Category: Links

suggested reading at other sites

Reading Around on March 20th through March 22nd

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A few interesting links collected March 20th through March 22nd:

  • Spring Cleaning Hits Chicago | Today’s Photos: Today’s best Chicago photos, handpicked by our editors. in Chicago – Cleaning Cloud Gate photo by swanksalot
  • Chicago Tribune Twitterizes masthead | Geek Gestalt – CNET News – He added that, “If you’re a reporter or an editor, Twitter is a great way to get in touch with your audience in real time, and if you do it right, if you follow the right people in your sphere of knowledge, you will get a lot out of it.” And, in an experiment to show the many Twitter users among the paper’s audience that the Tribune gets the microblogging service, and to make it easy to get in touch with the top editors and executives, the publication decided to publish, for one day only, the Twitter-friendly masthead. “We were talking at dinner,” Adee said, “and maybe we had too many glasses of wine…but we were just all talking, and we were like, ‘Hey, let’s do it.’ Tomorrow, it’s back to normal, but you never know when it will spring up again.”

  • [1960 Playboy Magazine advertising image via]

  • The Venereal Disease Channel Imaginatizes Greatastically « Whatever – “Apparently one of the motivating factors to change the name from “scifi” to a phase-changing-vowel-filled homonym was to have a name that was trademarkable and extensible, and it seems no one else in the world actually uses the word “syfy” for anything. Well, except Poland, where the word is used to identify crusty, scabby sexually transmitted diseases, and no, this is not a joke. No one there is going to use the word to associate with their product, any more than someone here might try to market, say, Chlamydia™ brand adhesive bandages.

    Note to SciFi Channel: when your new brand identity means “venereal disease” in any language, it’s the sort of thing that — excuse the term — gets around.”

Reading Around on March 18th through March 19th

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A few interesting links collected March 18th through March 19th:

  • Reminiscing at Arco Arena – Quickly, I thought to myself, Jesus, I don’t know what I’m going to do about it, but I can’t back down now. I noticed that he had just brushed his teeth and there was a little toothpaste in the corner of his mouth, so I pointed to the corner of his mouth and said: “Hey, Gary, you’ve got a little toothpaste in the corner of your mouth.” To this day, I have no idea why I said that. I just didn’t have an answer to “So what are you gonna do about it?” I knew I couldn’t say: “I’m gonna kick your butt” because I was a flabby 39-year-old sportswriter at the time and he was 26 and chiseled and no doubt would have beaten the hell out of me.

    His response to the toothpaste comment was this: He came at me with an overhand right that was intercepted by either Sam Perkins or David Wingate, thankfully, because it no doubt would have hurt my face.

    Then George Karl bear hugged me, to prevent me from charging Payton, figuring I had plans to do that, which I didn’t.

  • Base Station Firmware May Resolve Time Capsule Disk Problems – “One piece of advice if you’ve had problems in the past: Back up any existing Time Machine disk images to an external disk using the Archive feature in Disk Utility, erase them from the drive, and start fresh with new Time Machine backups.

    The Leopard-only Time Machine feature works as an incremental backup system, writing all files on a selected system to a disk image in a first pass, and then only creating copies of files that have changed each hour while Time Machine is active.”

  • Gapers Block : Drive-Thru : Chicago Food – San Marino Deli: Welcome New Addition to West Loop Lunch Desert – Just noticed this place, but haven’t tried it yet.
    “A small deli counter is stuffed with imported cheeses, cured meats, marinated olives, salads and a rotating daily selection of warm entrees like lasagna and herb-roasted chicken. Classic sandwiches are made with a few different types of Italian breads, cheeses and cured meats. The sandwiches are gigantic, even on an American scale. The meatball sandwich (called “American”) was about two feet long, with four 2-inch meatballs and a generous ladleful of homemade tomato sauce (I got two lunches out of it). There’s a full coffee bar that serves illy coffee and an assortment of simple but delicious-looking pastries “

Reading Around on March 17th

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Some additional reading March 17th from 15:24 to 15:41:

  • eG Forums -> Making Limoncello – Take the peels of one dozen lemons + 1 lime microplaned off. … Place the peels into an airtight container (I use a large screwtopped jar) and cover with 1 bottle of 100 proof vodka (I use 100 proof Smirnoff). …Place the jar in a safe place (on top of my refrigerator works for me!) for at least two weeks, giving it an occasional shake and sniff to check on it. You’ll be able to see the vodka turning bright yellow as it pulls the flavorful oils from the peels. When the peels no longer look colorful and the vodka doesn’t seem to be gaining any more visible color or scent, it’s done. Filter through a coffee filter or cheesecloth into a large bottle or jar and press down to remove all the vodka and oils that you can from the peels. Add a 1:1 simple syrup (I usually start with 2 cups water to two cups sugar, boiled lightly until completely dissolved and syrupy and cooled off) and then thin further with approximately another 750 ml bottle of your favorite regular vodka.

  • Limoncello

  • The Webtender Forums: Re Limoncello like mama used to make <by Dom Costa> – The traditional way of making limoncello is to slice off the topmost layer of lemon peel, avoiding the bitter white pith as much as possible. If there is any pith on a slice, scrape it off with a knife or spoon. An extremely sharp vegetable peeler works best. (If you use a fine grater , avoid the temptation to shave off every last bit of colored peel, because you’re likely to end up taking some pith along with it. In other words, it’s best to give up on the colored parts of the peel that are in any “valleys” in the surface of the lemon.) Once you have your lemon peel, steep it for a couple of weeks in 95% grain alchool. You can tell that the flavoring elements have been thoroughly leached out when the peels have lost their color. Filter well the infusion , and add ( cold) sugar syrup you prapared in advance ( 500gr sugar in one litre hot watwer), let stand for a a week, put it in the freezer, ready to drink.

Reading Around on March 17th

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Some additional reading March 17th from 13:38 to 14:12:

  • Taste of a thousand lemons – Los Angeles Times – On a wiltingly hot late summer evening, when all the plants are fainting and there’s not a breath of wind, you pour a tiny glass of limoncello straight from the freezer. It’s colder than ice, and it explodes in your mouth with all the freshness and optimism of lemon. Each sip seems to say, “Poor kid! Poor kid! What a scorcher that was! But everything’s all right now — your old friend night is on the way.”They know a lot about hot summer evenings in Sicily, where limoncello was invented about 100 years ago. It might just be the most sympathetic after-dinner drink there is, as bracing as a gin and tonic but more cheerful and fragrant. Limoncello’s fans have found a lot of other uses for it too: spiking lemonade, flavoring cocktails and splashing onto ice cream, poundcake or fresh fruit

  • Pallini Limoncello

  • Seattle Food – After Homemade Limoncello, You’ll Accept No Other – page 1 – Limoncello, the southern Italian after-dinner treat, is an invigorating refresher with an aroma and flavor unmatched by any citrus-flavored vodka or dessert wine. It’s the sensory equivalent of eating lemon meringue pie on a lazy Sunday picnic in the middle of Paolo’s lemon grove. It’s a potion that gets you to stop and live in the sun-drenched moment, even when it’s cloudy outside.

    The Luxardo brand that your state liquor store may carry is all fine and well, but once you’ve had homemade limoncello, you’ll accept no other. This recipe is a monthlong project that yields huge rewards for just a little patience and hardly any work.

  • Swanksalot’s Solipsism: Fifth Ward – Milwaukee, with biker – “As a billionaire, there would be a lot of buildings I would purchase in Milwaukee. This was one, for some reason. I’d turn most into art collectives – cheap studio space for artsy-fartsy types”

Reading Around on March 13th through March 16th

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A few interesting links collected March 13th through March 16th:

  • The NYT should just give Cheney a byline – “Dick Cheney isn’t Vice President any more, but the New York Times is still treating his comments as so newsworthy they must be presented without rebuttal. The Times devotes 558 words to Cheney’s appearance on CNN yesterday – 501 of which are devoted to simply quoting or paraphrasing Cheney. The 57 words that weren’t devoted to amplifying Cheney’s arguments didn’t include even a word of rebuttal:”

  • 25 Things I Learned at MIT – TrueHoop By Henry Abbott – ESPN – Last Saturday I filled most of a notebook with thoughts from the MIT Sloan Sports Business Conference. It’s all good fodder for TrueHoop. Pieces have made their way onto TrueHoop. More to come.

    But it has been a busy week ever since (there is no rest when you’re determined to write about Trevor Ariza every ten minutes!) and I don’t want to let those thoughts slip through the cracks.

    Some notes:

Reading Around on March 12th

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Some additional reading March 12th from 19:11 to 21:58:

  • Mad Dog Blog – NBA players with Twitter.com Accounts – “I had no idea what Twitter was and so I decided to do some research and really figure it out. As I was checking on it I found someone’s blog who pointed out that a bunch of NBA players have Twitter accounts. Then on my own I found some other NBA players with accounts. Some of the players are listed below.

    Chris Bosh
    Andrew bogut
    Danny Granger
    Steve Nash
    Shaq
    Charlie Villanueva
    Tyson Chandler
    Jalen Rose
    Dwight Howard     “

    maybe. Some of these seem fake, or near fake.

  • Fdic: Banks Didn’t Pay Into FDIC Coffers From 1996 To 2006 – For 10 years—including the boom times banks enjoyed in the first half of this decade—the FDIC was prevented from collecting fees from 95% of financial institutions, which it would have used to further build up its safety net in the event it would someday have to bail out a bunch of stupid losers…

    Cornelius Hurley, director of the Boston University law school’s Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law, [said] if the FDIC has to take over a large bank—say, Citibank—the funds that remain would be drained “in a flash.”
    “Typically you would build up a reserve during the halcyon days to protect yourselves during a recession,” he said, calling the decision to stop collecting most premiums “a political one” that was pushed by banks and not based on strict accounting principles.

    Of course the American Banking Association says it made no sense to pay into the FDIC during those 10 years because they had more than enough money. Congress, not surprisingly, agreed with them.

Reading Around on March 10th through March 11th

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A few interesting links collected March 10th through March 11th:

  • Can't blame Perry for avoiding me at taco eating bash – "In a computer search, I discovered that since March 2, 2001, I have had at least 25 columns in which I've made references to "Rick Perry" and "hair." Now that's a lot of Rick Perry hair jokes. Now, that's not as many jokes as David Letterman has made about what the hookers are doing on Times Square, but it's up there.

    Also, over the years, I have done seven columns in which "Rick Perry" and "adios mofo" appeared in the same text. These were references to when Perry told a TV reporter just that. So after today, we're up to eight "adios mofos."

  • Sam's Club to Offer Wine in a Barrel – "Move over boxed wine — Sam's Club this week will begin offering wine in a barrel.

    The retailer will carry Sonoma. Calif.-based Red Truck Wines' new three-liter Mini-Barrel, a trademark- and patent-pending barrel design featuring the iconic wine-barrel shape, complete with rings, staves, a wood-grain look, and burned-in imagery and typography."

Reading Around on March 9th through March 10th

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A few interesting links collected March 9th through March 10th:

Nelson Algren Avenue

Reading Around on March 6th through March 9th

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A few interesting links collected March 6th through March 9th:

  • It Didn’t Take Dem “Plotting” to Make Limbaugh GOP Leader – Eyes On Obama – “The bottom line is that Rush Limbaugh is unequivocally the most simultaneously loved, respected, revered, and feared man on the right. According to Machiavelli, that makes him the leader.Democrats didn’t concoct some false connection between Limbaugh and the Republican Party. It’s always been there, and as Rush has grown more popular, he’s grown more powerful in his ability to deflect criticism, to the point that his very presence downright deters it. Republicans know if they cross Rush (or speak against him publicly in even the smallest way), the firestorm he unleashes may be enough to end their careers. And so he speaks daily to an audience of millions, unchecked by his fellow conservatives.”

  • cocaine and the swinging 1970s

  • Media Matters – Media Matters: The media’s tax fraud – When is a tax cut for 98 percent of taxpayers portrayed as a tax increase? When some of the small handful of people whose taxes will go up happen to control the nation’s news media.

    Last week, President Obama unveiled a budget outline that extends the Bush tax cuts for all but the top two percent of taxpayers and makes permanent a tax credit of up to $800 for low- and middle-income workers that was included in the recent stimulus package, among other tax cuts.

Reading Around on March 4th

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Some additional reading March 4th from 16:15 to 19:51:

Reading Around on March 3rd through March 4th

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A few interesting links collected March 3rd through March 4th:

  • Warnings: Going To The Doc? Be Sure You Don't Sign A Gag Order – "ateMDs.com says it's planning on creating a "Wall of Shame" that will list all the doctors who are known to use the Medical Justice waivers—around 2,000 so far, according to Medical Justice.
    John Swapceinski, co-founder of RateMDs.com, said that in recent months, six doctors have asked him to remove negative online comments based on patients' signed waivers. He has refused.

    "They're basically forcing the patients to choose between health care and their First Amendment rights, and I really find that repulsive," Swapceinski said."

  • Johnny "Red" Kerr: Man of pleasures and passions — chicagotribune.com – "This disclosure sparked a discussion about our shared love of music. When Red asked for some of my favorite artists, I mentioned acts as varied as Uncle Tupelo, the Clash and Alejandro Escovedo and didn't give it much more thought.

    About a week later, Red arrived at the United Center for a game with a stack of CDs in his hand.

    "Here," he said, handing them over. "I burned you a bunch of your favorite artists. I really like that Uncle Tupelo. Thanks for turning me onto them."

    He was 68 at the time."

Reading Around on February 27th through February 28th

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A few interesting links collected February 27th through February 28th:

  • Debunking the Clean Coal Myth : EcoLocalizer – “There is no such thing as “clean coal” in the U.S. today. Coal is responsible for 32% of CO2 emissions in this country and 83% of the CO2 emissions from producing our electricity. In theory, we could retrofit this nation’s coal plants to capture their pollution and store it. Here is my question: If every single coal plant needs to be revamped to be truly “clean,” why not just invest that time and money in truly clean, renewables?” [Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by Seth Anderson]
  • April Winchell » Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit – Ray, a fellow classmate of Obama’s, was also bi-racial, and also trying to define himself. But what set him apart was his colorful manner of self-expression. Ray cursed like a motherfucker.

    This would all be snickerworthy enough, but it turns out that Obama actually read the audiobook version of Dreams From My Father.

    And that means he read Ray’s quotes.

    And that means you’re about to hear the President of United States using language that would finish Cheney off once and for all.

  • Chicago Reader Blogs: Chicagoland Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all: The Chicago Journalism Town Hall – “In other words: journalism isn’t dying. (Journalists are dying, of course, but even I don’t blame the Huffington Post for that.) The institutions are dying. That’s it. We’ve isolated the problem!

    Journalists (I will irresponsibly use this as a synonym for “people who work in broadcast or print,” even though we’re all kind of journalists, which I will get to later) blame the bloggers (ditto, for people who work online). Bloggers blame the journalists. Everyone blames the economy, and management. Was it Ben Goldberger in the Blog with the Aggregator? Or was it Eric Zorn in the Newspaper with the Inverted Pyramid, or Sam Zell in the Boardroom with the ESOP?”

  • John Bolton at CPAC: The Benefits of Nuking Chicago | Mother Jones – “Former UN Ambassador John Bolton believes the security of the United States is at dire risk under the Obama administration. And before a gathering of conservatives in Washington on Thursday morning, he suggested, as something of a joke, that President Barack Obama might learn a needed lesson if Chicago were destroyed by a nuclear bomb.”

    Asshole!

  • BULLS: Sam Smith: He was always Stormin’ – “Chicago understood Norm because it is known as the Second City. It is in the flyover region. Norm couldn’t crack the big time and run with the big boys, not among the playing elite and not afterward. But he never accepted being less than them and always was sticking his foot in the door to remind them he wasn’t going away.

    Norm was like us. Never really appreciated despite working so hard at it and giving everything he had every time. Norm broadcast harder than some guys played the game, and he let them know it. Someone was speaking up for us, and we loved Norm for that. And he loved us because he understood, if not accepted, rejection.”

  • SLAM ONLINE | » First Person: Norm Van Lier – “It was my dad who helped me let go of my anger. Before he died in 1988, we watched “The Godfather” together. Afterward my dad asked me, “Why do you think the Bulls owe you anything?”

    I told him about this and that, slights and slams, stuff that had grown into huge obstacles in my mind.

    “Did they pay you on time?” Yes, sir. “Were their checks good?” Yes, sir.

    “Well, then they don’t owe you a thing. So get up, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and go to work.”

    I swear, from that moment on, my attitude was completely different. I’ve not looked back since.”

  • The Sports Guy: Bill Simmons Welcome to the No Benjamins Association – ESPN Page 2 – Ru-oh.
    “For once, the league’s problems have nothing to do with talent, drugs, racial issues or how the sport is being played. With the country embroiled in its worst economic crisis in 80 years, the NBA is quietly bracing for its own little D-Day … only outsiders don’t fully realize or care. Clearly, we wouldn’t put this budding debacle on par with the Gulf War, the collapse of American car companies, the real estate quagmire, the implosion of Wall Street, the decline of the American dollar, the shaky footing of previously untouchable media institutions (newspapers, magazines, TV networks, movie studios and publishing companies), or even Vegas and the porn industry caving financially. “
  • Media Matters – Media Matters: In support of shunning – Will has made false claims about the Voting Rights Act and the New Deal. He made a claim about China drilling off the coast of Florida that was so wrong, even then-Vice President Cheney — who cited Will in repeating the claim — acknowledged it wasn’t true. When even Dick Cheney thinks you’ve gone too far in spouting pro-drilling falsehoods, you have a problem. But neither Will nor the Post corrected the error.

    Last year, Will claimed in his Newsweek column and on ABC that Social Security taxes are levied based on household income. Not true. He claimed that McCain won more votes from independents during the primaries than Obama did. Wrong. He claimed most minimum-wage earners are students or part-time employees. False. Will has even lied about Hillary Clinton’s Yankees fandom.

    Basically, George Will routinely makes false claims large and small, holds politicians to disparate standards, and engages in ethically dubious conduct on behalf of his preferred candidates.

  • The George Will Affair : CJR – Undeterred, on Tuesday, the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, Friends of the Earth, and Media Matters for America sent a joint letter to the Post reiterating the call for some form of correction or clarification. It cited three key problems with Will’s column: that he misused data on global sea ice levels from the Arctic Climate Research Center; that he misrepresented the World Meteorological Organization’s position on global warming and climate trends; and that he “rehashed the discredited myth that in the 1970s, there was broad scientific consensus that the Earth faced an imminent global cooling threat.”

    “George Will is entitled to his own opinions, but he is not entitled to his own facts,” the letter concluded. “We respectfully ask that you immediately make your readers aware of the glaring misinformation in Will’s column.” But the Post’s position remains the same.

Reading Around on February 26th through February 27th

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A few interesting links collected February 26th through February 27th:

  • There Is No Social Security Crisis | The American Prospect – When does the Social Security trust fund run out in that case? Never. It never runs out (here’s the graph, if you’re interested).

    The Social Security trustees aren’t the only ones who have tried to crunch these numbers; the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the trust fund will be exhausted in 2049, not 2041, and that at that point tax revenues will cover 84 percent of benefits, not 78 percent. But looking at all the various projections, one has to conclude the following:

    At some point, somewhere between 30 and 70 years in the future, the Social Security trust fund may be exhausted. If it is exhausted and taxes are not raised, beneficiaries will see a reduction in benefits that will be meaningful, though not catastrophic.

  • Chicago Closer to High-Speed Hub Reality? – Chicagoist: Chicago News, Food, Arts & Events – Awesome, let’s hope this happens. “it seems like a battle is shaping up for who will get the biggest slice of the transit pie as U.S. Senate Leader Harry Reid (of Nevada) will be making a play for his area, but he’ll be going up against Illinois’ own…President Obama. The Midwest line also has the Federal Railroad Administration on its side thanks to a layout that would connect up to 11 major metro areas (St. Louis, the Twin Cities, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, etc) within a 400 miles of Chicago, the proposed hub. As for what kind of train would be used, while Amtrak was batted about for the Midwest, the “Sin Express” folks are looking into maglev technology, a system which uses magnets to cause trains to levitate that is currently in use in Shanghai.”

Reading Around on February 26th

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Some additional reading February 26th from 17:50 to 18:48:

  • Chicago Reader | Norm Van Lier | Chicago Bulls – RIP – Awesome article from 1994 re the recently departed Stormin’ Norm Van Lier. A little bit of flash, 1970s beanbag bong hits, and some racism that still lingered twenty years (and fifteen years past that).”There was a time, not long before Michael Jordan, when Norm Van Lier was the best guard who’d ever played for the Bulls and was worshiped by basketball fans all over Chicago.”

  • Chicago Reader Blogs: News Bites – Quite interesting discussion of what newspapers might turn into, or not, and what might replace them, or not. Could one be a reporter for $41,000 a year, before taxes? Happily?

Reading Around on February 26th

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Some additional reading February 26th from 12:19 to 13:28:

  • Zulkey.com – Yo Dawg – The bright young minds over at 4chan established the format of 'Yo dawg, I heard you like X, so we put a X in your X so you can X while you X' and paired it with a funny picture of Xzibit … And so, a meme was born and it spread across the interwebs like herpes."

    To wit:

  • Chicago Public Radio Blog » Did MSNBC steal our story? | News and Notes from WBEZ – Then, MSNBC picked it up and reported nationally. But take a close look at how they provide the story. No links, very little attribution and essentially the full transcript lifted from our site. Interesting case study for the future of Journalism, ey? They will argue that they attributed to WBEZ in the lead, but who’s getting that traffic? And who’s getting that ad revenue from said traffic?