Political Blogs Ready to Flood Campaign Trail
Sites like Politico, Talking Points Memo and RealClearPolitics are planning to smother the 2012 campaign trail in a way they could never have imagined four years ago.
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January 29, 2011
Shadid
Anthony Shadid is on the ground in Cairo for the New York Times covering the Egyptian uprising. But the questions and challenges to be faced over the coming days makes me want to go back and reread his Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats, and the New Politics of Islam.
See his discussion of his 2005 book on post-invasion Iraq in TPMCafe Book Club back in late 2005.
TPMCafe Bookclub: Blowing Smoke
While Egypt is the story of the day and perhaps the month and year, don't miss a very different subject we're discussing over at TPMCafe Bookclub. This week we're discussing Michael Wolraich's Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual.
“Angry Birds Rio” Game to be Released in March
Angry Birds fans, it’s confirmed, a new edition of the blockbuster smartphone and console game is coming in March, and it’ll be called Angry Birds Rio.
Interspersed with characters from Rio, the upcoming animated feature from 20th Century Fox, Angry Birds Rio will revolve around the kidnapping of those annoyed avians.
As you can see in the video above, they’re hustled off to Rio de Janeiro via helicopter for an unscheduled vacation in a dark cave. Once they escape their cages, they find hundreds of others suffering the same fate, triggering a 45-level battle between the birds and their evil captors.
If you can’t get enough of Angry Birds, between now and the release of Angry Birds Rio, the game’s developer Rovio will release a pink-tinged Valentine’s Day edition. The company’s CEO Mikael Hed also announced an animated Angry Birds TV series to debut on an undetermined date.
quoted from mashable
putthison: In 1964, Lyndon Johnson needed pants, so he called...
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson needed pants, so he called the Haggar clothing company and asked for some. The call was recorded (like all White House calls at the time), and has since become the stuff of legend. Johnson’s anatomically specific directions to Mr. Haggar are some of the most intimate words we’ve ever heard from the mouth of a President.
We at Put This On took the historic original audio and gave it to animator Tawd Dorenfeld, who created this majestic fantasia of bungholiana.
Enjoy this special treat from Put This On: LBJ Orders Pants. Then share it with a friend who loves pants.
The Mermaid Oyster Bed of Terror
by Edith Zimmerman
"And here's the guest room, where you'll be staying."
"Oh my god, the bed! That's insane, I love it! Wait. No, I hate it. I hate it!"
"Toooo late!" [lock turns][Via]
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‘Ender’s Game’ Script Being Shopped Around By ‘Star Trek’ Writers
Let’s face it, sci-fi fans – screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci aren’t going to be satisfied until they’re involved in some form with essentially every (semi-)cult TV show or film franchise out there. The scribes behind Star Trek and first two Transformers movies have now revealed their involvement in another anticipated alternate-reality project: The adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.
Kurtzman and Orci (or K/O as they call themselves) have helped develop a script based off Card’s controversial 1985 work and are shopping it around to studios – with the assistance of X-Men Origins: Wolverine director Gavin Hood and Odd Lot Entertainment.
Word that Hood had reworked the Ender’s Game screenplay and was eying it as a potential directing vehicle emerged last September, but this is the first time Kurtzman ...
Click to continue reading ‘Ender’s Game’ Script Being Shopped Around By ‘Star Trek’ Writers
Friday in Cairo: The "Day of Rage"
by Gordon Reynolds
Gordon Reynolds—the pseudonym of a teacher in Cairo, dictated this over the phone to a friend not in Egypt. (For real-time dispatches on today's demonstrations, follow him here.)“Mister, Are you going to the protests tomorrow?” a student asked me on Thursday.
“No,” I said.
“It’s going to be worse than Thursday. Everything begins after Friday prayers, around twelve-thirty.”
“If I were going,” I said, “What part of town would I go to?”
“If you were going,” he said with a grin, “Then you should go to the mosque in Khan el-Khalili on Al-Azhar Street.”
***
The next morning at 11:45 a.m., I was in the back of a taxi, heading to the mosque on Al-Azhar for Friday prayers.
Standing on the side of the highway, facing the oncoming traffic was a policeman. Suddenly, our car accelerated, speeding towards him. The officer jumped to the road’s shoulder as my driver veered our speeding car at him. The driver looked up at me in the rearview mirror and smiled and laughed.
On #jan25, it was tweeted that Coptic Christians would attend Friday prayers to help protect Muslims, but as I stood in the back of the mosque, I saw no sign of them. In his sermon, the Imam spoke of how Mohammed came to bring light into the world, and through Islam, draw all men together into this light. He said that as Egypt goes through this time of trial, what is required most is patience—that change comes through restraint, not violence.
At 12:30 p.m., the mosque emptied into the narrow streets of Khan el-Khalili. On the way out I began talking to a store owner in his sixties. He invited me into his antique shop for tea.
“I don’t think there will be violence,” he said, as we sat outside his store. “What is accomplished if I break a policeman’s face? That man has a family. We are all the same people. In Islam we say, ‘To take a life is to take every life. To save a life is to save every life.’”
Then, a plump older gentleman wearing glasses and a sweater ran over to us. “The fighting has begun,” he said.
* * *
There were hundreds of young men and teenagers gathered on Al-Azhar Street when I arrived. They carried rocks in their hands. On the north end were Egyptian police in riot gear. The first set of roughly thirty officers were in position approximately one hundred yards on the north end of Al-Azhar Street. Two hundred yards behind them was a second line of police in position to keep the first from being surrounded from behind.
The objective of the protestors was to march down Al-Azhar Street to Tahrir Square where groups had amassed from other locations throughout Cairo.
The protestors chanted, “Bo-ttle, Bo-ttle, Bo-ttle.” With each syllable, they banged their rocks on the metal railing that separated the street from the sidewalk. As they chanted, the front protestors stared down at the line of officers linking riot shields and walked towards them.
Outnumbered, the police held their positions.
The first cannon-shot of tear gas sent the crowd running back. Then came the second and the third. The crowd retreated as police chased them up Al-Azhar Street. I was too close to the charging authorities to run back, so I turned into a side street. I had not gained more than a few feet before a teenager grabbed my shoulder and said, “No, they’ll follow you there, come.”
He jerked me into the entrance of a building where six of his friends had gathered. Other Egyptians tried to force their way inside, but the teenager reached up, pulled down an aluminum gate, and secured it with a padlock. Then he turned to me and extended his hand.
“I’m Nasr,” he said, “It’s okay. You’re safe here.”
We walked up eight flights of stairs and onto the roof where there was a group of six men—most in their early twenties, and six teenage boys and a small child, all looking over the edge down onto the street below.
* * *
There were three streets involved in Friday’s fight for Al-Azhar. At the ground level was Al-Azhar itself—the majority of the conflict between police and protestors took place here. Above this street was the first elevated highway, roughly four stories from ground level. Above this was a second elevated highway, roughly eight stories above ground level and nearly parallel to our position on the roof.
For the next six hours, protestors and authorities battled each other in effort to take advantage of the higher ground and gain control. When police charged forward on Al-Azhar Street, protestors ran up the first elevated highway and pelted them with rocks and bricks. In response, police units and tanks would charge the second elevated highway, firing rubber bullets and tear gas at the crowd until protestors retreated.
Trapped inside the building as the fighting endured without pause, I watched this back and forth battle for position and passage continue until after nightfall.
There have been rumors that this uprising is the work of the Muslim Brotherhood, but the majority of protestors I watched battling all day were teenagers—some of them just barely so. Some wore flip flops. Others charged at police barefoot. There were adults among them, but as the afternoon hours passed and I watched them continually get tear-gassed only to return with defiance, it seemed to me that I was watching enraged kids with nothing to lose.
* * *
On the roof, Nasr introduced me to Ahmed, a man in his forties who appeared to be in charge of things. “You’ll be safe with me,” he said when we shook hands. As he spoke all I could hear was the continued ring of tear gas cannons down below. Protestors had thrown some of the spewing gas canisters up on the second elevated highway across from us. The wind carried the gas towards the roof of our building.
My eyes watered as the fog blew over us. My throat burned. Ahmed led me to a faucet. We splashed water on our faces as we struggled to breath.
“I am so sorry that this happened to you in my country,” he said to me.
When the cloud had dissipated, one of the teenagers in the group decided to avenge our gassing. He picked up a brick and threw it down at the police below. Spotting this, an officer on the second level of the highway fired a canister of tear gas at us. It flew past my head and landed on the back corner of the roof.
We ran down the stairwell for cover.
Sitting on the concrete steps, with tissues over our mouths and noses, our eyes tearing as the continuous pop of gas cannons echoed on Al-Azhar, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned.
“Your email address?” the teenager who threw the rock then asked. “For Facebook. We can be friends on Facebook.”
The rest of the group nodded. They too wanted to be my friends on Facebook.
* * *
By late afternoon, some of the rocks were now being aimed at us. Frustrated that onlookers were not joining them, some protestors targeted the spectators watching from the rooftops. We were forced to take refuge in the office of a men’s clothing manufacturer on the fourth floor of the building. Inside Ahmed turned the television to Al-Jazeera. They were broadcasting video of the fighting outside our office window.
At roughly 6 p.m., I looked down and saw that two trucks filled with back-up reserve officers had arrived. An additional one hundred reinforcements exited and formed two lines. For the next three minutes a rapid succession of cannon blasts rang from outside. In formation, the replenished officers pushed forward. Unable to see or breath, protestors abandoned their pursuit and authorities regained control of Al-Azhar.
The streets clear of fighting, I said goodbye to my friends and thanked them for keeping me safe. I took a white rag, tied it around my face, and walked into the smoky night. The air was still hazy with gas, forming halos in the streetlights. Chunks of concrete littered the pavement. There was a team of three officers standing at the intersection. They reached for their batons when they saw me approach. I lowered the mask and threw my hands up. They dropped their arms. “Taxi?” I yelled.
“Straight ahead,” they replied, and pointed me down Al-Azhar.
I started down the street and headed towards the highway. The roads were flooded with Egyptian families, traveling in packs, all trying to get home. I passed half a dozen burning tires. They sent black clouds of smoke into the purple sky. Then, reaching the highway, I stopped, stared at the oncoming cars, waved my arm, and waited.
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vukašin vukobratovic: traffic jam
the furniture object not only features hooks in which to hang jackets and other clothing items, but stays true to its original form and function of displaying signage which could be particularly useful in schools, hotels, restaurants, offices and other public spaces.
read more
Helvetica and the New York City Subway System
Helvetica and the New York City Subway System
For years, the signs in the New York City subway system were a bewildering hodge-podge of lettering styles, sizes, shapes, materials, colors, and messages. The original mosaics (dating from as early as 1904), displaying a variety of serif and sans serif letters and decorative elements, were supplemented by signs in terracotta and cut stone. Over the years, enamel signs identifying stations and warning riders not to spit, smoke, or cross the tracks were added to the mix. Efforts to untangle this visual mess began in the mid-1960s, when the city transit authority hired the design firm Unimark International to create a clear and consistent sign system. We can see the results today in the white-on-black signs throughout the subway system, displaying station names, directions, and instructions in crisp Helvetica. This book tells the story of how typographic order triumphed over chaos.
The process didn’t go smoothly or quickly. At one point New York Times architecture writer Paul Goldberger declared that the signs were so confusing one almost wished that they weren’t there at all. Legend has it that Helvetica came in and vanquished the competition. Paul Shaw shows that it didn’t happen that way—that, in fact, for various reasons (expense, the limitations of the transit authority sign shop), the typeface overhaul of the 1960s began not with Helvetica but with its forebear, Standard (aka Akzidenz Grotesk). It wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s that Helvetica became ubiquitous. Shaw describes the slow typographic changeover (supplementing his text with more than 250 images—photographs, sketches, type samples, and documents). He places this signage evolution in the context of the history of the New York City subway system, of 1960s transportation signage, of Unimark International, and of Helvetica itself.
About the Author
Paul Shaw, an award-winning graphic designer, typographer, and calligrapher in New York City, teaches at Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts. He is the coauthor of Blackletter: Type and National Identity and writes about letter design in the blog Blue Pencil.Available February 2011
11×9.5, 144 pp., 273 color illus.
$39.95/£29.95 (CLOTH)Pre-order over at The MIT Press
January 28, 2011
Tech for good - catching up on Google.org
Google.org continues to ramp up technology projects and test new ideas while Google’s overall charitable giving, in-kind giving and employee volunteering have grown as well. Our newsletter outlines the latest updates to our philanthropic projects. I caught up with Megan Smith, VP New Business Development and General Manager of Google.org, to talk about how Google views philanthropy.
After two years at the helm of Google.org, what are you most optimistic about?
The Internet offers an opportunity to connect in ways never before possible. Things that have historically been far apart are now “virtually adjacent”—most people are a text away, data sets can be mashed up, and all world knowledge is coming online from both expected and surprising sources. Given all of this, I am most excited about all the extraordinary ways people are using the web to connect, be informed, use data and to start solving problems together.
For Google.org specifically, we want to contribute our knowledge and skills to help use technology to address humanity’s greatest challenges. We now have more than 50 engineers and about 40 other cross-functional Googlers working on four or five larger projects—like Google Crisis Response and RE<C—and over a dozen smaller experimental pilot projects.
What kind of project fits this opportunity?
One of our newer projects, Google Earth Engine, takes advantage of Google’s computing infrastructure to create a planetary sciences computation platform that could help reduce negative environmental impact at scale. The first focus is on deforestation monitoring. Earth Engine has just made it through the pilot phase to a full project with its launch last month at climate change talks in Mexico. If we meet our goals to enable global-scale monitoring of changes in the planet’s environment, I believe that Earth Engine could play an important information role in helping to slow deforestation.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned since joining Google.org?
Two things: first, the opportunity we have is great; and second, the work has served as a reminder that creating truly useful, innovative technology is challenging and requires patient iteration, dialog, teamwork and creativity. It takes time to gather new ideas, learn from the right partners, collaborate, pilot those ideas that pass initial assessment and then launch for scale the few projects that meet the criteria for a Google.org product.
Do Google.org projects have a specific focus?
We don’t have a topical focus—we work on technology solutions to many different kinds of global challenges. The key is to take advantage of Google’s strengths. In the area of global health, for example, we have been able to create a global flu monitoring system based on search data. For our environmental work, we were able to leverage our data center computing power to put together the finest-scale forest map of Mexico to date (processing this data would take two years on one computer, but we made it in less than 24 hours using our computing infrastructure).
How does Google.org start and ramp up its technology projects?
We work to tap into the talent at Google. Some projects have come out of hallway conversations and others from extensive talks with partners in the field. Formally, we have a bimonthly new initiatives meeting with senior engineers where talented individuals or teams within Google bring ideas or prototypes. If we think the idea is a match and has promise, we give it budget, headcount, guidance and time to see where it can go during a pilot period. Once we have a live pilot or project, we take advantage of Google.com’s standard project review and management processes that our company has effectively used for years.
What if those pilots fail?
That’s normal. We should expect that some of them will fail or will only have smaller impact. If you’re not failing some of the time, you’re not taking risks. As we progress, some of our failures will hopefully teach us as much as some of our successes.
What other charitable giving does Google do?
As a company that has been doing well, it’s important that we push ourselves to be amongst the most generous companies. We have several charitable giving programs supporting, for example, education (especially K-12 science and math programs), university research, communities where we work, and technology solutions for underserved groups. Last year the company gave more than $145 million to non-profits and academic institutions, and more than $184 million when including Google Grants, Google.org technology projects and in-kind product support for non-profits.
How is this philanthropic work different from that of other companies?
Like other companies, we have charitable giving programs, we provide products in-kind and we have a range of employee volunteering programs. Some companies like ours may also have experiments like Google.org to leverage their strengths—a form of skills-based giving. However, many companies do amazing charitable work through a centralized Corporate Social Responsibility arm that tackles a key issue or two. We approach philanthropy the way we do our core business, with big goals and a “launch early and iterate” approach. Ideas come from all over the company and we work to tackle a range of issues we care about, from clean energy to education to development. It may not be as clean as the process that some others have, but we think this is how we can have the most impact.
We remain determined, as our founders said when they set the vision for Google.org, "to find original ways to extend our assets, so that we can drive scalable, sustainable efforts. ...the underlying principle: Never stop looking for ways to do the best with what you have."Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations
If You Like Scouting NY, PLEASE Sign This Petition! – The Fight for 35 Cooper Square
You know 35 Cooper Square, right?
Sure you do. It’s that cute little building hidden in the shadow of the modern Cooper Square Hotel, a building best described architecturally as having been inspired by Optimus Prime’s phallus.
If you had passed it today at around 4:30pm, you’d have seen a group of passionate protesters standing outside with the goal of saving the building.
See, #35, one of only two buildings in the area that dates back to the beginning of Cooper Square, was sold to a developer, who wants to tear it down and add another space ship to the neighborhood.
Thankfully though, the Landmarks Commission is coming to the rescue on this one though, right??
Uh, nope.
Artist and East Village resident Sally Young unearthed a ton of history on the building: it was once owned by a great grandson of Peter Stuyvesant, as well as an undertaker, a teacher, a hotelier, and a saloon owner. In the 1900′s, it was a home to a number of artists, including Beat poet Diana DiPrima, who entertained such luminaries as William S. Burroughs, Cecil Taylor, and others.
There’s a lot more you can read over at Vanishing NY. Suffice it to say, Landmarks’ verdict: “the property does not meet the criteria for designation.”
It’s funny that the protest happened just shortly after the Parks Department yanked out the Pier D ruins from the Hudson, which I documented here:
This saddens me, but I knew Pier D was going to have to go eventually – it was structurally unsound, and were it to collapse on its own, could leads to dangerous conditions for the harbor. But the Hudson has lost a small piece that gave it an identity, a history. Meanwhile, over in Coney Island…
The bank building was recently torn down by developer Joseph Sitt – one of the last remaining buildings from its glory years. It’s gone forever. Unlike Pier D, this did not have to happen.
So please, sign this petition to save 35 Cooper Square. I know it might seem trivial to remove such a small building from Cooper Square, but it is important – take enough of this away, and Cooper Square might as well be Houston, Texas. Seriously, take a walk to Astor Place and look at the horizon – you could be forgiven for thinking this is NY’s new launch pad for rocket ships.
Lastly, I get that the property was sold for $8.5million, and at that price, the developers damn well expect to be able to do whatever they want with it.
Fuck ‘em. Could we for once show that this isn’t the case in New York?
Two bad-ass kids.
Again, sign the petition here!
-SCOUT
PS – I was startled to see that the name of the developer behind the sale of the property was Joe Sitt – could there be a relation to Joseph Sitt, who is currently tearing apart Coney Island like Godzilla in Tokyo? Or are guys named Joe Sitt simply destined to be complete shitheads?
Why Netflix Picked Amazon SimpleDB, Hadoop/HBase, and Cassandra
Why Netflix Picked Amazon SimpleDB, Hadoop/HBase, and Cassandra:Yury Izrailevsky[1]:
The reason why we use multiple NoSQL solutions is because each one is best suited for a specific set of use cases. For example, HBase is naturally integrated with the Hadoop platform, whereas Cassandra is best for cross-regional deployments and scaling with no single points of failure. Adopting the non-relational model in general is not easy, and Netflix has been paying a steep pioneer tax while integrating these rapidly evolving and still maturing NoSQL products. There is a learning curve and an operational overhead. Still, the scalability, availability and performance advantages of the NoSQL persistence model are evident and are paying for themselves already, and will be central to our long-term cloud strategy.
Summarizing the pros for each of the 3 solutions:
Amazon SimpleDB Pros
- highly durable, writes spanning multiple availability zones
- handy query and data formats
- batch operations
- consistent reads
- hosted solution
HBase Pros
- dynamic partitioning model
- built-in support for compression
- range queries
- support for distributed counters
- strong consistency
- interoperability with Hadoop
Cassandra Pros
- no dedicated name nodes
- no practical architectural limitations on data sizes, row/column counts, etc.
- flexible data model
- no underlying storage format requirements like HDFS
- uniquely flexible consistency and replication models
- cross-datacenter and cross-regional replication
I hope the next post will be about the “small” issues Netflix ran into when adopting each of these systems. In the past they’ve shared some of the challenges of an Oracle - Amazon SimpleDB hybrid solution.
Yury Izrailevsky: Netflix Director of Cloud and Systems Infrastructure ↩
Original title and link: Why Netflix Picked Amazon SimpleDB, Hadoop/HBase, and Cassandra (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)
These Things Happened
by Alex Balk
• Spoiler alert: This "Lives" column is composed entirely of the last lines of New York Times Magazines "Lives" columns from 2010
• Consider this: Here is a list of songs from David Bowie's "Berlin trilogy" ranked in order of plausible thematic interpretation
• Road rules: You'll want to follow this advice on how to behave at Jeff Mangum's ATP set
• Watch and learn: Here are the things you figure out when you watch TV for money
• Learn and share: A visit to the Modern Language Association convention results in an intriguing proposal
• Learn and sing: It's the best songs about New York without "New York" in the title
• Don't look back: American race relations 137 years ago… and today
• Don't look down: You have questions about heaven, right?
• Don't look away: Here's how they're trying to take your rights away now
Photo by David Berkowitz, from Flickr.
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The goal of business
I've probably written about this somewhere and somewhen before, but here it is again because I want to make sure I have it in case the original source is lost. Back when Stewart Butterfield & co. started Ludicorp (which was sold to Yahoo! along with Flickr), their about page listed a corporate philosophy so fantastic that it's the only such philosophy I've pumped my fist at. It takes the form of a passage from Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action and the Cultivation of Solidarity by Charles Spinosa, Fernando Flores & Hubert Dreyfus:
Business owners do not normally work for money either. They work for the enjoyment of their competitive skill, in the context of a life where competing skillfully makes sense. The money they earn supports this way of life. The same is true of their businesses. One might think that they view their businesses as nothing more than machines to produce profits, since they do closely monitor their accounts to keep tabs on those profits.
But this way of thinking replaces the point of the machine's activity with a diagnostic test of how well it is performing. Normally, one senses whether one is performing skillfully. A basketball player does not need to count baskets to know whether the team as a whole is in flow. Saying that the point of business is to produce profit is like saying that the whole point of playing basketball is to make as many baskets as possible. One could make many more baskets by having no opponent.
The game and styles of playing the game are what matter because they produce identities people care about. Likewise, a business develops an identity by providing a product or a service to people. To do that it needs capital, and it needs to make a profit, but no more than it needs to have competent employees or customers or any other thing that enables production to take place. None of this is the goal of the activity.
To which the Ludicorporate added: "The goal is to kick ass."
Tags: business Ludicorp
Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Week 156: Do Birthday Week Pounds Count?
[Photograph: Robyn Lee]
Of course they do. My birthday was yesterday, and even before I partook in the fried chicken and banana cream pie lunch that the SE'rs had waiting for me at SEHQ after I came back from a meeting, I knew I was in serious trouble.
How serious? Yesterday morning I told them I was thinking about giving myself a one week Serious Diet birthday furlow. I was just going to skip a week by invoking the birthday thing. Erin strongly urged me to face the Thinner music and cited my previous birthday posts as precedents. So even though I am going to feel profound embarrassment and downright shame, I will get on the scale this morning.
The beginning of the week started off promisingly enough. Thinner read 222 when I got on her on Wednesday.
But after a dinner with friends at Ardesia, a wine bar with exceptional food, my Thursday weigh-in was really discouraging, 224 to be exact.
Then my birthday menu, sticky buns from Bouchon Bakery for breakfast; fried chicken, banana cream pie, and chocolate mousse cake for lunch; and just a few bites of scallion pancake and scallion egg fried rice for dinner, pushed me over the edge.
Well, there's nothing I can do about the past. I'm just going to get on Thinner, read it and weep, and move on.
Weigh-In
Here we go. 224, up three pounds. Those numbers are tough to see. What will I do? Learn from my mistakes, move on, and look at the bigger picture, which shows that I have gotten considerably smaller in the previous 155 weeks.
What's happening in Cairo (a Mum asks!)
Thanks one and all for your comments and emails. Just to keep you updated.
We heard from the boy in Cairo yesterday .. to say he was OK, and that he would call 'tomorrow'. Well, of course, he cant phone as the mobile networks have been cut, and so has the internet (did we realise that it was so easy to do that?).
So at this point Mum has to learn not to worry . . . and to go through the reasons in her head.
1) There is nothing whatsoever to be done, so worry is energy expended to no point whatsoever. OK that kind of argument isnt usually very efficacious when you feel a bit of anxiety coming on (that's the point of anxiety -- it isnt susceptible to a good dose of common sense). All the same, it's a good thing to reflect on.
2) Whatever's happening, this 'keeping in touch with the young' habit is ever so recent, ever so 21st century.
When we went away, back packing or studying or whatever, in the 1970s, it wasnt a bit like this.
You waved the family good bye and for the next few weeks or months you tried to remember to send them a postcard from time to time (and to put vaguely the right stamp on it), and if you were lucky the old people back home received it before you actually got back. If you really wanted to give them a treat (and/or scare the hell out of them) you might very occasional phone them up -- a process that (yes even the 70s) involves going to some central telephone exchange, booking a slot and waiting around for ages until you were called into some sweaty booth.
I think they just assumed that no news was good news; and maybe that was a lot healthier. Though I think even my Mum might had the occasional pang of anxiety if I had been in Cairo at this minute.
Lets hope the boy is being sensible.
Chile Verde with Pork
Ingredients
serves 6 to 10
- 3 pounds trimmed pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch cubes
- Kosher salt
- 5 poblano pepper
- 5 cubanelle peppers
- 2 pounds tomatillos (about 15 medium), husks removed
- 6 whole garlic cloves
- 2 jalapeño peppers, stems removed, split in half lengthwise
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 cups loosely packed cilantro leaves
- 1 large onion, finely diced (about 1 1/2 cups)
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 quart chicken stock
Procedures
In large bowl, toss pork with 2 tablespoons salt until thoroughly coated. Set aside at room temperature for 1 hour.
Meanwhile, roast poblano and cubanelle peppers by placing them directly over the flame of a gas stove until deeply charred on all surfaces, about 10 minutes total. If you don't have a gas burner, you can achieve similar results under the broiler, or on an outdoor grill. Place peppers in a bowl and cover with a large plate. Let steam for 5 minutes, then peel under cool running water. Dry chilies, discard seeds and stems, and roughly chop. Transfer to bowl of food processor.
Preheat broiler to high. Toss tomatillos, garlic, and jalapeños with 1 tablespoon vegetable oil and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Transfer to rimmed baking sheet lined with foil. Broil until charred, blistered, and just softened, turning once halfway through cooking, about 10 minutes total. Transfer to the food processor along with any exuded liquid.
Add 1/2 of cilantro to the food processor and pulse mixture until it is roughly pureed but not smooth, about 8 to 10 one-second pulses. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 225°F. Heat remaining oil in large Dutch oven over high heat until smoking. Add half of pork and cook without moving until well browned, about 3 minutes. Stir pot and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until well browned on all sides. Add remaining pork and onions and cook, stirring frequently and scraping up any browned bits from bottom of pan, until onions are softened, about 4 minutes. Add cumin and cook, stirring constantly until fragrant, about 1 minute.
Add chicken stock and pureed chilies to pot and stir to combine. Bring to a boil, cover, and transfer to oven, leaving lid slightly ajar. Cook until pork shreds easily with a fork, about 3 hours. Remove from oven and return to stovetop.
Skim off and discard any excess fat. Adjust to desired consistency by adding water or boiling and reducing. Stir remaining cilantro into pot and season to taste with more salt. Serve immediately with warm tortillas, diced onions, sour cream, cheese, cilantro, and lime wedges. Chili can be chilled and stored in airtight container in refrigerator for up to 5 days. Flavor will improve with time.
The LISP עץ החיים
Plain awesome!
(cached copy in case the original site goes down)
Celebrate People's History Book Release and Exhibition in Lawrence, KS
Celebrate People's History Book Release Tonight at the Lawrence Percolator!
Book Release Party - Friday, Jan. 28th 5-8 pm
The book release coincides with an exhibit of the Celebrate People's History posters and printed matter from a local 1970s printshop in Lawrence, the Kansas Key Printer.
For more info click HERE. And click below for more photos (thanks to Dave Lawrence for his organizing efforts and photo taking)!
Other CPH-related events at the Percolator:
Saturday, January 29th, 2:30pm
Lecture by Steve Goddard, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Spencer Museum of ArtSunday, January 30th, 1-4pm
Poster Making WorkshopSaturday, February 5th, 2pm
“The Hidden Heritage of Radicalism in Kansas,” a lecture by author Fred Whitehead
January 27, 2011
Counter-Twitter Operations
We've now seen a series of waves of popular unrest which were, if not triggered by, at least accelerated and sustained for a period of time by social media, text messaging, easily-distributed digital imagery and all the rest of systems of our wired world. The latest reports out of Egypt are that the state has either disrupted or shutdown key social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as text-messaging and Blackberry service. It's unclear to me in this report from the AP whether Internet connections themselves have been blocked; but clearly access to the Internet has been significantly curtailed.
On its face, this seems like an obvious step for any embattled regime to take. Taking a whole country off the grid for any period of time would likely be catastrophic in the early 21st century. But surely an authoritarian or episodically repressive regime could disrupt connectivity for some period to prevent its overthrow and not have it do too much damage to the economy.
So two questions occur to me. One is just how much digital media really plays into these episodes of popular unrest in Iran or Tunisia or Egypt. It seems clear to me that it plays a role -- just as print played an important role in creating a popular self-consciousness among hitherto scattered and isolated communities and in facilitating communication. But just how much is unclear to me. Does digital communications really make spontaneous organization and collaboration possible or does it just give us a window into a process that's taken place with less technology in countless popular revolts over the last few hundred years? I don't have an answer to that. But I think it's worth reminding ourselves that it's still an open question.
The other issue is this. As we've seen in more circumscribed ways in the United States, the freedom of communication and coordination that the Internet makes possible is matched by the degree of monitoring, surveillance and data-collection it makes possible. We've all seen various data maps that show us where on the web -- either what sites or what geographical areas -- certain topics are most popular or where certain conversations are happening. We reported yesterday that political scientists funded by the Air Force have devised a computer forecasting model to predict civil unrest. And one of the variables is access to the Internet and social networks.
Now these governments aren't stupid. They may be sclerotic and rickety and repressive. But that doesn't mean they're stupid. Are they using any of these data gathering or mapping technologies to try to get ahead of these crises when they occur? Or is that just beyond their abilities? There are so many private security firms out there willing to provide all sorts of services. I find it almost impossible to believe there aren't ones out there hawking expertise on how to monitor Internet activity and selectively shut down Internet activity in periods of popular unrest. How many non-democratic or imperfectly democratic countries in the world are investigating how to do this on their own? It's common knowledge that China keeps a tight grip on Internet access. But I'm interested in less developed countries, ones with less state capacity and a less robust ability to control digital communications.
This isn't a rhetorical question. I'm sure the topic has been written about. Let me know what you know.
BLACKBOOK'S VYOU is UP
BLACKBOOK'S VYOU is UP:As the social media woman of the house, I will be spending time answering questions from the interwebs on behalf of BlackBook and the BlackBook family. Sometimes, I will connect you with other BlackBookers, and have them answer questions from the interwebs. Sometimes, while interviewing bands or celebrities or nobodies, I will alert the interwebs so that they can ask these special people specified questions, and these special people can answer them on camera. Sometimes, after a rough night, I will refuse to answer questions on camera, and perform Q&A puppet shows. Interwebs: ask your questions!
Mission Accomplished. (And she didn’t even mention how much I nagged her.)
Up next: Foster.
Taste Test: Best Salsa
VIEW SLIDESHOW: Taste Test: Best Salsa
[Photograph: Jessica Leibowitz]
The Winners!
Frontera
Green Mountain GringoIt doesn't get much more braindead-easy than popping open a jar of salsa and a bag of chips. Instant party.
Of course it's always more exciting to squeeze all the lime juices out yourself and chop up vine-picked tomatoes with fresh, bright cilantro—but sometimes you have a herd of friends coming over in five minutes, and you need to go the jarred route. How many people have you met that don't like chips and salsa? Well, they don't sound like much fun.
With Super Bowl ahead (and Cinco de Mayo and all the Taco Tuesdays), we were curious about store-bought salsas. So we opened two bags of tortilla chips (edible spoons!) and tried 17 different brands. All of the the salsas were of "medium" heat level and tomato-based ("the red kind"). No corn, mango, black beans, or any of that jazz was invited to this party.
Brands We Tried
Newman's Own
Herdez
Green Mountain Gringo
Chi-Chis
Taco Bell
El Paso
Amy's Organic
La Costeña
Tostito's
Frontera
Spike's
Trader Joe's (Salsa Authentica)
Muir Glen
Ortega
La Victoria
Pace
Whole Foods 365The Criteria
The salsa should have a bright flavor balanced with a kick of spice. It shouldn't punch you in the throat (it's just medium, not hot or X-TRA HOT) but it should get your attention. We don't want to confuse this for spaghetti sauce. Texturally, it should be chunky with tomatoes, chile pepper bits, and onions.
Why the Losers Lost
One of the most common offenses: salsa that tasted more like the tomato paste goo in Spaghetti-O's than salsa. Some were way too spiced (hello, black pepper) but not spicy. Others, too sweet and syrupy—what is this, a maple syrup tasting? And no thank you to anything "tinny" or "dirty-tasting." Texture was also critical: "ketchup water" with "squishy rubbery chunks" is not what we wanted.
When it's too runny, it just falls off the chip. Where are these salsas going? We don't want our salsas to be marathon runners.
Our Favorites
Frontera
This is chef Rick Bayless's line of salsas, and the only one we had to special order (you can find it at select stores, they just weren't near SEHQ). It tasted the most like real salsa, where you could actually picture a real person crushing the garlic and jalapeños with a mortar and pestle. It has a very prominent smoky, charred flavor. Some tasters found it too "funky," but the majority liked the roasted depth. It's slightly sweet but balanced with acidic tang. It also didn't have the tomato paste texture that many others did.
Green Mountain Gringo
Before we started, many SE'rs admitted this was their go-to brand. And even after the blind tasting, the same crew of GMG fanboys and girls ended up ranking this the highest. "Fairly chunky with a nice heat," agreed tasters. It's made with ripe tomatoes, not tomato juice or puree (common in other salsas) and cider vinegar, which you don't see in salsas too often. The texture was ideal for tortilla chip scooping; not runny at all. The salsa stays where it should—on the chip!
Read more about all the recommended brands here »
So You Wanna Make it From Scratch?
- Chipotle Bacon Salsa »
- Habanero Hot Sauce »
- (Not Exactly) My Uncle's Salsa »
- Chile Morita Salsa »
- Tomatillo Salsa »
- Salsa Piccante »
- Habanero Hot Sauce »
More Taste Tests
Colorblind Leading the Blind
Today, Netflix posted some interesting research, tracking the performance of their streaming service on the top ISPs in the U.S.
Sadly, the charts were completely useless to me — a pile of mostly-indistinguishable lines. Along with one out of every 14 American males (about 7%), I'm red-green colorblind.
This is hard for non-colorblind people to understand, so I pulled together a couple examples. Here's a split comparison of the original chart, showing what people with normal vision see compared to me and my broke-ass eyes.
(Click to view large.)
Two simple solutions:1. Label your lines. When you have more than three data points in a line chart, legends fall apart quickly whether you're colorblind or not. A label next to each line makes any chart much more readable. Here's a quick remake I whipped up. (Thanks to Greg for helping me get the colors right.)
(Click to view large.)2. Pick colorblind-safe colors. If you have to use a legend, be kind and pick something people like us can see. Photoshop's supported drop-dead simple colorblind simulation since CS4, or you can check your images or webpages for free using the Vischeck colorblind simulator.
When doing the right thing is this easy, it's really disturbing when it's dismissed as a waste of time.A couple years ago, I contacted the husband-and-wife team behind Snopes, the essential resource on urban legends, to let them know about a similar issue. The red/green icons they use to indicate true/false urban legends looked absolutely identical to me. I let them know about the problem and prepared alternate GIFs for them, with a darker red and lighter green. (Incidentally, that's why colorblind people don't have trouble with stoplights.)
They not only refused the new images, but actually added a new entry to their FAQ, defending their position:
We chose our red-yellow-green coding system because its "traffic light" pattern can be understood by most of our readers with little or no explanation. While we understand that about 8% of our readership experiences some form of color blindness and therefore cannot distinguish the different colors of bullets, other alternatives we have tried have proved confusing to many of our non-color blind readers. Therefore, we have chosen to stick with a system that works very well for 92% of our readers.Instead, they recommended hovering over every icon to see the tooltip text. I absolutely adore the work they do on Snopes, but that interaction's left a sour taste in my mouth ever since. It just doesn't seem defensible — is slightly darkening a shade of red and brightening a green too much to ask?
I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to perfectly anticipate every person's needs; accessibility is extremely hard to get right 100% of the time. But if your ultimate goal is conveying information, open ears and a little empathy can go a long way.
Top Chef: Who Are Your All-Stars?
This post is brought to you by Buitoni. Delicious BUITONI® pastas and sauces combine freshly made pasta with simple ingredients to create authentic, extraordinary Italian meals.
Another week, another repeat of Top Chef: All Stars last night! In lieu of a recap, I offer you my favorite Top Chef contestants of all time—and, as an added bonus, an auto-tuned video of Marcel rapping.
Life is so unfair. Just when I started looking forward to Wednesday nights, Bravo let me down by airing yet another repeat episode of Top Chef: All Stars. I actually had to turn the TV off and read a book instead. Can you believe the nerve of those people!
I do have some good news, though. Remember two weeks ago when Marcel randomly turned into Eminem and started yelling at Dale on the balcony? Well, the repeat episode freed up some time for Bravo's editors to whip together this little auto-tuned video of the incident.
And let's face it: if there's anything the internet needs, it's more badly edited auto-tune videos:
Auto-Tune Video of the Day: Marcel Vigneron
Jill's Picks
From left: Jennifer Carroll, Tiffany Derry, and Fabio Viviani.
Since we can't talk about Angelo's wardrobe or the fact that the judges all seem to want to have Richard Blais' lovechild, let's talk about our favorite Top Chef contestants of all time! These are mine:
Jennifer Carroll, Season 6. Tough, talented, and the chef who should have won Top Chef All Stars. I'm still bitter that she was eliminated so early in the season, in part because of Jamie's "injury." But in true Jen Carroll style, she gave the judges an earful and went out on top.
Tiffany Derry, Season 7. Sassy, down to Earth, and cooks from the heart. You just can't watch this woman on television and not smile along. A class act!
Fabio Viviani, Season 5. Arguably the most entertaining Top Chef contestant, and definitely one of the funniest (best line of all time: "It's Top Chef, not TOP SCALLOPS!") Truth be told, I just want him to come to my house and make me ravioli.
Now it's your turn. Who are your favorite Top Chef contestants of all time?
my community story
The vibrant community of TEDxPhilly, photographed by Kevin Monko of Monkophoto.
Earlier this week I was given the opportunity to share my experience with TEDxPhilly at an Innovation & Entrepreneurship class at UArts. When first asked by the wonderful Hilary Jay of DesignPhiladephia, I hesitated. Public speaking is not my comfort zone at all, and organizing TEDxPhilly this year was pretty damn challenging on many levels. What would I talk about? How would I close with a message of positivity? I was unsure how to proceed.
Before I go too much further, I want to say that Hilary gets it. DesignPhiladelphia is an amazing 10 day event that descends on Philadelphia each October, showcasing incredible design talent in the community, through exhibits, lectures, open studios and more. I'm in complete awe of the annual undertaking. The truth is, I reached out to Hilary independently, because when I see people pulling off such meaningful events, I want to reach out to them and ask - how do you do it!?
So back to class, back to this presentation. I was thinking about winging it and just riffing on the experience, but I realized it was a good opportunity to sit with it and think about it. I've had a canned answer for how things went, how I pulled it off (with an amazing group of volunteers), etc, but this was my chance to tell a story of how I got there and where I am today.
This is how the story goes…
In the Spring of 2007, I came upon a group of likeminded individuals -- web developers, designers, and generally enthusiastic people who wanted to change things up a bit in Philadelphia. Tired of the same old same old, you need to do things in this order, etc. While we ultimately all became great friends, this was also one of the first professional communities I had ever been a part of. Need design inspiration? Check. Wanna get that WordPress question answered? Check. And so on and so forth. I always found this group to be very welcoming and everyone had something to contribute. And if you didn't, you thought of something. That's how it worked.
It was this group that gave me the guts to co-organize the first BarCamp Philly in the fall of 2008. It was a very pivotal moment for me. Oh hey, turns out I like this community organizer thing. BarCamp Philly gave way to Refresh Philly which gave way to UX Book Club Philly and ultimately my largest project to date: TEDxPhilly. Each project had different requirements, different community overlaps, different stresses and rewards.
One of the best thing to come out of TEDxPhilly from my perspective was that it was the most diverse audience I had ever created an event for. Young, old, professional, student, musician, artist, scientist, nonprofit, corporate, techie, luddite, the list goes on. The TED brand is very powerful and draws people out the of the woodwork. That's why I wanted to bring it to Philadelphia -- to help people discover new people and projects and get inspired again!
So what was the message I wanted to leave with these students? It was simple and this is how I put it:
Find community
Create community
Have fun (the most important thing)
Pass it onWhen asked, "how do you find community?" I said this… Just show up. That's the first step. Inevitably there's going to be someone else there who is also there for the first time, and better yet, someone that's there to welcome you and learn more about you and your interests.
Maybe you ultimately decide you want to start your own community project -- figure out how to do it, either dive right in, or ask someone you look up to how they went about it. Learn from your mistakes, and share them with others.
Make things happen. Don't complain, just do. We're all in this together.
VHS (2005) - David Herbert
Foam, plexiglas, latex paint 2 x 4 x 8 feet
Originally via pietmondriaan
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All of our data journalism in one spreadsheet
Want to see all of the data we have reported? Here's all the data we've covered over the last two years, that's almost 600 spreadsheets linked from one spreadsheet
• Get the dataIt's been two years since The Guardian datablog began. That's two years of extracting key facts from the big news stories and publishing them in machine-readable format so talented creative people can make beautiful displays. But what stories and data have we picked over these years?
There are two ways you can explore the data we've covered. One way is through our A to Z of data, which lists all our blog posts in alphabetical order. Now we have a second way to explore the rich data set: we have all the data we have used in a spreadsheet.
From this spreadsheet you can see that in two years we have handled huge data sets. For example the game changing Wikileaks: from the Iraq and Afghanistan war files to the US embassy cables. Through this Wikileaks-fueled data journalism we have been able to convey the reality of war and international diplomacy like never before.
The British government have been publishing more detailed spending data than any of their predecessors, and this has not escaped our attention. We received all central government spending over £25,000 and we bravely interpreted a sample of budgeting data from the COINS database.
We've worked closely with the Office for National Statistics and a range of government departments to show Britain's health, education, employment and other key statistics in great detail, right down to ward level in many cases.
We do not shy away from the global issues, covering a range of international issues as they happen, and we keep a handle on global statistics in our World government data store.
Then there are the posts on movies, Desert Island discs, crop circles and Dr Who villains that don't seem fit into any obvious category.
Here's all the data. We'll update this monthly to give you all the data we have. Please tell us what you would like to see in future and, dare I ask, what you would not like to see.Data summary
Download the data
• DATA: download the full spreadsheet
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Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian
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Waka Flocka Flame's Accidental Ask a Dude Session
by Edith Zimmerman
Hairpin pal Carrie Battan noticed that rapper Waka Flocka Flame has been giving out advice on Twitter this morning. Waka, what do you think of tattoos on a woman?
What are your thoughts about meeting someone on Twitter?
Can a relationship develop out of a one-night stand?
Please elaborate on that later, but in the meantime what can I do to be in a relationship with you?
And what do you look for in a woman?
1 Comments
Kindle users form e-book “Lending Club” on Facebook
Kindle users form e-book “Lending Club” on Facebook:“Just days after Amazon launched the ability to “lend” Kindle e-books to other users, the first “Kindle Lending Club” is already developing a strong userbase of people looking to swap e-books with others”I like where this is heading. The Kindle has always been a “useful” device but I always wondered if it would ever enable actual community. I can’t wait to see how this develops.
Oh for the Love of Pete!
So do you remember The Uniform Project? Woman wears the same dress every day for a year, raises money for charity, great idea, yadda yadda.
Even cooler, she made a pattern for the dress, and is selling the pattern ... except: by buying the pattern (for $25, including $2 extra to her charity) you agree to this wackaloon EULA:
I acknowledge that the designs and patterns (the "Dress Patterns") offered for sale on this website are protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights controlled by Uniform Project. I agree that I may use the Dress Patterns only for personal, non-commercial purposes. For the purpose of clarity, I shall not use any item of clothing created through use of the Dress Patterns (the "Dress") in any commercial advertising, film, television, print or online media, nor shall any Dress be sold to third parties without the prior written consent of Uniform Project. For the avoidance of doubt, no prior written consent shall be required to post photos or videos of any Dress on a non-commercial website.
There are so many things wrong with this. Where to start?
-- First, this agreement would prohibit you from donating a dress to Goodwill or selling it at a yard sale. And IANAL, but I think this is permitted under the right of first sale: in other words, once you buy something, especially a physical object, it is your right to sell it as you choose.
-- It's pretty standard for commercial sewing patterns (Vogue, etc.) to say you can't use the pattern to make garments commercially, but -- you don't want to anyway. But saying you can't wear the dress on TV? Why not? Do they seriously think that if someone shows up wearing this dress in, say, a Mentos commercial it infringes their trademark? What if you are photographed for a "man on the street" segment? (And the founder of the project works in advertising, or did, which makes this all the more head-scratchy.)
-- Again, IANAL, but as far as I know, you cannot copyright a fashion design in the US (in fact, Diane Von Furstenberg has been trying to change that for years, in part to protect her iconic wrap dress) but only the printed pattern (or you can trademark a logo, which is part of the reason why huge logos are so prevalent these days). (And I'm not an expert in using the USPTO site, but I didn't even see a trademark registered for the Uniform Project, under that name.)
-- And what makes something a non-commercial website? I run ads, is this site commercial? (That's why there's no picture of the dress or pattern here, although I think their restriction makes no sense.) What about someone who makes butter-and-egg money from Amazon affiliate links? Who gets free products for review?
Does anyone (perhaps someone who is a lawyer) know why buying a dress pattern would be saddled with such a restrictive agreement? I can't imagine the possible "tort" that would necessitate this kind of heavy-handed protection. Does someone wearing this dress in an ad really injure the Uniform Project in a substantive way?
Needless to say, they lost my business.
January 26, 2011
In Praise of Brian Libby
Even with thin sourcing and scrubbed of the orientalism and oversexualized mythologies, Cleopatra's life story is incredible. The last quarter of the book dedicated to Rome's war on Egypt and Cleopatra's eventual suicide is taut storytelling, not just "classicism for amateurs." via hello.typepad.com On my Facebook "wall" Brian Libby asks: Does your review mention "Walk Like An Egyptian"? It does not, Brian, but I love how you use Goodreads:
Building Python with LLVM 2.8 (and why I still love the project)
With Python 3.2 due out in less than three weeks and LLVM 2.8 being the latest release of LLVM, I figure I will not be the only person in the world building Python with LLVM in the near future (let alone building other releases like Python 3.1.3 or Python 2.7.1 with LLVM 2.8). So, to simplify the lives of those that do, I just wanted to point out issue 10238 which notes that to build ctypes you should use the-no-integrated-ascompiler flag (I have it set in my CFLAGS environment variable). Do note that LLVM 2.9 has a fix already and this issue only affects the ctypes module. I will see if I can't find some autoconf expert to write up a patch for Python 3.2 to auto-detect LLVM 2.8 and add the flag (if you are such an expert please submit a patch!).
But honestly I don't feel that put out by this issue. When I reported the bug to LLVM they responded within an hour that it had been fixed for LLVM 2.9 and what the fix was. This just continues my wonderful experience interacting with the LLVM project.
But beyond that I appreciate all the tools they provide. For instance, I just ran the Clang static analyzer over Python 3.2rc1 (see issue 8914). The HTML output is really slick! And it honestly was not difficult to do thanks to the command-line tool they provide to work with configure/make files. And even during normal compilation, the warnings that are outputted by clang are so much nicer than those from gcc that I honestly could not imagine going back to it for C/C++ compilation. I (continue) to highly recommend LLVM and clang for any C-related development.
In Praise of the Book Cleopatra
Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Stacy Schiff has crafted, somehow, a new angle on one of the world's oldest great stories. By focusing on the first degree sources we have from the period (mostly from Roman scholars & historians, since Alexandria was destroyed by earthquakes), Schiff at once claims expertise but only in a context that is also accessible to the reader. At times Schiff's explanation of the sources and the perceived motivations of their authors feels plodding, but the framing of these sources is essential to Schiff's project. Some classicists (most significantly Mary Beard in the New York Review of Books) have been catty about the book, passing it off as lightweight or finding nits in the text. This makes me only want to love it more.
Even with thin sourcing and scrubbed of the orientalism and oversexualized mythologies, Cleopatra's life story is incredible. The last quarter of the book dedicated to Rome's war on Egypt and Cleopatra's eventual suicide is taut storytelling, not just "classicism for amateurs."
Here's one of my favorite passages from the book, about a fishing trip that Cleopatra and Antony took during a time of relative peace and prosperity in their lives.Appian has Antony exclusively in the company of Cleopatra, “to whom his sojourn in Alexandria was wholly devoted.” He sees in her a poor influence. Antony “was often disarmed by Cleopatra, subdued by her spells, and persuaded to drop from his hands great undertakings and necessary campaigns, only to roam about and play with her on the sea-shores.” More likely the opposite was true. And while Cleopatra focused exclusively and intently on her guest, she did so without sacrificing her competitive spirit, her sense of humor, or her agenda. Here are the two on an Alexandrian afternoon, relaxing on the river or on Lake Mareotis in a fishing boat, surrounded by attendants. Mark Antony is frustrated. He commands whole armies but on this occasion somehow cannot coax a single fish from the teeming, famously fertile Egyptian waters. He is all the more mortified as Cleopatra stands beside him. Romance or no, to prove so incompetent in her presence is a torture. Antony does what any self-respecting angler would: Secretly he orders his servants to dive into the water and fasten a series of precaught fish to his hook. One after another he reels these catches in, a little too triumphantly, a little too regularly; he is an impulsive man with something to prove, never particularly good at limits. Cleopatra rarely misses a trick and does not miss this one. She feigns admiration. Her lover is a most dexterous man! Later that afternoon she sings his praises to her friends, whom she invites to witness his prowess for themselves.
A great fleet accordingly heads out the following day. At its outset Cleopatra issues a few furtive orders of her own. Antony puts out his line, to instantaneous results. He senses a great weight and reels in his catch, to peals of laughter: From the Nile he extracts a salted, imported Black Sea herring. She is no scold, having instead mastered that formula for which every parent, coach, and chief executive searches: She has ambition, and no trouble encouraging the same in others. “Leave the fishing rod, General, to us,” Cleopatra admonishes, before the assembled company. “Your prey,” she reminds Antony, “are cities, kingdoms, and continents.”Hello, TypePad readers get an extra "blogger's cut" paragraph, omitted from the original Goodreads review! Here it is:
Despite the deafening buzz of critics & blogs around Schiff's "new" approach to history (which was really, simply: "don't include lies or fiction in your narrative") the book still managed to exceed the expectations of everyone I know who has read it. The book is dense, but it's not a book that an armchair thinker like me would be afraid to talk about with a real intellectual; it reads like an engaging conversation. If you read the fishing story superficially, it's funny, the kind of fishing hi-jinx that could just as well happen today as in first century BC. In fact, Antony's actions are those of "any self-respecting angler," no time period necessary. Schiff uses this story to remind us of the identity of our source (the historian Appian, whose surviving narratives are basically anti-Egyptian tabloids), and our setting, Lake Mareotis. The story also reminds us of Cleopatra's royal stature and lineage. She summons a "great fleet" for a day of fishing and outflanks one of the great generals in history — not to embarrass him, but to remind him of his place in the world (and of course, of hers). Schiff also finishes the joke deftly, as Antony "extracts a salted, imported Black Sea herring" from the lake, the surrounding crowd must have been able to recognize the fish (and the joke) immediately. Today, most people couldn't identify on sight the fish that ends up on their plate.
Cut Copy – "Need You Now"
by Liz Colville0 Comments
Cut Copy has always been good: the Melbourne group's second album in particular, 2008's In Ghost Colours, is full of dizzying, sad, and smart electro-pop, but they've just outdone themselves with "Need You Now," a soaring number with a long, LCD Soundsystem-like build-up, pretty melody, and memorable, sweet refrain. It's deeply '80s, and epic in the way this album's cover is epic. The album, Zonoscope, comes out February 8 on Modular. [Via]
New Order - The "Blue Monday" Sunkist Advert
Film wideo w YouTube został przeze mnie dodany do ulubionych: At some point in the mid 80s, Bernard Sumner was asked by an American soda company to rework the lyrics of Blue Monday in order to promote the drink Sunkist. He was given 200,000 dollars for doing it.
david chang's ipad app
David Chang is doing a quarterly iPad app (and print journal), where each issue will go deep into a single dish. "The ramen app will include a tour of a ramen factory in Japan; an interview with Allan Benton, the Tennessee smokehouse master whose bacon is used in the broth; a consultation with Harvard food scientists about Mr. Chang’s efforts to make a pork-based variant of dashi; a talk by Harold McGee (green-screened into outer space) on hot broth’s effects on noodles; and a scrollable time line tracing the rise of ramen in Japan over the last century. There will also be appearances by Wylie Dufresne, Charlie Rose and Anthony Bourdain, and plenty of cooking demonstrations." More like this, please. (Literally.)
How Lives End
by Stephen Whitlock
If you’re reading this, Mom — and I’m sure that you are — I hope that you’re proud of your boy. I could have been a Middle Eastern extra on “24.” And way ahead. But when the I.T. guy came and wiped me out — everything: me, just gone — I remember trying not to think about how easily you can be erased. “Exactly what you need,” he said. Then we strapped the kayaks to the roof of the car, got in and sat for a long time, heater blasting, weighing our options. As I watched the improvised refugee camp shrink in the rearview mirror, I noticed one of the tents had the Pakistani flag hoisted on the tent pole.
I have no idea how, but I’ll just take it one day at a time. It’s the lifetime that counts. You really wish it would work. And yet it might turn out to be the best job I’ve ever had. Meanwhile, I watched for other sangak lovers who, unlike dinosaurs, were still roaming around looking for an opportunity. To our right, another herd moved up the hill toward us. Unwilling to waste a second, I raced up to the house and phoned the sanctuary.
We’d both been on the road through Oak Hill, W.Va., yet for some reason, I got to keep going. I like to think of it not so much as a lack of carefulness as a wish to move forward. All of which, it now seems to me, was inevitable, or at the very least, predictable and probably foretold. I didn’t mention my son’s remark to my parents because it seemed emotionally manipulative, but I have it in my back pocket just in case. But he was already gone, disappeared into the crowd. And that is how I felt.
I’ve been so afraid that being a mother is causing my brain to dissolve, but this morning it knew I needed to be put to sleep in order to wake up. Drunk or sober, I am absurd. And while all this is happening, you find yourself thinking more and more about something else that could have: you could have crashed and killed someone, including yourself.
“I thought your hair looked longer,” she said, and dove into her éclair au chocolat. Infinite points for this, I thought. “You're O.K. to stop humming now." With gratitude, we eat. My word, imagine to be that age, in love and alive. She said the chairs were in their bedroom. "Let's go back inside." I tipped her well. That she never forgot. And she was smiling.
“I swam a hundred miles to get home,” he said. “It’s my leg.” What a difference, I couldn’t help marveling, one letter can make. He went to bed still musing. Of how all this came about. But regarding the mystery of what he discovered in his study of the cosmos, the prison library was completely silent. The guy looked me up and down and in front of everyone said, “No thanks, I’ll take the bus.” And they did.
Before flying home, I went to a fancy drugstore and bought a basic makeup kit — a compact, mascara, lipstick, Issey Miyake perfume in a tall conical bottle — in anticipation of having to compete with a transsexual sibling. It’s a loving relationship, Dave’s and mine, but one in which one partner, without testicles, will always scream at the other, who has them, for no apparent reason. And so I went inside the hotel to take a nap.
I stared at the small high window, through which I could see nothing but clouds. I should probably jot it down somewhere.
Stephen Whitlock is a freelance writer who lives in Stockholm and New York. He has written for the New York Times, Financial Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure and Wallpaper, among others.Photo by takomabibelot, from Flickr.
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That’s some good blogging, friend.
Bill Keller Tells All About Julian Assange
by Choire Sicha0 Comments
Times executive editor Bill Keller weighs in, in full, on the paper's relationship with Julian Assange—such as it is, as he describes Assange as "arrogant, thin-skinned, conspiratorial and oddly credulous." The relationship, well! Assange was pissed that the Times wouldn't throw a link to the Wikileaks website, and then he got too big for his britches. Oh, and then he started wearing "skinny suits." Unfortunately, Keller reads the Swedish sex charges against Assange rather glossily to my taste: "Two Swedish women filed police complaints claiming that Assange insisted on having sex without a condom; Sweden’s strict laws on nonconsensual sex categorize such behavior as rape." That is not really how I would describe their testimony. In any event, the Times makes much of its willingness to choose and redact Wikileaks data that might embarrass the government or private individuals who provided information. They agreed to not publish things "like a cable describing an intelligence-sharing program that took years to arrange and might be lost if exposed." Gosh that is intriguing! I sure would like to know more. Keller also makes an excellent case against the many popular stupid charges against the Times: "The journalists at The Times have a large and personal stake in the country’s security. We live and work in a city that has been tragically marked as a favorite terrorist target…. Moreover, The Times has nine staff correspondents assigned to the two wars still being waged in the wake of that attack, plus a rotating cast of photographers, visiting writers and scores of local stringers and support staff."
How to Swear If You Need to Use Words That Are at Least Six Letters Long
by Edith Zimmerman
Hello my name is Ejaculation Dickface Idiot Tranny Hellhole, and it is a pleasure to meet you. (More here.)
[Via]
13 Comments
What Are Your 'Dollar Menu' Favorites?
[Photo: Robyn Lee]
One dollar doesn't buy you much anymore. (I don't even put dollar bills in my wallet these days; I just stuff them in my pocket with the quarters and dimes.) Inflation has worked its magic, to the point where a dollar doesn't buy you the burgers it used to. Still, there are good deals to be found on various dollar menus.
John's Dollar Menu Favorites
For my money, the place to go value-wise is Wendy's. Their $0.99 Everyday Value Menu features some of the strongest options; in the one-dollar burger department, theirs is the best. The Doublestack, effectively a double junior hamburger with cheese, costs only $0.99. I've always found their meat ends up tasting much better than either BK or McDonald's, and when you're talking about classic toppings only (ketchup, mustard, cheese, pickles), burger quality really counts. It's fresh grilled meat (a little saltier than the competition) and it's delicious.
You can also order a small Frosty for a dollar—easily my favorite fast-food shake. It's not quite a milkshake, not quite soft-serve, and tastes great on French Fries. The Spicy Chicken Nuggets cost under a buck, too, with the same spice as the Spicy Chicken Sandwich; I've also found that the inside of these nuggets looks a little more like white meat than whatever the McNuggets are made out of. (I recommend eating them without sauce; Wendy's barbeque sauce tastes way too sweet.)
Though McDonald's Dollar Menu isn't what it used to be, you can still get two Apple Pies for $1—and more often than not, they're flaky and hot. We all know the sugar dusted crust and the apple-cinnamon gel interior. I don't want to think about what's actually in it, but if you can stand the sweet, it's delicious.
Taco Bell's Beefy Crunch Burrito may not have impressed me in all ways, but it thoroughly impressed me with its value. For $1.06 after tax, I chomped into a full burrito; no thin soft taco was this.
Though Burger King has seemed recently like it's having an existential crisis—jalapeño burgers?—I'd be happy if they just rebranded themselves "Fry King" and focus on what they do best.
What About Yours?
Any other dollar-menu items you guys love? What about at some of the regional chains?
The first rule of Fight Club, etc. etc.
It's been awhile since I've had a chance to write a corp dev centric post but couldn't keep quiet after reading this TechCrunch tidbit:
On his Diggnation web show this week, Digg founder Kevin Rose said that Yahoo contacted Digg to see if the company would be interested in taking over Delicious prior to when an internal slide leaked indicating Yahoo wanted to get rid if it and before the December layoffs (which would put the time period at early December/late November).
Kevin, you know I love you but you won't get those calls anymore if you keep announcing that you're getting those calls! This is why journalists and entertainers make crappy deal people.
Photo: Citi Field covered in snow
Well, this is depressing…
(Photo from Adam Rubin, at Citi Field for Chin-lung Hu press conference)
Updated at 12:12 pm:
To see video of it snowing at Citi Field, go to this clip at MLB.com.
Chicago: Choose Thin Crust at Suparossa
Serious Eats Chicago contributor Daniel Zemans checks in with another piece of intel on the Windy City pizza scene. --The Mgmt.
[Photographs: Daniel Zemans]
Suparossa
4256 N. Central Avenue, Chicago, IL 60634 (map); 773-736-5828; suparossawoodridge.com
Pizza Style: Stuffed and Chicago thin crust
The Skinny: Skip the stuffed pizza and order a sausage-topped thin crust pie.
Price: 12" stuffed vegetarian pizza is $18.95; 12" thin crust with sausage is $11.20The weather in Naples rarely gets below 40 degrees—Neapolitans can get through the winter with delicate pizza, individually sized and light as air. But the wind chill in Chicago was in single digits and I needed a more weather-appropriate pie. The answer: Suparossa's stuffed pizza, which weighs in at 5.7 pounds.
As far as I can tell, Suparossa is the oldest Chicago-area purveyor of stuffed pizza still operating under its original ownership. It started off as a Nancy's franchise but (as I explained in myNancy's review last year), after a business dispute escalated into violence, the companies went their separate ways. Eating at Suparossa makes it clear that more than just the business relationship was severed; the pizzas are significantly different.
The sauce at Suparossa is quite sweet, which is surprising given that it is located on the far north side of the city (hypersweet sauces are mostly a South Side phenomenon, for example, at Aurelio's.) The sauce was thick and rich, but lacking bright tomato tang.
The spinach and mushrooms on the stuffed pizza weren't enough to stand up to copious quantities of sweet sauce. Even the multiple pounds of cheese couldn't balance it out. The crust had a pleasant texture and a bit of extra crispness, but it was not enough to save this pie.
The thin crust pizza that I ordered as an afterthought actually stole the show. The excellent housemade sausage topping was absolutely loaded with fennel. It was also a question of balance; on the thin crust pie, the sweet sauce was more sparingly applied, and there was enough pungent sausage to bring the flavors into balance.
At many Chicago thin crust pizzerias, the crust is a machine-rolled afterthought. I'm not going to tell you the crust at Suparossa is amazing, but it's definitely above average for the style. The end crust is incredibly crisp, complementing the flavorful and chewy sausage.
The stuffed pizza at Suparossa is unquestionably hefty enough to get a large family through a cold Chicago day, but only fans of super-sweet sauce will really be pleased. Suparossa's thin crust pizza, on the other, hand, allows for some balance—on a cold day, maybe you should just order two.
MoMA acquires digital typefaces; what does that mean?
As you might have heard, MoMA recently acquired 23 typefaces for its Architecture and Design collection. I was curious about how such an acquisition works, so I sent a quick email to Jonathan Hoefler, one of the principals at Hoefler & Frere-Jones, a New York City type foundry that contributed four typefaces to the MoMA.
Kottke: Three of the four H&FJ typefaces acquired by MoMA are available for purchase on your web site. Did they just put in their credit card info and voila? Or was there a little more to it?
Hoefler: MoMA's adopting the fonts for their collection was much more complex than buying a copy online (and not only because Retina, one of our four, isn't available online.) I should start by stating that you can never actually "buy fonts" online: what one can buy are licenses, and the End-User License that surrounds a typeface does not extend the kinds of rights that are necessary to enshrine a typeface in a museum's permanent collection. The good news is that H&FJ has become as good at crafting licenses as we have at creating typefaces, an unavoidable reality in a world where fonts can be deployed in unimaginable ways. This was a fun project for our legal department.
It was actually a fascinating conversation with MoMA, as we each worked to imagine how this bequest could be useful to the museum for eternity. What might it mean when the last computer capable of recognizing OpenType is gone? What will it mean when computers as we know them are gone? How does one establish the insurance value of a typeface: not its price, but the cost of maintaining it in working order? Digital artworks are prone to different kinds of damage than physical ones, but obsolescence is no less damaging to a typeface than earthquakes and floods to a painting. On the business side there are presumably insurance underwriters who can bring complex actuarial tables to bear on the issue, but I think it's an even more provocative issue for conservators. 472 years after its completion, the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel underwent a restoration that scholars still find controversial. What might it mean for someone to freshen up our typefaces in AD 2483?
--Thanks, Jonathan.
Tags: art Hoefler and Frere-Jones Jonathan Hoefler MoMA museums typography
Help Martin Amis Coolhunt Brooklyn
by Alex BalkHey, you guys, anyone know where the hip stuff in Brooklyn goes down? You know, stuff with some edge, with that authentic Kings County feel to it. Like, I hear there's a flea market? And all the bars serve bacon cocktails? Something something pickling? Where's all that action at? Oh, no, it's not for me: It's Marty Amis wants to know. @ 9:30 am
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Content, context and code: verifying information online
When the telephone first entered the newsroom journalists were sceptical. “How can we be sure that the person at the other end is who they say they are?” The question seems odd now, because we have become so used to phone technology that we barely think of it as technology at all – and there are a range of techniques we use, almost unconsciously, to verify what the person on the other end of the phone is saying, from their tone of voice, to the number they are ringing from, and the information they are providing.
Dealing with online sources is no different. How do you know the source is telling the truth? You’re a journalist, for god’s sake: it’s your job to find out.
In many ways the internet gives us extra tools to verify information – certainly more than the phone ever did. The apparent ‘facelessness’ of the medium is misleading: every piece of information, and every person, leaves a trail of data that you can use to build a picture of its reliability.
The following is a three-level approach to verification: starting with the content itself, moving on to the context surrounding it; and finishing with the technical information underlying it. Most of the techniques outlined take very little time at all but the key thing is to look for warning signs and follow those up.
Level 1: Content
At its most basic level, alarm bells should ring if the information you’re looking at is simply too good to be true. The disgruntled sacked employee who makes lights up the exterior of Harrods with a farewell message fits this category. Ask yourself: would this really happen? And if so, who else would have known about it?
If the information is coming through social media you have to ask: is this bait? Jan Moir’s Twitter ‘apology’ is one good example – lending itself to easy retweeting. Peter Serafinowicz’s ‘deleted’ offensive joke is another. So are various Facebook rumours, such as paedophiles who want you to change your profile picture, or party gatecrashers, and the occasional protesting Facebook group. And forum rumours (sometimes placed intentionally to expose journalists who plagiarise without giving their source). And press releases.
Embarrassing emails that go viral can turn out to be PR tricks. Video diaries can be revealed as new forms of narrative. Spectacular video footage can turn out to be more PR (by the way, read through that thread to see how it is infiltrated by a PR person but their identity is challenged). Check the facts, and see what other people have uncovered. And click on all of these links: the more hoaxes you are familiar with, the more likely alarm bells are going to ring at the right time.
The frequency and recency of information will give you a clue as to its veracity: the more recent the information, the more up to date it is likely to be (although it may be based on out of date information – trace it back to its source). And the more frequently a source is updated (over a long period of time), the less likely it is to come from an opportunistic hoaxer. You can get browser bookmarklets that tell you when a webpage was last updated (as well as many other pieces of information).
For images look for cloning and airbrushing. Cloning is the replication and repetition of small areas of a photograph to, for instance, make a crowd look bigger by duplicating faces; make an air attack look more dramatic by adding extra plumes of smoke, or to make an operations room look more active by filling blank screens.
Airbrushing is the removal of details – the Harrods image mentioned above was most likely created in this way, by removing lights so that those remaining spelled out the message. Also worth watching for are composite or staged images, such as the various Google Street View hoaxes.
This article suggests that inconsistent lighting, eye shapes and light reflections within eyes are all good clues to look for as well.
Finally does the style and personality of the information match the supposed source? Do they write in the same tone? Do they make spelling mistakes?
Level 2: Context
Social media lends itself particularly well to verification because, in our activity in social networks, we effectively verify each other. If your information comes from a social network account, ask yourself some of these questions:
How long has the account existed? If it’s only existed since a relevant story broke (e.g. Jan Moir’s column; an earthquake where someone claims to be a witness) then it’s likely to be opportunistic.
Who did the person first ‘follow’ or ‘friend’? These should be personal contacts, or fit the type of person you’re dealing with. If their first follow is ReadWriteWeb, then it may be that you’re not actually dealing with a Daily Mail columnist.
Who first followed them? Likewise, it should be their friends and colleagues.
Who has spoken to them online? Ditto.
Who has spoken about them? Here you may find friends and colleagues, but also people who have rumbled them. But don’t take anyone else’s word for their existence unless you can verify them too.
Can you correlate this account with others? The Firefox extension Identify is a useful tool here: it suggests related social network accounts which you can then try to cross-reference. For companies the Chrome extension Polaris Insights does something similar for companies.
For Twitter you might also try other tools including PeerIndex and Klout, both of which use algorithms to give extra information on the ‘human-ness’ and content of particular accounts.
Finally, of course, you should try to speak to the person. Phone their office or their employer and confirm whether they do indeed have the account in question.
For websites the checks are broadly similar. On Google you can use the advanced search facility to look for other pages that link to the one you’re checking. These might include other website that have rumbled the hoax before you – or are bragging about it.
Similarly look what links the webpage contains to other sites: does this fit what you would expect? The browser bookmarklets mentioned above will collate these for you. At this point we’re starting to move onto the third level…
Level 3: Code
First, look at the website address. If it is purporting to be a governmental website it should end in .gov, .gov.uk etc. Health websites may end in .nhs, police in .police, defence in .mod and so on. Academic websites should end in .ac.uk or .edu but this is no guarantee: less reputable ‘establishments’ have managed to obtain web addresses with these extensions. And of course .com addresses offer no guarantees.
Murray Dick gives more advice on the other elements of a web address, and recommends using an open directory to check your searches, as these are maintained by people, not computers, are less likely to contain hoax websites.
Use a Whois service to find out who the web address is registered to. This isn’t immune to fakery but the hoaxer may not have thought about it, and if the details are hidden you may wonder why. Try variations of the domain – when the viral ‘Labservative’ campaign first began it was not clear who was behind it, and I started by looking at Whois details – the company had kept their details private for the .com address, but they had forgotten to do so for the .co.uk variation. I then called up the company and tried to call their bluff by asking who was managing the campaign.
Archives and caches can be useful to compare the latest version of a webpage with older versions. Conducting a relevant Google search and clicking on ‘cache’ next to the relevant result can show up recent changes. The Internet Archive‘s Wayback Machine (recently revamped) can give you snapshots going further back. On Wikipedia and other wiki-based sources, look for ‘history’ and ‘discussion’ links where you can see what changes have been made and the discussions about those.
Finally, right-click on the page and view the source code. Occasionally hoaxers intentionally leave clues here, but you can also find other clues such as the author, date, location, and technologies used.
Any other techniques?
Those are just the techniques and tools that I can call to mind but I’m sure there are others I’m not aware of. Any you can suggest?
January 25, 2011
A Thing About Coffee
by Edith Zimmerman
Ladies, keep drinking that coffee:
women, under the influence of caffeine, could solve puzzles 100 seconds faster than their caffeinated male counterparts
Related: Sometimes the day itself is the puzzle, and even though there aren't any guys around trying to beat you at it, you're losing, to yourself.
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Blog Really Wants Condoleezza Rice to Get Married
by Liz Colville2 Comments
"Why Condoleezza Rice Is a Great Catch" is a slideshow currently on MSN's BLTWY blog, and appears to be part of Condi's suggestively timed recent resurgence in the media — last week, for instance, she did a long and painful interview on Larry King replacement Piers Morgan's CNN show. The slideshow is actually derived largely from the CNN interview, and reminds us that Condi is really into football, knows how to cook, has style, is a trailblazer, likes working out, has "a way with words," is bringing in good money as a Stanford professor, and knows how to "rock out" because she is a classically trained pianist and was once in a band. But aside from the boobosity of mentioning some of those facts in relation to Condi's catchability, who is this article for? Could any of the people who read this article possibly be eligible bachelors or bachelorettes for Condi? Is Condi just supposed to go for any old MSN-blog-reading fool? (Thanks for the link, Meredith!)
Nabokov Butterfly Theory Is Vindicated
Vladimir Nabokov studied butterflies, and he came up with a sweeping hypothesis that, 65 years later, DNA analysis has proven correct.
Links for 2011-01-25
This Could Be Google’s Design Moment
Last week’s news that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence led many people to wonder whether the company truly has a vision that will sustain it in his absence. I happen to think that in the short term, at least, Apple will be just fine, but it’s interesting to note that implicit in this worry is whether Apple’s singular attention to good design will continue to prosper. Which is to say, perhaps the paramount anxiety surrounding Jobs’ leave — and his inevitable departure, whenever that is — is whether it represents the point at which Apple's ability to design wonderful products went on the decline.
It’s true that when visionaries leave a company, a lot can go wrong, though of course right now it’s impossible to know for sure what will happen. But by the same token, major shifts in leadership are also an opportunity for a company’s design acumen to improve.
This is what I’m hoping happens over at Google where, as also reported last week, Eric Schmidt is handing over the reins to co-founder Larry Page. Page is an engineer, of course, and quite private, so I have no particular insight as to whether he has any meaningful appreciation of design. But as a founder he has a unique power to influence the priorities at his company, and as the new CEO he has a unique opportunity to imbue his organization with a new design sensibility. If he wants to.
And hopefully he does. Few companies seem to understand the concept of design so cannily and yet so incompletely as Google does. It’s abundantly evident that they pay exceedingly close attention to usability and they slave over getting that right. And yet the total, intangible effect of their hard work is little more than the sum of its highly efficient parts. Google products are rich with design intelligence, but they also suffer from a paucity of design inspiration. They could be so much more than they are — they could be surprising, witty, fun and, yes, they could be truly beautiful. (Read former Google designer Doug Bowman’s notes on this for added perspective.)
We tend to think that design is a function of good process, well-structured organizations, and copious time and budgetary resources. But design is just as much a function of leadership. Who’s in the top seat matters very much to whether a company can design well. If the leader cares passionately about producing amazingly well-designed products, then you can get a string of indelible successes that capture the popular imagination like we’ve seen at Apple for the past decade-plus. We haven’t seen that kind of result from Google during that same span of time, though. Beyond the iconic minimalism of the original Google home page, not one of their subsequent products has truly inspired us. I hope that Larry Page realizes that, with the resources and design talent he probably already employs, there’s no reason that has to continue to be the case.
Michael Lopp Interviews Marco Arment
Marco Arment, on Instapaper’s bookmarklet:
The way it does this is ridiculous: instead of calling a simple GET request to save the page, since an entire page’s contents would quickly overrun any URL-length limits in the stack, it injects a FORM with a POST action and populates a hidden value with the page contents.
But form-data requests from browsers aren’t Gzip-compressed, so the resulting data is huge and needs to be sent over people’s (often slow, often mobile) upstream connections. So I found an open-source DEFLATE implementation in Javascript — really — and the bookmarklet compresses the page data right there in the browser before sending it.
BOB.
Please print out and post all over your local city. He must be found!
Rich Pellegrino's Portraits of Marty and Doc
I don’t think you could have a better portrait of Doc and Marty. It captures them perfectly and the colors scream 80s. If you’re a fellow Back to the Future fan, I highly recommend Nerduo’s new blog and the shirts they’re selling at 1.21jiggawatts.com. I’m not even sure I like the shirts, but I would buy them solely because of the brilliant domain name.
Permalink: http://www.capndesign.com/archives/2011/01/rich_pellegrinos_portraits_of_marty_and_.php
Hollywood’s Royal Stammer
Martin Filler
Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in The King's Speech
There is nothing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences loves more than movies about people with physical or mental disabilities (or addictions). There have been a host of such Oscar-winning best-pictures, from The Lost Weekend (1945) to A Beautiful Mind (2001), and best-acting awards, from Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948) to Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted (1999).
If the afflicted protagonist also happens to be royal—as in The Madness of King George (1994)—so much the better, for a suffering crowned head bestows an extra touch of class on Hollywood’s uplifting formula of brave triumph over cruel adversity. Not surprisingly, this year’s leading contender for Oscar glory is Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, which was nominated Tuesday for a dozen Academy Awards, more than any other film, including best picture, director, original screenplay, cinematography, editing, art direction, costume design, original score, sound mixing, and acting accolades for its three principal players.
This entertaining if only fitfully authentic docudrama focuses on the struggle of King George VI (Colin Firth) to correct his debilitating stammer with the help of an Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), climactically for a crucial radio address to the nation and empire when Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939. The fifty-year-old Firth, who has been garnering rave reviews and prizes for this role (including Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice awards and an Oscar nomination for best actor) may no longer be the heartthrob Mr. Darcy, but he is still far too robust to evoke the slightly built, bony-faced nervous-wreck George.
Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter in The King's Speech
However, it was inspired casting to give the part of his plump, petite no-necked consort, Elizabeth—the future Queen Mother—to the similarly configured Helena Bonham Carter, and to dress her in hilariously accurate outfits (by Jenny Beavan) of just the confectionery sort that caused mocking Mitfords and gleeful Guinnesses to dub her late majesty “the Cake.” As was also the case in real life, Bonham Carter’s sparkly queen outshines Firth’s morose king. He gives a nearly one-note performance, a rare departure from his squelched-rage mode being the tender scene in which he tells a charming bedtime story to the prepubescent Princesses Elizabeth (the present queen) and Margaret. Rush, who has an easier time of it because he portrays someone no one knows, manages to look duly concerned and blinks a great deal, but both he and Firth are easily outclassed by the quietly dazzling Bonham Carter.
Especially good as George VI’s elder brother, Edward VIII—later the Duke of Windsor—is Guy Pearce, who perfectly captures his character’s heedless selfishness and slavish devotion to Wallis Simpson (Eve Best, who resembles the hearty Angelica Houston more than the brittle little American double-divorcee who inspired Edward to abdicate.) This racy sub-plot provides one of the movie’s few divergences from its excessively narrow focus on the one-on-one relationship between Logue and his patient, which makes The King’s Speech at times seem more like a stage play than a historical film.
The King’s Speech doesn’t dwell on George’s limited intellectual capacities, but many who dealt first-hand with him did. Lloyd George considered him “a nitwit,” the French premier Edouard Daladier opted for “moron,” and a postwar British ambassador to France, Oliver Harvey, deemed the man he represented “a fundamentally weak character and certainly a stupid one.”
Though The King’s Speech posits the title character’s verbal handicap as the source of his irascible behavior, some who knew him thought his nasty temper and tendency to hysteria were more free-ranging. Lord Mountbatten’s daughter Pamela dreaded dining with the king because he could become “extremely annoyed about some quite trivial thing and there would be a violent explosion.”
George’s hairtrigger tantrums—termed “gnashes” within the palace—were patiently endured by his wife, whose lifelong skill at ignoring any unpleasantness earned her the sobriquet of “the imperial ostrich.” Notably absent from The King’s Speech is dramatization of the historian John Grigg’s report that there were times when George “became so out of control that he actually struck his wife.”
David Seidler, who wrote the screenplay, clearly did his homework, and the script is rich with dialogue uttered by the royal prototypes. Though he takes artistic license with certain facts, most such liberties are acceptable. For example, a scene where the bullying George V hectors his tongue-tied second son about the proper use of microphones may be imaginary but makes a valid biographical point.
Much of the action (such as it is) takes place in a set designed by Judy Farr to represent Logue’s Harley Street consultation room, a cavernous, fancifully ornamented space recalling an abandoned Aesthetic Movement artist’s studio of a half-century earlier, suggesting remains of the high bohemian London milieu depicted so brilliantly in Mike Leigh’s Gilbert and Sullivan biopic, Topsy Turvy (1999). Adding to the aura of faded splendor is Danny Cohen’s low-wattage cinematography, which makes everything look as if it had been steeped in strong tea.
Though Seidler gets most small things right, several big things seem very wrong indeed. George VI (born Prince Albert of York) was called Bertie in family circles, but he most certainly was not addressed that way by Logue, as the film purports. A stickler for protocol, the hidebound king never would have countenanced such lèse-majesté.
And when Firth’s character watches a newsreel of Hitler ranting at a rally and avers that he cannot understand the dictator, credibility strains. George’s parents were both of Teutonic descent, his older brother spoke fluent German, and he also must have known the family’s Muttersprache despite any expedient contrary pretense.
This glaring lapse highlights Seidler’s tiptoeing around George VI and Elizabeth’s personal politics. Though The King’s Speech rightly depicts Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson as Nazi sympathizers, it ignores the extent to which his successor and his sister-in-law were appeasers. Upon Neville Chamberlain’s return from his infamous capitulation to Hitler at Munich in 1938, which ratified the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, the prime minister made a Buckingham Palace balcony appearance with the royal pair.
Several other historians have agreed with Stephen Runciman, who called that implicit public endorsement of appeasement “the biggest constitutional blunder that has been made by any sovereign this century.” And when Chamberlain was forced to resign after the Nazi onslaught of May 1940, the king and queen still preferred the appeaser Lord Halifax to Churchill as his replacement.
They distrusted Churchill because he sided with Edward during the abdication crisis, and warmed to him only slowly, won over by his adoration of the monarchy and shameless flattery. In The King’s Speech we find Churchill (played by a rumbling Timothy Spall) spouting off about the need for a wartime king who can speak for Britain and reassuring George that he himself had overcome a speech impediment.
AP Photo
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, V-E Day, May 8, 1945
Yet it was Churchill’s genius for patriotic oratory that played a pivotal role in his country’s desperate battle for survival against all odds, as Max Hastings reminds us in his stirring Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940–1945. Churchill’s lisp may not have been as inhibiting as George’s stammer, but the prime minister’s galvanizing broadcasts, not the king’s halting efforts, were what carried the day. As Piers Brendon and Philip Whitehead write, it was that uncommon commoner, rather than his sovereign who “became the embodiment of Britain’s fighting spirit.”
The 126th MLA Convention: Invite Us All In!
by Maria Bustillos
The eggheads do complain about their annual conference of eggheads put on by the Modern Language Association. So boring, one has been told, so exhausting. It's crass and awful! The annual dread among those who have ascended to the glories of tenure is flavored strongly with guilt, too, because the MLA is also famously thronged with newly-minted Ph.D.s vying for the fewer and fewer tenure-track jobs on offer. Guilt, nerves, pressure, careerism and the sad foundering of humanities scholarship in our times!
This year the conference was held in Los Angeles, so I popped over there in order to see for myself how terrible this powwow really is, and found it to be so not even terrible. I loved every moment.
The 134-page MLA conference program gives the details of 821 separate events, each one featuring several speakers. The depth and richness, the awareness and sensitivity that goes into this work is evident just from the program. Here is a tiny sampling of the avalanche on offer:
• "Before the Pilgrims Landed, We Were Here: Puritanism and the Early Black Press"
• "Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth: Father as Fallen Superhero"
• "Global Sex Tourism and Abject Masculinity in William T. Vollman and Michel Houellebecq"
• "What's Eating Slavoj Zizek?"
• Memory Writing from the Perspective of Neuroscience
• "Raperos, Boleros and Salseros: Reconsidering the Authentic in Cuban Popular Music since the Revolution"
• What the Digital Does to Reading
• "'What You See Is What You Get'?: Richard Pryor, Wattstax, and the Secret History of the Black Aesthetic"
• "'What Monster am I this Time?' Laird Cregar, Oscar Wilde, and the Genres of Queer Horror"(Really, what is eating Slavoj Zizek? I didn't make it over there to hear the paper, but I still want to know.)
All these people dedicated to knowing the truth about such a variety of subjects; it made me weirdly happy to consider all the positive and fascinating things our culture somehow manages to achieve—despite all the well-warranted kvetching.
There was a wonderful sizzle of electricity in the air that I could feel the whole time, from the moment I arrived in the massive, kooky hotel atrium with its "arty" giant hanging light fixtures. These eggheads are agreeably chic; not art- or fashion-victim chic, but just grownup chic. They dress up for this thing, apparently. There's a particular aesthetic, specific, sober, polyglot, involving muted colors, Italian leather, God in the details, etc. Haircuts that are flattering without being "interesting." The jacket maybe a tiny bit on the shrunken side; the suit with trousers cut a little narrower than what a banker would wear, with Beatle boots. (And glasses, obviously.) Once in a while, a really appalling op-art tie. I understand that the sleeping around, once rampant, has fallen off in recent years. Maybe it's too risky because nobody can afford to get into much job-related trouble these days.
The escalators were all a babel of Portuguese, English, French, Chinese, languages I didn't recognize, spoken by chattering colleagues who hadn't seen one another in ages, all excitedly catching up. It's really loud, and there were interesting snatches of conversation to be caught on your way up or down. 'La Clemenza di Tito'… "oh no, the Dragonspeak software is terrible, a catastrophe"; the word "shit" comes up far more often than I ever say it… "the Mignon wine bar, it's very good, but overpriced … often and often, the phrase "close reading," and the phrase "digital humanities."
I had breakfast with a friend, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College. She's happy and exhilarated too, but then she generally is; an elegant, funny, animated woman, slender and beautifully dressed, with luminous pale skin and dark hair in a pixie cut. Her schedule is brutal; whoever thinks these guys have it soft must not know any of them, I've often thought. To judge from her Twitter feed, KF is like Tom Hanks in that movie where he has to live in the airport for years on end. She's wangled her way out of the airport for the moment, but for this conference she has got four or five sixteen-hour days in a row, several sessions and a meeting or two each day, then drinks and/or dinner with colleagues to talk more business. She's on planning committees, in "informal working groups" for administrative projects such as deciding how the dissertation process might be altered to suit the demands of a changing profession. That alone is a decades-old struggle, stubbornly thorny and intractable. Today she will also preside over a discussion on the aforementioned Digital Humanities, her own field which is hot as a pistol.
We talked mostly about the role of public intellectuals: does it weaken or strengthen an academic to seek a broader audience? KF said it's important to her to bring her own work to the public, but adds that there is a danger in that effort professionally; you may be perceived as less serious, as having diluted your message, if you are talking to "everybody." But obviously there are people like Noam Chomsky and Jurgen Habermas who have completely transcended this problem.
Academic critics are not generally thought of as being in the same boat with journalists, or with popular critics of film or fiction, and yet both groups are charged with bringing the public… what? Let's take it as read that both are working in the service of a free, humanistic spirit, and that the Chinese wall that has grown up between public and academic criticism could be made more porous to the advantage of all.
Me: So then, is the value of having public intellectuals coming out of the academy more to the advantage of the academy, or to the public?
KF: I think it works both ways. There is an interested and engaged public that wants to talk about whatever issues it is that we are interested in, I mean particularly in literary studies, right? There are so many people who are out there who are really passionately invested in books, and in talking about those books, and in really thinking about what's going on in them, that we can contribute something to. It's important for us to make that contribution because if we're sort of closing ourselves off in the ivory tower mode of discussion amongst ourselves, well… it's extraordinarily selfish.
It's important for us to make this contribution, but it's equally important for us to hear what's coming back to us. In no small part higher education is in the straits that it is because a swath of the educated public, and of our elected government, has decided that education isn't important; that we're all doing this foolish research that doesn't amount to anything. Until we're able to get out there and demonstrate why the stuff we're doing is important, and what it has to contribute to the public discussion of major issues, we're not going to be able to change that in a way that's going to save our institutions.
We moved on to a discussion of the kids who are here to interview, and how fierce the competition is. There are a lot of disciplines with little to no room at the top—pro and Olympic sports, classical music and so on. The highest reaches of the academy have always resembled these. It's a question of love, I think; each of these very gifted humanities grad students loves his field so much that he's willing to throw caution to the winds in hopes of making it to the top, and damn the torpedoes.
KF says that they're thinking about doing away with the practice of conducting the first-round interviews in hotel rooms, and doing them on Skype instead. It's very expensive and very stressful for young Ph.D.s, who are commonly poor as churchmice, to go along to these things. In the days when KF herself was interviewing, she says, apparently you would go at the appointed hour to the hotel room where your future might well begin, and then you might knock and one of your competitors would be in there being grilled, and there you'd be, staring at each other through the open door.
"Elevator eye!" I gasped.
"Totally," she said.
So off we go, for I am tagging along, to a session:
282. Paper as Platform or Interface, 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m., Olympic III, J.W. Marriott Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Media and Literature. Presiding: Lisa Gitelman, New York Univ.
1. “Word Made Flax: Cheap Bibles, Textual Corruption, and the Poetics of Paper,” Joshua Calhoun, Univ. of Delaware, Newark
2. “Theory of Paper: Hume, Beattie, Derrida,” Christina Lupton, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor
3. “Wordsworths’ Daffodils: On the Page, upon the Inward Eye,” Richard Menke, Univ. of
GeorgiaI adore Lisa Gitelman on contact; she's got an ineffably gentle, sardonic air, kind of like Fran Lebowitz, very brilliant-seeming, only much kinder. Almost everything she says has a joke in it, and it takes me a second to catch on. There are thirty or so attendees, several of whom are working on open laptops. This, I learn, is a bone of contention. Since nobody can attend all the sessions in which he's interested, a habit of Twittering-as-you-go has taken hold. The Twitter feeds have the hashtag #mla11. It's a clever way of making more of the conference available to everyone, but traditionalists dislike the practice and there are passionate arguments about it that are still raging on the blogs over a week later.
This is a traditional session, meaning that each speaker will have fifteen or twenty minutes to read his or her work, followed by a Q&A with the authors.
The first speaker, Joshua Calhoun, indulges himself in the word "palimpsested" which would drive me crazy if it weren't so appropriate to what he's saying, about how paper in the seventeenth century bore a well-understood relation to fiber, to worn-out clothing. It's a really good paper about literature and mutability, about "the supreme idea vs. the dusty matter of human existence."
The next paper is better still, even though early on Christina Lupton is describing in her grave, velvety English voice how "Derrida's beguiling writing displaces and exceeds thought" and I am certain she's going to lose me. But then she moves into David Hume and Enlightenment skepticism, into the slippery nature of "the material world's empirical availability" and I'm all over it. She contrasts Hume's elegant and adamantine doubts with the "certainty" of the poet James Beattie, whom I have never heard of, and who comes in for a pretty sound drubbing.
It's not just the speaker's voice that is velvety, it's the whole experience. There is something so comforting and great about caring this much about the exact deficiencies in Hume's thinking, and also about listening to someone whose worst and most violent insult I think might well be "unfortunate." Plus Prof. Lupton is a terrific writer as well as a subtle and seductive thinker. "Common sense and skepticism bleed into each other"; "A catastrophic mutation into print." It is comforting, too, that for all Hume's skeptical insistence that no assumptions whatsoever be made regarding "this paper," he was very fussy with his printers, and sweated blood over every error that found its way into his own books.
These are all discussions, it seems to me, that people outside the academy might very much be interested in—what purpose does the wall of academia serve? A lot of contemporary academic criticism of popular culture is super fun, vital and interesting, and I suspect all kinds of people would like to learn more about it, if it weren't all hidden away, only to be consumed with a JSTOR subscription.
The MLA convention is probably the safest place on earth in which to make a pedantic joke, and the participants do not stint themselves in this regard. The third speaker, Richard Menke, is going to be yabbering on about that Wordsworth poem that I can't stand, the one about wandering lonely as a cloud. Again I'm thinking no way for about thirty seconds before he has me in the palm of his hand. It turns out that Wordsworth wasn't as lonely as a cloud at all, his sister Dorothy was there! And it all really happened, with the daffodils! Who knew? (Maybe I am the only one who didn't know? On the upside, the poem reminds me of that old Genesis song.) Dorothy's much more entertaining account of the affair turns out to have included the ham and potatoes they had for lunch. Prof. Menke has got a terrific coinage for the writerly descriptive flourishes of the Romantic period: "mnemotechnics."
But the "paper" part of his talk hinges on the typesetting of the various versions of Wordsworth's poem. Prof. Menke is highly engaging on this stuff. He goes, "BING!" in a high falsetto to indicate a printed asterisk (shades of Victor Borge!), and makes reference to "Daffodils 2.0."
It becomes clear why the topic of paper is interesting to scholars in digital humanities; they are grappling in advance with the limitations of new media. What can they learn from the historical limitations of paper—not only in matters of preservation, but in the matter of understanding the nature and purposes of writing itself, of recording, in order to ensure that we do the best possible job of preserving and transmitting our culture to new generations, using our new media?
And then the questions, and they are good and interesting. Some of them challenge the speakers, who think very carefully and take their time before responding. There are some bits that sail straight past me, particularly regarding the finer points of Derrida. I think a lot of people would really enjoy this sort of thing, if they could experience it.
A.O. Scott wrote recently about 'cultural elites' in response to the crazy idea proposed by Neil Gabler in the Boston Globe that because of the Internet, the public has now got hold of the critical reins and will henceforth be enjoying the lowbrow stuff they really wanted to see all along.
Except: the mass culture critique is looking positively old-timey now that papers like “The Romantic Roots of High Postmodernism: Blade Runner as Neo- Romanticism” are routinely delivered at academic conferences.
Scott makes the point that the real "elites" are the corporations, whose stock in trade is not criticism, where you are tacitly asked to compare your own opinion to the critic's; it's marketing, where you're being told what to buy. There is a great distinction to be made here between leading the conversation, as good critics and academics do, asking all to participate and to judge and compare their own responses to the responses of those who are leading the discussion, and attempts to manipulate or control the conversation, as marketers do. One is free, the other is not.
Maybe more participation from the academy in public discourse can help forestall bad policy decisions, such as the recent Comcast merger, by stimulating participation the way good criticism does. And a broader public dissemination and discussion of academic works can create a new understanding among the public that can help serve, support and improve the academy, too.
Patton Oswalt's curious epitaph to to Geek Culture a month ago in Wired addressed these questions from the other side; he makes a kind of gatekeeper's argument, that the widespread embrace of geek culture (owing, he thinks, to the explosion of once-arcane information on the web) somehow spoiled that culture, as if it were a band that was cooler before everyone else found out about it; he complains about "Boba Fett’s helmet emblazoned on sleeveless T-shirts worn by gym douches hefting dumbbells." This is just like saying that academic criticism can't be popular; that walls should be built up around privileged information. It's an argument that falls to pieces under the slightest scrutiny. Cultural criticism of every kind can only be made deeper, better and richer by increasing the cross-pollination as much as we can. Curious, engaged, interested people of all kinds can join in shared interests, inside the academy and out.
Something KF said to me stuck: "In discussions like Oprah's Book Club, there's the ethics of our approach to public discussions of literary texts; we have an obligation to listen to what amateur readers are saying about these texts. But I think the obligation extends in the other direction, too, I think we have the obligation to speak, and to say, here is why I read this text the way I do, here's what you can kind of get from it and understand about culture by looking at it from this perspective."
It is worth remembering that the MLA was founded by a pack of academic renegades in 1883, in an attempt to break the stranglehold of Greek and Roman classics on language instruction in higher education. It was an effort, originally, to connect the academy more closely with the outside world that it was meant to serve. So how about it, MLA? After all, the MLA could be TED, just a century and a couple decades older.
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Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.
Coenfographic
An infographic that stitches together the 15 films that the Coen brothers have made.
Tags: Coen brothers design infoviz movies
Can Finishing School Slower Fast-Track Your Career?
photo: nsaplayer
Common sense and basic math says that finishing college quickly equals a less expensive education. The longer you take to graduate, the higher semester fees and housing costs will pile up.
But what’s left out of this purely dollars-and-cents equation is the potential effect of completing more internships — and thus building more experience and establishing more contacts – if you stay in college for five years rather than four; or four years rather than three.
In fact, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) 2010 Student Survey, seniors with internship experience had 12% more success in landing a job for which they applied, and their starting salaries where nearly a third higher than seniors who hadn’t completed internships.
In other words, rather than rushing through the academics at school with the idea of graduating as soon as possible, some students might actually fare better if they focused on getting actual work experience while in college. Even if that meant spending an extra semester, or even year, in school.
There is, of course, no fixed formula for what we’re about to discuss below: whether you’ll be better off graduating in three years with little work experience or taking four of five years and lining up an impressive list of internships will depend on your chosen field of work, career goals and even your personality. Here are the main factors to consider:
How Slow to Go With Internships
Interning won’t interfere with your schedule if you plan to graduate in four years. However, interning every summer would keep you from taking summer classes – if you wanted to finish in three.
And while the NACE study compared students with no internship experience whatsoever to those with some experience (in other words, NACE didn’t study the effect of completing several internships versus just one), experts agree that interning every summer increases your workplace savvy and improves your network of contacts when it comes to finding your first post-graduate job.
“One experience gives you one experience,” says Dr. Pat Schwallie-Giddis, the Counseling and Human Development Department Chair at George Washington University. Interning at several places, meanwhile, exposes you to different work environments, she says. When you interview for your first post-graduation job, you’ll look more attractive to employers because you know whether you work best in a team or individual environment, you know how much creative input you need to feel fulfilled, and you’ll have realistic expectations of what your first year of employment will be like.
As far as networking, you’ll create a real-world Facebook. Your references will be able to say they’ve worked with you or know someone who’s worked with you in your career field. The more internships you have, the bigger network you’ll be able to build. Dr. Schwallie-Giddis recalls a student in George Washington’s counseling program who had internships in three different states. Because her network was vast, she was able to land a job in the same state her husband found employment.
Co-op Programs
Traditional co-op programs, meanwhile, where you alternate working in a job within your field with school semesters or quarters, will likely keep you in school for five years. You will work for one employer only, so your network may be smaller in size, but your ties to that particular employer will be stronger.
Discovering Yourself in College
Finally, many college students change majors during the course of their school work. In those cases, obviously, graduating takes longer. But the good news is you’re less likely to graduate with a degree in a field you don’t want to work in after graduation. NACE Research Director Ed Koc mentions a former engineering co-op student who didn’t enjoy the work portion of his program. He switched majors in his sophomore year to biology. Now, he’s a successful orthopedist.
Making Room for Work Experience in Your Schedule
There is, actually, a middle ground: carefully planning your course load speeds up your graduation without decreasing time you could spend on work experience.
* Use credit from advanced placement courses as time for further career exploration. If you earned advanced placement courses in high school, you may have your basic courses covered. Talk to your admissions officer or academic counselor in your major to see where your course credits best fit among your college’s course requirements. Returning to school more than four years after taking AP tests? You can order your score records by filling out an Archived AP Scores Request Form. When I returned to school in 2004, I was able to get out of courses using scores from 1995.
* Check out professors before taking courses. Each class and professor requires different time spent outside of class. Contact each professor you plan on taking a class from prior to registration. Ask about time requirements. With this information, you can take extra courses when time allows.
* Prioritize pre-requisites based on when the following course is offered. For instance, if Marketing 101 is a pre-requisite to Marketing 305, it isn’t wise to take Marketing 101 in the fall if marketing 305 isn’t offered till the next fall. Especially if Economics 201 is offered in the fall, and Economics 202 is offered in the spring. Meet with your academic counselor every semester to help you plan your courses for optimum graduation time.
Consider Major-Related Work Experience and Coursework a Package Deal
Besides internships and co-op program participation, make sure your coursework best supports both your ultimate career goals and career exploration. Take at least one course in your major per semester. If you don’t like your major choice in semester one, you won’t have to postpone your graduation at all by changing majors.
Seek counseling from the career center as much as your department advisor. Since your ultimate goal in earning a degree is to find a career you love, your university’s career center should be as involved in helping you pick electives as your college’s academic counselors.
With major-related work-experience and an academic path focused on your future career, you’ll have a competitive edge in any job market.
Reyna Gobel is a freelance journalist who specializes in financial fitness. She is also the author of Graduation Debt: How To Manage Student Loans and Live Your Life.
What Your 16-Hour Workday Says About You!
- You’re a really hard worker
- Your time is poorly managed
- You don’t know what to do with your life
- Your boss knows you’re gullible
- At least 40% of your diet consists of pre-packaged food
- You send out work emails at inappropriate hours
- You have no perspective on life
- You don’t sleep enough for proper brain function
- You have very little self-respect
- Your salary should be higher, but isn’t
- You drink either too much or not enough
The Best Songs About New York That Don't Have 'New York' In The Title
by Lilit Marcus
"59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," Simon & Garfunkel"Bled White," Elliott Smith
"Brooklyn," They Might Be Giants
"Chelsea Morning," Joni Mitchell
"Christmas in Hollis," Run-D.M.C.
"Coney Island," Death Cab for Cutie
"Eleanor, Put Your Boots On," Franz Ferdinand
"Empire State of Mind," Jay-Z feat Alicia Keys
"Going to Queens," The Mountain Goats
"I And Love And You," The Avett Brothers
"Living for the City," Stevie Wonder
"My Blue Manhattan," Ryan Adams
"My My My Metrocard," Le Tigre
"Myriad Harbour," The New Pornographers
"Positively 4th Street," Bob Dylan
"Rhapsody In Blue," George Gershwin
"Song for Myla Goldberg," The Decemberists
"Take the A Train," Duke Ellington
"The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side," Magnetic Fields
"Tom's Diner," Suzanne Vega
"Walk on the Wild Side," Lou Reed
"You Said Something," PJ Harvey
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Lilit Marcus, the former editor of Jewcy, is Editor in Chief of The Gloss.
An Extended Interview with Former "Colbert Report" Head Writer Allison Silverman
by Mike Sacks
In And Here's the Kicker, Mike Sacks talked to some of the biggest names in comedy writing, including Dick Cavett, David Sedaris and Robert Smigel. Here is the complete and uncut version of his interview with former Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Daily Show and Colbert Report writer/producer Allison Silverman, with loads of new answers not found in the book.
It’s difficult to know just how seriously Allison Silverman takes herself, or her place, in the hierarchy of comedy-writing. Having spent time penning jokes for some of the best minds in satire — Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Conan O’Brien — she’d be justified in some self-aggrandizement.
“Over the course of the week [at Late Night with Conan O’Brien],” she once said, “[my desk] becomes a dumping ground for scripts, daily schedules, weekly schedules, cast lists, revised cast lists, and beat sheets. A beat sheet lists the comedy bits approved by our head writer. A beat sheet is how the wardrobe department finds out that we need a giant Hasidic ant costume by two P.M.” For Silverman, comedy is just another way to pay the bills, albeit a means of employment that occasionally involves dressing up actors as Semitic insects.
Long before she became one of the most influential female writers in TV comedy, Silverman was just another lanky Jewish girl growing up among tanned goyim in Gainesville, Florida. Though she briefly considering becoming a scientist, she eventually ended up majoring in humanities at Yale University. After graduating in 1994, she moved to Chicago to study with such comedy institutions as ImprovOlympic and The Second City Conservatory, the alma mater of future employer Stephen Colbert. During her graduation show at the Second City in 1996, she performed an original song called “These Are My Gandhi Years,” in which she sang about the trials of being poor and underfed as a struggling artist.
A year spent improvising with the Boom Chicago comedy troupe in Amsterdam (1997) was enough to convince her that she preferred the desktop to the stage. She wrote trivia — cooking up amusing minutiae for the ABC quiz show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire (1999) and the computer game You Don’t Know Jack (2000) — before finally mustering the courage to cold-call Daily Show head writer Ben Karlin and ask for a job.
It was a gutsy move, especially in an industry where female writers are about as common as conservatives. But her perseverance paid off. Her groundbreaking year at The Daily Show led to a four-year run writing for Late Night with Conan O’Brien (2002–2005), for which she won a Writers Guild award.
Then she did what few comedy writers in her place would have dared: she made a major career gamble, leaving a dependable writing post at Late Night to write for The Colbert Report, hosted by her one-time Daily Show colleague Stephen Colbert. Comedy Central promised only thirty-two episodes, which guaranteed them barely under two months to prove their comedic chops and attract a loyal audience.
The Colbert Report was originally envisioned as a spoof of the pomposity and the garishness of The O’Reilly Factor. If they had stuck to that premise, the show most likely would have ended the moment the novelty wore off. But Colbert and Silverman transformed a simplistic, one-joke news parody into one of the most subversive shows on TV, even surpassing The Daily Show with its satiric verve. Whether he was yammering on about “truthiness,” having water playfully thrown in his face by billionaire Richard Branson, or mocking President Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Stephen Colbert (the character) was a walking-and-talking indictment of arch-conservative egotism. The right-wing pundit was the fake-news personality that everybody (sometimes even Republicans) loved to hate.
Silverman, who has been The Colbert Report’s co–head writer with Richard Dahm since 2005 and a co-executive producer since September 2007, is largely responsible for much of Colbert’s fictional persona — including the idea for Colbert to strut around his desk as guests make their entrance over to the desk.
“That was my idea,” Silverman said. “For me, it felt like a strong statement of ego: that Stephen would be jealous of even that tiniest moment when his guests would be in the spotlight. So he diverts all of the attention — to himself.”
You’re one of only two humor writers I’m interviewing from the South — the other is David Sedaris. My southern friends and teachers aren’t going to be too happy.
I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, which is a university town. But, yes, it’s very much the Deep South. When I was growing up, I never looked similar to my classmates — or that’s how I felt, anyway.
What did the others look like?
It was mostly an environment of blonde cheerleaders, football players, and quintessential Americana. When I was young, I received a lot of questions about where I was from. I remember being told I would eventually be going to hell because I was a Jew. This was mostly in elementary school, before the students realized what they were saying. But by the time I was in high school, fellow students found my Semitism a little exotic.
Do you think your upbringing affected your humor? Did you go inward and become more introspective?
I guess I felt like a bit of an outsider, but I don’t think that’s too different from how most humor writers feel about their childhoods. I was an introspective person by nature. I was a happy kid, but I did have terrible nightmares. I’d turn on the bedroom lights and spend the rest of the night reading — usually the same few books over and over again. I must have read A Wrinkle in Time [by Madeleine L’Engle] fifty times.
Do you remember any of your nightmares?
Dreams about nuclear war, mostly. This was in the early 80s, and I had just learned that Gainesville was high on the list of nuclear targets, because there were a lot of hospitals in town. I also remember a classmate telling me about the nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how the shadows of the victims were forever burned onto the pavement.
I also had many dreams about being poisoned, and my accidentally poisoning others.
[Laughs] What type of kids were you hanging out with?
I can’t blame it all on them — I think I had O.C.D. as a kid. I would have recurring thoughts that were mostly uncomfortable to think about.
That’s another similarity between you and David Sedaris — and perhaps most of the writers I’ve interviewed for this book. O.C.D. is a very common theme.
Starting at around the age of nine or ten, I would suddenly feel the urge to stick to a very strict routine. I had to do all these very specific tasks before I felt comfortable enough to do much of anything.
I was obsessed with death and with order. My mother once showed me a biography of Albert Einstein and told me that he didn’t wear socks. And she said, “See? This is one of the greatest minds of all time. And he didn’t wear socks! He wasn’t perfect, so you don’t have to be either.”
Did that help?
I remember it, so it had some kind of impact.
Do you think this preoccupation with death was a Jewish trait?
I think it might have been, actually. With Judaism, there’s very little discussion of the afterlife. I was told that I wouldn’t die for a very long time, but then once I did, there would be nothing.
Did this preoccupation ever ease up?
In the late 80s and early 90s, by the time I attended Yale, the nightmares and O.C.D. had improved a bit. Most of my attention was focused on school-work, and on an improv group I was involved with called the Exit Players. There were about four improv groups at Yale, but this one was the oldest, and still is.
How did the Exit Players differ from the other groups?
I thought they were the flat-out funniest. There was another group that performed long-form material, but I didn’t really understand that method until after I graduated.
In retrospect, I prefer long-form. But, at the time, short-form was my preference.
What’s the difference between short- and long-form?
Long-form improv was most famously taught by [Second City’s] Del Close through his “Harold” method — that’s what he called it. Essentially, a group of performers receive one suggestion from the audience and then create a whole piece around that subject. There are three acts, each with three scenes. This method teaches that you shouldn’t go for the immediate and easy punchlines. Short-form, on the other hand, consists of more gags.
Is this something you’d recommend for humor writers — to start with improv comedy?
Absolutely. I think there are a few reasons why it’s a great idea. One is simply that you learn timing — what does and doesn’t work with audiences. If you’ve never experienced an audience in this specific way, it’s more difficult to learn later on.
It also helps — if you are going to write for somebody else, like I have for Conan, Jon, and Stephen — to understand the needs of a performer. Sometimes writers become very enamored with their own material — especially those who write for print. But what is very, very funny on the page might not work before an audience. The material might be too difficult for the performer and for the audience to follow. Get rid of all the verbiage, and refine your way to the core of the joke.
Third, I think it’s vital that comedy writers don’t hole themselves up and work alone. They need to meet and have a community of like-minded people — some of whom might hire you down the line. It is much easier to create this community if you’re performing.
Do you get the same high writing that you used to when performing?
It’s a different high. I love being backstage and watching one of my jokes really hit. It’s the grace of being an anonymous donor, only better. My name is on the credits. It’s the best of both worlds.
Did you receive a drama degree from Yale?
I was a humanities major, but it’s been mentioned by a few journalists that I was a molecular-biology major — which I definitely was not.
I read that, too. I was very impressed.
I said at some point that I matriculated as a molecular-biology major, but that just means that I started Yale as one. Once I was there, I got much more into the humanities. I do love science, though. I worked in a lab for several summers and got my name on a paper in the journal Plant Physiology. The paper is called “Association of 70-Kilodalton Heat-Shock Cognate Proteins with Acclimation to Cold.”
I only understood two words: “proteins” and “cold.”
It was about finding the genetic basis for cold-tolerance in plants. I performed experiments with the help and direction of people who really knew what they were doing. They were very kind, and they put my name on the paper as a co-author.
Did you approach humor with a scientific eye?
Actually, I did. When I lived in Chicago after college, I would watch the Second City performances, and I would take notes on the performers and on their individual moves.
What sort of moves?
I’d make notes about how each performer responded to their onstage partner. Status informs all humor. Specifically, a lot of comedy is about status shifts, and I would mark down whenever a shift would occur.
A “status shift” is about who controls the power in a scene. You see this in real life all the time. You see it with parents and kids; the parents are obviously in control, because they’re older and bigger, but when the kid throws a tantrum, the parents try to placate the child by giving them something.
Now the kid is in control. That’s a status shift.
So what does that mean within the context of a sketch?
I’ll give you an example: John Cleese would often play characters who were in charge but shouldn’t have been. A lot of what makes his characters so funny is that they are completely unfit to lead. In the Monty Python “Kilimanjaro Expedition” sketch, he’s leading an expedition to climb Kilimanjaro, but he has double vision and thinks Kilimanjaro has two peaks.
It’s not funny to see someone powerless being mocked. I think most people react against that, actually — unless they are a particularly cruel audience. What’s much more fun is to see someone who does have power, and is in the dominant position, become exposed.
So that’s the power structure. When you twist and play with this structure onstage, it hopefully becomes interesting and, in the end, funny.
Can you give me a specific example of how status came into play with any of the television shows you’ve written for?
I once wrote a sketch on Late Night with Conan O’Brien that I liked because it dealt with some issues that were on my mind at the time.
The sketch started with Conan returning from a commercial break and saying something to the effect of, “I’ve got to tell you, sometimes being a talk show host makes me feel a little guilty. I could have been a lawyer or a doctor — that would have been way more valuable to society.”
There was an actor in the audience who piped up, “Excuse me, Conan. I am a doctor, and I just wanted to let you know that you couldn’t have become a doctor, so just stop worrying about it. You just don’t have the skills to be a doctor — or the intellect!” The “doctor” then injures an audience member and demands that Conan prove that he actually could have been a physician. Conan manages to treat this “patient” brilliantly.
It starts with a switch: At first, Conan is in charge and says, “I could have been a doctor.” The doctor says, “No, actually, I am in charge, and you couldn’t have become a doctor even if you’d wanted to.” And then it switches once again.
You just mentioned that you liked this sketch because it dealt with some issues on your mind at the time. What in particular?
Certainly anyone who’s a comedy writer thinks — at least on some level — that maybe they should be doing something more “real.” I still feel that way, truthfully.
Really?
I always think I should be doing something that should more directly affect the lives of others in a more positive way.
You don’t think your work on Late Night, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report has affected people in positive ways?
I am exceedingly thrilled when people tell me those shows make them happy, but I don’t think it’s the same as dedicating one’s life to bringing more knowledge to the world. Or being a social worker and directly helping people. Or being a teacher.
I’d hate to see where I’d fall: a writer interviewing humor writers.
Clearly, we should both be determining how plants tolerate cold.
One could argue, however, that you are bringing knowledge to the world. As you’ve no doubt heard a million times, many viewers only get their news through The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
I appreciate people who might feel that way, but I think they should also be watching other shows and reading the papers.
We were talking earlier about status in regard to humor. The character of Stephen Colbert is very much about status.
Oh, absolutely. Stephen is all about status and the trappings of power. This is a character who looks to be in charge, and he constantly feels threatened by people who have much less than he has. There’s a real vulnerability buried deep within that character. His ego is a high-wire act.
One important thing about Stephen’s character is that while he’s a moron, he’s not an asshole. There is an essential innocence to his character. He’s well intentioned, but poorly informed. And because of this vulnerability, the audience comes to accept him.
It also helps that the real Stephen is a genuinely kind person. Even when he plays this character, the audience still detects that Stephen’s a good-hearted guy. That’s a major factor with our show: if Stephen couldn’t pull that off, the show wouldn’t be nearly as successful as it is.
Could this have been the problem with other, less successful, talk-show hosts? They didn’t come across as likeable?
I’d say so, yes.
I think it’s very important for any host or performer to not battle an audience but, rather, to become partners with them. As soon as you look needy or uncomfortable, the audience becomes worried and stops laughing — which is a big problem. Going out onstage and thinking of the audience as an enemy only makes you look more needy.
He’s not the brightest chap, this “Stephen Colbert” character.
That’s one of the fun things about him. He is stupid, and yet, every once in a while, he will express some sort of minute knowledge that impresses everyone. He knows exactly how and why car engines work.
But the character is a complete moron when it comes to other matters. For instance, he thought Watership Down, the book about a society of rabbits, was nonfiction. And it very much bothered him that the rabbits were at war.
The irony, of course, is that Stephen — in real life — is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He’s brilliant.
One of the impressive things about The Colbert Report is what Stephen manages to do with language—twisting, inverting, and molding it. An example: “This show is not about me. This show is dedicated to you, the heroes. . . . On this show your voice will be heard, in the form of my voice.” It reminds me of S. J. Perelman’s dense, imploding writing style.
Both Stephen and I really enjoy what can be done with language. Stephen’s background allows him to twist words in a very effective way. He is extremely well-read and he has a ferocious memory — he can pull it off.
We definitely tread that line between being too verbal and just making the jokes funny. It’s like what I was saying before about not becoming too enamored with your own work.
Who coined the word “truthiness” in 2005? The word was so popular that it eventually became Merriam-Webster’s number one Word of the Year for 2006. Here’s the official definition: “Truth that comes from the gut, not books.”
Stephen coined that word, and it actually appeared on our very first show [October 17, 2005]. The show has since coined other words, such as “wikiality,” which is “reality as decided on majority rule,” and “freem,” which was coined by one of our viewers. We used the word visually in our opening, and then someone online decided it meant “freedom” without having to “do” anything — without any responsibility or action.
The show seemed so fully formed right from the beginning; it always had a tremendous amount of confidence. I remember a joke Stephen told the first week about James Brady, who was seriously injured during the Ronald Reagan assassination attempt in 1981. That takes a bit of nerve.
That also happened in the very first show. There was legislation in Florida dealing with the issue of being able to shoot another person in self-defense. James Brady was obviously a critic of this legislation, but Stephen just did not understand why Brady would be against guns. It was the character being brazenly and willfully stupid.
The next day we got a handwritten fax from James Brady that read, “You lily-livered Italian-suited four-eyed Jon Stewart–wannabe. You’ll be crying in your cravat when I’m through. You want a piece of me? DO YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?”
Brady really enjoyed the joke, which was fantastic.
How did the audience react to something like that?
Better than I imagined. They’re very generous — I think they appreciate the boldness of saying something so wrong as a parody of cable-news blowhards.
The show has a very subversive spirit that I think people enjoy; a lot of viewers wind up participating in the show somehow, whether it’s taking Stephen up on a challenge, or creating ideas for the show completely on their own.
Why do you think that is?
I think a lot of times Stephen is asking the audience to play with him. And it’s very fun to play with Stephen Colbert.
Also, it’s always more fun for the writers when we can interact with the real world. Our first idea for the show was to have a more fictional, sketch-y aspect. But we quickly changed our minds. Stephen’s interactions are real — even if his character isn’t. It’s become almost like a Lazlo Toth–type of situation.
Lazlo Toth was the pseudonym created by Saturday Night Live writer, Don Novello. The character of Lazlo would mail — with ridiculous concerns that he took very seriously — real-life executives, celebrities, and other public figures. He would receive hilarious responses back — some of which were later published in book form.
We wanted to create a similar situation with Stephen’s character on The Colbert Report. It can become confusing, because you’re writing on a lot of different levels. Stephen Colbert is a person who plays himself. So, as a writer, you have to consider what you want the character to say. You also have to figure out what the real Stephen is saying. And how the audience will react to it all. And how the guests will respond. It can be overwhelming.
Has it ever felt too overwhelming?
Sure. Sometimes. I did feel that I had the right experience for this job, having worked at Late Night and at The Daily Show. I felt that The Colbert Report would be an outgrowth of those two influences: the satirical side of The Daily Show combined with the silliness and character-driven aspect of Late Night.
You were combining elements from two shows, but by doing so you weren’t necessarily making it easier for yourself as a writer.
It wasn’t easier, no. It’s like a hall-of-mirrors. And it becomes even more complicated on the “Word” portion of the show. You have to write both the argument and counter-argument, and you have to get jokes out of both.
When the show first started, many humor writers wondered how such a show could sustain itself.
I left Late Night to work on The Colbert Report, and I only did so because I very much trusted Stephen’s abilities. I felt that even if it was a failure, it would have been a smart failure.
David Cross, who plays the Al Franken–type character Russ Leiber on The Colbert Report, thought the show was going to be weekly, not nightly. When he found out, he told us we were insane.
Stephen’s character, who was inspired by the Bill O’Reillys, Sean Hannitys and Lou Dobbses of the world, has since come a long way. The show is a function of this character’s egomania, and I think the show can go wherever that ego goes.
And it tends to work best when that ego goes into the real world. It’s amazing who will play along.
Which leads into my next question: How exactly did you get Henry Kissinger to appear on the “Guitarmageddon” episode in December 2006? Kissinger introduced the challenge between Stephen and the guitarist from the Decemberists, by saying, “Stephen, it’s time to rock.”
A lot of it has to do with the children or grandchildren of these celebrities. In the case of Kissinger, it was a younger member of his family who told him he could have fun on the show — although I’m not so sure he did.
Well, it did look like Kissinger was having fun when he exclaimed, “Crank it up!”
I’m not sure if he was having fun or merely experiencing pure befuddlement.
It surprises me as to who’s not willing to play along with the joke — they mostly seem to be liberals. One example: Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank.
On a show in 2005, Stephen asked Congressman Frank if his weight was bothering his wife. Barney, being a notorious gay man, did not find this amusing. If I remember correctly, his response afterward was to call the show “sub–Three Stooges.”
I wish he liked our show more, but not everyone’s going to love it. And to be fair to Barney Frank, we interviewed him before the show had even debuted — it must have been extremely confusing for him.
I want to talk about the schedule for a late-night talk-show writer. I was shocked when I heard how little time the writers have to create jokes for each show.
We have a few hours in the morning to work on the bulk of the jokes. We have to work quickly.
Can you run down a typical day at The Colbert Report?
A typical day gets pretty hectic — I’m usually there anywhere from eleven to twelve hours.
I arrive around 9:30. Usually, I’ve already gotten some news from the papers and from the news shows. I meet with Rich Dahm, a co-executive producer, and Tom Purcell, the head writer. I meet with Stephen, and then with the rest of the writers and producers. We go back and forth with ideas and jokes, and then the writers retreat into their offices to work on their assignments. We then immediately get the production team working on the footage, graphics, music, and props we think we’ll be needing.
At one o’clock, the writers’ scripts are in, and we begin editing and refining the pieces. There’s a second production meeting, to go over new elements we’ll need and to stop production on the ones that now seem unlikely to make it to air.
The entire script is hopefully finished by around four. We have a rehearsal at around five thirty, maybe a little earlier, and we’re done by around six. We re-write and edit jokes that need to be fixed until around six forty-five. At around seven, the show is shot in front of an audience. We finish about forty-five minutes later, and we then go over the details for the following night’s show.
Is it true that writers work in pairs on The Colbert Report? One writer comes up with the lines as the other acts them out?
No, they both write and act them out. There’s definitely a need to say Stephen’s lines out loud, to hear if they really sound like his character.
You wrote an article for Slate magazine in 2001, and you listed the six types of jokes that writers weren’t allowed to come up with at The Daily Show. One of the examples was to avoid “jokes that will get claps instead of laughs.”
That’s very important, actually. We write so many jokes about the news that sometimes we can move into an area of political statements rather than jokes. Our most important task is to be funny. Everyone who writes for our show wants to be a comedy writer much more than a political commentator. It’s easier to get a clap than a laugh.
Were you in attendance at the infamous White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 29, 2006, when Stephen gave a speech and managed to upset not only the president but half the D.C. media?*
Yes. A group of writers worked on that speech together. This is the type of material we write every night. It never occurred to me that it would affect the audience so intensely. But what we didn’t take into consideration was who the audience was going to be: politicians and press people.
When we had rehearsed that speech a few hours before, in front of hotel staff, we never had any sense that there might be a problem. So when I witnessed the reaction, I was shocked. Shocked!
I was actually sitting with Stephen’s family. Very close to me were Karl Rove and other insiders. I was in the thick of it.
* Stephen Colbert: “. . . Wow, what an honor. The White House Correspondents’ dinner. To actually sit here at the same table with my hero George W. Bush — to be this close to the man — I feel like I’m dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You know what? I’m a pretty sound sleeper — that may not be enough. Somebody shoot me in the face. Is he really not here tonight? Dammit. The one guy who could have helped. . . .”
Did Stephen know how badly he was bombing with his immediate audience?
The speech definitely wasn’t getting a great response. Stephen is a fearless performer. He just kept committing to it, plowing forward. Having once performed myself, I know how difficult an accomplishment that is. It was inspiring.
Did Stephen have any idea the effect he had on the home audience? It was broadcast on C-Span, and immediately became, as they say, an “Internet sensation.”
Not really. Stephen only went up to the dais with the specific purpose of being funny. We had no idea how the speech would be perceived. Even later, when we did find out, we were surprised at the strength of the response. The reaction to that speech was a lesson on how many people wanted a voice of criticism at that moment in time.
Are you tired of being asked what it’s like to be one of the few female comedy writers in television?
I am tired of it.
I hesitated to even bring up the question, truthfully.
Most of the time when it’s brought up, the question isn’t actually about being a woman; it’s really about how poorly male comedy writers are perceived. Usually, people want to know how I survive in a writing room with a dozen men, whom they imagine are bullies and misogynists. That hasn’t been my experience at all. I’ve written with great people. And it is important that women hear that being a female comedy writer doesn’t mean you’re going into battle. Maybe more of them will give it a shot once they know that.
Any more advice?
You have to be patient. You have to give yourself a chance. When you’re first pursuing a job in a field like this, there’s a strong tendency to panic. When I took classes with Del Close, he would challenge all of us to wait — to not make the cheap, easy joke in a scene but to have faith that something funnier and more organic was on the way. It can be that way with a career, too. There are a lot of times when your biggest task is to stay calm and keep working.
You don’t have to write for Plant Physiology magazine.
It’s a journal, Mike. You just want me to pronounce that article title again, don’t you?
Yes, please.
“Association of 70-Kilodalton Heat-Shock Cognate Proteins with Acclimation to Cold.”
Got it: “proteins,” “cold.” Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Mike Sacks is a staff writer at Vanity Fair and the author of And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft. His upcoming book of humor writing, Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason will be released by Tin House Books on March 1st.
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Introducing The FanGraphs Library
While we’ve always been very proud of the quality and quantity of the statistics offered here on FanGraphs, we have never had a proper place to explain exactly what they all are, what they mean, how they’re calculated, and how they are best used. That’s why we’re extremely excited to announce the newest section of FanGraphs – The FanGraphs Library.
Steve Slowinski, creator of the excellent SABR Library, has agreed to come on staff and maintain the Library here on the site going forward. He’s created an in-depth resource that will serve as a place for explanation and education on all of the metrics we have here on the site, as well as many of the principles that we often refer to. He’s added some extremely fun tools to the pages, including calculators which will let you reproduce the metrics on your own, charts that show not only league averages for each metric but also the spread of those metrics from best to worst, and links to various explanations of how these metrics were conceived.
It’s really a fantastic resource, and one we’re thrilled to have on the site. Steve will be blogging both over at the Library and here on FanGraphs, and we’ll continue to update the Library going forward. We hope you enjoy using this resource as much as we’ve enjoyed bringing it to the site.
Return Of The Two-Division Format, Part 3
If you missed the first two parts, you can find them here and here. One quick clarification on scheduling from those first two pieces – I don’t think going back and resimulating seasons would be fair. It would be impossible to simulate added tension for games that may have taken on added importance thanks to different division rivalries. Pitching matchups may have changed based on the situation, guys that didn’t play hurt may have done so, etc. Furthermore, as one commenter pointed out, travel situations and other extraneous factors would change drastically as well. It is for this reason that I chose not to resimulate season results – there’s just no way to control for those variables. As for determining an optimal 162-game schedule, it’s clear that from the passion of the commenters and the complexity of the issue that that is a subject that deserves its own post at a later date.
Back to the topic at hand – what would the baseball landscape look like if each league went back to two divisions? Here’s how I laid out the new divisions in Part 1:
American League National League East West East West Baltimore Chicago Atlanta Arizona Boston Kansas City Cincinnati Chicago Cleveland Los Angeles Florida Colorado Detroit Minnesota Milwaukee Houston New York Oakland New York Los Angeles Tampa Seattle Philadelphia San Diego Toronto Texas Pittsburgh San Francisco Washington St. LouisLooking at the list, some winners and losers stick out. The biggest losers appear to be Cleveland and Detroit, who would now have to play with the big boys in the AL East. Detroit’s payroll is in the deep end of the pool, so they wouldn’t necessarily be hard-up from a financial standpoint. But as Jonah Keri noted yesterday, their roster is a little rough around the edges, and in the AL East, you have to be running on all cylinders. Cleveland is even worse off, as despite the success of their Snow Days program, they do not have the payroll luxury that the Tigers do. As their farm system starts to produce, they can emulate Tampa’s battle plan, but that may be a year or two coming.
The Dodgers are another loser. In the past, the Dodgers could always rely on being able to outspend their competition. But if it wasn’t bad enough that bitter rival San Francisco now has World Series hardware, they have also evaporated the Dodgers payroll edge. Exacerbating that in the new NL West would be the Cubs and Cardinals, and perhaps Houston as well, depending on who Drayton McClane sells the team to.
From a travel standpoint, the biggest losers are the two Chicago teams. Each add over 800 miles to their average travel distance among division opponents, both more than triple their current averages. This is a trend that holds for many of the teams in the new western divisions. While the eastern teams are for the most part unaffected, the western teams almost universally see large increases in travel. In fact, the Cardinals, Dodgers, Padres, and Twins would more than double their average travel distance to division opponents.
Of course, not every team would be a loser when it comes to travel. The Rangers make out like bandits, as they would cut their average travel distance to division opponents by more than 25 percent. Another team that could see 25 percent sliced off their average is the Pirates, who would derive a tremendous benefit from swapping out Houston for cross-state Philadelphia. Finally, adding Cleveland and Detroit to Toronto’s mix would help the Blue Jays lop off more than 20 percent of their average.
Also coming out nicely would be the Mets and the Phillies. While three teams are added to the NL East, none of their payrolls are likely to compete with either of the northeast squads. In fact, the combined 2010 Opening Day payrolls of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh did not equal the payrolls of either the Mets or the Phillies.
But the real winners here are baseball fans, especially fans of western division teams. Will they have to stay up later a bit more frequently? Probably, but it will be worth it. The AL West was the only division whose champion won at least 90 games every year of the past decade. To that mix, they would add the two best AL Central teams from the Aught’s, as well as the team that currently boasts one of, if not the best, farm systems in the game in Kansas City. Looking to the immediate future, a monster pennant race between the A’s, Rangers, Twins and White Sox would be on the menu for 2011. On the senior circuit, a Cardinals-Giants-Rockies three-horse race would evolve in 2011. But with the Padres making good strides, the hope that the front offices for the Cubs and Dodgers will soon be running smoothly, it could be possible to see a six-team race every season.
In any given season, a leader is capable of jumping out in front of the pack and running away with a pennant, and that will happen whether there are five, six, seven or eight teams per division. But combing through past season standings on baseball-reference, it is clear to me that in those other years the chance for magical pennant races is there. Moving from three divisions back to two will heighten the potential for such great pennant races and make sure that more deserving teams reach the postseason at the same time. If managed properly – creating a flex option for national telecasts would be a good place to start – September could draw a much bigger audience for the game, help it steal back some of the spotlight from the NFL and position October as must see TV for the entire country once again.
Scott Heiferman looks back at Meetup's bet-the-company moment
37signals and Meetup go way back. Meetup was one of our first design clients back in the day. And founder Scott Heiferman was even a guest poster for a month here at SvN back in ‘03. We’ve watched closely as Meetup has grown and evolved since then, especially during the tumultuous period after it began charging customers. It’s been almost six years since that fateful decision so we decided to sit down with Scott and talk about it.
In April of 2005, Meetup went from free to pay and started charging organizers of meetings. Many customers were outraged:
Congratulations, you’ve officially joined the “Asshole Club” along with the likes of BELL CANADA, EXON, KFC, McDONALDS, and all the other mega-corp. conglomerates who don’t give a shit about anyone or anything but lining their own pockets with money.
Others predicted the company’s demise:
I think it’s fair to say most organisers were shocked, and most of the ones I’ve spoken to will simply cease organising for their groups…There isn’t anything Meetup is doing these days that users can’t simply do on their own and more effectively, and there’s plenty of open source software to make use of and create your own website.”
Meetup wasn’t expecting the harsh response. “We were really naive,” says Scott Heiferman, founder of the site. “We figured that if people didn’t like it, they would just say, ‘OK, I’m not going to do this.’ As opposed to really taking it personally. Because this wasn’t like we were taking away their medicine. But people were so upset and we got such anger and such vitriol. The backlash was very bad. And we were surprised by that.”
According to Heiferman (seen at right in a photo by Tim Wagner), the site lost around 95% of its activity. “Now imagine you’re the hot startup – people forget we were the hot thing that was on 60 Minutes – and all of a sudden, in a flash, you see 95% of your activity go away. I mean, that’s the backlash in its most visceral form. It was like, ‘Oh, man what did you do? What do we do?’ We never really wavered seriously, but it’s a punch in the gut. It’s saying, ‘We were touching this many lives and now we’re touching not many lives, and oh, everyone hates us.’
“Now, did we think it was going to be less? No, not really. We knew. We said, ‘OK. If we get 10% or 5% to continue and pay that would be great.’ Because we were in this to make something great for people.” And Heiferman knew to do that, something had to change.
Little goes according to plan
Back in 2002, the original revenue model for Meetup was to charge venues $1 for each person brought in to a café, bar, pizza joint, bowling alley, etc. for a Meetup. “For a number of reasons it failed,” says Heiferman. “It was too early. It was hard. There was a discrepancy between the number of people who said they were going to come and who actually showed up. And too many people were going to their Meetup [at a coffee shop] and not buying coffee.”Little was going according to plan. Heiferman explains, “Most of what we thought Meetup was going to be used for, people didn’t use it that way. And what they did use it for were things we didn’t imagine when we were building it. It never crossed our minds that this would be a political mobilizing tool.” Yet that’s where Meetup was quickly gaining the most attention. Politicians like Howard Dean embraced the tool and so did a then-unknown Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama.
At the same time, Meetup began pursuing additional revenue streams. It charged political organizations. It added AdSense. It experimented with Meetup Plus, a premium offering.
None made much of a difference though. When asked what made Meetup Plus special, Heiferman answers, “God, I don’t even remember what it got you. It got you some kind of features where you would be able to…I don’t know. I can’t remember.” Heiferman laughs and continues, “That was the problem. That’s a problem with a lot of freemium things. We refused to handicap the core, free product. So it wasn’t compelling.”
Diane von Furstenberg Sent To Emergency Room After An Aspen Ski Accident
WWD reports that Diane von Furstenberg was flown to a hospital in UCLA after sustaining face and rib injuries while skiing in Aspen. Said DVF via email,
"Barry [Diller] and I were skiing happily. Some Brazilian man, who could not ski, lost control and went straight at me, hitting me badly on my face and ribs (with his camera). I went to the emergency room and then flew to UCLA. I look like Mike Tyson on his worst fight. Broken nose and some light facial fractures. At home in L.A. now waiting to heal. Will be staying here the week because I have my children and grandkids. I guess it could have been worse...but it does NOT look pretty."
With Fashion Week looming close, Diane is relying on creative director Yvan Mispelaere to keep things chugging along. Here's to speedy recover, Diane! (WWD)
The Revolution is Underway in Egypt
by Choire Sicha1 Comments
Downtown Cairo is essentially shut down. As our correspondent in Cairo suggested last week, public expressions of displeasure with the government have at last gone big in Egypt, with tens of thousands marching in the streets today. There are many pictures on the organizing Facebook site; people are using Twitter as well to share information about how to circumvent government Internet censorship and access information. The protests have turned violent in places, as police push back against crowds; they are using teargas and water cannons, and batons as well. From the AP: "Mothers carrying babies marched and chanted, 'Revolution until Victory!' while young men parked their cars on the main street and waved signs reading 'OUT!' inspired by the Tunisian protestations of 'DEGAGE!' this week. Men were seen spraying graffiti reading 'Down with Hosni Mubarak.'" Protests are also taking place in Alexandria and other cities and in Lebanon. The Egyptian minister of the interior has issued orders to "arrest any persons expressing their views illegally," which is pretty much everyone.
Modes of writing
I’ve written before about how the word "ebook" marks our as yet tentative embrace of the new medium. Ebooks are a kind of new incunabula—prototypes for the next phase of reading device that has yet to be defined, but which I expect will depart further from the printed book than the current ebooks do.
Right now, ebooks are a byproduct of paper books; the distribution and publishing process is identical, while the reading experience differs only slightly. The current crop of ebooks takes advantage of the digital format in as much as they permit you to carry more of them around than you could before; but other elements of the medium—the "hyper" part of hypertext—are noticeably absent.
Let's presume that won't last, that books will evolve to be native to the web. (Craig Mod shows us the way forward.) But if the book morphs from ink on paper to HTML (as I hope it does) what then will distinguish it from other kinds of writing? How will a book be different than a blog? Do we need to distinguish it at all?
When I first started blogging, I told myself it was ok to post half-formed thoughts; a blog was ephemeral, reactive—the medium cared not so much about completeness as about timeliness. I still believe that to be true, but with one important modification: it's not that a blog post has permission to be rough so much as that roughness is its natural state. Meaning, blogging encourages exploration and experimentation. In this way, blogging is the kind of writing authors have done for centuries but which usually remained hidden away.
On the contrary, a book is the culmination of this writing: it's what emerges after years of scratching around the same topic, when all the little pieces start to come together. Where the blog suggests paths, the book draws conclusions. Neither is superior to the other; rather, they represent different modes of writing—the first expansive, the latter convergent. Each mode suggests and learns from the other. And this is why, even if the form of the book perishes, the writing therein may survive—even if it happens on a blog.
Why 3D Doesn’t Work and Never Will
Walter Murch, in a letter to Roger Ebert:
The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the “convergence/focus” issue. A couple of the other issues — darkness and “smallness” — are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen — say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what. But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.
I think 3D is fun in very small doses, like in attractions at Disney World, where the movie is only around five minutes long. But I have never enjoyed 3D in a feature. Avatar was closest.
January 24, 2011
Wayne and Lev
Wayne and Lev, originally uploaded by david. I can't stop looking at this picture. I wish it was a 10 or 20 second movie, because what is missed is that Lev is trying to match the intensity in Wayne's eyes and smile. I think I caught the frame in which they finally synced up, but the dance was just as exciting.
Catwoman’s blessing: Julie Newmar says Anne Hathaway will be ‘marvelous’
Booth Moore of All the Rage, one of our sister blogs, had lunch with Julie Newmar, the greatest on-screen Catwoman of them all, and the topic turned to Anne Hathaway, who was just cast as the feline outlaw in “The Dark Knight Rises.” Here’s a quick excerpt:
Julie Newmar as Catwoman (Los Angeles Times archives)
At 78, Newmar is as feisty as ever. “This looks like Calvin Klein from 1978, and it might be,” she said of her outfit, a tweedy navy and white jacket and pencil skirt. Her voice still purrs. Of course, we all wanted to know her take on Hathaway. “She’s going to be marvelous,” Newmar said, even as I questioned Hathaway’s sex appeal. Now Newmar, she understood sex appeal. She made her own Catwoman costume, and was especially keen to have the belt at her hips, instead of her waist, to highlight her hourglass figure, she said. (The costume is now in the Smithsonian Institute).
In addition to being an actress on stage and screen, Newmar was also a fashion model and muse for designer Thierry Mugler. And honestly, where would Mugler have been if not for his Catwoman-like Latex and rubber suits and curve-hugging silhouette? Newmar walked the runway for him a couple of times in the 1990s, wearing waist-whittling corset dresses, and appeared in the Mugler-directed 1992 George Michael video “Too Funky.” (The Mugler label is now in the midst of a makeover, courtesy of Nicola Formichetti, the stylist-turned-creative director. He showed his first men’s Mugler collection in Paris last week.) Nowadays, Newmar keeps busy gardening, appearing at fan expos, and managing her real estate investments….
THERE’S MORE, READ THE REST
– Booth Moore
RECENT AND RELATED
Hathaway will be Catwoman, Tom Hardy is Bane
Nolan: Hollywood takes too many shortcuts
ESSAY: Nolan and his dark magic tricks
Chris Nolan: “It won’t be the Riddler”
“Inception” extras reveal stuff dreams are made of
ON THE SET: “Inception,” Hollywood’s dream heist
Nolan breaks silence on Superman film
Official App Store account on Twitter
Apple has an official Twitter account for the App Store, appropriately named @appstore which promises "official App Store tweets including our featured apps, exclusive offers, and more."
The first post from the account came only a few hours ago, but there are already 50,000 people signed up.
One of the questions that people have had with the Mac App Store was the question of "discoverability" of apps on the store which aren't "featured" or on the "top" lists, hopefully this account will be one more way for Apple to get out the word about new apps that you might not otherwise hear about. If you aren't a Twitter user, you can always follow the RSS feed for the account. If you're on Facebook, Appstore is there too.
Official App Store account on Twitter originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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QUOTE PEOPLE OUT OF CONTEXT ON BNTER is the new ASK UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS ON QUORA. via fimoculous.tumblr.com NOW I GET IT!
Appreciation
Today is Community Moderator Appreciation Day, a well-deserved moment of recognition for people who make the web more humane, more thoughtful, more helpful and more useful.
This is a bottomless topic for me, but perhaps the best way to observe it is to share what's been learned and distilled about creating an environment where good moderators can succeed. Here's Matt Haughey at last year's Gel Conference telling the story himself:
This is part of why I'm so excited to be speaking at Gel this year: There's a lot of things we've learned over the years that we haven't taken the time to share. And Gel itself is an event that's well-moderated, as you might expect.
So, thanks today to all the folks I know who moderate all of the sites where I spend my time online. Making a valuable, strong, positive community is one of the greatest things you can do to contribute to the world.
QUOTE PEOPLE OUT OF CONTEXT ON BNTER is the new ASK UNANSWERABLE...
QUOTE PEOPLE OUT OF CONTEXT ON BNTER is the new ASK UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS ON QUORA.
Indignez-vous! (Cry Out!), Hessel's Bestseller
Some dare to say to us that the State cannot afford the expenses of these measures for citizens any more. But how can there be today a lack of money to support and extend these conquests while the production of wealth has been considerably augmented since the Liberation period when Europe was in ruins? On the contrary, the problem is the power of money, so much opposed by the Resistance, and of the big, boldfaced, selfish man, with his own servants in the highest spheres of the State.
MongoDB Map Reduce: Yet another tutorial
MongoDB Map Reduce: Yet another tutorial:As the title says, this is yet-another-tutorial on Map Reduce using MongoDB. But two things that are different here:
- A problem solving approach is used, so we’ll take a problem, solve it in SQL first and then discuss Map Reduce.
- Lots of diagrams, so you’ll hopefully better understand how Map Reduce works.
If MapReduce still didn’t click, you could try this SQL to MongoDB MapReduce guide.
Original title and link: MongoDB Map Reduce: Yet another tutorial (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)
With an official post on the Gmail blog, Google has announced that in the next few days they will launch the Google Cloud Print online service with initial support for iOS devices and Windows operating system. Cloud Print allows you to print any kind of document and supported Gmail attachment by configuring a local printer with Google’s remote system. Once a printer is connected to Cloud Print, an iOS device can remotely send a document to the printer from the Gmail webapp in Mobile Safari. Support for Mac OS X and Linux is coming “soon." via www.macstories.net I would prefer if this was printed in the Google "cloud" (office) and then mailed to me. I don't want to own a printer.
why would anyone hate the library? Amy Poehler explains
Amy Poehler mentions, in an interview, that they just made up their anti-library stance in order to make a joke. But it turns out that they found many government officials actually shared those sentiments.
How much does Parks and Recreation hate the library?
The library represents that branch of government that’s like the smart kid—the teacher’s favorite. And the library always wins. They get whatever they want. Everybody loves them—nobody can say anything. People who work in the library think they are so much better than everyone else. And what’s really funny is we’ve been doing Q&A’s about our show, and people from local governments have said, “You guys nailed it about the library.” We were just making it up as a joke on the show, but I guess everyone hates the library.[via]
why would anyone hate the library? Amy Poehler explains
Amy Poehler mentions, in an interview, that they just made up their anti-library stance in order to make a joke. But it turns out that they found many government officials actually shared those sentiments.
How much does Parks and Recreation hate the library?
The library represents that branch of government that’s like the smart kid—the teacher’s favorite. And the library always wins. They get whatever they want. Everybody loves them—nobody can say anything. People who work in the library think they are so much better than everyone else. And what’s really funny is we’ve been doing Q&A’s about our show, and people from local governments have said, “You guys nailed it about the library.” We were just making it up as a joke on the show, but I guess everyone hates the library.[via]
Four Years
Four years ago, I went indie. My business, Instinctive Code (@InstinctiveCode) has been going strong since then, and it’s been a great ride. I’ve worked for many interesting clients, from Fortune 100 companies (including one with a certain fruit logo, on more than one occasion) to fellow independent developers, and I’ve learned a lot. I’m very grateful to everyone who has made it possible, and I want to give you some free stuff to celebrate!
This year, I want to seriously begin a transition from a mostly-consulting-based to a mostly-product-based income, with (of course) a focus on iOS and Mac OS X. I’m also expanding my services to include usability and accessibility reviews, which I’m very excited about.
It feels like about a decade since I was an employee, and I’m not looking back. I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot in the past year especially, and I thought I’d briefly take stock of where I am right now, professionally speaking.
I have some exciting apps in the works, and a roadmap to get them out there.
I’m a speaker at industry conferences. You can see some of my workshop and presentation videos here:
- Making Mistakes Impossible (free)
- Designing and Developing Custom Controls (free)
- The World According To Gemmell Usability Workshop (paid)
I’m a writer for Tap! Magazine (@TapMagUK), specifically the Dev_Zone section in every issue.
I’ve released many open source components for iOS and Mac OS X that are used in what by now must be hundreds of apps.
I’ve written a number of very popular articles on this blog, on topics relating to software and user experience. Some of my favourites:
- Designing usable iPad touch-screen software interfaces
- Engineer Thinking – Removing choice to aid usability
- Accessibility for iPhone and iPad apps
- Your App’s Website Sucks – Designing a user-friendly website for your app
- Touch Notation: A concise visual language for multi-touch interaction design
- Finger Tools: A context-free multi-touch interaction concept
- The iPhone Development Emergency Guide
- Client Requests – Being fair about “stupid” clients
- What Have You Tried? How to ask technical questions the right way
- The UI Design of Favorites
I feel a great pressure to contribute to the community, and I have more planned for the future. I think I’m doing alright so far.
So, on to the free stuff. First up, a few free promo codes for my speed-dial (and FaceTime, SMS and email) app for the iPhone, Favorites. It’s only $1.99, so if you don’t manage to snap up one of these codes, do feel free to buy a copy regardless!
If you do redeem one of these codes, I’d appreciate a comment telling me which one to strike off the list. Thanks!
Update: all of the current batch of codes have been used – that was quick! Sorry if you missed out this time; if you’d still like to try Favorites, you could always buy a copy (for just $1.99)!
- YE76JJ43P99F
- J4LRK6WYHTPJ
- 6E3K37JXX9T6
- A7YTKNF6WRYN
- X6TMT363XFAT
- TWLH3E4XJ6JJ
- NLXAJ7HYRPMY
- N3TM46HW63MR
- MK6KTTTMRHL9
- 6XYH9HL97TAH
Secondly, I recently began offering no-attribution-required commercial licenses to my portfolio of open source Cocoa code, for those who either can’t or don’t wish to attribute me in their apps. If you need such a license, you can visit the license store here, but you can also try to win a free unlimited license for a source code package of your choice!
Just fill in the entry form here, and I’ll pick a winner later this week. I’ll probably repeat this exercise too, so you might want to follow me (@mattgemmell) on Twitter. Good luck!
Many thanks to everyone who has made the last four years possible; not just the clients, but also the community. I’m well aware of how fortunate I am, and I look forward to continuing to contribute.
Tim Cook in NYT, says joining Apple was 'best decision I ever made'
The New York Times has written a nice profile of Tim Cook, who is once again sliding into the driver's seat at Apple while Steve Jobs takes medical leave. To hear the paper tell it, Cook is both a man well-prepared to fill Jobs' role if needed, and yet not exactly the creative visionary Jobs has become. While Jobs runs the company with a wide-ranging vision for products and how they're used, Cook is the details man -- a master of spreadsheets, factory dealings, supply chains and efficiency.
Cook previously worked at both IBM and Compaq, and in this commencement speech at Auburn University last year (embedded after the break), he says that moving over to Apple was "the best decision I ever made." He says that lots of the conventional wisdom he heard at the time told him not to bother joining Apple -- the company was a shell of its former self and the iPod hadn't yet materialized. But his intuition told him to join up to "work for the creative genius and to be on the executive team that could resurrect a great American company" and he says that "no more than 5 minutes into my initial interview with Steve, I wanted to throw caution and logic to the wind and join Apple."
If Jobs does have to step down permanently, odds are that Cook is the man that will take the CEO job. And while Apple will never be the same without Steve Jobs, Tim Cook's clearly dedicated to the company he took a chance on over a decade ago.Continue reading Tim Cook in NYT, says joining Apple was 'best decision I ever made'
Tim Cook in NYT, says joining Apple was 'best decision I ever made' originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Museum of Modern Art Acquires 23 New Typefaces for Permanent Collection
The brand of typography that I ‘grew up with’ is becoming a matter of the historical record. Curator Paola Antonelli writes:
“This first selection of twenty-three typefaces represent a new branch in our collection tree. They are all digital or designed with a foresight of the scope of the digital revolution, and they all significantly respond to the technological advancements occurring in the second half of the twentieth century. Each is a milestone in the history of typography. These newly acquired typefaces will all be on display in “Standard Deviations,” an installation of the contemporary design galleries opening March 2.”
There are some worthy additions, but there are some — like Verdana — that I’m less than fond of. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re not historically significant. Read the announcement here.
adayum: more and more real every day so. true.
more and more real every day
so. true.
STUPID CUTE FACES
If you can't get any work done today because you're too busy looking at their faces, you can blame @karenplusone.
Seven ways to think like the web
Back in 2000, the patterns, principles, and best practices for building web information systems were mostly anecdotal and folkloric. Roy Fielding’s dissertation on the web’s deep architecture provided a formal definition that we’ve been digesting ever since. In his introduction he wrote that the web is “an Internet-scale distributed hypermedia system” that aims to “interconnect information networks across organizational boundaries.” His thesis helped us recognize and apply such principles as universal naming, linking, loose coupling, and disciplined resource design. These are not only engineering concerns. Nowadays they matter to everyone. Why? Because the web is a hybrid information system co-created by people and machines. Sometimes computers publish our data for us, and sometimes we publish it directly. Sometimes machines subscribe to what machines and people publish, sometimes people do.
Given the web’s hybrid nature, how to can we teach people to make best use of this distributed hypermedia system? That’s what I’ve been trying to do, in one way or another, for many years. It’s been a challenge to label and describe the principles I want people to learn and apply. I’ve used the terms computational thinking, Fourth R principles, and most recently Mark Surman’s evocative thinking like the web.
Back in October, at the Traction Software users’ conference, I led a discussion on the theme of observable work in which we brainstormed a list of some principles that people apply when they work well together online. It’s the same list that emerges when I talk about computational thinking, or Fourth R principles, or thinking like the web. Here’s an edited version of the list we put up on the easel that day:
Be the authoritative source for your own data
Pass by reference not by value
Know the difference between structured and unstructured data
Create and adopt disciplined naming conventions
Push your data to the widest appropriate scope
Participate in pub/sub networks as both a publisher and a subscriber
Reuse components and services
1. Be the authoritative source for your own data
In the elmcity context, that means regarding your own website, blog, or online calendar as the authoritative source. More broadly, it means publishing facts about yourself, or your organization, to a place on the web that you control, and that is bound in some way to your identity.
Why?
To a large and growing extent, your public identity is what the web knows about your ideas, activities, and relationships. When that knowledge isn’t private, your interests are best served by publishing it to online spaces that you control and use for the purpose.
Related
Mastering your own search index, Hosted lifebits
2. Pass by reference rather than by value
In the case of calendar events, you’re passing by value when you send copies of your data to event sites in email, or when you log into an events site and recopy data that you’ve already written down for yourself and published on your own site.
You’re passing by reference when you publish the URL of your calendar feed and invite people and services subscribe to your feed at that URL.
Other examples include sending somebody a link to an article instead of a copy of the article, or uploading a file to DropBox and sharing the URL.
Why?
Nobody else cares about your data as much as you do. If other people and other systems source your data from a canonical URL that you advertise and control, then they will always get data that’s as timely and accurate as you care to make it.
Also, when you pass by reference you’re enabling reuse (see 7 below). The resources you publish can be recombined, by you and by others, with other resources published by you and by others.
Finally, a canonical URL helps you measure how the web reacts to your data. If the URL is cited elsewhere you can discover those citations, and you can evaluate the context that surrounds them.
Related
The principle of indirection, Hyperlinks matter
3. Know the difference between unstructured and structured data
When you create an events page on your website, and the calendar on that page is an HTML file or a PDF file, you’re posting unstructured data. This is information that people can read and print, and it’s fine for that purpose. But it’s not data that networked computers can process.
When you publish an iCalendar feed in addition to your HTML- or PDF-based calendar, you’re publishing data that machines can work with.
Perhaps the most familiar example is your blog, if you have one. Your blog publishing software creates an HTML page for people to read. But at the same time it creates an RSS or Atom feed that enables feedreaders, or blog aggregation services, to automatically collect your entries and merge them with entries from other blogs.
Why?
When you publish an iCalendar feed in addition to your HTML- or PDF-based calendar, you’re publishing data that machines can work with.
The web is a human/machine hybrid. If you contribute data in formats useful only to people, you sacrifice the network effects that the machines can promote. If you also contribute in formats the machines understand, they can share your stuff amongst themselves, convey it to more people than you can reach through word-of-mouth human networks, and enable hybrid human/machine intelligence to work with it.
Related
The laws of information chemistry, Developing intuitions about data
4. Create and adopt disciplined naming conventions
When people publish calendars into elmcity hubs, they can assign unique and meaningful URLs and/or tags to each event they publish. And they can collaborate with curators of hubs to use tag vocabularies that define virtual collections of events.
The same strategies work in all web contexts. Most familiar is the first order of business at every conference attended by web thinkers: “The tag for this conference is ______.” When people agree to use common names in shared data spaces, effects like aggregation, routing, and targeted search require no special software.
Why?
The web’s supply of unique names (e.g., URLs, tags) is infinite. The namespace that you can control, by choosing URLs and tags for the things you post, is smaller but still infinite. Web thinkers use thoughtful, rigorous naming conventions to manage their own personal information and, at the same time, to enable network effects in shared data spaces.
Related
Heds, deks, and ledes, The power of informal contracts, Permalinks and hashtags for city council agenda items, Scribbling in the margins of iCalendar
5. Push your data to the widest appropriate scope
When you speak in electronic spaces you can address audiences at varying scopes. An email message address one or several people; a blog post on a company intranet can address the whole company; a blog post on the public web can address the whole world. Web thinkers know that keystrokes invested to capture and transmit knowledge will pay the highest dividends when routed to the widest appropriate scope.
The elmcity example: a public calendar of events can be managed in what is notionally a personal calendar application, say, Google Calendar or Outlook, but one that can post data to a public URL.
For bloggers, this principle governs the choice to explain what you think, learn, and do on your public blog (when appropriate) rather than in private communication.
Why?
Unless confidentiality precludes the choice, web thinkers prefer shared data spaces to private ones because they enable directed or serendipitous discovery and ad-hoc collaboration.
Related
Too busy to blog? Count your keystrokes
6. Participate in pub/sub networks as both a publisher and a subscriber
Our everyday calendar programs are, in blog parlance, both feed publishers and feed readers. Individuals and organizations can publish their own feeds to the web of calendar data while at the same time subscribing to others’ feeds. On a larger scale, an elmcity hub subscribes to a set of feeds, and in turn publishes a feed to which other individuals (or hubs) can subscribe.
Why?
The blog ecosystem is the best example of pub/sub syndication among heterogeneous endpoints through intermediary services. Similar effects can happen in social media, and they happen in ways that people find easier to understand, but they happen within silos: Facebook, Twitter. Web thinkers know that standard protocols and formats enable syndication that crosses silos and supports the most open kinds of collaboration.
Related
Personal data stores and pub/sub networks
7. Reuse components and services
In the elmcity context, calendar programs are used in several complementary ways. They combine personal information management (e.g., keeping track of your own organization’s public calendar) with public information management (e.g., publishing the calendar).
In another sense they serve the needs of humans who read those calendars on the web while also supporting mechanical services (like elmcity) that subscribe to and syndicate the calendars.
In general, a reusable web resource is:
- Effectively named
- Properly structured
- Densely interconnected (linked) both within and beyond itself
- Appropriately scoped
Why?
The web’s “small pieces loosely joined” architecture echoes what in another era we called the Unix philosophy. Web thinkers design reusable parts, and also reuse such parts where possible, because they know that the web both embodies and rewards this strategy.
Related
How will the elmcity service scale? Like the web!, How to manage private and public calendars together
NYC Now Has A Chief Digital Officer
We're always ahead of the curve, huh? Enter Rachel Sterne, NYC's first CDO, or "Chief Digital Officer." And, get this, she's only 27—just in case you need a kick in the ass career-wise. Her resume includes the CEO title of crowdsourcing news website GroundReport, a teaching position at Columbia Business school, and a vibrant Twitter account. Besides being a regulation hottie, Sterne's new duties will include "leveraging the vast potential of the City's independent and entrepreneurial tech communities," as well as mining "public-private partnerships that the City could implement in the digital realm." How much do you wanna bet this gal will be in D.C. before she's 30?
Get to know your new CDO in a interview she gave on social media below. (Animal New York)A chat with the founder of GroundReport from JD Lasica on Vimeo.
Profanity
This may come as a surprise, but I have a teeny problem with controlling my temper. On occasion. If provoked.
Yoga and deep breathing are fairly effective for anger management as well as socially acceptable. But nothing soothes the nerves like unleashing a colorful stream of profanity, with a reddened face and a stamped foot. I learned this from my mother, an upstanding Irish Catholic lady who isn't afraid to use the f word if the situation calls for it. Frigging was a favorite of hers, as well. (My father mostly confined himself to "bloody" although he was not British. Also, if my brother pushed the limits Dad would mutter: "You have some set on you." For years I puzzled over that expression, and I never heard anyone else use it. It wasn't until I was working at Sassy that my friend and co-worker Mike Flaherty explained that it meant that my brother had a set of brass balls. Which is quite a thing to say to a 12-year-old.)
When I got pregnant for the first time, my husband started a crusade to make me stop cursing so I would not corrupt our child. What a pain in the ass. I had already given up coffee and wine for our precious bundle; now this. What had Dalton given up? The S.O.B. put a jar in the kitchen and I was supposed to pay a quarter each time I swore. I told him to fuck off.
But once the baby was born, I realized that it would be embarrassing to have a toddler exclaiming "shit" when he fell down in the playground. I agreed to cease saying the worst curses, so as to set a good example.
Ten years later, we're still working out the kinks. I refuse to classify "crap" as a curse. Dalton refuses to make it neutral. If he chastises me for saying "crap" in front of the kids (as in, "You kids better clean up all this crap"), I am likely to lose my tenuous hold on my temper. I let him have fuck, frigging, shit, ass, etc; I think I deserve crap. Crap crap crappity crap crap.
Dalton, if you are reading this, I have a confession to make. I said "fucking" in front of the kids this morning. This was at 8:15 when you were inside blow drying the frozen pipes. I was standing in the 2 degree cold wearing my coat over yoga pants and a pajama top, about to drive the kids to school because the bus had never come. Our daughter wouldn't put on her gloves because they are "fat." Our son said he thought we had missed the bus when we went inside to get my car keys. That's when I said it. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
I apologize to you, my Brownie troop, our minister, and the kids. And also the lady who was walking her dog by our house when I said it.
On editors
In which a good writer meets a poor editor:
Manguel, A Reader on Reading, page 208Even the most inexperienced writers of fiction know that if they are to be published at all, their manuscript must pass through the hands of professionals known as "editors," employed by publishing companies to read the books under consideration and recommend changes they think appropriate. (This paragraph you are now reading will not be the paragraph I originally wrote, since it will have to undergo the inquisition of an editor; in fact, when an earlier version of this essay was published in Saturday Night magazine, this sentence was cutout completely.)
Inquisition, indeed.
Manguel, A Reader on Reading, page 209Some might say that the patron saint of editors should be the Greek robber Procrustes, who placed his visitors on an iron bed and stretched them or cut off the overhanging parts until they fitted exactly to his liking.
Ouch.
Manguel, A Reader on Reading, page 210The editor must be a sort of platonic idea of a reader; he must embody "readerness"; he must be a Reader with a capital R.
Begging the question, of course, as to whether such a Reader could ever exist.
Manguel, A Reader on Reading, page 213Without editors we are likely to have rambling, incoherent, repetitive, even offensive texts, full of characters whose eyes are green one day and black the next (like Madame Bovary); full of historical errors, like stout Cortez discovering the Pacific (as in Keat's sonnet); full of badly strung-together episodes (as in Don Quixote); with a badly cobbled-together ending (as in Hamlet) or beginning (as in The Old Curiosity Shop). But with editors—with the constant and now unavoidable presence of editors without whose nihil obstat hardly a book can get published—we may perhaps be missing something fabulously new, something as incandescent as a phoenix and unique, something impossible to describe because it has not been born but which, if it were, would admit no secret sharers in its creation.
To this point, and in defense of editors everywhere, I will add only this: that perhaps the most important skill for an editor to master is recognizing when you're not needed. In addition to being an editor, I am also a cook; but I know damn well that a perfect summer strawberry need no further preparation than to be cut from the vine.
The Matrix Re-Reloaded
derGoldstein writes "According to Keanu Reeves: ' Matrix 4 and 5 are coming.' At an event that took place at the London International School of Performing Arts, 'Reeves revealed that he met with the Wachowskis around Christmas. They told him that they completed script treatments for two more Matrix installments. They are planning to make the films in 3D and have already met with James Cameron to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the technology. Reeves added that he's excited to return as Neo and promised that the treatments will truly revolutionize the action genre like the first Matrix film did.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Judging Books by Their Covers: 42
About 3 or 4 years after I first got involved in the then-tiny prison activist movement, the movement began quickly growing on college campuses, and a new round of activist, academics, and journalists began writing and publishing on prisons again. Many of these authors were friends or people I had organized around prison issues (Eli Rosenblatt, then director of the Bay Area Prison Activist Resource Center and Daniel Burton-Rose are two of these) or writers that had some experience working within the growing movement (Eric Cummins and Christian Parenti are two of this variety). By the year 2000 there was an entirely new literature about prisons published, with dozens and dozens of titles. There is no way I can look at them all, so I'm focusing on ones that I've read, have a copy of, or have interacted with in some way. The first book, to the right, is by Eric Cummins, and is a good example of the visual look of this new batch of books. The graphic tropes are slightly updated to seem modern, but they are the same old visual tropes: bars, bricks, barbed wire, and that damn stencil font!
The two covers below are good representations of this new activist publishing turn. The Burton-Rose book has a surprisingly modest Matt Wuerker illustration on the cover, but still falls within the general house style of the publisher, Common Courage. I've never been a fan of the Common Courage look, but this cover far more successful than a lot of the other books they've put out. The illustration attempts complexity with its evocation of a Metropolis-like prison with a conveyor-belt feeding prisoners into it's glowing maw. The Rosenblatt cover also attempts to go beyond the usual graphic clichés, but ends up just piling them on top of each other, with the U.S. flag, the Statue of Liberty, a dollar bill and a policeman making up the bars holding a Black man in prison:
One of the better written and most read of these books is Christian Parenti's Lockdown America. The cover of the first edition is nothing special, a blurry guard tower in the background, chain link fence in the fore. The second edition is much better, with the prison literally turned on its side. The hands protruding from the bars reach up to the sky, not in fists, but open palms, asking/pleading for help out of the system:
Here are two extremes of the "slightly updated" visual tropes. The Alexander book, which is brand new, has a cover that feels down-right old fashioned. The texture of the cement is nice behind her name, but beyond that that entire concept seems extremely exhausted, and wastes plenty of opportunity to play off the evocation of Jim Crow. The Morris book goes the other extreme. The large black wedge both cuts through the bars and creates a field to place the type, but shape feel inert, like it passively fell onto the prison bars, failing to live up to the activist zeal of the abolition in the title:
The Friedman cover below to the left is a classic example of the kind of post-modern cover design large publishing houses started churning out in the 80s and 90s. The bottom illustration calls from the late 19th century, the guard tower from the 40s or 50s, and the electric chair from the 70s. The fonts are just as dissonant, the wide title and thin author fonts feeling both historical and contemporary, just out of place with any specific time period. And the bars both reference prisons, but also modernist design and constructivism. The cover to the right is a different story all together, with a very raw drawing of a prison that evokes a somewhat timeless prison art style (especially the nod to it being on a torn sheet of notebook paper), but then the stencil font again, and a sans serif font with awkward transitions from thin to thick within the letters. It's an OK cover, but tells us very little about the book:
Vikki Law's book uses ALL the tropes: bars, bricks, barbed wire, and prison art. The cell floating on the black background is somewhat interesting, and I like the distressed title font, but the author's name shouldn't have been placed on such a busy background. The book is great, the cover fair, there has to be a way to better represent the vital struggles of women in prison that are discussed inside. The Critical Resistance book to the right has one of my favorite covers of the recent books, the type is striking, and the bird out of the cage, while not that conceptually inventive in the long view, is a leaps and bounds beyond all the rehash of same old prison visual language. On top of that, the transparency of the both the bird and the type, as well as the aged corners, create a nice depth of field:
Like the 60s and 70s, recent times have created a new crop of prisoner confessionals. Abbott's I Cried happens to be one I worked on (I did the interior design of the recent AK edition, I had nothing to do with the covers). The first edition to the left has a terrible cover. The image of the kid is creepy, the staggered type is awkward, and the blue duotone seems largely wasted beyond giving the feeling that you are underwater. It feels like a reject surfer memoir. The new edition to the right is much, much more successful. The photo is still creepy, but purposefully creepy. The scratching out and handwriting clearly echo the title—"You Didn't Listen":
Not much to say about the book to the left, a classic self-produced memoir-type cover with requisite self-portrait. The one to the right cracks me up: no-frills, like a generic prison book, black & white with shitty letters, just like your experience will be in the joint:
Next week I'll start on the political prisoner books. Here is the full bibliography of the prison books discussed over the past three weeks:
Dwight E. Abbot, I Cried, You Didn't Listen: A Survivor's Exposé of the California Youth Authority (Port Townsend, Wash.: Feral House, 1991).
Dwight E. Abbot, I Cried, You Didn't Listen: A Survivor's Exposé of the California Youth Authority (Oakland: AK Press, 2006). Cover design by Herb Thornby.
Jack Henry Abbott, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison (New York: Vintage, 1982).
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010).
American Friends Service Committee, Struggle for Justice: A Report on Crime and Punishment in America (New York: Hill & Wang, 1971). Cover photograph by Mark Feinstein/Liberation News Service.
Burton Atkins and Henry Glick, Prisons,Protest, and Politics (New York: Prentice Hall, 1972).
Jamie Bissonette, When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story in the Movement for Prison Abolition (Boston: South End Press, 2008). Cover design by Asha Tall, cover illustration by Darrell Gane-McCalla.
Malcolm Braly, False Starts: A Memoir of San Quentin and Other Prisons (London: Penguin, 1977). Cover design by Overlook.
Daniel Burton-Rose, ed., The Celling of America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1998). Cover design by Matt Wuerker.
G. T. Cartier, Deadlock at Walla Walla (Somerton, Ariz.: Somerton Press, 1986).
The CR10 Publications Collective, ed., Abolition Now!: Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex (Oakland: AK Press, 2008). Design by Albert Ignacio & Marcelo Viana.
Eric Cummins, The Rise and Fall of California's Radical Prison Movement (Stanford University Press, 1994).
Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979).
Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin, 1979).
Lawrence M. Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History (New York: Basic Books, 1993). Cover design by Tom McKeven.
Jim Hogshire, You Are Going to Prison (Port Townsend, Wash.: Loompanics, 1994). Cover design by Nick Bougas.
John Irwin, Prisons in Turmoil (Little, Brown, 1980).
James B. Jacobs, Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
Hugh J. Klare, Anatomy of a Prison (London: Penguin, 1962). Cover photograph by Roger Mayne.
Victoria Law, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (Oakland: PM Press, 2009).
Robert J. Minton, Jr., ed., Inside: Prison American Style (New York: Random House, 1971). Cover design by Bob Giusti, photograph by Steve Salmieri.
Jessica Mitford, The American Prison Business (London: Penguin, 1977). Cover illustration by Roger Coleman.
Ruth Morris, Penal Abolition: The Practical Choice (Toronto: Canadian Scholar's Press, 1995). Cover design by Brad Horning.
Eve Pell, ed., Maximum Security: Letters from Prison (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972).
Eve Pell, ed., Maximum Security: Letters from Prison (New York: Bantam, 1973).
Elihu Rosenblatt, ed., Criminal Injustice: Confronting the Prison Crisis (Boston: South End Press, 1996). Cover design by David Gerratt, based on a concept by Olanzani Olatunji, photo by Craig Bailey/Ron Gill.
Bill Sands, My Shadow Ran Fast (New York: Signet, 1966).
Judith A. Scheffler, Wall Tappings: An Anthology of Writings by Women Prisoners (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986). Cover design by David Ford.
Leon "Whitey" Thompson, Alcatraz Merry-Go-Round (Fiddletown, Cali.: Winter Books, 1995).
Kathryn Watterson Burkhart, Women in Prison (Popular Library, 1976).
Words from the House of the Dead: Prison Writings from Soledad (Trumansburg, New York: The Crossing Press, 1974).
Min S. Yee, The Melancholy History of Soledad Prison (New York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1973). Cover design by Stan Phillips.
Triple Fabric Score!
So there's now Scrabble fabric available at eQuilter, who knew? (Well, Monique and Mary Teri did, thanks for the link!)
I'm notoriously bad at Scrabble, but maybe a shirtdress made of Scrabble fabric will give me magical powers? Worth a shot. With wooden Scrabble tiles as buttons, of course. (I couldn't find those on Etsy, which completely surprised me. You'd think someone was doing that, wouldn't you?)
January 23, 2011
H&FJ Typefaces Join the MoMA Permanent Collection
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has announced the acquisition of four H&FJ type families — HTF Didot, Gotham, Mercury and Retina — for the MoMA permanent collection.
In designing new typefaces, Hoefler & Frere-Jones has long been consumed with the interpretation of historical artifacts, the implications of cultural expectations and mechanical requirements, and the invention of new techniques. Four type families that embody H&FJ’s approach to type design are HTF Didot, Gotham, Mercury and Retina, and we are honored to have these designs selected by the Museum of Modern Art for inclusion in its permanent collection.
This acquisition marks an important expansion of MoMA’s design collection, which includes historically significant objects ranging from Frank Lloyd Wright’s model for Fallingwater to the original Macintosh 128K computer, into the category of typeface design. “Type design is an essential dimension of the history of modern art and design,” writes Senior Curator Paola Antonelli. “The best typefaces belong in MoMA’s collection.”
The typefaces chosen for the MoMA collection have been selected for their social relevance, the ways in which they reflect technological progress, and their importance to cultural history. “Each is a milestone in the history of typography,” writes Antonelli. Alongside H&FJ’s typefaces are major works by a number of our friends and colleagues, including Matthew Carter, Erik Spiekermann, Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum, and the many contributors to Emigre. H&FJ is proud to be in such distinguished company, and to be a part of MoMA’s recognition of our industry’s craft.
My Mac Apps
One thing I’ve noticed having done a couple of reinstalls lately is that I’m using a lot less apps on my computer. I figure now (that I’m procrastinating) is as good a time as any other to write things down in case anyone finds it useful:
- Google Chrome, Firefox 4 and Plainview
- SIMBL and TerminalColours – pretty much the first thing I install, a must for seeting what you’re doing on a dark terminal background (I bump up green, blue, red, magenta and cyan). I’ve linked to the Network graph for TerminalColours, as the head seems to be ever-shifting
- XCode
- OpenTerminal – incredibly useful; I change the prefs to always open a new window and to open the selected folder
- ClipMenu – the best clipboard history app I’ve found. I don’t use it’s snippets much, just increase the buffer to 50, increase the autosave frequency and show the last 10 inline
- MacPorts – while others might have moved to Homebrew, MacPorts hasn’t failed me yet and I’ve invested the time to learning variants, upgrades, cleaning and activations. As long as it keeps working, I’ll keep using it. The first thing I’ll usually do is install python27 and python_select to python27. I finally learned my lesson not to use Apple’s built-ins. I also use MacPorts’ vim (+python27), curl (+ssl), and git-core.
- Thunderbird – one day my Mail.app stopped working w/ GMail’s IMAP. I switching to browser-only, but that didn’t work well, especially w/ 5 GMail/GApps accounts. I’ve switched before, but after a year w/ Thunderbird 3, it looks like it’s taken for good. I have a few useful extensions, but by far the most useful is keyconfig, which I primarily to map the ‘y’ key to archive. I mostly use the widescreen view w/ Group By reverse chronological sorting in the unified inbox.
Alfred – I finally switched off of Quicksilver a few months ago. Now, there’s still some development going on, and it mostly works, but it felt like the right time to move to something a bit more vital. After trying Quick Search Box, I settled on Alfred mostly because I wanted a quick way to access individual preference panes. My launcher needs have always been pretty basic, I just wanted something that works and doesn’t crash much.
- iStats Menu $ – For a long time I ran MenuMeters, which is great and does everything that I want. I mostly switched because iStats Menu has a nicer calendar than MagiCal, on par with the features I used from MenuCalendarClock (I can’t recommend the latter, as I registered, and shortly after a new version came out that required re-registering). Paying another $20 was a bit much for me.
- Adium – the only feature I wish it had was cloud-based log syncing… hmm, I wonder if saving to Dropbox is a good option… I’ve use the Domo-kun notification icon for years, although the Totoro is pretty tempting. I make a lot of customizations to my Adium, but by far the most importan are deleting Growl notifications, turning off sounds, disabling the menu icon, and hiding messages and lists when backgrounded – basically, anything that would actually interrupt my work (I have my dock hidden by default, otherwise I would disable that stuff as well).
- VLC – must have for MKVs and the like (I’ve used Perian in the past, just couldn’t be bothered to reinstall it)
- Cog – I loathe iTunes, and Cog is the best lightweight music player I’ve found. The official release hasn’t been updated in a while. I use the latest nightly without problems. Vox is a slicker alternative, but doesn’t have playlist management or scrobbling. (Cog does via the Last.fm Scrobbler)
- DTerm – I’ve yet to really start using it, but the copy results to clipboard seems really nice.
- Alarm Clock – I found this a few years ago, and it does everything I want/need in an alarm clock.
- Dropbox $ – I pay for the Pro account and use it everywhere. Here’s an interesting Quora question on why Dropbox is so much more popular than competitors. The simple answer is that it just works.
- Carbon Copy Cloner – Its read-only image writing seems to work much better than SuperDuper‘s for some reason. With it, I can image a machine (11GB uncompressed) in about 5 minutes.
- TeamViewer
- 1password $ – this works I think as well as can be expected. LastPass is probably its only real competition. One slick thing is that if you’re syncing with Dropbox, the 1password’s license file will be automatically synced.
- Evernote $ – It’s not perfect, but it does that one thing well that no one else did (sync!) With 2.0 (folders!), I find myself less angry at it now at least.
- Gabble – a far better Yammer app than the AIR one
- Sequel Pro – as much as I live in mysqlclient, Sequel Pro does some really convenient things (duplicating rows for example) and is a lot faster than MySQL Workbench.
- TinkerTool – I only use this app to move the Dock (I run mine hidden on the top left side w/ only running apps), although I include it in the list because it’s does other neat stuff as well.
OK, not the shortest list, but compared to the number of apps I had installed before…
Notes on optimizing dictionaries, the Python edition.
Notes on optimizing dictionaries, the Python edition.
Jason Calacanis Starts Promoting Mahalo 4.0 "Pivot" (Dan Frommer/SAI)
Shared by Jake Dobkin
I always said with $20MM, JC could pivot 5 or 10 times! I vote for bulldog breeding social network!
Dan Frommer / SAI: Silicon Alley Insider:
Jason Calacanis Starts Promoting Mahalo 4.0 “Pivot” — Jason Calacanis is launching “Mahalo 4.0” on Tuesday, he just said on Quora, “our pivot from human-powered search to....... :-)”. — In other words, Mahalo, his startup, is shifting focus again. — To what? Good question.
Tyr und Fenrir
At one stage the gods decided to shackle the Fenris wolf (Fenrir), but the beast broke every chain they put upon him. Eventually they had the dwarves make them a magical ribbon called Gleipnir. It appeared to be only a silken ribbon but was made of six wondrous ingredients: the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, bear’s sinews (meaning nerves, sensibility), fish’s breath and bird’s spittle. The creation of Gleipnir is said to be the reason why none of the above exist. Fenrir sensed the gods’ deceit and refused to be bound with it unless one of them put his hand in the wolf’s mouth.
Tyr, known for his great wisdom and courage, agreed, and the other gods bound the wolf. After Fenrir had been bound by the gods, he struggled to try and break the rope. When the gods saw that Fenrir was bound they all rejoiced, except Tyr, who had his right hand bitten off by the wolf. Fenrir will remain bound until the day of Ragnarök. As a result of this deed, Tyr is called the “Leavings of the Wolf”; which is to be understood as a poetic kenning for glory.
(via Týr on wikipedia)
The Nespresso Flavor Wheel
You can say whatever you want about how bad it tastes, the evils of Nestlé, or the negative environmental impact. It still looks good, and often that’s enough (unfortunately).
See also the Wine Flavor Wheel, Beer Flavor Wheel, the (real) Coffee Flavor Wheel, and the Chocolate Flavor Wheel (three versions – in PDF).
Thanks sL!
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