Breakfast in the old nabe: Village Den, NYC

Two eggs soft scrambled, side of homefries, coffee, OJ, rye toast.

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Everybody ok in there?

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House band, Blue Mist BBQ, Randleman, NC

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They sell it here too!

Chapagetti, I mean. And mango powder. And garam masala.  And shrimp paste. And miso. And fancy rices. And on and on.

Eastern Market on Rosemary St on the Chapel Hill/Carrboro NC border... rocks.
 


 

Eastern Market Oriental Food

505 W Rosemary St
Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2305
(919) 968-1703
Get directions
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Lunch

Okra, tomatoes, peppers and onions over brown rice. Bhindi sabji basically but I took Liberties.

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Contemporary crayon colors

contemporary crayon colors
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.

Crayons and big sheets of newsprint are staple items at our house,
useful in all kinds of design and planning situations, as well as ad
hoc art projects.

Some of the familar names from childhood are still going strong.

"Raw Sienna" is a personal fave.

But: "Timber Wolf" for grey? And "Tickle Me Pink" sounds like a shade of makeup.

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Thought for the day

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.  - H. P. Lovecraft

Why I no longer use Gmail - and am contemplating disentangling myself from GOOG entirely

As I write this, my personal Gmail account has been down and unavailable for about 36 hours.

There hasn't been a status update from "tech support" (and I use the term very loosely, as I haven't seen anything from Google yet that deserves the name "support") since 3PM Eastern yesterday.

I've relied on a lot of Google-based free services for everyday computing - Google Apps and Google Voice in addition to Gmail, to be sure, but also Blogger (since 2004.)

I'm done with that, I think.  Monocultures are dangerous.

As a first step, I have a new personal e-mail address.  I'll be sending updates out shortly - for those of you who care, Fastmail is my new provider of choice, for the following reasons:

• Good reputation for quality and transparency in the geek community
• Multiple tech support options
  
• Affordable: USD 35 for one year of "premium" e-mail service (free and lower-cost options are available)

I'll let y'all know how it goes.

And in the meantime - well, I guess it's finally time to suck it up and move enrevanche to a new home.  Stay tuned.

A favorite restaurant's takeout menu (p 1)

Posted via email from Barry's posterous

Old-school chewing gum

...found on our travels today. Hooray for licorice gum!

Posted via email from Barry's posterous

Scenes from an open house/potluck supper

He has a point there - 20 of them

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Oh yes he does

moar funny pictures

Thought for the day

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece. - G. K. Chesterton

I have not been watching Mad Men. Maybe I should start.

Hat tip: Judge.

Thought for the day

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter Drucker

NY Harbor, summer Sunday

Gato on the new carpet

Ernie Pesci and Bert deNiro (not safe for work!)

The new rug arrived today.

It really ties the room together, don't you think?

What's fixing to happen to that okra Carrie bought at the Farmer's Market today

Getting to know me (Facebook meme)

[DISCLAIMER: I do not tag others; when a meme catches my eye, I latch on. If the Spirit so moves you, please do.]

Replace each answer with your own, then re-publish.

1. What time did you usually go to work?
When I'm working from home (50% of the time) I am in front of the computer by 6:30AM and I try to knock off by 7PM. When I'm working from NYC, it varies - but at my desk by 8:30 AM and usually there until later in the evening.

2. How do you like your steak?
Stun the cow.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Star Trek

4. What is your favorite TV show?
The Wire. Now and forever.

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
Vancouver, BC,

6. What did you have for breakfast?
Two pieces of toast with melted swiss cheese; coffee with 2% milk; orange juice.

7. What is your favorite cuisine?
I am polymorphously perverse when it comes to food.

8. What foods do you dislike?
Too damn few.

9. Favorite Place to Eat?
My kitchen.

10. Favorite Dressing?
Three parts vinegar two parts EVOO one part lemon juice.

11.What kind of vehicle do you drive?
Mazda 5.

12. What are your favorite clothes?
Somewhat embarrassingly, I dress myself for work out of the Brooks Brothers catalog. At home I favor REI/North Face polypro t-shirts, cargo shorts and sandals. ;-)

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance?
Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Antarctica. (We have solid plans to visit all of them.)

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full?
That depends on whether I'm drinking or pouring, now doesn't it?

15. Where would you want to retire?
Coast of NC near Wilmington would suit me fine.

16. Favorite time of day?
Whenever I knock off work and start hanging out in earnest with Carrie and the animaux.

17. Where were you born?
Raleigh, NC.

18. What is your favorite sport to watch?
NCAA mens' basketball.

19. Who do you think will not tag you back?
N/A

20. Person you expect to tag you back first?
N/A

21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this?
N/A

22. Bird watcher?
I try not to let them notice. Oh, wait, you mean, like, avians.

23. Morning or night person?
Night person masquerading as morning person.

24. Do you have any pets?
One elderly female Chow Chow; one irascible grey tabby tomcat.

25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share?
Watch this space.

26. What did you want to be when you were little?
Physician.

27. What is your best childhood memory?
Beach trips with family.

28. Are you a cat or dog person?
Yes I am.

29. Are you married?
To my best friend, partner in crime and mistress. She wears a lot of hats.

30. Always wear your seat belt?
Always. Worked as an EMT for a few years; being on the back of an ambulance and scooping people off the road convinces you of the wisdom of this quickly.

31. Been in a car accident?
Yes.

32. Any pet peeves?
We don't have enough time or space.

33. Favorite Pizza Toppings?
Pecorino romano, red onions, mushrooms.

34. Favorite Flower?
Lilies.

35. Favorite ice cream?
Can't eat it any more. Back in the day, really really good vanilla if commercial; peach, if homemade.

36. Favorite fast food restaurant?
I can order something edible off any fast food menu. That said - In-n-Out Burger in California by a country mile.

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test?
One. Got it on the second try.

38. From whom did you get your last email?
An old friend.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
Nowhere. That way lies madness - if I can't pay cash I don't buy it.

40. Do anything spontaneous lately?
Heh. Absolutely.

41. Like your job?
Ever so much, but I wish there were less of it.

42. Favorite veggie?
Okra.

43. What was your favorite vacation?
Our honeymoon in Paris was kinda prime.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with?
Colleague at work.

45. What are you listening to right now?
Curtis Salgado, "Clean Getaway"

46. What is your favorite color?
Varies but is in the blue-green range.

47. How many tattoos do you have?
One.

48. How many are you tagging for this quiz?
N/A

49. Coffee Drinker?
Only because it hurts too damn much to take it intravenously.

Maturity

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Networking in a bad job market

Last week a guy I used to work with in the late 90’s tried to connect with me on LinkedIn. Whatever. This was the same guy who used to take credit for all my work and still had the balls to bring his kid by my cube on national Drag Your Spawn to Work day.

Because so many have lost their jobs in recent months, everyone’s seeking help. That’s why this is high time to focus on the “flip side” of networking: helping others.

Help others? Why would I want to do that?! Here are three good reasons:

1. If you concentrate on giving rather than receiving, you’ll be seen as a true corporate giant. And karma is an amazing thing! Help someone today and they’ll be a hundred times more likely to help you down the road.

2. Only the most accomplished and marketable professional could possibly have the leisure to be giving help right about now when most are scrambling to obtain assistance. So, by helping others, you distinguish yourself as successful despite the super-soft job market. It’s both ironic and sad that people prefer to help those who are already successful because they typically need less help than those lacking in good fortune.
   
   
3. It feels good to help others. At least, that’s what people who have helped others have told me.

Odd Job Nation - resources for the laid-off

Elf you!

With apologies to David Mamet... a Glengarry Glen Christmas:

Fast-moving thunderstorm, Holden Beach, NC

Photo credit: Andrea

Bobby McFerrin: The power of the pentatonic scale

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Hat tip: Tarus (via Facebook)

At Paradise Cafe, Holden Beach, NC

A friend describes this photo as "like the author's photo on the back of a 70s-era airport novel set in Florida."

I think he's right. But I do look relaxed, no?

Exploring the outermost reaches of the universe, by popular request

I am increasingly impressed with Calvin and Hobbes as a primer for how to understand small boys.

Below, a young friend clearly in his Spaceman Spiff phase.

How to Mad Men yourself

Get your own hip, stylish avatar at MadMenYourself.com.

Sunrise, Holden Beach, July 26 2009

photo
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.

At the beach

P1000183
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.

...and blogging is gonna be sporadic through the first few days of August. :-)

Thought for the day

I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. - Ecclesiastes 9:11

Originally in nautical use

I caved. I bought a Kindle. I love it.

Thought for the day

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. - M. Cartmill

A good place for Mister G

Useful Latin phrases

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito - "you should not give in to evils, but proceed ever more boldly against them"

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur - "what is asserted without reason may be denied without reason"

Nice save, Neil

So I'm in New York City for another hour or two - the car service picked me up right in front of the place I was staying in, right on time, and so I was out of Manhattan and over the Brooklyn Bridge Right. On. Time.

And then we got out on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway - traffic was bad, it's a damned hot day - and the car overheated.

We limped at 15 mph to the Woodhaven Boulevard exit--by some miracle, we weren't rear-ended by a transfer truck doing 70 - and pulled into a gas station.

I was about to call the dispatcher to send me another car, when the universe sent me a Band-Aid (maybe Carrie will explain the origin of this Campbell-Weiner family expression in the comments.)

A medallion cab (Yellow Cab) pulled up to the gas pump. I hurried over and asked the driver if he'd take a fare to JFK once he was finished pumping gas.

The guy - middle-aged Jewish dude, maybe a few years older than me, maybe not - grinned and said, "If you're in a real hurry, I don't even need the gas - just topping the tank off."

I assured him I could wait for him to finish, and bought three bottles of water - one for the hapless car service driver, one for the cab driver who rescued me, and one for me - it's a HOT day out, people.

As I took a closer look at the cab - I realized that it was a Lexus hybrid, brand spanking new.

They don't turn Lexuses into cabs in New York City, y'all.

I asked the driver - "Are you the medallion owner?" (The "medallion" is the license to operate a cab in NYC; it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and 99.9% of cab drivers rent them.)

He grinned again and said "Yes. Get in."

We had a delightful drive to JFK from Woodhaven Boulevard on surface streets with no traffic. Neil, the garrulous owner/driver, had grown up in the area and knew the streets like a farmer knows his field.

I tipped lavishly on a $25 fare to the airport (naturally, I didn't pay the guy whose car broke down a dime...)

Nice save, Neil. I mean that thing.

Health care: What's a statist to do?

The statist establishment would love a single-payer health-care system like Canada's if it were politically achievable. Barack Obama said that if we were starting from scratch, single payer is what he'd back. But, thankfully, Americans are still libertarian enough to cringe at turning the medical system entirely over to government.

So with single payer out of reach, the fans of government control have grabbed for second best: the "public option." This would be government-run health insurance that would "compete" with private insurance. (It wouldn't compete fairly because it could do something no private firm can do: milk the captive taxpayers.) But the public option is proving hard to get. Even some Democrats are nervous about it.

What's a statist to do?

Health Care Competition (Reason, 16 July 2009)

Augmented reality on the iPhone

Oh my God, is this ever cool.  We're living in a sci-fi novel.

A few are pure of heart; most are grabby of wallet

Killing the Buddha ("...a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches") is just wonderful.

Here's an excerpt from an article entitled "Jesus Is Just Alright" that captures the flavor of it:

A few of California’s holy men (and, occasionally, women) have been pure of heart, but most have been grabby of wallet: Werner Erhard of EST, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Hollywood “spiritual teacher” John Roger, “Crystal Cathedral” televangelist Robert Schuller. Some have been hairy-eyed nutters, such as Jim Jones of the People’s Temple or Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven’s Gate cult; others have been lovably loopy, such as the late Ruth Norman, founder of the El Cajon–based Unarius Academy of Science.

Dearly beloved of TV reporters the world over, Norman spoke in a fruity warble and wore jaw-dropping costumes that suggested the Good Witch Glinda on Moonbase Alpha. Norman’s “Cosmic Generator” getup was typical: a voluminous skirt festooned with comets and brightly colored planets, a blouse dominated by a massive “sun collar” with glittering extensions (solar flares?), a peaked cap bedecked with tiny lights. Somewhere, Liberace is shrieking with envy. In her devotees’ eyes, however, Norman was the Archangel Uriel. To her, and her alone, was vouchsafed the mind-shattering revelation that Space Brothers from the Interplanetary Confederation will touch down in El Cajon in 2001, heralding a Renaissance of Spirit that—hey, wait a minute!

[...]

Easy for me to roll my cynical, godless eyes now, of course. But long, long ago, in a universe far, far away, when the zeitgeist came in harvest gold, burnt orange, and avocado green, I was a teenage fundie. A fundamentalist. One of the Jesus People. A Jesus Freak. A cross-wearing, Bible-believing, born-again Christian.

It was 1973, and I wasn’t the only American teenager with heaven on my mind, as Judas sang, in Jesus Christ Superstar. As the religious scholar Stephen Prothero recounts in American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, the late sixties witnessed the emergence of a countercultural Christianity. “The Beatles sparked a guru vogue when they went as pilgrims to India in 1968,” Prothero notes, but for every seeker who embraced Zen or the Buddha, scores more “tuned in to the Bible and took Jesus as their guru. . . . These Jesus fans were the praying wing of the Woodstock nation.”

Thought for the day: Putt's Law

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.  - Putt's Law

My canine namesake

Awesome... there's another Barry Campbell who blogs!

Of course, this one *is* a chocolate-brown labradoodle...

(Related, and previously on enrevanche.)

Aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind

...Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops...

Frank Rich: She broke the GOP and now she owns it (New York Times)

Thought for the day, special "back in NYC" edition

The higher the buildings, the lower the morals. - Noel Coward

Gato on morning birdwatch

Skating babies

It's actually a commercial for mineral water, and it's everywhere else - so it might as well be here too.

Thought for the day

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.  - Umberto Eco

If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen

The bar is open

See also:



and

This is gonna be fun to watch

Google has taken direct aim at Microsoft’s core personal computer software business, with the announcement of a PC operating system to rival Windows.

The system, based on Google’s Chrome web browser, is designed for all classes of PCs, “from small netbooks to full-sized desktop systems”, and will be available in machines from “multiple” PC makers in the second half of next year, the company said.

Google to launch PC operating System (Financial Times, 8 July 2009)

Carrboro July 4 2009 Farmers Market on Main Street

Carrboro July 4 2009 Farmers Market on Main Street
Originally uploaded by enrevanche.

Every now and then, July 4th falls on a Saturday.

Carrboro, NC's Farmer's Market usually runs on Saturday mornings in the town square.

On Independence Day, the town square is needed for other functions.

So the farmers and their customers move right out onto Main Street - several blocks of which are closed off by the police and fire departments.

Everyone mingles and admires and inspects and purchases fresh produce, baked goods, and so forth.

Had I only brought a New York City coffee cart here with me, and had sources of electricity and water and some good beans, I'd have made a couple thousand bucks easy on Saturday morning. ;-)

Bad idea

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Sweet and/or hot

It lacks inlay

NAZARETH, Pa. -- At a bustling factory on the outskirts of this eastern Pennsylvania town, one of the world's oldest guitar makers is using a Depression-era strategy to keep production flowing and avert layoffs.

Workers at C.F Martin & Co. are putting finishing touches on the solid-wood 1 Series model, so named for its simplicity. It lacks inlay, as did the company's stripped-down 1930s model, and is expected to sell for less than $1,000, breaking a key price point and far less than its $100,000 limited-edition guitars made of Brazilian rosewood. More popular Martins generally sell for $2,000 to $3,000.

Guitar Maker Revives No-Frills Act from '30s (Wall St Journal, 6 July 2009)

What we et today

• Diversity Beans (field peas and navy beans, cooked vegan in a crockpot with olive oil, fresh ginger and hot curry)
• Brown rice pilaf (brown and white rice, Vidalia onions)
• Silver Queen corn, scalded, over thick-sliced homegrown tomatoes
• Baked potatoes
• Boiled beets (served sliced at room temp)
• Gojiberry iced tea

Google Wave

Google is working on a Facebook killer. Whoa... very cool collaboration tools.

Animal greeting protocol in the new digs

The animals are blurred apparently because they are constantly either emerging from or entering into their own personal tesseracts.





Photo credit: Carrie

It came from the sewers of Raleigh, NC

It looks like blob of wriggling pudding staring out through a single, puckered eye. You can see it caught on camera, clinging to the concrete pipes below Raleigh's Cameron Village: the Sewer Monster.

It's really a colony of prehistoric creatures known either as bryozoans or moss animacules, thousands of wormlike animals, biologists report. Clustered together in a glistening mass, they feed through tentacles on whatever floats past. More common in ponds, they have turned up in a set of sanitary sewer pipes under one of the country's oldest shopping centers.

Shacked up in a six-inch sewer main, the clusters of worms are about the size of a golf ball, estimates Ed Buchan, an environmental coordinator with the city. But the video footage, captured with a tiny, snakelike camera, makes the monster appear at man-eating size to viewers watching at home.

Don't be alarmed, but it is alive! Sewer Monster found in Raleigh (News and Observer)

Related:

Imagine my delight...

...when I logged in to Flickr and was greeted in LOLspeak!

Summer uniform

Homegrown tomatoes: Is there anything they can't do?

Admirable candor, indeed

Congratulations, Stan:

Stanley P. Weiner, key figure in Royals’ plan to stay in KC, retires from law firm

By DAN MARGOLIES
The Kansas City Star

Tax lawyer Stanley P. Weiner, a key figure in Ewing Kauffman’s plan to keep the Royals in Kansas City , is retiring after 25 years at Shook, Hardy & Bacon.

One of the top tax lawyers in the country, Weiner was instrumental in devising the complicated succession plan under which the baseball team’s founder and owner bequeathed the team to the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation and Affiliated Trusts.

The IRS blessed the plan after more than two years of deliberations, agreeing that the donation of the team was tax-deductible for the Royals estate. Absent that approval, the gift of the team would have triggered a deal-killing tax bill of $60 million or more.

The highly unusual plan — devised by Weiner and Sylvan Siegler, his Shook colleague and friend — was designed to keep the team in friendly hands in Kansas City and buy time while a permanent owner was sought. Proceeds of the team’s eventual sale to David Glass went to charity.

The plan ensured the team’s continuing presence in Kansas City — although, as Weiner joked Friday at a Shook reception in his honor, “whether you think that was a good thing or not” is another matter.

Weiner was also a force behind the establishment in 1984 of Missouri ’s IOLTA program, which requires the state’s lawyers to place short-term client trust funds into interest-bearing accounts. The interest is distributed to nonprofit organizations that provide civil legal services to the poor and conduct programs that improve the administration of justice.

In 1976, as a lawyer with Smith Gill Fisher & Butts, Weiner and Ed Smith represented H&R Block Inc. in hearings before Congress on the regulation of tax-return preparers. The resulting legislation governs such matters as when preparers are liable for errors and penalties.

Weiner, a Kansas City native, attended the University of Michigan Law School. After getting his law degree in 1967, he clerked for the chief judge of the U.S. Tax Court. He moved back to Kansas City in 1973 and joined the law firm of Smith Gill Fisher & Butts. He hooked up with Shook in 1984.

Among other things, Weiner has served as chairman of the Heart of America Tax Institute, president of the Lawyers Association of Kansas City, a member of the board of the Harvesters Community Food Network, president of Camp Quality USA and president of the Jewish Community Center.

Weiner, who turns 68 next month and has some health issues, said that four decades of practicing law was enough and that he wanted to spend more time with his two grandchildren.

“I’ve been doing this for 40-some odd years,” he said, adding with admirable candor, “After a while, it gets to be a drag.”

Stanley P. Weiner, key figure in Royals’ plan to stay in KC, retires from law firm - Kansas City Star (29 June 2009)

Thought for the day

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.  - Sydney Smith

Strange and beautiful clouds over the Lower East Side at sunset

Carrie and I were walking up The Bowery on Friday night, after a tremendous Vietnamese dinner at Nha Trang meal at Grand Sichuan on Canal Street - and were stopped dead in our tracks by this sunset/cloud cover combination.

We weren't the only ones. Everybody, tourists and locals alike, had their cellphone cameras out trying to capture this scene:



I hope one of our Air Force vets (there are at least three actively reading enrevanche) can help me out with cloud identification. Right now I am thinking exceptionally rounded altocumulus...

Update: over on Facebook, Heidi sez these look like mammatus clouds. I think she's right.

I'll have what she's having

Barry and Carrie @ Katz's Delicatessen, Houston and Ludlow Streets, New York City:



(You can see this much more clearly if you click on the picture and view it in a larger format, but the sign over the cash register in the back exhorts, "Send a salami to your boy in the Army!" Good advice, and they've been dispensing it since the Spanish-American War at least...)

Catering for all occasions (a view of the front counter... and that's our buddy and dining companion Bill in the right of the frame):

The High Line

Spent the morning in New York City hanging out on The High Line:

The High Line was originally constructed in the 1930s, to lift dangerous freight trains off Manhattan's streets. Section 1 of the High Line [is now] open as a public park, owned by the City of New York and operated under the jurisdiction of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. Friends of the High Line is the conservancy charged with raising private funds for the park and overseeing its maintenance and operations, pursuant to an agreement with the Parks Department.

When all sections are complete, the High Line will be a mile-and-a-half-long elevated park, running through the West Side neighborhoods of the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and Clinton/Hell's Kitchen. It features an integrated landscape, designed by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations, with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, combining meandering concrete pathways with naturalistic plantings. Fixed and movable seating, lighting, and special features are also included in the park.

Access points from street level will be located every two to three blocks. Many of these access points will include elevators, and all will include stairs.

Why Philip Morris loves the new tobacco regulations

When Senator John McCain introduced FDA regulatory legislation in 1998, the company spent a reported $100 million successfully fighting it. But since then, Philip Morris has had a crucial realization. With 50% of the U.S. tobacco market already safely in the company's pocket — and more than 50% of 18- to 25-year-old smokers loyal to its top brand, Marlboro — restrictive legislation will effectively lock in its market dominance, preventing any competitors from taking a bite out of Philip Morris' very lucrative business.

The company's main rival, R.J. Reynolds, manufacturer of Camel cigarettes, is still in dismay over Philip Morris' reversal from regulation opponent to champion, and the third largest cigarette manufacturer, Lorillard, has labeled the legislation the Marlboro Monopoly Act. Both argue that as the new restrictions cut off most remaining avenues available for advertising and ban marketing stunts like free-sample cigarette giveaways, the companies' ability to "communicate" (i.e., gain market share) with potential and existing smokers about their products will be blocked. In addition, the administrative costs of complying with FDA regulations favor large manufacturers over smaller ones.

Smoke Signals: Why a Tobacco Giant Is Backing a New Anti-Smoking Bill (Time.com)

Related: See vintage cigarette propaganda

Oh, by the way - I quit smoking exactly one week ago today. ;-)

The Michael Jackson performance I'll always remember

It's the thought that counts

Popbitch reports on Michael Jackson:

Supercrass writes from LA:
   "On the corner of Hollywood and Vine sits a star
   along the "Hollywood Walk of Fame," with loads
   of flowers, candles and pictures, surrounded by
   fans of Michael Jackson. (Pictured in almost
   every newspaper this morning). The star they have
   been surrounding all day is marked with the
   name, Michael Jackson. But the star does not
   belong to The King of Pop, it belongs to British
   born radio host Michael Jackson, who has been
   an L.A. radio personality for over 30 years.
   Seems the other Michael Jackson’s star has
   been covered since early Thursday morning.
   Covered by a red carpet. A red carpet
   leading to The Chinese Theatre Hollywood
   premiere of Bruno."

Mi dulce pequeña empanada

The State (Columbia, SC) is publishing the e-mails between Governor Mark Sanford and his Argentine playmate.

Since our first meeting there in a wind swept somewhat open air dance spot in Punta del Este, I felt that you had that same rare attribute. Above all else I love that inner beauty about you. That gift of yours is going to make a tremendous difference in (The State deleted sons’ names) life — and in anyone’s life who is blest to be touched by yours — you need to rest very comfortably in that fact. As I mentioned in our last visit, while I did not need love fifteen years ago — as the battle scars of life and aging and politics have worn on this has become a real need of mine. You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that is so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner — and unlike you I would never do that!

What's really embarrassing about this isn't the infidelity, but the quality of the writing - it's just awful.

LOLbacklash

This guy is going to change the way we think about cute animals on the Internets.

Hat tip: Morgan.

NedaNet: Hackers to the rescue?

A post reproduced in its entirety from Eric Raymond's "Armed and Dangerous" blog (hat tip: Chap):

I’ve spent the last seventeen hours living inside a cyberpunk novel. A libertarian cyberpunk novel. It’s been a weird and awesome experience.

Within an hour after I received a plea for help from Iran, a regular commenter on this blog recruited me into a hacker network that has been forming to support the democratic Iranian revolutionaries by providing them with proxy servers, Tor anonymizers, and any other technologies needed for them to communicate over channels the Iranian regime cannot censor or control.

I know this network has contacts on the ground among the revolutionaries. I don’t know who they are, and don’t want to know. Most of the other network members are just names on an IRC channel. But we’re putting together a stealth network at amazing speed. Nothing matters as much as the courage and determination of the Iranians on the ground, but we aim to make a difference in our own way and we have the tools to do it.

This disorganization has only been forming for a very short time. It doesn’t really have leaders. It didn’t have even a name when I joined it, though I’ve given it one that looks like it might stick. Until and unless somebody else steps up to the job, I’m our public contact.

This role carries a non-zero risk that I will be targeted for assassination, or interrogation followed by execution, by agents of the Iranian regime - we’ve had more than one death threat against core members already. I take this risk with eyes open because we need somebody to be public, and I know I’ve already been a jihadi target since 2006; at least I can keep some other poor bastard out of the line of fire. I now expect to remain continuously armed for the duration of the Iranian crisis.

Rostam, this is how I’m answering your plea. We’ll do what we can for your people. For freedom.

To learn more about NedaNet and how you can help, go here.

Related: NedaNet resource page

"Green shoots" may be weeds

Growing pessimism about the prospects for a global economic recovery sent stock and commodity prices tumbling on Monday while new data showed that leading US corporate executives were cashing out of their share holdings at a rapid pace.

US government bond yields followed equity prices lower, confounding analysts who had expected that Treasury rates would rise this week as the federal government auctioned off a record $104bn of debt.

Analysts said the market mood was captured by a World Bank report that said the global economy would contract 2.9 per cent this year, compared with a previous estimate of a 1.7 per cent fall. A White House spokesman said later in the day that the US unemployment rate was likely to rise to 10 per cent in the next couple of months.

[...]

“The smartest players in the US stock market – the top insiders who run public companies – are not betting their own money on an economic recovery,” said Charles Biderman, chief executive of TrimTabs. [emphasis added - bc]

Financial Times: Pessimistic executives cash out of shares (23 June 2009)

Netflix races against time

Here's a fascinating look at how a company that's red-hot - but whose business model is running out of time - tries to create internal change:

Netflix Inc. is a standout in the recession. The DVD-rental company added more subscribers than ever during the first three months of the year. Its stock has more than doubled since October.

But Netflix's chief executive officer, Reed Hastings, thinks his core business is doomed. As soon as four years from now, he predicts, the business that generates most of Netflix's revenue today will begin to decline, as DVDs delivered by mail steadily lose ground to movies sent straight over the Internet. So Mr. Hastings, who co-founded the company, is quickly trying to shift Netflix's business -- seeking to make more videos available online and cutting deals with electronics makers so consumers can play those movies on television sets.

His position offers a rare look at how a CEO manages a still-hot business as its time runs out. "Almost no companies succeed at what we're doing," he says.

Companies across the entertainment and technology landscape are struggling with how to profit from Internet video. There's still significant risk that Netflix could falter or lose out to another company that figures out how to do it first. And having picked his battle, the intense former engineer may risk missing other growth opportunities: Mr. Hastings hasn't yet expanded internationally or mounted a direct challenge to kiosks, such as Coinstar Inc.'s Redbox, that let customers pick up $1-a-night DVD rentals.

Netflix Boss Plots Life After The DVD (Wall Street Journal, 23 June 2009)

Shortwave: still a vital technology in the Internet era

In his Friday sermon, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reserved special wrath for "Zionist radio" that he said tried to drive a wedge between the Iranian people and the Islamic Republic. Such attention from Iran's supreme leader was music to the ears of Menashe Amir, a bespectacled Iranian-born Israeli who has been broadcasting in Persian from Jerusalem for the past five decades.

"We're listened to in Iran and considered very credible and effective," Mr. Amir says with pride. "We're close to the Iranian people, we know what they want, and we have
our sources that give us detailed news about everything that's going on in Iran."

The spread of the Internet and satellite television in Iran over the past decade seemed to eclipse the prominence of Mr. Amir's old-fashioned shortwave broadcasts on Kol Israel, Israel's public radio. But now, as the Web in Iran is either blocked or dramatically slowed and satellite-TV channels are jammed by the government amid spreading unrest, Mr. Amir has suddenly become relevant again.

"Today we have many more listeners inside the country because Iranians are thirsty for any information" about the unrest, the 69-year-old Mr. Amir says. He estimates the Iranian audience for Kol Israel's 85-minute daily show in Persian is between two million and six million people. Independent audience numbers, for obvious reasons, are impossible to come by.

Israeli radio show captivates Iranians (Wall Street Journal, 23 June 2009)

Working on kites at Holden Beach, circa 1973

In this photo: Bob Campbell (seated), Barry Campbell

Miss you, Dad. Thanks for everything.

Previously on enrevanche:

• Father's Day at the Nursing Home (June 19, 2005)
• Robert Campbell, 1936-2005 (October 22, 2005)
• For Dad (June 24, 2006)
  

See also:

My Old Man
Steve Goodman

I miss my old man tonite
and I wish he was here with me
With his corny jokes and his cheap cigars
He could look you in the eye and sell you a car.
That's not an easy thing to do,
but no one ever knew a more charming creature
on this earth than my old man.

He was a pilot in the big war in the U.S. Army Air Corps
in a C - 47 with a heavy load
full of combat cargo for the Burma Road.
And after they dropped the bomb
he came home and married Mom
and not long after that
he was my old man.

And oh the fights we had
when my brother and I got him mad;
He'd get all boiled up and he'd start to shout
and I knew what was coming so I tuned him out.
And now the old man's gone, and I'd give all I own
to hear what he said when I wasn't listening
to my old man

I miss my old man tonite
and I can almost see his face
He was always trying to watch his weight
and his heart only made it to fifty-eight.
For the first time since he died
late last night I cried.
I wondered when I was gonna do that
for my old man.

He's Barack Obama!

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Why I blog

I wonder sometimes.

And then something like this happens:

A total stranger found this post - in which I mention, in passing, a jazz concert I attended in 1985.

Dude recorded the concert... would I like a copy of the recording?

Too, too cool. Hell yes, I want a copy of the recording!

Stardust

The vendor-client relationship in real-world situations

The Vendor-Client Relationship In Real-World Situations (I Am Not Myself)

Element 112, coming soon to a periodic table near you

A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said.

A team in the southwest German city of Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to hit a lead target.

"The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table," the scientists at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The zinc and lead nuclei were fused to form the nucleus of the new element, also known as Ununbium, Latin for 112.

New, superheavy element to enter periodic table (Reuters)

Bullying, understood as a problem in pediatric medicine

Back in the 1990s, I did a physical on a boy in fifth or sixth grade at a Boston public school. I asked him his favorite subject: definitely science; he had won a prize in a science fair, and was to go on and compete in a multischool fair.

The problem was, there were some kids at school who were picking on him every day about winning the science fair; he was getting teased and jostled and even, occasionally, beaten up. His mother shook her head and wondered aloud whether life would be easier if he just let the science fair thing drop.

Bullying elicits strong and highly personal reactions; I remember my own sense of outrage and identification. Here was a highly intelligent child, a lover of science, possibly a future (fill in your favorite genius), tormented by brutes. Here’s what I did for my patient: I advised his mother to call the teacher and complain, and I encouraged him to pursue his love of science.

And here are three things I now know I should have done: I didn’t tell the mother that bullying can be prevented, and that it’s up to the school. I didn’t call the principal or suggest that the mother do so. And I didn’t give even a moment’s thought to the bullies, and what their lifetime prognosis might be.

In recent years, pediatricians and researchers in this country have been giving bullies and their victims the attention they have long deserved — and have long received in Europe. We’ve gotten past the “kids will be kids” notion that bullying is a normal part of childhood or the prelude to a successful life strategy. Research has described long-term risks — not just to victims, who may be more likely than their peers to experience depression and suicidal thoughts, but to the bullies themselves, who are less likely to finish school or hold down a job.

Perri Klass, MD: At Last, Facing Down Bullies (And Their Enablers) - New York Times

I was bullied mercilessly as a child, and the people who *should* have done something about it--the teachers and administrators at school--despite repeated complaints by my parents, did jack-shit-nothing.

I think the good doctor's advice is well-intentioned but wrong.

One thing, and only one thing, stops bullying in its tracks: a sufficiently violent response by the victim.

Digital Collaborators and Roving Nodes

The role of mobile internet access in evolving digital lifestyles is the cornerstone of the second typology of information and communication technology (ICT) users developed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.¹ The typology places ICT users into 10 groups and, notwithstanding variation among them, the groups fit into two baskets, with the groups' collective judgments on mobility being the pivot point.

[...]

Digital Collaborators: 8% of adults use information gadgets to collaborate with others and share their creativity with the world.

For many Digital Collaborators, digital information is input into a creative process that often involves others and whose output they share with the world using the web. Members of this group can almost always get access to the internet, whether that is with an "always on" broadband connection or with an "always present" mobile device. With such robust connectivity, Digital Collaborators share their thoughts or creative content with others. Using blogs and other content-creation applications, they collaborate with others online to express themselves creatively. For Digital Collaborators, the internet can be a camp, a lab or a theater group -- places to gather with others to develop something new.

This pattern of active and continuous information exchange puts ICTs at the center of how Digital Collaborators learn, work, socialize and have fun. Most play games on electronic devices, with half playing games on the internet. At least occasionally, most of them watch TV on a device other than a traditional television set. And one-quarter have avatars that let them participate in virtual worlds. The typical Digital Collaborator is in his late 30s and has had years of online experience to hone his skills to get the most out of ICTs.

Roving Nodes: 9% of adults use their mobile devices to connect with others and share information with them.

Picture a Roving Node as a woman in her late 30s who is rarely without her smart phone, often using it to chat, but also checking email or fielding a text message. When she gets home or back to the office, she is frequently online, keeping up with email or surfing the net to get news or shop. This group is highly dependent on ICTs, and this dependence comes about from using ICTs to manage busy lives and stay in touch with others. Unlike the groups above, Roving Nodes are more hubs of information flows than sources of digital content. They are heavily reliant on all their ICTs for communicating and gathering information, but Roving Nodes are much less likely than preceding groups to blog or manage their own web pages.

Roving Nodes are happy when the cell phone rings, which sets them apart from Ambivalent Networkers. Although they like how gadgets help them share their ideas with others, it is not likely that a blog or an update to their webpage will be the means to do this. Give Roving Nodes email access, a browser and a cell phone, and they are off connecting to others and passing information along the network.

Internet typology: The mobile difference (Pew Research Center)

Related: Quiz - what kind of tech user are you?

(Unsurprisingly, I was assessed as a "digital collaborator" - I think most enrevanche readers would be.)

Manhattan morning

A foggy day in New York City - and the Staten Island Ferry pulls close to its Manhattan terminal just after daybreak.

It's only okay if some people talk about this, but not others, apparently.

He’s done it while talking about abortion and the Middle East, even the economy. The references serve at once as an affirmation of his faith and a rebuke against a rumor that persists for some to this day.

As president, Barack Obama has mentioned Jesus Christ in a number of high-profile public speeches — something his predecessor George W. Bush rarely did in such settings, even though Bush’s Christian faith was at the core of his political identity.

In his speech Thursday in Cairo, Obama told the crowd that he is a Christian and mentioned the Islamic story of Isra, in which Moses, Jesus and Mohammed joined in prayer.

At the University of Notre Dame on May 17, Obama talked about the good works he’d seen done by Christian community groups in Chicago. “I found myself drawn — not just to work with the church but to be in the church,” Obama said. “It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.”

And a month before that, Obama mentioned Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount at Georgetown University to make the case for his economic policies. Obama retold the story of two men, one who built his house on a pile of sand and the other who built his on a rock: “We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand,” Obama said. “We must build our house upon a rock.”

More than four months into the Obama presidency, a picture is emerging of a chief executive who is comfortable with public displays of his religion — although he has also paid tribute to other faiths and those he called “nonbelievers” during his inaugural address.

Politico: Obama invokes Jesus more than Bush

It's like looking at the sun - get a sense of it, then look away

A man carries cash. A man looks out for those around him — woman, friend, stranger. A man can cook eggs. A man can always find something good to watch on television. A man makes things — a rock wall, a table, the tuition money. Or he rebuilds — engines, watches, fortunes. He passes along expertise, one man to the next. Know-how survives him. This is immortality. A man can speak to dogs. A man fantasizes that kung fu lives deep inside him somewhere. A man knows how to sneak a look at cleavage and doesn't care if he gets busted once in a while. A man is good at his job. Not his work, not his avocation, not his hobby. Not his career. His job. It doesn't matter what his job is, because if a man doesn't like his job, he gets a new one.

What is a man? (Tom Chiarella, Esquire, 6 April 2009) 

Hat tip: Alex 

"What they did" vs "who they are"

Jay Smooth of illdoctrine.com explains how to tell someone that they said something racist and offensive:

"I got one line on The Sopranos..."

"...and that makes me more gangsta than you."



Hat tip: Chap

Must-have iPhone apps for New Yorkers

iAvoid
Utilizes dynamic GPS to route you past annoying sidewalk representatives for Greenpeace, Children International, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Save The Children, Save The Animals, DNC and Amnesty International. To name a few.

Whew. I sure coulda used that one.

Banterist: Three Must-Have iPhone Apps For New Yorkers

Hat tip: Tarus Balog

Exanthems

I did not know this:

In antiquity, [exanthem - "eruptive" or rash-involving] illnesses were all lumped together. Eventually, a distinction was made between measles and pox (with growing clarity over about a millennium). However, what people called the “pox” and what was then called the “measles” are now known to each include a variety of distinct diseases.

Six separate childhood exanthems were defined from what was once called the “measles.” In the early part of the 20th century, these were often referred to by number. Measles and scarlet fever were the first two to be separated. Rubella (German measles) was called “third disease”; atypical scarlet fever was “fourth disease”; erythema infectiosum was (and is) “fifth disease,” and roseola was “sixth disease.”

Chickenpox and smallpox, the other two classic childhood exanthems, were recognized as separate from each other in the 18th century. These both had blisters, or pox, that set them apart from the red rashes of the other group.Today, dozens of exanthems are recognized, including adenovirus, anthrax, mononucleosis, Colorado tick fever, mumps, cat-scratch fever, rat-bite fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, relapsing fever, meningococcemia, typhus, hand-foot-mouth disease, and many others.

Exanthems (DrGreene.com)