Lance Wyman: National Zoo, Washington D.C.
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February 7, 2009
Food Autopsy Photos by Kathryn Parker Almanas
Photographer Kathryn Parker Almanas has a sort of medical, laboratorial style of food photography. Her shots of day-old danishes and French macarons appear in test tubes, sterile plastic bags, and shrouded with gauze. They are pretty spectacular, in a twisted necropsy kind of way. [via Feature Shoot]
Should Perl 6 use the CPAN?
I just gave my keynote at Frozen Perl, and one of the big points I made was that we don't know what Perl 6 is going to look like. It's totally a green field. There's no toolchain, no LWP, no DBI, etc.
My big question: Should Perl 6 use the CPAN?
Does an 11 year-old distribution system make sense in 2009? In 1998, when we didn't have everything living in a cloud, and hosting websites took a lot of money, and if you wanted massive bandwidth, you were at a big company or a university. In 2009, those are no longer true.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that we don't distributing thousands of excellently awesome modules to the world. If we didn't, we wouldn't be Perl. But does it need to be through a centralized distribution channel like PAUSE + CPAN?
I don't have an answer.
Discuss.
Alan Scott, Wood-Fired-Oven Builder, 72
The New York Times ran an obit yesterday for Alan Scott, who died on January 26 in Tasmania, Australia. Scott was the driving force behind California-based Ovencrafters, a small company that revolutionized the way backyard brick-oven bakers—and not a small amount of commercial ones—baked their breads and pizza. The Times says:
Several thousand amateur bread bakers and thin-crust pizza makers now have backyard brick ovens, many with cathedral-like arches, that were built either by Mr. Scott, with Mr. Scott or according to specifications he laid out with his protégé Daniel Wing in their 1999 book, The Bread Builders.
More than a how-to manual, the book is also a meticulous treatise on the history of bread making and the physics of baking, with instructions, for example, on how long to let the dough rise. Mr. Scott, who held instructional workshops around the country, played a role in bringing brick ovens to hundreds of bakeries and restaurants as well.
I actually have his book at home—not that I have the opportunity to use it; I just like daydreaming. My condolences go out to Mr. Scott's family and friends.
Look for him in a baseball release, soon…
This guy claims he’s the one who broke the Ginter code. He’s offering to sign his 2009 Allen and Ginter card for a SASE, or you can buy a limited edition signed ad card from him now for 3 dollars if you are interested in that sort of thing.
Oh, and to traffic in rumors, I read somewhere there will be a new code for 2009. My initial thoughts? Lame. This should have been a one and done kind of thing, but it will give you Allen and Ginter lovers a second chance at making it into the set. It would also mean that Topps is planning a 2010 Allen & Ginter release.
Like I said, it’s just a rumor, although I can’t recall where I read it. If I find it again, I’ll be sure and link it. Until then, we’ll just have to wait and find out.
Political Freights
These just anonymously flew into the inbox:
February 6, 2009
Lily Allen "Womanizer Video
Lily Allen "Womanizer Video source Lily Allen may be hearing from EMI Music Group's lawyers for unauthorized usage of Britney Spear's chart-toping single Womanizer, leaked online last weekend.Lily Allen is doing a cover of the No.1 Hit Womanizer by Britney Spears that premiered on Mark Ronson's East Village Radio show. Lily Allen does a different take on Womanizer, as you'd expect from a Mark Ronson artist, and it was not bad. Lily Allen is promoting her own album, entitled It's Not Me, out on February 9. Lily Allen'd new song The Fear pokes fun at "celebutards." Lily Allen "Womanizer Video
EaterWire: Kuma Inn Brooklyn, P&G Sign on the Move, and a Mystery at the Dory
UPPER WEST SIDE— Lost City gets shot of the old P&G Cafe sign before it takes a ride to its new location at 78th and Columbus. [LC]
CLINTON HILL— Gothamist reports King Phojanakong, the owner of LES small plates restaurant Kuma Inn, plans to open a second branch of his restaurant at 433 DeKalb: "...the new restaurant’s menu will follow Kuma Inn’s small-plate format with a 'heavy Filipino and Thai emphasis.' Some staples of Kuma Inn’s menu, like the Chinese sausage and sticky rice dish, will also be on the new space’s menu...At lunchtime the kitchen will switch to sandwiches and noodles." [Gothamist]
CHELSEA— A giant eel has gone missing from The John Dory fish tank, reports the Bruni: "The eel seems to be gone. And no one involved in the restaurant can figure out what might have happened..." The most likely theory: he's hiding or he was stolen (it's a $4k fish). [Diner's Journal]
Art history online
smarthistory is a fantastic substitute for that art history class you never took in college.
smARThistory.org is a free multi-media web-book designed as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the traditional and static art history textbook.
This looks like a great resource.
Tags: art www
City From Below poster
It feels like all I do lately is work on some (anal) design-y shit on the computer or (anal) letterpress and typesetting in my basement. So it was really fun to sit down and just draw a big goofy image. This is for a conference focused around urban issues in social struggles called the City From Below, held in Baltimore in late March. We'll be posting more about this conference as it comes closer, but for now....
Video: The New Home Run Apple has Arrived
Here is video of the new Home Run Apple being installed in Citi Field, courtesy of SNY:
Signs of The End of Shea Stadium
When we were out at the Shea Stadium wake last weekend, we wondered when the Mets or New York City might start taking down Shea-related signs.
Bobster sent along this evidence today.
Ben Meadows Catalog
If you measure value in decades and don't care about appearances then industrial supplies are always the way to go. The previously-reviewed McMaster-Carr Online Catalog is the granddaddy of all industrially-minded geeks, but their focus is on tooling and indoor industrial items. If I'm considering anything for the outdoors, Ben Meadows is the first catalog I pick up and the only other paper catalog on my shelf I use regularly.
Its categories span the spectrum of possible industries: loggers, farmers, ecosystem scientists, surveyors, animal control & management, spelunkers, cable locators, miners, hydrologists, oilfield workers -- and dozens of other areas. It's a weird and wonderful combination of both rugged equipment for burly log-throwing types as well as instruments, equipment, and books that the more scientific-minded person would be interested in. This is the place where pros (or their purchasing departments) come to find the best gear, and I suspect much of it is worth the cost and slight delay even for an amateur.
The inventory of the Ben Meadows catalog is impressive: Six pages of pH meters! Seven pages of measuring tapes! Five pages of arborist ropes! Portable lightning detectors, safety equipment of all types, windsocks, night vision gear, throw nets, waders, fire jumper supplies, forestry cruising equipment -- there is no way I could do justice to the huge variety. I've been getting the catalog for 10 years, and every year find a new person who has never seen it and been just as excited with all the stuff they have never known where to get ("So THIS is where I can get bright green non-toxic water dyes!"). Keeping this catalog handy is a dangerous thing. You'll almost certainly find that tool that makes you think: "If only I knew this existed last summer when I needed it!" And then you'll go order whatever it is so next summer's job is much easier.
The descriptions of certain tools give quick insight into how things are done by the professionals. It's like seeing a shadowy, partial image of an instruction set of how to perform certain tasks. For instance, there is a "Plant Tissues Color Chart" book which allows comparative color examinations of certain plant leaves to determine soil nutrient or toxicity makeup. Well, there's something I didn't know you could do, and now I know how to get more information. Looking through the field test kits, I was surprised to see how many possible test elements there are for groundwater; maybe now I'll test the spring in my backyard to see what kinds of mineral content it has. I would be very surprised if you couldn't find a significant portion of previously-reviewed Cool Tools in this catalog.
-- John Todd
Ben Meadows Catalog
Related Entries:
eCatalog
Cabela's A. M. Leonard Gempler's
Links: Shea, Kranepool, Wright, PECOTA and Ollie
In an emotional and honest article for SNY.tv, Ted Berg says goodbye to Shea Stadium, where he spent ‘some 2,000 of the best hours of his life.’
Steve from Eddie Kranepool Society writes about meeting Eddie Kranepool at Gallagher’s Restaurant earlier this week.
Dave Singer at NY Sports Dog compares Alex Rodriguez, Chipper Jones and David Wright.
Amazin’ Avenue uses PECOTA to compare certain people on the Mets to players of the past, such as Wright, who compares to Ron Santo and Jeff Bagwell.
Mets Dreams explains why Oliver Perez was the right move.
Lastly, Marty Noble of MLB.com catches up with Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen, to talk about the team’s pitching staff.
The sucky new Tropicana orange juice cartons
Steven Heller asks why Tropicana redesigned the packaging for their orange juice.
What could Arnell, the agency that did the deed, have been thinking? It's one thing to change the logo; it's another to abandon the mnemonic orange with the straw in it. As package imagery goes, it was pretty smart, and decidedly memorable.
He goes on to call the redesign "a big tactical mistake". I'm a Tropicana drinker and I think the new packaging sucks. It's impossible to figure out at a glance which juice is which because all the packages look the same, aside from some thin lines at the very top. Horrible.
Tags: stevenheller design branding food orangejuice tropicana
Video: Three Flights around Shea Stadium
The following 10–minute clip is of three flights from a remote control airplane with a camera attached that circled around Shea Stadium during random days over the last few months:
…that is really outstanding work, guys… fantastic footage…
Blogwatch: Swedish Meatballs with Nutmeg Gravy
Love Ikea's meatballs, but can't bear to make the trek out there? Heather, of Gild the (Voodoo)lily, has the solution. Homemade meatballs + creamy sauce + buttered noodles = comfort wrapped in a nutmeg blanket. Bring a plate of this over to the fire and settle in for a cozy evening, sans Ikea parking lot slush.
Previously: Ikea Groceries: Some Assembly Required
February 5, 2009
Another quick image from 2009 Topps
Folks, I know I promised you more, but I slept in today and still need to go to bed early. This week was bad as far as getting sleep went, so I’ve got to catch up when I can. And that’s now. Sorry.
Unfortunately, I’m going to be tied up most of Friday, too, so it’ll be that much longer until I post more stuff. Thankfully, there are plenty of other bloggers out there who can entertain you while I’m gone. But to make it up to you, I’m taking requests. I’ve got 100 cards here. If there’s a player you want to see and I pulled him, I’ll post it. Want to see all the Tigers I pulled? I’ll scan them, too. Cards of players wearing glasses? I can probably do that, too. Just leave a comment and let me know.
I did get one card scanned from the packs, though. It’s Tim Lincecum. If you like it, you’ll probably like 2009 Topps. If you don’t, I’d advise you to get some Upper Deck and try your luck there.
Two thing if you are still on the fence.
1) I pulled one player card that was posed. That’s one card where they called the player, told him to grab his uniform and glove, and met with him at the local little league park to take his picture. Either I got lucky, or Topps is really trying to get away from that. I guess we’ll know more with series 2 and Updates.
2) The gold foil/red back parallels? Gone. If they’re there, I don’t see them, and I’ve really been looking, too. You don’t know how happy I was when I made this realization. It really feels like Topps was listening with these.
Anyway, I’m off to bed. Enjoy Timmy. And go get some cards.
the updike tour of new york, as seen in the new yorker
Via Kottke comes In Updike's Footsteps, a post from a couple of New Yorker bloggers who retraced the path that Updike took in his 1956 Talk of the Town piece where he described a way to get from the Empire State Building to Rockefeller Center without using 5th or 6th avenues.
Since I'm sure you've all already seen that post, here's the value add: how great would it be if some enterprising young New Yorker took it upon him- or herself to start a walking tour of New York that took that path: the John Updike tour of New York. And may I suggest the perfectly complementary marketing vehicle -- those little ads in the back of the magazine.
One more thing…
I forgot to mention that my HarvardBusiness.org column is on the same subject as my upcoming Adaptive Path Virtual Seminar, “16 (Mostly) Difficult Steps to Becoming a Customer Experience-Driven Organization.” I hope you attend! Use FOPM and get 15% off!
Earliest Abe Lincoln photo?
The Kaplan Daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln is purported to be the earliest known photo of the 16th President, taken in the early 1840s when he was in his early 30s. The young man in the photo doesn't bare an obvious resemblance to a photo taken of Lincoln a few years later but the forensic evidence is compelling.
Tags: photography abrahamlincolnNumerous accounts have revealed that Lincoln underwent a noticeable change in his physical appearance beginning in January 1841 as a result of a grave emotional crisis. This coincides with his reported failure to go through with his scheduled marriage to Mary Todd, leaving her literally waiting for him at the altar. (They were married the following year.) This emotional crisis, just one of a series of such episodes to plague him throughout his life, was the cause of Lincoln losing a considerable amount of weight.
100,000,000 geotagged photos (plus)
“Over the weekend we broke the Hundred Million geotagged photos, actually 100,868,302 at last count, mark. If we remember that we passed the 3 billion photos recently and round the figure down a little that means (does calculations on fingers) that around 3.333% of photos have geo data, or one in every 30 photos that get uploaded…”
Read the entire post over at code.flickr.
Photo of the Day: Flowery Lotus Paste-Filled Dessert
Photograph from jasonlam on Flickr
Jason Lam of food blog Me So Hungry came across this vibrantly colored flowery lotus bean paste-filled dessert during dim sum at East Market Restaurant in Manhattan's Chinatown. It probably looks more interesting than it tastes, but I'll keep my eyes open for it if—no, when I eat at East Market Restaurant.
Related
Dim Sum at Jade Asian Restaurant in Flushing
Dim Sum at Perfect Team Corporation in Flushing
Dim Sum at World Tong in Bensonhurst
Just Because.
I am showing you this image (from Google's LIFE photo archive) simply because I can. Isn't it wonderful, that I can show you a photograph from a magazine printed more than sixty years ago, basically on a whim? This photo was taken by someone named Nina Leen, and I'm relieved I've never met her, because I felt compelled to say her name under my breath several times just for the sheer joy of it, and that would be awkward upon a first introduction. (Try it yourself: Nina Leen! Nina Leen! neenuhleeeeeeen! Isn't that fun?)
And this is one kickass dress, isn't it? I mean, not that anyone who was involved in either the making or the photographing of it would have probably described it that way, but it is. It is constructed of the most finely woven French kickass available, actually. I love the elegant square neckline and the fern detailing, and that the model is NOT an empty-eyed, twelve-year-old bobblehead. (You know I'm a sucker for models who look as if they had a pretty decent idea of how a dress should be worn in real life, instead of just on the runway. This woman is meeting her lover one last time before he heads to the front, obviously. At the end of their interlude she will cry just one perfect tear, so as not to distress him overmuch.)
This is just more proof that there are beautiful things everywhere, and more and more of them are available to our eyes every day. Go look for them, and when you find them, share them.
Announcing Percona Performance Conference 2009 on April 22 & 23
All of us here at Percona warmly invite you to Percona Performance Conference 2009 on April 22 & 23, 2009 in the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, California. The theme for the conference is Performance Is Everything. This conference is about application performance overall, not just databases. Attendance is free of charge for everyone. Experts in many types of technologies — databases, search, cloud computing, massively parallel computing, client-side optimization — will present their real-life experience.
In order to forestall speculations and prevent people from jumping to unwarranted negative conclusions, I’d like to take a moment and explain the story behind this event. Some of you have noticed that there were no sessions from Percona this year on the schedule for the 2009 MySQL Conference and Expo. This is not because we didn’t propose any sessions this year; Peter, Vadim, and the rest of us at Percona submitted over a dozen session proposals, which were initially declined. As a result, we conceived and organized another conference. We reserved a hotel near the MySQL conference, planned the event, invited speakers, etc. Then O’Reilly and MySQL graciously and unexpectedly proposed that we bring our conference into the Hyatt and present it in the same venue with the MySQL conference (official announcement from Kaj). They also accepted three of our original session proposals into the MySQL conference. We appreciated this fair and generous gesture and accepted their offer. We will be participating in all aspects of the conference, including the community events such as the dot-org pavilion and the MySQL Camp that Sheeri Kritzer Cabral is organizing.
That’s the back story — now on to the Percona Performance Conference! This is not “another MySQL conference.” It’s a performance conference. It’s true that we are among the world’s foremost experts on MySQL, InnoDB, and XtraDB, and it’s true that the database is usually harder to scale than other components in an application. But ultimately you don’t only care that your database is fast — you care that your application is fast as a whole. That’s why we’ll have sessions from experts on many aspects of high-performance applications, not just the database component. And we’ll have experts on different databases too.
This is a technical event that’s free to attend even if you’re not attending the MySQL conference. We expect to see a lot of people who live locally, and we know that the easy accessibility for attendees of the MySQL Conference and Expo will add value to their trip to Santa Clara.
We will not be the only ones speaking at Percona Performance Conference; other experts will join us in making presentations too. You’ll be able to hear sessions from such luminaries as Monty Widenius (creator of MySQL), Brian Aker (creator of Drizzle), Andrew Aksyonoff (creator of Sphinx), Mark Callaghan (database guru at Google), and many others. If you’d like to propose a session, please do so through the Percona Performance Conference website.
The Percona team looks forward to greeting you face to face this April in Santa Clara.
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Did I Mention?
Did I mention that Neel Kashkari, the 35 year old, ex-Goldman Sachs VP that Hank Paulson put in charge of TARP, is still over at Treasury running the thing? Matt Cooper looks at who might replace him.
Universal Studios Private Tour
February 5, 2006 - 1:36 p.m. - Studio City, CAIt's nice to have friends in Hollywood. An old high school BFF of mine took me to her "office" which happens to be on the Universal Studio lot. Nevermind the rain, we grabbed a golf cart and zipped through a bunch of different worlds together for lunch. Thanks for the private tour, Cindy!
Cindy: Guess which set this is?
Me: Oh I know. I know! It's Lost!
Cindy: Uh, no. You know where we are right? Universal Studios. Steven Spielberg Way...
Me: Oh I know... Umm...
Cindy: The film's from a couple of years ago?! Loretta, you know right?
Loretta: I totally know.
Me: Oh I totally know! Umm... Umm...
Cindy: Aliens? Destruction? Tom Cruise!
Me: I know. I know!
Cindy, as we're driving off: War of the Worlds!
Me: War of the Worlds! I totally knew it!
Credit is Alright show opening tonight
I'm pretty happy right now, today I was swimming in an outdoor pool in Southern Texas. 80 degrees in February, yeah I could get used to this.
I am working on an installation at the University of Texas Pan American. For all of you in Edinburg Texas, the show will open tonight, Thursday, February 5, 6-9pm. I will be talking about the work at 6:30. Here are a few preview picks.
During development.
During development.
★ ‘Do Shell Script’ and Premature Optimization
After last week’s piece on how to write AppleScripts that dynamically target either Safari or WebKit, a few readers asked about the following subroutine, which returns the name of your default web browser:
on GetDefaultWebBrowser() set _scpt to "perl -MMac::InternetConfig -le " & ¬ "'print +(GetICHelper \"http\")[1]'" return do shell script _scpt end GetDefaultWebBrowserThe question, more or less, is why call out to the shell to use Perl rather than figuring out a way to do it in pure AppleScript? It costs memory and time to call out to the shell and launch an instance of the Perl interpreter.
My answer is that this Perl routine is plenty fast enough, and when the script is finished the memory used by the Perl interpreter is released. I wrote a simple script that does nothing other than call this routine one time; Script Debugger reports that it typically takes less than 0.1 seconds to run. If this were something that I were calling repeatedly, hundreds or thousands of times in a tight loop, sure, I’d consider writing the fastest possible version. But I only call this routine one time. Perl, and the Mac::InternetConfig library that the snippet uses to get the default handler for the “http” URL scheme, are installed with Mac OS X by default.
This strikes me as a perfect example of Donald Knuth’s famous axiom: “We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.” There are a slew of cases where the easiest solution to doing something in AppleScript is to use
do shell scriptto do it from a shell scripting language. I think it’s the best thing that ever happened to AppleScript.
After Kashkari, Who Runs TARP?
Amidst all the debate over the stimulus package, Tom Daschle's limos, and when the White House puppies will arrive, it's worth keeping an eye on TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program that was supposed to get us out of this mess in the first place. The TARP's genesis from three-page memo to $700 billion fund is history but not so Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability that Henry Paulson appointed to run the program. Kashkari continues to run it having been asked to stay on by the Obama team until a replacement is found. Finding a replacement for Kashkari has not been easy just as it's been difficult to round out all the assistant secretary positions at Treasury because of Geithner's delay in confirmation. (That was when a tax problem led to delay instead of self immolation.) I hear that diversity issues are holding up some of the appointments as well as trying to find people who are both versed in banking but are untainted by the current mess and, most importantly, are not coming directly from firms that are asking for TARP funds. We're still reporting on the names of some of the people who may be coming in. I'm told one Wall Street executive turned the job down several times before the administration took no for an answer. Expect a new TARP head next week when Geithner unveils more comprehensive plans for repairing the financial system.
Meanwhile, at a Senate Banking committee hearing today, the program was lambasted by a Congressional watchdog. The GAO has a report saying the program is poorly run and the public has been misled about how the Treasury priced assets. More here. Neil Barofsky, the independent TARP inspector , told the committee that he wants a criminal investigation. "That's going to be a large focus of my office," he said.
Stephanie Izard on Twitter, 'Top Chef,' and Her New Chicago Restaurant
"My manager has me on Twitter now, which reminds me, I should go update that."
Yesterday, we caught up with Stephanie Izard, last season's Top Chef winner. She's a busy woman, opening her new Chicago restaurant, The Drunken Goat, this fall, doing some spokeswoman work for Quaker Oats, and launching a podcast next week. We thought it was only appropriate to have goat with her. So over a plate of slow-roasted goat in Manhattan, we got to the bottom of this curiously named restaurant of hers, among other things.
Why a goat? And why so drunken? So it turns out my last name, Izard, is a type of goat found in the Pyrenees. Since I'm not the type to call my restaurant, "Stephanie's," I figured that was personal enough. The drunken part is because I called up my good friend Antonia from the show and was like, "How would you describe me?" And she said, "Uh, drunken?" She was just joking, but I love the Drunken Goat cheese, so it worked.
So you'll be serving goat (the animal and the cheese) at the restaurant, yes? Yeah, I just got back from Spain and found the cheese at this amazing market in Madrid. I was there with my friend, who was freaked out by all the animals' heads hanging everywhere. But I loved it.
How do you like your goat? Is it tough to prepare? Well, some goat is like, "Hey, I am goat." In the same way lamb can be lamby. But it shouldn't be like that. Since it's not as fatty as other animals, it can get dry, but I'll probably do mine ragoût-style, maybe over a polenta cake. Depends on the time of year. I also want to play with house-cured meats and have as much charcuterie as possible.
Overall, I'm going for Spanish-Italian influences. Definitely casual decor. Somewhat similar to the feel inside the Spotted Pig restaurant in New York. I want to have tripe, pigs' feet, and other cuts of meat that are not only good for this economy but also tasty. Plates will be made to share—but I hesitate to call it tapas. The sharing part is key. We'll stay open late, with brunch on weekends. Of course lots of cheeses. I really want a cheese cave downstairs that the health department doesn't know about. They don't like the wrong temperatures.
And to drink? I'm actually going to make my own wine, which I've never done before. I was just in Walla Walla, Washington, at a place called Saviah Cellars. They're going to help me pick out blends. By the way, Walla Walla is such an awesome place. You walk around and people are just waving hello to each other. I told my friend, "This place is great. Let's buy a house here!"
Stephanie showing off the creepy-cute artwork on her Blackberry.
Yeah, repeating the Walla must make everything better. So what else are you working on? I'm actually launching a podcast next week. Podcast? Yeah, I guess that's what you call it. I'm not tech-savvy. It won't be one of those Food Network-type shows where I just stand there and cook. It will make people watch and say, "This chick is crazy!" I'll be rolling up my sleeves and getting dirty on farms and in breweries. The people filming it are documentary-makers so it'll have that feel. Plus me and all my sarcastic voiceovers. See, here's a picture of the artwork my friend in Chicago, Quang Hong, did for the show. Me standing next to a goat. It will have that creepy-cute feel.
Stephanie with Domo notebook.
Reminds me of the new Coraline animation. Kinda sweet, kinda goth? Coraline? Ooh, I'll have to write that down. [Pulls out Domo notebook.] Yes. I love Quang's stuff. He's painting goats for the new restaurant that I'll be hanging, too.
So, moving on from gothic goats. Top Chef! How do you feel about the new season? It's weird watching. It's like, what are you doing on my show?!
I have the inside scoop on the last few remaining but don't know who actually won. I'm guessing one of the European dudes. Stefan or Fabio. Maybe the first European Top Chef? Both of them can be a little cocky, but if you have talent, I don't really mind the cockiness.
Were you pals with fellow Chicago gal Radhika, who went home recently? You know, she called me before the show started to ask for advice. I told her the same thing Dale Levitski, the winner before me, said. Don't talk crap about people, and you're going to eat a lot of junk food.
Wait, junk food? Yeah, I didn't know what he meant by that either. Turns out the catering company for the show kind of sucks.
Finally, how do you feel about the internet? Are you on Twitter, Facebook, and all that nonsense? My manager has me on Twitter now, which reminds me, I should go update that. I joined Facebook to win the show's fan favorite award, so I accepted everyone at first. Now I'm like who are these people? 543 friend requests? I don't really read food blogs too much. It's not that I don't care; I just take things too personally. I could read one negative thing and it would ruin my day.
Stephanie Izard's podcast "The Tasty Life" will premiere on her blog next week.
Frugality and Thrift
Old people are tough. They made shoes out of newspaper and twine, and subsisted on a thin stew of newspaper and twine. Sometimes they had to go without shoes and stew altogether so that there would be enough newspaper and twine to treat the baby's Scarlet Fever.Stephen Colbert is funny. Our experience of the world has been more like this:
It may be the end of all that, and as the book notes The Return of Depression Economics
signalled by reemergence of the virtues of frugality and thrift, the growing savings rate, the drop in consumption and the now-daily pillorying of villains of excess.
NYC's maple syrup smell mystery solved
Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference today to address the mysterious maple syrup smell sporadically experienced by New Yorkers since 2005. The cause? Fenugreek seeds.
The source of the odor was a plant in North Bergen, N.J., which processes seeds of the herb fenugreek to produce fragrances.
Update: Gothamist has more details.
Tags: nyc smell
Ghost Posters
Roman from InCUBATE recently turned me on to a really cool project that recently came out of Cuba. Cuba since the Revolution has had an amazing culture of poster production, which has been especially strong in the realms of international revolutionary propaganda (the posters of OSPAAAL), and film promotional posters created by a couple different agencies. For years every film that played in Cuba, weather a domestic one or a foreign release had a poster produced to promote it, almost always silkscreened, and usually always the same size, the exact size to fit in all the kiosks that line the streets in Havana. [For a good intro to Cuban posters, check out ¡Revolucion! by Lincoln Cushing]
Anyway, Roman told me about this great project called Ghost Posters, which is a collection of 25 silkscreened movie posters for Cuban movies that were never made, either because the manuscripts for the films were censored or funding fell through. Each poster is made by a different Cuban graphic artist, and there are some really pieces. It's a great concept, and the posters are touring around. They were recently on display at Rutgers University in NJ, but I missed them. The project has a website, but it doesn't list any future venues.
mareen: the michigan theatrebuilt in 1926, this glorious...
my favorite. it’s a bit easier to appreciate the partial-demolition from inside the space: you can see they didn’t fuss to take down the entire screen or curtain, they’re merely lopped off just out of reach, and though off-limits, the restrooms are still intact. the basketball hoop: not original.the michigan theatre
built in 1926, this glorious building functioned as a performance space until 1976, when it was converted into a parking garage.
camilo josé vergara has done some of the best and most extensive documentation of this building and many others throughout the city.
February 4, 2009
AP Bullies Shepard Fairey Over Obama Poster [Art]
Shared by Jake Dobkin
That's a pretty stupid way for the AP to get press.
The Associated Press is alleging copyright infringement by street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey, who based his famous Barack Obama posters on an AP image. Why now?
The Obama campaign knew all along — so for like a year now — that the poster was based on a copyrighted AP image, reports, uh, AP, which is why they never used his original poster. Instead, they had Fairey design a separate poster based on a picture they had rights to.
But AP didn't act until now, two weeks after a photojournalist blogger identified the wire service's shot as the basis for Fairey's work. So Fairey's theft of AP's intellectual property was so obvious and atrocious that AP didn't notice it occurred until it was pointed out to them, one year after the fact.
Fairey said he didn't make money off of the image. And it's hard to see how AP lost any money off his use: the wire service's usual customers — newspapers, magazines and television stations — would generally be loath to substitute partisan iconography for a straight photograph.
Also, the poster was enough of an artistic advancement on the original to be featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and, in a different format, at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
All of these factors would be considered in determining whether Fairey's use of AP's image constitutes fair use, as his lawyers are stating.
AP's ridiculous whining about Fairey extends its tradition of acting like a condescending, sanctimonious tool when it comes to copyright and the internet and of having no clue what the hell it's doing online, with whom, ever.
The best design strategy conversation I’ve ever read online
This will seem self-serving, and I’m sure it is, but it’s also true. The best conversation I’ve read about design strategy has been posted to Adaptive Path’s blog, a discussion between Brandon and Henning from AP and David Butler, VP of Design at Coca-Cola. It’s broken up into two parts (Part 1, Part 2) and clearly gets at how design can be a force for change in business, even a ginormous multinational corporation.
mccarran airport is too small
A brief note to the architect who designs the next airport in Las Vegas: make it bigger. The current McCarran airpot is way too small. Not in terms of number of gates -- I'm not qualified to opine on whether this airport will need more gates. It needs to be just simply, physically bigger so that it's in scale with the rest of Las Vegas. You can't have a mall or a conference facility or a hotel that's 10x normal scale -- redwood-height ceilings, boulevard-width hallways, cavernous conference rooms, restaurants that seat thousands -- and have an airport that's merely "normal." It's too jarring, the experience is way out of scale. So at a minimum, the next version of McCarran needs to be at least as big as the United terminal at O'Hare.
How to solve :first-child CSS bug in IE 7
Shared by mccreath
This is absolutely absurd. I have such low expectations for IE8. And we're still going to have to support IE6, too.Yesterday, IE 7, once again, pushed me to the brink of going postal. Refusing to give up, I finally managed to find the problem.
Background
I was creating a top menu for a web site I was working on, and it needed some special styling for each first item, i.e. the first
LI, and other styling for all others. Since it’s a controlled environment, IE 6 doesn’t need to be supported (Yay!); hence I thought I’d be using some cool CSS to solve it, as opposed to riddling the HTML code with classes.Let’s look at my (somewhat
) simplified example:
HTML code
<ul> <!-- First item is special --> <li> <a href="/">Start page</a> </li> <li> <a href="/">News</a> </li> <li> <a href="/">Contact</a> </li> </ul>CSS code
li { background: red; } li:first-child { background: blue; }The problem
No matter how I tweaked and changed my code, the
:first-childCSS pseudo selector would not work in IE 7. Naturally, Microsoft claims it does support it, and, while going mental, I was trying to figure out whether it was just another crappy implementation that doesn’t work at all, or if there was something weird with my code.The solution!
After pulling my last beard hair from my face, it dawned upon me! The key was the HTML comment preceding the first
LIitem, incorrectly interpreted by IE to be the first child element of theUL. In my defense, the HTML comment wasn’t written by me and yes, it could be in another place…Still, it’s a horrendous bug, and therefore I wanted to warn you! Be very careful about where you put your HTML comments, because the possible results will mess with your mind.
Albany’s Transit Sins Come Back to Bite America
Just how bad are the service cuts and layoffs that transit agencies across the country will soon be forced to enact? Severe enough to weaken the national economy, the New York Times reports -- all while Congress pieces together a stimulus plan that does nothing to address the problem:How many true transit advocates are in this picture?
The new federal money -- $12 billion was included in the version passed last week by the House, while the Senate originally proposed less -- is devoted to big capital projects, like buying train cars and buses and building or repairing tracks and stations. Money that some lawmakers had proposed to help transit systems pay operating costs, and avoid layoffs and service cuts, was not included in the latest version.
It's not too late for the President, who set a mid-February deadline to pass the legislation, to step in, writes Times columnist David Leonhardt:
The odds that, a year from now, Mr. Obama and Congress will regret not having been more aggressive seem bigger than the odds that they’ll think they overdid it. Why not redouble efforts to find a few other ways to spend money quickly? More than 50 mass transit agencies across the country are cutting services or raising fares, and the stimulus bill does nothing for them.
On the same day that the Times ran these stories, representative Carolyn Maloney held a press conference to tout the stimulative effects of mega-projects like the Second Avenue Subway and East Side Access. Not a word about keeping the buses and subways running.
The pols at Maloney's presser might as well be taking a lead from the MTA itself. Last week, we wondered why the nation's largest transit agency, with its lobbying chops and $1.2 billion deficit, hasn't been more vocal about the desperate need for operating assistance from the feds. A spokesperson wrote back, saying the agency is now focused primarily on Albany after making its case to Washington:
Lee Sander has been to Washington at least a half dozen times over the past 3 to 6 months to make a case for Federal investment in transit. Over the last 15 to 20 years, the amount of capital funding that we receive each year from Washington has gone up from about $200 million to about $1.5 billion today. This money has taken the pressure off of our roughly $11 billion annual operating budget because it reduces the need to borrow against fares and tolls to fund capital expenses like maintaining stations and tracks, buying buses and rail cars, and expanding the transit system.
We estimate that the "shovel-ready" stimulus package now being considered would result in about $1.5 billion for the MTA. While this is a most welcome investment, it would represent about 5% of our five-year capital program. That's why our most critical concern is encouraging the State Legislature to enact the Ravitch Commission's recommendations, which would hold down the need for fare and toll increases, eliminate the service reductions, and create a stable revenue stream to fund our capital program. This year, we expect to put forward a 2010-2014 Capital Plan that will call for investment in mass transit of roughly $30 billion over five years. At present that plan has no identified state resources.
While Washington is important, Albany is critical.
The MTA is getting it from all sides now, and it's hard to blame them for choosing to fight this battle on the most important front. The Ravitch plan, after all, would provide long-term funding streams to maintain service and expand the system, not a one-time shot in the arm. But now -- in part because Albany has starved the MTA for so long -- one of the few transit agencies with influence in Washington is on the sidelines for a critical fight, and straphangers across the country stand to lose out.
The Charmingly Dry Wit of Nancy Pelosi
There are many truisms of life inside the Capitol that occasionally surface in media coverage but are rarely explained straight-up to those outside the building. Here's one: House Democrats -- like many in the party's grassroots base -- often watch in frustration as legislation that can easily pass in their chamber slows down to a stop in the Senate.
Despite the Democrats' control of 58 Senate seats (pending the outcome in Minnesota), that climate hasn't changed this year. One House Dem recently told me that his party should consider lowering the filibuster margin from 60 to 55 votes, citing the 1977 rules change that knocked it down from 67 votes to 60.
So given that accepted truism of House-Senate relations, it's hard not to grin at this exchange, which occurred during Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) press briefing today:
QUESTION: Speaker Pelosi, it's a lot easier to pass legislation through the House than it is in the Senate...PELOSI: You notice that?
Gingrich for HHS?
Yes, a palpably insane idea. But Craig Crawford at CQ is suggesting it. And in the current climate of completely whacked decision-making, perhaps it could actually happen?
Variety Shac
Yep, its that time of year again,.....tomorrow night (Thursday, Feb 5th) Ill be doing a "routine" in the Variety Shac Comedy night. Info--->
Variety Shac
Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre 307 W 26th St
Thursday Feb 5th
9:30pm
$5
Also performaing:Jacqueline Novak, Joe Mande, Amy Miles, Amy Sohn, & Zach Galifianakis.
Six Apart Announces Support for Parallel’s APS Format, Providing Wider Availability of Movable Type through Global Hosting Providers
Signs First Movable Type APS Package Agreement with Datagram
San Francisco, CA - February 4, 2009 - Six Apart, the world's leading blogging software and services company, today announced the availability of Movable Type through hosting providers who support the Parallels’ Application Packaging Standard (APS) format. Now any size organization can purchase Movable Type via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, making it easier than ever to get a social website up and running on Movable Type. Datagram, the Internet Network Services Company, is the first hosting provider to sign a formal agreement to use the APS format of Movable Type.
Six Apart made the announcement at the 2009 Parallels Summit, the premier hosting conference currently taking place in Las Vegas, where it is an exhibitor and two of its executives are speaking. Ed Anuff, EVP and GM of Movable Type and Six Apart Services, and Michael Sippey, VP of Product Strategy, are participating on panels during the three-day conference.
“We are committed to making it easier than ever to build a rich, interactive website on the Movable Type platform, and this is one more step in that direction. By supporting the APS format, we can provide end users and hosting providers with the best social media platform available,” said Ed Anuff. “Now partners like Datagram can generate additional revenue by bundling Movable Type with other services while end users can use Movable Type on an on-demand basis with confidence that they will have the most up-to-date version of Movable Type in a high quality environment.”
The APS format, which was designed by Parallels, enables hosting providers to efficiently provision and install Movable Type on their existing infrastructure using a standard “socket” for APS applications. As an APS-compliant application, Movable Type is compatible with Parallels’ Plesk control panel and Virtuozzo containers.
In an increasingly competitive market, hosting providers can differentiate their service offerings with Movable Type to retain existing customers, attract new clients, and generate additional revenue per user. Movable Type’s blogging and content management capabilities, built-in social and community features, powerful administration and analytics tools, and proven security track record make Movable Type a premium addition to any hosting service package.
“Movable Type will be a valuable addition to our wide range of dedicated hosting options,” said Alex Reppen, CEO of Datagram. “We understand the vital role blogs play on the web and with Movable Type available in APS format and our experience in hosting, a partnership to provide a hosted Movable Type solution made a lot of sense.”
Hosting providers interested in learning more about Movable Type partnership opportunities can contact Six Apart by visiting movabletype.com/services/partners/signup.
About Datagram
Datagram is the Internet Solutions Company that enables clients to efficiently leverage the Internet to achieve their objectives by providing highly reliable network and datacenter-based services, such as Dedicated Hosting, Internet Access, Colocation and Disaster Recovery. With over fifteen years experience in designing networks and server environments, Datagram operates state-of-the-art network and datacenter facilities in the New York metropolitan area, with additional points of service in Connecticut and California. Datagram is committed to optimal customer support and first-in-class technology so customers can focus on growing their business while Datagram takes care of the rest. Datagram: Internet Solutions Made Simple. To simplify your company’s Internet solutions, please visit www.datagram.com.
About Movable Type
Movable Type is Six Apart's flagship blog software product, launched in 2001. Today, this robust social publishing platform powers many of the websites and blogs of the world's largest media companies and Fortune 100 businesses, small and medium sized businesses, and power bloggers. Movable Type is a fully integrated, scalable, proven social publishing platform upon which to build highly interactive websites, blogs and social networks. For more information please visit www.movabletype.com.
About Six Apart
Six Apart Ltd. provides award-winning blogging software and services that change the way millions of individuals, organizations, and corporations connect and communicate around the world every day. The company provides the Movable Type social publishing platform, the TypePad premier hosted blogging service, Vox, a free blogging service for friends and families, advertising solutions for leading brands and influential bloggers, and a wide range of services dedicated to help bloggers thrive in today’s social media landscape. Founded in 2001, Six Apart is a global company with its headquarters in San Francisco, and offices in Tokyo, Paris and New York City. For more information, visit the Six Apart corporate web site at www.sixapart.com.
Media Contact
Six Apart
Jane Anderson
650-440-0540
AP: Senate votes to help Americans buy cars
Shared by mathowie
Tax write-offs for car payments sounds like the dumbest idea“I believe we can help by getting the consumer into the showroom.”
– Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)To give you an idea at just how difficult it will be to make any significant change in the American transportation paradigm, here’s the latest in the ever-changing saga of President Obama’s economic stimulus bill (via the Associated Press, emphasis mine):
The Senate voted Tuesday to give a tax break to new car buyers, setting aside bipartisan concerns over the size of an economic stimulus bill with a price tag edging above $900 billion. The 71-26 vote came as President Barack Obama said he lies awake nights worrying about the economy and signaled he’ll try to knock out “buy American” provisions in the legislation to avoid a possible trade war.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski led the successful effort to allow many car buyers to claim an income tax deduction for sales taxes paid on new autos and interest payments on car loans.
advertisement
She said the plan would aid the beleaguered automobile industry as well as create jobs at a time the economy is losing them at a rapid rate. “I believe we can help by getting the consumer into the showroom,” she said.
Democratic leaders have pledged to have the bill ready for his signature by mid-month, and in a round of network television interviews, the president underscored the urgency. He told CNN that even three months ago, most economists would not have predicted the economy was “in as bad of a situation as we are in right now.”
The American auto industry is hurting badly. They have already received billions in government assistance and they continue to shudder dealerships, close factories, and buy out workers. Americans, it seems, are finally beginning to realize that — despite what years of marketing has been telling them — it is possible to live on a low-car diet.
Our car culture is emptying American bank accounts, encouraging sprawl, hurting our planet, and making us less healthy. Is making car-buying easier really a smart way forward? Is it good economic policy to promote car ownership? What if we took those tax credits and put toward improving bus service or used them to help fund more bikeways?
And then there’s this story from MSN about GM and Chrysler essentially suing taxpayers with taxpayer money.
What’s next? Free cars for all Americans just to keep the auto parts and service industry alive?
[For transportation related goings-on in the stimulus bill, stay tuned to Streetsblog.org and The Transport Politic.]
Read: ESPN’s Frugal Draft
The crew at ESPN, consisting of Jayson Stark, Buster Olney, Steve Phillips, and Rob Neyer, are drafting their cost-conscious rosters with a salary cap of $40 million.
Phillips advises, “I would just recommend avoiding Mo Vaughn, Roger Cedeno and Kevin Appier.”
…well said steve, well said…as for the draft, olney is like the Mets as he seems solely focused on pitching, while i think stark’s team is shaping up nicely…
Not surprisingly, since this is about getting the best player for the least money, no Met was picked in the first 5 rounds.
RIP Joe Ades
Bryan Campen sent FlickrMail to let me know that Joe Ades, aka the gentleman carrot peeler, who we featured on FlickrBlog a couple of years ago, has passed away:
“The city lost one its quintessential characters Sunday when the enigmatic Joe Ades died after decades spent selling his $5 vegetable peelers at the Union Square Greenmarket, and other locations around town. Ades, born in Manchester, England, was an unavoidable and entertaining presence at Union Square, and eventually became something of a media darling for his loud, hypnotic patter; his distinctive suits; and his incongruous Park Avenue address.”
Photos from killthebird, photodrifting, and sgoralnick.
View more photos of Joe Ades on Flickr.
Bolivia and its new constitution
On January 25th, Bolivia held a referendum to adopt a new national constitution, one that dramatically shifts the country, reversing discriminatory practices and granting many rights and self-determination to the 36 indigenous nations within Bolivia. After a lengthy count, officials announced that the referendum passed with over 60% of the vote. Much political and legal work remains to implement the changes, but soon most of the country's natural resources will be state-owned, land ownership will be capped at 12,000 acres, and Morales will be able to run for a second term. Challenges still lie ahead, as Bolivia remains South America's poorest country, and - after recently expelling all agents the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency - it has lost preferred trade status with the United States. President Evo Morales welcomed the constitutional win by saying "Here begins the new Bolivia", claiming the changes would work to "decolonize" Bolivia. (29 photos total)A Bolivian Wiphala indigenous flag (this one representing the Qulla Suyu region of the Inca Empire) is held high during a protest march towards La Paz, Bolivia on October 20, 2008. Thousands of supporters of President Evo Morales marched toward La Paz to pressure congressmen to pass a law for a referendum vote to approve a new constitution. (REUTERS/Daniel Caballero)
Denial As Political Strategy
Behind all the back and forth over the Stimulus Bill is a simple fact: the debate in Washington is rapidly moving away from any recognition that the US economy -- and the global economy, for that matter -- is in free-fall. The range of outcomes stretches from severe recession to something closer to a replay of the Great Depression, though that label is perhaps better seen as a placeholder for 'catastrophic economic collapse' since the underlying place of the US economy in the world economy is very different from what it was in 1929. This reality was palpable in the political debate until as recently as a few weeks ago. But Republicans are using a strategy of conscious denial to push it off the stage.
Take stock of the last few weeks and you can almost visualize the two conversations -- path toward economic calamity and debate over Stimulus Bill -- diverging.
The other key into the current debate is that the Republican position is ominously similar to their position on global warming or, for that matter, evolution. The discussion of what to do on the Democratic side tracks more or less with textbook macroeconomics, while Republican argument track either with tax cut monomania or rhetorical claptrap intended to confuse. It's true that macro-economics doesn't make controlled experiments possible. And economists can't speak to these issues with certainty. But in most areas of our lives, when faced with dire potential consequences, we put our stock with scientific or professional consensus where it exists, as it does here. Only in cases where it goes against Republican political interests or economic interests of money-backers do we prefer the schemes of yahoos and cranks to people who study the stuff for a living.
Of course, at some level, why would Republicans be trying to drive the country off a cliff? Well, not pretty to say, but they see it in their political interests. Yes, the DeMints and Coburns just don't believe in government at all or have genuinely held if crankish economic views. But a successful Stimulus Bill would be devastating politically for the Republican party. And they know it. If the GOP successfully bottles this up or kills it with a death of a thousand cuts, Democrats will have a good argument amongst themselves that Republicans were responsible for creating the carnage that followed. But the satisfaction will have to be amongst themselves since as a political matter it will be irrelevant. The public will be entirely within its rights to blame Democrats for any failure of government action that happened while Democrats held the White House and sizable majorities in both houses of Congress.
Koala RELIEF
Hot damn.
It is HOT.
Hot enough to sneak into this cinderblock haven and look for relief! [Koala makes 'ehn!' sounds]
WAIT A MIN! [sploosh sploosh] WHAT'S THEES!?
[Test Slurpitty test slurpitty]
Yes.
Yes, this will do.
[Sizzling Koala sounds]
According to Sender-Inner Amy F., "A guy at work's wife sent him these photos of a little Koala who just walked into the back porch looking for a bit of heat relief. She filled up a bucket and this is what happened!"
OMG PONIES!
Michael Cho’s inking tips
The inimitable Michael Cho has posted a 3-page handout he had prepared for teaching a beginner’s class on comic book inking — specifically using blacks to create shadow, form, and mood. Awesome!
Michael’s also one of the most engaging illustrators on Twitter.
App makes time lapse photography easy for iPhone
Filed under: Accessories, Software, iPhone
iPhone TimeLapse Test from digitalurban on Vimeo.
Here's a fun application. TimeLapse [App Store link] uses your iPhone's camera to take photos at regular intervals. You can have one photo snapped as infrequently as every 24 hours, or as often as every 10 seconds, which is about as fast as it can snap and store a photo. After you've collected all of your photos (I told it to stop after 300), you can easily dump them into iMovie or QuickTime Pro and make a simple time lapse movie. Neat!
You can set a delay before it takes a shot, which means you can also use TimeLapse as a timer to allow the photographer to get in the frame. Additionally, it could work as a rudimentary surveillance camera. While it's running, a display lists when it started, the time of the last picture taken and the approximate time of when it will stop.
Here are a couple of things I learned while briefly playing with it this afternoon. First, mute your iPhone before beginning or you'll have to hear the camera's "capture" noise over and over again, which is kind of annoying. Also, enable Airplane Mode or an incoming call will interrupt your photoshoot.
For $0.99US, TimeLapse is fun.
[Via Digital Urban]Continue reading App makes time lapse photography easy for iPhone
TUAWApp makes time lapse photography easy for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Why we are fucked: factoid No. 246.
Even though transit ridership is at record levels in most urban areas, transit systems are slashing routes and workers. Meanwhile, highway building consumes the bulk of national transit spending.
Photos - Baby Steps: The Las Mingas Program
The Las Mingas Program is one of the most responsible and direct source models available to specialty coffee roasters throughout the world.
Still, it only represents 0.025% of Colombia's annual coffee production.
The collection catalogue is dead, long live the catalogue
There is a section of one of my bookcases where I keep collection catalogues from museums such as the Walker, MCASD, and so on. It's a great reference for when I want to find images to use on MAN or when I just want to look something up.
The problem is that it's a ridiculously incomplete shelf. I can't afford MoMA's umpteen different collection catalogues, nor the Met's 243 tomes. (I made that number up; it may be low.) Even if I could afford to buy the collection catalogues from, say, America's 20 most important museums, where would I keep them all? That's a lot of bound paper. Because of cost and volume, collections and the scholarship done about them are primarily accessible to two groups of people: People who live in City X who can visit the extremely limited percentage of collection on view at City X Museum on a given day, and scholars who have access to libraries with excellent art-related books collections. If I feel like looking at the Nelson-Atkins' Caravaggio -- let alone learning more about it -- the available images and information are limited.
Enter the Getty Foundation, which is working on a program that could transform how museums catalogue their collections and how they share their art and scholarship with the public. The Getty's project is ambitious: It aims to replace the expensive dead-tree scholarly catalogue with an open-source, web-accessible-to-all, digital catalogue format. For now the Getty is working with eight museums on the initial stage of the project: the Getty Museum, the Smithsonian's Sackler/Freer, SFMOMA, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate, the Seattle Art Museum and LACMA.
"In transforming the catalogues to an online environment, they won't be just scholarly," Getty Foundation associate director Joan Weinstein told me. Weinstein is managing the Getty project. "The premise is that you can include all kinds of information online that you can't in a print volume, information for everyone from the general public to students to scholars. You don't have to wait until everything's complete to put it online. You can have multiple voices in single entries: For more recent work, you can have both artists and curators speaking. Same thing for older collections. You can have conservators speaking and you can put the conservation documentation online. You could even super-impose an x-ray onto the image of a work of art itself."
Read more: The Getty's first publication detailing its online cataloguing initiative, how it might work and how museums would have to change in order to provide better access to their art collections.
Tomorrow: What all this would involve for museums -- and what it would enable for the rest of us.
News: Citi Field Naming Controversy
According to a report in today’s New York Times, citing Citigroup’s $45 billion TARP bailout, Rep. Dennis Kucinich continues to insist that the Treasury Department intervene to dissolve the agreement between the Mets and Citigroup.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal said Citigroup was looking to back out of its $400 million naming-rights and marketing deal with the Mets. However, the bank and the team issued a press release stating that Citigroup will honor its “legally binding contract.”
Kucinich added that there will be hearings held on the topic of TARP-aided stadium sponsorships.
During yesterday’s press conference, Jeff Wilpon pointed out to reporters that 40 of the 44 companies who applied for TARP funds also have naming-rights deals or title sponsorship coming our of the marketing budgets.
…it’s a shame that this brand new stadium, which should serve as a distraction from all that is going on in the world, has been caught up in this economic mess…
…so here’s my proposal: every MetsBlog reader contributes about $200, and we as a group buy the naming rights and call it The BlogPark… that way, we clear up any controversy and truly have a home for the fans…
…added to by Matthew Cerrone…
…i know what Citigroup keeps saying, and i know what the Mets keep saying, but i just get this feeling that with pressure from Congress and maybe even the White House, eventually, the heat will turn up so much that interfering with the relationship with the Mets may end up being used as a way to make a public example… time will tell… but, once Washington DC fixates on an issue like this, they tend to drive it home…
diller scofidio + renfro presents images of the high line public park project in new york.
'the high line public park project' by diller scofidio + renfro
diller scofidio + renfro presents images of the high line public park project
now in progress. the high line, in collaboration with field operations, is a
new 1.5-mile long public park built on an abandoned elevated railroad
stretching from the meatpacking district to the hudson rail yards in manhattan.
inspired by the melancholic, unruly beauty of this postindustrial ruin,
where nature has reclaimed a once vital piece of urban infrastructure,
the new park interprets its inheritance. it translates the biodiversity
that took root after it fell into ruin in a string of site-specific urban
microclimates along the stretch of railway that include sunny, shady,
wet, dry, windy, and sheltered spaces. through a strategy of agri-tecture,
part agriculture, part architecture- the high line surface is digitized into
discrete units of paving and panting which are assembled along the 1.5 miles
into a variety of gradients from 100% paving to 100% soft, richly vegetated
biotopes. the paving system consists of individual pre-cast concrete planks
with open joints to encourage emergent growth like wild grass through cracks
in the sidewalk. the long paving units have tapered ends that comb into planting
beds creating a textured, 'pathless' landscape where the public can meander in
unscripted ways. the park accommodates the wild, the cultivated, the intimates,
and the social. access points are durational experiences designed to prolong
the transition from the frenetic pace of city streets to the slow otherworldly
landscape above.
Urgent Action: Oppose Highway Robbery in Senate Stim Bill
Stimulus debate continues today in the Senate, where the stale ideas keep on coming. In addition to the $50 billion highway slush fund floated by Senators Boxer and Inhofe (no vote on that one yet), Missouri's Kit Bond plans to offer two amendments that would rob from transit, rail, and green transportation to pay for highways.
These are the two amendments from Bond:
- One strips all $2 billion set aside for high speed rail and redirects it to highway funds.
- The other takes $5.5 billion from "competitive grants" for transportation and gives it to highways.
How quickly the days of $4/gallon gas are forgotten. It goes without saying that de-funding high-speed rail and shoveling extra billions to unaccountable state DOTs, most of which have a penchant for expanding highway capacity, is exactly what we don't need right now. (Bond should be trying to locate billions for transit operations instead: His constituents in St. Louis are bracing for the nation's most severe transit cuts.)
What's more, the $5.5 billion for competitive grants could serve as an early litmus test for Ray LaHood's Department of Transportation. The funds are not set aside for a specific mode -- they could be spent on transit, roads, aviation, or ports. But if the criteria for winning the grants include traffic mitigation or emissions reduction, this pot of money could spur innovative transportation reforms, much like the Urban Partnership program under Mary Peters. Because the bill leaves it open-ended, we don't know yet how LaHood will use the money, and if Bond's amendment passes, we'll never find out.
To oppose backwards transportation policy that deepens oil dependence, worsens quality of life, and flies in the face of sustainability goals, call the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and urge your Senator to vote no on Bond's amendments and the Inhofe/Boxer amendment. You can also use action alerts from Transportation for America and Environmental Defense to get the message out. Keep us posted about those phone calls in the comments -- we'll have more updates throughout the day.
Mark Ruwedel
Filed under: photography
It would be hard not for me to love Mark Ruwedel's evocatively titled new show Westward the Course of Empire in which Ruwedel photographed the sites of abandoned railway lines in the American and Canadian West. It opens tomorrow at the Yossi Milo Gallery. This new series jibes nicely with Ruwedel's Earthworks portfolio in which he documented the mark of man on the earth (shooting burial mounds, old footpaths, earth art etc), and the effect of time on those marks.
Tags: earth, landscape, the west, time, trains
Joe Ades, RIP
This is Mr. Ades here in Brooklyn a few months ago. He was always up for a chat about his business, his life, or the things he saw on the street. But the minute customers would show up, it was back to work. I last saw him about a week on a very cold day, occupying his regular spot in Union Square, making sales.
NYTimes Article, The Vanity Fair Article, David Galbraith's De-mythologizing Eulogy (via kottke), photos
Filed under:
Tags: joe ades, new york, ny institutions
February 3, 2009
chromatic: Perl.com Administrivia
I no longer work for O'Reilly Media in any capacity. My only relationship with the company is passive: receiving royalties for books I've already written.
To my knowledge, no one currently employed by O'Reilly, whether directly or via contract, has the responsibility to publish on Perl.com in any fashion. I expect that this state of affairs will continue indefinitely, but any comment on the company's current and future plans for any of its ventures is mere speculation on my part.
Please discontinue the use of my oreilly.com email address and direct all questions about Perl.com to webmaster@oreilly.com or webmaster@perl.com.
Thune Stacking Basis
I've learned that it's important to speak to people in their own language. And earlier today, as you've seen, I noted Sen. Thune's explanation of the problems with the president's Stimulus Bill judged on the basis of how high the number of dollars would be if you stacked them on top of each other. (Thune pegs the dollar number at $1 trillion by adding the estimated interest on the borrowed dollars over time.)
So what we've done here is do an apples to apples comparison of current unemployment numbers to the stimulus spending number using the Thune Stacking Formula as a basis of comparison. Here we have dollars stacked on top of each other versus current number of unemployed Americans stacked on top of each other.
Honestly, I'm not sure I yet understand the logic of stacking as a point of comparison. But this is my effort to reach out and work in a bipartisan framework.
Mystery chairs
Hey Modern/contemporary furniture fans, that pair of beige chairs on the left side of the photo, anyone know what they are? Hit me on my burner or reply on Twitter.
My copy of 1000 Chairs is currently elsewhere. Photo found on The Selby.
Update: And the answer is: they're made by Hans Wegner. (thx, mark)
Update: Mark emails again...those aren't the exact chairs but they are close. I definitely like the chairs in the photo above over Wegner's. Anyone?
Tags: furniture hanswegner
Don’t Work for Assholes
Derek Powazek:
Nine times out of ten, the first impression someone gives you is exactly who they are. We choose not to see it because we need the money, or we want the situation to be different. But if someone rubs you the wrong way at the first meeting, chances are, it’s only going to get worse.
iPhone devs, access Emoji for free with Freemoji
When the iPhone 2.2 firmware debuted, iPhone hobbyists quickly discovered how to enable Emoji support to allow non-Japanese users to include Emoji icons in SMS messages and e-mail. Emoji icons offer a wide range of pre-built little pictures that add a little visual splash to your messaging. A single preferences key,
KeyboardEmojiEverywhere, toggles Emoji support and gives you access to that support through the iPhone Settings application.David Chartier previously wrote about using a $0.99 App Store application to switch that support on. After an Ars commenter asked if someone could write a free application to do the same, Jacqui gave the thumbs up for an Ars version. I went ahead and created that version, uploaded its open source code to github, and submitted it to App Store... where it was quickly rejected for performing the Emoji support enablement.
Click here to read the rest of this article
Stephanopoulos
What he says happened ...
Administration sources insist this was Daschle's decision alone. That was certainly the line from Robert Gibbs at the podium Tuesday A source close to Daschle says "he didn't have the stomach for the fight." The double-barreled combination of a blistering New York Times editorial and a front-page story raising questions about President Obama's commitment to ethics reform in Washington convinced Daschle he had to go.Already depressed by the recent discovery that his younger brother is stricken with brain cancer, Daschle wasn't prepared for another week of Senate hazing and damaging headlines.
And, he didn't want to hurt his friend, Barack Obama.
Late Update: On the other hand, this passage, from a little further down in George's piece strikes me as more than a tad overwrought ...
As sad as he and Daschle's network of White House friends are about his withdrawal, they know how much damage this has done to Obama's reputation. The Administration was appearing to set one standard for its allies, and another for the rest of Washington.
Spring spring spring spring spring spring spring
Do you think if I say it often enough, it will happen? If so, then "spring spring spring spring spring" is my new mantra. I'll say it while I shovel the four inches of snow expected in Chicago tonight.
I don't know what it is, but this winter has seemed terribly, terribly long, even longer since we have, thanks to an OBVIOUSLY HUNGOVER post-Super-Bowl groundhog, six more weeks of winter coming.
With all the snow and the ice and the bitter cold, and the using up of tubes of lipbalm faster than Blagojevich wears out hairbrushes, and the constant need to wear two pairs of tights (or one pair of black long johns plus black socks) to prevent the dreaded knee frostbite, and the spring fashion magazines trying to be "relevant" in the "economic crisis" by alternating offering up unremarkable $20 t-shirts with suggesting you buy a couple-grand handbag as an "investment," well, let's just say I haven't even been in the mood to look at anything springlike, not even stuff like this:
That's our friend Oscar de la Renta, who I know we've harshed on before as being a little safe, but -- you have to admit -- the man knows his pretty.
And speaking of pretty -- oooh! have you heard? -- Isaac Mizrahi's first set of designs for Liz Claiborne are about to come out:
It's worth clicking on that image EVEN THOUGH the whole Claiborne site is a stupid flashtastrophe that takes forever to load and doesn't allow for direct links. Because the new collection has about double the cuteness of the stuff he did for Target, and nicer fabrics because it's a higher price point.
Anyway, I'm not looking at this stuff now because it's just TOO PAINFUL. I need a couple of fifty-degree days in a row before I can begin to contemplate spring clothes. I'm so tired of winter that I'm even tired of Mexican hot chocolate, and friends, when you are tired of Mexican hot chocolate, you are tired of LIFE.
I'm beginning to think hibernation is a *fantastic* idea. Somebody wake me when the daffodils are out.
Kerry on Daschle
"I wish Tom Daschle had not decided to withdraw his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services. While Tom's decision is a reminder of his loyalty to President Obama and his determination not to be a distraction, this was no ordinary appointment and today is not a good day for the cause of health care reform. Tom brought a unique level of legislative skill and experience to this position in addition to his passion to achieve affordable health care for every American. Tom made it very clear he'd made a mistake and he took responsibility for it. I believe that when the smoke clears and the frenzy has ended, no one will believe that this unwitting mistake should have erased thirty years of selfless public service and remarkable legislative skill and expertise on health care. I know Tom Daschle well. I know his integrity and I respect his heart for this cause, and I know Tom will find other ways to contribute to this central mission."
Goodbye, Tom Daschle
Well, the Daschle nomination is no more. He's withdrawn his name which is in keeping with the idea that Obama would not actually have to fire him. We're still sorting out details on what happened between Obama's endorsement yesterday and the predictions of the likes of myself and George Stephanopoulos who thought that he'd muscle through it despite being bruised. Were there more tax problems? Did he just grow tired of the scrutiny? Was he asked to withdraw or did he do it of his own volition? We'll know more, I'm sure, as the day goes on.
After Daschle, a few big questions:
1. How many more officials are going to run into the tax buzzsaw. Just spoke to someone who is applying for a senior job in the administration. "If you haven't been preparing for public service your whole life, you're really kind of screwed," said the person. That may be a bit much, but it does raise the question of what tax indiscretion/error is now enough to derail your career in the Obama administration.
2. What's Plan B for HHS and the health care campaign? Remember Daschle was not only supposed to run the largest cabinet agency but also to quarterback health care reform. Will the jobs now be bifurcated?
3. What're the recriminations for Leo Hindery, the New York financier for whom Daschle worked? Did he do anything untoward or was this all Daschle's failure to keep his accounting straight?
4. How badly is Obama tarnished by this both in terms of his competence--two cabinet nominees choke before they reach their confirmation hearings--and his promise of reform.
5. It's No Fun Being Majority Leader. Look what's happened to the last majority leaders in the Senate. Bob Dole quit the post and his senate seat in 1996 and lost badly. Trent Lott got ushered out of office thanks to TPM and others who noted his praise of Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign. Bill Frist was a flameout. Now Daschle's career in public service seems at an end. Makes you not want to run for the leadership.
Legendary NYC Vegetable Peeler Salesman Joe Ades, 75
"... no one believed his answer to the 'So what do you do?' question: 'I sell potato peelers on the street.'"
One of Joe Ades' vegetable peelers. Photograph from La Mariposa on Flickr
If you live in New York or have visited as a tourist, it's more than likely you've seen the compelling salesmanship of Joe Ades, vegetable-peeler extraordinaire. Mr. Ades died on Sunday. He was 75.
Mr. Ades' five-minute pitch was hypnotic, and whenever I saw him on a corner—in Midtown, at Union Square (he had various favorite locations)—I'd always stop to watch, even though I'd seen his spiel countless times and even though I had already bought a couple of his peelers. (They really do work well and, as he claimed, mine has never needed sharpening.)
With bins full of vegetables, Ades would demonstrate the utility of the stainless steel Swiss peeler that made him a wealthy man ("one for $5, two for $10, five for $20"). He'd deftly remove the eyes from potatoes and show how easy it was to julienne carrots or to slice them into stars ("you do that for the kids and they'll eat their veggies"). [A video of Mr. Ades in action appears after the jump.]
Always nattily dressed in a suit and tie, no matter the weather, Ades was the subject of numerous magazine and newspaper articles that recounted his almost Dickensian trajectory from Manchester, England, to the streets of New York City.
As the New York Times says in Mr. Ades' obituary:
His was a particular kind of street theater in a city that delights in in-your-face characters who are, and are not, what they seem. For he was the sidewalk pitchman with the Upper East Side apartment. The sidewalk pitchman who was a regular at expensive East Side restaurants, where no one believed his answer to the “So what do you do?” question: “I sell potato peelers on the street.” Mr. Ades (pronounced AH-dess) died on Sunday at 75, said his daughter, Ruth Ades Laurent of Manhattan. She said he never talked about how many peelers he sold in a year, or how many carrots he had sliced up during demonstrations. She said he stashed his inventory in what had been the maid’s room of the apartment.
So entrancing was his pitch that I'd always wanted to muster the resources of Serious Eats and do a short video documentary on Mr. Ades. But like many of the city's unofficial landmarks and quirky treasures we take for granted, he passed from the scene far too early. This video, though, captures the essence of this charming self-described grafter.
Our condolences go out to Mr. Ades' family and friends. He will be missed.
Joe Ades, the Peeler Guy of New York
Related
His Stage, the Street; His Rapier, a Peeler [New York Times]
RIP Joe Ades, Union Square Peeler Peddler [SE Talk]
The Gentleman Grafter [Vanity Fair]
Perfect Pitch [New York Daily News]
Potato Peelers Put Him on Park Avenue [MSNBC]
A Quick Post-Haute Couture Chit Chat with Model Myf Shepherd
After a stunning New York debut this past summer at the exclusive Prada resort show, Myf Shepherd went on to gain "top-ten newcomer" status on both style.com and models.com subsequent to walking for the illustrious likes of Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga, Chanel, Nina Ricci, Miu Miu, Jeremy Scott, Fendi, Gucci and Jil Sander during the Prêt-à-Porter shows. Back in the city after her first dose of modeling Haute Couture last week, I sat down with 17-year-old Australian sensation (and current face of Miu Miu and Superfine) to reflect on her recent couture work in Paris and share with us some of her newfound haunts around Gotham. How do the more extensive couture fittings vary from their standard ready-to-wear counterparts? The ones that I did were, for the most part, actually really well organized. I think that as even more thought and handiwork has gone into creating each piece, they already know exactly which girl they want for each dress. Do you personally have a specific "couture walk" on the runway? Or do you maintain the same for both ready-to-wear and couture? In fact I didn't realize until I had arrived at Dior (my first couture show) that the walk was supposed to be different. I walked my standard Dior-esque strut and they looked at me as though I was crazy and said: "SLOW DOWN! This is couture!" Any amusing couture week stories from this past week in Paris? My mum thought it was hilarious when I told her about my sore tongue that I endured from eating too many figs at Chanel. She said she had no sympathy for someone who indulged enough to eat that many figs! HERE ARE MYF'S PICKS WHEN IT COMES TO... Art: I'm an adamant supporter of street art, so I loved the massive Banksy rats while they lasted and his animal rights animatronics in West Village. There are also great stencils and murals all over downtown. Place to be inspired: To be completely honest... I always feel inspired when I ride the subway. There are so many interesting people; Union Square Station always has great buskers and there often is really interesting graffiti. Part of town: East & West Villages and Williamsburg (luckily all on the L line)! Restaurant: Wild Ginger in SoHo. Be sure to try the satay seitan skewers. Although there are so many great restaurants around the city that I'm looking forward to trying. Desert: Lula's Sweet Apothecary in the East Village. Ohmywow! I'd like to go there now, please! Sandwich: The sesame "chicken" wrap from 'sNice. It is to die for. Music: The Delacorte Theatre in Central Park; I know it's not technically music, but they did do a production of Hair! Coffee: Abraço in the East Village on account of the fact that they make "flat whites" (it's an Australian thing). Dress: Beacon's Closet in Williamsburg has fabulous old costume dresses; they have something from every era and for every possible type of theme party. Accessory: Your best accessory is a smile! I actually only have two accessories that I wear routinely -- my dad's old watch and a bat-girl necklace. Fragrance: I don't really wear fragrances... I prefer to smell like my natural self. Naturally, I smell like roses though! Shoes: I harbour an intense dislike of shoe shopping. Photos above from The Cobrasnake
Quote of the Day II: Gwyneth Paltrow Up In Smoke
"The last cigarette I smoked was the day I found out I was pregnant with Apple. I'm so pissed off it gives you cancer. But then, once you have children, if you've witnessed a death like I did with my father, you just can't. But I've decided that when I'm about 70 I'm going to start smoking again. Why not? I can't wait!'"-- Gwyneth Paltrow, to Elle, on the bad habits she plans on picking back up in her old age
David After Dentist, a 7-year-old's first drug trip
"I feel funny. I can't see anything. I don't feel tired. Is this real life?" [via]
Thinking Big
Presidents need to think big, isolate the source of problems and act to fix them. So I think Obama needs to abolish the IRS so his appointees can get confirmed and his program move forward.
Playstation soap
Hand made with olive oil, and shaped like a playstation controller.
Soapy nubbins jokes aside, it's begging for a lolcat caption too.
R.I.P.: Most Union Square Greenmarket-goers are familiar...
Most Union Square Greenmarket-goers are familiar with the old man with the British accent who sits at the northern corner of the park during the Greenmarket days, selling vegetable peelers to crowds of onlookers. His name was Joe Ades, and he died on Saturday at the age of 75. He was a fixture for the market and he will be missed. [NYT]
News: Citigroup Considers Ending Mets Deal
Update, 10:23 am:
According to a report on CNBC, the Mets say Citigroup has contacted them and will continue to honor their current marketing and naming rights agreement, contrary to the Wall Street Journal report from below.
Update, 8:56 am:
Michael Espo, a long-time and trusted reader of
MetsBlog.com, just sent in the following e-mail:
“Moments ago on CNBC, Doug Kass, a noted investor and short seller, who is a member of the country club where Bernie Madoff solicited many of his investors, said, ‘scuttlebutt around town says that Fred Wilpon and Mets ownership may be forced to sell a minority interest in the team due to their exposure to the Madoff fraud.’”
Original Post, 8:38 am:
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, “Citigroup is exploring the
possibility of backing out of their marketing and naming rights deal with the Mets,” say people familiar with the matter.
Nevertheless, in a statement Monday, Citigroup said they would not use TARP money for the stadium deal.
Last week, U.S. House of Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Ted Poe wrote to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asking him to push Citigroup to dissolve the Mets deal.
“Citigroup is now dependent on the support of the federal government for its survival as an institution,” the Journal quoted Citigroup as saying in a letter. “As such, we do not believe Citigroup ought to spend $400 million to name a stadium at the same time that they accept over $350 billion in taxpayer support and guarantees.”
Meanwhile, the Mets continue to issue the following statement, whenever asked about the situation: “The Mets are fully committed to our contract with Citi.”
…sure, the Mets are committed, but is Citigroup…
…ok, Steve Jobs, step to the plate, bring me The Big Apple…
Eustace Tilley contest results
The New Yorker has announced the winners of the 2009 Eustace Tilley contest, which encouraged people to reïmagine the magazine's monocled mascot. These are all pretty good...the cab driver is an understated favorite.
Tags: newyorker remix
The Bag Tax is Coming
Back in November, when word first got out that Mayor Bloomberg would be proposing a tax on plastic grocery bags, we wondered if the city would realize it might be worth it to stick it to retailers, too.
And yes, it did - The plastic bag tax, which was officially proposed last week, will cover plastic bags of any kind - even at restaurants and department stores like Macy's - which will cost shoppers five cents per bag unless they're armed with their own stash of totes (or, presumably, plastic bags they've saved from prior trips).
So, if you want to step into H&M for some unplanned shopping after work, you'll have to be ready unless you want to pay up (obviously this is easier if you drive everywhere, but city dwellers might find the idea of having to have a bag with you wherever you go pretty annoying).
But we're wondering - Is a charge of five cents really revolutionary? Would you really say to yourself, "Oh man, a nickel? Let me go back five blocks to my apartment and get my tote from its spot on the door handle - This trip could cost me fifteen cents total!"
Do you think Mayor Bloomberg's bag tax will really stop people from using plastic bags? Or will the tax just raise tons of money for the city, without any real environmental effects? Or, in a dramatic plot twist, will retailers simply offer shoppers paper bags instead, rendering the Mayor's money-raising effort useless?
"Every day, a government official goes to your door. That’s pretty amazing and valuable when you..."
“Every day, a government official goes to your door. That’s pretty amazing and valuable when you think about it.”
-Postal Service seeks to weather economic storm (via pile)
Well, almost every day. Except Sundays and holidays. Five of the six days that they come to my door, they come at a time of day when almost no full-time-employed person will be there. And most of what they deliver is immediately thrown away.
The government official who comes to my door can’t do everything I need from this agency — I sometimes need to go to the post office. This is designed to be as hostile to working people as possible. My post office in Larchmont, a town where most full-time-working people commute to Manhattan, doesn’t open until 10 AM on weekdays and closes many hours before anyone gets home in the evenings. So for nearly all of the hours that this office is open, the majority of the residents of its ZIP code can’t possibly use it.
There’s certainly room for improvement in this wonderful government service.
The End of "Citi" Field?
Citigroup is now under intense pressure to back out of its deal with the New York Mets over Citi Field.
House members Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Ted Poe, R-Texas, have formally asked Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to cancel the troubled bank's deal to pay the Mets $400 million for the naming rights to Shea's replacement.
"Citigroup is now dependent on the support of the federal government for its survival as an institution," the congressmen wrote. "As such, we do not believe Citigroup ought to spend $400 million to name a stadium at the same time that they accept over $350 billion in taxpayer support and guarantees."
The story is on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today. This was always a possibility but Citigroup helped exacerbate the situation last week when it was caught in a PR fiasco over the purchase of a new $50 million corporate jet. It made no difference that the jet was ordered before the bank recieved TARP money. As the economy continues to worsen, any perceived wasteful spending is valuable tabloid fodder (hey man, the newspaper industry is tanking too. In fact, stop reading this and go buy a paper. Or better yet, buy an ad on a news Web site).
Of course, some wise-acre blogger with a fetish for the Mets' former digs will probably suggest the new stadium be rechristened "Shea Field." Unfortunately, that appelation probably won't happen. If Citi bails out, the Mets will need a bailout to recoup whatever part of the $400 million Uncle Sam denied them.
Or the Mets will pass the added expense on to us, the fans. Wait a minute, didn't I pay $9.00 for a beer last season? Never mind, I have already paid my share of the bailout.
Mattingly batting second
I grew up within the range of WPIX and therefore watched a lot of Yankee games on TV back in the day. In 1989, when Bucky Dent took over from Dallas Green as manager, Dent moved Mattingly from his customary position in the batting order, 3rd, up one slot to #2.
In the first inning, Mattingly showed bunt. I can’t recall whethe he actually attempted to bunt, or did bunt, or only showed bunt. What I vividly remember is Phil Rizutto immediately singing Mattingly’s praises for adjusting his game along with his new position in the batting order.
I found that game rather easily, as Mattingly batted in the #2 position in just one game in 1989. See here for the Event Finder search that revealed it.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. In Joel Sherman’s book that I mention in this post, he characterized Mattingly’s bunt as his way of ridiculing Dent for moving him to second in the lineup, and recalled some nasty words that Mattingly had after the game.
How interesting to see the different perspectives between Rizutto and the truth, at least as Sherman presents it.
One thing we know for sure…Mattingly was moved back to the #3 hole the next day.
Coffee Enthusiast, Meet Your Coffee Bag
Using coffee while its fresh is important to brewing great coffee. Fortunately, the bag it came in is helping you out. After it's roasted, the coffee is put in one of these bags and sealed. The round thing above the label is a valve which allows the gases to escape without blowing the bag up like a balloon. Once out, there's no getting back in. The valve bars access to the outside air and moisture, helping prolong the coffee's freshness.Want to know when your coffee was roasted? Look on top of the bag for the roast date sticker. Keep track of how old the coffee is getting as you use it. If you find a certain point where you can taste the loss of freshness, make a note of the age. Try to adjust when and how much coffee you buy to use it within that age range.Once it's been opened, your bag comes with its own resealable tape to help keep the coffee in and the other stuff out. Roll up the top and tape it down tight, but don't forget to supplement with an air tight container (unfortunately, not included).
February 2, 2009
Happy 20th, Paul’s Boutique
I don’t think any album has actually changed the course of my life as much as Beastie Boys’ 1989 masterpiece, Paul’s Boutique. Therefore it’s with tremendous pleasure and pride I announce you can purchase a deluxe edition of this classic album –
Wait, before I go into that, let me share my Paul’s Boutique story. We’ve all got one and you can share yours in the “User Photos and Stories” section of PaulsBoutique.BeastieBoys.com, but if you’ll indulge me for a few lines I’ll share mine here.
1989, my best friend Ryan Timmons and I were headed to the Warren Dunes in Michigan from Goshen, Indiana, where we grew up. There was no record store in Goshen, so we convinced my sister to stop at Concord Mall so we could shop for music. I can remember distinctly Ryan looking at the rack of tapes and letting out an excited, “Hey! There’s a new Beastie Boys record!” And I remember just as clearly me looking at him like he just admitted to digging Vanilla Ice and saying, “So?” He bought Paul’s Boutique (on cassette) that day, I bought Honey Bubble by Tar Babies.
Now I don’t mean to dis, but you have to remember that Beastie Boys were these beer-swilling pop stars who had disappeared as far as I could tell. No one was looking for another Licensed To Ill in 1989. Or at least I wasn’t.
Lucky for me Ryan hated Paul’s Boutique. For whatever reason he gave the tape to me, and for whatever reason (curiosity? boredom? destiny?) I played it. But I didn’t just play it, I sat down on the floor of my bedroom with headphones on, opened up the lyric sheet, and dove in. It would be an exaggeration to say my life changed at that moment but it would be an understatement to say I simply liked it — I was mesmerized by Paul’s Boutique. I played it, literally, to death, I wore the tape out and had to buy the CD. It felt as if someone made an album out of my record collection (from Cash to Sly to Mountain to The Isley Brothers) and it was these punk rock hip hop skateboard kids from NYC who took drugs and seemed to love music just as much as I did. I identified with it even more than the punk rock records that seemed to be made by kids just like me. Not only was it cool and accessible, it was musical, complex, and unattainable at the same time.
It was also a relative failure. After selling six million-plus for Def Jam Beastie Boys had jumped to Capitol Records, spent a ton of money, and not managed to find one commercial hit. The record peaked out at a few hundred thousand records and the band never even toured. There was a bit of critical acclaim as the album was discovered randomly but Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique was located very near purgatory; the album had too much depth for your average Licensed to Ill fan and us music nerds who avoided pop music weren’t exactly looking to Beastie Boys for our latest fix. That was respect the band would earn over the next ten years, their cache was near-zero at the time, at least from my point of view as a kid in Indiana.
Just a year later, Zoe was born. I was a few weeks shy of eighteen, working two jobs and just started college full-time. I don’t remember much about that first year of Zoe’s life, but I remember distinctly pacing around the living room in our Section 8 apartment in the middle of the night, Paul’s Boutique playing, me singing along, trying to calm a colicky baby.
Thankfully for everyone, Beastie Boys were far from done. They continued to reinvent themselves, playing live instruments and making another classic in 1992, Check Your Head. My fan-dom continued and in 1993 I moved the discography I’d been maintaining on Usenet to this new thing called The World Wide Web. I kept the Beastie Boys Web site up religiously as a fan through the release of Ill Communication in 1994 when I put up video of Beastie Boys live on Letterman before it aired on the West Coast. After that, I got a call from Beastie Boys management, John Silva (actually Bethann Buddenbaum, who was tipped off to my site by the only guy in the building with a computer, Jason Fiber, who was working for Dave Allen at World Domination at the time). I figured they were calling to shut me down for copyright infringement but John, forward thinking even then, said, “Are you crazy?! I wanted to know if you’d do this for *all* our bands!” I started a little consulting business charging John and Old School Ron Stone $8.50/hour to build Web sites. Laughable today but living in family housing in Indiana in 1994 it was just fine.
I spent a little time on Lollapalooza in 1994 and made friends with Beastie Boys. Mike D had Grand Royal, Yauch had Milarepa, and this Internet thing just might be useful for those low-budget endeavors. I was, of course, excited to be able to help in any way. Late in the year they asked if I’d come on tour with them in the spring of 1995. I was in grad school studying computer science at the time but made a decision to be done with that about five minutes after their invitation. Tour I did, and then moved to LA where Beastie Boys were at first the only people I knew, really.
So as I was saying…
I don’t think any album has actually changed the course of my life as much as Beastie Boys’ 1989 masterpiece, Paul’s Boutique, and it’s with tremendous pleasure and pride I announce you can purchase a deluxe edition of this classic album, complete with DVD-style “director’s commentary”, limited edition eight foot long poster and t-shirt, lossless remastered audio in addition to the MP3s, and interactive album art, all via Topspin’s technology at BeastieBoys.com. Hopefully you’ll agree it’s the treatment the album deserves.
If you already know this album, I hope you’ll appreciate the excellent remastering and hearing the band recall those days. If you skipped over this one, well, I envy the experience of sitting with this album for the first time. Grab the below to throw the album on your blog or Web site and maybe even read the 33 1/3 book for some serious back-story. Sampling laws shut albums like this out of existence. Enjoy of of the crown jewels of the era.
The very fun Paul’s Boutique Web site was created by the fine folks at Prod4Ever. Thanks to Jon, Jon, Greg, Nick, and everyone else over there for getting it and making it happen. Thanks to Jen Hall at Silva Artist Management for being the glue that holds this project together. Thanks to Jesse Ervin and Cory Ondrejka at EMI for fighting the good fight from within. And thanks of course to Beastie Boys and John Silva for, well, for everything. Always a pleasure. Thanks for believing in me fifteen years ago and for believing in Topspin today.
ps - Beastie Boys were kind enough to speak to me from Oscilloscope Labs this morning via Skype. Results below:
our chai wallah
You can’t go more than half a block without passing a chai wallah, seated under a tree or up against a wall, selling India’s signature brew at three or four rupees per cup. Milk, tea dust, sugar, spices, boiled over a gas flame; it’s one of the few street delicacies that even tourists feel comfortable with, as they can watch it boiled to sanitary perfection right in front of them.
Halfway down the street from our office sits a chai wallah named Lakshan. My company used to contract him to dispense fresh chai throughout the office four or five times a day. But then HR bought a chai machine, and Lakshan’s contract was cancelled in favor of lukewarm, powdered goop. So instead of Lakshan coming to us, we go to him.
He sits on the sidewalk a few buildings down, surrounded by bags of cigarette singles, gutka packets, fried sandwiches, biscuits, and other bits and bobs. He obviously has some agreement with the management of that building, because he’s got a little cement alcove for his stove, and he’s constantly going in and out of the building’s courtyard to get water.
It’s not a one-man operation; his twelve-year-old son, whom I’m told is named Raju, works with him. We calculate that Lakshan clears maybe 400 rupees a day after expenses—$240 a month. With that money he has to support his wife and at least one child, feed them, clothe them, put a roof over his head; he probably can’t afford an employee that would allow his son to go to school.
Watching him make tea is watching an expert at work. His hands move automatically, measuring tea and sugar in his palms, crunching cardamom and sometimes ginger with a rock, boiling it, and pouring it into the little plastic cups, through a sieve, without spilling a drop.
Lakshan is at his station before I get to work and is still there when I leave. It’s possible he lives nearby; more likely, he and his son sleep right there on the sidewalk during the week and, on Sunday, when the offices in the area are closed, go home and enjoy a day of well-deserved rest.
Posted in blah blah Tagged: cardamom, chai, chai wallah, fried sandwiches, ginger, Gurgaon, gutka, india, machine, tea
NYC Trend of the Month
From MASH SF’s blog.
Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.
Where Is Car Ownership Highest?
You'd never guess. (Thanks for the link, Tom.)
Flickr In The Real World - Instant Fave!
Ever found yourself leafing through a magazine or a book and wanting to leave comments on the photos? Or thought about suggesting a better crop while wandering around an art gallery :) Well the Flickr In The Real World - Instant Fave! group scratches at least one Flickr itch by faving things with handy dandy cards and stickers.
Now all I want is a tag search for my door keys.
Photos from theOtherdrBen, TPorter2006, metró and nataliej.
Music from stock charts
Johannes Kreidler took the data from recent stock charts, fed it to Microsoft Songsmith, and produced melancholy tunes. It's like the Visualizer in iTunes, only backwards. Ben Fry says of the project:
Tags: infoviz music songsmith johanneskreidler benfryMy opinion of Songsmith is shifting -- while it's generally presented as a laughingstock, catastrophic failure, or if nothing else, a complete embarrassment (especially for its developers slash infomercial actors), it's really caught the imagination of a lot of people who are creating new things, even if all of them subvert the original intent of the project. (Where the original intent was to... create a tool that would help write a jingle for glow in the dark towels?)
How a Bottlenose Dolphin Butchers a Cuttlefish
Images by Julian Finn et al, from New Scientist
Who needs knives or cleavers when you can butcher with your snout? Researchers in Australia have observed a bottlenose dolphin kill, cut, and bone a cuttlefish by using its nose to pin the cuttlefish to the ground, shake it to release its ink, and then drag it along the rough sea floor to break its bone. [via kottke.org]
Resident Evil 6 to be set in London?
Honestly. A few flakes of snow and you'd think it was the apocalypse. Walking through West London today was like wandering into Cormac McCarthy's The Road, re-written as a knockabout farce. Couples clutched together for warmth, cars skidded into post boxes, I wouldn't have been surprised to see groups of feral children scrabbling in the bins for dead pigeons.
It was perhaps a fitting backdrop to my interview with Resident Evil 5 producer, Masachika Kawata, who I met at Capcom Europe's office in Hammersmith today. Both Resident Evil 4 and 5 deal with societies on the verge of collapse; it's just that in London the problem is snow, not brain-controlling parasites or zombifying pandemics. Driving through the slushy streets of the capital seems to have had a profound effect on Kawata - when I asked him if he had any locations in mind for the next Resi title, he replied 'Why not London?'. Apparently he enjoyed the contrast of the ornate neo-classical buildings with the many dark alleys and shadowy side streets. It is perfect Resi stuff really. Perhaps he wasn't joking.
I won't go through the rest of our interview - I'm hoping to post it as a video soon. But it was interesting to meet him. Like Kojima, he has a great sense of cinematic detail; he thinks and talks in terms of images and visual moments. While discussing the use of sunshine as a source of horror, he talks about how some enemies will reveal themselves initially as looming shadows, coming out at you from behind walls. Often, enemies will be obscured by the brightness at first.
He also talks about how Resi 5 is very much an evolution, rather than a revolution. The key aims were to update the graphics for the current generation consoles, and to introduce the concept of co-op play (all Jun Takeuchi's idea apparently). However, Kawata-san doesn't expect these to reproduce the epoch-shattering impact we saw with Resi 4. He hints that there will be a Resi title in the future that will catapult things to a new level once again, just as RE4 did. That title isn't Resi 5, and the changes will be more drastic than, say, a slightly tweaked interface. A decision needs to be made on the future direction of the brand - back toward horror, or onward into action adventure...
With RE5, there was also a concern to get back to the core story of Resident Evil, after Resi 4's Las Plagas diversions. Hence the return of Chris Redfield and of Wesker. It sounds like the climatic fight between these two will be the mother of all boss battles.
Oh and finally, just for the Gamesblog community, I asked Kawata-san what his weapon of choice will be when the zombie apocalypse comes. "Shuriken" is his almost instantaneous reply.
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Wanted: A New Traffic Boss for New York City
You won't have Primeggia to kick around anymore.The New York City Department of Transportation is posting a job ad seeking a new Deputy Commissioner of Traffic Operations. That's because Michael Primeggia is retiring. After 30+ years in city government, New York City's chief traffic engineer, a man who referred to the city's streets as "my streets," will work his last day on Friday, February 13. DOT staff threw a party for him on Friday evening.
Primeggia leaves a mixed legacy. Many livable streets advocates will forever know him as "Dr. No," the classic, cars-first traffic engineer who repeatedly argued against car-free parks, delayed and killed bike, pedestrian and traffic-calming improvements and sought to convert slow-moving, neighborhood-friendly two-way streets into one-way thruways. Yet, in recent years, under the leadership of Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Primeggia has been instrumental in helping to implement progressive projects like Summer Streets, physically-protected bike lanes and new pedestrian plazas.
Regardless of what you think of him, Primeggia's retirement provides Sadik-Khan with an opportunity to hire a powerful and potentially long-lasting member of the city's transportation bureaucracy. What kind of employee should she be looking for?
Here's one thought: How about a planner instead of an engineer?
Feb is the month of LOVE
AND MY PERSONAL FAVORITE...
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The new liberal arts
Snarkmarket, one of my favorite WWW homepages, is making a book on the new liberal arts based on the conversation in the comments of a recent post.
It's 2009. A generation of digital natives is careening towards college. The economy is rebooting itself weekly. We have new responsibilities now -- as employees, citizens, and friends -- and we have new capabilities, too. The new liberal arts equip us for a world like this. But... what are they?
The time is ripe to expand and invigorate our notion of the liberal arts. Is design a liberal art now? How about photography? Food? Personal branding?
My favorite description of the book is that it's "the course catalog for some amazing new school". The book's focus dovetails nicely with my activities here on kottke.org; I can't wait to contribute (hopefully!) and read it. In true Snarkmarket fashion, they're looking for contributors to the project...details here.
BTW, my "liberal arts 2.0" description of kottke.org is generously listed as one of the seeds of the idea. I came up with the term a couple of years ago while concocting an elevator pitch for kottke.org. Liberal arts 2.0 seemed like the sort of thing that the site was about and that someone would understand a bit with little explanation...better than "kottke.org is about all kinds of stuff" anyway. I used the term in a talk I did at MoMA in 2007 with the following as "fields of study" in the new discipline:
Graphic design, freakonomics, photography, programming, film, remixing, video games, food, advertising, internet life skills, journalism, fashion.
The developing thread already contains many more interesting ideas than those, particularly Jennifer's vote for the inclusion of home economics:
Home economics. Cooking for yourself. Growing food for yourself. Making clothing for yourself. Why are these things important enough to be included as a "liberal art"? One word: sustainability. We all need to do our part to shrink our footprint, but many of us have no idea how, and for most people born after 1960 (or so) it's not something they learned in the home, either.
as well as Tim's expansion of the concept:
Tags: snarkmarket booksLet's put the "economics" back in "home economics"! Because it's not really just about the home anymore -- you have to think about the broader connections of the organization of your daily life to global operations, histories, labor, politics, geology and ecology. And that is home economics as a liberal art.
Scenes from The New York City Spelling Bee at Housing Works
Housing Works Bookstore Café is celebrating its 10 year anniversary, and the downtown cultural institution is keeping the good times going with lots of offbeat interactive events for weeks to come. This past Saturday, we hit their New York City Spelling Bee, a hilarious adult spelling competition hosted by comedian Jennifer Dziura and musician bobby blue. Although anyone can enter, the Bee means business. After a first round icebreaker in which all spellers advance, competition heated with words like "selenology," "gesundheit" and "perchlorate." In the end, second place went to contestant, former Daily News scribe, Jo Piazza (who got stumped on "ochlocracy") and Brian R. triumphed after knocking out a series of polysyllabic puzzlers. We're totally coming back for next month's match. Having learned that tobogganer has two g's as opposed to one, we were feeling pretty smart after the Bee. Even better, though, was knowing that all Housing Works' profits go towards providing housing and supporting people with HIV and AIDS. Check out Housing Works' website for more fun literary events to come.
The Original McDonald's in San Bernadino, California
During my recent road trip to Phoenix to visit my sis (and review a burger) I convinced my passengers to let me take a slight detour through San Bernardino, California, to check out the site of the original McDonald's. You know the one. It's where Ray Kroc, enthralled by the McDonald brothers' success, decided to leave his multimixer milkshake machine sales career behind and conquer the world with hamburgers.
Of course I wanted the place to still be serving up burgers (it's not), or—at the very least—be as shiny and meticulously kept as an actual restaurant (it's definitely not). Check out some photos after the jump.
Sadly and quite surprisingly, the McDonald's Museum—a Route 66 historic site—is a run-down mess of a place. The folks who maintain it are enthusiastic and—in an even stranger turn of events—owners of a restaurant chain called Juan Pollo. They sell rotisserie chicken. It was all very confusing.
Dive into the new Google Earth
As you read this, I am at the beautiful California Academy of Sciences, announcing the launch of the newest version of Google Earth. This launch is particularly special to me because it marks the moment when Google Earth becomes much more complete — it now has an ocean.
Didn't Google Earth always have an ocean? Technically, yes, well, sort of. We have always had a big blue expanse and some low-resolution shading to suggest depth. But starting today we have a much more detailed bathymetric map (the ocean floor), so you can actually drop below the surface and explore the nooks and crannies of the seafloor in 3D. While you're there you can explore thousands of data points including videos and images of ocean life, details on the best surf spots, logs of real ocean expeditions, and much more.
We were joined at the Academy by many of the dozens of ocean scientists and advocates who helped make this project a reality: friends from National Geographic, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the US Navy, Scripps Oceanography, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to name just a few. Above all, I would like to acknowledge the work of Dr. Sylvia Earle, who cornered me at a conference three years ago and told me that Google Earth was great but that it wasn't finished (you can read more about that encounter on the Lat Long blog). As much as I hated to admit it, she was right. We on the Google Earth team had been working hard to build a rich 3D map of the world, but we had largely ignored the oceans — two thirds of the planet. Inspired by Sylvia, the team got to work. I hope you are as excited as I am to explore our new Ocean and all of the fascinating stories and images our partners have contributed.
But that's not all we launched today. In addition to Ocean, we introduced new features that we hope will enhance the way people interact with Google Earth and use it to communicate with the world.
- Historical Imagery: Until today, Google Earth displayed only one image of a given place at a given time. With this new feature, you can now move back and forth in time to reveal imagery from years and even decades past, revealing changes over time. Try flying south of San Francisco in Google Earth and turning on the new time slider (click the "clock" icon in the toolbar) to witness the transformation of Silicon Valley from a farming community to the tech capital of the world over the past 50 years or so.
- Touring: One of the key challenges we have faced in developing Google Earth has been making it easier for people to tell stories. People have created wonderful layers to share with the world, but they have often asked for a way to guide others through them. The Touring feature makes it simple to create an easily sharable, narrated, fly-through tour just by clicking the record button and navigating through your tour destinations.
For those of you who keep track of version numbers, this is Google Earth 5.0. We felt the addition of the ocean and "time" merited a major bump from 4.3 to 5.0 :-)
- 3D Mars: This is the latest stop in our virtual tour of the galaxies, made possible by a collaboration with NASA. By selecting "Mars" from the toolbar in Google Earth, you can access a 3D map of the Red Planet featuring the latest high-resolution imagery, 3D terrain, and annotations showing landing sites and lots of other interesting features.
Members of the Google Earth team will be publishing in-depth posts about all of the new features in Google Earth 5.0 on the Lat Long blog all week, so be sure to check back there often. And check out our video tour below.
Posted by John Hanke, Director of Google Earth and Maps
Blackberries and Caste
In her HuffPo article, Linda Stone highlights the tradeoff between "staying on top of things at the expense of getting to the bottom of things" and quotes Peter, a retired Fortune 500 CEO as saying:
I gave up my Blackberry when I became CEO. I needed to trust my assistant to screen and forward things to me. I was afraid that if I didn't do that, I wouldn't have time to reflect, to consider and plan for the future of the company. There would have been a much greater risk of getting consumed by the day to day.This reminded me of the beginning of Feersum Endjinn
, one of my favorite science fiction novels, in which the castes in the society are defined by how much information one is subjected to. The higher your status, the fewer messages and information you have to sift -- instead your minions take care of the screening.
(Feersum Endjinn is spelled that way, instead of "Fearsome Engine" B cuz 1 ov teh mane carokters rites en funetic inglish, which takes some getting used to, as with another favorite of mine, Riddley Walker
)
Blackberries and Caste
In her HuffPo article, Linda Stone highlights the tradeoff between "staying on top of things at the expense of getting to the bottom of things" and quotes Peter, a retired Fortune 500 CEO as saying:
I gave up my Blackberry when I became CEO. I needed to trust my assistant to screen and forward things to me. I was afraid that if I didn't do that, I wouldn't have time to reflect, to consider and plan for the future of the company. There would have been a much greater risk of getting consumed by the day to day.This reminded me of the beginning of Feersum Endjinn
(Feersum Endjinn is spelled that way, instead of "Fearsome Engine" B cuz 1 ov teh mane carokters rites en funetic inglish, which takes some getting used to, as with another favorite of mine, Riddley Walker
Photos - Gimme! Coffee in NoLita Celebrates 1 Year Anniversary with Espresso for the Masses
Meet the espresso machine at 228 Mott Street.
Pokemon Battle Revolution: Little Battles
Sunny Park Colosseum is a special place in Pokemon Battle Revolution. While it is a normal battle spot the first time through it becomes something far more interesting afterwards. Why do I say this? Because Sunny Park Colosseum becomes the place to battle with Little Pokemon.
Little Pokemon are defined as unevolved Pokemon that are level 5 or lower. This means those big basic Pokemon such as Skarmory and Heracross can not compete. Nor can any Pokemon that evolves with a stone such the evolved forms of Eevee.
Most competitive Pokemon Battlers never even look at the unevolved Pokemon. They only look at the Uber and Over Used tiers. Here at the farm we like to be different. One way we are different is that we encourage the use of Pokemon that many battlers would shy away from.
In the past we have held tournaments where participants could only use level 1 Pokemon. This sort of battle is very different from the high powered battles most players are familiar with. For one thing set damage moves are banned (they would be OHKO moves in this format) and their is less of an emphasis on EVs and IVs. In fact a Pokemon may have terrible IVs but if their starting scores are higher than a Pokemon with better IVs then they will see battle before their better does.
Basic Rules
- Any unevolved Pokemon that can evolve can be used in this format. This includes Pokemon that have gained an evolution in 4th gen.
- Pokemon must be level 5 or lower. This is due to early generations hatching Pokemon at level 5.
- No set damage moves allowed. Most set damage moves would be an instant kill in this format.
Creating a team for this format is not much different than building a team for the normal formats. The only big difference is that it is all about the breeding skills of the trainer. Though you could burn a ton of TMs on your low level Pokemon it is much better to breed the moves into your Pokemon. There are numerous articles on the site about breeding and you can also check out out the forum.
When choosing Pokemon to use in your Little Battle team it is important to note that most Pokemon that fit into this tier will not be dual-type. There are some dual-types but they are few and far between. Available move pools is also something that you need to take into consideration. Some Pokemon you might never think of using become very desirable in this format.
Let’s take Munchlax for example. If you can get one with the Thick Fat ability you have already gained a huge advantage in that your Pokemon will only suffer 50% damage from Fire and Ice type moves.
Unlike the sleepier Snorlax Munchlax is a real hustler. He also has a wide variety of moves available (even more when Platinum comes out). Why not breed your Munchlax to have: Focus Punch (150 Fighting), Earthquake (100 Ground), Zen Headbutt (80 Psychic) and Rock Slide (75 Rock)? All of those moves are Physical due to Munchlax having a high base Attack score.
Why not give Little Battles a chance? It’s not that hard to make a team of Legendary Pokemon and kick butt in the competitive battle scene with them. It’s a lot harder to take a bunch of unevolved Pokemon and forge a competitive team out of them.
OK, your error page is awesome.
OK, your error page is awesome.
SXSW. Lineup.
"Over 9 days, from March 13 - 21, 108 features, including 54 world premieres, will screen over various sections and sidebars," announces the SXSW Film Festival. And here's that full lineup. Highlighting the panels as well, indieWIRE's Brian Brooks spots several titles from this year's Sundance lineup, but many of the premieres will spark interest on a first once-over. One question that'll leap to mind, this being SXSW and all, is, Will the mumblecrowd be representing? Of course, but having recently seen Andrew Bujalski's "Beeswax" (more later), I suspect that, as each of the young filmmakers associated with the M-word evolves, they share fewer and fewer of the stylistic ticks that once marked what was more "a loose collective or even a state of mind than an actual aesthetic movement," as Dennis Lim put it in the New York Times in 2007. What seems to have remained is a...
Note the Role of the Social Network Site
From Doe v. California Lutheran High School Assn., E0444811 (Ct. App. Cal. 4th App. Dist., Jan. 26, 2009):
In early September 2005, a student at the School reported to a teacher that one unnamed female student had said that she loved another unnamed female student. The reporting student added that, if the teacher looked at these female students’ MySpace pages, he would be able to find out who they were and how they felt about each other.
The teacher then reviewed the MySpace pages of all female students on the class roster, including plaintiffs’ MySpace pages. Mary Roe went by the screen name, “Scandalous love!” Jane Doe went by the screen name, “Truely [sic] in [love, represented as a heart in source]. with You.” On their MySpace pages, plaintiffs referred to being in love with each other. In addition, Mary Roe’s MySpace page listed her sexual orientation as “bi.” Jane Doe’s listed hers as “not sure.”
Expulsions followed. There are some familiar themes here:
- Doe and Roe misunderstood the privacy risks of their declarations of love.
- MySpace’s search-by-school feature makes large-scale privacy violations much easier—but also facilitates social interaction and community formation.
- Without the untrustworthy “friend” who tattled on them, Doe and Roe wouldn’t have been noticed by the school. (It’s also fascinating that the friend said enough to identify them but wasn’t willing to use their names.)
As for the holding that a private school that charges tuition is not a “business enterprise,” don’t get me started.
Quotes of the day: from an American prosciutto maker
Fine article in the Times magazine yesterday about an Iowa couple making a prosciutto that, according to chefs, is every bit as good as the stuff coming out of Parma. But what caught my attention was the intelligence of the guy who started La Quercia, Herb Eckhouse, a former Des Moines seed-company executive who started the company in order planned to do something good with his early retirement.
“It was clear that we had this incredible bounty around us, but we weren’t known for creating great stuff to eat.”
--Bounty, the sheer bounty of our land, our climate, all that we might do, and look what we have done.“At the beginning of the 20th century, Iowa fed people. And here we are in the 21st century, and we’re feeding machines. It’s just a priori wrong.”
--Corn, one of our main food crops, you can't eat it--it's got to be machine processed first. Can it be said enough? No. The word is Wrong.“One of the things in the U.S. is we don’t have the thousands of years of tradition of making prosciutto — or of making anything,”
--Of making anything. Which is why we've so trashed our food.
“You see that the quality of the meat comes from the quality of life of the animal and the quality of the feed”
--Also can't be said enough: the quality of the life of the animal determines the quality of the meat. Why isn't this obvious to the people who raise our livestock?I really like this guy.
(Photo by David La Spina for The Times.)
There's a good video of Jill Santopietro making eggs in purgatory, the recipe accompanying the story, in her purgatory-sized kitchen. Note her affinity for salt and fat!
February 1, 2009
Snapshot of the American diet
I find this juxtaposition of establishments at the Bayfair Mall in San Leandro, California, a good illustration of the “nutritionism” philosophy that is the foundation of many Americans’ culinary consciousness. Grab some chicken wings for an appetizer and a cheese-steak sandwich for the main course, but as long as you finish off with a few of the supplements that were hyped on last night’s evening newscast — Antioxidants! Probiotics! Extra-potent multimineral concentrates! — everything will be OK.
New Tumblr Theme Garden
The Tumblr staff have “just pushed a newly designed Theme Garden, and we’re working on approving the backlog of (several hundred!) theme submissions.” As each day passes, Tumblr can make a more and more compelling case that it’s the true blogging platform for the masses.
iPhones should work well at the Super Bowl
Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone
If you're going to be at Super Bowl XLIII today, your iPhone may actually work. Several companies have brought in massive amounts of equipment to handle what will certainly be an extraordinary increase of cellular and data traffic.
ADC, a cable and wireless technology provider, has brought in a special system they have deployed at Raymond James Stadium. The equipment will provide coverage throughout the stadium, including the inner bowl, all seating levels, luxury boxes, offices and locker rooms, and the stadium parking area.
The firm expects the system to handle between 10,000 to 15,000 simultaneous calls. Meanwhile, our friends at AT&T have added to the two cell sites that are already in the stadium. They have also beefed up coverage at the Tampa International Airport, downtown hotels, at the University of South Florida Sun Dome and team practice fields.
AT&T is also increasing the capacity of the 2G network by 400% and the 3G network by 335%.The company has also brought in two additional mobile cells on wheels that will cover the stadium parking lots.
I would expect there will be a lot of texting, calling, and pictures sent from the iPhones in the stands. It will be interesting to see how well the system actually holds up.TUAWiPhones should work well at the Super Bowl originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Cardinal Stew
While looking for recipes for Steelers-inspired food, I came across this gem on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Cardinal Stew
1 - washed up cardinal quarter back
5 - mediocre offensive lineman
3 - legitimate pass receivers
2 – Steeler Coach wannabe’sToss ingredients vigorously in large (Super) bowl, Bake under extreme heat for 60 minutes. Cool by fanning with large yellow towel.
Throw it out.
Try again next Year
Props to the Post-Gazette for having forums.
Loge13 in NY Times
Saturday, we were out for the Shea Stadium wake. My kids and I were standing in the parking lot near the 7 train stairs for a good look.
As I pointed out to my sons where Loge 13 was, Mathew Warren, a reporter for the NY Times, came over. We chatted for awhile and he wrote up that farewell moment in today's issue of the NY Times.
He also quoted me saying: "Shea had things that were uniquely Queens, like the architecture that came right out of the World's Fair era," he said. "Everything was so imperfect, like the bad plumbing, the lack of parking or the lousy train service. You kind of had to earn your way out here."
Nice job on the article, Mathew.
BTW here is the photo my 8-year-old took when we were bidding adios to Loge13. I think the boy has a future in photography:
More from Shea:
Shea Stadium's Final Days - January 31, 2009
A Last Look at Loge13, Shea Stadium - January 31, 2009
Citi Amongst The Ruins - January 31, 2009
Shea Stadium From Roosevelt Avenue - January 31, 2009
Loge 13 Then And Now - January 31, 2009
Gate D of Shea Stadium - January 31, 2009
Shea Stadium's Last Weekend - The Wrapup
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