« November 15, 2009 - November 21, 2009 | Main | November 29, 2009 - December 5, 2009 »
Mind Hacks is five years old today. The first post announced the arrival of the Mind Hacks book and the two posts the next day are still some of the best articles on the site.
I make this the 3,453rd post so I hope some of them have been of interest to you.
zadi: LOL. My favorite moment from August’s PBS press tour. I was busy interviewing the Sesame Street gang, so I didn’t realize what happened at the time.
In Steve’s words:
“At the TV Critics Press Tour in August, we interviewed Sesame Street. I was so dumbstruck by watching Maria, Grover, and Cookie Monster, that I ACTUALLY REACHED IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA to adjust audio levels on a mixing board we borrowed.
To say this is an incredibly stupid thing to do is an understatement. Grover noticed.”I laughed so hard at this that my sides hurt.
I’m a little disappointed with the new Andrew Miller from T-206.
I mean, I’m thankful that Topps even included Andrew in the set but it’s a photo I am all too familiar with thanks to 2008 Allen & Ginter. It’s not like it’s a new photo (Andrew’s bulked up a bit).
I should be happy he’s even in the set because Andrew’s last card came months ago in 2009 Allen & Ginter and despite the non-stop releases this year, he’s been in well under 10 of them.
As for Miller’s career, it’s not been a success as of yet. Two lousy seasons with the Marlins with multiple demotions has pretty much killed his hobby presence and has made collectors forget about his potential.
I will be receiving a box of Topps T-206 in the next couple of days for review purposes and will hope to pull at the very least a base card. If anyone pulls any of the parallels, I will trade them straight up for an autograph or game-used relic so be on the look-out.
There is a 3-card lot on eBay for anyone who wants to get an early start. I am without an eBay account (probably for the better) so I can’t bid. If anyone reading wins that auction, you will receive an autograph & game-used relic for your trouble.
Shorpy is a great source for old photographs. They often get them from sources like the Library of Congress which is where this photo of the New Cannan public library in 1953 came from. You can also see the original set of photos over at the Library of Congress [did not see this one over at their Flickr photostream]. The big add that Shorpy’s has, however, is the community. It’s not just a photo of a library, it’s also people commenting about their memories of the library including where else they’ve seen that certain floor tile [fun fact: it's also the tile that's in my bathroom as near as I can tell] [thanks mike]
Last Night’s Checkins gives a heat map of all the places you’ve ever checked in.
The part of Foursquare that I’ve become most enamored with lately is this ability to create a lifestream of places. Can you imagine if you had all of this data from your teen or college years? This would be amazing to mashup over long periods of time.
I’m going to build a stupid simple Foursquare app that emails you the places you checked in one or two years ago on this day.
From the write-up in the Post ...
Last year Michaele, now 44, told a Post reporter that she had been a Washington Redskins cheerleader, and she has been photographed at several alumni events. But the cheerleaders' director of marketing, Melanie Coburn, wrote in an e-mail: "We have no record of her being a member of the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders."Nor could the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders Alumni Association find any record of her, said Terri Crane-Lamb, president of the association.
One former cheerleader, Konnie McKee, said Michaele came to alumni events, but no one remembered her being on the squad. McKee and Crane-Lamb noticed Michaele attending WRCAA events. "I remember Terri and I talking: 'What's the deal? Does anyone remember her?'"
I'm really digging artist Christopher Bettig's new print, "Paris". It reminds me of the homes across the square from the Centre Pompidou -- homes I have spent a lot of time daydreaming about. Mr. Mountain Label created the neighborhood by drawing and scanning different buildings he saw from his last trip there. The one color print, "Paris" is 18 x 24 inches and is limited to 50 signed screen printed works. Act now if you likey, the original print in dark blue sold out quickly.
Tom Brady hasn't been on the field of the SuperDome since SuperBowl 36, but I have. Yes that's my view of the 20, and the 30, etc in New Orleans.
Some days I walk along the East River and wonder how I will pay my rent; other days I walk on the turf of the SuperDome, learn about soap-based paint, and wonder What Do Saints Fans Eat At The Game? Answer that question in the comments below, or on Scoreboard Gourmet's new fan page (the place where food and sports and You meet).
Thank you, thank you, thank you to the good people of the SuperDome for your hospitality.
Readers, SuperDome food reports to come.
You may be out at the mall taking advantage of Black Friday today, you may be one of the new breed who is shopping from the comfort of your home, or perhaps you do a little of both. When shopping this holiday season, please think of buying directly from your favorite artists. Not only will you be getting your recipient something cool and unique instead of mass-produced, you’ll be helping recording artists earn a living by buying direct (more margin for the artist).
Below are a few offers from artists selling via Topspin which:
- Contain something you could wrap/put under a tree
- Are shipping now
- Don’t suck.
Pick one of these up for a spouse, sister, nephew, friend, or anyone who loves music.
Paul McCartney, Good Evening New York City DVD
This summer Paul McCartney played a stunning set including Beatles and Wings songs in addition to McCartney solo numbers at Citi Field in NYC. The deluxe package is (IMHO) under-priced at $24 and includes 2 CDs, 2 DVDs, and hardbook-style special packaging. The perfect gift for any Beatles fan, which is pretty much everyone.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – LIVE
Also in the DVD zone is the new live outing from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The deluxe version comes with limited edition colored vinyl and a DVD, the perfect stocking stuffer for the rock record collector in your family.
Our friends at Artists in Residence make the best box sets in the history of music. You may remember their handiwork from the NIN Ghosts set or the crazy Sigur Ros In A Frozen Sea box. They’ve out-done themselves this time around by creating the definitive Pixies collectors piece. Check this description out:
– All five Pixies’ studio albums in the following formats: 24k gold plated CDs; 180 gram virgin vinyl 12″ LPs cut from the original analog tapes; Blu-ray audio mastered for 5.1 surround sound and 2 channel stereo at 24/192; DVD mastered for 5.1 surround sound and 2 channel stereo at 24/96.
– The previously unreleased Pixies 1991 live performance from Brixton, on both Blu-ray and DVD, mastered for 5.1 surround sound at 24/192 and 24/96, respectively.
– A 96-page fine art book, measuring 22″ x 14″, and an additional 54-page book, measuring 7.75″ x 8.25
– A 12″ x 19.5″ giclee print, and two double-sided fold-out posters measuring 48″ x 36.”
– Individually numbered and hand-signed by every member of the Pixies and Vaughan Oliver.
– 25 random sets will include test pressings of the vinyl albums.
– Housed in an oversized clamshell case and limited to 3000 copies.
YIKES. CANHASPLZ?KTHXBAI! Um, yeah. Click here to buy.
We’ve done not one but FOUR Beastie Boys reissues this year, and incredible limited edition vinyl packages of classic albums Check Your Head, Ill Communication, and Hello Nasty are still available. The deluxe Paul’s Boutique packages are sold out, as are the Check Your Head T-Shirts, but you can still buy Paul’s Boutique vinyl and Check Your Head deluxe, and Ill Communication and Hello Nasty with the limited edition t-shirts as well. Get these before they’re all sold out!
Get Busy Committee Uzi-Shaped 2GB Flash Drive
Full disclosure, I’m managing this one personally, but I do believe this is about the most unique stocking stuffer you could buy this year, at a great price ($20). This is a 2GB USB drive shaped like an Uzi submachine gun and containing the brand new Get Busy Committee album, Uzi Does It, in FLAC, Apple Lossless, and MP3 format. These start shipping this week and should make it to you in time for the holidays. Get yours today.
Carly Simon has recorded new versions of her classic hits and is selling not only CD, vinyl, and a Live from Martha’s Vineyard DVD but for superfans a box including one-of-a-kind (literally, only one in existence) heirlooms from her career.
The Golden Filter – “Thunderbird” from The Golden Filter on Vimeo.
Yeasayer “Ambling Alp” Vinyl and T-Shirt
or
The Golden Filter T-ShirtMaybe you have someone in your family who is always ahead of the curve, always up on the newest sounds. If so, you’re unlikely to go wrong with either this very limited edition Yeasayer 12″ and t-shirt or this shirt from The Golden Filter. Just to increase your odds, buy them both.
For that special someone who is always cold and lazy, the Weezer Snuggie. Need we say more? The zebra-striped safari version comes with a photo book, CD, vinyl, and poster!
Echo and The Bunnymen, T-Shirt, Chance at Signed Sheet Music
For the Bunnymen fan in your cipher, grab the deluxe package and get a t-shirt and sheet music, 50 of the packages are signed by Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant.
A hip hop album devoted to Hawaii? Yup. And an 8-color Angry Woebots-designed panda t-shirt. How’s that for a new and unique gift idea?
These are just a few, I’m sure there are more I’m forgetting, if so, please leave your favorites in the comments.
Thanks and happy consumption season,
ian c rogers
Topspin
Interesting but surprisingly disingenuous BBC News article from David McCandless, identifying a short-term trend in a much bigger picture to sell his new book. Reminds of when John Maeda took personal credit for animated graphics on the internet. "Serious information used to be relayed in words, graphs and charts - pictures were just pretty window dressing. That's all changing, says David McCandless. E-mails. News. Facebook. Wikipedia. Do you ever feel there's just too much information? Do you struggle to keep up with important issues, subject and ideas? Are you drowning in data? In this age of information overload, a new solution is emerging that could help us cope with the oceans of data surrounding and swamping us. It's called information visualisation."
The Arduino and open-source hardware go mainstream in the Wall Street Journal:
Taking an Open-Source Approach to Hardware – WSJ.com.
Say what you will about the Cincinnati Reds, as a team they play air-tight defense. I don’t think much has been made of it, but the Redlegs led the National League in UZR with 52 runs saved last season. Just looking at the team’s current depth chart, they might possibly improve on last year’s mark. This isn’t to say their squeaky clean glovework is going to somehow launch them into contention next year, but hey, when you can find a bright spot for a languishing franchise such as the Reds, it needs to be highlighted.
There are a couple nifty new sets of defensive projections that have recently come out. Jeff Zimmerman of Beyond the Boxscore has cooked some up, and Steve Sommer has some projections that go the extra mile and regresses UZR to a population based on the Fan’s Scouting Report.
Jeff Steve Joey Votto 2 3 Brandon Phillips 7 7 Scott Rolen 7 8 Paul Janish 4 7 Chris Dickerson 1 8 Jay Bruce 1 4Be sure to click on the links if you would like to read up on their methods.
There’s not a weak link on this chain. I’m assuming Drew Stubbs will be their Reds’ centerfielder after Willy Taveras‘ replacement level season, but we can’t put anything past Dusty Baker. Stubbs’ gets glowing reviews from scouts, and his Total Zone stats (found at MinorLeagueSplits.com) agree, the numbers have him at +58 in 423 minor league games, including 19 runs in 107 games in AAA last season.
UZR had Stubbs at 8 runs in just 42 games in the big leagues, for what it’s worth. The bottom line is he can go get ‘em.
Paul Janish may be Adam Everett-light, and I mean that as a compliment, I think.. He hit for a paltry .275 wOBA and is projected to do the same next year, but in just less than 600 innings on the field he was good for 12 runs as measured by UZR. Small sample, yes, but the fans like him and the Reds like him enough to start him next season.
The Scott Rolen for Edwin Encarnacion + prospects is still a head scratcher to me, but he was consistently -10 on defense where Scott Rolen is still mostly Scott Rolen.
Things might get ugly yet again this summer in Cincinnati, but it won’t be for a lack of fielding.
The White House just released this photo of Michaele and Tareq Salahi meeting President Obama at the Nov. 24 state dinner the Salahis crashed.
Check it out:
Here's our story on the couple.
And check out this rundown of other famous people the Salahis have shaken hands with, including John McCain, Donny Osmond, Charlie Rangel, Prince Charles and Matt Damon.
Earlier tonight, the Secret Service took sole responsibility for the Salahi-Obama handshake, and promised that other uninvited socialites will not be taking pictures with the leader of the free world any time soon.
Tareq and Michaele Salahi may not have what it takes to get a White House state dinner invite, but the couple has far-ranging connections with the famous, near famous and wannabe famous.
Photos found across the net show the couple posing for photos with a diverse crowd of people you've heard of, ranging from Donny Osmond to John McCain to Prince Charles.
The couple's relationship with celebrity is more than just skin deep -- as we already mentioned, the Salahis claim their wedding included speeches from then-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, among other famous names. Last year, Tareq Salahi attempted to buy his family's winery with the help of celebrity investor/star of Kazaam Shaquille O'Neal. Much like the Salahis' recent attempt to get close to a celebrity for fame and fortune, the deal with Shaq resulted in some negative headlines.
Some of the big names that have stood next to the Salahis over the years:
Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL)
Fmr. Virginia Gov./DNC chair Tim Kaine
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy
Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI)
Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY)
Matt Damon
There's no fighting in Shea Stadium among Mets fans. We may fight with fans of the other guys, but when you cut to the core, a guy wearing a Mets hat is family. There's a deep bond we share. It goes much deeper than words. So while we may disagree, when we're in Shea Stadium, we don't fight. So, in a family gathering, just invoke the same rules you do inside your team's ballpark. via www.scripting.com
How did whales get so big eating such tiny creatures? And why aren't they bigger? Carl Zimmer explains.
According to the scientists, this pattern occurs when the whales lunge into a cloud of krill and drop open their jaws. Pleats under the lower jaw open up, engulfing huge amounts of water. The whale slows down because of the drag. It behaves, in other words, a lot like a parachute. [...] It's a lot of water, the scientists have found: in one lunge, a fin whale can momentarily double its weight.
The scaling stuff later on in the article is especially interensting. See also The Biology of B-Movie Monsters.
Tags: carlzimmer science
We're trying to find out more about White House party crasher Tareq Salahi. Salahi is on the board of the American Task Force on Palestine, a DC lobby group closely tied to the Palestinian Authority government of Mahmoud Abbas. But his name seems already to have been scrubbed from the site. Here's what it looked like before the party-crashing incident.
Meanwhile, if you need more evidence that Tareq Salahi is the Zelig of fame-grabbing celebrity-socialite nonsense, here's video of Tareq and his wife interviewing Will.i.am and thanking him for his support for the America's Polo Cup. Salahi is the captain of the US Polo Team, or at least that's what he says. Does the US really have an official team?
In my last post I noted that the White House party crasher couple appears to have pretty substantial ties to the Indian Embassy in Washington. So let's put our thinking caps on and think about what may have happened.
First, Tareq and Michaele Salahi appear to have reasonably close connections to the Indian Embassy. They worked with the Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) on a Polo Match designed to highlight warming Indian-American relations. And the Salahis appear to have appeared at at least two events sponsored by the Embassy. Meanwhile, the Secret Service is saying that while they believe their procedures are adequate that some of their procedures were not followed in this case. So someone didn't follow the rules.
Now, when I first heard about this story, I thought the Salahis were just some random reality show freaks looking for a publicity hit. But taking the Embassy connection into account, it seems highly implausible that knowing people at the Indian Embassy -- several of whom were at the event -- didn't have something to do with them getting in. It's certainly possible that it had nothing to do with it. But given how inexplicable so much of this seems, I find it highly unlikely that it didn't play some role.
Now, to what the Secret Service is saying. If you look closely, I think the two stories fit together. Remember, the Salahis are apparently friends of the DCM at the Embassy, the second ranking diplomatic official in the building. If someone at the Indian Embassy vouched for the Salahis or in some way facilitated their getting in and someone with the Secret Service went along with that, that would seem like a good example of procedures not being followed. And it's one that, albeit very serious, strikes me as plausible.
If something like this did happen, it would also explain some of the White House's silence. Not only is this embarrassing for the White House and the Secret Service, it would also be diplomatically embarrassing for the Indian government -- something the White House and State Department would like to avoid.
Finally, let me again be very clear about one thing. What we know is that the Salahis know people at and have a relationship with the Indian Embassy in Washington. We know that the Secret Service says someone didn't follow procedures. Those are the facts we know. The rest here is speculation. I've tried to be very clear where fact gives way to hypothesis and speculation. So please keep this in mind.
Tags: Andy Warhol lists1 Warhol equals 15 minutes of fame, So if you've been famous for three years, that's just over 105 kilowarhols. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there's a critical point -- varying from celebrity to celebrity -- where that person has outstayed their welcome, and uh ... becomes synonymous with a feminine hygiene product (and the bag it came in). In keeping with nuclear physics, I'm happy for this to remain as k=1 (where 'k' is for 'Kanye').
A common problem programming problem: identify the URLs in an arbitrary string of text, where by “arbitrary” let’s agree we mean something unstructured such as an email message or a tweet. I offer a solution, in the form of the following regex pattern:
\b(([\w-]+://?|www[.])[^\s()<>]+(?:\([\w\d]+\)|([^[:punct:]\s]|/)))This pattern should work in most modern regex implementations. I can vouch for it working in Perl, Ruby, and with the PCRE regex library (which in turn means it works in PHP and BBEdit, both of which use PCRE).
This pattern attempts to be practical. It makes no attempt to parse URLs according to any official specification. It isn’t limited to predefined URL protocols. It should be clever about things like parentheses and trailing punctuation. For example, it will correctly match the URL in the following example lines:
http://foo.com/blah_blah http://foo.com/blah_blah/ (Something like http://foo.com/blah_blah) http://foo.com/blah_blah_(wikipedia) (Something like http://foo.com/blah_blah_(wikipedia)) http://foo.com/blah_blah. http://foo.com/blah_blah/. <http://foo.com/blah_blah> <http://foo.com/blah_blah/> http://foo.com/blah_blah, http://www.example.com/wpstyle/?p=364. http://✪df.ws/e7l rdar://1234 rdar:/1234 x-yojimbo-item://6303E4C1-xxxx-45A6-AB9D-3A908F59AE0E message://%3c330e7f8409726r6a4ba78dkf1fd71420c1bf6ff@mail.gmail.com%3e http://➡.ws/䨹 www.➡.ws/䨹 <tag>http://example.com</tag> Just a www.example.com link.It attempts to be particularly clever with regard to parentheses, which, in my experience, only ever seem to occur in the wild in Wikipedia URLs, and which many URL matching patterns seem to botch. The pattern looks for balanced parentheses within the URL, which is how it correctly omits the trailing parenthesis in the following line:
(Something like http://foo.com/blah_blah)The pattern is also liberal about Unicode glyphs within the URL, which allows it, among other things, to match IDN domain names, such as the ✪df.ws domain I registered for the custom URL shortener I use for the Daring Fireball Twitter feed.
Suggestions and improvements are welcome, including just sending me example input where the current pattern fails.
Maira Kalman wonders about the patterns of food consumption in the United States, whether it is democratic or not, and how we might want to change.
Every one of her essays is outstanding; I can't stop linking to them.
Tags: food Maira Kalman USA
Launching at Art Basel Miami 2009, Swiss Institute presents the cutting-edge calendar Artists on Their Bicycles New York. The limited edition portrays twelve of today’s most famous artists on their bikes, including David Byrne and Cindy Sherman for December.
The calendar is available as a low-res free download and in limited edition prints.
Trek Bellville, Dahons, and Brompton we’re spotted in the pages. Schwinns and more.
(Note: if you hate the M-word in relation to Perl and the title didn't warn you off, you have only yourself to blame for reading beyond this paragraph.)
Some people hate Perl. Some of them have good reasons. More than you might think don't, but you can't argue with these people. (If they haven't used Perl in 15 years and still hate the language, the only two appropriate responses are ignoring and mocking.)
Some people hate or dislike or don't care for Perl for good--that is, measurable and technical--reasons. Arguing that they should like Perl is a futile activity, but discussing those reasons can be enlightening.
Some people don't care for Perl for aesthetic reasons. I have trouble reading Python code because my eyes slide off over the horizontal whitespace used to delimit blocks. Some people cannot read or disambiguate leading sigils no matter how much they work. Aren't brains interesting?
Like all languages, Perl 5 has its drawbacks. Some of those drawbacks contribute to negative perceptions of Perl.
Note that I'm not suggesting that Perl 5 should or must change nor that any patches or designs are forthcoming or have any chance of acceptance in the Perl 5 core. I merely document opinions I've seen and heard when discussing Perl with people who do and don't like the language.
Perl 5 Drawbacks Contributing to the Marketing Gap
It's easy to write messy code in Perl 5 because the language and compiler does not encourage you to write clean code by default.
In this case, "messy" means "global variables", automagic globals springing into existence upon first use, and action at a distance governed by global variables.
For example, all variables are global by default, unless you declare them as lexical. I know Python and Ruby fans hate the idea of declaring variables (though both languages still have the automagic vivification problem, even if limited to lexicals, not globals), but it solves the scoping problem. Too rarely people wonder if changing the default scope of undeclared variables to lexical from global would have changed the way people wrote code in Perl 1 through 4.
The package global action at a distance problem is obvious when you consider the many ways to inherit from a class in Perl 5. Where modifying
@Some::Class::ISAdirectly can pass for a metaobject system, it's an ugly metaobject system.I like
Perl::CriticandPerl::Tidyfor cleaning up bad code, but preventing people from writing bad code by encouraging them to write good code from the start seems like a better approach.Similarly, I have only good things to say about Moose -- but it's an additional library that people have to install before they can use it. (Kudos to the first extended Perl distribution which includes
Mooseand other Task::Kensho modules by default.)CPAN is indeed the best part of Perl 5, but until CPAN distributions are as easy to install as the average PHP application is to deploy, I believe people will still see CPAN distributions as, at best, second class extensions with no guarantee of working together effectively or correctly.
Backwards compatibility is generally a good thing, but the fact that the Perl 5 parser can (and has to continue to) accept, silently, random garbage written fifteen years ago by someone with no business writing maintainable code isn't necessarily a benefit. Yes, it's good that Perl 5 doesn't wantonly break working code, but when it costs 3% of the Perl 5 parser to support a feature obsoleted by Perl 5 in 1995, and when the replacement feature makes code simpler, more concise, and easier to read, it seems like a credible time to consider the cost of supporting old, obsolete features.
Perl has no Big Name Corporate Sponsor. That can be a good thing--Perl doesn't depend on the whims and fortunes of any single company, but it also relies on the kindness and interests and free time of a collection of individuals for advocacy, development, testing, experimenting, polishing, and support.
Then again, volunteer Perl web sites have lately far surpassed the utility, attractiveness, and freshness of supposedly well-sponsored corporate sites.
I don't even have to write about the abominable book, tutorial, and training material situation. A handful of us scream into that void, but it'll take some time before we can fill in that gap and erase the collective memory of Matt's Script Archive from the Internet.
I know, I know -- mature, experienced Perl programmers know how to work around all of these problems. They're not problems if you've written effective Perl for five years.
Put yourself in the shoes of a novice for a moment. Forget that you know how to configure the CPAN client. Forget that you know the difference between
@ISA = 'Parent';anduse base 'Parent';anduse parent 'Parent';. Pretend that no one has told you that Perl 5 can catch your typos for you (if you ask it ) or warn you about deprecated constructs (if you ask it) or recommend alternate approaches that are safer, more secure, more concise, more readable, and better supported (if you install additional software and ask it).In short, pretend that you want to write good, modern Perl 5 -- not Perl 4 -- and don't know how. How much time will you have to spend fighting the obvious battles before you realize what to do differently?
(Before you start angrily telling me that PHP and Python and Ruby and Haskell and C# and who cares what else have similar problems, I don't care, because I'm not talking about that. Feel free to have that discussion elsewhere.)
Next time: Perl benefits.
A visualization of the ascent of many of the world's youngest countries showing their independence from colonial powers (British, Portuguese, French, Spanish) from 1800 to 2009.
France keeps its yoke on a stunning number of nations until 1960.
(Thanks to Jason for the video.)
I used to not really care about Thanksgiving, having not really grown up with it, but after these many years, I do enjoy coming together with friends and family to eat a nice meal. When I have hosted, it's always been very non-traditional, more Japanese. I now love the cozy feeling of this holiday, between Halloween and Christmas. It does encourage a pause to appreciate family, friends, and good health. Tis the season of merry-making!This year, we're lucky enough to be invited to 2 different traditional meals. Last weekend was up in Russian River at Nik's. Boy, was that fun! We all dressed up - M and me were cheesy prom gals. After the meal, we spent most of the time making music. We even practiced and recorded one song since Nik can really play the guitar (I just hummed in the background).
pic from Pixiemakers' Pre Tday set.
Today we are off to Alameda for more turkey. I must say, I'm loving not having to do much! Our friends just bought a cute house in Alameda so this will be a nice house-warming too.
Tim Lincecum, right-handed pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, won his second consecutive Cy Young Award last week. He’s only the 8th player in baseball history to win the award in two straight seasons. At only 25 years-old, Lincecum has become the face of the Giants team, he has dominated NL batters, and he’s established himself as one of the best pitchers in the game.
From his unconventional throwing mechanics to his unique fashion sense, Linceum has a style all his own, both on and off the field. Teammates have nicknamed him "The Freak" because his size, wild windup and unique pitches manage to translate into great results. And when it comes to media appearances, rather than sporting the usual business professional clothing like his teammates, Lincecum opts for a more casual look. Reminiscent of a "skater," he can often be seen wearing a plaid shirt and a beanie.
As evident in his fashion choices, Lincecum is known for his laid back and relaxed demeanor. As an avid video gamer, you may have seen him and his avatar in the commercial for the MLB 2K9 game. He possesses the attitude that baseball and life are both games of fun.
Tim Lincecum is Who’s Haute.
- Glam Gal -
I am thankful for blogs!
Serious Eats: "Here at Serious Eats HQ we have lots to give thanks for: a fantastic, supportive community; the opportunity to share our discoveries with all of you; and the chance to eavesdrop and participate in the most passionate, discerning, and inclusive food conversations on the web."
Talking Points Memo: "We have a president who, whatever his short-comings, at least speaks in full sentences. We avoided another Great Depression. And we've always got Michael Steele to entertain us."
Gothamist: "This Thanksgiving, the CDC has been concerned that the H1N1 virus may spread further, what with holiday-related travel."
Mena Trott's Nested: "I'm raising my daughter, Penelope, and I am constantly wondering how do we (my husband Ben and I) raise a daughter like you. I don't care if she hates math and doesn't do well in school or whatever as long as she has a passion. That's not saying I think you do poorly in school — it's just the traditional measure of success for a kid. I just want her to be passionate about something and put all her love into it..." Posted last week, the Letter to Tavi is a thanks as much as an appreciation.
Jason Kottke's Kottke - Malcolm Gladwell's article about concussions was not the first on the topic, and did not contain a cogent argument of any kind (in fact, it was almost aggressively lacking in sense), but Jason and other bloggers helped bring attention to the issue, and changes are being made. Spoiler alert! This is the Tipping Point's "three rules of epidemics" in action. The hospitals and doctors who made the research possible are mavens - the "information specialists", Gladwell himself is the salesmen - "[salesmen] tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, which makes others want to agree with them", and bloggers like Jason are the connectors: - "the people who 'link us up with the world ... people with a special gift for bringing the world together.' They are 'a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack [... for] making friends and acquaintances'. [Gladwell] characterizes these individuals as having social networks of over one hundred people."
More Jason: "The most striking feature of the H1N1 flu vaccine manufacturing process is the 1,200,000,000 chicken eggs required to make the 3 billion doses of vaccine that may be required worldwide. There are entire chicken farms in the US and around the world dedicated to producing eggs for the purpose of incubating influenza viruses for use in vaccines. No wonder it takes six months from start to finish. But we'll get to that in a minute."
Sally Law: "Someone should tell the Macy's parade announcers what 'money shot' actually means."
Matt Jacobs - for Canabalt Tips and Tricks and the high score list. My scores are low, but they are mine.
Anil Dash - For generosity and vision. We should all be thankful in advance for the work he is going to be doing. No pressure. Also, please fix that home studio set-up.
Bill Simmons - for The Book of Basketball. Maybe not 700 pages and three weeks rewarding, but rewarding nonetheless because it's so packed with ideas and energy. Sprawling at times, and meaning no disrespect to Simmons' GOE(1), I think the book might have been tighter had their been four or five editors who were each responsible for a section, and then had to argue for their sections' inclusion in the book (pyramid-style). Even the errata is fun to read. Thanks also to Brian Libby, whose photos of Memorial Coliseum will grace the design of the Simmons' inspired Bob Cousy's Lisp. Also thanks to Brian's commenter michael_1963 for the earnest but still unintentional comedy gold: "Is this your local team Brian?" Yes, Michael, yes it is.
Paper - for everything from pasta to ALICIA KEYES AND JAY-Z HANGING OUT AT TKTS. Just as they continue to do with print, Paper is showing bloggers how to be essential and unimportant at once. Perhaps better: important but nonessential. You know what I mean!
And of course thanks to my colleagues at Six Apart, who made much of the above possible in first place, and perhaps unfortunately have moved mountains so regularly that it's expected as a matter of course.
Grumpy old editor, who did an incredible job. (now go back)
I was thinking about the different types of content the other day and how you to organise your approach to it – in terms of both building content and acquiring links from that content. And now, I present to you the result of my deliberations: The Content Pyramid.
The Originators
At the top of the content pyramid are the real ideas guys – people who have resources, time and the sheer smarts to come up with things that can change your perception of an issue. Not wishing to suck up to Dave, but he’s the kind of guy I mean. In a 60 word post he can put out an idea or observation that sets lightbulbs off over people’s heads.
The Commentariat
At the second level of content are the people who follow the originators. Often they have more audience reach because they dedicate more of their time to honing their style or are attached to a big publication.
They’re still smart – because they not only understand what the originators are saying but can contextualise it for non-specialists. They can also see the implications and will often put together something that speculates on where an idea will end up.
The difference between these guys and the originators is probably like the relationship between a chef and a restaurant critic. The critic probably has more readers every week than the restaurant could sit in a year. This is where ‘word of mouth’ really starts.
Case in point: our original story about the Twitter hack got a fraction of the retweets that the rewrite on Mashable did over the first days as the story was breaking.
The Aggregators
The third tier are people with an interest in a subject but with no real insight of their own. The kind of people who retweet the aggregators or make a list of “10 Great Resources” from stuff they’ve read in the papers that week. You’re looking at the kind of content that is read just by a small circle of people.
I class my own blog in that kind of sphere – I could probably give you the names of 50% of my daily visitors and I don’t really write anything of consequence there. But! The people who come there have a laugh and remember it. There are a lot of these blogs out there, and they touch each other in unexpected ways. You might not get relevant links from a site like this, but the ripples can spread quite widely. These people are probably also susceptible to a little flattery or cash
The Thieves
The bottom feeders of the content chain are those who outright steal from any of the points above. It could be a direct content scrape or a respouting of an opinion or fact without any real addition. The people who visit these sites are probably accidental, one-time only visitors.
Where do you sit?
Arguably, being at the top of the content pyramid is the best place of all. You’re the domain expert. People can’t talk about the subject without touching on your work or ideas and it is your content that goes out through the aggregators. But, the aggregators might be where the traffic and exposure really is to push down into the volume sectors.
As a general rule, very few of us sit at the top of the pyramid (that’s why it’s a pyramid, doofus). We should all aim for it when writing content – because from there your influence can spread through and define a whole market. Realistically, most markets are saturated and you’re swimming in an ocean of Same – who really needs another article on link building, ferchrissakes?
If that’s you, then you need to look for a longer term strategy. You need to have opinions and develop a writing style that engages an audience. You need to spread the word so far and wide that people will learn about ideas from you, even if it all proves is that you subscribe to the blog of someone much smarter. From that comes traffic… and links from lower down the chain… and ultimately authority: the holy grail.
Finally, if you’re looking at getting links from people, think about where they sit in the pyramid. If it’s a splog, move on. If it’s an aggregator you need to get in front of them. If it’s an originator, you probably need to sidle up to them at a bar the next time they’re speaking at a conference and ply them with booze.
Filed under: Gaming, Freeware, iPhone, iPod touch
Back when the iPhone was first announced, there was no SDK, you'll remember. Jobs said that developers could just make web apps, and that they would be good enough. Of course, he was wrong -- given what you can do with your iPhone now compared to what you could do with your iPhone then, even Steve would be happy to say that yes, there is a native app for that. But let's not toss the projects out with the development platform, so to speak. Neven Mrgan, one of the devs over at Panic, has released Pie Guy, a free and surprisingly full-featured game for the iPhone that exists only as a Javascript web app. To play it, just point your iPhone 3GS (the page says you need one of those, and while I was able to play it on my 1G, it was too clunky to enjoy) to mrgan.com/pieguy, add that page to your homescreen, and there you go.
In case you haven't guessed from the pic above (or the name), the game itself is a straightforward Pac-Man clone. But what's most interesting here is the example this game sets. Think about it: a full featured, automatically updated game release, delivered straight to the iPhone without any approval required by Apple. The revenue model might need some work, but maybe we dismissed this whole "web app" idea a little too quickly. For devs looking to go around the App Store's process, maybe there's a solution here. Boy, Flash sure would help with that, wouldn't it?TUAWPie Guy: A web game for the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Illustration by Pierre LamielleI'll never forget the way the words rang in my head, what, four or five years ago, Judy Rodgers, chef of Zuni Cafe in SF: why is this the beginning of the eating season, she asked, why isn't this a holiday about cherishing our food, about saving it, about putting it up before winter so we don't starve, about sharing it? Thanksgiving should be about being with people we care about, about paying attention to what we have so that we don't waste it, so that we make more of it, so that everyone has it.
So as I spend a happy day in the kitchen, I'll be thinking about the time I live in, a time of unprecedented thoughtfulness about food and where our food comes from. It's a lucky time to be a chef, to be a cook, to be someone who loves good food.
I would be grilling my turkey today if my daughter hadn't demanded that I roast it. I love grilling a turkey. It may be the tastiest way of cooking a turkey. It requires continual attention, which is a good thing, unless you've got a million other dishes to cook, vacuum the living room, set the table, maybe even shovel the front walk, who knows? So I'm roasting this year, and not stuffed. Doing a "dressing." Leeks and mushrooms and lots of herbs and celery and some turkey stock and fat from the cooking turkey. Turkey cavity will have onion lemon and herbs. I'll also be making green beans with almonds (easy to finish at the last minute). I always have some kind of corn, symbolic for me. My dad's cranberry sauce. Donna's making the mashed potatoes because she loves to. Epi from On the Rise bakery, a wonderful edible garnish for the table. Friends are bringing pecan pie and pumpkin pie.
I did a local radio show yesterday with two chef restaurateurs I really respect and like, Doug Katz and Jonathan Sawyer, and Doug was talking about how he does his small-farm-raised birds. It's kind of a combo braise roast and it makes so much sense, but does have a big sentimental drawback. He removes the legs and braises them in stock and vegetables and roasts the breasts. It would be a great strategy at home. Sweat plenty of veg in a roasting pan, add the legs and enough wine and stock to come three quarters of up, bring it to a simmer on the stove top, then put the rest of the turkey on top and roast it. This way you end up with succulent tender legs and thighs and can control the doneness of the easily overcooked breast. And you've made some more delicious stock in the process.
But part of the ritual of thanksgiving is seeing this whole roasting bird. So I intend to present the bird when the breast is done, then remove the legs and finish them in the roasting pan with the vegetables and stock. And finish the rest of the dishes while the breast rests.
How ever you're cooking your meal, don't panic and don't stress, enjoy the process. Today is not about perfect food. This, holiday we all share, is about appreciating food, about sharing it, about being with friends and family, about giving thanks for the present with hopeful thanks for the future.
A final thanks to Pierre, who created the above illustration. I met him in Vancuver at a signing. He was a young cook and artist whose playful illustrations in his first book, Kitchen Scraps, a fun illustrated cookbook, I really admire. Thanks Pierre.
To all, Happy Thanksgiving.
Filed under: Video, Odds and ends, iMac
In case you're itching to use that new 27" iMac as a big display for a MacBook, DVD player, or some other device -- and assuming your new unit isn't one of the ones that has shown up DOA or with a cracked screen corner -- Apple has released a knowledge base article gives you the scoop on how to do it all.
The article, titled "Using a 27-inch iMac as an external display" outlines how easy it is to accomplish this:The post goes on to describe special conditions that may affect use of Target Display mode, and notes that third-party converters may be used to provide the Mini DisplayPort compliant signals needed for this mode.
- Make sure both computers are turned on and awake.
- Connect a male-to-male Mini DisplayPort cable to the Mini DisplayPort on each computer. The 27-inch iMac will enter Target Display Mode and display content from the source computer.
Note: If you are connecting two 27-inch iMacs, connect a Mini DisplayPort cable to each computer and press Command + F2 on the 27-inch iMac keyboard that you will use as an external display.- To leave Target Display mode, press Command + F2 on the keyboard of the 27-inch iMac that is in Target Display mode. To return to Target Display mode, press Command + F2 again.
Have any of you used a 27" iMac as an external display for another machine or device? Let us know by leaving your comment below.
TUAWApple document details Target Display mode for 27" iMac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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OK, this is awesome. The New York Times (whose infographics really are second to none) put together an index of searches from Allrecipes.com that maps out where queries for different Thanksgiving foods come from. Look at "green bean casserole" or "pumpkin cheesecake" and see exactly which states are searching for that dish.
Things to learn?
"Sweet potato casserole" was the most-searched term nationwide, but concentrated heavily in the South; Californians want to know how to make mashed potatoes; it's the Northerners who want to know how to brine a turkey. Of course, this raises the question: If something isn't highly searched in a given area, is that because fewer people are making it? Or because they already know how? It probably goes both ways. In any event, it's quite fun to scroll through.
The heritage breeds were popular 100 years ago but almost disappeared until preservationists, sustainable agriculture advocates and food enthusiasts worked to bring them back into vogue. They are generally raised on small farms, allowed to feed on pasture and roam freely. While broad-breasted birds can mature in 14 weeks, heritage birds take 28 weeks.
Enthusiasts say they taste better and have firmer, darker meat. But the birds also come with a compelling story that a frozen Butterball can’t match. Breeds from a bygone era, allowed to run free, are promoted as the edible embodiment of older ways of farming and eating — a political statement with a side of cranberry sauce. (via New York Times)
We've done the heritage turkey thing for the last two or three Thanksgivings and it's definitely worth it. So much more flavorful and, well, turkey tasting.
Some people thought that my recent column about hip-hop was actually an assertion that hip-hop was dead. In fact, my argument was that hip-hop is not ending but rather going through a transitional moment and atomizing. Glenn Branca, though, does seem to think think that all kinds of music may be coming to an end. In a post on the New York Times’s Opinionator blog, Branca wonders:
Why bother doing anything new at all? Why bother having any change or progress at all as long as we’ve got “growth”? I’m just wondering if this is in fact the new paradigm. I’m just wondering if in fact the new music is just the old music again. And, if that in fact it would actually just be the end of music.What’s odd about this post is not its grouchiness but its lack of specificity. When writing an obituary, it helps to name names. The only genres mentioned are “rock,” “jazz,” and “Muzak.” It is hard to figure out exactly what event or piece of music got to Branca.
In the first paragraph Branca asserts that “the music industry itself has been subsumed by corporate culture,” which wouldn’t have been news in 1979. He then says “composers are at their wit’s end trying to find something that’s hip but still appeals to an audience mired in a 19th-century sensibility.” I assuming he hasn’t read my colleague Alex Ross’s book “The Rest Is Noise,” which makes a fairly convincing case that classical music (whatever that is) was fairly robust during the twentieth century, and that at least some of the audience noticed. My copy is at the office, but I am fairly sure Mr. Branca is in the book.
In this sentence, though, Branca goes far freaking out: “For more than half a century we’ve seen incredible advances in sound technology but very little if any advance in the quality of music.” Step back for a moment, open a new window, and Google Mr. Branca. He didn’t begin releasing records until 1980, some of them genuinely great and genuinely important, like “The Ascension” and “Symphony No.6 (Devil Choirs At The Gates Of Heaven).” His assertion wipes out all of his own work, and tons of pop and modern classical music, depending on how far past “half a century” “more” indicates. Nuclear war!
I enjoy grouchy broadsides, so rather than slamming Branca, I would like to request a follow-up post. What droves him so nuts? What sounds to him like Muzak? (Muzak, if we are being literal, is mostly gone and has been replaced in department stores by curated playlists of pop music.) If music is ending, I want to know what to hoard.
At a bar last night, I was talking to someone smart who made an excellent point: that a very quiet, revolutionary act in the history of publishing had just taken place. (This person compared this moment to Gutenberg, which might be a little bit far afield but not that far off!) That is that Joshua Micah Marshall is hiring a publisher for Talking Points Memo, the blog he started all on his own in 2000, a bit before all the warbloggers like Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds came onto the Internet, and four years before Michelle Malkin. (Oh yes, how soon we forget.) My friend's point was: here is an editor, who built and owns his publication, who is now going to be the editor-owner, who will employ the publisher. For those of you who have worked at any sort of publication, the implications of this are staggering. via www.theawl.com Choire nails it, except this is the present, not the future. This is the major business shift that we're witnessing in the media world, and it's less dependent on the Internet than we all think. Other great examples of this – Serious Eats, Gothamist, the Awl itself, and even skunkworks projects within large media companies (a la the Big Picture) are also relevant examples.
Newark mayor Cory Booker has visited President Obama's White House four times, including one meeting with the president himself, according to the White House visitor logs that were released this afternoon.
The meeting with Obama occurred in March. There was another White House visit later that month for Booker, as well as one in May. And in August, Booker met with Valerie Jarrett, a close confidante of the president.
Booker and Obama have long been political allies, and some observers have noted that Booker's "post-racial' political style echoes the president's own.
I am a bit of a knot connoisseur. This year I noted that the live poultry folks use their own special knot when they weigh live birds. The knot has to go on fast, come off fast, and leave the bird unharmed. The worker holds the birds by the legs, puts the rope between the legs, quickly wraps the rope around the legs two times, and then passes the rope under and between the legs. The weight of the bird keeps the knot tight. The birds remain calm, thought they tend to spread out their wings.
via cookingissues.wordpress.com
Dave Arnold's experience buying a live turkey.
Shoppers at the Limited pop-up shop on Spring Street got to do a bit of early holiday shopping for a good cause last night when Parks and Recreation star Rashida Jones hosted a benefit for Peace Games, a non-profit that teaches kids to resolve classroom conflicts without violence. Jones, who described Peace Games as "the missing piece in education," told us she got involved with the program after a friend introduced her to founder Eric Dawson, with whom she attended Harvard but didn't know because, "he was busy being awesome and creating Peace Games and I don't know what I was doing."
After Jones gracefully shut down another reporter who inquired about her rumored relationship with John Mayer, she chatted with PAPERMAG about her plans to take on Black Friday sales, wondered aloud about why her Parks and Recreation character Ann Perkins, a nurse, is always hanging around City Hall, and her favorite New York City park.
How's your holiday going? Is Parks and Recreation on a break?
Yes. I'm sort of the wayward child who came to New York to do press. It's fun. I feel a little bit like I'm playing hooky.
Are you having Thanksgiving in New York?
Yeah, I'm having it with some friends and their families. I'm tagging along.
Have you started your holiday shopping yet?
No, but I intend to take advantage of that on Friday.
Wow, you're going to brave Black Friday?
I'm going to brave the storm. At least I'm going to try. Nobody's guaranteeing that I'm not going to end up in tears.
Do you have any favorite stores here?
I love UNIQLO, Eryn brinié, Opening Ceremony, Topshop -- all stores that we don't have in L.A. It'll be good.
What's going on on Parks and Recreation? Ann was dating the hapless, homeless Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt), but is now dating charming city planner Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider ). Last week, however, your character noticed hickies on Andy's neck and was apparently bothered...
Such drama. Ann saw the hickies and she's not a fan. Even though Andy's integrated himself into my world -- which is not even my world because why the hell am I there all the time anyway -- he's made a truce with me and Mark that he's going to be respectful of us. But I think she still has a lot of love for Andy.
Pehaps they'll be getting back together?
I wouldn't ever say no.
Your favorite New York park?
Central Park. There's no better park in the world.
Photo by: Bill Davila/Startraks
This publisher will be responsible for making the publication hum and grow. The first duty in the listing is "audience growth." This is what a publisher should do: ensure the ongoing financial success and growth of his or her publication. Instead, what we have now in the media industry are publishers who believe their duties include dictating the editorial mission on behalf of a business principle. This is when publishers go wrong and, generally, is when they should be taken out back and shot.
via www.theawl.com
Shared by BruJD Salinger Uncollected Stories
oh. cool, thanks mghezzi
Ariel Levy did a piece on runner Caster Semenya for the New Yorker this week. Semenya's competition eligibility is up in the air because the IAAF (the worldwide governing body for track and field) can't decide whether she is a woman or a man.
She didn't look like an eighteen-year-old girl, or an eighteen-year-old boy. She looked like something else, something magnificent.
Love that quote.
Tags: Caster Semenya gender sports track and field
I was just looking at this run-down of recent polls by Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling. The upshot is that while it seems extremely unlikely Republicans could regain control of the senate next year, it's not impossible and they look well positioned to make a big dent in the Dems' majority in the upper chamber.
Most of this has to do with the factors we know about -- a bad economy, a charged up right-wing, President Obama's decline in popularity. But looking more closely at the races something else stood out to me: just how many of the vulnerable seats are ones where bad or questionable picks by Democratic governors have put Democrats in an unnecessarily weak position.
To be clear, not all of these are bad candidates/incumbent senators. But politically they're all very weak -- probably unnecessarily so given the states they come from.
The ones that stand out are Beau Biden in Delaware, yet to be determined in Illinois, Kirsten Gillibrand in New York, and Michael Bennet in Colorado.
As you can see, each of races is fall out from the successful 2008 election. Biden resigned his seat and got a placeholder appointment to cue it up for his son Beau Biden in 2010. Obama gave up his seat in Illinois triggering the Blago/Burris train wreck, Clinton resigned her seat to go to the State Department and Bennet got appointed after Sen. Salazar went to Interior.
Defending a seat without an incumbent is always challenging to some degree. But each of these, in different ways, looks very much like unforced errors/self-inflicted wounds for the Dems 2010 election prospects.
The "best" of these appointments may well be Beau Biden. There's the obvious nepotism angle. But Biden's an established politician -- he's the state's Attorney General. And Delaware's a small state whose politics has been dominated by three of four guys for decades. It's not clear to me that there was another Dem available who would have come in to the contest better positioned. And his probable opponent, Mike Castle, is one of those three or four guys who's been running the state for forever.
Next you have Kirsten Gillibrand in New York. Maybe she'll turn out to be a great senator. But this one surprised everyone when it was announced. And she's far from the best positioned person to hold this seat in 2010. It wasn't clear when she was appointed that it would be such a tough climate for Dems. But that's life. If Giuliani gets in to this race, this one could end up looking like a senate Gov. Paterson all but gave away to the Republicans.
Next, Illinois. What can you say? It's not that Illinois would ever be a walk. But certainly the Dems position is greatly weakened by the whole Blago/Burris fiasco. And having a strong candidate in office for almost two years would have put that person in a much better position than whatever they'll face next November.
Finally, there's Colorado. I don't have a deep grasp of Colorado politics. And Sen. Bennet (D) may be a great senator. But it seems clear he has precious little political base to work with in running for office in his own right. I don't know what other Democrats were available. But his appointment seems to have put the Dems in a needless weak position trying to hold Ken Salazar's seat.
Some of these picks stemmed from personal idiosyncrasies, others unique personal situations. But all were made in the post-2008 political climate when the Democratic ascendancy seemed to flow into an endless future. And the Dems could pay a real price.
Opening this week is Me And Orson Welles, a fabulously entertaining new film by Richard Linklater about a headstrong high schooler, Richard (Zac Efron), who bluffs his way into Orson Welles's Mercury Theater during the final week of rehearsal of their legendary 1937 production of Julius Cesar. It's a whirlwind for Richard -- he falls in love with Welles's beautiful, nakedly ambitious assistant Sonja (Claire Danes), locks horns and does the unthinkable by disagreeing with the blustery tyrant, Welles himself (Christian McKay), and he even gets to appear (bittersweetly) on stage on an opening night that must have been true theatrical magic. It's a delightful conceit and Linklater really brings the loony mayhem of theater enjoyably to life on screen with a wonderful supporting cast including Ben Chaplin, Eddie Marsan, Kelly Reilly, James Tupper, etc. But the real treat is McKay who just nails Welles's bigger than life persona and captures the musicality of that memorably grand, sonorous voice. He also captures the vulnerability and epic sadness of him too.
Hans Rosling is the Zen Master of presenting statistics. He's brilliant. Hans proves what we all know, even if our teachers from yesteryear did not: Statistics are not boring. Statistics tell a story. Hans gave this talk at TEDIndia a couple of weeks ago. (I heard from friends who attended TEDIndia that the entire event was incredible; I must get there next year.) This may be the best Hans Rosling TED talk yet (all his talks are fantastic). He's natural, funny, passionate, and he knows his points and where he's going with them—and he's very, very visual. And what a great stage—that's the best TED stage atmosphere I've seen yet. Do yourself a favor and set aside 15 minutes to watch this informative talk. Better yet, share it with others.
Gapminder World
Gapminder World is a web service that displays time series of development statistics for all countries (Google acquired Trendalyzer from the Gapminder Foundation in 2006). Gapminder World is a powerful (free) tool. Increasingly, we're running out of excuses to be dull. Remember: Do not simply display data—present the data so that its story is revealed to all.
Gapminder World is loaded with over 200 indicators displaying trends in some cases back as far as the year 1800. Gapminder World is an amazing tool that is especially useful for educators or anyone else who is interested in "unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view."
This is a fantastic read from Baltimore City Paper, on the “fact” that Maryland’s number of millionaires dropped to 4,910 in 2008 from 7,067 in 2007. It includes a basic primer on how business works, which is so delightful we must excerpt it here.
Critics of the millionaire tax say they’ve never heard of a poor man hiring a worker. Only the rich do that; therefore, to render the wealthy less so by taxation is to destroy jobs.
The theory presumes that the wealthy hire people out of charity. In this model, jobs are bestowed upon lucky workers by the industrious entrepreneur, who derives his own wealth from some magical practices (having nothing to do with the workers he may hire) which are anyway unfathomable to outsiders.
To hear self-proclaimed capitalists make this argument is irritating, because it suggests they don’t understand how our economic system is supposed to work. They have the process exactly backwards.
In a capitalist system, investors make money not despite hiring workers, but because they hire workers who, if they are adequately managed, create value in excess of the wages and benefits they are paid. This value is called “profit,” and the business’ owner gets to keep that, after paying taxes.
In a properly functioning capitalist economy, rich people don’t “create jobs” for workers; workers, upon having jobs, create rich people.That’s how the system works, in theory.
But the reality is different from the theory. In today’s marketplace, the super-rich have become richer in large part by destroying jobs.
As I walk my dog this morning a man appears ten paces or so in front of me, walking a bit unevenly. He's the kind of person who talks to anyone and anything, unafraid of confrontation or judgment. He reminds me of Chris Tucker.
Walking toward him, I can tell that he's going to talk to me. (How do I know this? Because he is presently talking about the trash bags at 194 Riverside to, well, nobody.) Conversations with loopy strangers are not on my morning to-do list, but I sense he's non-threatening. He is clean-shaven and decently dressed, with a keychain hanging off his waist, so I suspect he's not homeless or a beggar. Then again, he's slurring his speech at 8:30 in the morning, so one never knows.
He spies me and Charley and turns around. "Good morning!" he says with abundant cheer.
I decide to go with it. "Mornin'."
"Walkin' the dog, ah?"
"Yes I am."
He turns away, says something I don't hear, then spins back and approaches me.
"Hey, can I ask you a question? First of all, happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and I wish you the happiest of holidays."
Great, I think, here it comes. "Sorry, man, I'm not carrying anything."
He pauses for a split-second, breaks into a huge grin, leans toward me, and continues:
"Can I borrow your dog?"
At a bar last night, I was talking to someone smart who made an excellent point: that a very quiet, revolutionary act in the history of publishing had just taken place. (This person compared this moment to Gutenberg, which might be a little bit far afield but not that far off!) That is that Joshua Micah Marshall is hiring a publisher for Talking Points Memo, the blog he started all on his own in 2000, a bit before all the warbloggers like Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds came onto the Internet, and four years before Michelle Malkin. (Oh yes, how soon we forget.) My friend’s point was: here is an editor, who built and owns his publication, who is now going to be the editor-owner, who will employ the publisher. For those of you who have worked at any sort of publication, the implications of this are staggering.
This publisher will be responsible for making the publication hum and grow. The first duty in the listing is “audience growth.” This is what a publisher should do: ensure the ongoing financial success and growth of his or her publication. Instead, what we have now in the media industry are publishers who believe their duties include dictating the editorial mission on behalf of a business principle. This is when publishers go wrong and, generally, is when they should be taken out back and shot.
Except when the owner is the publisher, as is so often the case, she or he can never be dislodged, and rarely disobeyed. And even when the publisher isn’t the owner outright, the publisher still represents those interests. And worse: the hybrid corporation/owner.
For instance, pretty much everything that is wrong with the Washington Post is driven by issues of ownership and control; the financial operation of the newspaper exercising control over editorial. (In this case, as so often happens, the executive editor of that paper, Marcus Brauchli, has some sort of weird, terrible, degrading Stockholm Syndrome relationship with the publisher-owner-corporation as well, and it is destroying the paper.)
Now that anyone can own a publication just by sweat equity, what will happen when the publishers actually report to the editor-owners? Yes, I am pretty much expecting a grand utopia, and perhaps I will be disappointed. But it’s high time media publishing—where, nearly everywhere across the industry, the business side that has failed so utterly at its duties is currently squeezing every last bit of blood out of editorial—tried something different.
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Recorded screencast and the rest of the talk in tonight's SF.pm talk. The talk went well with lots of questions and feedbacks!
Also, if you come to London Perl Worlshop in two weeks, you probably should avoid watching this movie. It's a spoiler! :)
(Note that I was misusing the apachebench command line option to test Catalyst on Plack. The right use will give me 200 QPS rather than 30, which is quite fast)
By the time I got there, it was gone.
The World’s Fair, you ask? Nope. I am referring to something far more unbelievable…
That’s right: Queens once had an honest-to-God Parks Department-approved fountain named “Fountain of the Planet of the Apes.” And if that’s not odd enough, an identical fountain on the opposite side of the Queens Zoo was named “Fountain of the Planet of the Grapes of Wrath.” You can see them labeled on this park map, courtesy Flickr user Joshua:
Sadly, when I arrived, the signs were gone, and the fountains now appear to be nameless (below is the former “Fountain of the Planet of the Apes”). Originally called “Fountain of the Planets” for the World’s Fair, former Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern added the “of the Apes” to the name in the mid-90’s because, according to his quote in this NY Times article, “‘It’s a great movie which is also a treatise on the dangers of war.”
Why “Fountain of the Planet of the Grapes of Wrath?” According to Stern, “We thought since we were paying tribute to a motion picture with an animal title, we should pay tribute to a motion picture with a vegetable title.” Makes sense to me. Very disappointed to see their signs removed – here’s hoping they return.
While in the area, I figured it’d be a good time to explore a little-known section of Queens known as Flushing Meadows Park.
Kidding, of course! I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to visit the site of two World’s Fairs. Originally, I wasn’t even going to put up a post about it – how could I even begin to find an original way to present material most New Yorkers are familiar with, a post people have done countless times in the past. Heck, there are World’s Fair aficionados who run sites chock full of every tidbit of World’s Fair info you could ever possibly hope to learn! Why add to the mix?
I decided to do a post anyway, for three reasons. One, if you haven’t been, maybe this will finally convince you to go. Two, if you have been, maybe this will bring to mind the park’s beauty.
Three, last Friday marked the anniversary of Queens Borough President Helen Marshall advocating the demolition of the iconic Philip Johnson-designed Tent of Tomorrow, seen below. According to Marshall: “It should be demolished. We have great artists. He’s not the only artist in the world.” Wow.
Well, since then, the Tent of Tomorrow site has gained Landmark status, protecting it from narrow-minded politicians. I present this post as a late celebration of an important victory.
Though a shell of its former glory, the Tent of Tomorrow is still an incredible structure, the future as envisioned in 1964:
How it looked during the 1964 World’s Fair:
Measuring in at 350 ft x 250 ft, the surrounding 100-foot columns originally supported a 50,000 sq-ft roof made up of orange and blue panels.
The Tent featured numerous New York-themed arts and sciences exhibits. Most incredibly, an enormous map of New York covered the floor, rendered in in 567 mosaic panels weighing 400 pounds each and described by the NY Times as “an exuberantly overstated mix of small-town parochialism, space-age optimism and Pop Art irony.”
Following the end of the fair, the tent became a roller rink, and then a performing arts space. When the roof was removed in 1976 over fears of its impending collapse, the map was largely destroyed by the elements, and vandals took care of much of the rest.
Abutting the Tent of Tomorrow are three towers, which once held cafeterias and an observatory.
The towers were accessed by “Sky Streak” capsule elevators. The elevators were removed in recent years, one of which had been stuck about 150 feet up for decades.
Though it cost tax payers $12 million and was supposed to become an arts center following the fair, the Tent of Tomorrow has basically sat rotting for 45 years. Though the structure is still generally sound, roof cables are apparently in danger of snapping.
As mentioned, the Tent is now a State Landmark, and pro-bono architects are considering ways of saving it (according to engineering reports, portions of it would have to be rebuilt to meet safety standards). In the meantime, the floor map, which was being restored by a group from U. Penn, will be (or has been?) covered in a layer of sand and gravel to help it survive the winter.
Meanwhile, two New Yorkers recently took to repainting the walls, though much work needs to be done. I wish they had been a bit louder in putting the word out – I for one would love to help!
Next door is a World’s Fair structure that’s been completely renovated: the former Theaterama, now the Queens Theatre in the Park.
During the fair, the Theaterama exhibited works by such artists as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as showing a 360-degree film about the wonders of New York in the actual Theaterama space. Since the 1970’s, the building has been through a number of renovations, beginning with this (pictures from the Queens Theatre in the Park website)…
Followed by this (which I love):
And finally, the above picture, which, while certainly modern, seem pretty bland. But what do I know? At least they left these great transistor-like adornments:
I don’t think they were around for the fair, but I love the water fountain design right outside:
And now, the Unisphere!
I really can’t think of anything more iconic in Queens than the Unisphere. Measuring in with a diameter of 120 feet, the Unisphere was designed in accordance with the theme of the World’s Fair: Peace through understanding. The three lines encircling the globe represent the first man in space, the first American to orbit the Earth, and the first communications satellite. The Unisphere was rehabilitated in the early 90’s and received Landmark status in 1995.
The globe is built on the former site of the Perisphere, the symbol for the 1939 World’s Fair. Originally 180 feet in diameter, the interior of the Perisphere depicted a utopian world of the future. It also featured, at the time, the world’s longest escalator.
Currently, the pool surrounding the fountain is undergoing renovations to fix leakage problems. The design of the fountains was intended to obscure the base of the sphere, so as to make it seem as if it’s floating.
How old is this sign?
During the fair, lighting at night would simulate sunrises across the globe.
The capitals were once marked with lights, though this seems to have been removed:
Nearby, a number of tablets have been set to commemorate both World’s Fairs, and I wanted to share some of my favorites.
Looks almost like the Diner of Tomorrow, which was allegedly present for the ‘64 Fair.
The silhouettes:
I love this one of a woman encountering a robot:
As reader David points out, this is actually Elektro, the Westinghouse robot! And he can smoke!
What are they looking at? A TV? A jukebox? Record player? All of the above?
So cool:
Great retro-space-age feel:
A satellite:
I’m dreading the day when a iPod and a flat screen TV seem antiquated:
Apparently, this fair-goer has traveled to another planet. Any ideas on this one?
Ah, water sports:
Down past the now empty pools leading up to the Unisphere is the Rocket Thrower statue, yet another space-themed sculpture, depicting a giant throwing a rocket up to the heavens while reaching out to a constellation with his other hand.
The sculpture received mixed reviews upon its installation (the NY Times descirbed it as “the most lamentable monster, making Walt Disney look like Leonardo Da Vinci.”). In 2008, donations were being sought after for its restoration.
Closer to the NY Hall of Science is my favorite park sculpture, Forms In Transit, meant to depict all aspects of flight:
While the statue lost part of a wing to weathering, the visible corrosion is actually part of the original sculpture, perhaps intended to show the effects of atmospheric re-entry.
Around the corner in front of the NY Hall of Science are Queens’ very own rocket ships: a Mercury Atlas and a Gemini Titan:
The two rockets were originally manufactured to carry nuclear warheads, and later were acquired by NASA. Unused, they were donated to the World’s Fair Hall of Science Space Park in 1964. Having deteriorated badly since then (one of the interior support structures had a termite infestation!), they were refurbished in 2001 and now look absolutely stunning.
Next: There’s an episode of the Simpsons in which a treasure is reputedly buried beneath a “Big T” (a reference to It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World – note the W on the left).
I always think that if Homer lived in Queens, his first stop would be Flushing Meadows Park:
Now a catering hall, the above structure was original built as the Port Authority Pavilion (the “T” is for Transportation), intended to serve as a landing spot for helicopter transport.
The top floor featured an 1,100-seat restaurant called the Top of the Fair; the lower floor, a 400-seat cocktail lounge known as “Drinks Around The World,” which served drinks from 24 international locales. Note the helicopter on the roof in the bottom picture:
Though a lot of films shoot here, I’ve never been up it. It almost looks like a playground on the roof!
Though it has great views, you might want to check out some online reviews before booking your next wedding here. Just sayin…
This is the lower floor – what is all that junk? Does the cocktail lounge still exist?
This random column in the middle of the park, known as the Column of Jerash, was donated to the Fair by the King of Jordan:
Originally from a Roman temple in the Jordanian city of Jerash built in 120 AD, it is known as one of the “Whispering Columns.” As Forgotten NY points out, it’s probably the oldest man-made outdoor object after Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park, which is 3,500 years old.
Last but not least, the site of both the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fair time capsules, buried to endure for 5,000 years.
A picture of this spot in 1964 (ha, that white cylinder reminds me of Doc Brown’s DeLorean fusion reactor in Back to the Future II):
Click here to read more about the time capsules, how they were designed to last so long, what they contain, and to see pictures:
From the tablets I wrote about earlier, I believe this one commemorates the insertion of the 1939 Fair capsule, which was lowered at the exact moment of the Autumnal Equinox in 1938.
The top of the monument covering the capsules, featuring the now-closed hole through which they were lowered:
Fall has hit Flushing Meadows Park pretty hard:
Finally, as I biked back, I passed by the Pan American Hotel on Queens Boulevard. I’m not sure how old it is, but it feels to me like it goes hand in hand with the world of the 1964 Fair.
Other than a website address, I don’t think any changes have been made to the building since it was built:
The two pyramids light up at night. The future is now!
Whew! There it is, my trip to Flushing Meadows Park. Again, I realize that what I wrote about is nothing new, but hopefully, this post has reminded you of the beauty of the Park.
Happy Thanksgiving!
-SCOUT
Plus PS3 to grow most in 2010?
I've been using the Wii a lot recently. Mainly, it has to be said, trying out some "kids" games for an upcoming post. But I'm also planning to pick up the new Mario at some point, possibly when I can drag myself away from Dragon Age and Assassin's Creed II. Yes, there are simply too many must play games around at the moment. But according to a US analyst it will be Xbox 360 and PS3 owners who do the buying, with Wii owners reigning in their spending. Or, as analyst Doug Creutz puts it, "the Wii bubble could be deflating."
His argument – core gamers will continue to buy games despite any economic concerns – seems fairly valid. Although the hefty batch of excellent recent titles – MW2, Dragon Age etc – will also have a lot to do with it. Creutz also looks at the impact of a Wii slowdown on the publishers.
While we believe the Wii is likely to be a drag on overall software sales through the holiday, the impact should be limited to those publishers which have invested significantly in Wii development, with the biggest negative impact likely to be felt by Electronic Arts, which (unwisely in our view) heavily invested in Wii development for [calendar 2009].
So if the Wii is on a go slow, which console will see growth in 2010? Yes, the PS3. According to Creutz's survey more than 32% of PS2 owners yet to upgrade were planning to get a PS3. While 21% of respondents were planning to get a PS3 this "holiday" compared to 9% thinking about a 360. Yes, the 360 has larger market peneation in the US, and hence may have reached a saturation point with hardcore gamers, but Creutz thinks Blu-ray and price will play a part too.
With the frontline Xbox 360 console (the Elite) also retailing for $299, we believe Sony now has, for the first time, a significant price advantage at retail, particularly in the minds of serious gamers who are more likely to be considering the PS3 vs. the Xbox 360 Elite rather than the $199 Xbox 360 Arcade version.
What do you think then? Has the Wii bubble burst? And if so will the PS3 be the beneficiary in 2010? Or is the Wii still likely to be the console best-seller this Christmas?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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"Blogging gives you the power to include the two Coreys."What's the difference between Twitter and blogs?
Well on Twitter I would have posted: "Had a nightmare about Corey Haim dating my mom -- I'm still a bit traumatized by it." and chuckled at my brevity and wit.
But instead, on my blog, I'll write: "The other night I dreamt that my mom and I bumped into the two Coreys at some sort of coffee shop in Los Angeles. Naturally, my mom and Corey Haim hit if off splendidly and by the end of our breakfast were already talking about marriage. Corey Feldman, on the other hand, was a bit uneasy at the pairing since Haim's Hepatitis C had been acting up lately. But of course, like Corey Feldman is wont to do, wouldn't flat out and say that my mom shouldn't date Corey Haim. It wasn't until I said "would you want your mom to date him?" did I get the honest answer of no. And then we all left. I can't imagine what part of my mind constructed this dream or what it represents. I'm only certain that I do not -- in any circumstance -- want to dream about Corey Haim again."
If the web was a big party, Twitter folks are the ones who drop one-liners and seem all clever as people wait with baited breath for their next bon mot or insight. It is brevity that makes them seem a bit quicker than they really are. Bloggers, however, are the ones who linger a bit too long at the food platters*, offering more context, but also perhaps sharing just a little too much of a story.
The moral of the story?**
Blogging gives you the power to include the two Coreys.
---
*I am, forever, a blogger.
**And, guess who just became the authority on "Corey Haim + Hepatitis C" as far as the web is concerned.
Dontrelle Willis to Paul Lo Duca, originally uploaded by david.I'm ready for baseball to start again.
A Study of Piles of Books, originally uploaded by david.
This quasi-documentary made by Krishna Shah (Shalimar) explores the history of Hindi language cinema against the political and socioeconomic developments of the 20th century, and by examining the quintessential Indian audience. Shah’s innovative approach is to film a “screening” of the documentary—narrated by Hema Malini, Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra and Zeenat Aman—in a real movie theater, [...]
Blogging gives you the power to include the two Coreys. via www.dollarshort.org
What's the difference between Twitter and blogs?
Well on Twitter I would have posted: "Had a nightmare about Corey Haim dating my mom -- I'm still a bit traumatized by it." and chuckled at my brevity and wit.
But instead, on my blog, I'll write: "The other night I dreamt that my mom and I bumped into the two Coreys at some sort of coffee shop in Los Angeles. Naturally, my mom and Corey Haim hit if off splendidly and by the end of our breakfast were already talking about marriage. Corey Feldman, on the other hand, was a bit uneasy at the pairing since Haim's Hepatitis C had been acting up lately. But of course, like Corey Feldman is wont to do, wouldn't flat out and say that my mom shouldn't date Corey Haim. It wasn't until I said "would you want your mom to date him?" did I get the honest answer of no. And then we all left. I can't imagine what part of my mind constructed this dream or what it represents. I'm only certain that I do not -- in any circumstance -- want to dream about Corey Haim again."
If the web was a big party, Twitter folks are the ones who drop one-liners and seem all clever as people wait with baited breath for their next bon mot or insight. It is brevity that makes them seem a bit quicker than they really are. Bloggers, however, are the ones who linger a bit too long at the food platters*, offering more context, but also perhaps sharing just a little too much of a story.
The moral of the story?**
Blogging gives you the power to include the two Coreys.
---
*I am, forever, a blogger.
**And, guess who just became the authority on "Corey Haim + Hepatitis C" as far as the web is concerned.
What's the difference between Twitter and blogs?
Well on Twitter I would have posted: "Had a nightmare about Corey Haim dating my mom -- I'm still a bit traumatized by it." and chuckled at my brevity and wit.
But instead, on my blog, I'll write: "The other night I dreamt that my mom and I bumped into the two Coreys at some sort of coffee shop in Los Angeles. Naturally, my mom and Corey Haim hit if off splendidly and by the end of our breakfast were already talking about marriage. Corey Feldman, on the other hand, was a bit uneasy at the pairing since Haim's Hepatitis C had been acting up lately. But of course, like Corey Feldman is wont to do, wouldn't flat out and say that my mom shouldn't date Corey Haim. It wasn't until I said "would you want your mom to date him?" did I get the honest answer of no. And then we all left. I can't imagine what part of my mind constructed this dream or what it represents. I'm only certain that I do not -- in any circumstance -- want to dream about Corey Haim again."
If the web was a big party, Twitter folks are the ones who drop one-liners and seem all clever as people wait with baited breath for their next bon mot or insight. It is brevity that makes them seem a bit quicker than they really are. Bloggers, however, are the ones who linger a bit too long at the food platters*, offering more context, but also perhaps sharing just a little too much of a story.
The moral of the story?**
Blogging gives you the power to include the two Coreys.
---
*I am, forever, a blogger.
**And, guess who just became the authority on "Corey Haim + Hepatitis C" as far as the web is concerned.
Which vampire franchise is for me? - make thousands more decisions on Hunch.com
A huge repository of blueprints of cars, trains, ships, weapons, sci-fi vehicles, etc.
(via quips)
Tags: design
At Six Apart we have a long history of developing leading class open source applications and supporting developers who contribute to the open source community. Our latest community microblogging application, TypePad Motion, has been extremely well received since its launch over a month ago. As these communities have grown around TypePad, so has their need for better community management and social integration. Our members have given great feedback on features and improvements they would like to see, and we've listened!Few things go better with a turkey and stuffing sandwich than Motion 1.1 for you coders looking to add a great new community feature to your site.
Miguel Cabrera getting a first place MVP vote is pretty silly. That said, as a player, dude is awesome. He’s not Keith Hernandez with the glove or Willie Wilson on the basepaths, but in case you haven’t noticed, he’s pretty good at the whole “hitting” thing. From 2007 to 2009, Caberara generated 110.5 batting runs above average. During that period, he’s accumulated more Wins Above Replacement than fellow first basemen Lance Berkman, Adrian Gonzalez, Carlos Pena, and Ryan Howard. Cabrera will only be 27 next season. Rumor has it that he may be available in trade with the Tigers trying to clear salary. If so, what is his value?
To reiterate: Cabrera is an excellent (and still young) player. However, as fans, we’ve lately become more aware that a player’s value includes not only his (total) baseball skill, but, as Dave pointed out earlier in a different context, the player’s contract. Think about it this way: if someone gives you a house worth two million dollars, then you’ve gained two million dollars in assets. However, if someone “gives” you the same house conditional on you paying off the same two million dollars, you haven’t really added an asset, have you?
The valuation of baseball players is similar. Without getting into methods for calculating dollars per marginal win (see Colin Wyers’ excellent series at THT), this is perhaps the most important function of WAR. Teams spend money to add wins. WAR tells you how many wins a player adds above “freely available” talent. On its own, WAR tells us how much a player helps his team even if he’s below average. When WAR is connected with relative dollar value of marginal wins, we get a sense of how much a player exceeded or fell short of the value of his salary. Let’s apply this to Cabrera.
CHONE projects Cabrera as 37 runs above average per 150 games a hitter next season. Jeff Zimmerman projects him as a -1 defender at 1B. Looking at Cabrera’s baserunning numbers from the last few seasons, let’s call him -2. Prorated for 150 games, that’s: +37 hitting, -1 fielding, -11.5 position, -2 baserunning, +23 AL replacement level = about a 4.5 WAR player in 2010.
Following Tango, I’ll assume the current market value of a marginal win is $4.4 million. Again following Tango’s generic model, assume post-peak players decline by half-a-win per year. We need to build in annual salary inflation, (which I’ve set at 7%). With those assumptions in place, over the next six seasons (2010-2015) we’d expect a 4.5 WAR player like Cabrera to be worth about $102 million. Cabrera’s only 27, so the decline curve may be a bit harsh. If we add on a half-win a season to the original calculation, his estimated value from 2010 to 2015 is $118 million.
From 2010 to 2015 (six seasons), Cabrera is guaranteed $126 million. Think back to the house example — no matter how nice the house is, if you have to pay full price (or more) for it, you aren’t adding an asset. Cabrera is an excellent player, but he’s going to be being paid as much (or more) than he’s (likely) going to be worth.
Of course, the Tigers could pick up a chunk of Cabrera’s future salary and/or throw in cheap talent to add value from their side. However, straight up, given his estimated talent and large contract, Miguel Cabrera’s intrinsic trade value appears to be… nothing?
This is a bit of an extreme conclusion. Cabrera’s trade value is not “nothing.” He is one of the best hitters in the league and is young enough that he will probably remain so for at least the next few years. Having an efficient payroll is just a means to winning, not an end in itself, and players like Cabrera are rare indeed. Still, since Cabrera is being paid (at least) his likely market value over the life of the contract, he would only really help teams that can afford to pay market value on a regular basis — the Yankees, and perhaps the Red Sox (though probably not the Dodgers at the moment given their ownership situation). And the Yankees already have an expensive first baseman signed long-term in Mark Teixeira. Cabrera isn’t worth “nothing,” but his contract gives the Tigers much less leverage than one would expect given his age and skill.
In all of the chatter surrounding the Demi Moore W cover controversy, many people have insisted that her vanished hip is part of a perfectly natural pose. They were correct. The photo shows the natural standing pose... of a runway model in her mid-twenties. It appears that Moore's head, legs, and arms were superimposed on the hips and torso of model Anja Rubik.
Fashion Thunderdome: two models enter, one magazine cover leaves.
Notice that while the Frankenphoto uses the contours of Rubik's torso, but her hip and collar bones have been airbrushed out.
What have we learned from this debacle? Let's review.
- The ideal woman is both fatless and boneless, like a chicken breast. Plastic wrap and styrofoam tray are optional.
- 47-year-old women, even slender and physically fit ones, are too old and horrible to appear on the cover of a magazine.
- The images in fashion magazines are altered so heavily that they can make any woman, even a model, feel bad about herself. Wait, we already knew that.
- Apparently, Thunderdome fashion is in this season. (side note? Tina Turner is 46 in that picture.)
Demi Moore's Body Replaced By W Magazine [Pop Culture Madness]PREVIOUSLY:
Somewhere, Out There, A Piece Of Demi Moore's Hip Is Looking For Its Home
Fashion Photographer Offers $5,000 Reward For Demi Moore's Hip
Filed under: Software, Cool tools
As part of my trade, I work a lot with colors. ColorSchemer Studio has long been a valuable tool in my toolkit for picking out color schemes based on solid color theory. It had its shortcomings, though, and some other tools had surpassed it, both on the desktop and on the iPhone. However, I got a sneak peek at the up-and-coming version 2.0 of ColorSchemer Studio, and I'm willing to say that it's poised to regain its lead in the field.
ColorSchemer Studio 2 adds an amazing number of new features, and improves on just about every aspect of the existing toolkit. Firstly, I want to highlight that it can now work entirely in the CMYK gamut, if you choose. Screen colors are adjusted to a CMYK profile, and there are export options to match. That's a big deal for those who take their colors off the screen and into the real world. Even though many modern presses can actually get better color from an RGB file, CMYK still rules in the world of offset printing. While it's a huge step for this app, it's not the coolest part ... read on for an in-depth preview.
Continue reading Sneak Peek: ColorSchemer Studio 2, pick your palette
TUAWSneak Peek: ColorSchemer Studio 2, pick your palette originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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In a post to Twitter, the National Lampoon’s Sports Minute writes:
“The Mets might acquire Ben Sheets. He hasn’t pitched professionally in a year, just like the rest of their staff.”
…oh, 2009 Mets, the gift that keeps on giving for jokesters everywhere… it’s a fair point, though, in that, is it smart for the Mets, of all teams, to put stock in a pitcher with his track record, given all the injuries they suffered last season… technically, one has nothing to do with other… but, if the Mets are even a bit concerned that a pitcher or two in the rotation, like John Maine or Oliver Perez, may still have issues next season, it would be wise to acquire more of a sure-thing, despite knowing sheets could end up being the second-best pitcher on the staff, should everything go according to plan…
Om on Foursquare.
Like Twitter and Facebook, Foursquare taps into our inner exhibitionist self — a malady of the post-Internet era. It allows everyone to be a Ruth Reichl, the legendary food critic — an arbiter of taste.(Look, I'll make the title joke explicit for you. It's a "post" on the "Internet." When we're supposedly suffering from an inner-exhibitionist, taste-arbiting, post-Internet malaise. And yes, I'm as confused as you.)
I'm used to seeing Law & Order plots that come right from recent news headlines. But this may be the first time that I saw the Law & Order episode first and only later found out about the real life story. The real story is about Paul Bergrin, a former prosecutor in the New Jersey US Attorneys office who apparently went from a life of prosecuting criminals to defending them and then decided to just cut out the middle man and become one himself. He's now been indicted on multiple counts involving drug dealing, prostitution, the murder of two witnesses and more.
On the possible Murdoch-Microsoft deal: I don't think there is a legal or regulatory question here. But there should be. Murdoch's properties are not that important to the Google experience or revenue stream. So it's Murdoch's loss to gamble on BING. BING is all about shopping, so WSJ would be an odd fit over there. Basically, Murdoch is just bluffing and blustering while trying to get a better global deal from Google. It does point out the need for search-standard regulations because if it were to succeed and spread, the fracturing of Web content among exclusive deals with search engines would severely disrupt the quality of the overall Web. via www.googlizationofeverything.com The Googlization of Everything is excellent, but uneven. Occasionally the opinions are simply headline grabbing, but I still read this blog, and you should too!
The American Prospect has a great appreciation of Jeanne-Claude.If Jeanne-Claude's portion of their work was in large part managing and bringing about the wrapping of the Pont Neuf in gold fabric despite then-Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac's grave hesitations, so much the better -- the process is the work. Jeanne-Claude's battle for recognition has helped shed light on the art world's discomfort with recognizing both women and the process behind creating large-scale work. That process was part of her work, too.
Cultural norms are a powerful force. Even though we have different backgrounds, we were raised with similar understandings of how certain aspects of the world work, and we agree to abide by these rules without much thought. We eat three meals a day because, well, that’s what we do. I can’t tell you why I sit around waiting for lunch time when I’m hungry and my body is asking for food – I just know I’m supposed to eat around noon. I’m sure there’s a reason for it, but I have no idea what it is, even though I’ve been eating for 29 years now.
It occurred to me today that our discussions about what constitutes a player’s value at award time is kind of like that. Especially if you’ve been a part of the statistical analysis crowd for any length of time, you have a pretty well defined idea of what the parameters of value are. Offense counts the most, obviously. Most people will adjust for the expectations of the defensive position you play, even if they won’t factor in how well you play that position. How well your team performs as a whole matters to some more than others, which is also true of stuff that gets labeled as intangibles, leadership, chemistry, etc…
Not everyone weights everything the same, but the things that we’re attempting to measure are all pretty much agreed upon. I’m wondering, though, is this a case where we agreed to the definition without really thinking about why we did it?
Specifically, I’m wondering why salary is not included. By anyone. Ever.
In terms of practical value to a team, there is no real difference between a player’s salary and the position he plays. The entire point of adjusting for position is to account for the opportunity cost of occupying that spot on the field. If the Tigers didn’t have Miguel Cabrera, they’d get some other decent hitting first baseman, because it’s not all that difficult to find a guy to play that position and hit competently. This matters, and we account for it. Almost everyone does, anyway.
Yet, we never factor in the opportunity cost of a player’s portion of his team’s budget, even though it is the exact same concept. If a player makes $15 million and his team has a $100 million budget, he comes with a significant opportunity cost, as he has effectively lowered the budget for his 24 teammates to $85 million. If he made the league minimum, the franchise would have $99.5 million to surround him with talent, and he would invariably have more talented teammates, given that the guy picking them was not named Dayton or Minaya.
We hear players lauded all the time for “making their teammates better”, yet we ignore the one instance where the player actually does directly influence the performance his teammates are likely to offer. Why? Is there any real good reason why salary shouldn’t be considered in our discussions of value? It matters at least as much as the position they play, and in many cases, a lot more.
This is made plainly evident in trade negotiations with high salaried players. Often times, a team trading the player of value with a significant contract will offer to pay a portion of the remaining amount due to the player in order to increase the return they’re getting in talent. There is no way around it – teams are explicitly stating that they value player X at a certain threshold when he’s paid salary Y, but they value him at a higher amount if he only has to be paid salary Z instead. His value is inextricably tied to how much money he earns.
This is why teams that trade away stars so often come out of it looking just fine – they take the money they would have spent on the traded player and give it to some other talented player, replacing a portion of his value in the process. Just like if a team loses a first baseman, they go out and find another guy who can hit okay. Filling the first base spot isn’t very hard, and neither is getting a valuable player when you have $15 million to play with.
Yet no one accounts for this in any MVP discussion. Why? Because we’ve never cared about salary, so why start, I guess.
I’d write more about this, but it’s noon, and I think that means I’m supposed to go eat now.
1. Following their move uptown for Halloween, The Box (189 Chrystie Street) is venturing south to Miami for another pop-up during Art Basel. They are planning two shows a night (the first with dinner) from December 3rd to the 5th at Nikki Beach (One Ocean Drive). Tickets are available here, but they're not cheap.2. NYC promoters Giant Step and Svedka vodka are hosting Chicago recording artist Kid Sister -- her debut album Ultraviolet was released last week -- with one of Miami's best DJs, Induce, at the Shore Club (1901 Collins Avenue) on Friday night, December 4.3. When New York magazine claimed that the Sex Pistols were playing a concert on the beach in Miami next week, we think they meant the band's original bassist Glen Matlock who is scheduled to perform at "We Rock the Arts," an event hosted by former NYC cab driver turned real estate mogul David Edelstein at his W South Beach hotel on Saturday, December 5.4. The Bruce High Quality Foundation, having just appeared with a stirring cover version of George Michael's "Father Figure" during Performa 09, are also heading to Miami for a show hosted by Vito Schnabel called "Happy Endings" at the W South Beach from December 2 - 5.5. Don't miss "Art Burn: The Most Combustible Art Show in the World." It will last only one day, Thursday, December 3 from 1 p.m. until sunset when all of the 40 works will be burned. Nothing is for sale. The location is a secret, but go here for updates.6. The fab new South Beach boutique (and Caviar Kaspia outlet) The Webster (919 Collins Avenue) is the sight of several events next week including an exhibit curated by Art Nexus, a "tire swing" exhibition by Aaron Young, the exclusive launch of Jeff Koons's Ikepod watch, a Pucci trunkshow and a cocktail party for Viktor & Rolf.7. Art Basel/ Miami is hosting several "salons," conversations and artist talks in the center of the Miami Beach Convention Center (19th Street and Washington Avenue) including Shepard Fairey at 4 p.m. on December 3, Fred Tomaselli at 3 p.m. on December 4 and Ryan McGinley at 6 p.m. on December 5th. Fairey is also unveiling a new mural called "The Public Works" at a reception on Wednesday from 10 a.m. to noon at 2700 NW 2nd Avenue in downtown Miami.8. On Friday, December 4, the winners of "Dawntown" an international design competition for Miami's Metromover public transport system, will be announced at The Marquis Tower (1100 Biscayne Blvd.) Judges include Terry Riley and Mera Rubell.
Eric Asimov gives a rundown on alcoholic digestives, those heavenly nectars which provide abdominal relief from the overindulgence often associated with Thanksgiving or other holiday meals. He focuses on amari, the Italian iteration of the soothing tonics.
The word refers to the bitterness, derived from quinine, that unifies this disparate group of liqueurs. Hundreds of amari are produced in Italy. Each has a proprietary formula that generally includes various herbs, roots, flowers and spices, which are macerated in alcohol, sometimes blended with a sweet syrup and tempered in barrels or bottles.
Among the amari are various stylistic subsets. Some are made with artichokes, like the well-known Cynar. Others incorporate black truffles, or the husks of green walnuts. Perhaps the best known are the fernets, which refers not just to the famous Fernet-Branca but to an entire run of bracingly bitter amari.
Do read on, there’s plenty more to learn. But this dovetails nicely with something I’d like to share: Alex Balk’s Foolproof Alcohol Intake Reduction System.
The plan is simplicity itself, but let me share with you its origin: Recently, I found myself in a situation where it occurred to me that perhaps I might be skirting that delicate mark between convivial inebriate and comprehensive dipsomaniac. It is a distinction between which we all straddle at one point or another, and there’s absolutely no shame in recognizing that you’re on the other side of the line so long as you’re willing to do something about it. So I sat myself down and came up with a scenario by which to regulate my intake: I would drink nothing alcoholic but Fernet-Branca.
Should you be unfamiliar with Fernet, here’s a brief description:
Fernet-Branca is a dark, syrupy alcoholic drink similar to an amaro, with a flavour that’s best described as being a cross between medicine, crushed plants and bitter mud. The exact recipe of Fernet-Branca is a secret but the producers, Fratelli Branca Distillerie, do say that it contains 27 different herbs and spices taken from four continents. Among the known ingredients are aloe, gentian root, rhubarb, gum myrrh, red cinchona bark, galanga and zedoary. The rumoured ingredients include saffron.
While it sounds a bit unpleasant, that’s the point. More importantly, it is 80 proof, so your demanding liver will be less upset with you for rationing its usual treats.
Unsurprisingly, Fernet is massively popular in San Francisco. This makes a lot of sense, because the drink is the liqueur equivalent of the kind of person who radiates disdain for American professional sports but can go on and on about the beauty of soccer. It adds an instant patina of class—one of the more telling class distinctions of our age, as I believe Joseph Epstein said somewhere, being the preference for bitter over sweet—and sophistication by the mere act of chugging it down. The fact that your resulting belches will convey the fragrance of those gifts borne across the desert to celebrate the birth of Our Lord should be considered a pleasant side effect.
And that’s how the system works. Should you wish to reduce your intake of alcohol, restrict yourself to Fernet. I assure you, you will be back in the category of “genial tippler” in no time. I should note that I myself was unable to fully abide by this rule because my preference for not constantly convulsing made a wider palette of beverage an almost medical necessity, but I’m still pretty sure the idea is a solid one. You’re welcome!
Another step in the right direction - The Mets are bringing back the pinstripes.
The Mets put out a press release today detailing their new home uniforms. Unfortunately the all white uniforms and the black jerseys are still with us.
Here's the release:FLUSHING, N.Y. - The New York Mets today announced they will wear a new pinstripe home uniform next season inspired by the early years of the franchise. The design combines new and old elements of Mets uniforms. The Mets created the retro uniform following research and positive responses to the jerseys the 1969 World Champion Mets wore during their 40th anniversary celebration in August.
The natural color and pinstripes were staples of the original Mets uniform when the team debuted in 1962. The Mets will also continue to wear their white uniform at home with the black jerseys as an alternate.
The new pinstripe jerseys will go on sale this Friday, November 27 at the Mets Team Store at Citi Field and will kick off the store's special Thanksgiving Sale. The jersey will also be available the same day on Mets.com.
Love the big, fun, pencil crayon illustrations of French artist, Julie Colombet. And… would love them even more if the site wasn’t made in Flash.
Posted by Matt Forsythe on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: authors, childrens illustration, illustrations, julie Colombet
When President Obama likes a magazine article, White House staffers had better read it.
Obama's must-read is Ron Brownstein's Saturday blog post "A Milestone in the Health Care Journey" at the Atlantic's political Web site.
Politico noted today that Obama found the article, which lauds Max Baucus' approach to health care, a good summary of the cost controls in the health care bill.
An administration official tells TPMDC that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel assigned the article as homework during a recent meeting.
According to the official, Emanuel told senior staffers "not to come back to the next day's meeting if they hadn't read the article."
"Advertisements from the 1950s popularized the idea of the 'coffee break.'"
[Photographs: Allison Hemler, unless otherwise noted] L: Donald Schoenolt of Gillie's Coffee; R: A Chemex at the Intelligentsia booth at New Amsterdam Market.
Before Stumptown, Gorilla, Grumpy, and even Dallis, there was a coffee roaster who set up shop in Manhattan, and 160 years later, still proclaims the good news about specialty coffee. Gillie's Coffee, who moved to Brooklyn from Greenwich Village in 1991, survived through the tumultuous economic times in the coffee world, the "coffee crash" of 1881, when unsuccessful attempts were made to corner the market on coffee. They're still surviving even as the third wave of young bucks spread the coffee gospel.
Donald Schoenholt, who has been in the business for forty years and has terms at the Specialty Coffee Association of America and the Roasters Guild under his belt, spoke to a group of coffee lovers as part of an event held by the New Amsterdam Market at New York's South Street Seaport Museum. The Seaport was a perfect stage for the lecture, considering coffee's presence in the Wall Street area as it came through the ports on the East River—and since the museum also used to be a coffee roasting facility.
The rash of "tea parties" in 1773 after the Tea Act threatened Colonial rights and created an East India Company monopoly on the tea industry had an impact on coffee sales: Coffee eventually took tea's place as the primary hot beverage in America. In these times, coffee was mainly consumed for medicinal purposes and was still too expensive to drink every day. In 1793, New York's first coffee roaster opened on Pearl Street, selling wholesale beans to taverns and hotels, which led to an abundance of coffee businesses along the East River ports. Since coffee importers lacked appropriate communication tools and were at the mercy of the bean-toting ships' arrivals, most of this early consumer-grade green coffee (which would eventually be roasted) was months old, gaining unattractive qualities from the musty and damp wooden ships. (It tasted downright shitty.) Yet still the coffee industry in Lower Manhattan grew, until the aforementioned "coffee crash" of 1881 wiped out the majority of businesses, and set the ball rolling for coffee trade pricing regulation.
Making coffee taste better and the advent of Starbucks—after the jump..
Wall Street, where coffee entered the marketplace, courtesy of the Nationaal Archief on Flickr.
Schoenholt claims Gillie's survived the coffee crash due to "dumb luck," and thrived as the Coffee Exchange of New York began regulating traffic in 1882, creating coffee standards and influencing the quality available to consumers. Through the progression of wooden to steam-powered ships, to paper packaging, advancements in roasting technology and selling coffee based on its taste instead of by sight, coffee morphed into a beverage which could be accessible to those outside the wealthy class and still taste good.
However, the events after World War II in the mid-20th century hindered the industry as cheaper, lower-quality Robusta beans made their way into consumer coffee; companies were cutting costs, training coffee drinkers to get used to an inferior product, and positioning the beverage as functional rather than enjoyable. Luckily, the Pan American Coffee Bureau was created to promote coffee consumption and encourage Central American coffee production—where the Robusta bean does not grow. You may have seen some of the advertisements from the 1950s which popularized the idea of the "coffee break."
The Pan American Coffee Bureau-approved "coffee break" courtesy of robotbastard on Flickr.
The 1970s birthed specialty coffee houses, most famously Starbucks in Seattle in 1971, which sold freshly roasted beans and brewing equipment. Eventually the business was bought by Howard Schultz in the late 1980s; Schultz transformed the brand by introducing espresso drinks after an influential trip to Italy. . Starbucks opened their first New York outpost in 1994 at 86th and Broadway—and the rest is history. Since then a multitude of coffee houses have opened in New York, as the roasters moved out of Manhattan and into Brooklyn, Queens, and Jersey.
The lecture was enhanced by a discussion of coffee bean cultivation and preparation by David Latourell of Intelligentsia. While we sipped my personal favorite, Ethiopian Sidama, David excitedly detailed the industry's push to directly interact with coffee farmers, to produce a quality product and let farmers receive more money from buyers in the process. Transparency is key in developing sustainable products and just business practices, and Intelligentsia is doing a great job in making the process transparent also to the consumer, providing as much information as possible on labels (as seen below on the Celebration Blend bag) and on their website.
Intelligentsia's holiday offering, the Celebration Blend
In a day full of Intelligentsia Chemexes, Mast Brothers chocolate bars, beef brisket, pizza bianca, and The Bent Spoon sweet potato pecan ice cream, it was a refreshing change to leave the hubbub of the market and sit down and jive talk about something which has become a hot topic in New York as more companies are deciding to set up shop.
We tend to not pay attention to coffee's importing history as an unhappy barista hands us a cup of liquid gold. But just like food, knowing the bean-to-cup journey enhances our purchasing power and may make the brew go down that much easier.
Read in “Mind the Gap: The London Underground Map and Users’ Representations of Urban Space” by Janet Vertesi (Social Studies of Science 38, 2008). Hacker Mullins Prize, American Sociological Association: Science, Knowledge and Technology Section, 2006.):
“A stable, iconic representation such as the Tube Map may convey a general sense of structure, establish points of interaction, and enable further representations and narratives about the object. It can act as a reference point for practices of navigation and wayfinding, affording judgments of normalcy and degrees of expertise or resistance. It may also, through its mapping of topological connections, be read not only as a subway map but as a useful way of representing the city in general: an object it does not pretend to represent. The Tube Map thus becomes something of a graphical user interface to the city, presenting and concealing opportunities for engagement, and making sense of the city to its users.
(…)
we are challenged to examine the representation as distinct from a discussion of ontology, topology, utility, or mimetic fidelity – against which the Tube Map would surely fail as an ‘accurate’ representation of London above-ground – to analyze the concrete ways in which representational organization enables narratives of movement and manipulation and, most important, to locate the boundaries and points of interaction for particular communities of users.“Why do I blog this? I simply loved this excerpt when reading the paper, wondering about its implications in map design. Regardless of the media employed (physical versus digital), there are some important decisions to be taken when designing such maps and the paper pinpoints relevant issues regarding this topic.
Besides, the quote “The tube map as a graphical user interface to the city” could also be interesting for class discussion about technical objects acting as metaphors.
The most striking feature of the H1N1 flu vaccine manufacturing process is the 1,200,000,000 chicken eggs required to make the 3 billion doses of vaccine that may be required worldwide. There are entire chicken farms in the US and around the world dedicated to producing eggs for the purpose of incubating influenza viruses for use in vaccines. No wonder it takes six months from start to finish. But we'll get to that in a minute.
The most commonly used process for manufacturing an influenza vaccine was developed in the 1940s -- one of its co-inventors was Jonas Salk, who would go on to develop the polio vaccine -- and has remained basically unchanged since then. The process is coordinated by the World Health Organization and begins with the detection of a new virus (or rather one that differs significantly from those already going around); in this instance, the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus. Once the pandemic strain has been identified and isolated, it is mixed with a standard laboratory virus through a technique called genetic reassortment, the purpose of which is to create a hybrid virus (also called the "reference virus strain") with the pandemic strain's surface antigens and the lab strain's core components (which allows the virus to grow really well in chicken eggs). Then the hybrid is tested to make sure that it grows well, is safe, and produces the proper antigen response. This takes about six to nine weeks.
[Quick definitional pause. Antigen: "An antigen is any substance that causes your immune system to produce antibodies against it. An antigen may be a foreign substance from the environment such as chemicals, bacteria, viruses, or pollen. An antigen may also be formed within the body, as with bacterial toxins or tissue cells." So, when the H1N1 vaccine gets inside your body, the pandemic strain's surface antigens will produce antibodies against it.]
At roughly the same time, a parallel effort to produce what are referred to as reference reagents is undertaken. The deliverable here is a standardized kit provided to vaccine manufacturers so that they can test how much virus they are making and how effective it is. This process serves to standardize vaccine doses across manufacturers and takes four months to complete. WHO notes that this part of the process is "often a bottleneck to the overall timeline for manufacturers to generate the vaccine".
Once the reference virus strain is produced, it is sent to pharmaceutical companies (Novartis, Sanofi Pasteur, etc.) for large-scale production of the vaccine. The companies fine-tune the virus to increase yields and produce seed virus banks that will be used in the bulk production.
And this is where the 1.2 billion chicken eggs come in. A portion of the seed virus is injected into each 9- to 12-day old fertilized egg. The virus incubates in the egg white for two to three days and is then separated from the egg.
For the shot vaccine, the virus is sterilized so that it won't make anyone sick. This is the magic part of the vaccine: it's got the pandemic virus antigens that make your body produce the antibodies to fight the virus but the virus is inactive so it won't make you ill. For the nasal spray vaccine, the virus is left alive and attenuated to survive only in the nose and not the warmer lungs; it'll infect you enough to produce antibodies but not enough to make you sick. Either way, the surface antigens are separated out and purified to produce the active ingredient in the vaccine. Each batch of antigen takes about two weeks to produce. With enough laboratory space and chicken eggs, the companies can crank out an infinite amount of purified antigens, but those resources are limited in practice.
[Side note. You may have noticed that the H1N1 vaccine has been difficult to find in some places around the US. The vaccine manufacturers have said that the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus when combined with the standard laboratory virus does not grow as fast in the eggs as they anticipated. The batches of antigens from each egg have been smaller than expected, up to five or even ten times smaller in some cases. Hence the slow rollout of the vaccine.]
The purified antigen is then tested against the aforementioned reference reagents once they are ready. The antigen is diluted to the required concentration and placed into properly labelled vials or syringes. Further testing is performed to make sure the vaccine won't make anyone ill, to confirm the correct concentration, and for general safety. At this point clinical testing in humans is required in western Europe but not in the United States. Finally, each company's vaccine has to be approved by the appropriate regulatory body in each country -- that's the FDA in the case of the US -- and then the vaccine is distributed to medical facilities around the country.
Sources and more information: WHO, WHO, WHO, WHO, CDC, Time, Washington Post, The Big Picture, Influenza Report, NPR, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Wikipedia.
Tags: how to medicine science swineflu USA
From Making Of, a further look at how the animation of Fantastic Mr. Fox was coordinated through the use of a custom-built software system that allowed for remote direction.
The best part about the setup is that the software interface for the cameras has a "Live to Wes" button that will stream the live feed from a particular camera to Wes Anderson for immediate viewing.
Tags: fantasticmrfox movies Wes Anderson
My colleagues and I are very happy to announce a completely re-vamped version of CommentPress. Available for download at http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/.
If you want to see the new version in action, check out Kathleen Fitzpatrick's Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy.
Want to participate in a competition worth almost US$1000? Read on!There has been a lot of discussion about the concept of information aesthetics lately, mostly focusing on the seemingly rapid rise of misplaced attention to "pretty, flashy mash-ups of something or other", in the press and on some (hmm hmm) online media. Despite these disagreements, I do hope we can all agree on some sort of visualization spectrum, with on one side the functional, expert-geared field of "information visualization", and on the other, that of the intriguing, visually persuasive "data art". I personally do believe we should not focus on defining such a hard divide, as there already exists an overlapping subfield in between where all the exciting things currently happen. Potentially, and maybe egoistically, I would propose this subfield could be labeled with the name of this blog. However, for the purpose of this competition, this issue is not even of much relevance.
While we keep discussing the necessity of theoretical frameworks, start dozens of vizblogs with endless "best-of" lists, and criticize the best practice of data visualizations, we seem to have lost the attention to a parallel universe, which no-one really recognizes the need to write a manifesto for. A field that is potentially more prevalent than all visualization "tools" and "artwork" put together. I mean those data visualizations that are neither "eye candy" nor "useful", neither "beautiful" nor "functional", neither "art" nor a "tool", neither "user-satisfactory" nor "effective", and neither stimulating the "heart" nor the "brain". The challenge of this competition is thus for you to find the most "ugly", "useless" and "disfunctional" data visualization online. It sounds easy, but can be more difficult than you might think.
Courtesy of our long-term sponsor FusionCharts, the 2 winners will each receive a FusionCharts Developer Bundle, worth US$499. Fusioncharts specializes in interactive Flash charts, gauges and maps, and is used by companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Dell, HP, GE, and many more. The Developer bundle comprises one license each of FusionCharts (animated Flash charts for web apps), FusionWidgets (data visualization widgets for dashboards), PowerCharts (interactive charts for specialized domains) and FusionMaps (interactive online maps).
You can participate by sending an email to ugly at infosthetics.com. The email should include a 600x600px .jpg image of the respective visualization, a direct link to the webpage containing the visualization, a title and short description (100-word max), and your name and email address (which will not be posted). Entries should be received before Wednesday 2 December, 12am (CET). The jury consists of FusionCharts staff and infosthetics. Any questions can be asked below.
Please note submissions proposing the complete collection of past infosthetics posts are permitted, but not really encouraged. :)
Images above were sourced from Many Eyes and Worst Visualization Gallery. Sorry, could not help picking 2 beautiful ones, negating my own rules... Further inspiration includes The Best and Worst of Statistical Graphics and The Pentagon Information Graphics Machine.
I've used one main resource, but comments are closed, so I've decided to throw random remarks in this post, for myself and for you dear googler.
The reference is here:
http://gregmeiste.com/2009/06/gerrit-code-review-installation/
It looks much better than the official documentation, at least if like my you don't usually touch java stuff.
- I used ubuntu 9.04 (xen)
- apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client postfix
- I've started installing java packages (sun-java6 sun-java6-jre libcommons-configuration-java libservlet2.4-java un-java6-javadb) not sure all are usefull though
- Step 4: I didn't use phpmysql to create gerrit2 user but:
'GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON 'gerrit2'.* TO 'gerrit2'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTIONS; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;'- Step 9: when you are done editing GerritServer.properties you should move it to /home/gerrit2/cfg and chown it to gerrit2 user.
- Step 11: though jetty7 should work (using the distribution package?) I went for the latest 6 version.
- Step 12: I'm not sure about this 'plus' directory. I've done what she said, but l've also put stuff into 'jetty/lib/ext/'
- Also, in addition to the two packages to add, I've also moved the stuff I've apt-getted previously:
- cp /usr/share/java/commons-pool-1.4.jar jetty/lib/ext/
- cp /usr/share/java/commons-dbcp-1.2.1.jar jetty/lib/ext/
- Step 13: The documentation says:
java -jar gerrit-*.war --cat extra/jetty_gerrit.xml >gerrit.xml
But with my version it was more 'extra/jetty6/gerrit.xml' find out for yours using 'java -jar gerrit*war -ls'- Step 15: I installed jetty on 0.0.0.0:8081 instead of 127.0.0.1:8081
Tada! I had gerrit UI at the address above.
I registered the first user with openid.
Then it turns out I had to add an admin group, the SQL from the official guide wasn't working, so I did this:
insert into account_group_members (account_id, group_id) values (1, 1);
After having verified that my id was 1 and the admin group id was 1 too.
I declared my email address, which I confirmed.
I declared my ssh public key.
I declared my ssh username.
I restarted gerrit.
I confirmed that my ssh key was taken into account by:
ssh -p 29418 yann@codereview.local # should say: 'no shell something'
ssh -p 29418 yann@codereview.local gerrit ls-projects
Then I created my first project:
ssh -p 29418 gerrit@codereview.local gerrit create-project --name findlib
Then I had to give my group (Administrators) the right to push into this new project (using the UI)
Then I pushed my 'my-review' branch, should be something like:git push ssh://yann@codereview.local:29418/findlib my-review
Then I worked.
Then I committed the work.
Then I used the magical refs to create a review:
git push ssh://yann@codereview.local:29418/findlib HEAD:refs/for/my-review
That's all, I hope this helps, comments are wide open for addendum to the above, but don't ask for help since it's merely chance that I went through all these steps without killing myself, so the mailing list would be a better place to ask.
snark's Plack-Middleware-Rewrite at master - GitHubSteve has been working on porting Rack's Rack-rewrite over to Plack. Give it a shot, any feedbacks will be welcome on #plack IRC channel on irc.perl.org.
I favorited a YouTube video: Expert Labs Director Anil Dash discusses an independent effort -- administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and funded by the MacArthur Foundation -- to help enhance policy-making by leveraging social networking platforms.
SCENE: It is before dinner. I am eating some crispy fried onions directly from the jar.
STEVE: Jesus, do you have pica?
ME: They're food!
STEVE: No. They aren't. It's like you're eating paint chips. Let me make you some toast instead.
ME: What a good idea. Okay.
STEVE: Would you like some butter or some almond butter?
ME: Butter and marmite and almond butter.
STEVE: And olives! And jalapeños!
ME: And paint chips.
Edward Champion reviews The Road.
It lacks the apocalyptic punch of 1984’s Threads or 1982’s The Day After, and is far from bleak and depressing in its approach. But a liberal parent may very well argue that this family-centric film is fun for the whole family. I couldn’t help but wonder at times whether Viggo would coo, “Good night, John Boy,” under the acid rain of family values.
For her latest GOOP newsletter, Gwynyth Paltrow asks a few friends -- Ferran Adria, Nora Ephron, Mario Batali -- to recount their most memorable meals.
Tags: food gwynethpaltrow
I continue to work on my new editorial system. Whether it will see the light of day remains to be seen. I'm finding it useful and may at some point publish the tools. In the meantime, I'm learning a lot about the various publishing environments.
I supported WordPress right off the bat.
Then I wanted to do Posterous, but they are missing one parameter on their API for editing a post. As a result you can post something but if the user wants to revise it, they have no choice but to do it through the web interface, can't do it through the API. Tumblr doesn't have this limit, nor does WordPress. I have gotten in touch with the Posterous team and made the feature request. I've also checked with Steve Rubel, the most famous (imho) Posterous user to confirm that there are no desktop editing tools for Posterous. Confirmed. Without this simple addition to the API, it would be impossible.
I know I am putting pressure on them to add the feature. But it's in a good cause. I want to enable people to use their product in the same way they use the other publishing environments.
Talking with Steve earlier today he says something obvious that's worth repeating. There is a position between the lightweight Twitter and the heavyweight WordPress. And Tumblr, Posterous and now TypePad are positioning themselves right there. I expect this sweet spot to become more important over time. Twitter is, no doubt, introducing a great number of people to the joys of blogging. When they want more, some of them will certainly move to these "lite" blogging tools.
Our Community Campaign is underway, and we would like to take a moment to thank our generous supporters so far. We will be listing our supporters on this page continually throughout the campaign. Your contributions keep all of our programs running -- so thank you!
via sfist.com My weekly post for SFist is up. Read it and weep. Not because it's so good, but because the Niners are horrible and we're not going to the playoffs. via oopsiedaisy.typepad.com
Other than Zack Greinke’s historic season, the 2009 Royals had little go right. Billy Butler was one non-Greinke bright spot. After a disappointing 2008, Butler raked in 2009, hitting .301/.362/.492 (.369 wOBA). He even became the everyday first baseman despite questions about his defense, beating out celebrated glove-man Mike Jacobs.
The Royals’ other “Savior,” Alex Gordon, has not quite (ahem) lived up to expectations. Hailed as “the next George Brett” upon being drafted in 2005, Gordon started at the hot corner on Opening Day 2007 and received a standing ovation. Things went downhill from there, as Gordon ended 2007 with a .317 wOBA. In 2008, he posted a merely decent .344 wOBA. Gordon got seriously injured to start 2009 , struggled upon returning, got demoted, and finally limped to a .321 wOBA (although 189 PA tells us next to nothing). The current attitude of many is understandable: Butler is The Man, and Gordon is a question mark at best.
Butler is clearly superior to Gordon as a hitter, and his minor league performances always indicated a higher offensive upside. But it is curious that so many smart people following the Royals have so readily hailed Butler’s 2009 as an awesome breakthrough while saying “meh” to Gordon’s decent 2008. Why is this curious? Because despite the glaring offensive disparity, we live in the Age of WAR. Let’s compare each player’s best season so far: Butler’s 2009 vs. Gordon’s 2008.
Butler’s 2009 value was excellent offensively at 21 runs above average. It was less impressive defensively. Despite looking better than expected, Butler posted a -6.7 UZR at first base (with a -12.6 overall positional adjustment). Butler’s overall WAR for 2009: an above-average 2.4.
Gordon’s 2008 value was more evenly distributed. +7.7 runs hitting, but only -3.0 UZR. However, the latter was accumulated while playing the much-more-valuable 3B. Altogether Gordon had a 2.6 WAR in 2008. It is obvious why many were down on Gordon’s 2008 relative to the Butler’s awesome 2009. Wait, what? Gordon was actually slightly more valuable in 2008 than Butler was in 2009?
Not really. After all, FanGraph WAR doesn’t currently include baserunning (other than SB/CS, which are included in wOBA/wRAA). Looking at the non-SB elements of baserunning using Baseball Prospectus’s EqBRR, as Erik did, we find that Butler was one of the worst baserunners in baseball in 2009 at about five runs below average, putting his WAR at about 1.9. In 2008, Gordon was about +3, which puts his WAR at about 2.9. So Gordon’s 2008 wasn’t “slightly” more valuable than Butler’s 2009, it was significantly more valuable. In fact, once baserunning is fully taken into account, Butler’s 1.9 WAR 2009 isn’t even quite as good as Gordon’s 2.1 WAR from his “disastrous” 2007.
My point is not about the relative value of Butler and Gordon going forward. Batting generally improves the most in the early 20s (whereas fielding and baserunning are relatively static), and Butler is two years younger than Gordon. There are legitimate questions about Gordon’s future given his performance and health. My intent is neither to run down Butler nor celebrate Gordon. One might respond that “Gordon’s value was primarily due to defense, position and baserunning!” But that is exactly the point — those things matter. Despite living in the Age of WAR, informed observers sometimes still focus on only one aspect of a player’s performance. And that can lead to a gap between a perception of one value disparity and the reality of the opposite.
I think Susie Essman is the anti-Jerry. Thanks to Jezebel, the Awl of the Gawker empire.
A few weeks ago, I did an interview for “What’s the Deal?,” an NBC New York series that investigates various quirky aspects of city life. The topic: the rarity of phone booths. This is one of those pieces that has TONS of zoom-ins, so down a Dramamine and look for me at the beginning and tail end.
Shortly after I posted my original article on Manhattan phone booths, everyone from CNN to the NY Post had similar stories up without a site mention. Thanks to NBC for making the effort!
-SCOUT
PS - Very appropriate Onion headline: “CNBC Cameraman Can’t Believe He’s Filming Another Blog Off A Computer Monitor”
I was watching a short speech given by President Obama this morning on science, technology, engineering and math education (which you'd know if you followed Fine Structure on twitter). Obama is really dedicated to improving education for these fields and it shows with the start of a new effort to connect kids to mentors in science: National Lab Day.
National Lab Day is, in fact, a day in May where volunteers (experts, even!) collaborate with teachers and students to do interesting science and engineering activities. The idea is to get students excited about science and engineering, and what better way than to connect them to people who are passionate about these ideas in the first place?
NLD is also the beginning of an effort to create hubs of expertise in local communities so that experts can reach students who have an interest in these areas and foster some additional interest outside of schoolwork. I'm actually very curious to see one of these pop up in the Bay Area, as there are a number of scientists and other experts who would surely want to participate in these hubs (including myself!).
[ http://www.nationallabday.org/ ]
best explanation I've seen of why it's exciting and how it works
I also really enjoyed Jerry on Curbed. The scenes where he and Larry just banter back and forth are some of the most genuine and funny stuff I’ve seen on TV for a while. What’s interesting is how Jerry takes something petty and bitter that Larry says/has experienced and turns it into something a bit more universal and understandable, and how he can do that in about 2 sentences (I know it’s a scripted show and this makes me seem like I can’t tell fantasy from reality, but it’s also pretty lightly scripted and none of them are good enough actors to really like trick you into thinking they have an emotion they don’t). So, really, the genius of Seinfeld is the interplay between them. Which is why Curbed can be a bit too picayune at times, and why the Seinfelds without Larry as a writer were too too fucking bland. via www.theawl.com Awl commenter "davidwatts" offers the above comment. My only nit is that Curbed is famously improvised, not scripted, and I think that was part of the joy of watching Jerry & Larry interact this season. This may end up being the best day of blogging since Obama won the Pulitzer!
But the last couple episodes, with the "Seinfeld" reunion, were indeed some of the funniest television I've seen this year. And they managed to do something I would have thought impossible: They made me rethink my distaste for Jerry Seinfeld and his eponymous show. What to me was one of the more interesting aspects of "Curb" was the way that it seemed to be Larry David's claim to the legacy of "Seinfeld," i.e., "Everyone thinks the show was all Jerry, but really, look how much of it was me." It's like Keith Richards' first solo record (Talk Is Cheap, 1988), where you're all, "Oh, right, THAT GUY. I knew he was good, but I had no idea how much of the sound came straight from him.") What has been absolutely amazing about the end run of this "Curb" season is the way that Jerry Seinfeld, appearing on Larry David's show, has been able to present himself as, yes, just as much the voice of "Seinfeld" as David. The meta is off the charts. via www.theawl.com I was thinking the same thing as "Balk," and I was never a "Seinfeld" fan. I think the "reunion" primarily worked because we didn't get a whole Seinfeld show, just two minutes of conceits and absurd situations (like Jerry being a sperm donor for Elaine) and then two minutes of funny punchlines ("In this case, all of my sympathies lie with the toilet.") It was an episode of Seinfeld condensed into 4 minutes, with a 30 minutes of Larry David (and his ensemblé) as host & narrators.
What happens when enterprising Americans watch Fox News and use Twitter simultaneously? Constant hilarity, that is what, as you can see from this fun “info-graphic” on the Fox News, which explains how Sarah Palin’s supposedly strong 70% support from GOP idiots is still no match for Huckabee’s 63% support, or Romney’s 60%. What? [Twitter of "Keventhepang"]
National Geographic's International Photography Contest attracts thousands of entries from photographers of all skill levels around the world every year. While this year's entry deadline has passed, there is still time to view and vote for your favorites in the Viewer's Choice competition. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose a few of their entries from 2009 for display here on The Big Picture. Collected below are 25 images from the three categories of People, Places and Nature. Captions were written by the individual photographers. (25 photos total)Nazroo, a mahout (elephant driver), poses for a portrait while taking his elephant, Rajan, out for a swim in front of Radha Nagar Beach in Havelock, Andaman Islands. Rajan is one of the few elephants in Havelock that can swim, so when he is not dragging timber in the forest he is used as a tourist attraction. The relationship between the mahout and his elephant usually lasts for their entire lives, creating an extremely strong tie between the animal and the human being. (Photo and caption by Cesare Naldi)
Did you watch “The Simpsons” last night? I did, and about halfway through I had a weird and difficult-to-categorize feeling that I was only later able to identify as shock that the episode did not entirely suck. I’m not making any claims for its greatness, mind you, but it was one of the few times in the last, say, ten years where I saw a new “Simpsons” episode and thought, Well, wow, that wasn’t terrible.
Which brings me to “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
I was slow to warm to “Curb Your Enthusiam.” It probably took me until the second season, with its “Survivor” joke, before I finally got on board. I know plenty of people who can’t stand it, because the humor can be off-putting or downright annoying, depending, but whatever, it worked for me. For that reason I thought the last season’s finale—with Larry a full member of the Black family—was almost the perfect way to end the series, because it was so unexpected and not in keeping with the rest of the show. It was the perfect absurd capstone.So I was already predisposed to dislike this season. It seemed a little too meta, in that, like “Seinfeld,” it was a show past its prime going back for another bite of the apple. (I also have a theory that every episode of “Curb” is a direct analogy to an episode of “Seinfeld,” but lord knows it will take someone with much more fortitude and interest than I to get tangled up in those weeds.) And, at least for the first half, I was considerably less amused than I had been previously. The show was trying too hard, Larry was too obnoxious, the scenarios were too outlandish, etc.
But the last couple episodes, with the “Seinfeld” reunion, were indeed some of the funniest television I’ve seen this year. And they managed to do something I would have thought impossible: They made me rethink my distaste for Jerry Seinfeld and his eponymous show. What to me was one of the more interesting aspects of “Curb” was the way that it seemed to be Larry David’s claim to the legacy of “Seinfeld,” i.e., “Everyone thinks the show was all Jerry, but really, look how much of it was me.” It’s like Keith Richards’ first solo record (Talk Is Cheap, 1988), where you’re all, “Oh, right, THAT GUY. I knew he was good, but I had no idea how much of the sound came straight from him.”) What has been absolutely amazing about the end run of this “Curb” season is the way that Jerry Seinfeld, appearing on Larry David’s show, has been able to present himself as, yes, just as much the voice of “Seinfeld” as David. The meta is off the charts.
Watching the episode-within-an-episode last night, hearing all the familiar “Seinfeld” cadences, really made me wonder: Why do I hate “Seinfeld” so much? I mean, I liked it when it was on. It was certainly fresh for its time. Is it the endless repetition, the fact that you are more than likely to flip past it at least three times a night? It it some kind of reverse nostalgia against the nineties? Whatever the reason, last night’s “Curb” finale made me reconsider.
But let’s end it here, shall we? I mean, how are you gonna have a better series capper than that?
Elise Bauer. [Photograph: Ree Drummond]
Mama Bauer's turkey stuffing. [Photograph: Elise Bauer]
We are longtime fans of the recipes and want-to-eat-the-computer-screen photography by Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes. She took the time to chat with us about her Thanksgiving plans this year—which will, absolutely not, involve the green bean casserole with fried onions.
Where are you feasting? At my mom and dad's house in Carmichael, California, with all of my siblings—there are six of us kids. We like to keep it really simple. Thanksgiving is not a time for experimentation. There's enough chaos and stress with all the family showing up, we want the actual meal to be as easy as possible.
What's on the menu? Any family recipes that reappear every year? My grandmother's stuffing recipe. She wasn't known for her cooking but she did a few things right. This one we do every year. We call it "stuffing" even though we prepare ours in a separate casserole pan—it's easier and safer that way. To get the turkey flavor, we use stock from the giblets and one of the secret ingredients? Olives.
Thoughts on cranberries. We are a very pro-cranberry family, especially my father. We never use the canned stuff though. There's no point when it's actually cranberry season. We do two cranberry dishes. One raw relish with apples and oranges (great on leftover sandwiches the next day) and of course the plain ol' sauce.
Green Beans with almonds and thyme. [Photograph: Elise Bauer]
And the green beans? This is actually one of my favorite recipes. I got it from my friend Heidi. We've got a whole bunch of beans growing in my parent's backyard garden. I cook them until their crisp-tender with Dijon mustard, garlic salt, fresh thyme, and lightly toasted almonds.
No crispy fried onions on top? Oh, no. I've never actually had those. In fact, I'm scared...mortified...appalled that anyone would. I don't understand it. They actually don't sound remotely appetizing.
Sour Cream Apple Pie with Streusel Topping. [Photograph: Elise Bauer]
And for dessert? We always have a cran-apple pie. My father just loves cranberries. I must have about three different recipes for it on the site now—finally I told him, that's enough. We make it with our own Granny Smith apples growing in the backyard. There are three trees, fifteen different varieties. My favorite pie though is a sour cream apple pie, a recipe from my mom's friend. I'd opt for that over pumpkin.
Favorite way to eat leftovers? My mom's turkey soup. She gets it started at the end of dinner. While we're doing the dishes she's putting the bones in a pot to let simmer on low for hours. We enjoy it for days.
Elise Bauer's Thanksgiving Menu
Mom's Turkey Stuffing
Raw Cranberry Relish
Green Beans with Almonds and Thyme
Sour Cream Apple Pie with Streusel Topping
Mom's Turkey Soup
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, a candidate for the Republican nomination to run against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), may have just gotten herself in trouble with the right -- saying that she probably would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
Dave Weigel reports:
At a breakfast with reporters this morning, California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina responded to a question about whether she would filibuster Obama nominees by saying that "elections have consequences," but that she'd look at the nominees' qualifications.
"I did not closely follow the Sonia Sotomayor nomination," said Fiorina. "I was battling breast cancer. But I probably would have voted for Sotomayor. She seemed qualified."Look for state Rep. Chuck DeVore, Fiorina's opponent in the Republican primary, to use this against her in his efforts to be the hard-line conservative option.
Examiner column for November 25.
Last week’s column enumerated what new teachers can’t possible prepare for—problems created by bad principals. Of seven principals I worked under during 23 years of public school teaching, only one was exemplary—and I’d like to thank him.
Charlie started out at Oakton as an Assistant Principal. His first day on the job he was bamboozled by one of my students who pleaded extenuating (and heartbreaking) family circumstances as the excuse for cutting my class several times. I had caught the student in one lie already, and was suspicious.
Charlie, even more of a bleeding heart than I was, sat with me and the student and worked out a deal whereby his transgressions would be expunged if he came to class from then on. Even I was persuaded the student would turn the corner in response to Charlie’s compassion—until he lied about his next several absences, and both of us realized we had been “played.” Charlie didn’t make that mistake again.
His big heart led him to more wins than errors, though. He was in the hallway greeting students early every morning and attended all athletic events, bonding with students from the start. When the school’s principal took a job in another state, Charlie was asked to take her place--to the surprise and delight of teachers and students.
The love affair with the school continued. Charlie had dinners for student athletes and student scholars, and treated the faculty to food during principal drop-ins and afternoon gatherings. If he wasn’t in his office or in the halls, he was at Costco buying platters of food for some event he was sponsoring. When my teaching partner and I were awarded National Board Certification, he announced it with a banner headline at the school’s entrance, and celebrated by inviting all faculty to an after school ceremony—which included food, of course.
The food and his attendance at games were simply manifestations of his real strength: he loved the students and teachers. He greeted every day as principal in an upbeat manner, and steered conflicts and complaints to positive resolutions. He poked fun at himself in the videotaped skits that became part of the weekly morning announcements; students wrote Saturday-Night-Live-type sketches featuring Charlie and couldn’t believe their good luck when he always agreed to participate.
In my mind he made the biggest difference in his support of the interdisciplinary courses that required extra staffing. He was pressured by the superintendent above him to pull the plug on some of the programs that were difficult to schedule or under-enrolled, but he managed to hang on to those choices when they were educationally sound, even if fiscally marginal. He won my loyalty early on when he told me that Senior Seminar, the course I helped create and taught for ten years, was the “jewel” of Oakton’s course selection.
When he retired, students and teachers missed him terribly. Ratemyteachers.com was full of student comments like “Bring back Mr. Ostlund!” He was my principal for only 4 of 23 years, but it’s his term of leadership that stands out in my mind. Thank you, Charlie Ostlund, for showing that a good principal is not a character found only in fiction.
Part of Trale's "Panoramic Dioramas" series. The audio track is Restless People's "Days of Our Lives". Trale is experimenting with "interactive music videos" and New Stripes comes out of that work. Tip: make it full screen.
New York, for example, was one of the first major cities to build a large sewer system, starting construction in 1849. Many of those pipes — constructed of hand-laid brick and ceramic tiles — are still used. Today, the city’s 7,400 miles of sewer pipes operate almost entirely by gravity, unlike in other cities that use large pumps. New York City’s 14 wastewater treatment plants, which handle 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater a day, have been flooded with thousands of pickles (after a factory dumped its stock), vast flows of discarded chicken heads and large pieces of lumber. When a toilet flushes in the West Village in Manhattan, the waste runs north six miles through gradually descending pipes to a plant at 137th Street, where it is mixed with so-called biological digesters that consume dangerous pathogens. The wastewater is then mixed with chlorine and sent into the Hudson River. via www.nytimes.com The engineers who run this system have a miserable job. “I went to Hawaii with my wife, and the whole time I was flipping to the Weather Channel, seeing if it was raining in New York,” [Bob Connaughton, plant engineer,] said.
Word is trickling out of Bell Labs that Alexander Graham Bell is developing a device that will supplant the telegraph.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist's horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph, though fatigue from magnetic waves is inevitable in the use of each. This is a minor complaint, however, as we could scarcely imagine using such a device for more than a few minutes a day.
Update: Meanwhile, back in the real world, M. Marion Crawford had this to say back in 1896:
The old fashioned novel is really dead, and nothing can revive it nor make anybody care for it again. What is to follow it?...A clever German who is here suggested to me last night that the literature of the future might turn out to be the daily exchange of ideas of men of genius -- over the everlasting telephone of course -- published every morning for the whole world....
The everlasting telephone!
Tags: alexandergrahambell telegraph telephony
Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today has just been released by PM Press! A brand new book which collects 200 political prints from 200 different international artists. Loosely based on the exhibition I've been touring around of the same name, this book is jam-packed full of image and text about the intersection of printmaking, politics, and social engagement.
I'm really proud of this one, it's chock full of great writing and art. There are essays by Deborah Caplow (art historian and biographer of Leopoldo Mendez!) and Eric Triantafillou (co-founder of the San Francisco Print Collective), as well as additional writing by a dozen artists in the book about why and how they print, and what it means to them. And the prints are awesome, ranging from street artists like Swoon, Chris Stain, and Sixten, to veteran political artists like Sue Coe and Carlos Cortez. There are gig poster makers like Emek and Seri Pop, and graphic/comic artists like Nicole Schulman and Seth Tobocman. It's all in here! Pick up a copy HERE, and check out some sample page spreads below.
on january 31st, 2010 following four years of construction, the design museum holon
by ron arad architects, will be inaugurated.
exterior
image courtesy of design museum holon
the design museum holon is arad's first architecture project of this scale.
constructed of five sinuous bands of varying shades of COR-TEN(weathered steel),
the overall mission of the institution is to explore the impact of design and its relation to
urban spaces and everyday life. the new museum will join holon's mediatheque, a cultural centre
which includes the national cartoon museum, repertoire theatre with original productions,
cinematheque, material and public library. the project was initiated by holon's mayor
mr. motti sasson and managing director, ms. hana hertsman who invited ron arad to create the
iconic building. ron arad architects has been invovled in the project from the program
development stage through to the conceptual stage to building completion.
'holon is a city which is re-inventing itself culturally, with ambitious plans that are investing
a lot into culture. the concept of this museum in the middle eastern sun is just one instance.
the city was brave enough to give ron arad architects the design task and I hope that it is
received well by the municipality and the public.’ - RA
from the outside
the view above from inside the museum
image courtesy of design museum holon
construction phase still ongoing
ron arad’s design for the museum, demonstrates an sculptural approach, combining ingenuous
and playful functionality with highly visual design. in reference to his approach he says:
'every project is unique; each one invites a different response. when we started working on
design museum holon, it was like a white canvas, things developed and a direction was formed.
we created a hierarchy of outdoor spaces so you walk in under the building into a semi-covered yard,
where you have a choice to take the air-conditioned route or one exposed to the elements.
the building envelope is not just a pretty space; it’s also a structure.'
image courtesy of ron arad architects
the museum is comprised of two primary galleries and a number of alternative exhibition
and education spaces. the upper gallery (500m²) celebrates the abundance of natural light in
israel and the qualities it can bring to the display of three-dimensional objects, while allowing
curatorial flexibility through modulating light levels. the smaller, lower gallery, (250m²) is taller
inside but offers a more intimate, personal relationship between the visitor and the objects on display.
'working together from such an early stage of development has enabled us to find answers
to the question of the relationship between curatorial space and public circulation. we were
able to capitalise on the potential space between the curves of the bands so that all the surfaces
around the galleries and public facilities would fit comfortably in and in many cases,
created bonus galleries. the bands form a visual key that carries visitors into the building,
through it and then out; the bands instantly become a string that ties the whole building together
inside and out,' says asa bruno, supervising architect.
detail of the structure's curvature
rendering of the 5 sinuous COR-TEN bands which envelope the building
aerial view of museum - model
plan
From Infosthetics, this moves nicely: "'The Cost of Getting Sick' is a a new data visualization tool developed in collaboration with Ben Fry, Director of Seed Visualization, which enables the exploration of some the 6 million patient records currently stored in GE's proprietary electronic medical records database."
It's been a while since I did a rundown of things not yet in English that have caught my attention recently. Kataribe I did a full piece on, of course, but here's some other things from the shelf that so far have not gotten justice.
Most anything by Baku Yumemakura, the novelist whose adaptations of the Abe no Seimei quasi-legend were made into the Onmyoji films. The books were also adapted into some of the most gorgeous manga imaginable -- which are also, inexplicably, not available here -- and one of his short-story collections (Akumugurai, "Dream Devourer") caught my eye thanks to its Yoshitaka Amano cover art.
For every Ryū Murakami that comes out here (like Coin Locker Babies or Almost Transparent Blue), there are a bunch that don't. Among them is Topaz, the novel Tokyo Decadence was based on. It's short, weighing in at barely more than 200 pages, so perhaps it could be anthologized along with some of his other works not yet published domestically.
Most readers of this blog know about Masami Akita as Merzbow, but he's also a fairly prolific writer. The Trevor Brown cover art of Terminal Body Play makes it a collector's item, but his book Noise War -- about the industrial-music scene until roughly the end of the Eighties -- would make a nice addition to the literature of the movement. Of which there is not enough -- Charles Neal's Tape Delay is really good, and I ought to talk about it in depth at some point, but I'm deadly curious to see what Akita (himself a member of said scene) has to say about the whole shebang.
Filmmaker Shunji Iwai is another fellow with novel-writing as a side hobby, and in the case of both Swallowtail Butterfly and All About Lily Chou-chou he penned books to go with the films. (In the case of the latter, the book preceded the film and was partly derived from an experimental website set up by the author, where people could come and contribute writings about a fictional singer-songwriter.) Butterfly is another short one that could stand to be packaged as a two-fer with Lily.
David Johansen is best known as the lead singer and principal songwriter of the New York Dolls, the early-seventies punk pioneers, who have reunited recently for both albums and tours. When he’s with the Dolls, Johansen plays mostly fast and loud, but in the course of his . . .
A Hugh MacLeod original from 2002, gifted to me a couple of weeks ago by [the sadly no longer blogging] Objectionable Content.
Funny thing is, this is exactly the line I used on @girlfriend. Related: if you thought for even as second that I was being serious, you should unfollow both of us.
Please. I’m not that easy. (He said, “I read Dealbreaker.”)
PyMT – "PyMT is a python module for developing multi-touch enabled media rich applications."
I'm really trying to wait until Topps206 comes out to break down and rip a bunch of packs, but then I see things like this:And it's damn tough to wait.
Ten years ago today — ten years! — Stating the Obvious ran an essay I wrote called “My Ass is a Weblog.”
If the name doesn’t make any sense to you, that’s because it’s a now-impossibly-obscure joke based on another now-impossibly-obscure joke. Alas, the actual contents of the piece have aged just about as well. Time is a brutal editor, and the past decade has rendered “My Ass is a Weblog” true in only one way: they’ve both gotten gigantic.
In the article, I claim that this new “weblog” nonsense, while useful in its niche, wasn’t deserving of all the hype that was being heaped on it. How could it be? People were claiming that weblogs — the word “blog” had been coined in early 1999, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it yet — would upend journalism, reach millions, bring people together, drive people apart, change the world. Blogs weren’t just a future, but the future. Blogs!, went the proponents. Blogs! Whatever that ultimately means!
Ha!, I spat. You naive, optimistic nincompoops. Ha.
Over the years, I’ve eaten my share of crow about “My Ass is a Weblog” — starting from its first anniversary — and all of it is justified. Out of everything I’ve ever written, this one essay is the most profoundly, spectacularly wrong — wrong in spirit as well as specifics. If anything, the most naive, optimistic nincompoops were too timid.
In fact, it’s how wrong “My Ass” is — and you can write your own joke here — that has given it life long past what it would have earned otherwise. Anybody remember my devastating takedown of WAP? No, of course not. Nobody’s writing books about the history of WAP. Nobody cares.
But blogs… Those of us who were wrong about blogs are cultural curiosities, the same way that those who cling to newspapers or the second Bush Administration are cultural curiosities — as oddballs and idiots who willingly stand on the wrong side of history. Heck, I’ve earned the title “dead horse” many, many times, but “My Ass is a Weblog” is the only reason that the Wall Street Journal called me one. Um, hooray? Yeah, sure: Hooray! You need some historical example of short-sighted, self-satisfied chimp? I’m your man.
Weblogs won, happily rolling over the petty doubts and even pettier cynicism of people like me, rolling over everything that could have kept them from becoming what they have become, both good and bad. Today, a decade on, I know countless people who have made their reputations from blogs, made their living from blogs, made their friendships from blogs, made their marriages from blogs. Blogs have figured into almost all our lives the way that schools and neighborhoods have, the way friends and coworkers have, the way good books and bad TV have. They’re integral to who we are, what we’ve become.
Blogs!, go the proponents, this time as valedictory. Blogs! Whatever that ultimately means!
And there’s a lesson in that. Passion won, enthusiasm won, being in the right place at the right time with the right tool won. World-changing won. I think that cynicism has a better record than anybody is willing to admit, but the people who created weblogs and the software that makes them go — and the list is too deep and too wide to even begin counting them here — won. And I’m glad for it.
My ass is a weblog, and somebody, somewhere, might want to hear what it has to say.
