Well, this is probably not the best place to do it: Welcome To The PalinDrome: Sarah Palin’s Blog

It’s a fake blog, and already has alot of content.

We live in interesting times. No one knows that better than Sarah Palin.

(Tip to andrewsullivan.com)

…as can be seen in this article: New Nokia phone offers free music where owners will be able to “keep all music they download during the 12 months of the package.”

The tide may turn, and the purchase of music may again become a viable business. But for the next few years, I think it will be something provided free as a way of supporting the purchase of something material (like a phone).

(Flickr photo from klabusta’s photostream)

There’s more to Urban Prankster than just pranks and tomfoolery. 🙂 It really covers all sorts of interesting events that happen in cities, including coverage of David Byrne’s wonderful bike racks for NYC.

Lots of innovative thinking wrapped with a smile at this site.

As an aside Toronto has some really nice city lighting: I hope they can get their hands on some bike racks like this.

You may be thinking: there’s more than one way?

According to www.popgive.com, there are a Few Different Ways To Tie Your Sneakers including this:

There’s lots more too. See the site.

Perhaps there is more to the story than can be found in this short nytimes.com article, Appellate Panel Bars Tests for Mad Cow Disease, but according to the story, “A federal appeals court has ruled that the government can prohibit meat packers from testing their animals for mad cow disease.”

If this makes the least bit of sense, I would like to hear why.

(Tip to Ezra Klein’s blog. Flickr photo from foxypar4’s photostream)

When I was a kid, after watching wrestling on Saturday afternoon, I would hang out with my friends, emulating what we “learned”. We practiced our body slams, our holds, and one of our favourites: The Claw. It sounds violent, but like professional wrestling, it was mostly great fun.

The Claw came from this man, Killer Kowalski, who just died at the age of 81. He was a favourite of mine, and no doubt alot of other middle aged men who came across this stopped and thought back fondly to those days, just like I did. Lots of great memories there. May he rest in peace.

Now get out of here before I apply the Claw to your head! 🙂

In a critical review of the the J. M. W. Turner retrospective at the Met (Heavy Weather: Critic’s Notebook: The New Yorker), in which Turner is said to convey “only irritable ambition. We must never forget to admire him. This tires.” is this last sentence: “Turner was the Damien Hirst of his day.”

Coupling this with the dig taken in the nytimes.com recently, it appears that Hirst is becoming an art symbol, and not a good one.

Why the VW (or at least you could). Volkswagen often have innovative ads, and these are no exception. While there is one with Slash and John Meyer, this one with Christopher Guest in full Spinal Tap regalia is my favourite.

According to the Globe, there are six of them (in Canada). The list and the details can be found here

What is also interesting is a rundown on the current state of auto leasing in Canada. While it is diminishing, you can still get a low cost car, even without leasing. As a bonus, these half dozen cars will use alot less gas than an SUV.

Anyone interested in buying a car should consider this article.

…looked liked this:

(note the sign in the top left). According to the blog, Shorpy where this comes from, this is a photo from ‘November 24, 1924. Washington, D.C. “Bonus Bureau, Computing Division.
Many clerks figure the amount of the bonus each veteran is entitled to.”‘

There are lots of amazing old photos at the site.

(tip from andrewsullivan.com).

Nothing could be more perfect for a Saturday night than Estelle and the way she sings “American Boy”.

YouTube – American Boy – Estelle Feat. Kanye West

BTW, that link has some swearing in it that this link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY7xXSW_NG4, does not have. Oddly, in this second link, the Michael Jackson button that Kanye is wearing is grayed out. Then again, this second link is associated with WEA music: that may have something to do with it.

I like the reference to Gladys Knight and the Pips in this song: Estelle reminds me of singers of that era.

I like how the shadow dances out of synch with her too. Heck, I like lots about this song/video, from the changing tempos, the guest appear of John Legend, the use of black and white patterns visually, her outfits, even.

Definitely bears repeat watching and listening.

If you feel stuck in a rut or needing a push to make “your life happier, healthier, and smarter”, then you want to surf over to
Daily 15. Every day the site posts “a challenge that will take you 15 minutes or less”. It may be just the thing to get you going.

It might look like a work of art

and in some ways it is, but first and foremost, it is a fine chocolate, from Christopher Elbow Chocolates.

If you like the look of this Russian Tea chocolate (a dark chocolate ganache infused with black teas and scents of citrus, bergamot and spices), then head over to the site for more cocoa goodness.

The nytimes.com has a good article on an captivating web site that IBM has produced called many-eyes.com:

Novelties – Lines and Bubbles and Bars, Oh My! New Ways to Sift Data – NYTimes.com

The site has been getting alot of attention not only because of the ability to effectively visualize data, but also because of the community aspect of it. It’s very smart in alot of ways.

Another smart site that is associated with IBM is wordle.net. Jonathan Feinberg is the author, and although he calls it a “toy”, it has been used extensively already in the US presidential election by people/bloggers analyzing the speeches of candidates.

Speaking of speeches, here is a famous one. Can you guess whose it is?

Anyone with a boring spreadsheet of data or a word document in need of analysis should check them out.

Much has been written about this already, but in case you have missed it,

“The Orwell Prize, Britain’s pre-eminent prize for political writing, is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog. From 9th August 2008, Orwell’s domestic and political diaries (from 9th August 1938 until October 1942) will be posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written.”

For more on it, see here

P.S. One thing to note is the really good blog roll. There are dozens of great news sources there.

American Book Review has the list, from:

1. Call me Ishmael.

to

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.

Some are short, while others slowly unwind. Some are very dramatic, while others are almost plain. In any case, you’ll have fun reading them.

P.S. Ok, they also have Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s “It was a dark and stormy night…”, which, come to think of it, isn’t as bad as I have come to expect.

This bench reminds of in some ways of Art Nouveau furniture, but it is really a work of art.

I love how it goes from being a common orderly bench to something wild.

You can see more here

The Ikan is a new way to shop for groceries, it says. You can read about it at the site. I would include some text on it here to promote it, but all the text is trapped in Flash. 😦

While it seems like a neat idea, I actually think it has the potential to be a great idea. I was thinking of this when I read about the listeria outbreak this week. What would be good if I could have something like the ikan and have it scan the food in my fridge (or tell it where I purchased the food). The ikan could then check and tell me whether I should be concerned about it or not.

In fact, it could take it even further. If my grocery bill had good marking on it, I could give it to the ikan when I got home. Then it could do things like periodically remind me about food in my fridge that has gone off, or even advise me of specials that might be occurring.

More and more appliances are morphing into agents and robots. Like the roomba, the ikan might be the beginning of the next wave of things in our home.

Inspired by my last post, I took this test, How to Spot Arial.

I started Microsoft Word, I typed in the word “Rates”, and I changed the settings from Arial to Helvetica. Guess what? No change occurred. All the telltale signs of Arial are still there.

Perhaps it’s just my version of Word (2002), but it looks like it provides Helvetica in name only.

Can you spot what is wrong this picture?

If you go over to the blog, panopticist there is a posting talking about it: Mad Men Gets All the Details Right—Except One

I was surprised that I actually found one error myself, but the other is subtler. I was also fascinated by the discussion of a font that we — ok, I — use all the time: Arial.

After you read this posting, the ones below are worth a read, too.

What do you do with all that styrofoam that is shipped to your house? If you are Kevin Kelly, you make this!

No, it doesn’t transform into a car, but the transformation from packing material to awesome robot is cool in itself.
For the whole story, see here

Where can you do that? Why, at foodgawker of course. If you are stuck for cooking inspiration, go there for a visual blitz of wonderfully prepared food. You do NOT want to visit it hungry, though. It will kill you! 🙂

Bon appetit!

LIFE is coming online. There’s just a teaser site up now, but there will be more soon. Go see…

Right now I have two blogs. This one that you are reading is one I plan to keep for short blog posts that are mainly about things I find (and I hope you find) interesting.

I am planning to use my other blog for longer posts that are more opinionated. If you are not interested in that, you can just say “meh” and move on.

Over time I may consolidate them, but for now I may just post over there and point to it.

For example, here’s one: On how to focus

Is it cheating if I say: I find this post, which I just happened to write, interesting? 🙂

This is a so-so picture I took of the wonderful Black Camel cafe, just outside of Rosedale subway station in Toronto. As they say:

“The goal of Black Camel is simple: to prepare good tasting, high quality food, to deliver it quickly and to price it fairly”

I had the pulled pork sandwich with chipotle mayo on a kaiser-like roll. At other places, you would get bland mayo, dried bread and stringy pork. At the Black Camel, you get just the opposite. It was a delicious sandwich. I can’t wait to try the others.

It’s a little gem of a restaurant. You should go.

One thing I have loved about the web since the beginning was the ability to access newspapers all over the world. At first there were only a handful, but now I would guess every major newspaper in the world has an online edition, including this one: DER SPIEGEL.

It has everything, from very serious stories to a section on Europe’s Weird Ways (better are the Flour Wars of Galaxidi to the real wars of…well, too many places).

Der Spiegel has news and views you won’t find in North American or English newspapers. It’s worth adding it to your reading list.

If you enjoyed the coverage of the Olympics NBC and would like to watch it again on DVD, there are two ways you can do that:

1) If you are one of the first two people who comment on this blog post, you will be eligible to get a free copy, courtesy of NBC.
2) And if you aren’t one of the lucky two people, you can still buy your own copy of  the 2008 Beijing General Highlight DVD, the 2008 Beijing Opening Ceremony 2-Volume DVD, or the DVD of “Michael Phelps: Greatest Olympic Champion”. Simply goto to http://nbcdvd.com

The DVDs are expected to ship in the middle of September.

Tina Roth Eisenberg is the brains behind this wonderful blog, swissmiss.

It’s chock full of goodness. I found the PosterList there, and there’s lots of other posts that I liked, like this one:

Yes it is a pebble alphabet from this site

Are you or do you know someone going to college this September? If you do, you need posters. Great posters. And you can get them here, at The Poster List.

I had a hard time picking one to highlight here, but I particularly liked this one:

So don’t waste time: get over there and get some. And don’t forget to follow them on twitter, too.

I love it because I can capture moments with my digital camera phone and share them with others. Moments like this:

Watching pink roses while waiting for the kids to descend for… on TwitPic

More than that, I can look back over the week or month and recall events and moments that otherwise would be even more fleeting than they already are.

I encourage everyone to use twitpic. If twitter didn’t exist, it would have to be invented just to support twitpic. 🙂

I’ve been coming across alot of very negative reviews of the new Star Wars film, but of the reviews I’ve come across, this one hits the mark for me: Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Kids Will Love It, Geeks will Shudder | Geekdad from Wired.com

When the lights went up at the end, all of these men — like me — trooped out with the 5 and 6 year old son, no doubt many of them to Toys R Us to load up on new Star Wars toys or McDonald’s for a Star Wars meal. And the kids (well at least my son) loved it. It was perfect for him.

As for me, I thought it was going to be painful. But I tried to see it from his perspective, and I thought it had alot in it for him. I also thought it moved along at a pretty good pace, too.

As for George Lucas, he now has a whole new fan base to work from, and a more accepting one at that. (Plus he has all those Dad’s to buy all that follow-on merchandise! 🙂 )

This should be interesting. According to Yahoo News — ok, Reuters — we will have:

“Daniel Okulitch (as) Seth Brundle and Ruxandra Donose (as) Veronica Quaife in the opera ‘The Fly’. David Cronenberg’s sci-fi (sic…I would use SF) terror movie ‘The Fly’ has taken on a new life in the Canadian director’s first foray into the world of opera. ‘The Fly’, described as a classical re-imagining of the 1986 movie about an eccentric scientist who turns into a massive fly, will open the new season at Los Angeles Opera in September with LA Opera director Placido Domingo conducting the orchestra.

I think Cronenberg is a significant artist, and if Domingo is on-board, it could be a great opera. In some ways, “The Fly” has similar themes to “La Boheme”. Cross your fingers/wings. 🙂

Miroslav Tichy took this:

with this:

Yes, I was fascinated, too, especially these days, where digital cameras are everywhere. Go to Jason Kottke’s post to get the details.

Which nations are the most corrupt? Most generous? Healthiest? If you want to know any of these things, you want to head over to NationMaster.com. There is so much information there, including this result, Probability of not reaching 40 (most recent) by country, which starkly highlights the North-South divide of the world.

I was somewhat surprised to see that in many categories, Canada ranks high but not in the top, including health. But see for yourself.

if you use the site Mr. Picassohead! It’s easy: anyone who can drag ‘n’ drop can make Picasso-like portraits. Here’s mine!

You won’t be able to produce “Guernica” with it, but you can have some fun.

There are so many good architecture and design blogs I have stumbled upon, it is difficult to know which one to follow. (And it also makes me wonder why I would subscribe to magazines covering the same topics.)

One I recently liked is CubeMe. It had alot of good posts, including one of this incredible museum planned for Qatar.

For more on the Museum of Modern Arab Art and other interesting design/architecture, see CubeMe.

The nytimes.com has an article on what I consider a precious addition to any city: the streetcar. While subways and buses can move masses of people, streetcars add a quality to the urban landscape that the others cannot (save London’s doubledecker buses). I believe that any city that can get streetcars should get them. And unlike other modes of transportation, age adds to their appeal (as I can attest to, having travelled on some old streetcars in places like San Francisco).

See the slideshow here, Desirable Streetcars.

There’s also an article.

The nytimes.com has a classic recipe for minestrone today: Recipes for Health – Summer Minestrone With Fresh Basil.

Now, you could follow this, but I have a better suggestion. Use the recipe as a guide, and instead of slavishly following it, take advantage of all the great vegetables available at this time of year to make the soup of the day. Let’s run down the list:

• olive oil? Sure, but if you have another oil like walnut of peanut or even corn, go with that
• onion? I would keep that, unless you want to go with an onion substitute, like a shallot or even a red onion (nice colour)
• Carrots? Keep. Get some nice fresh ones (not those ones in the bag)
• Celery? Sure, although I sometimes pass on celery, since I end up throwing most of it away. But it gives a nice flavour.
• Salt and garlic? Got to keep those, though try and experiment with more garlic
• Tomatoes? Must have those. But get fresh ones. Try yellow ones, if you have them.
• Turnip? A good choice, but if you see another root vegetable of comparable size, try that. A big yam or a fistful of potatoes will also work. Beets may work, but that might be a bit trickier. But it could be delicious, too.
• Zucchini? I like zucchini, especially yellow zucchini. But mushrooms would also work well here.
• As for the cheese and herbs, use whatever you like for the herbs. Have a bunch of basil or tarragon, then go with that. If you have some romano or other hard cheese, try it out. Asiago would be great.
• Can of beans? Really, anything will work here. I love beans in minestrone, but don’t get hung up on a certain type. Heck, even lentils will work fine. Or if you are fresh out, add more pasta and vegetables.
• Green beans? What about yellow? Is there a deal on asparagus? Then try that.
• Soup pasta? Really, any kind will do. You could even use orzo.
• Basil or pesto? What about sundried tomato pesto, or tapanade? Or any thick spread you might like.
• Finally, consider using a stock in place of 2 quarts of water. Use chicken, beef or vegetable stock.

Minestrone gives you an opportunity to use up and highlight vegetables you have. When you think of minestrone, think “leftover soup”, and you will end up with something useful and delicious!