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“I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!” the Queen said. “Two pence a week, and jam every other day.” Alice couldn’t help laughing, as she said, “I don’t want you to hire ME – and I don’t care for jam.” “It’s very good jam,” said the Queen. “Well, I don’t want any TO-DAY, at any rate.” “You couldn’t have it if you DID want it,” the Queen said. “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.” “It MUST come sometimes to “jam to-day,”” Alice objected. “No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every OTHER day: to-day isn’t any OTHER day, you know.” “I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!”The Queen’s rule is a pun on a mnemonic for remembering the distinction between the Latin words “nunc” and “iam” (sometimes written “jam”). Both mean “now”, but “nunc” is only used in the present tense, while “iam” is used in the past and future tenses.
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Mr. Assange is guilty of one of the worst offenses in American culture: challenging deeply-held beliefs about the benevolence of American foreign policy with facts. It’s no wonder that American media outlets immediately turn the spotlight onto him, and not the actual materials themselves.
Author: swanksalot
Always good to have a second user look at things
links for 2010-10-22
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Of course, Tribune columnist John Kass would prefer to rail at bloggers. You know, the kind who work out of mommy's basement. Here's a question for you, John: What blogs do you read? Cite some examples. Or are you just cutting and pasting from the hoariest cliches you've heard about the Internet?
links for 2010-10-21
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The city of Chicago has 36,000 parking meters. In 2008, it sold them on a 75 year lease for over one billion dollars. The buyers were led by Morgan Stanley. But as Matt Taibbi reports in his forthcoming book Griftopia, previewed in Rolling Stone, the state-owned investment arm of Abu Dhabi ended up owning a large share — possibility a controlling majority — in Chicago's parking meter system.
links for 2010-10-20
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On occasion, I’d like to showcase other iPhoneographers in The Small Mega Pixel. The great thing about the worldwide community of people creating ‘art’ with an iPhone is that they can be right in your backyard. Today’s work is from local guy Seth Anderson.
links for 2010-10-19
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When is it ever a good idea to tie up a woman and have her kneel before a false idol?
links for 2010-10-18
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Many of the most popular applications, or "apps," on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies
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In Chamorro culture many values are exhibited in daily life. Geftao (generous, giving in the Chamorro language) is an example of a principle that conveys cultural mores through practice and lifestyle.
To be geftao is a holdover from ancient Chamorro times. For example, it is unacceptable and a cause for embarrassment to be a poor host (taotao guma’) to your relatives, friends and even strangers. A Chamorro host’s goal is to make their guests comfortable when they visit their homes or at events such as parties or social gatherings.
Family version I Ching – Richard Wilhelm translation
This is the inscription on the hardback version of the I Ching I have, and have carried around for most of my adult life.1 Originally printed in 1966, Bollingen Series. There is a lot of subtext here, but I won’t bore you with a description.
The Chinese characters below my name are the transliteration of my last name, as assigned to me when I studied Beijing Hua at UT-Austin. An De Sen. Quiet Virtuous Forest, as my first Chinese teacher told me. The other character is “sheng” which translates into “born”. Again, there is subtext out the yin-yang, but I won’t bore you with a delineation of it. If you really want to know, bring me a couple of bottles of red wine, and drink them with me: I’ll tell you more than you want to hear.
This edition of the I Ching has a forward by Carl Jung, oft read, oft quoted. I suspect that more modern translations of the I Ching might speak to us more clearly, but that doesn’t matter. My Chinese was never proficient enough to make my own translations.
For over ten years, I kept a dedicated journal where I wrote down the questions and answers related to throwing the coins: my last entry was years ago, but I keep my spidery prose on my shelf. Just in case. Has it helped me? Probably. Part of the charm/mystique of the I Ching is the oblique meaning of the text. One can interpret meaning as it applies to one’s own life; sometimes even accurately.
I am an atheist, and have been as long as I was sentient, but the I Ching isn’t religion, it is aided contemplation. Part of the procedure of throwing the I Ching coins is thinking deeply and seriously about whatever the question of the moment is. I consider the I Ching results as tapping into the subconscious mind, that part of the brain which is active while sleeping, or otherwise occupied. Do you ever wake up in the morning with a perfect answer to a problem you’ve faced? This is that.
Footnotes:- I’ve moved it a dozen times or more, because I’ve moved seemingly a gazillion times [↩]
Don’t You Start Me To Talking
Remnant of 1927
Inside a book, no idea from where originally, but I’ve kept it for many years, especially because I like the phrase: “There is no religion higher than truth".
Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Ina’s 1935
eBooks are pale substitutes for real books: they have no extended history, nothing stuck in between pages.
eBooks have a function, but I hope we don’t, as a society, discard real books in our haste to digitize every goddamn thing on the planet.
links for 2010-10-15
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The Apple logo was multicolor because the Apple II was the first color computer. No one else could do color, so that’s why they put the color blocks into the logo. If you wanted to print the logo in a magazine ad or on a package you could print it with four colors but Steve being Steve insisted on six colors. So whenever the Apple logo was printed, it was always printed in six colors. It added another 30 to 40 percent to the cost of everything, but that’s what Steve wanted. That’s what we always did. He was a perfectionist even from the early days.
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The corner of North Leavitt and West Randolph looks a far cry from the most dangerous neighborhood in America as reported my several large national and local media outlets.
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Mayor Richard M. Daley joined Near West Side residents and members of the business community in dedicating the national headquarters of CB2 — a sister brand of Crate and Barrel — in a re-developed department store building at 240 N. Ashland in late September.
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The name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as Rich “Whitey” on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards — about half in predominantly African-American areas — and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day.
The misspelling turned up on touch-screen machines in 23 wards overall.
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Glenn Beck is urging his listeners to donate money to the Chamber of Commerce.
Now, the Chamber of Commerce is not simply an advocacy organization pursing an ideological agenda, like the National Rifle Association or the National Right to Life Committee. It is a trade association representing some of the largest corporations you can think of. Its board of directors counts among its members executives from Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, US Airways, JPMorgan Chase & Co., IBM, and Verizon. It is The Establishment incarnate.
And Glenn Beck is calling on his hardworking listeners to donate money to the Chamber.
Thistled
This thistle isn’t that, but it’s close.
“He talked with more claret than clarity.” Susan_Ertz
Indeed
links for 2010-10-14
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“We have probably 60 or so foreign multi-national companies in our membership that we have had for decades, many of which have been in the United States for half a century or a century,” said Josten.
The Chamber is being deceptive. In addition to multinational members of the Chamber headquartered abroad (like BP, Shell Oil, and Siemens), a new ThinkProgress investigation has identified at least 84 other foreign companies that actively donate to the Chamber’s 501(c)(6). Below is a chart detailing the annual dues foreign corporations have indicated that they give directly to the Chamber
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What the new genre of foreclosure photography reveals about the human side of the Great Recession.
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But, if I were a teacher, I’d definitely bring in my humidifier and park it in the corner of a classroom. Leaving one humming in the background might just reduce the transmission of all those combined flu particles hanging, exhaled, in the air. Studies have shown that humidifying nursing homes reduces flu transmission – so it’s not just a theoretical benefit. So if you’re a parent, consider sharing this info, as well as the gift of a humidifier, with your kids’ teachers. You don’t need an expensive humidifier – in fact the types that simultaneously heat the air may lead to mold growth in the humidifier (something you definitely don’t want to be blowing into the air you breathe). A good old cheap type of humidifier that you dump out each day and refill is plenty good enough.
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Two years ago today, Jonah Goldberg offered Juan Cole a bet: “Anyway, I do think my judgment is superior to his when it comes to the big picture. So, I have an idea: Since he doesn’t want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let’s make a bet. I predict that Iraq won’t have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I’ll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now). This way neither of us can hide behind clever word play or CV reading. If there’s another reasonable wager Cole wants to offer which would measure our judgment, I’m all ears. Money where your mouth is, doc
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The notion that Tribune editor Gerry Kern would be offended is laughable and just goes to show you how lame the whole company has become – I mean, it was lame before, but at least in a less psychotic way. We get Corporate Lame. This is the jocks vs. the nerds and I can’t take sides in that crappy fight. I hated high school. I’m with the rockers, the burnouts, the misfits, the pranksters, and the smart and witty independent outsiders who don’t care about the prom, their SATs, or tattling about beer and sex. My god, when they came for the journalists there were none of us left!
I didn’t go to my high school prom either, can I join your club…
Farmer’s Gin
Organic botanical gin, at that. Hadn’t heard of this before yesterday’s sojourn to Whole Foods, but I like it.
Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Ina’s 1935
in this age of everything artisanal and organic, you now have Farmer’s Gin. It’s a small-batch production from the people who make Crop Harvest Earth organic vodkas, based on grains from organic farms in the upper Midwest and infused with classy herbs like elderflower, lemon grass and angelica, besides the required juniper.
It’s fragrant, a bit floral and not as bone-dry and piney as a typical London gin. You might spike lemonade with it, and appreciate the 93.4 proof. I like it neat, on the rocks, with a generous squirt of lime
Via Florence Fabricant of The New York Times.
Actually, after I took this photo, I added a splash of Vya red Vermouth
bonus: Onion video that caused a bit of a ruckus at the Chicago Tribune, and got Chief Innovation Office Lee Abrams suspended:
VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes In California Causing Major Slut Spill
links for 2010-10-13
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This whole concept of “good welfare” and “bad welfare” is at the heart of the Tea Party ideology, and it’s something that is believed implicitly across the line. It’s why so many of their political champions, like Miller, and sniveling Kentucky rich kid Rand Paul (a doctor whose patient base is 50% state insured), and Nevada “crazy juice” Senate candidate Sharron Angle (who’s covered by husband Ted’s Federal Employee Health Plan insurance), are so completely unapologetic about taking state aid with one hand and jacking off angry pseudo-libertarian mobs with the other.
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In the middle of Gotham, our family of 66 sans serifs, there is a hushed but surprising moment: a fraction whose numerator has a serif. So important was this detail that we decided to offer it as an option for all the other fractions, a decision that ultimately required more than 400 new drawings. Why?
As you’ll read below, it’s something that we added because we felt it mattered. Even if it helped only a small number of designers solve a subtle and esoteric problem, we couldn’t rest knowing that an unsettling typographic moment might otherwise lie in wait. We’ve always believed that a good typeface is the product of thousands of decisions like these, so we invite you to join us on a behind-the-scenes look at some of the invisible details that go into every font from H&FJ.
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20 of the 200-pound boxes have been stolen in recent weeks, with most of the thefts happening in Area 5. Both the Police Department and Chicago Parking Meters LLC have said that the thefts are being treated seriously and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
links for 2010-10-12
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It is the policy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce not to distribute or make public information about our members. To find out if a specific company is a member, you will have to contact the company directly.
Secrets, secrets, I guess not many want to be associated publicly with this shady partisan organization
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The answer should be apparent: We need to run from the “tough on crime” policies of the 80’s and 90’s. It’s time for greater emphasis on alternative sentences, an end to mandatory minimums and increased good time. There should be more spent on prisoner re-entry programs and prevention and less on prisons.
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In our apartment building, the windows are cleaned professionally once per year. According to the window cleaners, if you don’t do this, the windows could brown. Is this true? Or was this just a sales tactic? It is true. If your windows are not cleaned often, at least an average of four times a year, the sun will bake the dirt onto the glass and ruin them.
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The Waldseemüller map, printed in 1507, depicted the New World in a new way—”surrounded on all sides by the ocean,” in the words of an accompanying book—and named the continent for the Florentine merchant who had sailed down its eastern coast.
Wish this was a bigger reproduction though
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What is the andersonville galleria? The andersonville galleria, in the heart of the thriving Andersonville retail corridor, is a retail market building that currently features over 90 tenants offering apparel, jewelry, artwork, home furnishings, giftware, accessories, antiques. fair trade, and gourmet treats.
The andersonville galleria is located at 5247 N. Clark Street, in Chicago, which is right in the heart of Andersonville
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We called Senator Coburn’s Washington office to find out his annual operating budget. His assistant revealed that Coburn’s office has an estimated annual budget of $3 million, and that none of that recurrent funding has led to a cure for cancer.
That is, as of 2008 or so, this country spent about $5 million funding political science research, and about $3 million funding Tom Coburn.
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Those of us in the industry have watched a series of ill-timed decisions wreck a lot of careers in the past few years, so it’s hard for me to get specifically exercised about Zell and Michaels (and you may have noticed a rash of mismanagement in other industries over the same period that, like, brought the national economy to its knees). Zell, Michaels, et al certainly deserve what Carr gave them. But the rot’s a lot deeper
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Hang out in airports, coffee shops, or other laptop-friendly spots for a while, and you’ll find “Free Public Wi-Fi.” NPR explains that “Free Public WiFi” was never free, and never public, and not actually a Wi-Fi service. It likely started as a joke or prank, but then spread around the world because of a quirk in pre-SP 3 versions of Windows XP:
