February 9
Crapping out
Trump Entertainment is about to run out of the third extension of its debt payments. Station Casinos is offering its investors as little as 10 cents on the dollar in a pre-packaged bankruptcy. Wynn Resorts is cutting staff hours and bonuses to avoid layoffs. MGM Mirage may see a default rate of 30% on its City Center condominiums. Harrah's long-term debt has doubled. There are no more traffic jams on the Strip. Oh... and the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City had to settle a $70 million sexual harassment lawsuit brought by its beverage servers. In short: times are tough.
If it ain't broke, fix it.
I like watching videos of people riding fixed gear bikes in the city: Empire, MashSF, Macaframa, Fast Friday, Bootleg Sessions, Lucas Brunelle's crazy vids (linked on MeFi before). Don't like videos? Try Fixed Gear Magazine (pdf of vol 1 and vol 2) or CogMag (dead tree mag, but excerpts from each issue are on their site).
Almost had fight at school.
The Best Off the Web
Alec Duffy won all rights to Sufjan Stevens' song "Lonely Man of Winter" in a contest (traded for the rights to his winning song). Rather than sell or blog it, he's having private listening parties with a handful of guests each Wednesday night in Brooklyn through Feb. 25th. Here's why. You can hear his winning entry, the vaguely Magnetic-Fieldsy Every Day Is Christmas, but so far, he has kept Stevens' song offline. Some people are angry about these "little asshat tea parties." The closest most of us can get are listener descriptions from Annie Scott ("lovely"), and Jessica Suarez ("gorgeous"). [more inside]
High Five Escalator.
"For [Improv Everywhere's] latest mission, Agent Lathan gave out 2,000 high fives by standing next to a subway escalator during the morning rush. Five additional agents spread out along the adjacent stairs, holding signs that prepared commuters for the upcoming high five fun. Enjoy the video first and then check out the mission report and photos."
"...And all for the want of a horseshoe nail."
Picture a three-guy trading floor. They would call a carrier,... [and] manually move trunks in and out of route by issuing SQL commands against the Veraz's Oracle database.... Let me write that out for you: One ass-hat residential customer with a 20yo telephone with four extra buttons did thirty million dollars in damages in less than one night. Anyways, that's how the company went bankrupt... and about 6000 or so people ... all got laid off.
"Journalists' children deserve to be fed" -- a plan to save the NYT
Steve Brill has a crazy idea that just might work. Would you pay a modest annual fee (about the cost of a magazine subscription) to read the New York Times online, if it means the survival of the world's greatest newspaper, er, news-gathering organization? It's an interesting idea.
But who will marry the new servers?
Dancing with the Woz
How About Some Sexual Harassment With Your Mozzarella Sticks?
The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles.
How to raise money for the Shirley Jackson Awards? Why, a Lottery, natch. The Shirley Jackson Awards, established in 2007 to reward "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic" is holding an online lottery beginning today and continuing through February 23 to raise funds for the program. Participants can buy $1 digital lottery tickets for any of 51 donated prizes from authors, editors, artists, and agents. Which prize will draw the most interest? Perhaps an autographed computer keyboard from Neil Gaiman? Or the chance to be Tuckerized in an upcoming work? [Tuckerization explained] Or ... star in a porn role? [more inside]
February 8
When No One Understands You, Chocolate Is There
According to legend, Einstein was eating chocolate when he came upon the theory of relativity. These sites are all about chocolate and candy in general. Chocolate Obsession.
Hyperbole? Maybe. Just a little. Ok, a lot. Chocolate does have a lot to offer, though. It is a one of a kind food characterized by a truly unique and intense flavor. The idea of Jim's Chocolate Mission came after a discussion with friends about the greatest chocolate bar. Was is the Wispa? Galaxy? Clark? The Chocolate Review is most likely to review English chocolate because that's where they're from, but they also do imports. [more inside]
Headbang Hero aka Headache Hero
"For the first time in history a wireless motion-sensing wig is used as game controller." SLYT via Kotaku
Evolution and Emancipation
Darwin the abolitionist. "The theory of evolution is regarded as a triumph of disinterested scientific reason. Yet, on the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, new research reveals that Darwin was driven to the idea of common descent by a great moral cause." [Via]
Goodbye, Blossom Dearie
American jazz singer Blossom Dearie dead at age 82. American jazz singer Blossom Dearie died Friday in her Greenwich Village home after a long illness. For most, an acquired taste. Her voice and phrasing had a way of drawing you in, taken aback by how soft and gentle she sounded. I think it was New Yorker critic Whitney Balliet who said her voice wouldn't reach the second story of a doll house. [more inside]
Forgiving Student Loan Debt Would Stimulate Economy
Forgiving student loan debt to stimulate the economy is an idea that seems to be gaining some ground recently. There's a petition, at least two facebook groups, and call to contact your senators and representatives.
hehehehehe
Where We Do What We Do
Where We Do What We Do is a gallery of the places where we work.
Major investigation launched into care and treatment of mentally retarded men
Henry's Turkey Service is a Texas-based company that for 34 years has employed dozens of mentally disabled men to work in an Iowa turkey processing plant. The state fire marshall shut down the mens residence over the weekend due to "deplorable" conditions. Now the investigation continues into civil rights and other violations. [more inside]
alternative currencies
15104
Braddock, Pennsylvania has been classified as a "distressed municipality." This may be an understatement: From a high of around 20,000, its population has dwindled to below 3000, many of those people unemployed. Braddock's is a landscape so grim ("a mix of boarded-up storefronts, houses in advanced stages of collapse and vacant lots") that it was selected to serve as a backdrop for the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel, The Road. Its mayor, John Fetterman, considers Braddock “a laboratory for solutions to all these maladies starting to knock on the door of every community.” [more inside]
February 7
Victoria's Bushfires
Many places in Victoria are on fire. Victoria's Bushfires can help you keep track of the current situation around Melbourne. [more inside]
Live From New York... Ed Sullivan
He couldn't sing, dance, or tell jokes, but he was television's greatest impresario. He was a stone-faced puritan -- America's arbiter of status quo -- but had a sly sense of humor , and in the segregation-tainted 1950's, welcomed blacks to his stage, and in the 1960's showcased rock n' roll's most anti-establishment acts. His show, the longest-running variety show in history, ran from 1948 to 1971. [more inside]
On the Road, On a Postcard.
The Motel in America. In a different America, where the novelty of driving cross-country and the charm of the highway strip drew droves of tourists--and their automobiles--from coast to coast in the name of exploration and recreation, motels provided a home away from home for weary travelers. While many of the great motels of the mid-twentieth century have disappeared from the national landscape, the linen postcards left behind in the Motel Morgue can give us a glimpse into what this era of American tourism and leisure looked like.
Lesbian partner denied access
Suit alleges that her partner of 18 years and her children were denied access to dying woman in Florida hospital. Due to her organ donation, however, Lisa Marie Pond’s heart survives.
Desert Plants, Chihuly Glass
Nestled amid the red buttes of Papago Park in Phoenix, the Desert Botanical Garden hosts one of the world’s finest collections of desert plants. Home to 139 rare, threatened and endangered plant species from around the world, the Garden offers interesting and inspiring experiences, while their website offers gardening help including good growing guides. The Desert Botanical Garden has educational programming and research for children as well as adults. The internationally acclaimed living collection of over 20,000 desert plants, with particular emphasis on those inhabiting the Sonoran Desert, continues to serve the public and scientific community. [more inside]
Photography of Food Autopsies
Sweden's version of R. Lee Ermey isn't scary, more like creepy.
Do you have what it takes to be an officer in the Swedish Armed Forces? ["Headphones required", new window pops]
Taking bets on how the Earth will perish...
A-Rod Took Steroids
In 2003, Major League Baseball ran a testing survey to see if they had a steroid problem. They did, but the names of the 104 players testing positive were kept secret. Today, one of the names was revealed: Alex Rodriguez.
Not Your Mama's LOL Catz
The title says it all: Pets Who Want To Kill Themselves.
Tim to Kim
German-born Kim Petras may be the world's youngest transsexual. Wanting to be a woman since the age of 2, she began taking female hormones at 12 and had gender reassignment surgery at 16. She's also an aspiring pop singer.
Grapes we can believe in
The first female White House chef, a naturalized Philippina named Cristeta Comerford, was appointed by George W. Bush - who told Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, "I am reminded of the great talent of our Philippine Americans when I eat dinner at the White House." Despite the urging of American food icon Alice Waters, President Obama has left Comerford in charge of the White House kitchens - though he's keeping quiet about it. But on the basis of the wines served at Obama's Inauguration Day lunch, oenophiles are still hoping for change. (more First Food posts here and here )
Moyers, Greenwald and Rosen on politics and the media
Politics, the Press, and the Public. Bill Moyers speaks with Glenn Greenwald and Jay Rosen about the role of the establishment press in America’s dysfunctional political system.
Politics as usual
Last-minute diplomacy: Less than a week before it left office, the Bush administration tripled the import duty rate on roquefort cheese to 300%, a move which the US hopes will "shut down trade" in the sheep's milk product by making it prohibitively expensive. [more inside]
Wind it up, wine up, wine up, jump up.
Carnival is home again.
The small Caribbean island of Trinidad has one of world's most lively Carnivals. An historical overview and explanation.
Lets start with the mas(querade); and Peter "see the music, hear the dance" Minshall without doubt the greatest ever carnival costume designer.
The music's inside. [more inside]
The small Caribbean island of Trinidad has one of world's most lively Carnivals. An historical overview and explanation.
Lets start with the mas(querade); and Peter "see the music, hear the dance" Minshall without doubt the greatest ever carnival costume designer.
The music's inside. [more inside]
Giant Spider attacks Liverpool
"As part of Liverpool's Capital of Culture year, the French group La Machine were commissioned to create a large piece of street theatre, on the scale of their earlier work, the Sultan's Elephant. Many were expecting to see something using the iconic Liverbirds, the symbol of the city but instead we got a spider." We also got some amazing photographs from Peter Carr of the gorgeously monstrous 37-ton, 50-foot arachnid.
What really happens on the ‘Ice Road Truckers’ frozen highway
“With this road, safety comes first all the time, and Ice Road Truckers just made a mockery of everything we do.” One journalist’s experience on the frozen road in the Northwest Territories. Made famous by a TV show, the road now sees less use in part due to a decline in demand for the NWT’s non-blood diamonds.
Return of the Amazons
It is said that the Amazons were tribes of women warriors in the East of Ukraine, in the Donesk area. They are back nowadays in the Carpathian mountains. (via)
"...Then I have half a banana (50)"
Via Amazon, you can read the first few chapters[PDF] of Carol Lay's new graphic novel-cum-diet book The Big Skinny. Blogger and fellow cartoonist Ampersand/Barry Deutsch doesn't object to the weight loss she documents, he just isn't convinced that it's actually all that healthy. [more inside]
"blue eyes that had seen Franz Josef in his glory at the Court Opera in 1908 close upon a view of rusty bed frames and cracked concrete walls."
"Habsburg! A vile being, heir to an illustrious name, born to a fortune, to honours, to soldiers, to prestige, and who finished as the lowest of Montmartre pimps, living from the money of a poor and unstable girl whom he sent to commit his foul deeds in his place!"That was after this Polish scion of the most famous family in Europe and commander of a soi disant "Ukrainian Legion" failed to finagle the crown as a Socialist king of The Ukraine, and became instead a patron of the rent boys of Paris who "handled women by necessity and men for pleasure". And all that before he turned successively a Nazi sympathizer, a British spy, and finally came, for the first and last time, to Ukraine's capital Kiev as a victim of Stalin and the Twentieth Century.
February 6
On this land that belongs to God
On the Militant Trail [Most recent of four articles with links to preceding pieces] Renowned Asia Times correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad visits Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and takes a journey with the Taliban through the Swat valley. His four-part series of articles examines the differing natures and strategies of various Taliban groups, describes a government counter-insurgency campaign gone seriously awry and finds indications that "a major battle will be fought in Pakistan before the annual spring offensive even begins in Afghanistan this year."
The Gutenberg Method
The Lecture System in Teaching Science "Meanwhile, back at the classroom, the lecture is drawing to a close. Just as the bell rings, the lecturer, if he's a really smooth operator, comes to the end of a sentence, a paragraph, a nice neat unit. He lays down his last piece of chalk — he knows exactly how many pieces the lecture will take — picks up his precious lecture notes, and goes out. The students, tired but happy, rise up and follow after him. Their heads are empty, but their notebooks are full. Their necks are a little tired; it's been like a sort of vertical tennis match: board, notebook, board, notebook. But other than that, everything is all right. Any student will tell you, "I never had any trouble with the course until the first examination."" [via]
It's as if Apple dissolved Microsoft
"Today we destroyed BoB." The giant sandbox-galaxy of EVE-Online (previously) was rocked this week by a defection from Band of Brothers, the largest alliance in the game (and no stranger to controversy), to the Something Awful-related alliance Goonswarm. The Mittani, the goon spymaster, explains what happened, after all of BoB's assets were given over, the alliance disbanded, and the name reincorporated by goons. Via [more inside]
Scorched huts and crushed skulls
"The Lord’s Resistance Army is now on the loose, moving from village to village, seemingly unhindered, leaving a wake of scorched huts and crushed skulls. Witnesses say the fighters have kidnapped hundreds of children and marched them off into the bush, the latest conscripts in their slave army." [more inside]
Let's Blow This Popstand
Yet another study says the middle class are fleeing New York City. What happened to the previous studies and solutions? Bloomberg to Middle Class, "Get Out."
Cut it out...
Paper cutout animation is repetitive, time consuming work. Results, however, can be well worth it. (SLYT)
How We Kill Geniuses
How We Kill Geniuses. "[Elizabeth Gilbert recalls] a story that musician Tom Waits told her years ago. One day he was driving on a Los Angeles freeway when a fragment of a melody popped into his head. He looked around for something to capture the tune -- a pencil or pen -- but had nothing to record it. He started to panic that he'd lose the melody and be haunted by it forever and his talent would be gone. In the midst of this anxiety attack, he suddenly stopped, looked at the sky, and said to whatever force it was that was trying to create itself through the melody, 'Excuse me. Can you not see I'm driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment ... otherwise go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen.'" Gilbert explores the idea that we might stifle genius by demanding that creative people be somehow larger than life and something more than human.
A sign of the atomic age
Roto-Spheres were dramatic animated neon signs, with 16 spikes projecting from a central ball; the left and right hemispheres rotated in opposite directions, and the whole thing rotated as well. Only 234 were made, and not many are still working, but despite their rarity, they are somehow instantly recognizable as the ultimate signs of the atomic age.
Outsource Yourself
IBM solves the outsourcing problem by firing American employees then offering to re-hire them in India. "The pitch to employees who might consider shifting to IBM's operations in developing economies seems to be the low cost of living, warmer climate and variety in cuisine and exotic places."
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