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Main page September 30, 2007Halloween: Homemade Candy Corn, regular and veganAn Epicurious editor's recipe for Homemade Candy Corn looked like a lot of work, and the photo looked like it had been a brave messy effort, but the candies look a little off. Fussy kids might sniff, or just shovel 'em down -- this is a serious cook, so they probably taste great. But I passed. Then I saw that food blogger Melisser of San Francisco (The Urban Housewife) has modified the recipe into Homemade Vegan Candy Corn.
She has craft skills, good photos illustrating every step and her notes after the recipe are terrific. They start,
If you're an omnivore, you'll find the ingredients in the Epicurious recipe more familiar, but Melisser has the how-to. Homemade candy corn still looks like a lot of work, but it could be fun to do with kids, who might want to sculpt flying-orange-dragon candy corn. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 29, 2007iPhone facts, fiction; Did Apple update have to break it? Unveiling Arab men; Dalai Lama's msg to Burma; Gutter artiPhone update: facts and fiction at Engadget. If you haven't already bitten the bullet and taken your unlocked iPhone down that scariest of paths, the 1.1.1 update, we're here to sort out a bit of the hearsay from the actual and fairly inconvenient truth. Even if you have already updated, or never even unlocked or jailbroke your iPhone to begin with, there's still a lot to learn, so let's dive in, shall we? Gizmodo asks and answers my question: Could Apple have been able to upgrade iPhones without the likely possibility of bricking the iPhone? (According to Apple, their firmware will likely and "permanently" make the device "inoperable.") Yes, it could have been done. As someone in the Dev Team core puts it: Great. A company at war with its most savvy customers. But wait... Will the iPhone Dev Team revert the iPhone to its original state? Escalation. Stay tuned.
...Most men in our societies are more veiled than any of these women. A man's veil is an abstract one, created by him at will and not imposed by God. It is a veil against freedom and education. It is a veil against new ideas and dialogue. It is this man-veil that makes him walk up to the Danish Embassy and set it ablaze, thinking that this will lead him directly to heaven.
Posted by Sheila Lennon September 28, 2007Joni Mitchell EastAt New York Magazine's entertainment and culture blog, aptly named Vulture, Joni Mitchell Gets Angry... ...And with the album… I confronted a lot of it and worked it out to a point. I read the Koran, I started Genesis, Augustine, did a lot of theological research. She handles the nonsequitur with grace. There is a nice commercial photo of Joni at an exhibition of her anti-war photos at New York City's Violet Ray gallery Tuesday night with the story. Two other photos from the event are in this post at fadingad. One shows Joni and portions of a dozen of these Green Flag Song works, first exhibited in Los Angeles last December. From that one:
Pensito Review, Joni Mitchell’s New Gallery Exhibit: ‘Art, Revolution and Torture’ Lorrie's Pop Life Art Blog covers celebrity artists. She went to that show (Joni Mitchell’s "Green Flag Song" Art Exhibition): This afternoon I visited Joni Mitchell's "Green Flag Song" exhibition at Lev Moross Gallery in Los Angeles. The exhibition is made up of 60 large green toned triptychs created from digitally modified combinations of photographic images, printed on canvas. Thanks to Robot Wisdom for the first breadcrumb. Posted by Sheila Lennon Review from a sneak preview of 'The Kingdom'I saw this two weeks ago. Really good movie, not what you might expect. Here's what I wrote afterwards: 'The Kingdom': Smart political action thriller may make you think. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 27, 2007Street-painting festival this weekend, and a look at the world's best 3-D street artists
Beginning at 10 a.m., 200 artists will begin chalking segments of the floor of the skating plaza, with awards, including cash prizes totaling more than $3,000, at the end of the day. The event dovetails with WaterFire, and is also free. The paintings will remain till the next rain washes them away. (Rain date is Oct. 6) Photos and a slideshow of last year's winners, and all the details are at the festival site. Coincidentally, this week the stylish Web Urbanist group blog showcases 3 Amazing 3D Graffiti Artists: Street Painting and Sidewalk Chalk Art. Photos and links to artists who specialize in this medium. Great stuff, some of which only works from one angle. Below, Spiderman by Belgian "pavement artist" Julian Beever. Posted by Sheila Lennon 'Garden in Every School' pilot project kicks off at Martin Luther King school in ProvidenceThis is a crosspost from the Projo Garden Blog.
At Martin Luther King Elementary School yesterday, the young gardeners breaking ground with shiny shovels know what they want to grow: Potatoes, tomatoes, flowers, watermelon, pumpkins and peppers. Between now and spring, they'll learn how. Congressman Patrick Kennedy secured $280,000 in federal seed money for "The Children's Garden Network Campaign 2010 - A Garden at Every School," a program that aims to bring a garden and the materials and know-how to make it grow to every school and youth organization in the state over the next four years. The first seven award winners were chosen from among 37 applicants to receive $2,500 grants. Rhode Island is the second state in the nation -- California was first -- to launch the ambitious program.
Kim Rohm said the children saw the potential, too, when the grants were announced last spring. "Harry Binder, a second grader then, said, 'Fresh produce in the cafeteria!' " Besides teaching basic gardening practices and skills, the school plans to explore sustainable options such as irrigating the garden with rainwater captured from the roof and composting cafeteria plant scraps and parings. During the summer, the YMCA has agreed to make tending the garden part of its daycare program at the school, and the PTO hopes to enlist parents to care for the plants on weekends.
When asked if the students would be planting garlic for a spring crop, he said, "First we'll plan the garden, where the paths will go, what kind of plants we'll grow." Over the winter, students will learn how plants grow and what plants might work in the space -- tucked in a courtyard between wings of the school, it won't get full sun all day. In spring, they'll start seeds and set in plants.
The Rhode Island Center for Agriculture Promotion & Education (RICAPE, the University of Rhode Island College of the Environment and Life Sciences (URI/CELS), and the Rhode Island Nursery and Landscape Association (RINLA) are collaborating on the statewide initiative. According to a URI press release, their intent is to foster "agricultural education by supporting food and plant growing projects and include opportunities for student learning, curriculum development, teacher training, and horticultural technical assistance." The Projo Garden Blog will be checking in with them periodically to see how they're doing. We hope to track their progress over the next year. The six other winners are Cumberland Office of Children, Youth & Learning; Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School, Providence; Ponaganset Middle School, North Scituate, Pilgrim High School, Warwick; Reynolds Arts Magnet School, Bristol and St. Mary's Home for Children, North Providence.
Posted by Sheila Lennon Better colors for your digital photosI've never properly learned Photoshop. I can resize, convert formats, change the levels and sharpen, but that's about it. I don't know how to dodge and burn or change a palette or all the things that make light look wonderful. So I found this a fascinating hack (someday I may have a newer version of Photoshop that includes it): Improve your photography with classical art. When Photoshop entered the CS series it included a new tool called 'Match Color.' This tool was made so that you could match a series of photos to one another.
There are lots more examples and a walk-through at that link at Unfocused Brain, via Allsux. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 26, 200724 MacArthur awards -- Will edgier philanthropists make millionaires of obscure geniuses?2007 MacArthur Foundation grant winners
Latest in the line of 756 since 1981, most (all?) of the newest Fellows seem accomplished and significant already. They're professors and scientists, doctors, a couple of musicians and painters and a dancer. Anybody would be delighted at the recognition and $500,000 over five years, no strings attached. It beats winning "Queen for a Day." I drool. Significantly absent, anyone working in Web technology, journalism, politics, economics, architecture, philosophy -- the human connections. There's a ton of money at the top now, enough to build out in those areas, enough that dozens of John Beresford Tipton re-enactors could amuse themselves by sending Stephen Anthony out with million-dollar checks for people who could "make important contributions in the future" if they didn't have to get up and go make money at something else every day. I hope there are genius philanthropists who'll ferret out shy, obscure alt-geniuses without position or portfolio, give them a dose of fertilizer and watch what happens. Who would you suggest they give the upgrades to? Posted by Sheila Lennon September 24, 2007Free: 38 September Songs, daily commercial games and programs
At WFMU's Beware of the Blog: "There are only a few days of September left, so here are 38 versions of Kurt Weill's beautiful (and misleading) September Song." They're mp3s, by James Brown | Lee Hazelwood | Santo and Johnny Lotte Lenya | Walter Huston | Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra Gene Bianco | The Harmonicats | Arthur Lyman John Lennon | Django Reinhart | Bryan Ferry Charles Mingus | Duke Ellington | Errol Garner Ian McCulloch | Lindsay Buckingham | The Young Gods Lou Reed | Hank Penny | Earl Bostic Scatman Crothers | Artie Shaw | Chet Baker Chico Hamilton | Dean Martin | Dee Dee Bridgewater Delcos | Dion and The Belmonts | Harry James and His Orchestra Jimmy Durante | Mill Brothers | Nat King Cole Nate Butler | The Platters | Ronnie Scott Quartet Sarah Vaughan | Stan Kenton (w/ June Christie and The Four Freshmen) Go. via Robot Wisdom Free $ software: Giveaway of the Day and Game Giveaway of the Day each offer a new commercial program or game every day. No spyware, no time limits, these are registered programs, but without support or upgrades, and they are limited to noncommercial use. You must download AND install the program the day it's offered. It connects to the server to check the time. After that, it's yours. The Giveaway site has been around awhile -- Lifehacker wrote about it last November. I downloaded a full version of a $14.95 kids' platform game called Fairyland today. The download server was busy enough that I had to retry a few times, but otherwise the only unusual part of downloading and installing it was the Net connection by the validation program. Italian software developer Andrea Nagar's account (Promoting your software on Giveaway of the Day) of offering his email enhancement software for download there is illuminating. He says it's a Russian site. To get your software listed, just write to the support team of Giveaway of the day and you’ll get a reply in few days. If they are interested in listing your software, they will be back to you in a few days and you will even get paid for it. You will send them a brief description of your software (and optionally a description of other software of your company) and you are all set.Nagar also links to the review by Giveaway's reviewer, Andrew Klein, of BladedThoth.com, published with the download link. Email and rss feeds to tell you what's free today, if you'd rather have that pushed to you than browse to it. Don't expect Photoshop or Dreamweaver. Some of these programs aren't better than freeware equivalents; others are just screensavers. But, if nothing else, it's a chance to try commercial software and games, then uninstall what doesn't interest you without feeling you wasted your money. You might also find something you'll love enough to buy the next version. Scavenge away... Later: Every downloaded zip file comes with a readme. txt. Today's game, Mad Magic, requires that you run activate.exe before setup.exe. I only found that out by actually reading that file after I first blew through straight to setup, and got a demo version of the game. Posted by Sheila Lennon How to make cupcake icing look like knitting
I've blogged Knitted food, such as the cheeseburger made of yarn, but this is the opposite -- it's real food that looks like yarn. The "knitting" is store-bought marzipan (almond and sugar paste), colored, and scored with a sharp knife. Tutorial at food blog Vegan Yum Yum.
Posted by Sheila Lennon Patriots: Lateral thinking
Brady, later, was asked about it: Were you surprised at the lateral that Wes Walker threw? "I don’t know what they were doing, those two. Maybe Wes learned that in Miami. I’ve never seen it around here. I’m sure Coach is going to [yell at] us for that. It’s just another one of those things that makes tapes. It turned out this time. I don’t know how well it turns out most of the time." -- PatsBlog Coach Belichick's reaction: BB: I don't think that was the best play that I've ever seen; let's put it that way. When the players have the ball out there, they have to make the plays and it's their job to do what they think is best. Being aggressive and trying to make plays is good. Being careless and not taking care of the ball is bad. I'll talk to Wes about it and see exactly what he saw. I don't think we want to make a habit of that. In that case, it worked out for a few extra yards. It's hard to get on him, but we'll try. We'll get on him anyway. WR Wes Welker (on his lateral to Randy Moss) "That is something I'm probably going to get yelled at tomorrow [about]. I don't know. It just kind of happened. It's one of those plays where he was there, I felt like it was safe, a possibility to score, so -- unfortunately, Randy wasn't able to finish for me [laughter]. I'm thinking 'he's going to finish', you know?" -- (Globe, Reiss's Pieces). Mother of invention. It was brilliant handoff. It sure beat going down with the ball. Here's to mavericks who make it work. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 22, 2007A message from Bob Dylan about this blog
techlightenment created this as a Facebook application for SonyBMG. It's brilliant. You also can make one of your own to send to friends or embed in a blog or MySpace page: Click here. Here's the original version. (And, in case you're wondering about the alt-URL Dylan gives for this blog, it's a redirect. The URL you're looking at was too long -- it would have stretched over three flash cards.)
Posted by Sheila Lennon September 21, 2007Links dump: Garden blogs; Sy Hersh interview; WinAmp: mp3 blogs...
Perennials: The long-running, gigantic Garden Blogs list I started many years ago has gotten yet another update, with a dozen new garden blogs added. These bloggers are in it for the long haul. This list has been going for at least four years, and when I periodically run a link-checker on it, they're nearly all still at it. Chocolate Zen: A review of the 99%-cocoa Lindt chocolate bar. Webbier than iTunes: Winamp goes where iTunes doesn’t dare. Media player WinAmp is turning 10, so... On the 10th of October at 10:10am, Winamp 5.5 (PC-only) will be released sporting two new and potentially controversial features: support for mp3 blogs and the ability to stream your music collection over the Internet (a Beta version is available here). Screenshots and more at that Last 100 link. The dean speaks: JJ: Bush recently compared Iraq to Vietnam in a positive way. What do you think he learned from the Vietnam War? via Robot Wisdom Not Photoshopped:
The impossible barn? A cantilevered truss system makes it seem so. NYT rave for 82-year-old Earth Kitt: Woe be the male ringside patron who becomes her cat toy for the evening, as she queries him in several different languages and coyly inquires about his financial status. If he is young, the chances are she will soon lose interest and suggest he introduce her to his father. In “Too Young to Be Meant for Me,” one of her wittiest songs on Tuesday, she impatiently brushes off a 20-year-old admirer and tells him not to wait: “Can’t you see I’ve got a date with someone rich and 82?” Spread the word: Mandela still alive after embarrassing Bush remark. Reuters. "I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas," Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday.
Pretty coal tar: The 7 Wonders of the Food Coloring World at Colour Lovers. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 20, 2007MUSH: Internet slang & acronymsRomanianNewsy: Internet Slang Big List WYSIWYG Posted by Sheila Lennon Hunter Thompson: 8 photos, 90 minutes of symposium
It's a new Hunter season. I got an email earlier in the week with word of something that could only be pulled off after Hunter Thompson was no longer able to burst in and break it up: First Hunter Thompson Symposium @ Aspen Institute I never watch 19 clips of anything, but... knock yourself out. Related: Americans giving up friends, sex for Web life Posted by Sheila Lennon Waterfront cities' nonstandard architectureHighrises, warehouse condos and malls aren't all there is.
Video, photo gallery and more at this BBC site. More links at Coolhunter's Will Alsop’s Master Plan For Middlehaven
Posted by Sheila Lennon September 19, 2007New Joni Mitchell tunes, other artists' covers to streamJoni Mitchell and her interpreters come roaring back together. Joni Mitchell Talks About Each Track On New CD, 'Shine'; Listen To Two Tracks. Starpulse News Blog offers If -- the Kipling poem set to music -- and Night of The Iguana in streaming QuickTime and WMA formats.
The Joni Mitchell site has news also of an art show opening in Manhattan Sept. 25, the day Shine is released. You can hear the usual brief clips from the album at that Amazon link. Related: Missive to Mitchell in The New Yorker: Herbie Hancock’s new album, “River: The Joni Letters” (Verve), pays tribute to a pair of musical geniuses: Joni Mitchell, whose songs make up the album’s marrow, and Wayne Shorter, the extraordinary saxophonist and longtime Hancock collaborator who steals the recording... You can stream the entire album, including Norah Jones' flaccid version of Court and Spark and bit of Joni herself at Live Daily. Who's singing Joni: 1. Court and Spark featuring Norah Jones Posted by Sheila Lennon NYT free archives: Women win vote in R.I., Kilmer reviews Emerson, outrage over modern art at 1913 Armory Show, interview with MatisseI've been browsing the New York Times archives of old since the paywall fell down at midnight. The search form is just above the lead story on the Times homepage. The resulting stories are pdfs of the news pages, and include photos and illustrations. My memory of history from 1851 to 1922 (a free period, along with 1987 to the present) is fuzzy, and I didn't feel like reading reports from war fronts. I did find a bit of Rhode Island history from Feb 20, 1907. Here's the entire story:
My memory of the timeline of literary figures worked better. April 12, 1914, poet Joyce Kilmer reviews (pdf) Ralph Waldo Emerson. This is lengthy, so I Photoshopped the headline and an early paragraph together. I don't know how to make those torn edges that would indicate this visually.
When I realized I could use the advanced search to limit the search to certain dates, I was cruising. The Armory Show of 1913 popped to mind. On the web I found its dates: Refresher:
One of the sputtering results for "armory art" between those dates, Cubists and Futurists Are Making Insanity Pay includes a couple of Rodin drawings, a "progressive bust" and that infamous Duchamps, Nude Descending A Staircase. It also spends a half-column retelling the fairy tale of The Emperor's New Clothes. Hoping to catch some of the furor over Duchamps, I used "nude" as a keyword on those dates. No Duchamps, but A Talk With Matisse, Leader of Post-Impressionists, in which another no less baffled reporter lets the painter talk. Blue tomatoes? That's how he sees them, he says. A report of a press dinner at a pub called Healy's after the show closed: 50,000 Visit Art Show begins, "Art and noise met last night..." and describes a high-spirited beefsteak dinner at which young women sang and danced. "The climax came in a high-kicking contest which was won by (the nearly seven feet tall artist) Mr. (D. Putnam) Brinley." On the Web, I find The Paeony Garden, c. 1912, by D. Putnam Brinley 1879-1963, in Shelley Staples' online exhibit at the University of Virginia of works in the Armory Show. The story ends with lawyer John Quinn announcing the attendance, the sale of more than 160 paintings, a contract to show the works in Chicago, and,
History -- searchable primary sources -- is now an open book, within certain dates. This is a huge contribution to the culture. Thanks, Gray Lady. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 18, 2007Providence Geeks to gather Wednesday at AS220
Providence-based Traction Software will be presenting its amazing TeamPage platform - think blogging software meets wiki software meets steriods. Presentations seem to start between 6 and 6:30, so don't be fashionably late if you want to catch them. There's plenty of palaver before and after, and a full bar. Details and more at that Providence Geeks link. AS220 is at 115 Empire Street, Providence. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 17, 2007NYT: 'Times Select' ends at midnight Tuesday; oldest, newest archives to be freeDing, dong... The New York Times just released a story for tomorrow's paper (Times to End Charges on Web site) announcing that Times Select, the paywall that has sequestered the work of 23 columnists -- including Nicholas Kristof, Maureen Dowd, Dan Barry and Joe Nocera -- will come down at midnight Tuesday night. The liberator: Major search engines, according to Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com, who signs a A Letter to Readers About TimesSelect: What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYtimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue. Or, you can't charge people to come into the store if you want to sell page views and eyeballs to advertisers. Maybe more interesting: The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free. No more of those searches that end in a single paragraph and a toll to read further. This is your chance to read daily reports on the Civil War, Woodstock and Rudy Giuliani's terms as mayor. Or all the Times columns you missed over the last two years. The Jazz Age, World War II and Watergate may not be available. The Times has been charging $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for access to its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. Posted by Sheila Lennon Brady biographer: If Belichick suspended, Patriots 'might beat some team 100-0'Just one more Patriots post. This is too good.
Win One for the Cheater: Why the enraged Patriots will go undefeated. By Tom Brady biographer Charles P. Pierce at Slate. How it ends:
Fuel, it's all fuel. Whatever gets their engines running, fans could be the biggest winners. Posted by Sheila Lennon Humble pie in San Diego, respect from pundits after Patriots crush Chargers
Before we go to the land of weeping and gnashing of teeth, the New York Times got the point: With Their Video Cameras Off, Patriots Keep Rolling ...the game on the field raised only one question: This team needed to cheat? San Diego Union Tribune: Chargers outplayed, humbled by Brady and Patriots' defense: ...It's not that they lost. The Chargers knew that was a possibility. They were playing across the country against one of the best teams in the league. They had considered a victory in last week's season opener paramount because of the cushion it gave them coming here. Columnist Nick Canepa: Just call this sorry game film 'The Spy Who Drubbed Me'
(The photo of Patriots coach Bill Belichick waving to the hometown crowd last night is by AP.) Patriots Trample Chargers, 38-14 collects Chargers fans' comments. The first one: What the hell just happened? All that hype down the drain. Well, you have to hand it to the Patriots....they had our number, and it wasn't because they were cheating, they just played better football, like they always do. Len Pasquarelli, ESPN.com: We should know better than to make the Pats mad: "Had the Patriots played with much more focus or emotion -- or, hey, been allowed to steal the San Diego defensive signals -- there is no telling how bad a beat-down New England would have administered." Don Banks, SI.com: Mass destruction: "The Chargers had absolutely no chance in this one. None." You can wallow in Patriots joy on the PatsBlog. At our house, where I spent last season missing Brady's go-to guy, receiver Deion Branch, the family joked that Randy Moss might finally put that line out to pasture. "She's found her new Deion Branch," Joe said. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 16, 2007'The Kingdom': Smart political action thriller may make you think
Ashraf Barhom as Saudi Col. Al-Ghazi and Jamie Foxx as FBI agent Ronald Fluery in The Kingdom. Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner and the remarkable Palestinian actor Ashraf Barhom star in The Kingdom, a political thriller we saw tonight. It's smart, intense and shocking like the classic Battle of Algiers, but never lapses into propaganda. The film's title sequence offers a pictorial history of the Saudi kingdom from its inception in 1902 and the discovery of oil in 1938 to Osama bin Laden, signaling that this is more than a blow-'em-up flick. An elite team of FBI investigators has just five days in Saudi Arabia to nail bombers who blew up dozens of American oil workers and their families during the company picnic. A developing friendship between the principled Saudi colonel Al-Ghazi, who's charged with keeping them safe, and Foxx's Special Agent Ronald Fluery becomes common ground for collaboration, and a standoff turns it into a real police investigation. (The colonel is played brilliantly by Ashraf Barhom, who should get an Oscar nomination for the role.) The culture clash adds to the tension -- one team member is a woman, but this isn't the constant bad joke it could have been in this man's land. It's also funny at times. An unctuous U.S. diplomat couldn't be more of a lightweight. The colonel is shocked by the agents' foul language and wants to wash their mouths out with soap. It all feels very real, the closeups with a handheld camera giving the film a documentary feel, even if the viewer at times gets lost in the chaos. The script isn't perfect, but the whole movie is so powerful it doesn't matter. When the rockets start flying in the narrow streets, we're there in the violence, too. The Kingdom doesn't offer pat solutions, even momentarily, but you may leave it thinking the police have better ways of tackling terrorism than politicians.The screening crowd seemed stunned as they filed out. You want stars? 4 1/2 out of 5. The script didn't know how to start the movie, and the ending seems cobbled together, but the excellent middle makes up for both. Helluva movie. The Kingdom officially opens Sept. 28. (We noticed it in the projo movie listings as a sneak preview at Providence Place and the Showcases, tonight only.) See the trailer at the movie's official site. Rated R for graphic violence. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 15, 2007Curiouser blogs, and blogrollsBlog for a lazy Saturday: Curious Expeditions, "devoted to unearthing and documenting the wondrous, the macabre, and the obscure from around the globe... We are D and M, a gentleman and gentle lady who were living normal lives, decided to give it all up and ride narwhals into the sunset."
 which translates to "Farther Than the Moon."
This blog is a smart grownup's replacement for Saturday afternoon Creature Features, delights of the right brain. And their blogroll is a useful portal to blogs you might like if you're intrigued here. Blogrolls are endangered. Read the discussion -- More blog, less roll -- at Doc Searls' new Harvard hang. The applause for white space and splendid isolation makes me squirm uncomfortably. I regret the dust bunnies and shrunken heads of my own blogroll. Linking is a generous way to participate in and extend the Web, and I hope soon to replace this archaic relic with blogs that feel intelligently alive to me now, each in a different way. But the busy part of this weekend is about to begin, full of events that will climax in a family gathering around the TV for the Patriots-Chargers game Sunday night. Journal Food Editor Gail Ciampa and I have been stocking the new Football Food & Spirits blog with recipes. You're invited to contribute to this cookbook in the making. If you whip up a winner for the folks you feed, please consider letting the rest of us try your recipe. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 14, 2007Where are the 'user-news sites' with users more like me?
User-news sites offer diverse stories, some questionable sources headlines a San Francisco Chronicle story about a Project for Excellence in Journalism study of "social bookmarking" sites. With straight faces, both report that these reader favorites are not the stories found on mainstream news sites. No, they're the stories favored by young geeks competing to become "top Diggers," consequently accumulating more "friends" and fans. There's even a new Firefox extension called Social Media for this single purpose: When browsing any of the mentioned social news sites... you will see icons appear next to each story Title with the submission information. If you are scanning Digg it will actually check the story url for you without you having to click through to the actual story. This is what will help you sky rocket your account. You can see every stories details without visiting the story...This is not readers, recommendations or traffic, it's just clicking for points. Chron: The 24-hour news cycle doesn't exist on rapidly growing user-news sites like Digg, Del.icio.us or San Francisco-based Reddit. Neither do the small cabal of editors who decide what news readers and viewers should see on traditional print and broadcast outlets. I cruise these sites every day looking for stories and art sites that are under the radar. Sometimes I find them, usually buried among stories about game consoles, Ubuntu ( an operating system), RIAA and somebody's morbid local news. It's deep geek, deep guy and way too unrelated to most adults' lives. You'd better hope your local news site doesn't buy into the wisdom of the crowd with the narrowest interests, lots of free time and the best voting tools. Below is a sample -- 12 consecutive stories from the top of page 2 of Digg River early this morning. It's pretty typical. Compare these to the New York Times News River -- each section's stories as they are released. These may not be all you or I might want or hope for, but it's not like getting your news from Dave and Buster's. Top Reasons to Get Hyped for Halo 3 (497 diggs) The wait is almost over. Halo 3, the third and final installment in the first-person shooter trilogy, releases in two weeks.... The key is to get a real, diverse population doing this, bringing the best from the interests they follow closely to the rest of us. This is a killer app I haven't seen yet. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 13, 2007A lawyer's tale -- 'I was duped by an Internet scam' -- with a local angleWanted: Gullible Lawyers, the cover story in last week's Washington City Paper, is subtitled, "I was hired over e-mail. A boss I never met promised me $14,000 a month. How could I fall for that?"
They gave up their Social Security and bank account numbers and worked hard on boring research till the first promised payday that never came. (Apparently the only real damage was suffered by the participants' pride.) The ending of the tale is pretty amazing. (i won't spoil it.) In passing, she mentions walking the beach near her parents' house in Rhode Island, so I contacted her. In an email she explains, ...actually, I'm from Warwick - my parents live right on the line, and we have an East Greenwich zip code but are in the Warwick school zone. I went to Wheeler -- graduated in 1991... Oberlin College finally gave me a diploma in 1995, I graduated from Columbia Law School in 2000. After 5 years in Saipan, near Guam, lawyering in the Office of the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, she's in D.C. now, doing legal work as a temp. Arin has placed her first novel, Tropical Depression, with an agent. She tells me its plot: The novel is about a spunky/depressive young lawyer in New York who absconds to a small tropical island near Guam to flee her personal demons, only to find that the tropics is no place to hide from herself, though it's a heck of a place to SCUBA dive and drink stunning quantities of beer. Here's her site. Meanwhile, even without this connection, Arin's scam story is a good read that will leave you more baffled than sad. Later: In response to comments questioning whether this story is fiction, Arin emailed a link to the "lawsuit filed by the splinter group" mentioned in the story. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 12, 2007Scraps from a life's work become an amazing art parkIn 1999, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel scoffed (Sculptor wants to turn old ammo plant into work of art), (Tom) Every, 61, who calls himself Dr. Evermor, claims he constructed the 400-ton sculpture - best described as resembling a cross between a roller coaster, Moscow's Kremlin and the Eiffel Tower with a rusty teahouse at top - as a working rocket ship. It's an interesting story, Every insists on being taken seriously, and explains, "It's a thing for people's imagination. That's what this is all about." It happened. And he has definitely broken through the limits of Erector Sets.
The Bird Band at Dr. Evermor’s Historical Artistic Memorial Metal Sculpture Park in Baraboo, Wisc., is huge, and some of those birds can play. (Providence could use one of these, too.) Neatorama blogs it: Forevertron: World’s Largest Scrap Metal Sculpture by Dr. Evermor. Oh yes, lots of photos, yes. Then, a 4 minute video slideshow with good music:
Posted by Sheila Lennon Unusually legal street art and 'parkour,' the art of the urban stuntmanThe new Web Urbanist continues to be edgy and interesting
This is the sort of thing you'd expect to see in an arts-friendly city like Providence: Spontaneous Urban Gatherings: From Subway Parties to Pillow Fights. A popular article on unusually legal street art prompted some of our readers to inquire about organizing or attending flash mob events. The internet has, fortunately, made the organization of these urban events a whole lot easier. However, flash mobs aren’t just about gathering at a store to stare at a carpet.
Parkour, at Wikipedia: Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement (English: the art of displacement) is recreational activity of French origin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls — and can be practiced in both rural and urban areas. Male parkour practitioners are recognized as traceurs and female as traceuses
Parkour emphasizes efficiency of movement, while free runners focus on fluidity and elegance. Parkour has its origins in gymnastics and martial arts, combining movements from each and applying them to urban settings. Free running evolved as an offshot of parkour, adding elements of harmony and style to basically strict utility. It's interesting to watch the movies there knowing that this isn't Hollywood bonebreaking-for-pay but "an art or discipline that resembles self-defense in the martial arts." Posted by Sheila Lennon September 11, 2007Aviator Steve Fossett missing: Help find him by searching satellite imageryEmail from Larry D: Have you seen this? "This" is distributed search of realtime satellite images for signs of a downed plane by volunteers with computers using Amazon Mechanical Turk. (links fixed) Background:
Instructions You will be shown a single satellite image. The task is to flag any satellite images which contain foreign objects that may resemble Steve's airplane or parts of a plane. Steve's plane will show up as a regular object with sharp edges, white or nearly white, about 21 pixels long and 30 pixels in wingspan.Notes If in doubt, be conservative and mark the image. For complete coverage, we've set up this HIT such that multiple people will cover the same area several times over. Please do your best, but do not worry that missing one little detail will be tragic. It will get caught. Guardian UK reporter Dan Glaister (Google Earth allows computer users to join hunt for Fossett) offers the brief backstory: He set off in a two-seat Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon from the private airfield of hotel magnate Barron Hilton for what was to be a three-hour trip. The plane was one of a selection at the Flying M ranch by Mr Hilton, the grandfather of Paris, for the use of guests. Mr Fossett and his wife, Peggy, were due to leave the ranch after his flight. If you want to participate, here's where to start looking for Steve. The search is exhaustively documented at Fossett's site. Posted by Sheila Lennon Colin Powell: 'The rest of the world sees an America that seems to be afraid'
Money quote for 9/11: Let’s show the world a face of openness and what a democratic system can do. That’s why I want to see Guantánamo closed. It’s so harmful to what we stand for. We literally bang ourselves in the head by having that place. What are we doing this to ourselves for? Because we’re worried about the 380 guys there? Bring them here! Give them lawyers and habeas corpus. We can deal with them. We are paying a price when the rest of the world sees an America that seems to be afraid and is not the America they remember. The photo is by Martin Schoeller. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 10, 2007Singularity Summit: What happens when machines get smarter than us?AP: Techies Ponder Computers Smarter Than Us. The Singularity Summit is under way at Stanford. If yesterday's human hybrids involved cows, these involve machines. What's a Singularity? The Institute's current definition is dense. I prefer the definition they offered in 2005, which I blogged then: What is the Singularity? Sometime in the next few years or decades, humanity will become capable of surpassing the upper limit on intelligence that has held since the rise of the human species. We will become capable of technologically creating smarter-than-human intelligence, perhaps through enhancement of the human brain, direct links between computers and the brain, or Artificial Intelligence. This event is called the "Singularity" by analogy with the singularity at the center of a black hole -- just as our current model of physics breaks down when it attempts to describe the center of a black hole, our model of the future breaks down once the future contains smarter-than-human minds. Since technology is the product of cognition, the Singularity is an effect that snowballs once it occurs -- the first smart minds can create smarter minds, and smarter minds can produce still smarter minds.
There's lot of coverage, including How to Invest in the Singularity, It sounds uncomfortably like The Borg, but in a way that's what the Web is, the hive mind.. We upload ourselves to it in small increments. Proto-blogger Jorn Barger of Robot Wisdom is linking simply to the Google stream on the "Singularity Summit," but you might find a voice that works for you in the News reports on the event. Browse what grabs you. If the future interests you, this may be important. Posted by Sheila Lennon Cow-human hybrids okayed in U.K.; Nerd test; Google to put video ads in search resultsTo err is human: BBC: 'Human-animal' embryo green light: Regulators have agreed in principle to allow human-animal embryos to be created and used for research. "It's not our intention to create any bizarre cow-human hybrid, we want to use those cells to understand how to make human stem cells better." -- Lyle Armstrong, of Newcastle UniversityThe Daily Mail: Vatican attacks human hybrids as 'monstrous act against human dignity' The so-called chimeras will be 99 per cent human and one per cent cow, and will be destroyed after 14 days. Except for the ones that are bred for milk.
It's straight out of genetic experiments of The Island of Dr. Moreau, the movie and novel by H.G. Wells (read it online).
The Nerd Test. Seems heavily weighted towards young males.
There goes the neighborhood. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 9, 2007Forrest-Gump-like photographer's obit was too good to be true
The Bizarre Story of Joe O'Donnell by Marianne Fulton at The Digital Journalist last month.: It all started with an Aug. 14 New York Times obituary by Douglas Martin for photographer Joe O'Donnell. Martin praised his exceptional work and took special notice of a picture made during President Kennedy's funeral cortege: "And the O'Donnell photograph of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's coffin became the most reproduced version of that memorable scene." Martin goes on to note that, because he was on the government payroll, Mr. O'Donnell got no personal credit for those photos, although he signed and sold copies of them after his retirement from the White House in 1968.
The first mistake was that the picture was made at the Tehran conference earlier. Just sticking to his own biography, he must have been in two places at once because the occurred at the time he said he was working as an Army photographer in the Pacific. More photos accompany Fulton's fine story, which kicked off a dig. Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher is among those who investigated further. (Questions Raised About Claims By Photographer -- His Son Responds -- 'NYT' Corrects), publishing the Time correction and correspondence with O'Donnell's son, which concludes, On the matter of the John-John Kennedy photo, Tyge O’Donnell agrees with those who say that it was not his father’s. “In my father’s mind, in the state he was in from the 1990s onward until his death, he honestly thought it was his photograph,” partly due to dementia. It's a sad reckoning for a son who believed his dad's war stories. Posted by Sheila Lennon September 8, 2007Pats@Jets Sunday, 1 p.m. on CBS | Football Food blog's hot-weather highlights
TV: CBS (Ch. 12 in Providence.) Radio: WSKO Providence, 790 AM. 99.7 FM; WBCN Boston, 104.1 FM.
Journal Food Editor Gail Ciampa posted the architectural elements of a Giant round Italian grinder she improvised last year when her husband got included in a tailgating pilgrimage to Gillette Stadium. Her recommendations for Gourmet R.I. pizza to go, with beer, may be all you really want if it stays warm around your TV. Later: I've just posted a dead-easy Chocolate-Dipped Fruit recipe over there -- all it requires is a ripe fruit, a microwave and chocolate chips.
MCT photo Posted by Sheila Lennon September 7, 2007Free mp3s: Newly 'discovered' Led Zep '73 live, and rumbles of a reunionLed Zeppelin, Southampton 1973, 2 CDs. Nine tracks today, six tomorrow, whenever that is in Singapore. Led Zep may be reuniting for a charity gig later this year, according to NME.com, a U.K. music magazine. Billboard:: Led Zeppelin Announcement Expected Next Week There has been talk that tour producers AEG Live and Michael Cohl's CPI (Rolling Stones, Genesis, Barbra Streisand) have put in offers on a Zep tour featuring founding members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones with late drummer John Bonham's son Jason on drums. But it is also well known in the industry that standing offers have been on the table for a Led Zeppelin tour for more than a decade. This comes after, Now on Ledzeppelin.com the date 11.13.07 mysteriously appears with the familiar Zep symbols. Feels like viral marketing. Enjoy the tunes. Posted by Sheila Lennon Nola Web radio; Magnetic fridges; Dylan season; Teen makes $70k a month; Judith Miller: New job; Riverbend returns; New food blog
Read that, then go to Home of the Groove Internet Radio Station. I'm listening to Eddie Bo singing Every Dog Got His Day. Nice touch: On the connect page there's an automatic refresh as the tune changes. You'll see the blog's postings about the artist playing, with photos. (Reload the page if it gets stuck.) I love the album cover of Forgotten Souls Brass Band as I listen to Who Took The Happiness Out . Great Mardi Gras music, says hotg , actually blogger Dan Phillips of Lafayette, La. Now it's Whipped Cream (by Naomi Neville), The Stokes, Alon 9019, 1965. Naomi Neville is Allen Toussaint's pen name, his mother's name. The hits keep on coming.
The invention will allow for refrigerators to replace existing electric refrigerators in homes and businesses with a fully environmentally friendly power source. Although the first prototype will not be ready until 2010, the project’s researchers say the appliance’s cooling cycle efficiency will be 60 percent greater than that of conventional refrigerators. These fridges will have one other advantage: The process is silent.
Judith Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent that pushed all the Bush administration spin about the (so-far non-existent) existence of WMD in Iraq, has finally come home. She's taken a job |
...However, the only thing that New England didn't pick up in the offseason was a cause, and now it has one, especially if the investigation is as thorough and ongoing as Goodell seems to be saying it will be. It is possible that we will have a revelation a week in which, as New England linebacker Tedy Bruschi put it after Sunday night's game, New England's "integrity" comes into question. More ill-feeling. More bad blood. More grist for Belichick's endlessly grinding motivation mill. Moreover, the players seemed all week to resent most that their work in winning three Super Bowls suddenly had been devalued by their coach's misbehavior. That's the obverse of a general feeling that has arisen among Patriots in recent years—that their own talents have been made subordinate to their coach's alleged genius.
The under-fire, underhanded New England coach and his Patriots last night stuck their figurative knife into the collective heart of the Chargers before a national television audience that probably found something better to do by halftime – such as go to bed.
In GQ, Walter Isaacson -- President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, former chairman and CEO of CNN and former managing editor of TIME -- 
The New England Patriots open the season 
Found her spot: !["When Pigs Fly?" [Pic]](http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_02/skypig1109_800x571.jpg){kind=link}
