Gawker has released a chart that shows how much traffic social sites are sending the blog network, and the numbers are enlightening for news publishers:

The first observation is Facebook referrals are way up, which is pretty consistent across the online publishing world these days. Gawker’s numbers from StumbleUpon are rather surprising, and there’s a steady decline in traffic from Digg. Writes All Things D, which first reported the numbers: “The other big takeaway from the data is the story that many publishers have been telling in the past year or so: Social traffic is becoming as important, or more so, than search traffic from the likes of Google and Yahoo.” And the rate of growth is showing no signs of slowing anytime soon.

Related posts:

1. Borrell predicts strong local advertising growth
2. Aggravated local news viewers and social media

Originally posted by Cory Bergman from Lost Remote, on September 4, 2010 10:26 PM

A year and a half ago, I did a fairly extensive look at the count in baseball, which was an embarrassing amount of fun. I have no idea why I get as much joy of sports spreadsheets as I do … sometimes my wife will walk into the office, take one look at my computer screen with all these rows and columns of numbers, shake her head and wonder why in the heck I couldn’t balance a checkbook before she married me.*

*I still can’t balance a checkbook.

In any case, I figured that last count thing was probably the last time I was going to do a count study, at least for a good long while … except something has been bugging me about it. It hit me hard while I was watching a game on TV, I’m not even sure what game. I heard the announcer offer some count statistic, maybe it was about how batters this year are hitting .337 on a 2-1 count and hitting .166 on an 1-2 count, and this led to a benign conversation of how important it is for pitchers to throw strikes, to get ahead of the count and so on and so forth …

Something hit me. It’s not something new, but it hit me with full force this time. Those batting average stats (which I quoted extensively the last time I wrote about counts) are irredeemably flawed. You undoubtedly know why … the problem, of course, is strikeouts. I immediately got up and went to the computer to check.

See, on a 2-1 count, if you swing and miss or let a strike go by … nothing happens. The at-bat goes on. There are no strikeouts to take down the average, so you’re only measuring balls put in play.

But, on a 1-2 count, if you swing and miss or let a strike go by … you’re out. Strikeout. He gone.

Is that the whole difference between 2-1 and 1-2? Well, no, not quite the whole difference, but it’s the bulk of it.

Hitters on 2-1 count in 2010 are hitting .337 and slugging .552.

Hitters on 1-2 count in 2010 are hitting .166 and slugging .224.

BUT, take strikeouts out of the equation …

Hitters on 1-2 count in 2010 suddenly are hitting .301 and slugging .443. And while that’s not as good as 2-1, it’s not so far off. Since 2000, take away strikeouts, hitters on a 1-2 count have hit .309 and slugged .459, which really isn’t too bad.

In fact, when a hitter puts a ball in play, no matter the count, he hits .better than .300. Every count — even 0-2 — the hitter is hitting .300 on balls in play.

First pitch: .338
0-1: .318
1-0: .339
0-2: .302
1-1: .326
2-0: .353
1-2: .309
2-1: .337
3-0: .393
2-2: .317
3-1: .355
Full count: .339

There are some clear fluctuations on those hitters counts when pitchers need to throw strikes — 2-0, 3-1, 3-0 the averages are quite a bit higher — but I don’t think the fluctuations are as dramatic as I once did. Yes, hitters do seem to hit the ball better and with more authority when locked in on a certain pitch in the strike zone, the difference I think now is much smaller than the big gap in raw averages had led me to believe. I would love to look deeper into this … I wish there was some count charts that would also show how many balls were taken for a strike, swung at, missed and fouled off.

There are some other fun things I picked up this time around by breaking down the count since 2000. If you want to impress people at the ballgame — and I know you do — this should help. You can thank me by buying 12 copies of my next book.*

*More on this next book soon … like you care.

Best count to SEE a home run: First pitch.

About 18% of all home runs are hit on the first pitch of the at-bat, which is way more than any other pitch. So in some ways, first pitch is the home run pitch — that’s how the expression “first ball fastball hitter” became so prominent.

Best count to HIT a home run: 3-0.

This is a little bit different. More home runs are hit on the first pitch than any other, but more of just about anything happens on the first pitch of the at-bat. The ball is put in play on the first pitch about 25% more often than any other pitch. So your best bet to see a home run is on that pitch.

But if you are a batter looking to HIT a home run … getting the green light to hit 3-0 is the ticket. Believe it or not, it only happens about 300 times a year that a hitter puts a 3-0 pitch in play. But when he does … he hits a home run about 9.5% of the time.

The 3-1 pitch (6.2% of the time) and the 2-0 pitch (6.0%) are, as you might expect, excellent home run pitches as well.

Best count to steal a base: 2-0.

Well, running 3-0 is really the safest bet — base stealers have made it a staggering 87.9% of the time — but it’s a rare thing for a team to run 3-0 (and, if you do run, the pitcher might throw Ball 4 which would make the whole point moot). The best real running count is 2-0 … base stealers have made it 77.9% of the time since 2000.

In many ways, 2-0 is the best offensive count going. The pitcher is under some pressure to throw a strike. A foul ball still leaves the hitter in the very comfortable 2-1 count. The base runner has options. Life tends to be good for the offensive team if they can work 2-0 counts.

Worst count to steal a base: 3-2.

Base stealers are thrown out 48.4% of the time on full counts … I guess that’s no surprise. The runners are often in motion on full counts, as manager rely on the batter not striking out. When the batters DO strike out, the moving runners are often sitting ducks.

What did surprise me is that 3-1 tends to be a bad count for base stealing. Base stealers were successful only 63% of the time on 3-1, and even though it’s a limited sample size (there have only been 865 official stolen base attempts on 3-1 since 2001), that’s still surprising to me. I suppose there are still some of the elements of the full count phenomenon — managers send the hitters on 3-1 and rely on either a walk or the hitter putting the ball in play.

Best pitch to go for the K: 0-2.

Well, I don’t know if the numbers really say that … but it is true that when 0-2 is the action pitch, pitchers get the strikeout 46.2% of the time, a higher percentage than any of the other two-strike counts. I have talked to more than one pitching coach who thinks wasting a pitch on 0-2 is bad baseball … especially in today’s watch-the-pitch-count environment. “You have him 0-2, go finish him off,” one pitching coach says. “Hitters are very uncomfortable hitting 0-2. I don’t think pitchers take enough advantage of that.”

Most like pitch for a double play: First pitch.

Absolutely no doubt about this one … Almost 20% of all double plays come on the first pitch of an at-bat.

The first pitch in many ways is really the most dramatic pitch in baseball. It’s when you will see the most doubles, the most triples, the home runs, the most double plays, the most sacrifice bunts, the most sacrifice flies, even the most reached on error.

I remember years ago when a man named Miles Prentice wanted to buy the Kansas City Royals, he would get incensed because the Royals were swinging at too many first pitches. The story everyone heard — though it was denied by some of the people involved — was that Prentice even told the manager Tony Muser that he wanted the Royals to STOP SWINGING at the first pitch. Prentice may or may not have said it, and he may or may not have had a point, but what I did not realize until this breakdown is that the first pitch is probably baseball’s critical offensive pitch.

Are there more strikeouts or walks on 3-2 counts? Walks.

Another slight surprise, at least for me.

On 0-2 counts, as mentioned, hitters strike out 45.6%.
On 1-2 counts, hitters strike out 42.5%
On 2-2 counts, hitters strike out 38.6%

But on 3-2 counts, hitters only strike out 22% of the time … and they walk 31%. I suppose the biggest part of this drop-off in strikeouts is the reverse of the batting average situation above … if a pitcher throws a ball on an 0-2 count, the at-bat just goes on and it isn’t recorded in the overall numbers. But if a pitcher throws a ball on 3-2, it’s obviously a walk.

Still, even discounting walks, pitchers strike out noticeably fewer batters on 3-2 than they do on the other two-strike counts. I have a theory, and I will admit right up front that it’s only a theory. I think good hitters tend to get themselves in 3-2 counts a lot more often than bad hitters do. I don’t have time for a full study on it, but a quick scan of good and bad hitters in 2010 hints that this at least COULD be true.

Daric Barton: 127 times.
Jose Bautista: 123 times.
Joey Votto: 84 times.
Albert Pujols: 79 times.
Prince Fielder: 79 times.
Miggy Cabrera: 75 times.
Jose Lopez: 43 times.
Jeff Francoeur: 39 times
Yuniesky Betancourt: 24 times.
A.J. Pierzynski: 23 times.

My theory is that good hitters force 3-2 count with a lot more regularity because they are (A) Good at seeing pitches; (B) Pretty locked in. And once they get to a 3-2 count, once they are even with pitcher, they will perform pretty well. They will take a walk if offered. And when they put the ball in play, they will hit .339 (as mentioned above) and slug .562.

Take Mark Reynolds, the King of K. Reynolds obviously strikes out a ton, but if you look at his numbers you will notice those strikeouts fall off noticeable when the count is full.

In his career, he has struck out:

0-2 count: 109 out of 178 PAs (61.2%)
1-2 count: 250 out of 382 PAs (65.4%)
2-2 count: 233 out of 386 PAs (60.0%)
3-2 count: 146 out of 388 PAs. (37.6%).

If you take strikeouts and walks out of the equation, Reynolds is hitting .459 and slugging 1.153 with a full count.

Let’s fine another strikeout guy who is a good hitter — OK, how about Ryan Howard? Same story:

0-2 count: 155 out of 233 PAs (66.5%)
1-2 count: 327 out of 532 PAs (61.4%)
2-2 count: 305 out of 532 PAs (57.3%)
3-2 count: 218 out of 617 PAs (35.3%)

If you take strikeouts and walks out of the equation, Howard is hitting .414 and slugging .874 with a full count.

Another? How about Adam Dunn? Same story:

0-2 count: 239 out of 367 (65.1%)
1-2 count: 456 out of 747 (61.0%)
2-2 count: 535 out of 951 (56.2%)
3-2 count: 371 out of 1215 (30.5%)

One more time, take strikeouts and walks out of the question … Dunn is hitting .378 and slugging .818 with a full count.

Again, I’m just picking and choosing here, but it’s an interesting question. It seems to me that even when you put even strikeout prone good hitters like Reynolds or Howard or Dunn on an even plane with the pitcher — one pitch, ball or strike or hit — they are awfully good. They will draw the walk more often than they will strike out. And when they hit the ball, they will hit it with power. Anyway, it’s just something to talk about.

No surprise: 75% of all sacrifice hits happen on the first two pitches.

And about 43% of all sacrifice flies happen on the first two pitches …

Best count for a fan to look smart: 3-1.

I’ve written this before, but I never really broke down the easy way to look like a baseball guru to the people around you at the ballpark. So here you go.

When the count is 3-1 — especially if it’s a crucial situation and a good hitter’s at the plate — you will want to say something out loud like: “Oh oh, this is a dangerous pitch” (if the home team is pitching); or “Oh yeah, this is the pitch right here that breaks the game wide open (if the home team is batting).”

And this is like a good magic trick — it will work no matter what follows. Here are the appropriate reactions for each scenario:

Single (happens 10% of the time): “Yeah, saw that coming.”

Extra base hit (happens 7% of the time): “Yep, just had a feeling.”

Walk (happens 52.3% of the time): “Pitcher wanted no part of him there.”

Foul ball or vicious swing and miss: “Oh, just missed that one.”

Taken strike: “You have to be more aggressive there, that was a very hittable pitch.”

And of the outs, which happen less than 31% of the time.

Hard hit: “You knew he’d get a good swing there.”

Soft out: “Well, that’s just a missed opportunity.”

It never fails.

Originally posted by Joe Posnanski from Joe Posnanski, on September 4, 2010 7:00 PM

Joe Sheehan left Baseball Prospectus and opened up his own, subscription-based newsletter. Costing $20 and promising no certain frequency - he writes when there’s something to write about, which is often enough for me - he’s been able to build up a respectable audience. It’s a word of mouth thing that’s going to be nichey - you have to know and like Sheehan’s writing to support him. His SI columns function as the only real marketing. (I know he does other media, but I’ve never seen a ton of real evidence that doing radio drove subscriptions. I do radio because I enjoy the interaction, not because I think it’s valuable marketing.) 

I like Joe’s idea to some level. Basing it on email, I think, is reasonable. Sam Lessin makes a better case for it than Joe does, but knowing Joe, I also think his disdain for technology factors in. He wants easy, simple, and an email newsletter is that. Nothing wrong with it. 

As more of a tech/geek/fanboy, I’m much more inclined, were I to enter this space (and I’m not, ever) I’d want to do something more mobile. I’m a huge fan of RUWT and would much rather use Mark’s model of synergistic app/mobile website. First, mobile ads are pretty easy and I’m high on the use of iAds, especially as the technology to pair viewers with relevant ads ramps up. 

Really, what I think would be the ideal is an idea I’ve had called the “unsubscription.” (It’s a terrible name, admittedly, semantically backwards of what it’s trying to say.) Slate used to do something like this - you could pay for access or watch an ad. In 2002-3, that was pretty cutting edge. I think that in return for watching an ad and having it as a “presenting sponsor”, in much the same way that Prudential is seen on MLB’s At Bat app, you could get a month’s subscription. (I should mention that I think a recurring low price, like $1.99 is better than a higher, yearly fee.) 

A sponsor could say “I have $2,000 to spend. The first thousand people to watch our ad or download our coupon will get one month’s subscription.” Don’t like the ad? Don’t watch and pay the two bucks yourself.  I think that model works pretty well for everyone - reader, advertiser, and most importantly, the writer.

The problem is scale. Few advertisers want to deal with small sites, let alone something relatively new like this. Few writers have the sales skills, connections, or time to find an advertiser once, let alone 12 times a year. It’s pretty expensive for advertisers as well, especially in an environment where large sites are getting $35 per thousand. The case would have to be made that the advertiser is getting a LOT more for their money and the targeting might work in favor of something like this. Rather than it being an annoying and random ad, there’s a value exchange for those that wish to accept it. 

In an economic environment where everything is free and Twitter-speed both thrills and kills, the subscription model is tough. Quality is important, but not so important that many are willing to pay for it. In sports, stocks, and a few other areas, everyone thinks they’re an expert and is wiling to produce content for free. That’s why TheStreet.com and SBNation have grown so much, by feeding that need and giving just enough feedback to keep people coming back.

Fact is, as much as I like the concept of this model and as much as I root for Sheehan to be right about this, I don’t believe it works. I know it doesn’t work for me, having tried a similar experiment last year with the concept of a for-pay Twitter account. Maybe that was a double whammy - asking people to try something new on a free service and to pay for content - but I think it’s pretty indicative.

Maury Brown asked me on Twitter when we were going to see InjuryExpert.com. Even if I owned the domain, the answer is the same: never.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Will Carroll's Rndm Crap, on September 4, 2010 10:06 AM

Kathryn hits a crab, originally uploaded by david.

[This was good]

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on September 3, 2010 7:36 PM

Mark and I, originally uploaded by david.This is going to sound a little weird, but I've thoroughly enjoyed reviewing my old Vox posts (on export to flickr and here on hello, TypePad). Good times!

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on September 3, 2010 7:35 PM

via www.seriouseats.com

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on September 3, 2010 6:49 PM

This looks like a lot of fun. Does anyone need a coach for their team? I need a reason to buy this. [via Cameron Moll]

Permalink: http://www.capndesign.com/archives/2010/09/coachpad.php

Originally posted by Matt Jacobs from Capn Design, on September 3, 2010 5:38 PM

...was a fellow by the name of Gaius Appuleius Diocles. He was a 2nd-century Roman charioteer.

His total take home amounted to five times the earnings of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period -- enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a fifth of a year. By today's standards that last figure, assuming the apt comparison is what it takes to pay the wages of the American armed forces for the same period, would cash out to about $15 billion.

Tags: sports

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on September 3, 2010 1:14 PM

[Photograph: Kristen Swensson]

To conclude the week of no-to-minimal-labor recipes for your weekend of feasting and bidding adieu to summer, here are 10 desserts that won't make you run out and buy any obscure spices or buy any fancy tools. No-cook berry crisp, pudding pops, DIY Reese's cups, and more.

• No-Cook Berry Crisp: A simple, seasonal treat that even your vegan friends can eat.
• Vanilla Ice Cream Without the Machine: Who says you can't make rich, smooth, creamy ice cream sans a special machine?
• Spicy S'mores: Move over the steaks and burgers grilling for the skewered marshmallows, which get even better with a blast of cayenne.
• Easy, No-Bake Peanut Butter Cups or Bars: DIY oversized Reese's Cups!
• Homemade Pudding Pops: Bill Cosby would be so proud.
• Tastykake-Inspired Butterscotch Oatmeal Cookies: We'll just pretend these are "good for you" since they contain oatmeal.
• Double Chocolate Ice Cream Pudding Pie: The thick, velvety chocolate middle part falls somewhere between pudding and mousse.
• A Midsummer Night's Creamsicles: To sleep, perchance, to creamsicle.
• Simple Chocolate Mousse: The base recipe is pretty braindead-easy, plus you can flavor it with espresso, liqueur, sea salt, or any number of spices.
• Bartlett Pears a la Mode: Pears, like so many fruits, just get better when grilled.

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on September 3, 2010 12:45 PM

I had a Tsingtao with lunch. It reminds me a bit of being in France: The first meal right after I get there, you might have just been able to share a whole bottle of wine with your wife, and then you totter back to the hotel. By your third day, you have to order an extra glass of wine at the end of the meal, and by the fourth day or fifth day, I find that you wake up in the morning and the first thing you want is some alcohol. I've been experiencing that a little, though I don't think it's serious, with all the whiskey I’ve been drinking. I’ve accompanied some of the past week’s lunch dishes with a shot of good whiskey, something I would have considered totally degenerate before. I think it is degenerate, but who can blame me? via newyork.grubstreet.com

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on September 3, 2010 12:25 PM

By this point, most of you surely have your own opinions about Rob Dibble's hiring and subsequent firing by the Nats. His fitness as a broadcaster has been one of the biggest online Nats debates for more than a year, which is why many of you, I'm sure, would prefer I never mention his name again. Regardless, the Dibble reviewers -- both positive and negative -- felt like a pretty small club up until the time he got fired. And then the national voices chimed in. Here's just a sample of the national ESPN voices who expressed an opinion on Dibble's ouster this week. Tony Kornheiser: Ok, Dibble was wrong, Strasburg needs Tommy John surgery, but Dibble was a terrific broadcaster: passionate, insightful, and a hundred percent for the Nats. They should not have fired him. Michael Wilbon: He can't possibly be out of work for long, right? That passion


Rob Dibble - Tommy John - Tony Kornheiser - Washington Nationals - Stephen Strasburg

Originally posted by (author unknown) from D.C. Sports Bog, on September 3, 2010 11:51 AM

Lots of geeks like to spend some time on a three-day weekend doing fun, spare-time coding. If you've been curious about ThinkUp and have a little extra time this Labor Day weekend, come on down! ThinkUp's come a long way so it's easier than ever to dive in, try it out, and experiment. 

Here are four ways you can help make ThinkUp better, whether you've got a free 30 minutes or 3 hours this weekend:

• Test ThinkUp's new easy installer. Running git, wrangling MySQL scripts, and creating symlinks is no longer required to install ThinkUp. If you've got a web server with PHP and MySQL, we've got a dead-simple web-based installer file that should have you up and running in just a few minutes. Download the latest .zip distribution of ThinkUp, extract it to a web-accessible folder on your web server, load its URL, and go. We need as many people to try out the installer on as many different web hosts and setups as possible, so let us know on the mailing list how your installation went.
• Document ThinkUp's new installer. The ThinkUp wiki still has the old, long, scary list of steps required to install the app in it. Dive into the wiki and update the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/Dreamhost installation instructions. If you've got screenshots, add those too!
• Create new data visualizations. Now that you're running ThinkUp and have a database of all your posts, replies, links, and friends, how do you want to visualize that data? Suggest or build a cool new way to visualize social data inside ThinkUp, like our new Google Map of post replies. 
• Dive into plugin development. Those of you with more time and experience can help us extend ThinkUp. We made this application an extensible platform, so almost all of its functionality is in the form of plugins, and we need help there. The Twitter plugin could be ported to use the new Site Streams beta. Our Facebook plugin uses the old Facebook Connect instead of the new OpenGraph. We need a Bit.ly and a Google Buzz plugin. If you've got experience with APIs, we need you. Check out ThinkUp's example "Hello ThinkUp" example plugin to get started.

Have a great Labor Day weekend, and we hope to hear from you on the ThinkUp mailing list.

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Smarterware, on September 3, 2010 11:13 AM

Sam MacLaughlin: Hi Dustin!

Dustin Kurtz: Hello Samuel. So, introductions of our various stances, maybe?

Sam: Maybe! We are both sad young white literary men, yes?

Dustin: Emphasis on the sad and white, yes. Our manliness being in dispute at times.

Sam: At times. I do carry a tote bag. And: you're not a female novelist, are you?

Dustin: No, so I think we can agree that my dislike of this book won't come from anything as disagreeable as politics. Unless there is a political party fighting for better prose?

Sam: Which book!

Dustin: THE book, young sir, the book of our generation!

Sam: The book that takes the datum of our shared millennial life, and limns, like, mostly everything that needs a limning?

Dustin: The tome, generations hence, that people will use to judge your immortal white literary soul.

Sam: Freedom!

Dustin: Freedom!

Dustin: I wish we could have done that simultaneously.

Sam: It was pretty simultaneous.

Dustin: So you would choose this book over the life of your firstborn, yes? Whereas I think it has flaws (so nuanced)! Sometimes little but.

Sam: I think it has flaws, too, but I would say that this is a great book. I am not an enemy of Freedom.

Dustin: Can we actually get seriouschat here and make a distinction between a great book and a great novel?

Sam: Let's. I bet you have ideas.

Dustin: I do! Greatness aside (very much aside) this book is a successful novel in many ways.

Sam: Agreed.

Dustin: When we talk about The Novel (all the time, I'm sure) we're talking about a specific layering of detail, adherence to some rules, all of which this does very well.

Sam: But?

Dustin: But if we want to talk about the worth of a book more generally, we have to look at the quality of the writing, and maybe it's value to readers. Did I say seriouschat? Apparently I meant didaticchat.

Sam: They are probably the same thing. Does didactic-chat need a hyphen? That one is harder to read.

Dustin: What I'm saying is that if all it takes to be a good (honestly, not great, and definitely not Great) novel is the creation of this dense clay flesh around the frames of these characters, then Franzen is good.

Sam: And yet, as a member of the backlash (how does it feel?) you are denying greatness and Greatness. On what grounds? I'm still trying to figure out how it's possible to hate Freedom. Also Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

Dustin: Well, so let's not get too much into whether he accomplishes his goals of a greater worth outside of that book, because I'm not Emerson and anyhow we both believe pretty soundly in the value of literature for its own sake. At least for well-fed bastards like you and I.

Sam: You want to talk about the book itself then? That's what you want to talk about?

Dustin: You are the worst Socratic interlocutor I've ever had, Zingerman McZing.

Sam: Zingerman MacZing, please.

Dustin: What I'm trying to do is throw out the idea that you and the rest of the damn world are not necessarily wrong, that this might be a good novel. But I'm maintaining that it's a pretty bad book.

Sam: Oh. Snap.

Dustin: Franzen is not a detailed writer, but an incidental one.

Sam: Right: I could make the same joke I always make about Anna Karenina: 700 pages of gossip.

Dustin: And I think that is some of what people are talking about when they call him old-fashioned. Well, that and the codpiece.

Sam: Always the codpiece. What an odd choice.

Dustin: With Franzen it comes out in a flat omniscient third that just sort of smears everyone and everything with his clunky segue phrasing.

Sam: I was re-reading some last night, and the first line of every chapter (saving the Patty chapters, but probably even those) could be: "Did you hear?"

Dustin: But I don't even dislike that about him.

Sam: You do dislike something. I still have no idea what it is.

Dustin: He's very good at the floating narrator who also gives us hints of the attitudes, if not as much the voice, of many characters in quick succession.

Sam: Free indirect discourse! My English degree is worth something. He's very, very good at that.

Dustin: Easy with that second very. He's okay.

Sam: I'm still trying to figure what you don't like!

Dustin: The writing. So, the book.

Sam: Like, sentence by sentence, you dislike this book?

Next: Does Dustin dislike the book sentence by sentence???

Originally posted by Dustin Kurtz and Sam MacLaughlin from The Awl, on September 3, 2010 10:00 AM

Corks from Bordeaux wine bottles. [Photograph: Deb Harkness on Flickr]

Bordeaux is a wine with baggage. I always assumed it was an out-of-reach, snobby wine that was too expensive and available only to collectors and le wine buffs with deep pockets. And while it's true that some Bordeaux wines are indeed expensive (top-of-the line Bordeauxs are snapped up for hundreds or even thousands a bottle!) it's just not true across the line. This wine-producing area in the southern part of Western France includes over 60 appellations, or wine-producing areas.

Another common assumption: Bordeaux wines are all red. Nope. Although Bordeaux is best known for its reds, wines from the region can be white, rose, and they can also be sweet.

I asked Laurie Forster, a wine educator who also calls herself "The Wine Coach" some questions about this misunderstood wine.

Can you give us a quick "Bordeaux 101"? The red wines of Bordeaux are always blends of five different grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petite Verdot, and Malbec. The left bank wines tend to have more Cabernet Sauvignon, while the right bank wines tend to have more Merlot and Cab Franc, and tend to be softer than left bank wines. We like to generalize about Bordeaux, but they can be very different based on the geography—the soil really makes its mark on the wine.

What makes Bordeaux wines particularly exciting right now? There have been a number of great vintages in the last five years. Thanks to lots of production and a domestic shrinking of consumption, this is the perfect storm for finding value for your money. There's also such a great balance of old tradition and innovation going on right now. Innovation with Biodynamics, packaging—wine tubes, appellations for example—Cotes de Bordeaux and marketing aimed to draw in the U.S. market.

Can you recommend some bottles in a reasonable price range worth seeking out (and drinking) now?

White

Chateau St Marie Entre-Deux-Mers 2009 $13
164% Sauvignon Blanc, 28% Semillon and 8% Muscadelle. White flowers, citrus and fresh acidity.

Red

Clos Puy Arnaud Cotes de Castillon 2005 $25-30
This is a biodynamic wine from the right bank. Red fruit-ripe berries, plum, cherry. Generous texture and velvety tannins.

Chateau Dutruch Grand Poujeaux 2005 Moulis-en-Medoc $27
This is a left-bank wine, where the soil is more gravelly. It's a blend of 57% Merlot, 41% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Petit Verdot. Still elegant tannins, more mineral, earthy with black fruits.

Sweet

Aureus de Sauternes 2006 $26
This is an affordable Sauternes with flavors of crystallized fruit and hazelnuts. Sweet wines aren't just for dessert—I would try pairing this with foie gras, blue cheese, or grilled poultry.

About the author: Kara Newman has written about wine and spirits for such publications as Wine Enthusiast and Sommelier Journal magazines, and is the author of Spice & Ice, which explores 60 tongue-tingling cocktails.

Originally posted by Kara Newman from Serious Eats, on September 3, 2010 9:30 AM

From Slice

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Slice Tests the Kettle Pizza Grill Insert

The Kettle Pizza grill insert promises to help you turn your 22-inch Weber kettle grill into a fire-breathing pizza-cooking machine.

Why would you even need this thing and what does it do? Those seemed to be the questions everyone at the test-grilling last night had. Even though Mmmph beat us to the punch on testing his, we wanted to try it the way the manufacturer intended it before maxing out the heat the way Mmmph did.

OK. There are a couple schools of thought on cooking pizza on the grill. One is to simply grill the dough directly on the grate. We deal with grilled pizza here, and in fact it's our preferred method anytime the words "grill" and "pizza" wind up in the same sentence.

But whenever we mention grilled pizza on Slice, a fair amount of people drop by and say that they like to use a pizza stone on their grills. The issue we've always found with that method is, well, let me poke Kenji here and see if he'll drop some science on us ...

The Heat Is On

Frequent Slice readers may know this already, but for those who don't, a Neapolitan pizza cooks via two modes of heat transfer: The bottom of the pizza is cooked by conduction, the direct transfer of energy from the stone to the crust. The top of the pizza is cooked via convection, the transfer of energy via hot air.

Conduction is a much more efficient method of heat transfer, which is why in a professional oven, to cook a pizza properly, the base of the oven need only be around 750°F or so, while the air above must be significantly hotter—in the 1,000°F to 1,200°F range.

The problem with trying to cook a pizza on a stone in a regular kettle grill is that, as many people have pointed out, the stone gets really hot, and it's hard to get the air temp above the pizza hot enough to match it. The bottom of the pizza burns before the top takes on any color. You might think that raising the lid higher and adding an opening would have the opposite of the desired effect, lowering the temperature inside the oven and making the top cook even less efficiently, but this is not the case. The important thing to remember is that moving air cooks a lot more efficiently than still air (think: convection mode in an oven vs. standard mode. The only difference is a fan circulating the air).

So really, the goal when cooking a pizza on the grill should be to get as much hot air circulating over the top surface of the pizza as fast as possible.

The main advantage that I see to using the Kettle Pizza insert is that when you get the fire and positioning of the stone right, it creates good convection currents. With the coals banked in the back, hot air rises off the coals toward the domed lid, then gets pulled back down and out the oven door opening. This moving air cooks the top of the pizza a lot faster than the relatively still air inside a completely sealed kettle.

The trouble we had was getting the temperature hot enough—we went through nearly 30 pounds of coal before we hit a sweet spot—but once we were there, the grill maintained its temperature at well over 700°F for a good 45 minutes (with a stone temperature of around 550°F). At about 3 to 4 minutes per pie, that was long enough to crank out 8 pies in rapid succession and feed an equal number of hungry guests. After the pizzas were done, the coals were still hot enough to fire up an addtional 8 Chili Cheeseburgers and a couple of red-chile marinated skirt steaks. —Kenji

Thanks, Kenji! That makes perfect sense. Now, the low-down on how this thing worked ...

For more observations, check out the slideshow »

The Verdict

Our initial 1.5 chimneys weren't cutting it, so we added 1.5 to 2 chimneys more.

As Kenji said, this thing does appear to give some added benefit to your pizza cooking but does so at the cost of an enormous amount of fuel. It is sometimes a chore to keep the thing stoked. Our advice is to start with 3 to 3.5 chimneys' worth of charcoal if you want to achieve the temperatures this thing needs to work.

This is the amount of coal we ended up using when we found our "sweet spot."

It's also imperative that you use the two-zone indirect fire that the manufacturer recommends. This ensures that you do not overheat the stone and cook the bottom of the pizza too quickly. (We tried an all-over coal placement and found that pizza bottoms cooked too fast that way.)

We also recommend cooking on a stone rather than a pan. Using the pan, we also found that the pizza bottom cooked too fast.

Do we recommend it? At $80 (about $105 after S&H) it is not the most expensive pizza-cooking gadget we've come across. My inclination would be as it always is -- just grill the pizza right on the grate.

But if you are looking for a Neapolitan-type crust and want a moderate edge over what a home oven can do for you, this might not be a bad option — as long as you understand its limitations and how to compensate for them.

Next up ... we want to get our hands on a Pizza Forge.

For more observations, check out the slideshow »

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on September 3, 2010 9:25 AM

As summer begins to wind down, the temperature still remains high in some places (in the Northern hemisphere, of course). Cool waters call out to those who would leap in, momentarily letting gravity have its way with them, pulling them down as they flail, shout or twist. Collected here are a handful of photos of divers around the world, showing their professional artistry, daredevil bravado, or just simple joy as they take the plunge. (36 photos total)

Alves Jucelino of Brazil dives 25m (82 ft) from the top of Roche Dam during the World Cup Cliff Diving Race in Bardonecchia, about 100km (65 mi) northwest of Turin, northern Italy on August 11, 2010. (REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini)

Turin - Sport - Soccer - Italy - Competition

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The Big Picture, on September 3, 2010 8:50 AM

In this latest video from Food Curated's Liza de Guia, we meet mussel farmer Gordon King. He farms 1.25 million pounds of Mediterranean mussels—an especially meaty-plump kind of mussel that's sought after by chefs—per year in South Puget Sound. He also looks like a brawnier version of Sean Connery, which is kind of what you'd hope for in a mussel farmer, right? Listen to him talk about harvest season in this video.

Sustainable Mussel Farming in the Pacific Northwest

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on September 3, 2010 8:15 AM

One of the first things that Steve Jobs did after taking over as Apple's interim CEO in 1997 is to get Apple back on track with their branding. In this short presentation from '97, Jobs talks about branding & Apple's core values and introduces the Think Different campaign.

That might be one of the best five minute explanations of good branding out there. The campaign was very successful in rehabilitating Apple's image with the press and public.

What's interesting is how the iPad and iPhone advertisements focus almost entirely on the product. Apple no longer has to imply that their products are the best by showing you pictures of Albert Einstein and Amelia Earhart...they just show you the products and you know. But I don't see Jobs doing a "fake it 'til you make it" branding presentation anytime soon. :)

Tags: advertising   Apple   Steve Jobs

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on September 3, 2010 8:05 AM

Originally posted by Andy Cruz from House Industries Show and Tell, on September 3, 2010 7:29 AM

There’s about a week or two, sometimes a month or two, every summer and winter in New York City when you seriously question your sanity for living here. That’s after you’ve already gotten over the tiny apartments, the crazy people, the noise, and the days you can go without seeing single tree or a star in the sky, because you love all the other things about being here. 

But that stretch in the summer, when it’s hotter than hell, and the garbage on the sidewalk ripens in the air, you can’t get a cab, it’s over 120 degrees in the subway, and maybe your A/C breaks down, too (or you don’t have one to begin with) — it’s pretty dehumanizing, and that stretch can be hard. 

We’re right at the tail end of one — Hurricane Earl is poised to sweep through tonight and bring 70 degree days again in its wake — and as I plodded over to the subway to head downtown for a meeting yesterday, I was not loving New York. But I went anyway, and I got to see a couple things on my way downtown and back.

A teenage girl, crying as she ran alone up the subway steps, followed a few seconds later by her stricken, ponytailed boyfriend, like a story in two acts. 

A busker playing electrified violin music in the scalding subway station, where he introduced each of his New Age-y songs with a hilarious name (“This one’s called… ‘Scandalous Love’”) and told everyone they could buy it on iTunes.

A full-grown, middle-aged guy matter-of-factly sliding his groceries under, then jumping the turnstile at the 23rd Street station, because budget cutbacks meant no one was in the booth. 

A couple kissing goodbye at the top of the subway stairs, blocking the exit a little, oblivious to the rest of us having to walk around them, because they might not see each other for a while, like a third act to the story before.

And then, the most killer sunset of the summer, as I stepped out onto 23rd Street looking west, and a pretty decent breeze.

Feeling like a human again, after all. Summer’s ending, and here in the city it’s going to be a good fall.

——-

Related: 8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live (The Onion)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net reblog, on September 3, 2010 7:14 AM

thanks to this Reddit user for exposing this unusual SEO trickery  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on September 3, 2010 7:03 AM

A diagram of all of the major soft drink players. Coke, Pepsi and Snapple/Dr. Pepper own nearly 90% of the market share. You can also see it big. [via kottke]

Permalink: http://www.capndesign.com/archives/2010/09/soft_drink_industry_structure.php

Originally posted by Matt Jacobs from Capn Design, on September 3, 2010 6:59 AM

Posted in Quote

"Compared to last year he's come a long, long way...His offspeed stuff for strikes has been tremendous this year. His last four or five outings have been phenomenal. His fastball is where it has been...only it's more consistent both sides of the plate...I really like his curveball. He's getting that over first pitch a lot. I think it's really effective. It's difficult to swing at first pitch for a lot of guys, especially when he's throwing 96 mph, kind of cutting." ~ Mike Nickeas on Jenrry Mejia, as quoted by ESPN NY

According to Adam Rubin of ESPN New York, Mike Nickeas will likely catch Jenrry Mejia tomorrow afternoon when he makes his first big league start.

Nickeas caught Mejia while in the minors earlier this season.

Like I said the other day, I’m up and down on this, as while I’m curious about Mejia and the development of his off-speed pitches, I would have liked to have seen Mejia get a few more starts in the minors under his belt, and build up even more arm strength and command of those off-speed pitches.

At any rate, good luck Jenrry.

Leave a Comment

Originally posted by Michael Baron from MetsBlog.com, on September 3, 2010 6:59 AM

Susan Orlean writes about the lopsided intimacy of big cities and social media.

Life in Manhattan is like living inside a gigantic Twitter stream. What you get to know about people you don't know simply by accidental adjacency is astonishing.

Tags: cities   NYC   Susan Orlean   Twitter

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on September 3, 2010 6:53 AM

Hisanori Takahashi has proven himself to be both a versatile and talented pitcher in his short time with the New York Mets. The 35-year-old Japanese rookie has a 3.95 ERA and a 3.79 FIP in 107 innings split between the bullpen and the starting rotation. Between the two, Takahashi has compiled 1.4 WAR and shown that he is worth of a full time MLB starting role.

Takahashi’s agent, Peter Greenberg, released a statement that suggested that Takahashi may prefer a partciular role and that said role is a determinant in which team Takahashi signs with in 2011:

“He has obviously established himself in the major leagues. He liked it in New York and would love the chance to take the next step here. But we’ll have to wait until the season ends to sit down with him to see what he’s thinking for next year as far as if he has a preference to any particular role.”

Given that Takahashi spent most of his years with the Yomiuri Giants in the NPB as a starting pitcher, and that he has managed a 2.6 K/BB as a starter in the MLB, the “particular role” and “next step” suggested by Greenberg is probably the role of Major League starter. Takahashi has posted a 5.01 ERA as a starter in 2010, but that is mostly due to a high HR/FB rate – his 2.6 K/BB rate in that role is effectively equal to his K/BB rate as a reliever.

Even with the high amount of home runs allowed, Takahashi has still posted roughly half a win as a MLB starter in 64.1 innings. At that rate, he would be a 1.5 WAR pitcher over a full season, and with regression over his HR rate., there’s no reason to believe Takahashi wouldn’t be an above average pitcher. One needs only to look at his success as a reliever to see how: in 42 relief innings, Takahashi has struck out 54 batters while walking only 18 and allowing only one home run. Takahashi has been nothing short of fantastic in his relief role, compiling nearly one whole win above replacement in 42 innings in the role.

The fact that Takahashi has been so successful in the relief role seems to suggest that he remains there, but the only real difference between his perfomance as a starter and as a reliever appears to be the amount of home runs allowed. It is likely that Takahashi (or any other pitcher, for that matter) would allow more home runs as a starter than as a reliever, but not to the extent that Takahashi has in his one major league season: a 1.54 HR/9 as a starter against a 0.18 HR/9 as a reliever. It’s far more likely that Takahashi would allow a 1.00 HR/9 as a starter like he has overall this season. With that kind of home run line, his 2.6 K/BB would play quite well in a starting role.

The fact that Hisanori Takahashi has given up a multitude of home runs as a starter belies the kind of season that he is having. In reality, Takahashi has shown that he has no problem retiring Major League hitters. Yes, he may be more suited to a relief role – in reality, most pitchers are – but there’s certainly reason to believe that he can succeed in a starting role. If that is indeed the case, teams should target him as a starter – not only would Takahashi be more likely to sign, but the increased amount of innings would lead to more value added to the team as well.

Originally posted by Jack Moore from FanGraphs Baseball, on September 3, 2010 6:00 AM

Posted in MetsBlog

Prior to last night’s 4-2 win over the Braves, David Wright spoke with SNY’s Kevin Burkhardt about the recent changes to the Mets roster.

Asked about how it is to lose good friends in Rod Barajas and Jeff Francoeur, Wright said:

“I think Ive been around long enough to realize the business side of it…As selfish as it is to want to keep those guys around, you understand as an org we have to look to better ourselves and really allow those guys to go to situations that are better for them…”

Asked about whether or not dealing these veterans raises the ‘white flag’, Wright said:

“I think from here on out., we are going to see what a lot of these young guys have…you look around on the field, in the lineup and in the clubhouse, there are a lot of new faces…a completely different mix than we had to start the season and sometimes that can be a good thing, when you get some fresh blood up here, guys who can bring the energy, guys who want to make a name for themselves and compete for jobs next year…hopefully the intensity level rises, hopefully these guys go out and they’re hungry to prove themselves, and we will see what happens.”

Wright also essentially told Burkhardt he recognizes the need for changes within the organization and with the team in particular, and he hopes they go out in the off-season and brings in the right group of guys this winter.

I think this is the third or fourth time Wright has been vocal about the Mets, the team in general, and the necessity for changes and it’s nice to finally see Wright step into this leadership role and be a leading voice, especially if the team gets younger around him.

I would be hard pressed to call these most recent quotes a warning of sorts for Wright in the sense that he’s saying to the Mets ‘if things don’t improve, I won’t stay’…He has repeatedly stated over the years he wants to remain Met for a very long time, and he wants to win a championship with them – I want to believe that he is simply evolving and maturing into a person and a player who is not just a leader, but a hungry leader at that.

For Wright’s full talk with Kevin Burkhardt, watch the video below:

Leave a Comment

Originally posted by Michael Baron from MetsBlog.com, on September 3, 2010 5:43 AM

My “help wanted” post created a bit of uproar, with people trying to read tea leaves and connect it, so I’m going to “out” my next project. One of the things I love doing is getting together with readers, talking sports, and having a good time. The ability to do that has always been limited by distance, cost, and the effort it takes to organize things. I’m trying  to put together a site that will make it possible not only for me. Codenamed “Mound Visit”, it’s a database that powers a web site that will collect information on venues, sports media folks, and then push out any type of get together to you when it’s in your area. I’ve been working on this for the last couple months and hope to have more information on it soon. I’d love to hear your thoughts (and I’m still looking for help!)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Will Carroll's Rndm Crap, on September 3, 2010 5:06 AM

Here are some images from the show 'A Bundle of Sticks is Strong' that I just installed in Cleveland. The lights haven't been properly set, so some of the shadows are weird. That will be fixed by the opening. Even so, I think you can get the general idea of the show, which uses baseball as the proxy to speak about issues of immigration and Indigenous sovereignty.

For the show, I created two series of relief prints, nine in each series. Each series is a baseball team, one entirely Native (calling into question the usage of Indigenous people as sporting mascots), the other completely immigrant (evoking how Latina/o players are engaging with Arizona's anti-immigrant legislation). The prints were all created from incised Louisville Sluggers.

In addition to the relief prints, I also did a set of pennants. Plus, a life-size wall painting of an ICE officer/umpire and an entire baseball team with a chalk batter's box on the gallery floor.

Let me know what you think. I am interested in trying to possibly travel the show, so get in touch and let me know what you think of the new work.

Click through for more images!

Originally posted by Dylan Miner from Just Seeds: Blog, on September 3, 2010 5:00 AM

Keeping Score: Determining a Most Valuable Pitcher - NYTimes.com

This week's NY Times piece looks at the most valuable pitchers in baseball this season.

I should have also mentioned in the piece, but failed to do so, that the techniques used to determine WAR are primarily the work and research of Sean Smith who does so much good work and shares it with others to such a degree that I fear I may take it for granted sometimes. Thanks to Sean for working with us and for creating such a useful framework (WAR) for evaluating players.

Originally posted by Sean Forman from Baseball-Reference Blog, on September 3, 2010 4:40 AM

Pitcher A: 13-1 record, 101.1 IP, 1.15 ERA

Pitcher B: 4-5 record, 83 IP, 4.55 ERA

Click through for the answers.Both are Ubaldo Jimenez. Pitcher A was his performance from the start of the season through his June 17th start against the Twins. Pitcher B was his performance since then, starting with his June 23rd game against the Red Sox and continuing through his Sept 1 game against the Giants.

What's interesting is that a lot of his peripherals haven't changed. Keeping the same time periods:

Pitcher A: 5.8 H/9,  7.8 K/9,  3.2 BB/9

Pitcher B: 7.5 H/9,  8.9 K/9,  3.9 BB/9

So he's allowed about 35% more hits, and his K's and BB's are both up in the neighborhood of 15-20%.

Neil pointed out that it's his BAbip that his really changed, up from .245 to .299. This is consistent with the increase in hits.

Originally posted by Andy from Baseball-Reference Blog, on September 3, 2010 4:39 AM

Billboard and Hypebot both had articles this week speculating who Google may be calling to lead their music initiative. Surprisingly, my name was on the lists and I had more than a few inquiries hit my mailbox asking how I felt about it.

Rest assured, I can happily report I’m not leaving Topspin for Google or any place else (and hopefully the Topspin board feels the same!). Google is certainly an interesting company and I’d love to see how they compare to my AOL and Yahoo! experience — I actually get a kick out of seeing how these big companies run (or don’t, as the case may be), but there is nothing on my mind at the moment aside from working with the killer Topspin team to build the marketing and retail platform used by every professional in the music business. While I know many entrepreneurs who have vowed to never pour their energy into the unforgiving abyss of digital music again (y’all know who you are!), this business is my passion and I plan on being a part of it one way or another for the rest of my life. As such it’s a huge honor to see my name on a list of “top anything” in the world of nerds and music. Thanks again Antony and Bruce for the kind words, I’ll try my hardest to live up to them.

I don’t like underestimating Google, but in this case I’m afraid I haven’t heard anything particularly interesting about their music initiative. I’d love to be wrong and find out they’re going a different route but from the news reports it sounds like they’re just going knocking on doors looking to license content for streaming and download. Yawn. Couple that with the fact it sounds like the Android team is driving this initiative and it sounds like you have a check-box marketing feature for Android (you can’t compete with Apple without a killer music experience) and not a “Google is going to change the music industry they way they are changing the book industry” scenario.

Instead of contacting an increasingly fragmented population of rights owners and asking for permission to access their content with a cumbersome set of attached strings I wish Google would build a valuable ecosystem content owners *want* to include their content in — they are a company who could start with the demand, not the supply. Build the inputs and outputs into the marketplace: rights owners upload and manage their own content, set the rules, give access to content to any app (including the Android app) willing to play by the rules. Take what MusicNet and 7digital have done with their APIs a step further, let the market determine what it’s willing to spend to utilize the content in their apps, give value in the ecosystem to cheap/free content and let rights owners charge as much as they think their content is worth (the ecosystem will determine if that content is the price is appropriate by whether or not it gets utilized). Topspin would *love* to participate in a marketplace like this and we could even add some interesting product bundling (merchandise, CDs, vinyl, tickets — all self-serve from the artist perspective) to the mix. THIS would be a very interesting play against Apple in my opinion, a licensed streaming and paid download store, less so. I get why it’s a fine feature for Android, and why Google has avoided music in the past, but I’m still disappointed Google isn’t taking a path which alters the course of digital music more.

Speaking of Google, I’ve been thinking a lot about Facebook vs. Google lately. At Topspin we’ve been digging in to what’s possible with the Facebook Like ecosystem and I have to say it’s an absolutely brilliant move. Sinister, in its way, but brilliant. For those who haven’t looked deeply into it, when Facebook changed “Fan” to “Like” across the site they also made it possible to “Like” any page on the Interwebz. So not only are they grabbing knowledge that you “Like” the Bed Intruder (who doesn’t?) but they might know that you “Like” Topspin or even this blog.

So what? Once upon a time Google came out of nowhere with a way better search engine, right? That search engine was better because of PageRank, an algorithm which used publisher intent (via what text linked where) to better rank search results. Now Facebook has their network of 500 million people expressing their like of pages across the Web. Add this data to a search engine and imagine how results might improve or simply get more interesting by showing you results ranked highly by your social group.

But the real fun starts when Facebook takes their ad network off of Facebook. They already have more than $1B (annually) running through their ad network on their pages alone. If they make that network available to publishers I could buy ads targeted at employees of major labels reading “You’re working more albums with less resources — Topspin can help” not only ON Facebook but across the Web. Imagine if you could add “on these sites” to all the other great targeting you can do with Facebook ads (Likes, employment, geo, demo, etc).

Sorry no comment on Ping yet, still haven’t spent any time with it. What do y’all think? Comments on any of the above welcome.

ian

Originally posted by iancr from FISTFULAYEN, on September 2, 2010 11:52 PM

There’s about a week or two, sometimes a month or two, every summer and winter in New York City that you seriously question your sanity for living here. That’s already after you’ve gotten over the tiny apartments, the crazy people, the noise, and the days you can go without seeing single green plant or a star in the sky, because you love all the other things about being here. 

But that stretch in the summer, when it’s hotter than hell, and the garbage on the sidewalk ripens in the air, you can’t get a cab, it’s over 120 degrees in the subway, and maybe your A/C breaks down, too (or you don’t have one at all) — it’s pretty dehumanizing, and that stretch can be hard. 

We’re right at the tail end of one — Hurricane Earl is poised to sweep through tomorrow and bring 70 degree days again in its wake — and as I plodded over to the subway to head downtown for a meeting today, I was not loving New York. But I went anyway, and I got to see a couple things on my way downtown and back. 

A teenage girl, crying as she ran alone up the subway steps, followed a few seconds later by her stricken, ponytailed boyfriend, like a story in two acts. 

A busker playing electrified violin music in the scalding subway station, where he introduced each of his New Age-y songs with a hilarious name (“This one’s called… ‘Scandalous Love’”) and told everyone they could buy it on iTunes.

A full-grown, middle-aged guy matter-of-factly sliding his groceries under, then jumping the turnstile at the 23rd Street station, because budget cutbacks meant no one was in the booth. 

A couple kissing goodbye at the top of the subway stairs, blocking the exit a little, oblivious to the rest of us having to walk around them, because they might not see each other for a while.

And then, the most killer sunset of the summer, as I stepped out onto 23rd Street looking west at seven o’clock, and a pretty decent breeze.

Feeling human again, after all. Summer’s ending, and it’s going to be a good fall.

——-

Related: 8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live (The Onion)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from shey.net reblog, on September 2, 2010 10:53 PM

sitting dog.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Final Boss Form, on September 2, 2010 9:23 PM

Ronen and I (video version)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Final Boss Form, on September 2, 2010 9:11 PM

(via 90salt)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from "Zits are beauty marks.", on September 2, 2010 5:44 PM

“As soon as we opened Ian Svenonius’s entry to our Sassiest Boy in America Contest, we just knew, the way you know it’s time to change your tampon.”

I was feeling depressed about Justin Bieber fanaticism and the teen girl dissing and girl-on-girl crime that will ensue, so I turned to Sassy.

Has fangirling really changed so much over the years? In my (and Angela Chase’s) humble opinion, teenage girls have always had the tendency to fall majorly butt-crazy in love with people they don’t know. Be it New Kids, Jordan Catalano, the Spice Girls, Josh, Kurt Cobain, the Sassiest Boy in America, or Ted from “Hey Dude.” We love/loved fast and hard. Sorry, it’s just the way we roll and still the way I roll today. Don’t be jealz of our devotion.

Now I guess a large portion of that devotion has been poured onto Justin Bieber. This is distressing, but also a natural progression. Do I think Bieber is worth the blood, Teen Spirit scented perspiration and tears of thousands upon thousands of teen girls who would be better off focusing their energy on perfecting their rock scream? No. Do I think Beiber is worth a box of Playtex Gentle Glide tampons? Fuck no. But I suppose someone has to cheer for the shitty bands to maintain balance in the universe.

Allow me to step on my Ms. Norbury soap box for a moment: What’s bothersome is the cruel comments lodged back and forth among girls over this boy, and how quick so many are to write it off as teen girls being “crazy bitches.” I think what we’re seeing in videos like this is internalized oppression, and it’s much easier to blame this behavior on Facebook/Twitter/teen girls being vapid airheads than to examine the real problem of systematic patriarchy.

Plus, you know, J. Beibz is no Sassiest Boy in America.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from "Zits are beauty marks.", on September 2, 2010 5:10 PM

It's Jane's half birthday! We will be sure to eat some cake on her behalf today. She herself has recently had the opportunity to scarf both roast zucchini and bits of tamale, both of which she approves of very heartily. She was less interested in the potatoes that came with my brunch last Sunday, but then I didn't think they were very delicious, either. (There is a theme uniting these foods—can you spot it?)

So that would seem to mean that it is September of 2010. And yet apparently it is 1999, because I am currently in mourning over the fact that there will never be a second season (series) of Ultraviolet. It holds up surprisingly well.

Idris Elba remains very handsome.

The characters are a good and plausible mixture of clever and not, dispassionate and self interested, savvy and gullible, brainy and lummoxy, laudable and infuriating, with a pleasing balance across genders.

The phones, it must be admitted, are very large.

But the representation of what computers can do is shockingly realistic, especially for the era. I never saw anything remotely as real as this in anything that I was watching in 1998.

(That one features a nice underplayed eyeroll just before it, right after someone else says, snidely, "Good luck, by the way. He wiped everything.")

The metaphysics are well thought out and hang together neatly.

And they never actually say the word "vampire".

I even like the music. (Dammit! I see that an "Extended Version Of Ultraviolet Theme Music" was one of the special features on the DVD. If only I had realized before we sent it back to Netflix.)

Originally posted by redfox from Adventures in the Pointless Forest, on September 2, 2010 4:56 PM

Shared by sippey
This is great.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from THXTHXTHX, on September 2, 2010 4:14 PM

Okay, I might be a little bit fangrrlish about the new Xcode 4 IDE. But seriously, it's really an awesome update to the existing Xcode tools. Yes, it's still majorly buggy and yes, there are still many features missing in action -- but it's such a treat to see how the new tools are evolving into their final form.

Today, Apple has released developer preview 3 of the new Xcode 4 suite, which you can download by heading over to the developer.apple.com site. You will need to sign in with your online or paid developer credentials to access the page and the preview dmg. I'm a little iffy about what the NDA situation is with regards to the release (I believe it is under NDA until it leaves beta) so I'll leave finding out about the details (there's a Readme and release notes) to you.

TUAWApple releases preview 3 of Xcode 4 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Originally posted by Erica Sadun from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), on September 2, 2010 3:45 PM

Thoughts on Vox closing

http://pop.vox.com/library/post/thoug...

You may have read by now that Vox is Closing. Many of you who know me know that I worked on Vox from the beginning. It was the first big project for me here at Six Apart, and I'm very proud to have been part of it for its entire life. I still work at Six Apart, in a much different capacity, and much...

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on September 2, 2010 3:34 PM

Each day this week we're rounding up our favorite no-to-minimal-labor recipes for your Labor Day festivities this weekend. So far we've shared appetizers, salads, and grilling recipes. Today it's time to glug it all down with something refreshing! Both boozy and virgin options included.

• Daiquiri: Daiquiris can be full of trouble—be careful with this one! It takes its name from the Havana bar where many a daquiri drinker, including Ernest Hemingway, got their fill back in the day.
• The Caipirinha: Think of the caipirinha as the daiquiri's Brazilian cousin.
• Strawberry Purée: Just blend up some strawberries, add simple syrup and water, and spike if you so choose.
• White Peach Purée: The same deal but with peaches! Makes a great bellini base.
• Key Lime Granita: This recipe is super tart, like a lime FrozeFruit popsicle. If you want it less strident, decrease the amount of lime juice and up the water.
• Watermelon Margaritas: This is the essence of watermelon flavor—sweet and just the tiniest bit tart with big chunks of frozen melon that quickly absorb the flavors. It also make a great snack after you've drained the glass.
• The Michelada: Fresh lime juice, salt, and a Mexican beer are constants in the equation, and everything ranging from Worcestershire sauce to Maggi seasoning to tomato juice and Clamato wind up in different versions of this drink.
• Buck's Fizz: While a mimosa is usually made with twice as much fruit juice as bubbly, the Buck's Fizz turns things around.
• Bloody Marys: This will surely beat the pants off of any other Bloody Mary recipes out there. The base is basically a homemade V8, combining fresh tomatoes, celery, carrots, garlic, lemon, jalapeño, and herbs.
• Basil Lemonade: All three major components—lemon, basil, agave nectar—meld quite nicely, with none competing for dominance over the others. Plus, it's refreshing as all get out. So that's fun.

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on September 2, 2010 3:30 PM

Current status

Originally posted by (author unknown) from lather rinse repeat, on September 2, 2010 3:26 PM

Each week we round up our favorite posts and recipes from our friends at The Kitchn.

This week, the Kitchn shares the pleasure of a breakfast salad. It's basically a poached egg atop any salad, like this real tasty-looking one with avocado, prosciutto, fresh tomatoes, and fresh herbs.

Also on the Kitchn:

• Recipe: Quick and Homey Oatmeal Raisin Muffins: You've had it in cookie form, but a muffin?
• Afternoon Snack: Wasabi-Toasted Nori Crisps: Inspired by a Mark Bittman recipe, this snack is easy to make, good for you, and addictively crunchy.
• Quick Tip: How to Avoid Bitter Eggplant: The best advice is to buy eggplants as fresh as possible and use them right away.
• Beer Trends: Look Out for Black IPAs: These IPAs are as dark as stouts, but with the hefty hop kick of, well, an IPA.

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on September 2, 2010 2:15 PM

From Recipes

[Photographs: Kerry Saretsky]

Whenever I think of puff pastry, I wonder how anything that should be so heavy could ever be so light. It is that lightness that gives meaning to vol-au-vent, literally "flying in the wind." But in my family, we always translated them as "gone with the wind" because they fly off into people's stomachs so quickly.

There are a million and one ways to make vol-au-vent, and even though the classic lidded nest in this recipe is the classic shape, I often just make little triangles or squares and call them by the same name, stuffed with anything from goat cheese and jam to brie and brown sugar. They really are blank canvases. This vol-au-vent is well grounded in tradition: a bite-size canapé made from bought puff pastry and stuffed with a creamy mushroom duxelles. The puff pastry is flaky and crispy, ready to crumble and collapse layer by layer at the very hint of a bite. And the mushroom filling is earthy and woodsy from mushrooms and thyme, and smooth from the crème fraîche.

I've always promised to show how to make classic French dishes easy with a little help from the store. This is how you do it.

About the author: Kerry Saretsky is the creator of French Revolution Food, where she reinvents her family's classic French recipes in a fresh, chic, modern way. She also writes the The Secret Ingredient series for Serious Eats.

Ingredients

serves 9 canapés

• 1 sheet of frozen puff pastry, thawed but very cold
• 1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 8 ounces wild mixed mushrooms, chopped to a rubble
• 1 whole, smashed garlic clove
• 2 stems fresh thyme
• 1 tablespoon dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons crème fraîche

Procedures

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.

2. Lightly flour a cutting board, and place the pastry on it. Cut out 9 circles from the pastry using a 2.5-inch biscuit cutter. Use a 1.5-inch biscuit cutter to make an indent (not all the way through) in the center of each pastry circle.

3. Bake the puff pastry for 20 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, make the mushroom filling mixture. Melt the butter in a wide sauté pan. Add the mushrooms, garlic, and thyme. Sauté the mixture over medium heat for about 4 minutes, until the mushrooms have greatly shrunk in size and the pan has dried out. Season with salt and pepper, and add the wine. Allow to reduce. Remove the garlic and thyme stems from the pan, and take the pan off the heat. Stir in the crème fraîche.

5. Use a paring knife to gently remove the center disc from each puff pastry shell. Reserve. Fill the cavity with the mushroom mixture, and replace the pastry disc.

Originally posted by Kerry Saretsky from Serious Eats, on September 2, 2010 1:30 PM

It’s not as mysterious as it seems, this mini-controversy about finding friends on Facebook for Apple’s new social music network.

According to sources familiar with Facebook’s platform, the social networking giant essentially denied Apple’s Ping access to application programming interfaces that would allow it to search for an iTunes user’s friends on Facebook who also had signed up for Ping.

Normally, this API access is open and does not require permission.

That is, unless some entity wants to access it a lot. In that case, Facebook requires an agreement for reasons primarily centered on protection of Facebook user data and, of course, infrastructure impact.

With 160 million iTunes users, that could potentially mean a lot of impact.

Sources said Apple (AAPL) and Facebook conducted negotiations about an agreement, but could not come to terms.

At the launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs complained to me about what he called “onerous terms” that Facebook had demanded for the friends connection and suggested using search or email to add friends to Ping.

But, at the same event another exec, Worldwide Product Marketing SVP Phil Schiller, said to me in a video interview that one could use Facebook to find friends on Ping.

In fact, Apple still included the ability to find Facebook friends in its demo onstage and also after it made iTunes 10 available for download.

It also currently claims this on its Ping page: “Find even more music fans with a quick search, by sending email invites, or by connecting to your Facebook account.”

But you can’t actually do that on Ping right now.

Sources said Apple went ahead with a plan to access the Facebook APIs freely, but Facebook blocked it since it violated its terms of service.

When that happened, it seems Apple pulled the plug on the connection with Facebook friends.

But maybe not for long. Sources also said the companies were still in discussions about putting the more robust Facebook Connect feature in Ping.

Because, in the end, it is all about connection.

BoomTown has requests into both Facebook and Apple for a comment.

Earlier today, Facebook said:

“Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.”

Originally posted by Kara Swisher from BoomTown, on September 2, 2010 12:17 PM

So, there’s a new kind of Android device in the world. The world still isn’t sure just where it is that tablets are the right tool for the job. That granted, this is a nifty product. And I’m developing my own theory of what tablets are for.

My impressions are based on a couple hours playing with one, which at this point is a couple hours more than almost anyone else. The model I played was not quite production — among other things, the product name stenciled on the back wasn’t “Galaxy Tab” — but close.

I won’t have one on next week’s trip to Mainz for MobileTech, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to take one along to GDD Tokyo and JAOO in Aarhus, Denmark.

Other coverage: At the Financial Times’ ft.com/techbog, also Android Central (with a useful iPad comparo), also Engadget.

Impressions

All the apps I tried ran just fine, including a couple of immersive games that really benefited from the extra inches. I’ve heard of a few apps that misbehave, but their problems were obvious & easy to fix; watch for details over on the Android Dev Blog, starting later today.

Samsung has sprinkled some sugar on the out-of-the-box Google UI elements, and while the community’s opinions on hardware companies’ efforts to improve Android software have been, um, mixed (my own is extremely mixed), I have to say that the Samsungers have shown restraint, putting the extra real estate to good use in good places, for example the notifications pull-down. There may be some of that integrated-social-everything that frankly gets up my nose, but my nose remained clear around the Tab, so if it’s there it‘s at least easy to ignore.

It’s snappy, especially on games where that matters; maybe there are places where servicing the extra bits in the 1024x600 screen will hurt, but I didn’t run across them.

It’s got a phone but (at least on the pre-release model I used) you can’t hold it up to your head, which is a good thing as that would look supremely dorky.

Did I mention that the screen is beautiful? Also it feels really good in the hand and looks pretty nice, and is obviously in the first microsecond’s glance not an iPad.

What Are Tablets For?

The trade-off is obvious. You win because you can show a bigger picture, which is important, and you lose because it just won’t fit in many pockets, which is important. It’ll go in most purses, though.

I know what I’ll use the Galaxy Tab for: to show off Android. The big screen just makes everything easier to see and point at, and graphics look outstanding, and it passes from hand to hand easily. Showing off Android is part of my job and this will help me do my job better.

Which leads to a general theory, reinforced by informal observation of hipsters with iPads in coffee shops: a tablet is, crucially, a more shareable computer. A laptop, with its fragile hinge-ware and space-gobbling keyboard, is just not comfy to share. A tablet is easier to bring to the café, easier to hand across the table or along the sofa, easier to seize in the heat of the moment, easier to hold up in triumph, easier to set aside when you need to meet someone’s eyes.

How big a market is that? Anyone who says they know is lying.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from ongoing by Tim Bray, on September 2, 2010 11:00 AM

"City With No Children" and "Sprawl II" are pretty rocking. Still mulling over the record. Those are the two tracks that caught me right off the back.

Arcade Fire - Games - Coin-Op - Arcade Games - Suburb

Originally posted by Ta-Nehisi Coates from Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic, on September 2, 2010 11:00 AM

In no particular order:

1. People who used the word boobs. It really bothers me. This particular annoyance came to mind this morning when I read a mention of the book "Boobs: A Guide to Your Girls." I especially hate it when women refer to their own breasts as boobs, or even worse, tits. It seems like a special kind of self-hatred. Please, ladies, refer to them as breasts. Give them the reverence they deserve.

2. In Jane Brody's column about BMI on Tuesday, she, or some hack doctor she quotes, says that it's thoroughly possible for a 125 pound, 5 foot 5 inch woman to be fat. Shut the front door. Jane, this is frigging impossible. I am resisting the impulse to say you are going senile.

3. An ad for a plastic surgeon in The Montclair Times today asks, "Do you suffer from cellulite?" Suffering? Really? I'm almost speechless. There is a lot of suffering in this world, to be sure, very little of it from cellulite.

4. Tracking down payment for freelance articles published in May. DRIVING ME BONKERS. It amounts to 600 measly dollars and the number of polite emails I have sent is staggering. I'm getting ready to name publications. PAY ME, NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Originally posted by Christina Kelly from Fallen Princess, on September 2, 2010 8:33 AM

Fresh Sriracha (aka "Homemade Rooster")

Fresh Sriracha (aka "Homemade Rooster") by edamame2003

Warning: once you make edamame2003's version, you may never be able to go back to commercial sriracha again. The vibrant color and piquancy of the fresh fresno peppers, combined with plenty of garlic and a boost of vinegar, make for a zippy, versatile condiment that would be great with anything from banh mi to scrambled eggs. We'd never used palm sugar before and were intrigued by its gentle sweetness, which helps to round out the heat of the sriracha. - A&M

Serious business.

You must wear gloves or wrap your fingers in plastic wrap while cutting these peppers! They are HOT!

This palm sugar comes in a plastic bag, inside a container. Yep, it's that sticky.

The peppers and garlic macerate overnight in white vinegar and a little salt.

In goes the palm sugar. You'll need to wash your hands after digging it out of the measuring spoon!

A mere 5 minutes on the stove keeps the peppers fresh and vibrant.

After they're cool, edamame2003 has you puree the peppers for a full 5 minutes in a blender. We were skeptical, but the sauce really does change in color and texture over that time.

Who knows what's going on here. Better not to ask, really.

Pressing the sauce through a fine sieve is surprisingly quick, and worth the extra dishes.

Who would choose the store-bought stuff over this?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from The A+M Blog, on September 2, 2010 8:00 AM

Posted in Link

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/sports/baseball/02takahashi.html

This is exactly why it makes more sense to keep using Bobby Parnell as a closer, and not Takahashi, who undoubtedly sees himself as a starting pitcher next season – be it for the Mets or someone else.

Leave a Comment

Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 2, 2010 5:29 AM

Latte art is one of the fun parts of being a barista. We get to show off a little and beautiful drinks always make people smile. Latte art takes a while to learn, but once you get the basics down it doesn't take long to master the different designs.

View the full gallery

Originally posted by Devorah Freudiger from Gimme! Coffee News, on September 2, 2010 4:56 AM

The Nats announced on Wednesday that Rob Dibble was permanently leaving the MASN booth -- as Josh DuLac put it in The Post, the team "laid down the smack 'em, yack 'em, sack 'em" on its controversial color man. Dibble, as far as I can tell, did not comment on the news on Wednesday, but he opened his SIRIUS XM show on MLB Network Radio Thursday morning by reading a prepared statement. It lasted about 25 seconds. Here it is: "As you may know, I made some statements last week about Stephen Strasburg, and have been called controversial and angered many. In my role as analyst for the Nationals, and [with] the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, I now realize that my comments were inappropriate and disrespectful. I have regret that my time with the team will have to end this way, but have learned from the mistake and look forward


Rob Dibble - Stephen Strasburg - Mid-Atlantic Sports Network - Washington Nationals - Sirius Satellite Radio

Originally posted by (author unknown) from D.C. Sports Bog, on September 2, 2010 4:29 AM

The publisher of the once well-regarded media cataloging application confesses that feature creep and a lack of follow-through subverted their ambitions for its second major release, leaving many customers frustrated and disappointed where the company had intended to wow them.

“Let’s say, for instance, 80 percent of these features worked great. I’d think, ‘Yay, I did good, I added a bunch of great stuff to the new version, it was definitely worth US$20 to existing customers.’ But, that’s not how the customers see it — they see the 20 percent that’s buggy, and they think, ‘This is crappy… he released software that didn’t work.’“

This is an object lesson in how success, ambition and even good intentions can lead to a bad product even when the business is fully aligned with the customer experience. It’s also a clever bit of mea culpa-style media spin. Not that I think it’s dishonest; I just find it very savvy. Read the full article

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Subtraction.com, on September 2, 2010 3:24 AM

'earos'


'earos' by robert potter from canada is one of the 240 shortlisted entries from more than 5100 participants in our
recent designboom competition 'design for all' in collaboration with seoul design fair 2010.

designer's own words:
'earos is a padded cushion that attaches to mobile phones, creating a soft, luxurious support for the ear.
its simple but versatile fastener allows it to connect to most phone models, and rotates on two axes so that
the unit can be quickly repositioned when not in use. the elegant, ergonomic design and soft, synthetic suede
material bring new joy to a universal human ritual - the telephone conversation.'

the earpiece creates support during phone conversations



the piece fastens onto the ear for comfort

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Designboom - Weblog, on September 2, 2010 1:39 AM

Before I even start rambling, I have a public service announcement:

ALWAYS BRING A SHARPIE TO THE GAME. ALWAYS.

So I'm standing with my friend in the SunTrust club room at Turner Field after probably the best game I will ever go to in my life. I know while it's happening that it's quite likely the best time I'll ever have at a baseball game and I'm cool with that. I had the realization that every subsequent game I go to will not be diminished by the fact that the experience is far inferior to that of this game, but instead will be enhanced by the good feelings I get as the baseball atmosphere brings to mind this near-perfect ballgame. If you believe in the Zen of Base and Ball, you could say that tonight, I was Enlightened.

I have to explain further. I knew I was going to the game, and i knew that they were really good seats. I've sat in company seats before and they were very good. A few rows behind the visitor's dugout. I remember one time Rafael Ramirez was playing for the Astros and a buddy of his was waylaid by an usher as he walked toward the dugout, but Rafael said something in Spanish and his buddy got to go anyway. Those were really good seats and I thought I knew what I was in for. No, I had no clue.

These were not merely really good seats, these were Oh My God These Are Possibly The Best Seats Ever Seats. The I Don't Belong Here But Here I Am Anyway Seats. My friend tried to explain to me how good these seats were, but I didn't listen. He tried to explain to me that I needed to bring lots of fives and ones to tip all the servers but I figured they were like the ushers I've seen at Hawks and Thrashers games who take your order and then you pay them when they get back with your food. I didn't realize this section was catered by Dantana's and had Tapas with scallops and shrimp sitting out for the taking and the server would bring you a Yuengling just because you asked. The food was just the appetizer, The main course was outside in our seats.

There's no way I can describe the seats right now with any justice. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures and as soon as I can download them and develop them I will show them off. I can't do it at 12:By God AM though. Here's the best I can do right now to describe these seats. Imagine you are at a fast food joint. McDonald's, Chick-Fil-A, The Varsity, whatever. Imagine you are second in line to the counter. The cashier behind the counter is Jason Heyward. What'll ya have? THAT'S how good these seats were.

The actual game was fantastic. Tommy Hanson pitched a gem. Billy Wagner got a save. Rick Ankiel got to every ball that was hit anywhere near the outfield. Freddie Freeman make a good debut where he got robbed by the ump on one at bat, but proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can play first base in the majors. Raw Dog Brooks Conrad reached down and grabbed a handful of dirt to rub on his hand and bat before every plate appearance. Omar and Marteeen hit like the couple of All-Stars that they are. And Jason Heyward - the guy whose name and number I was wearing on my t-shirt - went four for four with every hit being a rocket. And the Braves beat the Mets. You can't get better than that.

So back to the beginning, I'm standing in the SunTrust club room at Turner Field after probably the best game I will ever go to in my life. I'm hanging out with my buddy just sort of winding down after the experience. People are talking and drinking and generally having fun at the bar. Our server from earlier in the evening brought us some of the Butter Pecan Popcorn you see above. My friend has asked for some during the game, but they had ran out. She found some bags and brought him the two he requested and had an extra one for me. This stuff is fantastic. It's like little crunchy balls of pure butter with some pecan pralines thrown in for good measure. So we're standing there with our popcorn and my friend is teasing me about how I totally didn't expect these seats would be this good when all of a sudden Don Sutton comes down the stairs and walks right by me.

Repeat: Hall of Fame pitcher and Braves Broadcaster Don Sutton just walked right by me.

I see this, turn to my friend and tell him of course I didn't expect to have a Hall of Famer walk by me in a bar after the game. Nope, I didn't expect that at all.

Here's a little more explanation. My friend told me that we might get a chance at some autographs so to bring some baseball cards. Last night, I picked out some cards of current Braves players and a few coaches and broadcasters in the hopes of maybe getting one or two signed. I managed to find the entire starting lineup, most of the bench, all of the rotation and a good chunk of the bullpen. And Bobby Cox of course. The only players I was missing was Alex Gonzalez (looked but couldn't find a single card) and Jonny Venters (flaked and forgot to bring one). in that pile of cards was not one Don Sutton. I was looking through my Braves boxes and picked out broadcasters like Lemke, Glavine and Smoltz, but I didn't think of Don at the time because the cards I have of him are vintage and in my Braves binder and not the boxes of random Braves flotsam. We ended up getting stuck in traffic on the way so I ultimately ended up leaving the cards in the car rather than lug them in to the game. I didn't leave the blue Sharpie that I hoped would sign those cards in the car though, that remained in my pocket.

I'm standing there utterly dumbstruck that I'm in the same room breathing the same oxygen as Don Sutton when my buddy pipes up "why don't you go get his autograph?". Autograph? Get? Me? I can do that? Oh yeah! I can! So I did.

There was a small line at Don's table. A hello, a please sign, a hi Don. After chatting with the guy in front of me while I stood there grinning like a goofy schmuck, Don looked at me standing there like a galoot and said to the guy "Looks like you brought your bodyguard!"

I immediately went into dorky fan mode, and enjoyed every second of it. I shook Don's hand (Same one he won 324 games with, I realized afterward) and told him how glad I was that he was announcing with the Braves again. He said he was glad to be back and then I meant to say that I was sad when he left the Braves' announcing crew but I was able to hear him call a few games for the Washington Nationals and I enjoyed hearing him call a game even if he wasn't doing a Braves game but I my mind was malfunctioning at this point and I actually said "I got to hear a few games that you did for the Nationals and that was pretty cool". I always say stupid stuff like that when I'm talking to someone that I'm really impressed with, it must be some kind of primal defense mechanism kicking in. I have not gotten mauled by a celebrity yet, so it works really well. Don corrected me and said that he belongs with the Braves and that he's glad to be back here. Or something to that effect, I don't remember it clearly because like I said my brain was malfunctioning and I don't recall the words he used exactly. I finally asked him for his autograph and Don signed his name on the only thing that vaguely resembled memorabilia that I had on my person and I thanked him and that's when Don called me Double Deuce because I was wearing a #22 Jason Heyward shirt.

And that's how I got Don Sutton's signature on a Braves vs. Mets Gameday program featuring Rick Ankiel.

Thanks, Don, for capping a perfect night. Your fan Double Deuce the Bodyguard will always see you as a Brave no matter how much those Dodger fans protest. (The Nats game you called was cool though, I really enjoyed that)

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on September 1, 2010 9:37 PM

Let’s start today’s post with a marketing success story: Jenny and Johnny, the alter-ego of Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice. Their store illustrates how to build the right product for your audience. Check out the deluxe product: CD, digital download, multiple vinyl options, and a cassette (!) version of the album. To quote: “If you want to know how our album sounds on cassette, on top of a piano in laurel canyon, enjoy.” During the recent ticketing pre-order, you could also get the deluxe package bundled with a “his and her” pack of two tickets to their shows. As it stands, all 500 of the deluxe box sets have sold out prior to street date— a huge accomplishment. Congratulations to their team on this success. Head on over to the Jenny and Johnny site to check out the other packages currently available.

Speaking of deluxe products, check out the interesting VIP Tour Package that Jennifer Knapp has created for her fans. For just $69, Jennifer’s fans get a ticket, access to soundcheck and/or a meet & greet, special seating privileges, an autographed tour poster, and more.

Florence + the Machine are also taking advantage of Topspin’s ticketing platform to make special offers available for their US tour dates, including cool merch such as a handmade pewter charm and a signed lithograph. If you spring for the Cosmic Love Meet & Greet, you’ll also get to hang out with Flo herself.

The much-buzzed-about band Hurricane Bells is streaming their new EP Down Comes the Rain (and an excellent first album) from their site hurricanebells.com. The new EP features original songs and diverse covers, including the Shirelles’ hit “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” If you pre-order it today you’ll get their remix album “Ghost Stories” for free.

It’s the last week of Interpol’s pre-order, and that means it’s the last week to pick up their limited edition t-shirt and poster. You’re going to be hearing this album everywhere in September, so you might as well make sure you’re dressed appropriately. While you’re at it, head on over and check out that freaky-cool video, too.

Lastly, don’t forget to sign up for next week’s session of Topspin Training in Santa Monica. For just $50, you get a day of in-app experience and marketing coaching, plus a whole bunch of useful materials (such as our nearly-priceless artist forecasting tool). Lunch and ping-pong are included, so really, what’s not to like? Sign up today and see what you’ve been missing.

Thanks for tuning in. It’s an honor to work with such diverse and inspiring artists. Enjoy the music!

Peter Brambl

Originally posted by pbrambl from Topspin Media, on September 1, 2010 9:28 PM

This is a great industrial film by Jam Handy for Hamilton Watch Company in 1949. It explains the mechanics of a wind-up watch. If they were making it today they might call it F*cking Watches, How Do They Work? [via Hodinkee]

Originally posted by Paul Bausch from onfocus.com, on September 1, 2010 8:15 PM

hariboo:

squintyoureyes:

alone-with-everybody:

stardustmelody:

Yes, I did it. I killed Yvette. I hated her… SO MUCH… it, it, fla…flames, flames, on the side of my face, breathing, heaving breaths, heaving…

I quote this all the time and NO one ever knows what I’m talking about. YAY!

Originally posted by (author unknown) from lather rinse repeat, on September 1, 2010 6:01 PM

Any excuse is a good excuse to slip down to New York City, but a wedding’s a pretty great one. Especially when you’re really, really excited about the couple that’s getting married (!), you’re going to get a chance to hang out with old friends, and the weather is slated to be perfection. And if the wedding’s in Bushwick and Roberta’s is literally half a block away, well, all the better!



figs. a & b: The High Line, before and after

The High Line

The High Line was already a thing of beauty. Now, fully redeveloped, fully landscaped by our good friend Piet Oudolf,* and pedestrian-friendly, it's just a different kind of thing of beauty.

fig. c: The Standard, as seen from The High Line

It's a great place to take some sun, do some people-watching, get some amazing views of the city and the river, check out some of the city's most daring new architecture, even take in an art installation.

fig. d: an-ti-ci-pa-a-tion

It's also a great place to grab a popsicle or a shave ice, now that People's Pops are on the scene. We didn't realize it at the time, but it turns it out it was People's Pops' Day 2 on the High Line. What we did realize, instantly, is that we're definitely some People's Pops people. We loved their bright, beautiful, refreshing watermelon shave ice. We were totally ecstatic about their golden plum & mint pop. They were reasonably priced too. Power to the people!

fig. e: outside Momofuku Ssäm Bar + Milk Bar

Momofuku Ssäm Bar + Milk Bar + Beer Table

They said it couldn't be done, but we showed up for our glorious return to Momofuku Ssäm Bar at 8:05 pm on a Friday night--a beautiful Friday night--and we got seated in under 3 minutes! A party of four, too. We were fully prepared to wait a good 60-90 minutes, too. It was almost too easy.

And, god, was it good.

Vermont quail with sticky rice, shiitake mushrooms, and mustard greens sounded awesome--little did we know that that plump, beautiful roasted quail would come stuffed with the sticky rice and mushrooms and that it would be the quail of our dreams.

But the dish that blew our minds was one that sounded vaguely mysterious. When Michelle saw the buttermilk dish under the list of seasonal specialties she knew she had to have it. I asked her why and she told me she was convinced that the buttermilk would be served lightly set, like silken tofu, and she just had a feeling that it was going to transcend. Transcend, it did. What arrived was lightly set buttermilk (!) surrounded by a Fuji apple dashi, with toasted pine nuts and a mixed-herb salad as a garnish, and the combination was otherworldly.

Everything we had was stellar--including the simple pleasures of our Kentucky country ham plate--but that quail plate and that buttermilk bowl were the work of a team that's at the top of its game.

Afterwards we paid the mandatory visit to Ssäm Bar's little sister, Milk Bar. 1 Cereal Milk soft serve and a few cookies later, we were ready to roll. Literally.

fig. f: the menu at Beer Table

We had our car with us, and this being a Bushwick wedding, we were staying with friends in Brooklyn. So after dinner, we made our way across the bridge and had a drink at Beer Table. What exactly is Beer Table? Well, have you ever been to an intimate little wine bar? One that has a good kitchen? How about one that has a good kitchen that serves 3-course meals for $25? Well, get rid of the wines** and replace them with a well-curated selection of beers--bottled, draft, and casked, European and North American.

I'm not sure I want to pay wine bar prices for my beer (at least not regularly)--I lean towards the model of countries like Germany, Belgium, and the Czech Republic, where drinking the finest beers is a popular pastime--but the selection was definitely highly impressive. Just look at that menu. Just look at those write-ups. And I loved the honey notes of my Popperings Hommel ale.

People's Pops, various locations, including The High Line

Momofuku Ssäm Bar + Milk Bar, 207 2nd Avenue, New York, (212) 254-3500

Beer Table, 427B 7th Avenue, Brooklyn (Park Slope), (718) 965-1196

aj

p.s. Many thanks to L & T for the occasion and the inspiration.

* We wish.

** Yes, you can go ahead and drink them.

Originally posted by aj kinik from ...an endless banquet, on September 1, 2010 4:20 PM

Screen shot 2010-05-11 at 3.41.26 PM

Originally posted by btrott from Stupidfool.org, on September 1, 2010 1:41 PM

Locals who had hoped that the rest of the world would take away some useful knowledge about South Africa's current affairs could hardly be faulted for cursing the existence of the vuvuzela. Zealous opinion about the ubiquitous plastic horns has nearly dominated the portion of the World Cup's global media coverage which is reserved for "African content." Not only that, at the rate they are selling abroad, the trumpets may turn out to be South Africa's most distinctive export, and its most enduring contribution to football culture. Move over, songmakers of the Spion Kop, the storied Liverpool fan foundry that originated crowd chants! The low B flat drone of the vuvuzela seems destined to turn your rhymes to sonic dust. via www.socialtextjournal.org

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on September 1, 2010 1:12 PM

Tiff wrote up a great report of our first backpacking trip.

I’ve been at a loss of what to say about it. The hostile trail kicked our asses much more than any of us anticipated, and there were some pretty miserable times on the hikes, but the trip overall was such a great time with our friends that we’d definitely do it again… on a more hiker-friendly trail.

I feel different after having done this, but I can’t put my finger on why. It’s a good thing. I’ve never pushed myself this hard, physically, and I’ve never been in a situation like this in which the only reasonable way out is to use my own (hurting, blistered) feet to descend 3,000 feet of altitude over five miles of slippery, steep rocks before nightfall.

It certainly gave me some perspective.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Marco.org, on September 1, 2010 12:35 PM

If FanGraphs has a football-oriented kindred spirit around this great and wild series of tubes called the internet, it’s almost definitely Brian Burke’s Advanced NFL Stats. Just as we strive to do here, Burke makes it his bidness to ask the smartest questions he can think of and (generally) uses quantitative analysis to answer them. Also, as we do here, Burke carries a number of stats that you’re not gonna find elsewhere.

Finally, as with FanGraphs, green is integral to his site’s color palette. So, yeah.

So it was that, when FanGraphs’ own Zach Sanders assembled a cast of sabermetric types via a simple Twitter message (pictured below) I wrote to Mr. Burke and asked what might be a way to construct a league so’s to remove — as much as is possible — the effects of team context and randomness (i.e. practices common in the quantitative analysis of baseball).

Because he’s a kind person and sympathetic those less fortunate than him, Burke responded quickly. You can read the entirety of his reply (and more!) over at his site, but if you’re the sort to look for the bottom line, here’s a fair summary: turnovers, special teams, and touchdowns are the most random things in the NFL; stick with yardage as much as possible.

In any case, I assume at least some of our readers participate in fantasy football, and that some of those people have as yet to participate in the last of their NFL fantasy drafts.

That being the case, I’ve reproduced below the scoring system we’ll be using in what Sanders has subbed the This Ain’t Baseball League. Essentially, it’s a hybrid of the more traditional fantasy scoring with which you’re already likely familiar and then the yard-heavy approach endorsed by Burke.

The positions we’re using are as follows: QB, WR, WR, WR, RB, RB, TE, W/R/T, W/R/T, DEF, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN, BN.

The draft was last Thursday, and I believe you’ll be able to view the results of said draft — plus other league information — by clicking here.

Now, for the scoring (including the Yahoo default settings for the sake of comparison):

Those are the offensive ones. Here are the defensive:

Originally posted by Carson Cistulli from FanGraphs Baseball, on September 1, 2010 12:25 PM

Roger Ebert's eating career is over, but his career as a food writer is just taking off. His new cookbook, which comes out in three weeks, is about how to prepare just about any meal in a rice cooker.

He both writes and thinks about food in the present tense. Ask about favorite foods and he'll scribble a note: "I love spicy and Indian." An offer to bring some New Jersey peaches to his summer home here on the shore of Lake Michigan brings a sharp defense of Michigan peaches and a menu idea. "Maybe for dessert we could have a salad of local fresh fruits."

"Food for me is in the present tense," he said. "Eating for me is now only in the past tense." He says he has a "voluptuous food memory" that gets stronger all the time.

"I can remember the taste and smell of everything, even though I can no longer taste or smell," he said.

Here are the opening couple of paragraphs from the post that evolved into the cookbook:

First, get the Pot. You need the simplest rice cooker made. It comes with two speeds: Cook, and Warm. Not expensive. Now you're all set to cook meals for the rest of your life on two square feet of counter space, plus a chopping block. No, I am not putting you on the Rice Diet. Eat what you like. I am thinking of you, student in your dorm room. You, solitary writer, artist, musician, potter, plumber, builder, hermit. You, parents with kids. You, night watchman. You, obsessed computer programmer or weary web-worker. You, lovers who like to cook together but don't want to put anything in the oven. You, in the witness protection program. You, nutritional wingnut. You, in a wheelchair.

And you, serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. You, person on a small budget who wants healthy food. You, shut-in. You, recovering campaign worker. You, movie critic at Sundance. You, sex worker waiting for the phone to ring. You, factory worker sick of frozen meals. You, people in Werner Herzog's documentary about life at the South Pole. You, early riser skipping breakfast. You, teenager home alone. You, rabbi, pastor, priest,, nun, waitress, community organizer, monk, nurse, starving actor, taxi driver, long-haul driver. Yes, you, reader of the second-best best-written blog on the internet.

There's also a Q&A on the Times site with Ebert.

Tags: books   food   Roger Ebert

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on September 1, 2010 12:20 PM

He even looks like he might not yet be able to control metal yet either. A very YOUNG Ian McKellen. Very cool. Original link.

Originally posted by Scott Johnson from EXTRALIFE - By Scott Johnson, on September 1, 2010 12:15 PM

This optimism that I hear expressed at times is insane. It's irresponsible, when you do it in this profession. When you are reporting and even analyzing and you act like this is no big deal, that's junk. This is a big deal. Otherwise we ought to go around yanking our sons arms out of the socket and just sort of have this surgery be mandatory so they can all come back later. It's insane....It certainly could mar his career. It's not the death sentence it once was, but any phony optimism here, he still has to come back from this surgery. via voices.washingtonpost.com

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on September 1, 2010 11:22 AM

As the “real” trade deadline approached last night, the New York Mets finally got rid of their 2010 team mascot, Jeff Francoeur, trading him to the Texas Rangers in exchange for Joaquin Arias. Dan Szymborski has already issued a brilliant analysis of the trade, but I want to focus on what Francoeur might bring to the Rangers over the last month of the season.

It depends on his role. Obviously, Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz are far superior to Francoeur, but as Rob Neyer notes, they’ve each struggled with injury issues this season, so Francoeur provides a bit of depth in case those come into play again. Still, Francoeur has been close to worthless for two seasons, so it’s not clear why the Rangers would need to trade for a replacement-level bench player at this point, especially one who can’t play center field (assuming the Rangers don’t want to play Julio Borbon and don’t want Hamilton in center). In any case, the Rangers already have David Murphy, who does play center occasionally, although he isn’t very good there.

Assuming Murphy and Francoeur are roughly equivalent in the field (and some quick number crunching has them in the same general area), the main skill Francoeur supposedly brings to the Rangers is as a platoon partner for Murphy. When Francoeur’s abilities have been (rightly) criticized this season, his alleged usefulness as a right-handed platoon bat is usually brought up as a way he might be made useful. Francoeur does have a fairly big observed split: .302 wOBA versus RHP and a .344 versus lefties. However, as most readers of FanGraphs know by now, there’s a difference between observed performance and true talent. We have to properly regress Francoeur’s split against league average to get an idea of what his real platoon skill, i.e., what it will likely be going forward.

As is covered in the linked post, there is less variance among right-handed hitters with regard to platoon skill, so while Francoeur’s observed split is bigger than average, his 378 career PA versus LHP is regressed against 2200 of league average RHH versus LHP. In other words, his estimated hitter platoon skill is still far closer to league average than to his past observed performance. ZiPS overall rest-of-season projection for Francoeur is a .311 wOBA, which is pretty useless for a corner outfielder who isn’t exceptional defensively. Applying the split estimate to that figure gives us an projected wOBA of .304 versus RHP, and .330 versus LHP — terrible versus RHP and a bit above average versus LHP. Murphy’s ZiPS RoS wOBA is .344, and his estimated splits are .319 wOBA vs. LHP, .353 vs. RHP. *

* I realize that the ZiPS RoS projections currently assume Francoeur playing in the Mets’ pitcher-friendly park and Murphy playing in the Rangers’ hitters’ paradise. There isn’t a simple way of working around that, so I’ll simply note a) the park differences aren’t as big as one might think, especially over the few games left in the season (in terms of run values), and b) they are somewhat offset by the AL’s superior pitching.

Over a full season of 700 PAs, the difference between Francoeur’s .330 vs. LHP and Murphy’s .319 is about six runs. Of course, there isn’t a full season left, but about a fifth of a season — so it’s one or two runs over 140-150 PA. But even that is too much, since Francoeur would be the lesser part of a platoon. Assuming one third of the PAs go to the right-handed batter, the expected offensive difference between Murphy alone and a Francoeur/Murphy platoon would be less than a run over the remainder of the season. Yes, they’ll have Francoeur in the playoffs, but that’s (at most) 19 games. The expected difference is miniscule.

From the standpoint of creating a productive platoon, Francoeur’s expected platoon skill isn’t enough to overcome his overall lousiness at the plate, and can’t reasonably be expected to make much of a difference over the remainder of the season over just playing Murphy. If an injury does occur to one of the starters, forcing a backup into a full-time role, then Francoeur will have to face right-handed pitching. In that case the Rangers would be better off playing Julio Borbon (superior defense) and keeping the recently-designated Brandon Boggs around as depth.

It might not be a total wash. Francoeur might get a big hit in the playoffs and that, combined with his apparent ability to charm the press corps, will lead to some indignant newpaper columns when he gets non-tendered in the off-season. Fun for everyone!

Originally posted by Matt Klaassen from FanGraphs Baseball, on September 1, 2010 11:00 AM

Eighteen months after I started this site, the Modern Perl book is almost out, as is Using Perl 6. Perl 5.10.1, Perl 5.12.0, Perl 5.12.1, and (very nearly) Perl 5.12.2 are out, with Perl 5.14 coming next month.

Rakudo Star has had two impressive releases, which brings Perl 6 to ever more people. The Parrot VM had its 1.0 and 2.0 and 2.3 and 2.6 releases, and if you want an order of magnitude performance improvement in Rakudo Perl 6, the Parrot 3.0 series will deliver some impressive gains through the Lorito reorganization.

I've spent a lot of time critiquing the Perl language and community and even more time critiquing perceptions of Perl from within and without. I'm glad to review what's going right. It's easy to make a list of great new features of Perl and the community, but I can limit it to my favorites, in terms of immediate and longer-term significance.

• The revitalization of Perl 5 core development has amazed me. Regular monthly releases have become boring, as they should be. A rotating series of release managers helps avoid the burnout that's claimed every Perl 5 pumpking up to this point, and it helps to make the process of releasing a new stable version of Perl 5 easier. That's why you can have confidence upgrading to Perl 5.12.2 when it comes out, and why in a year Perl 5.10.1 will look old.
• I've wanted Plack for Perl for ages; I've long thought Python's WSGI is a good example of the "There should be one obvious way to do it philosophy" (it works much better for interfaces to well-defined problem domains than language features). The rapid adoption of Plack for so many web frameworks and libraries within Perl—as well as the number of backends supported by Plack—has solved many of the deployment problems of Perl web applications. It also allows greater collaboration on middleware, such as debugging and profiling tools.
• Ancillary tools such as perlbrew and cpanminus have demonstrated that very simple interfaces devoted to solving the most common problems can improve the user experience immensely. I've known how to maintain my own user- and app-specific Perl 5 installations for years, but I've never wanted to maintain the morass of symlinks necessary to do so. Now I don't have to. Similarly, cpanminus lets me install CPAN modules often in the time it takes the official CPAN client to download the indexes.
• Regular releases of the first Perl 6 distribution (Rakudo Star) demonstrate the power and consistency and disruptive potential of Perl 6 to even more people. Every month brings new features and improvements. Every bug report and new module written and benchmark help the development community make it an even better platform for new projects.
• Schwern made the CPAN forkable through gitPAN, and the world is better for it. Public distributed version control for Perl 5 improves the experience of submitting changes, and public distributed version control for CPAN distributions has helped me submit and publish more changes too. Noticing a typo in documentation on search.cpan.org has become almost an enjoyable experience, if I can find the appropriate repository on Github, fork it, make my changes, and submit a pull request within five minutes. Often I can.

I look forward to several other projects in the world of Perl, such as Ryan Jendoubi's Ctypes for Perl 5 and the ongoing attempts in the Perl 5 core to rein in a sane set of functions for extensions to use. I've heard that various help forums have become more helpful and less abusive (especially #perl on irc.perl.org). I've even noticed a shift in how community members talk about marketing, especially as the discussion has changed from "Marketing? That's for those sick Java fans!" to "Hey, look at all of the cool stuff we're doing with Perl!"

We can and should still make improvements, but if the past year and a half is any guide, we can safely shift our cautious optimism for the present and future of Perl to regular optimism.

Originally posted by chromatic from Modern Perl Books, a Modern Perl Blog, on September 1, 2010 10:27 AM

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 1, 2010 10:16 AM

Joshua Benton, on developing the Nieman Journalism Lab’s free iPhone app using TapLynx.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on September 1, 2010 8:47 AM

Remember Robin Nagle? The anthropologist-in-residence at the NYC Department of Sanitation? Well, here is a long interview with her! And it's awesome: "Every single thing you see is future trash. Everything. So we are surrounded by ephemera, but we can’t acknowledge that, because it’s kind of scary, because I think ultimately it points to our own temporariness, to thoughts that we’re all going to die."

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on September 1, 2010 8:20 AM

We read it, and it was worth reading. It did not make me feel good about the future. It will make you feel concerned too.

• "Todd Palin received as much as $20,000 worth of clothing—a wardrobe that would last most men for many years, if not for life." This is probably true and also is hilarious that it appears in Vanity Fair. Because, hey, that's how much the outfits cost, in the pictures?

• One thing that's fascinating is that the piece treats Palin's oratory style as a constant negging. "But she is also planting the idea with audiences that they might not be good enough, by telling them she thinks they’re plenty good, no matter what anybody else may say. ('They talk down to us… They think that if we were just smart enough…')" The point is a good one! Oratory works as amplification of disenfranchisement and as outrage-churning, very effectively.

• And yes. Why is Glenn Beck spending 9/11 in Anchorage, in Alaska's largest convention facility?

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on September 1, 2010 8:00 AM

Posted in MetsBlog

That may be, but despite all he did for the ‘clubhouse climate,’ the team is still 2 games below .500, nowhere near making the playoffs and on the verge of yet another meaningless September… so, what is that ultimately worth?

You know what else might help the ‘clubhouse climate,’ as well as scoring runs and winning games?  Hitting .300, 30 HR and driving in 100 RBI, consistently, and not swinging at more or less every pitch thrown towards the plate.

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 1, 2010 6:05 AM

Designed by Lanier Graham, this modern chess set is notable for its minimal interpretation on traditional pieces. The shape of each piece mirrors its function (Knights have L shapes, Bishops slope diagonally, etc.) and the scale indicates importance. All pieces interlock neatly into a rectangular puzzle for storage.

Made in China from cherry and maple wood with a natural oil finish.
Includes 32 playing pieces (chess board not included).

Originally posted by katie from Better Living Through Design, on September 1, 2010 5:08 AM

In 1975, Fleer sued Topps and the MLB Players Association over an alleged monopoly on the production of baseball cards, particularly when packaged with gum. It took years, but eventually the courts upheld Fleer's claim, opening the door for other companies to sell baseball cards. Unfortunately, this decision came down not too long before the 1981 baseball season, forcing Fleer and newcomer Donruss to produce a set of cards very quickly.

As a result, both companies used some questionable photographs (out of focus, etc) because they didn't have time to get something better. Also, there were many errors present on the cards in both sets.

This 1981 Donruss Bobby Bonds card is an example of both. The picture isn't terrible but certainly isn't great. Check out the back, though. Did you know that Bobby Bonds is the all-time HR leader with 986 dingers?

The mistake is an odd one. For starters, Hank Aaron had retired fairly recently at that point with his then-record 755 homers. This number, 755, was known to every single baseball fan from 1976 until recently, when I suspect some younger fans don't know it. Many fewer fans know the number associated with career leaders for, say, doubles, triples, or RBI. But the idea to me that anyone could look at this card, check the stats, and not have 986 as career HR stick out as totally wrong---that boggles my mind.

I also wonder where that particular erroneous number came from. After the 1980 season, Bonds had 326 career homers. Looking down at my keyboard, I see that it's possible somebody using a keypad might accidentally hit 9-8 when they meant to hit 3-2. I don't know if keyboards were like this in 1981, though.

How about the fact that Bobby Bonds has a card that incorrectly identifies him as the MLB leader in homers, but now his son hold that record?

Originally posted by Andy from Baseball-Reference Blog, on September 1, 2010 4:30 AM

What's wrong with American espresso? Well, pretty much everything, really. A well made espresso is a balance of 5 elements - and most Americans just don't have the experience to judge. "Here in the U.S. the coffee they use is good, but the way they prepare it is bad. Fifty percent of the result of a good espresso is in the hands of the barista. And if consumers can't recognize that, we lose." - Giorgio Milos, the master barista at illy

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on September 1, 2010 4:15 AM

Posted in Link

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/2010/09/01/2010-09-01_new_york_mets_willing_to_talk_extension_with_pitcher_ra_dickey_in_offseason_sour.html

According to the report, “The Mets are willing to engage in extension talks with Dickey this offseason, in lieu of salary arbitration or a one-year deal.”

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Originally posted by Matthew Cerrone from MetsBlog.com, on September 1, 2010 3:17 AM

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The last of the wine.

From the pen of To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee comes a downbeat letter written in September of 2008, at a time when a flurry of worrying developments in the world of traditional book publishing had seemingly brought about - in Lee's words - "the last of the wine". Just months earlier the CEO of HarperCollins, Jane Friedman, had simultaneously surprised and worried many in the industry by leaving her post; at the same time Harper Lee's agent was finding it impossible to secure a reprint of Mockingbird, one of the world's most celebrated novels and Lee's only published book. Then, on September 22nd, New York Magazine sounded the death knell by way of this widely read article, entitled 'The End'.

Clearly that was enough for Harper Lee.

Transcript follows.

Source

Transcript

NLH

22 Sep. '08

Dear Jonathan:

Thank you so much for the LEAVES OF GRASS. It will probably be the last edition, because the news in NY Magazine of 22 September is not good. Looks like books are coming to an end. My agent can’t get M’bird placed anywhere as a reprint. My own publisher, one of the biggest houses, is going out of business! Guess this is the last of the wine.

Love,

Nelle

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Letters of Note, on August 31, 2010 7:48 PM

I have so many posts I need to write, yet I am wasting my precious free time MSPainting masterpieces like this instead.

In other news, Jeff Francoeur got traded to Texas. I am somewhat happy about this because I still have a soft spot for the knucklehead, and I'm going to the game tomorrow, and I would have booed his ass lustily. Most everyone out there giving me a Look of Disapproval right now would likely also boo a Met if given half a chance so cut it out. The drawback to seeing Frenchy out of that nasty uniform is that there is a chance Atlanta could meet up with the Rangers in the World Series and Jeff Francoeur only lives up to his vast potential when playing the Braves. So there's one more thing to keep me up at nights. Good luck Frenchy, go earn yourself a contract next year out in Texas.

As long as I had MSPaint fired up, I decided to cobble this together in honor of Luis Castillo's defensive prowess this evening. (yes, I know it sucks - that's five whole minutes of work there)

Thanks for the huge inning Luis, we appreciate it!

Originally posted by dayf from Cardboard Junkie, on August 31, 2010 7:16 PM

Hat tip to Matthew Leach, who covers the Cardinals for mlb.com, for pointing out that The Roots’ new album, How I Got Over, is just $5 as an mp3 download on amazon.com (through that link). No idea how long it will last – the Arcade Fire sale was supposed to last one day but amazon extended it at least through the end of that week.

–

I’ve been promising a writeup of the game Puerto Rico for about six months now, but up until a few days ago didn’t feel like I’d played it enough to offer an informed take. The significance of the last few days is that I discovered the site Tropic Euro (two points to anyone who gets the reason for that name), a very slick Java-based application that allows you to play Puerto Rico against bots or live opponents. With a three-person game involving two bots running about 11-12 minutes for me, it’s been a nice way to take a quick break from packing as well as a way to get more familiar with why BoardGameGeek users rate Puerto Rico as the #1 board game of all time.

The goal in Puerto Rico is to amass Victory Points* by producing and shipping goods from your “island” back the mother country and/or by constructing buildings, especially one of the five large buildings that provide bonus points at the end of the game based on what else you’ve accomplished. Your island is a board with spaces for twelve plantations and twelve buildings; the plantations, which are free, can grow one of five crop or house a quarry that reduces the cost of any building by one doubloon. Corn is the least valuable crop, with a trade value of zero, but doesn’t require a processing building; coffee is the most valuable crop for trading but you can’t produce more than two units per turn.

*One thing you have to get used to when playing German-Style board games is that even a fairly concrete game concept, the goal is nearly always the abstract victory points. Completing certain tasks, building specific buildings, or shipping goods earns you points, but the assignment of points to deeds can feel a little arbitrary. I’ve just learned to accept it for each game and move on.

Buildings come in three types: Production buildings, for processing any of the four crops beyond corn; small buildings, each of which grants you a few victory points and some special privilege on every turn; and large buildings, which offer no in-game benefits but can provide significant bonuses after the game ends. Every building and plantation must be manned by a colonist, but their supply is limited, especially early in the game.

In each round, each player chooses a role, with options including the mayor (obtaining colonists), the settler (choosing plantations), the builder (obvious), the craftsman (producing goods), the trader (each player can put one good on the trading ship, as long as another good of that type isn’t already there), the captain (shipping goods for points), and, in larger games, the prospector (take a doubloon). Every player gets to utilize the roles chosen by other players, but the player who chooses a specific role gets an extra privilege, such as producing one additional good of his choice. Roles that go unselected are worth an extra doubloon in the next round.

The complex and slightly crazy part of Puerto Rico is that shipping round. There are five goods that players can produce, but there are only three ships available to take goods to the mainland, and a ship can only hold goods of one type. When a player chooses the shipper, all players must ship all of their goods; if there’s no room, most of their goods spoil and are lost with no compensation. (There are large and small warehouses that a player can buy and man to protect some of his goods.) The ships empty at the end of a round and only when they’re full.

Every good shipped is worth a victory point, and in the later rounds a player could easily ship five goods or more in a single shipping phase, especially if he’s the shipper and can place his goods first. Since points from shipping can easily be around 40% of a winning score, possibly more, there are a host of considerations behind the set of decisions of what goods to produce, how much to produce, and when to ship them, and those decisions also include considering what your opponents plan to produce and what they have on hand. A well-timed decision to choose the shipper role can grab you six points while spoiling goods for several of your opponents.

That’s what makes Puerto Rico a great game, and I’m going to assume it’s why the geeks over at BoardGameGeek have it at the top of their rankings: The decisions each player has to make are rich and complex and depend on potential future moves from both the player and his opponents. Just choosing a role means weighing four or five variables – money, colonist supply, the shipping situation, production potential, and what your opponents will do with this role if you choose it … or what someone else will do with the role if you don’t. Given the game’s complexity, it’s surprising that it works as smoothly as it does, and I think the only truly difficult part of Puerto Rico is setting the game up and putting it away.

It is, however, the most complex game I’ve reviewed on the dish so far, so I can’t just tell you that, say, if you love Settlers of Catan or Stone Age, you should try Puerto Rico. It would be more fair to say that if you’re looking for a more involved game than those two – both among our favorites – you should try Puerto Rico, not just because I recommend it but because the consensus of the boardgaming world is that it’s the best game out there.

Back to Tropic Euro, I’ve found that the software works very well; I’ve had occasional trouble logging on, where the main window was blacked out, but closing and restarting the app solved it. It offers PR expansions, swaps the prices of the Factory and University buildings (per the original boardgame’s designer’s suggestion), and the AI moves quickly and pretty logically, enough to punish me for making rookie mistakes. The app’s author, Chris Gibbs, says on the site that there will be a “hard” AI option available in the next week or so.

I’ve previously reviewed San Juan, the card game variant of Puerto Rico; while it’s consistent with the theme, it is a massively simplified game. I enjoy San Juan in its own right, but it’s just a different experience.

–

Posting here will be sporadic over at least the next seven days as we pack and await the moving vans. I should have at least one ESPN chat either this week or next, and both ESPN and dish blogging will become more frequent by the week of September 20th. If you’ve emailed me or asked me a question in any forum without receiving a response, I apologize, and I hope you understand.

Originally posted by keith from The dish, on August 31, 2010 5:47 PM

Shared by Bud
Simon Willison is one of the creators of Django, a key framework in app engine. In other words, he's a pillar in the web development community. If he's opting not to use OpenID, that says there's a problem with OpenID. Now add in the fact that he's an OpenID advocate, and the real extent of the problem becomes clear.

factoryjoe posted a photo:

When an original OpenID advocate like @simonw can't muster enough benefits to adopt OpenID for one of his own sites, it's time to reconsider the product we're selling.

See also: openidconnect.com

Originally posted by (author unknown) from FactoryCity, on August 31, 2010 5:35 PM

From Backwoods Home Magazine:

It’s also been read by Jay Leno on his late night TV show, on National Public Radio more than once (including Car Talk), on craigslist.org (sans the P.O. box), it’s been printed on T-shirts, discussed on the liberal website democraticunderground.org, it’s been the subject of conversation in several online forums, and very similar wording has been used in some computer games. There’s even a ghost hunter, Richard Senate, a resident of Oakview, who’s looking for the author. On his website he says the ad appeared in a local paper in 2004. He states “Some have even walked the town of Oak View seeking…evidence of the traveler…” It keeps popping up.

Where did it come from? Who is the mysterious author? What was his intent?

Actually, it first appeared on page 92 of the Sept/Oct 1997 issue of BHM—and I wrote it.

Why’d I write it? What was my motive?

(via Metafilter)

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C, on August 31, 2010 5:27 PM

Ignacio Nin and I (mostly Ignacio) have worked together to create tcprstat[1], a new tool that times TCP requests and prints out statistics on them. The output looks somewhat like vmstat or iostat, but we’ve chosen the statistics carefully so you can compute meaningful things about your TCP traffic.

What is this good for? In a nutshell, it is a lightweight way to measure response times on a server such as a database, memcached, Apache, and so on. You can use this information for historical metrics, capacity planning, troubleshooting, and monitoring to name just a few.

The tcprstat tool itself is a means of gathering raw statistics, which are suitable for storing and manipulating with other programs and scripts. By default, tcprstat works just like vmstat: it runs once, prints out a line, and exits. You’ll probably want to tell it to run forever, and continue to print out more lines. Each line contains a timestamp and information about the response time of the requests within that time period. Here “response time” means, for a given TCP connection, the time elapsed from the last inbound packet until the first outbound packet. For many simple protocols such as HTTP and MySQL, this is the moral equivalent of a query’s response time.

The statistics we chose to output by default are the count, median, average, min, max, and standard deviation of the response times, in microseconds. These are repeated for the 95th and 99th percentiles as well. Other metrics are also available. Here’s a sample:

[root@server] # tcprstat -p 3306 -n 0 -t 1
timestamp	count	max	min	avg	med	stddev	95_max	95_avg	95_std	99_max	99_avg	99_std
1276827985	1341	24556	23	149	59	767	310	91	69	1030	107	112
1276827986	1329	12098	28	134	63	461	299	91	65	667	104	93
1276827987	1180	13277	22	202	93	873	439	103	79	1523	131	169
1276827988	1441	15878	27	180	139	672	427	116	79	1045	136	128
1276827989	1432	157198	26	272	138	4165	405	115	80	1092	134	123
1276827990	1835	25198	26	183	124	734	448	115	85	1141	137	141
1276827991	1242	6949	29	129	114	301	233	98	61	686	109	84
1276827992	1480	284181	25	442	127	7432	701	128	114	4157	173	293
1276827993	1448	9339	22	161	88	425	392	104	80	1280	126	140

tcprstat uses libpcap to capture traffic. It’s a threaded application that does the minimum possible work and uses efficient data structures. Your feedback on the kernel/userland exchange overhead caused by the packet sniffing would be very appreciated — libpcap allows the user to tune this exchange, so if you have suggestions on how to improve it, that’s great.

We build statically linked binaries with the preferred version of libpcap, which means there are no dependencies. You can just run the tool. In the future, packages in the Percona repositories will provide another means for rapid installation via yum and apt.

tcprstat is beta software. Several C/C++ experts reviewed its code and gave it a thumbs-up, so many eyes have been on the code. We’ve performed tests on servers with high loads and observed minimal resource consumption. I personally have been running it for many weeks on some production servers without stopping it and have seen no problems, so I am pretty sure it has no memory leaks or other problems. Nevertheless, it’s a first prototype release, and we want much more testing. We might also change the functionality; as we build tools around it, we discover new things that might be useful. When we’re happy with it and you’re happy with it, we’ll take the Beta label away and make it GA.

The tcprstat user’s manual and links to downloads are on the Percona wiki. Commercial support and services are provided by Percona. Bug reports, feature requests, etc should go to the Launchpad project linked from the user’s manual. General discussion is welcome on the Google Group also linked from the user’s manual.

[1] Historical note: we initially called this tool rtime, but did not publicize it. However, some of you might have heard of “rtime” before. This is the same tool.

---

Entry posted by Baron Schwartz | No comment

Add to: | | | |

Originally posted by Baron Schwartz from MySQL Performance Blog, on August 31, 2010 4:52 PM

Comebacks posted by msippey at Flickr

I think I missed the deadline for Longshot Magazine issue #1. Drat.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.com, on August 31, 2010 3:45 PM

We know you come to us for fresh fashion, which is why we're jazzed to be the first stateside site to bring you the fall '10 campaign video from British brand Reiss. While Reiss has long been a High Street staple in the UK, their foray into the US market is more recent-ish, and, truth be told, not as thrilling as the hype had suggested. Well, it seems like HQ is keen to amp up their X-factor with a new video-torial, "Elements," a collaboration with famed influencer and photographer Jamie Morgan. The mastermind behind '80s London creative collective "Buffalo," Morgan crafted a black-and-white, minimalistic narrative starring models Natasa Vojnovic and Isaac Crew (not to mention some fierce animals). We like what's going on, from the True Blood-ish music to the fresh clothes—trenches, bags, and one killer statement necklace all scream covetable. Which, clearly, is the strategy they're going for: "This season is a step forward for Reiss," says founder David Weiss. Brand Director Andy Rogers agrees—"Our objective was to create a confident and captivating visual statement...as a mark of intent for the future." If this is the new direction, sign us up.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Refinery, on August 31, 2010 1:40 PM

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on August 31, 2010 1:12 PM

What's that, Science? You want to tell us something about old people? Well, go right ahead! "Older people like reading negative news stories about their younger counterparts because it boosts their own self-esteem, according to a new study. German researchers said older people tend to be portrayed negatively in society. Although they are often described as wise, they are also be shown as being slow and forgetful. 'Living in a youth centered culture, they may appreciate a boost in self-esteem. That's why they prefer the negative stories about younger people, who are seen as having a higher status in our society,' said Dr. Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, of Ohio State University." Fair enough! There was something else I wanted to mention about old people, but it seems to have slipped my mind. I'll be sure to share as soon as I can recall it, because I'm sure you haven't heard about it yet.

Originally posted by Balk from The Awl, on August 31, 2010 12:50 PM

long, must-read look at the insane complexity of today's political landscape  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on August 31, 2010 12:45 PM

Designing Obama, a book chronicling how the visual branding of the Obama campaign came about, is available in several formats, most notably in a completely free online version. Written by the campaign's design director, the making of the book was funded through the first big Kickstarter campaign.

Tags: 2008 election   Barack Obama   books   design   Designing Obama   politics

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on August 31, 2010 12:12 PM

By R.J. Anderson //

Okay, playoff rosters have to be set at midnight, let’s roll through the scenarios. By my count, Brad Hawpe, Jake McGee, Jeremy Hellickson, Grant Balfour, and perhaps Desmond Jennings will be added to the playoff roster between right now and then. To qualify for the roster, the player must be on the 25-man roster or on the disabled list before midnight on August 31. That takes care of Balfour and Gabe Kapler, who will both be on the 15-day disabled list through tonight.

A while back I documented how J.P. Howell’s injury could help the Rays with regards to the playoff roster. McGee doesn’t seem likely to make an appearance on the 25-man roster over the next eight or so hours, but the Rays can have Howell on the playoff roster and request the commissioner’s office to replace him between now and the day before the division series begins. Presumably, McGee will take that slot. It was erroneously speculated by the St. Petersburg Times that Rocco Baldelli could take that slot, but that is against the rules. Pitchers may only replace pitchers and position players may only replace position players.

As Howell is on the 60-day disabled list, this clears a 40-man roster spot for Hawpe. He’ll presumably be called up between now and midnight, although Kapler moving to the 60-day disabled list would prevent another move being required. The same could be said for Jennings and Hellickson too. The most likely candidates to hit the bricks for these guys are players with options remaining. Reid Brignac and Andy Sonnanstine, for instance, could be demoted tonight and return as soon as their affiliate’s regular season ends. Given that there are fewer than 20 days remaining in the minor league seasons, neither would use an option, and since there are fewer than 10 days remaining, both could return quicker than usual. (This is how Juan Salas was demoted on 8/31 and rejoined the team days later in 2008.)

The drawback is neither would be eligible for the playoffs barring another injury.

Theoretically the moves could look like this:

Sonnanstine to Montgomery, rejoins team in a week, Hawpe takes his 25-man spot.
Brignac to Montgomery, rejoins team in a week, Jennings takes his 25-man spot.
Cormier to the disabled list retroactive to his last appearance, Hellickson takes his 25-man spot.
Balfour rejoins team later this week. No further roster move needed.
McGee joins team later in September, Rays request the right to replace Howell on the playoff roster, are granted request, and place McGee on instead.

Originally posted by R.J. Anderson from The Process Report, on August 31, 2010 11:49 AM

Just completed my first email sweep with Gmail's new "Priority Inbox" feature enabled, and it's a keeper. Over time, if this mechanism proves to be as good as Gmail's top-notch spam filtering, it could be the reason why you only check Gmail in the browser. (Well-played, GOOG.)

Priority Inbox adds an "important messages" section above your inbox. Initially, Priority Inbox decides what messages are important based on your email and chat patterns--a message from someone you often email with will get marked as important automatically. Like the spam filter, you can train it by manually marking messages as important and unimportant as well.

You can also add up to 3 other sections to your inbox. By default it's Priority Inbox, Starred items, and then "everything else." But you can define what's in each section using rules based on read/unread status, stars, and labels. For example, I keep all my unread stuff in the second section. Trusted Trio users could add a section of just items labeled "Followup." I don't love the idea of using my inbox as a to-do list, so I'm still experimenting with what works best for me.

Here's what the Priority Inbox settings look like in my Google Apps account.

As someone who empties my inbox regularly, I was dubious about my need for Priority Inbox. My email pattern is this: I respond and archive/delete messages as I can each day, and then once or twice a week, before the list of conversations exceeds 50 items and goes to the next page in Gmail, do a clean sweep. With a well-trained Priority Inbox, aspirational inbox zero folks have the option to redefine an empty inbox as an empty priority inbox, and just let the rest flow down into the regular inbox. After only a day, already I can feel my eye focusing on the Priority Inbox over anything else on the page, and I'm responding to messages there much more quickly than if they'd fallen down the list with the rest of the bacon and mailing list messages.

The only worry I have about Priority Inbox is the additional complexity it adds to Gmail. As I said this past week on TWiG, Gmail is just getting stuffed with new and more advanced features: phone calling, Buzz, Tasks, and now this, not to mention the (awesome, but huge) buffet of optional features in Labs.

I believe most vanilla Gmail accounts are in the process of getting Priority Inbox now. If you're a Google Apps user, opt your domain into pre-release features to get it sooner rather than later. (Simply opting in won't make Priority Inbox just show up today; just sooner than it would have if you weren't opted in.)

Email overload? Try Priority Inbox [The Official Gmail Blog]

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Smarterware, on August 31, 2010 11:13 AM

Looks like some great improvements. The “Just Type” feature sounds like LaunchBar or Quicksilver.

 ★ 

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on August 31, 2010 10:21 AM

As you all know, Serious Eats is advertising supported, and sponsor posts are a part of the mix. We think it's a minimally intrusive way for our advertisers to share their message with our community.

We clearly identify sponsor posts so you can decide whether or not it's something you want to read (there's a big call out on sponsor posts when they appear on the homepage, and they're all titled "Sponsor Post:...." and include a disclaimer). In an average week, there are more than 150 posts that appear on the homepage. We've limited sponsor posts to no more than once a week, and to date they've appeared much less frequently than that.

We know Serious Eats means a lot to you, and we're listening. If you have further comments, please feel free to email me (alaina@seriouseats.com) or Ed (ed@seriouseats.com).

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Comments from Alaina Browne, on August 31, 2010 9:43 AM

In this release of the editor we have a whole new set of icons for the tool-bar. Loads of more colour, might take some time to get used to but I think it looks fab!

Also updated the Crop Tool, now you have options like crop to size and constrain aspect ratio.

Right click menus are added to the canvas, different tools have different menus.

Also some minor bugs where squashed.

//Ola

Originally posted by dgtart from Pixlr blog, on August 31, 2010 7:49 AM

The extraordinarily abstruse Triple Canopy has a new issue up. Most of it is beyond my interests and/or understanding, however I greatly enjoyed this interview with Bob Stein, who for the last six years has run the think tank Institute for the Future of the Book (I don't know, really; one of its goals is that it has "no deliverables") and also founded the Criterion Collection and spent a lot of time thinking about LaserDiscs and HyperCard (oh man!) and also worked at Atari, trying to create the encyclopedia of the future. Basically he makes Clay Shirky's jobs look very task- and result-oriented.

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on August 31, 2010 7:45 AM

From Serious Eats: New York

[Photo: Liz Clayton]

Last week, the New York Times reported on coffee shops that have started to ban, or otherwise actively discourage, laptop use. "I appreciate the idea of when you go someplace and it feels like a home away from home," Cafe Grumpy owner Caroline Bell told the Times, "but I don't think it should be a home office away from home."

Other coffee shops, too, have been taking measures to keep laptop-wielders away: keeping outlets out the main seating area, turning off wireless during some hours, or doing away with seating altogether. Of course, perks like WiFi and ample seating are part of what draw customers to many coffee shops in the first place. But when they start to look more like campus libraries in exam time than cafés, it's understandable that the owners would want to push back.

What do you think? Should coffee shops ban laptops?

Take the poll »

Originally posted by The Serious Eats Team from Serious Eats, on August 31, 2010 7:15 AM

From Serious Eats: New York

Looking for something great to eat at the US Open this year? While you could partake in the concession stands, the stadium is right in the middle of one of the most culinarily exciting regions of New York. You can travel the world on your way to (or from) the stadium, just by following the 7 Train—a direct line to the stadium from Manhattan. From 40th Street to Flushing, there are great international eats at every stop, from full meals to snack stops. Here are some of our favorites.

1. 40th Street-Lowery Street: P.J. Horgan's

In the mood for a burger, a pint, or some Shepherd's pie? Sunnyside is a the place for Irish food, and P.J. Horgan's has some of the best. Don't miss the Sunnyside Burger—topped with Irish bacon, cheddar cheese, and fried onions.

42-17 Queens Boulevard, Sunnyside (map)
(718) 361-9680

2. 46th Street-Bliss Street: Mangal Kabab

Turkish food is next as we slowly make our way towards the stadium. Mangal has falafel, freshly baked "home bread", a nice selection of salads, and their famous lahmacun, a lamb-topped flatbread.

46-20 Queens Boulevard, Sunnyside (map)
718-706-0605

3. 52nd Street: Sik Gaek

The newly opened outpost of this Flushing favorite, Sik Gaek is known for its seafood stews and live octopus dish. But there is something for everyone at this fun Korean spot, a short walk from the 52nd Street subway stop.

49-11 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside (map)
(718) 205-4555

4. 61st Street-Woodside: Jollibee, Red Ribbon

Woodside is home to Filipino fast food favorites. Go to Jollibee for crispylicious fried chicken and spaghetti, and then walk over to Red Ribbon for some ube, pandan, or mango cake.

Jollibee

62-29 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside (map)

Red Ribbon

65-02 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside (map)
(718) 335-1150

5. 69th Street: El Sitio

El Sitio is the place for cuban sandwiches with crisp, flat bread, layers of meat and cheese, and a whole lot of attention to detail. Or have a seat on one of the red vinyl stools at this classic luncheonette and check out their Cuban specials.

68-28 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside (map)

6. 74th Street-Roosevelt Avenue: Chaat at Maharaja Quality Sweets & Snacks

If you are looking for some filling Indian-style snacks, then this is the right stop. Many different varieties of Chaat, that crunchy, spicy dish full of great flavor and texture is available at many sweet shops and restaurants, and Maharaja serves up a good plate, as well as samosas, sweets, and other vegetarian offerings.

73-10 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights (map)
718-505-2680

7. 82nd Street: La Delicia en Pandebono y Cholados

One of my favorite stops, full of Colombian specialties, La Delicia has some of the best pandebonos in the city: warm, cheesy bread, baked fresh throughout the day. They're also a great stop for cholados: icy, fruity, sweet drinks that need to be eaten with a spoon. Round out your meal with fresh, crispy corn-dough empanadas and lots of other breads and snacks.

40-23 82nd Street, Elmhurst (map)
(347) 448-8020

8. 90th Street: Viva Puebla

Stop for elotes, chicharron preparado, and the amazing homemade nieves (sorbet or ice) at the the stand in front of this Mexican restaurant, most of which are only available for a limited time during the summer. If you're lucky, you'll even catch them spinning the nieves by hand in a big wooden barrel of ice, turning fresh fruit into a cold treat.

89-16 Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights (map)
718-947-2302

9. Junction Boulevard: Warren Street Ecuadorian Food Vendors

On Roosevelt Avenue and Warren Street, a block away from the Junction Boulevard station, carts and trucks are lined up, filled with Ecuadorian specialties like hornado (roast pork), morcilla (blood sausage), ceviches, llapingacho (potato cakes), seco de chivo (goat stew) and much, much more. Definitely worth a stop to see the abundance of food and drinks.

Roosevelt Avenue and Warren Street (map)

10. 103rd Street: Leo's Latticini

A short walk or drive from the 103rd Station, but definitely worth the time, as Leo's Latticini, or Mama's, has some of the best sandwiches in the city—including their famous meatball sandwich and, one of Ed's favorites, the roast turkey and mozzarella sandwich that he deemed, in 2006, as life-changing.

46-02 104th Street, Corona (map)

11. 111th Street: Tortas Neza

For some of the best tortas and tacos in Queens, Tortas Neza, a tiny storefront under the 7 train at 111th Street, is just a stop away from the Open. And if you ask nicely, they might even make you one of their amazing gorditas.

111-03 Roosevelt Avenue, Corona (map)
718-505-2121

12. Main Street: Flushing

The last stop on the 7 train is Flushing, and I would be remiss not to mention the Golden Shopping Mall. It's a fantastic place, close to the stadium, to explore regional Chinese cuisine, especially since we have such thorough guides of the first floor and the basement. A food court like no other.

41-28 Main Street, Flushing (map)

Originally posted by Sara Markel-Gonzalez from Serious Eats, on August 31, 2010 6:30 AM

Over the course of the summer, I have been crazy busy. I finished a book manuscript, wrote a couple of essays for books, worked on a new series of prints, did the artwork for Michigan Indian Day, and it seems like a dozen other projects as well. Of course, this was all coupled with a two-week residency at the National Museum of the American Indian in DC and lots of trips Up North (as we say in Michigan) with my daughters.

Tomorrow, I will be driving to Cleveland to install a solo exhibition based on eighteen new prints that I created from incised baseball bats. Thinking primarily about immigration and the usage of Native peoples as sporting mascots, the show brings together a team of 'Indians' and 'Immigrants'.

According to the Artist's Statement:
Known as the national pastime or America’s game, baseball occupies a central role in our nation’s collective imagination. Phrases derived from the ballpark pepper our everyday speech: in the big leagues, covering your bases, hitting a home run, out in left field, on deck, rain check, right off the bat, stepping up to the plate, striking out, and swinging for the fences, to name only a few. The game has equally been seen as an emblem of our country abroad and has been enthusiastically accepted by fans worldwide, particularly in Latin America and Japan.

Against this diamond shaped playing field, Dylan Miner proposes that a different game is being played, one that reveals truths of our collective past and points toward potential futures. As an artist and historian, Miner discloses that Native peoples are commonly relegated to either the dustbin of history or to the rural marginality of reservation life. Immigrants, particularly those from the global south, are inversely presented as a threat to the future of America. This exhibition challenges conventional notions of what it means to be a United States citizen at a time when even the most basic Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is being contested.

Bringing together a series of eighteen relief prints created directly from the inventive use of incised Louisville Slugger baseball bats, Miner has composed a full roster of positions that compose two opposing teams: Indians vs. Immigrants. His muscularly rendered compositions of professional baseball players and community leaders unite the contested fields of sports and politics in a singular manner by posing the question of whether you are rooting for the home team. Who is the home team after all?

Scope more at the Cleveland State University Art Gallery

I'll upload photos from the installation later this week!!

Originally posted by Dylan Miner from Just Seeds: Blog, on August 31, 2010 5:00 AM

GitHub launched with a simple pull request system on day one. You've used it to send 200 thousand pull requests in just over two years. Now we're taking it to the next level with a re-imagined design and a slew of new tools that streamline the process of discussing, reviewing, and managing changes.

As of today, pull requests are living discussions about the code you want merged. They're our take on code review and represent a big part of our vision for collaborative development.

Know What You're Sending

Sending a pull request is simple. Browse to the branch or commit with your recent work and hit the button. You'll be greeted by a brand new screen:

Pull requests are now fully revision aware and take into account not only what you would like pulled but also where you intend those changes to be applied. They even work when sending from and to the same repository, making pull requests just as useful in scenarios where a team is working out of a single shared repository as they are in the fork + pull model.

When you send a pull request, you're starting a discussion.

Some back and forth is typically required before a pull request is accepted. The maintainer needs clarification, or the change doesn't conform to the project's coding conventions, or maybe someone was able to take a concept 80% to completion and needs help working through the last bits.

The discussion view makes pull requests the best place to have these types of conversations. Anywhere. Here's why:

The discussion view presents all pull request related activity as it unfolds: comment on the pull request itself, push follow up commits, or leave commit notes - it's all interleaved into the discussion view as it happens.

Revision Aware

The discussion view is perfect for watching changes evolve over time, but it's equally important to know exactly what modifications would be made if the changes were accepted right now. The Commits and Files Changed tabs are quickly accessible and show the cumulative progress of the pull request:

Look familiar? It's a miniature compare view.

Visible, Linkable, Archived

Anyone with access can browse a repository's pull requests by visiting the repository's Network ⇢ Pull Requests page.

Every pull request has a URL so you can link to them. They're archived forever and indexed by search engines.

An Issue at heart

Pull requests are tightly integrated into GitHub Issues. When you see an icon in the issues list, it means there's a pull request attached.

Don't use Issues? No problem. You still get awesome pull requests.

Pull Request Dashboard

The pull request dashboard gives a high level view of all pull requests across every repository you or your organization is involved with.

What are you waiting for?

Pull requests sent prior to today are not automatically imported into the new system. If you have outstanding requests, use them as an opportunity to try out revision aware pull requests today!

Originally posted by rtomayko from The GitHub Blog, on August 31, 2010 1:12 AM

Narayan Newton:

However, things are mostly definitely changing. The trend for the last year has been major developments outside of MySQL AB, funded by everyone from Google to Percona to MontyProgram. In fact, the 5.4 release of MySQL is little more than a re-packaging of external patches. This is a far cry from an earlier MySQL AB driven development model. With Oracle’s purchase of Sun and by extension MySQL AB, this change has accelerated.

Sounds really sad for such a important piece that, as part of LAMP, has pushed the web forward. But I know at least 2 NoSQL databases that will use this opportunity in their favor.

Original title and link for this post: The Future of MySQL (published on the NoSQL blog: myNoSQL)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from myNoSQL, on August 30, 2010 2:21 PM

by Aaron Schatz

How could I be so lucky as to have a football-oriented journalism controversy fall into my lap during my short time blogging on The Atlantic's website? As my good friend Mr. Bounce would say, "Hooray!"

---

MORE ON Ben Roethlisberger:
Hampton Stevens: Ben Roethlisberger (Probably) Didn't Urinate on a Golf Course
Hampton Stevens: Life Lessons for Ben Roethlisberger
Ta-Nehisi Coates: On Roethlisberger

---

Currently, Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is suspended for the first six games of the season due to "conduct detrimental to the league" (i.e. legal trouble). He is meeting with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Friday and Goodell may or may not reduce the suspension.

This morning, Mike Wise of the Washington Post sent out this tweet: "Roethlisberger will get five games, I'm told."

There's nothing controversial there. Some people expected Goodell to drop the suspension to four games, but five sounds in the ballpark. Other NFL reporters on Twitter re-tweeted Wise's message, or mentioned it on their blogs, and we all went on with our day.


But hours later on his radio show on 106.7 The Fan, Wise announced that the story was completely false. He fabricated the report in order to prove that "anybody will print anything."

Yes, that's right, in order to prove that NFL bloggers will link to anything no matter how unreliable the source, Wise decided to make himself into an unreliable source, thus guaranteeing that NFL bloggers can't trust anything he writes in the future.

Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, one of the Internet writers Wise was apparently targeting with this nonsense, is not very happy with Wise's journalistic ethics. I don't think the Washington Post should be either.



Ben Roethlisberger - Roger Goodell - NFL - Washington Post - National Football League

Originally posted by Ta-Nehisi Coates from Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic, on August 30, 2010 12:30 PM

Gourmet magazine is hitting newstands again—but don't polish the Le Creuset casserole dish quite yet. Condé Nast is rolling out three special editions of the magazine packaged sort of like those massive People Style Watch mags you see in Barnes & Nobles. The first offering will be Gourmet Quick Kitchen, a collection of 81 quick, easy recipes out September 7. More cookbook than glossy, look for 120 pages of classic Gourmet recipes and photos, as well as new content, and wine pairings by Belinda Chang, Wine Director at The Modern. Two more special editions will be published in 2011, as part of Condé's push to utilize (and profit off) the magazine's extensive archives. While some Gourmet is better than no Gourmet at all, we can't help but miss the real thing.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Refinery, on August 30, 2010 12:14 PM

The body of a mountain climber from Maine has been discovered in a melting glacier more than two decades after the man fell 1,000 feet to his death in the Canadian Rockies, a park official said.

Originally posted by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS from Daily News - News, on August 30, 2010 11:56 AM

Oceanna Pier, originally uploaded by Steve1949.

Love love love this photo taken by my Dad.

Originally posted by Alaina from alaina browne lives here, on August 30, 2010 11:31 AM

I have to say, this film project for The Arcade Fire for "The Wilderness Downtown" totally was worth downloading Google Chrome to appreciate. Warning: sit back and relax, because it's going to open and close a lot of windows in a scary way. This is a really excellent case of musicians finding ways to work with image-makers, achieving results that really suit their style and intentions.

Originally posted by Choire from The Awl, on August 30, 2010 10:40 AM

Snakes and Lattes on Sunday evening, papered up in advance of its first day of business, which is today.

Ben Castanie's new Koreatown café, at 600 Bloor Street West, just east of Palmerston Avenue, will emphatically not have free Wi-Fi. In fact, laptops and their attendant air of isolation are completely counter to what Castanie is trying to do. "I just don't want people sitting staring at their screens," he says. Then he starts explaining the system of categorization he'd used to organize his café's library of 1,500-plus board games.

Snakes and Lattes, as the café is (pretty cleverly) known, opened for business earlier today.

Owned by Castanie and his girlfriend, Aurelia Peynet—first-time entrepreneurs—the place looks similar to any other newly renovated café on its section of Bloor Street, except for the board games, which occupy a set of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that run half the length of the room. Castanie amassed the collection over the course of two years, by diligently scouring garage sales and thrift stores. He inspected every box to ensure that no pieces were missing. A few must-have games were purchased new.

Snakes and Lattes is Toronto's first "board game café." Customers each pay a five-dollar flat fee for unlimited use of the game collection during a single visit. There are also drinks (including lattes, of course), tarts, and quiches. A liquor license is on the way.

The five-dollar fee, in addition to usage of the games, buys expert instruction-manual guidance.

Castanie, who is proudly French, but speaks English with a British accent because of time spent in the UK before he and Aurelia emigrated to Canada four years ago, is a believer in the power of games to bring people together. Anyone who comes in a small group should be prepared to make new friends.

"A game is not meant to be [played by] two," he says. "So you know what? If there's two groups, well then, we'll just make sure they play together, right?"

"You learn a lot from people playing board games."

A bookshelf holding some of the café's 1,500-plus game collection.

The games on offer include many old favourites, but the catalogue runs far deeper than just the basics. Castanie is particularly proud of his selection of "Euro games," so-called because they tend to be designed and produced in countries like Germany and France. Euro games are characterized by their simple rules, and their lack of player elimination. They're considered quick and easy to learn, and they lend themselves to casual play. Settlers of Catan, a German game, is one particularly popular and well-known instance of the genre.

Castanie says the idea for a board game café originated with a French business concept known as a "toy-lending library," which is a place where customers can rent games, board games, or other types of toys.

Board game cafés are not unheard of in other parts of the world. South Korea experienced a vogue for them, beginning about a decade ago—but Castanie, who would know, says that the fad, there, has peaked. Now, he says, board game cafés are beginning to become popular in English-speaking parts of Asia, like Singapore and Hong Kong.

Asked if he's worried that the idea won't catch on in Toronto, he grins.

"I don't think so," he says. "I think they're gonna like it."

Photos by D.A. Cooper/Torontoist.

Originally posted by Steve Kupferman from Torontoist, on August 30, 2010 10:00 AM

Philip Hodgetts e-mailed me yesterday, having found my recent CocoaHeads Ann Arbor talk on AV Foundation, and searching from there to find my blog. The first thing this brings up is that I’ve been slack about linking my various online identities and outlets… it should be easier for anyone who happens across my stuff to be able to get to it more easily. As a first step, behold the “More of This Stuff” box at the right, which links to my slideshare.net presentations and my Twitter feed. The former is updated less frequently than the latter, but also contains fewer obscenities and references to anime.

Philip co-hosts a podcast about digital media production, and their latest episode is chock-ful of important stuff about QuickTime and QTKit that more people should know (frame rate doesn’t have to be constant!), along with wondering aloud about where the hell Final Cut stands given the QuickTime/QTKit schism on the Mac and the degree to which it is built atop the 32-bit legacy QuickTime API. FWIW, between reported layoffs on the Final Cut team and their key programmers working on iMovie for iPhone, I do not have a particularly good feeling about the future of FCP/FCE.

Philip, being a Mac guy and not an iOS guy, blogged that he was surprised my presentation wasn’t an NDA violation. Actually, AV Foundation has been around since 2.2, but only became a document-based audio/video editing framework in iOS 4. The only thing that’s NDA is what’s in iOS 4.1 (good stuff, BTW… hope we see it Wednesday, even though I might have to race out some code and a blog entry to revise this beastly entry).

He’s right in the podcast, though, that iPhone OS / iOS has sometimes kept some of its video functionality away from third-party developers. For example, Safari could embed a video, but through iPhone OS 3.1, the only video playback option was the MPMoviePlayerController, which takes over the entire screen when you play the movie. 3.2 provided the ability to get a separate view… but recall that 3.2 was iPad-only, and the iPad form factor clearly demands the ability to embed video in a view. In iOS 4, it may make more sense to ditch MPMoviePlayerController and leave MediaPlayer.framework for iPod library access, and instead do playback by getting an AVURLAsset and feeding it to an AVPlayer.

One slide Philip calls attention to in his blog is where I compare the class and method counts of AV Foundation, android.media, QTKit, and QuickTime for Java. A few notes on how I spoke to this slide when I gave my presentation:

• First, notice that AV Foundation is already larger than QTKit. But also notice that while it has twice as many classes, it only has about 30% more methods. This is because AV Foundation had the option of starting fresh, rather than wrapping the old QuickTime API, and thus could opt for a more hierarchical class structure. AVAssets represent anything playable, while AVCompositions are movies that are being created and edited in-process. Many of the subclasses also split out separate classes for their mutable versions. By comparison, QTKit’s QTMovie class has over 100 methods; it just has to be all things to all people.

• Not only is android.media smaller than AV Foundation, it also represents the alpha and omega of media on that platform, so while it’s mostly provided as a media player and capture API, it also includes everything else media-related on the platform, like ringtone synthesis and face recognition. While iOS doesn’t do these, keep in mind that on iOS, there are totally different frameworks for media library access (MediaPlayer.framework), low-level audio (Core Audio), photo library access (AssetsLibrary.framework), in-memory audio clips (System Sounds), etc. By this analysis, media support on iOS is many times more comprehensive than what’s currently available in Android.

• Don’t read too much into my inclusion of QuickTime for Java. It was deprecated at WWDC 2008, after all. I put it in this chart because its use of classes and methods offered an apples-to-apples comparison with the other frameworks. Really, it’s there as a proxy for the old C-based QuickTime API. If you counted the number of functions in QuickTime, I’m sure you’d easily top 10,000. After all, QTJ represented Apple’s last attempt to wrap all of QuickTime with an OO layer. In QTKit, there’s no such ambition to be comprehensive. Instead, QTKit feels like a calculated attempt to include the stuff that the most developers will need. This allows Apple to quietly abandon unneeded legacies like Wired Sprites and QuickTime VR. But quite a few babies are being thrown out with the bathwater — neither QTKit nor AV Foundation currently has equivalents for the “get next interesting time” functions (which could find edit points or individual samples), or the ability to read/write individual samples with GetMediaSample() / AddMediaSample().

One other point of interest is one of the last slides, which quotes a macro seen throughout AVFoundation and Core Media in iOS 4:

__OSX_AVAILABLE_STARTING(__MAC_10_7,__IPHONE_4_0);

Does this mean that AV Foundation will appear on Mac OS X 10.7 (or hell, does it mean that 10.7 work is underway)? IMHO, not enough to speculate, other than to say that someone was careful to leave the door open.

Originally posted by cadamson from [Time code];, on August 30, 2010 9:46 AM

"Today, we are going to show you some things that may not be right. If you see something that isn't working, you need to point it out. If you don't tell us what you think isn't working, we will show you the same thing again and again until we are out of time and money and you are stuck with it."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on August 30, 2010 9:28 AM

What if your entire stovetop was a touch-sensitive heating pad that could fit up to 21 pots and pans? "The William" is just a concept at this point, but kind of fascinating. It's made up of 1,500 touch-sensitive honeycombs that create uniquely shaped heating surfaces for food, using all of the stovetop's surface area. Neat factor: you can create custom settings for each shape (like having it reduce the temperature in x minutes, while another one is turning off in y minutes) and it has a Lite-Brite look happening. Watch the video, after the jump.

Touchscreen Touch-Sensitive Stovetop

[via Reddit]

Originally posted by Erin Zimmer from Serious Eats, on August 30, 2010 8:55 AM

I remember reading that Greek and Roman statues were originally painted, but I didn't know that through the use of modern scientific equipment, we actually know how they looked.

(via @brainpicker)

Tags: art   color

Originally posted by Jason Kottke from kottke.org, on August 30, 2010 7:33 AM

What would a music experience designed specifically for the modern web look like? This is a question we've been playing around with for the last few months. Browsers and web technologies have advanced so rapidly in the last few years that powerful experiences tailored to each unique person in real-time are now a reality.

Today we’re excited to launch a musical experience made specifically for the browser. Called “The Wilderness Downtown”, the project was created by writer/director Chris Milk with the band Arcade Fire and Google. Building this project on the web and for the browser allowed us to craft an experience that is not only personalized, but also deeply personal for each viewer. “The Wilderness Downtown” takes you down memory lane through the streets you grew up in. It’s set to Arcade Fire’s new song “We Used to Wait” off their newly released album The Suburbs (which you may be familiar with, especially if you were one of 3.7 million viewers who live-streamed Arcade Fire's concert on YouTube earlier this month). The project was built with the latest web technologies and includes HTML5, Google Maps, an integrated drawing tool, as well as multiple browser windows that move around the screen.


“The Wilderness Downtown” was inspired by recent developments in modern browsers and was built with Google Chrome in mind. As such, it’s best experienced in Chrome or an up-to-date HTML5-compliant browser. You can launch the project and learn more about it on our Chrome Experiments site at www.chromeexperiments.com/arcadefire.

We hope you enjoy it.

Posted by Aaron Koblin, Google Creative Lab

Originally posted by A Googler from The Official Google Blog, on August 30, 2010 7:09 AM

From Recipes

Editor's note: On Mondays, Kristen Swensson of Cheap, Healthy, Good swings by these parts to share healthy and delicious recipes with us. Take it away, Kristen!

[Photograph: Trent Ermes]<

When you're trying to eat healthier, having dinner at friends' homes can be a bit of a minefield. Do you ask them to prepare something special? (Too fussy.) Do you bring your own food? (Too impolite.) Do you throw caution to the wind and dig in to that macaroni and cheese? (Too ... no, there's actually nothing wrong with this.)

That's why it helps to know people who'll indulge you. I recently attended a small dinner party at a friend's new apartment. He's an experienced cook, and worships Christopher Kimball. A brief glance at his bookshelf reveals dozens of America's Test Kitchen guides, quite a few Cook's Illustrated cookbooks, and a plethora of other Kimball-associated paraphernalia.

Knowing my preferences, he sunk a few hours into Pork Roast en Cocotte with Apples and Shallots from ATK's 2010 Light and Healthy book. Happily, it was well worth the effort. The pork was incredibly moist, and the apples lent a light sweetness that never became cloying. Served with garlic mashed potatoes and green beans, the meal felt like an indulgence.

Looking forward, I can only hope to be as accommodating to my friends. And if they want the mac and cheese, I'm all over it.

Special equipment: Dutch oven, knife, cutting board, tin foil

Ingredients

serves 6 to 8, active time 40 to 50 minutes, total time 100 to 110 minutes

• 1 tablespoon Herbes de Provence (or 1 teaspoon each dried thyme, dried rosemary, and dried marjoram)
• 1 (2 1/4 lb) boneless center cut pork loin roast, trimmed and tied at 1 1/2-inch intervals
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 8 shallots, peeled and quartered
• 1 pound Golden Delicious or Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch wedges
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar

Procedures

1. Place the oven rack in its lowest position and preheat to 250°F.
   

2. In a small bowl, mix together Herbes de Provence, salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Rub all over roast.
   

3. In a Dutch oven, heat oil over medium-high heat. When hot, add roast and brown on all sides, 7 to 10 minutes. Remove roast and place on plate.
   

4. Lower heat to medium and add shallots to Dutch oven. Sauté 3 minutes. Add apples and sugar. Sauté 5 to 7 minutes.
   

5. Kill burner heat and add roast back into pan, along with any shed juices. Cover the pot with a layer of foil, and place the cover on top of that. Cook 30 to 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the inner temperature reaches 140°F to 145°F.

6. Remove roast from Dutch oven. Place on a cutting board, tent with foil, and let it sit for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, add some salt and pepper to the apple mixture, stir, and cover to keep warm.

7. Slice up pork and serve with shallots and apples spooned over it.

Originally posted by Kristen Swensson from Serious Eats, on August 30, 2010 6:00 AM

Back at the end of June I was in Toronto, strangely at an academic performance art conference to talk about the Spectres of Liberty project, and their was a table for TDR (The Drama Review), one of the longest running and most political drama/culture journals. They had a pile of old back issues really cheap, with great covers. Plus the contents are great too in the early issues, lots of material on The Living Theatre, Bread & Puppet, Futurism, and guerrilla theatre.

TDR 43, Spring 1969, cover photos by "Rubenstein" (above)

TDR 38, Winter 1968, cover design Fred McDarrah and back cover of 43, advertisement for issue 44, designer unknown:

TDR 44, cover design by Franklin Adams and TDR 56, December 1972, cover design by Brooks McNamara:

TDR 68, December 1975, Leonard Levitsky and TDR 86, June 1980, designer unknown:

Originally posted by Josh M. from Just Seeds: Blog, on August 30, 2010 5:13 AM

From Slice

Aaron Mattis's cremini and shiitake mushroom pizza. [Photograph: Cameron Mattis]

After that quick post on Friday, you might have seen this one coming. In the few comments that were left there, I was surprised to see a lot of people express support for canned mushrooms on pizza. So folks: canned or fresh? »

Originally posted by Adam Kuban from Serious Eats, on August 30, 2010 4:50 AM

In this post, I'll show you how you can create objects without using the standard instance allocation process (either +[NSObject alloc] or class_createInstance()). I'll also explain why you might do this — the benefits and drawbacks to a custom object creation process.

Introduction to object allocation

The first point to understand when looking at Objective-C object allocation is what is an Objective-C object?

The answer is pretty simple: any block of data that starts with an Objective-C Class pointer can be treated as an Objective-C object. This pointer is normally called the isa pointer and allows the block of memory to be used in the Objective-C message sending system.

Normally, Objective-C objects are individually allocated on the malloc heap using malloc_zone_calloc from within the +[NSObject alloc] or class_createInstance() implementation. These allocation approaches automatically set the isa pointer for the object once it is allocated.

Alternative object allocation

Since any block of memory that starts with an isa pointer can be treated as an object, then there are numerous ways you could actually allocate objects. I'm going to consider just one alternative approach: malloc'ing a single large block of data, treating this single block as a C array of Objective-C objects and manually setting the isa pointer at the start of each of these objects.

The approach is fairly simple. Step one, allocate the C array (using calloc to obey Objective-C conventions):

const NSInteger arrayLength = /* some array length */;
Class someClass = [SomeClass class];
NSInteger runtimeInstanceSize = class_getInstanceSize(someClass);
char *instanceArray = calloc(
    runtimeInstanceSize,
    arrayLength);

Notice that we use the runtime size of the instance, not a compile-time value. This is because the instance size may change if a superclass adds extra instance variables at runtime (see my previous post on Dynamic Ivars). If your class doesn't have a superclass or you're otherwise cavalier enough to ignore this possibility, then you could use a fixed or compile-time size value.

Once the block is allocated, we need to set all the isa pointers:

for (NSInteger instanceIndex = 0; instanceIndex < arrayLength; instanceIndex++)
{
    Class *currentInstanceIsa =
        (Class *)(instanceArray + (runtimeInstanceSize * instanceIndex));
    *currentInstanceIsa = someClass;
}

Then if desired, you can invoke the init method or otherwise initialize each object some other way.

Reasons for using alternative allocation approaches

The reason to avoid standard allocation is generally because malloc_zone_calloc does not offer the memory efficiency or performance required.

I've previously examined how malloc works on the Mac. This post briefly looked at two of the limitations with malloc:

• malloc allocations have an "allocation resolution" (objects not a multiple of the resolution will result in wasted space)
• malloc must maintain metadata on allocated objects and this imposes an additional memory overhead

The biggest malloc limitation however is simply the fact that it imposes a per-object CPU overhead on allocations.

Finally, there is one other advantage associated with using alternative allocation approaches: it is lower level. This is not an advantage in all situations — low level implementations can be fussy and prone to errors. But low-level C implementations can be easier to join with other low-level C implementations, so if much of your program is already a low-level C implementation, it may end up being an advantage to have low-level access to your object's allocation.

Drawbacks to alternative object allocation

Alternative object allocation should not be used lightly. First of all: it is simply more work as a programmer, so you need to be sure it's work the effort.

But the biggest problem it creates is the fact that individual objects cannot be retained beyond lifetime of the larger block in which they're allocated. To address this, you must either

• Give the containing block a global lifetime (never released) like a singleton or other permanent instance
• Carefully manage all retains and releases to ensure that no object is retained beyond the containing block's lifetime
• Make retains illegal (use a retain implementation that throws an exception).

This limitation can be justified but only if the efficiency benefits are significant. On the iPhone, you may be able to justify it for a few 10s of thousands but on the Mac, your block should contain hundreds of thousands before you'd bother.

An example: loading the "/usr/share/dict/words" file

To illustrate how you can use alternative allocation, I'm going to show a traditional Objective-C approach for reading, parsing and storing the contents of the "/usr/share/dict/words" file as an array of NSStrings. I will compare the time taken and memory used by this approach with an approach that uses the alternate allocation approach.

The traditional Objective-C approach:

words = [[NSString
        stringWithContentsOfFile:@"/usr/share/dict/words"
        encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding
        error:NULL]
    arrayBySeparatingIntoParagraphs];

where arrayBySeparatingIntoParagraphs is an NSString category method that uses getParagraphStart:end:contentsEnd:forRange: to divide the NSString into lines.

The alternative approach uses a custom NSString class, allocated as described in the "Alternative object allocation" section above. This NSString stores a fixed length 24 character ASCII character string (24 characters is the maximum length of a line in the words file). The string storage is not actually a C string; if the stored string is 24 characters long, it isn't null terminated.

@interface CustomAsciiString : NSString
{
    char value[CUSTOM_ASCII_STRING_LENGTH];
}
@end

The allocation itself happens in the init method of a custom NSArray subclass.

@interface CustomAsciiStringArray : NSArray
{
    NSInteger count;
    char *stringArray;
}
@end

This custom array subclass is used to provide NSArray-compatible access to the C array of CustomAsciiString.

The array of CustomAsciiString is actually referenced here as a char* because at compile time we don't presume to know the allocated size of the CustomAsciiString so we'll need to offset into the array by bytes (i.e. chars).

The code for all of this is too big to include here but you can download the CustomObjectCreation.zip for the complete code.

Results

There are 234936 words in the dictionary with a maximum length of 24 characters and an average length of 9.6 characters.

The "traditional" Objective-C approach took 3.12 seconds to load, parse and store the file in the string array 20 times. Memory usage after the final iteration (all other iterations were released) was 16.5 MB.

The "alternative allocation" approach took 0.49 seconds to load, parse and store the file in the string array 20 times. Memory usage after the final iteration was 8MB.

Final result: 6 times faster using half the memory.

Potential issues with the methodology behind these numbers

Based on these numbers, the "alternative allocation" would appear to be more than 6 times faster and more than twice as memory efficient.

This isn't an "apples to apples" comparison though.

The "alternative allocation" approach is storing ASCII strings (which are half the size, character-for-character compared to typical unichar NSStrings). However, this is largely compensated by the fact that every one of the ASCII strings is 24 characters long — significantly more than twice the average length of the strings, so the useful memory allocated here is actually greater. Even if you double the ASCII string length to 48 characters, the memory usage is only 13.4MB — still 20% less than the traditional allocation approach. The "alternative allocation" approach is also allocating a fixed 250000 entry array (even though only 234936 are used).

The parsing used by each approach is radically different. However, this is related to my earlier statement that lower-level allocation lends itself to integration with lower-level parsing and handling. I have not attempted to make the parsing more comparable between the two approaches because I believe the different parsing approaches are correctly matched to the different allocation approaches.

The biggest problem that I would have liked to address better — but I don't really know how I would — is that simply reading memory usage from getrusage is not a highly precise way of determining memory used by the test. The getrusage results count allocated memory pages whether they're truly in use or not. It also can't separate memory that may have been allocated by the runtime for different purposes. Due to the difficulty of measuring memory, I've had to assume that getrusage is sufficient but there is certainly a margin for error in the numbers.

Conclusion

You can download the CustomObjectCreation.zip (20kB) which contains all the code used in the test project for this post.

For very large arrays of Objective-C objects, it is certainly more efficient to allocate them yourself within C-style arrays. It is faster (on the order of 6 times faster) and more memory efficient (between 20% and 60% lower memory usage).

However, it is not something you should do for all arrays. There's a lot of extra code — any part of which could introduce issues — and it introduces object-lifetime issues but for very large arrays, the advantages (especially in CPU or memory constraint scenarios) could be worth the effort.

Originally posted by Matt Gallagher from Cocoa with Love, on August 30, 2010 4:49 AM

This result isn't too surprising, but it turns out that there is a fairly strong correlation between average run scoring and percentage of games that go to extra innings. This makes intuitive sense--if league-wide run scoring is higher, it's less likely that both teams in a game will end up with the exact same number of runs at the end of 9 innings.

Click through for the data.

This data was easy to collect. I used two Team Batting Game Finders to find the total number of games each year as well as the total number of games of 9 innings or less. That gave me the fraction of extra-inning games. Then I picked off the run-scoring numbers from the MLB Batting Encyclopedia page.

Here's a scatter plot for all that data:

Each data point represents a single year. The average runs per game is on the x-axis and the fraction of games going to extra innings is on the y-axis. For example, this year, teams are averaging 4.42 runs per game and 9.1% of games have gone to extra innings. In 2009, runs were more plentiful at 4.61 per game and only 8.0% of games went to extra innings. In 1988, runs were scored only 4.14 per game and 9.4% of games went to extra innings. Back in 1965, run scoring was 3.99 per game and 11% of games went to extra innings.

The R-sqaured value of 0.27 tells us that there is a correlation coefficient of 0.52 between run-scoring and extra innings--that's a pretty strong link between the two.

Originally posted by Andy from Baseball-Reference Blog, on August 30, 2010 4:30 AM

On Saturday, This Boelter Family decided to do some real-live Seattle site seeing! We went to Seattle Center, which includes such notables as the Space Needle, The Experience Music Project, The Science Center, The Children's Museum, The Science Fiction Museum, and lots of other cool stuff!

That's the Space Needle, as seen from below (and behind one of the crazy sculptures on the grounds)—our number one destination on this trip.

Louis was excited about all the talk of elevators; it's a word he has recently enjoyed saying (although without most of the consonants, so it sounds sort of like "eh-yeh-yay-toe"). Here's Daddy and Louis in line for the ehyehyaytoe.

Once we got into the "moving room" (as defined in Louis's Sesame Street book The Furry Arms Hotel), however, he wasn't so sure he liked it. The elevator, which looks out over Queene Anne Hill, zooms up the 520 or so feet to the observation deck in a matter of seconds.

The city planners did a smart thing by not putting the Space Needle smack dab in the middle of downtown. Not only does it make for a really nice view of downtown's skyscrapers from the Needle, but it doesn't get lost in the jumble of buildings when you're admiring it from afar.

This is a patented Daddy-holding-the-camera-self-portrait shot, taken on the observation platform. The challenge level of this technique has increased with the addition of a certain camera-grabbing member of This Boelter Family.

Here's a corner of Puget Sound, and maybe the Magnolia neighborhood over there top right? I dunno, I can't keep all those non-North Seattle neighborhoods straight.

Mommy and Louis after we finished all the bunny crackers and apple snacks.

Louis points out the landmarks.

Mommy and Louis clownin' around.

Louis had the best view of all!

Back on terra firma, after walking around the park for a bit, Louis and Mommy wait for a fountain to start up.

There it is!

Whoa! Did you see that!?

Some cool structures near the Science Center.

We stopped in at the food court for lunch, which, as you can see, was Louis's favorite part. There was some kind of Tibetan fair going on, and Daddy was impressed that Louis identified the Tibetan monks' chanting as "museekah!"

More cool sculpture!

Here's just a chunk of the crazy architecture of the Experience Music Project (the Sci-Fi Museum may be in there, too), and the monorail leading up to (into? through?) it. We didn't check out these other attractions or any of the indoor stuff, really, on this trip; we'll save those for a rainy day.

We don't expect any shortage of those...

Originally posted by Josh Boelter from This Boelter Family, on August 29, 2010 9:52 PM

Yes, Anonymous has a profile.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello typepad, on August 29, 2010 4:14 PM

By R.J. Anderson //

A brief timeline of Dan Johnson’s career with the Rays:

April 18, 2008: Claimed off waivers from Oakland
April 22, 2008: Suits up for the first time
April 23, 2008: Designated for assignment to make room for Gabe Gross
April 25, 2008: Outrighted to Durham
September 9, 2008: Contract is purchased; hits game-tying home run against Jonathan Papelbon
December 21, 2008: Released/sold to the Yokohama BayStars of the Nippon League
–
January 11, 2010: Signed by the Rays to a major league deal
March 25, 2010: Outrighted to Durham after clearing waivers and agreeing to an assignment
August 2, 2010: Contract is purchased from Durham

I do not know what the future holds for Johnson. He’d stick around If the decision were mine. Not because of the home runs, but because I do think he can be an asset for the rest of this season and the next. The addition of Brad Hawpe certainly compounds Johnson’s chance to join the playoff roster as well – he missed that honor in 2008 as well.

I do know that the sequence of events that have placed Johnson amongst the franchise’s most memorable players is wholly improbable. Johnson had to pass through waivers not once or twice, but thrice between the original claiming and today. The first time came before Johnson ever took a game swing for the franchise. The next came when Johnson headed to Japan. Then finally, mercifully, this spring he passed through without a hassle.

All it took – all it ever took – was some team, one team, any team deciding Johnson would be a suitable first baseman; not even for years or months, but just a few weeks. Johnson had say in heading to the minors as well. Sure, Johnson is paid better than most minor leaguers – half a million – but since the Rays outrighted him before, he had the option to elect free agency – either at that point or at season’s end if he weren’t on the 40-man roster by then – and he chose to stay in the organization.

This is a common theme for the Rays. Winston Abreu chose the Rays over worthwhile cash (for a career minor league reliever) after the Tribe designated him for assignment by the Cleveland Indians. This season he chose against opting out despite having that right, as did R.J. Swindle. The Rays treat these minor league guys well. Maybe they have to because financially they can’t compete, but sometimes being treated with respect and like a valued member of the organization is more important than a few extra thousand per season. They are humans and humans are wont to desiring acceptance.

If Johnson is pushed aside within the next 48 hours, I think I will be heartbroken. Not because he is a ballplayer of great value or all-star potential. He’s not. He is what he is, a league average hitter with a strike zone the size of a phonebook as opposed to a phone booth. He’s not a franchise player and he never will be. There’s probably a dozen Dan Johnsons out there just ready to be gobbled up during any given offseason. But I don’t want one of them, I want Dan Johnson.

So yeah, maybe his time is running short. Nothing new for Johnson. This incident would be just another in a growing stack of times Johnson has been told (explicitly or implicitly) that he’s not good enough for this league. He was drafted in the seventh round as a senior without much in the way of defensive ability or flexibility. Those guys rarely reach the majors – it would be akin to someone like Michael Sheridan in the Rays’ system working out – and when they do it’s because they really mash. Johnson has mashed when given the opportunity – which more often than not has been in the minors. In Oakland he was viewed as the stopgap between Jason Giambi and Daric Barton. Here, he was the guy who would fill in while Carlos Pena went down. Now, he’s the guy Hawpe might replace.

I don’t think he knows what the future holds, and I think that’s one of the reasons he flashed wicked jubilation after that home run last night. For now, he is a starter on a major league baseball team. Nobody can take that away from him for now, even if the sands of time might take the title, he’ll always have the memory of last night and that September night in Boston.

We’ll always have those memories, and hopefully a few more.

Originally posted by R.J. Anderson from The Process Report, on August 29, 2010 2:56 PM

Still worried about that lack of gender equality in book reviews?

Consider this more frightening and fundamental imbalance: so far in the month of August, the NYT has published 76 obituaries. And only six of them were for women.

And for the year 2010 to date, the NYT has chronicled the deaths of 604 men, and only 92 women.

Bear in mind that the population of women in the U.S. exceeds that of men, and is nearly neck and neck worldwide.

This disparity in coverage has gone on for years, virtually unnoticed in a society that decades ago granted full equality to women, and has seen huge strides in the prominence of women in virtually all fields of endeavor.

And not only does it show no signs of getting better -- it's actually getting worse.

In a September 2006 "Talk To The Newsroom" interview, NYT obituaries editor Bill McDonald (pictured above) was asked about the lack of what a concerned reader referred to as "gender parity" in the section. His stunning response somehow slipped by unnoticed.

"Ask me in another generation," McDonald replied. "Really. The people whose obits are appearing in our pages now largely shaped the world of the 1940's, 50's and 60's, and the movers and shakers in those eras were predominantly white men."

Seriously? We were so struck by the seeming ludicrousness of that statement that we devoted several hours to a painstaking count of NYT obituaries in 1990. That's two decades ago, long enough in the past that the supposed disparity noted by McDonald should have been even more pronounced. Right?

Wrong. What we found was a disparity between men and women nearly identical to the extraordinary current gender split.

Of 691 NYT obituaries published in 1990, only 92 of them were of women -- almost exactly replicating the 2010 numbers.

So what's going on? Are the world's prominent women -- the ones deserving of NYT obituaries -- simply living forever? In the last two decades, has there been zero growth in the number of notable women who've died? Does it stand to reason that no more women have worked their way into the limelight in the last twenty years than in the previous twenty?

No, no, and no. In fact, what the numbers make plain is that the NYT still makes no significant effort to ferret out the stories of important women's lives, from unconventional sources -- and instead fills its columns with only the most obvious candidates for coverage.

Obituaries go first and foremost to the famous: we accept that, and acknowledge McDonald's point that we still live in a society dominated by a predominantly male power structure. We recognize that for all the advances that have been made by women, the world still too often rewards men with media attention, and denies women the spotlight they deserve. As McDonald went on to say:

Those generations of white men are now passing from the scene; hence you're seeing a disproportionate number of them. In a generation or less, I suspect that the Obits pages (no doubt entirely digital by then) will be filled with stories of women and members of minorities who made contributions at a time when the world finally allowed them to.

But as the gold standard of American journalism, it should fall to the NYT to aggressively find and chronicle the lives of women who deserve attention in the obituary column right now -- women whose rich lives and notable achievements warrant the honor of recognition when they die.

Is there no female equivalent to the man who invented the Cheeto? Or the man who designed the Greek coffee cup? Those are but two of the dozens of obituaries in the last year commemorating men who weren't particularly famous, but whose achievements earned them attention on the NYT obits page.

"To me," McDonald said in the 2006 interview, "the Obit page is not a reflection of the times in which we live. It's a mirror on a past that is slipping away."

That's simply not true. But if you doubt us, look at the NYT Magazine's well-executed annual "The Lives They Lived" issue, which brilliantly shapes its essays around the present, not the past. In its 2009 edition, eight out of 23 subjects were women -- more than three times the gender ratio of the NYT obits page.

It's time for McDonald to stop making excuses for his failures, and to withdraw his sweeping and false assessments of recent history. He must immediately direct his staff (we count eight regular contributors) to seek out more stories of noteworthy women's lives, ones that will give his page a desperately needed balance -- and more accurately reflect the contribution women have made to society in the last fifty years.

Originally posted by THE NYTPICKER from the nytpicker, on August 29, 2010 11:05 AM