An overvinew of the denarly departed Deneplenap project
An overvinew of the denarly departed Deneplenap project. Penoplen are just now getting aronund to doning somen of this stuff.
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Entries for August 2004
Entries in the Vancouver manhole cover competition
Entries in the Vancouver manhole cover competition.
A listing of all the signs that
A listing of all the signs that appear on I-90 in New York. The web is at its best with meticulous obsession like this.
Humorous debunking of 1992 letter in Nature that
Humorous debunking of 1992 letter in Nature that extrapolated that women might soon outrun men in track events. In the year 6419, women marathon runners will reach the speed of sound. “The aerodynamics of runners exceeding the speed of sound is interesting given that their feet must repeatedly accelerate from rest, exceed the speed of sound and then stop, making for a rapid series of sonic booms.”
Brief overview of Olympic timing technology
Brief overview of Olympic timing technology. In 1932, they had “twenty five people eyeball the finish line and average their stopwatch results to find the winner” of track events.
The Graphic Design Olympics
The Graphic Design Olympics. Otl Aicher wins the gold for his pictograms for the 1972 Munich games.
The photographic works of Loretta Lux
The photographic works of Loretta Lux. Seems to me that I’ve probably linked to this before, but here it is again anyway.
James Surowiecki to guest blog on Marginal Revolution starting today
James Surowiecki to guest blog on Marginal Revolution starting today. Damn, I was hoping to get him for a guest shot at some point.
NYer article from 1984 about the ancient Olympic Games
NYer article from 1984 about the ancient Olympic Games.
Rebecca Mead on J. Crew’s beach delivery
Rebecca Mead on J. Crew’s beach delivery service in the Hampton’s. “It’s always interesting when everyone wears the same color.”
From the front lines of the RNC, part 1
I’m not attending the Republican National Convention next week, but I will be in NYC reporting occasionally on the effects of the convention on the city’s population, if any. If this morning’s commute is any indication, security is ratcheting up around Madison Square Garden. As I boarded the 1/9 at 14th Street around 8:45 am, a NYC police officer checked every single car of the uptown subway train before departure. That is, 10 or 11 police officers each checked one of the 10 or 11 subway cars by sticking his head in and checking if people were spitting on the floor, had their feet up on the seats, were engaged in any form of gambling, or were taking unauthorized photographs. This was probably a show of force more than anything else because there were no such checks by even a single police officer at 18th, 23rd, 28th, 34th, or 42nd Streets.
Sidenote: In looking for the convention web site, I ran across the Republican National Committee site and was interested to find that much of the front page real estate is devoted to attacking John Kerry. Figuring the Democrats’ approach wouldn’t be much different (can you tell I’m cynical about politics?), I checked out the DNC site and was pleasantly surprised to see that it focuses mostly on Kerry & Edwards, the issues, and how people can help out. It will be interesting to see how the two approaches work for the respective candidates.
And one more thing…these “issues” that the parties are attacking their opposition on…what a bunch of bush league crap. The Republicans saying that Kerry is bad because he’s wealthy? The Dems saying the same thing about Bush? What a joke! I thought the campaign folks were supposed to be at the top of their game. A few Madison Avenue ad guys could run Jeffrey Dahmer for President and outwit these knuckleheads.
Steven Johnson on brain science and partisan politics
Steven Johnson on brain science and partisan politics.
Kidnapper shot to death by Chinese supercop
Kidnapper shot to death by Chinese supercop then comes back to life in the morgue!.
John Battelle’s summary of what’s going on
John Battelle’s summary of what’s going on at his Web 2.0 conference in October.
Gene Weingarten goes on a terrorism field trip
Gene Weingarten goes on a terrorism field trip. Rides a Jerusalem bus, the Madrid train, and an oft-canceled Britsh Airways flight.
Trailer for The Life Aquatic, the new
Trailer for The Life Aquatic, the new Wes Anderson movie starring Bill Murray. This is either going to be fantastic or when Wes jumps the shark.
Business lessons from Star Trek: The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
Business lessons from Star Trek: The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. Rule #49: “Everything is worth something to somebody”.
Surowiecki on the Google IPO
While everyone was kicking Google’s IPO like it had just pissed on the rug, I was wondering why James Surowiecki hadn’t weighed in yet. Well, he has now (in the Financial Times) and it’s fantastic. He hit all the high points:
When the company first announced it was planning to go public, most estimated that the company would end up with a market cap of $15bn (£8.2bn) to $25bn. When trading started yesterday, it was worth $27bn.
If Google’s unorthodox method of going public has had any impact on the company’s stock price, it is only because it forced Wall Street into a concerted whispering campaign designed to sabotage the IPO. It is hardly a coincidence that after Google directly challenged Wall Street’s stranglehold on the capital-raising process, it suddenly went from being among the most-loved companies in America to among the most criticised. Much of the bad-mouthing we heard before the IPO came from money managers looking to talk down the company’s price so that they could get a better bargain. One of the more laughable aspects of the whole Google circus has been false sanctimony about “valuation” from money managers who happily bought Cisco when its market capitalisation was $400bn and from Wall Street investment banks that bid internet stocks up to billion-dollar market caps.
A big first-day pop is a sign that the opening price was wrong, not a sign that it was right. As for Google’s supposed greediness, it is doing precisely what it is supposed to be doing: maximising the value it gets for selling off part of the company. Because it used the Dutch auction, it knows it is getting what people were really willing to pay, instead of what a coterie of investment bankers thought their friends and cronies should have to pay.
Wall Street can spin this however it wants. But Google went public without underwriting from a major investment bank, without handing out favours to well-connected executives and without dictating a price in the manner of Soviet central planners. Because it did, it now has hundreds of millions of dollars that it would not otherwise have had. By any standard, this was one IPO that worked.
A classic case of middlemen who are no longer needed (or at least needed less) fighting to retain control over what they think of as their domain. What cheeses me off is all the “journalists” who uncritically covered the IPO and gave the investment banks and money managers a platform from which to attempt to manipulate the market like that. Business as usual for many journalists, but irritating all the same.
Carmello Anthony and the Team USA doghouse
Carmello Anthony and the Team USA doghouse. What? A selfish, lazy superstar? Say it ain’t so.
Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush using
Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush using them in campaign ads. “Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself.”
Elizabeth Loftus, the myth of repressed memory,
Elizabeth Loftus, the myth of repressed memory, and the malleable nature of memory.
Making maps easy to read
Making maps easy to read. This site summarizes “a research project that set out to discover some of the factors that make maps easy to read and to use”.
Shizuo Kakutani’s fixed point theorem
Shizuo Kakutani’s fixed point theorem. I’m confused about the 3-D example…
Huge waves are throwing 2 ton boulders more
Huge waves are throwing 2 ton boulders more than 150 feet inland on British coast.
Last issue of quirky interiors magazine Nest published
Last issue of quirky interiors magazine Nest published.
Photo illustrations to accompany Alex Ross’s excellent
Photo illustrations to accompany Alex Ross’s excellent Bjork profile from this week’s New Yorker.
SQL Fairy has the best logo of
SQL Fairy has the best logo of any open source project. Not too politically correct perhaps.
And we’re off…Google starts trading on
And we’re off…Google starts trading on Nasdaq, currently up near $100/share.
The Flickr API
The Flickr API. You hear that noise, kids? That’s the Web OS getting ready for takeoff.
Flickr announces Organizr “to help you more
Flickr announces Organizr “to help you more easily store, sort, search and share your photos”.
How the delicious pies get made at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria
How the delicious pies get made at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria.
Transcripts of OnStar Service Conversations Not Selected for Commercials
Transcripts of OnStar Service Conversations Not Selected for Commercials. “Hello, OnStar. My ice cream, it’s locked in the car, and it’s melting.”
Last 100 posts, part 3
August has been a tough month so far…this past week has been one of the worst of my life. Everyone I know is out of town and there’s not a whole lot happening online. Hopefully my loneliness hasn’t permeated my writing and bummed you all out. Now, on to what little has been going on around here.
I moved kottke.org to a new Web server. If you’re still not seeing this site at it’s new location, please send me an email. (Wasn’t funny the first time either…)
So many people, including many who should (or I wish would) know better, wrote really dumb things about the Google IPO. Me? I just want it to be over, one way or the other.
Advert-esque: kottke.org readers get $300 off their registrations to the Pop!Tech conference. If five of you sign up, I get in free…and then I’ll tell you all about it. It’s like we all get in free. Well, except for the five of you saps that paid. Suckers! I mean, sign up now!
Still haven’t been to Shopsin’s. And I may have mentioned that everyone I know is out of town?
For some stupid reason, I never opened up comments on the Gigli entry. Too late now. But I’m curious…if you’ve seen it, what did you think?
In case you missed them, a few gems from the remaindered links: aerial photography from Yann Bertrand (Eliot was inspired to post some of his own), Nicholas Nixon’s photos of the Brown sisters, and satellite photo of thousands of planes at the Oshkosh Airshow.
Mr. Sun is rocking my socks. He points to the Amish site. Wuzzah?
Folks seemed to like my noodling on the Web as a platform. Here’s Marc Canter’s enthusiastic reply and some thoughts from the folks at Feedburner about their feed splicing.
Lots of activity in the RSS advertising space. We discussed RSS ads here two years ago when very few companies were serving up RSS files. The fun part’s gonna be when RSS/Atom ad delivery becomes standardized, the feedreaders start offering ad blocking, and the content providers get all pissed off about it and complain to the folks that make the feedreaders. What will the newreader vendors do? Listen to the users or to the feed providers?
Last week was funny typos week. In the space of three days, I wrote about a giant Argentinian art colony threatening natural biodiversity in Australia and the Recall Toolbat.
Fair warning if you’re reading along: I’m gonna post about McSweeney’s #13 in a couple of weeks.
kottke.org readers are extreme sports enthusiasts.
Here I said, “a bigger house, the newest gadget, finer clothes, a shiny car…those things don’t appeal to me that much” while earlier in the week, I said, “I would buy this Marc Newson-designed mobile phone in a second”. Oops.
And in the Killers thread, kottke.org readers explore the age old issue of music coolness. Apparently, if you’re listening to the wrong type of music, you owe it to society to start listening to better music. “They” won’t tell you what the better music is because if you don’t know already, you’re obviously not cool. And if you’re not cool, you’re listening to the wrong type of music. It’s a vicious little circle. Me? I listen to what I like. And if you’re looking to me to provide you with the latest in musical hipness, you’re barking up the wrong weblog.
Manhattan’s Meox Mix Cafe serves cuisine for cats
Manhattan’s Meox Mix Cafe serves cuisine for cats. Not to be confused with NYC’s similarly named lesbian bar.
Good interview with Craig Newmark about craigslist
Good interview with Craig Newmark about craigslist.
The page for David Foster Wallace on RateMyProfessors.com
The page for David Foster Wallace on RateMyProfessors.com. “Very particular about usage. Excellent at explaining concepts. Very neurotic and tends to chew tobacco and spit in a cup while lecturing. If you are a female, do NOT fall under his spell…he’s a heartbreaker.”
Announcing Dropcash
Dropcash is a little project that Andre Torrez and I have been working for the last few weeks:
[Dropcash is] a simple way to organize a fundraiser. Are you raising money for a charity, a trip overseas, a family gift for mom, or to pay off a surprise hosting bill? DropCash lets you set up a page so everyone can follow your progress as you near your goal.
Andre came up with the idea and did the coding and I helped with the design, HTML, and a bit of IA. It’s currently in beta and we plan on making improvements as time goes on. Gomi No Sensei has some nice things to say about it.
Jim Romenesko is running a Starbucks gossip weblog
Jim Romenesko is running a Starbucks gossip weblog. RSS feed comes in tall, grande, and vente sizes.
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