From the superb YouTube Channel: thealternateside907.

Check out that channel: there’s dozens of great live performances from a wide variety of bands.

John Cassidy has two (and likely more to follow) posts on this deal. First there’s this one: Facebook-Goldman: Where Is the S.E.C.?
and this one Facebook-Goldman: The Plot Thickens.

Both are worth reading.

As the WSJ says, you Decide: Goldman’s Facebook Pitch or Nigerian Email ‘Opportunity’?

From the article:

As a first step to drum up investor interest in Facebook stock, Goldman Sachs shot missives to clients with the opaque subject line, “Private Investment,” according to an email reviewed by Deal Journal. We couldn’t help compare it to another solicitation for money, from an anonymous Nigerian who assures you of a giant payout if you help him get back to his home country.

Of course, unlike Nigerian email scams, the solicitation came from a Goldman money manager rather than a random stranger. … But we couldn’t help note some similar language used by Goldman and purported Nigerian princes. Read and compare!

Exactly! Go to the WSJ blog post and compare the spam with the Goldman letter. The WSJ is not exaggerating when it says they are similar.

I think this latest play by Goldman is a good idea for them and a bad idea for everyone else. I also think they are testing the waters with the SEC. If the SEC gives them a pass on this, they will likely set up many private/unregulated IPOs like this, the next bubble will occur, and eventually we will have any financial meltdown similar like we just had.

BlogTO has a great set of photo essays showing some of the visual history of Toronto. I liked this one of Toronto of the 1890s. I was amazed by this photo:

University Avenue, now lined with large buildings and hospitals, is lined with trees back then.

Here’s the view from the other end of the Avenue:

Amazing.

Go to BlogTO and at the bottom of that post you can get the photo essays by decade.

Why? Because you will get alot more out of the Internet if you do, as Seth Godin very well explains in his post: In defense of RSS. If you are looking for a feed to test it out on, may I recommend my own? It’s http://smartPeopleIKnow.wordpress.com/feed And while you are at it, add Seth’s too. You will be glad you did.

Indeed, for any blog on WordPress.com, you can get the feed for it by tacking on “/feed” to the end of the blog’s URL. Relatedly, most online news sources have lots of RSS feeds you can use. Once you start looking, you will see them everywhere.

And if you have a Gmail account, you can use http://reader.google.com as your RSS feed reader, though in truth, there are many such tools out there. Ask your friends and co-workers what they use and go with what you think will work best for you.

It’s a good New Year’s resolution, but the next question is: how? Well, check out this blog: The Daily Post at WordPress.com | Post something every day. WordPress.com put it together to help inspire to blog more. It’s already off to a flying start. If you want to keep up with it, you can also follow WordPress Daily Post (postaday) on Twitter. Or if you want, you can put it in your feed reader, too. Lots of choices. Good luck!

(From the flickr photostream of poka0059, Paul Oka, who has some great photos of typewriters. See the link for rights.)

Anyone who doesn’t cook or feels their cooking is poor owes it to themselves to read this article: Sustainable Food – Three Recipes by Mark Bittman – NYTimes.com. It’s more a manifesto than an article, but it is very practical and something even good cooks should read.

Bittman does two things in this article: 1) demolishes the notion you should eat junk beause you don’t have time or you can’t cook or you can’t afford to cook good meals for yourself. 2) Presents three recipes which are more like three lessons on how to cook dozens of meals cheaply, easily, and simply.

It doesn’t matter if you are an omnivore, vegetarian or vegan: these recipes will work and provide you with lots of variety. Plus they are  “nutritionally sound and environmentally friendly”. Just as important: these meals are low cost. Rice, beans, lentils, cabbage, carrots, and onions can be some of the cheapest ingredients in a grocery store. If you are really tight on cash (e.g. a college student), look for vegetables being sold off in your green grocer or supermarket. You might find peppers, zucchini, greens, or squash being sold off, and while they might go off in a few days, if you prepare them that day, you can have a good and tasty and cheap meal.

If you only need to cook for one or two servings, the recipes are easy to cut back from the 4-6 servings listed. Cook one serving for yourself tonight, and put a second serving in your fridge for lunch the next day. Better yet, why not invite a friend or neighbor over for dinner?

(Great photo of lentils from photobunny’s photostream on Flickr. Creative Commons license: see photo for details)

You might think that is mad, but as this article show, The $100 New York City Weekend – Frugal Traveler – NYTimes.com, you can do it and have a wonderful time. The trick is all in the planning. But if you plan well, then you can see some amazing sites, eat in some cool places, and generally have a fabulous trip. Indeed, even if you did not want to go to NYC, I think you could use this article as a template for how you could visit other big cities cheaply, be that city Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco. If you do that, please let us know what you did and how you did it!

Don’t forget to read this acompanying article: My $100 Weekend in New York: Where the Money Went – NYTimes.com. The comments are also very good. s

This will be old hat to the pros who do this for a living, but for the rest of us,this post: Before & After(s): 1 Bedroom, 5 Different IKEA Makeovers | Apartment Therapy Chicago, really shows how changing a few things in a room can make a big difference. Here’s just two of the five:

and

You can make it a game: spot the differences from one room to the next. As you do, you can see how changing bed covers, pillows, curtains, to name a few, can make a dramatic change. (Of course painting the walls could make a huge change as well.)

Sometimes one of the best way to change for the better is to change your environment for the better.

I was always a fan of the Flash. Not sure why he hasn’t gotten a movie deal yet. 🙂

Found at ArtBest of 2010: April – July | Apartment Therapy Ohdeedoh