randomwalks/dj

When I was casting “Diner” in 1980, Mickey Rourke came in for an audition. He hadn’t done any films yet, and I was looking for certain characteristics: I wanted a guy who didn’t look like the “Grease” version of the ’50s but like a true ’50s man, like the guys I grew up with. Boogie, the character Mickey was reading for, was a hairdresser but kind of tough, and very smooth with women. I remember Mickey coming in and leaning against the doorjamb and, immediately, sensing this mix of toughness and vulnerability. There was a fragility that was part of Mickey’s nature, and that combination of strength and fragility impressed me. If you met him back then, you knew immediately that this kid had something very special, that he might define the next generation of actors.

- Barry Levinson on Mickey Rourke in the Sunday Times magazine.  If you were ever a Mickey Rourke fan, the phrase "Mickey coming in and leaning against the doorjamb" probably instantly conjures up a very recognizable posture.

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on February 13, 2009 8:26 PM

Hollywood has its paparazzi. So, apparently, does food. I took the shot above at last week's Tokyo Taste event in Japan, where a ruck of photographers rushed to snap dishes prepared by famous chefs. What a sight.

But there was more to the event than just pretty plates of food. Among the guests was Kunio Tokuoka of the famed Kyoto Kitcho, a renown and supremely talented Japanese chef. I want to share some highlights from his fascinating presentation:

Chef Tokuoka prepared a simple kombu dashi (kombu + water) in which he poached a piece of chicken. Once the chicken cooked through he removed it and added literally a pinch of salt and just a couple of drops of soy sauce -- I was actually wondering why so little when I watched him do it. The effect, though, was profound. I got to taste this dashi and was amazed by how incredibly savory and delicious it was. And so simple. That tiny bit of sodium really popped the umami (I'm sure the kombu was first-rate, too, of course). Something to keep in mind when you work with dashi.

Chef Tokuoka added a little butter to a kombu dashi and used the liquid to poach root vegetables like carrots and daikon. I didn't get to taste the results but I'm going to try this at home. The idea of vegetables infused with umami (the kombu) and a touch of richness (the butter) sounds very appealing, especially if you pop it with a few grains of salt.

During his presentation, Chef Tokuoka prepared a fillet of fish, but he deconstructed it: He grilled the skin crisp, poached the flesh tender and fried the scales crunchy. Then he reassembled the fillet on a plate - what an interesting play of textures and flavors, each element of the fish prepared with the perfect technique to bring out its singular qualities.

At one point, the chef preheated a dry Japanese clay hot pot (donabe) in the oven. He then drizzled in a little olive oil and added cooked rice and aromatic ingredients, preparing his take on risotto. I like the idea of mixing rice with aromatics in a hot donabe tableside, the sounds and smells would be really seductive. I'm going to experiment with this idea. (If you do, too, let me know what you did -- but please be careful handling the hot donabe!)

Finally, Chef Tokuoka slowly cooked down tomatoes into a sauce and spooned it on a plate. He then placed a pre-heated stone in the center of the tomato sauce and sprinkled parmesan shavings on the stone. The cheese of course melted and released its incredible fragrance. Another really interesting idea for tableside service. Maybe other kinds of aromatic ingredients roasting on the stone?

Originally posted by Harris Salat from The Japanese Food Report, on February 13, 2009 6:08 PM

via http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=632

Originally posted by bisceglie from FFFFOUND! / EVERYONE, ReBlogged by justin.s.ross on Feb 13, 2009 at 09:07 PM

Originally posted by bisceglie from Eyebeam reBlog, on February 13, 2009 4:07 PM

Percona is hiring. We’ve added several experts recently and we’re growing at a fast but sustainable pace. The demand for our services is strong, and we have openings for more experts in the next couple of months.

Let me explain a little about what we’re looking for at the moment. While we do have a career path for less experienced people, right now we are looking for people who are top-level, senior experts in LAMP/Open-Source performance and scalability. Most of our work involves MySQL (at least peripherally, usually centrally) but not all of it; and we are looking for a PostgreSQL expert as well as systems administration and operations skills. If you’re also an expert in a related technology (e.g. Hadoop, popular cloud platforms, or some other component that you might expect to see at the Percona Performance Conference) we’d like to talk with you.

What’s it like to work at Percona? To begin with, it’s about creating value for people. Any successful business exchange has to leave all parties better off than they started. Our priorities are clear: there are two groups of people (employees and customers) and both must be first priority. It sounds like a paradox, but it works due to the company structure and the way we’ve assigned responsibilities. If you’d like to know how, email me personally and I’ll share the details.

Your peers will be talented and experienced professionals. You can expect very challenging work, and very good pay and benefits. Our clients bring us a lot of different types of work. It is not all remote DBA, nor is it all urgent troubleshooting or performance audits; it’s everything you can imagine, and it’s never the same from day to day. Fix my RAID controller! Why isn’t my firewall working? Optimize the query! Find and fix security problem in my application. Calculate when I’ll outgrow the server! Can you benchmark my application? Make me a new database user. Audit my application and tell me how to make it run faster. You are responsible for day-to-day operations of my whole backend and you have my IT team at your disposal. Please set up redundant failover and good backups!

We all work remotely, from our homes. There is currently not much required travel for most of us; a few of us do onsite work because of where we live, but most of us don’t (note that we do meet together at least yearly, and we go to conferences and other events). But we don’t require most consultants to be ready to travel 80% of the time.

We do not hire consultants in the way a lot of other consulting companies do. You do not become a “Percona franchisee,” you are an employee, although the legal structures vary from country to country. You don’t have to go find your own clients or keep your own billing systems like you do at some consulting companies.

The successful Percona consultant has a combination of experience, aptitude and attitude. You must be a technical expert of the highest caliber. You have to be a fast learner who pushes to learn new things. You have to be great with people; good communication and deep understanding of the customer’s needs is mandatory. You have to be willing to work really hard at unfamiliar things. You have to be able to manage your time, manage large quantities of email and a ton of other distractions, work with a variety of perhaps unfamiliar tools such as our Eventum CRM system, and communicate well. The most important thing is a fanatical attitude of customer-first; we have to understand the customer’s needs deeply. We have an entire process built around making sure we learn, document and act on what’s important to the customer and how they want us to accomplish it. This is not a cookie-cutter job where you can just apply some formula and follow the ten-step recipe to fill in a report like they do at Jiffy Lube. And finally, there’s a magical ingredient I can’t describe — it either works or it doesn’t. This Percona consulting is a real culture shock, even if you think you’re used to working in this fashion.

That last paragraph sounds like standard text for a job ad, but we mean it (notice that we do not require “proficiency with Microsoft Office”). You cannot fake it in this job. We generally start off with a try-it-out period of several months to see how things go.

Due to the above considerations and our growing demand, we’re particularly interested in people who might have a shorter start-up time, perhaps those who have experience working from their home for an email/IRC/chat/phone based support or consulting organization.

If you think you’re a good candidate, please fill out the contact form on our website. Thanks!

---

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Originally posted by Baron Schwartz from MySQL Performance Blog, on February 13, 2009 2:46 PM

NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard examines the roles Juan Williams plays on both her network and Fox News, where he recently said Michelle Obama “has this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going” (YouTube video). His comments prompted several dozen angry e-mails to NPR. Such criticism of Williams may arise because the “news analyst” (his title at NPR) “tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox,” Shepard writes. Managers in NPR’s newsroom spoke with Williams after his comments on the First Lady, Shepard says, and network news veep Ellen Weiss asked the commentator to request that Fox no longer identify him as an “NPR News Political Analyst.”

Originally posted by Mike Janssen from Pubcasting In the News, on February 13, 2009 12:56 PM

This has been a lousy week for baseball. The news is all A-Rod all the time. Bud Selig is losing his mind. The leak of the failed test is probably a crime, and now threatens the relationship between the owners and union with the collective bargaining agreement set to expire in 2011. Meanwhile the asshats in Congress apparently have nothing better to do with their time. There there's the bizarre Roberto Alomar story. Ridiculous talk of collusion in a terrible market. Even bloggers aren't exempt as some fool threatened Mario with legal action over an anonymous comment critizising his products in a transparent attempt to create some buzz for his company and cause a chilling effect for any future critisism of his products.

This is getting really depressing.

However, the spring training ticker on the Braves page on AJC.com shows we're less than 40 hours away from pitchers and catchers reporting. The steroid mess just means we have a new hero. The NCAA and their stupid anti-athlete policies just got smacked hard. Newspapers are starting to examine the upcoming season. Our yearly MLB.com fantasy preview Baseball Card set has been released. And finally to hammer home that baseball is truly almost here, Amazon is promoting the new baseball books that are out. Actually, I think a baseball book is just what the doctor ordered.

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on February 13, 2009 12:23 PM

'Blackwater', well-known mercenaries and perhaps war criminals, are tired of you beating them up over various instances of fraud and bad-acting. So they've come up with the ingenious plan to rename themselves with a word you can't pronounce -- Xe.

Noooooooowww, just try to give them a hard time when you can't pronounce their name!

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 13, 2009 12:17 PM

I wasn't a Buffy watcher (and thus never became a Buffy fan), but I'm looking forward to watching Dollhouse this weekend. I caught most of the Joss Whedon interview on Fresh Air last night, and now not only do I feel the need to connect with my inner Buffy, but also to finally watch Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. (Yes, I know. I'm way behind.)

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on February 13, 2009 11:48 AM

Lost is five episodes into the new season and I've just now discovered the Lost drinking game. Dammit!

Take a sip whenever: Juliet makes her default wide-eyed, perma-smirk face.

Tags: lost tv

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 13, 2009 11:32 AM

The embarrassingly mishandled prosecution of then-Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was the sort of thing you figured would be addressed as soon as the new hands took over DOJ, but today a federal district judge in DC held prosecutors in contempt of court for failing to turn over documents to the defense by a court-ordered deadline:

During Friday's hearing, Sullivan repeatedly asked three Justice Department attorneys sitting at the prosecution's table whether they had some reason not to turn over the documents. They finally acknowledged they did not, and Sullivan exploded in anger.

"That was a court order," he bellowed. "That wasn't a request. I didn't ask for them out of the kindness of your hearts. ... Isn't the Department of Justice taking court orders seriously these days?"

He said he didn't want to get "sidetracked" by deciding a sanction immediately and would deal with their punishment later. But he ordered them to produce the material by the end of the day.

"That's outrageous for the Department of Justice -- the largest law firm on the planet," he said. "That is not acceptable in this court."

Sullivan held all three attorneys sitting at the table in contempt and demanded repeatedly to know who else was involved in withholding the information. Another government attorney sitting in the back of the courtroom stood up and gave her name.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on February 13, 2009 11:07 AM

The Miami city and county commissions both had hearings scheduled today to vote on approving the Florida Marlins stadium deal, but that’s now in doubt after the city hearing erupted in chaos after two of its four members balked at approving the deal.

The resistance was led by commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who said he would only vote for the deal if the Marlins: 1) agreed to pay cost overruns on stadium parking garages, 2) gave the city a cut of naming-rights revenue, which is currently slated to go only to the Marlins, and 3) promised to use any proceeds from the sale of the team to pay back the public’s costs before pocketing any profits. After a nearly one-hour recess, Marlins president David Samson said he’d work on capping garage costs, but wouldn’t budge on naming rights or sale proceeds. Sarnoff and commissioner Tomas Regalado said they’d only approve the deal with Sarnoff’s amendments, at which point meeting chair Joe Sanchez - a backer of the Marlins proposal - declared, “This deal is dead.”

You can read the play-by-play of the mayhem here, or follow along yourself via webcast here. The city commission is currently in recess, in hopes that Samson and the two dissident commissioners can somehow work out a deal in the hallway, but it seems likely that the Marlins mess is going back to the drawing board, at least for the time being.

Originally posted by Neil deMause from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on February 13, 2009 10:40 AM

The disappointing and boring presidency of Al Gore.

Of course, the biggest disappointment was Gore's failure to handle Hurricane Katrina properly. Not only did the massive evacuation of New Orleans prove a costly and time-consuming overreaction, since the levees -- fortified in 2003 -- held up fine. The emergency management agency also took over 24 hours to set up trailers for evacuees along the Gulf Coast, leaving them without government housing assistance for a full day.

And from Niall Ferguson, here's how 2009 went.

There was uproar when Timothy Geithner, US Treasury secretary, requested an additional $300bn to provide further equity injections for Citigroup, Bank of America and the seven other big banks, just a week after imposing an agonising "mega-merger" on the automobile industry. In Detroit, the Big Three had become just a Big One, on the formation of CGF (Chrysler-General Motors-Ford; inevitably, the press soon re-christened it "Can't Get Funding").

Tags: algore niallfeguson

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 13, 2009 10:00 AM

I am not looking forward to the day the final piece of Shea Stadium falls to the ground, it’s going to be so weird when the building is stricken from the horizon. 

The date keeps changing.  Now, people involved with the demolition expect the final piece to fall some time next week.  Though, I was told the same thing last week, and the week before.  So, who knows.

Speaking of Shea, the picture in this post is of the building’s skeleton, from when it was being built.

…thanks to Andrew H and his girlfriend’s father for the photo, which is amazing… i would love to blow this up and frame it…

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on February 13, 2009 8:40 AM

Video interview with Pixar's Andrew Stanton, director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E. Among other things, he talks about two things that enabled the success of Pixar: the creative egalitarian dictatorship of John Lasseter and the ability of Steve Jobs to protect everyone from any outside business pressures and just create.

Tags: pixar andrewstanton interviews video

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 13, 2009 8:34 AM

If you missed Project Runway alum Jillian Lewis' Fall 09 presentation yesterday, you could catch her on CNBC today.

She's set to ring the NASDAQ's closing bell at 4pm from the MarketSite location at 4 Times Square (yes, it shares a room in the Conde building - surprise!) to celebrate Fashion Week and her general success.

And now you know.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on February 13, 2009 7:59 AM

With their show happening tonight you would think that Costello Tagliapietra, the most huggable bears in fashion, would be holed up in their studio, sewing on closures and doing fittings with models. Well we stumbled upon the boys at Leather Squirrel, the old-school monthly party at Julius, the classic gay bar in the West Village, hosted by David Yarritu. It must be true that all work and no play makes CT dull boys!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on February 13, 2009 7:44 AM

Kevin K sent in the following e-mail:

“I’m writing because a couple buddies and I are heading to spring training this season for the first time and I was hoping you could give us some lodging recommendations.  For example hotels that are closest, nicest or in walking distance to anything.  From what I’ve heard and read Port St. Lucie isn’t the most happening place but figured you might be able to help.”

This season will be only my second trip to spring training, so I am far from an expert. 

Last week, Kevin Burkhardt from SNY sent in an e-mail, which you can read here, for fans looking to attend pitchers and catchers.

As for other information, from hotels, restaurants, etc., the best fan guide I have ever seen can be found at MetsGrrl.com, who, while the post is from last season, is a must read for people going to Tradition Field.

Also, read Marty Noble’s guide for MLB.com from last season.

Lastly, check out SpringTrainingMagazine.com, which has solid information about lodging and restaurants as well.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on February 13, 2009 7:40 AM

In our interview on Friday, one of the questions I asked Joe Stiglitz was: if it's so obvious that all this Tarp 2/Bailout stuff is a bad idea and not going to work, why do we keep coming back to it?

Here's his answer ...

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 13, 2009 6:52 AM

So you know how every once in a while, I toss off some nonchalant comment, like "I wish I had Tetris fabric," or "someone should really make a shirtdress out of this"?

Those are actually SEEKRIT CODED MESSAGES. If you hear them and feel compelled to comply, DO NOT BE ALARMED. It is all PART OF THE PLAN.

Awesome Jenny at Chronically Uncool heard the first coded message, and commissioned a fantastic Tetris-style fabric design from MissBlackPepper on Etsy, to print at Spoonflower. What's better than that, you say? She's making it available to us to use, too! I'm hosting the file for her; you can download it here (ZIP). I can't *wait* to get mine, I'm ordering from Spoonflower today!

Jenny is releasing her Tetris-style fabric design file under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. If you get a copy of the file, you are free to use, share, and remix the design for your own non-commercial projects. If you make a new design derived from this design, please attribute the original design to Jenny. (When Jenny commissioned MissBlackPepper to create the custom design, she purchased the rights to the resulting design from her.) Your derivative work should be released under a similar Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike license.

Next up in the Parade of Awesome is Nancy, who heard my not-all-that-subliminal instruction to make a ruler shirtdress out of this fabric. And here it is!




Isn't that great? You can read all about it on her blog. Nancy actually used *babysitting time* to get this done. Now THAT is devotion to the cause ...

Now I just have to figure out which of my immediate and pressing desires I should issue a call for. Prepare yourselves to receive instructions!

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on February 13, 2009 4:58 AM

The best lines from Star Wars that are improved by replacing a word with "pants".

I find your lack of pants disturbing.
Chewie and me got into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
In his pants you will find a new definition of pain and suffering.
Han'll have those pants down - we've gotta give him more time!
I have altered the pants, pray that I don't alter them further.

Tags: starwars lists bestof

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 13, 2009 4:02 AM

'my money, my currency' by hanna von goeler

it is said that recession provokes artists, designers
and alike to create some of their best work but for some
people money is the constant source of question
regardless of the economic climate.

money is many different things at the same time.
it's a work of art, a medium of exchange, a representation
of value, one, which most people take for granted.
everybody has their own answers when it comes to
money yet we think that it is more generative and
engaging to think about values and doubt.
it is a balancing force.

money creates a mood of euphoria.
money is one of the major constituents in determining
what our lives feel like, what our typical day feels like.
money also represents our society. it's everywhere
but money is just an idea - an abstract measurement.


'my money, my currency' by hanna von goeler

this is worth...?
it's rather like the chicken / egg question, there are
phrases that we appropriate, and phrases that
appropriate us. money is paper, money is metal but in
and of itself, it is absolutely worthless. once upon a time,
money was a little bit more solid an english pound was
just that, a pound of english sterling, whilst a dollar
was a gold coin. but today money is virtual.

the inequities of money. money is dirty. money kills.
it is usually a symbol of power or love, given or withheld.

making money. money seems to go nowhere,
the objective present at money seems missing.

some artists have x-ray eyes and can see through
all of that cloddish substance, which prevents us from
having a clear perception of its 'physical' reality -
free from the general claims of 'economic idealism'.
while others prefer to enhance the surface of banknotes
to cast light over its affects and how it might be perceived.



'my money, my currency' by hanna von goeler


'my money, my currency' by hanna von goeler


'my money, my currency' by hanna von goeler

'my money, my currency' by hanna von goeler
the interstitial quality of money as it travels from
person to person is the point of departure for
hanna von goeler's 'my money, my currency'.
in this this ongoing project the artist chronicles
her struggle and relationship with money.
exploring the ethical, political and aesthetic
questions that surround notions of currency.
the title of the project partially references warhol
and walter benjamin with the phrase 'my money'
but this body of work is not entirely about the
reproduction of money. rather it is about the concept
of currency what it is and who has it.

for the artist currency implies a general acceptance
prevalence and trend. currency is about the exchange
of something whether that be ideas, ethics, culture etc.

''my currency is painting and drawing, my mind, ideas
and spirit. money is what is there, currency is what
I've added. drawing and painting money makes us
notice its reproductive quality, as well as providing
a textured way of various roles the object plays.'

'painting on money also gives me some sense of
power to determine - rather than be controlled by
money's function within society. this relates to the
concept of agency; it explores the extent of to which
we have the power to define rather than be defined
by the currencies in our culture.' HVG

to date von goeler has created more than five hundred
one dollar artworks.

http://www.hannavongoeler.com


mad art by j.s.g. boggs


mad art by j.s.g. boggs

mad art by j.s.g. boggs
the american artist j.s.g. boggs refuses to sell his art,
instead he buys things with it. since 1984 he has made
'mad art', which resembles currency. he doesn't try to
pass it off as actual bills, but instead tries to convince
the seller of the piece's intrinsic worth. due to the
apparent similarities between official currency and
bogg's creations the american secret service often
seizes his work. there have been several trials brought
against him and he was repeatedly arrested for
counterfeiting both in the US and abroad.

'once I was an abstract painter, and I wanted to paint
something real, so I started painting numbers. then I
realized that numbers are not real they are total
abstractions. money is also an abstraction; the
transaction makes it real. for example using a
boggs bill to buy a hamburger and receive
in change, in other words what do you think it's
worth? and then the discussion ensues.'

'my money looks completely different to 'real' money
it is printed on one side and not on two. some are orange,
some are red, some are green and some are yellow.
they have my thumbprint on the back, they have my name
on them - its unmistakably my work. no one would ever
say that it was printed by the government or whoever,
it's a work of art about money'
j.s.g. boggs


'ten thousand cents' digital artwork by takashi kawashima and aaron koblin


detail of the 'ten thousand cents' digital artwork

ten thousand cents digital artwork
by takashi kawashima and aaron koblin
'ten thousand cents' is a digital artwork that creates a
representation of a 0 USD bill. the people behind the
project, takashi kawashima and his partner aaron koblin,
divided a 0 USD bank note into 10,000 sections.
next they recruited participants using amazon's
'mechanical turk', to reproduce one of the sections each,
using a custom drawing tool, each participant was
paid 1 cent. after five months of waiting, kawashima
and koblin received all their digital reproductions.

the finished work is presented as a video piece with
all 10,000 parts being drawn simultaneously.
the project explores the circumstances we live in,
a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets,
'crowdsourcing,' 'virtual economies,' and digital reproduction.

http://www.tenthousandcents.com



'transparent/ x-ray coins' by an unknown artist


'transparent/ x-ray coins' by an unknown artist


'transparent/ x-ray coins' by an unknown artist

transparent/ x-ray coins by an unknown artist
each coin is made from clear plastic which seals
an x-ray inside. the pieces feature the figure-heads
and tyrants behind human atrocities, 'evil' organizations
and world changing events in history: hitler, stalin,
osama bin laden, judas, noreaga and 'god' are included.

the value of the coins is relative to the cost each
person had on human life and the suffering they caused.
for example hitler's is valued at 100 with noreaga
and bin laden worth 50, the klu klux klan is worth 5
and the lowest denomination 1 is god. the text reads:
'money seriously damages your health'.

the other side of the coin shows a graphic representation
of the persons legacy- for example bin laden's
coin depicts the twin towers with noreagas' showing
narcotics and firearms. along with this the text reads:
'let a god forgive them' and 'money kills twice'.


money furniture by johnny swing


money furniture by johnny swing

money furniture by johnny swing
vermont based designer johnny swing's nickel couch'
uses 7,000 nickels welded together with 35,000 welds.
the couch is supported with a metal rod base that is
extremely re-enforced. other pieces in the coin series
include an easy chair, side chair and a bowl.
swing also creates other pieces of furniture and
sculptural works. read more


'currenkey' usb flash drive by 5.5 designers for lacie.


'currenkey' usb flash drive by 5.5 designers for lacie.

'currenkey' usb flash drive by 5.5 designers for lacie
'currenkey' is a usb flash drive in the shape of a coin.
indicated on the coin's face is the drive's storage capacity.
the bronze edition offering 4GB of memory and the silver
having a capacity of 8GB. 'currenkey' is meant to be a
reflection on the value which we grant our data and the
price we pay in order to store it safely in the IT capital.
read more



advertising campaign fischer portugal, lisbon for 'económico'
business newspaper the tiny slogan read's 'and it all ends in money'.





there are close to 200 countries in the world and almost
as many recognized currencies in use. each one of these
currencies is highly symbolic, tells stories and is a graphical
representation for entire countries and regions of the world.
as such its design is of great importance. in this article we
look at how money developed, how it is made today and
some of the design considerations.


a collection of coins and banknotes from all over the world (photo via flickr)

history
the sumerians and the babylonians were among the first
to develop the practice of trading currency, however
bartering valuable goods in exchange for others has
existed even longer. the earliest example of goods
trading dates back over 100,000 years in swaziland,
where red ochre was exchanged. other currency
stand-ins included barley, precious metals like gold
and silver as well as foods and spirits.


100 florin from aruba issued in 2003 (via banknoteworld)


the various coinage of the kurdish dinar, krudistan (via world coin gallery)

coinage
because bartering wasn’t standardized, it was quite complicated.
standardized coinage soon took over allowing people to exchange
goods for money instead of other goods. gold and silver blocks
were among the first units of coinage. coinage was later reduced
in size, more closely resembling what we know as coins today.
the touchstone was a key driver of this new coin economy, as it
allowed users to determine the value of the coins by rubbing them
on the stone. these primitive coins were made from metals and were
crafted with designs to represent their origin. their value was in direct
proportion to their weight. by pre-weighing coins and
having them minted by governments, touchstones
became unnecessary and users relied on the graphic
design to calculate value.


500 ngultrum from bhutan issued in 2006 (via banknoteworld)

paper money
paper money followed a similar trajectory as coinage.
warehouses storing goods for people issued receipts
signifying the rights to the stored goods. people would
trade these receipts, transferring the goods through
the form of paper. this system slowly evolved and
transformed into representative currency. the term
representative currency is used to describe this type of
money because paper money didn’t have intrinsic value
like precious coins, thus paper money only represented
value but didn’t hold it. this represented a major
psychological shift in the use of money. despite not
having intrinsic value, paper money was backed up
with valuable goods like gold.


the various coinage of the japanese yen, japan (via world coin gallery)




1 real from brazil issued in 2003 (via banknoteworld)

banknotes to today
while the first examples of representational money were
from warehouses, goldsmiths and banks also developed
similar systems that lead to the development of banknotes.
this form of money was issued by banks and could be converted
into an equal value of gold or silver. however this form of currency
relied on the banks themselves. this system had some faults and thus
slowly evolved into fiat money, which is issued by governments
and isn’t backed up by anything. this is the system
currently used by all of the major currencies in the
world today.


the various coinage of the egyptian pound, egypt (via world coin gallery)


the various coinage of the hong kong dollar (via world coin gallery)

currency design
throughout its many evolutions, money has been
designed using the latest technologies, whether they
be metal forming techniques for coins or printing methods
for paper banknotes. designers and artists have played
a key role in giving form to currency since its inception.
currency design is a small industry and most practitioners
are either graphic designers or highly specialized
craftspeople who are well trained in the process of
making money.


1,000 francs from the central african republic issued in 1990 (via banknoteworld)

manufacturing
paper banknotes and metal coins have very different
manufacturing processes that are both highly intricate
and become more advanced with every issue.
banknotes are primarily printed on special paper
commonly made with cotton fibres using a process
known as intaglio. this printing process was originally
developed in the 15th century and is used on most
currencies in the world. to print a banknote using intaglio,
the reverse image is incised onto a metal plate, which is
usually made of zinc or copper. ink is applied to the plate
and then the excess is wiped off leaving ink in the
negative form. the paper is laid on top and compressed
against the plate. the ink from the negative space has
been transferred to the paper and the resulting image
reveals the positive. this process is then repeated if
there are more than a single colour involved.

while intaglio is the most common currency printing
process, new polymer based banknotes have begun
to gain traction in some countries, allowing a variety of
other printing alternatives. polymer banknotes are more durable
than their paper counterparts and can be printed
using intaglio, offset printing, silkscreening or letterpress.
as of 2008, only six countries have switched their
currency to all polymer banknotes while a number of
others are testing the new material.

coins on the other hand are made from a variety of
metals and alloys with the most common being zinc,
copper and nickel. these metals are rolled out and turned
into large metal sheets that are then pressed to remove
the blank coins. these blank coins are softened by
annealing them in a furnace and then cleaned. once clean,
the coins are put through the edge-rolling process that
applies the pattern on the edge of the coin. once rolled,
the coins move onto the coinage presses that emboss
the front and back designs into the coins using incised
plates similar to those used to print banknotes.


commemorative five euro coin for dutch architecture by stani michiels (via infoaesthetics)

form
money has come in many shapes and sizes over its long history,
however almost all contemporary currency uses
a similar format and overall design. the size of most
banknotes and coins are very similar. banknotes are
primarily printed in a landscape format on both sides
using a single colour or a combination of a few. they are
mostly made with a 2:1 ratio of length to height and
measure on average 15cm long. each bill is printed
with is country of origin, value and date of issue.
depending on the design and country, the bill may also
show other information. they are commonly issued in
a number of higher value denominations, which are
differentiated by colour, shape and pattern or design.
banknotes also feature a number of security features
like hologram stickers or special colour changing inks.

coinages of different currencies also share many
similarities. coins are typically very small with the biggest
being no more than a few centimetres in diameter.
some are a single colour ,while others combine two or
more pieces to create more intricate patterns and
designs. coins are issued in a number of smaller denominations
and are differentiated by size, shape,texture and their visual design.
their embossed patterns depict images and text and in most cases
can be differentiated by the visually impaired.



500 kronur from the faeroe islands issued in 2004 (via banknoteworld)


the various coinage of the malaysian ringgit, malaysia (via world coin gallery)


10 bolivares from venezuela issued in 2007 (via banknoteworld)

subjects
as mentioned in the form of money, most coins and
banknotes features a variety of subjects in addition to
the country of origin, value and date of issue.
although every currency is different, there are a number
of common subjects that are depicted on money.
portraits of politicians, members of royalty and cultural
figures are perhaps the most iconic and common subject
matter depicted on money. animals, plants, buildings,
landmarks and landscapes are some of the other
examples. cultural scenes and themes are popular
images in contemporary currency.

joining these images and objects are different designs
and patterns that serve to accent the main focus and
protect it from counterfeiting. these patterns are often
inspired by motifs found in the currency’s culture of origin
or based on historical patterns taken from calligraphy
or art.


‘the royal shield of arms' new UK coinage by matthew dent (more info)

security
security has always been a key part of currency and
money design. with new technology and printing
techniques, today’s banknotes and coins are the most
sophisticated ever produced. because coins are
normally used for small denominations, less priority is
given to them in terms of security. banknotes, on the
other hand, are carefully protected especially the most
common denominations.

the paper used is one of the primary anti-counterfeiting
measures. most money is printed using a heavy paper
made with fibres that can be cotton, linen or specialty
colour fibres. polymer bills offer a more durable solution
and can be made with small transparencies that are
hard to counterfeit. the printing process also adds
security, for one the intaglio process is very difficult
to reproduce. patterns that are difficult to reproduce are
also used to add security, as are watermarks,
fluorescent dyes and micro printing. the ink itself is also
another area of printing security. in additional to standard
inks, intaglio printing can be done using colour changing
inks, magnetic inks and thermochromatic ink. holograms
that are applied to bills can also help protect them and
are a specialized material hard to copy. while these
security features do not guarantee protection
individually, combining them in intricate ways keeps
counterfeiters at bay.


25 gulden from suriname issued in 2000 (via bank-note)


the various coinage of the danish krone, denmark (via world coin gallery)

links

currencies of the world
http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/currency_table.html

coins of the world
http://worldcoingallery.com/countries/circ_sets/index.htm

banknotes of the world
http://www.banknotes.com/images.htm

strange currencies
http://www.neatorama.com/strange-currencies

more money artwork
http://www.pennylicious.com

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Designboom - Weblog, on February 13, 2009 3:40 AM

By now you’ve probably seen Joaquin Phoenix nodding through his Letterman appearance. I thought it might be fun to revisit some of the other awkward Letterman moments.

• Farrah Fawcett, 1997: There are space cadets and there are space cadets. (more here).
• Harvey Pekar, 1988: Telling Letterman that he was a shill for GE (who owns 80% of NBC) and was currently under fire for anti-union activity.
• Harmony Korine, 1995: Korine looks like a 13 year old dressed up for Sunday school here (he was 22 at the time).
• Crispin Glover, 1987: My all time favorite.

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on February 13, 2009 3:32 AM

"These notes are part of the UW Experimental College course on Introductory C Programming. They are based on notes prepared (beginning in Spring, 1995) to supplement the book The C Programming Language, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, or K&R as the book and its authors are affectionately known. These notes are now (as of Winter, 1995-6) intended to be stand-alone, although the sections are still cross-referenced to those of K&R, for the reader who wants to pursue a more in-depth exposition."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 12, 2009 10:06 PM

I love Powell's on so many levels.  In addition to the stores themselves and their incredible stock of new and used books, I love their blog and their monthly newsletter, which are both chock full of information without feeling like they duplicate each other.  In the newsletter I received yesterday, though, I came across a great new contest.  Win 24 signed books by people like David Sedaris, Lauren Groff, Chuck Palahniuk, Chip Kidd, Jhumpa Lahiri, Annie Leibovitz, Tobias Wolff, Stephanie Meier and more.  Obviously, that's a great offer, but what was most intriguing to me was that it was part of this Powell's "Specials" section, which I never heard of.  Sign up for the Specials newsletter and you'll get online-only offers, such as "discounts, rebates, signed editions and more!"

I signed up for the newsletter when I entered the contest to win the 24 books, but I didn't expect much - maybe an offer to save 10% when you shop in Tuesdays between 10pm-11pm or something.  But the next day (today) I got an offer to take $5 off any order I placed through Valentine's Day.  I was mulling over my options (I've been patiently, diligently looking for a used copy of The Monsters of Templeton for ages now) when it came to me in a flash: Indiespensable! 

Indiespensable is a subscription service that offers "signed first editions... inventive, original sets... exclusive printings" of new books, mostly by independent publishers, every six weeks. I've been very curious about it, but reluctant to pony up the $39.95 for something so unknown.  (It's rare that I ever by any book new, let alone in hardcover, which would be about $15 cheaper than one book in the Indiespensable series.)  But when I clicked on the Indiespensable link, I saw the last package was for a book called Tinkers by Paul Harding.  I've never heard of the book or the author, but Marilynne Robinson, who wrote Gilead (which may well be in my top 10, if not top 5), raved "Tinkers is truly remarkable.... It confers on the reader the best privilege fiction can afford, the illusion of ghostly proximity to other human souls."  I took that as a sign.

So I made the leap and used my $5 discount to try the next Indiespensable item.  I'm still a little on the fence about spending so much money on one unknown item every six weeks - $40 at Powell's can easily buy about 4-6 used books - but it'll be fun to give it a try.  I'll report back when I get the first installment.

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on February 12, 2009 7:38 PM

I'm pretty much sleepwalking through this this week and blasters are easy posts. Here's an extra-easy one since I've already reviewed the set. The American Heritage blaster has 7 packs and one 'half-pack' of four cards as a bonus. I'm not sure why Topps didn't just throw in another pack, but it's still cheaper than individual packs and there is no danger of the pack scratcher striking. Here's what I got:

Bonus Pack:
55 Barbara Rose Johns
29 Nathanael Greene
42 Orville & Wilbur Wright
124 Man Walks on the Moon

I'm not sure why Lewis and Clark got their own cards but Orville & Wilbur had to share. The Event cards can be boring, but this moonwalk card is one of my favorites in the set so far.

Pack 1:
39 Peyton Randolph
30 George Meade
21 John Paul Jones
116 Mount Rushmore is Completed
AP26 Theodore Roosevelt 1952 Topps
97 John Deere
8 Henry David Thoreau
15 Zebulon Pike

You know how on my Mayo blaster, I knew things would go badly after the first pack? Well this was the opposite. This pack was so awesome I had to just scan the whole thing. I like all the Revolutionary War cards just for the '62 design. General Meade and his beard defeated Lee at Gettysburg and probably saved the Union in doing so. John Paul Jones was a colossal pain in the English Navy's ass during the Revolution and also was a pretty good bassist. John Deere is the tractor dude. Well, he actually invented a better plow but his name is now all over green tractors. Thoreau's a nice philosopher and all, but he had an EPIC neckbeard. Zebulon is a perfect name for an explorer, General or Alien Warlord. Teddy makes the box though. I honestly didn't care what else I got, because I got the case hit with the '52 Bull Moose. Rushmore was an extra TR bonus. EXTRA COOL: I didn't get one card I already had in the pack. Not one.

Pack 2:
13 Robert Peary
5 Nathaniel Hawthorne
60 Elizabeth Jennings Graham
107 The Louisiana Purchase
131 Barack Obama SP
29 Nathanael Greene
42 Orville & Wilbur Wright
69 Thomas Nast

Another pretty nice pack here, headlined by an Obama short print. The bonus pack quickly becomes the doubles pack though and Greene and the Wrights make a second appearance. This is an amazing pack for mustaches. Hawthorne's walrus 'stache is thick and bold and doesn't even medal. Orville Wright's classic handlebar is good for the bronze. Thomas Nast is the godfather of cartooning and sports a killer goatee to go along with his copstashe. The undisputed champion has to be Robert Peary's monster with a two foot wingspan. Those handlebars belong on a Harley.

Pack 3:
73 Robert Kennedy
77 Charles Sumner
93 John Paul Getty
118 V-E Day
109 The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
58 W.E.B. Du Bois
80 Henry Cabot Lodge
90 Clara Bow

I didn't know RFK was in this set... I just realized that if Topps wanted to, they could make this a yearly cash cow like their baseball Heritage brand. There's no limit to subjects. When I was in 6th grade everyone in our class had to pick a civil rights leader to do a report on for Black History Month. Half the Class wanted MLK, the other half wanted Malcom X. We ended up picking names out of a hat and I got W.E.B. Du Bois. The founder of the NAACP turned out to be a pretty interesting dude. He sure knows how to wear a 'stache! The V-E day card is the first one where the picture had me thinking WTF. It's a picture of a crowd in London with Churchill smoking a stogie and giving the V sign. Unfortunately the picture was taken from behind Winston. I've also just realized that if I want to reference a photo on a card but don't want to scan it, I can just link to the picture on Wikipedia. No fooling, half the pictures from this set are straight from Wikipedia.

Pack 4:
99 Frank Woolworth
38 Patrick Henry
28 David Farragut
104 The Constitution is Ratified
121 Hawaii becomes the 50th State
57 Cesar Chavez
49 Clarence Birdseye
46 Philo Farnsworth

It had to happen sooner or later, but I finally got my first pack of nothing but doubles. But good news, everyone! I got Philo Farnsworth!

Pack 5:
22 Davy Crockett
14 Daniel Boone
6 Emily Dickinson
113 Completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad
136 John McCain SP
37 Crispus Attucks
23 George Marshall
12 William Clark

Wow, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett back to back in the pack! Man how can I choose between them to scan for the post. The heck with it, here's Emily Dickinson instead. I was going to pull a "Who was Crispus Attucks" trivia question on ya, but another blogger beat me to it. John McCain sure does look happy here!

Pack 6:
35 John Hancock
63 Frederic Remington
74 Daniel Webster
105 The Treaty of Paris
C56 Susan B. Anthony Chrome #128/1776
2 Harriet Beecher Stowe
19 Amelia Earhart
25 Winfield Scott
Checklist 3 of 3

The ladies are well represented in this pack, led by a Chrome Susan B. Chromes drop 1:7 packs so expect to see one per blaster. I got a checklist card, but I still don't have the first one with all the actual cards in the set. I know what all the cut sigs are in the set though, woo-hoo. The Treaty of Paris card is cool for the signatures down at the bottom. John Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Just you wait, Razor will buy that sucker up and slice and dice it one of these days. Treaty Used sealing wax card, anyone?

Pack 7:
85 Buster Keaton
11 Meriweather Lewis
17 John Wesley Powell
122 First Televised Presidential Debate
AP14 Franklin Pierce 1952 Topps
36 Samuel Adams
44 Alexander Graham Bell
56 Susan B. Anthony

Here's the downside of a set of American Presidents in every dang set. For every cool president like Teddy Roosevelt, there are 2 dogs like Franklin Pierce. He was one of the most ineffective and tragic presidents ever. His Presidency started two months after he watched his only surviving son get crushed to death in a railway accident. His wishy washy stand on slavery won him the southern states needed to get elected, and his subsequent support of the Kansas-Nebraska act split the nation. A chief adviser and Secretary of War was Jefferson Davis. Yes, that Jefferson Davis. He completely alienated northerners and did not win his party's nomination in 1856. He left the Presidency despised and it only got worse from there. He fell into alcoholism and eventually died of cirrhosis of the liver. He ran over an old lady while driveing a carriage drunk. He actually supported the Confederacy and was a correspondent with Jefferson Davis. He was so hated by everyone that when Lincoln was assassinated, he tried to just keep his mouth shut and lie low. Instead an angry mob protested outside his house because he didn't condemn the act. This was a terrible president. He was responsible for the Gadsden purchase however, so all you Tuscon residents do owe him a bit of gratitude.

Ok, here's the final totals.

Base Cards - 53/125 (42.4%)
Short prints - 2/25 ( 8%)
doubles - 2
Damaged cards - 1 (RFK has a bump on the bottom of the card)

Chrome (1:7) - 1 Susan B. Anthony
'52 Topps Presidents (1:6) - 2 Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Pierce
Celebrities (1:12) - 0
Relics, Autos, Patches, Icons, Legends - 0

If you like American Heritage, one blaster will knock out a very big chunk the set. You can also expect a couple of short prints and a Chrome in the box. You'll also probably find a couple of inserts in there too. It's a pretty fun rip for twenty bucks if you're a history buff.

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on February 12, 2009 5:05 PM

Shared by Adam Rice
possibly apocryphal

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

--Art & Fear

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modcult, on February 12, 2009 4:25 PM

Soviet Army dance ensemble + Run DMC = the invention of breakdancing in the mid-1900s.

Here's the same thing mixed with Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice. Reminds me of the previously featured but still awesome video of Al Minns and Leon James doing the Charleston to Daft Punk. Here are two more videos that track the origins and breakdancing and hip-hop dancing in a slightly more formal manner: one, two.

Tags: dance video remix

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 12, 2009 1:55 PM

According to our Matt Cooper, Gregg called New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch (D) a few hours ahead of releasing his withdrawal statement to alert him. But the White House appeared blindsided by the Gregg withdrawal, according to various reports, so much so that some officials were first learning of the news from reporters.

A Democratic Hill staffer writes in:

It's hard not to think that Gregg's withdrawal, with the grumbling about the census and the stimulus, was not timed to cause the most damage possible to the Obama administration. Releasing the statement just as Obama took the stage in Peoria was clearly designed to undermine the President's event. The fact he scheduled a presser only seems to confirm it. The classy exit would have been to wait til tomorrow afternoon to quietly bow out. Basically Gregg decided not just to politely decline, but rather to blow shit up and burn the bridge behind him. Do not think this portends good things for the wider political climate.

If the larger GOP strategy can be describe as putting all of their chips on "FAIL", this has to be seen as a significant addition to that pile, no?

Late Update: For his part, Gregg said at a press conference just now that he gave the White House "fair warning" of his withdrawal.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on February 12, 2009 12:31 PM

The wonderful free bikes program started 18 months ago in Paris has run into some trouble.

Over half the original fleet of 15,000 specially made bicycles have disappeared, presumed stolen. They have been used 42 million times since their introduction but vandalism and theft are taking their toll. The company which runs the scheme, JCDecaux, says it can no longer afford to operate the city-wide network.

Reports have some of the stolen bikes showing up as far away as Eastern Europe and North Africa.

Tags: paris free

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 12, 2009 12:29 PM

This week's gem from Lostpedia, a bon mot re. Christian: "Plenty of gifted doctors become alcoholics having never lived on a magical island."

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on February 12, 2009 12:17 PM

So it's officially here.

The first show of the week was, as expected, a presentation. Project Runway runner-up Jillian Lewis showed her Fall 09 collection on the windiest street in Chelsea this afternoon.

"I live in Long Island City," she said. "The collection's totally based off of the graffiti building, do you know it?"

I live in Greenpoint - the graffiti building's the prettiest thing around.

"They're supposed to be really urban, kind of grungy," she said of the clothes. Urban maybe, but there was nothing grungy about the long, detailed floral dress I fell in love with, or the chunky, perfectly fitted sweater dress that I want to wear tomorrow but can't have for months.

Meanwhile, Jillian has to be the first PR alum with Vogue at her show, right?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on February 12, 2009 11:23 AM

If the folks at jodi.org had a malicious bone in their bodies they really could have done something interesting with the clickjack exploit + twitter.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on February 12, 2009 9:36 AM

I received this set of The New Illustrated Library of Science and Invention for my birthday. Designed and produced by Erik Nitsche, the design, inside and out, is incredible. Assemble your own set here. *[Thank you Ace Jet 170 and Daniel Neville.]

Originally posted by Abby from HI + LOW, on February 12, 2009 9:22 AM

Following up on Joaquin Phoenix's bizarre appearance on David Letterman last night, I thought you might like to read an article from Movie Maker magazine written by James Gray who directed Phoenix in three films, including Two Lovers, the film Phoenix was supposed to be plugging on Letterman. Gray's earnest appraisal of Phoenix and his unique talent rings true. He concludes:

I wrote Two Lovers knowing that if Joaquin didn’t want to do it it would never get made. The role was created for him: A tormented soul, struggling, lost, lonely and, finally, beautiful and heartbreaking. Who else could do it? Who else would? Thankfully for me, he said yes, and the shoot was the happiest of the three. We developed a shorthand, but more often than not he was on his own—and he was liberated. The result is work that seems to my eyes eerily redolent of Montgomery Clift at his best. Forgive me, but I have trouble accepting this retirement thing. I need Joaquin’s moments of authentic heartbreak, of unfiltered emotion, of poetic humanity. Joaquin shares my passion for exploring the melancholy movements of life, the sad awareness of time’s ruthless march; and he far surpasses me in emotional intellect, always ready to recognize genuine tenderness and reject all artifice. He has embraced an elegant, higher truth. At the end of Two Lovers, Joaquin seemed simultaneously exhausted and bored. He’d left most of us in the dust long ago. Perhaps that’s why he’s done with acting: When you can do it all yourself and your genius has outgrown the mediocrity of others, why bother?

Gray's full article here

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on February 12, 2009 8:44 AM

Photo essay of how Japanese knives get made by hand.

Japanese kitchen knives cost more than a camera, they can't be washed in a machine, are subject to rusting and boy, they are so sharp that if you slip you'll lose a finger or two before you can say banzai. There is no doubt that these are the best knives in the world. Nothing comes close to them in terms of sharpness. With one of these knives, you could slice fish so thin you could read a whole chapter of La Physiologie du Gout through the slices. Earlier this month, I had the chance to see how knives are made in Japan like they have been for the last 200 years.

(via serious eats)

Tags: japan

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 12, 2009 8:08 AM

Did Sen. Collins leave Mainers out in the cold on home heating help?

On the other hand, mass transit seems to have gotten a bit more love in the final bill.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 12, 2009 7:46 AM

The House's original stimulus bill, as we've reported for several weeks, gave mass transit the short end of the stick in favor of $30 billion for highways with no requirement that repairs be prioritized over new road-building.

But according to a confidential summary of the final stimulus deal that we've just been passed (view it here), mass transit got some more attention in the end. Amtrak and high-speed rail programs got $9.3 billion, an increase of about $6 billion from the Senate's version of the stimulus.

Still, environmentally sustainable transportation didn't completely win the day. A $5.5 billion transit-modernizing grant program eagerly anticipated by environmental advocates, which senators at first wanted to open up to highways, was removed entirely from the final stimulus deal.

Congress did agree on $8.4 billion for general public transportation grants, however. Vice President Biden (D-Amtrak), if you had any role in this: thanks.

Late Update: N.B. Until legislative language is formally filed on the bill today, there's always the possibility that these numbers could change. What we're bringing you are the freshest details.

Originally posted by Elana Schor from TPM Election Central, on February 12, 2009 7:22 AM

Thanks to some timely reader tips, we're getting some of the details on what's in and what's out of the final version of the stimulus bill. Elana Schor reports here and here and here.

Late Update: It never hurts to repeat that until the final i is dotted and t crossed and the bill is filed of record that things are subject to change. But things are pretty far along at this stage, down to the brass tacks.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on February 12, 2009 7:21 AM

[Kathryn Yu]

Midwood: The Ditmas Park blog reports that famed pizza joint Di Fara is reopening for business today. It unexpectedly closed for a few weeks after NYC's most famous pizzaiolo broke his kneecap in a car accident: "The outgoing message on the voicemail of the great, currently shuttered Di Fara Pizza on Avenue J says it will reopen at noon -- today! So check it out, and let us know if it's open. (And pick us up a slice...)." A call to the restaurant 15 minutes past the supposed opening still yielded the same message, but perhaps they're just running late.
· DiFara Reopening Today? [DPB]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on February 12, 2009 7:20 AM

It appears that the government is beginning to crack down on products named after President Obama. After reading a Facebook message, Brownstoner reports Sixpoint Craft Ales were forced to shut down their "Hop Obama" line by the feds. Owner Shane Welch confirms to us that a government representative revoked his license to brew the beer and is monitoring his production and inventory (but makes it clear there were no guns or teargas involved). It's unclear to us why they didn't just force him to change the name and why the Dept. of Homeland Security would get involved (see below). Nevertheless here's an excerpt of the Facebook message Shane sent out to his friends this morning:

"Sixpoint was raided by the Feds and they put the kabosh on our Hop Obama. Naturally, I was infuriated by the censorship so I decided to do what I've done from the start - turn it into a story and allow the company to serve as a platform for delivering the story. However, this was quickly squashed by the Feds as well. Apparently, they did not want us making the beer NOR did they want me to create a story out of it.

Then, the plot thickens....The Department of Homeland Security gets involved. We recently received an official cease and desist letter from them claiming we must take immediate acts to shut down and exterminate our production, dissemination, and distribution of this brand or the Federal government will enact punitive fines and/or seize control of our brewery.

Don't worry though, the Hop Obama will live on, and be stronger than it ever was. We have a plan.... Kind of like Obi-wan Kenobi when he was struck down by Vader and came back as the guiding voice for Luke Skywalker. There will be a new reincarnation of the beer, along with many others."

· The Feds Raid Sixpoint Over 'Hop Obama' Beer. Say What? [Brownstoner]
· Two is A Trend: Welcome Brooklyn's Beer Pages [~E~]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on February 12, 2009 7:06 AM

A computer-generated artists impression released by the European Space Agency depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth.

The WSJ ran this along side their story about the collision of a defunct Russian military satellite with an Iridium satellite. (I first mistyped that as “collusion”. That would be a lot scarier.)

Business idea for the near future: contract to governments and aerospace companies to cheaply deorbit problematic chunks of space junk. I have no idea how to do this (ground-based laser?). Another thing you might be able to do, if you had the satellite deathray, is track all the debris over a threshold size, and sell subscription policies to aerospace companies that say you’ll blast whatever is necessary to keep their orbits clear. Kind of like a space dredger or plowing company. The Street loves recurring revenue.

UPDATE: I bet you you could get DARPA funding to develop the technology from the whiteboard stage if you pitched it as a space supremacy program, then you could also diversify out of aerospace with defense contracts.

(via

wsj

)

Originally posted by jeb from Modcult, on February 12, 2009 6:46 AM

Kevin Kelly has written a great post called Amish Hackers, which addresses the myth that the Amish don't use technology. As Kelly illustrates, the Amish use electricity, cell phones, cars and even the internet but their adoption of technology is not quick, they rent rather than buy (e.g. taking taxis rather than owning cars), and their default stance with any new gadget is to test first to see if it fits with their views.

One Amish-man told me that the problem with phones, pagers, and PDAs (yes he knew about them) was that "you got messages rather than conversations." That's about as an accurate summation of our times as any. Henry, his long white beard contrasting with his young bright eyes told me, "If I had a TV, I'd watch it." What could be simpler?

(via waxy)

Tags: kevinkelly amish religion

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 12, 2009 4:36 AM

I've been meaning to write down some thoughts on my trip to Rome since I got back over a month ago, but time has been crunched and re-crunched with other commitments. So, the basic story is that Favianna and I (and Dara) got to head off to Rome for a week back in mid-December to have a Reproduce & Revolt book release and a print show at the House of Love & Dissent in Rome. And it was awesome. Marco, Domizia, Luca, Pado and everyone at the gallery were awesome. Love & Dissent is in the neighborhood of Monti, which is pretty tourist-y because it is literally down the street from the Coliseum.

There's not too much to say about the show itself, we hung it, it opened, and people seemed really into it! Upstairs we put a mix of our prints, images from Reproduce & Revolt, and in the basement I installed a ton of Celebrate People's History posters. I'm just going to let the photos speak for themselves (all show install photos by Favi):

Marco put us all up in his apartment, which was amazing. Right in the center of old Rome, by Campo dei Fiori. We were able to walk to the gallery, as well as almost all the historical monuments, like the Pantheon, Coliseum, Vatican....Rarely does a street go more than a block without twisting and turning, so your field of vision is always blocked by the walls of buildings at crazy angles. It was amazing wandering through this maze of buildings, most of them older than any of the built infrastructure in the US.

We also got to check out the Vatican, and the Sistine Chapel. What a weird scene that place is! In order to get to the Chapel, you have to walk through 45 minutes (and seemingly miles) of religious artifacts, hundreds of years old wall tapestries, and thousands of marble statues of various dudes. Pretty soon it all started to look alike, there is just so much stuff I couldn't possibly absorb it all, and without a really strong background in the Bible, I had no idea what most of it was referencing. The sheer volume of stuff was much more impressive than any one object, and how the stuff was literally piled on top of more stuff. Most of this was pre-museum days, so there is no conception of the white box, with each piece of art autonomous from the next. I mean PaperRad has nothing on the Vatican for insane eyeball overload! There's also a ton of contemporary art, including a bunch of great US paintings from the 1920s and 30s, Ben Shaun, Jacob Lawrence, and other social realists. The Jacob Lawrence painting was "The Carpenters," which is literally what it is, a painting of a couple Black men working with wood, and I couldn't help but think that this was some sort of Vatican inside-joke. The art buyer talking to the Pope: "They're carpenters, like Jesus, get it?" "HaHaHa!!" Around the cool stuff are hundreds of other religious themed paintings and sculptures, some of the artists I recognized, others I didn't. 99% percent of the people visiting just breezed by all this work, impatient to get to the money shot, the Chapel itself. I wonder how many twentieth century Catholic artists felt like they had finally "arrived" by having their work in the Vatican, only to have it ignored by the crowds rushing to crane their necks at the most famous ceiling in the world?

The Sistine Chapel itself is insane, taking "Baroque" to the next level. I've always seen the old God-Adam finger pointing in isolation, I never realized that's just one 5 foot by 5 foot square in a 80 foot by 60 foot ceiling! Next to Adam and God are 30 other little scenes, surrounded by dozens of Bible figures, with a thousand angels on top for good measure. It's like one of those terrible fantasy movies where Hell breaks out on Earth, but instead it's a giant explosion of Renaissance Heaven. I mean really, how many angels riding on naked guy's shoulders can you actually look at?

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on February 12, 2009 3:28 AM

I'm trying to take in as much LA as I can before I head up to the bay. I made it over to the Crewest Gallery the other day to check out The Sharpie Show. Crewest is a real nice gallery and graffiti "boutique" in downtown LA. The show is packed with some talented sketches while the Mike Giant pieces had the largest impression on me.

The Sharpie Show, an exhibition curated by renown graffiti artist Man One, featuring original pieces created using Sharpies by some of the best known graffiti artists in the country (and beyond). Aside from graffiti artists, work by tattoo artists and known illustrators; Lalo Alcaraz and Overton Loyd will be on display. From stylized hand signatures, to throw ups, piecebooks, stickers, and any other possible object that can be marked upon, this exhibit will demonstrate the level of creativity that can be achieved between an artist and his/her most basic tool - The Sharpie.

The show will be on view until March 1st.
Visit the show at
Crewest
110 Winston St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Or check it out on the Crewest Flickr set

Originally posted by K C from Just Seeds: Blog, on February 12, 2009 3:08 AM

Mike from TapeMastersInc.net sent in the following video from his tour of Citi Field, from Feb. 11:

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on February 11, 2009 9:54 PM

Obama comments at Ford's Theater rededication ...

Michelle and I are so pleased to be here to renew and rededicate this hallowed space. We know that Ford's Theatre will remain a place where Lincoln's legacy thrives, where his love of the humanities and belief in the power of education have a home, and where his generosity of spirit are reflected in all the work that takes place.

It has been a fitting tribute to Abraham Lincoln that we've seen and heard from some of our most celebrated icons of stage and screen. Because Lincoln himself was a great admirer of the arts. It is said he could even quote portions of Hamlet and Macbeth by heart. And so, I somehow think this event captured an essential part of the man whose life we celebrate tonight.

As commemorations take place across this country on the bicentennial of our 16th President's birth, there will be reflections on all he was and all he did for this nation that he saved. But while there are any number of moments that reveal the exceptional nature of this singular figure, there is one in particular I'd like to share with you.

Not far from here stands our nation's capitol, a landmark familiar to us all but one that looked very different in Lincoln's time. For it remained unfinished until the end of the war. The laborers who built the dome came to work wondering whether each day would be their last; whether the metal they were using for its frame would be requisitioned for the war and melted down into bullets. But each day went by without any orders to halt construction - so they kept on working and kept on building.

When President Lincoln was finally told of all the metal being used there, his response was short and clear: that is as it should be. The American people needed to be reminded, he believed, that even in a time of war, the work would go on; that even when the nation itself was in doubt, its future was being secured; and that on that distant day, when the guns fell silent, a national capitol would stand, with a statue of freedom at its peak, as a symbol of unity in a land still mending its divisions.

It is this sense of unity that is so much a part of Lincoln's legacy. For despite all that divided us - north and south, black and white - he had an unyielding belief that we were, at heart, one nation, and one people. And because of Abraham Lincoln, and all who've carried on his work in the generations since, that is what we remain today. Thank you, and good night.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 11, 2009 3:32 PM

Shared by eve.batey
DAMNIT. All this time I've been hoping it was the same guy. Thanks for RUINING it, staff!

Leah Garchik writes in today's Chron that Joe D'Alessandro's staff at the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, where he is CEO, created a Joe D'Allesandro Wikipedia page for him for his bday.

Adds Garchik, "This not only was a nice ego booster; it also differentiated him from Warhol-era sex symbol Joe Dallesandro."

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Towse, on February 11, 2009 1:52 PM

Shared by eve.batey
Hence my status.

Michael Kinsley tried making readers pay for news. Didn't work!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Gawker: Valleywag, on February 11, 2009 1:51 PM

One of InnoDB’s features is that memory allocated for internal tables definitions is not limited and may grow indefinitely. You may not notice it if you have an usual application with say 100-1000 tables. But for hosting providers and for user oriented applications ( each user has dedicated database / table) it is disaster. For 100.000+ tables InnoDB is consuming gigabytes of memory, keeping definition in memory all time after table was once opened. Only way to cleanup memory is to drop table or restart mysqld - I can’t say this is good solution, so we made patch which allows to restrict memory dedicated for data dictionary.

Patch was made by request of our customer Vertical Response and released under GPL, so you can download it there http://mysqlperformanceblog.com/htdocs/files/patches/innodb_dict_size_limit_standalone.patch. Currently patch is on testing stage, but later will be included into our releases. To limit memory we introduce new variable innodb_dict_size_limit (in bytes).

Some internals: There is already implemented in InnoDB LRU-based algorithm to keep only recent table entries, but it was not used by reason that InnoDB has to know if table is used or not on MySQL level. We made it by checking MySQL table_cache. If table is placed in table_cache we consider it as used, if not - we can delete it from InnoDB data dictionary. So there is the trick - if you have big enough table_cache, memory consumed by data dictionary may exceed innodb_dict_size_limit, as we can’t delete any table entry from it.

To finalize this post small marketing message - if you faced bug or problem which exists for long time and is not going to be solved by MySQL / InnoDB - contact us regarding Custom MySQL Development.

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Entry posted by Vadim | No comment

Add to: | | | |

Originally posted by Vadim from MySQL Performance Blog, on February 11, 2009 1:24 PM

Republicans' first effort at working with Twitter doesn't pan out so well.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 11, 2009 1:10 PM

The Republican Party's embrace of technology, which many inside and outside the party see as essential to a political recovery, so far is working out like...well, it's not working out at all.

Yesterday the Virginia GOP came very close to taking control of the state Senate, nearly luring a Democratic Senator to switch parties and put them at a 20-20 tie, which would have been broken by the Republican Lt. Governor. Then Jeff Frederick, a state legislator and the party chairman, ruined it all by Twittering this:

Big news coming out of Senate: Apparently one dem is either switching or leaving the dem caucus. Negotiations for power sharing underway.

The Dems then read the message, quickly mobilized to talk the renegade out of it, and stopped the GOP coup before it could happen.

We usually don't cover state-level politics, but this is just too much. Really, Mr. Frederick, you don't live-blog about ongoing secret negotiations!

(Via the Not Larry Sabato blog)

Originally posted by Eric Kleefeld from TPM Election Central, on February 11, 2009 1:04 PM

Editor's note: On Wednesday afternoons, Paul Clarke (The Cocktail Chronicles) stops by with his weekly cocktail column. Today, rum.

"While it's hard for many rum drinkers to get too excited about mass-market spiced rums, the beauty of the situation is that spiced rum is so easy to make at home."

Captain Henry Morgan. Wikimedia Commons

Despite the fact that Henry Morgan was a notorious brigand—with all the vicious unpleasantness that comes along with the job—many rum drinkers find it hard to consider the spirit named after him as much more than a joke. As Eric Felten noted in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, the popular Captain Morgan’s Original Spiced Rum has typically been associated with imbibing more for quantity than for quality, and long before its release in the United States, “It was so associated with serious drinking in Canada that Maritime Provinces slang for a bender is to be ‘out with the Captain.'"

Spiced rums are dodgy creatures. True, the sweet, vanilla-tinged Captain Morgan has an agreeable enough flavor, but for rum fans the Captain’s appeal is not unlike that of fast food—satisfying on a certain level but ultimately disappointing and altogether forgettable (though like fast food, it’s also immensely popular: Felten notes that in the rum category, sales of Captain Morgan are second only to those of Bacardi). The only other spiced rum in wide distribution, Sailor Jerry, is somewhat more appealing, though the flavor profile doesn’t differ significantly from that of Captain Morgan or its higher-priced colleague, Captain Morgan’s Private Stock.

On a smaller scale, Old New Orleans Cajun Spice Rum takes the concept in a different direction, lacing a blend of aged rums with spices such as ginger, clove, nutmeg, and cayenne, creating a unique and pretty interesting result.

While it’s hard for many rum drinkers to get too excited about the mass-market spiced rums, the beauty of the situation is that spiced rum is so easy to make at home. Felten notes a recipe from Forbidden Island owner Martin Cate that includes vanilla, orange peel, allspice, and other ingredients soaked in aged rum for several days; Saveur also lists a recipe for the “44 Cordial," a sweetened rum flavored with orange peel and coffee beans.

These recipes are good starting points, but there’s a lot of room for individual tastes when making spiced or flavored rum.

Have you taken a crack at making your own flavored rum (or other spirits, for that matter)? If you’ve had good luck with a recipe, share it in the comments.

About the author: Paul Clarke blogs about cocktails at The Cocktail Chronicles and writes regularly on spirits and cocktails for Imbibe magazine. He lives in Seattle, where he works as a writer and magazine editor.

Originally posted by Paul Clarke from Serious Eats, on February 11, 2009 12:45 PM

Marco Arment, responding to my expectation that iPhone developers are set to begin implementing their own anti-bootlegging measures:

The ideal piracy detection system doesn’t make it immediately obvious to the crackers that their efforts have been detected. That way, they believe their crack is sufficient, release it, and move on to another app.

If your app interacts with a web service, you can then do all sorts of interesting things. For example, you can log the unique iPhone IDs that run pirated copies of your app and blacklist them from future updates. Or you could quit the app on launch, but only after it has been installed for a few days. You could even create a database of pirating iPhone IDs and share it with other developers.

The idea of anti-piracy measures which only kick in after the app has been in use for a certain amount of time is clever. But, it’d be a bad idea to just quit at launch without explanation when the protection kicks in — the user, though a bootlegger, would be left with the impression that your app is faulty, unstable, and/or downright junky. You’re probably not going to convert them to a sale, but they also might start spreading the word that your app crashes randomly after a few days of use.

Better to make it explicit to the user what is happening. Pop up an alert that politely asks them to consider buying a legit copy. It probably won’t convert a high percentage of bootleggers to honest customers, but at least they’ll know that the app didn’t crash.

Panic did some experimentation with this a little over a year ago, when they released CandyBar 3.¹ They have a phone-home system for serial numbers — not for any sort of Adobe- or Microsoft-style “activation” scheme, but simply to check whether a serial number is valid or known to be circulating on bootleg message boards and forums. They experimented with different dialog boxes that appeared when a user entered a known-to-be-pirated serial number. One message was staid and serious (“Microsoft-style”, in Cabel Sasser’s words), along the lines of “It appears someone gave you an invalid serial number…”; the other two messages were more personal, along the lines of “Please don’t pirate CandyBar. We’re a small company making software for you, and software sales are what keep our company going.”

They got better results with the more personal messages — about 10 percent of would be bootleggers presented with those dialogs clicked the button and immediately bought a legitimate license for the app. But even the staid, impersonal message had a 5 percent sell-through rate — far higher than Panic expected.

The benefit of Apple’s FairPlay protection for App Store apps is that individual developers don’t need to spend time working on their own protection schemes. But the problem is that the current protection scheme is universal and uniform — every licensed app from the App Store is FairPlay-protected in the same way. So when bootleggers found a way to crack one App Store app, they found a way to crack every App Store app. iPhone apps are easier to bootleg systematically than Mac apps because every single iPhone app is protected the same way. I think an iPhone developer who added the most rudimentary custom protection scheme would significantly cut down on casual piracy, insofar as the automated FairPlay-stripping tools would no longer suffice to create a working crack. Mac apps get cracked, yes, but some clever cracker has to take the time to crack each one individually.

For people with jailbroken phones and awareness of Appulo.us, it’s like a return to the old days of true “shareware”, where you can download a working copy of the software and the only impetus to pay for it is a sense of honesty. There’s a mountain of evidence that shows that this doesn’t work.

Some iPhone developers have a good sense of how rampant App Store bootlegging is, because their apps have some sort of web service or phone-home integration. (E.g. apps which sync data to a web server, or games that report scores to a global high score list.) I spoke to a developer who works on a best-selling iPhone game (who asked not to be identified because he didn’t have permission from his employer to reveal this information). The game in question attempts to identify when it’s running as a bootleg copy, and when it does, pings the company’s web server. According to my source, roughly two out of three users of the game are running bootleg copies.

Arment ends his advice with this:

Or you could just ignore the pirates, since hardly anyone jailbreaks their phone and they’ll never pay for anything anyway, and spend that time making the app better to attract more paying customers.

I strongly suspect games are bootlegged more often than other types of iPhone software, for obvious reasons, but numbers like those from my source are simply out of whack. And they also suggest that far more than “hardly anyone” jailbreaks their iPhone.

I’m not endorsing the idea of iPhone developers writing code that simply refuses to run on any jailbroken device, but I can see the appeal of it. Not all jailbreakers are bootleggers, but all bootleggers are jailbreakers.

---

1. See episode #15 of The Talk Show, an interview I conducted with Panic co-founders Cabel Sasser and Steven Frank at Macworld Expo 2008. The relevant bit starts around the 46:00 mark. ↩

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on February 11, 2009 12:26 PM

Well, it's a new era in Washington. A little bit, at least. The administration just finished their first event for bloggers and progressive media, a conference call with, appropriately enough, Jared Bernstein, one of the more liberal leaning members of the president's economic team. He's the top economic policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and he spoke for about 45 minutes with the likes of MYDD.com and yours truly.

A veteran of think tanks and a trained TV pundit, Bernstein, who has written for TPM, seemed a bit cautious and not at all eager to make news. The highlights were that he praised the stimulus package while noting that it doesn't have everything the administration and others would have liked. He noted, too, that just because something was excised from the stimulus package that in now way means the administration won't come back and try it again at a later point. He wouldn't get into specifics on what they might come back to but it's in keeping with a larger point I've tried to make (but that he refrained from explicitly making): This probably isn't the last stimulus.

I asked him how much good the bill could really do while the bank bailout plan remains so sketchy. Bernstein used a medical analogy saying that the stimulus plan was designed to
"get the patient's heart beating again" while the bank stabilization plan was about getting the patient's arteries cleaned out.

Another interesting point he made was that the stimulus package could probably shave a couple of points off of the unemployment rate but with the rate heading towards double digits you might well find the rate at 7.5 percent or so by the end of 2010. It's a sobering thought. We'll be coming out of this thing when the unemployment rate is what it is now. In other words, the roller coaster still has farther to go down.

But the biggest headline was probably the meeting itself. Jesse Lee, the online director at Casa Blanca, introduced Bernstein on the call and said he hoped that the progressive media call would be "the first in a newly sustained tradition." Let's hope.

Originally posted by Matthew Cooper from TPM Election Central, on February 11, 2009 12:17 PM

From Recipes

I've been a fan of fried fish tacos for a long time. Rolled in flour tortillas and dressed with little more than a tangy white sauce and crunchy sliced cabbage, they are unbelievably tasty. I wish I didn't have to fry the fish, but that technique just works better. Something about grilled fish gets lots in tacos. It becomes mushy and disintegrates in the taco. Fried fish keeps its structure.

Unfortunately, deep-frying is best left for the weekends. It's just hard to waste that much time getting enough oil, bringing it to the right temperature, and then figuring out what to do with it when it is done. Could pan-frying work?

I used the same flour, egg, and panko dip as from my Eggplant Parmesan and then cooked the fish in just a little oil in a skillet. Though it doesn't have the excellent batter that the best fish tacos have, it's awfully close.

About the author: Nick Kindelsperger is a freelance writer in Chicago. He is the co-founder of The Paupered Chef and spends most of his time playing with the new cooking gadgets he got from his wedding.

Pan-Fried Fish Tacos with White Sauce

- serves 3 to 4 -

For the white sauce:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup yogurt
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried dill
Juice of 1 or 2 limes
Salt and pepper

For the fish tacos:
1 cup flour
1/2 red cabbage, sliced thinly
2 eggs
1 cup Panko
1 pound tilapia
1/2 cup canola oil
12 flour tortillas

Procedure

1. Mix together the mayonnaise, yogurt, oregano, cumin, and dill. Mix in the juice of 1 of the limes and taste. If it is not acidic enough add some of the second lime juice. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

2. Dump the flour into a bowl. Whisk together the two eggs in a second bowl. Pour the Panko into a third bowl along with a pinch of salt.

3. Cut the Tilapia into 1 inch strips. Dry them as much as you can. Dip each piece first into the flour shaking the excess off, then into the egg, and finally coat in panko. Set finished ones on a wire rack while you dip the rest.

4. Meanwhile, pour the oil into a large skillet over medium heat. When it is hot, add enough fish to cover, but no more. Cook until golden browned, about 2 minutes per side. Set in an oven set on 200 while you finish the rest of the fish. It took me about 3 batches to pan fry all the fish.

5. Warm up some tortillas by cooking them for a few seconds on a dry iron skillet set over high heat. Serve with the white sauce and the sliced red cabbage.

Originally posted by Nick Kindelsperger from Serious Eats, on February 11, 2009 11:30 AM

Myostatin is a protein that, along with its associated gene, limits the growth of muscle tissue in some mammals. The Belgian Blue cattle breed has a natural mutation of the gene associated with myostatin that supresses the protein, resulting in lean and heavily muscled cattle.

A myostatin inhibiting drug called Stamulumab is currently undergoing testing for treating those with muscular dystrophy. If approved, use and abuse by human athletes will surely follow. (via siege)

Tags: genetics drugs sports

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 11, 2009 11:29 AM

FXcuisine.com

François-Xavier of FXcuisine.com travels to Sakai, Japan, and comes back with a beautiful photo essay detailing each of four steps that go into making exquisite knives.

Most kitchen knives today are stamped out of large sheets of metal. They are never as sharp as those made in Sakai. Master Ebuchi has been forging knives for the past 40 years, but he still breaks one knife for each three he tries to make. This is delicate work.

François-Xavier then takes us through the blade-sharpener's workshop before visiting the handle-maker and finally the engraver.

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on February 11, 2009 11:00 AM

The House and Senate confreres on the Stimulus Bill were just scheduled to get together for a final semi-ceremonial meeting to agree on the final bill. But the House folks didn't show up. Not clear what that means precisely, but does not sound promising. We'll have more for you shortly.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 11, 2009 10:52 AM

So one of our cousins in this Blogs By Fans network is C70 at the Bat, a blog dedicated to all things St. Louis Cardinals.

Author Cardinal70 is asking other team bloggers their opinion of their respective teams in 2009. I sent along my responses, which you can check out here.

Earlier today, C70 posted Depressed Brian's thoughts on the 2009 Spankees.

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on February 11, 2009 10:39 AM

Ed Westwick gets very close to Helena Christensen in next month's Bazaar. This makes us feel:

1) Jealous, so jealous we could cry.

2) Hot, it's pretty sexy.

3) Excited to be 40, Helena only pops up in front of cameras when she gets to wear lingerie these days.

4) Creepy, she's old enough to be his mother.

5) Bummed, that we have to wait five more days for a new Gossip Girl and that we won't even get to watch it because we'll be at shows.

6) Did we say jealous?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on February 11, 2009 9:56 AM

Amazon’s announcement of the Kindle 2 e-reader has book-lovers in a tizzy again, wondering how anyone could give up timeless paper-based books for the electronic version. Thing is, no one has to give up anything. I’ve got shelves of books and a Kindle, and I’m reading more than ever–mostly because of the Kindle.

Someone who’s never actually read a book on the Kindle focuses on the things you can’t do with it. Your favorite author can’t autograph a book on the Kindle. You can’t dog-ear pages. (Though you can virtually bookmark pages on the Kindle, the autograph point is true.)

But that same someone is often surprised by the stuff you can do with a Kindle book. When you encounter a word you haven’t seen before, you can look it up in the built-in dictionary in two clicks. (As a vocabulary nerd, this is the feature I love most.) You can highlight sections of the book as you read which get saved to a text file on the device. Then you can import the text of those paragraphs to your computer for stowing away in your favorite note-taking application or to include in your book journal or blog review.

You can take lengthy PDF files that are difficult to read on the computer because of its bright, eyeball-hostile screen, and send them to your Kindle to read it in its electronic ink (which is so paper-like it’s readable in San Diego’s noon sun). You can enlarge or reduce the size of the type in the pages of your Kindle book (no need for Mom to put on her glasses when you want to show her something). Even though the Kindle’s keyboard is awkward, you can type your own notes into sections of the book as you read–and import them onto your computer as well.

When your friends tell you there’s a book they know you’ll love, you don’t have to wait till your next trip to the bookstore to check it out. You can get a sample chapter on the Kindle on the spot, and if you like what you see, you can get the rest, without leaving your couch. (In truth it’s a book-buying machine dressed up as a book-reading machine; I’ve bought and enjoyed so many more books since I’ve had it. At least Kindle books are generally cheaper than their dead tree versions.)

I have a cherished collection of paper books, some of which are autographed by their author, which grace the shelves of my home and will never be replaced. But if I want to read the most current bestseller that I’ve only got a passing interest in, I’m buying it on my Kindle. If I want a non-fiction or educational book that I want to take notes on and highlight sections for further reading and research, I’m getting it on the Kindle.

In short, my one piece of advice for folks wondering about the Kindle is this: don’t knock it till you try it. If getting your hands on one isn’t an option, at least watch the whole video demo.

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Smarterware, on February 11, 2009 9:44 AM

Kweli jumps on stage for an impromptu Black Star reunion at House of Blues this week: Video: Mos Def & Kweli Live on Grammy Night different kitchen . Video: Mos Def & Kweli Live on Grammy Night...

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hip hop music, on February 11, 2009 9:38 AM

Photograph from malias on Flickr

A recent study proved that eating too many eggs doesn't necessarily cause high blood cholesterol and heart disease. BBC News reports that the antiquated misconception that too many eggs are bad for you can finally go away. Egg lovers everywhere rejoice! In light of this new evidence, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) dropped its advice to limit egg consumption to three a week.

Researcher Bruce Griffin said those on a low-cholesterol diet should be more concerned with cutting back saturated fats from fatty meats, dairy products, and pastries.

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on February 11, 2009 9:15 AM

An Ed Levine tweet last night: "At john dory april disappointed with 2 stars." [Twitter]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on February 11, 2009 9:00 AM

Paula Scher’s diagram of the cycle of blog commenting.

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on February 11, 2009 8:04 AM

From what I can gather, the final section of Shea Stadium will likely come down towards the end of this week, or the start of next week.

Last week, I wrote, “The Mets should leave that one remaining section of Shea Stadium standing, just the wall, as a piece of art work in the parking lot.  I think that’d be pretty cool.” 

Typically, an equal number of readers e-mailed to say it was a stupid idea as e-mailed to say it was a great idea.  I love when that happens.

Today, Adam, the Brooklyn Met Fan, said he likes the idea as well, writing, “Met fans would make the pilgrimage to our own wailing wall.  A place to pay homage to our old friend and introduce our still unborn children to the place the Mets were (essentially) born.”

I realize there are probably all sorts of safety, logistical and construction reasons why this is not possible at this point in the demolition, not to mention it would be the city’s call, not the team’s, but it does not stop me from wishing it would happen, even though I know it won’t.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on February 11, 2009 7:50 AM

Filed under: Retail, Apple Financial

Piqqem, a service that crowdsources stock picks, has some interesting demographic data about who says they're buying AAPL. Among female users, Apple is the most highly rated stock to buy.

The lowest-rated stock is Dillards -- which leads to an interesting analysis by Alex Salkever, director of research and marketing at Piqqem. He says that focused specialty retailers are better at weathering the economic downturn so far than large department stores.

"And while Apple has seen sales growth in its chain stores level off, I submit that a big reason why Apple has held strong is due to the attraction its products, stores, and services hold to women beyond the teenage years," he writes.

Personally, I think linking womens' stock choice specifically to the retail experience falls somewhere between a little chauvinist and a little short-sighted. AAPL is also the most popular stock among all of Piqqem's users, for example. It certainly can't hurt Apple's business, though, to appeal to women, teens, and other key demographics with disposable income right now.

Many analysts point to Apple's strong cash position as reason enough to buy AAPL. Indeed, Apple's stock price has recovered some since Macworld, and is trading around $98 a share. It's certainly shy of their 52-week high of $192 a share, but it's well off their 52-week low of $78.20.

TUAWRetail experience draws women to AAPL? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Originally posted by Robert Palmer from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on February 11, 2009 7:30 AM

Howling Fantods has published an old interview of David Foster Wallace from 1993. The interview was conducted by Hugh Kennedy and Geoffrey Polk and ran in The Whiskey Island Magazine. A generous excerpt appears below:

Wallace: [...] The writers I know, there's a certain self-consciousness about them, and a critical awareness of themselves and other people that helps their work. But that sort of sensibility makes it very hard to be with people, and not sort of be hovering near the ceiling, watching what's going on. One of the things you two will discover, in the years after you get out of school, is that managing to really be an alive human being, and also do good work and be as obsessive as you have to be, is really tricky. It's not an accident when you see writers either become obsessed with the whole pop stardom thing or get into drugs or alcohol, or have terrible marriages. Or they simply disappear from the whole scene in their thirties or forties. It's very tricky.

Geoffrey Polk: I think you have to sacrifice a lot.

Wallace: I don't know if it's that voluntary or a conscious decision. In most of the writers I know, there's a self-centeredness, not in terms of preening in front of the mirror, but a tendency not only toward introspection but toward a terrible self-consciousness. Writing, you're having to worry about your effect on an audience all the time. Are you being too subtle or not subtle enough? You're always trying to communicate in a unique way, and so it makes it very hard, at least for me, to communicate in a way that I see ordinary, apple-cheeked Clevelanders communicating with each other on street corners.

My answer for myself would be no; it's not a sacrifice; it's simply the way that I am, and I don't think I'd be happy doing anything else. I think people who congenitally drawn to this sort of profession are savants in certain ways and sort of retarded in certain other ways. Go to a writers' conference sometime and you'll see. People go to meet people who on paper are just gorgeous, and they're absolute geeks in person. They have no idea what to say or do. Everything they say is edited and undercut by some sort of editor in themselves. That's been true of my experience. I've spent a lot more of my energy teaching the last two years, really sort of working on how to be a human being.

Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk shares a kinship with what Wallace is getting at here.

Tags: davidfosterwallace interviews

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 11, 2009 7:19 AM

Zevs has just "liquidated" Google website. Check it out here.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on February 11, 2009 4:52 AM

Following in the footsteps of Mischa Barton, Hayden Panettiere, and everybody's favorite Party of Five cast member, Emma Roberts has just been signed on as the new brand ambassador for Neutrogena.

The 18-year old Nickelodeon princess, who made her rounds at Spring 09 last year in New York, has previously modeled for Dooney & Bourke, another hallmark of commercially successful teen queens (think Lindsay Lohan, and Hayden, again).

Interestingly, Neutrogena/Dooney girls tend to have a penchant for designing on the side: Lindsay's leggings, Mischa's line of purses, Hayden's guest designing for Dooney & Bourke, etc (fortunately, Jennifer Love's star fell long before starlets were required to design anything but careers with direct-to-video endings).

So is this the first of many stepping stones on the way to Emma Roberts, the Collection?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on February 11, 2009 4:25 AM

I am pretty sure I have had this "almost done!" since before Thanksgiving; I just haven't had a minute to finish it up. But last night I couldn't sleep, so I did the needful, which was really only putting in a zipper and hemming the skirt and sleeves. (I did have to hack seven inches off the skirt -- this was made for Amazons, it seems.)

Here's the original pattern, Vogue 9670. I can't remember where I bought it—if you sold it to me, leave a note in the comments!



Here's my version:



Ignore the little bit of iron shine in the picture, please. And that it needs pressing elsewhere. I really need a steamer. Or a better press cloth. Or hints from you guys.

I made the facing out of Liberty print, because the dress fabric is really thick, and because I knew I wouldn't be able to get the facing perfectly flat, no matter how much I trimmed and clipped the curves. This facing is now meant to show, making a virtue of necessity.



Oh look! I finally got the zipper to match up nicely at the side seam! Which one of you wonderful people told me that marking trick? Thank you! It works! I was really pleased with how the zipper went in, especially since I was doing this at 11 at night.



The above picture was taken with flash -- it's the truest representation of the color. It's an olive-y color, not brown. It's a heavy brushed cotton with a good bit of Lycra in it. It doesn't really stretch, it just gives. Very comfortable.

And here's the back. Kind of boring. But at least the back seams match up okay.



I really liked this pattern: it went together great, was easy to alter (I added more room at the waist as always, sigh), and except for being intended for women eight inches taller than I am (see the illustration? That skirt is right below the knee, amiright? On me it was almost to the ankle!) it fits well.

Next thing on my sewing list? Another crossword puzzle dress. The tournament is coming up!

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on February 11, 2009 4:20 AM

Note: Robert Jolly wrote this post for us. Robert is Happy Cog's Client Relations Director based out of their Philadelphia office. He can frequently be found cycling, doing triathlons, and hugging bikes during his spare time.

South By Southwest Interactive is a little over a month away, and I'm filled with the giddiness my daughter gets around the release of a High School Musical movie. This year's Bike Hugger Mobile Social and BBQ is one of the events I'm most looking forward to. It's on Saturday, March 14 (in case you haven't sharpied that into your iBerry, yet) from 2-4pm for the ride, 4-6pm for the BBQ. Officially, it's a SXSW official party, and that means it's programmed right into the event schedule. How cool is that?

To ride, or not to ride

I attended the Beer and BBQ party last year and hung out to talk about bikes and the whole Internet thing, but I didn't ride (no bike). Even though I wasn't riding, I enjoyed eating the food, drinking a beverage of my choosing, and discussing Web Accessibility with colleagues from three countries.

This year, I planned ahead and booked a rental bike from a local shop. Now I can fully enjoy the "43% more bike culture" I keep hearing about, get some triathlon training in with some friends I don't often see, and also enjoy a considerable amount of additional mobility in and around Austin. I'm putting together loose plans for training rides with a few other cyclists and triathletes attending the interactive conference, so contact me via Twitter (or some other method).

Musique non stop, techno pop

SXSW attendees generally possess a strong creative or technical bent--quite often a combination of the two. Similarly, bikes exist with both function and form. Cycling culture celebrates the extreme technical detail that squeezes every last drop of performance from bikes on one hand, and the aesthetic beauty, simplicity, and art forms that these machines can exhibit on the other.

The theme for the Mobile Social event combines bikes, technology, and art. Interesting things are bound to emerge from the mix of minds and matter that SXSW and the Mobile Social will bring together. Fun will ensue, if nothing else, which is just fine by me. The DJs of the Sun, aka Sycons, will be providing music during and after the ride, and there are some damn fine people involved in the event as sponsors and participants, so it's guaranteed to be a blast. And, as I wrote this post way past a self-imposed deadline, DL Byron has the Urban Ride will have a parade permit, police escort, and road closures --a bike parade on Congress Street in Austin!

Come out and play

So, with only about a month left before SXSWi and the Mobile Social event, it will be here before you know it. If you want to ride and need some wheels, there are rental bikes available from Bicycle Sport Shop in Austin. You could also bring your sweet old banana seat bike back to SXSW this year (see photo above) or even find one used from someone in the area. Some of those Craigslist bikes could, with a little creativity, make for some sweet art bikes to ride in the Mobile Social.

If you can't make it for the ride, definitely join in on the post-ride soirée at the barbeque in Brush Square Park, sponsored by An Event Apart and a whole host of other great companies. Jeffrey Zeldman will be there, so you can ask him or myself for a $100 off coupon for registration at any 2009 AEA conference.

And, there's an after party at Mellow Johnny's, sponsored in part by 97 Bottles, along with some other very hip SXSW events to round out your Saturday night. Hope to see y'all there.

Originally posted by Robert Jolly from Bike Hugger, on February 11, 2009 4:03 AM

Just a heads up that MLB’s fantasy baseball preview features players on the 1984 Topps (or is it OPC?) design.  So even if you don’t like fantasy sports, but wonder what, say, Kenshin Kawakami would look like on the ‘84 design, head on over there.

Now if only someone would actually print these and release them.  How sweet would that be?

Enjoy.

Originally posted by handcollated from Hand Collated, on February 11, 2009 3:46 AM

Thanks to the ladies at Jezebel, Michelle Obama's Vogue cover is out, after months of anticipation.

The First Lady clearly sticks with what she likes, donning Wu on the cover (which makes us wonder what the standing section at his show will look like) and striking a pose like a normal person (we love it).

There's something slightly subdued about it, especially being the big Spring fashion March edition, but that probably has more to do with the beige room behind her and the fact that nobody wants to risk putting the President's wife in something the American public might deem frivolous.

So will this cover be the saving grace for Vogue's sliding newsstand sales?

Discuss!

Update: Vogue's just posted most of the interview and two images from the shoot.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on February 11, 2009 2:47 AM

“I hate it!” is what a lot of people say about karaoke, but it’s one of the most popular things to do in Tokyo after dinner with friends.

Although it’s a predominantly Asian pastime, I think if you did a survey on who loves or hates karaoke, you could probably end up with a 50-50 result and it doesn’t matter where you come from.

But since you’re reading this, you are probably swaying on whether or not to grab that mike and let it rip. You’ve maybe even sat in on a couple of sessions but you’ve resisted singing at all costs.

It’s easier for me to embrace karaoke since I’m Asian and it’s everywhere, but I’ve had to climb over my own hurdles of fear and embarrassment in the beginning. Perhaps I’ve shed a lot of self-consciousness over such things since my awkward teenage years, but I’ve come a long way from being a shy lass to a thick-skinned woman.

So, here’s some advice on how to be brave at karaoke:

Choose familiar songs. It could be a really old tune by The Carpenters or The Beatles, but if you can remember the music and some of the words, you’ve won half the battle. Don’t select cool, new songs because they are really hard to sing. Would you rather look stupid over a rap song or go slightly off-key with an old classic? The choice is obvious.

Have a few drinks. I always hear these stories about people who used to be so reluctant to sing at karaoke, but once they down a few shots, they’re turn into a karaoke animal. Liquid courage is your friend.

Partner up. This will take your shyness away by at least 80 per cent because if you don’t know the words, you can hide your uncertainty behind someone else’s voice. Nobody really knows who flubbed which lines when two people take over the mike. It’s also fun to sing with a buddy.

Laugh at yourself. Though some people are truly good at carrying a tune, most folks are mediocre (like you), so don’t worry too much about not getting it completely right. Joking while you’re singing is fun, but like most things that make you laugh, you can’t plan the punch line. Just go with the flow and relax.

What are you waiting for? Just do it.

Photos: b-chan’s world, stuartbuchanan, Loop’s San

Originally posted by astrorainfall from Tokyo Metblogs, on February 10, 2009 11:09 PM

I love used book stores, but
there is always that forlorn melancholy
Of knowing that one day your copies
of Arabia Deserta, Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, and
The Voyage of the Beagle,
will one day be jumbled amongst
someone else's cook books, Judy Blume,
and, God forbid, self help literature.

So I write notes in the margins.
I hide pictures between pages.

If I'm feeling magnanimous, I'll tuck a dollar near the good part of the story.

Sometimes I circle words leaving secret messages.

I see these things as little whispers
to the people of the future.
I want to let them know that
that these books too once had other lives.

Filed under: night musings

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Heading East, on February 10, 2009 9:23 PM

Edward Champion is doing some amazing blogging from the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference. This particular post about Peter Brantley's talk resonated with me -- even as I'm currently reading a book about machines on a machine...

A book may be generated by a machine and ebooks may be available through machines, but that does not mean the book itself is a machine. Nor should the reader transform into a machine. This kind of perspective may work in programming circles, where jargon and other linguistic bullshit is tossed around as casually as spitballs.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on February 10, 2009 8:28 PM

We had two great editorial photographers at TED2009 in Long Beach -- the brilliant Asa Mathat and James Duncan Davidson. As luck would have it, Duncan was the shooter who happened to be in the right place to catch Bill Gates' now-famous mosquito release. Read how Duncan got the shot. In the enlargement above, it's clear that, yes, they were real.

Photo (enlargement): James Duncan Davidson

Originally posted by (author unknown) from TED Blog, on February 10, 2009 6:02 PM

Chafing under new scrutiny and limits on executive paychecks, many big banks are deciding that they've had quite enough of Uncle Sam and want to give the bailout money back as soon as possible. You get the sense we shouldn't have treated them so badly because if we hadn't they wouldn't be forcing us to take our money back. That's the report here from the New York Times.

The interesting thing though, when you read down into the article is that they don't like the scrutiny and interference and they want to pay the money back to get us off their backs. Only, it's going to be pretty hard to pay the money back because no one else is lending money right now, and certainly no one on as generous terms as the US government is. And if they paid back the money a lot of them might well go out of business.

In other words, they'd love to pay it back, especially if they had the money to pay it back, which they don't. So presumably we won't be hearing any more about this but the whining.

Things are tough all over.

The two named institutions are Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, which, at least as far as I understand these things, are probably the healthiest of the big banks, though it's a pretty low bar. Goldman CFO David Viniar tells the Times: "We just think that operating our business without the government capital would be an easier thing to do. We'd be under less scrutiny, and under less pressure. Not that we'd be out of the public eye; we're still going to be in the public eye."

Now, let's assume for the moment that Goldman and Morgan Stanley really don't need government TARP money or any other direct injection of taxpayer funds. This still doesn't account for all the indirect ways most if not all of these companies are only afloat today because of government rescue and taxpayer dollars. Behind the scenes for something like a year, the Fed and the Treasury have been doing all sorts of guaranteeing debt offerings, loaning money, doing all sorts of things to keep these outfits afloat. That's all in addition to the TARP money.

And take Goldman Sachs. You know that we've spent a hundred billion dollars of so bailing out AIG. Where do you think that $100 billion went? A lot went to pay off various banks and other financial institutions that would have gotten clobbered if AIG went under.

According to this September 2008 article in the Times, an AIG collapse could have led to as much as $20 billion in loses for Goldman, which was AIG's largest trading partner. The simple truth is that none of these outfits can go it on their own. Most are already on their feet today because of government support. And others probably could not have survived without systemic support for the whole industry.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 10, 2009 5:22 PM

Click the image above to view the full photogallery.

Lower East Side: A brief review for those of you just joining us. Two weeks ago, LES pizza spot Isabella's Oven shuttered after an eviction. Soon after, the owner publicly accused the Seward Park Co-Op Board of outright extortion. Later, rumors spread on message boards that the owner took to the restaurant with a sledgehammer, as a means to get back at the board.

Now we learn it wasn't just a sledgehammer. In addition to smashing all counters and fixtures, someone also took to the walls with some spray paint (note: most of the graffiti is NSFW).

A memo (in the gallery above), from the board's lawyer to the board, runs down the history of the restaurant, the amount of debt owed, and the eviction proceedings. And, of course, the vandalism:

"Finally, when management was given access, the space Isabella's vacated was determined to be structurally damaged and vandalized. The restaurant's interior had been substantially demolished including fittings, plumbing, ductwork, plus partial demolition of the patio, and threatening and derogatory graffiti was sprayed onto interior walls. The Board of Directors, of course, will take all necessary actions to obtain lawful financial reimbursements on behalf of SPHC in this matter."

This little brouhaha sure isn't going to help the owners relocate to a new space.
· Isabella's Drama [~E~]
· The Shutter: Isabella's Oven Searching for New Home [~E~]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on February 10, 2009 4:26 PM

Jesse turned up the heat at this year's Northeast Regional Barista Competition (held in conjunction with the Mid Atlantic Regional) in Pittsburgh last weekend, performing his routine in the semi-finals with grace and finesse, and securing him a place in the finals.

On Sunday he competed again, this time against the five other finalists from the Northeast region. He placed out of the top three, but gave another extremely impressive performance. 

Starting life at Gimme! as a State Street barista, Jesse recently transitioned to Sales as an Upstate Account Rep.

He kept extremely cool under pressure. In fact, that was the theme of his presentation: at the conclusion, he toasted to pressure with his judges, "Without the pressure in our espresso machines and in our minds, we wouldn't be here today."  Very tongue-in-cheek, very sneaky smile - very Jesse. He played pressure-themed songs throughout his performance - and started out with one of my favorites: "Pressure Drop" by Toots and the Maytals.

Jesse's Ommegang Brewery-inspired signature beverage tasted exactly like a porter. For serious, y'all. I found myself expecting to feel tipsy after a few sips of it (ok, so I'm a lightweight). I really couldn't get enough of it - it was balanced, complex and smooth. He used an AeroPress to infuse the hops, malt and barley, the pressure acting to speed up the brewing process, similar to how an espresso machine works. He then pulled a shot of Leftist on top, which lent the porter-like chocolate, and also, the crema of the espresso mimicked the head of a beer. It was obvious he really thought a lot about all aspects of his drink.

In short, Jesse made Gimme proud.  If you see him, go ahead and give him a high five.

Thanks to Liz Clayton for these pictures - check out twitchy.org for more info and pictures of the competition.

Originally posted by Erin McCarthy from Gimme! Coffee News, on February 10, 2009 12:47 PM

    

Flickr launched at ETech at 5:15PM Pacific time during the “Virtual Worlds, Distributed Interaction: Extending a MMOG with Remote Scripting, IM, Mobiles and REST” panel. We’ll be doing more in the near future to celebrate our fifth birthday, but we didn’t want to miss an opportunity to mark today’s milestone.

Photos from bees and bopuc.

Originally posted by Heather Champ from Flickr Blog, on February 10, 2009 12:11 PM

Boy, that's pretty dumb. It sounds like there's a good chance the restrictions on CEO pay contained in the Stimulus Bill is going to get pulled out in the final bill. Why? Because it might increase the total cost of the bill.

So we need these folks to make millions to help us balance the budget.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 10, 2009 11:53 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on February 10, 2009 11:24 AM

Playlist for Overnight Jazz with Mike Janssen on 89.3 FM WPFW, 3–5 a.m., Feb. 10, 2009

Less music than usual to make room for babbling in hopes of inducing people to call in and pledge money. One nice fellow and regular listener to my show did call, but we couldn’t hook him up with the premium CD he was wanting, so he didn’t pledge. Another caller said he didn’t have any money in his checking account. I’ve been there, dude.

I’m going to stop the live Twitter feed for the time being — it’s too much work, and probably no one is following it live. If I get a better time slot or listeners ask for it, I’ll go back to doing it. But I’ll still use the Twitter feed for requests, comments and two-way chatting with listeners, if it ever comes to that.

1. “I Want a Little Faster”
2. “Give Him the Ooh-La-La”
3. “The Middle of Love” — this and preceding tracks by Blossom Dearie, from the collection Give Him the Ooh-La-La
4. “Tout Doucement” — Feist, Let It Die (Blossom Dearie cover)
5. “Three Is a Magic Number” — Bob Dorough, Schoolhouse Rock
6. “How Long Do I Have to Wait For You?” — Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Funk/Soul Revival: Classic Tracks and the New Breed (comp.)
7. “Musings to Myself” — El Michels Affair, Sounding Out the City
8. “Make the Road by Walking” — Menahan Street Band, Make the Road By Walking (as a listener correctly pointed out, Jay-Z sampled this track)
9. “Tango Till They’re Sore” — Tom Waits, Rain Dogs
10. “Little Umbrellas” — Frank Zappa, Hot Rats
11. “The Dance of Maya” — Mahavishnu Orchestra w/John McLaughlin, Inner Mounting Flame
12. “Eat That Question” — Frank Zappa, The Grand Wazoo
13. “Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf Nebula” — Frank Zappa, Weasels Ripped My Flesh
14. “Four In One” — Steve Lacy, Reflections
15. “Eric Walks” — Sonny Clark, Leapin’ and Lopin’
16. “Dedication” (alt. take) — Andrew Hill, Point of Departure
17. “West End Blues” — Volume IV: Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines
18. “St. Louis Blues” — Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy
19. “Potato Head Blues” — The Hot Five and Hot Sevens, Volume II; this and all preceding tracks by Louis Armstrong, for my daughter, who learned about him in her music class in elementary school recently
20. “Mohawk” (alt. take) — Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Bird and Diz
21. “Most Like Lee” — Lee Morgan, Cornbread

Originally posted by (author unknown) from gargoyle drumming, on February 10, 2009 10:09 AM

Sent to me by my friend David Kidder, and guiding my workdays, as much as possible. I'm not sure where it's from.

Originally posted by caterina from Caterina.net, on February 10, 2009 9:02 AM

Sent to me by my friend David Kidder, and guiding my workdays, as much as possible. I'm not sure where it's from.

Originally posted by caterina from Caterina.net, on February 10, 2009 9:02 AM

The Book Design Review has collected a number of book covers that feature books on them. An addition to the list: Penguin's paperback cover of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin.

Tags: books design

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 10, 2009 8:44 AM

Originally posted by Kellan from Laughing Meme, on February 10, 2009 8:40 AM

Last April, we launched Six Apart Media, our innovative advertising program that helps make bloggers and advertisers successful.

Today’s bloggers are savvy, outspoken and influential, inspiring a record number of people to join conversations throughout the social web. We’re happy to report that to date, Six Apart Media reaches over 2.4 million of these influential bloggers with more than 85.5 million engaged readers. Since our launch, we’ve had some incredibly talented bloggers join our advertising program, including:

• Unreality Magazine
• Cake and Commerce
• Silicon Valley Moms Blog

Most recently, we’ve been hard at work on a campaign for Nature Made, who asked us to help inspire people to share their stories of greatness. Since we know how much bloggers love sharing and because we believe that each of us has a personal story of greatness to tell, this was a campaign we couldn’t wait to kick off.

You can share your story of greatness by answering today’s QotD on Vox, LiveJournal and within your TypePad profile. If you don’t have an account with any of those services, don’t worry, anyone can answer the Question of the Day on Blogs.com! Once you’ve answered, be sure to submit your story on the Nature Made website. You could win $1,000 and appear in the Nature Made “Fuel Your Greatness” documentary.

With so many great bloggers and advertisers on board, we are very excited for what the future holds. Are you ready to join the conversation? Whether you're a blogger who wants to generate income from your blog, or an advertiser looking for creative ways to reach your target audience, we have a solution for you.

Visit Six Apart Advertising to learn more.

Originally posted by daisy barringer from Six Apart News & Events, on February 10, 2009 7:44 AM

Micropayments: everybody’s talking about them! Will they save journalism? Can they help preserve the important tradition of reportage that results in an informed citizenship? Are they the solution to the problem of how to get readers to pay for valuable content?

No. People are idiots. I saw one of the freesheets yesterday whose cover conflated Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, who used anabolic steroids to give themselves an edge on the baseball field, with Michael Phelps, who smoked pot at a college party to make himself look cool. (And get high.) That’s the level of information people are getting from the free papers, and they seem to be perfectly happy about it. Why would they want to pay for anything more challenging or less imbecilic?

Still, we need a fully-funded working press if even a small number of us are to remain informed enough about the world and its currents and conflicts. My proposal is a form of micropayment subsidy that enables the continued existence of information-gathering and analysis so vital to our political literacy. A small fee will be added to the bill every individual or corporate entity is charged each month for Internet service. Those fees will be disbursed to newsgathering entities at the end of each month to pay for the kind of reporting which, despite the cost outlay required, rarely proves profitable.

Here’s the best part: These monies will be apportioned based on the amount of clicks given to completely frivolous articles. (Call it a “tax on stupidity.”) Can’t get enough information about your favorite celebrity’s current romantic travails? Who can? We all live vapid, soulless lives whose meaninglessness we can only endure by an obsessive prurient interest in the activities of people we see on the TV. It’s human nature! But under my plan, clicking through to these stories will result in pieces of actual utility receiving some kind of funding.

Obviously, this strategy is not without its flaws. Who decides which stories are the mouthbreathing moneymakers and which stories are the worthy but boring cash-receivers? I’m proposing an advisory panel made up of 6 noted internet experts (Kanye West, Tim Berners-Lee, Jay Rosen (so long as he promises to never show up; dude seems like he would just go on and on), the junior member of Rick Rubin’s accounting team who secretly writes Hipster Runoff, the kid who made Tumblr, and me) and 3 representatives of old media to be named later, although one of them should probably be Bill Kristol, because you never have to worry about him putting much thought into anything, which saves time.

Until that panel is appointed, however, here’s a rough guideline of which clicks would engender which stories. The formula is simple: For each click on x, the following micropayment from the fund goes toward y. Now, obviously, the fund will not be unlimited, so we need to make sure the more popular idiocies pay out less than slightly more obscure idiocies or else the whole thing will fall apart. Thus, every click on a story about:

Lindsay Lohan yields 1 cent for a basic Obama piece.
Dina Lohan yields 3 cents for a long-form investigation of Cabinet secretary tax. compliance
Michael Lohan yields 5 cents for a process piece on environmental regulations and the lobbying on both sides to influence their content.
Britney Spears yields 1 cent for a story on the growing strength of the Taliban in Pakistan.
Jamie Lynn Spears yields 3 cents for an investigation of the Russian government’s campaign against dissent and press freedom.
One of the other Spearses except for the mom, because fuck her yields 5 cents for a chronicle of the horrific suffering endured by helpless civilians in some African country that you have not only never heard of, but lacks oil fields or mineral deposits that our country’s corporations would be inclined to exploit.

In addition:

Any story that features the words “baby bump” yields 2 cents for an in-depth look at how the pharmaceutical industry gets doctors laid so they’ll prescribe its products.
Any story that features a side-by-side image of young, toned Madonna and wizened, toned Madonna yields 4 cents for coverage of a city council meeting in some heretofore unknown Iowa burg which, despite being incredibly soporific, identifies the growing trend of demonization of migrant workers in local municipalities.
Any story that features a picture of its subject with come or coke lines drawn on his or her face yields 5 cents for an essay bemoaning the death of culture.

There are plenty more (drop me an e-mail for the complete list) but I think you get the point. I’ve run the numbers on this, and it seems like the only feasible way we can save the fourth estate. Call your congressperson today, and then click away, baby: You’re doing it for the good of the nation.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Alex Balk, on February 10, 2009 5:56 AM

When are we going to give up the idea that the Play button needs to be right smack dab in the middle of the subject in order for it to be effective?

Originally posted by Mike D. from Mike Industries, on February 9, 2009 8:48 PM

Photograph courtesy of Kathryn Yu's Flickr photostream

Well, it's not like Serious Eats' Robyn Lee was a talking head on No Reservations, but you do see the back of her head on the show. FoSE Kathryn Yu captured the moment. There's Robyn in the background having lunch at Momofuku Ssam Bar.

Update: Highmtn pointed out this photo in Robyn's Flickr stream. Thanks!

Strangely appropriate, as the episode had to do with food porn, which Robyn excels at.

Bourdain talks about food porn in this blog post and in this video with David Chang, where Bourdain says:

It's anti-food in a sense. This is the thing with the food nerds—they're your most loyal followers. They spread the gospel, for sure, but ironically, in their fervor, they become ... like butterfly collectors. Instead of just appreciating the thing, it's all about acquiring it and putting it in the book.

Chang banned photography in one of his restaurants, Momofuku Ko, in June of last year.

If only the producers knew they were in the presence of food porn greatness, they could have gotten the perspective of a so-called food nerd.

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on February 9, 2009 7:25 PM

So much to say, but the pictures say it all: Dav's Vox post.

Only a few days ago, Dav and I marveled together as we watched Tesla, "did we really create her?" She's such her own being.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Kokochi, on February 9, 2009 7:19 PM

I think the power of President Obama's presentation tonight speaks for itself if you saw it. (Below I've included his answer to the first question on the economy, which was the essence of the press conference.) There's an important debate about the proper outlines of stimulus bill. But there's little serious debate over whether a large bill, predominantly focused on spending, is necessary. And yet that's what the Washington discussion has been about.

Yet the real key to understanding that press conference is in information that came out earlier today: two polls showing the public is overwhelming on Obama's side in this battle (see Gallup and CNN). According to Gallup, 67% of the public supports Obama on the Stimulus Bill versus 31% for congressional Republicans. 58% of Americans disapprove of the Hill GOP's stand on this issue.

What's most striking about these numbers is the continuing disconnect between the mood of the capital and that of the country. For me, a lot of that is a product of how Washington continues to be wired for Republican control. A president, and particularly one like Obama, is the one person who is in a position to cut through that.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 9, 2009 5:22 PM

Well, there's a reason he's president and not Hillary Clinton or John McCain.

Barack Obama handled himself with great aplomb, using his opening statement to lay out the problem and what his answers are. And with each question--and none of the questions were total boners, so score one for the press--the president managed to show a command of the issues and an analytic mind. Wisely, he kept coming back to the point that doing nothing is not really an answer and that tax cuts alone are not enough.

Of course, the contrast with George W. Bush couldn't have been more striking. Obama was comfortable with the long answer and the long question. There was no bristling over the Biden question but a good-natured response that seemed at once to put his Number Two to stop mouthing off so much but also an explanation of how they're trying to get it right.

I thought the tone towards Republicans was probably just right. Some on the left will probably wish he was a little more Republican bashing but that's not his style and he got his jabs in without becoming overly partisan.

For liberals who thought Obama had lost his way, that he'd conceded too much in the name of bipartisanship, that he'd been outflanked by Mitch McConnell, that he'd lost all the momentum, tonight should have been reassuring, a reminder of the power of the presidency to reset the debate and also to the enduring skills of Barack Obama.

Now comes more road show--Peoria, Florida. Those events won't command the audience that tonight's press conference did. But each visit outside of Washington illustrating the plight of the economy and going over the heads of the press and politicians should help Obama guide the debate in this final week.

Beyond that, a week from today, we're likely to be on the verge of passed stimulus package and then we'll be into health care and budget season and, of course, trying to see if any of this is working. Tonight, Obama was able to mention at a couple of junctures that he inherited this mess. True enough. But he'll need to start showing results. Hopefully tomorrow's Treasury program announcement will be soothing to the roiled markets. We'll see.

Originally posted by Matthew Cooper from TPM Election Central, on February 9, 2009 4:02 PM

The thing about the sopranos, uncensored video is that it simultaneously tests your patience (I only made it to 1:28 before needing to turn it off) and makes you want to go back and watch all six seasons all over again.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on February 9, 2009 3:52 PM

I did some stupid stuff this winter while waiting for the '09 stuff to come out. Well, all of it wasn't stupid, let's just call it imprudent. Inefficient. Unfocused. Most of the time my will broke down at Target although Wally World tempted me as well. Now that the new stuff is out, I don't feel quite as ashamed at buying retail repack junk so I'm going to show some of it off.

Here's the first thing I have to show off. You know those Target $1.59 junk wax boxes? Have you ever wondered where those packs come from? I have a theory that every so often the distributor pulls old unwanted blasters off the shelf, rips 'em open and sticks those $1.59 stickers on them. I've seen a few times where a product has exactly 8 packs in that box. I got 8 packs of '07 Bowman Heritage once in one of those boxes, exactly the count in a blaster. I can't actually prove that's what happens, but last month I saw it again. 8 packs of Chrome sitting nicely in the box. They were right next to a bunch of 2006 Upper Deck 5-card packs which I know were from blasters. Well, that would be the efficient way of doing it at least. Take the old blasters and plop 'em in the junk wax box. I saw the 8 packs as a discounted blaster in any case and picked 'em up in a fit of Target Madness. Here's the results:

Pack 1
122 Chone Figgins
150 Homer Bailey
176 Milton Bradley Blue Refractor
104 Matt Holliday
Checklist 1 of 2

Blue Refractors rock. The Cubs signing a malcontent DH to play in an overcrowded outfield rocks even harder.


Pack 2
72 Brandon Phillips
4 Stephen Drew
110 Aaron Harang copper refractor
209 Fernando Hernandez RC
Checklist 1 of 2

It looks like my knack for pulling Reds cards has continued over from my Timelines box. That's three in two packs. I'm not to unhappy with it, because I know a lot of Reds fans they can go to. I'm currently trying to wrap up a package for Joe, so as long as this guy doesn't need the copper Harang it's off to Joe. I almost hate to give up Harang though, he's a damn good pitcher.

Pack 3
110 Aaron Harang
204 Rico Washington RC
MMRC430 Mickey Mantle Home Run #430
148 Aramis Ramirez

Well, I say I like Harang and BAM! I get another one. Amazing. That's 4 reds now. Stupid Mickey Mantle ate my refractor. Grrrrrr. I'm showing off Rico instead.

Pack 4:
53 Yunel Escobar
TCHC24 Ken Griffey Jr Trading Card History
179 Livan Hernandez refractor
80 Jorge Posada

Ok, getting spooky now... Griffey is the fifth Red so far. Livan I can do without, Posada I can take him or leave him, but Yunel and Griffey are pretty cool.

Pack 5:
49 Scott Rolen
77 Carlos Ruiz
191 Edinson Volquez Xfractor
160 Pat Burrell

MAKE IT STOP. I'm going to get e-mails about my Reds-jo.

Pack 6:
181 Matt Kemp
178 Jo-Jo Reyes
201 Luis Mendoza RC Xfractor
25 Alex Rios

FINALLY. Now the Dodger fans can be jealous of me.

Pack 7:
124 Jacoby Ellsbury
TCHC37 CC Sabathia Trading Card History
211 Blake DeWitt RC Refractor
61 Gil Meche

This is either the third or fourth Blake DeWitt refractor I've pulled from a pack. I've lost count. The cool thing about this pack is I know someone who would want each and every one of these cards so I'm building good trade bait at least.

Pack 8:
192 Jeff Niemann RC
ARC6 Derek Jeter 50th Anniversary
97 Troy Tulowitzki Blue Refractor
121 Derek Jeter

Aaand we wind things up with the Jeter pack. The BlueTuloFractor ain't too shabby either. This wasn't the greatest 8 packs ever ripped but good lord have I got some trade bait. Now I just need to catch up on the trades I've got in process now. If you'll excuse me, I have some e-mails to answer...

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on February 9, 2009 3:07 PM

I asked Loge13 readers to send in pictures of Shea seats, if they bought 'em.. Author Matthew Silverman provided these photos of his seats and the following note:

I've finally uploaded the pics. Unlike a recent experience I read about on Faith and Fear, these seats came long before Christmas and arrived on a rainy day when we had a couple of people on hand willing to help with the cleaning. They were dirty with years of peanuts shells, but they came with a stand that was relatively easy to put together. They have transformed a room that didn't see much action into the rollicking sports den. My son and I even sat in them for two Cardinals football playoff wins, more rare than anything even the Mets can manage in the postseason. Maybe there's something to these seats. (When I sat in them for an UltiMET Classic, the Mets did, however, win that game.) They also take up relatively little space for two chairs and go perfect with a Mets rug that I was given as a gift a year or so ago (mainly because it was too big for someone else's home) and my laundry room is wider than it seems.



That's not to say all this was easy. To get orange seats I had to use someone else's account number and keep calling back during the season ticket grace period to buy the seats before I finally got an employee who had no problem with me buying someone's else's seats. (Like I was the first person to have this idea?)

 


While they were expensive, they're still barely as much as my friend's new boring old green seats at Leper Field (or whatever Rep. Kucinich would have us call it). My orange seats are much more comfortable when there's no row in front of you or someone sitting behind you talking on his cell phone the entire game or someone booing a five-time All-Star.

It's as close as I'll ever get to Shea again.

Thanks Matt! Quick quiz: can anyone identify the subject of the black & white photo hanging on the wall behind the seats?

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on February 9, 2009 3:03 PM

Not long ago it seemed a given that the Obama bank rescue plan would be on the 'bad bank' model -- i.e., you and I as taxpayers create what might more aptly be called a 'suicide bank' where you go to all the other banks and buy their poor investments at prices those banks wish they were still worth. Then, when that just seemed too silly it was going to be a plan to insure the banks against excessive loses on these bad investments. Sort of the slo-mo version of the bad bank. But CNBC is now reporting that the 'bad bank' is out. And they add these details ...

The Obama administration's wide-ranging plan to stabilize the financial system no longer includes creating a "bad bank" but will still contain measures to buy up toxic assets from financial institutions, according to a source familiar with the plan.

In addition, funding for the bank-rescue plan is unlikely to exceed the $350 billion currently available under the TARP, this source said.

So the 'bad bank' is out. There's some vague talk of buying back 'toxic debts'. But if I'm reading that right they're not going to be asking for any more money.

As the same source tells CNBC, "They have to have enough to calm the markets, but there might not be as many details as previously thought." I'd say that's an understatement.

Obviously, we'll know more details tomorrow with Geithner's speech (or maybe not). And I'll be very curious to see what others make of this. But this sure sounds to me like they've decided to punt. No big new plan. And no more money.

I wonder if what's happening here is that they realize that none of these TARP-like workarounds are going to work. So no point asking for a politically and perhaps fiscally debilitating amount of money on something they'll have to abandon in six months. But they also don't have their ducks in a row yet, or haven't come to grips yet, with something more like the Swedish model -- which is to say, letting failed banks actually fail, government takes them over like has been happening to little banks, government runs the bank for a while and then sells it to private investors. Regardless, at least from CNBC's discussion it looks like a big punt.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on February 9, 2009 2:06 PM

Shared by Jake Dobkin
Lockhart Steele is only 48 on this list? There is no justice in this universe!

This weekend, Page Six Magazine (which will switch from weekly to quarterly this month) ranked what it called New York's "50 Hottest Bachelors." We looked over the slideshow on their website, and we have some questions.

1. Are people technically bachelors if they're engaged?
2. Ron Burkle? Really?

3. Isn't this Gotham magazine's yearly gimmick?
4. How has Padma Lakshmi dated so many of these people?
5. Why aren't any of these people openly gay? Fifty percent of the handsome men in Manhattan are — it's just not strategically accurate. All that's represented on this list are the 25 percent of Manhattan men who are secretly gay.
6. And if this is a list for women, how come so many of the men are bears?
7. What, exactly, do the editors of Page Six Magazine think the word "hot" means? We must have been using it wrong all these years.

Anybody with answers, or the cell-phone number of Bachelor No. 46, please help us out in the comments.

50 Hottest Bachelors [Page Six Magazine]

Read more posts by Chris Rovzar

Filed Under: Men, page six magazine, the gayness of intel

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Daily Intel, on February 9, 2009 1:01 PM

Elizabeh Gilbert talks about how to keep being creative in the face of success. In particular, she mentions erecting a "protective pyschological construct to protect you from the results of your work".

And just so you don't end up wondering about it for half the talk like I did, Melissa Gilbert played Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie. Elizabeth Gilbert is a writer. (via john hodgman)

Tags: video elizabethgilbert creativity

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 9, 2009 12:13 PM

60 Minutes interviews Coldplay’s front man Chris Martin about how he writes hit songs. Being “openly neurotic,” Martin makes sure he captures song ideas the minute they strike him–even if it means scribbling them onto his piano with a Sharpie. He’s got a marker holder mounted to his whitewashed piano for just that purpose, as shown. In the video below, reporter Steve Croft asks about it.

Croft: You have notes written on the piano?
Martin: Yeah, look, but this is just the beginning. In six months, this will all be covered.
Croft: And you have to repaint the piano?
Martin: Yeah. When we finish something, we repaint.

While I have mixed feelings about Coldplay, I love that even though Martin is rich and famous, he’s a “compulsive worrier and list maker.” He’s even got band rules posted to the studio wall. (Rule #6: Don’t do too many interviews.)

Here’s the whole video; the piano bit is at around minute 7:30. (Thanks, TB.)

Watch CBS Videos Online

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Smarterware, on February 9, 2009 12:13 PM

According to the Daily News, Johan Santana plans to withdraw from the World Baseball Classic, ‘at the request of Mets officials.’

…interesting… in December, both Omar Minaya and santana told reporters it would be a judgment call made in spring training, based on how he was feeling in camp… from what i was told, santana was supposed to start throwing in late January, according to his off-season schedule… so, i wonder if something, based on his workouts, prompted the Mets to pull the plug on the WBC now, as opposed to waiting two weeks while in camp…

…whatever the reason, i’m glad… i know it is important to these guys to represent their country in a baseball tournament, but i’m far more concerned with him representing the Mets…

“There are a lot of things here that the Mets want to protect,” Santana acknowledged during a conference call with reporters in January, “and if they don’t want me to play I will not play.”

Santana underwent surgery in October to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee.  In December, he told reporters he will be ready for spring training.

In a poll to MetsBlog.com during late December, 86 percent of people who voted said they would ask Santana to skip the WBC.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on February 9, 2009 11:55 AM

Amazon announces the second version of the Kindle, their e-ink reading device. The price is $359.

Order Kindle now to RESERVE YOUR PLACE IN LINE. We prioritize orders on a first come, first served basis. If you have previously placed an order for Kindle 1, and have not yet received it, your order will automatically be upgraded to Kindle 2. You need to do nothing.

Also, those who own the original version of the Kindle will be given priority for ordering. The device itself is slimmer, has text-to-speech, better e-ink display, more storage (~1500 books), and doesn't look like a Pontiac Aztek anymore. From the NY Times coverage of the announcement:

Mr. Bezos concludes with some high-level thinking: "Our vision is every book, ever printed, in any language , all available in less than 60 seconds.

Which makes Bezos' aim pretty clear: Amazon : Apple :: Kindle/amazon.com : iPod/iTunes Store :: Bezos : Jobs.

Tags: kindle amazon books

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 9, 2009 10:43 AM

The following clip, from YouTube, is from two fans who sneaked in to Shea Stadium to film the demolition site up close:

…man, these two are crazy… i would have been paranoid the entire time that the building would crumble upon me… this is probably why it’s a restricted area… nevertheless, it’s pretty interesting video, even though i assume these people would have found themselves in a ton of trouble had they been caught…

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on February 9, 2009 10:38 AM

Spunto, in plywood days

1) Greenwich Village: NYMag has the skinny on newbie, Spunto, the latest in a family of like-named eateries around town including Vezzo and Gruppo. They write: “The West Village outpost is equipped with 64 seats, a beer-and-wine license, a gas-fired brick oven, and entrances on both Carmine Street and Seventh Avenue South. But what most distinguishes it from other local parlors is the range of toppings and combinations, from the Shroomtown (portobello, shiitake, button mushrooms, white-truffle oil) to ChixPotle (chipotle chicken, pineapple, and cilantro).” Status: Not Open. "Probably tomorrow, lunch." 65 Carmine Street, 212-242-1200. [NYM]

2) Harlem: UptownFlavor reports that Carl Redding, former owner of Amy Ruth’s has opened take-out only Southern eatery, Doc’s. He writes: “Doc’s is a scaled down version of the previous restaurants that serves a take-out only menu of Redding’s signature southern favorites, as well as seafood creations like steamed mussels and grilled salmon Caesar salad. Aware of the tough economic times Chef Redding has added a sweet twist to the old formula. Doc’s Recession Rescue Menu serves a family of four a choice of chicken, ribs or fish, plus three sides, biscuits and soda for $24.99.” Status: Unknown. Phone number gives busy signal. 1902 7th Avenue; 212-222-8820. [UptownFlavor]

3) Prospect-Lefferts Gardens: TONY’s The Feed checks in with a handful of openings including BBQ joint, Whiskey Sunday. They write: “A massive wood smoker—capable of cooking 500 pounds of meat at once—is the keystone of Richard Krause’s already-open Texas barbecue joint, featuring an extensive whiskey collection.” Status: Unknown. No answer to calls. 49 Lincoln Road, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens. 718-282-7098. [TONY]

4) Harlem: Back in Harlem, TONY has it that French Bistro, Chez Lucienne has recently opened with two Daniel alums at the helm. They write: “Look for both traditional (beef bourguignonne) and bold (calf’s-foot croquettes) creations at Harlem’s newest French bistro, from Jerome Bougherdani and chef Matthew Tivy, both Daniel alums.” Status: Certified Open as of Friday night. 308 Malcolm X Blvd; 212-289-5555. [TONY]

5) Hell’s Kitchen: And the folks over at Metromix report on the opening of Gossip Bar and Restaurant, including the obligatory Gossip Girl references: “The grub? Shock: predictably utilitarian bar food that's literally all over the map, from quesadillas to chicken satay to mini chicken cordon bleu. Larger plates bust out the fancy-schmancy—can you say duck breast with pomegranate reduction? Ooooh. Prices that top out at $18? Ooooh. Late-night hours that stretch to 4 a.m. on weekends? Ooooh.” Status: Certified Open. 733 Ninth Avenue; 212-265-2720. [Metromix]

5) Gramercy: TONY reports that Red Hook’s famous sandwich shop Defonte’s of Brooklyn, a plywood vet, is getting close to opening a Gramercy outpost: “As has been previously reported, Red Hook’s famed 87-year-old sandwich shop will soon let Manhattanites in on why Brooklyn is so unfuggedable: It’s bringing its flavor-packed heros—including one stuffed with potato, egg and mozzarella—to Gramercy.” Status: Unknown. No answer to calls. 261 Third Avenue; 212-614-1500. [TONY]

6) Upper West Side: Metromix has word that Israeli chain, Aroma Espresso Bar, (not to be confused with the downtown Italian eatery of the same name) has opened its UWS shop this week: “Aroma Espresso Bar expands its Gotham presence with a trendy, bi-level super-café on the Upper West Side. The usual suspects remain: cappuccino, espresso, lattes, as well as Mediterranean-inflected bites. Plus: free Wi-Fi!” Status: Certified Open. 161 W. 72nd Street; 212-595-7700. [Metromix]

7) Williamsburg: And finally, the arepa craze continues with the opening of Arepa Arepa in Williamsburg. TONY has the lowdown: “More than a dozen versions of the namesake South American cornmeal cake (rock shrimp, free-range chicken, chorizo, skirt steak, etc.) will be available at this Billyburg spot. Status: Unknown. No answer to calls. 160 Havemeyer Street, Williamsburg; 718-388-5797. [TONY]

Originally posted by Kelly Dobkin from Eater, on February 9, 2009 10:29 AM

The AP, via ESPN.com, is reporting that former Met infielder Edgardo Alfonzo has signed a one-year contract with the Yomiuri Giants of the NPB, Japan’s Major Leagues.

Fonzie, now 35, signed a deal worth $350,000 for the team considered Yankees of Japan.

…while it’s not the majors, it beats playing in the tiny stadiums of the Atlantic League…Japan’s fans are rabid, and the Giants are even bigger there than the Yankees are here…

…Fonzie was my favorite player growing up, so it’s time to switch allegiances from Bobby V’s Chiba Lotte Marines to the Giants, as painful as that is…

Originally posted by Jordan Zakarin from MetsBlog.com, on February 9, 2009 9:45 AM

Examiner column for February 11, 2009.

  Ordinarily, I don’t advocate simple solutions to complex situations. The factors that contribute to success or failure of a school or a student are so numerous that we’ve been arguing since the nineteenth century on the best way to accomplish the goal of achieving literacy for all children—and I include math, science, history, art, and music to the foundational literacies of reading and writing.

    Yet there is a reason why I’ve championed the Advanced Placement program for twenty years. AP is flexible enough to fit in any school setting, and is intelligently designed to elevate high school thinking and writing to something approximating college expectations. Over 90% of four-year colleges and universities in the United States accept AP credits, and studies show that AP students entering college achieve both higher college G.P.A.s and a higher rate of graduation within 4 years.

     Last week, College Board released its fifth annual AP report to the nation stating that 15% of the high school class of 2008 earned at least one passing score on the demanding AP tests given last May, with Maryland first in the nation at 23.4%, and Virginia third with 21.3%. If over a fifth of high school students in Maryland and Virginia pass at least one AP exam, no doubt a quarter are taking one or more AP courses—an impressive figure. But we can do better than that.

    President Obama has voiced support for initiatives not only making college education more affordable for the middle class, but also aligning high school and college more closely, so that fewer students drop out through lack of preparedness. Increasing the number of AP classes is one relatively simple step toward that goal.

    That Maryland and Virginia score so well on College Board’s list of AP achievement is in no small part owing to Jay Mathews’ celebrated Challenge Index—a school ranking based on availability of AP and International Baccalaureate classes in local high schools. Parents love rankings, and schools—and school systems—beefed up their AP and IB offerings in order to ascend the Challenge Index ladder in the greater D.C. area.

    Mathews is slightly partial to IB, and I am partial to AP—because of its flexibility and widespread acceptance by four-year institutions. But either one will provide the rigor and critical thinking students need to develop if they are to handle a college curriculum. Washington D.C.’s schools are undergoing huge changes at every level, and AP inclusion and preparation should be at the top of the list for every principal of every high school interested in improving student achievement.

    Next week I will describe the AP program more specifically and outline why it is successful in preparing students for college and the complex realities of the world beyond high school’s walls, but the essence of the AP method is that it doesn’t settle for rote memorization or multiple choice as means and ends in learning. (Even the math exams include essays.) Students need to be able to reason and think logically to pass an AP test.

    My personal Utopia consists of a population of students who reason and think logically! My next column will show how AP brings us closer to that goal.

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on February 9, 2009 9:29 AM

How do you wrest control of the banking industry away from the vested elites who got us in this mess? Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson makes the fascinating point that breaking the back of the elites is a critical stage in crisis resolution in developing and post-communist countries -- a stage we have yet to go through in confronting our own crisis:

The elites who run the US banking industry have had a great run of economic good fortune. They used this wealth to further strengthen their political power, both through donations to politicians of almost all stripes and more broadly through taking positions of formal and informal influence throughout the executive and legislative branches.

Our unsustainable debt-fueled boom, in other words, produced both the conditions for a major global financial disaster, and a political strengthening of the people who benefited most from the risk-taking and associated compensation packages that made this disaster possible. Ending the financial crisis is relatively straightforward - a forced recapitalization and change of ownership/management in the banking system - although this will not immediately lead to an economic recovery ... But seen in deeper political terms, decisive action to restructure large banks is almost impossible. Such action would require overcoming perhaps the single strongest interest group in the United States today.

How can you do it? The answer must be by splitting this powerful interest group into competing factions, and taking them on one by one. Can this be done? Definitely, yes. In particular, bank recapitalization - if implemented right - can use private equity interests against the powerful large bank insiders. Then you need to force the new private equity owners of banks to break them up so they are no longer too big to fail.

I'm preparing to do one of our video interviews with Johnson later today, and I'm eager to explore the political economics of the bank bailout with him. I should add that Johnson is not optimistic that the plan Geithner is set to roll out tomorrow is the back-breaking proposal we need.

Originally posted by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, on February 9, 2009 9:07 AM

A little birdie told us that Project Runway will never make it on the air again.

The source says that next week's scheduled show will in fact happen to generate publicity and anticipation for the PR brand without ever being broadcast. Instead, it will help establish Harvey Weinstein's place in the fashion industry - in total, he's behind three major shows: Halston, Marchesa and Project Runway.

Meanwhile, the poor designers busting their asses to finish their collections will miss out on the fame and fortune, or notoriety, or whatever, that comes from actually starring on the reality show.

The end.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on February 9, 2009 8:49 AM

Dan Lyons, who wrote and tried to monetize the now-defunct Fake Steve Jobs blog, on the business of blogging:

Blogs can do many wonderful things [but] generating huge amounts of money isn't one of them.

As businesses go, blogging is a lot like shining shoes. There are going to be very few folks who own chains of shoe shining places which make a lot of money and a bunch of other people who can (maybe) make a living at it if they bust their ass 24/7/365. But for many, shining shoes is something that will be done at home for themselves because it feels good to walk around with a shiny pair of shoes. Everyone else will switch to sandals (i.e. Twitter) or sneakers (i.e. Facebook) and not worry about shining at all. (via fimoculous)

Tags: weblogs business stevelyons

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 9, 2009 8:39 AM

Nothing too fancy today.  Just a pile of espresso machine parts that I found rather... attractive.  Tomas assured me that every little piece is exactly where it belongs.

On the workshop window sill, a memento of the Kaffinator days.

Originally posted by Jeff Katris from Gimme! Coffee News, on February 9, 2009 8:20 AM

after leaving Lifehacker, a "slower pace and a more personal approach to online publishing"  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on February 9, 2009 8:18 AM

MUSIC BUZZ: OMG, BuzzFeed editor Peggy Wang's band is totally taking off. They have a new video, a tour, lots of press, sold out shows. Pretty crazy. They are called “The Pains of Being Pure at Heart” and you can buy their debut album on Amazon . We are happy for you Peggy but don't quit your day job. Seriously, please please please don't quit your day job.

Contribute: Add an image, link, video or comment »

The Best Links:

1. Buy The Debut Album on Amazon
2. Pitchfork “Best New Music”
3. Guardian’s New Band of the Day
4. The Yellow Stereo Has An Interview with The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
5. Peggy Discusses BuzzFeed and Her “Day Job” on Stereogum
6. From the Village Voice - “Sweet Pop Pleasure From the Pains of Being Pure at Heart”
7. From the New York Times - “A Hard Sound Not Far From Gossip Girl”
8. “This is an Important Record for These Times, a Game Changer”
9. “This is a Slice of Summertime That is Badly Needed”
10. CD Review - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart Self-Titled Album in the Washington Post
11. YouTube - Watch The Video for “Everything With You”
12. Listen to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on MySpace
13. Indie Label Slumberland Releases the Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Originally posted by (author unknown) from BuzzFeed - Latest, on February 9, 2009 7:39 AM

The state of Victoria in southern Australia has recently been hit with hundreds of bush fires during a record-breaking heatwave - temperatures well above 38°C (100°F). Unfortunately, these fires have proved to be the deadliest in Australian history, with at least 166 deaths reported so far. The fires mostly appear to have been started by lightning - however a few appear to have been arson, and are under investigation - entire towns being declared crime scenes. Twenty-four fires are still burning, and authorities warn that the death toll will likely rise. (36 photos total)

A fire truck moves away from out of control flames from a bushfire in the Bunyip Sate Forest near the township of Tonimbuk, 125 kilometers (78 miles) west of Melbourne, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009. Walls of flame roared across southeastern Australia, razing scores of homes, forests and farmland in the sunburned country's worst wildfire disaster in a quarter century. (AP Photo)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Big Picture, on February 9, 2009 7:35 AM

The entire collection of Kim's Video in the East Village, all 55,000+ hard-to-find films, is now headed to a formerly abandoned town in Italy that is now run entirely by artists.

In a notice pasted on a wall inside the front door [of his video store], he wrote, "We hope to find a sponsor who can make this collection available to those who have loved Kim's over the past two decades." He promised to donate all the films without charge to anyone who would meet three conditions: Keep the collection intact, continue to update it and make it accessible to Kim's members and others.

(thx, cliff)

Tags: movies business italy nyc

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 9, 2009 7:17 AM

We've playing with the spankin' new Kindle 2 right now. Check out our live impressions, photos and video here, updating live.

• Hey, it's downright iPod Touchy. Nice rounded aluminum back with a plastic top. Will it stay on the toilet seat?
• Controls are almost exactly the same as Kindle 1, just slightly re-arranged, for the better. You can still page forward from both sides. Although now, with more non-button room on the sides, you can definitely pick it up without turning the page. They nailed the buttons.
• What we're really sad about: the Sparklemotion scrolling indicator is gone. Nooo! Now, as you scroll through lists, the active choice gets a black underline. It's not as slow as turning pages, but nowhere near as fast as the magical sparkle pixie trapped inside of Kindle 1. It definitely makes the overall experience a little more sluggish-feeling.
• The refresh is faster, but not super-noticeably so. It could definitely be zippier still, despite the ads saying it's just like turning a page. I don't turn pages that slow, except when I'm reading like, Deleuzian theory.
• The display is definitely crisper, and the book covers are a lot prettier, for black and white anyway. We wish it was a little bigger—it's the same size as the original—and there's definitely some room for it.
• The overall handfeel is a lot nicer. While part of me loves the snowspeeder original, this just feels better in your hand, and it obviously looks a lot slicker. Though at the same time, that iPod-like slickness is a bit less daring than the original.

• UI wise, it looks very, very similar to Kindle 1. Aside from the change in scrolling lists (sans Sparklemotion), it's all very very similar.
• Storage is hefty at 2GB - that's 1500 books Amazon claims, more than I can see any human ever actually needing at one time. Probably the smallest chip the factory could get their hands on.
• Web browsing and MP3s are still relegated to the "experimental" menu, and browsing seems equally awkward. Although images do look prettier.

Here's a quick run-through on video:

Originally posted by John Mahoney from Gizmodo, on February 9, 2009 6:05 AM

Leave it to the Greeks to remind us of what's important (while supplies last).

Originally posted by Anne-Marie Robles from Gimme! Coffee News, on February 9, 2009 5:31 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from garfield minus garfield, on February 9, 2009 4:50 AM

Nancy Pelosi wants to scare the crap out of you, so her office has released the above scary graph, which we bring to you by way of Time's Swampland blog.

Here's what Pelosi's office has to say about their work. (The graph uses "actual job-loss data," from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

This chart compares the job loss so far in this recession to job losses in the 1990-1991 recession and the 2001 recession — showing how dramatic and unprecedented the job loss over the last 13 months has been. Over the last 13 months, our economy has lost a total of 3.6 million jobs – and continuing job losses in the next few months are predicted.

By comparison, we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and we lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing.

Time's readers quickly got to work debunking the graph for not taking into account the difference in population, though it seems that they ultimately concluded that this recession is the worst since 1974-1975, and may likely be even crappier than that.

What do you think? What's that? It's so hard to understand you when you've got your hands shoved in your mouths to stop the screams from escaping.

How Bad Is It? [Time via Buzzfeed]
MORE: How Bad Is It? [Time]

Originally posted by Meg Marco from Consumerist, on February 9, 2009 4:30 AM

I added a new feature to kottke.org over the weekend: live updating on the home page. If you leave kottke.org open in your browser (with JavaScript on) and I post a new link, the page will display a message urging you to refresh to view some new posts. The page title changes too, so if you have it up in a tab, you can tell at a glance if something's new. Right now the page checks for new posts every ten minutes, but that could change depending on server load, etc. Thanks to Twitter Search and Tumblr for the inspiration.

Tags: kottkedotorg webdev

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on February 9, 2009 3:49 AM

BuddyPress, a set of plugins which will transform an installation of WordPress MU into a social network platform,  is nearing a 1.0 final release  - scheduled for Thursday February 12th.

We’ve received lots of interest about this project, and to help provide more info we’ve produced a short video with a great overview of BuddyPress and a hint as to what’s possible with this great new platform:

[ Visit BuddyPress.org ]

      

Originally posted by Raanan Bar-Cohen from WordPress Publisher Blog, on February 9, 2009 3:30 AM

If you've followed the Wooster site for long, then you know how much we love the art of OTHER in Canada. Torontoist recently did a terrific Q&A with OTHER, which you can read here.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on February 9, 2009 3:17 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on February 9, 2009 3:11 AM

Monster.com was hacked, and and people's personal data was stolen. Normally I wouldn't bother even writing about this—it happens all the time—but an AP reporter called me yesterday to comment. I said:

Monster's latest breach "shouldn't have happened," said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for BT Group. "But you can't understand a company's network security by looking at public events—that's a bad metric. All the public events tell you are, these are attacks that were successful enough to steal data, but were unsuccessful in covering their tracks."

Thinking about it, it's even more complex than that. To assess an organization's network security, you need to actually analyze it. You can't get a lot of information from the list of attacks that were successful enough to steal data but not successful enough to cover their tracks, and which the company's attorneys couldn't figure out a reason not to disclose to the public.

Originally posted by schneier from Schneier on Security, on February 9, 2009 2:47 AM

Congrats to Katie and Allie, for taking 1st and 2nd at the 2009 Mid Atlantic Regional Barista Competition this weekend in Pittsburgh!  Additional congrats to David Flynn and Jeremy Sterner (both from our B.F.F.'s at Peregrine Espresso) for taking 3rd and 4th.  Way to go, DC!!!  

Be sure to congratulate all of them!

Originally posted by Nick from murkycoffee, on February 8, 2009 7:27 PM

In every Pokemon game there is always someone who is willing to trade a Pokémon to you. In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness there was a trainer who would trade a very special Elekid to you. This Elekid was named Zaprong.

What made Zaprong special was his move set, it was full of physical attacks. Three of the moves were also egg moves.

Elekid is fairly even in the Attack(63) vs. Special Attack(65) department. Electabuzz continues this trend as Special Attack begins to gain a serious edge over Attack (83 vs. 95). Then came the 4^th generation and a second evolution for Elekid. As an Electivire this Pokémon really shines when it comes to physical moves (123 vs. 95).

I know a lot of people are new to the world of Pokémon and some of those people enjoy going back and playing the older games to collect rare Pokémon while others prefer to live in the now. This farming event is for those who do not have time to go back. Besides, getting a Zaprong out of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness is easily a 20+ hour endeavor.

Ability: Static: The opponent has a 30% chance of being induced with PARALYZE when using a direct attack against this Pokémon.

Moves
• Cross Chop (Fighting / 100)
• Thunder Punch (Electric / 75 STAB)
• Ice Punch (Ice 75)
• Fire Punch (Fire / 75)

Rules
1. Do not trade me eggs.
2. Do not trade me hacked Pokemon.
3. When you leave your information in the comments below your trainer name must be correct. When I do the trading I refer to the comments on the site to see who gets what.
4. When you enter the Wi-Fi zone select the trade option and wait for me to select you.
5. If you can, be early. I am sometimes on early.

My information:
Trainer: Ezekial
Friend Code: 0559 3242 3898

Instructions
• Have something to trade to me
• Be in the Wi-Fi zone by 7:00PM EDT (New York Time) on Thursday February 12, 2009
• Be ready

Originally posted by HMTKSteve from Poke Farm, on February 8, 2009 3:51 PM

The precept of Order requiring that every part of my business should have its allotted time, one page in my little book contained the following scheme of employment for the twenty-four hours of a natural day. --> One Floor Up {wicked good blog}

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on February 8, 2009 8:25 AM

A Postmodern Crime at TED2009: James Duncan Davidson’s incredibly unusual mugging at TED. What a sad yet odd story.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org, on February 8, 2009 7:44 AM

Allen Salkin, You Try to Live on 500K in This Town:

The bankers who screwed up their companies by leveraging to the hilt and assuming the good times would never end also screwed up their personal finances by leveraging to the hilt and assuming the good times would never end.

Originally posted by James Grimmelmann from The Laboratorium, on February 8, 2009 7:17 AM