Maybe everything that dies someday comes back

Atlantic City's mayor is MIA.

"One Laptop Per Child," finally shipping

David Pogue reviews the product of the One Laptop Per Child initiative:

In November, you’ll be able to buy a new laptop that’s spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It’s fanless, it’s silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

And this laptop will cost $200.

The computer, if you hadn’t already guessed, is the fabled “$100 laptop” that’s been igniting hype and controversy for three years. It’s an effort by One Laptop Per Child (laptop.org) to develop a very low-cost, high-potential, extremely rugged computer for the two billion educationally underserved children in poor countries.

Laptop With A Mission Widens Its Audience (New York Times, October 4, 2007)

If you'd like to donate one of these laptops to a child in the developing world, XOgiving.org is set up to help you.

(Psst... if you'd like to buy one for a child you know, a "Give One Get One" program starts up on November 12; at a cost of $400, one laptop is donated to the cause and one is shipped to you.)

Also, what happened to the bionic Foley?

Any organization that developed biomedical technology for instant healing and flawless body part replacement -- technology 20 years ahead of its time -- would be able to license it and generate hundreds of billions of dollars of income very quickly. Instead, they keep it secret and derive no real value from it. Why?

pmarca: 12 Questions for the producers of the new Bionic Woman

Related: Bionic Woman episodes at Amazon.com

Advice to foreigners: Sell your Treasury bonds

Andy Xie, writing in Caijing (a Chinese business publication that republishes some of its articles in English), states his case bluntly (you'll forgive, I hope, the mild awkwardness in translation):

In a closed economy, inflation is a zero-sum game in wealth redistribution. Investors in fixed income lose and borrowers win. As the US owes so much to foreigners, inflation, at least the unexpected part, adds value to the US economy. It does give the Fed incentives to tolerate more inflation. Why then it just lets it all out and inflates away all the foreign debts? The problem is that foreigners may see what’s coming and sell everything right away. It would trigger the US bond market to collapse, which would wreck havoc on the US economy. Hence, inflation benefits the US only if foreigners can be fooled before it happens. The Fed is still paying lip service to inflation for that purpose.

You probably know what I am getting at. If you hold US bonds, sell. The Fed wants to rob you to help the bankrupting US homeowners. My hunch is that the US inflation would rise to above 4% next year and higher afterwards. Foreigners own 40% of the US treasuries, mostly central banks. They should sell now to demonstrate they wouldn’t accept the broad daylight robbery by the Fed. The selling would cause the treasury yield to skyrocket, which would offset the stimulus from the rate cut by the Fed. The Fed may have to change policy to appease foreigners when it sees the rebellion.

If foreigners don’t act and lay there like lambs, they deserve to be slaughtered.

You Should Sell Treasuries (Andy Xie, Caijing Magazine, October 2, 2007)

Most popular tracks

New music, currently in heavy rotation chez enrevanche:

• Dashboard Confessional, The Shade of Poison Trees
  
  Emo power-pop from singer-songwriter-guitarist Chris Carrabba.
  
  
• Gilles Peterson (compiler), Gilles Peterson Digs America Vol 2
  
  How meta: Chap, the best music curator of my acquaintance, turned me on to Gilles, a DJ and music curator par excellence. An eclectic collection of R&B, dance and funk.
  
  
• Konono No. 1, Live at Couleur Cafe
  
  Bash-you-over-the-head big-city African party music from Kinshasa's best 12-piece band. Should be played loud. If you've never heard an amplified thumb piano (ikembe), you don't know what you're missing; Congotronics, an earlier album, is the one to start with.
  

Hacked by time travelers

Lord knows I love me some Hushmail - encrypted, private e-mail that offers IMAP access (for a fee) and works beautifully with the iPhone.

I think there's something a leetle bit amiss this morning, though...

The web interface informed me, when I logged in:

Last access on Sunday, July 27, 2767 at 9:01:13 AM

Would the person who accessed my e-mail account from the year 2767 kindly get back to me ASAP with some investment advice. Thanks.

Happy anniversary, love

Nine years ago today, it was a rainy Saturday in New York City.

At about this time (it's not quite 6 AM as I write this), Carrie and I were waking up and getting ready to walk, in the grey drizzle, over to Dizzy Izzy's (long gone, of course... which Citysearch doesn't seem to know yet) in the then-unfashionable Meatpacking District, for bagels and coffee.

A little later that morning, our friends and family, who had arrived in NYC from all over the world, would wake up in their Manhattan hotel rooms; we would all gather downtown, Carrie and I would sign the ketubah, the cantor would sing the ancient Hebrew words of the marriage ceremony, we'd be married and then there would be brunch. :-)

But the early morning, so far, still belonged just to the two of us.

I'm still not sure why we did this, but as we drank our coffee, we took a walk in the rain, holding hands, down by the Hudson River.

And as the sun came up, there was, briefly but unmistakably, a rainbow.

(For the record, the "pot of gold" would have been in Jersey City... and the way real-estate values are going now, I can't believe we didn't take that as a sign from God.)

Happy ninth anniversary, dear one. The time we've been together has been the best in my life.

You don't get to call it off just 'cause you're liquored up and popular on payday

There isn't going to be a Deadwood movie.

(via)

From Abba to Zappa

From Abba to Zappa

(with answer key)

(via)

Learn it well

If you're going to be a high achiever, you're going to be in lots of situations where you're going to be quickly making decisions in the presence of incomplete or incorrect information, under intense time pressure, and often under intense political pressure. You're going to screw up -- frequently -- and the screwups will have serious consequences, and you'll feel incredibly stupid every time. It can't faze you -- you have to be able to just get right back up and keep on going.

That may be the most valuable skill you can ever learn. Make sure you start learning it early.

The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, part 2: Skills and education (Marc Andreesen)

North Carolina Goober Alles

Fry some more goobers, Bubba; the truck's leaving for Manhattan in the morning:

For years, aficionados who liked their peanuts fried in small batches by septuagenarian hobbyists who gather in church rec rooms had but one option: the peanuts prepared by the First Methodist Church Men’s Club in Mount Olive, North Carolina. As you may have read in these pages, Danny Meyer’s business partner Richard Coraine discovered these extra-crunchy, super-salty specimens—which are to other peanuts what Belgian frites are to Munchos—on a reconnaissance trip prior to opening Blue Smoke in 2002. Hopelessly smitten, he’s been buying as many cases as the First Methodist peanut men can produce ever since...

Battle of the North Carolina Church Club Peanuts (New York magazine, October 8, 2007 issue)

New York City just got a little bit hipper.

O tempora, o mores

I subscribe to breaking news alerts from CNN on the iPhone.

I got two of them today.

4:04 PM:

-- Dow closes at record high after surging almost 200 points.

4:22 PM:

-- A court has ordered pop singer Britney Spears to give up custody of her children effective Wednesday at noon, according to court papers.

And thus are our hallowed traditions profaned

Pat Bertoletti, a mohawk-sporting chef from Chicago, gulped down 21 pounds of buttery, goopy grits in 10 minutes to win $4,000 in the first World Grits Eating Championship at Louisiana Downs on Saturday.

The grits were presented in 2-pound trays, each about 8 inches by 6 inches and 1 1/2 inches deep, said Ryan Nerz, a spokesman for Major League Eating.

Man eats 21 pounds of grits for title (AP via Yahoo! News)

If I don't love you baby,
grits ain't groceries,
eggs ain't poultry,
and Mona Lisa was a man.
-- Little Milton

S-T-A-T-I-S-T-I-C-S

In re yesterday's post (the anniversary party was tremendous and a good time was had by all), here's this timely article suggesting that the divorce statistics in America are not as bad as they might seem:

The story of ever-increasing divorce is a powerful narrative. It is also wrong. In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable. For instance, marriages that began in the 1990s were more likely to celebrate a 10th anniversary than those that started in the 1980s, which, in turn, were also more likely to last than marriages that began back in the 1970s.

If you asked them, they could write a book

In a country where between 40 and 50% of marriages end in divorce -- depending on whose numbers you believe -- the institution of marriage is clearly suffering.

Carrie and I have been together for eleven years now, and married for nine; we've already beaten the published odds, and I hope and expect we'll be together for the rest of our lives.

But wrap your minds around this one, if you can:

Tonight, I'm driving to Asheboro, NC to attend a family function: a dinner celebrating the 67th wedding anniversary of my beloved aunt and uncle.

Amazing, no?

The nuggets must be guarded

A plastic dispensary pitcher holding Iams Original For Cats is Mister Gato's favorite perch in the "pantry corner" of our kitchen.

I like knowing where my next meal is coming from.

See more bloggers' pets at The Modulator's Friday Ark; this Sunday, the Carnival of the Cats is hosted by Life From A Cat's Perspective.

This is good advice

I Used to Have Them Backwards, but I Was Dead Wrong

Professor: What words do we get from the name Aphrodite?
Student #1: Hermaphrodite.
Professor: Yes -- from the union of Aphrodite and Hermes. What else?
Student #2: Aphrodisiac!
Professor: Good! And what is an aphrodisiac?
Students: [Silence.]
Professor: Are you all Victorians? Come on... What's it called when one uses something to arouse sexual appetite?
Student #3: Necrophiliac! [Class laughs.]
Professor: I have to advise you to invest in a dictionary, as it's simply prudent to know the difference between a necrophiliac and an aphrodisiac. Hopefully, you won't ever need to thank me for that.

--NYU

Overheard by: Cairo

via Overheard in New York, Sep 27, 2007

World Freedom Atlas

The World Freedom Atlas is a geovisualization tool for world statistics.

Where's MEGEN?

When Team Navy won the friendly ValOUR-IT competition last fall (enrevanche readers helped!) and raised a lot of money to buy voice-activated notebook computers for injured American servicemen and women, a "golden laptop" trophy was created to commemorate the occasion... MEGEN, or "Most Exalted Golden Notebook."

MEGEN has certainly been getting around ever since (check out the posts over at Chaotic Synaptic Activity... starting with the first one is recommended.)

Part of the fun is a little game we play called "Where's MEGEN?" Here's the Big Apple edition of that game.

Like a lot of tourists, MEGEN recently visited New York City. Here's a picture of MEGEN on vacation in Manhattan:

MEGEN in New York

Well, shoot. You can't really tell too much about where MEGEN is from that photograph.

How about this one?

More context.

Any takers?

Take your best guess and leave a comment... I'll update this post with the answer in a day or two.

---

UPDATE: That didn't take long... NYC expat Scott got it in one.

The answer: Abingdon Square Park in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, in front of the Abingdon Doughboy.

Background:

"In 1921, twenty thousand spectators gathered in and around [Abingdon Square Park] to hear former and future Governor Alfred E. Smith present the Abingdon Square Memorial (also known as the Abingdon Doughboy) in memory of local men who fought in World War I. Created by sculptor Philip Martiny, this monument was restored by Parks' monument crew in 1993. The flagstaff was dedicated by the Private Michael J. Lynch Post No. 831 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1933."

The inscription on the monument's base reads:

ERECTED BY POPULAR SUBSCRIPTION TO HONOR THE BRAVE MEN WHO WENT FORTH FROM THIS NEIGHBORHOOD TO JOIN THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES DURING THE WORLD WAR

In the early years of the 20th century, Greenwich Village (where Abingdon Square Park is located) was *not* the swanky place it is now... it was a working class Irish and Italian neighborhood, and "popular subscription" means that someone collected a hell of a lot of dimes and nickels to get this memorial built.

Couldn't think of a more appropriate place to photograph the Valour-IT prize than by a monument that documents a community remembering its veterans.

The bending of definitions and the turning of blind eyes

In every war, information is a weapon. In a “war against terrorism”, where the adversary wears no uniform and hides among the civilian population, information can matter even more. But does that mean that torture can sometimes be justified to extract information?

The answer in international law is categorical: no. As laid down in treaties such as the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the ban on torture or any cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is absolute, even in times of war. Along with genocide, torture is the only crime that every state must punish, no matter who commits it or where. Defenders of this blanket prohibition offer arguments that range from the moral (torture degrades and corrupts the society that allows it) to the practical (people will say anything under torture so the information they provide is unreliable anyway).

The September 11th attacks have not driven any rich democracy to reverse itself and make torture legal. But they have encouraged the bending of definitions and the turning of blind eyes. There is a greater readiness among governments that would never practise torture themselves to use information which less squeamish states have obtained—through torture.

Terrorism and civil liberty: Is torture ever justified? (The Economist, 20 September 2007)