Farhad Manjoo's page on the Internet

Are Saturday morning cartoons over?

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:47:15 -0800

I’m idly wondering, because we’ve lately taken to pacifying the baby with Netflix kids shows, especially The Backyardigans.

Which prompted all these questions: Since Netflix seems to be bulging with kids’ stuff, and since the normal selection problems with Netflix streaming don’t really apply to kids (since they have no taste and will watch anything—at least, my 14-month-old will), are cartoons on TV over?

Do parents just put on cartoons whenever, from Netflix or something else, any time? Do kids understand that there was once a time of scarcity, a time when cartoons came on TV and you watched them and then, after that, there wasn’t more stuff to watch?

How has the instant availability of so many shows improved children’s quality of life? The other day I loaded up a cartoon to make dinner at a restaurant tolerable. I see parents do this all the time now, guilt-free.

News of the World's hilarious headlines

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:17:00 -0700

News of the World's hilarious headlines:

Now that I’ve seen News of the Word, I’m sad to see it go — its headlines are such Britty, nonsensical Dada fun!

From the site right now:

Apprentice Zoe: I won Glenn with socks appeal

Harry’s bedder than Jen, says Flo

Boozy bro Andy Carroll gave me black why eye

Cheeky mates show off Lamps’ Chelsea buns

I Moss be mad, wedding’s cost us £1m

My Big Fat Gypsy Divorce at just 19

Peter Crouch’s unAbbey families

The NYT Paywall works on me

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:47:00 -0700

At the moment I don’t pay the NYT anything (they pay me!) I’m a very heavy NYT.com reader — I read 262 articles in the past month, according to their stats, but I think they may be undercounting.

Another thing I am is a cheapskate. I generally don’t pay for stuff that I can find free online. This includes a lot of things I’d rather not mention. Suffice it to say, though, I know how to get through paywalls — I wrote one of the Web’s first how-tos about getting through the WSJ’s paywall — and the NYT’s is not really a paywall but a paycurtain. It will take half a second of Googling, Binging, Bitlying or some other Web trickery to get at Times content.

One more thing to note is that I don’t really need the Times’ iPhone and iPad apps. I generally read the mobile site on my phone and tablet, so the loss of those features wouldn’t bother me so much.

And yet: This morning I’ve decided to pay for the New York Times. This will be the first time I’ve paid for the NYT in about four years (I got the paper for many years, but at some point decided it made no financial sense).

I’m doing this because I realized that one of the many subscription offers the Times is now offering is actually a pretty good deal.

Due to the bizarro math of print ad subsidies, it turns out that getting the Sunday paper delivered is actually cheaper than subscribing to the Times’ All Access Digital, which is the top tier of their new digital subscriptions. (AAD gets you unlimited access to the Website, all the mobile apps, the excellent Times Reader software, and the Chrome Web app.) AAD alone is $35 every four weeks. But the Sunday subscription includes AAD, and it costs only $30 every four weeks (this seems to vary by zipcode, though). In other words, they’ll cut five dollars off your bill if you get the Sunday paper.

Anyone who’s ever handled the NYT Sunday knows it is an awesome thing. It’s unbelievable that any institution can produce so much content at all, let alone one that can produce something that is so frequently top-notch (even if two-thirds of it is filled with disquisitions on the lives of wealthy people with first-world problems; hey, I’ve got first-world problems too!). The Sunday paper deals in volume, and as a consequence it’s just not the kind of thing that’s possible to appreciate on the Web or really in any digital form. It works only on paper, and once paper is gone, I imagine it will cease to exist — Sunday’s content will be spread out over the week or the month, SEO’d and slimmed-down.

Still, of course, Sunday’s expensive — $7.50 a week is more than most monthly magazines — especially when you consider that you’ll very likely miss it most Sundays, or have just enough time to skim the news, the book reviews, and the magazine. And probably if there’s a magazine article you really want to read you’ll get online and Instapaper it so you can spread it out over the week, and read it in the dark when you can’t sleep.

But what the hell, is my thinking: It’s worth a shot. They’re giving me this enormous pile of beautiful and interesting paper every week, and they’re letting me get to all their content online in any form without the minimal hassle that would be necessary otherwise. I’ll at least take a stab at this and see how it goes.

Now, is this a better deal than free? No. Of course not. But for me, free was never really the only way. Even though — as I said — I pilfer a great deal of content online, I’ve also been known to pay for a few things that make me appreciably happier. Among other things I pay for Netflix, for Cooks Illustrated, Rhapsody, and public radio. Now I’ll pay for the NYT Sunday, including All Access Digital.

I’ll let you know how it goes, especially if I decide I need to ditch it.

(Image from nialkennedy on Flickr.)

I asked Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, to...

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:42:00 -0700

I asked Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, to explain this cartoon in the magazine’s online chat. Here’s what he said:

It was a topical cartoon. Maybe about some kid who the father was trying to get back from another country. Totally blanking on this now but I’m sure that was it. We forgot to run it and then did which was a mistake.

In other words, no one knows what it means.

Twitter’s problem, as pointed out by Evan Williams today.

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:11:52 -0700

Twitter’s problem, as pointed out by Evan Williams today.

barbara: I’m Yours (ukulele)

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:50:20 -0800

barbara:

I’m Yours (ukulele)

Barnes & Noble's $259 Nook costs more than Amazon's $279 Kindle. Why? Tax.

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:33:00 -0700

Barnes & Noble's $259 Nook costs more than Amazon's $279 Kindle. Why? Tax.:

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 screen for a Kindle will look like this:

While your checkout screen at BN.com looks like this:

Isn't it possible Shepard Fairey forgot which image he used?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:36:00 -0700

Isn't it possible Shepard Fairey forgot which image he used?:

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 source image he used to create the Infringing Works, which were completed only a year earlier in January 2008,” according to the papers filed Tuesday. “It also strains credulity that an experienced graphic designer such as Shepard Fairey misremembered cropping George Clooney out of a source image and making other changes … when no such cropping or other changes were ever made.”

But is this right? When I write, I’m always careful to link to and properly quote the source material that I’m using. Nevertheless, a lot goes on in the editing process—a process that goes on while you’re writing—and if you asked me a year later how I was inspired to use some turn of phrase or even where I got a specific quote from, I think I’d very likely misremember.

Look at the two pictures above: Obama’s expression is the same in each. The photos were taken by the same photographer at the same event, seconds apart. All you have to do to the Clooney one to make it into the close-up is apply one Photoshop transformation—Crop. It’s a one-second process.

Fairey is a slippery character—he’s admitted to destroying evidence to cover up which picture he used—but still, it seems entirely reasonable to me that he could have genuinely forgotten which picture he used.

The AP seems to simply misunderstand the ease of editing photos—or, really, editing anything—in the modern age. Copying, pasting, cropping, resizing—these are the bread-and-butter actions of modern info-mining. They are entirely forgettable.

Malcolm Gladwell's advice for young journalists: Go to grad school

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:13:27 -0700

Malcolm Gladwell's advice for young journalists: Go to grad school:

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 smarter.

Why did Shepard Fairey lie?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:10:39 -0700

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 the same event — a close-up of Obama. Now he admits that he did use that image.

Here’s what I can’t understand: Why did he lie? He and his former attorneys—who withdrew from the case when he fessed up to lying—now say that the particular image he used doesn’t undermine his fundamental fair use right. That seems right to me; both images are from the same photographer at the same event, and each could easily have served as the basis for the Hope poster. If one of them can be appropriated under fair use, so can the other.

But if he believed that, why did Fairey say he used the Clooney image and not the close-up? Does the close-up image make the fair use case more difficult? Why? Was there a reason Fairery lied — or was he just dumb?

Randall Munroe writes to Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:06:00 -0700

Randall Munroe writes to Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle:

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 (barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com) so that it takes you through all the items before repeating one. There’s a subtle probability-related problem that occurs in showing people stuff at random that isn’t sufficiently appreciated.

If you have 1,000 factoids, you know how many you’ll have to show before the reader will probably see a repeat? 38. And when they see that first repeat, they think “okay, I’ve seen most of them.” Even if you write 10,000 entries, they’ll see a repeat on average after 119.

Bottom line, you can make the site much more enthralling if, for each visitor (IP/whatever), you shuffle the factoids and then show them one at a time, so there’s no repeat. This will look almost exactly the same to the reader for the first few refreshes, but it fixes the fact that under the current true randomness, the site looks like it has only 1%-10% as much content that it ACTUALLY does.

This affects a lot of sites, but yours is cute and I thought I’d let you know.

— Randall

Al Franken is masterful at explainaing healthcare reform

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:45:50 -0700

Al Franken is masterful at explainaing healthcare reform:

(via Ezra Klein)

Does anyone else have this issue with Chrome?

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:10:40 -0700

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 experienced this problem? Or is it my-PC specific? (Likely not, since I’ve experienced this on two computers.)

2) Are you fixing this, Chrome? I can’t find reports on the bugtracker.

View from the inside of a failing kitchen

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:20:25 -0700

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 quit, we divided the extra work amongst the rest of us, shouldering more responsibility and working longer hours for the same pay. And though I’d always monitored food cost like a hawk, I redoubled my efforts to save money without compromising our commitment to sustainable foods.

I re-examined my purchases. Instead of 25-year-old balsamic vinegar, I bought 15-year-old stuff. We stopped buying whole pigs; we couldn’t break even on them because few customers were adventurous enough to order soppressata, zampone or porchetta di testa, dishes we made to use up every part of the animal.

But there were things we couldn’t let go of without compromising taste - extra-virgin olive oil and Parmigiano-Reggiano, for examples. If we skimped on these, our food would suffer. I started to feel stuck: The choice always seemed to be between flavor and expense, and ours was a kitchen motivated by taste. Things started to get tense with our accountants, because our priorities were clearly different.

…..One particularly emotional battle revolved around eggs. A few years ago, Alexis Koefoed of Soul Food Farm near Vacaville showed up with a carton of speckled eggs. After tasting her pastured, tawny-yolked eggs, we began buying them. But investors kept questioning: If we could get organic eggs for $3, why buy Soul Food Farm eggs for $5? They felt customers couldn’t taste the difference.

The next week, we served garlic broth garnished with a poached Soul Food Farm egg. Table after table raved. One woman was moved to tears - she said she hadn’t seen yolks so bright and rich since being on her grandparents’ farm in Taiwan.

But in the end, the reality was the profit-and-loss statement, and we had to let go of the eggs. I almost quit over that. One by one, all my purchasing habits were scrutinized: Why spend the time going to the farmers’ market? Why buy Hoffman Farm chickens when precut breasts are so much cheaper? Why buy fresh squid that you have to pay an employee to clean when you can get pre-cleaned frozen squid?

The best way to navigate a menu

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 10:01:21 -0700

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 chef’s vanity — possibly too much of it — spawned these.

Then scratch off anything that mentions truffle oil.

Choose among the remaining dishes.

The $400,000 magazine story

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:26:00 -0700

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 back-of-the-envelop calculation yesterday of what the total cost of the piece actually was, figuring in several years of reporting and nearly a year of editing. Estimate: $400,000.

Here’s the piece.

I have 91 Facebook requests. Why isn't there an Ignore All button?

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:16:00 -0700

I have 91 Facebook requests. Why isn't there an Ignore All button?:

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 Barack Obama

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:20:32 -0700

Student Reporter Damon Weaver Interviews President Barack Obama:

The New Yorker is immune to cuts at Conde Nast

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:59:08 -0700

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 would be just fine, and neither McKinsey nor company executives would be mucking with his editorial costs. (Mr. Remnick declined to comment, and Mr. Townsend said, “When Si and David speak at the lunch they have periodically, God knows what’s communicated between them.”)

Obviously, any companywide cuts would still affect the magazine, but as the company prepares for a retrenchment of sorts, it appears The New Yorker will be immune from the pain that other editors and publishers in the building are anticipating. It turns out the popular line from several Condé Nast insiders over the last few weeks—“There are no sacred cows”—is only partially true.

The Chevy Volt Gets 230 mpg? Only if you use bad math.

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:54:44 -0700

The Chevy Volt Gets 230 mpg? Only if you use bad math. :

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 average, you can drive it for about 40 miles on a full charge before it needs to start using any gasoline.

The “mileage” figure, as it’s presented, is really meaningless - because it’s being presented for a situation in which the gasoline engine almost never runs at all.

They compute it by basically saying: “If I fully charge the car battery every night, how far will I drive the car in typical city commuting conditions before it’s consumed a gallon of gas”.

What if you drive your volt around the city all day? Your mileage will drop to around 50 miles per gallon once you’ve driven more than 40 miles. If you drive your car 100 miles in a day, you’ll consume a bit over a gallon of gas. That’s very impressive. But it’s absolutely not what you’d expect after being told that it gets 230 miles per gallon.