May 2009
86 posts
Come on, iPhone: I need wireless syncing. This is so obvious.
The Zagat of judges →
A New York Times piece on Sonia Sotomayor includes this snippet. Who knew there was a Zagat of judges?
In the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, which conducts anonymous interviews with lawyers to assess judges, she has gone from generally rave reviews to more tepid endorsements. Among the comments from lawyers was that she is a “terror on the bench” who “behaves in an out-of-control manner” and...
Important Pepsi Throwback update. I tried it side-by-side with Mexican Coke. Throwback was … slightly better! And usually I’m a Coke man.
Awesome catchy kid’s song heard on @nprnews: Billy Kelly’s “People Really Like Milk.” You won’t get this out of your head. http://is.gd/HE0F
NPR report on “fracking” unintentionally hilarious for Battlestar fans. http://is.gd/Hve8
Bach played by dancers on a giant piano. Like that scene in Big, but different. http://is.gd/Hqh1
RT @tadfriend: not usually a youtube linker, but this is jaw-dropping http://bit.ly/S6N5k
Sotomayor quotes socialist Norman Thomas in her yearbook. What’ll they do when Supreme Court nominees have Facebook? http://is.gd/GZHJ
I used to cover voting irregularities. Here’s a glaring one: AT&T may have swayed American Idol vote. http://is.gd/GZ03
At the Supreme Court, the side that gets more... →
Adam Liptak looks at a surprisingly accurate way to predict which side is going to win a Supreme Court case:
A few years ago, a second-year law student at Georgetown unlocked the secret to predicting which side would win a case in the Supreme Court based on how the argument went. Her theory has been tested and endorsed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and has been confirmed by elaborate...
Job hunters dumb down their resumes to avoid... →
The WSJ talks to several people who removed high-flying achievements from their resumes because they didn’t want to appear overqualified for low-totem-pole jobs.
Sometimes, it seems to work:
Kristin Konopka sent out nearly 100 copies of her résumé in January in search of receptionist work, but got only one callback. That’s when Ms. Konopka, a 29-year-old New York actress and yoga...
Verdict: Pepsi Throwback is great. Not as good as Mexican Coke, but cheaper.
If you like Yo La Tengo, you’ll love The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Also, if you like @buzzfeed. http://is.gd/CrDF
Dr. Dre asked his son what the kids wanted from Eminem’s new album. The answer: Less Marshall, more Shady. http://is.gd/Cr77
Rush Limbaugh's bottom dwelling →
As Salon documents, Rush Limbaugh is obsessed with ass:
When gay activists called for a boycott of Colorado in the early 1990s, Denver Mayor Wellington Webb came to New York to seek the support of his fellow African-American city chief, Mayor David Dinkins. Limbaugh saw Dinkins being pulled in two directions: “And the question is should he bend over forward and grab the ankles for this...
RunPee.com: Tells you when it’s safe to go to the bathroom during movies currently at the theater. (Star Trek: 50 mins) http://is.gd/3kEr
Among the many awesome things about working at home: All of a sudden you can caramelize onions on a Friday morning. Try and stop me.
Those all-over-the-page Apple ads you’ve been seeing everywhere (Salon, NYT) don’t work in Chrome. Bug or feature?
John Gruber on the next iPhone →
John Gruber says he’s spoken to informed sourced about the next iPhone, and here’s what he found:
In the same way that, say, a 90 MHz Pentium was more than 1.5 times as fast as a 60 MHz 486, the 600 MHz CPU in the next iPhone will be more than 1.5 times as fast as the current 400 MHz iPhone CPU.
Much of what the iPhone does now is constrained by its CPU....
Hey, the narrator in the Royal Tenenbaums is Alec Baldwin! Don’t know if I knew that before. Spotted in this slideshow. http://is.gd/C9F1
That slideshow also got me noticing WA’s consistent typeface for screen titles. Of course @jkottke’s covered it: Futura. http://is.gd/C9MA
Hey @jodyrosen looks like you got a virus/phishing scam. Don’t click on those “funny blog” links. http://is.gd/C5zy
Waking up to awesome news: ABC is bringing back V. They better not ruin it. http://is.gd/BSVr
Comcast charges $99 installation fee for broadband. You do not have to pay this. Say no. I reduced it to $25. Could have gone to 0 I bet.
RT @ezraklein: You know what I thought prisons were supposed to do? Hold dangerous, violent people.
There are just a couple dozen Michelin restaurants in any given city. Why would you need an iPhone app? http://is.gd/BNU8
Legal reversal: Pringles *are* chips! British appeals court overrules lower court’s not-enough-potato-for-a-chip decision. http://is.gd/BNth
All the kids in the new News Corp. show “Glee” use the News Corps social network MySpace. Facebook? What’s that?
Lamb cracker = bahhh-licious! →
Grace Bonney’s great cracker idea. Here’s how to make it.
A test-drive of dry shampoos →
Laura Moser and her pals try out dry shampoos for DoubleX:
Frederic Fekkai was far and away my favorite: My hair did feel a little cleaner post-application, and I preferred sprinkling the rice-and corn-based powder directly into my scalp to enveloping the entire bathroom in an aerosol brume, as some of the other products demanded. Plus, no aerosol also meant no oppressive scent or easily...
Are athletes prone to OCD? →
From New Scientist:
Kelly MacDonald dreams of Olympic glory. But when her Canadian diving teammates competed at the Beijing games, MacDonald was absent. Her entry on the Diving Plongeon Canada website states that she has been “sidelined with injuries”.
However, this week, MacDonald has spoken out for the first time about the real reason for her interrupted athletic career:...
What happens to Willem Dafoe in the new Lars Von Trier movie? You really, really, really don’t want to know. http://is.gd/B4xa
Frank Lloyd Wright LEGO Sets →
Lego is making sets of six Wright buildings, including Falling Water and the Guggenheim. They’re on sale at the Guggeheim.
(Via Dylan Tweney)
CaughtYouWatching.com captures Web surfers'... →
This site captures your porn-viewing history by examining the colors that links display in your browser—it can tell which sites you’ve visited by their different color.
There’s also a script here that people can add to the blogs that will catch readers who’ve been watching. I’m nice, so I’m not adding it here.
Democrats hire speed reader for energy bill →
Congress is full of grown-ups:
Republicans on the committee have said they may force the reading of the entire 946-page bill — as well as major amendments that measure several hundred pages — all aloud. This is a procedure lawmakers have a right to invoke. Republicans are largely against the bill, which aims to cut emissions of so-called greenhouse gases by more than 80% over the...
Articles on the most-viewed list are popular... →
The Numbers Guy examines the feedback loops of news sites’ most-popular lists:
Frequently, popularity rankings speak less to the merits of what’s being observed and more to the fact that crowds are observing it. In other words, peer pressure. “If you see a crowd around a building, you pop over and see what everyone is looking at,” says Jimmy Leach, editorial director...
Odd: I heard about the earthquake in L.A. before hearing about how Twitter was first to report the earthquake in L.A. #twittergloatfail
Confession: I like Meghan McCain. She should be the leader of the Republican party. She’s smart, charming, and funny. http://is.gd/BpIN
Apple says your earbuds can give you a static electricity shock. I’ve experienced this, and it’s awful. http://bit.ly/vJy7V
When you copy text from Politico, it inserts a tag—Read more at Politico.com—when you paste again. Sneaky code to get back at bloggers?
Sarah Palin's possible alliance with Hillary... →
Here’s a story from the bizarro world. You know how Greta van Susteren keeps hanging out with the Palins? Apparently one of those trips to Alaska, van Susteren’s husband—John Coale, trial lawyer extraordinaire—began urging Palin to use her political-action committee to pay down Hillary Clinton’s campaign debt:
From Politco:
An outspoken Clinton supporter during...
Slumdog Price Is Right →
Watch The Slumdog Price is Right on CollegeHumor
(Via Buzz Feed)
Once you become aware of the computer fan’s hum, you can’t not notice it. It’s everpresent. But what can you do? You can’t shut it off.
Maureen Dowd cuts and pastes Josh Marshall →
Last week, Josh Marshall wrote:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
And today, Maureen Dowd wrote:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was...
The Wikipedia entry for Operation Entebbe is gripping. http://bit.ly/7GN2q
How do you make multiple batches of French toast without having the butter burn on the pan? Wash the pan between batches? Use oil instead?
Just added myself to the http://wefollow.com twitter directory under: #writer #food #tech
“The youngster wanted to see if the President’s haircut felt like his own.” http://bit.ly/oduvN
Obama lets a kid touch his hair →
From the White House’s Flickr page: “President Barack Obama bends over so the son of a White House staff member can pat his head during a family visit to the Oval Office May 8, 2009. The youngster wanted to see if the President’s haircut felt like his own.”
Classmates.com Employees Don't Have Heart To Tell... →
Sad news:
SEATTLE—Employees at Classmates.com—an online service that enables users to find and communicate with people from their past for a monthly fee—have done everything in their power to keep the company’s CEO from finding out about the wildly popular social networking site Facebook. “He knows something is going on,” Classmates.com web coder Josh Krzysch said while...