randomwalks/dj

From Recipes

Hmm, this might be something to try tomorrow morning, no? Why don't you grab the ingredients this evening? —Ed.

I have to confess, I tend to be an obsessive recipe follower when cooking something for the first time. I think it has something to do with learning how to bake sweet things when I was little. "If you just throw some baking soda into your cake, you will be sorely disappointed," was the loud and clear message I got from my mother. But, as I learned, if you let measurements and chemistry do their work, you'll almost always be greeted by something beautiful when you open the oven door.

Related

• 14 Granola Brands Taste-Tested Head-to-Head
• Recipe: Hannah's Granola
• Talk: Do You Make Your Own Granola?

GranoIa on the other hand, is where I play hard and fast. My rule of thumb when it comes to granola: follow your tastebuds and you won't be disappointed. I don't like most industrial cereals and always find granola in bins or bags at the health food store to be way too sweet or wildly expensive. But oh, homemade granola you get me every time and I think there are plenty of others out there just like me.

When I interned at Gourmet, I was asked to research what dish readers were requesting the most for the You Asked For It column. It turned out to be granola by a landslide. My hypothesis was that when people are on vacation at inns or fancy hotels, they get great granola for breakfast and they dream about recreating it at home. But so few people do it. Embrace making your own granola! It's cost effective and so much healthier than the packaged stuff. Plus, it takes one easy hour on the weekends and you'll be set for days of great breakfasts.

This recipe was inspired by the granola sold by Nekisia Davis of Early Bird Foods at the Brooklyn Flea. Davis uses premium ingredients, good olive oil, and doesn't shy away from the salt. That's my general granola making strategy too. But whether you find pistachios or giant yellow flame raisins or almond extract or tart cherries in my breakfast bowl all depends on what I'm feeling like and what I've got in my cupboard.

In Davis' original recipe she uses brown sugar and Grade A maple syrup. I think maple syrup is plenty sweet on its own, so I cut the brown sugar out use darker Grade B syrup in my recipe.

The "black and white" in the recipe's title comes from copious amounts of unsweetened shredded coconut, poppy seeds, and Gomasio (black and white sesame seeds). The poppy seeds were left over from a cake and the salty Gomasio was just looking good at that moment. They are both unconventional granola ingredients, but I love the extra crunch that they lend. Most granola recipes have you bake the ingredients for 30 minutes or less. I take my granola to at least 50 minutes. The ingredients start out pasty and sad looking, but they end up beautifully browned.

Black and White Granola

This recipe makes enough for a couple good sized bowls of granola and yogurt. However, it is easily doubled—so if you've got more than one person eating in the mornings, I recommend you double the recipe and bake the ingredients on 2 rimmed baking sheets.

Ingredients

1 and 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds, hulled
1/2 cup raw pecans, walnuts, or almonds, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup poppy seeds
1/4 cup Gomasio (black and white sesame seeds)
1/4 cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B
1/4 cup olive oil
Coarse sea salt

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 300°F.

2. Place oats, coconut, sunflower seeds, nuts, syrup, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, olive oil, and 1 teaspoon salt in a large bowl and mix until well combined. Spread granola mixture in an even layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Transfer to oven and bake, stirring every 10 minutes, until granola is toasted, about 50 minutes. Watch granola closely in last 10 minutes of baking to ensure that it does not burn.

3. Remove granola from oven and season with salt to taste. Let cool completely before serving or storing in an airtight container for up to 1 month.

Originally posted by tressa eaton from Serious Eats, on August 8, 2009 2:00 PM

"We hate fingers, tools inside our heads - they're the locus of our private selves. A quietly nervous waiting room, as if a crime had been tacitly hushed. The dentist's reassuring patter. His optics glued to glasses lenses. Yellow safety glasses. Maps stapled to the ceiling to distract the patient. Teeth everywhere on the map - buildings, gardens, dental rectangles. The piers looking like decayed roots in the sea. Injections felt deep in the jaw, a tingling on the lip. Half the tongue numbed. Even so, the tongue going where it wants, involuntarily. The high-speed multi-fluted drill. A mist of air, water and matter..." (Rod McLaren)

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on August 8, 2009 11:44 AM

Barra de Sao Francisco at night
Originally uploaded by mjanssen.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on August 8, 2009 10:08 AM

Actually, according to the Gazette's own scale, it's "very good."

fig. a: latest review

Team Laloux continues to be on a roll. The latest coup came just this weekend: a very warm, very positive 3 out of 4 review from Lesley Chesterman in this weekend's Montreal Gazette. And, once again, Michelle and her desserts were singled out for particular praise:

Laloux's desserts hit a high under [Patrice] Demers, and that high continues under pastry chef Michelle Marek, who used to work as Demers's assistant. Marek has kept Demers's signature chocolate pot de crème on the menu, but the rest of the sweets are all hers, and are they ever good.

I like that her style is more simple than her predecessor's, and her buttermilk pannacotta with poached rhubarb and ginger scones is a testament to the fact that less is more. Her white chocolate cake with raspberries, pistachios and spiced frozen yogourt was so good that I could only steal one bite from my friend before he inhaled the rest.

If you want to get the full lowdown (which includes some rather fetching photographs of a few of Laloux's latest gourmandises), take a gander here.

And if you choose to visit Michelle and the rest of Team Laloux, you should know that her current lineup also includes a positively stellar apricot cream tartlet with a candied orange & hazelnut nougat glacé and a lavender caramel, as well as my personal favorite, an almond cake with cherries macerated in kirsch, candied almonds, almond granita, chamomile cream, and a cherry sorbet.

Go team!

Laloux, 250 avenue des Pins E., (514) 287-9127

aj

Originally posted by aj kinik from ...an endless banquet, on August 8, 2009 8:43 AM

A week or two ago, I was reading something which included a really silly statement hyperlinked to the Wikipedia entry for XML. I followed the link and discovered that the entry was appallingly bad. I looked with a shudder at the size and complexity of the brokenness and just failed to convince myself that it was somebody else’s problem. So we fixed it.

If you want to get a feel for the problem, here’s the August 4th version, as it stood before this work started.

How It Went

As a first step, I sent an email to the old xml-dev mailing list; a remarkable institution that, it’s been in continuous operation (I think) since before XML 1.0 was actually finished in 1998.

Then I started a linear march through the entry, throwing out three or four paragraphs for every one I put in. By the time I got through the first pass, several others were involved, notably including Michael Kay, Rick Jelliffe, Ken Sall, and James Clark. Some of the discussion took place over on xml-dev, but quite a bit is where it really should be, the XML entry’s discussion page.

A Lesson

Right now I’m feeling good about the way this is coming out. Historically, the community of XML experts hadn’t really paid attention to the Wikipedia entry until it was “too late”, when it had become bloated, disorganized, and a theater for pro/anti-XML edit wars. The evidence suggested that the majority of people editing the entry were not overburdened with real XML expertise. Nobody really had the heart to take this mess on.

What changed was this: one engaged party (me) decided it was worthwhile investing the (single-digit number of) hours for an initial hosing-out of the of this particular Augean stable, and knew where to go to appeal for help going forward.

At the moment, my bet is that enough people with an intersection of XML expertise and Wikipedia-editing skills are paying attention that the entry should be in pretty good shape for the next little while.

A Problem?

Well, perhaps. If you go to the XML entry Discussion page, there’s a notice across the top with a big Attention glyph. It says:

An individual covered by or significantly related to this article has edited Wikipedia as TimBray (talk · contribs). This user's editing has included this article. Readers are encouraged to review Wikipedia:Autobiography for information concerning autobiographical articles on Wikipedia.

Well, yep, and the potential problem is obvious. XML is probably going to be the biggest thing on my gravestone after my name. The incentive for me to pump this entry up and make XML seem positively epochal in its importance is huge.

A more subtle but even more pernicious incentive would be for me, while editing the entry, to inflate my importance in the development of XML.

Maybe this isn’t just abstract. At one point a few years back, some XML-haters descended on the XML entry and added a section explaining why it was a crock of shit and anyone with any taste would use YAML or S-expressions or something.

Others who objected, but didn’t want simply to erase others’ edits, added countervailing evidence, and the entry ended up with a section entitled “Criticism of XML” with “Pro” and “Con” lists; sprawling, disorganized, of questionable relevance, and a frequent locus for edit wars.

I raised the question of whether this thing deserved to be in the entry at all; someone took this as Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest? and shitcanned the whole section. I hadn’t been quite ready to do this, but on the other hand I hear no voices raised asking it to be put back.

It would be reasonable to suspect someone like me of maliciously conspiring to censor criticism of my intellectual baby right out of Wikipedia. I honestly don’t know what the right answer is. We want experts to edit Wikipedia, but experts tend also to be partisans. I think the current approach (highlight when it happens) is a reasonable compromise.

Unfinished

The one thing I’m not claiming is that this entry is finished or perfect or not in need of further work. The entry could be better. It should be better. Can you help?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from ongoing, on August 8, 2009 1:00 AM

Two great concepts that take boring household objects and make them playful using marbles…

The Xylophone Bin (2008) by Dominic Wilcox…

“When the pedal is pressed the lid opens, releasing a ball that travels down a ‘helterskelter’ set of xylophone steps around the bin. Each time the ball hits a step, a note is played. The xylophone steps are cut in increasing lengths so that the note gets deaper as the ball gets closer to the bottom”.

Created for a VIPP Charity auction in NewYork to raise money for Chernobyl Children’s Project International and Foodbank NYC.

Marbelous (2008) by Ontwerpduo…

“The world of adults furniture and the world children’s toys don’t seem to belong together.
From my childhood I remember it was always exiting to combine these two. I used the woodcarvings of furniture as a playfield for my puppets, to play in a new world. With this feeling in mind we created a concept for a new piece of furniture.
We invented these functional woodcarvings. It is decoration you can play with. They applied woodcarvings in a piece of furniture that combines the world of adults with the world of the children. A marble track in a table. A new type of functional woodcarving, that invites you to play”.

Originally posted by Chris OShea from Pixelsumo, on August 8, 2009 12:59 AM

The citymurmur project [citymurmur.org] attempts to map the conceptual and cultural layers of urban space based on media aggregation. The web application perdiodically scans the text of online news items for place or street names in the city of interest, and extracts keywords and categories. The resulting combination of conceptual and geographical information can be explored in map overlays - for instance highlighting all streets with news about "Jazz" - and network diagrams (click the "switch" button), which relates the extracted terms to each other based on the geographic information. As the news sources range from international and national media to local and neighborhood sources, it is quite interesting to see which parts of the city are in fact covered by which types of media, and to what amount.

The project originated at last year's visualizar workshop, mapping the media in Madrid. This year, it was at display at the Emerging Technologies exhibition at SIGGRAPH09, with New Orleans as the object of interest. According to Gaia Scagnetti, one of the designers involved in the project, keywords like 'rebuilt' or 'music' were characteristic in this new context, but it was also interesting to see the much higher volume of local and neighborhood news sources in New Orleans.

This post was written by Moritz Stefaner, a researcher and freelance practitioner on the crossroads of design and information visualization. Occasionally, he blogs at well-formed-data.net.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from information aesthetics, on August 7, 2009 9:48 PM

the united steak of america. i wish i could eat this.

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

Originally posted by (author unknown) from TasteSpotting, on August 7, 2009 7:27 PM

Originally posted by bspcn from The Best Article Every day, on August 7, 2009 6:35 PM

The Iron Giant came out ten years ago and Scott Thill has a nice appreciation of the still-underrated film at Wired.

Warner Bros. didn't know what to do with a movie about a killer robot who becomes a pacifist with the help of a patriotic kid in love with comics like Superman, the ultimate alien benevolent (and the Iron Giant's eventual role model). "When we showed the executives the movie, they didn't get it," Iron Giant screenwriter Tim McCanlies said in 2003. One possible reason: The movie has no clearly defined protagonist or antagonist, a must for popcorn entertainment. "Let's just have paranoia be the enemy," McCanlies remembers Bird saying, "not the combined armies of the superpowers." The Iron Giant's domestic box office gross of $23 million didn't come close to recouping the movie's production budget, which reportedly hit $70 million.

As I've written before, 1999 was a great year for movies and The Iron Giant was one of my favorites. If you haven't seen it, it's only $6 on Amazon.

Tags: irongiant   movies

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 7, 2009 3:25 PM

Photograph from on Flickr

Banana death by human is your typical chew-and-swallow method, but when you get green birds involved, it becomes a little uglier. This hungry bird decided to dissect the banana midsection, or the bananular belly in technical terms. Maybe bananas are like pigs and all the tender, succulent meat is hiding in the belly region?

Related
Photo of the Day: Individually-Wrapped Bananas, Freaking Us Out
In Videos: Stacking Food on Animals
Cute Paintings of Animals Eating Food

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on August 7, 2009 3:15 PM

via www.boston.com

There's something that really appeals to me about this photo: I think part of it is imagining waking up, looking out my window, and seeing that iceberg.

Originally posted by btrott from Stupidfool.org, on August 7, 2009 3:12 PM

Greg Sargent reports that, in a meeting with key liberal interest groups, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel went on quite the tirade, letting it be known just how he feels about progressive groups targeting House Blue Dogs and conservative Senate Democrats.

Among other things, he called them "fucking stupid."

In the past, White House objections to infighting have been effective. And though a number of groups have insisted that they're not changing their game plans, it'll be interesting to see if the tone or intensity of these campaigns changes.

Originally posted by Brian Beutler from TPM Election Central, on August 7, 2009 3:05 PM

ninety9:

This is the uptick rule of Karaoke-blogging? Also; we could just not post photos of parties ever.

I think there’s nothing wrong with Karaoke in theory, but I’ve never EVER been to Karaoke with a group of people where I didn’t get physically run over by at least two or three overly ambitious Karaoke-ers who were frighteningly determined to get either the microphone or the song book all to themselves.  Having always been a very bad singer, I generally avoid both the song book and the microphone, as much in consideration of the general public’s aural health as anything else. So it may just be that I don’t understand the impulse to furiously and a little-too-desperately snatch the instrument of choice—book or mic—from one’s drunken party-goer friends and acquaintances while otherwise trying very, very hard to affect the impression that one is an easy-going, party-loving, laid-back person, because I don’t fully appreciate the sheer unadulterated joy that comes from Karaoke when one believes one can actually sing.

But it always happens. And after having been borderline assaulted on multiple occasions by stray elbows thrashing their way into range of the mic or stepped on by someone who weighs 50 pounds more than me en route to figure out the call number for that one Bon Jovi number that just matches the perpetrator’s exact vocal range, I’m inclined to avoid it for fear of actual physical harm.  There are far too many Type A people in New York who have secretly been contemplating American Idol tryouts who will cut you if you get in the way of their opportunity to perform their extravaganza edition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in front of their drunk friends.

And what I’m going to say next will make it sound like I’m unduly influenced by @boyfriend, but nonetheless… I am too old for that shit.

You Karaoke people who go to Sing Sing and drunkenly stand in the corner and belt out lyrics to yourself sans-mic, because you don’t give a shit and you don’t really know the lyrics anyway, but who cares because you’re drunk and making noise when you’re drunk is always fun: I am not talking to you. You are fine. You would drunkenly belt out lyrics to “Sweet Caroline” at any given cocktail party after 3AM and eight Jamesons on the rocks, so the presence of amplification and a soundtrack is superfluous.

Also, you are probably John Carney.

You other people, though. You nutso musical-theater-in-high-school-people who forget that you are at a casual social event with normal human beings and not on stage in front of Simon Cowell: it’s just Karaoke, Tracy Flick. Have another beer. Step away from the mic (for once). And relax, for fuck’s sake.

So I’m afraid until my experience of Karaoke changes, my only Karaoke experiences will be had without a soundtrack, without an audience, and in my shower. I may still be drunk, mind you, but I won’t have to worry about getting stampeded by any of you crazy people determined to do your solo rendition of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” with no interference.

And don’t worry. I’m not posting any photos of it, either.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Spiersblr, on August 7, 2009 2:25 PM

Unsurprisingly, the MLB teams currently drawing the most benefit from the lessons of Moneyball are those with lots of money operating in big markets.

Well, of course, the big-market teams figured it out. They hired their own Ivy League consultants. They bought even better computers. Walks is only one tiny aspect in it ... but who leads the American League in walks this year? The New York Yankees. Last year? The Boston Red Sox. The year before that? The Boston Red Sox. And so it goes. Now, six years later, it seems to me that the small-market teams are really grasping and trying to find some loophole, some opening that will allow them to win in this tough financial environment.

Tags: baseball   books   economics   Michael Lewis   Moneyball   sports

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 7, 2009 1:59 PM

The idea of giving anyone my online banking usernames and passwords sends shivers up my spine. But my finances are more irregular than ever right now, so I’ve got to keep a close eye on them. For the last seven years, every month I dutifully fired up Microsoft Money (then later, Intuit’s Quicken) on my computer to balance my accounts. Now that I’m freelancing, it’s either feast or famine in my checking account, and that makes me want to jump off the roof instead of launch Quicken. When several months of personal finance denial went by without doing basic house-cleaning, I bounced a check. It was time to make keeping tabs on my money easier.

Enter Mint.com, a web-based finance aggregator. Given your online banking credentials, Mint logs into your accounts, fetches your transactions and balances for you, and arranges them into a single, well-designed dashboard. Back in October of 2007, Adam gave Mint a rave review on Lifehacker. But in the editors’ private chatroom I said I thought it looked great, but that I couldn’t bring myself to give it my online banking passwords. Last month, thanks to that bounced check, I finally bit the bullet. I’m glad I did.

I still feel icky about a third party storing my banking passwords. However, Mint actually keeps me safer from identity theft or break-ins because it can alert me the moment a big withdrawal, purchase, or deposit happens on any one of my accounts. Mint had built-in support for all my banks, from my checking and savings, to my mortgage account, to my investment accounts and retirement funds. (It does list ING Direct as an institution that occasionally blocks Mint requests, but after I set up my secret questions and answers and entered them, it had no problem getting my transactions). It also smartly guesses what categories a transaction should fall under, and lets you split transactions as well as tag them with multiple keywords. For example, I like that I can take a client out for lunch, and categorize it under “Restaurants” and also tag it “tax deduction.” You can’t do that in Quicken.

I like Mint’s simple budgeting tool, too. You set an amount you’d like to spend on a category–say, $300 on restaurants per month. On a given day during the month, Mint shows you how much you’ve spent as compared to what day of the month it is. The bar in the chart is yellow if you’re under budget for the month but over for the day in the month, and red if you’re over completely. Here’s what it looks like.

The other thing Mint does that Quicken doesn’t is send you email alerts when particular things happen in your accounts. You could probably set this up within each of your online bank accounts, but you can centralize it all in Mint. Right now I have it email me if a bill is due (like my AmEx payment), an account has a low balance (no more bounced checks!), or if a large ($1000+) deposit, purchase, or withdrawal happens on any account. All of this is configurable.

Now, instead of going for months in financial denial, when Mint emails me about a bill being due or a deposit clearing, I log on to get a quick overview of everything that’s going on in my accounts in one place. It’s way more convenient than logging into all my online banks separately, or launching Quicken, downloading transactions, categorizing and reconciling. I actually enjoy using Mint, and tools you love to use are tools you will use.

Regarding password storage, I also gave Mint’s competitor Wesabe a test-drive. What’s awesome about Wesabe is that unlike Mint, you can manually upload your transaction files to it, or use a Firefox extension to do it for you, which means you don’t have to save your passwords there. While I was happy about this option, in practice all that work felt like I was just using Quicken again. Wesabe doesn’t do transaction categories, just tags. It also doesn’t try to guess what tags it should use–you set that up, in addition to tagging rules for future incoming transactions (ie, “any transaction from Regents Pizza should get tagged restaurants.”) I liked Wesabe very much; in fact, it was a really tough decision whether or not to use it or Mint. I wound up going with Mint because it felt just a teensy bit more comfortable and automated to me. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

I go on about the security risks of cloud computing often and I’m especially wary of any webapp that wants you to store sensitive information like passwords in it. But the cloud computing tradeoff, as always, is privacy for convenience. Right now the convenience of an all-in-one web-based finance manager outweighs my fears about storing my bank passwords in it. What about you?

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Smarterware, on August 7, 2009 1:50 PM

We're gliding toward the end of a long week here at TPM HQ. And in one of our free-ranging all-staff skype bull sessions I mentioned something I'd hardly remembered, which is that not long before I started TPM during the November 2000 Florida recount, I'd actually briefly did a sort of proto-TPM on the website of my then employer, The American Prospect.

I guess maybe Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal TPM.

I only had a hazy recollection of it and hadn't thought about it in ages. But through the magic of the Internets Andrew Golis pulled it up in seconds on the Internet Archive. This appears to be the first post, from August 10, 2000. I'd forgotten how similar it looked to the original TPM site and even the name ("Washington Memo") was pretty similar.

In any case, I only hazily remember it. My only real recollection is why I stopped. I remember starting to get calls from HQ up in Boston (I was the Washington Editor at the time) with various complaints about how what I was writing was too edgy or unprofessional or funny or I guess just too interesting. So I figured WTF and basically just stopped. Later, after I started real TPM, they started picking it up back on the Prospect site in a sort expurgated, lam-ized edition. But not long after that I was on my own.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on August 7, 2009 1:14 PM

via www.youtube.com

This is wonderful. It makes me want a glass of scotch, and to take a walk in Scotland. Or, even, to drink a glass of scotch while on a walk in Scotland.

I'd say that's an effective ad (maybe even the best ad of the year).

Originally posted by btrott from Stupidfool.org, on August 7, 2009 1:00 PM

[photo credit]

Some startling news just came in over the tipline from Jerome Chang, owner of one of the city's most well loved high-end food carts, The Dessert Truck. Threats from other vendors and parking tickets are one thing, but this is highly disconcerting:

WTF?!

We can't open! Yesterday, the city notified us that the mobile food vendor's permit used by DessertTruck is no longer valid. For reasons too confusing and vague for us to understand, the city denied the permit holder the right to renew his permit.

What does this mean? We can't sell on the street to passersby. It does NOT mean we are out of business - we will continue to cater private events and find a way to open to the public again. As for all the knotty red tape that binds all mobile food vendors, we're developing a special ray gun for that.

Thank you in advance to all our awesome customers who patiently await our return in one form or another. And a big thank you to our crew, present and past for supporting us – Bill, Colin, Craig, Grace, Jenica, Kevin, Lawpo, Luis, Mallory, Susana, Travis& Vincent!

We'll post updates on our website and Twitter feed as they become available.

A bientôt!

Jerôme Chang

DessertTruck

mail@desserttruck.com

A small snafu or the beginning of a larger city backlash against these newfangled trucks? It's hard to say at this early point, but things look dicey indeed.
· All Food Truck Coverage [~E~]
· @desserttruck [Twitter]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on August 7, 2009 11:56 AM

I'm loving Andre's posts about switching from an iPhone to a Google phone, especially the highly opinionated bits like this one about Twidroid, the really awfully-named Twitter client for Android.

There is a "delete" option for every tweet, not just my own, but every tweet. When you push that option you are told, "You may not delete another users (sic) status". They shipped that.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on August 7, 2009 11:46 AM

At the station entrance at Metro Center in DC last weekend there was a sign — neat, professional — apologizing for broken air-conditioning on the platform.  How genteel, I thought.  Ever since I’ve been back home in New York the subway platforms have been obscenely swamp-hot, the humidity rolling up out of the ground from them like the waves of heat and stink generated by piles of fermenting garbage.  In DC, though, there is an expectation that things would be otherwise, and an expectation that someone might apologize if they weren’t. In New York no one expects to be comfortable.  Or: we expect to pay a lot for the privelege of being comfortable, and even then there are no guarantees.

An hour before dinner on the night of the full moon  I was telling Choire that I thought all the assholes had left town for the summer, just because on my walk to the East Village I’d seen two people reach down, pick up items that strangers had dropped from their bags or pockets, and then half-jog down the block after the droppers to return the items (a wad of cash; a pink tie from a gym duffel).  Of course there’s still the problem of tourists, clutching their frightened-looking childrens’ hands and not understanding walking protocol, but in spite of them the city still seemed to me to have been pleasantly emptied-out of its worst element.   Choire was skeptical of this yoga-addled theory and of course he was right to be.

I left him and wen to meet Kate at a restaurant on 4th street.  The place was pleasantly emptied-out, not so much that we worried about the food but enough so that we could comfortably sprawl at a four-top with the waiter’s blessing.  We hadn’t seen each other in a long time and so for the first half-hour we were oblivious to everything around us as we caught up.  We ate some buffalo mozzarella with three pale decorative slices of deli-quality roma tomato on top, barely noticing what we were putting in our mouths.  We were having a good time.

I have to describe Kate a little for this story to make sense: she is blonde and even though she’s taller than average she seems small because of the almost childlike delicacy of her features.  I’m not sure what her spirit animal is but I’m pretty sure it’s herbivorous.  I’m not saying that she is weak or a pushover, just that she seems to me to be someone who it would be almost impossible to dislike on sight, unless you were jealous of her beauty or you had been traumatized by a snub-nosed, doll-faced blonde as a child.  Like, if maybe something bad happened to you while watching a Naomi Watts movie.  Anyway: there is nothing intrinsically hateable about Kate, there just isn’t.

But about halfway through our meal — I had some kind of little chewy pasta with wild boar sausage, it was okay –  we started getting the feeling that we had direly offended the couple sitting behind us, who had been eating their meal mostly in silence.  I had noted the feeling of being eavesdropped on, and then a bit later a gruff, old-man voice raised in a way that seemed intended for our notice, something sarcastic about “how things are going in the ACCOUNTING business.”   We lowered our voices then, even though we hadn’t been talking loudly at all.  The man continued to clear his throat and make pointed comments that were clearly about us but that we couldn’t quite hear.   The hostess then came over and lingered by the man’s table making small talk; it became obvious that the man and his companion were regulars. When the hostess left, the man told his date in a loud pointed way that the hostess was “a beautiful person.”

We rushed through the rest of our meal and got our check.  I got up and went to the bathroom, apologizing first for leaving Kate alone in our corner of the restaurant with this couple and the bizarre waves of malevolent feeling that I could sense coming off  of them, even though I was facing away from them.  When I got back, she told me she’d overheard the man saying to his date, “You’re afraid of what I’m going to say to that girl, aren’t you.”

We paid the check — it wasn’t cheap, I noted with a twinge — and the waiter bid us farewell, standing near the table as we gathered our things.  And then just as we’d almost reached the door, the gruff-voiced old man shouted, “And don’t come back!”

I could have just kept walking, I guess.  Is that really a thing I could’ve done, though?

Instead I stopped and turned to the man with a wide-eyed look of affability, fake but I’ve been working on it and it seems less fake now than it used to when I was younger, I’m pretty sure.  “Excuse me, sir, but I’m just curious — what did we do that offended you?”

“Your girlfriend there talks too loud.  And that laugh! It’s grating.”  He addressed himself directly to Kate. “You’re grating.”

I don’t remember the rest of our conversation that well; definitely I didn’t handle the situation diplomatically or well.  I didn’t yell, but I did try to make some logical counterarguments along the lines of  “this is a restaurant, not your living room, my friend and I came here to talk to each other, maybe you have a hearing problem, we didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You’re grating,” he said, making a dismissive gesture. “You should go to Europe, see how they behave there. You ruined our meal, I couldn’t hear my companion …”  His “companion,”  a mask-faced middle-aged Asian woman, stared blankly at us.   Kate I think tried to say something too at this point, and I told the man that he had ruined our meal by being — I remember I did say this — “mean and judgmental.”

“I’m not mean,” he said, as though the suggestion was laughable, and then finally it dawned on me that there was nothing we could or should possibly say to this monstrous person.  The last thing I told him was that I felt sorry for him because he had to be him, and that was his punishment, and then as we finally left we gave him the finger through the windowpane like children, In my dark imaginings, the waiter and the hostess, that beautiful person, probably descended then and cooed over their regulars about how imaginarily rude we’d been, in order to keep the monster’s business.  Possibly that’s what I would’ve done, back when I was a waitress.

I’m not telling this story because I’m proud of how I acted. I’m not, especially not the last part.  I’m telling it because I’m trying to figure out why this incident has lodged so firmly in my mind.  In my everyday dealings with strangers, I habitually base my actions on the assumption that all people aren’t secretly evil.  When I sit down to eat I don’t pause to wonder who around me might be full of a rage so powerful and achingly trapped that just a stranger’s laugh could release it all, venomous and vile and scarily out of scale, yet still commonplace enough that you’re just supposed to brush it aside.  Well, what else can you do?  It’s true what I said, that he is punished by being himself.  Or is it?  It doesn’t seem like any kind of punishment at all.   This man will probably go to his death feeling that pleasant interactions with other humans are just another product he can buy, and that the purpose of life is to accumulate enough capital that you can buy all-pleasant interactions all the time.

Well, fuck that.  Fuck people like that.  Fuck forgiving them, thinking about where they’re coming from — trying to imagine the disappointments of their childhoods, etc –  and having tender, yogic compassion for them because we are all parts of the same whole.  It doesn’t make me feel good to hate this man, but it doesn’t make me feel good to forgive him either, and so here I sit, not doing either, and I guess that means he won, but I don’t know how to make him and people like him stop winning. Sometimes human history seems like the story of their victory.

Originally posted by emily from Emily Magazine, on August 7, 2009 11:11 AM

We just delivered the 100,000th Joyent Accelerator to a customer. That’s a big milestone. Congratulations to the Joyent team. And congratulations to our customers who are doing such interesting things with Joyent Accelerators, everyone from Prince (the artist known as), to all the Facebook developers, to the many enterprise shops ...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Blog Joyent, on August 7, 2009 11:09 AM

hot dog (via Mickipedia)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Scribbling.net, on August 7, 2009 10:44 AM

Who better to take apart Carol Bartz's retconning (Yahoo has "never been a search company") than Danny Sullivan:

Search was Yahoo’s origin story. To say Yahoo was never a search engine is like saying Superman wasn’t originally from Krypton or that Spider-Man was never bitten by a spider.

Yes, at first Yahoo’s search was powered by human editors, rather than machines. By 1999, the majority of search engines out there used human editors as the basis of their search. When machine-based search took over, Yahoo shifted along to that eventually, spending plenty for its own technology.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on August 7, 2009 10:18 AM

Errol Morris shares Seven Lies About Lying, principles about lies often assumed to be true but which Morris believes are false.

5. Lying will be punished. Perhaps. But not as often as truth-telling. Lying effectively in many situations is generally superior than telling the truth, because often we have to search our minds for the truth, whereas a good lie can be easier to produce (though of course caution is indicated if the lie can be easily unmasked). Invariably a skillful liar makes a calculation about his chances of being exposed and avoids situations where a lie can be revealed. Lying is punished only if it is detected. A more reasonable assessment would be that ineffective and unskillful lying is severely punished. No one is held in greater contempt than an unskilled liar.

Morris also solicited Ricky Jay's thoughts on a world without lying:

When you're talking about Kant and trust, it made me think of one of the ways I tell people about the con game. I say, "You wouldn't want to live in a world where you can't be conned, because if you were, you would be living in a world with no trust. That's the price you pay for trust, is being conned."

Tags: Errol Morris   Ricky Jay

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 7, 2009 8:55 AM

Big ups, playa

(via pirata: obamaporn)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Final Boss Form, on August 7, 2009 8:11 AM

Building Custom Bicycles in New York City

Rocketboom NYC Correspondent Ella Morton interviews artist Josh Hadar about his hand sculpted custom bicycles.

I pass by this shop every day and it’s wonderful. It’s nice to finally give people a look inside.

(via ROCKETBOOM)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Final Boss Form, on August 7, 2009 7:53 AM

An observant Eater operative, after wondering why Bon Ap's Momofuku Ko comic looked so damn familiar, found the above photo (full size here) of the soft opening of MomoKo in the archives. It's curious to say the least. While there's nothing wrong with an illustrator using a photograph as a model—though the AP would argue otherwise—it is interesting that Ruth Reichl, editor of rival Conde mag Gourmet was switched with Men's Health's Dave Zinczenko and made to look, ahem, a bit manly. One must wonder: Was that a cognizant move on Bon Ap's part or just the creative choice of illustrator Matthew Woodson? At least it's fair to assume that the original photographer, Momo regular Kathryn Yu, won't be suing.
· Dave Chang's Signature Dish [BA]
· KO-Boom: Night 2 A-Listers Everywhere [~E~]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on August 7, 2009 7:49 AM

Parking is heavily subsidized in the US; spaces in cities can cost between $10,000 and $50,000, a high price to pay to house hunks of metal that don't do anything for 95% of the day.

Who pays for this? Everyone. The cost of building all that parking is reflected in higher rents, more expensive shopping and dining, and higher costs of home-ownership. Those who don't drive or own cars thus subsidize those who do.

The argument comes from a book called The High Cost of Free Parking.

Tags: cities   economics

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 7, 2009 7:25 AM

In a post to Mets Police, Shannon Shark explains why Bobby Valentine is the only man for the manager’s job in 2010.

Actually, I have been thinking a lot about Valentine, as well, ever since he officially announced on his blog that he will not be returning to Japan.  Yes, he has his own blog.

The thing is, I am not sure Jerry Manuel has done anything to warrant being fired.  Frankly, I think he’s done an admirable job navigating through this 2009 injury-storm. 

As I have written before, the way I understand it, Omar Minaya and Manuel are tied to the hip.  In short, if Minaya is ever fired, the new GM will hold Manuel’s future in his hand.  But, under no circumstance will Minaya be firing Manuel.

In a poll on MetsBlog.com in June, 97 percent of 5,000 voters said they still have a positive view of Valentine.

I love Bobby V, too.  I think he’s brilliant, albeit avante garde and controversial, he’s entertaining, he’s unique, he’s feisty, players either love him or hate him and because of this he seems to get the most out everyone – including us.

Reporters and baseball people often ask ask me why I like Bobby V so much, seeing as he never won a World Series while with the Mets.  And that’s the thing, think about it: he lost to the freakin’ Yankees in the World Series… the Yankees… in a World Series… yet, 97 percent of us still like him.  I mean, you need to be a pretty special personality to pull off losing to the Yankees, and the Braves, yet retain that level of goodwill.  Look, it’s pretty simple: he’s an underdog, he’s unique, he’s a fighter and he wears his passion on his sleeve, just like we do, and so I think he connects with fans in a way that most managers do not – including Manuel, Joe Torre, and others.

That said, for the most part, Valentine seems to work best with disciplined, selfless talent, most of whom are primed to buy in to his style of play.  For instance, I think David Wright would do well with Valentine, but I think Jose Reyes would struggle.  So, if the Mets intend to rely on the Gary Sheffields of the world, the Carlos Delgado, Valentine should never return.  However, if the Mets plan to build a team around hit-and-runs, less power and more doubles in the gap, timely stolen bases, bunting, a versatile bullpen, and basically play chess on a baseball field, Valentine is the best man for the job.

Last month, during an interview with ESPN 1050, Michael Kay asked Valentine if he would ever manage the Mets again.

Valentine did not answer the question directly, of course, though he was sure to say Manuel is a good manager for this team.

However, he did point out that his departure from the Mets was ‘not bad at all,’ noting the ‘personalities’ who he had issues with, and who had issues with him, are no longer with the organization.

From what I can gather, this is true.  In talking with people close to the team, I believe ownership and Minaya still like Valentine, and continue to have a good relationship with him.  It sounds to me like he and Minaya have remained remained in contact, as their relationship goes back a long, long way.

The thing is, a) the Mets have a manager they like, though they’re not against change, and b) ultimately, I sense the Mets view Valentine as a part of their past; so if they do make a change, they’ll be more inclined to move forward, not back.

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on August 7, 2009 7:05 AM

The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies presents their findings on the awkwardness that is Weegee. Mario is Missing, game footage from Mario is Missing, Software Toolworks, Super Mario Bros. (film), Mr T Ate My Balls, Creepy Chan, The Hasslehoff Image Database, Carlton Banks, Chuck Norris Facts, Jean Luc Picard, Woll Smoth, 4chan Thread on Weegee, moot, An interview with the founder of 4chan, DeviantArt, GameFAQs, Google Insight Search for Weegee, YouTube Poop, Mudkip: The Insane Edition, 9000!! NINE THOUSAAAAANDD!. For more on internet memes and phenomena visit The MemeDB at KnowYourMeme.com

Originally posted by hello@rocketboom.com (Rocketboom) from Rocketboom, on August 7, 2009 7:00 AM

Originally posted by Curtis from Hey Okay, on August 7, 2009 6:19 AM

From Vanity Fair, an imagined GOOP newsletter from Gwyneth Paltrow.

What is it about books that make them so truly great to read? I think it's the way the words are printed on every page, the right way up and in just the right order.

This means you can start reading on the first page and then continue reading through the middle pages all the way to the last page.

Here are some of my absolute favorite books. War, by Leo Tolstoy. A great read. Bonus: You can get it as part of a two-volume edition which includes Peace by the same great author.

Shakespeare, by Shakespeare. He has so many great lines. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." "I am the Walrus." "My heart will go on." They're part of the language.

Next week, we learn to peel a banana with a world-expert fruit psychologist.

Compare with the real thing:

As I write this, I am finishing the amazing three-week-long "Clean" detox program detailed below. Designed by New York cardiologist and detoxification specialist Dr. Alejandro Junger, this program allowed me to work and exercise regularly, something I cannot do if I am on a liquid-only detox. I followed it to the letter and I can report that it worked wonders. I feel pure and happy and much lighter (I dropped the extra pounds that I had gained during a majorly fun and delicious "relax and enjoy life phase" about a month ago). I also really enjoyed learning about the incredible health benefits of resting your digestive system, etc. This thing is amazing. And don't forget to ask your doctor if a cleanse is right for you.

Cleanses, "relax and enjoy life phase", resting your digestive system...I don't where to begin. (thx, dj jacobs)

Tags: gwynethpaltrow

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 7, 2009 6:10 AM

Shared by mathowie
Kinda shocked hollywood people did a junket interview with (albeit, a great) food photographer and blogger like Matt.

What happens when a certain angel at Columbia Pictures tells you that she’s secured 25 minutes for you with Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Nora Ephron in Beverly Hills before the grand opening of Julie & Julia? Well, you do a small happy dance, check for batteries in your interview recorder, iron a shirt and join the select few who are lucky enough to meet these beautiful and insanely talented women. And then you begin to think about the questions you want to ask and hope that you’re not distracted by Meryl’s big laugh or Amy’s giant dreamy eyeballs.  That’s exactly what you do.

The rules were simple: ask anything and everything and take no pictures. Ok, I can do that! I must admit that it’s hard not to think you might be a bit starstruck by meeting all three but once Meryl Streep walks into a room you cannot help but relax and smile. It’s a side I’ve never seen of her and she completely puts everyone at ease. And if you thought Amy Adams was beautiful on the big screen then you ain’t seen nothing. They are really quite special. And the icing on the cake was meeting writer and director Nora Ephron. So let’s get to the questions.

Q: So what drew each of you to the story and the film?

Meryl: I read Nora’s script which was extremely beautiful and interesting and I thought it was probably not commercial whatsoever and I was very worried about her sanity and with financing! They were willing to give us the money and I think it’s turned out really well!

I just really love the story of these two women looking for their calling. I just thought it was extremely touching and also delicately written, not hammered on the head. That’s so hard to find. It’s hard to find beautiful subtly written stories. It’s a hopeful story.

Amy: It was gentle.

Q: What was the last thing that each of you cooked at home?

Meryl: Nora just gave me an Ina Garten Cookbook and Saturday I made Tuscan Lemon Chicken which is highly recommended, it was a big hit. And I have a shortcut for zesting 4 lemons that I might share with you!

Q: Amy, when we met with Susan Spungen, food stylist on Julie & Julia, she told us about the food styling side of the movie and working with you.  She said she spent a couple of sessions with you at ICE. How comfortable were you in the kitchen before and after your training?

Amy: I’m not really intimidated by the kitchen. I think I’m a little bit tidier now that I’ve learned the correct way of doing stuff so it doesn’t look as messy. My chopped salad is more consistent now. She gave me a lot of great tips and a lot of shortcuts that I never would have thought of so I don’t mind preparation as much. That’s opened up a world of cooking to me because I have much more enjoyment of prep work.

Meryl interjects: I just wonder if Julia Child had four children if she would have cooked the way she did!

But I learned patience. I realized that in my life so often I get home and I had planned something and then there’d be some disaster with somebody that would keep me from one element of the meal and then someone would scream “WHEN IS THAT GOING TO BE READY?!”

Q: Prior to the movie did any of you read food blogs?

Amy: No.
Meryl: No
Nora: I do, I read Chowhound and I use it for new restaurants. I read Ed Levine’s blog Serious Eats and then my sister Amy has a food blog, One For The Table, so I do, I love them!  You could ruin a day reading them, there are so many good food blogs, it’s amazing. But I hadn’t read Julie Powell’s blog until I read about it in the New York Times.

Meryl: That was the first time I heard about it. There was something about that article that jumped up. It was an unusual challenge that she had set for herself.

Q: Julie Powell told us that you printed out a lot of her entries and went through them with her. Why was that important for you to do?

Nora: If I had found a section that I wanted to amplify beyond what was in the blog then I interviewed her. There were a couple of chronological things that I was confused by and I wanted to figure all of that out. And basically I just wanted to hear her talk a little bit more about some of the events I chose to do in the movie because it was about 2000 pages printed out of the blog with all the comments. I had 8 huge binders of material and I had winnowed it down and then I had figured out what I was going to do of it, what scenes had to be done. I had to do the meltdown scene, I had to do the lobster scene and I became really interested in her mother. Her mother really got into her blog and wrote slightly inappropriate things and I was so amused that she had sort of become a character in the blog. That was really mostly what it was, just to amplify.

Q: When we screened the movie a few weeks ago we got to speak with Chris Messina (Julie Powell’s on-screen husband) afterwards and he talked about the food discipline when you’re shooting a scene all day and how you might have to eat 35 bruschetta. Do you have any experiences like that?

Meryl: I didn’t! Surprisingly I didn’t have a problem with it! No, we didn’t have to eat as much and with such gusto.  You have to realize how many times he did it: in the master, in the midshot, in the closeup, the over shoulder, he ate a lot of bruschetta! And he did it everytime! He did a great job.

Amy: I did mostly this (she pretends to eat while talking). I was like “I’m talking so I can take a bite here”.  It was important to know that we really enjoyed the food. But I hadn’t figured out and I still haven’t figured out how Chris Messina did it. How he was able to eat and talk and nothing falls out! It must be a structural thing! With me I would talk and it’d be a full show! No way. I had a different relationship with the food on set but we all really enjoyed it. Like the chocolate cake moment, that was so much fun. But we also negotiated what we ate the night before by asking “what are we shooting tomorrow?” Ok, then I’ll have a small dinner and a small breakfast and then I’ll be hungry. It definitely helped.

Meryl: I never ate off set. Never never never. There was no need.

Q: So were your meals off camera the foods you were preparing during the scenes?

Meryl: That was the reward at the end of the day, after we had the shots. Like the sole, oh the sole! You could smell it. You could smell it!

Q: Where you familiar with Julia Child beforehand?

Amy: I was familiar with her but more as a characterization. But not the real intimate details of her life.

Q: Nora, you’ve written about Julia Child previously. Was there a sense of fate in this film?

Nora: Totally and completely. I don’t mean to be ridiculous but I really did think “I should write this!” When they first told me about this movie as a director they already put a writer on it and I was not happy about it. I was hoping something would happen so that I would get to write it and she would not (we all laugh!) and my prayers were answered because she got a big television series on the air and that was the end of her! Then I got to step in and I got to do it! I was thrilled.

Q: Nora, did you see any parts of yourself in the characters?

Nora: Yes, I see parts of myself in both women. I see many of my worst qualities in the occasional moments of Julie Powell. There’s no question that I don’t have Julia Child’s fantastic sunny disposition. And there are definite pieces of my marriage in the Julia Child story because I am married to an extremely nice guy, so was Julia Child. I didn’t make up Paul Child, he was exactly like that.  The moment in the movie when Julia is rejected by Houghton Mifflin and he cheers her up is a scene that we played into our house on many occasions, right down to the last two words of it (I will leave this out, go see the movie!)

Q: A friend wanted me to ask if working on this film made you more appreciative of the men in your life, but it sounds like you already are! I mean you guys were working with characters that loved you so thoroughly and that was so special to see.

Meryl: What’s unusual is that you never see that. All the sustaining things, all the supporting things, just the fact that someone loves you even when you’re a brat. Even when you’re completely boring!

It’s such a valuable part of many women’s lives, and men’s lives, too. It’s kind of like a bath of pleasure to have that! I would look at Stanley Tucci (as Julia’s husband Paul) and just the way he looked at me made me feel beautiful! Then I’d go back to my dressing room, look in the mirror and think “Wow, I really believed him”.  It was really wonderful.

Q: How did you prepare for the role as Julia?

Meryl: I didn’t really prepare too well. I kept preparing as we went on. I cooked out of the book which I had never done and I actually had my arguments with her about how she would do certain things! But I looked at the video tapes and the American Masters series that they did on Julia Child and for me the most valuable parts were the early tapes, before she got hyperbolic about what she was doing, the curly cues of Julia Child, the flourishes. But the earliest stuff mostly.

Q:  How has this role changed your perspective on food?

Amy: It hasn’t necessarily changed my perspective on food but how I’m cooking and the reasons I’m cooking. I take my time now, I enjoy it. I’m starting to cook with my friends a lot more in tandem and I’m realizing how wonderful it is.

Q: Do you cook from Julia’s book as well?

Amy: Yes, that was one of the assignments Nora gave me. We had to cook a dish  from the book and blog about it and my dish was Brussels Sprouts with Cheese and I can’t even say it in French because I’ll sound really foolish. But they were beautiful and I wrote about it, much to my chagrin. I have so much respect for writers. If I was envious of anything, aside from height, it’s writing!

Q: in some capacity you’ve all worked together in some form. Any plans on working together again?

Nora: Well I’ve never worked with Amy before.
Meryl: But I’ve worked with you Amy before, separately.
Amy: Yes, it’s like 6 degrees of separation.

Nora: Oh god I hope so!

Amy: We’re going to play Siamese twins in our next film.

Matt says: I know I’d like that!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Julie & Julia opens August 7th. Thanks to Columbia Pictures for setting this all up and a huge thanks to Nora Ephron, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and my fellow blog pals!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from MattBites.com, on August 7, 2009 5:29 AM

I was flipping through Bill James’ 1987 Baseball Abstract the other day, because that’s the sort of thing that passes for fun in my house, and came across this little nugget:

…I wrote a program to compare the 1986 rookies with those in the 1948-1975 database so as to find the ten most comparable players to each of the 1986 rookies… One way to project what a player will do is to find similar players in the past and look at what they have done… the ten comparable players will subsequently diverge… but it gives us the range of normal expectation for a player of this type.

For the crop of significant position players that were rookies in 1986 (a total of 18) James estimates their career totals based on the weighted average of the career performances of their 10 most similar players. In other words, the most similar career would be counted more heavily than the 10th most similar career, with various gradations between those two endpoints.

Inasmuch as we can predict the future from the past, and acknowledging that every individual is unique, it’s a fun toy that sometimes yields startlingly accurate results. To use a fairly trivial example, here’s how James’ estimate for Andy Allanson compares with Allanson’s actual career:

	G	AB	BA
Allanson (James)	518	1415	.243
Allanson (actual)	512	1486	.240

Of course, it doesn’t always work out. Barry Bonds, for example, ends up with 122 homers according to the method. (James notes that there were no truly similar players to Bonds and that such a low home run total would be a “mighty disappointment.”)

Anyway, James runs through this exercise for several rookies. It’s pretty hit-or-miss, but check out the two American League right fielders, Danny Tartabull and Ruben Sierra:

	G	BA	HR	RBI
Tartabull (James)	1418	.269	200	742
Tartabull (actual)	1406	.273	262	925
Sierra (James)	1922	.280	271	1026
Sierra (actual)	2186	.268	306	1322

With just one season’s worth of data, those aren’t bad guesses at all. For grins, here’s how the entire crop turned out (James doesn’t provide all numbers for all players):

	James				Actual
	G	BA	HR	RBI	G	BA	HR	RBI
Andy Allanson	518	.243	-	-	512	.240	-	-
Barry Bonds	1111	-	122	470	2986	.298	762	1996
John Cangelosi	848	.247	19	-	1038	.250	12	134
Jose Canseco	1825	.262	290	998	1887	.266	462	1407
Will Clark	1399	.274	165	658	1976	.303	284	1205
Andres Galarraga	1085	.265	107	-	2257	.288	399	1425
Pete Incaviglia	1823	.265	282	982	1284	.246	206	655
Wally Joyner	897	.262	89	-	2033	.289	204	1106
John Kruk	713	.273	41	247	1200	.300	100	592
Mike LaValliere	632	.240	25	166	879	.268	18	294
Steve Lombardozzi	900	.246	37	259	446	.233	20	107
Kevin Mitchell	1269	.266	168	654	1223	.284	234	760
Bip Roberts	1002	.258	-	-	1202	.294	30	352
Ruben Sierra	1922	.280	271	1026	2186	.268	306	1322
Cory Snyder	1254	.277	189	-	1068	.247	149	488
Kurt Stillwell	523	.241	10	-	998	.249	34	310
Danny Tartabull	1418	.269	200	742	1406	.273	262	925
Robby Thompson	928	.260	35	-	1304	.257	119	458

Well, that was fun. You know, if you like that sort of thing.

Originally posted by Geoff Young from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on August 7, 2009 5:27 AM

katiebakes:

I just got my Fall Schedule from the 92stY in the mail and I take issue with Maria Bartiromo appearing under the heading “CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY” alongside Vikram Pandit and Jeffrey Immelt.

Oh, Bakes. Does one’s ability to secretly utilize Todd Thomson’s private party plane count for nothing anymore?  (Granted, Pandit’s costing Citi way more than her company-funded jetsetting did, but still!)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Spiersblr, on August 7, 2009 5:13 AM

As a kid I used to love bragging about having so many baseball cards. Back in the early-90’s when collecting was at its peak, every kid in my neighborhood has a collection going. I would say at the most I had about 5,000 cards.

After my return to collecting in 2007, I reached about 15,000 cards before I realized how unhappy that was making me. You see, I am the most obsessive person in the blogosphere. I’m the kind of guy that sets all three remote controls in perfect angles and yells at anyone who moves them.

The idea of having so many cards from different brands, eras, and players began to drive me nuts. In January of this year I gave everything away. As you can imagine, my wife was not thrilled. After all, this was stuff we paid thousands of dollars for not sponsored boxes card companies occasionally send out.

I am happy today with nothing more than Andrew Miller and Jose Canseco cards. It’s truly all I can handle. That’s why I nearly had a heart attack when I checked out this eBay auction Voice of the Collector pointed to last night. There’s a thin line between collecting and hoarding and this guy clearly crossed it years ago.

What I don’t understand is that the seller has seemingly hundreds of recent game-used relics but I could not find a single certified autograph in the entire lot. Yes, there are some key rookie cards including the Topps Rickey Henderson and Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. but you can pick those cards up for under $20 dollars on eBay.

I would say 99% of the wax boxes pictured are considered “junk wax” by today’s standards. Sure, it’s fun to bust but unless you send out the key cards to get graded and they do well, it’s certainly not worth the $3,500+ the auction has already reached. If you used this collecting to open up a store, odds are you’d be out of business in the first month.

Am I wrong?

Originally posted by Mario A. from Wax Heaven, on August 7, 2009 5:04 AM

Production Notes for Know Your Meme: Keyboard Cat

The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies presents its findings on ‘Play Him Off Keyboard Cat’

(Holy crap, I completely forgot to hit ‘publish’ on this weeks ago.)

So I have a little bit of this thing called Founder’s Syndrome.  Don’t worry, my case is mild, really, but I know it’s there, and I know that it affects Know Your Meme. As a founding member, sometimes I get the feeling that no one except for Ellie, Jamie, Drew (EP) and I know how this show is supposed to go.  And because I’m a founder, and as long as view counts are up, I can insist that everything be done my way. Until that moment when it fails.

Producing the episode for Keyboard Cat should have been one of those moments.

When we write scripts for KYM, we go through this process of research, debate, first draft, second draft, script meeting, final draft, and then we edit for language and style long before we get to the actual shoot.

As the one who gets the story structure and rhythm of KYM better than anyone, I’m usually responsible for the final draft. In this case, I failed miserably. My jokes weren’t funny, the pacing was terribly off, and I’m not sure if I even told a coherent story. I mean, I did my job, but I was horrified.  The script I turned in after so many revisions, after so much work had been done, ended up being total crap. It was a dung ball about 8 KB wide.

Even so, I started to insist on shooting my script as is.  Fortunately, my duties as Director of Operations for Rocketboom took me out of the studio for the afternoon. And while I was gone everyone else happened. Jamie and Ellie took my script and fixed the language. Barry ran a decent looking shoot. And the editors (oh, wow, the editors!) Eric Brown and Andrew Kornhaber reworked the cuts, transitions, and music cues called for in the original script and two days later, we emerged with a decent episode. So if you all are reading this, thanks everyone.

Script and research-wise, this was one of those episodes where 90% of the research gets tossed out in order to make the finished piece as tight and efficient as possible. Ellie became an expert on early 80’s outsider art and the VHS aesthetic. New writer Mike Rugnetta (of MemeFactory fame) took a good look into the traffic vector of KBC over time. I became obsessed with the history of jesters and clowns and KBC’s link to Vaudeville, ‘Showtime at the Apollo’, and ‘Family Guy’. All of this research is sitting in a rtf doc on my desktop. Hopefully, it’ll soon make it into the Keyboard Cat entry in the memeDB.

A few other notes:

(1) In the opening skit, we set it up as if Keyboard Cat would eventually play Elspethjane off but she doesn’t. We didn’t do it because I kind of felt as if that would be too obvious and that the only way it would work is if we found Ellie a foul up so awesome that people wouldn’t expect it. Alas, we couldn’t find a giant shark costume in time for the shoot.

(2) A few very knowledgable production people have remarked to me that while the actors in the foreground look properly lit, the back of the room gets washed out in blue and that this must be a mistake. This is not a mistake. This is purely intentional. We white balance against 3200K lights and allow the daylight to come through to turn the back of the “lab” blue. And it’s kind of a joke — it’s a reference to the oversaturated, overdramatic lighting of certain procedural dramas. Some people don’t get it but I like the look.

(3) Shooting in the summer is miserable. During shoots, we have to turn off the air conditioning and the windows in the back of the scene face west bringing constant sun during the afternoon. Add the set lights and wearing a labcoat becomes nearly unbearable (Ellie was such a trooper.) So as a small in-joke, I put the Steve Ballmer ‘Dance Monkeyboy’ video on in the background.

Script by Ellie Rountree, Mike, and myself. Research by Mike and Chris Menning. Shot by Barry Pousman. Hosted by Ellie and Jamie Wilkinson. Edited by Eric Brown, Andrew Kornhaber, and Barry. Production assistance from Brad Kim, Greg Leuch, and Mike.

(via: knowyourmeme)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Final Boss Form, on August 6, 2009 10:33 PM

In the south-western corner on the St John The Divine property is Synod Hall, a large indoor space available for functions (movies often rent it for catering and extras holding purposes when shooting in the area).

I noticed something on my last job there - the statues in the arch above the front doors can sing!

More specifically, they seem to have learned how to chirp. Somewhere, nestled in amongst the statues ornamenting the arch, are dozens and dozens of birds - and you will never see a single one.

I seriously have no idea where they hide. Yes, you might see nests, like the ones below, but you can stare and stare, and all you’ll see are statues chirping back at you. No wings flittering, no beaks pecking…If they weren’t chirping, you’d never know they were there.

While you’re staring up at the singing statues, you should take a moment to look more closely, as they’re not the typical ho-hum collection of saints and martyrs. Take, for example, this workman, complete with hard hat and measuring tape:

Nearby is this rain-coated sailor, who looks like he just stepped off a Gloucester fishing boat (note that he’s standing on a coiled rope):

A little lower is Hamlet, contemplating Yorick’s skull (that is one great skull!):

And here we have a scientist, peering through an ancient microscope:

The arch is filled with numerous sculptures representing all segments of society, and has some really imaginative work. Definitely worth a look next time you’re passing by 110th & Amsterdam. Though most people only bother to see the cathedral, the grounds of St. Johns have some pretty impressive sites, including three beautiful roaming peacocks and a garden consisting only of plants mentioned in the Bible.

Finally, for those who have never been inside Synod Hall, it is essentially the closest thing New York City has to the dining room at Hogwarts:

-SCOUT

Originally posted by Scout from Scouting NY, on August 6, 2009 9:47 PM

(via luc sante)

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on August 6, 2009 6:42 PM

Of Wrestling with Moses, the story of how Jane Jacobs took on Robert Moses and his plans for two Manhattan freeways, Tyler Cowen says:

The parts of this book about Jacobs are splendid. The parts about Moses are good, though they were more familiar to me. I believe there has otherwise never been much biographical material on Jacobs's life.

The New York Times has a lengthy excerpt from the book that recalls Jacobs' arrival in NYC.

Writing about the city remained her passion. She often went up to the rooftop of her apartment building and watched the garbage trucks as they made their way through the city streets, picking the sidewalks clean. She would think, "What a complicated great place this is, and all these pieces of it that make it work." The more she investigated and explored neighborhoods, infrastructure, and business districts for her stories, the more she began to see the city as a living, breathing thing -- complex, wondrous, and self-perpetuating.

Tags: Anthony Flint   books   cities   Jane Jacobs   NYC   robertmoses   Tyler Cowen   Wrestling with Moses

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 6, 2009 5:27 PM

I love JK Keller's Tatamount project.

Photographs of mountains are computationally altered to flatten the mountain's elevations, while an ocean horizon is altered to mimic the mountain's original topography.

In the comments, he mentions that the effect is done with a combination of JavaScript and Photoshop...which I didn't even know was a thing. (via today and tomorrow)

Tags: JK Keller   photography   remix

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 6, 2009 2:49 PM

Vanity Fair goes long in a profile of Mad Men and series creator Matthew Weiner. Great stuff if you're a fan.

The dialogue is almost invariably witty, but the silences, of which there are many, speak loudest: Mad Men is a series in which an episode's most memorable scene can be a single shot of a woman at the end of her day, rubbing the sore shoulder where a bra strap has been digging in. There's really nothing else like it on television.

The article mentions that the show's core group of writers are all women. The show's portrayal of women is what really drew me into the show. The first 2-3 episodes were nothing but men behaving badly and I was ready to give up on it but then came episode 4 and it was like, oh, the women are sticking it to the men now...this could be interesting.

Tags: Mad Men   Matthew Weiner   TV

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 6, 2009 1:18 PM

I not going to lie, I was absolutely blown away by the response to today’s piece on Josh Bell and what happens behind the scenes when a prospect gets traded. Not that I didn’t like the piece, I just didn’t expect such universal praise and wanting for more. Clearly, you the reader want more of these kind of “how the sausage is made” type of articles, so I want to bring them to you. So let’s use the comments for your suggestions. What would you like to see? Fill in the blank: “What happens behind the scenes when __________ happens?” We’ll see when readers seem to want the most, and then assemble the right pieces for more articles in this genre.

Originally posted by Kevin Goldstein from Baseball Prospectus: Unfiltered, on August 6, 2009 1:18 PM

From scoochmaroo on Instructables

Drumsticks are pretty tasty straight from the supermarket freezer, but they'd be even better if you made them yourself. Instructables has a tutorial on how to make them at home. Just get ice cream cones, ice cream, Magic Shell, crushed nuts, wax paper, and you're on your way to having a freezer-ful of customized Drumsticks.

Related: How to Make a Choco Taco

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on August 6, 2009 12:45 PM

Kristina Halvorson's book is out in two weeks. I spoke with Kristina on the Try Making Yourself More Interesting Panel at SXSW earlier this year. As we talked about then, interestingness is key to web charm, to awesomeness online, and we recommend you Do Epic Shit.

Anything epic requires a strategy, lots of work, and Kristina will teach you how to create meaningful content in Content Strategy for the Web.

Originally posted by DL Byron from Bike Hugger, on August 6, 2009 12:39 PM

Good news, Bruce Campbell fans! He’s still alive! Also, here’s where to watch him during the next month.

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on August 6, 2009 12:25 PM

When is enough, enough? - make thousands more decisions on Hunch.com

Originally posted by caterina from Caterina.net, on August 6, 2009 12:11 PM

me: emailed this link [http://gothamist.com/2009/08/06/subway_announcers_wanted.php] to someone, thinking of a friend of ours who does voice-overs who might be interested in auditioning.

response: “that would be funny since he already was the voice of the subway food chain for 3 years.”

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on August 6, 2009 12:01 PM

Rocketboom NYC Correspondent Ella Morton interviews artist Josh Hadar about his hand sculpted custom bicycles.

Originally posted by hello@rocketboom.com (Rocketboom) from Rocketboom, on August 6, 2009 10:33 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on August 6, 2009 8:55 AM

Rafael Amado Deras/Flickr

In a surprise move few saw coming, Lindsay Lohan landed a job—a real, honest-to-goodness paid acting gig. Confirmed via Lohan’s Twitter and a plethora of gossip sites, it looks like the crazy bus is about to make a stop. Destination: Austin.

Lohan, best known in recent years for her ability to be a hot mess (stealing, drama with on again-off again girlfriend Samantha Ronson and multiple stints in rehab), has signed on to star in Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming film, Machete.

The film is scheduled to start shooting this month (cast/crew trailers have already been spotted downtown) and is rumored to star Robert De Niro, Steven Seagal and Nash Bridges himself, Don Johnson. Rodriguez chose to write this film after the faux Grindhouse trailer received so much attention. The plot summary on IMDB says something about snipers, assassinations, and Cheech Marin, all of which are secondary to the fact that Lohan is likely going to trash this place like a cheap roadside motel after a Whitesnake reunion show. Face it, Austin, we aren’t ready for this.

Lohan's career looked so bright at the beginning, but some have said that her fall has seemed more cringeworthy and pathetic than those of others. And who knows? Maybe Lohan’s stay in Austin will be uneventful. In any case, consider this advance notice to prepare for potential chaos, paparazzi traffic jams and spray tan shortages.

Originally posted by austinist_keb from Austinist, on August 6, 2009 8:45 AM

So not only does the wonderful Shake Shack in New York City serve custard (with a special flavor each day) they also serve hamburgers and french fries that are super popular.  And while I am not a big supporter of hamburgers (I’ve been a vegetarian for 7+ years) it’s an undeniable fact (just ask Eric Schlosser) that people want to eat them.

And if they are going to eat them I hope they are doing it at places like the Shake Shack.  Why? Well Shake Shack takes all of the old cooking oil used to make that fried (and tasty) food and turns it into bio-diesel fuel!

They are involved in the RWA Resource Recovery program, which is “New York’s only ecologically, and socially conscious on-demand, free, pick-up service for waste cooking oil that is converted into premium grade biodiesel fuel”

And it seems that the program just got a new grant to continue moving forward with their oil-changing efforts! Awesome.

Also, the weather is a little rainy here in NYC so I don’t know if I will make it out for custard today.

But it’s all good, the flavor today is Sweet Corn which was also on last month’s custard calendar.  Of course though it’s pretty darn tasty.

*photo by stu_spivack (CC)

Originally posted by blair@takepart.com from TakePart Social Action Network™, on August 6, 2009 8:21 AM

Photos by Donna

Have been on a sourdough binge since the purple cabbage post (waffles last Sunday, bread, pictured above, by dinnertime) and loving Carri's ratio of 1 part starter : 1 part water : 2 parts flour with 1% salt by weight, though I back off by about 20% on the water because it's been so humid.  I usually make a dough that's between 30 and 40 ounces total weight.

I've noticed various differences in the loaves and because I've put up the BLT From Scratch Challenge, I thought I should go over the 5 key steps of making bread, whether you're using sourdough or commercial yeast.

Mixing/Kneading:

Mix or knead the dough to the point that it can be stretched to translucency. This ensures that it will adequately trap the gas being released.  Not mixing enough will fail to develop the gluten that makes it elastic; overmixing can break up the gluten network.  Mixing flour, water, salt and yeast is the first pleasure of making bread--I like my hands in the dough and always finish the kneading by hand (I'm not a fan of the no-knead bread—it diminishes both fun and flavor; but then again, I have a mixer to do most of the labor).

The First Rise:

Sometimes called fermentation, allowing the yeast to create gas and flavor, and good elasticity in the dough, but not so much that it becomes slack from over rising.  It should roughly double in size, and it should not spring back when you poke it with your finger.

Shaping:

After it's risen, knead it again to force out as much gas as possible and redistribute the yeast.  Let it relax a little so the gluten doesn't work against you, then shape it as you wish, into a baguette, into a boule. Make it as tight as possible.

The Second Rise:

The second rise allows the yeast to get back into action, aerating the dough into the shape and interior structure.  It should take about an hour at room temperature.  In my opinion this is the most important step.  You can also refrigerate it for up to 24 hours to develop more flavor.  If you do, let it warm up a bit at room temperature for an hour or so.

Baking:

Start it in a very hot oven.  You can turn the oven down if you think it's making the crust too dark. I cook my bread till the interior is about 200 degrees.

That's really all there is too it.  There is of course more in Ratio, but these are the basics.  

One last thing though.  Jim Lahey, via Mark Bittman, introduced baking a boule in a Dutch oven.  This is a fantastic idea.  Moisture released while it bakes remains trapped in the the pot, resulting in a fantastic crust.  Highly recommend this if you're making a bread for your BLT.  Highly recommend anytime you're making bread.

Great bread at home is not a mystery or a science, it's simple a matter of recognizing the key steps above and paying attention to them. 

Originally posted by michael ruhlman from ruhlman.com, on August 6, 2009 6:59 AM

Today is the 39th anniversary of The Shea Stadium Festival For Peace.

To commemorate the day, here is a taste of what might have happened at that gig. Get ready kids to groove on some of the tunes and talents that rocked Shea Stadium August 6th, 1970. First up, Johnny Winter with Mean Town Blues. This one goes out to Tony Bernazard:



Next up, Poco takes the stage with some tasty country licks. Smoking is permitted. Here's "Just for me and you."



Lets crank this Festival up a notch with the James Gang and "Walk Away," also rumored to be Oliver Perez's favorite song:



One of the hottest acts of the day, lets give a warm Shea Stadium welcome to Creedence Clearwater Revival!
 

Richie Havens opened Woodstock the year before. According to some folks, it was during his set at Shea that the Mezannine level began to shake:
 

The headliner for the Shea Stadium Festival For Peace was Janis Joplin. Two months after her set, Janis would be dead.




Read more on Shea Stadium's Festival For Peace here and here.

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on August 6, 2009 6:38 AM

You knew Mos Def could rap, and act, and argue foreign affairs with Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie. (Did you know that? If not, check this clip from Bill Maher’s Politically Correct.) And did you know he could sing? Here he is giving tribute to Michael Jackson—something Rap Radar’s Elliott Wilson notes is currently “Mandatory. End of story.”—on a cover of “Billie Jean.” He’s subtle in striking the iconic poses, and in his moonwalk, and he lets the crowd at Chicago’s House of Blues take the high parts. And there’s a real sadness in his reggae-tinged lilt. You can think of lots of way someone could do something like this, most of them not nearly this nice.

Originally posted by Dave Bry from The Awl, on August 6, 2009 6:25 AM

In remembrance of the mass destruction of life and property due to the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima 64 years ago today, The Big Picture presents a typically excellent selection of photos.

Tags: atomicbomb   hiroshima   Japan   photography   war   World War II

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 6, 2009 6:04 AM

Great flying Gelflings — the Henson studio hasn't decided to abandon the Dark Crystal sequel. In fact, it's moving forward. Just in case you've run out of things to watch while getting high.

In an interview with MTV, the son of muppet god Jim Henson, Brian Henson, gave a little update on the next movie in the series about muppets that will make you secretly terrified.

The sequel to Frank Oz and Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal will be called The Power of the Dark Crystal:

We have a 'Dark Crystal' sequel, called 'The Power of the Dark Crystal.' It has a very strong script... Both of those projects... are very close to going into pre-production. They're both really ready to go. [The studio is] just [in the process of] putting together the final finance pieces and the final distribution pieces.

It's all happening! I have the patience of a five-year-old when it comes to muppet movies, as there is a dire need for some good old fashioned puppetry in today's cinema. Hopefully the urRu pace at which the Dark Crystal 2 seems to be plodding along may indicate an intent from Henson studios to do DC2 right, this time lets really scare the kiddies, with puppets!

Originally posted by Meredith Woerner from io9, on August 6, 2009 6:00 AM

This year, in Citi Field’s debut season, the Mets have lost Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, John Maine, Jon Niese and J.J. Putz to major injuries, while Oliver Perez, Brian Schneider, Fernando Martinez, Ryan Church, Gary Sheffield and Alex Cora all spent time on the disabled list, and Luis Castillo twisted his ankle falling down the dugout steps.

“Maybe it is the ghost of Shea,” Alex Cora told Joel Sherman of the New York Post, in what is a sarcastic, but interesting and funny review of the injury-plagued season.

…sure, why not… or, perhaps it’s the medical staff… or, maybe it’s just really bad luck… who knows… like i suggested a few weeks ago, there are people who believe the Mets training staff may give too much slack to players, who they let dictate how they’re feeling, how they’re progressing, etc., instead of the team just telling the player how it is… i do know the team’s doctors are well respected around the game… i believe the Mets were willing to accept this all is a freakish accident, but i think this recent run, losing niese, shffield and castillo, may force them to overhaul the training staff, if for no other reason than to give confidence to new players… i mean, be it superstition, or a bad rep, if you’re a free agent, do you want to walk in to that clubhouse right now… hell, i’m just a blogger, albeit an injury prone blogger, and and i’m paranoid of walking within 10 feet of that place…

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 August 6, 2009 5:22 AM

The revisions keep coming on the Walter Cronkite obituary—and this is not the one that Clark Hoyt chewed out Alessandra Stanley for, this is the actual obit. The latest appendage blames Cronkite’s own autobiography for the errors, but here’s the running tally thus far.This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 21, 2009
Because of an editing error, an obituary Saturday about the CBS newsman Walter Cronkite misspelled the name of the church in Manhattan where his family plans to hold a private funeral service. It is St. Bartholomew’s, not Bartholemew’s.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 23, 2009
An obituary on Saturday about Walter Cronkite misidentified the country in which he crash-landed a glider as a United Press correspondent in World War II. It was the Netherlands, not Belgium.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 6, 2009
An obituary on July 18 about Walter Cronkite, using information from his autobiography, “A Reporter’s Life,” misstated the origin of the term “anchor.” While Mr. Cronkite was referred to as the anchor of CBS news coverage of the 1952 presidential conventions, that was not the first time that “anchor” and “anchorman” were used. Both terms had been applied to broadcasters in other contexts before the conventions. The obituary also included an erroneous anecdote from the autobiography about the extent of his fame. He was said to be so widely known that newscasters in Sweden were once called “Cronkiters,” but that term is not known to linguists in that country.

And that’s the way it is. For now.

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on August 6, 2009 4:53 AM

You want to watch the paternal instincts of a bunch of guys instantly kick in like their desire for s'mores over an open fire? Then show them this adorable knit baby-sized Link costume. Oh my gawd, who doesn't want a little baby now?! Not only that, but the quiver holds the baby bottle. It's all toooooo cute. We want an office baby now. Craftster.org user UpKnitCreek created this as a baby shower gift ... and we're totally jealous of the recipient.

We're currently trying to get in contact with UpKnitCreek to see if we can get the pattern. Not that we'd know what to do with it, but we're sure somebody else does -- and then we want one! We haven't been this impressed with a knitting project since the Guitar Hero scarf.

We're having a baby to justify this Link costume originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 07:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Alexander Sliwinski from Joystiq, on August 6, 2009 4:01 AM

Because Wil Wheaton made me look at this first thing in the morning. He will pay.

Originally posted by Warren Ellis from Warren Ellis, on August 6, 2009 3:38 AM

Xerox Star 8010 Interfaces

(via grubes)

Originally posted by finn from Modcult, on August 6, 2009 3:37 AM

There is no denying that iPhone rules the smartphone world of today.  Apple just sold 5.2 million iPhones last quarter, a 626 percent increase from the previous Q2.  The iPhone OS accounts for 47 percent of smartphone request according to AdMob.  Apple also claims 32 percent of the handset industry operating profits.  The numbers are impressive, but how long can iPhone remain at the top?

We could argue for hours on all sorts of different metrics, but I think the most important leading indicator is developers.  Apple owes much of its iPhone success to the App Store and the community that sprung up around it.  Everyone has seen the massive “There’s an app for that” campaign. Recent numbers suggest there are 65,000 apps that have been downloaded over 1.5 billion times.

With all the success that iPhone has enjoyed, would you believe we might be past their tipping point?  Check out the following stats provided in a Flurry analytics report from July.

I think we know where this is going.

The chart compares the number of new projects (apps) that are being developed for iPhone and Android.  Since the beginning of the year, Android has more than double its share while iPhone has declined each month.  As time goes on, more developers are choosing to bring their apps to Android and I see no sign of this stopping.  With every major US carrier ready to jump on the Android bandwagon, we are likely to see this trend accelerate.

With all the recent news, is it really that surprising some devs are ready to bail on the iPhone?  No one understands the App Store approval process.  The FCC is investigating Apple’s rejection of Google Voice.  Loyal customers are unhappy.  Even Palm has filed a dispute against Apple for blocking the Pre from iTunes.

If you want to know where iPhone is headed, just talk to their developers and they will tell you.  The bloom is off the rose.

[via Mashable]

Originally posted by Taylor Wimberly from Android and Me, on August 5, 2009 11:36 PM

There’s no doubt in my mind that Anil Dash has a crystal ball stowed away somewhere at his place back in NYC. While his piece on the Pushbutton web almost two weeks ago was inspiring in concept, it’s exhilarating to see it come to fruition.

(Seriously, if you haven’t read his piece, GO THERE NOW: The Pushbutton Web: Realtime Becomes Real. I’ll wait.)

Back? With me? Good.

Tonight, Googler Mihai Parparita announces that Google Reader now sends realtime updates to FriendFeed when you share items using the PubSubHubbub protocol.

Huh-wha? you ask. Yeah, I know. It’s no Google Wave. But that’s what makes this exciting. This kind of small Pushbutton implementation is how real web pages will easily use existing technology to notify one another of new updates. The Google Reader/FriendFeed integration is just the first tiny step in what will be a broad deployment of realtime-enabled sites. These sites and services will let one another know when they have new data to share without the sucky inefficiencies of polling. Check out how fast FriendFeed updates when you share an item in Google Reader in this video.

In short, it’s almost zero latency.

I’ve been lurking on the PSHB mailing list for a few weeks now. I’ve enabled pinging to Google’s open hub on Smarterware’s feed. (XML nerds, note the rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com" attributes in my Atom.) This means posts from here should show up in realtime on both FriendFeed and, according to this demo video, Google Reader (though my tests show GReader does not work right now). To enable PubSubHubbub pinging on your feed, you just need to check a box over in FeedBurner. Here’s a helpful howto on doing that. For more, check out Google’s own post on the subject, What’s all the hubbub about PubSubHubbub? and Dave Winer’s breakdown.

This is just the beginning of what might be done with publishers (like you) pushing new updates/tweets/blog posts/whatevers to your subscribers in under a second via a hub or cloud. We’re talking about real-time cloud computing that doesn’t depend upon centralized servers or technology owned by one company here. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

(Speaking of Google Reader, I’ve been having a ball with its sharing feature this week. Here’s a page of my shared items or you can get it with instantaneous updates on FriendFeed.)

PubSubHubbub support for Reader shared items [Google Reader Blog]

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Smarterware, on August 5, 2009 9:29 PM

I've really been enjoying the response to my recent blog posts — here are some more thoughtful replies.

Rafe Colburn, one of my favorite bloggers for a decade now, followed up my Apple and secrecy post with "Apple vs. my preconceived notions":

In one scenario, this is a bubble of sorts. Apple may be doing OK now, but they’re headed for a big crash when people get sick of their behavior. In another scenario — one that I think is, sadly, more likely, Apple continues as they are, adjusting when it must to address reality, but only in the most minimal way.

I've also really been enjoying watching Dave Winer's work recently. In the past we were both too young and stubborn to realize we're amused by a lot of the same things (There's my refrain of "We hate most in others that which we fail to see in ourselves" again!) but these days it is just plain entertaining to watch Dave go. My amusement is amply covered in "Anil's belly laugh", which mentions my response to Dave's latest bit of hacking. As I mentioned on my Twitter account, I also recorded an episode of the Bad Hair Day podcast with Dave and Marshall Kirkpatrick last week.

Speaking of podcasts, This Week in Google is a new one featuring Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis and Internet Hero Gina Trapani. This week, they had a very nice look at The Pushbutton Web towards the end of the show. I'm delighted how many people have told me they found that post valuable or useful in talking about this whole area of innovation. Since I'm a lousy coder, writing blog posts like that is the most helpful thing I can do.

Finally, as it's come up in several contexts lately, it's probably worth repeating the key point of a post I wrote two years ago, which attracted some attention then but is probably even more relevant today. The core concept is about "The Watery Web":

It's not true to say that Facebook is the new AOL, and it's oversimplification to say that Facebook's API is the new [MSN] Blackbird, or the new [AOL] Rainman. But Facebook is part of the web. Think of the web, of the Internet itself, as water. Proprietary platforms based on the web are ice cubes. They can, for a time, suspend themselves above the web at large. But over time, they only ever melt into the water. And maybe they make it better when they do.

Thanks, as always to people who've responded to what I've written, and especially to all of those who've taken these posts as starting points and expanded the ideas into some truly inspiring creations.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on August 5, 2009 9:10 PM

Tonight, several folks organized a Ghost Bike installation and memorial service for Rui Hui Lin, 38, who was killed while returning from a delivery on his bicycle Monday in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh. The driver who hit Lin initially fled the scene after getting out and assessing the situation, but turned himself in to police this afternoon after cell phone videos of the accident and eyewitness accounts began to pour in. The event was somber, but it was good to see some local media attending, especially given the usual shoulder-shrugging that attends even the most intentional car-vs-bike accidents that have happened here in recent years. Ghost bikes continue to be a powerful memorial to cyclists who are injured and killed by motor vehicles - I'm interested to see how long this memorial stays in place.

Originally posted by Shaun Silfer from Just Seeds: Blog, on August 5, 2009 6:34 PM

Have you ever dreamed of opening a cafe?  Michael Idov did, and his experiences trying to do just that are the basis of his first novel, “Ground Up”.  Set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, “Ground Up” chronicles the story of a young married couple who make their dream a reality, where it quickly becomes their nightmare.  The story takes you on a journey of hopes and dreams through the nitty gritty of New York’s rugged entrepreneurial underbelly, barely pausing long enough for you to clean up after the last morning rush.  They’ve thought of every detail, every mistake that they won’t make.  And yet…something is missing, and the whole dream unravels.  The concise, effortless narrative describes sleepless nights, neighborhood characters, powerful landlords, and local competition that any cafe owner can relate to, and the desire to make dreams come true that can be shared by anyone.

Idov’s experiences were also the subject of a Slate article in 2005, which led to the writing of this novel.  His article “Bitter Brew” is available here, along with an mp3 audio version.

For more information on “Ground Up’, follow the link below to read about it on Amazon, or visit michaelidov.com.

Amazon.com: Ground Up: A Novel (9780374531546): Michael Idov: Books.

Posted in cafes, coffee Tagged: cafe, coffee, NYC

Originally posted by Mike White from ShotZombies.com, on August 5, 2009 4:38 PM

From Freed Journalists Return to U.S. in the NY Times:

"Thirty hours ago, Euna Lee and I were prisoners in North Korea," Ms. Ling said in brief remarks to reporters, blinking back tears. "We feared that at any moment we could be prisoners in a hard labor camp. Then suddenly we were told that we were going to a meeting. We were taken to a location and when we walked through the doors, we saw standing before us President Bill Clinton."

One could imagine a chart of the possible range of human experiences from negative to positive circa 2009; near one end would be "prisoners in a North Korean hard labor camp" and near the other, "personal meeting with President Bill Clinton".

Tags: Bill Clinton   North Korea

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 5, 2009 3:52 PM

Lately it feels like a full-blown startup revival is taking place in NYC and betaworks is very much at the center of it.  So I was grateful to be included in a lunch discussion group they held at their offices yesterday.

Some things I left the discussion thinking about:

- In a discussion of the “real time” web (you can’t go to betaworks and not discuss the real-time web!) Anil Dash made the distinction between the value of real time as in the information being recent and the value of real time as in having a shared experience. The distinction strikes me as critical.  Speaking strictly from personal experience, most of the value I get from real time services like Twitter & Facebook falls in the latter category.  Reading my friends’ tweets helps me keep connected with them, the same way bumping into them on the street and exchanging small talk does.  The content isn’t as important as they connection shared and presence felt.

I think Anil’s distinction also explains why Twitter search is sometimes a strange experience.  Besides the (presumably fixable) problems of spam and relevancy ranking, you see a lot of tweets that are fragments of friends bantering.  There’s no context.  The major exception is when a news event happens, since then the related tweets are generally reactions to that event, so the event plus a single tweet provides the full context.

-Caterina Fake discussed a few principles for designing successful user generated sites.

Among them:  make sure the minimum unit of work required of user contributions is very small (ideally, something that takes just a few seconds).  You can change something on Wikipedia in seconds, but writing a Google Knol page can take hours.   At Hunch, we think of one of our main product design innovations was to take something inherently large and complex (decision trees) and reduce the minimum unit of work to something small (submitting a result or question).

Another principle we discussed was what we at Hunch call the read-write ratio.  For every page created in Wikipedia (a “write”), there are thousands of millions of instances of people reading that page (”reads”).  The same holds true for YouTube (writes=uploads), Yahoo Answers (writes=questions & answers).  One goal in designing user generated systems is to get a high read-write ratio (for example, by avoiding duplicate writes).

Anyways, it seemed people enjoyed the discussion, since, as Anil pointed out, they weren’t doing much fiddling with their iPhones.

Originally posted by chris from cdixon.org, on August 5, 2009 2:58 PM

The trailer for The Lovely Bones, directed by Peter Jackson and based on the 2002 book by Alice Sebold.

It is the story of a teenage girl who, after being brutally raped and murdered, watches from heaven as her family and friends go on with their lives, while she herself comes to terms with her own death.

Jackson personally purchased the film rights to the book and from the trailer, it seems like this is a return to his Heavenly Creatures days, with a bit of the LOTR fantasy and special effects sprinkled in. Looking forward to this one.

Tags: Alice Sebold   books   movies   Peter Jackson   The Lovely Bones   trailers

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 5, 2009 2:21 PM

It has been a hoot to write for Loge13 over the years, covering everything from Shea Stadium's bathrooms to Citi Field's bathrooms and all points in between. Occasionally I even write about baseball although that is admittedly secondary. The goal of Loge13 was always to write about Shea Stadium, and along the way, Met fans and what makes us unique.

One of the great legacies of Shea Stadium is music and without a doubt the post that elicited the most feedback was about the Shea Stadium Festival For Peace, held 39 years ago on August 6th, 1970.

That date was the 25th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. To recognize the occasion, organizers staged a 12-hour anti-war concert at Shea Stadium. Performers included Janis Joplin, CCR, Paul Simon, Johnny Winter, Poco and more.

My original post  received alot of comments from folks who were searching for info on the show. In fact, there is very little officially available about the concert. No footage or photos, no bootlegs. Thus Loge13 became something of a hub for folks looking to connect with each other and share memories...or at least confirm or refute rumors (no Jimi Hendrix did not perform that night). The comments left on Loge12.com have become an oral history of the show and provide some neat nuggets about Shea. For example, fans swear the Mezzanine section swayed up and down that night.

One reader created a Wikipedia entry about the show after I wrote my original post, which was cool, and solicited more details from commenters. Readers continue to find my post via Google and add comments. I harvested some of the best last year. In keeping with tradition, here are some more memories of Shea Stadium's Concert For Peace, posted since then:


Charles J. Biancheri said

Hey man I thought I was Dreaming and thought I was the only one there cause no one remembered. A concert to remember came down from CT at 15 best concert ever. I can remember the movement of the mezzanine will never forget that day. Am glad to see other people wont forget either. Were all survivors.

CJB

[September 28, 2008 2:38 PM]  

Gene Chiamulera said

I remember that concert. I was lucky enough to get on the stage with my friend & guitarist Paul Frehley. Some other acts that perfomed that day were The Young Rascals, Richie Havens, Dionne Warwick and I think the cast of HAIR. I remember my friend Paul helping John Kay from Steppenwolf change his guitar strings, later on Paul became better known as Ace Frehley lead guitarist of Kiss. I can't believe it was over 38 years ago.

Lisa Boyle Mevorach said

Thanks for all the memories. I went with my friend, the two of us saw the Jimi Hendrix concert the month before at Randall's Island. We were thrilled when Janis came out on stage. I believe she drank so much that she had a hard time completing her last couple of songs--it was an abbreviated set. John Sebastian and Johnny Winter were great. It was a real great and all American group of artists.

[November 16, 2008 6:43 PM]  

Richie J. said

I was at that show too. I got in for free as a marshall. It was incredible. The Rascals did not play but the next generation band with their guitarist eddie Brigati, I think named Bulldog played. when Ritchie Havens performed the tiers in the stadium were bouncing 3 feet up and down from the crowds getting into the music and stomping and jumping up and down. pretty scary, they had to tell the crow to calm down. Johnny Winter And came out when it started to get dark and tore the house down. Johnny and Derringer were incredible. When Janis joplin came out she was pissed at all the bright lights. She went off screaming that if " YOU DON'T TURN DOWN THOSE M***FUC#*N LIGHTS I"L HAVE THIS CROWD TEAR THIS HOUSE DOWN" The crowd went nuts...the lights came down and Janis sang her ass off.She was incredible. I really glad I got to see her perfornm since 2 months later she was gone and nobody has ever come along to replace her since. She was GREAT! OH and yes too bad . but definately no Hendrix...I wish but was still one of the best Musical Memories of my life . I could tell a million stories about that day and actually do whenever I get a chance 28 years later. Now I own a music store and wish music was like it was back then....Who knows? Maybe they will invent a new drug that actually makes you get into music again instaed of crack and hip hop Rap shit that just damages society.

Jack M said

I have been searching for ages to find info about this concert and it was like a Christmas present reading all this. I was 20 years old and attended with an old girlfriend and fellow "stoner"
from my neighborhood.
I have remembered most of the groups, especially Joplin who, amidst her drinking, shouted for them to turn out the lights, finally one last, "turn out the F---ing lights" and they went out, it was so magical! Poco totally rocked as did James Gang with Funk 49. John Sebastian, whom I had seen before, was so wrecked he spent a lot of time tuning his autoharp. There were so many people performing you just went from group to group. I remember the bottles of wine and the joints going up and down the rows, take a swig, or take a toke, and pass it on. We were next to the isle where NY's finest were there to keep peace and order. They sometimes joined in and other times just kept the free drink and such moving to the next person. They did ask people to stop the jumping, I do remember the stadium vibrating, I was on the second level behind home plate and could really feel the movement. No need to repeat the above comments, very accurate details of a truly fantastic day with nearly 12 hours of music and very little down time. I hope more continue to read this. One last note, I always referred to this concert as the "August Festival for Peace", which is why I could not find anything written about it for years. Maybe that could be included as a possible link to finding it. I do want to point out that I have all my vinyl from the 60's on up, still alphabetical, and I'd love to recreate the concert because I'm sure with over 900 albums I have virtually all the music that was played that day. Thank you to Eric for listing groups, and anyone else who can lists sets.

Elaine said

I came across on YouTube The Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965. It was so exciting to see that because I was at that phenomenal concert. Then I thought about the Peace Concert at Shea which I also attended. I thought for sure a portion of it would be on YouTube.It's a shame because the Peace Concert was such a great concert. If I can recall, Steven Stills from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young was also there. If that was the concert, I remember him to be quite obnoxious. Other than that, I remember it to be the mini Woodstock. Those were the days.

[April 10, 2009 10:58 PM]  |  

Don said

I was 15. Went with my 13 year old girlfriend. My sister asked me if I wanted tickets a few days before. We had great lower level (orange) seats on 1st base side. It was hot! The show and the sun. Went on all day with the great bands and acts.

[June 19, 2009 12:14 PM]  

Steve Nesich said

I was there with my younger brother and 3 other high school friends. We left New Jersey early that morning, with our sacks of food and drinks, getting on the bus to NYC, with all of the daily job commuters. After arrival at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, we got on the subway to Shea Stadium. What a great day it was! Close to 13 hours of music, fun and yes, a hot, beaming sun. (But we didn't care about that part.)

No Jimi. In fact, he wasn't even scheduled. Janis was a surprise guest. As was, I believe, Paul Simon. Amazing acts all around. And the tickets were cheap. I was amazed at how more than half the stadium was empty! (There probably wasn't much of a budget for marketing and promotion.)

The most memorable part of the day, however, is what this concert did to shape our thinking, as teenagers, about the insanity of the war in Vietnam and our responsibility to oppose it. Years later, we all talk about how that day raised our political consciousness in a matter of hours, helping us put together an understanding of this issue, through the vehicle of music.

I'll post more at another time about this great day: August 6, 1970.

[July 16, 2009 8:55 PM]

Ruby Harris said

I was there. Janis sang with Jonny Winter. Credence rocked the stadium. Peter Yarrow mc'd. Poco's first gig, James Gang's first gig, Joe Walsh changed a string during a long guitar solo.

[July 28, 2009 1:06 AM] 

Tommy said

It was a great show and I have never heard anyone talk about it on radio or in print. Grand funk railroad was also there. I also saw Janis Joplin at the N.Y pavilion of the old worlds fair in Flushing Meadow Park.

For more, visit:

Shea Stadium Festival For Peace

Festival For Peace Revisited

  

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on August 5, 2009 2:00 PM

I got home just in time to turn on today's game and see Nelson Figueroa's triple.

My first thought: has it gotten this bad that Nelson is now in the starting lineup?

Well it's almost that bad. Wonder boy Jonathan Niese did start but crumpled to the ground after covering first in the second inning. the Mets say he may have a torn hamstring.  There are no words.

But give Nelson credit for bouncing back after Monday's disaster. He pitched a great game and drove in a few runs. That's the kind of stuff to warm a Met fans' heart.

The Mets won 9-0 and lost perhaps two more players. Gary Sheffield said after the game his hamstring was also bugging him. I'm bullish on shares in the Hospital for Special Surgery for the rest of the year.

Originally posted by Kingman from Loge 13, on August 5, 2009 1:46 PM

August is food science month here at The Brooklyn Kitchen! And in the grand tradition of discussing science on fridays (maintained by our favorite station, WNYC, through the syndicated show Science Fridays), we’d like to introduce:

FOOD SCIENCE FRIDAYS AT THE BROOKLYN KITCHEN!

Everyone’s a scientist when it comes to food! Baking is chemistry, fermentation is biology, choosing a pot is a question of physics.

Fridays in August, we’ll be conducting some fun food-oriented experiments. Come by after 4pm to hang out and talk science. Or watch this space for updates and results!

Food Science Friday Schedule:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/theeerin/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 at 4PM: COOKING WITH THE SUN!

We’ll be baking cookies on a car dashboard, and if it feels hot enough, we’ll see if we can actually fry an egg on the sidewalk.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 – FRIDAY, AUGUST 14: CAPTURING WILD YEAST!

Yeast is everywhere! Strains of yeast exist right in the air around us, and we are going to catch some and force it to leaven our bread! On the 7th, we’ll set the trap, and we’ll visit it throughout the week to see what we catch.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14 at 4PM: GRAMMAR SCHOOL SCIENCE FAIR FUN TIMES!

Capillary Action: Why do we water the soil instead of the top of the plants? Doesn’t gravity pull the water down? Well, no. We’ll be replicating your classic celery stalk capillary action demo.

Punk Rock Candy: Geology isn’t a science we routinely associate with food, (though of course soil and its health is everything about food) but here we go! We’ll be making rock candy, forming salt crystals and seeing if we can combine the two flavors for a sweet and salty rock food!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 21 at 4PM: IT’S ELECTRIC!

Tuber Town: We’re going to see what kind of kitchen electronics we can run with potatoes and citrus fruits!

Sparks!: Not the malt liquor! We’re going to see what sort of minty things we can get to spark in the dark recesses of our mouths.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 28 at 4PM: UP, DOWN AND OVER

How Do You Get An Egg In A Bottle?: We’ll demonstrate how temperature and air pressure interact to pull a hardboiled egg into a narrow mouthed bottle. The real question will probably end up: How do we get the egg out?!

Chemical Propulsion: We’re going to build a rocket to the moon. Well, maybe not the moon, but we are going to propel things short distances into the air using baking soda and vinegar.

Dry Ice Cream: Making ice cream always feels a bit scientific, especially the old fashioned rocksalt and ice way. But today we’re going to go nerdtastic and make ice cream using dry ice.

Originally posted by alfairbk from The Brooklyn Kitchen, on August 5, 2009 1:11 PM

From Serious Eats: New York

It's official. Sam Sifton is the New York Times' new restaurant critic. Serious eaters should be thrilled. Sam is an inspired choice for the job. Before I tell you why I should tell all of you that Sam was the Dining section editor who reached out to me to become a regular contributor to the paper. Though we have not worked together in at least five years, we have stayed in touch and broken bread together on numerous occasions. So I am sure what I am about to write is colored by the great respect, admiration, and warm feelings I have for Sam.

In the end all of that doesn't matter. What does is what Sam is going to bring to the most important and influential restaurant critic job in the world. Allow me to explain, after the jump.

• First of all, Sam Sifton is brilliant, and that's a word I don't throw around easily. He's smart as a whip, and he has more bandwidth than just about any other human being I know. Sam is endlessly curious and ridiculously well-read.
• He is also a serious eater par excellence. Sam is as passionate and discerning and inclusive about food as anyone I know. Go back and read any installment of The Cheat in the Times Magazine, and you'll feel his discerning passion in every sentence. When you do that you'll also notice something else: Sam writes like a dream.
• Sam is not a food snob. Remember, he was the one with whom I developed the long-form format for my round-up stories about hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza by the slice. Sam encouraged me to go to all five boroughs in my seemingly endless searches for seriously delicious food. He is a man of the people, albeit in part a man of the people who went to Harvard.
• Sam has strong, well-reasoned opinions about food and defends those opinions as well as anyone. We don't always agree, but I have always respected his point of view and his ability to articulate and back up his arguments.
• He is a straight shooter, a person of unimpeachable integrity. Chefs and restaurateurs can rest assured that Sam will give them a fair shake, though I am sure that some of them will think otherwise when he writes his first negative review.

So factoring in everything I have just told you about Sam, I think you can see why I think the New York Times got it right. He is the right man for this job, especially at this moment. In a world where everyone has the wherewithal to be a restaurant critic, it's somehow comforting and reassuring that the Times has come up with someone as democratic, discerning, and authoritative as Sam Sifton.

Everyone at Serious Eats would like to welcome Sam Sifton to the fray.

Originally posted by Ed Levine from Serious Eats, on August 5, 2009 1:10 PM

• David Weiner: Google Maps Finds Heaven in Brooklyn?
  Brooklyn is heaven glad that Google got on camera
  (tags: brooklyn)

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on August 5, 2009 12:03 PM

Flapjack lovers, rejoice. Now you can make fresh, 97% fat-free pancakes in as little as 30 seconds using the ChefStack Automatic Pancake Machine ($3,500). This microwave-sized wonder uses no-mess batter...

Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Uncrate, on August 5, 2009 11:51 AM

If only travel posters still looked this good!

American illustrator, David Klein (1918-2005), created numerous travel posters for Howard Hughes’ Trans World Airlines (TWA) in the 1950s and 1960s. His posters use eye-popping colors, iconic landmarks, and scenic images to advertise global travel.

The composition of this particular poster is fantastic, as Klein sets the St. Louis Gateway Arch against a festively patterned background, emphasizing its momentous size. The analogous colors of the type, airplane, and old courthouse are a warm treat too!

In 1957, the MOMA honored Klein by including his TWA poster advertising New York’s Time Square into its permanent collection.

In addition to creating colorful multi-faceted travel posters, Klein has also designed and illustrated window cards for Broadway plays and the Heights Players community theater. Images of his life’s work can be see on his website, which is managed by his estate.

Be sure to check out the general illustration section, which features a kooky take on Alice in Wonderland!

——————

Also worth checking: Dan Reisinger Illustration and Design.

Not signed up for the Grain Edit RSS Feed yet? Give it a try. Its free and yummy.

——————

No Tags

Share This

Grain Edit recommended reading: Otto Neurath - The Language of The Polls

©2009 Grain Edit - catch us on Facebook and twitter

Originally posted by Grace from Yummy Fresh grain feed!, on August 5, 2009 11:24 AM

To help new restaurant critic Sam Sifton get around town without being made, Gawker and its commenters have come up with some killer disguises from Harry Potter to Jason Statham and the Monster of Montauk. The Kate Gosselin suggestion should really be taken under advisement, Sifty. [Gawker]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on August 5, 2009 11:18 AM

A 1934 story from the International Herald Tribune:

Dynamite Found On Track

SPOKANE Discovery of a box of useless dynamite on the railway track two and a half miles southwest of this city led to special precautions being taken to guard the line over which President Roosevelt's train passed this morning [August 4] en route to Washington. Six deputy sheriffs guarded the section of the line near which the discovery was made. The President's train passed safely at 10 a.m. Officials are skeptical about the dynamite having any connection with a possible plot against the President.

Imagine if the same thing happened today.

Originally posted by schneier from Schneier on Security, on August 5, 2009 10:46 AM

"Many of you have asked if I have any tips on how to get leggings on quicker. My in-house leggings guru advises rubbing onto your legs a paste made from five spoonfuls of extra-virgin olive oil, turbinado sugar, and coarsely ground fair-trade coffee. If you have any further problems, then next week I’ll be recommending a truly great creative-leggings clinic." --Gwyneth Paltrow's diary as imagined by Vanity Fair.

Sponsored Topics: Olive oil - Gwyneth Paltrow - Coffee - Vanity Fair - Food

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on August 5, 2009 10:25 AM

The NY Times has named their replacement for outgoing restaurant critic Frank Bruni: current Times editor Sam Sifton. This is good news for me...I look a bit like Sifton; if I'm mistaken for him and incur favorable treatment at restaurants because of it, I won't complain.

Tags: food   NY Times   NYC   Sam Sifton

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 5, 2009 10:19 AM

NoNoHitters.com obsessively tracks the New York Mets' continued futility in no hitters. On twitter too.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on August 5, 2009 9:29 AM

John Downer

Twenty years ago, John Downer and I were introduced by a mutual friend. He’d introduced us as “type designers,” a flattering description of my professional achievements to date (I was a recent refugee from graphic design), and a somewhat elliptic summary of John’s credentials. Whether or not he was intentionally vague, I’ll never know, but it set me up for a very entertaining afternoon.

John visited my studio, where I was working on a set of roman capitals that would ultimately become the Requiem typeface. He had some suggestions about the design, which like most critiques were especially hard to articulate; typography suffers from a poverty of terminology. Eyeing two bottles of Rich Art poster paint in my taboret, John reached for these along with a sheet of typing paper, and the cheap plastic paintbrush that I kept for dusting my keyboard. In a few effortless strokes of black, he perfectly reproduced Requiem’s capital S, waited a moment for the paint to dry, and then reloaded the brush with white to render his corrections. The whole shebang couldn’t have taken fifteen seconds, most of it spent waiting for paint to dry. I just stared: it was like watching someone fold a paper napkin into a remote control helicopter, and then pilot it around the room. The detail our mutual friend had neglected to mention, of course, is that John came to type design through his other profession: he is a master sign painter.

Type design has always been a wonderfully polygenetic field, and a random sampling of practitioners is likely to include calligraphers, graphic designers, stonemasons, letterpress printers, engravers, graffiti artists, and programmers. This mixture produces a marvelous synthesis of perspectives in terms of both technique and culture, and serves to make type design a vigorous and exciting discipline. But few type designers I know bring this particular experience to bear on their work:

I began graduate studies in painting at The University of Iowa in 1973 after working at sign shops in Des Moines for about a year. The chairman of the painting department at the UI was Byron Burford, proprietor of The Great Byron Burford Circus of Artistic Wonders — a traveling art show and circus, in one. It included moving cutouts of exotic animals, motorized trapeze artists, contortionists, and acrobats...

This is from Freshjive’s The Propagandist, which today is presenting a nice slideshow of John’s work in connection with a line of lettered t-shirts. —JH

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Hoefler & Frere-Jones, on August 5, 2009 9:15 AM

Noted without (much) comment: “Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day.” Please feel free to cleanse your palate of the bad taste in your mouth by reading this old article form The Atlantic Monthly which includes my favorite dictionary joke (ah yes we librarians have dictionary jokes…) punchline: ‘So you have been looking for them, Madam?’

Originally posted by jessamyn from librarian.net, on August 5, 2009 8:55 AM

Ryanair is one opinionated company

Michael O’Leary, chief executive of the European budget airline Ryanair, is hardcore about saying no:

Ryanair promises four things: low fares, a good on-time record, few cancellations and few lost bags.

“But if you want anything more — go away! Will we put you in a hotel room if your flight was canceled?” Mr. O’Leary asked rhetorically. “No! Go away.”…

“Will we give you a refund on a nonrefundable ticket because your granny died unexpectedly?” he asked. “No! Go away. We’re not interested in your sob stories! What part of ‘no refund’ do you not understand?”

Miss your flight because you had to wait too long at a Ryanair help desk? Too bad! Your luggage is slightly overweight? Throw away the excess, or wear it on the flight! Try to tote your duty-free purchases onto the plane in a shopping bag, when you already have a carry-on bag? Prepare to fork over $40 at the gate.

Sounds like a bad experience in many ways (Southwest manages to take a similar approach without coming off as hostile to customers). But a lot of people only really care about those four things Ryanair promises to deliver. By pleasing that core group, Ryanair is managing to do something that most airlines find impossible right now: It’s turning a profit and growing the number of passengers it flies.

Originally posted by Matt from Signal vs. Noise, on August 5, 2009 7:51 AM

Tom Toles cartoon: Washington Post

Robert Menendez (D-NJ), a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, began his hearing on transit today by displaying the above cartoon by Pulitzer prize-winner Tom Toles. The senator's message parallels Toles': In a world where the auto industry can get $2 billion more in one week, what's to be done about rail's $50 billion backlog?

Menendez, whose state is one of only four in the nation where 10 percent of commuters take transit, said lawmakers should weigh emergency spending authority for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to help local agencies pay for equipment repair needs that are estimated at $50 billion -- for the top seven urban rail networks alone.

But given the difficulty of wrestling transit's long-term share of federal money past the 20 percent mark, winning emergency funds for rail would be a very heavy political lift. So FTA chief Peter Rogoff focused on the more achievable question of how to best spend Washington's $5 billion-plus budget for transit modernization.

"The current formula" for distributing that money, Rogoff acknowledged, "is a bit of a hodgepodge. It's hard to define what the strategic goal of it is."

Complicating the issue, he added, is that everyone agrees transit agencies are falling far behind on keeping their equipment in what the FTA calls "state of good repair," but few parties agree on how to actually define that term.

The U.S. DOT is currently completing a more in-depth study of transit modernization needs that aims to single out repair needs linked to passenger safety, with findings expected early in the fall. Rail safety has taken on new urgency in Congress in the wake of the D.C. Metro's fatal crash in June.

Yet looking only at safety risks undercutting transit agencies' ability to serve ridership that is hitting record highs. Fixing escalators and crumbling train platforms "might not be viewed as safety-critical," Rogoff said, "but it can move people out of transit and back to highways," thus further clogging the nation's already taxed roads.

One thing that Menendez, Rogoff, and transit officials from four states agreed on was the need to avoid penalizing agencies making progress on repair with less federal money. In fact, New Jersey Transit was singled out by the FTA in May for properly supporting its equipment health.

How did the state get its transit into top shape? It was simple as formulating a workable long-term funding plan, NJ Transit executive director Richard Sarles testified before Menendez.

Given the Capitol's current focus on short-term stimulus, however, that task is far more challenging than it might seem.

Originally posted by Elana Schor from Streetsblog New York City, on August 5, 2009 6:47 AM

We weren't sure why Erin Wasson, free, homeless-person loving, Alexander Wang-wearing rock 'n' roll hippie decided to show her AW10 line for RVCA at the commercial epicenter of New York Fashion Week, the Bryant Park tents.

Because though she's a Maybelline face and Maybelline's sponsoring the tents, all of her cool friends will be downtown at Milk Studios.

Now we're hearing she's not just showing in the tents, but in The Tent, the massive space in which Herve Leger stuffs their starlets, Zac Posen housed five pianos and Justin Timberlake played host to Carine, Anna and J.C. Chasez.

How, exactly, is Erin Wasson going to fill such a huge space? Why, exactly, does she want such a huge space? No idea, though now we know why they're taking forever to come out with the damn Fashion Week Calendar -- they'll need a good hour cushion before and after the show if they expect everyone to head uptown.

Sponsored Topics: Erin Wasson - New York Fashion Week - Zac Posen - Fashion - Justin Timberlake

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on August 5, 2009 6:33 AM

From Brad: "I had alot of fun and help from Ruskig, August, Jazz, Ajja, and many many more students from the Hip Hop School in Malmo. We took a wall covered in illegal graffiti and made it permanent.

Photos by August Dahllöf

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on August 5, 2009 5:16 AM

Filed under: OS, Other Events, Developer, Deals, iPhone, iPod touch

Addison-Wesley Professional, the publishers of many books on both Mac and iPhone development, is hosting the Voices That Matter: iPhone Developer's Conference October 17 and 18th in Boston. TUAW wants to make sure that the budding iPhone devs in our readership are able to attend the conference, so we have an exclusive discount code for you to use when you register.

The conference is focused at experienced Mac developers who are looking for a quick way to get the skills required to build, test, and distribute iPhone and iPod touch apps. The speaker list for the conference is impressive and includes:

• TUAW's very own Erica Sadun (Conference Program Chair)
• Aaron Hillegass, author of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (Keynote Speaker)
• Mac and technology pundit Andy Ihnatko (Keynote Speaker)
• Peter Bakhirev
• Lee Barney
• Erik Buck
• Bill Dudney
• Dan Grover
• Daniel Jalkut
• Steve Kochan
• Bill Licea-Kane
• Mike Morton
• Jonathan Rentzsch
• Fraser Speirs
• August Trometer
• Marcus Zarra

TUAW readers can save $150 on their conference registration by providing the special priority code PHNTUAW when registering. If you register before September 12th, you can combine your TUAW discount with Early Bird pricing and save a total of $350.

The iPhone app market is still going strong even in this execrable economy, so this is a great opportunity for Mac developers to get the smarts to make the leap to the iPhone market.

TUAWGet your TUAW discount to the Voices That Matter: iPhone Developers Conference originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Originally posted by Steven Sande from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on August 5, 2009 5:00 AM

Freed journalists Laura Ling, with hoagie, and Euna Lee.

When CNN.com first published the news that journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were freed from North Korea yesterday, these were the photos they used. At some point, the website cropped out the hoagie from Ling's photo—but not before sharp-eyed Philadelphia Citypaper blogger Drew Lazor noticed it and screen-capped it, saying:

...why did CNN decide to zoom in/crop the image after its initial posting? Is it inappropriate to show a former detainee brandishing a sandwich like a motherfucking microphone? We certainly don’t think so. On the contrary—nothing, in our opinion at least, screams democracy quite like this. Fuck you, Kim Jong-il, you evil commie bastard! This shit has THREE KINDS OF HAM ON IT!

We're glad the women are back, but now we want to know what's in that sandwich and where she got it from.

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on August 5, 2009 3:30 AM

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting about Coney Island, featuring places and things that are there now, but probably won't be there for long, thanks to the city's repugnant plans to destroy what remains of New York's "Sodom by the Sea."

It's been a long fight.

For decades, developers and politicians have lusted to level Coney Island, one way or another. As historian Charles Denson said in the Daily News, "Coney Island has a history of land grabs." Since the end of its heyday, as developers and the city have hacked away at it, Coney's once-sprawling amusement area has gotten smaller and smaller.


Moses over Brooklyn

Robert Moses started chopping up Coney in the 1940s. As Wikipedia writes, "In 1953, Moses had the entire island rezoned for residential use only and announced plans to demolish the amusements to make room for low income housing." The city edited his plan, zoning parts of Coney for "amusement only." Moses still managed to clear away homes, businesses, and amusements, leaving mostly empty lots behind.

In 1966, Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, bought Steeplechase Park from its longtime owner. He wanted to replace it with "a modern Miami Beach high-rise apartment dwelling." But the Lindsay administration wanted the site zoned for recreational use. The city envisioned "a combination Disney and Tivoli Gardens." Writes Jerome Tuccille in Trump, the city planned "a monumental park with indoor swimming pools, restaurants, and concert facilities...a multilevel seafront park development."

Sound familiar?

Steeplechase was demolished. Nothing was built. The site remained an empty lot for more than three decades.


Fred Trump axing Steeplechase

In 1976, when casinos were legalized in New York State, mayor Koch aimed to turn Coney Island into another Atlantic City. In Coney Island Lost & Found, Denson writes about the swarm of speculators that descended--slick guys in limos and silk shirts--to snap up properties. But the Trumps put the kibosh on that plan, protecting their interests in Atlantic City--or maybe it was revenge against the city for squashing their Miami beach high-rise dreams a decade earlier. Property owners bulldozed more of Coney in anticipation of casinos, leaving more empty lots.

In the 1980s, Kansas Fried Chicken king Horace Bullard bought up several properties with plans to build another Disney, only to lose them to the city. In 2000, without warning or permission, Giuliani demolished the Thunderbolt rollercoaster, owned by Bullard. It was a beautiful wreck that bloomed with moonflower vines and bird nests in summertime. A woman named May Timpano lived in the house beneath the coaster, the one featured in Annie Hall.

It is now an empty lot.


Thunderbolt, C.B.'s flickr

Today, after decades of butchering, through bloody wars waged between the city and developers, what remains of Coney's iconic amusement park is small. Now the Bloomberg administration intends to make it even smaller, to continue the carnage of Coney. What will be demolished next? What empty lots, filled with the rubble of our memories, will we have to endure before the next Disney-Condo monstrosity rises?

See Also:

• Save Coney
• Don't Shrink Coney
• Coney Island History Project
• Don't miss watching Lila Place's poignant and subtle documentary about May Timpano and her house under the coaster: Part 1 and Part 2
  

Originally posted by Jeremiah Moss from Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, on August 5, 2009 3:00 AM

This kid is DEAD SERIOUS about some Michael Jackson. Watch what happens when you try and switch to some other music! Too cute.

Originally posted by jay smooth from tuberaider video, on August 5, 2009 2:51 AM

I was scouting the Old Trinity Cemetery when a guy walked up to me and asked if I had seen any chickens.

OK, that sounds like the beginning to a joke. Before I delve into my odd story, let me give a quick rundown on one of the most beautiful and interesting outdoor spaces in New York City.

Covering four entire city blocks, the Old Trinity Cemetery in Washington Heights was founded by Wall Street’s Trinity Church in 1842 as an expansion to its downtown churchyard, which had run out of space. Numerous well-known New Yorkers are interred here, among them the Astor family, Clement Clarke Moore (pastor and author of A Visit from St. Nicholas), and John James Audobon, famed ornithologist on whose former farmland the cemetery resides.

Due to the wealth of a number of its residents, the graveyard is filled with great mausoleums like this one:

Peer through the glass of the iron door and you’ll see a beautiful stained-glass window, with bodies stacked floor to ceiling on both sides.

Same goes for this one…

…which features this interior:

This odd mausoleum has an interesting feature…

Climb up the hill on top of it and you’ll find these four openings allowing light into it (because corpses need some sun too, right?):

A camera flash (sort of) reveals the inside, cobwebs and all:

Here, the grave on the right seems to be sinking into the ground (as far as I can tell, it’s not just a broken remnant):

I could go on forever with pictures, but better yet, take a trip up there and discover the cemetery for yourself. You could spend hours reading the graves, peering through mausoleum doors and keyholes, and discovering the countless surprises the cemetery has to offer.

But back to the chickens…

I was taking a picture of this mausoleum when a guy came up and asked if I had seen any chickens. Strange question - perhaps the graveyard has wild chickens like some places have wild geese and turkeys?

No, he explained, he was talking about dead chickens. Or dead cows. He claims to have come across a dead cow once (to be specific, half of a dead cow), along with a number other unexpected finds: fish, eggs, and other offerings left hidden amongst the graves.

According to my new cemetery friend, a number of locals in the area practice Santeria, a religion that is most simply described as a mix between Christianity and African belief systems. I couldn’t even begin to get into the specifics (the stereotypical idea of voodoo came to mind, but he said it was more complicated), but apparently, offerings to the dead play a strong role in the Santeria faith, and this cemetery is a hotbed of such activity.

The guy pointed to the mausoleum steps, where he had noticed two oddities:

A candle (something tells me the ol’ Gould family hasn’t come to light a candle in front of this mausoleum in quite a long time)…

…and what could be a symbol formed from pinecones.

The guy told me he lives in the area, and regularly finds new offerings in the cemetery. He pointed to this gated grave at the top of a hill…

…in which were two wooden bowls.

One of the wooden bowls had an egg in it, along with a candle.

The man said that he often finds jars buried in the dirt behind graves, which have been unearthed by a heavy rain or lawn-mowing. I happened across this one…

…but exactly what was in it (something gray and fuzzy), I have no idea (I’m not a religious person, but I ain’t risking a curse for disrupting a graveyard offering!).

Keith15, an excellent photographer, has some amazing photographs on Flickr he took in Old Trinity Cemetery of Santeria practices:

Note the eggs in the bowl:

Apparently, alcohol is not uncommon either:

According to my cemetery friend, the Trinity Church staff often find people sneaking in to lay their offerings late at night. Most of the stuff is eventually thrown out by cemetery caretakers, though sometimes, they let it stay for some time.

The one bit that has my cemetery friend stumped, though, is chickens. Though he has often found chicken feathers, and even smelled the scent of decaying chicken flesh, he has never actually found a full chicken.

Some mysteries, I suppose, are best left unexplained.

Again, you can’t go wrong with a trip to Trinity Park. It’s infinitely more interesting than any other cemetery in Manhattan, and holds more surprises than you can imagine.

-SCOUT

PS - Going rate for burial? Mayor Koch paid $20,000 in 2008 for a plot in Trinity Cemetery, saying he couldn’t imagine spending eternity outside of Manhattan.

PPS - This great NY Times article from April 4, 1911, tells a very interesting story regarding the building of the Church of the Intercession, which is located in the north-west corner of the cemetery. Apparently, 20-30 graves had to be moved to accomodate the church’s foundation. However, when the coffins were opened, there were no bodies in the coffins. What happened to those corpses remains a mystery (though an interesting idea is offered).

Originally posted by Scout from Scouting NY, on August 4, 2009 9:23 PM

From TPM Reader MN ...

As an Obama supporter and volunteer during the 2008 primary and general election, I can tell you that nothing motivated me more than the prospect of LOSING. I live in NH, and the ground game is important to winning here. If I had expected an easy win, I wouldn't have even volunteered or contributed $1. But I felt like Obama's campaign needed me -- and many others -- to work for him so he could win. I do not feel that same necessity with health insurance reform. Each time the President says "We will pass health insurance reform this year," each time I hear congressman (from both parties!) and pundits predict that, despite recent setbacks, health insurance reform is very likely to pass THIS YEAR, I think to myself, "Ok, he's got this in the bag. He doesn't need me to do anything." I want health insurance reform. And in my opinion, ANY of the bills that have been drafted would be huge steps forward. Ironically, all the progress made so far makes me less willing to fight for it. I don't know what the President can say to get all of us more motivated, but it might just come down to waiting for his back to be against the wall again.

Originally posted by Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, on August 4, 2009 8:28 PM

Clearly not dead yet... but I've been noticing what looks suspiciously like a quiet revolt. Specialty coffee professionals seem to be more and more passionate about drip/filter coffees... and slightly less passionate about espresso year after year. Perhaps it started with the introduction of the Clover brewer.

I was told over and over from our friends in the Pacific North West, just a few years ago, that there was little-to-no interest in filter coffees in their markets. They were all about espresso drinks, and didn't care for or want filter coffees. This clearly isn't the case anymore.

The friendly folks at the industry-leading La Marzocco USA debuted some espresso innovations this year at their SCAA Atlanta Expo booth... along-side a french press grinder?

Top baristas all over seem to be spending more and more time on their siphon-brewing than anything else.

Is there something really going on, or is this just a phase?

Originally posted by Nick from portafilter.net, on August 4, 2009 8:02 PM

The latest ridiculous App Store power-play to make it into the public limelight is Apple’s alleged censoring of Ninjawords, an iPhone interface to a community-edited dictionary called Wiktionary. Before being approved, even as a 17+ rated title, the app’s developers were asked to remove specific words from the dictionary’s index.

John Gruber excoriates Apple for censoring a reference book. Gruber also discovered through an interview with a Ninjawords developer that Apple must have gone out of its way to locate words they could find fault with. Apparently the developers had been careful to prevent casual users from stumbling upon an offensive word, by preventing auto-completion for common vulgarities:

“In other words, the App Store reviewer(s) explicitly searched for curse words they already knew, and found them.”

I’ve been thinking about the capriciousness of the App Store review process. It’s ridiculous the kinds of rejections and hoop-jumping we’ve observed in the past year, and one has to assume that the issues making their way into the public eye are only the tip of the iceberg.

Then I remembered something from my own experience that might shed light on the situation. I started as a Quality Assurance tester back in 1995, in a small engineering group. Our group was diligent in the pursuit of finding issues that would embarrass the company or hurt customers. But we worked with larger groups whose motives seemed more oriented to the systematic evaluation they were receiving from their bosses.

These testers didn’t care how good their bug reports were. It didn’t matter if the software gaffe they discovered would save the company a million dollars, or a metric shit-ton of public grief. All that mattered was that the bug was “valid” and that the reporter was “first.”

I learned about the subtleties of this system through the ways that those testers interacted with me. Sometimes a bug that I submitted was determined to be a duplicate of an earlier report one of these testers submitted. If mine had more detailed information, it might be marked as the “original” bug, while the less informative bug was designated a duplicate. This worked great for those of us trying to ship a great product, but not so good for people who were fighting to their reputations in the metric-oriented testing groups.

Because our group was committed to shipping a great product, we were always convinced that bug reports with more information were superior. But the testers who were under the gun to produce new, unique issues, wanted credit for having uncovered these issues first.

As you can imagine, the “thirst for first” led to a significant number of ridiculous bug reports. If a tester could reasonably defend a bug report as valid, then it counted in their statistics, and made them look like a useful member of their team. My impression was that promotions and raises were directly linked to these statistics.

Many of the mercenary testers I encountered were motivated to scrape the system for bugs, as ridiculous as they may be. They logged them into the bug system and then defended them at all costs, as if their lives depended on it. And it turned out, they did. At least, their paychecks did.

I would not be surprised to learn that App Store reviewers are working under a similar structure. A system that rewards “unique, valid rejections” would certainly explain the behavior we have seen coming to light in the past year.

Why would somebody waste time typing profane words into a dictionary, gathering screen captures, and sending them to developers, except to defend their prize “catch”? If perfecting the product was the goal, we’d see a lot more nuance and thoughtfulness. But excellence is one goal, and collecting proof of “doing one’s job” is quite another. I think I know what many App Store reviewers aspire to.

Afterhought: It occurred to me shortly after publishing the above that App Store reviewers can’t be working purely under a “catch all violations” directive, because if they were, there would be numerous rejections based on UI guideline violations, and we’re not seeing as many of those (or are we?). I’m sticking to my thesis, but I suspect that the number of rejections we’re seeing on contrived issues like “you can find ‘cock’ in the dictionary” is because these are the easiest for reviewers to defend with Apple’s published guidelines. Whether a text field is aligned properly is a lot harder to challenge than whether “cock” can be interpreted as profanity.

Originally posted by Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Blog, on August 4, 2009 8:01 PM

The moment I saw this cover, my first question was whether that hair was real. When close inspection indicated that it was real, my next question was: where did they find this guy? The answer is that these are not models –  they’re the group.
(more…)

Originally posted by Alex from Sleevage, on August 4, 2009 6:59 PM

Two years ago I linked to a web site called Ninjawords — a fast, simple online dictionary backed by a good data source (Wiktionary).

The developers behind Ninjawords, Matchstick Software, have released an iPhone version, currently available from the App Store for just $2. Here’s how they describe it:

Ninjas are three things:

1. They’re smart
2. They’re quick
3. They’re deadly accurate

Ninjawords is a dictionary for the iPhone built on these principles. We made it because we saw that the low-cost dictionaries on the App Store are slow, cluttered, and all use the same bad data source (WordNet) for their definitions.

Ninjawords takes a different approach. We use awesome, fresh, high quality data with more words and synonyms than you can throw a ninja star at. And best of all, when you look up your words, they all stay on the page. No need to flip back and forth between different pages as you look up multiple words.

It’s a terrific app — pretty much exactly what I’ve always wanted in an iPhone dictionary, and, yes, with both a better user experience and better dictionary content than the other low-cost dictionaries in the App Store.

But Ninjawords for iPhone suffers one humiliating flaw: it omits all the words deemed “objectionable” by Apple’s App Store reviewers, despite the fact that Ninjawords carries a 17+ rating.

Apple censored an English dictionary.

A dictionary. A reference book. For words contained in all reasonable dictionaries. For words contained in dictionaries that are used every day in elementary school libraries and classrooms.

Amazon, of course, does not restrict the sale of English dictionaries, either in print or for the Kindle. The Kindle, in fact, ships from the factory with a built-in dictionary, The New Oxford American Dictionary — the very same dictionary used by Mac OS X’s built-in Dictionary app. Like any good dictionary, it contains listing for all of the words deemed “objectionable” in Ninjawords by the App Store reviewers.

Even Walmart, notorious for its censorship of “objectionable” music and movies, neither restricts nor places warning labels on dictionaries. Apple’s App Store review team makes Walmart seem liberal by comparison.

I interviewed Phil Crosby, one of Ninjawords’s developers, via email.

The App Store approval process for Ninjawords took two months. Matchstick submitted the first build on May 13; it was rejected two days later. Says Crosby, “Our app was crashing on the latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0. We quickly fixed this issue and resubmitted.”

Matchstick did not hear back from Apple until May 30. Then, says Crosby: “We were rejected for objectionable content. They provided screenshots of the words ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ showing up in our dictionary’s search results. What’s interesting is that we spent a good deal of time making it so that you must type vulgar words in their entirety, and only then will we show you suggestions in the search results. For instance, if you type ‘fuc’, you will not see ‘fuck’ as a suggestion. This is in contrast to all other dictionaries we’re aware of on the App Store (including Dictionary.com’s application), which will show you ‘fuck’ in the search results for ‘fuc’, ‘motherfucker’ for ‘mother’, etc.

In other words, the App Store reviewer(s) explicitly searched for curse words they already knew, and found them. (Reminiscent of the reviewer who rejected the e-book reader Eucalyptus after searching for, and finding, the Gutenberg edition of The Kama Sutra.)

This is the rejection email Matchstick Software received from Apple:

Thank you for submitting Ninjawords to the App Store. We’ve reviewed Ninjawords and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because it contains objectionable content which is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

Parental Controls have been announced for iPhone OS 3.0. It would be appropriate to resubmit your application for review once this feature is available.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

On July 1, the app was rejected for the third time. Crosby says, “Someone from Apple called Dave [Crosby’s Matchstick Software colleague] to tell him that we were being rejected again for illicit content (he provided the single example ‘cunt’, which we had indeed missed in our filters), and no matter what we did to our dictionary, it will have to be 17+ to make it to the App Store.”

In other words, not only must the dictionary be censored — a dictionary — but even after being purged of “objectionable” words it would only be considered with a 17+ rating. Even after agreeing to these terms, it took another two weeks for Ninjawords to appear in the App Store. According to Crosby, “We gave in and said fine, hoping that we could get on the App Store immediately since the solution to their rejection was a simple metadata change. However, the App Store reviewer would have none of that. We would have to resubmit an entirely new binary and get to the back of the queue before they would look at it again.”

Ninjawords appeared in the App Store on July 13.

The list of omitted words includes some which have utterly non-objectionable senses: ass, snatch, pussy, cock, and even screw. (Ass and cock appear throughout the King James Bible.)

Every time I think I’ve seen the most outrageous App Store rejection, I’m soon proven wrong. I can’t imagine what it will take to top this one.

Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day.

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 4, 2009 4:50 PM

Benicio Del Toro & Brad Pitt

Originally posted by (author unknown) from That Obscure Object, on August 4, 2009 4:18 PM

"Take the train,Bangladesh"

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Pixdaus: Popular Today Pics, on August 4, 2009 4:12 PM

Smashing Telly found the entirety of a documentary called Paris is Burning on YouTube.

This is a documentary about vogueing, and the extremely refined and detailed aesthetic sensibilities it reflects, shot in New York City around Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, and Harlem in the mid- to late-80s. The city has changed in dramatic ways since then, to say the least. The characters of the film are complete outsiders with, at the same time, a deep understanding of the world they are outside of.

Check out a recent example of vogue dancing.

Tags: dance   movies   NYC   Paris is Burning   video

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 4, 2009 2:37 PM

This should be fun.

An experiment. It's just a test. I put up a web service that returns a Twitter subscription list as OPML. You should be able to import it into your RSS aggregator or feed reader. But it's just a test. When the experiment is over the service will come down. It just builds on the Twitter API and took me a couple of evenings to put together. It's not Big Tech, it's just a little thing. But interesting? Perhaps.

For example, here's the subscription list for "cluelessnewbie," a fictious user who follows the 100 most-followed people on Twitter (that's what makes him so clueless).

Here's Jay Rosen's subscription list. Danny Sullivan. The Gillmor Gang. Gruber. Om. Loic. Doc Searls. Anil Dash.

When I sent a preview link to Anil, here's what he said: "This got one of those immediate belly laughs that only come from seeing something new and realizing exactly how disruptive it can be. :-)"

He's right -- it's part of Le Grand Bootstrap that's underway.

Who knows where it leads?

And that's why it's so much fun!

Here's the full writeup.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Scripting News, on August 4, 2009 1:36 PM

What will our beloved Bruni review tomorrow and how will he rate it? Herewith, your help is requested as we Ballpark Frank.

Boom Boom Bruni throws a major curveball this week and reviews one of Danny Meyer's jewels, Union Square Cafe, last reviewed and awarded three stars ten years ago. Still some surprises up those sleeves! Could that mean his dinners at Eleven Madison Park in the last two months were just "background research"? Genius. Will he knock her down a peg, reinforce Grimes' assessment, or (gasp) will a fourth star be unleashed in the next two hours? For background on the restaurant, see coverage here. Otherwise, cast a vote below. [Union Square Cafe, after 8PM; NYT]

Our polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

[photo credit]

Originally posted by Amanda from Eater, on August 4, 2009 1:36 PM

From recovering lazyholic on Flickr

In her illustration "Nutrition", Erin Hanson depicts the food pyramid many of us would want if it was less likely to result in premature death: coffee, butter, pizza, and booze. If only.

Check out her other food-related "Photoshop thoughts" on income, luck, embarassment, dilemma, and fornication.

Originally posted by Robyn Lee from Serious Eats, on August 4, 2009 12:30 PM

I tried making pancakes for dinner last night, using Alton Brown's Instant Pancake recipe, but they turned out terrible! I put them on the preheated griddle, waited until bubbles set on the outside and the bottom was browned, flipped, and then let them cook. When the outside was cooked, I checked the inside and it was still mushy and runny! It wasn't even a first pancake problem, it happened to every one! I left them on the griddle and just let them cook until the outsides were practically burned, 20 minutes, and the insides were still mushy!

Though I figured out that if I spread the batter super thin and cooked them until they were crispy they made great pancake chips =].

At first I thought it was a baking soda/baking powder problem, but those both worked. Does anyone know why the insides would stay mushy like that?

Originally posted by bks1210 from Serious Eats: Talk, on August 4, 2009 10:51 AM

In early July, a photographer took a picture of what appears to be three Suns rising over Gdansk Bay in Poland.

The photographer insists that the effect was not created by the camera and was visible to the naked eye. The early consensus in the forums is that the photo was taken through a double-paned window.

Tags: astronomy   photography   Sun

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 4, 2009 9:08 AM

Today we’re pleased to announce a redesign of our search results page. The changes we’ve introduced make it easier to browse through the billions of photos and videos on Flickr, and to connect to the communities that help make sense of all those photos.

A good way to see what’s changed is to search for something right off the top of your head. Take this search for delicious rhubarb pie, for example.

Note the new “View” controls at the top of the page, these allow you to display the results in different sizes and formats. Both small and medium views have an ‘i’ icon on every thumbnail — click it to see more detailed information about a particular photo. We’re also doing some whiz bang stuff in the small view to take advantage of as much space as you have on your screen, just try resizing your browser to see.

On the right side of the page we try to provide a new perspective on your search. Based upon how our members are tagging their photos and participating in the Flickrverse, you’ll see links to the groups, photographers, tag clusters and places that are most closely related what you’re looking for. We hope these will occasionally provide a little extra inspiration for your search.

Lastly, we’re exposing simple summary information on the page as you refine your search. For example, try looking for Creative Commons licensed videos of dogs made after 1st January 2009 and you’ll see all that information listed above your search. Over time, we’ll bring more and more advanced features directly into the page.

If you’ve feedback or bugs, please head over to the Help Forum — we want to hear from you.

Photo from mellowmonday.

Originally posted by Shanan Delp from Flickr Blog, on August 4, 2009 9:02 AM

It seems the Design Blogess of Halcyon Days is vying for a spot on MadMen. Be a good sport an go give her a star or five(Listed as KLW) Whats that Dear? Mad Men I'm up there on their site but you've got to vote. Of Course Darling where? Oh where? Right Here. (click on the word here) Once a day now until the 10th of August. Come on I need your help. 5 stars please. xoxo, K

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Monoscope, on August 4, 2009 8:44 AM

Ballpark Orientation, Major League Fields, Ball Size Comparison and the Wu-Tang vs. E Street Band [via] 

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on August 4, 2009 7:24 AM

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Wax Heaven favorite, Andrew Miller. Although he had finally begun showing signs of dominance a couple of months back, two rough starts in a row sent him packing out of Dolphin Stadium and to New Orleans, the home of the Triple-A Zephyrs.

Sadly, this is Andrew’s second time he’s been demoted due to poor performance. It happened in 2008 and he barely survived Spring Training this year to land as the fifth starter on the Florida Marlins. Since coming to the team last year, Andrew has won just 9 games in 34 starts.

Making matters even worse, the Marlins did everything they could to trade Andrew to the San Diego Padres right before the deadline. It was a shocking and sad day for this former “Super Prospect” whose 2007 rookie cards demanded premium prices among collectors and prospectors not too long ago.

As expected, Andrew’s Hobby presence is all but gone. His first year cards, including low-numbered parallels and certified autographs are selling for next to nothing. If you are a collector, do you give up on the kid who just turned 24 or hope and pray that he works out his stuff and becomes the dominant pitcher everyone expected him to be?

I think everyone reading Wax Heaven knows my decision.

Originally posted by Mario A. from Wax Heaven, on August 4, 2009 6:53 AM

Posted for elspethjane.

(via randomwalks/dj via gifparty)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Final Boss Form, on August 4, 2009 6:30 AM

A brief trailer for Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, featuring a narrator that is rumored to be Pynchon, himself.

Originally posted by ry from Modcult, on August 4, 2009 6:14 AM

Last night’s Sony screening of “Julie and Julia,” at the Lincoln Square movie theater, was bananas. It was more like a Woody Allen opening on the Upper West Side, and you know what that is like. People were waiting downstairs in an extraordinary wrap-around-the-lobby-press-line—poor New York Times critic Stephen Holden showed up not at all early and actually did a double take between the press tickets table and the end of the line. (To his credit, he hopped on the back of the line.) There were even people in the line who had been turned away from the last big-theater pre-screening. This screening looked a lot like the one, held in the same theater, for King Kong—a crazy rush of anticipation. Why? Could it perhaps have been… all the pre-press?

Nikki Finke is on the warpath over the New York Times and Nora Ephron: “At last count, 15 mentions of Nora Ephron in The New York Times online and in the paper in just the past 30 days.” There are many nefarious suggestions there: her husband used to work for the Times, and Times TV “critic” Alessandra Stanley threw her a party, and maybe her “contributing columnist” title at the Times means she receives money from them.

Nikki’s not wrong! The Times is basically live-blogging from inside Nora Ephron’s living room. But none of that quite accounts for what’s going on.

There are two things, I think, working in conjunction. One is that there is a newspaper that, for the most part, has no idea what lays beyond its own fortress walls, and also lacks communication between sections. (Let me double-assert the “for the most part” there; there are definitely Times critics and editors and columnists who are not in the bubble chamber, who do not spend all their time with each other.) But Ms. Ephron is absolutely a citizen of the land of the Times, and at a time when sections like Arts & Leisure exhibit absolutely clearly that they have very little idea anymore what readers are, or even should be, interested in. Ephron knows the paper’s bigwigs quite well; that is one of the worlds she travels in quite happily; she is deep inside their bubble.

But it’s also bigger than that. Nora Ephron is perhaps the most masterful social butterfly of her age group. At least in part, that is because she is delightful, and witty, and actually somewhat powerful, at least as much as any person working in the arts can be. (That is to say: she knows a lot of rich people!) She is available to reporters large and small (she once responded to an email of mine for a story, having no idea who I was, even though she was out of the country), which is an insanely charming attribute. And she represents an important and rare bridge between New York and Los Angeles, between publishing and film, a bridge that has narrowed in recent years. (The days of everything produced by “hot young magazine writers” getting optioned ended a while ago.) Surely people believe that a word from Ephron can get their whatever onto whoever’s desk out on that mysterious other coast.

Nora Ephron possesses a strange sort of magic here in New York, in this odd period after the reigns of Pat Buckley and Mrs. Astor and before, I guess, the doyenneships of Tinsley Mortimer and, uh, whoever. Her friends are extremely fancy. And, unlike most of the women in various points in time at the top of what I guess you could call cultural society, she actually makes and does something. In a town where there’s actually not that much going on—really! It’s pretty bleak here!—it’s easy to pay attention to a charming, fun whirlwind.

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on August 4, 2009 5:44 AM

Josh MacPhee Think Galactic $5 This is a nice offset poster of the design I created for the 2009 Think Galacticon, an annual radical political science fiction conference held in Chicago! So this one is for all the crossover sci-fi/political art fans out there. The idea behind the design is that we always see astronauts as atomized individuals floating in space, but what if we had an outer space popular assembly?!?!? full color offset poster 11"x17" signed & stamped on the backside

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds, on August 3, 2009 8:00 PM

While the National has come and gone, one company is still making headlines days after due to an amazing purchase. Brian Gray, the owner of Razor Collectibles ran into this signed 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle and knew he had to have it. A few hours later and with $17,500 dollars less in the bank, he became the proud owner of the iconic card.

Brian’s plan is to create a vintage product that offers one JSA slabbed authentic signed vintage card per pack. Also included in the product will be a 1952 Topps Willie Mays,  1954 Topps Hank Aaron, 1949 Bowman Stan Musial, and many more including rare autographed tobacco issues.

There is no further information on this Razor product, not even a release date or name but you can bet Wax Heaven will keep collectors up to date on what is sure to be one of the biggest stories in The Hobby in 2009 or 2010. It’s good to see one company doing something a little different from the usual game-used relic/autograph “hits” every time.

(thumbnail leads to an amazing scan)

Originally posted by Mario A. from Wax Heaven, on August 3, 2009 7:43 PM

Check out these new images of two cards which will be included in packs of 2009 Topps Updates & Highlights.

While there is no further information available through Topps’ brand spankin’ new Twitter account, there is just something wrong with any card featuring Manny Ramirez and the word “Victory” on it.

You can find a preview of ‘09 Updates & Highlights HERE.

(thumbnails lead to full-size scans)

Originally posted by Mario A. from Wax Heaven, on August 3, 2009 7:41 PM

Shared by Eve
In which I am ALMOST mentioned on The Awl.

The Rumpus asks three eminent Internetarians (I dunno) to consider the vexing problem of whether or not The Huffington Post should pay its writers. It’s complicated! (You will find a related opinion in the disclosure statement here.)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Awl, on August 3, 2009 6:14 PM

If you do not follow MariaDB development, I want to head up XtraDB has been commited to MariaDB server and will be included in binary releases of MariaDB (scheduled on end of August – September) as replacement of InnoDB storage engine. MariaDB will also include PBXT storage engine, Sphinx storage engine and few our non-InnoDB related patches (extended stats into slow-log)

---

Entry posted by Vadim | No comment

Add to: | | | |

Originally posted by Vadim from MySQL Performance Blog, on August 3, 2009 5:19 PM

Regarding the previous post on Twitter and the telegraph, eagle-eyed kottke.org reader Mark spotted this gem on page 401 of the telegraphic code book:

I heard that "tunnel is in ore" was @jack's first name for the service; that it was shortened to Twitter makes a lot of sense now. (thx, mark)

Tags: language   telegraph   Twitter

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 3, 2009 5:02 PM

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to prevent bugs in Parrot. My first contribution to the project was a patch in late 2001 to make an essential Perl 5 program used in the build compatible with Perl 5.004. (My, how times change.) I've spent countless hours in the intervening seven and a half years helping the project become correct, complete, viable, and competitive.

Many of my opinions about the maintainability and sustainability of software projects come from experiences with Parrot (sometimes to the chagrin of people who don't know the other projects I can't talk about which have similar characteristics).

Fiddly Bits of Parrot Not Always Easy to Write Correctly

Parrot uses pervasively a data structure called a PMC,a PolyMorphic Container (or Parrot Magic Cookie). A PMC represents anything that's not a primitive value -- anything more complex than an integer, a floating point value, or a string. In Perl 5 terms, a PMC resembles an SV. Don't take that line of thinking too far; PMCs take the good parts of SVs and avoid the scary, complex parts of SVs.

Because Parrot hasn't quite managed to get rid of C entirely yet (see the Lorito plan for more about that), we have several dozen core PMCs written in C.

A PMC has several well-defined behaviors which forms the vtable interface. These are common operations that any PMC should be able to perform: get a scalar value, set an integer value, access a nested PMC, invoke the PMC as a callable function. Not every PMC performs every defined vtable function, but unimplemented functions produce Parrot exceptions rather than interpreter crashes.

Additionally, most PMCs have attributes. Think of a PMC as a class, with instances of that PMC as objects and PMC attributes as instance attributes and vtable functions as instance methods, and you have a conceptual understanding which works at a high level.

Because of our current use of C as the PMC declaration language, PMCs need to understand their memory management characteristics. In other words, if your PMC has two INTVAL attributes and one PMC attribute, the PMC initializer (like a constructor, in OO terms) needs to allocate enough memory to store these three attributes. Similarly, the PMC's garbage collection mark vtable function needs to be able to mark any PMC stored as an attribute as live. The PMC's destroy vtable function (a destructor, of sorts), needs to release the memory allocated for attribute storage back to the system.

(Don't you have a garbage collector?, you may ask. That's a good question. We could let the garbage collector manage the lifecycle of all of these pieces of memory, but they're already attached to GCable elements, so we don't need to mark or sweep or trace them. The malloc/free memory model works here well enough, even though we use memory pools to avoid the costs of malloc/free.)

Why Fiddly Bits are a Problem

Thus to write a PMC without any garbage collection errors, without any memory leaks, and without any random corruption waiting to happen, you had to remember several steps. In practice, people writing their own custom PMCs copied and pasted behavior from an existing PMC, then refactored it until it did what they wanted.

I spent a couple of weeks reading every line of every core PMC in Parrot. I fixed a lot of bugs. I can spot GC and memory bugs in patches. The problem is that I don't scale and you can't get the experience I have without going through all of the bugs I've gone through -- and if I never read your patch, you may still have that bug.

Properly Encapsulated Complexity

Julian Albo and Andrew Whitworth (and several other Parrot developers) made an improvement recently in this area.

PMCs with attributes need to declare them. We use a mini-language built around C to define PMCs. For example, the PMC which represents an object in Parrot (the Class PMC) has two attributes, a PMC which represents the class of the object and a PMC which contains the instance variables of the object. The code looks like:

pmclass Object need_ext {
    ATTR PMC *_class;
    ATTR PMC *attrib_store;

    /* vtable entries go here */

    /* PMC methods go here */

The PMC to C conversion step creates a C struct to hold this PMC attribute data:

/* Object PMC's underlying struct. */
typedef struct Parrot_Object_attributes {
    PMC * _class;
    PMC * attrib_store;
} Parrot_Object_attributes;

Thus at Parrot's compilation time -- when we compile the Parrot virtual machine -- we know how much memory to store the attributes of each PMC. We know which PMCs have attributes (not all do). We know which PMCs need to mark their attributes specially (this one does, as its attributes are GCables and not primitive values).

Julian's idea was to store the size of the attribute structure in the PMC structure. When allocating a new PMC, the PMC initialization code also allocates memory to contain the PMC's attributes and attaches it. Thus all of the bookkeeping code in PMC init vtable functions can go away. When destroying an unsed PMC, the PMC destruction code can free this memory. Thus all of the bookkeeping code in PMC destroy vtable functions can go away.

We can even get rid of a special PMC flag value which meant something to the garbage collector but was fiddly to get right, because people often forgot to enable it.

This new code is obvious to prove correct. It either works or it doesn't. It's one codepath to examine and patch, not dozens of core PMCs and countless other PMCs existing now or in the future. This reduces the amount of code people need to write and reduces the amount of code existing in our system.

We've moved the internal bookkeeping mechanism from the user-visible portions of Parrot. If you want to hack on the GC, feel free -- but most people shouldn't have to. They shouldn't even have to know how it does what it does. (That won't hurt, but they shouldn't have to know the mechanisms by which it does what it does.)

That's one principle of software development I always encourage. Encapsulate confusing or dangerous or difficult code behind a nice interface. Now you don't have to worry about doing the wrong thing because you don't know how to write code which does the wrong thing. If you don't write any code at all, Parrot will do the right thing for you.

Yes, we changed the way you define PMCs -- but tell me that this isn't an improvement for everyone. That's a principle of modern Perl I want to encourage.

Originally posted by chromatic from Modern Perl Books, a Modern Perl Blog, on August 3, 2009 3:54 PM

There's something about a cold metal spoon, especially the long ones for parfait glasses, to shovel up ice cream. The metal probably isn't helping the ozone layer or saving panda bears, but it's just one of those things you leave alone. As biodegradable food packaging has become more available, more ice creameries are offering specialized bowls and utensils instead.

You can spot it right away: the slightly gritty mouth feel and off-white color. It was made of corn, potato starch, soy oil, or something else that sounds edible, and it belongs in a separate trash bin.

Metal spoons: ice cream scoopage of yesteryear.

Recently I was digging into some at Blue Marble in Brooklyn with friends when this concern (yes, it's extreme ice cream minutiae) came up. The corn-based scoopers don't conduct heat as fast as metal so the ice cream doesn't feel as cold. Blue Marble co-proprietress Alexis Miesen was on our side, but pointed out that they're still better than plastic. "They're somehow richer, more texturized than the flat slick surface of the plastic spoons."

Usually when eating ice cream, the brain isn't too critical. Ooooh, iiiiice creeeam is about as advanced as my mental process gets, but it's interesting to see the evolution of the ice cream-eating experience. Do you think our earth-hugging tendencies are compromising the basic joys of frozen dessert?

Related

Best way to eat ice cream? [Talk]
An In-Depth Tribute to Sporks
'Spoon,' a Children's Book About a Self-Conscious Spoon

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on August 3, 2009 3:30 PM

The spray painted list of things not to be fucked with continues growing in Bushwick.

Photo by Jake Dobkin

Originally posted by Will Sherman from ANIMAL, on August 3, 2009 3:29 PM

Choose Your Apocalypse: Slate’s Choose Your Apocalypse. Zero results for the intersection of SEX and MONEY.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fimoculous, on August 3, 2009 3:12 PM

Orly Taitz, head of the Birther movement (self proclaimed or do they have elections?), on MSNBC convincing people that she is not in the least bit insane.

I’m kind of enjoying the Birther movement. Pass the popcorn.

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on August 3, 2009 3:05 PM

Scott Dadich tipped me off to Brent Humphreys show "Le Tour." The tour is over, but these pictures are beautiful! Tien Mao has a larger picture of last Friday's rainbow over Citi Field.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on August 3, 2009 2:47 PM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from the real janelle, on August 3, 2009 1:33 PM

Diesel is continuing its ongoing partnership with the world of music with its next big giveaway for Diesel Only the Brave.

Starting next week (Monday, in fact) the first 500 people to spend $117.50 on Only the Brave merch (yeah, not sure on how they arrived at the amount!) at select Macy's locations will receive two tickets to a special private performance by Common (the face of the fragrance) at Capitale.

I've always been a Common fan. I like his music, his sense of style, his GAP ads, and find that he has a lot of interesting things to say. And free tix to any small live show are always a welcome addition to my calendar.

So if you need to stock up on some manly fragrance for yourself or someone else, you might want to make Monday your shopping day. More details on participating locations and the concert after the jump!

Sponsored Topics: Macy - Gap - Shopping - Entertainment - Arts

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Fashionista, on August 3, 2009 1:28 PM

Here is video of an interview Wu-Tang Clan MC Ghostface Killah did last week on Angela Yee’s radio show on the Shade 45 satellite station. It is a good example of how a hugely talented artist can be engaging and enjoyable to watch, even as he espouses horribly repellent views on matters of ethics or politics.

Here is a guy who can render the tenderness and intimacy of maternal love in twenty exquisitely chosen words: “But I remember this/Moms would lick her fingertips/to wipe the cold out my eye before school with her spit.” (From 1997’s “All That I Got Is You.”) And here is a guy who can say: “That’s what’s wrong with our people and shit, they put our women equal to men. We’re not equal… Don’t put me equal. I was here first!”

That’s a bummer, no way around it. It’s like my favorite rapper is a member of the Promise Keepers. Still, I love his music. I play his records all the time, I play his records for my kid. And I could listen to him talk all day. What does this mean? I don’t know for sure. Something about art being apolitical, I guess. Anyway, the clip is nothing if not interesting. (Note: it is full of curse words. Ghost is a renowned vulgarian. He once told me, at the end of an interview I did with him in the 90s, “Don’t take the curse words out and shit, those are my favorite shits.”)

Originally posted by Dave Bry from The Awl, on August 3, 2009 12:50 PM

Oh boy. My goodness. Good grief! Today at the White House press briefing: “The second announcement is the Senate Democrats will come down to the White House tomorrow and have lunch here with the President.

Q All of them?

MR. GIBBS: All of them.

Q Open press?

MR. GIBBS: Unclear.

Q But we’re all invited to the lunch?”

“MR. GIBBS: You didn’t get your invite?

Q Is beer being served? (Laughter.)

Q Why are they –

MR. GIBBS: To continue to talk about the priorities that they have, talk about what has been accomplished in the first six-and-a-half months of the administration, and to talk about our priorities.

Q There’s no particular issue?

MR. GIBBS: No. No. And it’s the President’s birthday, and Chuck E. Cheese was booked.

Q I got it. (Laughter.)

MR. GIBBS: Good. That didn’t actually cause you to laugh, though.

Q No. (Laughter.)”

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on August 3, 2009 12:30 PM

We just had the annual justseeds retreat! Three days in Braddock outside Pittsburgh, Pa across the street from a Steel Mill! Long days (10 hour sessions!) where we talked about our group projects (like the annual portfolio project- check out the Voices from the Outside project we did last year); our business structure, our blog, and all sorts of stuff. Here are a few photos that show us all meeting meeting meeting! We tried for consensus on all decisions. We will be tabling alot in the next few weeks (including at AS220 in Providence RI for the Anarchist Bookfair at the foo fest on August 15th where I booked the entertainment which includes SUN RA ARKESTRA!!!). Come check us out!

Among these photos is one of the more lighthearted activities we did to help us relax and break the ice; which was an exquisite corpse game where we would pass papers around the room and people would alternately write and draw. One was particularly funny; it started out as "I watched coyotes" and became a ridiculous drawing about a gerbil hypnotizing its pooh to teach it to clean up after itself.

Anyway, all this will lead to a great year of continued updates and info!

Originally posted by Meredith Stern from Just Seeds: Blog, on August 3, 2009 12:22 PM

Doree Shafrir lives in Brooklyn and has contributed to the New Yorker, New York Magazine, the Daily Beast, and the New York Observer.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Alex Balk, on August 3, 2009 12:14 PM

There are few things that feel  better than crushing a 90 mph fastball or throwing a runner out at the plate from the outfield , but the majority of things I miss the most didn't happen between the lines.

via influencers.typepad.com

My friend (and colleague at Six Apart) David Tokheim played outfield in the Phillies organization in the early '90s, and has a great post up today about all the things / people that are outside of the game proper that he misses. Speaking of which, I could use some "Clubbies."

"Clubbies are there to make your experience comfortable with food, supplies, hook-ups and anything you could possible need. I'll never forget Pauly or Harry from Clearwater in their Philly accent saying 100 times a day, 'you good...you good?'"

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from sippey.com, on August 3, 2009 11:00 AM

Two fascinating films from French director Jean-Luc Godard are out now (http://www.criterion.com/) and they're really worth checking out: 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her (Criterion) (1967) In Godard’s intellectually prickly filmMarina Vlady plays Juliette, a suburban wife and mother who also works as a prostitute in Paris for extra cash. But the movie is more an essay about industrialization, the war in Vietnam, Marxism, and other philosophical arguments. Particularly intoxicating is cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s stunning color photography. His shot of the swirling inside of a cup of espresso is sublime. Made In U.S.A. (Criterion) (1966) is dedicated “To Nick (Nicholas Ray) and Samuel (Sam Fuller), who raised me to respect image and sound”. It stars the gorgeous Anna Karina (Godard’s wife at the time) as a gun-toting gal (in eye-popping 60s outfits) investigating the possible assassination of her lover. This French new wave film noir is Godard at his most playful interjecting the non-plot with Marianne Faithfull singing As Tears Go By in a bar or a goofy Jean Pierre Leaud (The 400 Blows) following after Anna Karina. Two killers are named Robert McNamara and Richard Nixon and the movie weaves in plenty of existential reveries and commentary about war and communism. The film is rife with film references (a loudspeaker voice at a health spa asking for Ruby Gentry and Daisy Kenyon really made me laugh). A colorfully zany pop pulp fiction.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from PAPERMAG: WORD UP!, on August 3, 2009 10:58 AM

In San Francisco’s Tenderloin, in streets that still smell of piss, where homeless men shuffle around at the street corner, the clutch of Indian and Pakistani restaurants is brimming with hipsters. There are at least half a dozen Indian restaurants within a couple of blocks. Shalimar was the original hole-in-the-wall, in a rundown neighborhood of junkies and musty SROs. It started out as a place where cabbies could run in for a quick bite. Nothing fancy, no tablecloths, just a bustling kitchen and tandoori chickens turning on the spit. Now, the homeless man standing outside trying to sell a street newspaper greets me with a “Namaste.”

 Bookmark this on Delicious - Saved by stamen to sanfrancisco tenderloin shalimar indianfood - More about this bookmark

Originally posted by stamen from Delicious/stamen, on August 3, 2009 10:17 AM

Anil Dash:

Apple must transform itself and leave its history of secrecy behind, not just to continue being innovative and to protect the fundamentals of its business, but because the cost of keeping these secrets has become morally and ethically untenable.

Thoughtful criticism. I agree with Anil that Apple has an institutional problem, but I disagree over what it is. I believe that it truly is beneficial for Apple to maintain secrecy regarding future products. The problem is that Apple is secretive about everything — not only does Apple not talk about what they’re going to do, they don’t talk about what they’ve already done. The relationship between the App Store and iPhone developers is emblematic of the problem.

Secrecy is fine. Paranoia is a problem.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 3, 2009 10:07 AM

It’s been entertaining watching people go on about Ian Shapira v. Hamilton Nolan today. Shapira wrote a piece in the Washington Post about how, largely, he felt like Hamilton at Gawker had “ripped off” a previous Washington Post piece of his—by means of that great enemy of press freedom and profitability, something called “extensive quoting.” Hamilton wrote a 439-word item, 227 words of which are blockquote from a Shapira story (226, say others), and 5 words of which are the hyperlink to the source of all the material. Gawker honcho Gabriel Snyder wrote a rather fabulous response today, if you can get the site to load. One of Snyder’s two best points: the Washington Post is intentionally boring readers to death. This is true.

And Shapira himself made a huge error in introducing an “expert source” in his complaint, one who isn’t really very expert. But we treat this as an opportunity for a stroll down memory lane, rather than the chance to be yet one more set of hands with too much typing-time on their, uh, hands!

Oh, let us go back in Gawker-time, to the pioneering wonder-works of one Elizabeth Spiers, who was charged with essentially the same duties of young Hamilton, but with less corporate obsession with SEO. March 2003, anyone?

Its hard not to admire the brevity of these items, is it not? Useful little excerpts of things to go and read. A guide for readers! So servicey. And then lots of little bits of original content— including this short bit!

Let the record reflect that I actually am stealing from Gawker by using these screenshots.

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on August 3, 2009 9:30 AM

From the Modern Love column in the NY Times this week, the story of a woman who was told by her husband that he never loved her and wanted a divorce. But she wouldn't let him leave.

Although it may sound ridiculous to say "Don't take it personally" when your husband tells you he no longer loves you, sometimes that's exactly what you have to do.

(thx, meg)

Tags: marriage

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 3, 2009 9:08 AM

Tom Scocca: Did you ever read that Baltimore Sun piece? About the hit-and-run?

Choire Sicha: About the 17-year-old boxer who was allegedly run down by the police, whilst on his dirtbike? Yes I did!

Tom Scocca: That was as bad as a newspaper story ever gets. There was no epistemological effort put into it at all.

Choire Sicha: There was a claim, and a weak denial, I believe.

Tom Scocca: The reporter spent maybe half an hour getting a story told by the lawyer. But the claim was–well, it’s not even weak, because it simply exists outside the spectrum of persuasion. How good is the boxer? How bad are the injuries? Who saw the incident? Are there other dirt-bike riders who report a pattern of being menaced by the police?

Choire Sicha: According to the lawyer, yes!

Tom Scocca: Exactly. The reporter abdicated any responsibility for getting the story. And this is a story alleging a serious crime–a hit-and-run–by the police, and it ran I believe on page A3 of the daily newspaper, fairly large. But it contains nothing that’s not being claimed by an interested party.

Choire Sicha: Well, I’m not sure there are technically any non-interested parties?

Tom Scocca: Let’s start with the lead. “Two months ago, 17-year-old Deon Johnson was among the top-ranked boxers at a junior national championship, he said.” “He said”?

Choire Sicha: Oh boy.

Tom Scocca: USA Boxing
One Olympic Plaza
Colorado Springs, CO 80909
Phone: (719) 866-2300
Fax: (719) 632-3426
I bet someone there could help you understand how good Deon Johnson is.

Choire Sicha: I’m finding it hard to look him up online without knowing what weight he fights in.

Tom Scocca: It’s not even about whether the claim he’s an Olympic-bound boxer is true or not. It’s about the reporter and the editor being too lazy to even bother getting firm information. Why not say how he did in the tournament? It’s a better lead that way.

Choire Sicha: Or, for instance, what tournament it was? Because I cannot raise records of any of this.

Tom Scocca: And this guy fights out of the Umar gym. I have a long and affectionate history with Umar. If the reporter had simply gone to Umar, they could have hooked him up with specifics about the boxer’s record and history. They would probably have known somebody who knew something about the dirt bikes.

Choire Sicha: But that’s like in West Baltimore. And like, this Deon Johnson person is… oh wait… on a “Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Tom Scocca: Looks like Umar’s current headquarters is about two blocks from where Pennsylvania crosses North Avenue.

Choire Sicha: And this lawyer’s office is on N. Calvert St. It’s in the Equitable Bank Building! 10 N. Calvert St.

Tom Scocca: Google Maps: Directions.

Tom Scocca: The Sunpapers is an 8-minute walk from the lawyer’s office.

Choire Sicha: Do you think he walked?

Tom Scocca: It’s easier than driving. Calvert is one-way going north, I believe. So you gotta get turned around, and then you gotta park. Even on a hot day, I’d walk it. So, in fact, I’m going to bet that this reporter didn’t get into a car at all on this one. If you go down to the bottom, I think he refers to this session with the lawyer as a “news conference.”

Choire Sicha: Which was attended apparently by others. Although: barely! WJZ; “Investigative Voice.” Doesn’t Baltimore have some version of Gothamist that should have been there?

Tom Scocca: Evidently not. I don’t know why The Sun even pretends to publish a newspaper anymore.

Choire Sicha: Well this is sort of like a pretend-newspaper piece!

Tom Scocca: It is completely a pretend newspaper piece. The various people who assigned, reported, wrote, edited, and placed the piece were all pretending to do their jobs.

Choire Sicha: Perhaps they were busy with something else.

Tom Scocca: I can’t imagine what. There’s nothing in the paper.

Choire Sicha: I mean, their night jobs.

Tom Scocca: Tending bar. Washing cars. I have great sympathy for the handful of surviving journalists in the building. I guess if they want to keep taking Guild paychecks from Sam Zell’s money, they should go on ahead. But I wish they would just fabricate the news entirely, and make something that at least reads like it’s not an insult to the customer. If you don’t have the time or energy to drive out to West Baltimore and talk to some people, gin up a scene. Here’s a starter kit: boarded-up rowhouses, check-cashing shop, Formstone churches, ailanthus trees. Use Google Street View and have a look around. If you get caught, you’ll never work in journalism again. That’s a win-win.

Previously: Memoirs! Leer at Yer Crazy Memoirs! From a Circus of Times Employees, a Thousand Magazine Excerpts Bloom

Originally posted by Tom Scocca from The Awl, on August 3, 2009 8:50 AM

Do any New York car-rental places offer cars with manual transmissions?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org, on August 3, 2009 8:18 AM

Another long excerpt in the Washington Post from Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson’s narrative of the 2008 campaign. This one deals with the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican nominee for Vice President. Here’s a brief look at the immediate reaction once the choice was announced.

At McCain headquarters in Virginia, the communications team was caught off guard. No one had given members the advance word that they needed to prepare background material. Inundated by media calls trying to confirm the choice, they were helpless, some of them not sure how to pronounce her name. One staffer was frantically trying to download information about Palin when the overloaded Alaska state government Web site crashed. Unable to get answers to basic questions, the campaign gave out inaccurate information, telling one news organization she had been to Iraq when she had only been near the border on a visit to Kuwait. “It was horrific,” one campaign official said. “It was a disaster. It was a huge disaster.”

Remember, they’re just talking about the immediate reaction there. The rest was totally smooth sailing.

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on August 3, 2009 7:10 AM

Apple PR:

“Eric has been an excellent Board member for Apple, investing his valuable time, talent, passion and wisdom to help make Apple successful,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s Board.”

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 3, 2009 6:52 AM

As ever, The Onion was prescient.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 3, 2009 6:42 AM

In an apparent nod to Sesame Street's adults-only, tobacco-smoking early days, the kids' show will parody Mad Men on an episode of its upcoming 40th season. Look for Cookie Monster to reveal that he stole his identity from a cookie-loving dead guy during the Korean War. [Live Feed/HR]

Read more posts by Lane Brown

Filed Under: mad men, sesame street, tv

Originally posted by Lane Brown from Vulture, on August 3, 2009 6:30 AM

The next version of OS X (code named Snow Leopard) is available for pre-order at Amazon...for only $29 for Leopard (10.5) users. The family pack for five users is only $49. If you're upgrading from an older version of OS X, the Mac Box Set for $169 is your best bet. (via daringfireball)

Tags: Apple   OS X

Originally posted by jason@kottke.org from kottke.org, on August 3, 2009 6:14 AM

Just for kicks, James Grimmelmann plugs into the A.P.'s new licensing scheme an excerpt from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to Isaac McPherson in which Jefferson harangues against the concept of copyright. The letter of course entered the public domain a long time ago.

Sure enough, the A.P. spits out the excerpt, adding that Grimmelmann can use the words only if he pays the news service $12, adds a lengthy footer with the A.P.'s copyright language, uses the excerpt "only as written," and—the kicker—promises not to use the excerpt for political purposes or to disparage the A.P.

Via Boing Boing.

Originally posted by rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) from Reason Magazine - Hit & Run, on August 3, 2009 5:55 AM

A sign of the times...

[via The Next Web]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Reaction!, on August 3, 2009 1:04 AM

Originally posted by (author unknown) from GIF PARTY, on August 2, 2009 7:04 PM

The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

A new spin on the daily self pic vids.

(via Metafilter)

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on August 2, 2009 6:55 PM

The dining room updates have stalled because Brian had to hang a show at District on Monday and Tuesday, and I was in LA on Wednesday and Thursday. Then Brian was hungover from his opening Thursday night, so Friday was pretty much a wash as well.

About the time his hangover was kicking in, I came home to a mural with all the blue replaced by brown and an upset Olivia and Mr. Lacy who thought it was getting too dark. "Trust the vision!" I said.

Brian worked all day Saturday and is in there getting in his groove now, and I think it's looking awesome. Here's how it looked at the end of Saturday. I'll post a Sunday update tonight.

 

Weird that I was riding a bike on the beach in a dress last week and there's now a rather curvy lady biking in a dress in the bottom corner. I think it's me heading to meet Mr. Lacy, on the skateboard on the right. Also, we recently took pictures of giraffes in Africa, and there's a giraffe on the right side. And, per Arrington's comment about "elephants walking and dogs barking" on my post yesterday, I'm delighted there's an elephant in there. Brian seems to be channeling our lives into the wall! If he paints a pregnant lady I might scream.

Originally posted by sarah lacy from SarahLacy.com, on August 2, 2009 1:27 PM

Superbarrels. Like catching rain in backyard barrels, only super-sized for city roofs!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Social Design Notes, on August 2, 2009 1:13 PM

"It tastes like you'd imagine Victorian drug store cola to taste."

My idea of a natural soda usually involves an experiment in mixing seltzer water and fresh juice. You get to watch the mixture fizz and spit and change color, just like with an amateur chemistry set.

So when I saw the "Natural Born Cola" Pepsi Raw (marketed in the U.S. as Pepsi Natural) in the cold drinks section at my local pharmacy here in England, I was intrigued by the slim-as-a-Red-Bull, dark-as-a-brown-M&M can. The ingredients listed are "sparkling water, cane sugar, apple extract, colourings: plain caramel, natural plant extracts including natural caffeine and kola nut extract, citric tartaric and lactic acids, (stabilizer) gum arabic, (thickener) xanthan gum."

It claims, furthermore, to be a "sparkling cola drink with natural plant extracts," containing "no artificial colours, sweeteners, flavourings, preservatives." Each 250 ml can contains 93 calories, 23.8 grams of sugar, and no fat, saturates, or salt.

I marched up to the register with the can in my hand like a trophy. The world, I thought, is ready for this. It's about time.

Once home, I snapped open the lid and poured the Pepsi Raw into a glass. The fizz and sparkle is there, as is the identical color. The taste is, however, different, although not worse.

It is slightly more dilute in flavor, making it more like Diet Pepsi than regular Pepsi. But it tastes like you'd imagine Victorian drug store cola to taste, in that you feel like you can pick out individual elements.

It's like drinking a vintage of wine and claiming it contains hints of leather, black currants, and chocolate. This "vintage of Pepsi" tastes of root beer, gingery spices, caramel, and, of course, very smooth cola. It's not as sharp and doesn't make your eyes water quite as much as straight modern colas. It was delicate, and I liked it. I might even prefer it.

Originally posted by Kerry Saretsky from Serious Eats, on August 2, 2009 11:00 AM

Bobby McFerrin Programs the Audience as an Instrument at World Science Festival 2009

That was fun.

This clip reminds me why I used to listen to Bobby McFerrin when I was little. He was the first musician who’s albums I actively collected. More importantly, he was the reason I was able to come to appreciate and understand unconventional music. If I look back through my music collection, I can trace a straight line from Bobby McFerrin to They Might Be Giants to discovering WFMU to this weird amorphous area that includes John Cage and found sound.

Plus, when ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ blew up, I got mad possessive, giving me my first taste of being an indie/punk rock fan.

Also, apparently it’s 1989 on my Tumblr blog today.

via rocketboom: buzzfeed

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Final Boss Form, on August 2, 2009 10:57 AM

From Serious Eats: New York

New York Post

Mobster Anthony "Fat Tony" Rabito, consigliere of the Bonanno crime family, can no longer get his fat on at four old-school Italian eateries in New York City, according to the New York Post. Just released from Loretto federal prison in Pennsylvania last month after charges of gambling, racketeering, and extortion, Rabito won't be able to celebrate with a big fork full of mussels marinara or lemon chicken at Rao's in East Harlem, Bamonte's in Williamsburg, the Parkside Restaurant in Corona, and Don Peppe in Ozone Park.

When gangsters get out of prison, they are usually placed on supervised release for three years and prohibited from hanging out with other convicted felons or known mob members or associates. Rabito's case, however, appears unique in that his probation officers allegedly told him to stay away from specific restaurants. Probation officials refused to comment.

The story does a pretty phenomenal job capitalizing on all the inherent mobster puns, like how Rabito got "bada-banned" and "still longs for a pizza the action."

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on August 2, 2009 7:35 AM

According to Joel Keller of TVSquad, Miranda Berry of Sesame Workshop has announced that Sesame Street will parody Mad Men (without the smoking and drinking, of course) during its upcoming season. Naturally, the Muppet world is rife with casting speculation.

While the folks at Sesame Street will most likely create new characters specifically for the spoof, as they've so often done in the past, I thought it might be fun to cast a few old school Sesame characters in major Mad Men roles. Let's break it down, shall we?


Prairie Dawn as Peggy Olson: Like Peggy, Prairie Dawn is a writer who, often enough, is the only female Muppet in a world filled with males. And nobody can argue that she's already got the hairdo down pat.


Lefty the Salesman as Don Draper: Lefty the Salesman wasn't much of a salesman, but perhaps his attempts at selling shady merchandise to the folks of Sesame Street will help him prepare for the role of Don Draper. If nothing else, he looks good in a fedora.


Clementine as Betty Draper: Clementine's boyfriend, Forgetful Jones, often neglects her due to his poor memory. Perhaps she could channel some of that frustration into playing the oft-neglected Betty Draper?


Cookie Monster as Roger Sterling: Roger Sterling always wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Related: Cookie Monster will happily play any role that can even remotely be linked to the consumption of pastries.


Bert and Ernie as Ken Cosgrove and Paul Kinsey: Though Bert and Ernie are best friends, they know what it's like to not always see eye to eye. Will they be able to pull off the tension and jealousy that arises at times between co-workers Kinsey and Cosgrove? Of course they will, people. Bert's uni-brow alone can bring the drama when necessary.


Telly Monster as Freddy Rumsen: Telly, like Freddy, is always a mess and can never seem to keep it together. They're a sad-faced match made in Heaven.


Lady Two as Joan Holloway: A former girlfriend of Count Von Count, Lady Two clearly knows how to vamp it up, and her sassy dress and bright red hair are perfect for the part.


Elmo as Pete Campbell: Elmo is younger than most of his cast mates, but that doesn't stop him from trying to grab the spotlight at every opportunity. Oh, he may seem cute, but he can't be trusted. Elmo's already succeeded in getting his own show-within-a-show on Sesame Street. Surely he understands Pete's desire to get to the top.


There are still a few major roles that need to be filled: feel free to add your suggestions in the comments!

Sesame Street Will Have A Mad Men Parody This Year-TCA Report [TVSquad]

[Sesame Street Images via Muppet Wiki]

[Mad Men images via AMC]

Originally posted by hortense from Jezebel, on August 2, 2009 7:30 AM