Final Jeopardy blog
The Final Jeopardy blog posts a video each day’s Final Jeopardy question. (thx, daniel)
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Entries for April 2008
Fifty greatest TV shows of all time
There’s much to argue with on this list of the 50 greatest TV shows of all time. Too many 1 or 2 season shows and recent shows. And Buffy at #2? Christ, whatever.
Masonic handbook
Photos of a Masonic handbook from 1920 called King Solomon and His Followers — A Valuable Aid to the Memory. The text is written in shorthand. (via clusterflock)
Saudi Arabian car madness
Video of four people in a car driving down a road in Saudi Arabia with three of them outside the car doing what looks like ice skating on the pavement. That is some weird shit. (via cyn-c)
Buzzfeed hiring developer
BuzzFeed is looking to hire a Perl developer to join a small development team.
We are in need of a experienced software developer well versed in Perl and web based technologies. Looking for a motivated individual who has experience building scalable web application in Perl and MySQL, and has a familiarity with developing in Unix/Linux environments.
Sandwiches
Sometimes it seems as though the NY Times writes articles just for me: Seven New Sandwiches Try to Make it in New York.
One day last year at the Watchung Deli, at the request of a student from a nearby school, Ben Gualano piled mac-and-cheese onto a chicken cutlet sub with barbecue sauce and bacon, squeezed it shut somehow, and the Benny Mac was born… It’s a full-body experience — like a mud bath, but with extra ooze. One taster said afterward, “There was bacon in there?”
You may remember that I’m a sandwich fan. For dinner last night, I had a surprisingly good turkey sandwich of my own making (the little bit of onion and the pepper was the secret) and have made friends with a particularly good meatball hero and a banh mi near the office. My present sandwich life is entirely satisfying.
End of the blockbuster
Here’s the premise: taken together, this summer’s movies are bad enough that it signals the end of the summer blockbuster. The evidence in two parts.
Update: Counterpoint. (thx, patricio)
Grand Theft Auto food
An attempt to find real-world analogs to the fictional NYC restaurants in Grand Theft Auto 4.
Blogger book battle
Two new books by bloggers out today: Heather Armstrong’s first book, a compilation called Things I Learned About My Dad, and Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, a book on “techno-geek rebellion” for teens. At the moment, Dooce is winning the battle at Amazon; Little Brother’s sales rank is #501 while Things I Learned is a startling #38.
The under-construction facade of the new Apple
The under-construction facade of the new Apple Store in Boston looks like Fenway Park’s Green Monster. I bet they did this just to piss off Gruber.
Free Richard Dawkins! (That’s free as in
Free Richard Dawkins! (That’s free as in lecture, not free as in spring from jail.) Each year in honor of Harvey David Preisler, a lecture is given and this year’s will be delivered by Richard Dawkins on May 3 @ 9am at The New York Academy of Sciences.
The lecture is entitled “The Purpose of Purpose,” and Professor Dawkins will make himself available for a question/answer period afterward. If you are in the New York City area (or can be on Saturday), I urge you to attend.
As noted the lecture is free; all you need to do is RSVP in the comments of this thread.
Update: The event filled up quickly…only the first 25 RSVPs will be able to attend.
James Frey’s first interview since Oprah threw
James Frey’s first interview since Oprah threw a tantrum in front of him on her show in 2006. Frey famously wrote A Million Little Pieces as a memoir and then admitted that he’d made some of the story up after The Smoking Gun investigated.
Timelapse video of the cherry trees blossoming
Timelapse video of the cherry trees blossoming at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden over a period of 9 days. If you haven’t been over to the BBG yet this year, now would be a good time; most of their cherry trees are at “peak bloom” right now.
A graph that perfectly describes my profanity usage from yesterday.
A graph that perfectly describes my profanity usage from yesterday.
(Today is Ben Fry day on kottke.
(Today is Ben Fry day on kottke.org. Apparently.) All Streets is a map of the US with all 26 million roads displayed on it. The best part is that features like mountains and rivers emerge naturally from the road system.
No other features (such as outlines or geographic features) have been added to this image, however they emerge as roads avoid mountains, and sparse areas convey low population. The pace of progress is seen in the midwest where suburban areas are punctuated by square blocks of area that are still farm land.
Here are a few technical details of how the map was made.
A collection of photos taken from space
A collection of photos taken from space of cities at night. Beautiful. (via ben fry)
Roger Ebert + blog = subscribed. (via house next door)
Roger Ebert + blog = subscribed. (via house next door)
Ben Fry has updated his salary vs.
Ben Fry has updated his salary vs. performance chart for the 2008 MLB season that compares team payrolls with winning percentage. The entire payroll of the Florida Marlins appears to be less than what Jason Giambi and A-Rod *each* made last year.
In the late ’90s, pop-culture historian
In the late ’90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy.
He wrote to Charles Manson, Ted Kacynzski, and Dick Cheney, among others…and they wrote back. Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, wrote back on his own personalized letterhead. (thx, andrew)
You won’t need to do that. She
You won’t need to do that. She will be alive by then.
That’s what the parents of a dead 11-year-old girl said when told the medical examiner was to do an autopsy on her. The girl died from untreated diabetes while her parents, convinced she was under “spiritual attack”, prayed for her instead of taking her to the doctor. They face up to 25 years in prison and probably zero guilt because it was all God’s plan.
The Wire, Simpsons style
A few drawings of characters from The Wire drawn in the style of The Simpsons. Here’s a scene from season one; D’Angelo tries to teach chess to Wallace and Bodie:
This might be my new favorite thing on the web. (thx, andy)
A short appreciation of the iconic Citroen
A short appreciation of the iconic Citroen Deux Chevaux on the occasion of its 60th anniversary.
As a student and trainee journalist, I managed to drive my bright red one thousands of miles around the continent and once even to Morocco without a breakdown. The main drawback was sunburn from motoring with the cloth roof rolled back. There was so much wind you didn’t feel the rays.
For her Mended Spiderweb project, Nina Katchadourian
For her Mended Spiderweb project, Nina Katchadourian found spiderwebs in need of repair and fixed them with a needle and thread.
All of the patches were made by inserting segments one at a time directly into the web. Sometimes the thread was starched, which made it stiffer and easier to work with. The short threads were held in place by the stickiness of the spider web itself; longer threads were reinforced by dipping the tips into white glue. I fixed the holes in the web until it was fully repaired, or until it could no longer bear the weight of the thread.
The spiders didn’t think much of her handiwork:
The morning after the first patch job, I discovered a pile of red threads lying on the ground below the web. At first I assumed the wind had blown them out; on closer inspection it became clear that the spider had repaired the web to perfect condition using its own methods, throwing the threads out in the process. My repairs were always rejected by the spider and discarded, usually during the course of the night, even in webs which looked abandoned.
(via 3qd)
Researchers Discover Massive Asshole in Blogosphere.
Researchers Discover Massive Asshole in Blogosphere.
At the Web 2.0 conference, Clay Shirky gave
At the Web 2.0 conference, Clay Shirky gave a talk called Gin, Television, and Social Surplus. In it, he argues that the “social surplus” soaked up in the latter half of the 20th century by television is now being put to better use on the internet.
For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before—free time. And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV. We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan’s Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.
But maybe it’s possible that the internet is a slightly more sophisticated (or slightly more cognitive) cognitive heat sink?
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space 18 years ago and to celebrate, NASA has put up a photo gallery of merging galaxies, galaxies as in love with each other as NASA is with the Hubble. Aww.
Warning: this is probably the most depressing
Warning: this is probably the most depressing thing you’ll read all day (or even all week):
An Austrian engineer has confessed to fathering seven children by raping his own daughter and keeping them captive in the cellar, Austrian police said today.
Standard Operating Procedure
To be honest, I was a little disappointed in Standard Operating Procedure…but the fault is my own, not the film’s. My expectation was that the film would start with the photos of Abu Ghraib & misdeeds of the lower ranking soldiers and then move up the chain of command, both militarily and thematically speaking, to explore the issues of truth in photography and culpability. To Morris’ credit, he didn’t do that. It’s too easy these days to attempt arguments about Iraq or the Bush Administration that connect too many dots with too little evidence…essentially propaganda that sings to the choir.
SOP has a surprisingly small depth of field; it’s the story of those infamous photos, the people who took & appeared in them, and what they have to say about the photos & the actions they purport to show. And in that, the movie succeeds. Morris leaves plenty of negative space into which the audience can insert their own questions about what the photographs ultimately depict and who’s responsible in the end.
Incidentally, Morris generated a bit of controversy recently when he admitted that he’d paid some of the interviewees in SOP. The criticism of this practice is that “the credibility of interviewees diminishes when money changes hands and that these people will provide the answers they think are desired rather than the truth”. That is a concern but no more so than every other reason for being untruthful, including not telling the truth out of spite for lack of payment. People have so many better reasons to lie than money.
A short (too short, perhaps) interview with
A short (too short, perhaps) interview with Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich of Radio Lab.
It got really weird when you said, “If I’m a Buick and I’m made of parts, am I alive?” And he said, “Well, some people would say a Buick is alive.”
A recent RL show explored Laughter and included a segment on its contagiousness. I’ve been showing Ollie the video of himself laughing at card shuffling and he laughs along with his onscreen self. He found the laughing baby videos on YouTube funny as well.
The Coolidge Effect is a phenomenon whereby
The Coolidge Effect is a phenomenon whereby males exhibit high sexual performance given the introduction of new willing females.
It earned its name many years ago when President Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm. While the President was elsewhere, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a rooster that “could copulate with hens all day long, day after day.” Mrs. Coolidge coyly suggested that the farmer tell that to Mr. Coolidge, which he did.
The President thought for a moment and then inquired, “With the same hen?”
“No, sir,” replied the farmer.
“Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge,” retorted the President.
Zing! (via defective yeti)
Tree People, a series of photos of
Tree People, a series of photos of the Korowai of Papua New Guinea.
A list of reasons why people write
A list of reasons why people write and explore history with examples of each.
14. The past is heritage: we study it to form or enforce national, ethnic, religious or personal identity, or to combat attempts to destroy heritage. Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-Moralization of Society.
(via short shrift)
The One Day Poem Pavilion uses the
The One Day Poem Pavilion uses the sun to display a poem one line at a time over the course of an entire day. (via stingy kids)
This season, baseball managers are being a
This season, baseball managers are being a bit more experimental in how they construct their batting and pitching lineups. For instance, the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers started relief pitchers in games that they suspected might be shortened by rain in order to save the scheduled starter for the next game. The Braves shifted their pitcher to the outfield for one at-bat then brought him back to the mound for the next one.
The article is also notable for this quote from an Angels spokesperson, who said that Angels star Vladimir Guerrero is “somebody who’s not affected by things”. !!
Gar, I missed another one of Tobias
Gar, I missed another one of Tobias Frere-Jones’ NYC Typographic Walking Tours but luckily Jason Santa Maria — a fellow so nice they named him thrice — has photos. Photos from his first tour here. (via airbag)
The 10 most appropriate weatherperson names…like Ray
The 10 most appropriate weatherperson names…like Ray Ban and Storm Field. When I was a kid watching the news out of Minneapolis, their morning weather guy’s name was Sunny Haus. (Not his real name though…the station wouldn’t let Steve Wolhenhaus go by his real name.)
Ten things I learned this week, 01
I’m debuting a new feature on kottke.org. On (some? most? all?) Fridays, I’ll wrap up the week with a list of interesting facts I’ve found that don’t really warrant their own posts for whatever reason. I hope you find it useful. Suggestions for next week’s list are welcome via email.
Life expectancy for women in some parts of the US declined significantly from 1983 to 1999. [NY Times]
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. One out of every 100 American adults is presently incarcerated. [NY Times]
Nearly 1 million women in Iraq are widows or divorcees, or their husbands are missing. [Washington Post]
A quarter of all the petroleum ever consumed in the history of the world was consumed in the last 10 years. Humans collectively consume 6,000 gallons of fuel every second. [PBS]
About a third of all American high school students drop out. That’s about one every 26 seconds. [NY Times]
China now has the world’s largest population of internet users. [Reuters]
Humans may have almost gone extinct almost 70,000 years ago. The total population may have dipped to 2,000 individuals, possibly because of drought. [CNN]
Standard Operating Procedure is the first movie Errol Morris has shot with a Cinemascope aspect ratio of 2.35:1. [Errol Morris at the Apple Store]
Nearly 80 percent of roommates got so drunk last night. [The Onion]
How NYC has been depicted in video
How NYC has been depicted in video games through the years. (via waxy)
The 92nd St Y has put the
The 92nd St Y has put the video of a talk called The Art of the Book up on their site. The talk was held in Dec 2006 and featured Milton Glaser, Chip Kidd, and Dave Eggers with Michael Bierut moderating. You may recall that Glaser got into a bit of hot water for some comments he made about the career paths of women in graphic design.
Mister Disc is a portable record player,
Mister Disc is a portable record player, like a Walkman or iPod for phonographs. There’s only 12 easy steps to listening to your favorite LPs on the go.
Careful reading the instructions will assure you of many hours of enjoyment from your new Mister Disc.
Whoever greenlit this thing must have been high at the time. (via episode #59 of Starcade)
Starcade was an 80s TV game show
Starcade was an 80s TV game show where contestants competed against each other on various arcade games like Joust, Burgertime, Dragon’s Lair, and Mr. Do. I watched it whenever I could and now they’ve put 15 full episodes online for your viewing pleasure. I found this on the Secret Fun Blog, written by the Vice-President of the official Starcade Fan Club.
On a Spring morning Brad showed up to homeroom with the crazed look of inspiration on his face. He erupted into babble and I sensed that he’d been waiting many hours to unload his revelation upon me. It was something about Starcade, and a club, and titles and duties, and other foreign concepts. I patronizingly agreed to his wishes and I even signed something. It was a letter…
The Expedition One crew, consisting of one
The Expedition One crew, consisting of one American and two Russian astronauts, spent 136 days in space aboard the International Space Station. Their logs include a record of the movies they watched while on their mission.
6 Feb 2001: We ate some dinner and watched the last part of “City of Angels”. Shep did his best to explain to Yuri and Sergei what the phrase “chick flick” means.
24 Feb 2001 We put some chow and the DVD player in the Soyuz and close the hatch about 0530. It takes 2 orbits to get the first set of hooks off and the docking tunnel pressure checked. We get the “Austin Powers” sequel in while all this is taking place. (Maybe a Soyuz first here).
Update: The Expedition One crew also documented their many computer problems.
Sergei notices that the Russian PCS laptop has locked up. He tries to reboot, but the Sun application software won’t load. Lots of messages on the screen noting data errors. Sergei thinks that it may be the hard drive. He boots up windows to see if the windows partition runs OK—it does. So at least some of the hardware is functional.
Maybe they need Macs?
I’ve got Will Smith action hero fatigue,
I’ve got Will Smith action hero fatigue, but HOLY CRAP does Hancock look awesome. I am into apathetic superheroes. There’s a second trailer available on YouTube…and its quality is surprisingly good. (You can tell I don’t make it out to the movies a lot these days…the first trailer has been out since December.)
The slipperiness of truth
Honestly I was getting a little burned out on Errol Morris. I’ve been reading his Times blog, reading and listening to interviews with him about Standard Operating Procedure, and went to see him at the Apple Store last night. (I was most intrigued by his observation that photographs both reveal and conceal at the same time.) But this (relatively) short interview with him on the AV Club site is worth reading and got me unburned out. One of the many choice quotes:
I wish they’d just get it over with and make [Iraq] the 51st state, because I think it’s the perfect red state: religious fundamentalists, lots of weaponry. How could you go wrong? We’re already spending a significant fraction of our gross national product on the infrastructure; such as it is, on Iraq. Make it the 51st state and get it over with.
The interviewer, Scott Tobias, makes an interesting observation toward the end.
It seems like there’s been plenty of instances in which big guys [i.e. Bush, Cheney, etc.] could have and should have been held accountable. Yet it’s not as if they’ve slipped a noose. It’s as if they deny that there’s even a noose to be slipped.
And Morris replies:
That’s what’s so bizarre. You know, there are smoking guns everywhere, and people are being constantly hit over the head with smoking guns, and people simply don’t act on them.
For me, this is the central mystery of the Bush administration. There has been demonstrable legal wrongdoing on the part of this administration and through some magical process, they’ve charmed the country and managed to sidestep not only legal action (including impeachment) but even the threat of legal action and — this is the best part — get fucking reelected in the process. With Bush’s disapproval rating at an all-time high (for any President since Gallup began polling), it’s not like people aren’t aware and the 2006 elections clearly show the country’s disapproval with Bush et al. Maddening and fascinating at the same time.
Nice anecdote from a former line chef
Nice anecdote from a former line chef at the French Laundry about Eric Ziebold, then the sous-chef there.
He was TFL’s first ever sous chef and to this day I have never seen any one person work so many hours. (He, Thomas & Laura all put in 17-19 hour days, 7 days a week.) Everyone knows The French Laundry is an amazing restaurant, but few know why. It’s easy to blame or praise one person, but the truth is that it takes a village.
Why is New York-style pizza so difficult
Why is New York-style pizza so difficult to replicate in other areas of the world? Perhaps the answer lies with NYC’s legendary tap water.
“Water,” Batali says. “Water is huge. It’s probably one of California’s biggest problems with pizza.” Water binds the dough’s few ingredients. Nearly every chemical reaction that produces flavor occurs in water, says Chris Loss, a food scientist with the Culinary Institute of America. “So, naturally, the minerals and chemicals in it will affect every aspect of the way something tastes.”
Update: That legendary tap water was supposedly responsible for NYC-style bagels as well until Finagle A Bagel founder Larry Smith drove some Boston tap water to NYC and compared bagels made with the water from the two cities.
“There was absolutely no difference between them,” Smith reported. “What makes the difference is equipment, process and ingredients.”
Well, ingredients except water. (thx, darrin)
Update: Jeffrey Steingarten, among others, believes that temperature is the key to great pizza and that coal is the key to great temperatures. (thx, hillel)
Update: I knew we’d eventually end up on Slice…the web’s premiere pizza site hosts an account of Jeff Varasano’s attempt to reverse engineer a NYC pizza, specifically from the 117th St. Patsy’s. Among his findings:
There are a lot of variables for such a simple food. But these 3 FAR outweigh the others:
1. High Heat
2. Kneading Technique
3. The kind of yeast culture or “starter” used along with proper fermentation techniqueAll other factors pale in comparison to these 3. I know that people fuss over the brand of flour, the kind of sauce, etc. I discuss all of these things, but if you don’t have the 3 fundamentals above handled, you will be limited.
(thx, ian)
After boxing podcasting soundly about the ears…
After boxing podcasting soundly about the ears…
The stylistic arena of text and images is so exponentially more vast, and so much easier to negotiate a rewarding path through, it’s hard not to think of the [podcasting] format as broken, a dead end. Perhaps that’s why many come and go so quickly.
…Dean Allen lists some of his favorite podcasts. Many of which I’d immediately subscribe to except that I don’t exercise, drive, or cook. (I will also add that I am so happy to have Textism back in my life. It’s the perfect up-yours to the Web 2.0 hype machinery/chicanery.)
Vengeance
Jared Diamond wrote a fascinating article in last week’s New Yorker about vengeance. On one of his trips to Papua New Guinea, he met a man named Daniel who had been responsible for “organizing the revenge” against the man who killed his paternal uncle Soll. (Incidentally, Soll’s killer was also an uncle of Daniel’s.)
Among Highland clans, each killing demands a revenge killing, so that a war goes on and on, unless political considerations cause it to be settled, or unless one clan is wiped out or flees. When I asked Daniel how the war that claimed his uncle’s life began, he answered, “The original cause of the wars between the Handa and Ombal clans was a pig that ruined a garden.” Surprisingly to outsiders, most Highland wars start ostensibly as a dispute over either pigs or women. Anthropologists debate whether the wars really arise from some deeper lying ultimate cause, such as land or population pressure, but the participants, when they are asked to name a cause, usually point to a woman or a pig.
The process of vengeance is very important to the people living in this region of New Guinea; people there speak openly of revenge killings as Americans might speak of friendships and family. Diamond argues that the New Guineans’ everyday open embrace of such a strong emotion is not necessarily a bad thing and that modern society can circumvent people’s need for vengeance, resulting in feelings of dissatisfaction that can create unbalanced emotional lives. At the end of WWII, Diamond’s father-in-law had a chance to take his revenge on someone who had killed his mother, sister, and niece but was persuaded to turn the man over to the new Polish government for punishment. The man was never charged with the crime and Diamond’s father-in-law was never the same.
One day, he took out a sheaf of photographs and showed [his daughter] Marie a picture of three shallow excavations in a forest: the photo that he had taken of the graves of his mother, sister, and niece. Then, for the first time, he told Marie the story of how he discovered what had happened to them, and of his release of their killer. Once, when he was about ninety years old, he recounted the story to Marie and me together. I recall his talking in an emotionally flat, distant, storytelling way, as if he no longer attached feelings to the story. In fact, his distanced manner must have been a tightly controlled act, a way of preserving his sanity while living with his memories.
A new version of Buzzfeed launched late
A new version of Buzzfeed launched late last night. It’s not exactly a 2.0 release, but it’s a major step toward that near-future event. Disclosure: I’m an advisor to Buzzfeed.
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