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Entries for August 2004
Mr. Sun takes the kids to an
Mr. Sun takes the kids to an Usher concert, hilariousness ensues. “The oldest momentarily rose above his inbred dorkitude and made body and hand movements approximating getting his freak on”.
Gigli
Boy, does hype work both ways. Gigli wasn’t nearly as bad as the critics said it was. Mostly it was just an overreaction: with all the Bennifer buzz, this should have been a better movie, it wasn’t, and it got slammed accordingly. I mean, it wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t Ed (or pretty much any movie with a monkey playing the title character). As usual, Roger Ebert explains things pretty well.
Physicist Paul Davies suggests looking for messages
Physicist Paul Davies suggests looking for messages from extraterrestrials in our DNA. For those of you chuckling, “sounds like a Star Trek episode”, it was an episode of Star Trek.
Bag Borrow or Steal is like Netflix for designer handbags
Bag Borrow or Steal is like Netflix for designer handbags. What a fantastic idea. I wonder what other types of goods might be rented in this fashion?
A list of self referential songs
A list of self referential songs. “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you”.
A telephone interview with Usher
A telephone interview with Usher. Q: “…and I’m curious, since you’ve clearly had sex—excuse me, success in the past…”
The Morning News roundtables with six mp3 bloggers
The Morning News roundtables with six mp3 bloggers. There’s a load of good music chat in here.
The equal rights movement marches on with
The equal rights movement marches on with the car accident rates of young women growing at a quick pace. There was “a 42 percent increase in young female driver fatalities from 1992 to 2002”.
Seeing stars
I’ve followed Antony Hare’s adventures in illustration on his site for several years now and always liked them for their simplicity, but he’s kicked it up a notch recently.
His more recent work — particularly his illustrations of Johnny Depp, George Plimpton, and Franz Kafka — contains more depth and presence while remaining simple and clean. The Plimpton is fantastic, the way his eyes peer out from beneath his eyebrows. If you’re in Toronto in September, you should check out his inaugural show at the Brassaii Bistro & Lounge.
Deception detection: spotting liars is not that easy
Deception detection: spotting liars is not that easy.
One of the Canary Islands could collapse
One of the Canary Islands could collapse and pound a 300-foot wave into the east coast of the US.
Choire fails to escape from Gawker empire;
Choire fails to escape from Gawker empire; Gawker to get new writer. New Gawkette has “killer rack”.
Photo documentation of a wacky game of Drunk Guy Jenga
Photo documentation of a wacky game of Drunk Guy Jenga. If you wake him up, you lose.
Some patents destroyed in 1836 fire discovered at the Dartmouth library
Some patents destroyed in 1836 fire discovered at the Dartmouth library.
Not a very positive review of Microsoft’s blogging tool
Not a very positive review of Microsoft’s blogging tool.
NY Times compares TiVo to Apple, saying
NY Times compares TiVo to Apple, saying it faces a struggle in a market it helped create. One of their biggest problems is the cable companies’ leveraging their monopolies.
A Flicker member created “an illustrated version
A Flicker member created “an illustrated version of the Sherlock Holmes tale The Speckled Band” using Flickr photos as the illustrations. The text starts here and spans 58 photos total. Neat.
Red Adair, famous oil well fire fighter,
Red Adair, famous oil well fire fighter, dies with with his boots off at the age of 89.
Your moment of information design zen: the Shopsin’s menu
Two years ago, Calvin Trillin wrote an article for the New Yorker about Shopsin’s, an eccentric eatery in the West Village with about 9 billion menu items:
What does happen occasionally is that Kenny gets an idea for a dish and writes on the specials board — yes, there is a specials board — something like Indomalekian Sunrise Stew. (Kenny and his oldest son, Charlie, invented the country of Indomalekia along with its culinary traditions.) A couple of weeks later, someone finally orders Indomalekian Sunrise Stew and Kenny can’t remember what he had in mind when he thought it up. Fortunately, the customer doesn’t know, either, so Kenny just invents it again on the spot.
Shopsin’s has moved to another Village location since the article came out, but they’ve still got that big old menu. If you dare, feast your eyes on a tour de force of outsider information design, all 11 pages of the Shopsin’s General Store menu.
You want chicken fried eggs with a side of pancakes? Page 6. On page 1, there’s gotta be 100 soups alone, including Pistachio Red Chicken Curry. I lost count after 40 different kinds of pancakes on page 10. In amongst the kate, gregg, tamara, and sneaky pete sandwiches on page 2, you’ll find the northern sandwich: peanut butter & bacon on white toast. There appears to be nothing that’s not on the menu, although I looked pretty hard for foie gras and couldn’t find it. If they did have it, you could probably get it chicken fried with whipped cream on top.
On page 8, page 11, and the front of their Web site, you’ll find the restaurant rules:
- No cell phone use
- One meal per person minimum (everyone’s got to eat)
- No smoking
- Limit four people per group
On that last point, the menu has something additional to add (page 4):
Party of Five
you could put a chair at the end
or push the tables together
but dont bother
This banged-up little restaurant
where you would expect no rules at all
has a firm policy against seating
parties of five
And you know you are a party of five
It doesn’t matter if one of you
offers to leave or if
you say you could split into
a party of three and a party of two
or if the five of you come back tomorrow
in Richard Nixon masks and try to pretend
that you don’t know each other
It won’t work: You’re a party of five
even if you’re a beloved regular
Even if the place is empty
Even if you bring logic to bear
Even if you’re a tackle for the Chicago Bears
it won’t work
You’re a party of five
You will always be a party of five
Ahundred blocks from here
a hundred years from now
you will still be a party of five
and you will never savor the soup
or compare the coffee
or hear the wisdom of the cook
and the wit of the waitress or
get to hum the old -time tunes
among which you will find
no quintets— Robert Hershon
Love it, love it, love it, and I have to get my ass over there one of these days.
Moving right along…
I’m currently moving kottke.org to a new server. If you’re seeing this, it worked. If you’re not seeing this, please send me an email.
I think I took care of most things during the transition, but if something seems weird, lemme know?
Thanks to everyone who helped out during the transition: Leonard, Mark, David, and Andy.
Update: mod_rewrite was misbehaving (due to a stupid user error), rendering most of the site inaccessible. Fixed. Thanks, Jari.
Comm Arts profile of Hoefler and Frere-Jones Typography
Comm Arts profile of Hoefler and Frere-Jones Typography.
Decentralized Intelligence: What Toyota can teach the 9/11
Decentralized Intelligence: What Toyota can teach the 9/11 commission about intelligence gathering. Duncan Watts on the wisdom of crowds in disaster recovery scenarios.
The Science of Word Recognition
The Science of Word Recognition. A little light reading on how people read.
How not to buy happiness
Robert Frank has an article in the journal Daedalus on how not to buy happiness (via Peter). Frank suggests that money can buy you happiness, but only if you spend it correctly:
Considerable evidence suggests that if we use an increase in our incomes, as many of us do, simply to buy bigger houses and more expensive cars, then we do not end up any happier than before. But if we use an increase in our incomes to buy more of certain inconspicuous goods — such as freedom from a long commute or a stressful job — then the evidence paints a very different picture. The less we spend on conspicuous consumption goods, the better we can afford to alleviate congestion; and the more time we can devote to family and friends, to exercise, sleep, travel, and other restorative activities. On the best available evidence, reallocating our time and money in these and similar ways would result in healthier, longer — and happier — lives.
The use of income to buy “inconspicuous goods” is a pretty apt description of how I’ve spent any extra income as I’ve gotten older and earned more. A bigger house, the newest gadget, finer clothes, a shiny car…those things don’t appeal to me that much, which makes me something of an anomoly in the US I think. I’ve used my income to move to a new city, take some time off of work, travel, and more carefully choose what I want to do for employment. I rarely buy a “better” version of something I already have…I’m a very suspicious upgrader, even when it comes to software. I don’t know that I’m any happier because of this approach, but I know I wouldn’t be very pleased if I couldn’t go on vacation because I’m spending all my money on a bigger apartment.
Anyway, the article is excellent if you’ve got time to read it. A Professor of Economics at Cornell University, Frank has written a few books related to this topic, among them Luxury Fever, The Winner-Take-All Society, and Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status. Related articles by Frank include When Less is Not More (NY Times), Why Living in a Rich Society Makes Us Feel Poor (NY Times Magazine), Talent and the Winner-Take-All Society (The American Prospect), and Market Failures (Boston Review).
How We Are Hungry, a collection of
How We Are Hungry, a collection of short stories by Dave Eggers, due out August 9th.
25 years of the Brown sisters, Nicholas Nixon
25 years of the Brown sisters, Nicholas Nixon. Four sisters photographed once a year for 25 years.
Lobstergate
Lobstergate: David Foster Wallace and his Gourmet article about the Maine Lobster Festival. Wallace’s article is fantastic.
Now *this* is a telephone
Now *this* is a telephone. I would buy this Marc Newson-designed mobile phone in a second.
These suggestions for the next OSCON apply
These suggestions for the next OSCON apply well to other conferences.
Danny Way catches some *huge* air on
Danny Way catches some *huge* air on the giant ramp built for the upcoming X-Games.
Portmanteau words are formed from portions of
Portmanteau words are formed from portions of two or more words. bionic = biology + electronic; squiggle = squirm + wiggle; quasar = quasistellar + radio; croissandwich = croissant + sandwich
Gallery of photos by the recently deceased Henri Cartier-Bresson
Gallery of photos by the recently deceased Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Morning commute notes
How can someone smell so much like garlic at 8:30 in the morning? Are there garlic breakfast foods that I don’t know about?
Walked past another NYPD flash mob in Times Square. Deterring terrorists these days involves standing around drinking coffee. How about a little gunfire and random beatings? Now *that’s* intimidation.
Standing on his tippy toes had two benefits for the young man on Broadway: 1) he could see whichever famous person was doing Good Morning America this morning; and 2) passersby could see more clearly the red stripes on the soles of his Prada shoes, identifying him as a person of impeccable taste.
Letters from ex-Presidents
Letters from ex-Presidents. So far, Carter and Clinton have written back.
Feynman diagrams in Beautiful Evidence
Preview pages about Feynman diagrams from Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence.
Indians are finding unusual uses for government-subsidized condoms
Indians are finding unusual uses for government-subsidized condoms. Lubricant for sari looms, ad hoc water flasks, and gun barrel cozies.
Eyebeam releases new version of their reBlog software
Eyebeam releases new version of their reBlog software.
Lengthy Fast Company profile of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
Lengthy Fast Company profile of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Naked Face discrepancy
Ken Hirsch has uncovered a potential discrepancy in Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article, The Naked Face. Hirsch excerpts a January 2004 article from Smithsonian Magazine on the same topic in which a cop from Gladwell’s article gives a different account of events that led him to shoot a man. Here’s Gladwell’s version:
But at the time all Harms had was a hunch, a sense from the situation and the man’s behavior and what he glimpsed inside the man’s coat and on the man’s face — something that was the opposite of whatever John Yarbrough saw in the face of the boy in Willowbrook. Harms pulled out his gun and shot the man through the open window. “Scott looked at me and was, like, ‘What did you do?’ because he didn’t perceive any danger,” Harms said. “But I did.”
And here’s an excerpt from the Smithsonian Magazine piece:
The cop in the New Yorker article, in fact, was Harms, who got out of the car afterward and held the assailant in his arms as he died. Harms says what he actually glimpsed, long enough to read the brand name, was a can of hair spray in one of the assailant’s hands, and, in the other, a cigarette lighter. It was a weapon, a makeshift flamethrower capable of torching Harms and his partner. “It wasn’t something I was reading in his face, or any kind of cues,” Harms says. “It was the totality of the situation.”
There’s a certain amount of interpretation involved in explaining how Harms knew what he knew, when he knew it, when he decided to act on it, and what he remembered later, but even so, it may not be the strongest example of face reading out there. I’m keen to learn if this anecdote made it into Blink.
Getting in on the Google IPO as a small investor
Getting in on the Google IPO as a small investor. Looks like it’s tough to find a brokerage house to handle small accounts (try E-Trade or Ameritrade).
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