Month: December 2009

Reading Around on December 9th

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Some additional reading December 9th from 16:37 to 19:54:

  • Glenn Greenwald – Why don't the powerful get grilled like this? – One can watch what Rachel did in last night's interview — what made it so effective — to see why this virtually never happens on, say, Sunday shows when politically powerful people who interviewed:

    (1) Rachel had obviously done a substantial amount of work prior to the interview, having even read the guest's books and being able to refer to various parts of them quickly; doing real work and real reading is far too burdensome for most of our coddled, vapid media stars.

    (2) Rachel, despite being unfailingly civil and polite, was obviously indifferent to whether the guest liked her. She bombarded him with questions that made him extremely uncomfortable and which conclusively proved that he was simply lying. Media stars who host political interview programs would never subject powerful people to treatment like that for fear of losing access and/or their standing in the Beltway world.

  • Healthy Food Lithuanian Closing – Chicagoist – Healthy Food's closing marks the end of an era; they've been in business in Bridgeport since 1938 serving practically the same menu of fresh-squeezed juices, homemade soups, Lithuanian sausage dumplings (koldunai), blynai (rich Lithuanian pancakes stuffed with cheese and fruit), roast duck and the amazing potato and bacon bit pudding known as kugelis. Healt
  • Healthy Food Lithuanian Restaurant retiring along with its owner | Crain's Chicago Business – Healthy Food Lithuanian Restaurant, a Bridgeport staple, is closing Tuesday after 70 years of serving up kugelis and sauerkraut soup.
    Owner Grazina “Gina” Biciunas-Santoski said she is hanging up her apron and retiring after running the restaurant at 3236 S. Halsted St. for the past 30 years. Ms. Biciunas-Santoski took over the neighborhood spot in 1978 from her parents, who bought it in 1960. Healthy Food Lithuanian opened in 1938.

Reading Around on December 8th through December 9th

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A few interesting links collected December 8th through December 9th:

  • News America Paid $29.5M in Mysterious Floorgraphics Acquisition | BNET Advertising Blog | BNET – The suit has a certain chutzpah to it. A source tells BNET that FGI had sales of less than $1 million. Many outside observers believed that at the time of the deal, FGI existed mostly to resolve its litigation against NAM, not as a functioning business. It’s hard to believe NAM thought it was buying a genuine business and not settling a lawsuit, which is essentially what NAM is arguing in its suit.
  • Stooper supports a family by cashing in erroneously discarded betting slips Boing Boing – (Image: OTB and me, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from swanksalot’s photostream)

  • The Spending Wars | The American Prospect – How did military spending become sacrosanct? – Excellent question: How did military spending become sacrosanct?”When Rep. David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, recently proposed a surtax that would pay for the Afghanistan War, the collective response from most of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle was, “Are you nuts?” Nancy Pelosi quickly put the kibosh on Obey’s “Share the Sacrifice Act,” and all talk of funding the war has been banished. Meanwhile, Democrats have spent untold hours debating how to finance health-care reform, all while Republicans carp about how doing so is just too darn expensive, what with our ever-climbing deficit.”

OTB and me

swanksalot1 Comment
OTB and me
OTB and me, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

and some stranger in the foreground. No, didn’t go in, not my thing.

republished at BoingBoing:
www.boingboing.net/2009/12/08/stooper-supports-a-f.html

Jesus Leonardo is the king of the “stoopers” — people who pick up discarded betting slips at racetracks and betting parlors and double-check them to see if they’re actually winners. He makes about $45,000 a year at it, working 10 hours a day, and declares his “winnings” to the IRS.

Mr. Leonardo, who is married with two teenagers, is hardly living on the fringes. He said that stooping brings him $100 to $300 a day, and more than $45,000 a year. Last month, he cashed in a winning ticket from bets made on races at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., for $8,040. His largest purse came in 2006, when he received $9,500 from a Pick 4 wager (choosing the winners of four consecutive races) at Retama Park Race Track in Selma, Tex.

Stilton Cheese and Stilton England

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Strange byproduct of EU food rules: Stilton cheese is not really Stilton cheese, and probably will never be.

John Major is a Twat

STILTON, England — This small hamlet shares its name with a famous curd. But under European Union law, it’s illegal to make Stilton cheese in Stilton.

The bar on producing Stilton cheese here is a curious consequence of EU efforts to protect revered local foods by limiting the geographical area where they can be made.

The EU’s protected list of more than 800 foods and drinks includes famous names like Champagne and Parma as well as lesser-known delicacies such as Moutarde de Bourgogne, Munchener Bier and a Spanish chili pepper called Asado del Bierzo. It even covers Foin de Crau, a hay for animals from the fields of Bouches-du-Rhône in southern France.

But to the chagrin of locals, no cheese made here can be branded as Stilton. That’s because a group of outsiders, called the Stilton Cheesemakers Association, raised a formal stink.

The association, whose members have been making the cheese for more than a hundred years, in 1996 sought to protect the “Stilton” name by applying for a Product Designation of Origin from the EU. In its application, the group wrote that “the cheese became known as Stilton because it was at the Bell Inn in this village that the cheese was first sold to the public.” The 17th-century inn, which still stands in the main street, is the village’s oldest.

[Click to continue reading English Village Tries to Milk a Connection to Its Cheesy Past – WSJ.com]

Gotta love this detail:

One 18th-century notable who dropped by was Daniel Defoe, author of “Robinson Crusoe.” He wrote about the inn, and the cheese he enjoyed there, in a travelogue published in 1724. He remarked that the cheese, unfettered at the time by EU product rules, was known as the English Parmesan, and he offered a mouth-watering description of how it was consumed. The cheese, he wrote, “is brought to Table so full of Mites or Maggots that they use a Spoon to eat them.”

Neckties Seen as Flu Risk

Seth Anderson0 comment

Another reason to avoid the damn things like the plague they are probably carrying:

The list of things to avoid during flu season includes crowded buses, hospitals and handshakes. Consider adding this: your doctor’s necktie.

Neckties are rarely, if ever, cleaned. When a patient is seated on the examining table, doctors’ ties often dangle perilously close to sneeze level. In recent years, a debate has emerged in the medical community over whether they harbor dangerous germs.

Several hospitals have proposed banning them outright. Some veteran doctors suspect the antinecktie campaign has more to do with younger physicians’ desire to dress casually than it does with modern medicine. At least one tie maker is pushing a compromise solution: neckwear with an antimicrobial coating.

[Click to continue reading Nothing to Sneeze At: Doctors’ Neckties Seen as Flu Risk – WSJ.com]

Suited and Bored

Other than tradition, why the hell would anyone choose to wear neckties? They constrict your throat, and collect germs1 – for what? To conform to Renaissance fashion trends? We don’t wear bloomers anymore, either, or powdered wigs, so why cravats?

Wikipedia’s brief history lesson on these abominations:

The necktie traces back to the time of Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) when Croatian mercenaries from the Military Frontier in French service, wearing their traditional small, knotted neckerchiefs, aroused the interest of the Parisians. Due to the slight difference between the Croatian word for Croats, Hrvati, and the French word, Croates, the garment gained the name “Cravat”. The new article of clothing started a fashion craze in Europe where both men and women wore pieces of fabric around their necks. In the late seventeenth century, the men wore lace cravats that took a large amount of time and effort to arrange. These cravats were often tied in place by cravat strings, arranged neatly and tied in a bow.

Footnotes:
  1. and food, occasionally [↩]

Vinyl Record Albums and Turntables Making Comeback

Seth Anderson1 Comment

A surge I could believe in…


“Audio Technica AT-LP2D-USB Fully Automatic Stereo Turntable with USB Output, Includes Recording Software and Dual Magnet Cartridge” (AUDIO TECHNICA)

At a glance, the far corner of the main floor of J&R Music looks familiar to anybody old enough to have scratched a record by accident. There are cardboard boxes filled with albums by the likes of Miles Davis and the Beach Boys that could be stacked in any musty attic in America.

But this is no music morgue; it is more like a life-support unit for an entertainment medium that has managed to avoid extinction, despite numerous predictions to the contrary. The bins above the boxes hold new records — freshly pressed albums of classic rock as well as vinyl versions of the latest releases from hip-hop icons like 50 Cent and Diddy and new pop stars like Norah Jones and Lady Gaga.

And with the curious resurgence of vinyl, a parallel revival has emerged: The turntable, once thought to have taken up obsolescence with reel-to-reel and eight-track tape players, has been reborn.

[Click to continue reading Vinyl Record Albums and Turntables Are Gaining Sales – NYTimes.com]

Kaulana O Hilo Hanakahi by The Kalima Brothers

If I had space, I’d love to have a room dedicated to a turntable, a quality headphone, and a wall of vinyl records. Sigh.

Tuesday iTunes Randomizer

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Non-Sequitur alert: a random playlist, as generated tonight during my meditation1. Ignore the goofy formatting and crazy number scheme, I made a typo in the HTML, and didn’t want to go back and redo all the code.

  1. Jason Isbell– Dress Blues
    Sirens of the Ditch
  2. Americana, sometimes known as alternative country, a tale of being a casualty of war, sleeping in Dress Blues
  3. Bob Dylan– Stonehenge
    TTRH Season 2 – 05 – Days of the Week
  4. what is the deal with Stonehenge? Bob ponders rocks of all time, and notes that currently there are two Starbucks and and Applebees inside the circle
  5. Johann Sebastian Bach – Bach: Notenbüchlein Für Anna Magdalena Bach
    Bach: Notenbüchlein Für Anna Magdalena Bach – Menuet, BWV Anh. 114- Pieter-Jan Belder
  6. Ahhh, Bach
  7. The Velvet Underground– I’m Waiting For The Man
    Peel Slowly And See Disc 2
  8. even after a hundred thousand listens, still love this garage rock tune, especially the occasional cha-ching double-time strum on one of the rhythm guitars
  9. Barack Obama– White Folks
    Dreams from My Father


  10. “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (Barack Obama)

    There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherfuckers like you…

  11. Micachu– Eat Your Heart
    Jewellery
  12. meh, some free track from Amazon.com
  14. Johann Sebastian Bach – Bach Edition, Vol. 5 – Cantatas, Vol. 2 [Disc 4]
    Bach: Cantata #98, BWV 98, “Was Gott Tut, Das Ist Wohlgetan” – Was Gott Tut, Das Ist Wohlgetan- Ruth Holton, Sytse Buwalda, Etc.; Piet Jan Leusink: Netherlands Bach Collegium, Holland Boys Choir
  16. Louvin Brothers, The– There’s A Higher Power
    Satan Is Real
  17. Check the album cover. Nuff said. Actually a great LP.


    “Satan Is Real” (The Louvin Brothers)

  18. Johann Sebastian Bach – Bach Edition, Vol. 4 – Cantatas, Vol. 1 [Disc 3]
    Bach: Cantata #97, BWV 97, “In Allen Meinen Taten” – Ihm Hab Ich Mich Ergeben- Ruth Holton, Sytse Buwalda, Etc.; Piet Jan Leusink: Netherlands Bach Collegium, Holland Boys Choir

  19. With a good sustain guitar pedal, this would sound rockin’ translated as an Indie pop song.

  20. Johann Sebastian Bach – Bach Edition, Vol. 12 – Keyboard Works, Vol. 2 [Disc 12]
    Bach: 3-Part Invention In A Minor, BWV 799- Pieter-Jan Belder

  21. Bach friendly meditation tonight. I forgot actually what I was thinking here, I drifted into galactic space

  22. The Velvet Underground– It Was A Pleasure Then
    Peel Slowly And See Disc 2


  23. “Peel Slowly and See” (The Velvet Underground)

  24. I’m lucky that I didn’t have a copy of this Nico rarity2 during my drug-addled youth, such a perfect song to listen to after being up for a few days straight on whatever. Not that I’d know about being up for days on end. That must have been someone else. Sounds like Nico singing, John Cale on squeaky viola, and Lou Reed on electric guitar, as far as I can tell.
  25. Iggy Pop– Repo Man
    Repo Man
  26. Iggy sounds like a thug here on the title track to the Repo Man soundtrack, love it. Bought a copy of this CD, used, this year, replacing my original vinyl version. Such memories invoked, of being a angsty-teen, of wondering what life would be like as a punk-rocker, etc. etc. I’m looking for the joke with a microscope!
  27. Circle Jerks– Coup D’Etat


    “Repo MAN – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” (REPO MAN – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies, The Plugz, Juicy Bananas, The Circle Jerks, Burning Sensations, Fear, harry dean stanton, emilio estevez, punk rock, art punk, 80’s) (michael nesmith)

  28. I even raised and shook my fist during the chorus of this song: Coup D’Etat!

  29. Stephan Smith– All Together Now
    Now’s the Time
  30. No idea where this song came from, but it isn’t bad. The singer has a slight lisp, but the acoustic guitar work is nice, and the lyrics are poignant and pointed enough to notice, about world unity. I’ll have to look for more music by this guy.
  31. Dubliners, The– Molly Malone
    Seven Drunken Nights
  32. This even goes further back: I remember learning this song in Mrs. Sullivans’ Fifth Grade class, South River, Ontario. I recall singing enthusiastically, in our children’s tenor voices.
  33. Barack Obama– Buy Your Own Damn Fries
    Dreams from My Father (Disc 2)
Footnotes:
  1. we have one of those one-person sauna devices, and I let the day’s worries leave my body while ruminating about whatever it is my mind decides to ruminate upon, while playing my iPod [↩]
  2. from Chelsea Girl [↩]

Unions Push to Finish Tallest Tower in Chicago

Seth Anderson0 comment

The 2,000 foot planned condo tower, designed by Calatrava, has been stuck at hole-in-the-ground status for a while now. [Wikipedia has a few photos, including this one]. Wonder if this latest surge will help complete the project?


[artist’s rendition of the Spire, via Wikipedia]

The stalled construction of North America’s tallest building, a 150-story luxury residential tower planned for downtown, may get a boost from unionized construction workers desperate for jobs.

Any effort to save the Chicago Spire faces major hurdles, especially coming after a real-estate glut that flooded Chicago with new condos. Plans call for the 2,000-foot-high Spire to have nearly 1,200 units — more than are expected to be completed for the entire downtown area in 2010. Prices start at $750,000, with the bulk of the condos costing $2 million to $15 million.

Workers broke ground with great fanfare in 2007, but the project stalled last year amid the financial crisis when funding dried up. That left many doubtful that the Santiago Calatrava-designed tower would ever emerge from the circular foundation that sits about a block from Lake Michigan.

Now a group of union pension funds is conducting due diligence on a plan to lend $170 million to Irish developer Shelbourne Development Group, said Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago and Cook County Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents 24 unions with some 100,000 members.[Click to continue reading Push to Finish Tallest Tower – WSJ.com]
[Non-WSJ subscribers use this Digg-enabled link]

The Chicago Spire website is a flash-centric p.o.s., but if flash annoys you less than it annoys me, browse the Chicago Spire website here for lots of photos, descriptions and the like.

and the failed Olympics bid continues to have a ripple effect on the Chicago economy:

The Spire got an unlikely break in early October with the demise of Chicago’s hopes to host the 2016 Olympics. Mr. Villanova, who was on Chicago’s Olympic bid committee, said the unions had committed to help fund the Olympic Village to house athletes. “When that went south on us, we started focusing on the Spire project,” he said.

After cranking out an average of 4,500 new condo units a year downtown for the past four years, Chicago developers expect to complete 900 units next year and fewer than 100 in 2012, said Gail Lissner, vice president of Appraisal Research Counselors, a Chicago appraisal and consulting firm. “We don’t see cranes in the sky anymore,” Ms. Lisser said, which could mean the Spire would arrive in a much-changed market in four or five years.

Reading Around on December 6th through December 7th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected December 6th through December 7th:

  • “Do I have the right to refuse this search?” | Homeland Security Watch – TSA Terrorism Theater is a Joke, and not the 911 kind1 “Within the last few months, I have been singled out for “additional screening” roughly half the time I step into an airport security line. On Friday, October 9, as I stepped out of the full-body scanning device at BWI, I decided I needed more information to identify why it is that I have become such an appealing candidate for secondary screening.

    Little did I know this would be only the first of many questions I now have regarding my airport experiences.

    Over these last few months, I have grown increasingly frustrated with what I view as an unjustifiable intrusion on my privacy. It was not so much the search (then) as it was the embarrassment of being singled out, effectively being told “You are different,” but getting no explanation as to why.”

  • Mark the Spot: Tell AT&T where the iPhone sucks – Well now there is an electronic version of that crosswalk button for me to push whenever my signal degrades. This app, free in the App Store lets you pinpoint your location when the call was dropped. Expect a good constellation of points around my house

  • Oxford American – The Southern Magazine of Good Writing :: Ode to a Pecan Pie – The pecan pie has been on the Brigtsen’s menu for all twenty-three years of the restaurant’s history. It is evidence of Brigtsen’s broader philosophy.

    “I wanted it to be just that: a classic Southern dessert. I am not out to change the world with my food. I am not out to reinvent the wheel. I’m only here to make people happy. And whatever it takes to do that is my goal. I also believe that just because something is one hundred years old or twenty-three years old doesn’t mean it isn’t good anymore.”

Footnotes:
  1. or the 9/11 kind [↩]

Cancer From the Kitchen

Seth Anderson0 comment

Nicholas Kristof asks a question I’ve asked many times: what if our chemical-friendly lifestyle is directly linked to our increased death rates from cancer, and other illnesses? Especially since, in the US, toxins don’t have to be proven to be safe1 before they are used. I’d rather we used the European model, and mandated extensive testing before chemicals are allowed. The American Chemistry Council has too much power in this country.

Thirsty?

What if breast cancer in the United States has less to do with insurance or mammograms and more to do with contaminants in our water or air — or in certain plastic containers in our kitchens? What if the surge in asthma and childhood leukemia reflect, in part, the poisons we impose upon ourselves?

…

Dr. Philip Landrigan, the chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai, said that the risk that a 50-year-old white woman will develop breast cancer has soared to 12 percent today, from 1 percent in 1975. (Some of that is probably a result of better detection.) Younger people also seem to be developing breast cancer: This year a 10-year-old in California, Hannah, is fighting breast cancer and recording her struggle on a blog.

Likewise, asthma rates have tripled over the last 25 years, Dr. Landrigan said. Childhood leukemia is increasing by 1 percent per year. Obesity has surged. One factor may be lifestyle changes — like less physical exercise and more stress and fast food — but some chemicals may also play a role.

[Click to continue reading Nicholas Kristof – Cancer From the Kitchen? – NYTimes.com]

and what to do? Simple answer is to make a few changes around your house:

I asked these doctors what they do in their own homes to reduce risks. They said that they avoid microwaving food in plastic or putting plastics in the dishwasher, because heat may cause chemicals to leach out. And the symposium handed out a reminder card listing “safer plastics” as those marked (usually at the bottom of a container) 1, 2, 4 or 5.

It suggests that the “plastics to avoid” are those numbered 3, 6 and 7 (unless they are also marked “BPA-free”). Yes, the evidence is uncertain, but my weekend project is to go through containers in our house and toss out 3’s, 6’s and 7’s.

Bill Moyers did a piece on this topic several years ago, including testing his own blood, and discovering tons of toxins, at levels unsafe.2

The “precautionary principle” – adopted by the European Union in 1992 as the basis for regulation of toxic chemicals –- holds that in the face of scientific uncertainty, government should err on the side of protecting public health and safety. In other words, if scientific evidence indicates there is a good chance that a chemical may pose a risk of irreversible harm, regulators should not wait for absolute proof before acting.

One of the major themes running through the internal chemical industry documents investigated in TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS REPORT is the industry’s opposition to the precautionary principle. It has used its wealth to win favorable treatment from politicians, sponsored surrogates to promote the industry point of view with the media, and now is quietly pushing legislation through state legislatures that will overturn many of the gains citizens believe they have made in their right to information about toxic chemicals.

Footnotes:
  1. the so-called precautionary principle [↩]
  2. I’ve blogged about it, but can’t find it at the moment [↩]