randomwalks/dj

[This piece combines into a single narrative and expands upon three shorter pieces I posted immediately after this news broke Friday night.]

Friday night around midnight, The Wall Street Journal published a report headlined “Jobs Had Liver Transplant”¹ by Yukari Iwatani Kane and Joann S. Lublin. It stated:

Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave from Apple Inc. since January to treat an undisclosed medical condition, received a liver transplant in Tennessee about two months ago. The chief executive has been recovering well and is expected to return to work on schedule later this month, though he may work part-time initially.

What’s intriguing about this story is not the question of whether Jobs actually had a liver transplant. I do not doubt that (although I’d like to see better sources for it). What is intriguing is the question of who leaked this information to the Journal and why.

The WSJ’s Unusual Lack of Sourcing

There are several highly unusual aspects to the Journal’s story. First is that they offer no source for the information — not even an “according to sources familiar the matter”. But yet they state it flatly as certain fact that Steve Jobs had a secret liver transplant in Tennessee. Blockbuster news with no sourcing whatsoever. To call that curious is an understatement. And, coming in the opening paragraph of a page one story, it could not be a careless omission.

The basic tenets of journalism are simple. One reports facts and how one knows them. The principle is much like that of publishing scientific papers, where one describes not just the results, but also exactly how the results were obtained, so that others can reproduce them. This is why named sources are so much more valuable than anonymous sources; with a named source, other reporters can contact the source to verify the information.

But there’s an apt journalism adage from Lord Northcliffe: “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.” And so sometimes the only sources for certain information are those who cannot or will not allow their names to be used. Most publications, and certainly all publications of the stature of The Wall Street Journal, have strict guidelines covering the use of anonymous sources. My friend Matt Deatherage (publisher of the estimable MacJournals) quoted the following from the Journal’s own Wall Street Journal Guide to Business Style and Usage in a post to the MacJournals-Talk mailing list:

ANONYMOUS SOURCES: Accepting a source’s request for anonymity sometimes is the only practical way to obtain important information, but we must be circumspect. On-the-record sources are always preferable because they may be held personally accountable for what they say and are therefore generally more certain to be scrupulously accurate. Also, readers are able to made judgments about the reliability of those whose identities are provided.

In cases where the person’s identity is to be protected, take pains to indicate where his or her biases might lie: “an executive working for a competitor … an executive who left the company in a management shakeup … a laid-off employee …” or “a close relative of the plaintiff.”

Their story on Jobs’s purported liver transplant offers no sourcing for the reader to judge. It entirely hinges on the (admittedly significant) credibility of The Wall Street Journal itself.

Again, I point all this out not to say that I don’t believe their report. I’m as big a cynic regarding anonymous sourcing as anyone, but I believe that Jobs indeed had a liver transplant in Tennessee simply because The Wall Street Journal has placed its credibility behind the story. There is no hedging or fudging in their report. If it’s not true, it would amount to one of the biggest mistakes in their esteemed history.

But reputable news publications do not ordinarily report utterly unsourced news. (I cannot find another example of the Journal reporting completely unsourced page one news.) So: Why?

Most major news publications have picked up the story, but only by sourcing the information to Journal itself. For example: Bloomberg, The San Jose Mercury News, ABC News, and The BBC. Bloomberg’s report is indicative of this second-hand reporting:

Steve Jobs, co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc., underwent a liver transplant two months ago, the Wall Street Journal reported, without disclosing the source of the information.

Even The New York Times has published a piece (“Apple Chief Reportedly Had Liver Transplant”) but they too have no source for the news other than the report in the Journal. (Surely the Times has reporters digging into this story; the aforelinked piece crediting only the Journal ran almost 24 hours after the Journal’s story, and as of this writing, four hours later, has not hit the front page of nytimes.com.)

The only publication claiming independent verification is CNBC, late Saturday night:

Two sources confirmed to CNBC that Jobs had the surgery and another confirmed that his plane flew from San Jose to Memphis in late March.

Further curiosity: whoever the Journal’s source, they didn’t give the WSJ any publishable information regarding why Jobs needed a new liver — that part of the article is pure speculation, quoting doctors who have never treated Jobs personally. Is it because the Journal’s source doesn’t know, or because the source wouldn’t tell? There’s a big difference.

Why Tennessee?

There have been rumors circulating for months that Steve Jobs had moved to Tennessee for some sort of medical treatment. Here’s a rumor Barron’s Tech Trader Daily published on April 15, which in turn cites a report by Alexander Haislip of the PEHub Blog (which does not have publicly available archives). Haislip wrote:

I spoke with a well-connected business person in Memphis this morning who says that there is a house in a swank neighborhood there that has been bought for a princely sum and is undergoing minor renovations in preparation for its new resident.

He says he has reason to believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs is moving to the city to treat his pancreatic cancer.

Several readers sent me this Barron’s link back when it was new, but I decided against linking to it because it was just so sketchily sourced. (And even now, if the WSJ report turns out to be completely accurate, the Barron’s rumor was wrong with regard to the treatment for which Jobs went to Tennessee.) I’ve ignored a slew of Jobs-related rumors over the past year because of the sourcing.

One thing that struck me as wrong at the outset regarding these “Jobs-in-Tennessee” rumors is the question of why he’d bother going to Tennessee in the first place. Tennessee may be a lovely state, but, well, it doesn’t sound like Steve Jobs country. You don’t need to leave the Bay area to get world-class medical treatment. The Journal’s report has a good answer:²

The specifics of Mr. Jobs’s surgery couldn’t be established, but according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the transplant network in the U.S., there are no residency requirements for transplants. Having the procedure done in Tennessee makes sense because its list of patients waiting for transplants is shorter than in many other states. According to data provided by UNOS, in 2006, the median number of days from joining the liver waiting list to transplant was 306 nationally. In Tennessee, it was 48 days.

But if the Journal knows that Jobs had a transplant, and knows that it was performed in Tennessee, why don’t they know which hospital? Again from their report:

Three hospitals in Tennessee — Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and Methodist University Hospital in Memphis — are designated as liver-transplant centers, according to UNOS. A spokeswoman for Le Bonheur said the hospital doesn’t perform liver transplants in adults. A Vanderbilt spokesman said it didn’t treat Mr. Jobs. A spokeswoman for Methodist University said Mr. Jobs isn’t listed as a patient there.

Reading between the lines, if Jobs had a liver transplant in Tennessee, it must have been at one of these three hospitals. Two flatly deny it, but the third, Methodist University, simply stated Jobs “isn’t listed as a patient” — present tense, not past tense. So it must have been performed there. But why can’t the Journal state that as fact as well?

Regarding the Timing and Source of the Leak

That this news broke months after the purported transplant, at midnight on the Friday of what appears to be the most successful new product launch in Apple history, strikes me as beyond coincidence. My first thought was that it must be a deliberate, timed leak from Apple. Assuming the story is true and that Apple felt the need to eventually release the news, when better to release it than on the very day when it most appears that Apple has continued to thrive while Jobs was on medical leave? MG Siegler at TechCrunch speculates similarly:

We’d be remiss if we didn’t note that the timing of this story appears favorable for Apple. This news breaks late on a Friday, after Apple has just held a successful launch of a very high profile new product, the iPhone 3G S, that sent the stock soaring today. Obviously, the market won’t be open again until Monday.

I don’t see how the leak could have came from someone with a competitive interest against Apple. The timing is completely favorable to Apple; if the leak had came from someone wishing ill against Apple, it would have come at some time, any time, other than in the wake of the extremely successful iPhone 3G S launch. Plus, other than the surprise that Jobs had a liver transplant in the first place, the gist of the article is largely favorable to Apple. It emphasizes that Jobs is recovering, is still set to return to work this month, and has already been seen on Apple’s campus recently. It is also the case that it would be unconscionable for the information to come from someone with a position against Apple and for the Journal not to describe the source as such.

Thus I see only three possible sources for the leak.

Theory 1: That the information came without Jobs’s permission or knowledge, from a healthcare provider with knowledge of Jobs’s medical situation. Presumably, given the Journal’s report, from someone at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis. Such a leak would clearly be a violation of HIPAA privacy laws. This might explain the utter lack of sourcing and the certainty as to the veracity of the information, but it would not explain the perfect-for-Apple timing of the leak, which timing I firmly believe is simply too convenient to be coincidence. It would also raise serious questions regarding the ethics of the Wall Street Journal. I therefore discount this possibility.

Theory 2: That the leak was authorized by Jobs himself. I doubt Jobs personally spoke to the Journal reporters (see below), but it could have been someone close to him (if so, I’d guess Katie Cotton or someone else high up in Apple Communications) doing it with his permission. The thinking behind this theory would be that if the information was going to become public eventually, why not control it and have it come out at the most advantageous time possible. This scenario would explain the certainty of the information, but not the odd lack of sourcing.

My thoughts then ran to the possibility that perhaps Jobs himself is the source — he has occasionally called reporters personally. And if he offered the information only on the condition that it not be sourced to him by name, perhaps the Journal couldn’t bring themselves to describe Jobs himself as merely “a source familiar with the situation” or somesuch. But the second paragraph in the Journal story seems to preclude Jobs personally as the source:

Mr. Jobs didn’t respond to an email requesting comment. “Steve continues to look forward to returning at the end of June, and there’s nothing further to say,” said Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton.

That language leaves the clear impression that Jobs did not personally contribute to the report, and it implies that Katie Cotton did not either. It’s one thing for reporters to omit information; it is something else entirely to purposefully mislead readers.

There are also certain implications in the Journal’s story that cast Jobs in an unflattering light.

William Hawkins, a doctor specializing in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., said that the type of slow-growing pancreatic tumor Mr. Jobs had will commonly metastasize in another organ during a patient’s lifetime, and that the organ is usually the liver. “All total, 75% of patients are going to have the disease spread over the course of their life,” said Dr. Hawkins, who has not treated Mr. Jobs.

Getting a liver transplant to treat a metastasized neuroendocrine tumor is controversial because livers are scarce and the surgery’s efficacy as a cure hasn’t been proved, Dr. Hawkins added. He said that patients whose tumors have metastasized can live for as many as 10 years without any treatment so it is hard to determine how successful a transplant has been in curing the disease.

This is ugly business. They’re quoting a doctor who specializes in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery as saying (1) that it’s common for someone who had the cancer Jobs had to subsequently get cancer in their liver; (2) that liver transplants are not proven to help in such cases; and (3) obtaining a liver transplant in such cases is therefore controversial because it’s taking a liver that could otherwise have been put to better use by someone with some other type of liver ailment. There is no other way to read this than as an implication that Steve Jobs may have gotten a liver that should have gone to someone else. Keep in mind that this entire ugly implication is not stated as fact and is attributed as speculation from a doctor who admittedly has not treated Steve Jobs. But the fact that it is in the story at all makes me question whether any of the information in the story came with Steve Jobs’s permission, tacit or otherwise.

Theory 3: That a member of Apple’s board of directors leaked the information to the Journal without Jobs’s permission or knowledge, or perhaps, if the matter of public disclosure had been posed to and dismissed by Jobs at a board meeting, expressly against Jobs’s wishes. The scenario I am imagining here is that Jobs does not wish to reveal anything regarding his medical situation, but that a member (or contingent) of Apple’s board believes it is in the company’s interest to release the basic gist of the story, regardless of Jobs’s wishes. This scenario would explain the timing, the certainty, and perhaps even the lack of sourcing. (Although if this scenario is the case, certainly Jobs himself must suspect the source of the leak is from the board.)

Note also that some portions of Kane and Lublin’s WSJ report must have been sourced from someone on, or very close to, Apple’s board of directors:

When he does return, Mr. Jobs may be encouraged by his physicians to initially “work part-time for a month or two,” a person familiar with the thinking at Apple said. That may lead Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, to take “a more encompassing role,” this person said. The person added that Mr. Cook may be appointed to Apple’s board in the not-too-distant future. […]

At least some Apple directors were aware of the CEO’s surgery. As part of an agreement with Mr. Jobs in place before he went on leave, some board members have been briefed weekly on the CEO’s condition by his physician.

Who else other than a source on Apple’s board would know that Tim Cook may soon join the board, or that some board members were briefed weekly?³

This third scenario is my best guess as to the Journal’s source. It sounds sensational to speculate that there is conflict in this regard between Jobs and at least some contingent of Apple’s board of directors, but sensational or not, it makes more sense to me than any other scenario.

It also fits with my belief that Steve Jobs does not want to disclose anything about his health whatsoever.

---

1. As usual, I’m linking to a Google redirection to the WSJ story. If I link directly to the WSJ web site, only paid WSJ subscribers will be able to read the story. The WSJ allows referrals from Google to see full article content. ↩

2. Apple board member and Jobs confidant Al Gore is from Tennessee. But his home is in Nashville, not Memphis, so I can’t think of any reason Gore would have played a role in Jobs’s decision to go there. ↩

3. In theory the Journal’s source could be Tim Cook, but that goes against everything I have ever heard about Cook. I believe him to be loyal, honest, and to have deservedly earned Steve Jobs’s full trust. I truly believe that Cook would much prefer to continue in his current role in an Apple with Jobs as CEO than to be CEO of a Jobs-less Apple. Plus, Cook doesn’t need to angle through the press for anything. If Jobs steps down as CEO any time in the foreseeable future, the CEO job goes to Cook. No one whose opinion I value doubts this. It’s simply a question of whether Cook runs operations as “COO” with Steve Jobs overseeing product development, or as “CEO” without Steve Jobs overseeing product development. ↩

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 20, 2009 11:25 PM

My friend Deanna, wearing her BOBBY 2010 shirt for Bobby V, in the visitor’s cheering section at Jingu Stadium. She is one of the best English-language writers covering Japanese baseball.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from metsgrrl.com's tumblr, on June 20, 2009 7:39 PM

I just had the image of Beavis and Butthead playing frog baseball, only with an iPhone.  That’s not what I’m talking about, of course.  If you want to see iPhone destruction, I can only recommend this.

The evening I downloaded the MLB at bat 2009 app for my iPhone.  It’s teh awesome.  Not only can I listen to games for the rest of the season, I can watch a couple games a day (of MLB’s choosing), watch in game video highlights, and so much more.  And all for $10 bucks.  I believe the online audio is $20, so I’m $10 bucks ahead.  Well, minus the cost of the iPhone and service, of course.

Even better, MLB at bat 2009 lets you listen to the game while it’s in sleep mood, saving your battery but still giving you the game.  Awesome.

I fully expect MLB to screw it up next year by charging more or offering less.  But for this year, sign up. 

/free advertising for iphone, mlb at bat 2009, and baseball in general

Originally posted by handcollated from Hand Collated, on June 20, 2009 6:08 PM

Note: Dinged Corners is having feed issues. They are alive and kicking and can be found here:

I hopped on board the fad train to TweetyTown and got myself a Twitter account. For someone who was deeply skeptical about FaceBook until recently this may seem like a ludicrous act. What the hell can you do with Twitter anyway? How can you possibly express any useful information in 140 characters? Well, it ain't easy, but I had a breakthrough during a training class on Friday.

I'm working on a CCNA certification and am currently taking a class towards that end. The stuff I was going over on Friday was heavy on the math - packet headers, binary numbering system, subnet masks. Basically squeezing a lot of useful information into a small amount of bytes. During my lunch break I headed to Target to pick up a new notebook (I take a lot of notes and mine had just run out) and I snagged a pack of Heritage to serve as a distraction from all those 1s and 0s.

Most of this stuff is just review for me so I took my notes and idly flipped through the cards. It then occurred to me that 140 characters is actually a whole lot of information. Heck, you only need 32 bits for an IPv4 address. So 140 characters can be useful, but how can it be useful? What problem can it solve for me?

Well, one problem I have with this blog is that I am suffering from pack rip constipation. I want to post pack rips on A Pack a Day and A Pack to Be Named Later, but time has been tight and it takes as long to post a pack rip as it does a decently researched article. I've also bought a fraction of the packs I normally do this year so I don't want to waste a good pack rip by actually sorting the cards into my set before I've taken the time to type it out and scan the cards but that's time consuming. So as a result about half of the packs I've bought this year are sitting on my desk opened but unsorted. Yes, I have mental problems. You're just noticing this now? Now, if there was a way I could post those pack rips as quickly as possible I could flush through the banal rips and save the good ones for posting. But you can't possibly tweet a pack rip can you? Let's examine.

So what information do you really need to share what cards you pulled in a pack? Well, the name of the product and the cards inside, of course. Pics and prices and commentary and links and YouTube videos are cute, but all you really need is the product and the cards. So can you tweet that in 140 characters? Let's break it down.

How many characters do you need to express the name of the pack? Well let's look at the names of some products. 2009 Upper Deck Series 2. 1987 Topps. 2008 Topps Baseball Updates and Highlights presents 2009 Topps Heritage High Number Series. That last one wipes out the tweet by itself, but let's truncate it to 2008 Heritage High. Heck, you can cut these names down further and still have collectors know what you're talking about. 09 UD2. 87 Topps. 09 HeritageHigh. So anywhere from 6 to 15 characters. Let's leave some wiggle room and make it 20 characters for the name of the pack, that leaves up to 120 for the cards.

So what do you need to list the cards? Card number and name would be helpful. If it's an insert or numbered that can add some extra characters but there's usually only a couple per pack. Card numbers at most will take 4 characters for an Upper Deck 1000 card set. Add a space to make it five. Names are generally three characters (Ott) to 14 characters long (Saltalamacchia). so really the most you would need is 20 characters per card, assuming you got all Saltalamacchias and Grudzielaneks and Pierzynskis. 120 divided by 20 is 6 so you can easily tweet a 6 card pack rip. Here's the characters per card you'd have for various pack sizes:

4 cards: 30 characters per card
5 cards: 24 characters per card
6 cards: 20 characters per card
8 cards: 15 characters per card
10 cards: 12 characters per card
12 cards: 10 characters per card
15 cards: 8 characters per card
20 cards: 6 characters per card

Jumbo packs are obviously untweetable. Hobby Upper Deck packs are impossible as well unless you just post the card numbers. A six or eight card pack though? perfect. What's in that pile on my desk? 8 card Heritage, 6 card O-Pee-Chee, some 12 card Topps, and soon to be a whole CRAPLOAD of 6 card Allen & Ginter.

It... Could... WOOOORK!

So I wrote up a mock tweet using that Heritage pack.

09 Heritage Target
19 characters, no problem.

383 David Wright 308 Zach Greinke 351 Ben Sheets 381 Braves Team 431 Jason Bartlett SP 344 Rafael Furcal 389 World Series game 4 162 BJ Upton
Eek, 141 characters, too many. Let's kill those first names.

383 Wright 308 Greinke 351 Sheets 381 Braves Team 431 Bartlett SP 344 Furcal 389 WS game 4 162 BJ Upton
103 characters. You know who all those guys are right? We have some space left so let's add a hashtag so the whole world can easily look at my packs.

#packrip
Seven characters to spare. I can add "poopie" to the end if I wish. But I won't. This is entirely too silly as it is.

So now I can tweet my pack rips and save time for more important things. Like typing up my Twitter methodology for an hour. Feel free to steal the concept or call the nuthouse on me if you wish.

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on June 20, 2009 4:34 PM

For those who don’t know, NARM is the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, the trade group for music retailers which is increasingly seeing membership from companies like iTunes, Amazon, and Rhapsody, as well as mobile carriers and a few of us rag tag startups such as Topspin. The NARM Connects Conference 2009 was held last week in San Diego and it was Topspin’s first visit to the gathering.

I participated by giving a keynote interview to Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk. NARM has posted the interview in its entirety at their Vimeo account. Dig:

NARM 2009 Keynote Interview With Ian Rogers from NARM on Vimeo.

But much better than my interview is Mike Masnick of Tech Dirt’s incredible presentation from earlier in the day. Mike is very kind to Topspin in his presentation and you should discount my opinion accordingly but this is, IMHO, a must-see. Please take a run through and send to everyone you know who cares about the future of media. Mike’s words may be a little hard to swallow but they’re based in reality and he offers not just commentary but a suggested solution (CwF + RtB = $$$), something few have the balls to do these days:

NARM 2009 State Of The Industry: Michael Masnick from NARM on Vimeo.

We also had the good fortune of receiving an award at Wednesday night’s awards ceremony. Somewhere between Norman Lear, Transworld’s Bob Higgins, all around rad dude Don Van Cleave, Ashford and Simpson, and Hall and Oats, Topspin was awarded a Business Innovation award from NARM. We were very proud to be nearly the only startup in a field of award winners such as Universal, Warner, and EMI. Thanks to all involved. It was truly an honor.

There were a lot of awards at the end of the presentation and they were discouraging speeches, so instead I stumbled up and nervously stammered a few mildly coherent words. Not sure what I actually said, but this is what I was trying to say:

“We’re a young company, less than two years old, and we certainly haven’t done anything worthy of an honor from you all just yet, though we hope to. I think the reason we’ve had a lot of attention in the past year plus is because we are actually very optimistic about the future of the music business, or at least about profitability for artists, which is the most important thing in the entire business. Thank you sincerely for this award, it’s truly an honor to be in the business of music.”

Thanks for watching and reading. Please RT, tell a friend, all that good stuff. And have a happy Father’s Day.

ian c rogers
Topspin

Originally posted by iancr from Topspin, on June 20, 2009 12:48 PM

Video of John Hodgman's speech at the Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner.

With Obama in attendance, Hodgman wonders if our Commander in Chief is indeed as nerdy as we've hoped.

Tags: Barack Obama   John Hodgman   video

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 20, 2009 12:17 PM

Looks like an awesome app — a working C64 emulator with a gorgeous UI.

But while I hope this gets worked out and allowed into the store (I’d buy it in a heartbeat), it should not be considered a bogus/outrageous/controversial rejection. The rejection notice cites sections of the SDK guidelines (forbidding code emulators) which the app clearly violates. This is the sort of app where it’d be nice if there were some sort of “premier developer” channel through which developers could get approval for concepts in advance of developing them.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 20, 2009 11:48 AM

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple's Steve Jobs had a liver transplant operation done about two months ago. John Gruber has extensive coverage of Livergate; he thinks it was an Apple leak:

This must be a deliberate, timed leak from Apple. The timing is simply perfect from Apple's perspective -- midnight on the Friday of what appears to be the most successful new product launch in company history.

Whatever the case, get well soon, Steve.

Tags: Apple   Steve Jobs

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 20, 2009 11:17 AM

This is an amazing collection of images from Iran over the past couple of days. It is extremely interesting how important these images have become to people on he ground, and the extent to which the regime has tried to suppress the creation of images and documentation of what is happening in Iran, to the extent of beating foreign journalists. It seems that now is the most important time for us to keep our eyes on Iran, to keep watching, paying attention, and aiding the movements for social transformation in the ways we are able....

According to our friends there: "These are photos that are being photocopied and handed out, held up at the demonstrations... they show the extent of repression and violence, mainly by the Bassiji...who here are finally taking some form of visual representation to the world, although the reality of their presence is beyond description."

1: A supporter of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi shouts slogans during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared winner by a landslide in Iran's hotly-disputed presidential vote, triggering riots by opposition supporters and furious complaints of cheating from his defeated rivals. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

2: Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi march through Valiasr Street during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

3: Protesters set fires in a main street in Tehran, Iran in the early hours of Monday, June 15, 2009. Iran's supreme leader ordered Monday an investigation into allegations of election fraud, marking a stunning turnaround by the country's most powerful figure and offering hope to opposition forces who have waged street clashes to protest the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (AP Photo)

4: Young men run past a burning bus during a riot in Tehran on June 13, 2009. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

5: A riot-police officer strikes a man with a baton near Tehran University on June 14, 2009. Iran's defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi said on Sunday he has asked the powerful Guardians Council to cancel the result of the presidential poll, while urging his supporters to continue peaceful protests. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

6: A man is detained by Iranian riot-police in front of Tehran University during riots in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo)

7: Iranian students, supporters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, try to keep clear of tear gas being lobbed back and forth at the main entrance of Tehran University during riots on Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo)

8: Students, supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi demonstrate at the main entrance of Tehran University during riots on Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo)

9: Iranian supporters of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi gather on the streets protesting the results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (AP photo)

10: Members of the Iranian hardline volunteer Basij militia begin to enter Tehran University where supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi were protesting against the latest election's results at Tehran's University on June 14, 2009. (AFP/Getty Images)

11: Supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and members of the Basij militia hurl stones towards supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi who are inside Tehran University on Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo)

12: Backers of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi are beaten by government security men during riots in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo)

13: Riot policemen deploy in Tehran's Enghelab square to disperse protesters demonstrating against the election results in Tehran on June 14, 2009. (AFP/Getty Images)

14: Hard-line supporters armed with batons try to break into a house where protesters found shelter in central Tehran June 14, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer)

15: A motorcycle burns in a street of Tehran, Iran on Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP photo/Vahid Salemi)

16: An injured backer of Mir Hossein Mousavi covers his bloodied face during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

17: A supporter of defeated presidential candidate Mousavi is beaten by government security men as fellow supporters come to his aid during riots in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo)

18: A man with a cane gestures towards a woman on the ground during protests in central Tehran June 14, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer)

19: Supporters of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi are followed by Iranian riot-police with batons in front of Tehran University during riots in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo)

20: Supporters of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wave Iranian and religious flags during a victory celebration in central Tehran June 14, 2009. (REUTERS/Damir Sagolj)

21: Thousands of supporters of Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wave national and other coloured flags during a massive rally to celebrate his victory in the presidential elections in Tehran's Valiasr square on June 14, 2009. Ahmadinejad defended his June 12 re-election but his defeated rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, demanded the result be scrapped, setting the stage for further tense confrontations after the authorities cracked down on opposition protests. (ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images)

22: Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looks on during his first news conference after the presidential elections in Tehran June 14, 2009. (REUTERS/Damir Sagolj)

23: Supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wave Iranian and religious flags during a victory celebration in central Tehran June 14, 2009. (REUTERS/Damir Sagolj)

24: Iranians armed with sticks and batons ride on motorcycles during protests in central Tehran June 14, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer)

25: Iranian riot policemen kick a man in Zartusht street close to the Interior Ministry, as supporters of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi started to gather on the streets protesting the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (AP photo/STR)

26: A riot policeman hits a motorcyclist with a baton during a protest against the election results in Tehran June 14, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer)

27: A riot-police officer sprays tear-gas at a supporter of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who is attacking him with a police stick during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

28: Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi try to calm down fellow demonstrators as they rescue a bloodied riot policeman (center) who was beaten during a protest in Valiasr Street in Tehran on June 13, 2009. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)

29: A backer of Mir Hossein Mousavi helps evacuate an injured riot-police officer during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

30: Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

31: A protester holds a stone during clashes with police in Tehran June 13, 2009. Thousands of people clashed with police on Saturday after the disputed election victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparked the biggest protests in Tehran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. (REUTERS/Ahmed Jadalla)

32: Armed with handguns, members of the Iranian security force, in civilian clothes, fire warning shots to disperse supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi in central Tehran on June 14, 2009. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

33: A poster of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi is seen on the broken-down door of a room in Tehran University dormitory after it was attacked by militia forces during riots in Tehran, Iran in the early hours of Monday, June 15, 2009. Overnight, police and militia stormed the campus at the city's biggest university, ransacking dormitories and arresting dozens of students angry over what they claim was election fraud. (AP photo)

34: An image of Mir Hossein Mousavi is seen (lower left), fixed to a desk with a smashed computer monitor in a room in a Tehran University dormitory after it was attacked by militia forces during riots in Tehran, Iran in the early hours of Monday, June 15, 2009. (AP photo)

35: A man paints over campaign slogans near the headquarters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in Tehran on June 13, 2009. Mousavi's name is written in green while Ahmadinejad's name is written on top of it (left) in black. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

36: On Monday, June 15, 2009, Iranian opposition demonstrators protest in support of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, in Tehran. Opposition supporters defied a ban to stage a mass rally in Tehran in protest at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide election win, as Iran faced a growing international backlash over the validity of the election and the subsequent crackdown on opposition protests. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)

37: Defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi (center) raises his arms as he appears at an opposition demonstration in Tehran on June 15, 2009, appearing in public for the first time since an election that has divided the nation. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)

38: Defying an official ban, hundreds of thousands of Iranian supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi demonstrate in Tehran on Monday, June 15, 2009. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)

39: A man lies on the back of a taxi, after being seriously injured by gunfire in an area where pro-government militia were firing shots near a rally supporting leading opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in Tehran, Iran, Monday, June 15, 2009. (AP Photo)

40: A man lies the back of a truck after being seriously injured by gunfire in an area where militia were firing shots at a rally supporting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's top opponent on Monday, June 15, 2009. (AP Photo)

41: Onlookers observe the body of a man allegedly shot by pro-government militia near a rally supporting leading opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in Tehran, Iran, Monday, June 15, 2009. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on June 20, 2009 11:01 AM

For the third consecutive year, Citizens Bank Park (Aramark / Phillies) has been named America’s most vegetarian-friendly ballpark by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Among PETA’s annual list of the best baseball venues for vegetarians, four of the top five, and five of the top 10 spots, as well as two honorable mentions are servied by Aramark (they're in 13 major league ballparks).

Coors Field (Rockies), Turner Field (Braves) and the Minute Maid Park (Astros) ranked third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Oriole Park at Camden Yards earned PETA’s No. 9 ranking. PNC Park in Pittsburgh and the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum were honorable mentions.

Originally posted by Sara Pepitone from Scoreboard Gourmet, on June 20, 2009 9:21 AM

Database Views will make their appearance in the upcoming Django 1.1 release. Having used them for my latest project, there are a few gotchas when it comes to using them.

In our project, we were using South for our database migrations. To ensure our database views were created, we added them to a south migration using db.execute. This worked very well for 90% of our usecase. The biggest hurdle for this ended up being testing. When syncdb runs, your unmanaged models (ie: database views) aren't generated. There were a few options available to us at this point.

Provide a replacement for django.test.TestCase which handles our DB View setup / teardown. The biggest benefit of this approach is it stays neatly out of the way. It also allows us to further alter TestCase if we have a need. In the end, we chose not to do this as it felt a bit sloppy and we ran the risk of breaking something if django TestCase were to change.

Another option was to use the post-syncdb signal to create the models. This approach also stays neatly out of the way. The downsides here were that it would conflict with South already generating our database view as well as it was a bit bigger blanket than we needed. Our problem was only for running tests. That said, if we weren't using South to manager our database options, I think this would have been the route we'd have gone.

Instead, we opted to provide a function for setup & teardown which handles the view creation. These functions are explicit and fix the issue exactly where we need it. The downside here is it seems like an extra step when creating tests for an app which would be nice not to have to go through.

The other big gotcha for database views is that you can't delete from them. This means that due to django's cascading delete's, you may recieve errors when attempting to delete an object that has references to a database view. The proper way to handle this is to invalidate the foreign keys that an object has to this database view before deleting it. Setting the ForeignKey to None before deletion will ensure that it actually works. You can follow the process of the resulting ticket for this at #10829.

Overall, I feel the work that has gone into db views has been amazing. When you need one, they're exactly what you need. Here's hoping the above helps you avoid those gotchas.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Justin Lilly: Latest Entries, on June 20, 2009 7:35 AM

Several readers sent this Barron’s Tech Trader Daily link to me when it was new, but I decided against linking to it because it was just so sketchily sourced. This rumor from April had Jobs moving to Tennessee for medical treatment — but for “pancreatic cancer”, not a liver transplant.

I’ve ignored a slew of Jobs-related rumors over the past year because of the sourcing. But tonight’s bombshell story in the WSJ is completely unsourced. I can’t recall anything like this before: a top news source (and in this case, the preeminent U.S. business news source) reporting an enormous scoop about an important figure without even a hint, nothing, about where the information came from.

The timing makes me think it was a leak from Apple. But the complete and utter lack of sourcing makes me wonder if the leak came from someone legally obligated not to reveal Jobs’s private medical information. And if the Journal knows that Jobs had a liver transplant, why don’t they know which hospital performed it? From the Journal report:

Three hospitals in Tennessee — Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and Methodist University Hospital in Memphis — are designated as liver-transplant centers, according to UNOS. A spokeswoman for Le Bonheur said the hospital doesn’t perform liver transplants in adults. A Vanderbilt spokesman said it didn’t treat Mr. Jobs. A spokeswoman for Methodist University said Mr. Jobs isn’t listed as a patient there.

Reading between the lines, if he had a liver transplant in Tennessee, it must have been at one of these three hospitals. Two flatly deny it, but the third, Methodist University, simply told them he “isn’t listed as a patient” — present tense, not past tense. So it must have been there. But why can’t the Journal state that as fact as well?

This story is very weird. It’ll be interesting to see how, or if, other publications will pick up this story.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 19, 2009 11:26 PM

I’m curious about the reported timing. The Journal story says “about two months ago”, but I heard from a bunch of sources last week at WWDC that Jobs had been seen on campus the week before — i.e. about two weeks ago. I mean, he was there walking around, giving people hell like usual. Regarding recuperating time, the Journal story has this sentence:

Recovery from a liver transplant is relatively fast, said William Chapman, a specialist at Washington University who has no direct knowledge of Mr. Jobs’s case.

But six weeks doesn’t sound “relatively” fast, to me. It sounds crazy fast.

I don’t know how authoritative it is, but here’s what health-cares.net says regarding liver transplant patients:

After discharge from the hospital, patients are seen every week (for approximately three weeks) in the outpatient clinic for an examination and monitoring of blood tests. During this time, medications are adjusted based on the levels found in your blood. After approximately one month, patients are usually seen only two to three times during the first year. Also beginning at one month, blood is checked every other week; eventually, it is checked only once a month. Most patients are encouraged to resume physical activity, including work, after three to six months, depending on their recovery. Patients may resume heavy activity, including workouts, at six months.

So I’m thinking that if Steve Jobs had a liver transplant, it was more than “about two months” ago.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 19, 2009 9:34 PM

Yukari Iwatani and Joann S. Lublin, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave from Apple Inc. since January to treat an undisclosed medical condition, received a liver transplant in Tennessee about two months ago. The chief executive has been recovering well and is expected to return to work on schedule later this month, though he may work part-time initially.

This must be a deliberate, timed leak from Apple. The timing is simply perfect from Apple’s perspective — midnight on the Friday of what appears to be the most successful new product launch in company history.

But two things strike me about this story. First, the WSJ offers no source for this information — not even an “according to sources close to the matter”. But yet they state it flatly as certain fact. That’s highly unusual. And whoever their source, they didn’t give the WSJ any publishable information regarding why Jobs needed a new liver — that part of the article is pure speculation. My guess is that the source is rock solid but gave the information only on the condition of complete unsourced anonymity. Curious no matter what, though.

Second, why Tennessee? Tennessee is a lovely state but, well, it doesn’t sound like Steve Jobs country. You don’t need to leave the Bay area to get world-class medical treatment. Here’s the answer:

The specifics of Mr. Jobs’s surgery couldn’t be established, but according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the transplant network in the U.S., there are no residency requirements for transplants. Having the procedure done in Tennessee makes sense because its list of patients waiting for transplants is shorter than in many other states. According to data provided by UNOS, in 2006, the median number of days from joining the liver waiting list to transplant was 306 nationally. In Tennessee, it was 48 days.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 19, 2009 8:31 PM

These vintage coke cans come courtesy of www.inspiredology.com

I think some retro cans like these would make for a nice re-release by coke.

Originally posted by JP from TheDieline.com, on June 19, 2009 5:39 PM

Newish episode of Radiolab about randomness: Stochasticity.

How big a role does randomness play in our lives? Do we live in a world of magic and meaning or ... is it all just chance and happenstance? To tackle this question, we look at the role chance and randomness play in sports, lottery tickets, and even the cells in our own body. Along the way, we talk to a woman suddenly consumed by a frenzied gambling addiction, two friends whose meeting seems purely providential, and some very noisy bacteria.

Tags: mathematics   science

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 19, 2009 3:24 PM

A return to form for the Autotune the News guys. They know they're onto a good thing with Katie Couric. She's a natural.

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

The Best Links:

1. Autotune the News #1
2. Autotune the News #2
3. Autotune the News #3
4. Autotune the News #4

Originally posted by (author unknown) from BuzzFeed - Latest, on June 19, 2009 1:02 PM

arigreenberg: The official portrait of the Obama family dog, Bo. (via Huffington Post)

mdfsmash: CUUTTEEEE!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net, on June 19, 2009 11:44 AM

What I love most about my friend Penelope Trunk’s Twitter feed (and all her writing) is that it’s raw, personal, and hilarious. But I imagine getting served with legal documents that involve a printout of it wasn’t so hilarious.

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Smarterware, on June 19, 2009 10:19 AM

We humans are natural dancers. Dances can be celebrations, or for praise, or for an audience - or just a simple act of letting the rhythm move your body. Dancers can communicate ideas, preserve cultural identities, strengthen social bonds, or just have a lot of fun. Collected here are recent photographs of us, human beings around the world, professional and amateur, in motion for all of the reasons above and more. (39 photos total)

A dancer from the English National Ballet performing 'Ballets Russes' at Sadler's Wells poses in her 'Dying Swan' costume designed by Karl Largerfeld on June 16, 2009 in London, England. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Big Picture, on June 19, 2009 9:15 AM

french designer etienne menaeau recently completed his seventh limited edition hand-blown glass wine
decanter. the design follows meneau's signature branch like concept. the seventh model measures 39cm tall
and holds one bottle of wine. the decanter stand upon eight individual feet that are all linked together at the
spout on top. made from borosilicate glass, eight decanters were produced along with four artist's proofs.
the n. 7 model is a little rounder and more sturdy than previous editions, perhaps a comfort to clumsy
wine drinkers.

http://the-strange-decanter.blogspot.com

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Designboom - Weblog, on June 19, 2009 8:32 AM

A sex tape, purportedly of “Gossip Girl” starlet Leighton Meester, has been sold to the website CelebHotline.com, where, for a the price of a membership, you can view it to your heart’s content, or until you splooge, whichever comes first. As a service to readers, many of whom are currently at work and unwilling to risk their jobs by clicking through to a porn site, I decided to investigate and see if it’s the real deal.

Not surprisingly, the alleged Meester tape is at the top of the site’s homepage. The prospective masturbator is offered two options: “Click Here To See Her Now,” or “I’m Not Convinced! Click Here For More Info.” This is actually a rather smart move on CelebHotline’s part; I know a number of consumers who, in the wake of the Patricia Heaton Gangbang video turning out to be a hoax, swore off paying for celebrity sex tapes altogether. I clicked through to see further information about the film, and I could not have been more surprised by the arguments put forth to affirm its verisimilitude:

“Everyone has just one question about the recent Leighton Meester sex tape scandal that has exploded all over the internet in the last few days -

IS IT REALLY HER???!

The answer is YES! But first, let’s look at it from an epistemological standpoint. As the great logician Willard Van Orman Quine once wrote, ‘Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a chapter of psychology and hence of natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input — certain patterns of irradiation in assorted frequencies, for instance — and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional external world and its history. The relation between the meager input and the torrential output is a relation that we are prompted to study for somewhat the same reasons that always prompted epistemology: namely, in order to see how evidence relates to theory, and in what ways one’s theory of nature transcends any available evidence…But a conspicuous difference between old epistemology and the epistemological enterprise in this new psychological setting is that we can now make free use of empirical psychology.’

So, YES! This is 100% the REAL Leighton Meester, who plays the sexy socialite Blair Waldorf on the popular television series “Gossip Girl”! But consider this other thought from Quine:

‘As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer… For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.’

If that’s the case—and Quine certainly has his detractors, although those of us here at CelebHotline have never found their arguments to be convincing or even compelling—we can culturally posit that these are indeed Leighton’s perfect breasts with perky pink nipples. You want epistemological footing? See sweet Leighton giving a footjob and tell us you are not conceptually imported into the situation. Do your perceptions allow you to conceive of these hot ass close-ups as empirically real? Did you know she’s a natural blonde?

Click here to find out for yourself. You won’t be disappointed.

CelebHotline is your #1 source for LEIGHTON MEESTER SEX SCANDAL news and More Celebrity Movie Archives.”

That is a remarkably rational analysis of the situation. In fact, I can say with almost total certitude that, based on the arguments put forth here, the footjob-giver in the video is, in fact, “Gossip Girl” starlet Leighton Meester. Were I not so desperately poor right now I would totally pay for the video. But I am poor, so I’m just gonna go hunt around the Bittorrents for it. Still, nice to see our purveyors of celebrity nookie are making the effort.

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on June 19, 2009 8:16 AM

Beets, originally uploaded by Ed Yourdon

I love farro, and I love beets. And they make a great combination!

Here's what I did the other night to make a farro salad with roasted beets, arugula, walnuts, and goat cheese.

1. Prepare beets: toss with olive oil and salt, splash of water, cover with foil, roast for 30-40 minutes until done. Then remove skins and slice into wedges.
2. Prepare farro: boil in salted water until tender (but still with a bite).
3. Toast walnuts.
4. Make a vinaigrette: combine diced shallot with red wine vinegar, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, and a little bit of salt. Let sit for 5 minutes. Add olive oil.
5. Toss cooked farro with arugula and some of the vinaigrette.
6. Toss beets with some sliced shallots and some of the vinaigrette.
7. Combine farro, arugula, and beets, and transfer to a platter.
8. Top with toasted walnuts and crumbled goat cheese.

Easy, and delicious!

Originally posted by btrott from Stupidfool.org, on June 19, 2009 8:05 AM

hotfoot:

peterwknox:

Fantasy baseball played out between the Wu-Tang Clan and the E Street Band (Masta Killa with a knife-twisting two runs to end the tiebreaker)

Really Fantasty Baseball at Flip Flop Fly Ball

okay, let’s really break this down.

First of all, the E Street Band would never lose a home game played in Asbury Park, NJ.

About the only thing I wholeheartedly agree with is Nils as SS. Clarence should be catcher, Patti should be an outfielder. I would also put Garry at third base and have Danny in the outfield. Max is definitely CF.

I am disappointed that they got lazy on the stats for E Street. And Led Zep as umpires is just random. They could have gotten more creative on that.

All of this, of course, is based on extended interpretation of public personae, and my own rich internal fantasy life. But if you think I’m bad, wait until someone else in my house gets ahold of this.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from metsgrrl.com's tumblr, on June 19, 2009 7:59 AM

Wu-Tang Clan's Inspectah Deck recently addressed Joe Budden's rap rant towards Method Man and said the entire Wu is supporting Method.

[Visit SOHH.com for more information]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from SOHH.com Dailies, on June 19, 2009 7:11 AM

Even robots grind on demand;

Coffee-Making Manga Robot – What Every GeekDad Wants For Father’s Day | GeekDad | Wired.com.

Posted in coffee Tagged: brewing, coffee, grinders, robots

Originally posted by Mike White from ShotZombies.com, on June 19, 2009 6:53 AM

Is this the kind of thing that you’re supposed to pray to God to alleviate? Because, honestly, I am pretty much willing to do anything at this point. FUCKING RAIN.

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on June 19, 2009 6:13 AM

From the Penny Illustrated Paper, deep in the bowels of the British Library, comes this 100-year-old nugget about the relations between the classes. (This small humor moment is a birthday present for the delightful Anna Holmes, the tireless editrix of Jezebel.)

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on June 19, 2009 5:54 AM

Note: This is a guest post by Nicola Twilley.

As Geoff mentioned last month, London's Building Center hosted a daylong seminar at the end of May called London Yields: Getting Urban Agriculture off the Ground.

[Image: From London Yields: Urban Agriculture].

The speakers covered a lot of terrain—so, instead of a full recap of the event, the following list simply explores some of the broader ideas, responses, and questions about urban agriculture that stood out from the day's presentations.

1. Becoming public policy
The event was introduced and moderated by David Barrie, a sustainable development consultant, who framed the day as a collective opportunity to brainstorm ways in which urban agriculture could be moved from mere "sustainable accessory" to become a standard practice of both everyday life and city design. Interestingly, Mark Brearley, Head of Design at Design for London (DfL) and the day's first speaker, provided confirmation of Barrie's diagnosis, confessing that food production was a recent add-on to many of their open space projects. Why? "Because people were asking us about it," he said.

Brearley's presentation was an overview of DfL's hundreds of urban regeneration and infrastructure improvement projects; these are, in themselves, interesting but, in aggregate, somewhat exhausting. However, as an office of the London Development Agency, working on behalf of the Mayor of London, Brearley was able to provide a fascinating insight into some of the current institutional priorities that need to be satisfied before urban agriculture can become a standard part of London public policy. For example, DfL's main interest in food production today is in terms of its "public engagement potential" and their primary stumbling block is how to measure the scaleability of local initiatives. Any London-based urban agriculture projects hoping for a mayoral blessing, take note!

2. Food is a design tool
The second speaker was Carolyn Steel, author of the excellent book Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives. Hungry City traces how food has shaped both the city and its productive hinterland throughout history, from the Sumerian city of Ur to today's London via the markets and gates of ancient Rome. Steel provides a wide-ranging historical look of food production, importation, regulation, and culture, before putting forward her own intriguing and potentially revolutionary proposition: what would happen if we consciously used food as a design tool to create a "sitopic" city? Steel's coinage here, sitopia—from "sitos" (food) and "topos" (place)—is derived from her realization that "food shares with utopia the quality of being cross-disciplinary... capable of transforming not just landscapes, but political structures, public spaces, social relationships, [and] cities." And because "food is necessary," a sitopian city (unlike its utopian cousin) would remain tied to reality and of universal relevance.

The quotations above come from Steel's book, however, rather than her lecture; twenty-five minutes was enough time to provide fascinating examples of food's role in shaping cities and urban life, but, sadly, not enough to explain (let alone explore) further thoughts about food's use as an urban planning tool. More to come soon, I hope, on this topic...

[Image: Ebenezer Howard's original scheme for the Garden Cities of To-morrow shows a landscape reimagined in terms of food production and supply. As Carolyn Steel explains in her own book Hungry City, Howard's plans relied on land reform that was never carried out, and the garden cities of today (Letchworth, Welwyn, etc.) are, as a result, little more than green dormitory suburbs].

3. Partnerships as infrastructure
Anna Terzi, who runs London Food Link's small grants scheme for Sustain, was the day's third speaker; she described one of their current projects, demonstrating how key insights from both Mark Brearley's and Carolyn Steel's talks might look in action.

Sustain (a nonprofit alliance for better food and farming) is currently poised to create borough-wide institutional change by partnering with Camden Council and Camden Primary Care Trust (part of the National Health Service). This alliance—with its intriguing implication that the National Health Service might be the one institution with the most to gain by promoting urban agriculture—speaks to the impact of creating new interest groups for locally grown food. By partnering with institutions responsible for dealing with established urban challenges—issues such as public health, economic growth, community engagement, waste, and environmental sustainability—groups like Sustain have the potential to take urban agriculture from decorative hobby to investment-worthy infrastructure.

The Camden partnership's report (still in draft stage) aims to outline a relatively coherent and holistic food program for the borough—a plan that promises to use food to reshape at least this part of the city, in terms of promoting social enterprise, meeting infrastructure needs, and reducing health inequalities.

[Image: A lemon grown in Dulwich; photograph by Jonathan Gales (2008), ©Bohn & Viljoen Architects].

4. Mapping and visualization tools
The last two presentations of the day agreed that successfully producing food in the city requires a detailed resource inventory combined with effective promotion efforts. Mikey Tomkins, a PhD candidate at the University of Brighton, described systematically mapping the rooftops, grass patches, vertical faces, and vacant lots of Elephant & Castle—whereupon he discovered that 30% of the area's food needs could be met through the cultivation of found space alone.

Architects Katrin Bohn and Andre Viljoen, creators of the uninspiringly named CPUL (Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes), emphasized the need to think about spare inventory in terms of population and three dimensionality (their Urban Agriculture Curtain filled a display window one floor above us). Their research techniques included the accumulation of census data and questionnaires combined with GPS mapping and site visits in order to analyze a landscape's food production capacity.

Both Tomkins and Bohn & Viljoen also showed several projects intended to help people read the city in terms of food, using tools as diverse as "edible maps" of London and visual analyses of urban agriculture in Havana, to installations and public events, such as the Continuous Picnic. This was a day-long event, part of the 2008 London Festival of Architecture, that included an "Inverted Market" (bring your own locally grown fruit and vegetables to be admired, judged, and then prepared), as well lessons in "Community Composting"; a giant public picnic then spread throughout Russell Square and Montague Place, with connecting corridors between.

Meanwhile, for his Edible Maps series, an example of which appears below, Tomkins targets a new type of urban resident: the "food-flâneur," who, map in hand, "could start to picture... the grassed areas around housing, the corners of parks, or the many flat rooftops of this quarter of Croydon spring into life with psychogeographic food."

Another example of urban agriculture as an opportunity for community activation was Croydon Roof Divercity, Tomkins's collaboration with AOC (previously discussed, along with other AOC projects, on BLDGBLOG here).

[Image: From Mikey Tomkins's series of Edible Maps, this guide represents the area around Surrey Street car park, site of Croydon Roof Divercity, in terms of inventory and potential yield].

5. Easy, cheap, and somewhat under control
Both Anna Terzi and Bohn & Viljoen recognized the difficulty of maintaining urban agriculture projects, once the initial novelty has worn off. Bohn & Viljoen are currently working on a twelve-step program to prevent relapse, while Sustain are offering ongoing practical and financial support to new food growing spaces in London through their Capital Growth initiative.

Throughout the morning, David Barrie repeatedly registered his concern that urban agriculture needed to be economically viable, not just an upscale $64 Tomato lifestyle choice. Several of the presenters added a layer of nuance to Barrie's formulation, noting that cheap food has simply had its costs externalized and hidden (Carolyn Steel) and that organizations like the New Economics Foundation are developing the much-needed tools to measure urban-agriculture-created value, such as increased community engagement and environmental sustainability, which is currently perceived as intangible and qualitative (Katrin Bohn). Mikey Tomkins argued against an economics-based one-size-fits-all approach to urban agriculture, explaining that the scale of a food growing project determines its possible benefits. Thus differentiated, food gardening generates educational and quality of life outcomes and should be measured accordingly, while market gardening creates recycling benefits, and urban agriculture can be evaluated in terms of yield.

Finally, the elephant in the room was the degree of coordination and regulation needed to transform London into a food-producing landscape. In an environment where, as Carolyn Steel said, the supermarkets where Londoners buy more than 80% of their groceries refused to participate in consultations with the Mayor's London Food Strategy, it seems unlikely that sustainable food production and distribution will become the norm without legislative intervention.

In her book, Steel quotes Cassiodorus, a Roman statesman who wrote: "You who control the transportation of food supplies are in charge, so to speak, of the city's lifeline, of its very throat." At the moment, Steel tells us, roughly 30 agrifood conglomerates—unelected, and with no responsibility other than to their shareholders—have almost unfettered control over London's food supply. Until that changes, urban agriculture can't help but remain "at the artwork stage"—an inspiring, attractive, and completely optional extra.

[Previous guest posts by Nicola Twilley include Watershed Down, The Water Menu, Atmospheric Intoxication, Park Stories, and Zones of Exclusion].

Originally posted by Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG, on June 19, 2009 3:24 AM

These covers of mine appeared in the March 2009 issue of Vanity Fair under the hed and dek “Annals of Our Endangered Medium: Some shotgun magazine mergers you might soon see (first in a series).” I was excited to finally get a chance to deploy Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed for a Cosmopolitan parody:

The first one is a slightly different version than the one that actually ran. And there was a third cover, which I haven’t posted here.

I’ll be doing more of these for V.F. in the near future.

[Visit the magazine covers page for more stuff like this.]

Originally posted by Andrew Hearst from Panopticist, on June 18, 2009 7:50 PM

Jay Smooth, "Please stop calling everyone and their mother 'The First Rapper'":

U-Roy may be one of rap's predecessors, and among the influences that laid the foundation for rap, but he did not invent it...any more than Jocko Henderson, Gil Scott Heron, Lord Buckley or the West African Griots invented it. All of them may be forefathers, but none are the inventors. And muddling their places in music history with his sort of specious, sloppy revisionism does hip-hop AND its forefathers a disservice.

Scott Rosenberg talks about The First Blogger, as part of his promotion for his upcoming book "Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters":

It's interesting to contrast these points because all of blogging is hip hop.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on June 18, 2009 7:46 PM

Foxtongue

If you’ve just received the news that you’re pregnant, one thing’s for sure, life as you know it is over. But that’s a good thing. The joys of parenthood far outweigh the cons but you’ll need a solid financial plan if you hope to make it through the next nine months.

So after you’ve shared the news with your parents and 500 of your closest friends on Facebook, you’d better start thinking about how this is going to affect your wallet.

You want the best for your family of course but who should you listen to? When it comes to giving new parents advice, suddenly it seems everyone is an expert: don’t get this brand of diapers, make sure to get that kind of car seat, don’t rush to get the baby the first time it cries, and so forth. The good news is that you will have nearly nine months to prepare your home. Make sure to use a few of those hours to get your financial house in order too. Both are about to go through major changes.

No matter your fiscal discipline, there’s about to be another mouth to feed. Many couples will want or need to move into a bigger space. The extent of many of your baby-related expenses will be controllable, as your and your partner’s expenses are today. However, even with maximum restraint, you’ll still be walking down new grocery aisles and visiting new stores, ultimately spending money on products and services you never considered previously.

If you’re financially unprepared for your new baby, you could end up financing diapers. Here are the top 5 things you should do when you’re expecting:

Tip 1: Communicate With Your Partner

The theoretical conversations you may have had a few times previously will now become real. Decisions will have to be made. Nothing should be assumed, Talk about them.

• Will one of you stay home? If so, for how long? Things may change. That’s okay.
• Could all of you live on just one income? If you think so, what makes you so confident? Have you ever done so before?

Tip 2: Live Within Your Means

It’s as important as ever to make sure to live within your means. Resist the temptation to use your new arrival as an excuse to purchase things you can’t afford and don’t really need. If you have a car with four doors and four tires, you already have a “family car.” Your apartment or existing abode is probably big enough to accommodate the baby. Try to put off a major move for as long as possible. Not everything has to fit the stereotype. Spend on what’s important to you within the constraints of what you can actually afford.

Tip 3: Establish An Emergency Fund Now

If you haven’t already done so, there’s no time like the present to establish an emergency fund. The traditional three to six months sounds like a lot. It is a lot. But it’s better to have some money socked away for this purpose than none at all. Do what is possible. Remember you’re trying to set aside three to six months of non-discretionary living expenses only, not your full monthly income. If you aspire to have one partner stay at home for an extended period, one easy way to enhance your emergency fund is to practice living on one income while both spouses are still working.

Job security still have feeling confident you’ll never need to tap an emergency fund?  It’s not just about your job.  When you first hold your baby in a few months, it will be so obvious- there’s another person in the picture now.  The more people in the family, the greater chance there is for some kind of emergency. Be prepared.

Tip 4: Get Life Insurance

Many young adults without children can actually spend their money more wisely than on life insurance. That concept changes immediately upon conception. Now, someone will be depending on your income for years to come. You’ll need to be sure that if something unfortunate happens to you, your child can still maintain the lifestyle you’ve been providing. Only life insurance can provide that financial security.

Tip 5: Sign Up for the Health Care Reimbursement Account at Work

Also known as a flexible spending account (FSA), this account requiring minor paperwork can effectively save you 25% or more (depending on your tax rate) on your medical expenses. When you’re expecting, you’re going to have big medical bills, including pre-natal care and delivery.

Your next annual enrollment date presents the perfect chance to increase your contribution rate to reflect your new medical spending and to reduce your after-tax costs in the process. If you won’t reach an enrollment date prior to delivery, remember that your child’s birth constitutes a “life event” and will give you a special one-time opportunity to increase your contribution rate.

Be prepared, don’t overspend, and remember that what really matters is not the brand, design, or expense of your child’s bedding, stroller, or Onesie, but rather your love and care for them.

Michael B. Rubin is the author of Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck and the blog of the same name. He is the President of Total Candor, a financial planning education company.

Originally posted by Michael B. Rubin from Mint.com Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice, on June 18, 2009 4:20 PM

Umbrella Demo: I had no idea this existed, publicly: The-Dream’s demo for “Umbrella.” And just like that, Rihanna’s version is now a cover!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fimoculous, on June 18, 2009 4:19 PM

Filed under: Freeware, Internet Tools

With the release of iPhone OS 3.0, I was wondering if emoji icons still worked (they do), and then it finally dawned on me: why not iChat? A quick search turned up exactly what I was looking for: Emoji for iChat. This free downloadable icon pack basically adds the iPhone Emoji icons to iChat, accessible from the standard smiley-face dropdown menu. For it to work, however, both sides have to have it installed; if your recipient does not use the tool, all they'll see is gibberish.

Emoji for iChat is a free download from Einar Andersson & Tor Rauden Källstigen. The download includes an installer which will require you to restart iChat.

TUAWEmoji for iChat adds... emoji to iChat originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Mat Lu from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on June 18, 2009 3:00 PM

If you like burritos and things that don't make much sense, you'll love this comic by Buttersafe. (The ending is great. You'll see.)

Related
A Comic About a World of Peanut Butter and Chocolate
'Alien' with Apples

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on June 18, 2009 3:00 PM

Firefox 3.5 (Release Candidate 1) adds geolocation as a new feature: it calculates a user's location based the user's IP address and nearby wireless access points; location-aware sites can then access that location if the user grants permission. Details here. Via Mapperz....

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on June 18, 2009 2:41 PM

Okay, so this new technology we just came across over on Allure's blog sounds way cool in a very Minority Report sort of way.

Apparently there's a company in Japan that is developing a "fragrance communication" system that allows you to send a scent via the internet.

What the what? Yeah, we did a doubletake too. Seems that you hook something up to your computer that then follows digital commands and mixes the fragrance for you to smell.

Of course many perfumes are super complex, so there are sure to be some limitations. But it sounds like sooner rather than later you'll be able to test a scent before you buy it online. Just keep some coffee beans at your desk when you're trying out a bunch.

Our one fear? Pop-up fragrance ads that become the digital equivalent of unwanted scent strips inside of magazines.

Sponsored Topics: Coffee - Minority Report - Japan - Bean - Shopping

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on June 18, 2009 2:25 PM

It's been over a year since the series finale of The Wire. SOHH sat down with Felicia "Snoop" Pearson to talk about her upcoming film with the producers of the HBO show and her new reality show.

[Visit SOHH.com for more information]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from SOHH.com Dailies, on June 18, 2009 2:15 PM

After speaking at Internet Retailer, I got several follow-up questions about how I reviewed websites on the fly. It's a great question, and rather than tuck it into an email or Twitter @reply, I thought I'd share it here.

Critiquing a website on stage is a unique endeavor. What it largely comes down to is playing to the strengths of one's co-presenters. Ethan Giffin, with whom I've presented before, focuses on conversion, looking at buttons and sales opportunities. Craig Smith quickly established his interest in SEO and search. That left me free to discuss information architecture and messaging, which are my own strong suits.

I'm not sure IRCE knew it had such a balanced team, but the result was a great rat-a-tat dissection of the sites we saw, with minimal overlap and dissent. Last time around, Ethan and I, and our third presenter, agreed with each other a lot; this time, the three of us carved out niches and took turns presenting ideas. We were all pleased with how it went.

Offstage, the process is a bit different. Ai does competitive reviews that encapsulate my criteria in painstaking detail--we often have more than 100 fields, laid out in a spreadsheet, to consider for each site. Our research categories are arranged as follows:

• Branding and design: The first step is to consider whether a site is properly conveying its brand message. How polished is the design? Is the color scheme appropriate to the company and its target audiences? Are page layouts consistent and brand imagery persistent as one moves through the site? We also look at copy, and gauge how effectively the site is speaking to users, on everything from headlines to buttons to page text.
• Navigation and ease of use: This is the core of Ai's user experience focus. We gauge how intuitive and logical a website is, and make sure that performing essential tasks is easy to execute. Objectively, we check navigation bars, page widths, pop-up windows and the like; subjectively, we look at UX on a more holistic level, to see how well the site performs.
• Content: This varies by site type. For ecommerce sites (like the ones discussed at IR) we focus on product pages, and we run them through a robust checklist. How big are images, and are they manipulable? Is essential information easy to parse? Are important functions above the fold? What supplemental features, like reviews and technical specifications, are available? For content-driven sites, the focus shifts to hierarchies, layouts, and so forth.
• Conversion: How well does a site seal the deal? We count steps in checkout, complexities in form data, and identify whether customer service is readily available. We also look at up-sell, cross-sell and shipping displays, each of which can be an opportunity or a deterrent to people in the conversion funnel.
• Intangibles: There's actually a field on our spreadsheet called "Vibe," where we give our overall impressions of what the site is saying to its users. This is a vital component of our process. No critique can be completely objective; each site has a distinct audience to which it speaks, and our job is to assess how well the message will be received by the site's target segments. We also gauge the overall experience of exploring the site, and we actually overweight these two fields to give UX the proper amount of influence in our research.

Whew! There's a lot to cover to critique a site in depth. Our most recent competitive review spreadsheet spanned more than 1500 fields. It's a smart way to learn the landscape, though--and when the spotlight is trained on one site, a similar-minded critique is a great way to assess a site.

Originally posted by David Wertheimer from aiaio - the Alexander Interactive blog, on June 18, 2009 1:40 PM

Scary: The red band trailer for Park Chan-wook new film, Thirst. [via]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fimoculous, on June 18, 2009 1:19 PM

Dwight Howard tweeted today that he didn't want to talk about basketball anymore.  He wrote, "No more talkin about me. i wanna learn something about u guys. pls."  His first question was to ask people what they'd wish for if they could have one wish.  It was fascinating to look on his page and see his responses without the context (see attached image).  Then I decided to click through and see what people were actually wishing for, and it was amazing.

One person wrote: "I wish that I actually had a real father instead of someone who was never there for me, I missed that part of my life." 

Dwight's response?  "u got one. God."

Later, Dwight asked if you could die and go to heaven right now, would you die? 

One person responded: "I got something to add to your question...before you went to heaven, what would be the last thing you did on Earth?"

Dwight responded: "Hold my son."

That's lovely.  At its best, Twitter's 140-character posts are the 21st century equivalent of messages in a bottle - a chance to connect, however fleetingly.

Originally posted by Valarie Smith from Crazed Teacups, on June 18, 2009 1:02 PM

The conventional wisdom at the moment seems to be that the iPhone is only a consumer device, but the conventional wisdom is wrong. Think about all the hospital/medical demos from recent iPhone events, for one thing.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 18, 2009 12:33 PM

I dream of a day when I can finally take the boxes upon boxes of my beloved books that sit in my parents' attic and unpack them in what I imagine to be a gloriously large library inside my fantasy brownstone off lower 5th Avenue.

And in this library, there will definitely be many, many books from Taschen, one of our favorite publishing houses. We're obviously partial to the fashion and photography lists. But really, we can't pick just one genre. And the limited editions, like the Peter Beard one we've been obsessing over, are so ridiculously well-done.

Hence our utter excitement about the company's warehouse sale which starts tomorrow (11am - 8pm) and continues on Saturday (11-8) and Sunday (12-8) at the Soho store at 107 Greene St. There are going to be literally thousands of books (new! vintage! limited editions! out of print!) on sale from 50-75% off.

We're envisioning a major shipment heading to M&D's in Indiana come Monday.

Sponsored Topics: Publishing - Books - Shopping - Publications - Indiana

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on June 18, 2009 12:27 PM

I'm selling my high end mint-condition 2008 Unibody MacBook!

• Backlit Keyboard

• 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo

• 4 GB RAM

• 320 GB Hard Drive

• 2 1/2 years of AppleCare

• More photos here

For $1,100 please contact me at liz[at]latherrinserepeat.org if you are interested! :)

Originally posted by Liz from Lather Rinse Repeat, on June 18, 2009 12:14 PM

Several teams are thisclose to winning. This contest was sheer genius on Netflix’s part — the 10 percent improvement is surely worth far more than $1 million to them.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 18, 2009 12:11 PM

Noted without comment:

If Twitter tweets are being bought by New York editors, and HarperCollins is turning Chesley Sullenberger into a published poet, who’s to say you can’t build a book, and a film, from a Facebook update? Howie Sanders, at UTA, and Christy Fletcher are currently trying to do just that for Lisa Hamilton Day. Day, a former exec at Dreamworks and friend of Fletcher’s, wryly posted last week: “Lisa Hamilton Day’s Pomeranian raided Chinese takeout bag overnight, opened and ate a fortune cookie. Her fortune: You have strong spiritual powers, and you should develop them.” Fletcher, who runs the New York lit agency Fletcher and Company, was thoroughly amused by the comment and immediately saw a story in it. Now Fletcher’s teamed up with Sanders on a tween series about Charlotte, the Pomeranian, who uses her newfound superpowers to save her owner’s home after said owner loses her job and is forced to contemplate moving in with her folks, in a deal that would entail selling the Facebook update and optioning the dog’s life rights. Joking aside, the duo sees a market for the idea, especially given the recent talking-dog hit, Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

Oh, wait, I do have a comment! GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

RELATED: Are you laughing now, Liz Spiers?

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on June 18, 2009 11:52 AM

Google's about to have its second tenth birthday. In late August, Blogger will officially turn 10 years old. As our birthday draws near, we thought it would be interesting to share some fun facts about Blogger:

• Every minute of every day, 270,000 words are written on Blogger
• Millions of people worldwide use Blogger to publish to their blog each week
• Almost two thirds of Blogger's traffic comes from outside North America (What's the #2 country after the U.S.? Brazil, followed by Turkey, Spain, Canada, and the U.K.)
• The most popular sport for our bloggers? Soccer (that's football to the rest of the world), more than four times larger than the #2 sport, baseball

While we're really excited about this milestone, we want the focus to be on you and the remarkable stories that you and millions of people around the world document on Blogger. After all, blogs are one of the true building blocks of the web, constantly updated not only with news and personal stories, but any kind of information you can imagine. Just this week, there's an Iranian student documenting the minute-by-minute proceedings in Iran, while a British woman is uploading nightly blog posts from her satellite phone while rowing solo from Hawaii to Australia, while an American college student is running from Amsterdam to Athens with nothing but the pack on his back. There are literally millions more.

What's your story? Did your blog help you find a job? Learn a language? Interact with your fans? Master a new skill? Battle an illness? Turn a hobby into a career? We read as many blog posts as we can, and what we do read is often brilliant. But we want to know more — we want to hear from you about what Blogger has meant to you over the past decade.

Do what you do best: tell your story. Write a post, and then let us know about it by filling out this form. Keep an eye on Blogger Buzz, where we'll be sharing some of our favorites over the coming weeks.

To the millions who have depended on Blogger to help you tell your story, thank you. To those of you who have yet to tell your story, creating a blog couldn't be easier: just visit blogger.com to get started. We can't wait to see what the next ten years bring — and stay tuned for details about the tenth birthday itself.

Posted by Rick Klau, Product Manager, Blogger

Originally posted by A Googler from The Official Google Blog, on June 18, 2009 11:00 AM

It goes without saying (though, when have I ever kept quiet?) that Terminal 5 has played host to some stellar acts of late. From Cut Copy to Bloc Party to last week’s Santigold and Trouble Andrew dynamite lineup. Come tomorrow night, the avidly adored French foursome Phoenix will perform a sold out -– “Not even Anne Hathaway’s getting in!” –- show. Yes, Terminal 5 may very well be in the prime of its life right now, kicking ass and showcasing great names. As for last night, Canadian-based quartet Metric commanded the entire room, front to back, side-to-side, tier-to-tier. Led by blonde bombshell Emily Haines, the three gents (guitarist James Shaw, bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott-Key) and their gorgeous gal broke it down from 9:30 till 11. In this hour-and-a-half heavenly span they covered vast territory, plucking from albums past and, duh, showcasing songs from their recent release, Fantasies, which hit shelves in April. From this record they laid down the best tracks, including “Help I’m Alive,” “Satellite Mind,” “Gimme Sympathy” and “Gold Guns Girls,” among others. During the latter, Haines halted her 90-minute aerobic routine (which included ample side-stepping, shoulder-dancing, swim moves –- think the breast stroke, sans water –- and righteous, rockstar arm thrusts) to hop on the guitar. You can imagine her hotness. Definitely not a woman beside whom I’d choose to stand, for fear of wilting in her radiance, both her utter talent and her ridiculous good looks. Sheesh. She’s the complete package. Of especial note was Haines’ introduction to “Gimme Sympathy"; she began by confessing her awe of New York, despite having lived here before. (After all, the band initially met in the honorable borough of Brooklyn.) The surreal never fades for some folks and I can wholeheartedly appreciate this not-yet-jaded perspective. Haines spoke of the wonder that is this city and our preoccupation, as humans and, in particular, as Manhattanites, with “focusing on the life we want versus appreciation of what we have.” She went on, expressing the opinion that, “some of us have to be exactly who we are. This song is about striving for the things there is no need to strive for.” A couple numbers were significantly more rockin’ in real life than heard through headphones, to my mind anyway. “Dead Disco,” off of Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? (2003) is indeed a badass track, but I can’t tell you how many times I skip over it on my iPod (clicking my way to the MSTRKRFT “Monster Hospital” remix most probably). Last night? This song captivated. With its thick synth, escalating strumming and punchy vocal delivery, the band capitalized off these distinct traits and expanded on them, lengthening the instrumental solos and closing with intense strobe light effects. Towards the end, Haines silently fiddled with the dials, then kneeled down as the lights came up. Needless to say, this specific rendition inspired much moshing, shoulder-hoisting and fist pumping. Another notable booty-mover was “Empty,” pulled from Live It Out (2005), their second studio album. This song straddles soft and raucous, oscillating between the two opposite poles, and works well in the up-close and personal setting. Haines explored the stage space, portable mic in hand as she shimmied in time to the beat, her voice echoing due to a mic maneuver. With its ethereal, Pinback-esque chords meets explosive, electric guitar solo aesthetic, this song may suffer from schizophrenia, but it lends credibility to the argument that manic in music is as awesome as, if not more enjoyable than, identity crisis-free formats. Bipolar wins when it comes to audible execution, at least in this instance. For Metric’s “last song,” Haines shifted sat down at stage edge and speaking to us directly. She talked of their being half-Canadian, half-American, gesticulating wildly (as always) while going on about their “four-person planet called Metric.” She seamlessly transitioned into discussing the next number, which would require “massive love,” on behalf of everyone within earshot. And thus they broke into “Stadium Love,” the last track on Fantasies. With its pulsating percussion and killer keyboard (courtesy of Winstead, who took a break from bass), this animal-reference-packed ditty brought out Haines’ wild side; she crawled on all fours and oozed sex symbol, her locks shooting in all directions, looking like a post-coital casualty. The leopard statues (don’t ask) situated on either side of the stage had nothing on her unbridled beauty and untamed approach to performing. This was particularly evident during her bouts of head-banging while attacking the keyboard. The hiatus between “last song” and encore invited much hooting and hollering that emerged from hoarse throats around the room as a collective roar. Fitting. Metric returned to play their ever-famous “Monster Hospital,” encouraging the sea of devotees to sing along, acoustic-style. Their request was met. So relieving when fans know what words to sing, which all too often doesn’t happen. Not so with Metric. Their last song called for lighters to be held high; “Verizon lighter? Sprint lighter? T-Mobile lighter?” Emily insisted everyone raise them in the air. No one dared deny her, and who would want to? “This part of the night is always my favorite… this is our sweet dreams lullaby.” Several “I love yous" were released from loose-lipped listeners, and then Metric dove into “Live It Out,” a song that truly tests Haines’ range. She passed with flying colors, nailing the deep parts. She ambled down from the stage and took time to high-five the front row, proving that, indeed, it pays to arrive early and remain immobile behind the barricade until the curtain finally falls. All-in-all, Metric measured up. “Front Row” (Fantasies) could have been less static, with its fuzzy bass that drowned out Haines’ angelic lyrics, but, besides this technical setback, and a couple sorely missed songs (“Combat Baby,” anyone?) their performance shined bright. They’re one of the most engaging and entertaining rock bands -– thanks to the winsome and daring Haines -– I’ve witnessed live in a while. Almost makes me want to pack up and migrate towards our northern neighbor, home to myriad amazing artists. Oh well. Eventually all acts pass though this city and, more often than not these days, it would seem, dope bands tend to make a pit stop at this very station. Suppose I’ll just set up shop; stay tuned for Phoenix come Monday. Photos by Pearse Daly

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on June 18, 2009 10:59 AM

This video of a toy maglev train is a great illustration of how the technology works.

Watch the whole thing...there's a nice bit at the end with tracks mounted vertically on buildings. (via cyn-c)

Popular Science published an article five years ago on the possibility of a trans-Atlantic maglev train that would travel in an airless underwater tunnel at 4,000 MPH and make the trip from New York to London in an hour.

A 4,000-mph magnetically levitated train could allow you to have lunch in Manhattan and still get to London in time for the theater, despite the 5-hour time difference. It's not impossible: Norway has studied neutrally buoyant tunnels (concluding that they're feasible, though expensive), and Shanghai is running maglev trains to its airport. But supersonic speeds require another critical step: eliminating the air -- and therefore air friction -- from the train's path. A vacuum would also save the tunnel from the destructive effects of a sonic boom, which, unchecked, could potentially rip the tunnel apart.

Tags: maglev   trains

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 18, 2009 10:48 AM

Today marks the official launch of Percona.tv. We’ll be uploading technical screencasts, conference video, and anything else cool we can think up. If you’ve got ideas or requests, let us know and we’ll do our best to accommodate!

---

Entry posted by Ryan Lowe | No comment

Add to: | | | |

Originally posted by Ryan Lowe from MySQL Performance Blog, on June 18, 2009 10:45 AM

Yesterday PAPER held a high noon gathering at Indochine to celebrate PAPER's favorite power couple -- Ruben and Isabel Toledo. Folks like Terence Koh, Matthew Modine, Cynthia Rowley, Tatum O'Neal, Narciso Rodriguez, Stephen Burrows, Sally Singer and Doo Ri came out to fete artist Ruben and fashion designer Isabel, fresh from the opening of her extraordinary exhibit at F.I.T.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on June 18, 2009 9:29 AM

The list of winners for the Knight News Challenge were just announced. They look really interesting. Gotham Gazette, one of my daily reads for NYC, got one to form a wiki on the City Council. A big grant went to ProPulbica and the NYT for a db of public records, a really interesting one to create tools to make community news data visualizations.

Jake Dobkin of Gothamist and I were finalists for this contest for a project we collaborated on. We wanted to create a site for placebloggers to collaborate and share stories. The project also gave them access to tools like Reuters, and Lexis Nexis so they could compete with professional journalists. Looking at this list I see that we asked for much to much money. I'm sure there were other reasons we didn't win too but that really stands out. I don't see an everyblock in this group but who knows.

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on June 18, 2009 8:47 AM

A very interesting infographic of the ideological history of the Supreme Court from 1937 to the present. The color coding on the map is weirdly inaccurate but you can still be general trends pretty well...like how many of the justices changed greatly during their terms. William O. Douglas became slightly more moderate mid-term and then got really liberal while Rehnquist went from very conservative to more moderate as his term went on, especially after he became Chief Justice.

OT: I knew there was a Burger on the bench but was unaware of Justice Frankfurter (1938-1961).

Tags: infoviz   politics   The Supreme Court

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 18, 2009 8:23 AM

From Fantastic Flashbacks:

The article posted this time was clipped by me from the May 30, 1977 issue of Time magazine. I had been following the articles in various other magazines with interest, like Starlog and Famous Monsters. But this was the first in a mainstream publication that I had found, and it came out the same week the movie did, before I or most people had seen it. Hope you enjoy this look back to a time when it was possible to read something fresh and new about Star Wars before it became the phenomenon that it did.

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on June 18, 2009 8:22 AM

Ever since I posted about the vintage Good Humor ice cream truck I spotted last year, I've gotten countless emails from people asking how they could hire the truck and its retro-uniform-clad driver for an event.

"No idea," I'd reply. "I don't have his contact info. You'd have to scour the streets looking for the guy."

Well, it looks like you all can finally give the shoe leather a rest. A company called Gold Coast Ice Cream Truck Co. has a truck that's nearly identical to the one I spotted—and it's available for events in New York City and Long Island.

And, as is all the rage these days, they're on Twitter: @IceCreamLady67

goldcoasticecream.com; 516-776-9594

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats: New York, on June 18, 2009 7:30 AM

One of my favorite editors appears on Colbert. "If you are a blogger why aren't you wearing a bathrobe.." Fun interview.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Joshua Micah Marshall
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Stephen Colbert in Iraq

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on June 18, 2009 7:28 AM

I mentioned yesterday that I have a cold. It didn't get any better overnight, so I went to the local Wally World to pick up a gallon of OJ to attempt to drown the bugs currently infesting my sinuses in vitamin C. As long as I was there, it couldn't hurt to swing by the card aisle, could it? Well, yes, actually it could:

O-Pee-Chee is live and in retail stores. Gravity feed packs for $1.57 each and blasters 14 packs for $19.99. The whole aisle had been recently revamped with new stuff (OPC, Topps Series 2 Cereal Boxes and '09 Donruss Americana) and a bunch of new discounted stuff. Blasters of '08 UDX for 10 bucks and packs of '08 First Edition for 49 cents caught my eye. The pretty yellow wrappers with Ryan Braun gracing them sucked me in though and I picked up 4 packs for review purposes. I wasn't buying these for myself, you know... this was a selfless act in order to help my readers learn more about this newfangled Americanized O-Pee-Chee. I'll post the packs themselves tonight or tomorrow but first I want to share a few things I learned about this product.

Topps Sued Over The Wrong Set Design

They got so worked up over that 1971 parallel card that they completely missed that UD pulled another Upper Deck Vintage on them. Compare:

Behold: 2009 Upper Deck Vintage ripping off the 1976 Topps design and called O-Pee-Chee for no discernable reason. They curved the corners and turned the position illustration into a baseball and logo, but yeah, it's pretty much the same thing. This alone makes me like this set a whole lot more than I did yesterday.

I Still Don't Know How I Feel About The Black Border Parallels, But At Least They Look Neat

'71 Topps they ain't but they do look pretty snazzy. The contrast between the neon frame and the black border is pretty attractive in person. This would be a great looking set to build and put into a binder for posterity. Of course at one per pack you would have to open at least a few cases just to get close to the set.

The backs of the parallels are a different color stock and ink from the base cards too. I guess this is so Upper Deck can sucker the OCD set collectors to buy more boxes because the parallels just don't look right in their set. Of course, I'm building both an Allen & Ginter mini set using minis from 2006 to 2009 and a 2009 Topps Series One set using all three varieties of borders - base white, Wal-Mart, black and Target retro - just to spite Topps for not advertising the variations. So bollucks to UD if they think those black cards aren't going straight into my OPC set, assuming I even bother to try to build one after all the shenanigans surrounding this product.

I do have to give it to Upper Deck for taking the retro feel to its absolute limits in this set. Check out the Kyle Kendrick card up there. Yep, it's diamond cut. Aaaaawweeesome! Maybe Panini should sue too for swiping the distinctive characteristic of 1981 Donruss.

This Could Quite Possibly Be Both The Coolest And Saddest Thing You See All Day

Ok, I said there were blasters there as well so I took a gander at one of them. People who collected O-Pee-Chee hockey the past couple of years might know that UD printed cards on the back of the blasters that you could cut off the box. Well, they did the same thing with the baseball product! I saw three different panels there: Boston Red Sox and Chase Utley, Albert Pujols and Adrian Gonzalez and BJ Upton (I think) and Derek Jeter. That's the cool thing, now here's the sad thing:

I just got a new phone last Friday. It has a camera on it so I pulled it out to take a picture of the boxes to share. The only problem is, while I know how to take pictures with the phone, I haven't quite figured out how to get them off the phone. There are options to e-mail the picture and upload it to the web, but I haven't looked over my phone plan yet and I don't know how much it costs. The most sensible thing to do would be to just send it to my PC using a Bluetooth adapter, but I haven't bought one yet. So I can't Bluetooth it and I'm skeered to e-mail it and get a nice bill in the mail next month so I did the most bootleg thing possible:

I took a picture of the picture on my phone with my webcam.

(yes, I'm pathetic)

Honestly, the pic from the phone isn't much better than that one, but I'm still embarrassed for myself. The box on the top has the BJ Upton (or some other Ray, I honestly forgot between the store and my house) and Jeter, while the bottom has Pujols and Gonzalez. I'm guessing A Cardboard Problem will be responsible for at least two OPC blaster purchases. I love the concept and it's a lot better use of the space on the blaster than the advertising copy they have on every other blaster out there.

One More Bit Of Info Courtesy Chris Harris

The 2009 O-Pee-Chee set is made up of 600 cards. 500 base cards and a further 100 subset cards inserted one per pack. Now, the first reaction of many (including myself) was "What?? Bloody short prints in a low level set building product? Rackinfrackin NOTAFINGA!!!". However, Chris points out that due to the pack configuration, the subset cards are actually statistically easier to pull than the base cards. Let's break it down:

• One Pack of 2009 O-Pee-Chee = six total cards*
• One card in the pack is one of the subset cards numbered 501-600.
• This leaves five cards in the pack.
• One of these cards is the 'Not '71 Topps' black border parallel card.
• This leaves four cards in the pack.
• With absolutely perfect collation, it will take 100 packs to complete the subsets (100 divided by one card per pack)
• With absolutely perfect collation is will take 125 packs to complete the base set (500 divided by four cards per pack)

The subset cards are actually more plentiful than the base cards! And don't forget, there are also insert cards in there like the 20th Anniversary set eating up another base card every few packs making it even more difficult. Of course we have all been trained like Pavlov's dogs to see a base card listed at "X per pack" and assume it's a short print so expect the easier to find subsets to book for a premium in next month's price guide.

Overall, my feeling is that this is a decent little set with some serious flaws. If I was rolling in dough like I was a couple of years ago, I'd probably buy a few blasters just to be able to cut the cards off the box, but with the economy tight I might wait until they join the other discounted packs on the aisle. This could be a fun set to collect - in 2010.

*This is waaaaaay too few cards in my humble opinion, but that's a rant for another post.

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on June 18, 2009 7:24 AM

Breakfast @ Blue Bottle, originally uploaded by Alaina B..

Quick trip to San Francisco included breakfast at Blue Bottle Sunday morning. I prefer my eggs a little runnier, otherwise YUM.

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from A Full Belly, on June 18, 2009 7:05 AM

Photos by Donna
Last Sunday morning, my son James said, "Dad, what if you made a bowl out of cookie dough?"

I'm the first to admit that there are almost no truly new culinary innovations or ideas, only variations on what's come before us, and I also know that making a cooking to serve ice cream on, such as an ice cream sandwich, is a common one (some great recipes will be in Ad Hoc At Home, now at the printers). But when James said it, I said, "Very cool idea, James.  Let's give it a shot." And so we did.  We posted a Twitpic and fellow Twitters were likewise enthusiastic.

It's taken a few different methods to figure out the best way to bake them and how much to put in our bowl-in-a-bowl makeshift mold.  But not too long.  Very easy to bake, a little tricky to get out of the mold. But James's final verdict was emphatic: "Awesome!"

The following is the chocolate chip cookie dough from Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.  It's an interesting recipe to me because I've basically taken the 123 cookie dough (1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, 3 parts flour) and made a 111 cookie dough, plus an egg, and chocolate chips of course.  The result is a very light clean chocolate chip cookie, crisp but tender.  And it works great when transformed into a bowl that holds ice cream.  My mom would use electric beaters, or this dough can be mixed by hand but, but it's easiest and cleanest made in a standing mixer. The following quantities will make at least four to six bowls (depending on the size of your mold).

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Bowl

Put 8 ounces of butter, 4 ounces each of brown sugar and white sugar, an egg and a teaspoon of vanilla extract into the bowl of a standing mixer.  Beat using the paddle attachment until all ingredients are incorporated. 

Remove the bowl from the stand, put it on a scale and pour in 8 ounces of flour (about a cup and a half), 1/2 teaspoon salt and a teaspoon of baking powder.  Return the bowl to the machine and paddle until the dough is formed.  Add at least a cup of chocolate chips or roughly chopped chocolate and mix until the chocolate is evenly distributed.

This dough will make about two dozen delicious chocolate chip cookies, but if you want to make bowls, you'll need two oven-proof dishes, one that fits inside another, for each chocolate chip cookie bowl (see the Twitpic link above).  Spray the inside of the larger one and the outside of the smaller one with vegetable oil (or butter them).  Press about 1/3 of a cup of the dough into each large bowl.  Press the smaller bowl on top of the dough firmly so that the dough begins to push up around its sides (expansion will take care of the rest).

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. Remove the bowls from the oven and carefully twist the small bowls to free them from the dough (I used sturdy tongs), then remove it, and continue to bake the cookie bowls for 5 minutes of so until the inner bottom of the cookie bowl finishes cooking.

When the bowls are cool enough to handle, cut off any dough that's over flowed the edge and, very carefully, run a pairing knife along the sides, gently lifting up to delicately free the bottom of the cookie bowl.  Chill completely.

Fill with ice cream and serve to anyone who adores cookies and ice cream. I reiterate James's verdict: "Awesome."  Thanks, James!

Originally posted by michael ruhlman from ruhlman.com, on June 18, 2009 5:31 AM

On June 4 I posted about how the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new so-called American Wing and the National Gallery of Art's American galleries are problematic. The two institutions are clinging to embarrassingly conservative, Pat Buchanan-Tom Tancredo-style definitions of what 'American art' is. That thinking culminated in yesterday's post, about the NGA.

A word on why I didn't include the Met, whose 'American Wing' is almost as embarrassing as the NGA's presentation of American art. So far the Met's space is not worthy of the name 'American Wing.' It is the white, northeastern American wing. Call it the '1/8th of America Wing.' 

But the Met isn't done. In 2011 the museum's American paintings and sculpture galleries will re-open. I'm not sure there's any reason to believe they'll be more fully American than what's opened so far. But it would be unfair to comment on the totality Met's view of American art until...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on June 18, 2009 4:44 AM

(via nadiaisobel)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Suicide Blonde, on June 17, 2009 6:50 PM

Got off to a rough start ...

But eventually we were cool ...

Tune in for tonight's episode.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on June 17, 2009 6:40 PM

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on June 17, 2009 2:12 PM

Balthazar's menu is a lesson in good salesmanship.

How much can restaurants influence what we order? Menus are written with appetizing adjectives like “roasted” or “marinated” (“fried” should be avoided); highlight dishes with different fonts, colors, and pictures; move items to the center right of our line of sight; and drop dollar signs from prices, all in an effort to make higher profits, according to a recent Baltimore Sun blog post. As an educated diner, it’s hard to imagine being tricked into buying a dish you don’t want, but the conventions turned up in menus from many of our favorite restaurants. Check out our list to see who follows the rules.

Balthazar
Menu [PDF]
Evidence: No dollar signs. Giant picture highlights pricey shellfish platters. The most expensive dish — steak au poivre for $38 — is at center right.

Cozy Soup 'n Burger
Menu [PDF]
Evidence: No dollar signs. Plenty of pictures, stars, and colors highlighting menu sections. The most expensive items on the page —Tasty Wraps for $14.50 — have a picture and fall in the center-right of the page. Plus the beef and chicken options for wraps are “marinated.”

La Esquina
Menu [PDF]
Evidence: No dollar signs. Pictures draw attention to the expensive main courses, which are also positioned center-right. Avoids saying fried potatoes by calling a side dish “papas fritas.”

Apiary
Menu [PDF]
Evidence: No dollar signs. Bees buzz around the $35 prix fixe menu. New executive chef Scott Bryan is highlighted in red. Entrées like roasted organic chicken and Berkshire pork are on the center right of the page.

Veloce Pizzeria
Menu [PDF]
Evidence: No dollar signs. The pizza is the main event in a central box.

Public Fare
Menu [PDF]
Evidence: No dollar signs. Uses the term "roasted" for a tomato sandwich. Headers for food colored blue and typed in caps.
Needs to Improve: The story of the restaurant could be switched from the far right to the left so that dishes would display front and center.

Butcher Bay
Menu [PDF]
Evidence: No price signs.
Needs to Improve: “Fried,” “fries,” and “fritters” show up four times on the menu. The cheapest entrée — BBQ tofu for $14 — is center right.

Hotel Griffou
Menu [PDF]
Evidence: Most expensive dishes — Steak Diane, $38; and stuffed lobster tails, $42 — fall in the center.
Needs to Improve: Drop the dollar signs.

Bar Artisanal
Evidence: Funny fonts highlight sections of the menu. Burger names are capped.
Needs to Improve: Expensive Plats Principaux could be made more central or have a picture.

Sorella
Menu [PDF]
Evidence: Pretty fonts and designs highlight the small plates. Nightly two-course menu has its own font.
Needs to Improve: They waste a designed box and central-right location on cheap contorni.

Retail psychology of menus: the best advertising ever [Baltimore Sun via Big Money]

Read more posts by Alexandra Vallis

Filed Under: menus

Originally posted by Alexandra Vallis from Grub Street, on June 17, 2009 2:05 PM

Two big expansion alerts coming across the wire this afternoon. First up, the Observer reports that Think Coffee, the growing coffee shop empire with branches on the lower Bowery and right on NYU's campus at Mercer and 4th, is continuing its Village domination by opening up a 1,600 square foot shop on 4th Avenue between 12th and 13th. They hope to open by the end of the summer.

Meanwhile, the 'Bag brings the news that every Nolita Euro's favorite hang out, Cafe Gitane, has abandoned its plans to expand to Bond Street and hopes to open a new location in the Jane Hotel by the end of the summer. A hip faux-antique bar and a Gitane under the same roof? Our brain just exploded.
· Cafe Gitane Coming to Jane Hotel [TFB]
· Think Coffee to Peddle Caffeine Near NYU [NYO]
[photo credit]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on June 17, 2009 12:09 PM

Chips made from bismuth telluride could signal a new era in electronics.

Recently-predicted and much-sought, the material allows electrons on its surface to travel with no loss of energy at room temperatures and can be fabricated using existing semiconductor technologies. Such material could provide a leap in microchip speeds, and even become the bedrock of an entirely new kind of computing industry based on spintronics, the next evolution of electronics.

No loss of energy...it's like magic!

Tags: science

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 17, 2009 11:56 AM

Hey, did everyone get their newsletter this morning? Couple of folks complained yesterday that it hadn’t come, which was also the case for me recently. (It went to Spam, which it so is not. Until Choire actually writes about spam next week.) Anyway, we haven’t heard of any problems, but if you just now noticed that you didn’t receive your early-morningish blast of happiness, let us know in the comments or drop us a line and we’ll see what we can do to get you sorted out. Not yet a subscriber? Head right, to the section that says “Subscribe to the newsletter” and sign yourself up. You probably won’t regret it that much. Thanks!

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on June 17, 2009 11:25 AM

If you're up for some late evening TV viewing tonight, I'm going to be on the Colbert Report.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on June 17, 2009 11:11 AM

The Architects' Journal selected their top 10 structures from the Star Wars films.

Not quite a building, but the monumental quality of its form and its polygonal facades lend this Jawa Sandcrawler a building-like presence. These large treaded vehicles have inspired buildings from a Tunisian hotel to Rem Koolhaas' Casa de Musica in Porto.

(thx, janelle)

Tags: architecture   best of   lists   movies   Star Wars

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 17, 2009 10:32 AM

Just outside of Volcan, Panama is Finca Hartmann, a beautiful 90 hectare (220 acre) estate, in which 12 of those hecares are set aside for coffee cultivation, and the remainder are dedicated to old-growth rainforest. Alex Hartmann is one of five Hartmann siblings who work together to run the family estate. Alex is the manager of the coffee nursery, and assists in the management of all coffee harvesting between the months of September and February. When I visited Finca Hartmann in late May, I met with Alex in the nursery and got a glimpse into his philosophy of producing and selling coffee, that is, why it is so important for coffee producers and consumers to communicate with one another.
 
Over the course of the past few years, Gimme Coffee has met a number of coffee growers from various coffee producing countries. Each meeting is an effort to foster new relationships with these growers, and to actively dissolve our spatial and economic distances.

We visit coffee producers so that we can continue educate ourselves about what quality coffee truly is: a process. Quality coffee is neither a commodity, nor is it a static idea. It relies heavily on the responsibility of everyone involved, from the farmer in a given coffee producing country to the consumer buying whole beans off of the shelf.

Alex mentions that roasters and coffee buyers are the important link between producers and consumers. We are, in fact, a dual agent in the buying and selling of quality coffee. Gimme's responsibility is to both respond to the specific needs of the grower, as well as to educate the consumer about what we believe quality truly is. It is also to respond to the specific needs of the consumer, as well as to educate the grower about what we believe quality truly is - in an objective and positive way.

Essentially, we visit coffee producers because we want more people drinking better coffee and knowing more about it.

Originally posted by Colleen Anunu from Gimme! Coffee News, on June 17, 2009 10:14 AM

In the ongoing guerrilla campaign against the Cooper Square Hotel and its noisy terrace bar, the neighbors living mere feet away have yelled at bar goers through a megaphone, played comedy routines through loudspeakers, distributed homemade videos, and made copious complaints to the city and the press. Oh, and they've hung soiled underwear right by the terrace, now called the "lingerie line of defense" by 1010WINS.

Today, we noticed that a whole new, and more extreme, set of delicates are out to dry, along with a bonus Yes We Can T-shirt. According to Jeremiah Moss, it's a replacement clothesline for one broken by a falling air conditioner: "Foul play? Karmic retribution? Or just a couple of loose screws?" We present, the average bar goer's view:

· Notes From the Backside #5 {JVNY]
· All Cooper Square Hotel Coverage [~E~]
· Coop Hotel Can't See London, Can't See France, However... [Curbed]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on June 17, 2009 9:44 AM

Dear Answer Lady,

I’m a lady at or around the age of 30, as are many of my friends. I live way up at the top of Manhattan, in faraway Inwood, but many of my friends live down under Manhattan, in faraway Brooklyn. When I want to see one of my Brooklyn-dwelling friends, we generally get together somewhere in between, so neither of us has to make the 1-1.5-hour trek to the other’s house (and back, which is usually worse, or more expensive, on account of it being at night).

But, oh, Answer Lady… lately my friends have started having babies. Like, in the last couple of months. Sort of all at once. It’s weird. ANYWAY, I feel like you can’t ask a mom to haul her just-gave-birth-body and her screaming 8-pound new-born to Korea Town or the West Village for get-togethers. If I’m not mistaken, the expected thing is that I go visit them. In Brooklyn.

But it is soooo far awayyyy. Is there any alternative? I like my friends, and I’m sure I’ll like their babies, once I see them. Can I just wait 8 months until they’re more mobile or something? Or pick a baby-friendly venue and invite them out?

Signed,

Selfish?

Dear Selfish,

Your question is trickier than it seems on the surface, I suspect. I mean, as to whether you ought to suck it up, grab a good book, spend an hour and a half on the A train, and try to hit up as many babies as you can in one trip to Brooklyn: yes, duh. You won’t have to do it every weekend or anything, and you won’t have to do it that many times. They won’t be little immobile babies and weary sleep-deprived new moms forever. It will just seem like forever to *them.*

You won’t even really notice it, because your life will go on and you’ll start spending more time with your friends who live near you and don’t have babies, and they’ll start spending more time making macaroni crafts and freaking out about how much mercury is in sardines and stuff like that. And also they’ll spend more time with their friends who live near them and have babies around the same age as theirs, because that’s how it works. And that’s what your question is really about, I think: “Can I still be friends with my friends who have babies, even though our lives are necessarily super different now?”

And, I don’t know! I hope so. I think probably not, though? Your friendships will definitely change. And that is okay, Selfish. Imagine how boring things would be if everyone just continued to be childless and carefree forever, and your hangs with your girlfriends were exactly the same now as they were in your early 20s except now everyone is older? People are growing up and doing grown-up things like buying apartments and getting married and having babies, there is just no stopping that stuff from happening, Selfish. And it can be a little sad and lonely and inconvenient sometimes for those of us who either aren’t doing these things yet, or don’t plan to do them ever.

The compensatory thing, though, is that we don’t have to constantly worry about a little human being being totally emotionally, physically, and fiscally dependent on us for his survival. Bonus! Or, is it? I dunno. As a very wise cartoon crab once said, the seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go make an appointment for my elderly cat to have $1300 worth of dental surgery.

Troubles? We can help! Write to the answer lady’s private tipline at advice at TheAwl.com if you please.

Previously: Should An Athiest Tell The Family That She Prays?

Originally posted by Emily Gould from The Awl, on June 17, 2009 9:30 AM

It's New York's 400th birthday next week.

Which makes us feel wonderfully young and makes designers, including Elizabeth and James, Michael Kors, Tibi, Tory Burch and DvF feel like making one-off designs in honor of the city they love.

The pieces will sell at the two Bloomingdales in New York (where a purchase also gets you two tickets to the Museum of the City of New York) and online.

Everything's under $128, including jeans from Seven for All Mankind, a scarf from BCBG, a Michael Stars tee and a Kate Spade tote.

It launches on Monday, but if you're feeling patriotic today, Gerard Butler's been filming a 4th of July parade on my street all week.

Sponsored Topics: Michael Kors - Kate Spade - Gerard Butler - New York City - New York

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on June 17, 2009 9:12 AM

This is going to be huge. I wish this would have been available last week at WWDC.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 17, 2009 8:42 AM

related: Clay's TED talk from last month at the State Department  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on June 17, 2009 8:27 AM

According to Adam Rubin in the Daily News, Billy Wagner told Dan Warthen that he could be pitching two innings in the major leagues in 30 days.

However, Warthen told Rubin 30 days is way to early for Wagner to return, though he is expected to be back with Mets by mid-August.

Last week, on WFAN’s Boomer and Carton, John Franco said Billy Wagner is pitching from a mound and throwing over 90 mph.

…i know, i know… i’m imagining it too… one step at a time, though…

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on June 17, 2009 7:37 AM

Just add water!

Mountain Rising Gourmands have never for a glass of red wine on the mountain summit refrain. Trekking Meals presents the new red in powder form. The beverage powder in the practical portion bags is like a light wine from the bottle of an alcohol content of 8.2%,

(via Arbroath)

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on June 17, 2009 7:22 AM

Another report:

TEHRAN, June 15, 3h30-

Today, at least 1 million people gathered for a 'silent' march from Revolution Square to Freedom Square. The crowd, which filled the wide avenue, extended further, and at one point it became impossible to move forward. There are no official figures (and those would of course be disputable), but I have never seen a demonstration like this in my life, anywhere!

People walked silently, hands raised. We had been warned to stay indoors, as the police have orders to fire live bullets, and this being Iran, we take that for exactly what it means, but people did not listen.

As night fell, and the crowd dispersed, Bassiji militiamen opened fire on the crowd, killing one (his photo is circulating) and many were injured. The city took flames again, but by this point I had come home. In our neighborhood, there were Bassijis stationed with police at the major square north of the house, pushing people and hitting cars with batons, telling people to go home. Again at 9:30 pm, people made their way to the rooftops to cry out, "Allah Akbar" and "Death to Dictatorship". We heard shots that sounded like tear gas pellets (although they are using some strange nerve gas or other chemical agent, not tear gas) but also live fire.

Today, students at Tehran University were in mourning. Many of their peers were arrested last night, and one student was shot dead, when Bassijis raided their dorms and beat them. Today, as the demonstration passed by the University, we saw students protesting from inside and speaking to people through the metal bars. They were locked in.

I won't get into the decisions and talks taking place in the high ranks of the regime, and amongst reformist groups. These people, no matter how much they represent 'change', are problematic political leaders with shady pasts.

Tonight we are only thinking of the dead, from the past and today, and preparing ourselves for more. Something is taking form, and it is only a matter of time before there is a bigger backlash than what we have seen.

Here are the names of the 5 people who have been confirmed dead from yesterday and Saturday's clashes. 2 women and 3 men, all of whom were buried in Behesht Zahra cemetery without their families being notified.

Fatemeh Barati
Kasra Sharafi
Mina Eterami
Kambiz Shoai
Mohsen Imani

We do not yet know the name of the man shot dead tonight.

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on June 17, 2009 7:15 AM

Hivelogic: “Many people unintentionally abuse their friends and colleagues with incorrect away statuses. There’s a good chance that you may be one of these people without knowing it.”

Originally posted by admin from ranchero.com, on June 17, 2009 7:08 AM

Hivelogic: “Many people unintentionally abuse their friends and colleagues with incorrect away statuses. There’s a good chance that you may be one of these people without knowing it.”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from ranchero.com, on June 17, 2009 7:08 AM

From The Village Voice:

We dropped by that Fire David Letterman protest across the street from the Ed Sullivan Theater. The Daily News says there were about 50 people there, but we put it closer to 100 if you include the rubberneckers. Indeed, there were about four or five times as many protesters as reporters and cameramen, who competed for pearls of wisdom or lunacy from the crowd. “I have a conservative blog!” one nice young man in a button-down shirt offered. “Women are being debased, Christians are being degraded! Anything’s funny now!”

I wish I had time to protest against the evil that is late night talk shows.

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on June 17, 2009 7:03 AM

Playing a critical game right now - and look at their wrists. They took the bands off in the second half. God knows what they were told in the half-time. But for those who still don't believe this is a genuinely national movement, open your eyes.

Originally posted by Andrew Sullivan from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan, on June 17, 2009 5:43 AM

Jay-Z has reportedly begun filming the music video for his controversial "Death of Autotune" record and footage from the video shoot has leaked online.

[Visit SOHH.com for more information]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from SOHH.com Dailies, on June 17, 2009 5:30 AM

I started a Tumblr about the situation in Iran.  Just kidding, I started a Tumblr about Things I Ate That I Love.  It exists to catalog and sometimes minorly analyze or contextualize the things I ate that I love.  It features blurry cell phone photos of same.  Sometimes there are also pictures of my cat or other people’s cats and minor analysis or contextualization of foods that I or you might eat and love, or not love, at some point in the future. And that is the sum total of what to ever expect from this Tumblr.

Originally posted by emily from Emily Magazine, on June 17, 2009 5:27 AM

When you’re feeling small and alone, and the world doesn’t make any sense, all you need is a really good friend with a really good grip.

Something to make you go “aw,” from deeleea.

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Unusual animals

Originally posted by Not That Mike The Other Mike from Cute Overload, on June 17, 2009 4:38 AM

Kev and Alice are two Sims - father and daughter - created by Robin, a UK-based games design student.

Kev and Alice are homeless.

Welcome to the tale of Alice and Kev.

This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. [...]

I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.

Start the story here... it's really sad. And completely compelling.

(thanks Harry!)

Originally posted by Alice from Wonderland, on June 17, 2009 4:21 AM

No one is surprised by the NY Times report that Sammy Sosa was one of 103 who tested positive in 2003. Of course, that list remains the object of much speculation at the same time that it is the subject of ongoing litigation. Two names have come out, but the story does raise some interesting questions:

* I’ve always followed the steroid story as something of an epidemic. It often follows the same models, centering around hubs and nodes. The hubs are players like Jose Canseco or Bill Romanowski in the NFL who were evangelists for the substances, but the nodes are usually the drug distributors. The Bay Area had BALCO, Baltimore had their “star”, and Dallas had their Hollywood connection, while the NFL had doctors in Pittsburgh and Charlotte, among others, who were willing to supply. Chicago, however, doesn’t have this issue or at least hasn’t. Looking at the Cubs roster in 2003 and a year previous, there’s *no one* that tested positive or that has even had much speculation surrounding their production. It will be interesting to see if the 2003 list shows such a cluster existed or if Sosa was one of few singular users.

* This is the second name to leak and Michael Schmidt credits “lawyers with knowledge of the list.” That’s probably a bigger group than you’d expect. Remember that the key source for Game of Shadows was a defense attorney. Going back to the original Alex Rodriguez leak, Selena Roberts said at the time that Schmidt was very close to getting the story before she broke it. With the Barry Bonds case delayed to July and likely beyond, the speculation that the government is leaking names to keep the story alive has some legs.

* 2013 just got a bit more interesting as Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens all hit the ballot for Cooperstown that year. What could have been one of the greatest Hall of Fame classes of all time might now end up a blank slate and an enduring comment on the Steroid Era. I think the BBWAA is hoping the Mayans were right.

Originally posted by Will Carroll from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on June 16, 2009 5:29 PM

Criterion has two new announcements on conventional DVD: David Mamet's Homicide, and another title that Danny Peary covered in his legendary Cult Movies series: That Hamilton Woman.The former impressed me when I first saw it; the latter has, as far as I know, never turned up on home video until now.

Originally posted by Serdar from Serdar | Genji Press, on June 16, 2009 5:27 PM

Today was a good day for mail. We received a handwritten letter from our friend and NYC-based artist, Ryan McGinness inviting us to visit his studio in 2009/2010+ for "50 Parties. 50 Themes. 50 Weeks. In a Row in the Studio. No Sponsors. No Strangers". Included with the note was an additional welcome letter with website login instructions and a list of the first 29 parties' themes.

When we lived in New York City, we were fortunate enough to attend several of Ryan's game nights and gatherings. They were always filled with creatives and interesting doers. Ryan created the 50PARTIES project in response to this void: "to bring back the artist's studio space as an environment for social exchange and revitalize the practice of the artist's studio as salon."  I can only imagine (with anticipation) the potential interactions and conversations while attending one of the themed gatherings.

The more I learned about Ryan's new project, the more it made me miss our friends back east. To remedy this feeling, Silvio and I are going to pick a few dates and party with Manhattan. I'm looking forward to picking up my Guest Card and joining the fun!

Originally posted by hustler of culture from hustler of culture, on June 16, 2009 5:00 PM

yankees Popcorn Scarf. hat?

Originally posted by Sara Pepitone from Scoreboard Gourmet, on June 16, 2009 3:51 PM

The Washington Post got in depth today with Counter Culture’s new training center in Washington, DC.

“Counter Culture staffers describe their mission in part as an effort to reshape the way Americans think about coffee. In an ideal world, they say, drinkers might liken it to wine: an artisan product with specific seasons and a wide variety of subtle flavors to be savored, not something so lacking in value that it is served in a bottomless cup.”

That’s not to say great things aren’t happening for them in NYC either.  Here’s an example;

What’s notable about this flyer (among other things), is that Aida Battle will be attending.  Aida is one of the most prominent specialty coffee producers in the world.  Her visit to NYC is a special treat for all of us.

But even if you’re not in NYC, or can’t attend the open house, you should still read the Washington Post article linked to below.  It’s a great article about a great company.

Coffee Roaster Is Out to Educate, Cup by Cup – washingtonpost.com.

Posted in coffee, training Tagged: barista, coffee, counter culture, green coffee, origin

Originally posted by Mike White from ShotZombies.com, on June 16, 2009 2:09 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on June 16, 2009 2:02 PM

probably the only member of the Mets right now I am am not unconditionally mad at (although I cannot ever be angry at Johan Santana, and find it hard to be upset with Carlos Beltran)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from metsgrrl.com's tumblr, on June 16, 2009 1:55 PM

In an interview with ESPN 1050’s Michael Kay, Bobby Valentine said he has not heard form a major-league team this season.

He said he is confident, if he decides to interview for a job in MLB next season, he will be able to find a team to work for.

Valentine said he has been offered jobs by MLB teams during the last few years, but he has been under contract in Japan.

Lastly, asked if he would ever manage the Mets again, Valentine was sure to say Jerry Manuel is a good manager for this team.

However, he also said his departure from the Mets was ‘not bad at all,’ and said, essentially, the ‘personalities’ who he had issues with, and who had issues with him, are no longer with the organization.

To listen to to Valentine’s entire interview, go to 1050 ESPN Radio.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on June 16, 2009 1:37 PM

Suave, sophisticated, man-about-town

Originally posted by (author unknown) from metsgrrl.com's tumblr, on June 16, 2009 1:06 PM

In an analysis of the global financial system, Duncan Watts says that we should limit the complexity of these sorts of systems because "once everything is connected, problems can spread as easily as solutions".

Traditionally, banks and other financial institutions have succeeded by managing risk, not avoiding it. But as the world has become increasingly connected, their task has become exponentially more difficult. To see why, it's helpful to think about power grids again: engineers can reliably assess the risk that any single power line or generator will fail under some given set of conditions; but once a cascade starts, it's difficult to know what those conditions will be - because they can change suddenly and dramatically depending on what else happens in the system. Correspondingly, in financial systems, risk managers are able to assess their own institutions' exposure, but only on the assumption that the rest of the world obeys certain conditions. In a crisis it is precisely these conditions that change in unpredictable ways.

No one, for example, anticipated that an investment bank as old and prestigious as Lehman Brothers could collapse as suddenly as it did, so nobody had that contingency built into their risk models. And once it did fail, then just as the failure of a single power line increases the stress on other parts of the system, leading to further "knock on" failures, so too did Lehman's unlikely collapse render other previously unlikely failures suddenly much more likely.

This is essentially the same point that Nassim Taleb makes in The Black Swan re: Extremistan and Mediocristan.

Tags: 2008 recession   Duncan Watts   economics

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 16, 2009 1:01 PM

FAIL is over. Fail is dead. Because it marks a lack of human empathy, and signifies an absence of intellectual curiosity, it is an unacceptable response to creative efforts in our culture. "Fail!" is the cry of someone who doesn't create, doesn't ship, doesn't launch, who doesn't make things. And because these people don't make things, they don't understand the context of those who do. They can't understand that nobody is more self-critical or more aware of the shortcomings of a creation than the person or people who made it.

When someone says "FAIL", what they’re really saying is, "I’m failing to understand a creative person’s constraints."

Of course, I'm not the first to point out that "Fail" sucks. Andy Baio articulated the case quite well, and I even touched on it in my Battledecks presentation a few years ago. Here's the relevant segment:

But we know that people who cry "FAIL!" are assholes — so why do we have to deem their petulant cry completely unacceptable? It's because of the Law of Fail:

Once a web community has decided to dislike a person, topic, or idea, the conversation will shift from criticizing the idea to become a competition about who can be most scathing in their condemnation.

It is in this way that the obnoxious jerks who offer an unthinking, uncritical belch in response to others' efforts kick off an even worse mob-minded pile on. And what I want to make clear is those who begin these conversations are, it must be said, the true failures. They choose a reflexive shorthand instead of a reasoned critique, and they bring out the worst in a community. I care deeply about people being creative on the web, and I care almost as much about people having thoughtful and productive conversations on the web.

So, fail is dead. I won't accept it in dialogue from those I communicate with, I won't permit those I'm connected to on social networks to use it around me, and no, you're not the first to think you're clever enough to use it as a comment here. If you have the urge to say it and you're a good person, then go do something creative instead. If you have the urge to say "Fail" and you haven't done anything? Well, then your statement speaks for itself.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on June 16, 2009 12:46 PM

Exhibit A, in which Baltimore Examiner columnist writes hack-job piece:
http://www.examiner.com/x-436-Baltimore-Orioles-Examiner~y2009m6d16-Step-right-up-and-defeat-the-Mets

Exhibit B: where Mets forum The Crane Pool Society members expose this guy as a hack:
http://www.examiner.com/x-436-Baltimore-Orioles-Examiner~y2009m6d16-Step-right-up-and-defeat-the-Mets?#comments

Exhibit C:
Orioles Message Board where hack columnist complains that Mets fans “jumped” on him and then the rest of the board proceeds to remind him that having “meaningful” games is a lot more than the Orioles have had in years.

http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/showthread.php?t=83005

Originally posted by (author unknown) from metsgrrl.com's tumblr, on June 16, 2009 12:35 PM

David Wright is hitting .364 in 60 games this season, and is on pace to finish the year with over 160 strike outs, 10 HR, roughly 100 RBI and 45 stolen bases.

According to Jayson Stark, and his Useless Info Department on ESPN.com, “No .360 hitter in history has even whiffed 100 times, let alone 161.”

…by the way, a few weeks ago, i argued that wright wasn’t struggling to hit in Citi Field… despite his home and away splits… i argued he was just a streaky hitter, and it so happened that the deep parts of his slumps had occured during parts of the team’s home series… wright is in the middle of one of his hot streaks, and is now batting .312 in Citi Field, while batting .414 on the road… i am more and more convinced that he’s a streaky hitter, who works hot and cold in what seem to be 10 to 20 game clusters…

Wright is batting .524 in his last 11 games. 

He hit .190 in the 12 games before that, he hit .418 in the 20 games before that, and .271 in the 20 games before that.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on June 16, 2009 11:26 AM

Topps has done a vastly better job on their photos this year after a few years of really bland photography. However, my annoyance with some of the photo choices by Topps has reached full blown obsession so I did what any real man would do and took matters into my own hands. Gentlemen, it's time to open up... MSPAINT.

Original Topps Series Two Jason Kendall card:

Now that same card cropped and horizontal'd

Even with the mess I made with the background on the left side, which is the better looking card? Are his shin guards really that interesting? Ok, here's another one:

2009 Topps Series Two Adam Wainwright

Cropped a little

Cropped a lot:

I don't know about you, but I'd rather see these guys' faces instead of their ankles. I'm not a professional photo editor and I hacked these up using stretch, cut and paste in MSPaint. The cropped cards seem to be better looking to me at least. This might be in part becauseI grew up on Topps cars from the '60s, '70s and '80s where close ups were the norm, not the exception. What do you guys think? Do they look better or should I not quit my day job? (Oh wait...) Let me know thumbs up or down in the comments and let me know if you can do a better job with your own custom crops.

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on June 16, 2009 10:53 AM

A couple of weeks ago on Twitter, I asked about freely available financial data.

Anyone know where to get stock data in a standard API format (XML, JSON, etc)? Just looking for hi/lo/close data, not real-time.

I may or may not get around to doing the project I wanted the data for, but in the meantime, here's a list of the suggested resources that people sent in:

- Google Finance API.

- Google Finance's CSV output (example)

- Google Finance API for gadgets.

- Yahoo Finance's CSV output (example)

- There's a stock quote example in this IBM article on using YQL, JSONP, and jQuery.

- The Stock Quote web service from WebserviceX.net.

- Data from Infochimps: AMEX, NASDAQ, NYSE.

- Xignite finance APIs.

Tags: finance

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 16, 2009 10:39 AM

From Slice

Antica Pizzeria

13455 Maxella Avenue, Marina del Rey CA 90292 (2nd floor of Marina Marketplace; map); 310-577-8182; anticapizzeria.net
Pizza Style: Neapolitan, VPN-certified
Oven Type: Wood-burning
The Skinny: Delicious Neapolitan pizza from the president of the U.S. branch of the Verace Pizza Napoletana association
Price: Margherita pie (serves 1), $12.50

As a transplanted a New Yorker living in Los Angeles, I have often suffered pangs of homesickness for the streets of my youth. All I have to do is close my eyes and allow imagination and sense memories to transport me back to the Bronx.

One of the most poignant and vivid memories is of eating pizza, usually at either Paradise Pizza (just a few doors down from the palatial Loew's Paradise Theater) or at Burnside Pizza. Both establishments were ordinary, local businesses that produced extraordinary slices. I can clearly visualize a hot, plain slice, perfectly crunchy and chewy, and with a perfect balance of cheese and sauce, all for a mere 25¢.

Longtime Antica Pizzeria pizzaiolo Jose Barrios, who trained under Peppe Miele many years ago and who makes the pizzas most nights.

Well, years have passed and, though the price of a slice has risen considerably, so has my degree of pizza sophistication. Having discovered in the '90s the wonders of coal-burning ovens and homemade mozzarella, my early love for this simple and satisfying food has evolved into an obsession. Imagine my excitement and relief when, more than ten years ago, I discovered that I lived just around the bend from Antica Pizzeria, Peppe Miele's Neapolitan outpost in Marina del Rey.

Miele, the president of the Verace Pizza Napoletana's American Division, has been preparing authentic Neapolitan pizza, as well as a full menu of pastas, meats, and other Neapolitan specialties (like timballetto and arancini di riso) in Los Angeles for many years. His lifelong passion for authenticity and integrity in the kitchen has resulted in a culinary oasis in Southern California's pizza desert.

The other night I went back for dinner, alone, so I wouldn't have to share the pizza, and decided to take a few notes, trying to recapture in words and images the transcendent culinary experience I have grown so accustomed to.

It was early for dinner so I had no trouble getting my favorite table. From this vantage point, there are no windows to remind me that I'm in the Marina Marketplace mall. All that can be seen is a mural of a Neapolitan street scene and a photograph of Naples' greatest product, Sophia Loren.

I ordered quickly—a gorgonzola salad and Margherita pie with sausage—grabbed a piece of house-baked bread, removed all but the crust (have to cut calories where possible), and dipped it into a dish of piquant, extra virgin olive oil nicely spiced with crushed red pepper and rosemary.

The salad of greens, radicchio, walnuts, and cheese chunks was fresh, balanced, and not overly dressed. A light, perfect starter. Then I noticed a slight trembling in my hands. Was it early onset Parkinson's (God forbid) or merely my growing anticipation? Clearly, the latter.

The waiter suddenly appeared and set the pie down in front of me. It was the perfect expression of the Neapolitan ideal as defined by the VPN. A crust made from "00" flour, topped with San Marzano tomatoes (canned). Buffalo mozzarella is available at Antica, but I went with the house-made fior di latte. All topped with basil. The red, green, and white of the classic Margherita pie, with a spicy crumbled sausage sprinkled throughout.

As can be seen in the photographs, a puffy, nicely charred cornicione encircled the pie. The upskirt shot reveals a well-charred bottom, courtesy of the wood-fired oven. As is typical of the Neapolitan pie, there is a liquid build-up in the center due to the "wetter" nature of bufala mozzarella and fior di latte. I learned years ago that, for my taste, it is wise to order the pie well-done. The crust, still not really crisp, is nevertheless, delicious. And if you are quick, you can fold the slice (as New Yorkers habitually do), gently support the end with the pinky finger, and bite the tip before any sagging occurs. Chewy, smoky, and almost sweet somehow, this crust is guaranteed to be finished off with a dip in the olive oil. No large chunks of crust left on the plate as is almost always the case in most of California's pizzerias.

Sadly, for the average pizza consumer, the crust is merely a surface for loading on various toppings. However, as Miele told me later, the crust is really the pizza's foundation and, just as with a house, if the foundation is weak, the house will collapse. No fear of collapse here, the crust reeks of simplicity and integrity.

As for the other elements of this pizza architecture, the creamy and fresh fior di latte and simple tomato sauce mingled cozily atop the crust. Again, the classical pizzaiolo's values of balance, simplicity, and integrity come shining through.

With all the pizza buzz ringing from coast to coast, it is fascinating that Miele's Antica Pizzeria has tended to fly below the media radar for so long. Interestingly, the No. 16 ranking given Antica in Alan Richman's Top 25 Pizza List in GQ already seems to have had an effect. The couple dining next to me had read the article and came to check out Antica. The man, an Italian native visiting L.A., confirmed that the pizza was truly authentic and unquestionably delicious. Not that I needed confirmation. My opinion of the pie can best be judged from the nearly bone-dry plate that now stared back at me.

Although I'm excited to see Antica finally begin to gain some well-deserved recognition, I can't help but think how ridiculously misleading Richman's article is. To rank L.A.'s Tomato Pie, a perfectly serviceable pizzeria, at No. 7 (not to mention the snubbing of Pizzeria Mozza), is to completely negate any credibility in the rest of the survey.

By the way, for all the pizza fanatics in the Pacific Northwest, Miele and other members of VPN will be in Seattle the last week of June conducting discussions and pizza demonstrations with that city's several VPN-certified pizzerias. For more information, check out Miele's VPN America website: verapizzanapoletana.org. Ciao!

Originally posted by L.A. Pizza Maven from Serious Eats, on June 16, 2009 10:00 AM

In a report for FOXSports.com, Bob Klapisch looks in to a reunion between the Mets and Bobby Valentine could one day be a possibility.

According to Klapisch, “Despite having fired him in 2002, Met ownership has no hard feelings toward Valentine.  In fact, he and GM Omar Minaya remain close friends… Does that mean Valentine is next in line to succeed to Jerry Manuel? It depends on whether the Mets survive September, not to mention October.  But there’s no question a coup is coming if the Mets fail to catch the Phillies — starting with a new manager.”

…i think what i liked most about valentine is that he captured so many elements that we, the fans, love: he was charming, weird, funny, entertaining, super smart, he motivated his club, he was controversial to a fault, he used stats, played form his gut, and even wore a disguise… he will always hold a special place in my heart, because i know he is capable of pushing a team to be overachievers, and i like the underdog, and i sense he does as well… that said, i like jerry, and think he’s a good fit for this specific roster… if, however, the Mets decide to change, go younger, tougher, etc., and they decide to one day replace manuel, i’d be all for the return of bobby v…

Yesterday, in a report for SI.com, Jon Heyman said, if the Nationals fire Manny Acta, Valentine may be among the possible replacements, according to a National League source.

The poll in the article says 68 percent of the 11,000 people who voted believe Valentine will one day return to manage the Mets.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on June 16, 2009 9:17 AM

-Photo by Getty Images-

Jessica Alba won't be vandalizing anymore billboards anytime soon -- but she also won't be getting into too much trouble for the ones she's already defaced.

After putting up posters of sharks around a town in Oklahoma, including one on a United Way billboard, Oklahoma City police said they won't pursue criminal charges against the actress, because none of the property owners wanted to pursue it. 

"I got involved in something I should have had no part of," Jessica apologized, in a statement last week. "I realize that I should have used better judgment, and I regret not thinking things through before I made a spontaneous and ill-advised decision to let myself get involved with the people behind this campaign."

Jess was trying to be a crusader for the Great Whites, but all it did was land her in hot water.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from iVillage - Daily Blabber, on June 16, 2009 7:52 AM

SewStylish is having a Spring Sewing Contest, and GertieT emailed me to let me know that her adorable dress has made the finals (it's there up above). Go check out the other two dresses, too, and vote! Voting closes TONIGHT (the 16th) at midnight.

She also wanted to let me know that several of the less-courteous commenters had said things like "Your tattoos are disqusting [sic]......I wouldn't vote for your dress even if I liked it...." and "too bad!!! [about the tattoos] coz the dress is lovely!!!"

C'mon, people. This is how it goes. You can certainly refuse to vote for a dress if you don't like GertieT's tattoos -- it's your right to cast a vote based on any criteria you like. However (just so you know) you pretty much make yourself look like a blithering idiot by commenting to that effect. What will those comments accomplish? GertieT getting hers lasered off? (No.) Will they prevent some other person from getting a tattoo? (Unlikely.) All they do is make you look like narrow-minded ignoramuses.

Now, if this had been an actual moral issue -- say, one of the contestants had been convicted of assault, or was an avowed racist, or something like that -- I think you would be within your rights to announce WHY you weren't voting for a particular candidate. But because you don't like tattoos? Sheesh.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of tattoos. What does this mean? It means *I* don't have one. I've never found any image that I liked enough to want to make a permanent part of my skin. But that doesn't matter -- what other people do with their skin is no concern of mine. And it's certainly not pertinent to the questions at hand, which is: "What's the nicest dress?"

The contest wasn't SewStylish's Spring Beauty Contest -- it was a sewing contest! It takes a lot of gumption to pose for a contest picture, and if there are going to be these sorts of ad hominem comments, I bet there will be fewer contestants next round. What if next time one of the contestants is "overweight" (whatever that means) or is "too goth" (as if there was any such thing) or has an unusual hairstyle (whatever that is) or, heaven forbid, has something pierced other than her ears?

I don't want to be all "Oh noes! People are mean on the Internets!" but really, sewing people, I expect better from YOU. So if you're ever tempted to make this kind of comment, safe and protected behind your keyboard, think about how you would feel if a bunch of bozos decided to leave similar comments about you.

It's the Golden Rule, peoples. It's not difficult. Or if the "unto" in the Golden Rule trips you up, you can ask yourself two simple questions: "Is it truthful? Is it kind?"

Originally posted by Erin from A Dress A Day, on June 16, 2009 7:15 AM

Lou Romano has now posted higher-res images of the complete colour script for Pixar’s UP. A colour script is what the filmmakers use in the production of animated feature to get a feel of the colour, mood, and visual atmosphere of the film.

Spoiler warning, though — stay away if you haven’t seen the movie, since this does contain images of all the major scenes.

And if you missed it the first time, don’t forget to see more of Lou Romano’s UP artwork, which includes a far more abstract and simple first pass at a colour script for the film.

As always, if you like this stuff, I can’t recommend Pixar’s The Art Of… books enough. The Art of UP includes this colour script and Lou notes how colour is used to drive the story along: “When Carl is forced into the present, he’s miserable and the colour is bleak. But as each new character is introduced, we see flashes of life and colour.”

Originally posted by Johnny from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on June 16, 2009 7:05 AM

TOP 10

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on June 16, 2009 6:42 AM

Please shake your head in sympathy at this bit of terrible design in PHP's class handling. The code below is a simplified sample version of some real code I was working on last night.

$ cat foo.php
<?php

error_reporting( E_ALL ^ E_STRICT );

class Dog {
    protected $_bark;

    function __construct() {
        $this->_bark = 'Generic woof';
    }

    function speak() {
        print $this->_bark . "\n";
    }
}

class Chihuahua extends Dog {
    function set_bark() {
        $this->_bark = 'Yip yip';
    }
}

$doggie = new Chihuahua();
$doggie->speak(); // Generic bark
$doggie->set_bark();
$doggie->speak(); // Specialized bark
?>

$ php foo.php
Generic woof
Yip yip

That's about what you'd expect, right? Call a method in the subclass to modify something in the parent class, and then print it out. Nothing goofy, right?

Last night, I spent at least an hour figuring out why my code was still printing "Generic woof" instead of "Yip yip." Finally, I tried printing out my $doggie object with print_r, PHP's dumper mechanism, and it all became clear.

$ php foo.php
Generic woof
Generic woof
Chihuahua Object
(
    [_bark:private] => Generic woof
    [_bark] => Yip yip
)

It turns out that at some point I had made $_bark private in the Dog base class, thus breaking the ->set_bark() method. What is so infuriating is that instead of telling me that I was trying to modify a private class member, PHP decided to make a separate class member that Chihuahua could see, different from the member in the base class. It created a class member that I did not declare myself.

I'd love to know the logic behind this design decision. Best I can figure, it was to allow future modifications of base classes without causing name conflicts, but as far as I'm concerned, silently letting people do The Wrong Thing, even with warnings maximized is exactly the wrong behavior. PHP's tendency to silently ignore problems has always frustrated me.

As programmers, we should optimize for telling other programmers that something is wrong, rather than sweeping it under the carpet. Naked Perl doesn't do this, of course, but that's why we have warnings and strict.

Originally posted by Andy Lester from Perlbuzz, on June 16, 2009 6:04 AM

In a post to his blog for ESPN.com, Buster Olney lists five potential trade targets for the Mets, such as Nick Johnson, Aubrey Huff, Jorge Cantu, Dan Uggla and Mark DeRosa, and ‘why they make sense.’

However, according to Baseball Prospectus, there are only 10 teams in MLB who, as of today, have less than a 10 percent chance of making the playoffs.

…hat tip to MLB Trade Rumors for the link…

The thing is, on that list, there are plenty of teams like the Mariners, Astros and Braves, all of whom, according to Baseball Prospectus, may have little statistical chance of making the playoffs in June, but who also have strong fanbases, who buy tickets and jerseys and watch their teams on television every night.

That’s the thing with this trade market, the way I see it, right now, there are only three teams - the D’Backs, Padres and Nationals - whose fans have to know their team is not making the post season.

The rest of the group, be it the Rockies, A’s or Royals, etc., all will want to keep their team in tact, most likely through the All-Star break, to try and milk as many ticket sales, as many hot dogs, team hats, ads on TV, etc., that they can before signaling to their fans that the season is essentially over.

For instance, the more I look in to him, I think Rockies OF Brad Hawpe would be a decent fit for the Mets.  However, despite being 10 games out of first, they’re also one game under .500, three back of the Wild Card and are on an 11–game winning streak.  So, why would they trade Hawpe for prospects?  How does this help them keep winning?  Or, at least help sell a few more tickets?

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on June 16, 2009 6:00 AM

On the way to San Francisco on Friday afternoon, I accidentally left my laptop at the security checkpoint at JFK. They were taking an unusually long time with my carry-ons, and my items didn’t come out of the machine in the same order they went in. (I think the Eileen’s cheesecake I was carrying had something to do with it; the screener, who looked a bit like Eileen herself, was sort of eyeing me with a bemused but knowing look as she ran my bakery box back and forth through the scanner.)

Anyway, as we were all waiting to board the plane, I saw photographer and viral-video star Noah Kalina walk up up to the gate. I was like, “Hey! That’s Noah Kalina! I’m going to tweet that we’re on the same flight and then go introduce myself.” (I’ve been a fan of his work since I started seeing his restaurant interior shots on Eater years ago, and I think he’s commented once or twice on my Flickr photos, and I know a lot of the same people he does, but I’ve never met him.)

I wanted to @message him in the tweet, and since I couldn’t remember if he was @noahkalina or @kalina, I figured I’d consult the web via my laptop instead of trying to blindly guess it on my phone (he’s @noahkalina).

So when I went to pull out my laptop and … “FUCK! I left my machine at security!”

With only minutes to initial boarding, I ran back through the terminal and retrieved the computer. Luckily it was still there and they hadn’t sent it to lost and found or blown it up as a suspicious package. Conveniently—but perhaps not super securely—they didn’t even challenge me to prove the computer was mine. So I guess if you ever want a free laptop, just skulk around the security area and watch for someone to leave a computer. Then just run around a bit, get sweaty and frantic-looking, and then tell them you left your MacBook and can you get it back.

By the time I got back to the gate, Noah had already boarded and was in his seat with earbuds in. I ended up finding him at baggage claim at SFO, introduced myself, and thanked him for saving my stupid ass.

Noah, if you’re reading this, thanks again!

Originally posted by akuban from Kublog, on June 15, 2009 8:25 PM

Why the wry smile?

First there was pastry school. Then there was Les Chèvres & Le Chou. Then there was Laloux. And now there's, well, Laloux.

There were also some important stages and a whole lot of silly blog business along the way, but for years now Michelle was always careful to correct people when they referred to her as a "pastry chef." "Pastry assistant," she'd tell them.

Until now, that is. You see, for about a month now, Michelle has actually been a full-fledged pastry chef. Her longtime chef and mentor, Patrice Demers, decided to pursue an opportunity across town, and suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Michelle found herself promoted to head pastry chef. It's been a hectic few weeks, with her fair share of twelve-hour days, but Michelle's happy to report that things are going very well, indeed, her new desserts have been a hit, and an entirely new slate of desserts is just weeks away. Meanwhile, the savoury side of the kitchen also has a new chef: Eric "Cube" Gonzalez. Like I said, ch-ch-changes.

Michelle's menu:

far breton with candied walnuts and Armagnac ice cream

buttermilk panna cotta with rhubarb soup, rosemary flowers, ginger shortcakes, and rhubarb compote

orange spice cake with dark chocolate cremeux, caramelized hazelnuts, candied orange, and hazelnut mayonnaise

But, look out! Summer fruits are just about here! And Michelle's got big plans!!

As per usual, Laloux's desserts are available both at Laloux and at Pop!, the bar à vin next door.

aj

Originally posted by aj kinik from ...an endless banquet, on June 15, 2009 7:19 PM

On Friday, Atul Gawande gave the commencement address at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. The address touched on some of the same themes as his recent piece on the differing costs of healthcare across the US. He began with an anecdote about how observation of well-nourished children in poor Vietnamese villages led to village-wide improvments in curbing malnutrition.

The villagers discovered that there were well-nourished children among them, despite the poverty, and that those children's mothers were breaking with the locally accepted wisdom in all sorts of ways -- feeding their children even when they had diarrhea; giving them several small feedings each day rather than one or two big ones; adding sweet-potato greens to the children's rice despite its being considered a low-class food. The ideas spread and took hold. The program measured the results and posted them in the villages for all to see. In two years, malnutrition dropped sixty-five to eighty-five per cent in every village the Sternins had been to.

And I don't know why, but I've always thought of surgery as primarily a cerebral pursuit; a great surgeon is so because he's clever and smart. A short passage from Gawande's address reveals that perhaps that's not the case:

In surgery, for instance, I know that I have more I can learn in mastering the operations I do. So what does a surgeon like me do? We look to those who are unusually successful -- the positive deviants. We watch them operate and learn their tricks, the moves they make that we can take home.

So surgeons learn surgery in the same way that kids learn Kobe Bryant's post moves from SportsCenter highlights?

Tags: Atul Gawande   healthcare   medicine

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 15, 2009 6:38 PM

We've got a full menu of news we're trying to keep on top of today. But I wanted to let everyone know about some comings and goings here at TPM.

First, Associate Editor Lila Shapiro, who's been TPMCafe editor and doing about a hundred different other things at TPM for the last year is off to a new job at Huffington Post. We thank her for all her hard work and wish her the very, very best. Here's Lila's sign off post at TPMCafe.

You can remember Lila from her going away bash at TPM HQ (pictured below) or just go over to Huffpo and check out her headlines and news layouts.

Second, we've promoted Brian Beutler to become our new Congressional Reporter-Blogger at TPMDC. Brian's actually taken this week off which I guess makes sense to take a final breather before formally join the TPM reporting cult.

Third, we've hired former TPM intern Rachel Slajda to be our first of three new "news writers." Rachel starts next week.

And finally, fourth, we've promoted former intern Versha Sharma to be our first TPM 'Editorial Fellow.'

We expect to have several new hires to announce in the near future.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on June 15, 2009 6:07 PM

At the intersection of urbanism, DIY, food justice and sustainable agriculture, a crop of artists making open source gardens and sharing instructions on the web and beyond.

Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray build hydroponic Window Farms from recycled materials. The farms are specifically designed with New York City apartments in mind, and the website invites window gardeners to share photos, plans, designs and information.

Edible Estates is a project to convert the classic American front lawn into a productive vegetable garden. Initiated by architect and artist Fritz Haeg on Independence Day, 2005, several prototype gardens were created in different cities across the United States, with instructions and documentation of the prototype gardens posted to the site. 2009 sites have not been announced, but the group is ideally looking for “A monotonous housing development of identical homes... where the interruption of the endless lawn would be dramatic and controversial.”

The Future Farmers’ Victory Gardens project is fought on two fronts: to deliver urban garden kits to urban farmers across San Francisco, and to ultimately develop and maintain a portion of the original Victory Garden space in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

On the more underground tip, Guerilla Gardening is illicit, nocturnal gardening in a space not your own. guerrillagardening.org lists projects, mostly in London, each with a descriptoin, location, photos, and budget. The site includes tips for making your own.

Seed bombing is packing seeds in compressed soil and throwing it into inhospitable or hard to reach places. Artist Liz Christy was the first to use the term in 1973 when she fought urban decay by tossing seed grenades full of sunflower seeds into abandoned New York City lots. Here’s a scan of her original instruction sheet. Christy also co-founded the first community garden in New York City.

The Garden is a feature-length documentary film about a 14-acre community garden in South Central Los Angeles that emerged in the wake of the 1992 LA riots. The film chronicles the origins of the plot and the South Central Farmers struggle to prevent it from being demolished.

Moss graffiti is also good for damp, urban corners. Anna Garforth has done some beautiful work here. Here’s how to make your own.

And onto Gardening 2.0: Landshare is a UK website matching people who want to grown their own food with homeowners with underused space. The site also hosts an active forum for sharing tips and answering questions.

And with your veggies in hand, VeggieTrader is a website for trade, buy or sell homegrown produce.

I’m sure there are many more sites and projects, too. Between the recession and growing concern about industrial food systems, there seems to be something of a renaissance going on here.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on June 15, 2009 6:06 PM

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a new site with neat old pictures. I have a tendency to just trawl Google Books to find old images, but this site — From Old Books — has a bunch of neat images along with all the citation information and sometimes some nifty stories besides.

Originally posted by jessamyn from librarian.net, on June 15, 2009 5:43 PM

By DeNeen L. Brown and Richard Leiby White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett today defended President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, saying that critics are holding Judge Sonia Sotomayor to a "double standard." Jarrett, speaking at the annual luncheon of the National Partnership for Women & Families, compared Sotomayor's controversial 2001 comment about the judgment of "a wise Latina woman" with comments made by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. about his Italian American background during his 2005 confirmation hearings. Sotomayor has more federal judicial experience than any other Supreme Court justice in 100 years, Jarrett told the crowd of mostly women leaders gathered at the Washington Hilton: "You can imagine our surprise when people started saying maybe she wasn't qualified. 'What are you talking about, she isn't qualified?'" "You add to that the incredible, rich personal story, where she grew up in the South Bronx," Jarrett said. "Her father

Originally posted by (author unknown) from 44, on June 15, 2009 5:43 PM

You wanted to see the grab bag fungus card, so you get to see the grab bag fungus card:

Poor Dwayne Murphy. Stained all over and losing structural integrity up at the top. It's really bad when you can see the card sticking out like a sore thumb in a pile of other cards. Most likely this card was left near some water where the mold took root and then took over. Here's a close up of the top:

Now that damage could have been caused my a number of things. Water damage may have caused it to disintegrate. A rodent may have nibbled on it. It could have been scraped across a concrete floor. There's no proof that this was caused by the fungus. The fungus has done enough damage though:

Bllleeaaauuuuggghhh! (click to see the full size moldy horror) Oh yeah, that mildew has burrowed deep into that card. I'm thinking I should dispose of it by fire instead of dumping it in a landfill. It might mutate and grow and become sentient and escape!
THE FUNGUS CARD THAT ATE KENNESAW

Why in the world this card made its way into a grab bag is beyond me. I've got to sanitize my scanner now and the rest of the '81 Fleer out of that brick is in quarantine. This poor thing deserves a final rest and a Viking funeral. It's a shame that this had to happen but there are many dangers out there for cards. Don't let this happen to your cards. And even if it does, don't pawn it off on unsuspecting collectors, mmmmkay?

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on June 15, 2009 5:29 PM

This past weekend, Nintendo made a stop in Nashville, Tennessee for their final Regional stop in the Pokemon Video Game Championships. The event was held inside the historic Gaylord Opry in Opryland, just north of Nashville. There, more than 350 players from around the nation signed up for the Senior Division early Saturday morning. Of those who registered only 100 were selected to participate for four spots at the National Championships in St. Louis.

Forum members Taterbud and I(MissingNo.) arrived late Friday night. It was quite a long trip from Northeastern Indiana. Both of us were exhausted, yet excited about being in Nashville. We picked our spot for the night, and then went out for some food and exploring. The area we ended up in revolved completely around the Opryland. Hotels and restaurants were the only places around, besides a few small shops. However, inside the actual Opryland was a mall, movie theater, and of course the large hotel and convention center.

Nashville was also hosting its large Country Music Festival this past weekend. Each hotel was booked, and the city was full of people. Downtown on Saturday, there were multiple tents set up with live music. Many of the streets were closed off, and every parking spot was taken.

Back at the hotel, Taterbud and I were both exhausted. She took a short swim in the hotel pool, then we both packed it in for an early night, knowing we’d have to be across the street at the Gaylord by 8:30 in the morning. That next morning, Taterbud found out that I took no chances of sleeping in. First the hotel alarm clock went off, followed by my DSi alarm clock, followed by a wake-up call, and then my constant nudges. We got a quick breakfast free of charge from the hotel, checked out, then headed on over. I hadn’t realized how big the place actually was until I found myself lost. We spotted a group of people that we suspected were Pokemon fanatics…. the Ash costume was a dead giveaway. Inside, there was a guide standing near the entrance wearing a green Pokemon Staff t-shirt. He directed us to follow the previous crowd around the inside of the Gaylord to the area where Nintendo had set up their event.

When we got there, we found ourselves at the very back of a long long line of registrants. The line moved quickly, and we were both eventually registered and given a number and a matching wristband with the number and corresponding Pokemon. Inside there were multiple balloon representations of D/P/Pt Pokemon.  We also saw some characters as costumes walking about and taking pictures with children.  There was a snack bar set up, which we avoided.  We wandered a bit observing some of the convention center as we waiting for the selections to be posted.  Around 10am, the group was all called to take a massive picture, followed by a dance competition.  Pikachu was seen getting his groove on.  And then, the selections were posted on the screens scattered about the hall.

Neither Taterbud or I were selected to participate.  It was a very disappointing feeling.  I had spent a couple of months breeding and training for this event.  In fact, as soon as the event was posted on the forums, I gave Taterbud a call and told her that we were going, and I started planning right then and there.  Yet, the trip wasn’t a total waste.  As soon as we found out we weren’t accepted into the competition, we immediately got in line for the main reason on why we went…. Shiny Milotics!  These were given out via a GBA slot device.  This way, no one could pick up more than one.  Once you recieved your Milotic, your wrist band was cut so that they knew not to give you another.  We saw brief glimpses of a couple of battles on the screens while we stood in line.  Immediately the first person was eliminated, and I was just happy it wasn’t me.

We received our Milotics and proceeded out of the Nintendo area and back out into the rest of the Opry.  It was a beautiful place, with shops and restaurants and hotel rooms, with balconies that allowed the residents to observe the people below.  We found our way back to the car after exploring and taking pictures.  It was an awesome experience, and I can’t wait until next year when I can try again.  At least now I have a team already bred and trained.  Plus we both ended up with VGC09 Shiny Milotics, which less than 1500 were estimated to have been given away total at all the events combined.  We started our journy back home, waving goodbye to Nashville, and eventually Tennessee.

More pictures can be seen here: MissingNo.’s Photo Album

Originally posted by MissingNo. from Poke Farm, on June 15, 2009 4:32 PM

The Los Angeles Times has updated its map of 113 Los Angeles neighbourhoods, taking into account reader feedback as to what neighbourhoods comprise what areas. It's a project that sounds a lot like what the Toronto Star is doing with Toronto neighbourhoods (but I don't know which one came first)....

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on June 15, 2009 4:17 PM

The Tom McCall Waterfront Park is attractive and popular. It's a great location. Portlanders consider it quintessential Portland (though I favor the Boise River Greenbelt, Washington Park, and the South Park Blocks as far as urban green spaces go).

Barry Johnson is a writer for The Oregonian, a newspaper. His Waterfront Park: A balancing plan discusses a common problem with a use of a lovely public space in downtown Portland: big festivals on the waterfront limit the usability of the park for the rest of the year.

You probably don't care about my opinion on parks (and perhaps less so for Barry Johnson's), but his column has a gem of a paragraph. Given that festivals bring in money, that Oregon has an unsustainable tax base, that schools are out of money again, that unemployment here is ... brisk, and given that the city council has plenty of other pressing concerns, not limited to a pending recall of the mayor and controversial decisions to rename streets and relocate a professional sports arena, why bother rethinking a park maintenance policy? From the column:

In the great order of things, this might seem like a small problem. But one way to look at a city is as a collection of thousands of small problems which are small opportunities to make things better. When we successfully apply our ingenuity to one small problem, it points the way toward other improvements. In this way, our city gradually gets better, and at some undefinable point it actually becomes great.

That's also true of software design and development:

• The easier for users to do the right thing, they less likely they'll do the wrong thing.
• The more artificial bottlenecks you remove through profiling and optimization, the more apparent are actual bottlenecks.
• The fewer spurious warnings generated at compile time or run time, the easier it is to identify useful warnings.
• The faster and more effective your test suite, the more frequently you can run it.
• The fewer obstacles to getting feedback from users, the better you can design your software to meet their needs.
• The cleaner your code and better its design, the fewer nasty hacks you need to work around infelicities.
• The more expressive your language (whether in builtins or abstraction possibilities), the more precision you have available to solve specific problems.

Unlike software, many minor city improvements are obvious and immediately available. When the Park Department mows the grass in the park by my house, I can enjoy the park the same day. When they approve the budget to install automatic sprinklers, I can enjoy the improved flora within a week of installation. Not all improvements fall into this category -- but many do. (Every time I pick up a discarded wrapper and put it in the garbage can, the park is a little prettier for the next person.)

These are the kinds of little improvements that build on each other. I don't mind if I can't produce a big, earth-shaking change every time I release a new version of my software. I care that every time it's even a little bit better I can give it to users so that their software can be a little bit better and they can identify the next little thing that could be a little bit better.

Next time I'll talk about how frequent but minor improvements produce major benefits.

Originally posted by chromatic from Modern Perl Books, a Modern Perl Blog, on June 15, 2009 3:06 PM

Via Andy Baio, who rightly describes it as a candidate for best error message ever.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 15, 2009 1:32 PM

Not much explanation needed here, but there's more to the components than meets the eye. A video explaining the cupcake kebabs appears on the blog Cupcakes Take the Cake.

These would be clever desserts to bring to a potluck cookout.

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on June 15, 2009 12:40 PM

Well, I'm glad they finally found a use for the Kinja platform

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Spiersblr, on June 15, 2009 12:05 PM

oriolesmagic:

Rain delay, Ballpark at Arlington

(via)

waiting to hear “get a dome”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from metsgrrl.com's tumblr, on June 15, 2009 11:52 AM

Hunch, the ambitious new decision-making expert system, is out of beta. Examples: “What sci-fi movie should I watch?”, “Should I buy an Apple iPhone or a Palm Pre?”, and “Where should I eat in/around San Francisco?”

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 15, 2009 11:11 AM

Earlier today, former Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson was a guest of Brandon Tierney on 1050 ESPN Radio and said:

“Well, Santana is a major concern, obviously.  I know it’s been reported he has a blister on his middle finger and that can certainly be a major, major detriment for a pitcher; and then there’s been some rumors that his knee has been bothersome.  When you have a finger issue and then you have that knee issue like he had before you really have to be concerned… But, hopefully for the Mets and hopefully for Johan it’s temporary, hopefully it’s just a blister and a cranky knee and he bounces back after a few days rest.”

To listen to Peterson’s entire interview with Tierney, click here.

To follow Tierney on Twitter, click here, and tell him Matthew Cerrone sent you.

… rick pulled on another interesting point, which is, he has always let up fly balls, even in Minnesota… this is true… the thing is, those fly balls in a spring-time Citi Field might have all dropped for outs, while now, in a warmer, dead-air Citi Field, they may be carrying in to the gap or over the wall…

That said, in a post to Twitter, SI.com’s Jon Heyman quotes a ‘Mets bigwig, really big,’ as saying he is ‘not at all worried.’

Nevertheless, in a post to Mets Today, former pitching coach Joe Janish breaks down Santana’s delivery, and explains why he may be struggling.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on June 15, 2009 11:07 AM

I don't think I ever posted this project here, and it just popped back up in my head, so I thought I'd share it. Back in early 2008 designer Brian Ponto asked a number of artists and designers to create posters inspired by the Atelier Populaire posters from France in May 68, but relevant to the realities of 2008. Among those invited to work on the project were Chris Stain and myself, as well as Jody Barton, Scott Boylston, Seymour Chwast, Sun Dawang, Gwenaëlle Gobé, Finn Nygaard, UG Sato, James Victore, Brett Yasko, and John Yates. The project culminated in a newspaper collection of black and white posters which also included an essay on the form of the political poster by Carol Wells, director of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles. You can learn more about the project and read Carol's essay here and here. And since the posters were reproduced in black & white in the paper, I've posted a color version of mine below:

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on June 15, 2009 10:47 AM

Oobject interrupts the High Line hug fest with a list of nine reasons why the High Line sucks. He missed James Kunstler's assertion that the whole thing should have remained a railroad.

Tags: architecture   lists   NYC   The High Line

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 15, 2009 10:44 AM

Here's a Summer reading challenge for those of you who are enthusiastically making your way through my summer reading lists:

Read 10 books by Sept. 21.

Of the 10, I suggest: 1 classic you've never read but always meant to
1 book you've read and always wanted to reread but haven't yet
at least 1 book featured on AuthorsNow!
1 book outside the genres you usually read
1 "impulse" book that catches your eye during the summer
5 others of your choosing

Kids can join the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge - only 4 books to win!

Originally posted by Rebecca Blood from Rebecca's Pocket, on June 15, 2009 10:37 AM

Originally posted by Ceci Moss from Rhizome Inclusive: News, Blog, and Digest, on June 15, 2009 10:36 AM

We launched Hunch early this morning (w00t!) and there's already been a ton of great press. Here is some of it:

• Hunch: a real decision engine on Search Engine Land, by Matt McGee
• Hunch: your personal decision maker on Search Engine Land, by Greg Sterling. This is great, there are two different posts, one a descriptive walk-though, another about how it fits into the rest of the "space".
• 'Hunch' Web site will make decisions for you on CNN.com by John D. Sutter
• Hunch Launches, Reinvents How You Make Decisions on Mashable, by Ben Parr
• Caterina Fake's Hunch: "Yahoo Answers Is Not The Answer." on TechCrunch by Erick Schonfeld. (It's possible I actually said that, but it sounds bad taken out of context, and is not the main idea or impulse behind Hunch! Makes great copy though.)
• Hunch wants you to give it some ideas on L.A. Times by David Sarno
• Hunch: The Search for Better Search on Business Week by Douglas MacMillan
• Hunch: A Cure for Indecision On MIT Technology Review, by Erica Naone.

Originally posted by caterina from Caterina.net, on June 15, 2009 10:34 AM

We launched Hunch early this morning (w00t!) and there's already been a ton of great press. Here is some of it:

• Hunch: a real decision engine on Search Engine Land, by Matt McGee
• Hunch: your personal decision maker on Search Engine Land, by Greg Sterling. This is great, there are two different posts, one a descriptive walk-though, another about how it fits into the rest of the "space".
• 'Hunch' Web site will make decisions for you on CNN.com by John D. Sutter
• Hunch Launches, Reinvents How You Make Decisions on Mashable, by Ben Parr
• Caterina Fake's Hunch: "Yahoo Answers Is Not The Answer." on TechCrunch by Erick Schonfeld. (It's possible I actually said that, but it sounds bad taken out of context, and is not the main idea or impulse behind Hunch! Makes great copy though.)
• Hunch wants you to give it some ideas on L.A. Times by David Sarno
• Hunch: The Search for Better Search on Business Week by Douglas MacMillan
• Hunch: A Cure for Indecision On MIT Technology Review, by Erica Naone.
• Hunch Answers Questions Based on Your Personality on Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy
• Flickr Co-founder's new Hunch on Wall Street Journal by Andrew Lavallee

Originally posted by caterina from Caterina.net, on June 15, 2009 10:34 AM

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WWDC, Apple, Apple History, Snow Leopard

On October 17, 1998 Apple released Mac OS 8.5, the first operating system that ran solely on Macintoshes with PowerPC processors. As far as system software upgrades go, this was the end of the line for any Mac built before the Power Macintosh 6100, introduced in March 1994. Earlier Macs ran on some variation of 680x0 processors and were supported mostly via emulation in a PowerPC environment. Emulation works, but it also slows things down. By 1998, Apple decided it just couldn't support 680X0 emulation for a number of reasons, but chiefly among them was speed.

What happened was just what you would expect. In user groups, USENET and the Internet (which was only starting to explode), apoplectic non-PowerPC Mac owners threatened class action lawsuits and the rending of garments. Of course, most Power Mac users loved the newfound speed introduced in Mac OS 8.5, thanks to code optimized for PowerPC processors and jettisoned emulation support.

It took Apple only four years to introduce the PowerPC chip and make any Mac without it obsolete. Technology moved on.

In September Apple will release Snow Leopard, which will only run on Intel based Macs, thus cutting off PowerPC support. This time it took eleven years from inception to extinction (well, three for the Intel transition), but even so I can hear the hue and cry machine cranking up. Once again, the major reason for dropping legacy support is speed. Technology has moved on.

Whenever something like this happens there is a potential for a marketing meltdown, but this time Apple is doing something brilliant. It is going to sell Snow Leopard for $29. When I saw this on the video stream of the WWDC keynote address my jaw dropped, my eyes glazed and only later did it start making sense to me. Apple first introduced Mac OS X in 2001, and excluding the free update to Mac OS X 10.1 from Mac OS X 10.0, a new version of the OS has been released roughly every 18 months, always at a price of $129. The sales pitch is always the same: with each new version, OS X gets new features and an "enhanced computing experience" which largely depended upon how much you like the new features.

Mac OS X 10.6 will be the fifth major release in eight years, and some users are complaining about feature overload. There will always be users who want four ways to do the same thing, but for others, feature-laden releases are overwhelming and the glimmer and excitement of a new OS X release has faded. What a perfect time to work under the hood, set up the core of the operating system for the future and stabilize what's already there! But of course you can't make everyone happy. I would expect a large group of users to not be mollified by a nicer QuickTime and an improvement to Stacks. In effect, where's the beef? The beef is under the hood this time.

Continue reading Snow Leopard: Party like it's 1998

TUAWSnow Leopard: Party like it's 1998 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by David Winograd from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on June 15, 2009 10:00 AM

Chris Foresman reports on the findings of Chinese student Jjgod Jiang on the font-related changes in Snow Leopard: the light and strong sub-pixel anti-aliasing options are now gone; some of the system fonts are now shipping as .ttc (TrueType Collection) files instead of .dfonts; and a bit more on Menlo, the new default monospace coding font.

Foresman’s report contains several significant errors, however. First, Monaco has not been dropped from Snow Leopard. Menlo has replaced Monaco as the default font in Xcode and Dashcode, but Monaco is still there if you want it. Second, BBEdit does not ship with a Bitstream Vera Sans Mono variant; it ships with Consolas.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on June 15, 2009 9:44 AM

Following up from last Friday's entry about Iran's Presidential Election, Tehran and other cities have seen the largest street protests and rioting since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Supporters of reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, upset at their announced loss and suspicions of voter fraud, took to the streets both peacefully and, in some cases, violently to vent their frustrations. Iranian security forces and hardline volunteer militia members responded with force and arrests, attempting to stamp out the protests - meanwhile, thousands of Iranians who were happy with the election outcome staged their own victory demonstrations. Mousavi himself has been encouraging peaceful demonstrations, and called for calm at a large demonstration today (held in defiance of an official ban), as Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has just called for an official inquiry into accusations of election irregularities. (38 photos total)

A supporter of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi shouts slogans during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared winner by a landslide in Iran's hotly-disputed presidential vote, triggering riots by opposition supporters and furious complaints of cheating from his defeated rivals. (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Big Picture, on June 15, 2009 9:28 AM

Today we're releasing a PHP framework called NYT_Transformer: a flexible data processor that can be customized for various input and output types.

Originally posted by By Paul Robbins from Open, on June 15, 2009 8:32 AM

A reprint of an essay from 30 years hence about the state of the movies.

The Summer of '77 :: rogerebert.com :: News & comment

I read the other day that 13 percent of total U.S. paperback sales (yes, 13 percent) consist of those dumb little Harlequin Romances, in which Boy has by now met Girl in more than 2,000 ways, all of them PG-rated. There must be millions of people who like their entertainment predictable and dependable -- who find reassurance in the repetition of the same durable formulas with their obligatory happy endings. And if Hollywood thinks it has learned its lesson during the summer of 1977 and grows single-minded about turning out expensive remakes of remakes, we are going to start wondering, with the new releases of two or three years from now, if we haven't seen all these movies before somewhere.

Well, we have seen them all somewhere before, haven't we? The problem is that most of us don't care; we have the same attitude about the movies (or many of our other art forms verging on entertainments or vice versa) that we do about car parts or hamburgers. They're inherently interchangeable and disposable.

The audience isn't even the audience anymore, and that's the problem. It's the distribution chain that's become the real audience for everything, and the people who actually do the reading, the viewing and (especially) the creating are just auxiliaries. If everyone from Barnes & Noble to Loews could get away with selling the exact same things every single year, they'd do it -- and it's now beginning to look like they are in fact doing just that.

I've talked before many times about the damage this does. It hurts audiences, who never get to know about all the truly interesting and creative moviemaking / creativity going on. It hurts creators, who find they have that much less of a market for their product, and who face mounting indifference to their hard work. And last but not least, it hurts the distributors, who get used to doing the same things they've always done, and thus completely ignore seismic changes in the landscape. As much as I dislike the Kindle, for instance, its existence may well set in motion a whole slew of changes that allow creators to connect that much more directly and properly with prospective audiences. Real audiences of "punters", as the U.K. term goes -- not just people responsible for filling shelves and getting butts in seats.

Originally posted by Serdar from Serdar | Genji Press, on June 15, 2009 8:26 AM

“The band that once specialized in manhandling pawnshop guitars has become an institution.” Sasha Frere-Jones reflects on 30 years of Sonic Youth.

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on June 15, 2009 8:18 AM

I’m excited about all of the speakers at our upcoming UX Week 2009 conference, but I have a special place for Sarah Jones. Sarah is a remarkably talented playwright/performer, known for her one-woman show “Bridge and Tunnel.” I like to think of her as Anna Deavere-Smith for a new generation.

Sarah is perhaps best known for her ability to inhabit her characters, including mannerisms and accents. One of the reasons I thought she would be great for UX Week 2009 is that she engages in deep field research to create her characters. I believe there is much we can learn from her process. At UX Week, we’ll delve into that. To get a taste, here’s her TED Talk:

At UX Week, we’ll get something like this, PLUS discussion of how she gets there. Register with the promotional code BLOG and get 10% off the already discounted early rate!

Originally posted by peterme from Adaptive Path, on June 15, 2009 8:07 AM

On the Freakonomics blog, Dmitri Leybman tells us about the three main ways that the President's political party can have an impact on the economy.

This tendency of Republican presidents to preside over growth that occurs so close to re-election has been cited by Bartels as the main reason why Republican presidents have been so successful in achieving two-term presidencies in the post-World War II era. Voters, Bartels believes, are economic myopists, paying attention only to the most recent economic outcomes and not the overall outcomes experienced under a president's rule.

Tags: Dmitri Leybman   economics   politics

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on June 15, 2009 7:43 AM

1973 WGBH Boston Public Television Program

Originally posted by John Michael Boling from Rhizome Inclusive: News, Blog, and Digest, on June 15, 2009 7:00 AM

When I'm looking at a server, I often want to see the /etc/my.cnf file nicely formatted, and with comments stripped. This Perl one-liner will pretty-print the file:

PLAIN TEXT

CODE:

1. perl -ne 'm/^([^#][^\s=]+)\s*(=.*|)/ && printf("%-35s%s\n", $1, $2)' /etc/my.cnf
2. [client]                           
3. port                               = 3306
4. socket                             = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
5. [mysqld_safe]                     
6. socket                             = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
7. nice                               = 0
8. [mysqld]                           
9. user                               = mysql
10. pid-file                           = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
11. socket                             = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
12. port                               = 3306
13. ....

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Originally posted by Baron Schwartz from MySQL Performance Blog, on June 15, 2009 6:17 AM

Industry names its greatest talent.

Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto has been named game developers' game development hero. 9000 industry bigwigs were asked to take part in the poll, commissioned by the organisers of the Develop Conference, which takes place next month in Brighton. A third of those questioned went for Miyamoto - known affectionately as 'Shigsy' by people who spend too much time on gamer forums. Responsible for some of the world's greatest games - and Wii Music - Miyamoto created Mario and Zelda as well as aiding in the development of the Pikmin, Star Fox, Metroid Prime and Nintendogs series'.

But what of the other top development talents? Here's the top ten...

1. Shigeru Miyamoto
2. John Carmack
3. Will Wright
4. Dave Jones
5. Sid Meier
6. Peter Molyneux
7. David Braben
8. Masaya Matsuura (PaRappa The Rapper creator)
9. Michael Morhaime (president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment)
10. Jonathan Blow (Braid)

I'd say that was a reasonably predictable list, although Jonathan Blow is a surprise. The wording of the poll is interesting - they've asked for 'development hero' not 'best developer ever', so these are, presumably, the chaps who've directly inspired this generation of game makers - which explains why there's no-one under 45 on the list; apart from Blow who, I suspect, is there for his single-minded determination to create and distribute Braid though non-traditional channels and for his championing of experimental and independent game design.

But who, in your opinion, has been criminally overlooked?

• Nintendo
• Game culture

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Originally posted by Keith Stuart from Technology: Games blog | guardian.co.uk, on June 15, 2009 6:08 AM

Caterina's new project is weird and good; worth checking out: the stats methods in the API and their cred system  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on June 14, 2009 10:08 PM

This is the second season they're wearing them, but I'm just noticing them now. Baseball uniforms are usually pretty classy, but these fauxbacks are really nice. In fact, I'm tempted to buy one of those hats, just because they look great. The only downside is the continued use of Chief Wahoo. Racism isn't cool.

If you want to see some more views, you can see the official announcement. And while they didn't really cover this explicitly, Uni Watch should satisfy any uniform curiosity you've got.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Capn Design, on June 14, 2009 9:21 PM

Every NYT Styles story should be like this one: Bartender, Make It a Stiletto. There’s really some guy out there who gets his jollies by lying down on bar floors wrapped in a blanket and asking people to step on him? Has anyone ever encountered this dude?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fimoculous, on June 14, 2009 9:11 PM

During the nineteen-eighties, there was a sort of competition among certain members of the American independent-rock scene to make the most hideous noise possible. Guitars were rebuilt to produce wild and staticky new sounds, then played painfully loudly; lyrics and stage antics were often gruesome and intimidating. Butthole . . .

Originally posted by Sasha Frere-Jones from The New Yorker, on June 14, 2009 8:00 PM

I guess you could wrench some reason for optimism from PM Netanyahu's speech today if you view it as an opening gambit, albeit couched in a lot of deal-breakers necessary to keep his rightist coalition intact. But that strikes me as a bit of a stretch. Most reactions in the US press are treating this as a major move by Netanyahu, endorsing the idea of a Palestinian state. But that seems doubly naive a) since that's been the premise of US policy for almost 20 years as well as a goal accepted by several Israeli governments and b) because Netanyahu's conditions amounted to deal breakers.

It's been a premise of all the negotiations that a future Palestinian state would have to have some real restrictions on 'heavy' weaponry and wouldn't be able to do things like invite foreign armies on to its soil. But what the Palestinian state Netanyahu described is something that lacks the key attributes that apply to almost all states, like statehood, for instance. It was a relabeling of what Netanyahu was pushing back in the mid-1990s, which is a sort of regional autonomy and self-government.

On the point of the need for the Palestinians to unequivocally recognize "Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people," a few thoughts.

I've seen a few different wordings of this in the press. And the English language advanced transcript sent out by the Israeli government press office, there are a few different formulations. What to make of it? There are things you say when you are trying to settle differences and things you don't.

All of the negotiations to this point have been premised on recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

Where the rubber meets the road in a real sense is on the issue of refugees and a Palestinian right of return. The Israelis will never accept a right of return for every descendent of the refugees of the 1948. It would make Israel no longer a Jewish state. If that's the Palestinians condition, then really no deal is possible. But this is an issue that's been worked through in great detail at the negotiating table. And there've been a number of rough outlines of a possible compromise -- most of which allow a right of return in principle but satisfy the vast majority with compensation while allowing a small number to resettle in Israel, small enough not to substantially change the demographic make-up of the population.

Regardless of all these details, what Israel needs and has a right to ask for is a final settlement that, once all the compromises are made, recognizes the State of Israel and declares all the unclosed issues of borders and refugees closed forever. Facts and commitments are what treaties and negotiations and peaceful coexistence are made of. Getting the other side to ascribe to your national dreams and mythologies is too much to ask.

I hope I'm making the distinction clear. Perhaps it's a subtle one. But it's a critical one. Of course, any peace settlement will require the Palestinians to recognize Israel as what it is, a Jewish state, and put in the past any questions of whether a Jewish state, Israel, is legitimate in Palestine. But the upshot of Netanyahu's speech has him almost demanding the Palestinians themselves become Zionists.

I think before he was arrested but during the Second Intifada, I saw an interview with Marwan Barghouti in which he said that for peace the Israelis would have to give up the 'mentality of occupation.' That phrase has rattled through my head ever since. And that, I think, is what Netanyahu's speech was mainly about.

Late Update: Akiva Eldar, writing in Ha'aretz, puts it well ...

The demilitarization of the Palestinian state was mentioned in the Clinton guidelines, the Taba understandings and the Geneva accord, as was the right of return to Palestine, not Israel. The difference between these documents and the Bar-Ilan address is not only that the former recognized the Palestinians' full rights to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The real difference lies in the tone - in the degrading and disrespectful nature of Netanyahu's remarks. That's not how one brings down a wall of enmity between two nations, that's not how trust is built.

It's hard to believe that a single Palestinian leader will be found who will buy the defective merchandise Netanyahu presented last night.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on June 14, 2009 7:27 PM

It's about time someone said it.

From Jane Mayer's article on and interview with Panetta.

CIA Director Leon Panetta on Dick Cheney: "It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."

It wouldn't be the first time an extremist got so twisted up trying to prove he was right about how to protect his country that he was willing to sacrifice some of his countrymen to prove it.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on June 14, 2009 3:34 PM

A slight little tweak to the design -- removing the foodness of the site -- and I may just be back to blogging here again. Shortly after Ollie was born in July, 2007, I kind of abruptly abandoned this site. And it took me a while to realize the reason: I wasn't so interested in writing about food. My life had expanded quite beyond food, but the site was limited to that one topic. And so everything here just stopped.

Removing the constraint of 'food', I now hope to find some time to write here again. Not as much as in the past certainly, and probably not as linky as it's been. I don't spend a whole lot of time online anymore, at least compared to the ten-plus hours a day I used to.

So what's that mean? First, don't get your hopes up, this might be one of my (many) projects that I want to do (ahem, like the violin lessons I undertook back in January) but don't really have the time for. Second, there are probably lots of things broken around here.

I really rushed this "redesign" so that I could just get writing. That was supposed to the point all along, wasn't it?

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on June 14, 2009 1:47 PM

…right now, you should be.

• Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish and Talking Points Memo have great coverage at the moment. Juan Cole has great analysis.
• Twitter search has been great. iran, tehran, and Mousavi are good terms
• Good photos collected on Tehran24, and on Flickr accounts mousavi1388, ~~~Ali~~~, vnnb2, ZhuPix, and .faramarz

Originally posted by lhl from random($foo), on June 14, 2009 1:44 PM

First reported Saturday by El Nuevo Herald, it’s been confirmed to me by major league sources that high-profile Cuban defectors LHP Noel Arguelles and SS Jose Iglesias have been declared free agents by Major League Baseball. That being said, it’s very unlikely that they will be signing soon. Here’s what has happened so far:

1. OFAC (in the U.S. Treasury Department) has signed off on Arguelles and Iglesias being allowed to work for an American company; that they won’t funnel money to Cuba, etc.

2. As current residents of the Dominican Republic, Major League Baseball has declared the players free agents, eligible to sign with any big league organization. Technically, they were eligible to be signed sometime late on Friday, when teams were notified.

So, both players could have signed as early as Friday, but are still unsigned. Is their agent, Jaime Torres, just negotiating? He may be, but there’s still more work to be done.

Each individual club is responsible (with the cooperation of MLB) for performing background checks to verify the ages of both players. The process of doing these background checks will take at least a few weeks. No club will sign the players without their ages verified, so it will likely be at least a few weeks until they sign with a major league organization. The U.S. government also hasn’t completed their full process yet. The signing big league team(s) will need to request work visas and the FBI, among other governmental agencies, still stand between the players and an American baseball career.

Arguelles and Iglesias both have long track records of competing in international tournaments and that has teams more comfortable with their ages than previous Cuban defectors. Despite the long-term familiarity clubs have with them, there are still whispers about both Iglesias and Arguelles being older than their stated ages of 19. A Torres client who lacked a long international track record, CF Felix Perez, had a contract with the Yankees, including a bonus of over $3 million, voided after it was revealed that he was in fact 4-5 years older than the 20-year-old he claimed to be. Perez was suspended for one year and that will presumably be the punishment if Arguelles or Iglesias falsify their ages.

Arguelles is considered a better prospect than Iglesias, as a left hander standing 6’3, tipping the scales at 210 lbs., and hitting 93 mph with his fastball. Arguelles has a solid curveball, changeup, and command, along with a recently-added slider that some scouts say has quickly become his best off-speed pitch. Some scouts saw him sitting at 88 mph recently and said Arguelles was out of shape, but other clubs have recently watched him hit 91 mph and say his body isn’t a big concern. Every team I’ve spoken with is comfortable with his talent, given his consistent international performances. Executives agree that Arguelles would have been a late first rounder or sandwich pick in the recent draft, if he entered the draft rather than become a free agent.

Iglesias has a similarly strong tournament record, drawing attention for his flashy glovework at shortstop, with one scout grading his fielding as an 80 on the 20-80 scouting scale. His arm is enough to stick at shortstop, but his range is somewhat limited by his fringe-average speed. Iglesias makes the most of his ability, with instincts that enhance his tools and excellent makeup. He bats from the right side and while his overall offensive package leaves a bit to be desired, most scouts agree Iglesias will hit enough to allow him to profile as a big league regular. He has decent pop in his 5’10 frame, at a maxed-out 180 lbs., though he can get pull-happy at times. An international scouting director called Iglesias’ total package, “Ryan Theriot with better hands.” Iglesias is a defensive-oriented overachiever and executives say he would be more of a 2nd-3rd rounder if eligible for the recent draft.

A number of teams are interested in Arguelles and Iglesias, but one team is mentioned by every international source I’ve spoken with: the Yankees. Seemingly since the players defected, nearly a year ago while at a Canadian tournament, the players have been tied to the Yankees and many believe they will both end up signing with the Bombers. It won’t be easy for the Yankees, though; expect the other big market clubs and organizations with active Latin operations to enter the fray as well. It’s too early to handicap all the teams that could be involved, but the Cubs are one team that has been mentioned as heavily interested in Iglesias. As a potential late first round pick (if subject to the recent draft), Arguelles would command a bonus of about $1.0-1.3 million, while Iglesias’ 2nd-3rd round projection correlates to a $500,000-$750,000 potential bonus. That being said, Cuban players tend to have their own pay scale, independent of 16-year-old international free agents or domestic draftees, due to the amount of high-level game experience and the refinement most defectors possess. Some sources have suggested the ultimate pay days for these players could be twice or even three times the slot bonuses I’ve suggested.

Originally posted by Kiley McDaniel from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on June 14, 2009 1:41 PM

Daniel McGowen recently had a GREAT piece published on the Huffington Post blog about the new Communications Management Units in US prisons. It's a must read, check it out here.

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on June 14, 2009 11:43 AM

"This has been my dream for nearly two decades, I still believe in that dream. And the image I had in mind wasn't what took place yesterday."

First off, straight up: Our humblest apologies go out to the many serious eaters who came out to Shoreline yesterday, particularly those who came between the hours of noon and four. My 17-year dream became a humbling reality in those first few hours.

We were so focused on getting the talent and purveyors together that we didn't realize how at risk we were logistically because more than 8,000 tickets were sold in the last week.

Frankly, people were so excited about the fest that they all showed up early, which doesn't normally happen at an all-day festival. That compounded the logistical issues. Our high-tech cashless wristband system, designed to be easy to use for serious eaters and purveyors alike, failed at the get-go.

That said, we did bring together in one place the greatest assemblage of quintessential, iconic American food ever: Anchor Bar, Barney Greengrass, Graeter's, Katz's Deli, Pink's, Southside Market, Tony Luke's, and Zingerman's. We did bring together and celebrate some of the best American chefs and food personalities, from Bobby Flay to Anne Burrell to Guy Fieri to Aida Mollenkamp. And I hope we provided hours of listening pleasure from Little Feat, Marshall Crenshaw, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

I will say that it was a tale of two festivals. After 4 p.m. people using cash seemed to have a great time buying food at lines that were most often 15 minutes or less, and never more than half an hour.

So where do we go from here?

I'm sure we'll start with a series of painful post-mortems so we can fix all the problems so that next year the Great American Food & Music Fest does deliver on all its fundamental promises: To deliver great American food, great American chefs, and great American music in a comfortable, welcoming, and efficient environment.

That's my promise to serious eaters everywhere, in the Bay Area and all over the country. If you could find it in your hearts to think of this as our first pancake, that would be great. You clearly showed there's a great hunger, a huge appetite for a festival like this. Now it's up to us to bring it to you in the right way. Stay tuned.

This has been my dream for nearly two decades, I still believe in that dream. And the image I had in mind wasn't what took place yesterday, but I won't give up on the dream that I think a lot of you share with me. It was a pleasure to meet so many of you in person. We'll let you know when we try again.

Before we sign off here, we feel compelled to give one last shout-out and thank you to all the serious eaters who came, as well as the incredible array of chefs, performers, musicians, and purveyors who performed heroically. And a special thanks to the national purveyors, who literally came thousands of miles to grace our presence with so much seriously delicious food: Anchor Bar, Barney Greengrass, Graeter's, Katz's Deli, Pink's, Southside Market, Tony Luke's, and Zingerman's. Thanks for all your hard work and indomitable spirit. And a course a most special thanks to Bobby Flay, who was a total mensch and an incredibly engaging, personal, and incandescent presence throughout the day and night.

As soon as the info concerning possible refunds becomes available we will let you know.

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats, on June 14, 2009 10:05 AM

Juan Cole breaks down the best current evidence the Iran Election was stolen. (via Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net, on June 14, 2009 10:01 AM

In a shocking deviation from normal practice, I got something done around the house. Yesterday I put together something called a back porch compost tumbler, which is a sort of drum on wheels that you can dump your scraps into and whirl around, then push like a wheelbarrow if you want to move it somewhere else. Because who doesn't want to roll a lot of half-rotted vegetable bits from place to place?

I'd been feeling a little ridiculous throwing out piles of vegetable scraps every week, which I do, and don't have the freezer space or need for stock required to save anything like all of them for cooking. Compost, then, is the obvious solution, but since the garden at our rented house is small and mainly the domain of the owners, who live on the other side of the duplex, I needed to get something unobtrusive, smallish, and self contained. 

The composter we got I think perhaps missed a step in its factory fabrication, because every single hole that a screw or bolt was supposed to run through seemed to be unfinished and needed to be drilled out before I could proceed. On the other hand, doing that did make me feel extra handy and competent, so all in all it was perhaps more satisfying this way than the alternative.

Originally posted by redfox from Adventures in the Pointless Forest, on June 14, 2009 6:55 AM