March 2005 Archives

New Dylan book, by Greil Marcus, already in my shopping cart....

Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads

1:30-3:30pm Old Town School of Folk Music Panel event with Jon Langford (Waco Brothers, Mekons), Sally Timms (Mekons), Elizabeth Elmore (Reputation), Greg Kot (Chicago Tribune), and John Mead (Old Town School)

Publishers Weekly reviewed the book recently: “Marcus's engaging exegesis on the musical and cultural ramifications of Dylan's 1965 six-and-half-minute hit is not just a study of a popular song and a historic era, but an examination of the heroic status of the American visionary artist. Recorded when American popular music was 'like a running election,' Dylan's 'music of transformations' induced a conflicted, confused America to look at its social disasters of racism, drug abuse and Vietnam, Marcus says, while simultaneously permitting it to strip away its illusions and hope for a better future. Ostensibly about a rich young socialite's fall from grace, the song's lyrics are open to many interpretations, which may have helped make it such a phenomenon. Marcus displays a comprehensive knowledge of American popular and political history, tracing the song's roots back to Robert Johnson and Hank Williams and spotting its influence on such disparate artists as Frank Zappa, the Village People and various contestants on American Idol. Part scholarly discourse and part beatnik rambling, the book is chockfull of lively metaphors and includes 20 pages of studio outtake banter. Marcus successfully convinces readers that (in the words of hit songwriter Gerry Goffin), 'Dylan managed to do something that not one of us was able to do: put poetry in rock n' roll and just stand up there like a mensch and sing it.' ”.

{B12 recommended, Bob Dylan, Books}

EBay spends between 70-80 million

Online auction giant eBay today awarded it more than $70 million advertising account to Omnicom Group's BBDO Worldwide a day after it fired Omnicom's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Omnicom Group's BBDO said it has landed eBay's ad account without a review, just one day after the online auctioneer dismissed Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The client spends about $80 million annually on ads.

{Business}

in that both are L.I.N.O.s*, and should be ignored whenever possible. We actually wonder if the Washington Monthly staff is really just a front group for Scaife, or are just clueless LINO hacks, looking for controversy to increase their page counts.

Lindsay Beyerstein has the specifics-

Majikthise : Why pharmacist malpractice matters:


Why pharmacist malpractice matters

....
This is a political issue, but it's hardly trumped-up. The issue is not how many wingnut pharmacists are currently refusing to supply birth control but rather how many states permit them to do so and how many more jurisdictions may soon give their pharmacists the right to opt out of modern scientific medicine.

How is it that Osco Drug didn't fire the pharmacist in the Chicago Loop who refused to dispense contraceptives? or at the least forced him to adopt all the ensuing children? Or force him to march in opposition to capital punishment?

Tribune:

Nearly 100 people held a peaceful protest at lunchtime Tuesday outside a Loop drugstore where a pharmacist has refused to fill prescriptions for birth-control pills.

In a scenario reminiscent of the 1960s, protesters chanted, “What do we want? Access! When do we want it? Now!” and carried placards reading, “Your religion does not belong in my health care.”

Planned Parenthood, which organized the protest outside the Osco at State and Adams Streets, says the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act does not apply to pharmacists. That law says health-care providers cannot be held liable for withholding treatment that violates their personal beliefs.
... Sue Hofer of the State Department of Professional Regulation said she could not confirm that her agency had received complaints, adding, “To my knowledge we've not taken any disciplinary actions [against pharmacists] for refusing to dispense.”

Hofer declined to address directly whether the state believes pharmacists are covered under the Illinois law.

“I'm not an attorney,” she said. But she invited any citizen who feels a pharmacist has broken the law to file a complaint by phone, at 312-814-6910, or online at www.idfpr.com.

*(Liberals in Name Only)

{Chicago, Business, Current Affairs}

There should be a subset of the game googlewhacking (wherein one tries to find a word or word combo that leads to only one site). Instead, my variant would be that you look for a tag at flickr that only leads to one image.

Flickr: Photos tagged with logorrhea:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/logorrhea/

I sort of assumed that someone else would use the Flickr tag logorrhea, but I guess I was wrong.

{Business, Photos, Tech/Web}

--update
strangely enough, boing boing posted a link today to Airtight Interactive, a flickr tag search engine/cool tool...that

“lets you surf Flickr's 'tag space'.”

--update the second:
I suppose I'm not the first to think of flickrwhacker, though I did think of it independently. Shite, there goes my Nobel Prize in internet buzzwords.

Today is officially 'stare at spreadsheets until your eyes glaze' day, so this photo of a Chicago and Northwestern train bridge on W. Ohio near Kingsbury is somehow appropriate.

“Tamrac 603 Zoom Traveler 3 Forest Green” (Tamrac)

{Chicago, Personal, Photos}

Tags: Chicago, /Personal, /Photos

What a great word, appropriate to political speak and marketing blather, among other dialects. D calls this type of word/phrase NLP

paralipsis (par-uh-LIP-sis) noun, plural paralipses (-seez)

Drawing attention to something while claiming to be passing over it.

[From Late Latin paralipsis, from Greek paraleipsis (an omission), from paraleipein (to leave on one side), from para- (side) + leipein (to leave).]

Paralipsis is especially handy in politics to point out an opponent's faults. It typically involves these phrases:

• “not to mention”
• “to say nothing of”
• “I won't speak of”
• “leaving aside”

An example from Moby Dick: “We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here; how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare.”

from Word of the Day

{language}

A few spring snapshots. The weather has been spectacular in the way only possible in locales with a winter.

Apparently, a certain mother duck lays eggs on this buoy in the Chicago River every year, and every year as the ducklings hatch, they walk off the edge and die in the water. Yikes. She must belong to BoBo's world. I wasn't aware of this gruesome story; I just liked the Texas-ness floating in the Chicago River. Our house guest explained the story to us last night, we had to look closely to see the eggs.

Various and sundry Heads of Industry, from Chicago's Gilded Age (Montomery Ward, Marshall Field, et al), look out at the Merchandise Mart.

the Marshall Field head, soon to be renamed Macy's. Ahem.

click for larger versions, natch.

{Chicago, Personal, Photos}

Tags: Chicago, /Personal, /Photos

Not sure why but ecto cannot login to post this morning. Get an error message about “invalid Login”. Nothing has changed as far as I know. Hmmmm. Of course, I'm supposed to be working on real things at the moment.

Response:

Invalid login string

We have a friend who has believed this viral link to disease for years, interesting to note that she is not alone.

WSJ.com - Researchers Probe for Viral Link to Mental Illness:


Can viruses cause mental illness?


A growing number of studies are testing theories that viruses and other infectious agents may underlie some cases of psychiatric illnesses. The theory is that viruses and bacteria assaulting the immune system could also end up affecting the brain in such disorders as autism, depression and eating disorders.


Once considered marginal, this kind of research is gaining more acceptance in the wider scientific community.


Perhaps the greatest strides in this area of research are those linking obsessive-compulsive disorder and bacterial infections. Susan Swedo, a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, documented the sudden onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder or Tourette's syndrome in some children who got strep throat. Dr. Swedo, who has numerous studies under way, coined the term PANDAS, or pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections.
...

In a new government-funded study, Dr. Brown is looking at brain images of schizophrenic patients from his earlier study. He wants to see if there is a difference between the brains of patients whose mothers were exposed to flu during pregnancy and other schizophrenic patients whose mothers weren't.

Another scientist with several studies under way is Ian Lipkin, the Columbia scientist who identified West Nile virus as the cause of encephalitis in victims of a 1999 New York City outbreak. Dr. Lipkin's largest study looking at a link between virus and mental illness is a collaboration between Columbia and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. They are enrolling patients in a study of 100,000 women, partners and babies in Norway for six years to investigate many possible causes of autism spectrum disorders. Viruses are one area of investigation....
The research has given rise to hopes for new treatments. A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline PLC, for example, said that while the company isn't presently researching any applications of these theories, it is monitoring the research, and is particularly interested in inflammatory responses in the brain and the psychiatric consequences.

Advocates for the mentally ill hope that the research, by confirming that mental illness has biological roots, will help lessen the stigma still attached to it. The research on viruses, says David Fassler, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, “is having a positive impact on public awareness. But we still have a long way to go.”

{Business, Health}

WSJ.com - Study Criticizes Ads By Top U.S. Hospitals:
Many of the nation's top-ranked medical centers employ some of the same advertising techniques doctors often criticize drug companies for -- concealing risks and playing on fear, vanity and other emotions to attract patients, a study found.


The study of newspaper ads placed by 17 top-rated university medical centers highlights the conflict between serving public health and making money, the researchers said.


Some ads, especially those touting specific services, might create a sense of need in otherwise healthy patients and “seem to put the financial interests of the academic medical center ahead of the best interests of the patients,” they said.

The centers studied were on U.S. News & World Report's 2002 honor roll of the nation's best hospitals, including Johns Hopkins' medical center, Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Chicago Hospitals and Vanderbilt University's medical center. The study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.

“We do Botox!” one analyzed ad proclaims. Another depicts a spilled cup of coffee symbolizing a woman's heart attack -- potentially evoking fear in a tactic more commonly associated with pharmaceutical ads than respected hospitals, said lead author Robin Larson, a researcher at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt.

Of 122 ads designed to attract patients and published in newspapers in 2002, 21 promoted specific services, including Botox antiwrinkle injections and laser eye surgery. Only one of the 21 ads mentioned the risks. Sixty-two percent of the ads used an emotional appeal to attract patients. One third used slogans focusing on technology, fostering a misperception that high-tech medicine is always better, the researchers said.

“As a result, patients may be given false hopes and unrealistic expectations,” the researchers said.

Hospitals are caught in the middle between providing care to sick folk and making large enough profits in an increasingly cutthroat healthcare environment to pay for all those corporate salary bonuses. Ahh, American Capitalism.

{Health, Business}

I turned on the Chicago vs. Memphis game, which is playing on NBA Tv. Blacked out. Flipped around the dial through the usual suspects, and found the game being broadcast on Comcast. However, for some reason, the television commentary is absent. Wow! The crowd noise is still evident, as is the stadium announcer, just not the inanities of Johnny “Red” Kerr and his cronies (especially Wayne Larrivee but Tom Dore is pretty awful too). Kerr is ok, just clueless most of the time, but the other two schmoes are horrible, horrible announcers.

SI.com - Pro Basketball Boxscore:

If I could pay extra to get games that had a mike in the stands, and on the court, but didn't have a play by play commentary, I would pay gladly. I already shell out for the DirecTV pass, so I'd add a couple of dollars to turn their mike off. I sometimes turn all the game sounds off and just listen to music, but that takes away the crowd noise and squeak of sneakers.

Apparently, I'm not alone in my disgust with the slack-jawed-yokel Bulls announcers.

{Basketball, Chicago}

Sam Rockwell is a good actor, and this sounds like an interesting tale, if it isn't dumbed down, Hollywood style.

Netflix Shipped: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind:

Shipped on 03/28/05.

Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell) has it all -- a hot TV hit, "The Gong Show," and the love of a good woman (Drew Barrymore). But he's got one big secret: He's a CIA assassin who kills while purportedly escorting his game show winners on their vacation prizes. George Clooney directs and co-stars with Julia Roberts in this film based on the book of the same name, authored by the real-life Barris.

“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”

{Film, B12 recommended}

Looks like


Tiger

Mac OS X Missing Manual
>

{Macintosh, B12 recommended}

Technorati Tags: B12 recommended, Macintosh

Either pretentious twaddle, or fun philosophical moments. Not sure what to expect.

Shipped: What the #$*! Do We Know!?:

Shipped on 03/28/05.

The neurological processes and "quantum uncertainty" of life are explored in this film. Thrust from her mundane life into an Alice in Wonderland-like world, Amanda (Marlee Matlin) must develop a brand-new perception of the world and the people she interacts with. Interviews with various experts are interspersed throughout the film, which combines narrative, documentary and animation. Elaine Hendrix, John Ross Bowie and Armin Shimerman also star.





“What the Bleep Do We Know!?” (Betsy Chasse, Mark Vicente, William Arntz)

{B12 recommended, Film}

Something sapid would be quite satisfying right about now....

sapid: Dictionary.com Word of the Day:


sapid: having flavor, especially a strong pleasant flavor.

{language}

Puff piece on Ms. Garofalo, who certainly bolstered her “indie cred” during the 2004 election season. She'd probably be fun to have dinner with.

And Don't Even Get Her Started on the War:


Five months after the election, Janeane Garofalo has found her new life on the fledgling liberal network called Air America Radio.

{Business, Current Affairs}

Per my audioscrobbler update, this was the iTunes week that was for March 27, 2005.

{Personal, B12 recommended, Music}

Woke up this morning, made my espresso, and went to the elevator to go downstairs to pick up the newspapers, left in front of our condo building. Someone was crying in the elevator. I ran back in, and we called the elevator company, and then the fire department. Long story short, I brought the Chicago Fire Dept folks up the stair well, and they eventually pried out a hysterical Janina. She had been trapped for about an hour, and since it is Easter weekend, not many people are in our building.

Public thanks to the Chicago Fire Department folks!

Went back down the stairwell to get the paper (elevator car still stuck between floors), and the technician for the elevator company we have a service contract with was sitting in his van, smoking a cigarette, reading the paper. Thanks for nothing. We had just called them a week or two ago because the elevator was acting strangely, I guess it would have been too difficult to actually fix the damn thing.

{Chicago, Personal}

It isn't very funny, really, but we speculated as soon as we heard of this horrific event whether the kid was on Prozac. Apparently our black humor was accurate.

Family Wonders if Prozac Prompted School Shootings:


The family of the Minnesota teenager who killed nine people and then himself was left wondering about the drugs he was prescribed for his waves of depression.

...Friday, as Tammy Lussier prepared to bury Mr. Weise, who was her nephew, and her father, who was among those he killed, she found herself looking back over the last year, she said, when Mr. Weise began taking the antidepressant Prozac after a suicide attempt that Ms. Lussier described as a “cry for help.”

“They kept upping the dose for him,” she said, “and by the end, he was taking three of the 20 milligram pills a day. I can't help but think it was too much, that it must have set him off.”

Lee Cook, another relative of Mr. Weise, said his medication had increased a few weeks before the shootings on Monday.

...
Ms. Lussier, who lived with Mr. Weise in her mother's house on the Red Lake Indian reservation in far northern Minnesota, said she could not understand what else, aside from drugs, had changed to explain his sudden violence.

Since his suicide attempt and 72-hour hospitalization a year ago, Mr. Weise had seemed to be improving, she said, and he was receiving mental health counseling and a doctor's care at the medical center on the reservation.

Others in Red Lake said, however, that they had seen few signs of improvement in the dour, solitary boy.

Of course, one shouldn't read too much into isolated incidents, I'd be cautious prescribing anti-depressants to certain types of folks. And by the way, a big public thanks (for nothing) to the FDA for protecting the public. Wouldn't want to investigate such things, because the anti-depressant category is such a huge money maker for the FDA's corporate masters.

Though research has not linked antidepressants to acts of violence on others, several incidents have gained wide publicity.

In 1989, Joseph Wesbecker walked into a printing plant in Louisville, Ky., with a bag of guns and killed eight co-workers and himself. He was taking Prozac, which had recently been approved.

In 1999, a student involved in the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado had reportedly taken Luvox, an antidepressant similar to Prozac.

In 2001, Christopher Pittman killed his grandparents while taking Zoloft, another antidepressant similar to Prozac. His lawyers faulted the drug, but a jury in Charleston, S.C., convicted him of murder in February.

{Current Affairs, Health}

Tool notes, for future reference. I'd write a haiku, but I have to make it to the mailbox before 5 pm.....

rentzsch.com: fs_usage Intro:
Mac OS X's little-known fs_usage command.

fs_usage is a command line tool that displays file system activity. This is useful in a variety of circumstances. For example, a while back another friend was having problem with Eudora crashing.

link found via Gruber's interesting analysis of a Mac OS X.3.8 bug.

{Macintosh}

{Music, B12 recommended, Personal}

Another blast from the past, haven't seen this movie in twenty-some years. Have the soundtrack though....

Shipped: Repo Man:

Shipped on 03/24/05.

Lacking role models and a purpose, baby-faced delinquent Otto (Emilio Estevez) finds a code of honor and a higher calling when he hooks up with a band of contemporary "knights": the repo men. A "seasoned" auto repossessor (Harry Dean Stanton) shows Otto the ropes, and when a big reward is offered for an elusive 1964 Malibu, Otto dodges G-men, cops, religious kooks -- you name it -- in a frenzied quest for the car. Does his fate lie in its trunk?





Repo Man

{Film, B12 recommended, Personal}

Funny survey of Corporate Hate sites at Forbes. I get a lot of traffic from people searching for “NordicTrack Sucks” and “DHL Sucks”, but neither of these posts defines this site. I don't know what defines this site's philosophy, but that's a conversation for another hour.

Forbes.com: Top Corporate Hate Web Sites:
Sometimes it seems that shoddy products and atrocious customer service go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

But while your average disgruntled consumer simply vents their bile by bellowing at a bewildered service rep, a few go farther. Much farther. These perennially peeved people build--and obsessively maintain--sites devoted exclusively to complaining about their least favorite corporations.

To honor these quixotic champions, we spent hours trawling the Web looking for the very best corporate hate sites. After checking out more than 100 sites with names like dontflycontinentalairlines.com and fordlemon.com, we rated the best of them on a scale from one to five in six different categories: ease of use, frequency of updates, number of posts, hostility level (angrier is better), relevance, and entertainment value (Hey! Angry and funny!).

The following nine sites--there were ten, but one went unexpectedly dark during the editing of this story--are the crème de la crème of online rage. Note that we substantially cleaned up some of the posts, editing out odd capitalization schemes, iffy grammar and plain incoherence. Apparently blinding anger does not go hand in hand with dotting your i's and crossing your t's.

{Tech/Web, Business}

New Dual layer DVD burner arrived today, from my trusty OWC fellows....

OWC Mercury Pro DVR-109 DL DVD-/+ R/RW (up to 16X) ;CD-R/RW(up to 40X) Oxford911 FireWire & USB 2 Solution w/Dantz Retrospect Express, NTI DragonBurn, 5 Pieces DVD-R 8X Media in Jewel, 25 Pieces 80Min CD-R Media. 1yr OWC Warranty. Works with iDVD 5!

rock and roll

{B12 recommended, Macintosh, Personal}

Flickr is acting up again, so I'll post this photo/painting here.
I was trying to make photos that were paintable, and ended up with this photo of Lake Michigan that looked more like a painting, untouched, than anything I was going to paint with my hands made all of stone.

click for larger version. If you really want to see it, you have to look at the matte paper print

I'm not a bad photographer, but I suck as a painter, as of right now. The brush doesn't do what my brain tells it to, and I get frustrated by the leaden, clunky images that end up smeared over my canvas. So, I'm switching gears for a while and photoshopping my photos within an inch of their lives, printing on heavy matte paper via my Epson photo printer, then painting over them. I've only done a few, but it's a hell of a lot more fun. I still need to grasp color theory, or in actuality, need to progress past over analyzing my color choices, but experience is the best teacher.

I'll post a few scans once the paint finishes drying.

{Personal, Arts}

Tags: Arts, /Personal

Hey, I have an idea. How about stop trying to emulate Fox, and try something different instead? How about being more of a news gathering organization and less of a sleazy tabloid network? How about sucking less? How about actually questioning some assertions made by the White House and other Powers-that-be? I'm a prime demographic, and I've watched CNN less than an hour in the last 3 years. Why? because there isn't any news there, so why waste my time watching the bubble-heads blather?

CNN Seeks New Ways to Battle Fox News:
Jonathan Klein, the new president of CNN, wants to increase the amount of time viewers spend watching the network by an average of six minutes a year.

more NYT

{Business, Current Affairs}

Who knew we even still had a Constitution? I thought everything got overturned, except for the 2nd one (gun ownership to protect against the British king).

Judge's Ban Overruled:
A judge violated the First Amendment when he barred reporters from disclosing the names of jurors in the trial of a former Wall Street banker.

{Current Affairs}

I have a little chat with Bob Newhart, a discussion really, the contents of which will remain confidential, prior to browsing the Chicago Garden show at Navy Pier.

We also didn't go to the Billy Goat, made famous by Saturday Night Live. The only Billy Goat worth visiting, imho, is the one on underground Wacker and Michigan, or thereabouts. There the grease on the walls has character, elsewhere, it's just window dressing....

I just love the logic of this statement, by a major anti-virus company. In other words, buy our products to protect yourself from attacks which might come, at some time in the future. Uhh, ok. Where do I sign up?

Mac OS X in hackers' crosshairs, report says | CNET News.com:


In its seventh semiannual Internet Security Threat Report, Symantec said that over the past year, security researchers had discovered at least 37 serious vulnerabilities in the Mac OS X system. The company said that as Apple increases its market share with new low-cost products such as the Mac Mini, its user base is likely to come under increasing attack.

I call bullshit.

I also wonder about these so-called 37 serious vulnerabilities named by Symantec. What are they? And how does that number stack up against the numbers of serious vulnerabilities in Windows XP?

{Business, Macintosh}

Full instructions are here:

The Mike Matas Blog: How to make a Life Poster:


Make a new iPhoto Album. Fill it with the 98 photos you want in your poster. Try to pick photos with lots of different colors. If you pick all indoor florescent light photos your poster is going to look like crap.

but I had never thought of using iPhoto to make a poster collage. Have to try it out. Maybe of a smattering of 2004 photos. Will post my results when I get to it.

{Macintosh}

This photo is probably one of the most recognized photos of an original bluesman. Even people who don't know much about the blues know this photo.

“King of the Delta Blues” (Robert Johnson)

WSJ.com - Blues Rift: Snapshots Of a Music Legend Lead to Tug of War:
n about 1935, Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson mounted a stool at Memphis's Hooks Brothers Photography studio, picked up his Gibson L-1 guitar, tipped his fedora and gazed into a camera lens.


Nearly four decades later, Mr. Johnson's half-sister dug the resulting photo out of a cedar chest to show to a dogged blues historian who had tracked her down. The trunk she opened that afternoon in 1973 has since turned into a Pandora's box.


That now-famous photograph and another one that was buried in the chest have become the subjects of a convoluted legal tug of war between the blues sleuth and relatives of the legendary musician, who died penniless and without a will in 1938. At stake: Who is the rightful owner of the iconic images, the only known photographs of the legendary musician, and who holds their lucrative copyrights?


The dispute is the final chapter in an epic legal struggle, now entering its 15th year, over Mr. Johnson's legacy. Earlier, a dramatic trial elevated a sole heir from a handful of contenders, entitling a once-poor truck driver to share in the lucrative rights to Mr. Johnson's music. Now the dispute over the photos is proving just as tangled, thrusting the blues historian and his business dealings into the spotlight.

Robert Johnson

{Music, Photos}

{Music, Photos}

Jesus H. What will they think of next?

About Safari International Domain Name support:


The Issue


Safari can display Unicode characters in URLs, allowing you to access foreign language websites using their native language. For example, you could enter the Japanese language URL “宝島.jp” to visit the website instead of using the Latin alphabet that represents that domain name to get there.


However, lookalike characters could be used to make users believe that they are viewing a different site than what they actually are. For example, the Cyrillic letter “a” could be used in place of the Latin letter “a,” making it difficult for a user to tell if they are at “www.apple.com” or a malicious imposter website that's designed to look like the real one. These sites can be used to collect account numbers, passwords, and other personal information. This can affect any web browser with support for International Domain Names. Security Update 2005-003 addresses this issue.


The Solution


Security Update 2005-003 provides a user-editable list of scripts that are allowed to be displayed natively in domain names. The default list does not include Latin lookalike scripts (Cherokee, Cyrillic, and Greek) that could be used to trick users into navigating to malicious sites.

{Macintosh}

Edgar Watson Howe:
“A poem is no place for an idea.”

{Quotables}

Interesting, organic rooftop gardening is a much better way to spend ones day rather than begging for change on the Wells Street bridge.

Pacific Gardens leaders hope to begin building the new mission this summer. The Chicago Plan Commission approved rezoning the site at 527 W. 14th Pl. from manufacturing use to commercial use in late February. City Council approval is expected in April.

Designed by Stanley Tigerman of Chicago-based Tigerman McCurry Architects, several of the nearly 1,000-bed building's green technology features set it apart from other missions for homeless people throughout the nation. “I think people other than the homeless will come to see this building for its design,” said Ald. Bernard Stone (50th) told fellow plan commissioners.

Tigerman, who discounted his services to design the building, according to Phillip Snelling one of a team of attorneys representing the Pacific Gardens Mission on the project, is particularly interested in applying architectural design to solving social problems.

“It is not just housing for homeless people, it is housing designed to reintegrate them back into society, with green elements that will be uplifting for people on the bottom of the rungs of society,” Snelling said in an interview last week. He estimates the building will cost about $27 million.

An atrium at the center of the 135,000-square-foot building will infuse light and boost air circulation and provide an internal landscaped respite for the homeless who stay at the mission during summer months, according to David McCarrell, president of the Pacific Gardens Mission.

A 24,000-square-foot, two-tiered, rooftop greenhouse where the mission's kitchen will get its organic vegetables is a particular highlight of the new building. “We will grow organic vegetables to be used in our kitchens, and possibly whatever we don't use could be sold,” McCarrell said in an interview last week. “But the big thing is that homeless people who want to can work in that greenhouse, can use their hands and learn how things grow. We will have people up there that know something about [growing organic vegetables].”

A 10,000-square-foot rooftop photovoltaic cell unit will provide the building's heated water. A chapel, medical clinic, 640-seat auditorium, kitchen, and 620-seat dining facility will be on the ground level.

{Business, Chicago}

Bush's Re-election Lifts Circulation at Liberal Magazines:
Sheepish though they may be about profiting from George Bush's re-election, some liberal magazines have seen subscriptions rise during the recent political season.
“We had a huge spike in orders beginning the day after the election,” said Art Stupar, vice president for circulation at The Nation, which comes out weekly. “In fact, our Web site, in the week following the election, generated 2,600 subscriptions.” Typically, The Nation gets no more than 500 subscriptions a week through its Web site, he said.

Overall subscriptions to The Nation reached 184,000 at the end of December, up 24,000 from the previous year; they have doubled since 2000, with a spurt in 2003, when the war in Iraq got under way. “You could say that all the way through, for four years, we've benefited from the follies of the Bush administration,” Mr. Stupar said.

and the basis for Rethuglican values, pithy version:

The National Review had a 20 percent jump in subscriptions last year, closing out 2004 with 173,815 subscribers.

But if their man won, how do publishers on the right understand the boom? “Hate sells,” quipped Jack Fowler, associate publisher at The National Review.

{Current Affairs, Business}

So, apparently, Yahoo has thrown mega-dollars at Flickr. Good for Flickr, I suppose. I just hope that Flickr doesn't lose what makes it an interesting site. I also like this quote:

FlickrBlog


I liked Flickr BEFORE you even heard of it!


You shall be recognized for your discerning taste in web sites!! I bet you also liked the Flaming Lips before they appeared on Beverly Hills 90210, and for that we salute you. Pro account holders will get super mega bonuses, to be announced soon.

More here

Cool. I'm waiting for those super mega bonuses. My flickr photos are here, if you're curious....

{Photos, Business, Tech/Web}

Follow up, via the WSJ

WSJ.com - Yahoo Acquires Flickr Creator:


Yahoo Acquires Flickr Creator

Yahoo Inc. has acquired Canada's Ludicorp Research & Development Ltd., creator of the popular photo sharing Web site Flickr.


The long-rumored deal, announced today by Yahoo, could further its push to beef up photo and community aspects of the Sunnyvale, Calif. company's Web site. Consumers upload digital photos to Flickr, where they can then share them with other individuals, groups of people, or the public. The site has won kudos for letting users attach notes and other identifying information to photos, making them more easily searchable.
... People familiar with the matter had previously said than any purchase of closely-held Ludicorp would likely be for well less than $50 million.


Yahoo said Flickr would continue to operate as a standalone Web site. In addition, “Yahoo Photos will get a lot of Flickr features,” a Ludicorp executive wrote on Flickr's Web site, confirming the deal. Yahoo last week announced its planned release of “Yahoo 360,” a free service which will allow Yahoo users to designate groups of friends and share content, including photo albums.

I'll give it to Uncle Tom: he does have good taste. The albums on this list that I don't own are going on my Amazon Wishlist (and it is my birthday soon.....)

The Observer | OMM | 'It's perfect madness':
In the first of an occasional series in which the greatest recording artists reveal their favourite records, Tom Waits writes about his 20 most cherished albums of all time. So for the lowdown on Zappa, as above, and Bill Hicks, step right up...

slightly annotated list after the jump....

{Music, B12 recommended}

There are just so many jokes waiting to happen here, my fingers can't even type them. Regardless, if 76% of drug users are gainfully employed, what does that imply for how easy it is to function and still use illicit substances (presumably not at work)? Seems like a fairly weak argument, doesn't it? And the remaining 24% of unemployed drug users, were they fired for not being able to pee in the cup? Or for other reasons unrelated to job performance?

Drug War propaganda (click for larger version)

{Current Affairs}

I'm curious as to why this isn't bigger news. Fraud, waste, misleading reports, wasting taxpayer money to line corporate coffers. Can't we initiate impeachment proceedings yet? Just because the Congress, by and large (both Rethuglicans and Corpocrats), is filled with corrupt wearers of three-thousand dollar suits doesn't mean that a nation of voters wouldn't want a little trial, cleaning the air, as it were. Jes sayin'.

Now You See It: An Audit of KBR:
There are new questions about how the Pentagon, at Halliburton's suggestion, chose the items it edited out of an audit of Kellogg, Brown & Root.

{Current Affairs}

Finally looks like some movement in the promised development in the current Union Pacific parking garage. The signs have been up for maybe 2 years, promising 'coming soon'. We live in sort of a canyon between the loop/downtown, and everything west of Halsted. There aren't really many retail stores, or restaurants less than 6 blocks away. Meiji is a great addition (get Maki made with cucumber instead of rice, damn that's delectable), but one cannot eat sushi every day, even if it is delicious.

One new commercial development is bound to make the West Loop more appetizing to home buyers as well as office workers.

MetraMarket, a $47 million project of U.S. Equities Realty and Metra, will transform the area north of the Ogilvie Transportation Center (formerly the Chicago & North Western Station) into a mix of restaurants, retail and a “French-type marketplace,” according to Bob Wislow, chairman of Chicago-based U.S. Equities.

Planned since 2001, construction is scheduled to start by year-end with the businesses opening in stages in the fall of 2006. It is designed by OWP&P Architects, Chicago.

You might ask yourself: Isn't this area already served by the restaurants in Greektown on Halsted Street or those along Randolph Street? The answer is that Greektown is west of the Kennedy Expressway and so are most of the Randolph Street restaurants. And the restaurants of the Loop are east of the Chicago River. The Kennedy and river serve as neighborhood definers and barriers.

MetraMarket will close what Wislow called a “hole” and a “wall between two incredibly developing parts of the city -- east of the facility, the office development and tremendous conversions of lofts along Canal Street and north, and the huge development on the west side of the train tracks,” where five new office buildings have gone up “in addition to an amazing” upswing in residential, Wislow said

Tribune's Wayne Faulkner

{Chicago}

The City of Chicago is finally addressing some of the outdated or poorly implemented pedestrian bridges. Of course, the key sentence of this press release is the last; the city hopes to begin construction sometime in the next ten years. Ouch.

North Avenue Bridge Design Chosen in Chicago:
PSA-Dewberry’s lead designer, Christopher Frye, submitted a scheme for a forward-looking structure—notably different from the existing bridge—that will serve as a distinctive gateway to the city for visitors approaching downtown Chicago along Lake Shore Drive from the north. The bridge will provide a vital link between Lincoln Park and the popular North Avenue Beach, transitioning as an integral park element from the expansive green space to the sandy shorefront.

A series of low terraces set at the eastern base of the bridge along North Avenue Beach will serve as a gathering area for bikers and pedestrians. The bridge is designed as a highly sculptural structure that will work harmoniously with nature. The path of the bridge and its canopy are shaped to track the movement of the sun as it rises over Lake Michigan and sets below the western skyline of the city.

A trellis, composed of a series of reflective metal louvers and photovoltaic panels, will create a self-sustaining “sail” that will provide energy for the bridge’s lighting, effectively becoming a beacon for this gateway into the city at night.

The span’s superstructure across Lake Shore Drive will be constructed of precast concrete sections. Cast-in-place concrete, allowing for sculptural shaping, will be used at the lakeside base. Designers noted that the monolithic nature of concrete was appropriate to the shore’s sand dunes, while the airy trellis will allude to the grasses growing within the sand along the lake’s edge.

The design competition was sponsored by the Chicago Department of Transportation. The city anticipates that construction will begin later in this decade.

{Music, B12 recommended}

Perhaps all the yeast has gone to my head, but this song is reverberating at this moment....

Lester Bangs on “Astral Weeks”:


“Cyprus Avenue” from Astral Weeks. After going through all the verses, he drives the song, the band, and himself to a finish which has since become one of his trademarks and one of the all-time classic rock 'n' roll set-closers. With consumate dynamics that allow him to snap from indescribably eccentric throwaway phrasing to sheer passion in the very next breath he brings the music surging up through crescendo after crescendo, stopping and starting and stopping and starting the song again and again, imposing long maniacal silences like giant question marks between the stops and starts and ruling the room through sheer tension, building to a shout of “It's too late to stop now!,” and just when you think it's all going to surge over the top, he cuts it off stone cold dead, the hollow of a murdered explosion, throws the microphone down and stalks off the stage. It is truly one of the most perverse things I have ever seen a performer do in my life. And, of course, it's sensational: our guts are knotted up, we're crazed and clawing for more, but we damn well know we've seen and felt something.

1974, a late night network TV rock concert: Van and his band come out, strike a few shimmering chords, and for about ten minutes he lingers over the words “Way over yonder in the clear blue sky / Where flamingos fly.” No other lyrics. I don't think any instrumental solos. Just those words, repeated slowly again and again, distended, permutated, turned into scat, suspended in space and then scattered to the winds, muttered like a mantra till they turn into nonsense syllables, then back into the same soaring image as time seems to stop entirely. He stands there with eyes closed, singing, transported, while the band poises quivering over great open-tuned deep blue gulfs of their own.

Astral Weeks

and why aren't there contemporary music critics who write with Lester Bangs style? Is it that difficult to become passionate?

{B12 recommended, Personal}

As someone with plenty of Irish DNA intermingled in my slipstream, and plenty of Planxty tunes memorized, it is my solemn duty to explain why I've imbibed several fluid ounces of Jameson's today, with Guinness chasers. Maybe not.

Suffice it to say that vomiting on public streets is not really an Irish tradition worth emulating, nor is public pugilism honoring the great pagan St. Patrick. Those who choose to besmirch Ireland and Irishness by embarrassing themselves should not be allowed to stand for the whole of our sphere; Joyce, Yeats, Pogues, et al. If my meanings are not clear, blame that shamrock jammed in your ear.

Now, pour me another.

shameless commercialism of great Irish music, well played

{Personal}

In two US studies, doctors have found that 15 minutes of laughter a day is good for the vascular system. They found that the blood flowed more freely in 9 out of 10 people while they were laughing, with average blood flow increasing some 22 percent. The physical benefits of laughing were similar to those people get when exercising, without the aches and pains. But -- we're not off the hook -- doctors say that we should continue to exercise at least three times a week. (story)

Quote: “Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.” -- Norman Cousins

{Health, Oddities}

People have been yelling, “Freebird” at shows for years, at least since the late 80's, if not earlier. Must get tiresome for the musicians, especially if they don't have a sense of humor, or have an expanded sense of humor, like Bill Hicks in his memorable put-down of Freebird hecklers....

WSJ.com - Rock's Oldest Joke: Yelling 'Freebird!' In a Crowded Theater:
One recent Tuesday night at New York's Bowery Ballroom, the Crimea had just finished its second song. The Welsh quintet's first song had gone over fairly well, the second less so, and singer/guitarist Davey MacManus looked out at the still-gathering crowd.


Then, from somewhere in the darkness came the cry, “Freebird!”


It made this night like so many other rock 'n' roll nights in America.

Somebody is always yelling out the title. “I don't know that I've ever seen a show where it hasn't happened,” says Bill Davis of the veteran country-punk band Dash Rip Rock.

“It's just the most astonishing phenomenon,” says Mike Doughty, the former front man of the “deep slacker jazz” band Soul Coughing, adding that “these kids, they can't be listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

Yelling “Freebird!” has been a rock cliché for years, guaranteed to elicit laughs from drunks and scorn from music fans who have long since tired of the joke. And it has spread beyond music, prompting the Chicago White Sox organist to add the song to her repertoire and inspiring a greeting card in which a drunk holding a lighter hollers “Freebird!” at wedding musicians.

Bands mostly just ignore the taunt.

{Music, Oddities}

Resetting AirPort Express:
How to perform a hard reset

If your AirPort Express stops responding, you may need to hard reset it. You can then restore settings from a saved profile or start all over with the AirPort Express Assistant (Windows), AirPort Setup Assistant 4.1 or later (Macintosh), or AirPort Admin Utility (either platform).

Important:
Hard resetting AirPort Express erases all settings other than saved profiles. The settings erased include Access Control and RADIUS settings. AirPort Express must be connected to power during this process.
The reset steps vary slightly depending on whether the version of firmware installed on AirPort Express is 6.1.1 or later (downloadable here), or earlier than 6.1.1.


For 6.1.1 or later

Push and hold the reset button.
Continue holding it until you see the status light (LED) start to flash rapidly, which should happen after about five seconds.
Release the button, and AirPort Express will reset.

{Macintosh}

My site traffic has been pretty steady since I moved to movabletype. However, my google earnings have gone up since I last looked at them.

In February, Google ads were worth over $15 or 56 cents a day. This doesn't mean that I can retire to the Bahamas quite yet, but it does pay for my hosting costs. Yayyyy. Theoretically, that is, since Google doesn't actually send money until it adds up to $100 dollars.

Google's new ToS: Now you can say how much you make:
“Google updated its AdSense TOS and now lets its affiliates discuss what they make:

You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. 'Google Confidential Information' includes without limitation: (a) all Google software, technology, programming, specifications, materials, guidelines and documentation relating to the Program; (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google; and (c) any other information designated in writing by Google as 'Confidential' or an equivalent designation. However, You may accurately disclose the amount of Googleâ's gross payments to You pursuant to the Program.

(Thanks, Glenn!)

{Site Notes, Business, Tech/Web}

In brief:

Valassis answers probe :
The FTC refused to comment Tuesday, but Valassis said the agency is looking into whether it and its key rival, News America Marketing, colluded to set prices and divide up customers in the market for the colorful ads and coupons inserted into Sunday newspapers, a product known as free-standing inserts, or FSI.

Valassis pioneered the Sunday inserts industry and for a time was by far the major player in the market. FSI revenues made up 47 percent of Valassis' 2004 revenues. But in recent years News America Marketing, a subsidiary of News Corp., the giant media company founded by mogul Rupert Murdoch, has battled Valassis for dominance of the FSI market. Valassis has about a 46-percent market share, News America about 54 percent.

MCA Chicago - Upcoming Exhibitions:
John Jasperse Company
CALIFORNIA
Friday, March 18 and Saturday, March 19, 7:30 pm
Sunday, March 20, 3 pm
Tickets $22, MCA members $18

This intriguing new work by one of the most acclaimed young American choreographers challenges how we focus our perceptions and hopes. John Jasperse returns to the MCA with a layered and suggestive dance that shifts between chaos and order, set amidst a massive floating sculpture by Chicago based architect Ammar Eloueini and includes music by Jonathan Bepler. Using California as a state of mind defined by both promise and crisis— the gold rush and the dot-com bust, the land of plenty and of fault lines— he delves into what it means when things go wrong, and when what we expect to happen, doesn’t.

Land of sunshine, starlets, and silicone. If these are the only things you picture when you think of California, you should check out the John Japserse Company's production CALIFORNIA at the MCA Theater. Through amazing experimental dance, Jasperse presents the fact and the fiction, the life and the lie that is the Golden State. Internationally celebrated choreographer John Jasperse returns to the MCA with a new dance inspired by California, the mythical American Shangri-la defined both by promise and crisis. Underneath a massive floating sculpture by Chicago-based architect Ammar Eloueini, Jonathan Bepler (composer of Matthew Barney's Cremaster films) and his ensemble perform live onstage with four grand pianos and special sound effects

{Arts, Chicago}

I don't know what it's called, but I'm drinking an evening cocktail with

• Tequila (pure blue agave, because otherwise you're drinking grain liquor mixed with tequila, and who wants that?)
• Pomegranate juice
• Blueberry juice
• Cointreau.

Shaken over ice cubes, and slowly, luxuriously sipped. Mmmmmmm.

and parenthetical note, if we had to live in Arlington Heights, or nearby, I'd be suicidal. What a wasteland. My S.A.D. is bad enough, somewhat palliated by the energy of an urban environment; if we lived out in the 'burbs, I don't know how I'd get through the winter.

You scored as Buddhism. Your beliefs most closely resemble those of Buddhism. Do more research on Buddhism and possibly consider becoming Buddhist, if you are not already. In Buddhism, there are Four Noble Truths: (1) Life is suffering. (2) All suffering is caused by ignorance of the nature of reality and the craving, attachment, and grasping that result from such ignorance. (3) Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance and attachment. (4) The path to the suppression of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right-mindedness, and right contemplation. These eight are usually divided into three categories that base the Buddhist faith: morality, wisdom, and samadhi, or concentration. In Buddhism, there is no hierarchy, nor caste system; the Buddha taught that one's spiritual worth is not based on birth. Buddhism 75% atheism 63% Paganism 63% Islam 58% Satanism 58% agnosticism 54% Christianity 46% Hinduism 46% Judaism 38% Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

Tags: Personal, /quiz

My aunt honoria is looking to get her work out to galleries, take a look

honoria in ciberspazio:


In fact, I will trade a nude painting (or flowers, even nasturtiums) for gallery leads that you suggest, thank you.

Read more about her project here

{Personal, Arts, B12 recommended}

What a great idea! My credit data should only be available to me, and to whomever I specifically authorize. Of course, many businesses depend upon the sale or perusal of my data, but too bad. Why should credit card companies be able to ping my credit report weekly, just to send me credit card offers I don't even open? This would rock the direct mail industry, and greatly benefit alternative media purveyors, like myself. Hmmmmm, which Senators do I lobby?

WSJ.com - Freezing Out Identity Theft:
In an effort to combat the rapidly escalating outbreak of identity-theft crimes, a handful of states including California and Texas have passed legislation that allows consumers to put a “security freeze” on their credit history.


Some 20 other states this year have considered or are considering adopting similar laws, which make it nearly impossible for criminals to use stolen information to open bogus new accounts. The measures are so effective because once frozen, a merchant is unable to review an applicant's credit history. Lacking such information, most companies refuse to open a new account, greatly devaluing stolen personal data.

{Business}

We are lucky (or paranoid enough) to have installed reverse osmosis water filters for our drinking water. We have considered adding an ultraviolet light disinfector, but have not yet done so. However, as a public health risk, chlorine is one of many toxins that end up in all of our bodies, regardless of how clean ones drinking water might be. Food chain is as food chain does. Err, something like that....

Chlorine Treatment Seen as Risky:


Using chlorine to disinfect wastewater has long been standard practice. Recently, however, debate as to whether the benefits of chlorine outweigh toxic side effects has intensified. By Erica Gies.

...In 1988, SFPUC successfully petitioned the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board to eliminate requirements to disinfect water released from a pipe four miles offshore. SFPUC conducted a study with the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that tracked effluent currents and demonstrated that the bacteria died quickly in the cold, salty water and that the stream never made it shoreward, where surfers or bathers might get sick. Effluent released in the bay, closer to where people swim and fish, is still disinfected through chlorination.

Sejal Choksi, San Francisco chapter director of Baykeeper, a nonprofit environmental organization, cited a study by the National Resources Defense Council showing that DBPs called trihalomethanes, or THMs, are potentially carcinogenic and correlate to an increased risk of miscarriage and birth defects.
...
Arleen Navarret, regulatory manager for SFPUC Wastewater Enterprise, said she would like to see chemical residues in the effluent reduced even further.

“The fewer chemicals we can put into the environment the better off we are,” she said. “I am not sure that we really understand the fate of bacteria in our receiving waters, and regulations are created by the EPA that often are designed for a particular area, and then those regulations are administered to the entire nation.”

A treatment used in five plants around the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere around the country that doesn't impart DBPs utilizes ultraviolet light, which kills bacteria by changing their genetic structures. Other promising technologies not yet in widespread use for wastewater management include ozonation, the use of membranes, peracetic acid or bromine, and even a diamond electrode-based system.

read more Wired

{Health, Business}

Chicago officials today unveiled an agency charged with reducing street congestion by quickly dispatching traffic personnel and tow trucks and, ultimately, installing thousands of “smart” traffic signals around the city.

The Traffic Management Authority “will have a very positive effect on the quality of life for the residents of Chicago,” Mayor Richard Daley said at a news conference to announce the initiative.

The authority would monitor street conditions and send to trouble spots civilian traffic control aides, tow trucks and other resources. Aides would use bicycles when necessary to maneuver around congestion.

The authority also would keep tabs on construction permits as they are issued, beginning with the downtown area, to anticipate potential conflicts with city events.

Over the long term, the authority would wire 2,800 signalized intersections into an “intelligent traffic system” under centralized control of signals. Message boards also would be employed to direct motorists.

Officials have not yet determined how much the automated traffic signal system would cost or when it could be implemented. A pilot project is in the planning stages.

The Traffic Management Authority would be modeled on traffic control systems in Atlanta, Houston, London, Los Angeles and Tokyo, officials said.

Tribune

And from John Hilkevitch's column:

Airport authorities in Chicago and Hong Kong are striking up a business relationship aimed at sharing information about airport operations and new technologies. Chicago Aviation Commissioner John Roberson said the partnership also will help with long-range plans to expand cargo operations at O'Hare International Airport.

Roberson recently hosted Howard Eng, director of Hong Kong International Airport. Roberson said he plans to visit Hong Kong this year and launch a management-exchange program between the two airports.

“The exchange will help us as we begin talking more about what O'Hare should be in the future,” Roberson said. He said a top priority is attracting more companies that air-freight goods from the huge Asian manufacturing market to the U.S. to distribution centers near O'Hare.

Chicago Transit Authority officials are also taking note of the popularity of the Hong Kong airport's express train service. The CTA this month solicited bids seeking a consultant to develop a business model to operate express trains from downtown to O'Hare and Midway Airports.

The Hong Kong airport trains take about 23 minutes from downtown. Advanced baggage check-in and porter service are provided, as well as free shuttle bus service from hotels to train stations. “Airport access through a premium transit service in Hong Kong and elsewhere reinforces the fact that it makes sense to invest in a high-speed, highly reliable rail connection to the city center,” said CTA president Frank Kruesi.

{Chicago}

As the poet said:

I'm painting again, I'm cleaning my brain

and a cogent dream managed to penetrate the labyrinth and accompanying moat which separates my consciousness from my sleeping brain. I was working on a diptych in some public area, like a train station or an airport. The left panel was a ink wash of the Tree of Life, or my interpretation of it at least. Sitting to my left was a woman, and on the table in front of her was a brush, dipped in crimson or cadmium. She nodded at me, and I started using the brush, adding a liberal amount of paint onto my sketch. I was quite pleased with the result; much more vibrant tree than previously.

However, the woman rapidly became annoyed with me for, “ruining the brush!”

I was dumfounded, because not only did the painting have a shimmering life now, but I really was sure she wanted me to use this brush, or why else would it be sitting there, beckoning.

previous usage of this quote

{Personal}

Checking in on this websites stats, updating results from Dec 27 2004, it looks like Firefox (17% from 12%) is still gaining on IE (66%, roughly the same), but Safari usage has slightly fallen (from 15% to 10%).

{Site Notes}

In brief:

Revlon has awarded creative and media duties to Publicis Groupe's Kaplan Thaler Group and Aegis Group's Carat, respectively, for its Revlon cosmetics brands as well as a new fragrance, according to executives familiar with the matter.

{Business}

I got a copy of a Scion mix tape, by Jazzy Jeff and Peanut Butter Wolf, by going to the Chicago Auto show. It actually isn't too bad.

From Toyota, a Different Sound System:


Toyota has entered the music business, not to make money but to win the hearts of underground music fans.

{Music, B12 recommended, Business}

Tags: B12 recommended, /Business, /music

Went to Meiji, for the second time, Saturday. Wow, what great food. Among the better meals I've had in the last while, we savored every bite, lingering for a couple of hours.

The sushi chef, Eddie Lao, came and introduced himself, and offered to custom make a cucumber-wrapped maki next time (we had a Salmon-mango-cilantro-avacodo maki both times). Hamachi sashimi was also delicious, as was a cucumber-wrapped maki called Kani Kyu (contained King Crab, and various vegetables).

Highly recommended. Currently BYOB (without corkage, but they await their liquor license); we brought a bottle of sake from home (via Mitsuwa), our waitress brought us a chiller. Mmmmmm, I'm hungry just thinking of it.

edit
Meiji no longer BYOB though.

Tags: B12 recommended, /Chicago, /Food & Drink, /Personal

This sounds tailor made as some plot point to a Sci-Fi movie, or even some version of a thriller. In fact, I should do a work-up/treatment of a screenplay just for fun. You never know....

Wired News: Are Nanobacteria Making Us Ill?:
So the Finnish biochemist and his colleagues slipped some of their old cultures under an electron microscope one day in 1988 and took a closer look. That's when they saw the particles. Like bacteria but an astonishing 100 times smaller, they seemed to be thriving inside the dying cells.


Believing them to be a possible new form of life, Kajander named the particles “nanobacteria,” published a paper outlining his findings and spurred one of the biggest controversies in modern microbiology.


At the heart of the debate is the question of whether nanobacteria could actually be a new form of life. To this day, critics argue that a particle just 20 to 200 nanometers in diameter can't possibly harbor the components necessary to sustain life. The particles are also incredibly resistant to heat and other methods that would normally kill bacteria, which makes some scientists wonder if they might be an unusual form of crystal rather than organisms.


In 1998, Kajander tried to prove the skeptics wrong by turning up what he believed to be an example of nanobacteria's ribosomal RNA, something that only organisms have. But the claim was squashed two years later by a National Institutes of Health study, which found that the RNA was actually a remnant from a bacteria that often contaminates lab equipment.


The debate would have ended there, except for a steadily increasing number of studies linking nanobacteria to serious health problems, including kidney stones, aneurysms and ovarian cancer. The studies show that nanobacteria can infect humans, a find that has helped push nanobacteria back into the limelight. Now the pressure is on to resolve the controversy and expose how nanobacteria works -- no matter what it is.

Final Draft

Read more

{Health, Film}

Tags: Film, /health

New location of Chicago Sun Times - apparently they took over a Holiday Inn. There are many snarky comments I could make about this, but won't.

click for larger version

{Photos, Chicago}

Tags: Chicago, /Photos

Who does the NYT include in this group? They only quote Democrats.com, which might be liberal (even though I've never such a blog). On the other hand, in this article about Liberal bloggers, the NYT solicits the opinion or mentions: FreeRepublic and Powerlineblog. Maybe I'm reading too much (or not enough) in this article because my morning coffee cup is still full, but in no way does quoting Democrats.com and Powerlineblog make an article balanced.

Liberal Bloggers Reaching Out to Major Media:


A group of left-wing bloggers has started holding conference calls with news outlets to counter what they believe is the growing power of right-wing blogs.

{Current Affairs}

The Tribune designates the nearby Fulton Market as a So-Ho in the making. We hope so. If only the chicken-head processing factories and the upscale sushi bars can comfortably co-exist, that is. I dub thee: SoFu!

For the early morning visitor, Fulton Market is a walk on the wild side.

Forklifts charge from behind plastic-stripped door-ways like iron toros bravos in a Spanish bullring. Sections of the sidewalks are so unmatched in height, there are moments when you feel you could use rappelling equipment to traverse them.

But you are forced to hoof it, because parking is so scarce you have to leave your car five blocks away. Besides, some of the potholes here are so big, you might just free-fall into them.

You feel like a test pilot maneuvering around semi-trucks loading or unloading frozen chickens and other foodstuffs parked wherever they please -- no way to know what is advancing from the opposite direction.

The visitor, who is seeking the other, aesthetic identity of the street, is asked several times as she passes workmen if that is her late-model silver sedan parked at a corner curb. She is ordered to move it, even after denying ownership thrice.

This is Fulton Market, the extension of the South Water Street Market that is still a vital part of Chicago's wholesale food supply chain, where truckloads of produce arrive daily to supply the city's restaurants. This is where Morlen Sinoway, owner of the eponymous design atelier, moved five years ago.

{Personal, Chicago, Food & Drink}

Technorati Tags: Chicago, Food & Drink, Personal

The NYTimes takes our advice, ahem, and reinstates Frank Rich to the Op-Ed page. No word on where MoDo will go, or if she will remain. Probably will remain, as the Op-Ed is expanding.

'N.Y. Times' Returns Frank Rich to an Op-Ed Slot: In a surprise announcement, The New York Times said today that Frank Rich, associate editor and Sunday Arts & Leisure columnist, will be returning to the op-ed pages as a columnist on April 10.

“We're thrilled to welcome back Frank, whose distinct writing style and broad range of experience as a theater critic and observer of art, entertainment and politics, will be a great asset to the expanded Sunday Op-Ed,” said Gail Collins, editorial page editor, in a statement. “Our new, two-page Op-Ed section in the Sunday paper will give our readers what they have been requesting: more opinion pieces.”

..

The Times will expand its Sunday op-ed section to two pages beginning April 10.

Hat tip to Talk Left

Tags: Current Affairs

Dylan nerdery unleashed online | News.blog | CNET News.com
Dylan kicked off his latest North American tour in Seattle on Monday, and with that another season of the Dylan Pool began.

Since 2001, fans have been competing in a contest based on set lists from Bob Dylan concerts. Think “fantasy sports for music fanatics.” Here's how it works: Players make picks as to which songs Dylan will play most often on the upcoming tour. Each time a selected song is played, points are awarded to anyone who picked that tune. More points are awarded for songs that rarely make it into live set lists, fewer for old standbys such as “All Along the Watchtower.” Players compete alone or in teams. Every time Dylan goes on tour, players make their picks, and the competition starts up again.

I screwed something up installing the Keystroke spam-guard, and now comments only work if you “preview” first. I get this error message

Subroutine approve_comment redefined at lib/MT/App/CMS.pm line 1982.

{Site Notes}

My cousin, Rachel, is heroically living in East Texas, with my grandparents. She is looking for suggestions for Books on Tape for my grandfather. If you can think of any that would interest an elderly farmer from Texas, please help her out.

family_update: authors and titles for grandpa?:
As you know, I order books from the texas talking book library for grandpa to listen too. He doesn't seem interested in choosing them himself, I wonder if maybe because it is difficult to read the small print of the catalog and the fact that most of it is computer based, anyway, I go thru the catalog and try and order books that might interest him

{Books, B12 recommended, Personal}

Our cat is named for this movie, seems fitting that I should watch it again....

Shipped: Tampopo:

Shipped on 03/11/05.

A celebration of the role of food in Japanese culture, acclaimed director Juzo Itami's hit satire was dubbed the first "noodle western" for its delightful parody of American Westerns and Japanese samurai films. Tampopo follows a young widow (Miyamoto) who runs a small noodle restaurant in Tokyo and Goro (Yamazaki), a cowboy hat-wearing truck driver, as they attempt to concoct the perfect bowl of ramen.

Tampopo

{B12 recommended, Film, Personal}

Dirty Life and Times
Zevon, Warren The Wind

Blues All Around My Head (Alternate take): Memphis Slim -Memphis Slim U.S.A.

Themselves
Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime

Condescend
Low Songs for a Dead Pilot

Strange Currencies
R.E.M. Strange Currencies - EP

The Shape I'm In
Band Rock Of Ages

Shave 'Em Dry Blues
Ma Rainey Nothing But The Blues - Ma Rainey

PJ Harvey To Bring You My Love (disc 2: The B Sides)

Guthrie, Woody Folk Song America: A 20th Century Revival

Husker Du New Day Rising

{B12 recommended, Music, Personal}

Technorati Tags: B12 recommended, Music, Personal

Great, more bumblers at work...

Senate Spotlight Turns to Data Security:


Last month, ChoicePoint, one of the largest suppliers of private consumer data, disclosed that criminals masquerading as legitimate small-business customers had gained access to files on 145,000 people. The FTC is investigating ChoicePoint, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into stock sales by two of the company's executives after the company discovered a breach last fall.

Last week, Bank of America Corp. said it had lost financial information for 1.2 million federal employees -- including some senators on the banking committee that conducted yesterday's hearing -- who participate in the government's charge-card program. The latest blow came Wednesday, when LexisNexis, a large data-warehouse firm owned by Reed Elsevier PLC, announced that 32,000 files had been compromised. Executives for ChoicePoint and Bank of America are expected to testify in a hearing next week.

{Current Affairs, Tech/Web}

Security and MS are basically incompatible subjects. This MS initiative brings to mind two thoughts.
1. The Air Force uses crappy Windows machines? Jesus, I hope they move to Unix/Linux/Mac soon, because anything MS is ready and willing to be hacked by script-kiddies, not to mention other assorted bad guys.
2. Knowledge of these patches would be worth a lot to these same assorted bad guys - MS is basically delaying fixing problems for the masses to concentrate on a handful of their largest clients. Theoretically, if the vulnerability was made public, millions of computers could get hacked. Just like what really happens anyway....

WSJ.com - Microsoft Gives Some Customers Early Bug Fixes:


The ability to get patches up to a month before they are widely released is “a big jump start for us,” says Kenneth Heitkamp, assistant chief information officer for the Air Force. Previously, it took the Air Force an average of 89 days to insure it had properly installed patches across its more than 700,000 desktop and laptop computers; Mr. Heitkamp says the long-term goal under the new program is to reduce patch installation to as little as 10 minutes after the fix is released publicly.


Microsoft says it has taken precautions to prevent news of the patches in the advance-release program from leaking. For example, these patches are distributed only through a “private channel,” which the company declines to describe, and no information is given about the underlying vulnerabilities being fixed or even the area of code being updated.


The extraordinary security measures are evidence of the risks involved in providing differential access about flaws that in some cases could allow hackers to take control of computer systems. If information about a new vulnerability leaks before a patch is generally available, unpatched customers could be at even greater risk of attacks by virus-writers or malicious hackers.


“If somebody gives the early patches to the bad guys before the bulk of the good guys get them, that could help the bad guys reverse-engineer their exploits,” says John Pescatore, vice president for Internet security at Gartner Inc., a technology consulting firm.

{Current Affairs, Tech/Web}

Missed this flick in the the theater, but 'word on the street' is that it is better than one might think. We'll see. Slightly skeptical, since so much of Hollywood war is right wing propaganda.

Shipped: Black Hawk Down:

Shipped on 03/10/05.

Based on a true story. When U.S. Rangers and an elite Delta Force team attempt to kidnap two underlings of a Somali warlord, their Black Hawk helicopters are shot down. Facing intense fighting from the militia on the ground, the Americans suffer heavy casualties. Director Ridley Scott (Gladiator) captures the brutal and incessant battle scenes with powerful and intimidating framework and pace.





Black Hawk Down

{Film, B12 recommended}

No context at all, b/c I gotta leave.....

ESPN.com - Delivering the mail:
Hey, Bill. I just Googled “Bill Simmons sucks” (exact phrase) and came up with only two matches. Congratulations. Because “Dan Shaughnessy sucks” got three matches. And “Joe Buck sucks” got 22 matches. And “my life sucks” got 29,600 matches. I'm not sober.
– Jason B., Vancouver


SG: Yup, these are my readers.

and yes, I'm messing with google.

{Quotables}

In brief, if Shaq can stay in the lane for 6-7 seconds, he'll always have good position. I am watching a Heat vs. Timberwolves NBA game, and TiVo-slow-mo-ed a possession, mid third quarter. Shaq stepped into the paint at 20 seconds (on 24 second clock), and fought for position while the ball whipped around the perimeter. Shaq's feet never left the paint, until 13 seconds were left on the clock. Ummm, the rule, as written, is that 3 seconds is the maximum time allowed. So, where was the whistle? Shaq is already M.D.E., by his estimation, and a perennial MVP, by this writers estimation, why does he need extra help?

{Basketball}

Saw this movie (Taiwanese, I believe) back when I was diligently immersing myself into Chinese (and Asian) culture at UT (studying Chinese, taking classes about Chinese movies, history of Asia, etc.). Wonder if I've changed, or if I'll still laugh out loud at this film.

Shipped: Eat Drink Man Woman:

Shipped on 03/10/05.

Widower Tao Chu, Taiwan's most famous chef, struggles with accepting his three daughters' newfound appetite for boys, an interest that begins to break the family apart with hilarious and often touching results.

Eat Drink Man Woman

{Film, B12 recommended, Personal}

Curious. I actually watch Boston Legal (sometimes), one of a very small number of television shows that doesn't suck. Perhaps why we go through so many Netflix rentals. Wonder what the real scoop is here? ABC can't be scared of O'Reilly and his team of rag-tag lawyers, can he? Didn't they read the press accounts of the Falafel's suit against Al Franken?

Fox News: no critics allowed:
ABC has mysteriously “scrubbed” an upcoming episode of “Boston Legal” of all pejorative references to Fox News and O'Reilly. Top ABC executives heavily censored an earlier version of the script, in which a teacher calls Fox News “hate speech” and installs a “Fox Blocker” on every TV set in his school. A side-by-side comparison of the two versions of the script reveals it has been stripped of any references to the network. The Sunday episode is, ironically, about free speech. Neither ABC nor David Kelley, the show's creator, would comment on the changes. The script also contained excerpts from “Outfoxed,” an anti-Fox documentary by indie filmmaker Robert Greenwald which argues that the cable channel has an explicit conservative agenda. The “Outfoxed” excerpts will be included in the episode, although ABC would not allow Greenwald to buy ad time for his film to air during the episode. “The door has been closed in our face,” said the film's distributor

(for the Boswell in me, these are the shows currently broadcast that are being TiVoed in our household-

• Arrested Development
• Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• Boston Legal
• Real Time with Bill Maher
• the Simpsons

• The Wire
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Six Feet Under

{Personal, B12 recommended, Current Affairs}

S. Korean Group Sponsored DeLay Trip (washingtonpost.com):
A delegation of Republican House members including Majority Leader Tom DeLay accepted an expense-paid trip to South Korea in 2001 from a registered foreign agent despite House rules that bar the acceptance of travel expenses from foreign agents, according to government documents and travel reports filed by the House members.

Justice Department documents show that the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, a business-financed entity created with help from a lobbying firm headed by DeLay's former chief of staff, registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act on Aug. 22, 2001. DeLay; his wife, Christine; and two other Republican lawmakers departed on a trip financed by the group on Aug. 25 of that year.

Love how our putative ally, Pakistan, is such a good friend to the “End-of-Timers” (ie, that the world is ending soon) [note to self, look for the Bill Moyers newsmagazine on this topic]

Pakistan admits nuclear expert traded with Iran:


Pakistani information minister admits Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme, gave nuclear technology to Iran but insists the government knew nothing of the transaction.

{Current Affairs}

Frank Rich must have read this WSJ summary of the Greatest Dirty Joke ever told documentary...but even better, he watched Gilbert Gottfried tell it at a Friar Club roast of Hugh Hefner.

The Greatest Dirty Joke Ever Told:
A post-9/11 Friars roast and “Deadwood” show that indecency can be all-American.
...Restlessness had long since set in when the last comic on the bill, Gilbert Gottfried, took the stage. Mr. Gottfried, decked out in preposterously ill-fitting formal wear, has a manic voice so shrill he makes Jerry Lewis sound like Morgan Freeman. He grabbed the podium for dear life and started rocking back and forth like a hyperactive teenager trapped onstage in a school assembly. Soon he delivered what may have been the first public 9/11 gag: He couldn't get a direct flight to California, he said, because “they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.”

There were boos, but Mr. Gottfried moved right along to his act's crowning joke. “A talent agent is sitting in his office,” he began. “A family walks in - a man, woman, two kids, and their little dog. And the talent agent goes, 'What kind of an act do you do?' ” What followed was a marathon description of a vaudeville routine featuring incest, bestiality and almost every conceivable bodily function. The agent asks the couple the name of their unusual act, and their answer is the punch line: “The Aristocrats.”

As the mass exodus began, some people were laughing, others were appalled, and perhaps a majority of us were in the middle. We knew we had seen something remarkable, not because the joke was so funny but because it had served as shock therapy, harmless shock therapy for an adult audience, that at least temporarily relieved us of our burdens and jolted us back into the land of the living again. Some weeks later Comedy Central would cut the bit entirely from its cable recycling of the roast. But in the more than three years since, I have often reflected upon Mr. Gottfried's mesmerizing performance. At a terrible time it was an incongruous but welcome gift. He was inviting us to once again let loose.

I bring up that night now because I've seen “The Aristocrats,” a new documentary inspired in part by Mr. Gottfried's strange triumph. Unveiled in January at Sundance, it's coming to a theater near some of you this summer. (It could be the first movie to get an NC-17 rating for sex and nudity not depicted on screen.) But I also bring up that night for the shadow it casts on a culture that is now caught in the vise of the government war against “indecency.” The chill cast by that war is taking new casualties each day, and with each one, the commissars of censorship are emboldened to extend their reach. When even the expletives of our soldiers in Iraq are censored on a public television documentary, Mr. Gottfried's unchecked indecency seems to belong to another age.

more

{Humor, or lack of}

Buried in the Tribune Metro section is more on Gov. Blowjobavich's fund-raising practices, also known as legalized corruption. Are there any politicians who are not corrupted by money, and don't need to placate large donors? The recent bankruptcy bill in the U.S. congress would never have passed without support from Dems, dependent upon slurping slurry from corporate bankers' loafers.

Bleh. Makes me retch. Whatever happened to campaign finance reform?

Blagojevich's campaign operations came under scrutiny after his father-in-law, Chicago Ald. Richard Mell (33rd), alleged that the governor's campaign chief traded contributions for state appointments, then retracted the accusation. Cook County State's Atty. Richard Devine and Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan are investigating.

Last fall, a Tribune review found that more than 120 appointees were tied to $1.9 million donated to Blagojevich's campaign fund, with at least 25 of them, their companies or their organizations linked to donations of $25,000 or more.

In addition, the Tribune found that more than one of every four individuals and businesses that contributed at least $50,000 to Blagojevich have received state business during his first term in office.

{Chicago, Current Affairs}

Wouldn't want anyone to criticize us for torture or other war crimes now, would we....or even our national penchant for executing prior to DNA evidence review.

U.S. Says It Has Withdrawn From World Judicial Body:
The State Department said that the U.S. was prompted by a decision ordering new hearings for 51 Mexicans on death rows.

Darla Jordan, a State Department spokeswoman, said the administration was troubled by foreign interference in the domestic capital justice system but intended to fulfill its obligations under international law.

But Ms. Jordan said, “We are protecting against future International Court of Justice judgments that might similarly interfere in ways we did not anticipate when we joined the optional protocol.”

Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at the University of Georgia, said the withdrawal was unbecoming.

“It's a sore-loser kind of move,” Professor Spiro said. “If we can't win, we're not going to play.”

{Current Affairs}

Haven't been here yet, but we will. This will be the fourth restaurant in this location in the last few years. DKelly sucked - wanted to be an upscale hamburger diner. No thanks. Grace wasn't bad, for a Blackbird imitator, and before that was an Indian place, I think. Might have been a hot-dog stand too, have to ask D who has a better memory for these sorts of details.

The anonymous owner of Meiji (623 W. Randolph St.; 312-887-9999), a new Japanese spot in the old DKelly space, says, “The chef, Mr. Ishimaru, is the name to know. He has 15 years of experience in Sapporo, Japan. We have a traditional selection of Japanese food but also food not like others’.” That means a deep bowl of agedashi (tempura broth) filled with asparagus, a rice cake, spinach, and shrimp wrapped in tofu skin. And the Kobe beef is the real thing—from Japan—not Kobe-style American wagyu. Desserts go way beyond mochi: Try pear gyoza with spicy chocolate sauce.

-update: went to Meiji and it was delectable.

{Food & Drink, Chicago}

Italy disputes US hostage account:

Italy's PM Silvio Berlusconi says an agent's account of a hostage negotiator's death contradicts US reports.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said the car carrying an Italian agent killed by US fire had stopped immediately a light flashed.

His statement contradicts US accounts of the incident in Iraq in which Nicola Calipari was shot taking freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport.

Mr Berlusconi said the US must accept responsibility to restore relations.

He said his government had demanded “maximum collaboration” from the US, and a joint inquiry had been promised.

I wonder why? Did Berlusconi look into the soul of Bush or something?

The prime minister said the US military had authorised the Italian journey to the airport. An agent travelling in the car with Mr Calipari had given an account of events which conflicted with the version given by the US military, he added.

“A light was flashed at the vehicle from 10m away,” Mr Berlusconi said. “The driver at this point stopped the car immediately and at the same time there was gunfire for about 10 or 15 seconds.

”A few shots reached the vehicle and another one reached and killed Mr Calipari,“ he said.

”This reconstruction of events has been made according to what has been witnessed by another agent who was with Mr Calipari and does not coincide totally with what has been communicated so far by the US authorities.“

{Current Affairs}

Here's yet another reason I'm glad that I am my own IT department - nothing is getting installed anywhere without me doing the installation. My healthcare is a little expensive, but hey, I don't have to pee in a cup.

WSJ.com - Snooping E-Mail by Software Is Now a Workplace Norm: ...But what every employee ought to realize by now is how completely nonprivate their office e-mail is. In a recent survey of 840 U.S. companies by the American Management Association, 60% said they now use some type of software to monitor their employees' incoming and outgoing e-mail, up from 47% in 2001. Other workplace privacy experts place the current percentage even higher.


And in most states, companies don't have to tell employees their e-mail is being monitored. Only Connecticut and Delaware have laws requiring companies to notify employees, says Jeremy Gruber, legal director at the National Workrights Institute, a Princeton, N.J., workplace privacy advocacy organization.


Elsewhere, companies are free to monitor at will all e-mail sent and received using company equipment or company e-mail accounts, says Mr. Gruber, adding that he doesn't know of a single case where an employee has successfully challenged workplace e-mail monitoring. As an employee, “you have no rights whatsoever,” he says.


There is slightly less attention paid to internal e-mail. Only 27% of employers use technology to monitor internal e-mail conversations between employees, up from 19% in 2003, according to the American Management Association.

{Business}

Technorati Tags: Business

WSJ.com Mitsubishi to BBDO:
Mitsubishi Motors North America awarded its ad account to Omnicom Group Inc.'s BBDO Worldwide. Annual spending on the account has been estimated at about $275 million.


The account had been at Interpublic Group of Cos.' Deutsch, which dropped out of the review for the business in late January. Other agencies vying for the account had included Publicis Groupe SA's Publicis and Publicis & Hal Riney agencies and Interpublic's TM Advertising.


BBDO also does advertising for DaimlerChrysler AG.

{Business}

13% scored higher (more nerdy), and 87% scored lower (less nerdy). What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:

High-Level Nerd. You are definitely MIT material, apply now!!!.

No way I'm going to MIT, even if Chomsky teaches there

I think its b/c I guessed Manganese correctly....

idea for quiz due to Peter Fallon's blog

{Personal}

Tags: Personal, /quiz

type your own letters
link via Boing Boing

{Photos}

Technorati Tags: photos

No idea about this one. check back next week and I'll tell you if I made it to act 2....

Shipped: Venus Beauty Institute:

Shipped on 03/07/05.

Unable or unwilling to find a long-term romance, aging hair stylist Angèle (Nathalie Baye) settles for the salon's distaff camaraderie and for living by proxy through her co-workers. But her life gets upended when a stranger -- a shaggy-haired, bohemian stud named Antoine (Samuel Le Bihan) -- abruptly declares his love for her. The guarded Angèle faces a dilemma: Should she take a chance on intimacy, or remain inside her protective shell?

Venus Beauty Institute

{Film}

My aunt writes:

I just want to let my family know that...[snip] [we're] developing the content for Guam's online encyclopedia. I'll keep you posted on its progress OK? www.guampedia.com

Great news.

{Tech/Web, Current Affairs, Personal}

Found a useful new tool for cleaning up ones iTunes libraryLairWare MPFreaker. Lots of songs, especially those ripped last century with SoundJam Pro, are missing year info, track info, etc. MPFreaker cleaned up several thousand of these songs in my library, chugging along, adding album names sometimes as well. A couple of times, MPFreaker got stuck on remotely shared songs, but if most of your music is on your main drive that wouldn't be a problem.

Imagine a program that automatically fills in the missing information in your music library — including artwork! Using innovative techniques, MPFreaker quickly searches the internet to find out which album your song belongs to, the year your song was released, the genre, track numbers, even album cover artwork. In seconds, all of this information is automatically added directly into your song files.

By using industry standard methods, you can see and access the new information that MPFreaker adds in any audio player which recognizes these standard information “tags”, including iTunes™, iPod™, and other MP3/AAC players. Artwork added by MPFreaker automatically shows on the iPod Photo's “Now Playing” display, for example. If you love your music library, you need MPFreaker!

(link originally via Tidbits)

This program, coupled with Musicbrainz (iEatBrainz), has really made a difference in giving me good data to build all the complicated playlists I have.

{Music, B12 recommended, Macintosh}

Per the Feministe site, even though it's a little late....

1. Now that we Found Love: Third World
2. Blood Roses: Amos, Tori
3. Lacrimosa dies illa: Neville Marriner, Acadamey and Chorus of St. Martin in the Fields
4. Big Mouth Blues: Gram Parsons
5. Si vous passez par la: 3 Mustaphas 3
6. Gathering flowers for the master's Bouquet: Stanley Brothers
7. Lucy In The Sky: William Shatner
8. Greensleeves: Coleman Hawkins
9. Alaniaris: Markos Vamvakaris
10. Ball The Wall: Professor Longhair

{B12 recommended, Music}

T. S. Eliot:
“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”

T.S. Eliot

“The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions)” (T. S. Eliot)

{B12 recommended, Books, Quotables}

Today (and yesterday) is dedicated to the study and contemplation of wabi-sabi. Not being very in-tune with Japanese culture, except by proxy and study, wabi-sabi, as I understand it, is a concept surprisingly close to my everyday existence. Perhaps since I am a country boy (Frostpocket) at heart, but wabi-sabi is already part and parcel of my actual personality matrix.

Wiki definition:

Wabi-sabi (in Kanji: 侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic system, and is difficult to explain precisely in western terms. According to Leonard Koren, wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of what we think of as traditional Japanese beauty and it “occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West.” Wabi-sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is the beauty of things modest and humble. It is the beauty of things unconventional.

I wouldn't be surprised if this particular revenue stream plunged. Or else, some adjustments to the model will have to occur.

Web Marketers Fearful of Fraud in Pay-Per-Click:
Businesses that pay Google and Overture to steer customers to their Web sites are questioning how much fraud lurks in the blossoming pay-per-click model of advertising.
There is evidence that at least some scammers are clicking away at the ads, or having programs called hitbots or clickbots do it for them, with the knowledge that each click costs an advertiser money. Some of the troublemakers are disgruntled employees; some are companies trying to force competitors' ad spending up; some are even Web page operators who let search engines deliver ads to their sites and then collect a cut when people click on those ads.

The company, which has been advertising its site, www.speedreg.co.uk, on Overture since August, saw daily traffic from its keyword ads abruptly triple, from 400, for five days last October, said Des Elton, managing director. “We averaged 1,200 clicks a day, costing us £950 on average every day,” or about $1,800, he said. “We'd been up to £450 to £500 before, but that was the extreme case.”

The sudden boom in site traffic would have been welcome if it had produced increased sales, but conversions from clicks to sales actually plunged, Mr. Elton said. The company reported its suspicions to Overture in early November; three weeks later it collected a refund of £2,519.88 (about $4,800).

Mr. Elton said he remained dissatisfied with having to depend on search engines to make things right. “As of the present time, they are judge and jury on any suspect click fraud case such as ours,” he said. “I believe there should be an unbiased independent arbitration by a separate specialist company. In other words, Overture should not be solely investigating click fraud on our behalf.”

Jessie C. Stricchiola, the president of Alchemist Media and one of the first to examine click fraud, said yesterday that click fraud, was “a problem for advertisers.” Ms. Stricchiola was on a panel discussing click fraud yesterday as part of the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo this week in New York.

A tangle of conflicting interests makes it hard to straighten out or even quantify the click fraud problem, Ms. Stricchiola and other panelists said. Google, Overture and the other search companies describe their fraud-prevention and detection programs only vaguely, explaining that scammers could use the details to cheat the system more effectively.

{Business, Tech/Web}

Thanks to Dr. Laniac's Laboratory, I've added a sampling of recently updated Indy blogs to my side panel. Work related matters preclude me from 'making it purty' at the moment, but at least this is a beginning....

{Site Notes}

We are going to try to make this event, Monday or if we can juggle prior committments, Sunday night. Sounds interesting. We are strong proponents of eating local produce, and eating organic food, when possible. Part of our roof deck is going to be dedicated to a garden, but that's not going to happen till summer, at the earliest.

Mary Schmich writes:

Organic food has already arrived, even in the standard Chicago supermarket, but, unfortunately, says [Jim] Slama, too often it arrives here on the tundra from megaproducers in California, Florida, New Mexico or the Netherlands.

A few places break that rule, like this neo-bohemian cafe in the Northwest Side neighborhood of Logan Square [ Lula's cafe], where at a tiny table under an old tin ceiling, Slama points to his corncakes.

Local organic corn, he says. And his bacon? Local organic meat. The cafe owner stops by the table to discuss his desire to make the cafe's own tofu, from, what else, local organic soybeans.

A few famous Chicago restaurant chefs are dedicated to local food. But until lately, restaurants and markets have had trouble hooking up with local farmers, who themselves have had trouble making ends meet. Ordinary eaters who like local food have had trouble too, outside the brief bliss of farmers-market season.

So Slama is out to bring everyone together. That's why he's organized the FamilyFarmed.org Expo this Sunday and Monday at Navy Pier.

The slogan is “Know your food. Know your farmer.” You can meet local organic farmers, attend workshops, eat, watch cooking demos by chefs, including Oprah's, and, if you stay for Sunday evening's party, sip an organic martini.

“Vodka made from Illinois grain,” says Slama. Olives, alas, from California.

{Health, Chicago}

Gee, every day there are reports of soldiers dying, or having legs blown off or what have you. So what sane person thinks helping to foster Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq is a good enough goal to go sacrafice their lives for? Right, not many....

Army misses February recruit goal Officials say Iraq war affecting enlistment

By Eric Schmitt
New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON -- The Army is so short of new recruits that for first time in nearly five years it failed in February to fill its monthly quota of volunteers sent to boot camp. Army officials called it the latest ominous sign of the Iraq war's impact on the military's ability to enlist fresh troops.

“We're very concerned about it,” Army Secretary Francis Harvey told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday when asked about recruiting shortfalls in the active-duty Army and Army Reserve. “When people ask you what you worry about the most, I say there's just two words: people and money.”

{Current Affairs}

This renovation has been a long time in coming. A lot of the exhibits here are 'dated', look like a remnant from yesteryear's style. Looking forward to seeing the new museum.

Tribune

The city's oldest museum, the Chicago Historical Society, plans to celebrate its 150th birthday next year by spending $22 million to gut and dramatically reconfigure almost all of its exhibit halls.

When the project is completed in fall 2006, the museum will have torn out 75 percent of its public areas, added exhibit areas and totally rethought its use of 22 million artifacts of city, regional and national history.

“It all will be a model of what an urban historical museum should be in this country in the 21st Century, and what an educational force a museum like this should be for the rest of the city,” said Historical Society President Lonnie Bunch, who was hired away from a top post at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in 2000 expressly to reinvigorate the Chicago museum.

Mayor Richard Daley is scheduled to be at the Historical Society Friday morning to join Bunch in announcing the project, which includes the first significant renovation of its Chicago history galleries since 1978.

{Chicago}

Not that I know much about Richard Feynman, other than what's in the great Tuva movie, Genghis Blues, and that he won a Nobel Prize in Physics....

Richard Feynman:


“I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.”

Genghis Blues

“Genghis Blues” (Original Soundtrack)

{Quotables, B12 recommended, Film, Music}

I wondered this myself.

What's in a Name? 'Sudan' Food Scare Angers Country:


LONDON (Reuters) - Sudan's ambassador wants to know why a cancer-causing dye that caused a food scare in Britain is named after his country, but no one seems to have an answer.

{Current Affairs, Health, Humor, or lack of}

Interesting cast, might end up being fluff.

Shipped: Holy Smoke:

Shipped on 03/02/05.

Returning to Australia from India after living in a cult, Ruth Barron (Kate Winslet) is enraged to learn she was tricked into coming back by PJ Waters (Harvey Keitel), a hotshot deprogramming guru. Waters believes he can return Ruth to normalcy with little effort, but quickly learns otherwise when Ruth turns the tables on him. Before long, Waters needs a strong dose of his own medicine!

Holy Smoke

{B12 recommended, Film, Personal}

I saw this movie back in the day, ie when I was a snot-nosed wise acre (as opposed to now) but don't really remember much about it besides the scene with Pacino sticking his face into a bag of coke, and cursing, cursing, cursing.

Shipped: Scarface: 20th Anniversary Edition:

Shipped on 03/02/05.

A remake of the 1932 film starring Paul Muni, Scarface gets a facelift by transferring its venue to Miami, reflecting the early-1980s drug rackets. Al Pacino chews scenery as lowly Cuban refugee Tony Montana, who becomes a Florida drug kingpin but makes the fatal mistake of "getting high on his own supply." This special edition boasts DTS 5.1 audio and a widescreen anamorphic transfer. (Rent the Bonus Disc for all of the extra features.)

Scarface

{Personal, B12 recommended, Film}

Too funny; Billy Graham strikes! Too much praying apparently will get you on the no-fly list too.

The Globe and Mail: Defence Minister or no-fly suspect?:


Bill Graham has found himself in the same company as Ted Kennedy and Cat Stevens.

Last January, during a routine flight to the United States, the Defence Minister had trouble obtaining his boarding pass. Apparently, there is another Bill Graham out there somewhere who did something to get his name on an American watch list. Mr. Graham was obliged to prove that he was the other Bill Graham, the one in charge of the Canadian Forces.

Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the Americans have been trying to harmonize a gaggle of watch lists from different agencies into two databases: a “no-fly” list of people prohibited from entering the United States (this is the list that kept Mr. Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, from entering that country because of his financial support for Hamas and similar groups) and a “selectee” list of people who need to be further screened before being permitted on a flight.

The two lists are not exactly working perfectly. Senator Edward Kennedy was repeatedly hassled last year after his name made it on a no-fly list. It took the direct intervention of then-director

{Oddities, Current Affairs}

Letter we received from the ALCU today.

This morning, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit charging that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody. The lawsuit seeks a court declaration that Secretary Rumsfeld violated the U.S. Constitution and international laws.

Officials at the highest levels of government bear the ultimate responsibility for the actions of the U.S. military. I urge you to join us in our call for accountability by viewing a two-minute Web movie and calling on the Attorney General to appoint an outside special counsel to investigate how our government's torture policies took such a misguided path.

This landmark lawsuit was filed by a coalition of human rights advocates on behalf of eight former detainees who were incarcerated in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they were subjected to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment. None of the men was ever charged with a crime.

Because I know you care about the guiding values of justice and liberty that define American life, I'm writing to ask you join us in seeking to hold our leaders accountable for the torture carried out in our name.

1. Watch our Web movie: “The New Face of America?”
http://www.aclu.org/newface?orgid=EA030105A&MX=1954&H=0

2. Send a message to Attorney General Gonzales urging him to appoint a special counsel to investigate high-level violations of the War Crimes Act and other federal laws forbidding torture:
http://www.aclu.org/Prisons/Prisons.cfm?orgid=EA030105A&ID=17564&c=26&MX=1954&H=0

Because of the support of people like you, the ACLU was able to carry out the groundbreaking Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits that have brought to light much of what we - and the world - know about the torture practices of our government and the Bush Administration.

To preserve our country's international reputation as a beacon of freedom and to protect our own soldiers from similar mistreatment, our leaders must be held accountable.

I am never more proud to lead the ACLU than at times like these when our voices are raised together to demand justice for those who cannot demand it for themselves. Thank you for being part of that work.

Sincerely,

Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director, ACLU

P.S. What the ACLU lawsuit against Rumsfeld says:

* Widespread abuses did not spring from the spontaneous acts of a couple of soldiers. Secretary Rumsfeld personally authorized the military to abandon our nation's historic prohibition against torture and cruel and degrading treatment.

* Secretary Rumsfeld and other high-ranking military officials failed to stop the torture and degrading treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo even after credible reports of abuses began to emerge in the media and in military documents.

* Although Secretary Rumsfeld knew of wrongdoing, and even ordered investigations into the torture of prisoners, he knowingly limited those investigations in a way that blocked high-ranking civilian or military officials, including himself, from being held accountable.

Get more info on the lawsuit:
http://www.aclu.org/rumsfeld?orgid=EA030105A&MX=1954&H=0

{Personal, Current Affairs}

Ooops.

F.D.A. Official Admits 'Lapses' on Vioxx:
After the Food and Drug Administration insisted for months that it did nothing wrong in its oversight of the withdrawn pain pill Vioxx, a top agency official acknowledged “lapses” in the agency's actions before a Senate panel on Tuesday.


Dr. Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the office of new drugs at the agency, also said the power to require label changes “would be very helpful.”


Most witnesses testifying before the panel, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, agreed, saying the agency should have the authority to force label changes and make companies conduct tests if safety issues arose after a drug was approved.

Dr. Kweder blamed difficult negotiations with Vioxx's maker, Merck, for the delay. “We don't have the authority to tell a company, 'This is how your label has to look,' ” she said. “We have to negotiate with the company the specific language of how things should be worded, the placement, those kinds of things, after talking to them.”

The other lapse, Dr. Kweder said, was “the failure of that information somehow to be in the forefront of the consciousness of the prescribing physician.”

Millions of people took Vioxx in the years after its risks to the heart became apparent. As a result, as many as 55,000 patients may have died from heart attacks and strokes induced by the drug, according to estimates by drug safety officials at the F.D.A. Merck withdrew the drug from the market in September, after a test showed that it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Dr. Kweder's admission could cause difficulties for Merck, which is battling more than 800 lawsuits filed by thousands of patients claiming that they were injured by Vioxx.

Of course, the FDA is under no pressure to protect consumers, no pressure at all. Corporate Profits Uber Alles.

{Health, Business}

smack. Consider it dealt out.

Peter Vescey: New York Post Online


As for TNT's information officer, David Aldridge, interesting how little breaking news he has to offer these days left to his own devises; he was so much better equipped when adhering to ESPN policy of stealing everyone else's report and confirming it as if just learned . . . exclusively.

If Aldridge hadn't confiscated so much of my material over the years, I'd almost feel sorry for him. Again, last Thursday following the movement of 35 players within 24 hours the best “fresh” stuff he could provide from beyond the screens was a purported conversation between the Rockets and Timberwolves involving Juwan Howard for Sam Cassell, “but Houston backed off a little.”

Backed off a little? What in the name of Slim Fat Joe (in case you haven't caught him live lately) does that mean? Earth to Aldridge: For future reference, there's no fractionalization to a deal, it's either impregnated or it's not. And, please, do your audience a favor, find something more compelling to report from the sidelines (during the All-Star Game) than “Ray Allen is a free agent after the season, and hasn't been able to come to an agreement with Seattle yet.”

Wow! Had Aldridge done some homework he might've discovered the Sonics and Allen (30 on July 20) are snagged on a fifth guaranteed season.

It's as simple and expensive as that. Seattle is offering four years in the gated community of $68M, the same elite neighborhood Rasheed Wallace (10 months older) is dwelling since re-signing last summer with the Pistons. Allen, currently earning $14.625M, wants another $20M or so.

{Basketball}

For the second straight day, the Tribune didn't run the Boondocks cartoon, instead making the lame-o claim, that “Today's original Boondocks strip presents inaccurate information as fact.”

Don't get exactly how the editors parsed this exactly. A taped conversation is just that, as far as facts go. And there's the little word, Maybe in the first strip, which gives one some leeway. Oh well, from uComics: the cartoons in question. Judge for yourself.

Editor & Publisher quotes the Tribune (but not Aaron McGruder)

NEW YORK The Chicago Tribune dropped today's “Boondocks,” as the strip once again mentioned President Bush's alleged former drug use. The paper had also dropped yesterday's installment.

Why did the Tribune pull Aaron McGruder's Monday and Tuesday comics? “Even in cartoons, you cannot state as a real-life fact something that is not true in real life,” Geoff Brown, the Tribune's associate managing editor/features, told E&P. “This is not to say that cartoonists can't dream up conversations or situations to poke fun at a public figure -- that's satire. But when they inaccurately attribute to a public figure a real-life fact, quote, or action that never happened, then lampoon him or her for a fictional fact, quote, or action, that's unfair. Reports from reputable news sources about the president's taped conversation are careful not to state outright that he admitted drug use.”

Ummm, but what about the actual recording? Did Geoff Brown really tell Dave Astor (of E&P) with a straight face that it would be inaccurate to describe Bush's conversation as actually admitting to using the devil weed, and more? Good poker player probably. Perhaps Brown is angling for a job when Scott McClellan's head explodes sometime next month.

Pretty lame reasoning.

{Chicago, Business}

Technorati Tags: Business, Chicago

More coverage of Tysabri from the WSJ. The FDA has come under 'scrutiny' in the same way that the 2000 U.S. presidential elections in Florida came under scrutiny (all smoke and no fire).

WSJ.com - A Death Prompts Withdrawal Of Promising MS Drug:


Shares of Elan declined $18.90 to $8 as of 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange trading. Biogen Idec shares were down $28.63, to $38.65, as of 4 p.m. in Nasdaq stock-market trading.


The decision to halt sales of Tysabri comes amid wider controversy about the safety of other drugs approved by the FDA, particularly whether regulators have been correctly balancing the risks of new drugs with their benefits. The FDA has come under scrutiny in recent months over the safety of widely used painkillers, following the voluntary decision by Merck & Co. to pull its best-selling painkiller Vioxx last September after a trial tied it to higher rates of heart attacks and strokes.


Many analysts expected Tysabri to quickly become a blockbuster with annual sales of over $2 billion within a couple of years. The one-year results showed the drug was about twice as good as existing drugs in reducing flare-ups of symptoms in MS patients, such as tingling, double vision and muscle weakness.


Still, the experience with Vioxx offers some hope for Biogen and Elan. An FDA panel last month narrowly voted in favor of allowing the painkiller back on the market, but also called for strong restrictions including an end to consumer promotion of the drug and tough warnings that would sharply limit its use.

{Business, Health}

Seems to be another topic de jour: FDA corruption and wink-wink quick acceptance of potential blockbuster drugs into the marketplace. Of course, nobody plans to injure the consumer, the point being inadequate testing is conducted so that drug companies can start selling promising drugs.

WSJ.com - Are Too Many Unproven Drugs Receiving FDA Early Approval? Process Comes Under Scrutiny:
With the Food and Drug Administration's handling of drug safety already under a microscope, the suspension of multiple-sclerosis drug Tysabri creates a new area for scrutiny: the agency's process for rushing out promising new treatments for the most serious conditions.


Biogen Idec Inc. and Elan Corp. yesterday announced that they would suspend Tysabri from the market and from clinical trials after confirming that one patient had died of a neurological condition called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, or PML. They said a second patient also may be afflicted with it. Both patients were in clinical trials and had taken the drug in combination with another medication, Avonex.


What sets the Tysabri case apart from other recent drug-safety controversies is that it was allowed on the market through the FDA's “accelerated approval” program. Under that mechanism, a drug that treats a life-threatening disease and represents a significant improvement over available therapies can win approval with less data than typically required, though the company is supposed do a follow-up study.

In an analysis that was presented last year at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and later updated, researchers found that of 26 uses for cancer drugs that won accelerated approval, six had serious new adverse events that were discovered only after they went on the market. In addition, only nine of those uses had new, fuller data reviewed after the accelerated approvals, and just six had accelerated approvals converted to full approvals. No accelerated approvals were revoked.

{Health, Business}

We don't use our blog as a marketing tool (for either of our businesses), because one must assume a fairly moderate voice. However, this is an interesting development, no doubt. Much more personal than email marketing, or direct mail.

WSJ.com - Enterprise - Blog as a business tool:
The blog as business tool has arrived.

Some eight million Americans now publish blogs and 32 million people read them, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. What began as a form of public diary-keeping has become an important supplement to a business's online strategy: Blogs can connect with consumers on a personal level -- and keep them visiting a company's Web site regularly.

...While any size company can use such a strategy, small businesses may benefit most: Blogs offer little-known small businesses name recognition, and the chance to boost traffic well beyond what they'd get if they were simply offering goods and services for sale.

“It's a new way of communicating, rather than marketing,” says Charlene Lee, an analyst at Forrester Research. Like other forms of publishing, blogs attract the largest audiences when they avoid overt commercialism and deliver compelling and credible content, Ms. Lee says.

{Business}

Technorati Tags: Business

James Dolan is still a dorkweed for firing Mr. Albert. Dolan is obviously a subscriber to the George Bush school of criticism: no criticism allowed within earshot.

Is Albert Nets' New Yes Man? 'Yes!' and No:


Marv Albert is probably the greatest pro basketball announcer ever, but how much do the Nets and the YES Network really need him?

Albert and MSG Network parted on bitter terms last June when he said that he could no longer deal with attempts by James L. Dolan, Cablevision's president, to censor his criticism of the team. “It got so ludicrous that we'd kid around and say, 'If the Knicks lost, let's not give the final score,' ” Albert, 63, said yesterday.

Yesterday, Ratner said that he could “never envision” telling Albert what to say or intruding upon his independence.

{Basketball, Business}

Tags: Basketball, /Business