harry allen design
such good work. i got his ikea lamp "kila" last week, and it's super cute and friendly. and ten bucks!
(Monday, July 28, 2003)

kobe ups the price of forgiveness (ray ratto, espn)
"Look, you've annoyed your spouse plenty of times. You've bought flowers (or if you are a woman, beer), or you've bought candy (or if you are a woman, beer) or you've thrown yourself at the mercy of the court (or, if you are a woman, beer and Fritos).

"And you usually get forgiven, right? Beer, after all, is the gift that keeps on giving."
(Monday, July 28, 2003)

the times discovers trader joe's (nyt)
"It's a company that is kind of a loose-tight company," said the chief executive and chairman, Dan Bane, adding that it has no secretaries. "We're very controlling and tight about the cost structure and processes; we're very loose about how we want the stores to run."

I love TJ's. It's a great supplement to one's normal shopping.
(Sunday, July 27, 2003)

Knicks' Expert in Mediocrity (nyt)
"In Scott Layden, the Knicks have an irrelevant general manager who is an expert in mediocrity and a connoisseur of basketball comfort food."

I was hoping Selena Roberts would weigh in on the Spree trade. And has she ever. Scathing!
(Wednesday, July 23, 2003)

big trade sends spree to bucks, van horn to knicks (nyt)
"The Knicks traded their most popular player, Latrell Sprewell, to the Minnesota Timberwolves last night and obtained the often-maligned forward Keith Van Horn from the Philadelphia 76ers in a four-team, six-player deal."

That's the lead, and does it ever foreshadow the hell that Van Horn is in for next year. He's going to get booed mercilessly, I think, which is too bad, because he's not a bad player. He gets a bad rap because he really could be a lot better.

And at least Knicks fans should be glad that the team didn't acquire yet another undersized swingman. Though they did just trade away their best player.
(Wednesday, July 23, 2003)

to nap or not to nap [at work]? (wsj)
"Opponents of napping argue it's bad form. But maybe it's just another example of our fetish with the appearance of productivity and professionalism. In our fake-it-till-you-make-it culture, superficiality is a substitute for real productivity. There's hardly a gripe about power lunches or pumping iron."

And one should keep in mind that "research shows napping improves visual skills, learning and alertness."
(Wednesday, July 23, 2003)

happy (belated) kissing on the lips day!
"Kissing someone on the lips is a really fucking stupid idea and you could get your goddamn head blown off for doing it, especially if when you first start to kiss you only have one hand touching the person's hip and you worry that it might seem like you're about to put your hand on the person's ass so you move it further up to just above the waste [sic] ..."
(Monday, July 21, 2003)

the beginning of the end
who can stay in this camp and have any credibility at all?

i, for one, am keeping my attendance record spotless. as in, never been there. i'd rather go to the desert by myself. it's why the word that connotes profound emptiness is "deserted".
(Monday, July 21, 2003)

"i never expected THIS!"
(exploding dog)
(Saturday, July 19, 2003)

maybe the lakers won't win this year (espn)
"So, just to set the record straight, Shaq and Kobe have a well-documented contentious history, Shaq and Malone have a repaired history, Kobe and Malone have a history, Kobe and Payton have a history and Payton and Malone have a history. The only contention missing is Shaq and GP."
(Friday, July 18, 2003)

cellphone hooligans commuting in nyc (nyt)
"Acrimony could be lessened, said Ms. Page, the Miss Manners of the cellphone world, if users placed their cellphones on vibrate. 'The ring startles people,' she said. And people 'don't understand the technology — the phones are tiny and there are connection problems so they shout.'
...
"For some people, including Jeffrey Frey, an intellectual-property lawyer, [going to the vestibule to make a call] not enough. A lover of trains who has ridden some of the most glamorous, including the Trans-Siberian Express, Mr. Frey has nevertheless stopped boarding Amtrak to make business trips between his Washington office and New York. He now flies.

"'Airplanes: no cellphones,' said Mr. Frey."
(Friday, July 18, 2003)

as airlines tighten belts, wine gets better (wsj)
"Olivier Henry, commercial director of Paul Sapin SA, one of the world's few bottlers specializing in the diminutive sizes served on airlines, says he has seen a slight pickup in wine quality since 2001, when carriers started cutting costs. No wonder, he says. An average small bottle costs less than 50 European cents (56 U.S. cents), of which about 40% pays for wine. The rest covers packaging, bottling and shipping. So replacing good wine with bad to save a few pennies 'is a stupidity if it brings complaints,' he says."
(Thursday, July 17, 2003)

shipping wine gets a little easier (wsj)
It's getting easier to ship wine across state lines, but only in some states. The preponderance of Prohibition-era blue laws never fails to astonish me.

In Cambridge, we couldn't buy alcohol at the majority of supermarkets, the liquor stores closed at 10pm most nights, and we couldn't buy bottled alcohol at all on Sundays. Though during the holidays that last provision was suspended, so why was it okay to buy beer on Sundays during December but not during the rest of the year? Georgia has similar laws.

I like the frontier character of the west: more stuff happens.
(Thursday, July 17, 2003)

FELA! (nyt)
"There are a lot of things about Fela's life and work that are fascinating on a purely aesthetic level," said Michael Veal, a professor of ethnomusicology at Yale University and author of "Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon." "His music is great. He was a very charismatic performer. Visually he was very striking. But at the same time, while all this interesting aesthetic stuff is happening, you've got someone who has really put their life on the line to speak as a voice for the dispossessed and to dramatize the struggle of his society on the world stage."
(Thursday, July 17, 2003)

general says us faces "guerilla war" in iraq (nyt)
"The blunt assessment by Gen. John Abizaid of the Army, who has responsibility for all military operations in Iraq, came shortly after the NATO secretary general made it clear that the military alliance had no interest in expanding its own limited role in Iraq."

So now we have the looming spectre of a Vietnam-style morass, and no other countries want anything to do with it. How did the administration not see this one coming a mile away?

Dubya got all psyched up to exact revenge on Saddam that he missed the point entirely. And missed Saddam, too, who is likely playing poker online with Osama and Mullah Omar.

Ari Fleischer is apparently leaving his spokesman post. That seems like the smartest bail-out since Jeff Van Gundy left the Knicks.
(Wednesday, July 16, 2003)

google shakes things up (wsj)
"Microsoft is also waking up to the power of Google and racing to protect its turf... [Microsoft] for years largely ignored Google and the search business, offloading the search function on its growing MSN online service to Overture, Inktomi and LookSmart. But in a broad study of Internet usage by the MSN group over the past year, Microsoft discovered that search was just behind e-mail and instant messaging as the most-performed task on the Internet."
(Wednesday, July 16, 2003)

christopher alexander's revolution (nyt)
I took one of Alexander's classes at Cal, and was turned off at the time. I honestly don't think my assessment from then would be changed now: the man is very intelligent (he's a reknown expert in Turkish carpets), but just as unyielding. My experience of him was that one had to buy into the whole package: one couldn't agree with the points made in A Pattern Language without also agreeing to his aesthetic choices. And while he has a point about modern buildings being soulless, I don't believe that 'modern' aesthetics and soulful buildings are mutually exclusive.
(Saturday, July 12, 2003)

the longest concert ever (wsj)
"Six years ago, Heinz-Klaus Metzger gave a short talk about a long, potentially very long, piece of music -- 'Organ2/ASLSP,' by John Cage.

"Speaking at a conference on organ music, Mr. Metzger wondered what the late avant-garde composer meant by ASLSP, his designation for 'as slow as possible.' Mechanical organs, like the ones Europeans have built in churches for centuries, can hold notes indefinitely. 'One could imagine playing the organ piece so slowly that it would take years to come to an end,' mused Mr. Metzger, a music theorist who knew Mr. Cage."

In Halberstadt, Germany, where the current keyboard key layout was first used, 'Organ2/ASLSP' is being performed, until 2640. "There's an intermission in 2319." Seems like it might be worth a visit.
(Saturday, July 12, 2003)

the best seat on the plane (wsj)
"In no particular order, [the Journal's] own experience with the best and worst seats in economy class. You will have to pay attention to the plane you're flying, since seating charts vary by aircraft model."

The Journal's style of reporting just shines. I love the Journal.
(Saturday, July 12, 2003)

new excise taxes on alcohol proposed (wsj)
"In the quest to cut teenage drinking, the suggestion of new excise taxes may be the most controversial element of the panel's work. Members heard persuasive research that pricing directly affects youth consumption, people briefed on the deliberations said. Stiff excise taxes on cigarettes, for example, have been shown to be effective in reducing smoking and have become widely used as a public-policy tool.

"One panel member is a Stanford University economist and well-known expert on excise taxes, Philip Cook. In a recent research paper, Dr. Cook and a co-author concluded that 'current excise taxes are too low, both nationally and in every state. The rates are far less than the average social cost of each drink consumed,' in terms of health and other costs, the authors found. 'Raising the excise tax would be in the public interest.'"

One can only hope that the same reasoning will be applied to gasoline and inefficient vehicles: "Current excise taxes are too low, both nationally and in every state. The rates are far less than the average social cost of each mile driven."
(Saturday, July 12, 2003)

365 days project
this is just genius: one new mp3 a day for an entire year. nothing from a major label, and a lot of weird outsider and industrial stuff. but they have one of jodie foster's french singles. (woo hoo!)
(Monday, July 7, 2003)

PBteen
okay, we'll skip the discussion of whether or not pottery barn for teens is really a good idea. there are two good things here: the locker-based furniture, while expensive, has got to be sturdier than the similar ikea items; and the browse-the-catalog interface is pretty good.
(Wednesday, July 2, 2003)

nice error page
a good parody.
(Wednesday, July 2, 2003)

Russel Wright reissued
I've been collecting American Modern pieces for years, and now Oneida has made that part of my life cheaper and easier, by reissuing a ton of Russel Wright tableware designs. Yay!
(Tuesday, July 1, 2003)