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Main page September 30, 2006Virtual finger painting; Patti Smith to close CBGBs; New Guinea festival photos; Daily puppy
(Attribution expanded):Virtual finger painting by Ksanlab (where I can't find it) via Techblog who cites Fresh Creation: “Touch Me Tender” is an early prototype interface that eventually aims to replace photo editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop and MS Paint. It allows users to paint with their fingers directly on the screen: The video begins with a demo of dragging and enlarging photos with your finger, then switches to finger painting. When I was 5, I loved kindergarten because we could finger paint at a big easel whenever we finished our work. I raced through letters and numbers so I could paint, and had it down enough that I was painting much of the day. Unfortunately, I didn't understand how that looked to adults: Like too much fun. One night my parents got a call from the teacher saying I obviously was ready for first grade. After 6 weeks in kindergarten, I was moved to a classroom with desks, no naps, no milk and cookies, and no easels -- childhood's end.
It's been more than two years since Patti Smith's breakthrough album, Horses, and the May 15, 1978 gig was also a historical event - it was poet Jim Carroll's first performance as a rock star. News: A Homecoming: Patti Smith to Play CBGB's Last Show. The famed NYC club on the Bowery, birthplace of punk, is closing after 33 years. Following the show, CBGBs, thanks to skyrocketing rent costs, is relocating to Las Vegas, and expected to open in 2008. Bonus: History of Rock -N- Roll Punk Part 2 at YouTube. In case you wondered, CBGB stands for Country Bluegrass Blues, even though we don't think its 1974 house band, The Ramones, ever played that. Video: Ramones: Judy is a Punk (CBGBs 1974)
...the mount Hagen festival is an event to see once in a lifetime...Thousands of tribesmen coming from all over the country, dancing, singing, pride of themselves, and they can be!
Posted by Sheila Lennon September 29, 2006Firefox Portable; Post-Cluetrain thinking; Nice Italian Nike ads; Shameful terror bill; BugsFirefox Portable: Take your browser, bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords with you on a thumb drive. Like having no hands: Doc Searls, whose Cluetrain quote, "Markets are conversations" approaches mantra status, wants to focus on what happens post-marketing, when we already know what we want. In a conversation with a minister over the meaning of another's obscure use of the word "gestures," Doc clarifies it as customer "intent" and calls for software to mobilize us: We need to serve market (not marketing) relationships that arise from decisions customers have already made to buy something. They have money in hand, and the intention to book a hotel, or rent a car, or buy a basketball backboard, or whatever. Marketing's job is done. Of course this makes sense. (Ever spend a whole evening looking for the best price on anything at umpteen sites?) Interesting: The blog item itself turns another relationship around: Lots of programmers develop an interesting technology, find a use for it and take it out there, but we may not need yet another music recommendation engine or synchronize-your-calendar tool. Doc knows what he wants, but not knowing how to program is like having no hands. Who will help him build it? (I feel the same way much of the time. I'm brimming with ideas I have no idea how to turn into instructions to a computer. The tools and interfaces available shape and limit what we all can do: Hammer, meet nail. How do we wangle a screwdriver and a drill and a thingamabob that doesn't exist yet?) Really nice ads for Nike Italy. Some recall Art Deco posters of the '30s, but this is my favorite: 
Click image to see a very large version This comes via the stylish ComputerLove. Have you no shame? Bush: Dems Have Become Obstructionists. AP. Well, yeah, that's why they're called the opposition party. Our American system is built on a system of checks and balances, all designed to obstruct attempts by any body to seize absolute power. At least it's supposed to work that way. Among the provisions of the new "antiterrorism" bill that permits us to terrorize, selected from yesterday's Times list, are these new lows in American civilization: Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted. Democrats largely went along, out of fear of being branded unpatriotic or soft on (bad guys) in lurid campaign ads. Are they hoping to repeal it if they win? Bugs: How HP bugged e-mail at CNet: "Hewlett-Packard employed a commercial service that tracks e-mail paths to bug a file sent to CNET News.com reporter, an HP investigator said Thursday." Advocacy groups to Congress: Forget HP. What about NSA? -- also at CNet: WASHINGTON--The spying scandal that rocked Hewlett-Packard's boardroom may be disconcerting to many onlookers, but Congress would be better served if it devoted the same sort of scrutiny to the Bush Administration's warrantless terrorist surveillance program, advocacy groups and some politicians said Thursday. Breaking: House approves warrantless wiretap law, 232-191. WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House approved a bill Thursday that would grant legal status to President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program with new restrictions. Republicans called it a test before the election of whether Democrats want to fight or coddle terrorists. There always seem to be only two choices, one blustering and one absurd. Does anybody coddle anything besides eggs and babies? No matter. It's just campaigning: ...(Senate) Leaders concede that differences between the versions are so significant they cannot reconcile them into a final bill that can be delivered to Bush before the Nov. 7 congressional elections. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 28, 2006The acidental surrealist: Mary Reynolds, American in ParisThe accidental surrealist: A link from Mark Woods of wood s lot (one of our deeper bloggers) unearths yet another American who took a flyer on freedom when most early 20th-century women were privately struggling with corseted convention. Warm Ashes: The Life and Career of Mary Reynolds is astonishing. Why haven't we heard of Mary Reynolds before, in the same breath as Anais Nin and Djuna Barnes? Perhaps because she did not write. She bound books. In a time when the world was small enough that all the artists seemed to know each other, Mary Hubachek Reyholds, born in 1891, lived in Greenwich Village with her soulmate husband, enjoying Bohemia. He enlisted in WWI sixteen months into their marriage, and died of the flu somewhere in Europe two years later. Pressured by her parents to move on, remarry and start a family, she fled to Paris, to Montparnasse. She took up with Marcel Duchamp, who would be, despite rocky early years, her lover for the rest of her life, and eventually took up bookbinding as her own art.
Susan Glover Godlewski, in this profile of Reynolds at the Art Institute of Chicago, writes, The 1930s marked a period of tranquillity, contentment, and artistic achievement for Reynolds. Her relationship with Duchamp had settled into a comfortable intimacy. Her creativity and binding production were at their highest levels. She held an open house almost nightly at her home at 14, rue Hallé, with her quiet garden the favored spot after dinner for the likes of Duchamp, Brancusi, Man Ray, Breton, Barnes, Guggenheim, Éluard, Mina Loy, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Samuel Beckett, and others.
When life became dangerous, Mary refused to leave Paris with Duchamp, and became instead a leader of the Resistance, harboring refugees as "Gentle Mary." She wrote, I am trying to profit by the times here....it is a bill in my personal life. I said try—don't laff—to make myself a better character—a little late. It is a curious life of anguish and such luxury as I have not known for a long time—the evenings more or less alone and away from the world like a desert island—and I enjoy that. She finally fled just ahead of the Gestapo by walking over the Pyrenees to Spain. After being debriefed by the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), forerunner of the CIA, she tried to join them, in the foreign service, but was rejected for "age"; she was 52. Reunited with Duchamp in Greenwich Village, she sorely missed Paris, and returned six weeks after the war ended. He joined her, but liked the art scene and collectors in New York too much to stay. She died in 1950 at her Paris home of uterine cancer, with Duchamp at her side. Duchamp stayed on at 14, rue Hallé taking care of Reynolds's affairs, cleaning the house, and most importantly, organizing her bindings, as well as the books, art, and ephemera that she had gathered during her three decades in Paris. These he had carefully packed and shipped to her brother, who had decided to donate the collection to The Art Institute of Chicago in his sister's memory. Hubachek (her brother Frank) and Duchamp worked assiduously on the organization and publication of the collection for nearly six years. When the collection catalogue, Surrealism and Its Affinities: The Mary Reynolds Collection, was published in 1956, Hubachek made certain that as many of his sister's friends as he could locate received a copy. He obtained names and addresses not just from Duchamp, but from Cocteau, Barnes, Calder, Flanner, and others. Tributes poured in. One of the most touching was from Cocteau, who wrote to Duchamp, "My very dear Marcel—It is rare that death leaves warm ashes. Thanks to you, this is what is happening for Mary. I congratulate and embrace you." Her friend, the writer Janet Flanner, wrote of her, How intimate she was with the artery-stream of Paris, in the pulse of its creators, major and minor. There was something immediate in her sense of appreciation, she seemed to be right at the side of writers and artists as they became themselves, so she was a continuous witness. There is something poignant about the Mary Reynolds presented here, an early Forrest Gump, present at everyone else's creation, while her own efforts remained obscure. The Vassar girl from Minneapolis took freedom as far as she could. I hope she found that enough.
Posted by Sheila Lennon September 27, 2006Richard Clarke's new site; Space Elevator test; Email addiction; RSS feeds by emailQuick links today:
LiftPort has finished a 60-day test with a 100-metre-long tether held aloft by four helium balloons. The test was designed to see what kinds of problems would crop up if such a platform were used to transmit Wi-Fi signals. The lofty platforms would be especially useful for providing Wi-Fi coverage to rural areas, says company president Michael Laine. Why email is addictive (and what to do about it) at Mindhacks.
Feedmailer: RSS feeds emailed to you in a familiar format: You set the frequency (how often you wish to receive updates) and our system will notify you when an RSS your subscribed to has been updated with new content! What's RSS? Its a delivery system for Web content. The acronym stands for Really Simple Syndication, which describes it from the viewpoint of the blogger whose RSS "feed" you subscribe to. Feedmailer offers a BBC description of it from the point of view of the reader: "RSS allows you to see when sites from all over the internet have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and articles (or even audio files, photographs or video) in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to remember to visit each site every day." Abu Aardvark blog proprietor Marc Lynch -- political science professor at Williams College and the author of Voices of the New Arab Public -- tried to track down the status of Osama bin Laden (Bin Laden dead?) on the Arabic jihadi blogs. Al-Arabiya is reporting that a senior Taliban official has confirmed that bin Laden is still very much alive. You'll probably have to take his word for it -- the linked page is in Arabic, but contains a photo of a smiling bin Laden. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 26, 2006Too tired for words 
 Posted by Sheila Lennon September 25, 2006Video: Bill Clinton and Fox's Wallace; 35 artists morph in 7 minutes; Facing Medicare drugs 'moat'; How Digg works
Chris Wallace Interviews Bill Clinton Pt 1 (09:20)  From Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase Morph on: Joan C. Gratz, Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase, 1992, Academy Award Winner for Best Short Film (Animated), 1993. Gratz morphs, merges and melds the work of 35 famous artists in just under seven minutes, but this isn't digital morphing. Her site, gratzfilm.com describes "her unique animation technique, clay-painting. Working with bits of clay as if they were oil paints, she blends colors and etches fine lines to create a seamless flow of images. "
Thanks to wood s lot for unearthing this eyepopper. Bottom drops out: WP: Millions of Seniors Facing Medicare 'Doughnut Hole'. Millions of older Americans are confronting a temporary break in their Medicare drug coverage this month that will require them to pay the full cost of their prescriptions or face the painful prospect of going without. Sounds more like a moat than a doughnut hole to me: Get across this stretch and you're home free. The cost per pill, cheaper alternatives and alternative medications also deserve scrutiny. This is dangerous. I can imagine patients rationing their medications -- take every other dose, for instance, and hope it helps enough. After a spate of people are hospitalized and perhaps die from the conditions their medication ought to keep in check, the system may change. (It's not like asking people to manage a food budget that can be trimmed by paying attention to sales and skipping dessert.) Digging into... How Digg Works, at How Stuff Works: "Digg.com... a user-driven news Web site that brings together hundreds of thousands of people to do the work of finding, submitting, reviewing and featuring news stories drawn from every corner of the Web." Posted by Sheila Lennon September 24, 2006Blogger: What space smells like; Which apple for what? BanksySpace tourist She was spacesick, but recovered in time for the docking with the International Space Station: ...finally the moment arrived and they were ready to open the hatch. Mike and Misha called me closer and told me to take a good whiff because this would be the first time I would smell “SPACE.” Over eons, humans have looked at the night sky, and some must have wondered what space smells like. If Anousheh were a time traveler, able to go back with the answer... Yeah, right. Related: Iranian women gather to catch glimpse of spacecraft carrying Iranian woman Apple research: Rocky Brook Orchard in Middletown has a nicely simple page of small photos of some apple varieties, each with a description of its appearance, texture, sweetness or tartness, and best uses.
At Phantom Farms in Cumberland, the "We currently harvest…" list also includes Rhode Island Greening and Spencer. The Apples page at The Cook's Thesaurus presents many more varieties grown in other regions, as well, and there's a comprehensive page of links to hundreds of apple varieties at All About Apples. Earlier in the season, a vendor at the farmer's market recommended Cortland (pictured above) for baked apples, so I picked some up today. Tonight I learned that they hold their shape well when baked. At the recipe page of the Rhode Island Fruit Growers Association, I found the Apple Crisp of my childhood. Art meets West: Banksy: The joker: The Independent (UK) story on the graffiti artist begins, Quite how a celebrity culture like that of Hollywood is going to cope with the British artist Banksy is far from clear. His show Barely Legal - featuring an incarnation of the proverbial elephant in the room - has this week made Banksy the darling of Tinseltown. Do unto others...: "Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America?" by Chilean American novelist and playwright Ariel Dorfman in the Washington Post. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 22, 2006It's OneWebDay; Energy-saving tips from Consumer Reports; Bronco Cobb: Patriots all about fear; Immersion blender makes soup easyOneWebDay: Doc Searls: The Web in the life of a Day Today is OneWebDay — Susan Crawford,'s great idea to create, maintain, advance, and promote a global day to celebrate online life. Autumn begins at 12:04 a.m. Saturday: 20 free ways to save energy : An exclusive excerpt from Consumer Reports' "Complete Guide to Reducing Energy Costs". Among them: Wash clothes in cold water (better for clothes, too) and Dust off the CrockPot -- uses less energy than simmering on the stove. Them's fightin' words: Broncos' Cobb says Patriots are all about fear(?) The San Jose Mercury News headline above is taunting, and I thought the war drum was beating a taunt about last season's playoff loss to Denver. But the story originated at a fellow McClatchy paper, the Colorado Springs Gazette, which billed it more clearly: Former Patriot Cobbs has little love for Belichick.
In Sunday’s game, Cobbs muffed the first kickoff of overtime. He scrambled and recovered the ball before the Chiefs got it. Cobbs cringed when he thought about what would have happened had he muffed a kickoff in New England. Well, yeah, we all groan at mistakes. But I don't want to see robots play machine football. History is largely the tale of human error and grace flowing through time.
My husband is in the middle of dental work, and needs soft food right now. Last night I made broccoli cheddar chicken soup, blending it in the pot. We had nibbled a large rotisserie chicken, then used it for sandwiches, then for chicken salad with what I could pick off. The carcass went into a 2-qt. saucepan and simmered away for several hours. I drained it, refrigerated the broth, and let the bones and chicken bits cool. Later, I picked through it, tossing skin and bones. Chicken Broccoli Cheddar Chicken soup Heat the chicken stock in a 2-quart saucepan, add broccoli and simmer until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Meanwhile, saute the onions in butter over medium-low heat till soft but not browned. Immerse the stick blender carefully in the soup and puree the broccoli, using the pulse button. Add the onions, let them cook for 30 seconds, then immerse the stick blender and puree them for a few seconds. Add the chicken bits (comb through them for small bones on the way into the pot) and puree them in the soup. Add the cheese and puree it. Add salt and pepper and a few grinds of nutmeg (about 1/8 teaspoon to start). Taste the soup. Add more cheese if you want it to taste very cheesy -- I liked a balance. It will be pale green with specks in it, and slightly thickened by the cheese and vegetables, as though you had added cream. But you haven't, so you haven't diluted the flavors. I was amazed at how the blender pureed everything -- including the chicken -- effortlessly. I'm wondering if it would puree a steak. So I went on a hunt for more ways to use it, and the first thing that grabbed me was Spinach-Peanut Soup. Please, sirs, may we have our spinach back now? One of Too Many Chefs' chefs, Meg in Paris, loves her immersion blender, and I've bookmarked many of her recipes. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 21, 2006For our daughters: 100 women; Recipes for an abundant tomato harvest
For our daughters: 100 women. SomeWomen by Madame Levy at La Vache Qui Lit is photos and links, in filmstrips. Just the photos, larger thumbnails at Persephassa, a small press and more. Striking, women with bold lives. Update: Roxanne M Carter, Persephassa's creator, lives in Providence. Harvest time: The low-acid, low-salt, no-sugar-added fresh tomato puree at The Epicurean Table looks very real. This is the site of a woman living in Spain who has also lived in the Middle East. Her recipes are really different from what I'm used to: Chicken Azahar), with mandatory muscatel, Mussels in Benedictine Sauce, Lamb & Turkey Kofte with Fresh Tomato Sauce a la Turk, Potatoes Lemon/Lime with Feta Cheese, Cauliflower and Pear Soup with Broccoli Florets.
Rich Marinara Sauce Tomato recipes to preserve the goodness of an abundant harvest goes way beyond that. For instance, I would never have thought of this: GRANDAD LOVES FRIED TOMATO FRITTERS Submitted by Ralph Dixon Lowe, Rt 5, Box 46A, Georgetown, TX 78626 Posted by Sheila Lennon September 20, 2006Blogging the Thailand coup; Dali's Disney film; Top 10 college pranks; New office slang; Utne, out now
Blogging the Thailand coup: Preetang Rai at Global Voices (which won the 2006 Knight-Batten Award for innovations in journalism) posts a coup update. The top of it: It was a holiday today in Thailand after the military ousted Prime Minister Thaksin’s government last night while he was away in in New York. There are no reports of violence and people are venturing out in the streets. There are more links to Thai blogs in the rest of this post, including 19sep: "Blog for Thailand 19 Sep 2006 Coup. All content are public domain." Thanks to Liz Donovan for the pointer. Salvador Dali's Disney Film Destino: See some clips at this post from Lukira that begins,
In 1946, Salvador Dali and Walt Disney planned a cartoon together. Destino is a six-minute film set to a Spanish song, devoid of dialogue and without a clear story line. It follows a dark-eyed ballerina on a journey among strange objects through a desert landscape in a dreamlike atmosphere. The photo is of Dali at work at the Walt Disney Studio, circa 1946. High jinx: The Top Ten College Pranks of All Time at the Museum of Hoaxes. New Office Slang: Includes such instantly recognizable events as "Blamestorming - A group discussion of why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible." Farewell to all that: Eric Utne, "a magazine junkie," hit upon the idea of gathering essays, journalism and other writings from obscure publications around the world, and presenting them in a bi-monthly, nationally circulated magazine, she said. Issues usually have a theme, and while not partisan, the magazine has a decidedly progressive take on the world. Once upon a time, we all thought we could change the world with projects that began around a potluck dinner table. Alt-pub: Jim Romenesko: "NOTE TO EX-DMN STAFFERS: I'm interested in posting your unpublished farewell pieces. Send them to jromenesko@poynter.org" Former Dallas News book critic Jerome Weeks published his swan song in "Critical Mass: the blog of the national book critics circle board of directors." Former TV critic Ed Bark has his own site now, Uncle Barky's Bytes Both took the buyout. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 19, 2006Genius grant to jazz's Regina Carter; Free video-editing software; Elephants, and camels; Matt Taibbi scolds us
MacArthur Foundation Names Recipients of 'Genius' Awards at philanthropy.com includes the full list of 25 lucky ducks. Free video editing software list for all platforms, from Tv.isg.si, which bills itself as "an internet television and personal video archive."
For the most part, America looks pretty much like it looked before 9/11. We spend most of our time pounding Ding-Dongs and Sonic burgers, watching ESPN and surfing porn sites, while transnational corporations -- the silent allies of drug cartels and warlords in the dismantling of the traditional nation-state -- install turnstiles in Congress and steadily move our entire manufacturing economy overseas. Our culture is a parade of idiot reality shows where ordinary citizens eat caterpillars for money and Southern jocks drive moving billboards in a circle at 200 mph in front of euphoric crowds of a hundred thousand. In the intellectual north, our braver political dissidents dress in T-shirts with the face of George Bush morphed onto a pig's body and watch documentaries in which other intellectuals brag about being tricked by the Republicans into voting to invade the wrong country. Nobody seems neutral about Taibbi's writing. The commenters jump all over him. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 18, 2006Pats angst; White jigsaw; 23 lots, no homes; Farewells: Richards, Fallaci; Firefox tipI've updated this with reaction from New York papers overnight.
Pats fan, heart still pounding: We should have/could have lost, but got saved by Tedy Bruschi's interception with five seconds left. Tedy's back! Clock management wasn't too shabby either. This win over the Jets, 24-17, puts the Pats atop the AFC east. AP: GOLDBERG on FOOTBALL: the Patriots Do What They're Best at PatsFan.com: Bob George: Need To Tackle For All Sixty Minutes N.Y. Times: Pennington Runs Out of Answers Against Brady and New England Odd cliche: Both the NBC announcers and another Times story refer to "17 unanswered points" by the Pats when the Jets came back from 17-0. Weren't the Jets "answering" the Pats' points, 7 of which stayed unanswered after the final knee? More: N.Y. Post, Daily News. (You'll find the same "unanswered points" at both.) Next week, the Pats face Denver on Sunday Night Football on NBC at 8:15 p.m. Denver beat Kansas City today, 9-6. Denver Post: Broncos clip K.C. in overtime Pattern recognition: White Jigsaw.
Future home of...What if they built a gated community and nobody moved in? Interesting story from the High Springs (Fla.) Herald about Magnolia Meadows, a sold-out development of 23 5-acre lots in north Florida, near the Suwanee River: ...The lawns are mowed to perfection, and the road winding through the area looks as if it was just put down yesterday. There's not a pothole to be seen, not a crack in sight.
Former Texas Governor Ann Richards is a video of a recent speech that includes, "Fifty years ago we were certain we were going to change the world and we started with Texas." Funny lady. Feisty, too. Remembering Ann Richards, by her friend, Texas journalist Molly Ivins. "Transcript of the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention last night by Ann Richards, the State Treasurer of Texas, as recorded by The New York Times" Quotes, assembled by the Times. Ann Richards on How to Be a Good Republican. And... Oriana Fallaci died Sept. 15. The N.Y. Times obit: Oriana Fallaci, Incisive Italian Journalist, Is Dead at 77 I was at home, which is in the center of Manhattan. At exactly nine o’clock I had a sensation of danger, of a danger that perhaps would not touch me, but that undoubtedly concerned me. It’s the sensation you feel in war, or rather in combat, when every pore of your skin feels the bullet or the rocket as it approaches, and you perk up your ears and yell at the person next to you: "Down! Get down!" I pushed it away. It’s not like I was in Vietnam. It’s not like I was in one of the many wars, those fucking wars that have tortured my life since World War II. I was in New York for God's sake, on a marvellous September morning in 2001. But the sensation still possessed me, inexplicably. So I did something I never do in the morning and turned on the TV. The audio wasn’t working. The screen was. And on every channel—and here there are almost a hundred—you saw a tower of the World Trade Center burning like a giant match. A short circuit? A small plane gone off course? Or an act of deliberate terrorism? I stayed there almost paralyzed, fixed on that tower, and while I fixed on it, while I asked myself those three questions, another plane appeared on the screen. White, huge. An airliner. It was flying extremely low. Flying low, it turned toward the second tower like a bomber who draws a bead on a target and then hurls himself at it. That’s when I understood. I also understood because in that same moment the audio came back on and transmitted a chorus of primal screams. Repeated and primal. "God! Oh, God! Oh, God, God, God! Gooooooood!" And the plane went into that second tower like a knife going into a stick of butter. More links at Giselle Fernandez's site: Oriana Fallaci lost her protracted battle with breast cancer on September 15, 2006. Banish old typos: Doc Searls asks, "Is there a way (or ways) to edit or alter the stuff Firefox's automatic form-filling and auto-complete (or whatever it/they are called)? I've been looking around and missing it." Here's how: In Firefox, start typing the bad URL in the location field so the dropdown includes your old typo. Scroll to it and hit the Shift and Delete keys simultaneously: Gone forever (or till you make the same mistake again). In I.E., just use the Delete key. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 16, 2006Dalai Lama: War is outdated; The bad spinach; Every (?) Web 2.0 Company On One Page; Patriots-Jets, 4:15 Sunday
Dalai Lama Tells Youths: War Is Outdated: DENVER - The Dalai Lama urged thousands of teenagers at a world peace conference Saturday to embrace globalization and accept people from all countries as neighbors and collaborators, not rivals. Ive updated the information below to reflect that all spinach -- not just bagged spinach -- has now been pulled from groceries.  The bad spinach, and the good: Popeye weeps. E. coli-laden spinach linked to Calif. grower:
"Natural Selection Foods LLC said in a statement that it was cooperating with federal and state health officials to identify the source of the contamination and had stopped shipping all fresh spinach products. They are sold as Rave Spinach, Natural Selection Foods, Dole, Earthbound Farm, Trader Joe's, Ready Pac, Green Harvest, among other brand names" More recalled brands. "Washing won't get rid of the tenacious bug, though thorough cooking can kill it."
Earthbound Farm spokeswoman Samantha Cabaluna said consumers could call (800) 690-3200 for a refund or replacement coupons for tossed-out spinach products. If you have to have your spinach, you're out of luck. Whole Foods now says on its Web site, "As a precaution, Whole Foods Market has temporarily removed ALL fresh loose and packaged spinach and fresh salad mixes containing spinach that comes in packaged form." Lots, but...limited: Every {?} Web 2.0 Company On One Page. The "every" is an unfortunate overreach, and you may be disappointed by the limited range of possibilities so far, despite the number of players. Click on any label there to see more info in the sidebar. Interesting: Etsy - "Your place to buy and sell all things handmade." Art market to come? Sunday football: Pats v. Jets, 4:15, Channel 12. Before, that New York Giants at Philadelphia Eagles on Fox 11, or Buffalo Bills at Miami Dolphins on CBS 12. The night game: Washington Redskins at Dallas Cowboys on NBC 10 at 8:15. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 15, 2006Mp3s: NYC radio the night John Lennon died, Nirvana 1992; How to cancel your cell phone contract; Ears on their kneesMp3s: New to me, from WFMU's Beware of the Blog, "Here's a dial scan of New York City's FM band from 25 years ago (MP3). It was recorded shortly after the news of John Lennon's murder broke. The recording was made by an unknown listener, and it was included on our CD compilation, Radio Archival Oddities, Vol. 2."
Nervous laughter: In Welcome aboard, The Economist offers, "In-flight announcements are not entirely truthful. What might an honest one sound like?" Here's a bit of it: Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero. This aircraft is equipped with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides. We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is to enter the realm of science fiction. No termination fee? From Smart Money, Ditching Your Cell Contract: Many folks don't realize that they can drop their cell phone contract without paying a termination fee, which typically runs as much as $150 to $200 per line. All they have to do is find someone willing to take the contract over for its remaining term. Ears on their knees: Outside last night, listening to night sounds, we wondered about the cricket chorus. Wikipedia: Crickets are known for their chirp (which only male crickets can do; male wings have ridges or "teeth" that act like a "comb and file" instrument). The left forewing has a thick rib (a modified vein) which bears 50 to 300 minute "teeth". They chirp by raising their left forewing to a 45 degree angle and rubbing it against the upper hind edge of the right forewing, which has a thick scraper (Berenbaum 1995). This sound producing action is called "stridulation" and the song is species-specific. There are two types of cricket songs: a calling song and a courting song. The calling song attracts females and repels other males, and is fairly loud. The courting song is used when a female cricket is near, and is a very quiet song. Female crickets have a long needlelike egg-laying organ (ovipositor)....
Posted by Sheila Lennon September 14, 2006Political phone spam; 'Art is a cat'; Ex-rock star wins N.Y. primary; All-women talk radio Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman Richard Olmsted and Julianne Abramson, volunteers for Senator Lincoln D. Chafee, make telephone calls to voters before the primary. Take me off your list: Now they've done it. The Washington Post's Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza are gushing about In R.I., a Model for Voter Turnout -- phone spam. Brace yourself. "The effort helped Chafee survive a spirited challenge from Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey by boosting primary turnout to an all-time high," they write. After spending $400,000 to speed-dial us, would the Republican National Committee say it was merely annoying? Here's what The Providence Journal found when it interviewed actual voters: Some cited voter discomfort with Laffey's combativeness and temperment. Others cited overconfidence on the part of Laffey, whose campaign precipitated an election-night e-mail that landed on the National Journal blog "On Call." In it, top campaign aides said they had hit their voter-turnout targets in every precinct and they would be "stunned if we lose based on what we know." Does anybody who actually lives here think the dozens of political phone calls that interrupted our dinners, shattered our naps, and cluttered our voicemail made one bit of difference in whom we voted for? Who cared about recorded messages from John McCain and Christie Todd Whitman? "Please take me off your list" became the refrain in our house, when a live human was calling. Ingenuous: "As the campaign wore on, Republicans began another slew of phone calls to unaffiliated voters to tell them that they could vote for Chafee and then immediately change their registration back to unaffiliated or Democrat." You think we don't know this? Why do you think the majority of Rhode Island voters are already Independents? So we can disaffiliate and keep our options open for next time. Turnout factors the Post didn't mention: -- It was a beautiful fall day in Rhode Island and, for the first time, schools were closed on primary day. The marathon phone calls? Evil. Even a Republican candidate told me, "It was awful. I just let my voicemail take it all and deleted it. " Is there any chance we could get politicians to outlaw political phone spam?
Bonus: A very amateur video of Orleans performing "Still the One" at YouTube. You can also see Hall playing with Bonnie Raitt, Keb' Mo and Phoebe Snow in Central Park in June as part of his campaign. Art is a cat: The writing is too dense, but the ending of Jerry Saltz's The Whole Ball of Wax: Can Art Change the World? A Holistic Theory in the Village Voice may be worth it: ...Imagine calling two pets, one a dog, the other a cat. Asking a dog to do something is an amazing experience. You say, "Come here, Fido," and Fido looks up, pads over, puts his head in your lap, and wags his tail. You've had a direct communication with another species; you and Fido are sharing a common, fairly literal language. Now imagine saying, "Come here, Snowflake" to the cat. Snowflake might glance over, walk to a nearby table, rub it, lie down, and look at you. There's nothing direct about this. Yet something gigantic and very much like art has happened. The cat has placed a third object between you and itself. In order to understand the cat you have to be able to grasp this nonlinear, indirect, holistic, circuitous communication. In short, art is a cat. She says... All-women radio talk network launches: From Reuters,
Timing: The Best Time to Buy Everything SmartMoney.com Who gets the pension? French police are baffled by the mystery of the two Madeleines: Telegraph (U.K.), The two elderly women acknowledged each other politely but frostily, with the same nod of the head and identical words: "Bonjour, je suis Madeleine Morès." Posted by Sheila Lennon September 13, 2006How the Web reacts to Chafee win3:46 a.m. Wonkette: No Laughter in Laffeyville Wow. That’s one of the most devastating campaign photos we’ve ever seen … and we were just recently convinced Rhode Island is actually a state. (The Chafee photo is by the Journal's Connie Grosch.) Proud Liberal: Rhode Island Republicans say No to Extreme Right Wing ...Even though polls show that a Laffey win would virtually guarantee a November win by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, I still think this primary shows that those Republicans in lock step with Bush on Iraq are in trouble... Out of town media has been tripping over our open primary. The actual story headline is more restrained: Moderate GOP Senator Beats Conservative Challenger in R.I. N.Y. Times trips in the opposite direction: The homepage is restrained (Incumbent Prevails in R.I. Senate Primary), but the story headline jumps way out there: In Setback for Democrats, Incumbent Wins Republican Senate Primary. Democrats may or may not be set back by Chafee's candidacy -- there are months of political phone calls ahead of us before that day -- but Sheldon Whitehouse is already framing this election as about sending a Democrat to oppose Bush's policies (and maybe help take back the Senate in November). It remains to be seen whether Chafee can hold on in the face of that logic, but yesterday Rhode Island refused to reject him. Video: Channel 10 has Laffey's concession and Chafee's victory speech. 2:15 a.m. The third ("Will") replies, Cabot, how can I phrase this nicely ... pull your head out of Senator Chafee's rear and take a deep breath. Chafee won because more than half the voters in the REPUBLICAN primary were not Republicans. There are 68,000 registered Republicans in Rhode Island, and about 62,000 people voted in the Republican primary (91%). There is no way a real Republican can overcome that. Normally, I'd just call that stealing the election, but this isn't Bush-Gore 2000 and I just don't want to go there right now, because it isn't worth it. 12:58 Kos: Another election thread: Chafee defeats Laffey: It looks like Chafee is going to win at this point, pulling off a fairly comfortable 5- to 8-point victory. Club for Growth has been taken down by the combined might of the Republican establishment. CfG had the money, but NRSC had more plus they put serious boots on the ground. Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo: So what does the result out of Rhode Island mean? Some conservative blogs think this sews up the election. It's worth noting that Democratic candidate Sheldon Whitehouse got more votes (65,772 plus 2,079 mail ballots) than Lincoln Chafee (33,545 plus 862 mail) and Steve Laffey (28,554 plus 498 mail) combined, even with the help of the Unaffiliated. Because Rhode Islanders rejected Laffey's candidacy doesn't mean they'll vote Republican in November. The state is overwhelmingly blue. Too Conservative:YES:CHAFEE WINS LINCOLN CHAFEE DEFEATS LAFFEY IN RHODE ISLAND PRIMARY. Election Predictions: Chafee Wins Chafee won the primary over challenger Steve Laffey. Moderates can claim victory here. JWL: Chafee Wins RINO Senator Lincoln Chafee is going to win his primary. With 94% of precincts reporting, Chafee has over 53% of the vote. Hang Right Politics: Chafee With 84% of the precincts reported, Lincoln Chafee is ahead 54% to 46%. Reports today indicated that in this tiny state, if there were 50,000 votes cast in the Republican primary, that would be a huge turnout. The votes counted total to nearly 52,000 so obviously the GOP machine (which strongly backed Chafee) got out the vote today. Finally, National Journal's Hotline On Call, which had reported earlier tonight, "Steve Laffey's campaign aides will be stunned if they lose," offers several takes: The Chafee Victory: What Now? Posted by Sheila Lennon September 12, 2006Primary night live from The Providence Journal newsroom: Chafee wins, Laffey concedes
Providence Journal political columnist M. Charles Bakst, reporters Steve Peoples and Scott MacKay in the newsroom just before the polls closed. (If you just got here, you might want to scroll to the bottom and read up from the 8:50 timestamp.) My favorite newsroom quote of the night: 9:50 p.m.: "You guys want my 'Laffey wins' lead? It was a good lead, one of the best I've ever written." -- Providence Journal reporter Scott MacKay I posted the returns as they arrived here, but watching them mount the next day is just clutter, so I've removed most of them. They were remarkably consistent -- no seesawing; Chafee led Laffey by either 53-47 percent or 54-46 percent all night. Projo.com has unofficial results from the state Board of Elections for each race on its homepage now, and you can see them at the Board later. In other election news... Democratic Sheldon Whitehouse, who is to face Chafee in November, is giving a nomination speech, with a platform focused on President Bush, after a race that was never in doubt. (With 97 percent of the vote in, Whitehouse has 82 percent of the Democratic primary votes.) If Chafee was celebrating, Whitehouse is campaigning, now that the cameras are finally focused on him. 11:02 p.m. 10:48 p.m. 10:37 p.m. 10:36 p.m. 9:45 First numbers, from WPRI Channel 12: US Senate 9:14 p.m. The GOP winner will face the winner of tonight's Democratic Senate race -- Sheldon Whitehouse is heavily favored over Carl Sheeler -- in November's general election. Polls have shown a close race if Chafee faces Whitehouse, but an easy Democratic win if Whitehouse faces Laffey. The majority of Rhode Island voters are officially Unaffiliated, and can therefore vote in either party's primary, restoring their independent status on the way out the door. Complicating matters: Some Democrats (such as this poster at Democratic Underground) have been urging unaffiliated Democrats to vote in the Republican primary for Laffey. The thinking is that Laffey would be easier for the Democrat to beat than the incumbent, and the Democrats might pick up a Senate seat. While I've been typing this, the polls have closed. Stay tuned. 8:50 p.m. I'll be feeding projo.com's R.I. Primary Blog and, later, blogging reaction on the Web to the results here in this blog. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 11, 2006'I’m tired of September 11th'; R.I. primary vote; Pizza-delivery talesPrimary advice: This is a blogitorial: An election is to gauge the support of the voters. Don't vote for somebody you don't want to see in office. More complicated caroms have a high chance of backfiring into unintended consequences. I don't know if I'll vote, or in which party's primary if I do. Too bad we can't vote in both, set up the races ourselves. I do know all those political phone calls are disruptive of my family life and irritating. Most were recordings. John McCain didn't mention who he supported. One live volunteer was caught on voicemail, complete with background babble -- just somebody earnestly soldiering into my machine, trying to volunteer as best he could. Maybe I'll vote for his candidate. Now I know how people in Iowa feel, kicking off the presidential primary season. Everybody's here to cover Chafee vs. Laffey for Senate. ProJo is blogging the election at the Rhode Island Primary blog tomorrow. Could be interesting to watch it live-blogged. City Pages - The Pizza Man Always Rings Twice: (link fixed) Tales from the route. What is he saying about you? Posted by Sheila Lennon Buffalo Bills: 'A False Start'; Roasted Vegetable Tian; Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard; Houseblogs; Best overlooked movies; Nixing Amazon videoHeart attack A.C.: The Pats of old are back, the ones we bit our nails for every game. The Bills beat themselves -- literally, with QB J.P. Losman brought down in his own end zone by Ty Warren to give us the winning two points, 19-17. Buffalo News: A FALSE START. FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - One of the messages the Buffalo Bills' coaches gave to their players at their team meeting Saturday night was this: Don't expect the New England Patriots to beat themselves. This was Patriots coach Bill Belichick's 100th regular-season win as a coach. He's 100-77. Minnesota Vikings and Washington Redskins kick off Monday Night Football at 7 on ESPN tonight; San Diego at Oakland follows at 10:15 on the same channel, if you just can't get enough. Great recipe: I bought a batch of native produce at the farmer's market Saturday, and used it in a Roasted Vegetable Tian for gametime yesterday -- perhaps the easiest and best vegetable recipe I've ever made. The concept is simple -- slice vegetables uniformly about 1/4-inch thick, stack them in a baking dish like Oreos in their trays, and bake twice, once with foil, once with not, adding cheese when you take off the foil. First time I've seen the family going for seconds on a veggie side dish. The basic recipe, from the blog The Unemployed Cook by Marianne Canada of Knoxville, Tenn., is below. I modified it in several ways: I used red peppers, carrots and summer squash in addition to small potatoes, zucchini and tomatoes. With so many vegetables I used a larger glass pan -- 9 x 14 -- but didn't need to extend the cooking time. I used more cheese -- Comte, because Gruyere was expensive yesterday, but you could use Emmenthaler or plain Swiss -- it melts into a nutty underflavor. I also added some fresh basil and the flowers of lemon thyme that I didn't want to go to seed, but those flavors vanished. Next time, I might also add a bit of wine when I add the cheese, for a flavorful sauce.  Roasted Vegetable Tian serves about 4 There's just enough left today to bring it to work for lunch.
Here at last: On March 22, 2002 I blogged, TYPE ON WOOD: A full-size, fully functional virtual keyboard that projects onto any surface debuted this week at the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover, Germany. The virtual interface from Israel's Developer VKB Inc. can be integrated into mobile phones and laptops or used in sterile medical environments. The mini-projector, right, that detects the "typing" also simulates a mousepad. Now, 4 1/2 years later, you can buy one at ThinkGeek for $179.99: Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard. Houseblogs.net: 340 home improvement blogs under one roof. The Best Movies You've Never Seen: The many commenters agree. My fight with Amazon Unbox: CNet's Tom Merritt emphatically does not recommend Amazon's new video download offering: ...So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can't burn to DVD and can't watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. More: Programmer Shelley Powers found she couldn't uninstall it, and blogs the email she got from Amazon detailing seven steps to uninstall it, which ends, You can also check if there are multiple copies of the installer in your Task Manager. If there is an instance running please end the task on this. The process name should end in “msi.” If there are multiple instances of this installer and you can not end task on these because they are locked by the system or if the previous steps do not work, you may have to consult a local PC technician to assist you further. Shelley notes, "Aside from being intimidating to a non-tech, these instructions are inaccurate..." just before she digs into her system to uninstall it manually. No way. State of Grace: "...alleviate the suffering, and start with oneself." Posted by Sheila Lennon September 10, 2006Game times and recipes for TV tailgaters; Voter phone fatigue; Resize photos onlineTailgating recipes: If you're really tailgating, you should have left for Gillette Stadium by now. Here are a few more recipes for those tailgating in front of the TV: Put me in, cook is cooking with beer. Super Bowl Recipes from New England Like ketchup? Heinz tailgating recipes. How about avocados? Hess has a couple... Or you could just poke around the Whole Foods recipes... The New England Patriots game against the Buffalo Bills begins at 1 p.m. on CBS. Fox is showing the Philadelphia Eagles at the Houston Texans at the same time, and the Dallas Cowboys at the Jacksonville Jaguars at 4. NBC kicks off Football Night in America at 7, with Bob Costas and Cris Collinsworth offering highlights of the day's games, joined by analysts Jerome ("The Bus") Bettis and Sterling Sharpe and SI reporter Peter King. Then at 8:30, the Mannings -- Colt Peyton and Giant Eli -- face off in the season's first Sunday Night Football on NBC. Phoned out: Thursday night was the worst -- eight calls in two hours, including recordings by Rep. Patrick Kennedy on behalf of fellow Dem Ralph Mollis and former GOP Gov. Lincoln Almond on behalf of nobody. (That was confusing. ) Mollis's opponent for Secretary of State, Guillaume de Ramel, has Mrs. Claiborne Pell in his corner, but she didn't call me. There's a lot of gaming going on in this state where the majority -- Independents -- can pick the primary they'll vote in on the spot and be a Democrat or a Republican for 5 minutes before scurrying back to the neutral zone by "disaffilating" again: Vote for right-wing Laffey so Dem Whitehouse can take him out, or maybe Stop Laffey Now by voting for Chafee, or maybe notice that surreal postcard from the Rhode Island Democratic State Committee: "Do Not Vote For Republicans." Find your polling place here. Photos of Chafee and Laffey on Flickr. Searching isn't pinpoint here. If you put just "Chafee" into the search field you get photos of the Navy destroyer USS Chafee, named after the Senator's late father, a Senator who also served as Secretary of the Navy. As it is, you'll see photos tagged with both men's names that don't actually include them -- a Net Neutrality petition being delivered to Chafee's office, and Laffey proclaiming India's Independence Day in Cranston last month. On the fly: Resize Images online. Worth tucking that link away. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 9, 2006Dylan Thomas live; Early rock guitars, videos; SI mag: Pat Tillman; Bills fans cover Pats; 'Remember the Name'
Dylan Thomas Live(s)!: Back when the Internet was young, it was full of odd and interesting sites where people shared their cultural finds. Eventually, it seemed, obscure live performances would be available to everyone, not just to those who made a point of going to flea markets to rescue old recordings. Brad Clark of The Reel Blog is this sort of generous hobbyist, "Sharing stuff found on magnetic tape in the reel-to-reel format." This time, it's late poet Dylan Thomas reading 29 of his own works.
This is a .rar file (rar is a compression format, like .zip) containing 29 separate mp3s. If you download the file and can't open it, you you'll need to get and install a file archiver such as the free 7-Zip. (Wikipedia entry) If you'd rather read poetry to yourself, here's a batch of Thomas's at Internal.org's Poetry Archive - "A modest collection of works by our favorite poets, in a pretty cool database. " The always surprising Jorn Barger of Robot Wisdom found this. Related: Bedazzled does a similar spread, but of less obscure stuff -- video of Aretha in '71, The Zombies doing She's Not There on Hullabaloo, Bob Dylan & The Band, Isle of Wight 1969 and much, much wierder stuff. One more tech note: Some of these videos are offered as mov and m4v files -- m4v is a raw stream not inside an mp4 container, and my system couldn't play it. I just downloaded the free, cross-platform VLC media player which installed easily and played the file. So far it's fine, and bloat-free. SI Magazine: Pat Tillman: Remember His Name: Buffalo fans did all the work: Saturday's New England Coverage at TwoBillsDrive.com. After that, you might want to lurk in the fan forum at Patsfan.com. Anthem: And for all you Googlers looking for the audio, video or lyrics to Fort Minor's Remember the Name, there ya go. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 8, 2006Steelers shine, Bettis is bored, SI sees Pats 23, Buffalo 10 Sunday
STEELERS 28, DOLPHINS 17: Pittsburgh is always admirably tough, and backup QB Charlie Batch made Roethlisberger's scratch irrelevant. (Ben himself was hopping well on the sidelines for a guy who had an appendectomy four days ago.)
Game stories from Miami (The Herald), Miami foiled in opener and Pittsburgh, Post-Gazette: TD interception return seals Steelers' 28-17 win
At least now that I'm retired I won't have to hear from people about fantasy football. As a player you get real sick of fantasy because everywhere you go people were talking about it. Man, I was just trying to win a game. Now that I'm out of the NFL there's no way I'll start playing fantasy football, that'd be sacrilegious! That's what was causing me half the pain in the first place -- people wanting points instead of wins. I added the Sunday Night Football schedule. (text - flash) to yesterday's assortment, so the Googlers will see them all in the same place. About that (Proud as a peacock, NBC back in game), the Globe quotes Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports, "We would not have been a bidder if the games had been played on Monday night," Ebersol said. "To have a game that would end at 12 or 12:30 at night would have harmed Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. Sunday night became the one place for us, and it started with the league moving its premier package from Monday to Sunday." Well, maybe. The third game on Sunday has less appeal than coming home after work Monday night and zoning out with MNF. This week it leads with the much-hyped battle of the Mannings, Peyton and Eli, as the Colts play the Giants. The Patriots opener against the Bills at 1 p.m. is the big game here. At SI.com, Peter King foresees New England 23, Buffalo 10. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 7, 2006Football season starts tonight at 8:30; Online alarm clock; The basics of Japanese cookingNFL season starts tonight: Miami at Pittsburgh (8:30 p.m. ET, NBC) -- Daunte Culpepper v. Hometown takes:
Florida Today: Culpepper era begins: "Acquired in a trade with Minnesota for a second-round draft pick, (quarterback Daunte) Culpepper has taken over South Florida the way Fiedler and Frerotte never could -- even on their best days." Palm Beach Post: So Culpepper's healthy. Can he win?
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Fresh Batch is ready More on the appendix. And... In Pittsburgh, a convergence of funeral and Steelers football: Today brings the distinctly Pittsburgh confluence of a solemn morning funeral for a fallen leader and evening football festivities as the Steelers open their season. (Mayor Bob O'Connor died Sept. 1.) NFL.com does some cheerleading about its season, and gets into what's different this year: NEW COACHES/NEW ADDRESSES: There are 10 new NFL head coaches, including three in the NFC North -- Brad Childress (Minnesota), Rod Marinelli (Detroit) and Mike McCarthy (Green Bay). That trio comprises three of the seven "rookie" head coaches in the league this year --those with no previous NFL head-coaching experience. That is the most rookie head coaches in any one year in 40 years (1966). The other rookies: Gary Kubiak (Houston), Scott Linehan (St. Louis), Eric Mangini (NY Jets) and Sean Payton (New Orleans). The "veteran" new head coaches: Herm Edwards (Kansas City), Dick Jauron (Buffalo) and Art Shell (Oakland). Tonight's game is just a warmup, to get you ready to pull out the Super Bowl recipes and make a shopping list for Sunday, when the Patriots open at home against the Buffalo Bills: 1 p.m. on CBS. (Patriots TV schedule) Buffalo wings? Or just buffalo? "The PC just went off...":Online alarm clock:: Let your computer wake you up. Wouldn't be bad to leave showing when you leave your office computer for lunch, either. The alarm sounds like... two sticks barking. The basics of Japanese cooking:The essentials of a Japanese pantry: Maki, "a Japanese American ex-Tokyoite, ex-New Yorker, currently living in beautiful Switzerland" writes a Japanese cooking blog: I was just really very hungry ("just hungry," for short)
If you remember the ubiquitous brown rice and tamari of the '70s, her take on tamari may amuse you: Not essential at all
The Stratosphere Giant, the world's reigning tallest living tree, seems to have lost its title -- to not one but three contenders. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 6, 2006Google offers newspaper archive search; Dylan outtakes from 'Freewheelin' sessions; GMail keyboard shortcutsGoogle "liberates" newspaper archives: From Search Engine Watch (Google Debuts 200 Year News Archive Search): ...Google has partnered with news organizations including Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Guardian and the Washington Post, and aggregators including Factiva, LexisNexis, Thomson Gale and HighBeam Research, to index the full-text of content going back 200 years. There's a heavy dose of hyperbole here, since most newspapers have not digitized hundreds of years of their archives -- the Journal's digital archive begins in 1982, for instance; before that, it's entire pages on microfiche, accompanied by an index. A timeline feature permits you to zero in a period, and you may also filter by publication. To give you a sense of how it works, here are some test searches I did: Gmail Shortcuts (printable cheatsheet) M&M'S to Honor Two Mil M&M Reward For 'The Scream'. Airport security cartoons: Security guru Bruce Schneier is soliciting links to your favorite caricatures of current airport security policies, and posting his faves. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 5, 20067 more gardeners join the Garden Blogs megalist
Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening celebrated her fourth anniversay as a garden blogger by interviewing a group of g-bloggers who've been doing it longer than she has. Here are those links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9. Head for Garden Blogs for links to these folks, too. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 4, 2006Working for a living: The Stagnation Tax; Summer's end, basil, labor and sand11:13 a.m. I'm not blogging this post because I agree with him -- I haven't thought these ideas through yet -- but because there is a lot to think about here: Triggers. Doc Searls opens a post about it today (Growing new answers) by agreeing with an old friend who said, "The republican party is about income production and the democratic party is about income redistribution". Perhaps that was an old line. Newberry mentions "the redistributive rightism we've had - which has redistributed gains generated by the whole society upward" and examines income production and productivity at length: ...if 1975 wages had gone up with productivity, real wages would be twice what they are today. Here's how he kicks it off: The New York Times wants to argue the glass is half full, but then admits at the bottom that it is very full for the top 5%, and bone dry for everyone else. The reality is that virtually all Americans are paying the stagnation tax - an economy where productivity across most of the economy is basically flat. The average looks fine, but then, on average everyone gets up from the poker table with the same amount of money they started with.... But what originally drew me to click the link was this paragraph that Doc pulled out: I've brought up these issues before, and regularly I've been told "well you don't have solutions". Actually there were solutions and still are solutions. However, the require a different relationship between citizen and government. That, not the technical and economic factors, was what was decisive in the end. In the end Americans wanted to be consumers. And they were willing to pay a great deal to be consumers. This is an economic trade off the hours that people have spent skiing and reading porn and watching television and mowing the lawn that they would otherwise have spent being involved in community and government, and feeling responsible for the consequences. However, the question is is that free time worth $16 dollars an hour because that is what the ordinary person is paying for it. Watching an hour of Law and Order or 24 might be amusing. But is it worth $16/hour. The answer for a long time, for the majority of Americans, was "yes". Elsewhere this weekend I typed, " 'Online life' is an oxymoron." Life goes on without us when we're mesmerized by our attention toys. Steeped in the illusion of being highly networked, I am guilty of severe cave behavior. The language -- the writing -- of economics and sociology makes the Newberry post rough slogging at first. (Writers rushing not quite at the speed of thought really should revisit their sentences later, in case they need to pop in a verb or lop off the dangling stub of a dropped idea.) But at the end, ...The solution American chose was to pay the stagnation tax, leave their children alone and at risk to the world, and to pursue hobbies and the cult of small things while others ran the country. They wake up to find that the fees for that management were particularly high, and that it hasn't outperformed the marketplace - that they wake up today with declining wages, less access to health insurance, less and less affordable housing, less access to moving up the career ladder - and a political system that does not seem to be responding. Start thinking. There's a lot to digest here, perhaps in small bites over time. Comments show promise, too. 3:08 a.m. Day off: Labor Poems and Songs Hard Workin’ Woman by Mississippi Matilda at Honey Where You Been So Long: Pre-War Blues. There's an mp3 there.
Bread and Roses Background: Bread and Roses: The Lost Histories of a Slogan and a Poem In 2005, full-time wage and salary workers who were union members hadmedian usual weekly earnings of $801, compared with a median of $622 for wage and salary workers who were not represented by unions. (See table 2.) The difference reflects a variety of influences in addition to coverage by a collective bargaining agreement, including variations in the distributions of union members and nonunion employees by occupation, industry, firm size, or geographic region. Over: Cheer yourself up: Copy this URL, paste it into your browser's location bar, type your own name instead of (yournamehere) and close up the spaces between the // and the period. Hit enter. http:// (yourname here) .youaremighty.com/ Posted by Sheila Lennon September 2, 2006We want Deion! Games for a rainy day; Cell phone reviews Deion Branch catches a pass from Tom Brady (#12) in a happier September. Branch offers refused Patriots then are hit with two grievances: Ron Borges of the Boston Globe has the escalation of the Deion Branch saga in excruciating detail: Although it had been widely speculated that Branch would find no suitors after the Patriots told him he had seven days to negotiate an acceptable contract with another club and then a trade with New England, Branch and agent Jason Chayut came up with two similar offers, from the Jets and Seahawks. Both were six-year deals worth roughly $39 million with $13 million upfront and $23 million spread over the first three years. That is about 30 percent higher than New England's best offer, a five-year, $28 million deal with $11 million guaranteed. The Patriots had also offered a three-year extension with an $8 million signing bonus split evenly over two years and salaries of $1.4 million, $4.3 million, and $4.75 million. Branch would have been forced to play out the final year of his rookie contract at the $1.05 million he was set to earn this season before a daily fine of $14,000 began being assessed against him once training camp opened and he did not report. Except that it's easy to offer big bucks when you probably won't have to deliver, since nobody seriously believed that either the Jets or the Seahawks would give first-round draft picks to the Patriots for the right to pay Deion that much. After watching all four exhibition games, this fan can only ask Pats' management, "Well, do you want another Super Bowl title or not?" Brady's favorite receiver is a key piece of that. This Mexican standoff backfired, and now you're going to have to pay him bigtime or lose. You've got the money. Swallow your pride and give us a great season.
First Place: Clack All the entries are linked at the bottom of this post. Hear the call: Cell Phone Reviews at the long-running Steve Punter's Southern Ontario Cell Phone Page. Worth a look if you're looking. Grass roots: Neighbors form committee on Hillside property at Summit Neighborhood Association: We who live near the onetime nursing home, whose former owners are headed for jail, assembled in an effort to have input into its future. A concerned neighbor went door to door one weekend asking who'd be interested in meeting one night at the Rochambeau branch of the Providence Public Library. The turnout was three times what she expected. That's how to do it. Fun: What may be the biggest and longest party the town of Kipling, Sask. has ever seen gets underway this weekend when residents welcome Kyle MacDonald — the red paper clip man. Read his own account at one red paperclip: My name is Kyle MacDonald and I traded one red paperclip for a house. I started with one red paperclip on July 12 2005 and 14 trades later, on July 12, 2006 I will trade with the Town of Kipling Saskatchewan for a house... BBC has a story and video of the trades, which ended involving both Corbin Bernsen and Alice Cooper, with MacDonald above. Posted by Sheila Lennon When women who can count don't count: Office 2.0 conference speakers 98 percent maleTestosteroni: The Office 2.0 Conference (all your programs on the Web, like GMail) promises a wide ranging group of visionaries and industry leaders -- 53 men and one woman. Reactions: Holy sausage party and Okay...rather than just complain... -- Tara Hunt What will work - Shelley Powers Your Balls Are in Your Court -- Jeneane Sessum Stowe Boyd parrots the line, then does a mea culpa after his friend Jeneane calls him out. Validating Shelley Powers or more middle aged white guys tethered together -- alan herrell - the head lemur Conference organizers make my head explode -- Elisa Camahort Broader: Where Are The Women Redux: Supreme Court, Office 2.0 Lacking Women
The fourth-grader in our family says that, too. But he's not a CEO organizing a public event, with high-powered sponsors, a slick website and a claim to cornering the "visionaries." This "poor little me" post deserves the label Shelley gives it: Clueless. The point? In the future, perhaps conference organizers will look beyond the comfy crowd of folks just like themselves, lest they be Ismaeled. Resources (to avoid that fate): Speakers wiki: Add yourself if you're willing to go on the circuit. (I just might. I do these speaker gigs on blogging panels sometimes, including at an upcoming AP conference Sept. 30. Journalism -- aware that its readers/users and half the population are female -- seeks out and invites women out of the blue.) Posted by Sheila Lennon September 1, 2006Ann Coulter on Chafee: 'They Shot the Wrong Lincoln'Shoot-from-the-hip right-wing columnist Ann Coulter tossed off a screed yesterday that castigates R.I. Sen. Lincoln Chafee for being the scion of a wealthy Republican family. (President Bush escapes her wrath for the same crime of being his father's son, however. ) In Coulter's version of reality, Chafee was plucked from a stable and installed in the Senate upon his father's death: When the farrier business proved too taxing for Chafee's intellect, he went into the family business -- politics. His father died in office, and Lincoln was appointed by the governor to serve out the remainder of Pop's term in the U.S. Senate. We who actually live here may remember that Chafee served six years on the Warwick city council and had been mayor of Warwick for seven years when Sen. John Chafee died in 1999 and his son was appointed to fulfill his term. He won the seat on his own in 2000, beating Democratic Rep. Robert Weygand. I hope Chafee's primary opponent, Steve Laffey, whose background as mayor of Cranston Coulter actually mentions, repudiates the support of this particular blonde cheerleader. Wishing death on those she disagrees with is despicable and brings no honor to those she supports: The headline of this Coulter column is "They Shot the Wrong Lincoln." Posted by Sheila Lennon |
The late Suzanne Henseler (
Many are the familiar apples you'll see now in grocery stores -- McIntosh, Granny Smith, Delicous, Gala, Northern Spy -- as well as some newer varieties such as Honeycrisp and Suncrisp. Few of these varieties are in the largely unfamiliar, and undated, "Now growing" list below this chart.
Denver Broncos running back Cedric Cobbs, cut after one season in New England, says the players are scared of coach Belichick and the Pats' "cutthoat" ways.
Amazing soup: I bought an immersion blender with a metal shaft so I could puree hot soup. (I confess it's so big and intimidating it took me months to pull it out of the box. It looks like a baby pile driver.)
On the other hand, 
Backing into this: How 
Restitution:
Steve Laffey concedes: "I called Senator Chafee and I told him.... in November I will be supporting Senator Chafee." (AP Photo)
Dolphin coach Nick Saban, at right, was graceless both in the way he screamed at a player over a penalty (Lehan) and in pouting after no official noticed his little passive-aggressive toss of a challenge flag.
Miami Herald: 
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 
Game day: With the remains of Ernesto drenching us today, one of the better things to do may be to check out the winners of the 
my passport photo blogging since 2002 garden blogs archived headlines  Sheila Lennon is features & interactive producer of projo.com, the Web site of The Providence (R.I.) Journal Rhode Island |
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