The wsj.com home page today features, prominently, an article on fund manager Ken Heebner, who's long bank stocks, and I can't for the life of me work out what it's doing there. Heebner was a media star back when he was outperforming massively, but his fund has lost more than half its value so far this year, and in any case it's impossible to mirror what he's doing because, as the article itself notes, Heebner is known for his "rapid portfolio turnover". In other words, you might be able to go long with him right now, but you'll never know when he's exited that position and moved on to something else.

I fear that this article will steer some retail investors into buying bank stocks -- it is in the Personal Finance section, after all. And bank stocks, as we all should know by now, are very dangerous things. The WSJ should be providing less adulation of fund managers in general, and of Ken Heebner in particular: it does no one any good.

For really lazy journalism, however, you need to turn to the WSJ's glossy magazine. I'm surprised at this: it comes out so infrequently that you'd think its editors have the time to really check things over. But turn to the article about hard-core adventure travel -- things like six-day, 155-mile races across the Egyptian Sahara:

"Lately, the hardest thing for us has been keeping authentic adventure travel distinct from mainstream tourism," says Chris Doyle of the Adventure Travel Trade Association, who estimates world-wide spending on real adventure-travel packages at $75 billion to $150 billion a year.

Let's put those numbers in perspective: according to its annual earnings report, Walt Disney's global revenues from all its parks and resorts in fiscal 2008 totalled $11.5 billion. So I'm pretty sure that Doyle was talking in millions, not billions: 10,000 people each spending $10,000 will add up to $100 million. Which means that the WSJ is three orders of magnitude off.

Alternatively, check out the little maps that accompany the little article on hot winter spots around the world. The magazine's editorial staff is based in New York, and its editor, Tina Gaudoin, is an Englishwoman who has only recently moved here from London. So you'd think they'd be able to get those two cities right, at least. Think again: the New York map places the new Giorgio Armani Store, which is going to open on 5th Avenue and 56th Street, about 20 blocks north of that, on a residential stretch of the avenue abutting Central Park. And the London map places Somerset House somewhere in South Kensington -- about three and a half miles from its actual location on the Strand.

Of course, people aren't going to use those maps literally, to find the places in question, especially since that Armani store isn't even scheduled to open until February. (What it's doing in this issue of the magazine I have no idea.) But there was clearly a lack of attention to detail here.

But the worst offender of all, this weekend, is not WSJ but rather the NYT's T magazine, and specifically a section called The Must Haves. What are this season's must-haves?

• A $19,992 chandelier.
• Shoes: Pick from four different pairs, which cost $1,100, $375, $995, and $785.
• A $1,495 puffer jacket.
• Bikinis (yes, bikinis in December, presumably for those of us who regularly holiday to the southern hemisphere around now).
• A $1,355 table.
• Handbags: Another set of four. These cost $3,900, $3,775, $6,950, and $2,295.
• Watches: Four of these, too. Costing $14,650, $20,000, $54,200, and "price on request".

On what planet is a $54,200 watch a must-have? In which economy does a $2,295 handbag qualify as cheap? I don't know the answers to those questions, but with a bit of Googling I can tell you what "price on request" means: $126,700. And no, there's no bling -- it's even got a rubber strap. But there is a tourbillion, which is French for "utterly useless widget which adds an extra zero onto the price".

I know that lead times for these magazines are long, but we've been in recession for a year now. And these kind of prices don't generate escapist reveries, they generate revulsion and disgust. I'm sure the editors don't care what I think, but maybe we can hope that the advertisers will start phoning up the NYT and asking them to tone things down a bit. The New York Times Company needs T magazine, which is probably its most profitable arm -- it simply can't afford this degree of cluelessness.

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Originally posted by (author unknown) from Felix Salmon - All posts, on December 6, 2008 6:45 PM

Since where I live rarely sees snow, this is as close as I’m going to get to a white Christmas. Now if only I can figure out how to change the snowflakes to these…

      

Originally posted by handcollated from Hand Collated, on December 6, 2008 7:12 AM

It turns out that the iPhone supports video-out, it just hasn't been exposed to developers. I guess this should come as no surprise given the device's iPod heritage and its full-on computer characteristics.

All Apple would have to do is expose a Bluetooth interface for traditional HID (keyboard & mouse) and it will be game over for the netbooks, small laptops, and even perhaps up to 50% of the regular laptop market.

Three thoughts related on this topic:

1. I've got a friend who is traveling for work to the Netherlands next week who told me that he was going to take the bold step of leaving his laptop at home and relying only on his iPhone. He's not a programmer or designer, but an ops guy who needs to be able to be constantly on top of his email and web dashboards. At first I was surprised when he told me, but then I realized that he may be on the leading edge of a trend.

2. I used to commute back and forth to work with a laptop in the event that I was going to be somewhere either before or after work where someone might ask me to log in to check on something. I almost never carry a laptop around now, instead leaving one at either place and using the iPhone for the rare moments when I do need to be connected while not at home or at the office.

3. Remember how all of the sudden it seemed that every business travel hotel replaced its alarm clock with one that has an iPod dock? I've been amazed at how far down market this trend has gone; even Comfort Inns have iClocks gracing their bedside tables. Additionally, this upgrade was concomitant with the replacement of tube TVs with flat panel ones—basically better monitors for computer display. How long after Apple officially opens HID for mouse and keyboard and video out before these same hotels start providing these two relatively cheap peripherals so that business travelers can leave the laptop at home?

Sure, the iPhone is underpowered relative to even the most anemic of laptops. But for how long? And in the meanwhile, how should we be thinking about the applications we write for this new infrastructure?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the Onda, on December 6, 2008 3:40 AM

We don’t take change lightly, but the good news is that this redesign provides a solid foundation that we’ll be able to build on for the next 5 years of WordPress, just like the last one was basically the same for 5 years. Years? Don’t you mean ‘months’? It is eight of those, by my reckoning, [...]

Originally posted by that girl again from wordpress™ wank, on December 5, 2008 3:51 PM

Mike Frumin's blog is the best place to read about transportation and urban studies. You could read every blog, and you wouldn't find 10 posts about cities in the past two years as could as the 10 on his front page. Totally awesome!

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on December 5, 2008 3:15 PM

Cold comfort to the newspaper industry in the US. But TPM Reader RC passes on this article that notes that print media in India is experiencing a boom of historic proportions. Once it is explained, this artifact of globalization isn't that surprising -- literacy is growing rapidly on the subcontinent, creating a mass market for magazines and newspapers, along with money to buy them. But infrastructure and wealth isn't nearly as far along as in the US and Europe so Internet access isn't nearly as widespread.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 5, 2008 3:05 PM

Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity, Internet Tools, iPhone

First things first: as a new blogger around here, let me introduce myself. Hi, I'm Mel Martin. I spent most of my life as a journalist, then moved over to the technology side. I spent 4 years at the BBC working on creating a content management system.

I'm an avid amateur astronomer and have published many images taken from my home observatory. I've also written a book about film producer Samuel Bronston, who created epic films like El Cid, Fall of the Roman Empire, King of Kings and 55 Days at Peking. I participated in the recent DVD releases of two of the Bronston films, and shared in doing the commentary on the Fall of the Roman Empire DVD released in April. I've had Macs since 1984, the Apple II before that. Glad to be here, and hope I can share some interesting posts with you. And here we go....

There are lots of applications out there to deal with spam, but many run within or alongside the mail client itself, and that can be problematic when you are away from home and using limited bandwidth -- you still have to download all the mail in order for your local filters to process it. My ISP offers POP mail, and does some filtering on the server side, but 30-40 spams still get through every day.

Spamsweep from Bains Software offers a nice solution that has largely gone unnoticed, although there was a brief mention of it here in 2005. Now, for people with iPhones or other smartphones, it is even more useful. Spamsweep is a small app that displays an icon in your menu bar. In my situation, it runs on my Mac Pro desktop at home, checking my mail account(s) once a minute. It downloads the spam, and leaves the good mail alone, ready to pass it on to any device while I am on the road, connected via a laptop or cell phone. The spam gets trapped and goes to spam heaven (or hell).

You can train it, of course, and go back through the list of spam to correct any errors, but there are darned few of them. A nice side benefit is that it keeps the spam off my iPhone. It works with several mail clients including Apple Mail, Eudora, Entourage, Mailsmith, Powermail and Thunderbird. Those connections to your mail app are important only if you want Spamsweep to launch your mail client after it checks for spam. I don't use it in that mode, so Spamsweep quietly spends the day obediently checking my POP mail account and cleaning out the garbage. It is great when I travel, and when I get home I can check to see if there are any good messages (false positives) that got trapped. That almost never happens; if Spamsweep is unsure, it passes the mail through.

Support from the company has been very good, and there are usually a few updates per year adding some features and tightening up the code. It's a great solution for keeping spam vanquished when you travel, and really keeps your iPhone (or lesser device) clean.

Of course, a spam message could sneak in if your phone checks your mail server right before Spamsweep has done its check, but in the real world I only see that happen a couple of times a week, and of course during that week Spamsweep has snagged hundreds of messages I never want to see.

TUAWDrowning in a sea of spam? Spamsweep can help originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Mel Martin from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 5, 2008 3:00 PM

From Serious Eats

Photographer Peter Cunningham took this great photo of a man making hand pulled noodles in Shanghai. Look at those noodles fly!

Related
Translation of Lan Zhou's Chinese Menu
Knife-Sliced Noodles and Boiled Dumplings at Super Taste in Chinatown
Off the Beaten Path: Golden Shopping Mall in Flushing

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on December 5, 2008 2:00 PM

Shorpy.com posted a couple of classic 1950s interior shots by celebrated architecture photographer Julius Shulman. Above: Recreation Pavilion. Mirman Residence, Arcadia, California, 1959. Architects: Buff, Straub & Hensman. Some amusing commentary at Shorpy’s, including:

Please do not move cushions more than one-quarter inch from designated positions on the Recreation Pavilion Fun Grid. The Herman Miller benches will not be moved more than 21 bricks away from decking. Tennis racquets allowed on pillows only if propped at an appropriately informal angle, 35 degrees to the horizontal. Thank you.

1950. Cocktail hour at the Spencer residence in Santa Monica. A commenter says:

High ceilings, simple, sparse furnishings, even the fashions look contemporary. Usually there would be a grey brick fireplace and evidence of robin egg blue palette or chrome and blond furniture around for the fifties. This could be 2009 decor.

Exactly. We’re definitely returning to this aesthetic. That’s what I’m getting at when I say mid-century modernism is “both a historical milestone and a living, breathing ideal, reflected in much of today’s best design and architecture.”

Thanks for the tip, JLT!

Originally posted by Stewf from The Mid-Century Modernist, on December 5, 2008 1:10 PM

It's out of the bag, Greg Maddux will retire on Monday at the winter meetings. Best pitcher of this generation, automatic Hall of Fame choice. Maddux cards will be posted here pretty much all weekend.







Cards courtesy of the nice ladies at Dinged Corners.

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on December 5, 2008 12:33 PM

One typical question which frequently pops up is whenever it is better to use hardware upgrade or optimize software more. I already wrote about it, for example here.

Today I’ll look at the same topic from the consultants view. When consultant should suggest hardware upgrade and when it is not in a simple checklist form.

How good is hardware ? Sometimes people use so crappy hardware it would be much cheaper for them to upgrade before purchasing much of professional services. Though in some cases people like their system to be optimal and so they want to run it on some old box even if it costs them more to optimize it. It may be valid choice allowing to take a hardware boost later down the road when you need a major performance increase and do not have a time for big application changes.

Is current hardware usage balanced ? Say you have 10 servers one of them is overloaded and 8 are almost idle. In this case proper balancing is the answer rather than getting more hardware. Of course not all of the applications can be easily balanced but it is also surprising how many cases of people with reasonable sharded or replicated architecture suffer from wrong balance. Balancing can be simple operations act or require application changes which is another variable.

Are there any spikes in hardware use ? Often performance problems happen only Sometimes….. for example nightly when you do a backup or at 15 minutes off hour when you have some cron job running. In such cases evening out the usage is often better choice than hardware upgrade and it also can be done easily.

Is MySQL, Queries, Architecture optimized well enough ? Do not advice hardware upgrade as the first thing when you can triple performance by simple my.cnf change. Well enough is a tricky term though. You need to balance things and see what can be easily done by consultant or the customer and what is not. Adding the indexes is easy. Changing the query in your own application is easy but is hard for third party application, especially if it is close source. Big schema changes, caching, sharding can be even more complication - it depends. The bigger your application is going to be the more optimal you want to be on application level to be efficient.

What is exactly your goal with hardware upgrade ? Same as with software optimizations and changes you do should have a goal. You add the index to avoid full table scan and make given query faster. You add memory to avoid disk IO and make lookups faster. The goal in the application performance - making throughput better, query faster should lead you to goals in hardware (faster random IO, better caching, faster execution) which you can use to understand what needs to be done (gettings SSD, upgrading memory, upgrading CPUs). There are number of balancing questions you have to solve too such as SSD may not need so good in memory caching any more etc. There is no such thing as better hardware really, just hardware which serves application needs better. Many of us probably remember as moving from 4 Core systems to 8 Core reduced performance for many MySQL systems even though hardware itself was superior.

There are surely more things you can look at but these are simple obvious things you can keep in mind. Do you think I should add something else ?

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Originally posted by peter from MySQL Performance Blog, on December 5, 2008 12:25 PM

Terrific essay by John Powers on the design and art direction for Star Wars:

A flying saucer had never been a slum before. The immaculate silver sheen of the saucer was reinvented as a dingy Dumpster full of boiler parts, dirty dishes, and decomposing upholstery. Lucas’s visual program not only captured the stark utopian logic that girded modern urban planning, it surpassed it. The Millennium Falcon resisted the modernist demand for purity and separation, pushing into the eclecticism of the minimalist expanded field. Its tangled bastard asymmetry made it a truer dream ship than any of its purebred predecessors. It is the first flying saucer imagined as architecture without architects.

The Millennium Falcon is my single favorite bit of art direction ever. Nothing so fantastic has ever seemed so utterly real. (Via Kottke.)

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on December 5, 2008 12:11 PM

Songs boiled down to their essence...mostly "I want to do it with you".

Led Zeppelin, "Whole Lotta Love"
I want to do it with you.

AC/DC, "You Shook Me All Night Long"
We did it yesterday.

Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire"
I did it with you, and now it hurts when I pee.

If it's funny, it's gotta be McSweeney's.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 5, 2008 12:11 PM

More than 10,000 people are converging in Poznan, Poland, this week for the United Nation's conference on climate change. This global conference is the second in a trilogy of negotiations, whose goal is to create international policy that will decrease the effects of climate change and set the planet on a path toward a low carbon future. The final conference, COP15, will take place next fall in Copenhagen.

Public-interest law firm Earthjustice has sent two of its most global warming-savvy attorneys to Poznan this week to witness and write about their experiences while there. Through their Postcards from Poznan series, attorneys Martin Wagner and Erika Rosenthal will be giving us an educated glimpse at the busy world of climate policy negotiators.

Their most recent letter, the Stakes are High at Climate Summit, discusses the importance of global participation in this treaty.

Wagner is Managing Attorney for the International Program of Earthjustice, and blogged from Bali at the last world climate change conference. Rosenthal is a staff attorney in the International Program, and has an international background in environment and public health matters, according to Earthjustice.

Find more stories on the importance of the climate negotiations in our archives:
Good News about the Low-Carbon Future
Why Does Poznan Matter?
Breaking the Climate Deadlock, the G8's 50 by 50 Plan and Copenhagen

Image credit: Flickr/Maxymz, CC License

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 1:57 PM)

Originally posted by WorldChanging Team from Worldchanging, on December 5, 2008 11:57 AM

With the holiday season in full swing, we wanted to share a few suggestions for gifts to give yourself and those close to you who have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. The books and informational resources below are a few bodies of info we’ve found interesting and we hope you do too. Some are old, some are new, and we think there’s a ton of value in each. Whether you want to be a better marketer, a stronger business manager, a more creative artist, or you just want to know more about the evolution of the music business (and where it’s likely headed), we recommend you check out the goods below.

This is by no means a complete list of the best publications out there, nor is it in any particular order. It’s just a sampling. Have any comments about the list or suggestions for others? Please join the conversation and let us know.

• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us - Seth Godin
• Meet the Millennials - Terry McBride
• CRM Bible - Pyinna
• Word of Mouth Marketing - Andy Sernovitz
• The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen, and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce- Fred Goodman
• Confessions of a Record Producer: How to Survive the Scams and Shams of the Music Business- Moses Avalon
• The Problem With Music - Steve Albini
• 1,000 True Fans - Kevin Kelly
• Music Industry Survival Guide - Tunecore
• The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution- John Kusek

• Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy- Lawrence Lessig
• The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life- Richard Florida
• The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth - Clayton Christensen
• Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment- William Fisher
• Fair Use: The Story of The Letter U and The Numeral 2 - Negativeland
• Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid- Douglas Hofstadter

This is the first of a few gift guides we’ll be publishing over the next few weeks so keep you eyes peeled for more.

Originally posted by gary.brotman from Topspin, on December 5, 2008 11:27 AM

Shared by Eve
Well, if anyone wanted to ensure I'd be sitting here hitting refresh until Billy's interview with the cast went up, they have succeeded.

The Gothamist is all gooey with excitement they got access to The Real World: Brooklyn's set yesterday, but there's one person who thinks the blog can suck it: Transgender cast member Katelynn Cusanelli (pictured left), who was so mad about the way blogger Billy Parker treated her during the interview, that she wrote about it in her Live Journal:

"With public recognition comes public defamation; it's just part of the territory. As the next few months unfold I have prepared myself for the onslaught of vitriol, however I thought it would at least be spewed to my face.

Enter the douchebag.

I have been a blogger for a few years now and while I do not blog for my profession I have met a handful of those who do. There are writers with integrity and there are writers whose sole purpose is to debase other individuals because that is what their readers have come to expect; behavior I find to be woefully repugnant and is one of the primary reasons I refuse to read Perez Hilton (he just never seems to have anything nice to say…). Well today I had the unfortunate experience of being interviewed by one such individual, Billy Parker from The Gothamist.

CONTINUED »

---

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Post tags: Brooklyn, The Real World

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Queerty, on December 5, 2008 10:50 AM

So I just heard some great news from a couple of our filmmakers at Media That Matters. Randy Vasquez, director of eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival's Something's Moving just landed a big ol' grant from Native American Public Television (NAPT) to complete the feature-length version of the short that was included in the collection and which can now be purchased at our store! Plus, Lynn True and Nelson Walker, filmmakers of A Nomad's Life were just announced as one of 20 projects selected by the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program for 2008. The grant gives money to the filmmakers needed to complete the feature-length version of the 9 minute film that premiered at the eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival last May. Check out our new Discussion Guide and updated guidelines on how to submit for the next batch of social issue short films. —posted by Leah

Originally posted by (author unknown) from MediaRights: Staff Blog, on December 5, 2008 10:25 AM

CNET: Why Obama should ditch YouTube Posted by Chris Soghoian

President-elect Barack Obama has now posted his second weekly address to YouTube, and it has already gotten more than 411,000 views. A week ago, I criticized the use of YouTube by Obama's transition team, calling it a no-bid giveaway to the Google-owned video-sharing site. The solution I called for then--the adoption of BitTorrent as the official distribution platform for Change.gov--was, admittedly, a pipe dream. In this post, I'll explain why the government needs to step up and host its own videos and why it is simply improper to rely on YouTube to foot the bandwidth bill for Obama's messages to the people. I will also make the case that the use of YouTube and Google Analytics by the Obama transition team violates the privacy of Web site visitors and possibly even violates federal rules banning the use of permanent tracking cookies on government sites. ...

Originally posted by Siva Vaidhyanathan from The Googlization of Everything, on December 5, 2008 9:59 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on December 5, 2008 9:35 AM

We went to Wal-Mart yesterday. It was a mistake.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand why people shop at Wal-Mart. I live in a rural community that is mostly poor or working class. I see hundreds of people ride the bus to Wal-Mart daily because the store is one of the few places they can afford to shop. The dollar they save on a package of diapers is a dollar they genuinely need for heat, or for rent.

I get it, I do. I just don’t like the place.

Mostly, it depresses me. When I walk in and see all the plastic goods, all the sweatshop-made clothes, the fake flowers, the phthalate-filled toys, and the packaging-inside-of-packaging-inside-of-packaging, I quickly fall into a kind of despair. That’s no exaggeration; after five minutes in Wal-Mart, I genuinely start to lose hope for the planet, for humanity, for the world.

Give me Goodwill, with its recycling and potential for creative reuse, over Wal-Mart any day of the week.

Yesterday, however, I took Merrie, my seven-year-old, to Wal-Mart. We went in search of wire frames from which we could make wreaths with backyard greens. We didn’t find them. Apparently, Wal-Mart has pared down its craft section to make way for ever more plasticware and cheap electronics. Truthfully, we didn’t see anything I wanted to buy. We did, however, see a big-ol’ Dunkin’ Donuts counter.

And there the trouble began.

Merrie’s eyes lit up. “Please?” she asked. “Can we please get some Dunkin’ Donuts while we’re here?”

I said, “No, not today. We’re in a hurry, and I’d like to leave.”

“Mom, please! I’m hungry!”

“We have apples and nuts in the car, remember? You just ate some.”

“I don’t want those. And I’m hungry.”

“If you’re truly hungry, apples and nuts…”

“But I don’t want apples! I don’t want nuts! You always make me eat that stuff!”

I tried explaining again. There are the “sometimes” foods and the “anytime” foods. Donuts are “sometimes” foods. They are treats. It’s fine to have them once in a while, but they shouldn’t be something we buy on impulse just because they’re in front of us.

“Unhealthy food will always be in front of us,” I tried to reason. “If we bought treats every time we saw them, we would all be really, really unhealthy.”

And of course, we mostly are: 86% of the population is expected to be overweight within 20 years, childhood Type 2 diabetes has reached epidemic status, and children younger than Merrie now routinely get kidney stones. Those are the statistics, a few of them, though truthfully, there was plenty of evidence around us at Wal-Mart; people riding in carts because they were too unhealthy to walk; the rows of diet pills; the stacks of blood glucose monitoring kits by the pharmacy; small children already swollen like balloons with extra weight, dragging a 20-oz bottle of soda as they walked.

“You always say no,” she said, sadly. Her eyes welled with tears.

I don’t always say no. In fact, I say yes far more than I ever expected I would. Yes to cookies in the lunchbox. Yes to buttered popcorn at the movies. I say yes to snacks, yes to desserts, yes to hot cocoa in the winter, yes to ice cream in the summer. I say yes not once in a while, but often.

I say yes because I have read too much research about the consequences of saying no. To my great frustration, the research is pretty clear: when a parent restricts a food, it only makes the child want that food more. I do my best to strip the junk of its importance, make it no big deal.

But this is where the research utterly fails me. This is what makes a trip to Wal-Mart like entering a minefield. Because that stuff I’m not supposed to restrict? It’s everywhere there. Absolutely everywhere. And so far, the research has failed to teach me how to keep my kid healthy in a world where you cannot turn around without bumping into a rack of Cheetos and a plate of Krispy Kremes.

“Everything in moderation,” people say, which sounds so wise. But there is no moderation, not here, not in America at the dawn of the 21st century. So we parents are damned if we do, damned if we don’t. By restricting junk foods, I will make her want them more. But if I say yes every time she wants junk foods, I could be killing her, literally.

So I try to set boundaries. Soda at birthday parties? OK. Soda at dinner? Nope. Cookies in your lunchbox, sure, but not so many that you fill up on them. Dunkin’ Donuts? OK, maybe, as a treat sometimes. But not just because you happen to see a Dunkin’ Donuts counter when we go to Wal-Mart.

Along the way, I do my best to explain where I’m coming from, and I try to discuss the implications of our choices: where the money goes at the grocery store vs. at the farmers market, the environmental impact of single-serve packages vs. home-cooked.

But here we were in the late afternoon, standing  under the bright lights, holding an empty cart, and my daughter was starting to cry. Right now, she couldn’t remember all the times I said yes. She couldn’t remember those rational conversations about the consequences of our choices. All she knew was that donuts were in front of her, and she really, really wanted one.

As I stood there, I remembered another reason why I find Wal-Mart so depressing: because it invariably creates yet another wedge between me and my kids — the wedge where I become the bad guy for saying, once again, no.

Remember this, I said to myself. Remember how little there is here that you want, and how much there is to fight about.

“I’m not going to get you a donut right now,” I said calmly. “But I will take you to Dunkin’ Donuts sometime. I will.”

“When will you take me? When?” she pleaded.

I sighed. The truth is, parenting is filled with moments just like these — small, unglorious moments where the right response is no longer obvious — where maybe, perhaps, there is no right answer, just the option that seems a little less bad than an alternative. Mostly, I just desperately wanted to be out of that store. “Sunday,” I answered, wearily. “Let’s go to Dunkin’ Donuts on Sunday. It will be a special treat, and you will appreciate it even more because of that.”

“Sunday?”

“Sure.” Whatever, just get me out of this hellhole. “Sunday.”

She sniffled. “OK, Mom. Thanks.”

We left Wal-Mart, then, our cart still empty. I cast a glance back as I walked, and I silently cursed the big box store. This Sunday morning, I will go to Dunkin’ Donuts with my daughter. I will order gooey sugar-filled treats made with ingredients from around the world. Chances are good that it will be some variety of jelly donut, which I know from reading too much will contain sodium benzoate, TBHQ, a likely carcinogen that’s one of the ingredients in varnish and lacquer, and Red 40, which researchers link with ADHD and behavioral problems.

But I won’t think about these things as I order it at the counter. I’ll block them out, place my order, and hand over my money.

Merrie will eat it delightedly. “Jelly” will run down her chin, and she will probably declare that this is one of her best mornings, ever. I will smile at her, tell her I’m glad that she’s enjoyed herself. And I will silently curse Wal-Mart under my breath, vowing that next time, I will stick with Goodwill.

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Originally posted by Ali from The Ethicurean: Chew the right thing., on December 5, 2008 9:35 AM

From A Hamburger Today

After hearing about the greatness of Five Guys over and over again and possibly being the only burger writer who had never eaten there (yes, I'm full of shame), I finally visited the burger chain for the first time a few weeks ago. If I were really lazy, I'd tell you to read Kevin Pan's review at the Chicago Tribune because my experience was pretty much the same—in a nutshell, the fries are awesome and the burger is alright. But I'm only kind of lazy, so I'll throw up some pretty photos accompanied by commentary.

Being a complete Five Guys newbie, I didn't know that regular burgers came with two patties and little ones came with one, and that I could get as many toppings I wanted for free. Oh my, the possibilities.

I heeded my coworkers' advice and went for a little cheeseburger topped with pickles and grilled onions—nothing too crazy. While I'm sure I could eat a regular double-patty burger against the wishes of my stomach, the single-patty burger was just the right size for me.

Alas, the burger looked better than it tasted (keeping in mind that I was half expecting my mind to explode from delicious after reading so many of Five Guys' accolades). Not that it tasted bad, nor was it dry—my only problem with the patty was that it seemed to be missing something. Like seasoning and sodium. Each bite I took mostly tasted of tart pickles with the melted cheese and grilled onions providing textural contrasts. The soft, slightly chewy griddled bun was great though.

The star of the show was the french fries. I've eaten a lot of fries in my life, but I had never know the full potential of these simple deep fried potato sticks until that moment. All previous knowledge of french fries up to that point meant nothing. Nothing. All future, non-Five Guys french fry-eating experiences are destined to be ruined. I don't know how to describe how perfect that first bite was, through the delicate, salt-studded, crispy crust to the soft innards, but my reaction was probably something like, "Oh my god these fries are made of crack and rainbows and how the hell can fries taste this good oh sweet jesus I'mgonnaeattenmore." Pan's description is much more eloquent: "The fries tip more crispy than crunchy, and the interior has a creamy consistency with assertive potato-ey notes." The potato-ey notes in my fries were from Pasco, Washington, according to the whiteboard by the potato sacks. Thanks, Pasco!

My only problem with the fries is that the regular order is way too much for one person. The cup above is only half of the order while the rest of the fries sat in a paper bag, making me wonder why they bothered with the cup in the first place. Another thing is that one of my coworkers told me that their fries aren't always transcendental; it depends how busy it is when you go. If it's swamped, the fries will probably suffer. Luckily, there weren't many people during my visit.

While I would definitely go back to Five Guys for a reliably tasty burger, the fries are the main draw for me.

Five Guys

Multiple locations, but here's the one I went to:
296 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10014 (at 7th Avenue; map)
212-367-9200

Related
Five Guys Open in Brooklyn Heights
Five Guys Already Open in NYC

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on December 5, 2008 9:30 AM

Every twelve hours, these 500 clocks align to form a readable message. (via quips)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 5, 2008 9:17 AM

As Minnesota Senate recount officially ends, Franken camp claims a lead that can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from Talking Points Memo, on December 5, 2008 8:52 AM

A temporary detour along the Hudson River Greenway in Washington Heights went into effect Thursday.

The closure, related to work on the George Washington Bridge, will reroute cyclists to Broadway and Ft. Washington Avenue between 158th and 181st Streets. According to a Port Authority flier [PDF], pedestrians may access the park and riverfront through the tunnel at 172nd Street.

Interruptions are to occur on a "periodic" basis until December 31, "typically" from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on December 5, 2008 8:04 AM

The trailer for Carts of Darkness, a documentary film about Vancouver bottle collectors that have taken to racing shopping carts downhill. More excerpts are available on YouTube.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 5, 2008 7:59 AM

Biden taps economist and ... how can we not say it ... frequent TPMCafe blogger Jared Bernstein as his chief economics advisor.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 5, 2008 7:54 AM

Fun stuff: In an interview set to air tomorrow on "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," Howard Dean joked about a bit of a sensitive subject: The fact that Rahm Emanuel wasn't an early fan of Dean's 50-state strategy, which helped put Emanuel's new boss in the White House.

Asked if he felt vindicated, Dean joked that he would have felt more vindicated if Obama had given him the chief of staff gig instead of giving it to Rahm:

"Rahm ended up as chief of staff to Barack Obama," Dean said, "so I don't feel too vindicated." When he was informed that he had been right, Dean cracked: "I might have been right but I'd rather be chief of staff."

DNC spokesperson Stacie Paxton emailed to assure us that Dean was kidding. "Dean was clearly joking," Paxton wrote, adding that Dean had recently praised Rahm on MSNBC as "tough," "smart," and "loyal."

"As he's said previously, Dean has a lot of respect for Rahm Emanuel and thinks he'll do a great job as Chief of Staff," Paxton said.

No doubt, but as James Thurber put it, "the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing" he is simply revealing people's "true nature."

The interview is set to air tomorrow night at 10 P.M.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on December 5, 2008 7:46 AM

I love pieces like this — experts writing about how they use their tools — even when they’re about apps I don’t personally use.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on December 5, 2008 7:37 AM

About a month ago in Bali, Indonesia, the inaugural 2008 Asian Beach Games came to its conclusion. Intended to promote sports and culture, the games (held every two years) encourage tourism, support local economies and allow host countries like Indonesia to present a more global face to the world. The 2008 games brought 6,000 athletes to compete in 71 events in 19 sports. Sports included well-known games like beach volleyball and triathlon, and some sports better known to asians, like sepak takraw, kabaddi and pencak silat. The next Asian Beach Games are scheduled to be hosted by Oman in the year 2010. (25 photos total)

Daiki Masuda of Japan dives out of the water in the swim leg of the men's triathlon on day nine of the 2008 Asian Beach Games at Mertasari Beach on October 26, 2008 in Bali, Indonesia. (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Big Picture, on December 5, 2008 6:45 AM

I read Cynical-C everyday; the other day I ran across this post about the Dancing Plague of 1518.

The Dancing Plague (or Dancing Epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) in July 1518. Numerous people took to dancing for days without rest, and over the period of about one month, most of the people died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.

Wikipedia is great but I like to dig back into the "primary" sources. A Discovery News article tells of a book called A Time to Dance, a Time to Die whose author says that the dancing was a result of mass hysteria caused by high levels of psychological distress in the community. That article also mentions the Tanganyika laughter epidemic:

The epidemic seems to have started within a small group of students in a boarding school, possibly triggered by a joke. Laughter, as is commonly known, is in some sense contagious, and for whatever reason in this case the laughter perpetuated itself, far transcending its original cause. Since it is physiologically impossible to laugh for much more than a few minutes at a time, the laughter must have made itself known sporadically, though reportedly it was incapacitating when it struck. The school from which the epidemic sprang was shut down; the children and parents transmitted it to the surrounding area. Other schools, Kashasha itself, and another village, comprising thousands of people, were all affected to some degree. Six to eighteen months after it started, the phenomenon died off.

That epidemic was covered at length in Radio Lab's Laughter episode from earlier in the year.

But back to the Dancing Plague. That article links to a page on another form of mass hysteria, penis panic.

Genital retraction syndrome (GRS), generally considered a culture-specific syndrome, is a condition in which an individual is overcome with the belief that his/her external genitals -- or also, in females, breasts -- are retracting into the body, shrinking, or in some male cases, may be imminently removed or disappear. A penis panic is a mass hysteria event or panic in which males in a population suddenly believe they are suffering from genital retraction syndrome.

Which in turn guides us to a 2008 article in Harper's, A mind dismembered: In search of the magical penis thieves. George Costanza had a personal case of penis panic in the Seinfeld episode entitled The Hamptons.

George is seen naked by Jerry's girlfriend Rachel, to whom he tries vainly to explain that, having just gotten out of the cold water, he is a victim of penile "shrinkage."

Penis panic put me in mind of a similar phenomenon and after a couple of failed searches -- "afraid to pee", "pee in public" -- I finally found it: paruresis, aka "pee shyness, shy kidney, bashful bladder, stage fright, urophobia or shy bladder syndrome".

Paruresis [...] is a type of phobia in which the sufferer is unable to urinate in the (real or imaginary) presence of others, such as in a public restroom. It can affect both males and females. The analogous condition that affects bowel movement is called parcopresis.

Paruresis has been referenced in several movies, TV shows, books, and other media.

Stage fright always puts me in mind of this New Yorker article by John Lahr about the phenomenon (subscribers-only version). From there, it's relaxed concentration all the way down, a topic on which I could digitally ramble all day, so let's stop there.

(I took the title of this post from the online excursions that Rosecrans Baldwin conducts for the NY Times' The Moment. Apologies and thanks.)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 5, 2008 6:33 AM

Photo credit: Kelly Rossiter A number of people have commented on earlier posts over the past few weeks about not knowing exactly how to go about being a vegetarian. You've made the ethical decision not to eat meat, but then practical issues come to the fore. Maybe you don't know what to cook, or how to get all your vitamins and protein on a vegetarian diet, where to buy local ingredients for a vegan diet, or even where to eat out. ...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from TreeHugger, on December 5, 2008 6:31 AM

Originally posted by HMTKSteve from Poke Farm, on December 5, 2008 6:19 AM

1.) The New York Times as Cliffs Notes. If you've read the LAT or MAN on MOCA, you already knew everything that was in the NYT story, and you knew it days/weeks ago. (On the bright side: I congratulate the NYT on finding a direct way to educate its own chief art critic on MOCA's import.) In a related story, this probably means that any day now the NYT will 'discover' the financial troubles at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

(Meanwhile, Lee Rosenbaum scoops the NYT on the biggest NYC art story in months. Oops.)

2.) So, Twitter... (If you don't know it, here's the skinny.) I've noticed that lots of museums, from the stodgy Met to hipper museums such as Seattle's Henry, have started tweeting. That's a good thing. Connecting with your audience where they are is always a plus. (Related: Carol Vogel has noticed only Brooklyn. Stunner.)

Unfortunately way too many museums are unclear-on-the-concept. As usual, art museums are stupidly shy about using new technologies to feature what they're all about: Art. Instead, museums tweet about all kinds of preposterous silliness, like party pix. Exceptions: The Whitney. MoMA, sometimes. More typical is the Hirshhorn, which has never once tweeted about an artwork.

Motivating factor behind this post: This morning, the Walker Art Center offered up what might be the dumbest tweet ever:

"Wondering what people would like us to tweet about more. Got suggestions? Reply!"

Moments later, a brilliant response from schmelzenfreude:

"Tweet about snow shovels! Or great botanical gardens of the world. Or quantum physics. Or fisheries biology. Or yarn."

The Walker Art Center is one of America's best contemporary art museums. Its building is full of modern art and contemporary art from its permanent collection of art. It hosts art exhibitions, and it employs art curators and other smart art people. I'd bet that its offices are full of art. The place exists because of art. And the Walker Art Center can't figure out what it should be tweeting about? (I mean, you know it's time to lay off the entire web/interactive/whatever staff when...)

Tweeting about art couldn't be easier. I often wander into a museum and 'tweet' my visit, posting 140 characters or less about the great Emile Bernards in Indy, or about Carleton Watkins at the Getty. (My feed from a recent visit to the Indianapolis Museum of Art is in the jump. Thanks IMA.) And it's not just me: Former Whitney and SFMOMA director David Ross just started tweeting. His recent Met visit resulted in a van Eyck-related tweetgasm. 

Bottom line, museums: If you blog or tweet, make sure at least half of your blog posts are about art objects.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on December 5, 2008 6:01 AM

A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis. Clever flow-chart of recent events leading to the housing bubble and financial market collapse punctuated with some choice, embarrassing quotes from the heads of state. It doesn't go into deregulation, predatory lending or other deeper roots, but does a good job with the immediate cause and effect.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on December 5, 2008 5:59 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on December 5, 2008 5:43 AM

From Serious Eats

If you're a Serious Eats regular, chances are you're also a bacon lover. We've created a holiday gift guide especially for you to share with your friends and family to ensure your holidays are bacon-filled. You can thank us later.

DIY Bacon Gifts

With the economic times being what they are, many of us will be spending less money and more heart on our holiday gift-giving this year. Here are a few DIY gift suggestions for your bacon lover.

Make Your Own Bacon: It's easier than you think, doesn't require any special equipment, and is sure to impress. There are many tutorials and recipes online, we recommend following the New York Times' adaptation of Michael Ruhlman's savory bacon recipe. Savory Bacon Recipe »

Bacon Soap: If you've gone through the trouble of making your own bacon, you've already got the main ingredient needed for a batch of bacon soap. This is not a quick project (your soap will need to cure for at least 2 weeks) so be sure to read through the instructions carefully before you dive in. How to make bacon soap »

Bacon Fat Spice Cookies: Everything tastes better with bacon! Especially cookies. This recipe for Bacon Fat Spice Cookies is adapted from Jennifer McLagan's book,Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes. This is a low effort, high reward project and a great gift (if you don't eat them all!) Bacon Fat Spice Cookies Recipe »

Crochet Bacon Wrap: If you're handy with a crochet hook, use your skills to wrap your bacon lover in deliciousness. The Big Strip O'Bacon crochet chart can be downloaded for $5 from Monster Crochet »

Bacon T-shirts

Help your bacon lover represent with a bacon T-shirt. Bacon is a powerful muse and has inspired many t-shirts, so we've narrowed it down to a few of our favorites.

Baconshirts.com: Baconshirts.com is a great first stop for your bacon wear. I'm partial to the butcher diagram, but all designs are bacon-tastic and available on T-shirts, aprons, onesies, and undies. $20 at Baconshirts.com, shipping included »

The Bacon Geek T-shirt: Is that bacon in your pocket? Just one of the bacon-themed T-shirts available from The Grateful Palate. $21.95 from The Grateful Palate »

Praise the Lard!:

We have a natural bias toward bacon corollary T-shirt, Praise the Lard! (we designed it!). Available in a multitude of color combinations, as a T-shirt or a hoodie. Starting at $19.99 at Neighborhoodies.com »

Bacon Reading

On our required reading list for any bacon lover:

Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman will lead your bacon lover through the essentials of at-home charcuterie. Available for $23.10 at Amazon.com »

The Bacon Cookbook by James Villas includes more than 150 recipes incorporating bacon in all different kinds of dishes. Available for $23.10 at Amazon.com »

Pork and Sons by Stéphane Reynaud is a beautifully illustrated cookbook celebrating the whole hog. Available for $27 at Amazon.com »

Bacon of the Month

Each month, bacon of the month club members receive a different delicious bacon by mail. An obvious gift that's sure to fill a bacon lover's heart with glee on a monthly basis.

Zingerman's Bacon Club is available for for 3 or 6 month subscriptions, starting at $99, (shipping and handling included, $10 extra per installment if your sending it to Alaska and Hawaii).

Grateful Palate's Bacon of the Month Club is available for 6 or 12 month subscriptions, starting at $190, (shipping and handling included).

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Serious Eats, on December 5, 2008 5:00 AM

The profoundly amnesic patient known in the scientific literature as H.M. has died, at the age of 82.

H.M., whose full name is now revealed as Henry Gustav Molaison, suffered from intractable epilepsy, probably as a result of a head injury incurred when he was knocked down by a bicycle in childhood.

In 1953, some 18 years after the accident, H.M. was referred to neurosurgeon William Scoville, who performed a radical procedure in an attempt to cure his debilitating seizures and frequent blackouts. Using a modification of the surgical technique developed by Wilder Penfield, Scoville removed both of H.M.'s hippocampi in their entirety, as well as some of the surrounding structures.

This cured H.M.'s epilepsy, but had severe effects on his memory: he was left with profound anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Not only was he unable to remember anything that had happened to him in the 10 years or so before the surgery, but he was also unable to form any new memories.

Following his surgery, H.M. was studied intensively, and became the best known case study in neuropsychology. Up until his death earlier this week, he took part in numerous groundbreaking memory studies, conducted initially by Brenda Milner of McGill University, and more recently by Suzanne Corkin of MIT.

H.M.'s amnesia was so severe that he never recognized Milner, despite working with her for more than 50 years. "He was...always willing to try these tasks," Milner said in a recent interview, "and yet every time I walked in the room, it was like we'd never met."

Milner's early studies of H.M. showed that the hippocampus is critical for memory formation, and the subsequent finding that he could learn simple motor skills showed that there were at least two distinct memory mechanisms. Although H.M. left no survivors, his legacy will not be forgotten, because he has probably contributed more to our understanding of memory than any other individual.

Read the comments on this post...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Neurophilosophy, on December 5, 2008 3:47 AM

Being an illustrated ramble through the last three days, which I spent in Manhattan talking about money. Some of the photos are the most painfully obvious clichés and to make it worse fuzzy and blurry too. Those adjectives might apply at least in part to the money business too.

First off, thanks to my friends and colleagues at Sun for setting this up (I seriously enjoy listening to customers), and I apologize to some other New York friends whom I’d have loved a beer or a coffee with but this particular schedule got very jammed very quickly.

The Biz

New York’s all about money, more and more so the further south you go in Manhattan. Just off Wall Street, something was reflecting light onto a building.

The bankers I was talking to were mostly those who aren’t feeling existentially threatened; but all of them have taken a beating. Over coffee and chit-chat, under my Sun hat, there was quite a bit of common feeling, sharing the experience of wild investor mood swings.

If Sun is lucky and smart, we have lots of growth opportunities. I doubt, though, that the finance business will regain its pre-crisis size for quite some time. But even in its diminished state, it’s very big and very strong and very rich. I can’t give you the details of who I talked to and what they’re up to, but damn, do these guys ever have serious data management problems.

We visited some people at one of the exchanges, and I walked away from that with my mind boggling at their traffic levels, and the number of rows they think it’s reasonable to write into a database in 6½ hours. Also, the view from the office was pretty compelling.

In the finance biz there are a very few, very central, balls-to-the-wall trading apps like those exchange guys were running, and they just don’t use computers like most people do. But actually, most of the programmers spend their time building, and most of the servers spend their time running, straightforward Web-fronted database-backed CRUD apps. And they’re under-using modern Web frameworks, still a lot of Java classic and .NET/ASP being ground out really inappropriately.

On this trip I did something I’ve totally never ever done before: dropped into total fanboy salesdroid mode, talking up the new Amber Road storage products. Because dammit, these customers need ’em. I actually enjoy doing this, but I’m too keenly aware how complex the trade-offs are for most technology choices, and it’s not often that something stands out starkly as these things seem to.

The Buzz

As long as the weather’s not too brutal, anyone who enjoys life has to enjoy a few days in Manhattan. The lights and colours and faces, well, there really isn’t anywhere like it. Of course, not all of it’s happy and pleasant; blow this pic up and check out the fruit vendor.

The pix start to get fuzzy; this one was shot out the window of a taxi that was going way too fast, and the light wasn’t good.

I confess to feeling an odious smugness as I navigated among the crowds of tourists hunched around their unfolded maps, just because I knew where I was going and was There On Business, so Nobody Could Tell that I was actually a Clueless Out-of-Towner too.

Hey, here’s a blurry tourist shot, what a cliché.

The quality of light in Grand Central is always special; the stone is a good colour of course, but they seem pretty clueful about not screwing it up with the wrong lighting.

Sorry, I just couldn’t get enough of the blurry people.

I was pretty busy from early to tired most days, but did get out for one late night walk; it was raining a bit.

Being in New York on business is the best way to visit. Only next time I want a day or two off.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from ongoing, on December 4, 2008 11:00 PM

One of my favorite things about the Christmas season is the Portland Mercury's online auction. Below are just some of the great items they're offering and how much they're currently going for (and the auction has only been posted for one day!). All proceeds benefit Portland Women's Crisis Line, which provides a 24-hour hotline for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

I'm a Narcissist! ($50)

Get your photo or name on every single page of an issue of the Mercury!

A Mercury Feature about You! ($161.46)

Sweetness Is Your Weakness ($82.00)

The owner of Pix will spend three hours working with you to create a six-course dessert tasting with you and your friends.

Get a Bike and Lunch with Sam Adams ($750)

Get a commuter bike, a ride with Jonathan Maus from BikePortland.org and lunch with Sam Adams.

Cop and Chiers Ride-along ($52.01)

Ride along with a cop AND with the cops who pick up "those who are too intoxicated to fend for themselves."

Movies for a Year ($152.50)

You 52 admission passes to Cinema 21 and free movies all year (with a plus one!) to the Clinton Street Theater, the Hollywood Theatre, and the Laurelhurst Theater! You also get a private screening of a movie of your choice at the Clinton St.

Your Choice of Investigative Report ($47.98)

You name the topic, and the Mercury will investigage it for you.

Throw An Awesome Picnic Party ($170.03)

100 half sandwiches, potato salad, 50 dots from St Cupcake, two cases of Hot Lips soda, and a live performance.

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on December 4, 2008 7:21 PM

There’s a lot of discussion about defense and defensive statistics coming into vogue, especially with Peter Gammons stating that teams are realizing that the negatives of defense take away from even big positives on offense. Manny Ramirez, he’s looking at you. Adam Dunn? You too.

But while people are crowing about Zone Rating or even Dave Pinto’s Probabilistic Model, they’re missing something. If you think teams don’t read the studies and stats out here, you’re wrong. They’ve done that for years. What most people don’t realize is that while there’s some great minds writing about baseball, there’s some great minds inside the game too. There are the names you know — Eddie Epstein, Ben Baumer, Keith Woolner — and more names that you don’t.

There have been occasions where I’ve been privy to some of that work that’s going on in front offices and it simply blows away things you’d call the state of the art in sabermetrics. Not a little ahead — a lot. Some of it leaks out, some doesn’t. Some is absolutely horrible too, while some is ignored. Just don’t think that teams are using the same things you are. Anyone that thinks that, isn’t thinking.

Originally posted by Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on December 4, 2008 6:56 PM

This month, Gourmet is running my story about Tohoku, a breathtaking region that sits atop the main island of Honshu. I've traveled to the area, Japan's snow country, several times. It's a remarkable place, rural and rugged, with dramatic mountains and coastline (and unbelievable onsens, including this one, hard by the Sea of Japan). The food there is as rustic as the landscape, simple, hearty fare that warms you on a frigid winter day. Hot pots are a big part of the cooking, as you may expect, with different areas of Tohoku proud of their local dishes.

The last time I traveled through the region, I met a woman in Akita Prefecture named Mrs. Shizuko Kamada, who invited me to her home and cooked hot pot for me and her family. She lived close to Akita City, the area's urban center, but her house was already deep in the countryside, surrounded by farmland and thick forest. She showed me how she buries Napa cabbage under the snow to preserve it fresh for months, and the foods she keeps in her storehouse. She also graciously shared her recipe for her local hot pot, "rice ball" hot pot (damako nabe). I cooked it again last night and it was delicious. Here's Mrs. Kamada's recipe, below. Give it a try. (Thank you, Mrs. Kamada.)

Damako Nabe

For the rice balls:
3 cups Japanese short grain white rice
Potato starch, as needed

For the broth:
1 quart chicken stock, prepared only from chicken bones (no bouquet garni or mirepoix)
1 quart iriko dashi
2/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons sake
1 teaspoon salt

2/3 lb taro
1/4 lb burdock root
3/4 lb chicken, boned and cut into bite-size pieces (white and dark parts)
1/2 lb Tokyo negi, sliced on an angle
7 oz itokonyaku noodles, boiling water poured over them
1/4 lb oyster mushrooms, ends trimmed
1 bunch seri (dropwort) or mitsuba as a substitute, the leaves plucked from stem

To make rice balls, mash the cooked rice with a spoon to crush the grains and sprinkle a little potato starch on them to hold the ball together. Dip your hands into salt water and roll the mashed rice into dense balls about 1 inch in diameter. Set aside.

Mix together all the broth ingredients to prepare. Set aside.

Prepare the hot pot ingredients: Steam the taro with the skin on, until you can pierce with a skewer. Cool and peel, and cut into 1/2 inch thick slices. Scrape the burdock root clean with the back of knife then shave it like you would sharpen a pencil. Place the shavings in bowl of cold water so they don't discolor.

To cook, add the chicken, burdock root and broth to a hot pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the taro, Tokyo negi, itokonyaku and mushrooms, in neat bunches in the pot. Cover and simmer for 5 more minutes. Add the rice balls and simmer for 2 minutes more. Garnish with the seri or mitsuba leaves and serve.

Now, if you check out the photo above you may notice the oyster mushrooms missing, and the curious appearance of carrots (fancy yellow heirlooms from the farmers market), cabbage, shiitake mushrooms and shimeji mushrooms. What gives? Well, that's the beauty of hot pot. The only rule is... no rules! This is relaxed cooking. If you're missing an ingredient, substitute it with another that you think would taste good. If you want to add more of one ingredient, just do it (I did, with the chicken). The bottom line: Make your hot pot your own.

Originally posted by Harris Salat from The Japanese Food Report, on December 4, 2008 6:10 PM

Tonight the Rainforest Alliance threw their annual Holiday Party.  Although not quite all of the 33,000 members attended, there was a large turnout.  Luckily for us, their headquarters are located just a few blocks from our Nolita location.

- - - - - - - - -

During their 21 years in operation, the nonprofit organization has grown to an annual operating budget of $33 million.  Working in the Farming, Forestry, and Tourism business has serious global impact, but the Rainforest Alliance knows how to have a good time as well.

Rainforest Alliance is one of many certifications that we proudly support, and we are grateful that we got to party with them tonight.

Originally posted by Mike White from Gimme! Coffee News, on December 4, 2008 4:38 PM

More on the Saigon Grill saga: the owners were arrested yesterday on over 400 counts of "violating minimum-wage laws, falsifying business records and defrauding the state's unemployment insurance system".

"Like so many restaurants across New York City, Saigon Grill was run on the backs of its workers," Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. "These workers allowed the business to thrive, and in exchange they were allegedly cheated out of wages, fined for ridiculous reasons" and, he said, "pulled into a painstaking ploy to cover it all up."

(thx, nick)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 4, 2008 3:38 PM

Richard Howe takes photographs of Manhattan street corners. From March to November 2006, Howe took a photo of every single street corner in Manhattan, around 11,000 in all.

I photographed each corner just as I found it, almost always as seen from its diagonally opposite corner. Some of the photographs have no people and no traffic, others are completely dominated by people or even, in some instances, by traffic; the majority are somewhere in between. Most of the photographs simply show what people were doing on the corner when I got there: crossing the street or waiting to cross it, shopping, hanging out, riding a bicycle, and so on -- in short, doing what people do at almost any street corner anywhere in Manhattan.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 4, 2008 2:38 PM

A new caucus of pro-Depression 2.0 Republicans? Ed Kilgore looks at the possibility.

Check out Ed's post, and his reference to another of Stoller's. There's an interesting and I think important question here as to whether neo-Hooeverite Republicans are pushing Hooverite policies for strictly economic reasons (creditors can do well in a deflationary economy), moral reasons (need a good hard recession to re-teach the poor moral values) or just because they're economic illiterates who just don't feel right echoing the calls of centrist and liberal economists. I think both Ed and Stoller are both on solid ground, with respect to the moral and economic rationales, respectively, though I think many of the folks I see on Cavuto's show fall squarely in the third category.

Late Update: This too, from TPM Reader JF ...

I tend to believe there is a simpler explanation for the Neo-Hooverite positioning: Given the new demographic realities of the country, Obama's presidency must be a failure if Republicans are to ever emerge from the political wilderness. The more they obstruct, the more Obama and Congessional Democrats will be forced to water down economic policy. And a watered-down policy just won't cut it at this moment in history. This is sabotage, pure and simple. If the poor and the middle class have to suffer in order for Republicans to have something to run against in 2010, so be it.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 4, 2008 1:38 PM

Former Rep. David Bonior, who has deep roots in the labor movement, has mounted an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign, with letters and personal lobbying, to press the Obama transition team and top labor leaders to get behind his pick for labor secretary: Union activist Mary Beth Maxwell, who would make history as the first openly gay cabinet member.

Bonior, who has been trying in vain to get his own name taken off the shortlist for the post, is also confirming for the first time that if asked by Obama, he would take the job, though he would prefer Maxwell.

"I would do anything President-Elect Obama asks me to do, but I think it's time to pass the torch to a new generation of leadership with a fresh vision for working families," Bonior said in a statement that was sent to us by his spokesperson.

"That's why I'm behind Mary Beth," continued Bonior, who has made his preference known but has shied away from making public statements about the labor sec post.

Bonior has also sent a letter (which we've obtained) to leaders at top unions such as the AFL-CIO and SEIU, as well as leading progressive organizations, making a strong case for Maxwell. And Bonior has also privately made the case for Ms. Maxwell directly to Obama's top transition team officials, a source familiar with the discussions said.

Some labor leaders are reported to be worried that an older, more experienced hand with more stature would make a better pick for the post than the relatively younger Maxwell, who heads the pro-labor group American Rights at Work. But Bonior argued in his letter that Maxwell would be more in sync with Obama's change message.

"I believe that it is time to pass the torch to a new generation of leadership that puts a fresh new face on the labor movement and our vision for working families," Bonior wrote, adding that an old-guard figure would amount to "looking in the rear-view mirror and represent past Washington battles."

Separately, The Politico reports that a key coalition of gay and lesbian groups has thrown its support to Maxwell.

Late Update: A bio of Maxwell here.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on December 4, 2008 1:02 PM

Today we are pleased to announce the beta release of the Facebook Connect Commenters plugin for Movable Type Pro 4.23 and MTOS 4.23, following yesterday's announcement of the Facebook Connect plugin directory as well as Monday's announcement of Movable Type Motion, which includes the plugin as well. It's available for immediate download from the plugin directory.

This Open Source plugin adds Facebook Connect to any Movable Type powered site and allows any Facebook user to sign in, comment, and share their actions on Facebook.

Using Facebook Connect, MT automatically displays a commenter's Facebook user name and photo next to their comments.  Then, Movable Type automatically lets all of a commenter's friends on Facebook know about the comment via the mini-feed on that commenter's Facebook profile. This helps to drive traffic to your blog -- and your content -- not just from your community, but from the social network of everyone who participates on your site.

And Facebook Connect joins a range of other authentication options which use OpenID to allow commenters to sign in on your Movable Type site. From Google to Yahoo, AOL to LiveJournal to WordPress, or even our own Vox and TypePad services, almost any popular service can be used as a sign-in option on your site.

Important: please be sure to review the read me file included with the file since you will need to create a Facebook app in order for the authentication and transmission of comments to Facebook to work properly.

Please note that this is an unsupported beta release, but we are very interested in your feedback and bug reports. If you wish to report a bug, please create a case in our public bug tracking system.

Originally posted by Chris Ernest Hall from MovableType.org - Home for the MT Community, on December 4, 2008 10:47 AM

A photo from Life Magazine of Southdale Shopping Center in Edina, Minnesota after its opening in 1956.

Southdale was the first mall ever built and still stands today (I visited many times during my Minneapolis residency). The mall's designer was an immigrant from Austria, Victor Gruen, who wanted to bring the community feeling of the European arcade to the suburbs.

Oddly, this most suburban American invention was supposed to evoke a European city centre. Hence Southdale's density and its atrium, where shoppers were expected to sit and debate over cups of coffee, just as they do in the Piazza San Marco or the Place Dauphine. Gruen exiled cars, which he thought noisy and anti-social, to the outside of his mall. Most contemporary critics thought Gruen had succeeded in bringing urbanity to the suburbs. Southdale was "more like downtown than downtown itself", claimed the Architectural Record. Another asserted, in a rare example of journalistic hyperbole that turned out to be absolutely right, that the indoor shopping mall was henceforth "part of the American way".

Ironically Gruen's creation only served to strengthen the suburban car culture that he despised. Later in life, Gruen became disillusioned with malls and their unintended consequences.

He revisited one of his old shopping centers, and saw all the sprawling development around it, and pronounced himself in "severe emotional shock." Malls, he said, had been disfigured by "the ugliness and discomfort of the land-wasting seas of parking" around them. Developers were interested only in profit. "I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments," he said in a speech in London, in 1978. He turned away from his adopted country. He had fixed up a country house outside of Vienna, and soon he moved back home for good. But what did he find when he got there? Just south of old Vienna, a mall had been built -- in his anguished words, a "gigantic shopping machine." It was putting the beloved independent shopkeepers of Vienna out of business. It was crushing the life of his city. He was devastated. Victor Gruen invented the shopping mall in order to make America more like Vienna. He ended up making Vienna more like America.

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 4, 2008 10:19 AM

The Economist on Nokia’s drive to become a major service provider for maps and email.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on December 4, 2008 9:53 AM

We're pleased to share that Google Friend Connect is now available in beta to any webmaster looking to add a "dash of social" to his or her site. This service lets webmasters add social features to their sites by simply copying and pasting a few snippets of code — no advanced coding or technical background required.

We know that people want to be social on the web, and Friend Connect makes it easy for anyone to sign in to a website, share a little bit about themselves through a personal profile, discover other people with similar interests, invite their contacts, and interact with friends. Even better, you don't have to deal with the hassle of creating yet another username and password — Friend Connect lets you log in using an existing account from Google, Yahoo, AOL, or OpenID. Similarly, you can choose to either establish a new profile or use profiles and friend sources from other social networks that have opened up their services, like Plaxo and orkut. To learn more, watch the video tour below:



We launched Friend Connect as a preview release in May, and since then we have been working closely with a handful of website owners, social networks, and application developers to improve its speed and scalability, ease of use, and customization capabilities. We've also expanded the features available to users with richer, more integrated profiles and new ways to discuss and share content, like including YouTube videos in your comments.

Friend Connect's goal is to facilitate an open social web. Using open standards like OpenID and OAuth, Friend Connect makes it simple for people to instantly interact with one another on the sites that they already love to visit. Additionally, websites that use Friend Connect become OpenSocial containers, capable of running applications created by the OpenSocial developer community.

In the coming months, we're excited to see more webmasters add Friend Connect to their sites, helping their visitors engage with each other across the web.

To learn more, please visit www.google.com/friendconnect.

Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager

Originally posted by A Googler from The Official Google Blog, on December 4, 2008 9:48 AM

The song is fantastic. The video is adorable and looks like it cost a bagillion dollars to make (how much do you think it costs to rent Versailles Palace?).

It's makes me think of this song called "The Fear" by Pulp:


I actually find myself singing the Pulp version far too often:
This is the sound of someone losing the plot -
making out that they're okay when they're not.
You're gonna like

Originally posted by Sarah from sarah's so boring ever since she stopped drinking., on December 4, 2008 9:28 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on December 4, 2008 9:20 AM

Filed under: Internet Tools, iPhone

Devicescape has released Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T (iTunes link) a new iPhone application designed to streamline logging onto the now free AT&T wifi hotspots. The old way required you to join the network, which would then bring up a page in mobile Safari to enter your AT&T phone number. A few seconds later you receive a (free) text message from AT&T containing a link. Click on the link and you're connected to the internet.

With Easy Wi-Fi apparently all you have to do is launch the app and it will log you on without going through the text message rigmarole. They're offering it for free at the moment, though apparently it'll be jumping up to $1.99 on Friday. So if you make a habit of visiting places with AT&T wifi (e.g. Starbucks) grab it now at the iTunes Store.

[via Gizmodo]

TUAWEasy Wi-Fi for iPhone simplifies logging onto free AT&T wifi originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Mat Lu from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 4, 2008 9:11 AM

Let me follow up on what I just wrote below about Krugman's and Atrios's views on our difficulty in finding ways to spend on stimulus quickly enough to pull the economy out of its nosedive. We're not just looking for ways to spend -- capital projects like major infrastructure spending -- but also ways to prevent things that will force an even more rapid deterioration -- like big budget cuts by state and local governments (Atrios's point.)

I'd be very curious to hear from the real economists on this one. But if these assumptions are right (and I assume they are) I do not see how they do not become the major factor in the auto maker bailout discussion. Whatever we think of the long-term or even the medium-term fate of the US auto industry, it's hard to think of many other stiff accelerants to the downturn than one of more of the big automakers going bankrupt any time in the next year.

For all sorts of reasons, we couldn't broadcast the idea that we're just propping up these companies in the near term as a de facto stimulus effort or as a way to keep money flowing into people's pockets (nor am I proposing that approach, as opposed to a plan which keeps them spending and employing while also laying the groundwork for longterm health). But if Krugman's prognostications are right, it's not clear to me that such an effort would not justify itself in macro-economic terms.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 4, 2008 9:00 AM

Created by Christoph Niemann

I like coffee so much that I have tea for breakfast: The first cup of the day in particular is so good that I’m afraid I won’t be able to properly appreciate it when I am half-asleep. Therefore, I celebrate it two hours later when I am fully conscious.

I must have been 5 when I first discovered the taste of coffee, when I was accidentally given a scoop of coffee ice cream. I was inconsolable: how could grown-ups ruin something as wonderful as ice cream with something as disgusting as coffee?

A few years later I was similarly devastated when my parents announced that for our big summer vacation we would go . . . hiking.

When I was 10 I still hated coffee, but fell in love with the ritual of making coffee. My parents were thankful enough about me fixing them coffee every morning that they overlooked my first clashes with brewing technology.

At 17 I still suffered from coffee schizophrenia: I loved the concept of coffee, but resented the taste. I decided to cure myself through auto-hazing. Around that time, my parents took me on my first trip to Paris. We arrived by train early in the morning and went straight to a little cafe. I ordered a large café au lait and forced down the entire bowl. It worked. Since then I have enjoyed coffee pretty much every day.

When I was 21 I worked as an intern at a magazine. The art director and I would brew a gigantic pot of coffee around 9 a.m. to help us get through the day. The pot would simmer in the coffeemaker, and through evaporation the coffee strengthened noticeably at lunchtime. In the evening hours, the remaining coffee had turned to a black concoction with a stinging smell and tar-like taste. We endured it without flinching.

When I came to New York in 1995, I was delighted to discover deli coffee. At the time, I was focused less on taste and more on quantity and price. Thus, I was in caffeinated paradise.
In January 1999 a friend seduced me into switching to latte. Within weeks a considerable portion of my budget ended up at the L Cafe in Williamsburg.

My inner accountant quickly convinced me to buy one of those little espresso machines (for the price of approximately 10 tall lattes). It had a steam nozzle to heat milk, which one should clean very thoroughly after each use. I didn’t have the patience to do so. Within a few uses, an unappetizing, dark brown, organic lump developed around the nozzle. A few days later it had become unremovable, and I reverted to getting my coffee outside.

Here’s a chart that shows my coffee bias over the years.

For good measure I have added my bagel preferences over the same period. (1) Drip coffee, (2) Starbucks, (3) blueberry bagels, (4) sesame bagels, (5) poppy-seed bagels, (6) everything bagels

Please don’t hold my brief affair with blueberry bagels against me. I cured myself of this aberration.

I order large coffees, but stop drinking when the coffee gets too cold. There’s always a couple of ounces left in the cup, so I can’t just toss it into my wastebasket. I dread the long haul to the bathroom to properly dispose of the coffee remains. Hence you will usually find a tower of paper cups on my desk.

Hot milk greatly improves the taste of coffee, but I find milk foam useless and annoying.

My mother (who makes the most delicious coffee in the world), is obsessed with a particularly potent mechanical foam maker. The result is a layer of impenetrable foam, a kind of lacto-stucco. I have to gnaw my way through it before being able to get to the actual coffee. Apart from that she really makes the best coffee in the world.

Once, after a grueling all-day design conference at a university, I was invited to dinner on campus. To go with the various delicious pastas, salads and quiches, coffee was served.

When you are craving a beer, coffee is the most disgusting drink in the universe.

In New York, I was always envious of people who could walk into a coffee place and the guy behind the counter would know them so well he would just start fixing their order, without any exchange of words. It took me more than 10 years to get to that stage, but at the very end of my tenure in New York I finally achieved it: I would enter my little spot on Eighth Avenue and, with nothing more than maybe a nod of acknowledgment, my buddy prepared my personal choice: drip coffee with steamed milk.

After a couple of blissful weeks though, things took an unfortunate turn. For some reason he started making the wrong coffee (half and half, two sugars). I knew that if I corrected him, our mystic bond would be forever tarnished. So I swallowed the coffee, instead of my pride.

Originally posted by bspcn from The Best Article Every day, on December 4, 2008 8:18 AM

from here.

(via

jedwards

)

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on December 4, 2008 8:18 AM

From Serious Eats

Seaweed is high in umami. In fact, the term umami was coined by Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda in 1908, as he was researching the flavor of the seaweed stock. Photograph from Robyn Lee on Flickr

By now, any food-lover with his or her salt knows about umami, the "fifth flavor" (in addition to sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, and sourness). But I don't know if I've ever seen this bit of info about it. From the Guardian:

Part of the reason why the palate responds so favourably towards glutamate could be our early exposure to it—breast milk has very high levels, 10 times higher than cow's milk. However, as with all good tastes, umami guides our appetites towards foods with optimum nutrition. Just as sweet foods signal that there are sugars in foods, salty tastes indicate the presence of minerals, and sour and bitter tastes keep us away from foods that could potentially poison us, research suggests that umami-rich foods alert us to the presence of proteins.

I suggest you continue getting your umami fix from such dishes as seaweed salads or the others described in the Guardian story.

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on December 4, 2008 8:00 AM

One of the great joys of working at Six Apart has been getting to know and work with our Japanese team at Six Apart Japan (SAKK). The closest I'd ever been to Tokyo before coming to Six Apart was Narita Airport, but I've now had the opportunity to travel there many times in the last couple of years - I even brought my family there earlier this year and took the girls to Disney Sea - and really admire the country, the people, and the culture.

I've always been impressed with the great people at SAKK, who are smart, creative and hard working, and they've done a great job being the undisputed leaders in what is clearly one of the largest markets for blog software and services in the world.

This week SAKK celebrated its 5 year anniversary and I wanted to say congratulations and thanks to Nob Seki (the GM of SAKK) and the entire SAKK team, as well as a hearty thanks to all of our partners and clients throughout Japan who have made Six Apart Japan what it is.

Joi Ito created a great video montage of the 5th anniversary party -- check it out!

Originally posted by Chris from R21, on December 4, 2008 7:46 AM

I have no brief for the auto companies. Clearly, their plight is due to years, decades of mismanagement -- much more than the demands of their unions, and in many cases because they've spent years lobbying Washington to stop the kinds of regulatory changes that might have helped them on the way they're now going to have to go now. But there's no ignoring the massive disconnect between the controversy, attention, number of hearings and general controversy over the relatively small number of dollars it would cost to bailout the auto makers.

I want to be clear: what I'm saying here is not necessarily that we should go easier on the automakers or that we act carelessly about allowing the banking system to collapse because it's managers have acted like idiots. But I do think a big, not very good, and really underappreciated reason for the disjuncture is that the auto makers are structured in a way, are economic entities in a way, that most of us can have some basic understanding on how they operate, what they do. And to the extent that they've been habitually mismanaged we are, as a country, understandably reluctant to reward incompetent management. On the other hand, I think the financial services giants are getting some level of a free ride because a lot of us (and this would seem to include some of the people running the big financial services giants) just have a really hard time understanding what it is they even do or how their fundamental business model works.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 4, 2008 7:40 AM

TPM Reader MM sent this in a couple of days ago:

For years, the complaint was that the auto companies were full of insular 'car guys' who failed to appreciate how business was being done in the modern era. So Ford and Chrysler went out and grabbed successful CEOs from outside the auto industry to turn things around, and these CEOs are now supposed to agree to a wage of $1 a year to atone for mistakes made before they arrived to clean things up. I can't wait for the tsunami of business talent that will soon be pouring into America's most important manufacturing sector.

Citi sucked up $25 billion to no discernible effect, then got a check for $20 billion more and $300 billion + in loan guarantees. AIG has received over $100 billion. Where are the demands that their CEOs turn their corporate jets into tin cans, and reduce their salaries to $1 a year? Since when do banks and investment houses get a free pass for their short-sighted decisions and overpaid employees?

I agree that the auto execs could have done a better job of public relations. But let's remember that the CEOs of the financial companies did not have to do anything at all for their $700 billion. They were not dragged in front of Senate committees to endure Star Chamber treatment. Treasury officials fly to them, go to their offices and work the phones to find buyers and bridge financing to get them through this recession. Failing that, Treasury and the Fed open the money floodgates, and give them whatever they want. ...

Here's a dispatch from 'flyover' country: the millions of workers who depend on the auto companies and their suppliers, and the even more millions of workers who depend on the spin-off from them, have noticed the double standard. A couple of contracts ago, the UAW negotiated a national holiday on election day so its members could work phone banks and drive voters to the poles. The UAW and other industrial unions have donated millions of dollars and thousands of hours to Democratic causes and candidates over election cycles that go back before you or I were born.

It is easy to make fun of the car companies and their execs, especially for those whose prejudices and information about manufacturing in the US are 20 years out of date. But denying bridge loans to the auto companies would screw a social movement that has stood by Democratic candidates and causes since WW II.

This year, we won a huge victory in (large) part because the sons and daughters of Reagan Democrats became Obama Democrats. Those voters are watching, and waiting. They have a hell of a lot of skin in the game, and they will remember what the party does on this issue.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on December 4, 2008 7:39 AM

creative industrial objects is a vienna based design studio. one of their designs is the mobile workstation
‘ci desk’. the small cart is mounted on three wheels that allow it to be moved around. a variety of shelves
and drawers provide storage like a tabouret, perfect for technology devices and desk supplies.
the desktop slides out to allow the user to sit below it. when used with a laptop computer the desktop
features a horizontal slide out mouse pad. the desk is made from metal and bent plywood.

http://www.creativeindustrialobjects.com

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Designboom - Weblog, on December 4, 2008 7:24 AM

Percona has a new Chief Operating Officer! It is Tom Basil, who was Employee #11 at MySQL and led the Support organization there for almost eight years. He was the founding Director of Support at MySQL, and built it into a team of about 60 people all across the world. Tom was legendary as a manager at MySQL, and we’re really looking forward to his experience at Percona.

It sure is funny how things work out. When Peter and Vadim were at MySQL, Tom was their boss for 4 years. Now, Tom works for them! And Tom actively recruited me for a position at MySQL Support almost exactly a year ago, but I joined Percona instead. Perhaps we were meant to work together.

So, why did he resign from Sun/MySQL and come join us? In his own words, slightly paraphrased,

• Vision. Tom knows that we have replicated the vision of MySQL’s own founders Monty and David, which was what drew him to work at MySQL in the first place. We’re building our business organically, focusing on our customers’ practical needs. We’re doing it bootstrap-style, with no venture capital or hard revenue targets.
• Virtual. We have a distributed workforce of some of the best and brightest performance gurus in the world.
• Values. We’re fiercely loyal to our employees and their families. And we care about our customers.

I could probably find some more words starting with V, but that seems to sum up what Tom has told me. His main regret is leaving behind friends at MySQL Support, which has been a close-knit team.

Tom works from his home, just like the rest of us. He lives in the Baltimore area with Kathleen, his wife of 22 years and their six children. And on a side note, he’s pretty near me, so I am looking forward to getting together with him and brainstorming on a more regular basis than I do with people in Novosibirsk or Japan!

Tom, from all of us in Percona, the warmest possible welcome! Here’s to a great future together. And here’s to our clients, who are certain to benefit from your wisdom as Percona keeps growing!

---

Entry posted by Baron Schwartz | No comment

Add to: | | | |

Originally posted by Baron Schwartz from MySQL Performance Blog, on December 4, 2008 6:41 AM

In Brooklyn we go hard. At least according to what Jay-Z and Santogold in this song featured in the upcoming movie based on the life of Biggie Smalls, Notorious. I grew up in Brooklyn too, so I know.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on December 4, 2008 6:32 AM

Users of Adobe's Creative Suite have complained about the company's application installers for some time now, but two Adobe engineers are making an effort to explain installer functionality decisions and to solicit feedback.

Read More...

Originally posted by justin.berka@gmail.com (Justin Berka) from Infinite Loop, on December 4, 2008 5:17 AM

From Serious Eats

"Thank you, Serious Eats community."

©iStockphoto.com/robynmac

A few years ago I had a dream. About creating an online clubhouse for food, a place that serious eaters could come to share their food enthusiasms. A place serious eaters could come to find out what's going in the world of food and drink, find a recipe, look at a cool food video, get restaurant advice, and, best of all, chew the fat with like-minded folks. Two years ago today, on December 4, 2006, that dream, Serious Eats, became a reality.

Now that we're 2, we're pretty precocious. We're doing a lot more than walking and talking. We've become home base for millions of passionate, discerning, and inclusive food lovers all over the world. Wow, who would have thunk it?

Thank you, Serious Eats community. You are the mostly merry band of serious eaters who make the site feel so alive whenever anyone logs on. You make me laugh, you make me smarter, and you make me so proud to have played a small part in creating the greatest food lovers' community in the world.

My dream has become a vibrant reality with the the help of a savvy and forward-thinking group of advertisers and sponsors who have believed in my dream and joined in the conversation from the outset; a few supportive and visionary investors; the insanely hardworking SE crew at SE world headquarters, Alaina Browne, Adam Kuban, Robyn Lee, Raphael Brion, and Erin Zimmer; all the contributing food-blogger journalists from all over the world who welcomed us with open arms and who help make the site a daily required destination for serious eaters; and finally, a ridiculously talented bunch of quick-study interns. You have all grown with us, and I'll tell you we're just getting started.

Serious Eats is only 2, but in web years, by my calculation, that's an eternity. I look forward to growing older and wiser with the entire Serious Eats community. Keep on logging on, reading, eating seriously, cooking, watching, conversing, and laughing. That's what I'll be doing for the next 20 years, and I hope all of you will come along for what promises to be a wonderfully fulfilling ride.

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats, on December 4, 2008 5:00 AM

From Serious Eats

"Thank you, Serious Eats community."

©iStockphoto.com/robynmac

A few years ago I had a dream. About creating an online clubhouse for food, a place that serious eaters could come to share their food enthusiasms. A place serious eaters could come to find out what's going in the world of food and drink, find a recipe, look at a cool food video, get restaurant advice, and, best of all, chew the fat with like-minded folks. Two years ago today, on December 4, 2006, that dream, Serious Eats, became a reality.

Now that we're 2, we're pretty precocious. We're doing a lot more than walking and talking. We've become home base for millions of passionate, discerning, and inclusive food lovers all over the world. Wow, who would have thunk it?

Thank you, Serious Eats community. You are the mostly merry band of serious eaters who make the site feel so alive whenever anyone logs on. You make me laugh, you make me smarter, and you make me so proud to have played a small part in creating the greatest food lovers' community in the world.

My dream has become a vibrant reality with the the help of a savvy and forward-thinking group of advertisers and sponsors who have believed in my dream and joined in the conversation from the outset; a few supportive and visionary investors; the insanely hardworking SE crew at SE world headquarters, Alaina Browne, Adam Kuban, Robyn Lee, Raphael Brion, and Erin Zimmer; all the contributing food-blogger journalists from all over the world who welcomed us with open arms and who help make the site a daily required destination for serious eaters; and finally, a ridiculously talented bunch of quick-study interns. You have all grown with us, and I'll tell you we're just getting started.

Serious Eats is only 2, but in web years, by my calculation, that's an eternity. I look forward to growing older and wiser with the entire Serious Eats community. Keep on logging on, reading, eating seriously, cooking, watching, conversing, and laughing. That's what I'll be doing for the next 20 years, and I hope all of you will come along for what promises to be a wonderfully fulfilling ride.

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats, on December 4, 2008 5:00 AM

Yesterday, at Baseball Prospectus, John Perrotto suggested the Mets and White Sox could be discussing a deal that could send OF Jermaine Dye and RHP Bobby Jenks to the Mets for OF Fernando Martinez and others, according to ‘whispers.’

However, today in Newsday, according to ‘a person familiar with the situation,’ David Lennon writes, ‘There is nothing there,’ with regards to the Dye-Jenks-Mets-Martinez rumor.

In a post to hie blog for the New York Post, Joel Sherman describes the rumor as ‘nonesense,’ after having talked with a few of the team’s executives.

…as i said yesterday, a deal between the Mets and Sox involving dye and jenks may have been true once before…however, from what i can gather, the Mets are more focused on Huston Street, since they match up better with the Rockies…plus, i believe he will not cost martinez…more like Nick Evans, if a prospect is needed…

Yesterday, MiLB.com ranked Martinez No. 32 on its annual Top 50 Prospects list.  In 2007, he was ranked No. 17.

According to Lennon, ‘The Mets are not prepared to deal Martinez,’ whose name will likely be mentioned a lot during next week’s Winter Meetings in Las Vegas.

…from what i can gather, other teams are leery about martinez, because he is being scouted in essentially the exact-same way he was three years ago, i.e., he’s got tons of potential, great swing, etc., but he has yet to prove his talent…plus, he’s been hurt a lot…

…in the end, it feels like other teams are tired of hearing about his ‘potential,’ despite his young age, and are eager to see him hit, stay healthy and actually produce and dominate, before they once again buy in to the hype…

…this may be why he dropped 15 spots on MiLB.com’s list…

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on December 4, 2008 4:27 AM

Greg Allen's ode to Costco, flatscreen TVs, and bottomless jars of peanut butter.

So we go to Costco for lunch and formula Friday, my dad, the kids and I, and it's a flatscreen frenzy. Like Rodney King-grade looting frenzy; every cart has a flatscreen and a bale of toilet paper, and I'm like, I have a flatscreen I don't even watch, and yet I want another one. I couldn't fit that box in the car, and I still want one. My dad and his wife bought the biggest flatscreen in the Triangle last spring, and I can see he wants one, too.

The kid's sitting in the cart, and she sees a guy carrying a 19" flatscreen, and she goes, "Look! He has a tiny one!" and the guy looks at her, looks at the box -- I'm not making this up, my dad told me; he was investigating the flatscreen aisle while I was in the bathroom -- and goes and puts it back, and picks up a 23" flatscreen.

I'm still working through the toaster-sized box of Mach3 razor blade refills that I bought at Costco almost four years ago.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 4, 2008 4:15 AM

Starting today, visitors to NYTimes.com have the option of seeing an enhanced version of our home page that we call Times Extra. This alternate view of the same editorial slate adds links to related coverage from third-party news sources and blogs — right there beneath our main news stories.

Now, I haven’t been posting much about what we’ve been up to at the Times because there’s been so much good stuff (like our voter mood gauge from election night, our holiday shopping guide from David Pogue and our overhauled video library, among many others) that I didn’t want to overrun this blog with press releases.

False modesty aside, I’m making an exception for Times Extra because, well first I think it’s a quiet breakthrough that’s pretty neat, and second, because it’s a concept that I personally hatched on the side with my Times colleague Philippe Lourier, the brains behind our Blogrunner aggregation engine. It was originally something of a lark so we’re pretty happy that it’s finally seeing the light of day (as a beta experiment). Of course, it would still be nothing more than an intriguing idea without the many, many hours of additional dedication from the designers, editors, technologists, the ace project manager and the hard-driving product manager that joined our campaign to make this happen. For their long hours, patience and dedication, I’m incredibly grateful.

In Action

Here᾿s how it works: at the top of our home page, just click on the toggle that says “Try our Extra home page” that now appears just below the New York Times logo.

What you get is the exact same home page with an additional, scrollable box of links beneath each of the major news stories. We’ve color-coded these outside sources in green, so that’s your cue that they lead to external content.

Actually, I should say you’ll see these additional modules beneath most of our major news stories. This process is entirely automated, relying on Blogrunner intelligence to match the stories our editors pick with relevant headlines from the thousands of blogs and other news sources that the service is constantly crawling. So sometimes, because of the delicate combination of human curation and automated formatting that drives our home page, no matches come up. We’re working on improving that over time, though.

Fear of Design

Finally, one more point: as far as graphic design goes, this is pretty unremarkable stuff. We went through a few iterations to decide what these links would look like, but in truth there’s nothing here that will win points for visual innovation. Or even good looks: the automated manner in which the scrolling boxes are added can create some unintended and undesirable gaps in the page’s layout. And there’s a legitimate argument to be made for the sheer density of what we’ve created here with all of these additional links; our already crowded page only gets more crowded with Times Extra.

Sometimes though, design is a matter of trying to effect material changes to the experience at the expense of aesthetic purity — and opportunities for graphical showmanship. Times Extra is an experiment in modestly redesigning the user experience; whether it’s a success or not is up to you and all of our users. Hopefully enough people will find it useful for us to evolve it further; I don’t think any of us suppose that this is really the last word in how third-party links can be expressed on the site. My point is that, as designers, an aversion to flouting the rules of visual decorum often doesn’t serve us well. Nor for that matter does a fear of failure.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Subtraction.com, on December 4, 2008 3:49 AM

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on December 4, 2008 3:09 AM

Jay-Z on iLike - Get updates inside iTunes

Recently Evan Roth from GRL put together a short video with his idol Jay-Z for (RED). The video, shown above is for a new Kanye West produced Jay-Z song for RED & the Global Fund to Fight AIDS in Africa. It launched earlier this week on World AIDS Day at red.msn.com.

The entire video is composed only of the letters from the word BROOKLYN, and as far as we know it's the first rap video to ever be released with open source code.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on December 4, 2008 2:06 AM

'if you could...' is the self initiated project of london design studio hudsonbec. working together with
designers and illustrators they produce work for publishing, exhibitions and events. a collection of
all 24 prints released as part of the print series 2008 have just been released in a limited edition
catalogue. contributions from genevieve gauckler, anthony burrill, tom gauld, rob ryan, kate moross,
build, kam tang, the designer’s republic, ian wright, alex trochut, and siggi eggertsson among others.




L: genevieve gauckler, 'I'd fly to planet mars and say hello to the martians'
R: alex trochut, 'go for it'



L: dan mumford, 'beastmaster'
R: kate gibb, 'view the world symmetrically'



L: jason munn, 'stay in and draw'
R: siggi eggertsson, 'get a dog'



L :kate moross, 'I would run away to new york'
R: anthony burrill, 'bad art'

you can see other prints from the catalogue here

more

if you could: http://www.ifyoucould.co.uk

---

via its nice that

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Designboom - Weblog, on December 4, 2008 2:05 AM

docs.python.org: “Python 3.0, also known as ‘Python 3000’ or ‘Py3K’, is the first ever intentionally backwards incompatible Python release. There are more changes than in a typical release, and more that are important for all Python users. Nevertheless, after digesting the changes, you’ll find that Python really hasn’t changed all that much — by and large, we’re mostly fixing well-known annoyances and warts, and removing a lot of old cruft.”

(Via Gus.)

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on December 3, 2008 9:30 PM

I was recently asked about the "death of blogging" for this article in The Economist. I didn't get back to the reporter in time, though, so my comments ended up, ironically, on his blog. (Conclusion: I don't believe blogging is dying, but...it's complicated. Like in most healthy ecosystems, new species are breeding. Whether or not they're called "blogging" is a question perhaps best left for scientists, but there are many new forms that are undeniably part of the blogging genus.)

Last night at the Churchill Club, I was quoted as saying that Twitter "will dwarf Blogger." I do believe that, but it will be no easy task and will not be soon. Blogger is big. Really big. That chart was from six months ago. Is it losing traction? I don't know. It doesn't look like it was then. And since then, the team over there seems to be kicking ass. A glance at Blogger Buzz show's they've been launching feature after feature the last few months. Launching any features when you're that big is usually a daunting task. Shows that a lot of years building a solid platform have paid off.

So, the question is: Where do they go from here? Part of that, I suppose, will be determined by where the Google powers-that-be decide Blogger lands on their priority list, given the leaner times. Clearly it's not one their cash cows, but it's also not a side project they're dabbling in. I've heard it makes money (from AdSense on blogs they host), but I really don't know. In fact, I know so little about Blogger these days, I feel like I can actually write about it as an outsider.

From a product perspective, I do feel like they could get more out of the capabilities and incredible usage they already have. Here's an unordered list of some of the ways I'd look to do that if I were in charge:

Build a Network of Networks: Building more interconnection between users and blogs is clearly part of the focus now with "followers." It's something we realized we were remiss in not doing more of way back when we built the (not very good) profile pages in 2004, when Friendster was the big thing and Orkut was launching down the hall. There are a ton of mechanisms to do this, but one thing to consider: Don't try to make one big network. Perhaps enable anybody to create a blog network/community thingy. (There might be a doc around there about "Blogger Hubs" -- not sure if it's still relevant.)

Point People to Good Content: When it comes to interconnectedness, don't just try to make it more "social." Social is important, but pure socialness can be achieved elsewhere. One unique thing about Blogger -- vs. say Facebook or MySpace -- is the content. How can you make the content more interlinked and use the network to get more attention to the good stuff, thus rewarding the creating of more good stuff? You know what the most-viewed/commented/linked-to post on Blogger was today. Show it to me! I bet it's interesting! (Even better: Show me what's most popular within my blog network.) BTW, if revenue, not just usage, is a priority, this plays to that, because it's the content focused blogs that can make the money.

Get More Out of the Navbar: The toolbar you have at the top of millions of blogs could do so much more. This is where you can put the feedback mechanisms, interlinking mechanisms, etc. NextBlog could be a whole thing! Make that so I never wanna stop clicking because it always shows me something awesome. (Think StumbleUpon within the Blogger network.)

Prettier Templates: When it comes down to it, many people just want a page that looks good. This a large part of Tumblr's appeal, in my opinion. You gotta upgrade those templates. I know prettiness is not a focus in your culture, but bring them into 2007 at least web design, if not 2009.

Help People use the Layout Engine: The new templating system does everything anyone would every want. But you kinda gotta be a programmer who likes programming in production, in a textarea, in a language you've never used, to tap into it. Yes, there's point-and-click design and widget goodness, but it seems...hard. Can you make it seem fun? Can you make it so pseudo-developers can figure it out and others can leverage that? Layout sharing perhaps (kill two birds)?

Make it Fast: You've made some progress on slimming down the posting form page (at least in Draft). But I don't know if we've fully embraced the Google mantra of speed is every. I predict you'd see a 30% increase in posts if you made posting twice as fast. (That goes for the whole workflow, not just the posting form.)

Become the Aggregator: One possible answer to the question to what role does the stand-alone blog live in the age of a million-and-one generalized and specialized participatory web experiences is as a personal aggregator that reflects back the other stuff one does on the web. Yes, I'll load all that stuff into FriendFeed, but that's not my "online presence" as we used to say back in the day. Everybody (or at least a lot of people) needs an URL -- and one without a ? in it. I want my tweets, and my photos, and my whatevers to show up on evhead.com (hosted by Blogger) in an attractive way.

Put Ads in the App Interface: For example, the published landing page alone must get millions of views a day. And it's the perfect point for someone to go elsewhere. See if you can target it off what they wrote about. No one will mind (much). And strengthening your revenue story will strengthen your position in the company.

Do Something Radical: I almost feel like this list is way too conservative. Not that I think Blogger's in trouble. But I suspect there something potentially more awesome that you could pull off by leveraging what you already have. You probably have those ideas. When there are so many great things to do that you know will work, it's hard to not focus on them. But it might be time to try something wacky.


Sorry, I know you've already thought of these things. When you're working on a product and people on the outside tell you what you should do, acting like they're all smart, it's annoying. The hard part is building stuff, not thinking it up. Carry on. (But seriously, the prettier templates thing.)

Originally posted by Ev from evhead, on December 3, 2008 9:12 PM

We’ve recently done benchmarks comparing different MySQL versions in terms of their CPU efficiently in TPC-C like Workload. We did it couple of weeks ago so MySQL 5.0.67, MySQL 5.1.29 and Innodb Plugin 1.0.1 were used which are not very recent, though we do not think results will differ a lot with today versions.

Results are as follows:

The system was 2* Quad Core Xeon E5310, CentOS 5, Data stored on ramfs. We controlled number of cores used with /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/online Maximum performance for each number of cores was taken though it was reached with number of sessions matching number of cores. Just 1 “Data warehourse” was used to keep data small.

As you can see there is some gain for MySQL from read-write lock split patch (found in Percona Builds) though it is not very significant for this workload. To isolate effect of this patch we only use this patch not full patch set in testing.

MySQL 5.1 is 4% slower than MySQL 5.0 with two cores and just 2% slower with 8 cores, thus showing a bit better scalability.

MySQL 5.1 plugin (compiled in) is further 3% slower compared to MySQL 5.1 with 2 cores and about 6% slower with 8 cores, meaning regression from plugin increases with number of cores.

If you would not only run MySQL plugin but also use new “Barracuda” Innodb format you see just 1% slow down with 2 cores and about half percent with 8 cores which is what you can attribute to measurement error.

This tells us there are some workloads when MySQL 5.1 is slower than 5.0, and same applies to the new Innodb code. Well newer does not mean more efficient, on the contrary newer features often come together with larger code and longer execution path.

Another thing to note - if you’re using Innodb Plugin consider using new Barracuda format, though do this only after you have done your careful testing as this format will not be recognized by older Innodb versions.

Note: These are completely CPU bound test conditions, data fits to buffer pool furthermore data and logs are on ramfs so no IO is ever needed.

---

Entry posted by peter | 7 comments

Add to: | | | |

Originally posted by peter from MySQL Performance Blog, on December 3, 2008 8:00 PM

Python 3.0 has been released.

I love me some python.

One quick tip- if you are using smtplib to send utf-8 email, it won't work in Python 3 unless you are using email.mime.text, like so:

import smtplib
import email.mime.text

msg = email.mime.text.MIMEText("Ümlaut", _charset="UTF-8")

smtp = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
smtp.sendmail('foo@foo.com', 'foo@fo.com', "Subject: This is your mail\n" + msg.as_string())
smtp.quit()

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Gus's weblog, adventures in Flying Meat., on December 3, 2008 7:33 PM

If you are in NYC, come out to our big Justseeds show at the Brecht Forum tomorrow night, Thursday Dec 4th! After our event, cruise over to The Change You Want to See in Williamsburg for this video program!:

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

The Change You Want To See Gallery
Thursday, December 4, 8pm
84 Havemeyer Street, at Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn NY 11211

Since its humble beginnings in 1994, subMedia has grown from a small group of determined filmmakers into a grassroots network of socially and politically engaged artists and individuals. subMedia scrutinizes popular culture and media through the production of film, performance art, video, music and zines.

Equal parts performance and protest, an attitude of art following action defines subMedia’s productions. From the regularly released and highly produced video blog “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”, to the collaborative documentary Ground Noise & Static, their work injects a radical analysis into the culture in a most entertaining way.

Please join subMedia founder, director and producer Franklin López (aka The Stimulator) as he steps out from behind the talking boxes to tour us through a video montage of his latest works, mixing culture jamming, news, radical commentary, music and action.

ABOUT FRANKLIN LOPEZ
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and based in Vancouver, Canada, López has been media jamming since he started subMedia in 1994. His CrimethInc inspired films have been screened worldwide and translated into several languages. His post-Katrina music video 'George Bush Don't Like Black People' has been downloaded over one million times and counting. López's work has been featured and/or written about in The New York Times, Wired, Contour, BET, Current TV, Free Speech TV, the Georgia Straight and Creative Loafing to name a few. More recently he worked as TV producer for Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" He produces a VLOG called "It's the End of the World as We Know it and I Feel Fine" and released issue #2 of subMedia's Zine "Molotov!" You can view López's work at http://subMedia.TV.

ABOUT “GROUND NOISE & STATIC”
A video report on the protests that occurred in connection with the Democrat and Republican National Conventions, Ground Noise & Static is a manifesto. We went to Denver and St. Paul to take the pulse of the movement. Corporate media would cover the platitudes and posturing of the politicians, we were interested in something else, a story hidden in plain sight, captured in the now-classic street chant, “This is what democracy looks like.”

Ground Noise & Static is a joint effort of Franklin López of subMedia.TV and PepperSpray Productions. It is the direct result of a wonderful collaboration with many indymedia-style activists and journalists who all pitched in for the common good and success of their various efforts to tell their “Unconventional” stories.

http://subMedia.tv
http://peppersprayproductions.org

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on December 3, 2008 3:54 PM

Believe it or not, there's no definitive ranking of media properties on the web. The latest list of top news sites put together by Editor & Publisher is ridiculously newspaper-centric and makes use of Nielsen's notoriously erratic pageview numbers (rather than the monthly visitor numbers that advertisers instead rely on).

Nielsen's own news and information rankings include miscellaneous weather and directory sites. Neither includes entertainment sites such as People.com. So I've taken the media research outfit's latest audience numbers for the top 50 online properties—whether they're brands that began in print (gray), on television or radio (dark gray) or are native to the internet (red). It's as good a guide as we have to the new media landscape.

Conclusions? First of all, internet-born properties such as Yahoo! News, The Huffington Post and Gawker Media—with 14 of the top 50 properties—do not dominate.

Second: television—with 20 of the top 50—is holding its own. Sure, TV networks have a smaller share of the online audience than they do of all media consumption; but they have a future.

Third, no surprise, newspapers and magazines are struggling. They have 16 in the top tier—but it's astonishing that established print giants such as Cox Newspapers and Time Inc haven't yet squashed the internet insurgents with which they compete in these rankings.

Originally posted by Nick Denton from Nick Denton, on December 3, 2008 1:12 PM

"To a certain extent it's nice for me, I get a lot of the credit, but it was really a phenomenal team that made Flickr. It's a whole group of people and we should be sharing in the credit, but it's always the boss who gets it." No one's quoted me saying this about Stamen yet, though I have been - not sure if I have to try harder or what.

 Bookmark this on Delicious - Saved by stamen to stewartbutterfield credit boss - More about this bookmark

Originally posted by stamen from Delicious/stamen, on December 3, 2008 1:06 PM

The Daily News has a clever little cover story today about how the tabloid "stole" the Empire State Building. Inspired by the Brooklyn DA's increasing number of deed fraud prosecutions, reporters decided to try the scam, which involves drawing up fake documents, making a bogus notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property. Grifters use the fraudulent deed to take out big mortgages, then disappear.

About an hour after filing the fraudulent documents Monday, the city register office—which doesn't require clerks to verify the information—approved the transfer of the $2 billion property from Empire State Land Associates to Nelots Properties LLC. The News giddily notes that Nelots is "stolen" spelled backward, their paperwork listed King Kong star Fay Wray as a witness, and famous bank robber Willie Sutton as notary. Very cute.

However, instead of taking out a lucrative mortgage on the property and solidifying their grip on a dying industry for a few more months, the paper returned the building to its rightful owners on Tuesday. Squares!

But thanks for sharing; who wants to get together and take over the building housing Love Saves the Day? Seems like a cinch, according to the article. In fact, the one item city employees do check is the notary stamp, but a lawyer tells the News, "They don't check to see if it's real, but they do check to see if it's there."

Originally posted by John Del Signore from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 3, 2008 12:54 PM

In case you missed the announcement post on mt.com, yesterday evening we released Movable Type 4.23. Much thanks to the community members who submitted bug reports and code patches that contributed to this release. More details can be found on the change log, or you can just use the following direct download links to get MTOS 4.23:

• MTOS-4.23-en.tar.gz
• MTOS-4.23-en.zip
  

Please note that this is a mandatory security upgrade due to the fixes for XSS vulnerabilities that it includes.

Originally posted by Chris Ernest Hall from MovableType.org - Home for the MT Community, on December 3, 2008 12:32 PM

We often discuss the sustainability implications of peak population. Read more about this topic here and here .

Reproductive health advocates are praising the nomination of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to serve as the next U.S. secretary of state.

President-elect Barack Obama's nomination on Monday of Clinton, a longtime champion of women's rights around the globe, suggests that international reproductive health policies may be a high priority in the Obama administration, family planning leaders said.

"She's been a strong advocate for sexual and reproductive health rights throughout all her years on the federal level, and I expect her to carry that through in her new job," said Susan Cohen, government affairs director at the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice think tank.

Although Clinton's agenda will likely be dominated by the diplomatic challenges of a global war on terror, she is expected to restore U.S. leadership on issues of population, human rights, and environmental enforcement if the Congress approves her nomination.

"She recognizes how important [reproductive rights] are to an overall foreign policy agenda," said Brian Dixon, vice president of government relations at Population Connection. "Her commitment to this is undeniable. I don't think she's going to allow it to slide too far down the list of things to be worked on."

Although Clinton's leadership would have to remain consistent with the decisions of President Obama, as secretary of state she would be able to influence global reproductive health priorities through department policies and - assuming the department's organizational structure is unchanged - through U.S. Agency for International Development funding.

The Obama administration follows eight years of U.S. opposition to several key reproductive health programs due to their support-both direct and indirect-of abortion rights.

President George W. Bush enforced a so-called "gag rule" that banned U.S.-funded international family planning groups from counseling women about abortion services in countries where abortion is allowed or outlawed. The Bush administration also cut all funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2002 - an annual loss of $21.5 million for contraception and other reproductive health services.

The Obama White House is expected to reverse several of Bush's reproductive health policies. During the campaign season, Obama insisted he would support abortion rights and "reduce unintended pregnancy by guaranteeing equity in contraceptive coverage," according to his Blueprint for Change [PDF].

The Clinton nomination further suggests that Obama would revert to the international family planning policies of the Clinton years. As a senator, Clinton introduced legislation to restore the UNFPA funding, and as a first lady, she led support for the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, a 1994 meeting that resulted in a goal to make family planning universally available by 2015. President Bush ended U.S. support for the goal during his first term in office.

"We have every expectation that the Obama administration will reverse [the global gag rule] early in the administration soon after he's inaugurated," said Craig Lasher, a senior policy analyst at Population Action International (PAI). "Also, restoring the U.S. contribution to the U.N. Population Fund, we anticipate that happens early in the administration as well."

The United States, the world's largest donor to international reproductive health services, has provided a relatively steady level of funding over the past decade: $454.8 million in 1996, $446.5 million in 2001, and $458.1 million in 2006, according to PAI. The UNFPA, however, called for increased funding earlier this year to provide some 200 million women with access to effective family planning.

The Obama administration's support for abortion rights has already stirred criticism from Catholic leaders in the United States. "Aggressively pro-abortion policies, legislation, and executive orders will permanently alienate tens of millions of Americans, and would be seen by many as an attack on the free exercise of their religion," said Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a statement released last month.

Clinton's leadership will also affect U.S. diplomatic efforts during international negotiations of a climate treaty to follow the Kyoto Protocol. While campaigning for president, Clinton vowed she would cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 through a national cap-and-trade system - a promise that Obama made as well and continues to support.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Photo credit: Change.gov

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Ben Block in Politics at 2:10 PM)

Originally posted by Ben Block from Worldchanging, on December 3, 2008 12:10 PM

“Prop 8 - The Musical” starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Scribbling.net, on December 3, 2008 11:19 AM

The Mets announced today that they have signed Nelson Figueroa, Adam Bostick, infielder Andy Green, and catcher Rene Rivera to minor league deals.

Figueroa was 3-3 with a 4.57 ERA for the Mets last year.

Bostick had his season limited to 11 games after undergoing left knee surgery on May 27.  He was 2-2 with a 6.04 ERA in Triple-A last season. 

Green, 31, spent all of last season in the minor leagues with the Mets and Reds.  He hit .331 with 10 doubles, two triples, eight HR and 28 RBI in 52 games with the Triple-A Zephyrs.

Rivera had been batting .227 with a .252 OBP in 53 major-league at bats with the Mariners.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on December 3, 2008 10:47 AM

(via

abangupjob

)

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on December 3, 2008 10:12 AM

In his latest rumor-mill round up, citing ‘whispers, at Baseball Prospectus, John Perrotto suggests the Mets and White Sox could be discussing a deal that could send OF Jermaine Dye and RHP Bobby Jenks to the Mets for OF Fernando Martinez and others.

…a deal between the Mets and Sox involving dye and jenks may have been true once before…however, from what i can gather, the Mets are more focused on Huston Street, since they match up better with the Rockies…plus, i believe he will cost less…

…as for dye, i have no idea if he’s a realistic option, but, as i have said before, he’d be a pretty good fit…however, trading martinez to get him would cancel out one of the reasons, i.e., a short-term solution, which makes dye appealing…

Last week, at FoxSports.com, Ken Rosenthal wrote that the Mets have been looking for a right-handed bat.

“On Tuesday, Nov. 11, several White Sox officials watched Mets pitching prospects Bobby Parnell and Eddie Kunz pitch in the Arizona Fall League,’ reported the Chicago Tribune.

According to Gonzales, citing two NL scouts, the Sox were scouting players for deals that include Dye, who hit .292 with 34 HR, 96 RBI and a .344 OBP in 154 games last season.

Dye will earn $11.5 million in 2009, after which he has a mutual option in 2010 for $12 million, or a $1 million buyout that could make him a free agent.

On Nov. 18, I wrote, “From what I can gather, the Mets are likely to make a trade for a relief pitcher, who has experience as a closer,” in addition to signing either Francisco Rodriguez, Brian Fuentes or Kerry Wood.”

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on December 3, 2008 9:48 AM

At The Biz of Baseball, Maury Brown catches up with former Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson to discuss pitcher biomechanics and how ballclubs can better educate themselves when investing in a player.

…good, i missed stories about the zany world of rick peterson, but i’ve actually read about some of this work he is doing and believe it’s quite valid…

Steve Popper at The Record thinks that chasing Manny Ramirez is a bad idea, and likens him to Moises Alou but “with a better bat.”

The Phillies received their postseason shares yesterday, and at MLB.com you can see what the Mets earned for second place as well.

The ‘Ropolitans and Brooklyn Met Fan are perplexed by the green seats of Citi Field.

…green, blue, orange, all i know is i’m priced out of a sunday plan next year because of the two extra games…

Lastly, John Delcos can now be found here.

…stop moving john, i can’t keep up…

Originally posted by Regis Courtemanche from MetsBlog.com, on December 3, 2008 9:45 AM

Over at the Times ArtsBeat blog I posted about Random House's staff-cutting and reorganization. The general take is that as long as the publishing industry keeps doing the same old outmoded things, it's going to continue being gobbled up alive, and vast swaths of the very things I love to read will vanish.

My own take: get rid of hardbacks. I know that they are a "prestige" item, and that many name authors demand a hardback printing as part of their contract, but they constitute one of the biggest money sinks right out of the gate. When a hardback printing of a book bombs, it takes a whole slew of other possible contenders with it no thanks to the amount of money needed to justify a single hardback title. It's also exorbitant from the POV of the buyer: $25-$40 for a single volume? Not when there's trade paperback editions that go from $8-$15.

So here's my x-point plan for reworking the publishing industry.

1. Dump hardbacks. Go with 6×9 trade paperbacks with cardstock covers, something along those lines (e.g., Black Sparrow Press's Bukowski editions), for a "prestige" printing.
2. Go digital. To a degree this has already happened, but I'd love to see more publishers do what Tor Books have done and offer back catalogue titles as digital items either for little cost or nothing. Paradoxically, they stimulate sales, whether through print-on-demand or otherwise. Offering digital editions through Kindle isn't a bad idea, but it's still constrained by the fact that the Kindle is so damn expensive all by itself.
3. Drop the stupid perks. Stop giving celebrity authors the indulgent-rock-star treatment. Stop throwing advances at flash-in-the-pan celebrities for titles that'll simply end up turning into remaindered items at best and landfill at worst. Every $500,000 advance you shove into someone's pocket is five other books you can't publish.
4. Go broad, not tall. Respect the fact that the people who do read, read aggressively and broadly. Diversify your titles. Create new imprints that take risks and look for creative markets to address. Use print-on-demand and other technologies to make these things work -- not just with the little indie publishers, but the big guys.
5. Build bridges. Find out what people might be hungry for, and cultivate that. Do "taste tests" with possible new writers; solicit translations of first chapters from works not in English and see if they excite readers. There need to be more people in the publishing industry who act more as ambassadors to readers and less as marketing experts. Most of this work is left to critics or people who run blogs -- chaps like me, in other words, who love to do that kind of thing independently but lament the fact that it's not being done in a more systematic way by the publishers themselves. (Note that I am not suggesting substituting such things for independent readers and critics, just expanding thing a bit.)

Additions welcome, but let's start with these.

Originally posted by Serdar from Serdar | Genji Press, on December 3, 2008 9:07 AM

A nice catch by Taegan Goddard: In a fun bit of campaign trivia, commerce secretary nominee Bill Richardson reveals in a new interview that Barack Obama surreptitiously bailed him out during a Dem primary debate, even though they were rivals at the time:

"As I'm chatting with Obama, the moderator says, 'Governor Richardson, what do you think of that?' And I look at him like a deer in the headlights. I was about to say that I hadn't heard, when Obama puts his hand over his mouth and says, 'Katrina.' So I gave my four-point plan on Katrina. When I was done and the debate moved on, I looked over and said, 'Thanks, you're okay.' He said, 'Nothing to it, brother.'"

Okay, that was a pretty cool thing of the President-elect to do. One hopes, though, that Richardson doesn't need to be bailed out in similar fashion during cabinet meetings...

Late Update: As commenters are pointing out, this isn't the first time Richardson has told the story.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on December 3, 2008 9:02 AM

I thought the rumblings about Hillary being barred from serving as Secretary of State by the Constitution's Emoluments Clause was some half-baked right-wing theory on par with Obama's supposedly fake U.S. birth certificate. But apparently Congress is taking the matter seriously enough to reduce the Secretary of State's salary to get around the problem, and Nancy Pelosi supports the move.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on December 3, 2008 8:43 AM

Sure, Sean Avery was traded to the Dallas Stars, but he left his mark as Ranger, what with the Sean Avery/Nitwit Rule for this move in April. But for all his antics, he was never suspended before--until now.

Avery has been suspended indefinitely for taking shots at fellow players and his ex-girlfriends. The morning of his game against the Calgary Flames, Avery spoke to reporters (after making sure a camera was present): "I'm just going to say one thing. I'm really happy to be back in Calgary; I love Canada. I just want to comment on how it's become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I don't know what that's about, but enjoy the game tonight."

A little background: Avery used to date both actress Elisha Cuthbert (24, Old School, an episode of MTV Cribs featuring Avery) and model Rachel Hunter (ex of Rod Stewart and Stacy's Mom). Now Cuthbert is dating Calgary defenseman Dion Phaneuf (ESPN adds she was "romantically linked to Mike Komisarek of the Montreal Canadiens) and Hunter is dating Jarret Stoll of the L.A. Kings. So, while fighting isn't a big deal, talking smack is, so the NHL suspended him for "inappropriate public comments, not pertaining to the game."

The Stars agreed, with their owner Tom Hicks saying, "Had the league not have suspended him, the Dallas Stars would have. This organization will not tolerate such behavior, especially from a member of our hockey team. We hold our team to a higher standard and will continue to do so." Hey, Hicks, at least he didn't shoot himself in the thigh accidentally...right?

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 3, 2008 8:24 AM

Download "Jack Nance Hair" from Jack Nance Hair 7" by Comet Gain (1998)

From an older Comet Gain EP, this song is now collected on their new singles compilation, Broken Record Prayers.

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on December 3, 2008 7:59 AM

According to Lyle Spencer at MLB.com, Angels GM Tony Reagins denied reports that his team is more focused on signing CC Sabthia over Mark Teixeira, despite reports suggesting otherwise.

The Giants continue to negotiate with free-agent SS Edgar Renteria, reports the Associated Press.

Free-agent OF Casey Blake is seeking a three-year, $20 million deal, reports FoxSports.com.

The Tigers are interested in Rangers C Gerald Laird, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on December 3, 2008 7:46 AM

Official Amazon iPhone app, available now as a free download from the App Store. In addition to shopping, it has an interesting “Remembers” feature: snap a picture with your iPhone, and it gets saved to your Amazon account. Plus, Amazon sends the image to a team of humans to identify what it is and offer links to similar items for sale at Amazon. (I presume it’s powered by Mechanical Turk.) And, yes, it seems safe to presume this is why Amazon rejected Mazo.

Weird web-design note: Nearly the entire web page, including text, is made of JPEG images. I guess that’s one way to make pages that display properly in IE.

Update: Via Andy Baio, proof that it’s Turk-powered. Also worth mentioning SnapTell, an app Andy showed me a few weeks ago that does the image-recognition trick for any book, game, or DVD.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on December 3, 2008 6:57 AM

The Washington Post has a fascinating story of a US interrogator, pseudonymed "Matthew Alexander," who refused to use aggressive interrogation tactics sanctioned by the military -- because, as he puts it:

These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

This is the same idea Philip Zimbardo shares in his TEDTalk, when he examines the horrors at Abu Ghraib -- that a policy of control, fear and dehumanization can open the door for evil. In his own work, Alexander took another path:

I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. ... We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques. ... It worked.

Read the full story here >>
Read a review of Matthew Alexander's new book, How to Break a Terrorist >>

Originally posted by (author unknown) from TED | TEDBlog, on December 3, 2008 6:30 AM

We are delighted to announce the launch of the website we designed for Brain Traffic, a leading content strategy agency.

This site is lively and engaging and contains not one single unnecessary image. Our design is intended to help them convince potential clients of the power and importance of using words well on the Web. You know what does that? Making the design about the words and making the words look really good.

At the heart of the site is the portfolio. Enjoy the grid and hierarchy that frame their expertise.

Originally posted by erika from Mule Design : Off the Hoof, on December 3, 2008 6:15 AM

A lovely story all about (and with) coffee.

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from A Full Belly, on December 3, 2008 6:13 AM

illustrator christoph niemann details his love / hate relationship with coffee over the years.
via 13 drawings in coffee on napkins he describes his qualms with milk foam
and his bagel preferences while living in new york.

more

christoph niemann: http://www.christophniemann.com

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Designboom - Weblog, on December 3, 2008 6:04 AM

On Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Robert Morris, Robert Smithson, Jane Jacobs, 2001, Star Wars, and minimalism: Star Wars: A New Heap.

Kubrick's film presented a future of company men moving with assurance and clear intention toward a godlike minimalist object. Lucas, on the other hand, gave us a slapdash world of knuckleheads pursued by industrial-scale minimalists. Visually, Kubrick's film is as seamless and smooth as the modernist authority it mirrored. Like the mid-century modernists, 2001 associated abstraction with the progressive ideals of the United Nations as embodied by its New York headquarters. Lucas, on the other hand, was a nonbeliever. Even the initially smooth and unitary form of the Death Star was shown, as the rebel fighters skimmed its surface, to be deeply fissured with an ever-diminishing body of structural fragments. These crenulated details suggested a depth and complexity to modern life that modernism's pure geometries often obscured.

And this:

A flying saucer had never been a slum before. The immaculate silver sheen of the saucer was reinvented as a dingy Dumpster full of boiler parts, dirty dishes, and decomposing upholstery. Lucas's visual program not only captured the stark utopian logic that girded modern urban planning, it surpassed it. The Millennium Falcon resisted the modernist demand for purity and separation, pushing into the eclecticism of the minimalist expanded field. Its tangled bastard asymmetry made it a truer dream ship than any of its purebred predecessors. It is the first flying saucer imagined as architecture without architects.

(thx, matt)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 3, 2008 4:54 AM

A very nice piece by John Harris and Glenn Thrush of The Politico gets at a forgotten dimension to the pick of Hillary as Secretary of State: How extraordinary a moment it is in the context of Hillary's life, career, and persona:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has a favorite expression for turning setback into opportunity: "Bloom where you're planted."

Her three-decade career on the public stage has produced countless examples of Clinton sprouting a flower in a pile of manure.

Few of them are more vivid than this week's official announcement that she is the nominee to serve as secretary of state to Barack Obama -- the man whom she initially refused to talk to on the Senate floor two years ago when he first made clear he would challenge her for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton's planned ascension to Foggy Bottom is the culmination of a strenuous effort over the past several months to fashion a next act in a career that long has been defined by two distinct halves: flamboyant celebrity on one side and dogged, often lonely, distance runner on the other.

On this score, I recommend Harris' book on Bill Clinton, which displays the same startling tendency on display in the above piece: A willingness to treat the Clintons like human beings. That book is called The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House, which explains this piece's description of Hillary as "the new survivor."

Whatever you think of Hillary -- and the above depiction is of a person who's anything but flawless -- the conventions of political reporting tend to discourage this type of treatment of politicians, so it's worth savoring when a news org comes along and does it right.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on December 3, 2008 4:35 AM

• Big Three Are Back in DC, Asking for Help and Promising to Restructure (NPR, NYT)
• Regulators Who Denied Climate Change Science Helped Make Detroit Less Competitive (Grist)
  
• Confronting Fare Beaters Is a Tricky Task for Bus Drivers (NYT)
• Cop Charged for Assaulting Pedestrian in Fit of Road Rage on Queens Boulevard (NYT)
• Biden Talks Up Rail Investment at Governors' Meeting (Yglesias)
• Prospect Park Road Diet Discussed at CB7 Meeting Yesterday (Bklyn Paper)
• News Celebrates Brooklyn's Low Gas Prices
• Early Observations of the Bronx Hub Redesign (Mott Haven't You Heard)
• Hawaii Moves to Implement Electric Car Network (NYT)
• Can a Wal-Mart Be Reclaimed By Going Mixed-Use? (Where via Streetsblog.net)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on December 3, 2008 4:07 AM

StateStats is hours of fun. It tracks the popularity of Google searches per state and then correlates the results to a variety of metrics. For instance:

Mittens - big in Vermont, Maine, and Minnesota, moderate positive correlation with life expectancy, and moderate negative correlation with violent crime. (Difficult to commit crimes while wearing mittens?)

Nascar - popular in North and South Carolinas, strong positive correlation with obesity, and and moderate negative correlation with same sex couples and income.

Sushi - big in NY and CA, moderate positive correlation with votes for Obama, and moderate negative correlation with votes for Bush.

Gun - moderate positive correlation with suicide and moderate negative correlation with votes for Obama. (Obama is gonna take away your guns but, hey, you'll live.)

Calender (misspelled) - moderate positive correlation with illiteracy and rainfall and moderate negative correlation with suicide.

Diet - moderate positive correlation with obesity and infant mortality and moderate negative correlation with high school graduation rates.

Kottke - popular in WI and MN, moderate positive correlation with votes for Obama, and moderate negative correlation with votes for Bush.

Cuisine - This was my best attempt at a word with strong correlations but wasn't overly clustered in an obvious way (e.g. blue/red states, urban/rural, etc.). Strong positive correlation with same sex couples and votes for Obama and strong negative correlation with energy consumption and votes for Bush.

I could do this all day. A note on the site about correlation vs. causality:

Be careful drawing conclusions from this data. For example, the fact that walmart shows a moderate correlation with "Obesity" does not imply that people who search for "walmart" are obese! It only means that states with a high obesity rate tend to have a high rate of users searching for walmart, and vice versa. You should not infer causality from this tool: In the walmart example, the high correlation is driven partly by the fact that both obesity and Walmart stores are prevalent in the southeastern U.S., and these two facts may have independent explanations.

Can you find any searches that show some interesting results? Strong correlations are not that easy to find (although foie gras is a good one). (thx, ben)

(Comment on this)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 3, 2008 3:59 AM

Ssam Bar by Kalina

Today the Brunmeister drops the big fat tres on David Chang's Momofuku Ssäm Bar, upgrading it just less than two years after his original review. He admits that he doesn't exactly love adding to the Momo hype, that he'd much rather be writing the ultimate Chang take down:

"We’d love to move on to a more original object of adoration and would be happy to pronounce him overrated or just plain over — we’re cranky and contrary that way. But he won’t let us. He keeps demanding more from himself and his restaurants, keeps giving us reasons not to stray."

Those reasons, according to the Brunz include: an expanded wine list and dessert offerings, more seating and a better layout, and the new lunchtime offerings. And maybe those two years have given him a chance to reflect on the original star count: "I’ve circled back because eating at Ssam feels so unencumbered, honest and joyful, and because I can’t stop reflecting on the daring and importance of Mr. Chang’s work there." [NYT]

Even though his wine is corked, he hates the decor, and his waiter is a white truffle pusher, Alan Richman enjoys his time at A Voce: "Missy Robbins’s food was exceptional, not simply because it tasted good but because it was unusually multifaceted for Italian cuisine...By the end of the meal, my now-jolly friend and I had even forgiven the waiter and the wine guy." [GQ]

The Cuozz is just excited there's finally some good Asian food on the UWS. His thoughts on Barbao: "Imperfect and not 100 percent consistent, almost-Vietnamese BarBao thrilled me on every visit. Raw materials like black cod and Angus beef cheeks are first-rate. Sauces, spices and chilies lurking at the bottom of little clay and iron pots ignite starbursts of palate-expanding flavors." [NYP]

The RG checks out East 60th's shiny new health conscious spot Rouge Tomate and gives it a whopping four stars: "Usually the thought of self-consciously healthy food makes me depressed...But I don't feel that way at Rouge Tomate, even though they've replaced most of the fats we associate with haute cuisine...Rouge Tomate may be a prototype for a restaurant of the future - a new way of thinking, a new way of eating, a new way of dining out." [NYDN]

The Plattster files a double this week on Brooklyn's Char No 4, a surprise charmer (two stars) and Bouley's Secession, a big flop (zero stars). He praises Char No 4's bacon, bourbon, and baby backs and finds little to love at Bouley's newest: "For those of you ghouls who’d like to trace the decline of New York’s latest gilded restaurant era...David Bouley’s slapdash new venture, Secession, is a good place to start." [NYM]

THE ELSEWHERE: Bruntastic experiences service issues at Pranna, Ryan Sutton declares Williamsburg's Motorino better than Una Pizza, Jay Cheshes gives four out of six stars to Irving Mill, Julia Moskin likes the pork belly but not too much else at the East Village's Hea, Tables for Two has a mixed bag for Char No. 4, DiGregoriao, like The Cuozz, is a fan of Barbao, and Sietsema pays a visit to Midtown's mozzarella bar Obika.

THE BLOGS: Ed Levine gives a B+ to Salumeria Rosi, The Girl Who Ate Everything files reviews on Motorino, Bonjin Cafe, Jane, Great Bakery, and more, Writing with my Mouth Full notices some attitude and Bobby Flay at Boqueria Soho, Lifestyle of a Yuppie is at the clean and dirt cheap HK Station, NYC Foodie is at the "sexy" Pure Food & Wine, Robyn Lee tries the dim sum at World Tong in Bensonhurst, and Gotham Gal isn't wowed by Irving Mill.

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on December 3, 2008 3:56 AM

It is official: Loge13 will be in Citi/Taxpayer Field next year.

Specifically, we will be in Promenade Box Section 427...or The Prom as I like to call our new home.

Ironically, 4+2+7 = 13. How is that for some creepy numerological karma?

The best part: all the Loge13 denizens are together! The Bayside crew and Ron Hunt and the Kingman clan are in one row. I have to give a big thank you to the Mets ticket office, which was ultimately responsive to our requests to remain near each other. Big kudos.

We did the 15 game all-weekday plan. That means we will be going the following games at Prom 427:

Monday	April 13	7:10 p.m.	San Diego Padres
Tuesday	April 28	7:10 p.m.	Florida Marlins
Thursday	May 7	7:10 p.m.	Philadelphia Phillies
Tuesday	May 12	7:10 p.m.	Atlanta Braves
Wednesday	May 27	7:10 p.m.	Washington Nationals
Thursday	June 11	7:10 p.m.	Philadelphia Phillies
Thursday	June 25	1:10 p.m.	St. Louis Cardinals
Thursday	July 9	7:10 p.m.	Los Angeles Dodgers
Tuesday	July 28	7:10 p.m.	Colorado Rockies
Monday	August 3	7:10 p.m.	Arizona Diamondbacks
Monday	August 17	7:10 p.m.	San Francisco Giants
Thursday	August 20	7:10 p.m.	Atlanta Braves
Monday	August 24	1:10 p.m.	Philadelphia Phillies
Wednesday	September 9	7:10 p.m.	Florida Marlins
Tuesday	September 22	7:10 p.m.	Atlanta Braves

Of course, as mentioned elsewhere, the drawback to the 15 game plan is no guaranteed post season tickets, just a chance to get them in pre-sale. But as Doug pointed out, this plan is cheaper, giving fans more coin to spend on the secondary market for postseason tickets, if you like.

I know many of you are aiming to get plans this week in the pre-sale. So Loge13 readers: let everyone know where you ended up in Payson Field.



 

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on December 3, 2008 3:47 AM

Justin contacted me after seeing my blog at White Sox Cards. He looked over my wantlist (which you can do, too!) and found a few Allen and Ginter cards for me, but I was hip deep in trade offers for the stuff that had come in before. Once the dust settled on those trades, we quickly worked out our deal. Justin’s son got some SP Authentic cards he needed and Justin got some random Orioles and Rays as well as some Allen and Ginter cards he needed. I knocked another eleven cards off my wants thanks to him.

Here’s a few of them:

38 Andruw Jones

I’d like to think Andrew’s watching his career get away from him here.

126 Chris Young

Chris looks like a little menacing with that bat in his hand. I guess that’s okay for the only rookie to hit 30 HRs and steal 25 bases. If he can get his batting average up, he’ll be an even greater force in Arizona for years to come.

143 J.J. Hardy

For fans of smiles.

345 Francisco Liriano

Liriano’s 6′2″ according to the back of the card and it looks like this was done in a 5′10″ room.

So those of you waiting

      

Originally posted by handcollated from Hand Collated, on December 3, 2008 3:41 AM

Yesterday, during a tour with reporters at Citi Field, Mets COO Jeff Wilpon said Omar Minaya and other GMs have been working the phones, laying groundwork for the Winter Meetings, and he expects the Hot Stove to pick up momentum sooner than later.

“Omar knows where he wants to go,” Wilpon said, “and we’re going to let him do that.”

Wilpon pointed out that, with the current state of the economy, “it’s not unexpected that we’re slow to get going.”

…the way i heard it, from a person in baseball who deals in budgets, teams have cash, but they are fearful of what the economy may do to attendance in years to come…so, while pitchers like CC Sabathia and Derek Lowe will get their money, it’s hard to gamble on a player like Bobby Abreu or Pat Burrell with a three-year contract, when fans may be unable to afford ticket prices down the road…and so, teams are really crunching numbers when trying to determine a course of action…

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on December 3, 2008 3:28 AM

Vanity Fair’s January cover story is on “America’s New Sweetheart” Tina Fey and (being Vanity Fair and all) it primarily focuses on how Fey transformed from being the frumpy 25-year-old virgin who one agent assumed was having an affair with Lorne Michaels to the sexy librarian The New Yorker recently called “the sex symbol for every man who reads without moving his lips.”

And while going on Weight Watchers when she was still just a writer at SNL in order to become “PBS pretty” may have had something to do with it, Alec Baldwin shares with the magazine the only advice he’s given to his-costar since the inception of 30 Rock:

“I’d say to her, ‘‘You know, you’re a really beautiful girl. You’ve got to play that. It’s a visual medium. This is not Upright Citizens Brigade, where we’re doing sketch comedy at nine o’clock at night on a Sunday for a bunch of drunken college graduate students. You are a very attractive woman and you’ve got to work that. You’ve got to pop one more button on that blouse and you’ve got to get that hair done and you’ve got to go!’... There is Liz Lemon and there is Liz Lemon as portrayed by a leading actress in a TV show. It’s not a documentary. Tina’s a beautiful girl. We needed to get the pillows fluffed on the sofa and we needed to get the drapes steamed, and we needed to get everything all nice and get the presentation just right.”

All of that pillow-fluffing seems to have done the trick as the article recounts how Fey is now every dirty old man’s fantasy, turning the heads of everyone from Rip Torn to Steve Martin. Even the story’s author, the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, seems to be cast under the spell of Liz Lemon, describing her at one point as being “like Daisy Buchanan, except her voice is full of funny rather than money.”

Also, the big scoop in Dowd's article is how Fey got her scar: Apparently a stranger slashed her when she was five years old. FIVE!

Originally posted by Billy Parker from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 2, 2008 8:07 PM

Photograph by merlinsclaw on Flickr

Perhaps inspired by yesterday's NY Post cartoon by Delonas, featuring Mr. Met watch CitField's name changed to Taxpayer Bailout Field, two politicians from State Island are proposing that Citifield be named Citi/Taxpayer Field. Because what better way than to pay tribute to Citigroup's $400 million investment in the Mets' new home, now that taxpayers are on the hook for about $350 billion with the Citi bailout.

City Councilman Vincent Ignizio (R) said, "Perhaps a name change is in order, since it will be the taxpayers of the country who will foot the bill for not only part of stadium, but for the company itself. The taxpayers are spending billions for this company to maintain its operations and deserve the recognition for their largess.” And City Councilman James Oddo (R) added, “Not naming the field after Jackie Robinson in the first place: mindless. Tom Seaver stepping onto the new mound for the first time: timeless. Actually acknowledging the contributions of the hardworking taxpayer: priceless.”

Newsday's Wallace Stevens has a column about this tempest in a name: "The one thing it should not be called, under any circumstances, is Citi Field." And still, on the Mets' website, there's an article noting, that while the CitiField name is not in jeopardy, "they understand a takeover is possible and that a name change probably would follow. As much as the club favors the current name -- it considers it far less corporate-sounding than most of the new names for stadiums and sports arenas, it is much more conscious of the revenue connected to it."

Originally posted by Jen Chung from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 2, 2008 8:07 PM

The new bike lane on Grand Street that a local shop owner recently called the possible "demise of Little Italy" continues to draw attention with complaints that fire trucks are struggling to maneuver around the new setup of the block. Ernest Lepore, owner of Ferrara Cafe who originally talked to Villager, appears to have taken his case against the lane to the Post, telling the paper, "I saw one truck back up four or five times before being able to squeeze into the lane. The firefighter was visibly frustrated."

Now Ferrara even has an anonymous firefighter on his side. A member of nearby Engine Company 55 told the Post, "It is a problem. It's something we've been talking about. We been changing our routes when we're driving around this area." But an FDNY spokesman denied that the new lane has affected response times. The FDNY and DOT have apparently been discussing the issue for over six months.

The DOT continued to support the bike lane, saying that MuniMeters with three-hour limits are being installed on the north side of Grand to keep delivery trucks moving and that No Parking zones at Grand Street intersections are coming as of Monday. A DOT spokesman told the paper, "The most important thing to emphasize is that this project is still being installed. We're still open to hear concerns from the community."

Photo courtesy Rather Be Biking.

Originally posted by Billy Parker from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 2, 2008 8:07 PM

Shared by Tim
Awesome. I've seen the video before, but never heard the story behind it. I'd be interested in hearing Lee Ving's side of the story too.

New York, 1981. Lorne Michaels calls up John Belushi and asks him to make a cameo appearance on SNL (Belushi left the cast in ‘79). Belushi agrees, but on one condition: Michaels has let Fear play the show as the musical guest. Michaels agrees, but sees a small problem: they need “some dancers.” So what to do? Call up a 19-year-old Ian MacKaye down in DC.

“Hi, Ian… this is John Belushi. I’m a big fan of Fear’s. I made a deal with ‘Saturday Night Live’ that I would make a cameo appearance on the show if they’d let Fear play. I got your number from Penelope Spheeris, who did ‘Decline of Western Civilization’ and she said that you guys, Washington DC punk rock kids, know how to dance. I want to get you guys to come up to the show.”

(from Nardwuar vs. Ian “Fugazi” MacKaye via Young Manhattanite)

When Fear played on “Saturday Night Live,” Ian, did you go down to “Saturday Night Live” and check it out in New York with Rollins and the gang?
Rollins was not there. I’ll tell you the story if you’d like to hear the story about that. At eight in the morning, some point in October, I got a call. I was driving a newspaper truck for The Washington Post at the time, so eight in the morning was brutal. It was Lorne Michaels’ office, Lorne Michaels being the producer of “Saturday Night Live,” and I get this woman,

“Lorne Michaels’ office, please hold.”

I was completely delirious. Lorne Michaels gets on the phone,

“Hi, Ian, it’s Lorne Michaels of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ I’m calling you because I got your number from John Belushi. He says that you might be able to get some dancers up here ‘cause we want to have Fear on the show.”

I was completely baffled by this.

“Pardon me?”

“Hold on a second.”

John Belushi gets on the phone and he says,

“This is John Belushi. I’m a big fan of Fear’s. I made a deal with ‘Saturday Night Live’ that I would make a cameo appearance on the show if they’d let Fear play. I got your number from Penelope Spheeris, who did ‘Decline of Western Civilization’ and she said that you guys, Washington DC punk rock kids, know how to dance. I want to get you guys to come up to the show.”

It was worked out that we could all arrive at the Rockefeller Center where “Saturday Night Live” was being filmed. The password to get in was “Ian MacKaye.” We went up the day before. The Misfits played with The Necros at the Ukrainian hall, I think, so all of the Detroit people were there, like Tesco Vee and Cory Rusk from the Necros and all the Touch and Go people and a bunch of DC people - 15 to 20 of us came up from DC. Henry was gone. He was living in LA at this point. So we went to the show. During the dress rehearsal, a camera got knocked over. We were dancing and they were very angry with us and said that they were going to not let us do it then Belushi really put his foot down and insisted on it. So, during the actual set itself, they let us come out again. If you watch the show - have you seen it?

Yes I have.
If you watch it - during the show - before they go to commercial, they always go to this jack-o-lantern. This carved pumpkin. If you watched it during the song, you’ll see one of our guys, this guy named Bill MacKenzie, coming out holding the pumpkin above his head because he’s just getting ready to smash it. And that’s when they cut it off. They kicked us out and locked us out for two hours. We were locked in a room because they were so angry with us about the behavior. I didn’t think it was that big of deal.

They locked you in a room?
Yeah, we were locked in a room. They said they were going to sue us and have us arrested for damages. There was so much hype about that. The New York Post reported half a million dollars worth of damages. It was nothing. It was a plastic clip that got broken. It was a very interesting experience and I realized how completely unnatural it is for a band to be on a television show - particularly a punk band - that kind of has a momentum to suddenly be expected to immediately jump into a song in that type of setting. It was very weird. Largely unpleasant. Made me realize that’s not something I’m interested in doing.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from MBV, on December 2, 2008 8:01 PM

East Village kitsch mecca Love Saves the Day (MySpace) will close next month after more than four decades in the neighborhood, Vanishing New York reports. Originally opened in 1966 on 77 7th Street, the day glo-painted shop moved down the block to its current location at Second Avenue and 7th Street in 1983, just in time for a cameo in Desperately Seeking Susan, in which it's immortalized as the boutique where Madonna traded in her leather pyramid jacket for rhinestone studded boots.

The cluttered store was always packed with eclectic items ranging from funky threads to Star Wars paraphernalia to obscure pop culture ephemera. According to the Villager, the landlords tried to triple the rent in 2005, but owner Leslie Herson and her husband were able to negotiate a new three-year lease. Now it's 2008, and with rents declining, you'd think they'd have a better chance of hanging on. Of course, there's probably also a shrinking market for their inessential oddities.

Perhaps another factor, according to Racked, is that Leslie passed away over the summer. Her husband still maintains an LSD in New Hope, Pennsylvania (home of Ween), but that's small consolation when one contemplates the corner of Second and 7th without Love Saves the Day. No matter what depressing chain store comes in its place, it's now clear that we've officially become the old grouch droning on about how things used to be so much better in the old days. But they really were!

Photo courtesy S.D.

Originally posted by John Del Signore from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on December 2, 2008 7:58 PM

Odetta, dies at age 77.

Originally posted by O.W. from soul sides, on December 2, 2008 7:54 PM

Link: Reluctant defense secretary 'impressed' with Obama:

Gates also said he was impressed by Michelle Obama's desire to work on behalf of military families.

"I think all of these send very positive signals to our men and women in uniform about the way the new commander-in-chief looks upon his responsibilities as commander-in-chief, but also as the person for whom all of these men and women in uniform work."

This is the "#1 most viewed" article on CNN right now ("Best of CNN!" ?) but it's worth linking to. It's inspiring that Gates has such obviosuly sincere praise for Barack Obama, and it offers me real hope.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on December 2, 2008 6:54 PM

You thought I was done with election grabage? Nosireebob! I had to listen to lying awful irritating commercials from every 527 group in the universe all month so you have to deal with the Georgia Runoff for one post. So, who is it going to be?

Chambliss

or

Martin

Vote! I already did...

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on December 2, 2008 2:04 PM

Last week, Future Shorts presented the movie Ghostbusters as part of their Secret Cinema.

Apart from converting an empty conference hall into a cinema for 1000+ people with a 100ft screen in one day, this also involved creating sets for Dana's flat, the Ghostbusters office, Library and much more; brought to life with a huge cast & crew including terror dogs, ghosts, Dana & Louis (both possessed & normal), librarians and of course the Ghostbusters themselves.

Working with The Found Collective, Seeper & Lexhag, we created an interactive environment with physical elements (exploding eggs, cards flying out of drawers, synchronized wind with visuals etc.) and of course virtual - where people could see their souls...

Originally posted by memo from memo.tv - Adventures in Audio Visual Interaction - Processing.org, OpenFrameworks, Quartz Composer, VDMX, Flash, After Effects etc..., on December 2, 2008 12:45 PM

Seth Godin:

The only reason to answer the phone when a customer calls is to make the customer happy.

If you’re not doing this or you are unable to do this, do not answer the phone. There is no middle ground on this discussion. There are no half measures. Saving 50 cents a call with a complicated phone tree is a false savings. Think of all the money you’ll save if you just stop answering altogether. Think of all the money you’ll make if you just make people happy.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on December 2, 2008 12:29 PM

Togepi’s a joyful little pokemon of the normal typing. One of the traits that sets this little egg apart from the myrads of other normal types is the ability “Serene Grace.” Serene Grace is an ability unique to only Dunsparce, Togepi(and Evolutions), Jirachi, Shaymin-Sky forme and Happiny(and evolutions). It increases the chances of secondary effects appearing. Meaning it doubles the seconday effects of moves. For example, Air Slash has has a 20% chance to make your opponent flinch, when serene grace is in effect the flinch rate is doubled, so instead of the flinch rate being 20% it’s now 40%. As Togepi’s bond grows with it’s trainer it will evolve into Togetic and then into Togekiss via shiny stone. Togekiss is a very sturdy pokemon, with a base special defense of 115 and special attack of 120, togekiss can easily assume the role of a special sweeper or special wall. The Togepi I have today are Timid(attack-, speed+), to assist it in sweeping, passing stat boosts, and give you some extra speed if you choose to put a choice scarf on it. All of today’s togepi will come with a Shiny Stone. It move set is the following:

Nasty Plot: A move that doubles Togepi’s special attack. With this move you can either set up a sweep, or pass the boost to another team member.

Baton Pass: This moves passes stat boosts and drops. You can use this move to pass the nasty plot boosts to another team member, or escape Mean Look.

Wish: A self-healing move that restore up to half of it’s maximum HP in the next turn.

Hidden Power: An attack that varies in intensity and type depending on the users IVs. To find out the type and power of this attack you will have to check the IVs of your Togepi.

Rules:
Please leave your name and FC, even if we traded before I will need it again.
Only 1 Pokémon per person
If you prefer a particular gender or ability tell me, this is on the first come first serve basis.
Please do not trade me eggs
Be in the Wi-Fi zone at 2pm(PST), on December 5th.
Make yourself available to Trade (Invite–>Trade) I will come to you when I’m ready.
Iitems(rare candies or water stones) are very appreciated but not required.
If you are new to our site, your first comment will be moderated. Don’t worry if your post doesn’t show, we will get to it in time, and you will not miss out!

My Information:
Glacier/ 1160 6656 0190

Originally posted by Babael from Poke Farm, on December 2, 2008 12:21 PM

The Sorry, Thanks site has been updated with a trailer, a blog, and more information about the movie. We're waiting to find out about our first screenings, and info about them will be posted to both the movie site and here posthaste.

Originally posted by weevil@wileywiggins.com (Wiley Wiggins) from It's not for Everyone., on December 2, 2008 12:13 PM

The following video was shot by SNY’s Ted Berg during our tour of Citi Field today, enjoy:

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on December 2, 2008 12:10 PM

When I was born 35.2 years ago, a light cone started expanding away from Earth out into the rest of the universe (Minkowski space-temporally speaking, of course). Thanks to updates from Matt Webb's fancy RSS tool, I know that my personal light cone is about to envelop the Zeta Herculis binary star system, located 35.2 light years from Earth in the constellation Hercules.

With a mass some 50 percent greater than the Sun, however, and beginning its evolution toward gianthood (its core hydrogen fusion likely shut down), Zeta Her A is 6 times more luminous than the Sun with a radius 2.5 times as large. Nevertheless, the star gives a good idea of what the Sun would look like from a great distance, in Zeta Her's case 35 light years. The companion (Zeta Her B), a cooler class G (G7) hydrogen-fusing dwarf with a luminosity only 65 percent that of the Sun and a mass about 85 percent solar, orbits with a period of 34.5 years at a mean distance of 15 Astronomical Units (over 50 percent farther than Saturn is from the Sun). A rather high eccentricity takes the two as far apart as 21 AU and as close as 8 AU.

Hercules is of course named for the Greek hero, Heracles. Next up is Delta Trianguli, another binary star system, in about two months.

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 2, 2008 12:09 PM

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson at an Obama campaign event in August, 2008. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Updated 3:25 p.m. By Chris Cillizza New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will be formally nominated by President-elect Barack Obama as commerce secretary tomorrow in Chicago, according to a transition official familiar with the decision. Obama will unveil Richardson as the nominee at a news conference they will both attend tomorrow in Chicago, cementing a pick that had been expected...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Originally posted by The Trail from 44, on December 2, 2008 11:54 AM

Roger Ebert rails against our infantilizing celebrity obsessed media.

The AP, long considered obligatory to the task of running a North American newspaper, has been hit with some cancellations lately, and no doubt has been informed what its customers want: Affairs, divorces, addiction, disease, success, failure, death watches, tirades, arrests, hissy fits, scandals, who has been "seen with" somebody, who has been "spotted with" somebody, and "top ten" lists of the above. (Celebs "seen with" desire to be seen, celebs "spotted with" do not desire to be seen.)

The CelebCult virus is eating our culture alive, and newspapers voluntarily expose themselves to it. It teaches shabby values to young people, festers unwholesome curiosity, violates privacy, and is indifferent to meaningful achievement. One of the TV celeb shows has announced it will cover the Obama family as "a Hollywood story." I want to smash something against a wall.

As in most matters, Ebert speaks for me in this regard, the smashing in particular. His final line -- "The news is still big. It's the newspapers that got small." -- is spot on and, I'm increasingly convinced, the way out for newspapers in the long term. The news is big and newspapers need to get back to covering its complexity, significance, and interestingness.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 2, 2008 11:42 AM

An interesting comment from Defense Secretary Bob Gates a little while ago during a press conference. He was asked about the Mumbai attacks and suggested that the attackers were targeting Americans and Britons. Here's the exchange:

Reporter: Mr. Secretary, can you confirm that Admiral Mullen is on his way to India, can you outline the purpose his mission, and more broadly, can you talk about the Mumbai attacks and who you believe was responsible?

Gates: Well, I think -- y'know, I don't want to get into the intelligence that we have. I would like to commend the Indians for their restraint at this point. Admiral Mullen is in the area, as is Secretary Rice, as you know, and frankly, because the situation's fairly delicate, I don't want to say too much about it. It clearly was the action of an extremist group that apparently was targeting Americans and Britons, and -- but the truth is most of the people who were killed were Indians, and so it's important that we find out who did it and try and prevent it from ever happening again.

It's certainly possible that Gates has intelligence that backs up this claim about the targets being Brits and Yankees. But as Jeff Stein reported yesterday for CQ, the nature and manner of the attacks really don't lead to the conclusion that Westerners were the targets, despite initial press reports that claimed as much. Fareed Zakaria has made a similar observation, noting that the hotels attacked are Indian-owned and now attract the local elite, more so than the Western hotels in Mumbai where foreigners congregate.

If Americans and Brits were the targets of these attacks and Indians merely innocent bystanders, that would and should dramatically shift the U.S. response. But I need to see more. There's plenty of bad blood between India and Pakistan, and especially between extremists in both countries, without the U.S. inserting itself in the middle as the intended victim here.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on December 2, 2008 11:39 AM

Antonio Carusone:

The Grid System is an ever-growing resource where graphic designers can learn about grid systems, the golden ratio and baseline grids.

Lovely.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on December 2, 2008 11:24 AM

Very impressive spreadsheet “data cleanup” tool. Check out the demo to see just how cool it is. (Via Andy Baio.)

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on December 2, 2008 11:17 AM

The GAO has just released an initial report on how the Treasury Department is handling the $700 billion TARP program. As you might expect, things are a bit rough around the edges, to put it politely. For example, Treasury has not yet decided whether it will make participating banks report back on how they are using the bailout monies. Zachary Roth is blogging the report at TPMmuckraker.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on December 2, 2008 11:00 AM

Economists and lawmakers are batting around increasingly large figures for the Obama admin's upcoming stimulus package -- 300 billion dollars, 500 billion, a trillion? Whatever the final sum, a big cut will get plowed into transpo projects. The question is whether all that money will perpetuate an outdated system or lead toward a future where cars and gas aren't seen as basic necessities for most Americans.

This piece from William Gale and Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution maps out some smart principles for the people who'll be making those decisions. Stop spreading transpo funds around the country "like peanut butter," they tell the feds, and target places with the biggest concentrations of people...

Lost in a morass of pork and politics, federal infrastructure policy today is an unaccountable free-for-all. Though there is little economic justification for making broad improvements in all places, that is exactly how the American transportation structure operates. The 6,373 earmarked projects in the latest federal transportation authorization illustrate the problem. It's not just the distaste for earmarks but the politically driven scattershot approach. The result is that only half of the projects go to places that matter most to the American economy and would benefit most from the investments: the 100 largest metropolitan areas, where 75 percent of GDP is produced.

Katz, you may recall, is one of the leading candidates to head up the new Office of Urban Policy in the Obama White House. So hopefully we'll get to see whether this idea can survive the Senate, where Alaska wields the same number of votes as New York. 

In terms of modal preference, Katz and Gale make no pronouncements, but the goals they describe don't seem all that compatible with 18-lane elevated highways:

The focus should be on investing in infrastructure that supports the competitiveness and environmental sustainability of the nation instead of funding individual states or spending on singular needs.

To score this, the nation needs a strong, deliberate and strategic federal government to do what is necessary to keep America competitive. What would that mean?

It means setting strict criteria for the billions of infrastructure dollars that are spent as part of the stimulus. Such criteria should include a real assessment of economic benefits and costs that consider environmental, energy, and social impacts. We should only invest those dollars where the nation has assurances of high returns.

It means holding the grantees -- the states and metropolitan planning organizations -- accountable through ongoing audits to ensure public dollars are being spent as efficiently and effectively as possible. The direct loss of future federal funds should be a genuine consequence for failing to meet basic accountability standards.

It means making focused, targeted investments in those gateways and corridors that are the critical nodes of international trade and inter-metropolitan commerce, rather than spreading infrastructure funding around the country like peanut butter. An independent national infrastructure bank should be established to define and finance those projects of substantial regional and national significance now and in the future.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on December 2, 2008 10:28 AM

Shared by Eve
Now I understand everything.

Holding Out for a Hero: Sure, Transporter 3 features a scene where Jason Statham takes off his clothes so he can hit bad guys with his shirt, but is that gay? Yes! says series mastermind Louis Letterier. "If you watch the movie and you know he's gay, it becomes so much more fun," Leterrier told the LAT. "Action fans in general are pretty homophobic. You see these tough guys who say, 'The Transporter, that's such a great movie!' If they only knew they're really cheering for a new kind of action hero." Sadly, Letterier handed off the Transporter 3 reins to the amazingly named Olivier Megaton, who added a very heterosexual make-out scene for Statham. "Haha, I haven’t seen it," Letterier said in response. "I can’t wait." [LAT]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Defamer, on December 2, 2008 10:11 AM

-Photo by Mario Testino-

Yeah, that's Jessica Alba, being a calendar girl for Campari.

The new mom, who gave birth to daughter Honor in June, said she was happy to take on the beauty-on-the-beach role for the campaign. 

"I'm usually walking around in comfy clothes, with a baby on my arm," Jess admitted, "and it's nice to dress things up and feel sophisticated, sexy, and surrounded by so much beauty."

Campari is printing only 9,999 copies of the calendar, which will feature all photos of Jessica in swimsuits, high heels and evening wear, and will be available at the end of the year.

I'm so getting one for my friend Craig. You know, the one who named his gigantic, flatscreen, hi-def television Jessica Alba?

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on December 2, 2008 10:10 AM

From an article about a collection of businesses located near Riker's Island, this tidbit: the inmates refer to the prison-issued orange sneakers as Air Giulianis. Also:

The food truck man, Mr. Samolis, said he often gives free food to inmates who are released from Rikers with no money.

"They get released at 6 in the morning with nothing but a $2 MetroCard the jail gives them," he said. "So I'll give them a coffee and an egg sandwich, on credit. I know they're never going to pay it back, but I feel bad for them."

(thx, jake)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 2, 2008 9:54 AM

From A Hamburger Today

Burger King's latest campaign, Whopper Virgins (by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky) aims to determine the winner in the Whopper vs. Big Mac battle by taking both burgers to remote places around the world—such as areas in Thailand, Romania, and Greenland—and conducting tastes tests with people who don't "even have a word for burger."

Backlash against the Whopper Virgins documentary is pervasive. In The Daily News, Marilyn Borchardt, development director for Food First, calls the campaign "insensitive" and points out, "The ad's not even acknowledging that there's even hunger in any of these places." Dunca Riley of the Inquisitr also finds the campaign offensive, while Brian Morrissey of AdFreaks says it's "embarrassing and emblematic of how ignorant Americans still seem to the rest of the world."

Watch some teaser clips of the documentary, after the jump.

'Whopper Virgins' Teaser 1

'Whopper Virgins' Teaser 2

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on December 2, 2008 9:15 AM

Add Micah Kellner's name to the MTA doomsday scorecard. Yesterday, the Upper East Side Assembly member came out in favor of increasing license and registration fees for New York drivers as a transit revenue booster.

Under the Kellner plan, which originated with the non-profit Citizens Budget Commission, motorists would pay flat fees, rather than the weight-based assessments recently proposed by city comptroller William Thompson. Kellner says the new fees would raise $550 million a year -- a little more than the income projected from tolls on the now "free" East River bridges.

On that note, Kellner's press release includes this odd passage:

"Early indications suggest that the Ravitch Commission will announce Friday that tolls on the East River bridges are the centerpiece of their recommendations. This is a proposal that has been recycled time and again in each and every fiscal crisis but has always failed to gain the necessary support to be implemented. I don’t know why they think this time will be any different, but I am hopeful that the Governor’s office will look to other ideas like this one and reinstituting the commuter tax as he constructs his Executive budget."

Could it be that the idea of imposing East River bridge tolls is "recycled time and again" because it's a proven and equitable course of action? Rather than take a stance for or against, Kellner characterizes new tolls as a non-starter -- as if, as an elected state representative, he himself is in no position to influence the issue.

Sounds all too familiar.

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on December 2, 2008 8:59 AM

More news on the Conde Nast front:

On December 16th, Flip.com, Conde's teen-driven online scrapbooking site that couldn't be more than three years old, shuts down.

So if you have any super amazing flip books from special events, their staff suggests printing them out now.

No word yet on where exactly that staff is going, or why exactly the site's shutting down, though we're sure the lack of ads on the site might have something to do with it.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on December 2, 2008 7:29 AM

Google Calendar’s CalDAV support is out of beta. What would make this really great would be for the iPhone to support CalDAV directly.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on December 2, 2008 7:27 AM

I've already mentioned that we're trying to redeploy some of our resources to focus on the financial crisis, particularly the potential muckraking angles. And as we do so I keep coming back to the ratings agencies. Bubbles are an inherent and recurrent feature of financial markets. And there are plenty of roots to this crisis. But at a basic level we're talking about lots of big players paying wildly inflated prices for crap and then having investors running up the stock prices of the big players because they didn't realize that there was so much crap on the books. And that sounds like a systemic failure of the role rating agencies are supposed to play in well functioning markets.

As we've looked into this I was surprised to learn that the major rating agencies are paid by the companies they rate, which certainly creates perverse incentives.

So, we're actively in the hunt for our Finance Blogger to help us dig further into these stories. And our own reporting continues here today. But our readers are always our best resource, our competitive advantage as a news operation. And I know we've got a lot of TPM Readers in the financial services industry and the financial press. So help us come up to speed. Send me your thoughts and insights. Point us to the best articles on the topic. It seems obvious to me that there's a big story here. I've got a sense of the structural issues involved. But I'm interested in getting a better grasp of what happened over the last few years, what's been different. I'm looking for the details.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 2, 2008 7:19 AM

We've just launched our shiny new transportation-policy blog network, and we're pretty darn excited. You can find out why by clicking here.

Streetsblog Network (streetsblog.net) brings together more than 100 blogs from 31 states — and counting. Its purpose is twofold: to create a place where people who blog on smart growth, livable streets and sustainable transportation issues can come together and learn from each other. And to provide a clearinghouse for information related to the transportation bill, or "TEA," that directs the spending of hundreds of billions of federal dollars. The next such bill is set to come up for reauthorization in 2009.

Federal transportation policy has long been a Beltway insider’s game, one where the highway lobby held most of the cards. This time, a coalition of organizations called Transportation for America has come together with the aim of taking the next TEA bill in a different direction.

We'll be using the Streetsblog Network site to give readers and bloggers opportunities for action on the TEA bill, information about upcoming committee hearings — pretty much all the news on this legislation that we can get our hands on.

Think of it as a community that gets things done.

Originally posted by Sarah Goodyear from Streetsblog, on December 2, 2008 6:00 AM

We asked Bill Clinton spokesperson Matt McKenna for a response to the speculation that Bill is eying a takeover of Hillary's Senate seat, now that she's set to become Obama's Secretary of State.

McKenna emailed over this:

"It's completely false. President Clinton is excited to expand the work of his foundation which has more than 1,000 staff and volunteers in 44 countries advancing projects on HIV/AIDS, climate change, sustainable economic development, and childhood obesity."

The response is actually noteworthy for another reason. Some critics had argued that Bill should disband his foundation or dramatically scale down his role, to avoid the appearance of conflicts involving Hillary in her new post. But this statement suggests that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on December 2, 2008 5:39 AM

Education column for The Examiner, December 3.

    While you are reading this, I am meeting my last classes of the semester at George Mason University. I have borrowed Frank Kermode’s phrase for the header of this column because, at the conclusion of every semester, the class writes about endings.

    Everyone tries to make sense of endings. Did we end the project/semester/year well? New Year’s resolutions are clichéd caricatures of making an end because people often--quite cynically--make resolutions they know they can’t keep. We think that a list of what we should have done negates all we didn’t do. Is that how auld lang syne works?

    Not for my students. As they struggle with this last paper, due on the last class, they not only explain the ending they’re writing about, but make its significance clear.

    A few write about the end of high school, and the ambivalence about their impending “freedom” versus the security they felt at home and school. Others write about the deaths of relatives or friends, some of whom died at appropriately old ages, and some of whom had unnaturally short lives. The significance of the latter is hard to articulate; the unexpected and unfair early deaths often leave the writer with a vow to remember that occasionally, life doesn’t make sense.

    What each student addresses at the end of their writing is the question of what’s left after “the end.” Is it our memory that keeps autumn alive, even when it’s winter? Or is it something organic—still in the ground, that helps turn winter into spring?

    Relatives live on in our memories and our DNA. What about past events? Are they only recorded in memory and on paper, or are they still alive, still around us in some physical way?

    As you can see, these papers become quite philosophical, and that’s why I give the assignment in the first place. As a semester ends, it’s important for every student to place it in the context of their educations and their lives.

    Riley’s paper, on the Tao way of looking at death, uses an image that captures this: life is like a match—lit briefly, then blown out and tossed away, of no more use. But the smoke generated by the match lives on for a time.

    When Riley applied that analogy to his outlook on death, I saw a further analogy to the end of my three classes this week, no longer of use to these students. The classes will end.

    But something will continue, at least for a time. I hope it is the ability to read others’ writing closely, and to write clearly and concretely. But yesterday Aaron suggested another way this class might live on.

    On Halloween, Aaron asked his children to write scary stories—something he had never done before. But he now loves to write and wants his children to value writing as well. One of his children really got into the task and produced something fabulous; perhaps a new match has been lit.

    Teachers always hope our lessons live beyond the walls of our classrooms, and Aaron’s own “lesson” on Halloween guarantees that this semester’s ending is, for at least a few, a new beginning.

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on December 2, 2008 5:18 AM

Six Apart Japan 5th Anniversary Party from Joichi Ito on Vimeo.

Today was the fifth anniversary of Six Apart Japan. I had to talk about how it all started and tell funny stories about Nob.

I decided to try to shoot people for today's video. I experimented with timing my transitions with music. I used Garage Band to make the "music".

I was using the cheesy random loops as a place holder and was going to try to do a real track, but I ran out of steam for the night...

Also, some of the colors seem blown out and the white balance seems a bit off. I guess I need to start looking into either white balancing more properly in the camera or post processing the color.

I wonder how long I can keep this one video a day thing going...

I used a Canon 5D Mark II with a 85mm f/1.2 lens. Shot in 1080i, edited with Final Cut Express, exported to 720p. Music made with Garage Band.

Make sure you watch the video in "HD" mode.

Originally posted by Joi from Joi Ito's Web, on December 2, 2008 4:59 AM

(via

TMN

)

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on December 2, 2008 4:34 AM

Citi stock closed at $6.51 Monday, down over 20 percent.

The company continues to skate on the edge of existence during the credit crisis. Is Citi a victim of short sellers or its own reckless risk-taking? These are issues above Loge13's pay grade but two government bailouts later, one issue has emerged: is it appropriate for Citi Field to retain its moniker?

There's lots of noise in the system on this subject. Here is the latest from George Vescey:

 With a mixture of rage and pride, I drove past the Mets??? new ballpark Monday and noticed that offensive name still up there.

As Citigroup grovels for a bailout from public funds, the Mets insist the name will not change. Not to give free publicity to these jokers, but as of this moment, the new stadium is still Citi Field.

My rage gave way to pride, however, knowing that we are all, in a broad sense, shareholders in the Mets. Civic benefactors. Patrons of the arts. Sportsmen and sportswomen, as franchise owners used to call themselves, before we wised up.

We are paying for the government subsidy ??? socialism at the top ??? so that this failing institution can keep its name on the Flushing skyline where Serval Zipper once stood so proudly.

How much money? Get your pencils and scorecards ready: last Sunday???s New York Times reported that the federal government is investing ???about $20 billion directly and guaranteeing $306 billion in loans and securities on Citigroup???s balance sheet.???

The article also said that Citigroup ???effectively suspended its dividend for three years and agreed to limit executives??? pay.??? How nice of them. On Monday, a dreadful day for the economy, Citigroup shares plunged 22.2 percent.

Yet Citigroup is still under contract to pay $20 million a year for the next 20 years to subsidize the bullpen that launched dozens of late-inning defeats in the past two years. We are enablers all around.

New ballparks are a source of amusement in the Bronx as well as in Queens. It was recently reported that the Bloomberg administration had bargained 250 extra parking spaces to the Yankees in exchange for a larger luxury box and free food for the high-profile schnorrers from City Hall.

???

This disclosure makes it easier to understand why the Bloomberg administration was so compliant about the vanishing of a neighborhood park that was so inconveniently in the way of the new Yankees playpen. The city claims it will eventually put in tiny little parklets on top of garages, but at least the Yankees respect their brand and are not selling their naming rights to some shaky financial institution.

For several years, I have been insisting that the Mets should name their new stadium ??? partly paid for by the owners, the Wilpon family, with infrastructure mostly subsidized by the city ??? after a legitimate New York sports hero who would not embarrass everybody down the line.

The most obvious name would have been Jackie Robinson Stadium, but if the standard were somebody who wore the Mets uniform, then what about Gil Hodges Stadium?

Meantime, I persist in calling it New Shea, in honor of the lawyer who helped bring the National League back to New York, whose name was proudly affixed to the old dump that is being torn down.

The Citigroup bailout brought out my populist leanings, and I was toying with the name Power to the People Park. Then I heard that the New York City Council members James S. Oddo and Vincent Ignizio, both Republicans from Staten Island, had proposed the new park be named Citi/Taxpayer Field. Their suggestion kicked up a flurry of approval on the Internet.

???A cheeky way to make a point,??? said Oddo, who noted that his colleague, Ignizio, had the idea first. ???These are complex issues,??? Oddo added. ???They go over my head, but this was a way to vent my frustration.???

Oddo was referring to the worldwide economic crisis brought about, in large part, by American buccaneer capitalists we seem to admire so much, unregulated by government. In terms of lives being affected, it???s hardly funny, except for the antic chutzpah of a failing corporation putting its name up in lights, with somebody else???s money ??? yours and mine.

???This is more of a case of using the office as a bully pulpit,??? said Oddo, who does not claim the City Council has any legal power to take down the annoying name. The response on the Internet has made Oddo appreciate ???the beauty of a snarky comment.??? Previously known for his campaign to ban metal bats, claiming they are dangerous to young players, Oddo does not apologize for his varied interests.

???I can fill a pothole at the same time I spark a debate,??? he said.

As a lifelong Mets fan, Oddo said, he learned to suffer at an early age. For example, he recalled his trauma in 1981 when Mets catcher Ron Hodges drilled pitcher Craig Swan in the back while trying to stop Tim Raines from stealing second. Swan???s rib was broken, and he went on the disabled list.

Lately, Mets fans have endured two hideous Septembers, which, in a weird way, makes Citigroup and the Mets ideal partners ??? ???both entities had collapses,??? Oddo said. And while he professes great admiration for the Mets??? general manager, Omar Minaya, Oddo notes that management of bank and ball team have something in common: both retain their jobs.

The first step is the name. The Mets can do without the $20 million a year, since all they would do with the loot is recruit some other ghastly bullpen. Better they start all over, on the cheap, like the rest of us are learning to do. With apologies to Ronald Reagan: Mr. Wilpon, tear down this sign.

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on December 2, 2008 4:30 AM

• Bloomberg Signs Bill Extending Time Drivers Can Park at Broken Meters (City Room)
  
• Reporters Record Rampant Traffic Crime, Catch Scofflaw Drivers in the Act (S.I. Advance)
• Pricing Foes Markowitz and de Blasio Lead Rally Protesting MTA Cuts and Fare Hikes (Bklyn Eagle)
  
• MTA to Purchase Hundreds of New Subway Cars Despite Budget Troubles (Post)
• Village Bus Riders Decry Plans to Eliminate M8 Route (Villager)
• NYCT Rolls Out Vintage Buses and Trains for the Holidays (Post, NY1)
• More on the Mammoth, Time-Wasting Enviro Review of SF's Bike Plan (Bay Guardian)
  
• Thousands of Big Three Dealerships May Fold With or Without a Detroit Bailout (NYT)
• Streetsblog Readers Want to Know: Were Horses Deadlier Than Cars? (Paper Cuts, Caleb Crain)
• Buffy the Bike Rider (TreeHugger)
  

Originally posted by Ben Fried from Streetsblog, on December 2, 2008 4:05 AM

Filed under: Internet Tools

Although the plumbing has been in place since the summer, it's always nice to have an official announcement, and now we do: Google has gone on the record with its support for CalDAV syncing from iCal to Google Calendar. You can now gracefully sync your editable Google calendars with your (Leopard-only) iCal, keeping a local copy of those events in the cloud.

Granted, both BusySync (which adds Bonjour-based iCal synchronization between Macs) and SpanningSync (which includes Address Book --> Google contact sync) have been handling this task with aplomb for some time, and they offer something Google hasn't -- a nice GUI for picking your sync options. That too has been addressed: Google Code is hosting the Calaboration sync setup tool, a basic checklist of calendars to add to your iCal setup.

If you are syncing your iCal and gCal data via Google's support for CalDAV, let us know how it's going.

TUAWGoogle Calendar CalDAV/iCal syncing now official originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Originally posted by Michael Rose from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 2, 2008 2:00 AM

We have now published presentations from OpenSQLCamp at Percona Presentation pages

Percona MySQL Patches is a great presentation to see Percona Patches for MySQL in action, showing how you can use them to get more understanding of your server load and improve server performance, as well as how they can improve performance all together.

Sphinx full-text search engine is presentation about Sphinx Search Engine talking a bit about architecture, performance and new features in Sphinx 0.9.9

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Originally posted by peter from MySQL Performance Blog, on December 1, 2008 8:21 PM

I have long held a theory that anyone who wants a good, well-rounded education but can't afford it need only read the NYT Book Review every Sunday.  You have to read every review, beginning to end (okay, you can probably skip poetry... and kid's books... but that's it), but you will learn an astonishing amount of information in a very accessible style and a short amount of time.  I stopped reading the review after I moved to Portland, but I've picked it up again this year and I still think that theory holds true.

Here are just some of the things I learned this week:

From a Richard Holbrooke review of Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam by Gordon Goldstein (Bundy was Kennedy's and LBJ's National Security Adviser who strongly encouraged American involvement in the Vietnam War):

After remaining largely silent, — except for an occasional defense of the two presidents he had served — for 30 years, Bundy finally began, in 1995, to write about Vietnam. He chose as his collaborator Gordon Goldstein, a young scholar of international affairs. Together they began mining the archives, and Goldstein conducted a series of probing interviews. Bundy began writing tortured notes to himself, often in the margins of his old memos — a sort of private dialogue with the man he had been 30 years earlier — something out of a Pirandello play. Bundy would scribble notes: “the doves were right”; “a war we should not have fought”; “I had a part in a great failure. I made mistakes of perception, recommendation and execution.” “What are my worst mistakes?” For those of us who had known the self-confident, arrogant Brahmin from Harvard, these astonishing, even touching, efforts to understand his own mistakes are far more persuasive than the shallow analysis McNamara offers in his own memoir, “In Retrospect.”

From Caroline Weber's review of A Revolution in Taste: The Rise of French Cuisine, 1650-1800 by Susan Pinkard:

In “A Revolution in Taste,” Susan Pinkard, a historian at Georgetown University, explores the striking technical, material and philosophical shifts that profoundly altered French cooking between the second half of the 17th century and the revolution of 1789. Before this period in history, Hippocratic dietetics had maintained that disease was caused by excess humors (moist, hot, cold or dry) for which food could correct. Seasonings, in particular, were thought to adjust a dish’s elemental properties in crucial, therapeutic ways. For example, “dangerously cold and moist fish, such as lamprey eel (a surfeit of which was said to have killed Henry I of England), could be transformed by a sauce of pepper, garlic and marjoram into a delicious and healthy dish.” Guided by these curative principles, ancient and premodern chefs relied heavily on spices, which masked underlying tastes and aromas. This practice gave rise to the conviction that fine cooking “fused many layers of flavor into a single, unitary whole, rendering individual ingredients unidentifiable to even sensitive palates.” As Pinkard astutely points out, this culinary aesthetic persists today in regions ranging from Mexico to the Middle East. “Mexican kitchen lore,” she writes, “claims that if one can identify a recipe’s ingredients by smelling the steam rising from the pot, the mixture must cook longer to achieve a perfect blend of flavors.”

From Caleb Crain's review of Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America by Ann Norton Greene:

So why didn’t steam power replace horsepower? The answer is that it did, but not in all circumstances. To cross long distances in early America, one bought a stagecoach ticket and was dragged at a speed of 10 to 12 miles an hour over rutted and uneven roads by teams of horses, one team relaying another along the route, in an experience that Frances Trollope once described as being “tossed about like a few potatoes in a wheelbarrow.” Railroads improved on this, because rails were smooth and because steam-powered locomotives were more efficient than horses over distances longer than 15 miles. But horses were more efficient at start-and-stop traveling, and locomotives weren’t welcome in cities, because they threw off sparks that set fires and because with some regularity they exploded. Horses therefore often pulled trains once they reached city lines. Because railroads were built by competing private companies, a passenger who wanted to change trains sometimes had to get to a depot on the other side of town. Only a horse or shank’s pony could take him there. Most important, while railroads put a large number of goods and people into motion, they delivered to the depot and no further. For the last mile, animal power was the only option in the 19th century.

From Noam Scheiber's review of The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence by Robert J. Samuelson:

In 1998, after a global financial crisis threatened the expansion he’d so carefully cultivated, Greenspan flooded the economy with cash (not crazy), then kept interest rates low for more than a year (highly questionable). The extra money led to the tech frenzy that ended so badly in 2000. Beginning in 2001, Greenspan aggressively lowered interest rates and kept them low into 2004. Once again, all the excess cash resulted in a bubble — this one in real estate — the bursting of which we’re now struggling through.

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on December 1, 2008 7:16 PM

Dave Rolsky wrote a fantastic article on the many different criteria on which you can choose your software to use. For example:

Easy to integrate - Some libraries are designed to be integrated with other modules (Catalyst), some want you to embrace their world (Jifty).

Complete - Some libraries come with a complete solution (Jifty) and some require you to put together a bunch of pieces into a whole (Catalyst).

Which is better? The answer, of course, is "it depends." Is the project for in-house use, or will it be distributed? Is it a one-off, where the base install will do most of what you want? Or are you likely to want to extend beyond those constraints?

Most importantly, Dave points out:

I'd like to see people state their priorities up front, and explain why it's important for the work they do. Often this gets left out of the discussion. Without this information, we often end up just talking past each other.

The extension of that is that many people may not even have thought about what their priorities are. Consider how often you'll see a question, such as at Stack Overflow, that asks "What's the fastest way to do X?" Most of the time, the querist hasn't even thought about that "fastest" part; it's just assumed. (For that matter, that's like assuming that the most important part of a new job is how much it pays, but that's a topic for another blog.)

Make sure you know what your priorities are. Question your assumptions. Your project will thank you for it.

Originally posted by Andy Lester from Perlbuzz, on December 1, 2008 7:15 PM

Man, I hate when there’s no clear answer to a cooking question.

The question is whether or not it makes sense to soak dried beans before cooking. You have three options: Soak overnight in cold water (they’re actually fully soaked after about four hours, but can stay in the water for up to eight hours); soak quickly in one hour by starting with boiling water; or don’t soak and increase your cooking time and cooking liquid.

Here are the arguments I’ve found for and against soaking:

• Soaking frees up minerals and vitamins in the beans. Beans contain a chemical called phytic acid, which “can form complexes with some minerals and make them insoluble and thereby indigestible,” a process known as chelation. Some phytic acid is destroyed in cooking, but more is removed (an extra 15.4% up front, according to the American Chemical Society) if you soak overnight before cooking.
• Soaking cleans the beans. Got that from Miss Vickie’s, the best site around for pressure-cooking tips. She says there’s a lot of nasty stuff on the outside of dried beans. I think that a really good rinse should take care of that nasty stuff, and besides, letting the beans sit in water that has absorbed undesirable compounds sounds like a bad idea. But what do I know.
• Soaking reduces cooking times. It does - by maybe a half an hour. Doesn’t bother me. Might affect people who have office jobs, although I’m guessing you’re still not making two-hour beans on a Tuesday night.
• Soaking cuts down on “ze tummy music.” I’m pretty sure this is bullshit, but then again, everything gives me ze tummy music, so how the hell would I notice?
• Soaking means softer beans. I know this is bullshit, because I’ve tried it both ways, and soaking did not help the texture of the cooked beans one iota. You know what helped? Cooking them longer.

Arguments against soaking beans:

• Soaking leaches out flavor. Well, you have my attention there. Alton Brown has suggested soaking and then using some of the soaking liquid in cooking, although in this season’s red beans and rice episode (a good recipe, BTW), he dispensed with soaking entirely. I have made beans both ways, but I’m usually putting so much other stuff in the pot that I would never notice a 10% flavor loss through soaking. My beans tend to taste like other things, such as bacon.
• Soaking removes the phytic acid. Yeah, how about that: Phytic acid is an antioxidant. I found a few studies discussing phytic acid’s antioxidant properties, although none seem to argue strongly in its favor. It has been mentioned as a potential anticancer compound, and it definitely plays a role in preventing bean spoilage.
• Soaking leaches out nutrients. So perhaps we’re even - soaking takes out nutrients but gets the phosphate out of the phytic acid so that the remaining nutrients are more accessible; not soaking leaves the phytic acid but the beans start with a higher nutrient content. I have no idea how that nets out.
• Soaking is not traditional. I know it’s just a forum post, but this caught my eye: You’re probably all bored to death with my saying this, but I have lived in Mexico for nearly 26 years. I do not know a single Mexican cook who soaks beans. Naturally, YMMV. Rick Bayless, who knows a thing or two about Mexican cuisine, also advises against soaking. Not a nutritional argument, of course.

Usually I can at least offer an opinion based on a preponderance of evidence, perhaps mixed with personal experience or observation, but on this one, I just don’t know. You might have a tradeoff between tradition and nutrition, or between convenience and flavor.

I can only tell you what I do, or what I don’t do: I’ve stopped soaking beans. I never found a cooking benefit, and I was unaware of a nutritional question until shortly before I started writing this post. I did find something interesting in, of all places, Wikipedia - and, oddly enough, it comes from a bona fide academic source:

Probiotic lactobacilli, and other species of the endogenous digestive microflora as well, are an important source of the enzyme phytase which catalyses the release of phosphate from phytate and hydrolyses the complexes formed by phytate and metal ions or other cations, rendering them more soluble ultimately improving and facilitating their intestinal absorption.

That indicates to me that popping a couple of L. acidophilus pills before chowing down on some (unsoaked-before-cooking) beans might help you get the best of both worlds. But beyond that, I’m as confused as ever.

Originally posted by keith from The dish, on December 1, 2008 7:08 PM

I'm reading an interesting article at the Journal about the second-try presentations the big three are planning to make to Congress. A very interesting read. But as much as we hear about executive compensation I was still a little struck by this line: Ford CEO Alan Mullaly "has earned close to $50 million in total compensation since taking the helm of Ford in 2006."

It was Mullaly who, when asked at that hearing whether he'd be willing to take a $1 salary in exchange for federal aid said: "I think I'm OK where I am."

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 1, 2008 6:50 PM

Watch it until Snoopy kicks the red water dish, if not to the end.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on December 1, 2008 6:34 PM

TPM Reader DR updates us on the Tory trainwreck up North ...

Nice of you to notice, given the amount of time I've spent reading TPM for the last year...the best source ever for US election politics.

Anyway, the answer up here is Hell, yeah!

Stephen Harper didn't so much win enough seats to form a minority government in October; the Liberals simply lost dozens of seats because of a terrible campaign and a weak leader. Now that leader is poised to become prime minister of a coalition government.

Harper, who admires Bush's politics and tactics, is actually smarter than Bush. But he's much nastier, and chose a poor time to try to stick a machete into the opposition parties by cutting off their public funding for election campaigns (can you imagine Obama, upon assuming office, trying to eliminate public campaign financing?) and the entire civil service by banning their right to strike. That, and being the only G8 country to not initiate any financial stimulus for the economy.

Like Bush, Harper has contempt for government. Unlike Bush, that contempt extends to public spending: he hates it and would be delighted to see government as little more than a placid flow through mechanism for the private sector as it does whatever it wants.

Look north for the next few days...it's going to be fun!

I really can't think of another political leader of late whose hubris has had such immediate consequences.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 1, 2008 5:58 PM

In honor of World AIDS Day 2008, Arts Engine is making available resources and information about HIV and AIDS to help you find ways to raise awareness, “Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise.” and take a leadership role in your community to combat this disease. Read our MediaRights article on World AIDS Day which includes useful links to organizations that facilitate others in getting involved in the battle against AIDS and HIV. Educators, youth activists, parents and community members alike can use our recent publication of the Health Literacy Take Action Pack which features films, downloadable resources and ideas for activities to help raise awareness as well as links to recent Media That Matters films on HIV / AIDS from our MediaRights database such as Diana. —posted by Leah

Originally posted by (author unknown) from MediaRights: Staff Blog, on December 1, 2008 12:58 PM

I mentioned in a chat that I wasn’t doing rumors this year. Since then, I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking why I would kill a popular feature and the thing I do in the baseball off-season. Why would I be going to Vegas for the Winter Meetings if I wasn’t hitting up rumor action?

There’s a number of reasons. First, the market is saturated. At the top, there’s Ken Rosenthal, the ESPN crew, and our own John Perrotto. While it feels good to “beat them” every one out of a hundred times, it’s not worth the beating that I get when I’m “wrong.” Even better, the guys at the top of the game are good guys and I never minded losing to them.

But wins and losses aren’t exactly what people think. The scoops that get things exactly right come seconds before the announcement, not days. Sometimes you get something — Manny Ramirez to the Marlins? — that you just don’t think could be possible, even when told it by a very credible source and backed up with a secondary. Sometimes you get something — “all but done” between Red Sox and Twins — and things go sideways. Both are right, both are wrong, but neither is fact.

Paul DePodesta wrote that 25% of rumors have any basis in fact. I spoke with Andrew Friedman earlier this year and he gave a slightly higher number. I’d say that the number is higher still, probably about 50%. There’s some nugget of truth, some overheard conversation or leak, some good source talking out of school in — just a guess — half. About 25% is chatter - secondary things that aren’t quite right, people talking about things that never quite get to the real talking stage. I can remember a team saying they liked a guy and then a couple weeks later, that guy was in a trade rumor involving the team. It didn’t happen, but someone filled in the gap with something plausible. Not right, but not entirely wrong.

About 10% beyond that is trial balloons. They aren’t facts, but agents and teams like to get stuff out there and it’s useful to some extent, assuming you can pick apart the layers of anonymity. I’d argue there’s real value here in that it helps create action. In Moneyball, Peter Gammons was shown to be a go-between, an information clearinghouse for what teams were trying to do and there’s unquestionably a value there.

It’s the other 15% that’s worrisome. It’s the whole cloth, puff of smoke lies that throw everything off and give the whole process a bad name. I’ll split that into half “good” and half “evil” — the good smoke is just talking points, people throwing ideas on the wall and covering them in a thin candy shell of credibility. The evil smoke is designed to do something, to create action or in most cases, just attention. These seldom hold up very long, but they’re out there and worse, there’s some big name people that do this far too often, likely under pressure of deadline or an editor telling them to produce something.

I’ve often said that someone could have a hit on their hands if they figured out how to “keep score” on rumors and the mongers who sell them. I’m sure that I’ll hear rumors at the Winter Meetings and be asked to discuss them on my radio hits, but after my years in this game, I’ve learned a new trick: shutting my mouth.

Originally posted by Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on December 1, 2008 12:39 PM

Some more commentary on Secretary of State Hillary that will make the Obama transition team happy, this time from Hillary's predecessor in the gig:

"She won't -- and you won't -- hear from me again," Rice said on the day President-elect Barack Obama named Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the next secretary of state. "I will certainly not make the effort to comment on everything that is done."

Rice also hailed Hillary as someone with "enormous energy and intellect and skill" and cited her love of America. She also apparently briefed Hillary yesterday on the Mumbai situation, though that may be the last time Hillary will be hearing from her.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on December 1, 2008 11:39 AM

According to the current issue of American Journal of Veterinary Research, “IV administration of caffeine at 5 mg/kg improved the performance of Arabian horses during intense exercise of short duration and diminished the oxidative metabolism of glucose.”  The abstract is available here. In other words, drink more coffee before racing for the Triple Crown.  And eat [...]

Originally posted by Mike White from ShotZombies.com, on December 1, 2008 10:54 AM

unlike most acquirees, they thoughtfully built an exporter tool  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on December 1, 2008 10:51 AM

In this video interview, long-time online community expert Randy Farmer explicitly references the broken windows theory and its application to online spaces. He tells an anecdote about how the quick deletion of trolling questions from the front page of Yahoo Answers led to a decline in the number of trolls. (thx, bryce)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 1, 2008 9:58 AM

There's a lot of speculation about what Obama's foreign policy picks mean. But what was and remains clear to me is that Obama, like most but by no means all Democrats, believes that settling the mess of interconnected messes in the Middle East starts with a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Progress on virtually every other front can likely only be tentative at best until that issue is resolved.

Note, for instance, that Gen. Jones, Obama's National Security Advisor (remember, he doesn't need to be confirmed) made his post-military reputation as the US envoy helping to create the beginnings of possible Israeli-Palestinian coexistence in Jenin. Brent Scowcroft, who is I believe the key force behind the retention of Bob Gates, believes as a cardinal matter that you can't really solve anything in the Middle East before you get the Israeli-Palestinian problem settled.

And yet in Israel it's not at all unlikely that by February Bibi Netanyahu could be the Prime Minister again in Israel. I guess there's always the argument that you need a Nixon to go to China, that you need someone with impeccable security credentials on the Israeli side to make a lasting peace. That's one of abiding tragedies of Ariel Sharon's stroke. (It's ironic that Netanyahu, who's got a thin national security resume by Israeli standards, should be seen in that light since verbal and policy aggression are his only real calling cards. But that's another story ...) But Netanyahu is not only the voice of Israeli territorial maximalism, albeit in its current more limited form, he's also fundamentally unreliable person -- a charlatan.

For those of us who are heartened to finally have an administration that realizes this issue is as critical as it is, it's a very disheartening prospect on the horizon.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 1, 2008 9:54 AM

We had the pleasure of hosting Andy Schecter and his infinite bag of tricks recently.  In this episode Andy showed us how to use this state of the art Refractometer (AKA ExtractMojo) in conjuction with computer software, to evaluate total dissolved solids and soluble yields in a cup of brewed coffee.  What does this mean, exactly?  It means you can quickly compare your brewing parameters with an objective standard, and make adjustments accordingly.  Andy writes about this more here, but for an in-depth look, check out George Howell. 

Originally posted by Mike White from Gimme! Coffee News, on December 1, 2008 9:33 AM

Just after the November election, I told you how we were expanding our original reporting capacity in Washington by hiring two new reporter-bloggers, one to focus on Capitol Hill and another on the White House and executive branch.

I'm extremely pleased to announce that we've now hired the first of the two. Elana Schor will start at TPM the beginning of next month. She's covered Capitol Hill for The Guardian for the last year and before that she covered the senate for The Hill newspaper for three years.

(We hope to hire the second DC reporter-blogger in the next few weeks, in time for them to hit the ground running with the new administration.)

To date, our original reporting has been mainly, though not exclusively, old-fashioned phone reporting from our offices here in NY or from our Muckraker reporters' home offices in DC. But as we expand our operation to chronicle the unfolding story of the new Democratic Ascendancy (of unknown duration) in Washington, DC we felt like a more on-the-ground, in-person dimension to our blog reporting was required. And with that in mind, our plan is to have our Capitol Hill reporter-blogger reporting from Capitol Hill every day. So this will be, among other things, an experiment in mobile blogging.

We're excited, both about the story that's before us and the chance to keep innovating in the field of digital news reporting and aggregation. So a big welcome to Elana and a thanks to you, our regular readers, who've made our continued expansion possible.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on December 1, 2008 9:20 AM

Not that we need more evidence that the Yankee Stadium parking deal was rancid to the core, but a Saturday story in the Times reveals the sad details of the Bloomberg administration's push for luxury game day digs -- a 12-seat suite in left field -- for which it traded 250 spots to the team.

The parking spaces were given to the team for the private use of Yankees officials, players and others; the spaces were originally planned for public parking. The city also turned over the rights to three new billboards along the Major Deegan Expressway, and whatever revenue they generate, as part of the deal.

The quest for perks first made news months ago following an inquiry by Assembly Member Richard Brodsky, but the nature of recently uncovered e-mails between the team, the city, and the Economic Development Corporation is depressingly banal.

At another point, raw personal feelings emerged, as evidenced during this exchange, starting June 29, 2006, between top city officials about Randy Levine, the Yankees president.

"If we want a deal on the suite, he wants 250 spaces," Seth W. Pinsky, then the executive vice president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, wrote to Daniel L. Doctoroff, a former deputy mayor. After Mr. Doctoroff did not respond, Mr. Pinsky, a bit sheepishly, wrote the next day: "It comes down to how much we’re willing to rely on Randy’s word."

"Let’s not give," Mr. Doctoroff replied. "I don’t trust him."

The Daily News has more, including PDF files of some e-mails. The News notes that taxpayers could end up paying for the spots if stadium garages, as expected, take a loss.

And the kicker? Follow the jump for mind-bending quotes from Westchester's faux-populist-in-chief.

Mr. Brodsky said what emerges from the e-mail correspondence is a sense of entitlement ingrained in Bloomberg officials. He said that the city appeared to be pushing for use of the suite for not just regular-season games, but for the playoffs and the World Series, and for special events like concerts, too.

"There’s this 'Alice in Wonderland' quality to the question of, what is the public interest here and who’s protecting it?" said Mr. Brodsky, who conducted a hearing on the issue of public financing of sports stadiums this summer. "We can’t find the money for the M.T.A., or schools, or hospitals, and these folks are used to the perks and good things of life, and expect them."

Richard Brodsky railing about entitlements and perks -- in the name of the MTA? We are through the looking glass, indeed.

Originally posted by Brad Aaron from Streetsblog, on December 1, 2008 9:20 AM

A couple more quick points about today's Obama presser. First, it was striking how comfortable Obama appeared in a take-charge role when on a stage dominated by heavy hitters like Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton -- and how visibly they deferred to him.

Also, it wasn't until Obama himself announced the appointment of Hillary as Secretary of State that it became clear just how well it reflects on him. The sight of him hailing her strength, toughness and suitability to the huge challenges ahead -- even as he brushed off reporter chatter about the acrimonious Dem primary -- made for powerful political theater.

We've heard a lot of analysis about how Obama's "team of rivals" approach shows his mature willingness to extend a forgiving hand to rivals and his confidence that he can control them within his own orbit. But I'd argue this isn't so much about his interpersonal style as it is about the sense he is trying to project that he possesses a gravity and sense of seriousness appropriate to the enormity of the tasks before him.

The message is that only the best will do; previous rivalries or petty subplots generated in the press as a result of his picks be damned. Here's how Obama himself described his approach today:

"I assembled this team because I'm a strong believer in strong personalities and strong opinions. I think that's how the best decisions are made...

"I'm going to be welcoming a vigorous debate inside the White House. But understand: I will be setting policy as president. I will be responsible for the vision that this team carries out, and I expect them to implement that vision once decisions made. So as Harry Truman said, the buck will stop with me."

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on December 1, 2008 8:53 AM

“Iron Man was released a few weeks later. I never got ‘round to seeing it in the cinema; I’m not a big fan of the whole cinema-going experience. But some time later I was travelling across the Atlantic yet again and one of the in-flight movie options was Iron Man. I fired it up, wondering if my picture had made it into the final cut and even if it had, whether I’d be able to spot it.

Three minutes into the movie, there was my photo. It fills the screen.

The camera lingers over it while performing its best Ken Burns effect. Not only was Robert Downey Jnr. photoshopped onto the picture, Jeff Bridges was on there too! The Dude!! …On my picture!!! My Flickr pictures have been used in some pretty strange places but this must surely be the strangest …and the coolest.” Iron Man and me

Read the full story here.

Photo from adactio, via Rev Dan Catt.

      

Originally posted by Heather Champ from Flickr Blog, on December 1, 2008 8:05 AM

I am pleased to announce that today we are welcoming the Pownce team and technology to Six Apart. Pownce launched in June of 2007 and opened to the public earlier this year, but, as mentioned on the Pownce blog, Pownce.com will be closing in the next few weeks. We have a lot of respect for what this team has done and believe we share a common vision about making the Internet more social.

We have been impressed not only with the vision for Pownce but the great work of Leah Culver and Mike Malone and are very happy that they will be joining us. We’re also very excited to welcome Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka as advisers to Six Apart. The Pownce team and Six Apart share the same passion for social blogging and we’re really proud to have them on board.

For Pownce users, we are very sorry the site will be closing. We welcome you to join us on Vox - Leah and Mike are there! - and we hope the Pownce and Vox communities can come together, just as the teams have, towards a better future. For the Pownce Pro users, we would like to offer you a free TypePad account for a year. All Pownce users will receive an email with further instructions about exporting content out of Pownce and signing up for Vox or TypePad accounts.

We’re planning on doing great things with the help and expertise of the Pownce team, and can’t wait to see all the results of their hard work.

Originally posted by Chris Alden from Six Apart News & Events, on December 1, 2008 7:00 AM

Josh MacPhee How Many Dead? $30 I've been experimenting with the merger of half-toned photos and drawn elements for awhile now, here's one I finished up in the summer. This woman stands out on the street corner in Troy, NY every weekend holding a sign with the current number of dead US soldiers in Iraq. I took the liberty of changing her sign to ask what seems to me to be the question her presence raises. This print is inspired by all the people that have been consistent and persistent in their opposition to the war. 4 color silkscreen print 25"x19" signed/unnumbered

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds, on December 1, 2008 6:10 AM

A puzzle:

Christian Siriano, arguably better known for structured jackets and layered ruffles than for popularizing the word "fierce" as an acceptable adjective, has just signed a deal with Payless to do a line of bags and shoes for Fall 09.

Apparently, the tired economy has gotten to his customers (and potential buyers), too, and he wants to ensure that "everyone" can get a piece of his brand.

The line debuts at Fashion Week in a couple months, but no word yet on the general design direction.

We're not sure what platform, ruffly booties would look like, but we have a feeling we'll be able to tell you all about it very soon.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on December 1, 2008 5:29 AM

Shared by colin
I think I need to join this project so I can be happy again =)

Well that’s it. Tomorrow is my first day in offline land. I’ll be disconnected from the internet: no email, no google, no blogging, no twitter… no nothing.

Why? Because I want to know how that is. What am I going to miss the most? And what are the things that I’m happy to miss?

These crazy questions came up when I was working on a research project. A study that examines the effects of internet on our happiness. Does the internet make you happy?

The internet makes you sad

From what I have studied the last months I can tell that some forms of internet usage really make you sad. For example people who suffer from information stress, from not being able to filter or deal with the unlimited amount of content that is potentially under their finger tips.

Or think about email. Email is a monster that gets bigger every time you fight it. Just when you think you have it under control (you’ve replied to 40 messages), at least sixteen of them are allready awaiting you with a next action. No wonder initiatives like the E-mail free Friday grow bigger.

The internet makes you happy

Also there is much proof of situations in which the internet actually makes you happy. In my talk at the PicNic-festival in Amsterdam I’ve spoken about the virtual happiness-hypothesis.

By exchanging bits and bites with people in other rooms -but behind their screens- you simulate social interaction, increasing your happiness. Because that’s what we’re built to do: to socially interact (besides to reproduce of course).

The aim of the research project is to combine all studies and theories on internet / happiness, and come up with a conceptual model. It would be wonderful to write a manual for the happy digital citizen.

No farewell, just goodbye

Don’t get me wrong: I love the internet. And I’ve done almost anything the last four years when it comes to maintaining a digital lifestyle. That’s why “The Next Web” seemed the perfect place to say goodbye for now.

I’ve decided to go offline for (only?) a full month, so I’ll be back online in January 2009. If you want to reach me in the mean time, feel free to send me a post card or let’s meet IRL.

P.s. Please feel free to comment on this article, but forgive me if I don’t reply within a month :-)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from TheNextWeb.com, on December 1, 2008 5:11 AM

Results of the 2008 Muji Award design competition. Winning entries include a drinking straw made from straw, a garbage bag that stands up by itself (no can needed), and a stapler that gets that staple in the corner of the page every time. (thx, dj jacobs)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 1, 2008 5:00 AM

With Obama set to announce his national security team today, The New York Times offers a valuable corrective look at his choices, reporting that despite their hawkishness, there's also another dimension to his picks: The key players are also proponents of boosting the U.S.'s "soft power" abroad.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for instance, has been giving speeches for a year or so now "about the limits of military power in wars in which no military victory is possible," the paper notes. Gates has also decried "the gutting of America's ability to engage, assist and communicate with other parts of the world -- the 'soft power' which had been so important throughout the cold war."

Meanwhile, Obama's choice for national security adviser, former NATO commander James Jones, has taken that critique even further, criticizing our strategy in Afghanistan over its failure to implement a strategy of reconstruction and aid in order to hold territory won from the Taliban.

The paper posits that the pick of Jones could signal a serious effort to use such measures in Afghanistan -- a place where Obama is promising a renewed focus -- something that could fundamentally change our national security policy:

If Mr. Obama and his team can bring about that kind of shift, it could mark one of the most significant changes in national security strategy in decades and greatly enhance the powers of Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state.

This view of Gates and Jones would seem to lend comfort to the camp of foreign policy thinkers (notably Steve Clemons) who think such figures could give Obama the cover he needs to pull off a fundamental shift in national security policy. On this score, Jones may prove to be at least as key a player to be watching as Hillary.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on December 1, 2008 4:40 AM

If you're young, know nothing, and are trying to understand the world, here's some good advice:

Only Collect; that is to say, collect everything, indiscriminately. You're five years old. Don't presume too much to know what's important and what isn't. Photocopy journal articles, photograph archives; create bibliographies, buy books; make notes on every article or book you read, even if it's just one line saying "Never read this again"; collect newspaper clippings and email them to yourself; collect quotes; save your ideas for future papers, future projects, future conferences, even if they seem wildly implausible now. Hoarding must become instinctual, it must be an uncontrollable, primal urge. And the higher, civilizing impulse that kicks in after the fact is organization, or librarianship. You must keep tabs on everything you collect, somehow; a system must be had, and the system must be idiot-proof (that is to say, you should be able to look back on it six months for now and not be completely stymied as to why you've organized things that way -- the present versions of ourselves are invariably the biggest idiots, and six months will make that clear).

An alternate and equally useful approach is just to start doing things without regard to their quality. Make 1000 mistakes but try not to repeat them. (via snarkmarket)

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 1, 2008 4:00 AM

In today’s Newsday, Ken Davidoff reports the Mets contacted the Rangers earlier in the off season about C Gerald Laird.

“There hasn’t been much discussion there lately,” writes Davidoff, noting, instead, how the Mets have prioritized ‘the renovation of their pitching staff.’

In early November, at SI.com, Jon Heyman wrote:

“Some Mets people are concerned about their catching.  But some in their hierarchy don’t like that the best free-agent options… Pudge Rodriguez and Bengie Molina don’t exactly make them younger.”

The Dallas Morning News has written the Rangers will listen to offers for all of their catchers, including Max Ramirez, Laird and Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

However, in all cases, the Rangers will want a top-flight, proven, under-contract, young pitcher in return, such as Red Sox RHP Clay Buchholz, according to the Boston Globe.

For what it’s worth, according to Ken Davidoff in a previous report for Newsday, the Rangers have shown interest in RHP Aaron Heilman, who will turn 30 later this month, and who is not eligible for free agency until after 2010.

The 29–year-old Laird hit .276 in 95 games for Texas, while hitting six HR and 41 RBI with a .329 OBP.

In 2008, he threw out 28 percent of runners who tried to steal against him, compared to a 39–percent success rate in 2007 and a 45–percent success rate in 2006.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on December 1, 2008 3:40 AM

oh, Officer McBride, have i got a bone to pick with you, miss. yes, yes, i get that you are trying to keep speeding down in our neighborhood. i get that. trust me, i do. i curse out the crazy kids who drive at 80mph down our residential street because i am a) old and b) concerned for the safety of my children. but, i gotta tell you. you need something better to do at 8:30am on a sunday morning.

because i was out on a mission. coffee for the husband and me. it was much, much needed after the complete and total barf-o-rama weekend. why yes, little miss isabella decided to saunter into our bedroom at 6:15 in the am on saturday morning, tell us that she was going to throw up, haul her little tushy to the bathroom, and make good on her promise. lather, rinse, repeat. all day.

and we all know how i. feel. about. barf.

so, i was out. getting the reinforcements we needed. and then, along with the only other 9 cars on the road, pulled over.

for going 52 in a 40 zone. that’s kilometers, people. which means that i was speeding. SEVEN miles over the limit. on a deserted street. before 9am on a sunday.

hi, i’m speed racer. a total menace to society.

Officer McBride was all too kind and knocked it down to only 10km over.

TOO KIND. and i actually told her so. in a slightly sarcastic tone. and as a had a vision of me calling my husband from jail in my sweats and unbrushed hair telling him that his coffee was gonna be REAL cold because i got arrested for snarking an officer….i quickly pulled away and raced - as fast as my car at 4km an hour could go - home.

Originally posted by ali from Cheaper Than Therapy, on December 1, 2008 3:36 AM

This post on the UK edition of TechCrunch about OpenStreetMap, written by Ed Freyfogle, provides a pretty good overview of what it's been up to and where it stands vis-à-vis other mapping providers. Here's an interesting excerpt: "As the biggest...

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on December 1, 2008 3:25 AM

Fifty favorite Criterion Collection DVD covers. Great work.

(link)

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on December 1, 2008 3:00 AM

-Photo by Bauer-Griffin-

That's a lot of star power in one photo!

Close fams The Beckhams and The Cruises spent their turkey day together, taking in a Thanksgiving Day performance of the Big Apple Circus in NYC on Thursday.

Victoria and David held their boys, Cruz, Romeo, and Brooklyn, close, as Tom and Katie carried little Suri from the tent at Lincoln Center. The night before the two couples had dinner together and Posh and Becks caught Katie's performance of All My Sons.

Just like one big, happy, very rich family. 

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on December 1, 2008 2:57 AM

Filed under: Retro Mac, Blast From the Past, Found Footage

Al Diblasi over at Alfred.TV keeps coming up with fun videos with old Apple or related devices as the centerpiece. In this latest 53-minute masterpiece on YouTube (below), Al boots up a 1991 68040-based NeXT Cube, and then shows off some of the built-in applications, an original brochure for the NeXT, a cool NeXT black turtleneck (Steve Jobs' influence, obviously), and a couple of versions of the NeXTstep OS and development environment.

For those of you who are new to the Mac world, NeXT was the company Steve Jobs founded after being kicked out of Apple. Originally, they produced both hardware, of which this NeXT Cube is a prime example, and software. NeXT was purchased by Apple in 1997, and the NeXTstep environment evolved into what we now know as Mac OS X and the Cocoa development suite. A NeXT computer used by Tim Berners-Lee was the world's first Web server.

Be sure to watch or at least skim through to the end of the video, where Al finds a couple more Apple gems in his brother's basement. You can follow Al's trips through retro computing on Twitter.

TUAWFound Footage: A working NeXT Cube originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Steven Sande from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on December 1, 2008 2:00 AM

L: manhattan, R: los angeles

since the arrival of google maps and google earth we've seen a rise in the number of designs that reference
satellite images of the earth's surface. one of the more recent projects to do so is the 'city plates collection'
by rios clementi hale studios, which features 16 major cities from around the world. each metropolis is
represented by a 30 cm (12 inch) diameter porcelain plate.


L: rome, R: london






L: mexico city, R: brasilia




L: shanghai, R: tokyo

more

city plates collection: http://www.notneutral.com
rios clementi hale studios: http://www.rchstudios.com

related / more map designs

'did we miss the exit?' tiles by giffin'termeer
'london overground' plates by michael warren

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Designboom - Weblog, on December 1, 2008 1:32 AM

Whatever Happened to "A Day Without Art?". What began on December 1, 1989 as an annual day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis seems to have mostly vanished today. Whatever happened to the day without weblogs?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on November 30, 2008 11:00 PM

what, that it’s made from animal fat? that it’s all natural? that it’s just fine...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on November 30, 2008 6:21 PM

I am a gaming nerd!! Everyother Thursday, I get together with a group of like-minded geeks and we engage in German boardgames. Good times.

Over the weekend, while hanging out at my brother's apartment in Brooklyn, I introduced my family to the world of Corcassonne. During the game, we spoke a bit about other rad board gaming fun. Two that came up were Class War, which I've only played once with my friend Andrew, and Guy Debord's infamous board game, which I have never played.

For those that didn't know, Debord has a De-board Game. In the late 1960s, Guy Debord (artist, activist, and member of the Situationist International) created a game called Kriegspiel or Game of War. It became available for sale in 1989, although sadly I've never played it. But now, I just downloaded a version for computer. I'm ready to rock!!

Download Kriegspiel for FREE
A bit of history and review of the actual game from the Bookforum, the literary counterpart to Artforum.

Originally posted by Dylan Miner from Just Seeds: Blog, on November 30, 2008 5:52 PM

Last week I had opportunity to visit the advanced printmaking class at Portland State University here in Portland. Valerie Wallace teaches the class, and shares with me a fondness for large scale linoleum printing, so she asked me to come in and talk about my work with her students. I spent some time talking about justseeds and our collaborative projects, showed them some of my work, all then had the class all work together to hand print a linoleum print I have been working on (slowly) for the past couple years that is over 20 feet long.

I have to say it was a pretty great experience having 15 + people all inking up the blocks then getting on the floor to hand burnish. This was the first time I have had the print as one solid piece, and first time having this many helpers. We used one big roll of mulberry paper to print on.

My favorite part was pulling the paper off the block then having everyone snake through the room, and up the stairs to the second floor to hang the piece on the wall. Thanks to all the students for partaking on this social experiment.

all photos by Kevin Welsh

Originally posted by Pete Yahnke from Just Seeds: Blog, on November 30, 2008 5:31 PM

Even if I didn't make it to 50,000 words this year, I still think NaNoWriMo was more than worth the effort. Now that Tokyo Inferno is "booted up" and running, I can slow down a little bit and concentrate on getting more of it written at a pace that better suits my current lifestyle.

I've tried to prune out a lot of things from the way I live, as a way to get avoid getting too caught up in distractions, but in the end it always comes back down to a few basic things: my job, my family, my writing, and some online activities including this website. Any one of those things alone eats up a lot of time, and it gets worse when you factor in any number of other distractions that can simply throw themselves at you.

A few new things came my way, though. Among them is an author of the period that Tokyo Inferno is set in: Satō Haruo, author of The Sick Rose a/k/a Gloom in the Country. I stayed up a little later than I would have liked reading it; the beauty of the language and the author's fondness for the world of nature is downright scrumptious, some of the best sort of thing I've seen since Morio Kita's Ghosts.

I also popped in Love and Honor, and while a full review is of course pending, my quick impression is that it's a nice rounding-out to the trilogy of The Hidden Blade and When the Last Sword is Drawn. Old-fashioned, but not in the stifling way that Dora-heita was. (I also have Hana and both Genghis Khan movies waiting to be checked out when time [ha ha] permits.)

Originally posted by Serdar from Serdar | Genji Press, on November 30, 2008 5:03 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on November 30, 2008 3:20 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on November 30, 2008 1:48 PM

It has been a while since I was blown away by food in London. It happened decisivly at L'Autre Pied. The cuisine was very fresh, architectural and light. There was fun combinations, rich colour and the attention to detail was great. We were met by very friendly service. I ordered some wine for the table and the red I was recommended was not tasking good. We passed the glass around and concluded that the wine was not to our liking, yet we agreed it was not spoiled. They took it out and brought another. I was impressed, no fuss truly professional service. I have never sent out a bottle that I did not like before, but I am convinced it would have ruined what became a wonderful dining experience.

We had most of the dishes on the menu as we were a company of 7 and I tasted most and it was one delight after another. I loved my Risotto, served in a small casserole on the side, a clever move as risotto generally is not so decorative.

The food was filled with aroma and the air was clean enough to let it savor into the nostrils for a rich moving experience. I have lately become a bit sceptically with over designed dishes, but here the high design was followed with a warm rich taste and finally a light feeling in the stomach. This kind of sensations I think one only has in very classic two star type restaurants, kind of culinary palaces like the Palme D'Or I wrote about some time ago.

The big difference between L'Autre Pied and Palme D'Or is that the wallet will feel the diet. L'Autre Pied is a restaurant in upwardly motion and I bet it will have a star in Guide Michelin in the next year of two, if they keep up the good work.

The only disappointment was the Crumble which I think was over designed and too crunchy for my taste. It however brought my thoughts to the Danish desert Able kaege my mother makes, which does beat that desert flat out. On the other hand if a desert makes you think of your mothers and grand mothers cuisine that is an achievement in itself.

Originally posted by Christian Lindholm from ChristianLindholm.com, on November 30, 2008 8:28 AM

From Serious Eats

Theo, a self-proclaimed five-and-a-half-year-old (at the prime age when half ages matter), has trouble pronouncing "agar" and needs a step stool to see over the counter, but he can cook from the Alinea cookbook (previously reviewed on Serious Eats). His brother James (nine-years-old) isn't professionally trained either, but doesn't fret over a recipe with pheasant, gray shallots, and burning oak leaves.

While some home cooks have expressed frustration with the unapproachable quality of the Alinea cookbook ("it took seven hours and produced eight bites of food") these two munchkins have proved them wrong. It doesn't hurt that their father is Nick Kokonas, the business partner of Grant Achatz, Alinea's head chef. Both videos on both sides of the argument, after the jump.

The Alinea Cookbook Is Easy Peasy

The Alinea Cookbook Is Frustrating

Related

In Videos: Three-Year Old Mark 'Mini Minimalist' Bittman Is a Big (Little) Deal
In Videos: Cooking Sous Vide Turkey with Grant Achatz
Grant Achatz' Alinea Cookbook

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on November 30, 2008 7:00 AM

One of the game’s best pitchers when healthy, Chris Carpenter is hoping to return to form in 2009 after making only four appearances over the past two seasons due to a fragile right arm.  Signed by the Cardinals in December 2002 after six seasons in Toronto, Carpenter missed the 2003 campaign due to a torn labrum but returned to go 51-18 for the Redbirds from 2004-2006, capturing the National League Cy Young Award in 2005.  The 33-year-old Carpenter discussed his future prior to the Granite State Baseball Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire on November 22.

David Laurila:  You had Tommy John Surgery in 2007 and more recently have had an issue with your shoulder.  What is your health status right now?

Chris Carpenter:  My elbow is feeling good.  I just had a little simple surgery to move a nerve, so I’m feeling good.  The doctors don’t feel that it’s going to be an issue.  As for my shoulder, time will tell.  When I get back to St. Louis, after this event, I’m going to get some tests done, and some nerve conduction studies done, to see how my nerve is healing.  Nerves take time to heal, but I think that everybody believes that I’m going to be able to come back and pitch, it’s just a matter of how long before that happens.

DL:  Do you see your repertoire or velocity changing once you’re back on the mound?

CC:  I wouldn’t be able to answer that question right now, not until I come back and start throwing.  But I don’t see anything changing.

DL:  After missing the 2003 season, you came back and established yourself as one of the best pitchers in the game.  Why?

CC:  I grew up and gained experience, and the difference between when I came back from my shoulder in ’03 – you know, my stuff didn’t change.  I wasn’t throwing as hard as I was when I was in Toronto, before the surgery, but I learned how to pitch and was able to go out and execute pitches.  That’s what makes you succeed.  There are many guys in this game that throw anywhere from 86 to 100, and there are guys who throw 100 that get hit around, and there are guys who throw 86 and go out and win all the time.  So it’s about learning how to execute, and how to pitch, and going out and executing your game plan.

DL:  What impact has Dave Duncan had on your career?

CC:  He’s had a ton of impact.  He’s a great pitching coach, and I owe him a lot for the ability to do all of that.  He definitely helped me to go out and learn how to read hitters, how to have a game plan, how to execute that game plan, and how to stick with that game plan.  I owe him a lot.

DL:  You have an excellent curveball.  Can you say a little about its development?

CC:  I’ve thrown it since I was 12 years old, so I wouldn’t say there’s been much development involved.  It’s a pitch that has always been there.  I was born with it and have always been able to throw it.  It’s just been there my whole life.

DL:  What are your thoughts on Tim Lincecum beating out Brandon Webb for the Cy Young Award in the National League, and which numbers do you feel are most important for a pitcher?   

CC:  To be honest with you, it’s the consistency; it’s what you do all year long.  It’s not about the amount of strikeouts or the lowest ERA; I think it’s about being able to go out there and giving your team a chance to win every time.  And if you’re consistent all year long, which Webb and Lincecum both were, you might have to go to the total amount of numbers.  If Lincecum beat Webb in most categories besides wins, I don’t see an argument.  I don’t know everyone’s numbers, though.  I don’t pay attention to, or care too much about numbers.  All I care about is being consistent.  If I can take the ball and do that, I think I’ll always have a chance to win.

Originally posted by David Laurila from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on November 30, 2008 5:52 AM

From Serious Eats

What's Up With Eggo?
"Eggos are one of those things, like blue raspberry flavored stuff, that taste like their color: They taste 'yellow.'" —redzerostar

Salt Explained
"Oh thank god for this thread. I have 8 different kinds of salts and my best friend thinks that I have lost my mind however is see I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE!" —GretchinF

Gourmet White Castle Hamburger Stuffing Is Just a Bad Idea
"If you added a pound of butter to this mess it could have come from Paula Deen." —RichardCrystal

Paula Deen Is Trying To Kill Us
"Nothing should surprise anyone about this. Why do we eat English muffins if not merely as an excuse to eat little pools of melted butter!!" —Mazcheck

Mystery Meat Regularly Turning Up in Park; No One Knows Why
"Wasting meat is a crime. Arrest them." —JerzeeTomato

Take Thanksgiving to the Next Level with a Modular Pecan Pie-Cosahedron
"Now I know what to serve for dessert if the Borg drop by." —Tonecat

Originally posted by Linnea Covington from Serious Eats, on November 30, 2008 5:00 AM

It's really, really official: Hillary will be named Obama's Secretary of State tomorrow in Chicago, a person close to Hillary confirms.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from Talking Points Memo, on November 30, 2008 4:22 AM

It's official. A person close to Hillary Clinton tells me that she will be in Chicago tomorrow to be named President-elect Barack Obama's Secretary of State.

This confirmation from the Hillary side that she will officially be named comes after the Associated Press earlier quoted "Democratic officials" saying that Obama was set to name her as Sec of State at a press conference tomorrow.

The New York Times reported late yesterday that Bill Clinton had agreed to disclose the names of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation, clearing the way for Hillary's nomination.

Originally posted by Greg Sargent from TPM Election Central, on November 30, 2008 4:16 AM

(via

molly lambert

)

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on November 30, 2008 3:47 AM