April 2010
1 post
February 2010
1 post
October 2009
4 posts
Barnes & Noble's $259 Nook costs more than... →
Barnes & Noble released its long-awaited e-reader today, and it looks pretty spiffy. What’s more, it’s priced at $259 — $20 less than Amazon’s 6” Kindle.
There’s only one problem: Amazon doesn’t charge sales tax, while BN.com and Barnes & Noble stores do. What’s tax on $259? Where I live, it’s $24.61.
In other words, your checkout...
Isn't it possible Shepard Fairey forgot which... →
I’m still fixed on this story.
The AP filed court papers saying Shepard Fairey is lying about simply misremembering which photo he used to create the Obama Hope poster. (Fairey originally said he used the Clooney photo above, and now he’s recanted and says he used the close-up.)
The AP alleges:
“It is simply not credible that Fairey somehow forgot in January 2009 which...
Malcolm Gladwell's advice for young journalists:... →
From a Time Q&A:
Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master’s in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that’s the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get...
Why did Shepard Fairey lie? →
Shepard Fairey says he lied to his attorneys and destroyed evidence about which photo he used to create the Obama hope poster.
When he sued the AP in February (after they’d claimed he’d violated their copyright), he said he’d used a photo of Obama sitting next to George Clooney at the National Press Club — the first one here. The AP claimed he used another image from...
September 2009
3 posts
Randall Munroe writes to Barack Obama is Your New... →
Mathew Honan, who did Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle, shares an e-mail he got from Randall Munroe, creator of XKCD:
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:03:32 -0500
From: “Randall Munroe”
To: mhonan@gmail.com
Subject: Barack Obama (from Randall Munroe of xkcd)
Hi,
Assuming you’re the guy who did barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com:
You should try adjusting the randomizer on your site...
Al Franken is masterful at explainaing healthcare... →
(via Ezra Klein)
Does anyone else have this issue with Chrome?
When I come back to Chrome after I’ve been away from the computer for a while, it always takes years to jog back to life. When I click on each tab, I’ve got to wait 10 or more seconds for the image to appear; the hard drive runs aggressively during this period, leading me to believe that Chrome has cached the data and is trying to revive it.
1) Is this common — have you...
August 2009
9 posts
View from the inside of a failing kitchen →
Samin Nosrat, sous chef at the Berkeley restaurant Eccolo (which has just closed down), tells what it’s like to try to serve local, organic food during the financial crisis:
We did fine for a long time - barely making it is considered fine in the restaurant business - but when the financial crisis hit last fall, we felt an immediate impact. We started to tighten things up; when one cook...
The best way to navigate a menu →
Frank Bruni, in his last column as NYT restaurant critic, offers this advice for navigating a menu:
Scratch off the appetizers and entrees that are most like dishes you’ve seen in many other restaurants, because they represent this one at its most dutiful, conservative and profit-minded. The chef’s heart isn’t in them.
Scratch off the dishes that look the most aggressively fanciful. The...
The $400,000 magazine story →
In an online chat, NYT Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati says that this weekend’s big piece on one hospital after Hurricane Katrina cost $400,000 to produce:
The Magazine is publishing a 13,000-word piece on Sunday (it will be up online earlier) that we did in partnership with ProPublica, the independent, not-for-profit newsroom. One of ProPublica’s editors and I did a...
I have 91 Facebook requests. Why isn't there an... →
Facebook tells me I’ve got 91 requests from various apps. Please, Facebook, add an Ignore All button! Or perhaps, Ignore All Requests From This App? We need help!
This is what my Pending Requests page looks like:
Student Reporter Damon Weaver Interviews President... →
The New Yorker is immune to cuts at Conde Nast →
John Koblin reports:
The Observer has learned, however, that New Yorker editor David Remnick will be exempt from meeting with McKinsey, as will anyone from the editorial side of his magazine. Two well-placed sources said that Condé Nast’s chairman, Si Newhouse, reached out to Mr. Remnick shortly after the McKinsey announcement was made and told him not to worry about anything—the magazine...
The Chevy Volt Gets 230 mpg? Only if you use bad... →
Mark Chu-Carroll writes:
Chevy has announced that for city driving, the Volt will get gas mileage of 230 miles per gallon.
That’s nonsense. Pure, utter rubbish.
The trick is that they’re playing with the definition of mileage. In city driving, the Volt is primary an electric car: it’s powered by its batteries which you must recharge every night, not by gasoline. On...
Keanu Reeves visits the 1984 International Teddy... →
(via Buzz Feed)
A Breastfeeding doll →
July 2009
55 posts
Super Michael Jackson Bros. →
Kafkaesque conversation with Apple's App Store →
Riverturn’s VoiceCentral app had been available for several months on Apple’s iPhone App Store, but this week Apple removed it and all other apps that connect to Google Voice. Here’s the conversation Riverturn had with a representative from the App Store:
Richard: “I’m calling to let you know that VoiceCentral has been removed from the App Store because it duplicates features...
How Physicist Build a Bridge →
You start a bridge by sending a small piece of string across a chasm and then feeding it with thicker and thicker pieces of rope, and then construction materials. Physicists at Fermilab’s Wilson Hall had a clever way to do this:
Now they could call in a construction crew, build scaffolding up twenty stories and just connect the cable like that. Not pretty but it would get the job done....
Humans time blinks so they don't miss information →
From the Telegraph:
A study of eighteen volunteers found they synchronized their blinks while watching video clips taken from the comedy TV show Mr Bean.
But the same phenomenon did not occur when they viewed a background video or listened to an audio recording of a Harry Potter book.
Dr Tamami Nakano, of Tokyo University, said: “We seem to be unconsciously searching for a good...
Swinging your arms makes walking more efficient →
From the Independent:
The mystery of why people swing their arms while walking rather than holding them still and rigid like the famous silly walk of John Cleese in his Monty Python sketch appears to have been solved. An experiment involving making a group of volunteers take equally silly walks in a laboratory setting has confirmed that arm swinging makes walking more efficient and easier.
...
Not your standard way of starting a wedding →
Will Shortz explains how he puts together the NYT... →
One of his answers in a very interesting Q&A with NYT readers:
I receive 75-100 freelance crossword submissions a week, from which I select my favorites for publication in The Times. Some of the contributors are frequent, others not. Since the payment is modest ($200 for a weekday puzzle, $1,000 for a Sunday), most contributors make crosswords mainly for the pleasure of doing so and for...
A better way to harvest bone marrow →
(via GrrlScientist)
A software engineer on why he won't be going to... →
Mark Chu-Carroll’s amazing post:
As pretty much any reader of this blog who isn’t a total idiot must have figured out by now, I’m a geek. I have been since I was a kid. My dad taught me about bell curves and standard deviations when I was in third grade, and I thought it was pretty much the coolest damn thing I’d ever seen. That’s the kind of kid I was. I was also...
White girls doing Bill Cosby impressions vs Asians doing Christopher Walken. http://bit.ly/hBzHw vs http://bit.ly/7iuS
Going to Flour + Water for dinner tonight. Can’t wait. http://bit.ly/19f6UR
White Girls Doing Bill Cosby Impressions (and... →
and
(via Buzz Feed)
I rarely want to leave San Francisco, but Central Park in the summer sure sounds fun. http://bit.ly/LWljb
These hearings are completely worthless. It’s like listening to potheads discuss philosophy—sounds high-minded but illuminates nothing.
If summer’s got you down, make your own air conditioner. http://bit.ly/pCX4H
Just heard this for the first time: The Streets “Dry Your Eyes” is pretty great. http://bit.ly/BXoZr
Are you in the UK? DM or e-mail me, would like to ask a quick favor. (farhad.manjoo@slate.com)
Add a baby picture to your wallet to make sure... →
An experiment:
Hundreds of wallets were planted on the streets of Edinburgh by psychologists last year. Perhaps surprisingly, nearly half of the 240 wallets were posted back. But there was a twist.
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist, and his team inserted one of four photographs behind a clear plastic window inside, showing either a smiling baby, a cute puppy, a happy family or a contented...
Wikipedia debates showing the world Rorschach... →
Editors on Wikipedia are in a battle over whether to post the famous what-do-you-see-here inkblot tests. The argument against: If everyone sees them, the test will no longer be effective.
I got Spotify to work for me in the US. I don’t hear any ads. Am I supposed to? What am I missing?
How to get people to follow you on Twitter →
This guy tried out several different ways to ask people on his site to follow him on Twitter. The most effective: “You should follow me on Twitter.”
State Dept. staffer asks Hillary Clinton why the department doesn’t use Firefox. Turns out it’s too expensive! http://bit.ly/5eX2W
State Department workers want Firefox! →
At a Q&A session with State Department staffers, someone asks Hillary Clinton why the department doesn’t use Firefox. Turns out the free program is too expensive!
MS. GREENBERG: Okay. Our next question comes from Jim Finkle:
Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox? I just – (applause) – I just moved to the State Department from the National...
Sotomayor defends her nunchuck ban. I hope Michelangelo doesn’t get wind of this. http://bit.ly/7q0N6 (Yes, I mean the Ninja Turtle.)
Bittman calls this “possibly” the best pea soup recipe. I disagree. It is the best. Make it tonight. http://bit.ly/vvE0k
If you’re near the Ferry Building in SF, @dcpatterson is giving out free lunch at the new Cane Rosso.
Cats control humans with high pitched purr-cries →
Researchers at the University of Sussex played back different kinds of cat cries to human subjects, some of whom didn’t own cats. They found that a particular kind of cat meow—” a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry,” as LiveScience describes it—was very difficult for people to ignore:
They found that humans, even if they had never had a cat themselves, judged the...
Down with Verdana! My story on Typekit and terrible Web typography. http://bit.ly/U53kR
My awesome Restoration Hardware decorative American Flag and Declaration of Independence cushions got delivered today. http://bit.ly/7bXjS
Thanks for the links, @bryanmason and @veen — and thanks for chatting with me!
I’ve raised the hackles of a lot of Linux fans with my five reasons why the Google OS is doomed. http://bit.ly/LZVkc
RT @LordOfTheTweet: “Soylent Green is manufactured in a facility that processes eggs, wheat and tree nuts.” #1stdraftmovielines