trading below cash (ap via yahoo)
"This 'trading below cash' phenomenon is an unwelcome development facing more high-tech companies as their sagging shares sink to new depths. It indicates investors have reached a chilling conclusion about BroadVision and some other once-beloved Silicon Valley companies: they might be worth more dead than alive."

Good news: BVSN is one of our competitors, and is basically on its last legs. BLUE is also trading below cash.
Bad news: We're trading just above cash.
(Wednesday, July 31, 2002)

us to consolidate debts into one easy monthly payment (onion)
"I was definitely skeptical about E-Z Debt, as were many of my colleagues," Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) said. "I'd heard horror stories about those debt services. England used one to get out of a recession in the late '80s, and they're still paying for it."
(Wednesday, July 31, 2002)

george lois (aiga)
"Throughout his career, Lois's talent has always been to capture the zeitgeist of an age—whether in the form of a senatorial campaign for Bobby Kennedy (1964), a composited Esquire cover that has Andy Warhol drowning in an oversized can of Campbell's soup (1969), the concept and name for the low-calorie Stouffer's product Lean Cuisine (1979), or those entertainment industry-transforming words, "I want my MTV" (1982)."

Knowing who George Lois is is as important as knowing who Tibor Kalman or Paul Rand are.
(Wednesday, July 31, 2002)

the looming government accounting scandal (iht)
"When Tennessee considered a tax increase last year, legislators were intimidated by a riot stirred up by radio talk show hosts. Only when lack of cash forced the governor to lay off half the work force did the state, which has the second-lowest per capita taxes in the country, face up to reality."

And Tennessee isn't alone. Alabama, New Jersey, and other states are all discovering the perils of bad accounting.
(Wednesday, July 31, 2002)

shaq building low-income housing (espn)
rock on!
(Tuesday, July 30, 2002)

the authenticity scale (oprah)
"This range [where I scored] suggests that you are operating, most of the time, from a fictional self-concept that has become distorted and is therefore a fictional version of who you really are."

The thing I need to do is figure out what's going to make me happy (while allowing me to pay off my debt and my monthly expenses).

There, that's a step towards honesty, isn't it? Not quite what you came here for.
(Tuesday, July 30, 2002)

We Blog
"This book will provide answers to those wondering what a Weblog is, how to start one, and what the benefits are. Written by experts who helped shape the genre from the beginning, it offers readers a quintessential guide to this worldwide phenomenon. From the Weblog's origins as the first native Web format, to its impact as an outlet of personal expression, to its practical use today as a business communication tool, the authors present a glimpse at the flexibility and possibility of Weblogs."

Is it just me, or could these topics be covered in a tiny website?
(Tuesday, July 30, 2002)

more architects to tackle wtc site planning (nyt)
"Officials involved in the rebuilding effort, including two directors of the development corporation who favor opening up the design process and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they believed some effort to expand the number and type of firms submitting ideas for the World Trade Center site would come to fruition over the next few weeks."

I am hoping that Michael Bell gets involved with this. I'd be interested to see him working on something high-rise high-density.
(Tuesday, July 30, 2002)

the ben brown show!
of all the web kids, ben brown should be on television the most. even more than justin hall. if you've got broadband, this is worth checking out. i'd actually buy a dvd of these episodes.
(Monday, July 29, 2002)

jack saturn explains
Again, far too long, Jack.

The MetaFilter kids are harsh but succinct.

Sigh. Junior high is endless, apparently.


Upon reading Evan's response at MetaFilter I have to say I'd probably fall more on his side of this mess.

Evan wrote, "I couldn't leave as long as I saw a glimmer of hope (which, admittedly, being an eternal, hallucinatory optimist is almost always), because of the obligation I felt to our investors, users, and other people who supported us (and, yes, to myself). If that makes me a bad guy in your eyes, I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree about that (and by that I mean: grow the fuck up)."

That last bit, I've wanted to say to a lot of people I've worked with over the past seven years.
(Monday, July 29, 2002)

new jill bliss illos!
native california plants and grasses. these are beautiful.
(Sunday, July 28, 2002)

john "simpleton"
My friend John is far from being a simpleton, and his website is fabulous. His illustrations are on par with Claire's. I miss hanging out with him even more than I miss commuting with him.
(Saturday, July 27, 2002)

dating the neighbors (nyt)
"The thought of dating someone who lives in the same building is enough to send some singles not down the hall but screaming into the streets. It's so radical not even the women on 'Sex and the City' have tried it. Because if the relationship ends badly, that will be the end of privacy in the building."

I've dated a neighbor once. We had a great date, and then started a great friendship. I miss her.
(Saturday, July 27, 2002)

jack saturn wants his job back. (via kottke)
oh man this is pretty funny. if carl had written it it'd fit onto the back page of an industry magazine, which would tighten up the irony and get to the joke a little faster. but jack didn't do too bad.

it makes me even happier that i've never used blogger, and reminds me that i've never heard anybody really talk about how great they think evan is.
(Friday, July 26, 2002)

princeton official 'hacks' into yale website (nyt)
"The report stunned and puzzled other college officials. Some saw it as a disturbing sign of how frenzied the college admissions process has become, particularly at elite institutions like Yale and Princeton, which receive more than 10 applications for every place in their first-year classes."

Really, all it shows is that people still have a lot to learn about (a)online media, (b)privacy issues, and (c)the confluence of (a) and (b). I'd be more than happy to help them out, of course.
(Friday, July 26, 2002)

trying to avoid google (nyt)
"David Holtzman, editor in chief of GlobalPOV, a privacy Web site, said that the notion of privacy was 'undergoing a generational shift.' Those in their late 20's and 30's are going to feel the brunt of the transition, he said, because they grew up with more traditional concepts of privacy even as the details of their lives were being captured electronically.

"'It almost gives you a good reason to name your kid something bland,' Mr. Holtzman said. 'You are doing them a good favor by doing that.'"

I would figure that I have a fairly distinctive name, but it turns out there are a number of other men with my name floating around the web. One of them is the principal curator of Bermuda's Aquarium, Museum and Zoo. Cool!
(Thursday, July 25, 2002)

they grow up so quickly (observer)
"On a recent Friday evening at Tao, the cavernous Pan-Asian restaurant on 58th Street, Alexis (not her real name) met eight men before she got one menu. The men flirted with Alexis, and Alexis flirted back... It all seemed innocent: a bunch of ambitious, attractive New Yorkers having fun. Nobody had to know Alexis’ little secret: She’s 16."
(Thursday, July 25, 2002)

wiffle ball rules
who knew there were official rules to wiffle ball? this is pretty cool.
(Thursday, July 25, 2002)

messier (epsn magazine)
this is a couple of years old, but is yet another example of how one can learn a lot from sport.
(Thursday, July 25, 2002)

jpeg the dog
speaking of old school webmonkey goodness...
(Wednesday, July 24, 2002)

webmonkey's design tips, circa 1998
a lot of these hold up and are still very applicable. before you judge the tips, read them and absorb them. some are written with tongue firmly in cheek, but most are pretty good.
(Wednesday, July 24, 2002)

tufte's redesign of the pioneer plaque
putting the levitation trick on the plaque is pretty genius.
(Wednesday, July 24, 2002)

grad student deconstructs mexican menu (onion)
"Seeing this long list of traditional Mexican foods—burritos, tacos, tamales—with a price attached to each caused me to reflect on the means by which capitalist society consumes and subsumes ethnicity, turning tradition into mass-marketable 'product' bleached of its original 'authentic' identity," Rosenblatt said. "And yet, it is still marketed and sold by the dominant power structure in society as 'authentic' experience, informed by racist myths and projections of 'otherness' onto the blank canvas of the alien culture."
(Wednesday, July 24, 2002)

the onion tells it like it is, inadvertantly, again
"Family Upgrades To Shells & Cheese
MOBILE, AL— After years of eating regular Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, the Conroy family upgraded Monday to the higher-end Velveeta Shells & Cheese. 'We've finally arrived,' said wife Beverly Conroy while serving up a heaping bowl of the delicacy, made possible by husband Corey's 35-cent raise at the local tile factory. 'It's nothing but the finest processed instant foods for us from now on.' Pending sensible budgeting, the family hopes to move up from Hydrox cookies to Oreos by August."

How many thousands of families do you think actually have lives like this? It's got to be far too many. It makes me ill, actually.
(Wednesday, July 24, 2002)

underworld returns
new album (gatefold double vinyl, like beaucoup fish) coming out soon. yay! i wonder how the departure of darren emerson is going to change the group's sound.
(Wednesday, July 24, 2002)

make your own underworld shirt
buy one of four t-shirts with a pack of six sheets of iron-on transfers, and you too can make your very own completely unique underworld shirt. or shirts, plural.

absolutely fucking brilliant!
(Wednesday, July 24, 2002)

work daze (nyt magazine)
"Maybe the real curiosity is that so many of us would expect anything other than boredom from work. But that was a great promise of the 1990's boom: sure, we would have to give up the security the work world once offered, but we would participate in the creation of something new and better -- something presumably less boring... [B]oredom is apparently with us more than ever -- and especially in our supposedly revolutionized workplaces."
(Tuesday, July 23, 2002)

IDEO
they redesigned; i dunno when. but it's fabulous. i love this kind of clean, big photos design.

and that cd player for muji! i really love that!
(Tuesday, July 23, 2002)

the boston yankees (espn)
wow, a great article that sets the record straight regarding the curse of the bambino. which should really be called the curse of the commissioner. sounds like bud selig is well within baseball's tradition of meddling commissioners, unfortunately.
(Monday, July 22, 2002)

amazon light
this is very very cool. i may have to take a stab at something like this, running all links through givequick.
(Monday, July 22, 2002)

wolfenstein 5k
amazing. just amazing. and it's all javascript! seems like one could extrapolate this up to a decent-sized window in under 20k or so.

high score so far: 9370 (level 7)
(Monday, July 22, 2002)

nyc power plant explodes (msnbc)
one of the people on my team was driving into manhattan just as this happened. i can't imagine how nerve-racking it would be.
(Monday, July 22, 2002)

sportscasters (nyt magazine)
ah, finally, a paean to espn's sportscenter, and sportscasters in general.
(Sunday, July 21, 2002)

toronto (nyt)
sigh. i loved toronto in the snow, and keep wanting to go back when it's green and warm(ish). the film festival beckons.
(Sunday, July 21, 2002)

halberstam and teddy ballgame (espn)
"The night before I went to see him, I had gone to a dinner party among the powerful in New York -- nothing but Wall Street and media heavies where the usual degree of one-upmanship was in play. I had bided my time in terms of ego games, but then had announced late in the evening, near coffee, that I was going to interview Ted Williams the next day. For a wonderful half-hour, I owned the room, and I could easily have auctioned off the job as my assistant to all sorts of Wall Street tycoons who were quite willing to come along for the occasion."
(Friday, July 19, 2002)

dow down more than 400 (nyt)
"The global decline in stocks is adding to fears that consumer confidence will be broken and consumer spending reined in, undermining economic recoveries here and abroad."

My confidence broke and my spending was reined in a while ago.

I just looked at CNBC and saw how low the Dow has fallen, and felt like puking. Instead I just said, "Oh man, we are fucked."
(Friday, July 19, 2002)

the five types of cell phone user (la times)
"'On an elevated train in Chicago, a young man talks on a [cell phone] in some style,' [Sadie] Plant says in her [Motorola] report, which is titled, 'On the Mobile.'

"'He's discussing an important deal while at the same time trying to impress a group of girls in the same part of the train. It all goes well until disaster strikes: His phone [rings] and interrupts him in midsentence, and his fictional deal is exposed.'"

The only time I miss having a cell phone is when I'm travelling. Otherwise I could care less. Not having my Palm, though, has really sucked.
(Thursday, July 18, 2002)

ipod now works with windows
now if they'd just port itunes, too.

i figure wen i can afford it i'll have an imac as my guest room entertainment center, doubling as the mp3 server for the apartment's wireless network (and an ipod). that's the plan, at least.
(Wednesday, July 17, 2002)

panini (nyt)
yum! i wouldn't have thought of using my waffle iron as a sandwich press (i don't have the ridged plates to insert, but the regular waffle pattern should work fine). and 'ino is indeed a fabulous place to have a panini and a glass of wine before going out in new york.

the headline, referencing grilled cheese, spurred my memory of the best grilled cheese sandwich i've ever had. at cafe lilianne in san francisco (near 16th and utah) they make a grilled cheese panini that has avocado in it. it adds just enough exoticism to be absolutely wonderful. so go get one!
(Wednesday, July 17, 2002)

how to walk in nyc (nyt)
"Fred Kent, president of the Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit group that advises communities on public planning, sees the walking crisis as part of a much larger problem. 'I think it is all part of this trend away from being comfortable as a pedestrian,' he said. American cities and American life in general is so focused on the car, he said, that 'we are becoming enormously obese, because we have few opportunities to walk and very few opportunities to exercise.'

"Mr. Kent says walkers should not be mad at one another, for they have a common enemy. 'They are in this situation by manipulation,' he said. 'We have developed rules for pedestrian traffic to enhance car traffic rather than traffic rules that would benefit pedestrians.'"
(Tuesday, July 16, 2002)

dubya's harken smoking memo? (ap via salon)
"Two and a half months before George W. Bush sold his stock in a struggling Texas energy company where he was a director, he signed a letter promising to hold onto the shares for at least six months, internal company documents show."

Whoops!
(Tuesday, July 16, 2002)

dubya gets another free pass from the media (salon)
"Why? Why was a press that for years flogged the dead horse of Whitewater so indifferent to a much bigger, fresher story? Why didn't it probe, even if only to discountenance the allegations [surrounding Bush's Harken sales]?

"Three reasons suggest themselves, none of them edifying. The 2000 election was notorious for the way beat reporters got themselves trapped in a narrative that was throughout impervious to real news: the narrative that Gore was a braggart and a poseur and Bush was an amiable Forrest Gump. Anything that did not fit the preconceived pattern had little chance of seeing ink or breathing air. Throughout the entire campaign, the political reporters and their editors were typically less concerned with the integrity of Bush than Gore's decision to wear earth tones."

Okay, let's talk some more about the "liberal media" and its bias. Apparently the media is either so scared of being labeled as "liberal" that it's become a tool of the right wing, or it was such a tool all along.
(Tuesday, July 16, 2002)

dial-a-song
i remember calling dial-a-song a few times in college, listening to a tmbg track right before going to sleep. the site isn't as intimate as that, but it's still really nice. tmbg's graphic look right now is really fabulous.
(Tuesday, July 16, 2002)

selig sued under rico (nyt)
Wow, a baseball commissioner is being sued under the federal racketeering act. There seems to be an element of sour grapes in this, but it would be great to see Selig go down hard.
(Tuesday, July 16, 2002)

google lava lamp
for the geek who already has everything in his cube branded, google will sell you a lava lamp with the google logo on it. was this an internal giveaway?
(Monday, July 15, 2002)

how to fix the warriors (espn)
"The team hasn't been to the playoffs since the 1993-94 season. They haven't been to the Western Conference Finals since the 1975-76 season. From an player-coaching dispute to contract wrangling, draft bungling and a rather ugly choking incident, the Warriors rarely get a break. Jinxed? Haunted? Cursed? It's hard to argue with the facts."
...[expurgated because it's just too sad to read]...
"You can't deliberately be that bad. Someone around the Warriors has some bad ju-ju."

The Warriors have made so many missteps for so many years, and you just know that not one of these five recommendations has a chance in hell of happening.
(Monday, July 15, 2002)

new sony digital stereo
I want this. More accurately, I want the second or third version of this, with more capacity and Gracenote title verification, even for all of my vinyl. This seems like it could potentially be a solid alternative to the B&O "yuppie boombox" stereo.
(Friday, July 12, 2002)

nhl gms = trading spaces designers (espn)
oh, this is funny. hockey and trading spaces! two great tastes that taste great together!
(Friday, July 12, 2002)

economist cities guide
not bad; a little difficult to navigate, but a nice summary of what's happening culturally in key cities worldwide.
(Wednesday, July 10, 2002)

"Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" (John Updike, 1960)
"Gods do not answer letters."
(Wednesday, July 10, 2002)

free-spending illness (new york)
"Although money has always been an important motif in psychotherapy, thinking about how to treat money problems has begun to change in recent years. Such problems had always been considered secondary symptoms of neurotic conflicts or underlying mental illnesses, such as bipolar disease. However, clinicians have observed that money pathology, like alcoholism, has a tendency to take on a life of its own, and become a dominant defining condition. The DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) may include 'compulsive shopping' in its next edition, in a section on impulse-control disorders, such as compulsive gambling and kleptomania. Such an inclusion would make it an official, insurance-covered psychiatric disorder."
...
"...Only one third of households making more than $100,000 a year (and 40 percent making $50,000 to $100,000) agree with the statement 'I can afford to buy everything I really need.'"

I remember reading once that regardless of income group, Americans always want to have double the amount of money they currently have. Whether you make $15k or $150k, you probably want twice that. Which is interesting.

Money is such a loaded topic. I don't think it's appropriate for me to comment too much on my own situation or feelings about money here, partly because I haven't figured them out yet.
(Wednesday, July 10, 2002)

michael jackson says the music industry labeled him a "freak" (mtv)
well, um, yeah. he is one, after all.
(Wednesday, July 10, 2002)

see the sox at yankee stadium
oh, this is cool. of course i entered.
(Tuesday, July 9, 2002)

flaws in emergency plan exposed the hard way (nyt)
this is just sad. another long list of little things that add up to a lot of dead people who didn't need to be. another example of how isolated fiefdoms do not contribute to the greater good. grrr.
(Tuesday, July 9, 2002)

"a brilliant mistake" (tsunami, 1997)
if you don't own this you need to buy it right now. this is the millionth time i've said it, so just spend the money. you won't regret it.
(Tuesday, July 9, 2002)

eitzel on eitzel
Eitzel writes, "I should be walking around with a 'Thank You' sign on my forehead. I am such a fucking lucky man. All these smart cool people like my music and I give them a fucking tantrum. I did this horrible show in Chapel Hill and some guy walks up to me and hands me a pile of about 20 new cd's. I feel bad because I know I don't deserve them - Can I pay them back with a bullshit performance like the one I gave? It just tears at my heart."

There's a lot more (midway down), and it tears me up to see him the way he was on this last tour. It would be great if he could let himself have an off night, or embrace the tribulations of touring. But then he wouldn't be Mark Eitzel anymore.

In any case, my desired response to his open letter is to give him a hug and tell him how much his music has meant to me, because it's meant a lot for some ten years now.
(Tuesday, July 9, 2002)

many with hiv don't know it (nyt)
"As Dr. Valdiserri called for a revival of the old passion that advocates expressed in the early years of the epidemic, scores of participants marched outside the conference hall. They called for increased spending and action to combat a virus that has killed 20 million people and infected an additional 40 million, mostly in Africa."

Combine this with the fact that "health officials reported that the spread of H.I.V in the United States continued to be disproportionately high among blacks," and we're in Big Issue territory. Why aren't more blacks in the health care system? Why isn't Africa on our radar for much of anything, ever? There was a big fuss over Mandela and South Africa, but the region's pretty much been abandoned by the west. (cf. Rwanda, Zaire, Congo, Zimbabwe, et al)
(Monday, July 8, 2002)

build your own foosball table
pretty cool. this sounds like a good project for when i finally have a game room.
(Wednesday, July 3, 2002)

AIDS about to explode (la times)
"More than 68 million people will die of AIDS in the next two decades unless massive intervention efforts are begun immediately, according to a grim new UNAIDS report issued Tuesday. ...
... 'It's clear to me we are only at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in historical terms,' [Dr. Peter Piot, the executive director of a joint United Nations program on AIDS and HIV] said."

Sub-Saharan Africa is being decimated by AIDS, and a recent New Yorker article predicted that India was on its way to a major outbreak.

The United States could probably pay for most of the world's prevention efforts by diverting the budget for space-based defense to AIDS prevention, but why would we want to do that? After all, there aren't any votes in Africa, right?
(Wednesday, July 3, 2002)

wi-fi takes root (bbj)
"Michael Oh, president and founder of an eight-person computer services company and reseller, has a completely different idea: Rather than charge consumers for wireless Internet access, businesses should sponsor wireless Internet access. His company, Tech Superpowers, is doing exactly that in its Newbury Street neighborhood. In perhaps the only example of a corporate-sponsored wi-fi network in the country, Oh and his employees built the Newbury Open Network (not to be confused with Newbury Networks), which provides free, high-speed Internet access to two restaurants on Newbury Street."

Seems to me that if an airline equipped their waiting areas with wi-fi, they could charge a couple dollars more for tickets and bring in some extra business travelers. We've got wireless in our offices, and it's wonderful. I can't wait to install it at home.
(Wednesday, July 3, 2002)

ergonomics back on the agenda (bbj)
"It's hard to imagine legislation going more precisely in the wrong direction," says Chris Tampio, director of employment policy for the National Association of Manufacturers. "One-size-fits-all mandates from Washington will only be effective in raising costs."

One of these days business is going to realize that sometimes spending some money results in a sizeable benefit to the bottom line. Keeping workers healthy should result in lower medical costs, less time lost to injury, and higher worker retention rates. How are those things not worth a bit of extra top line outlay?

It makes me want to shout!
(Wednesday, July 3, 2002)

ichiro's humidor (espn)
"Think about it," Ichiro said. "Those bats and gloves are not machine-made -- they are hand-made. If someone who makes a glove or bat sees their product thrown away they will be very sad about it. They feel invested in it. Hopefully the players will think of the people who made the equipment."

okay, i don't really care about baseball anymore, but reading about ichiro's respect for his equipment is just too touching, too expansive, not to mention it here.
(Monday, July 1, 2002)

Pierluigi Collina
The best, and most recognizable, referee in the world has his own website. He handled the Cup final very well yesterday.
(Monday, July 1, 2002)