Quite a few, based on this: Mosques near Manhattan, NY – Google Maps. If you click on the link, you can get more detail on them, as well as where there are located.
Google puts it at 11, but I suspect there may be more, based on some other maps I have seen.
This is an amazing map outlining the night life of Harlem in the 1930s, with some legendary names and locations. It’s a fascinating view into the social circuit at the time, filled with little details (e.g. whom to ask for when you get to a certain club). For more on it, see:
476 – “Go late!”: A Night-Club Map of Harlem | Strange Maps | Big Think
The blog History Eraser Button has a run down of the area where the Park 51 Community Center (the so-called Ground Zero Mosque) is going. If you have an opinion of this, one way or another, and you don’t know what that section of Manhattan looks like, take a look at “Hallowed Ground” | History Eraser Button. You may not change your mind, but if you think that section of New York is some form of holy place, well, take a look.
I’ve been to New York many times, and to me, it looks like alot of working New York. Nothing wrong with that. If anything, it has that rough charm I love about the city, just like I love the people who live there. New York is a great city: to me, it’s the capital city of the world. Any city so great should be open to everyone, as New York has been these many many years. It’s one of the reasons, among many, why it is so great.
Long live New York City.
The family film is ascendent. Pixar and Dreamworks Animation are very successful in creating works to appeal to all ages. And a synopsis of this rise can be seen in this article: Is a multiplex full of family films the future of moviegoing? | 24 Frames | Los Angeles Times.
To me, it is something I had been expecting for over a decade. I remember taking my daughter to see Madeline (1998) and thinking: there should be more movies to take my kid to, but there wasn’t. After all, every kid film brings in at least two people, and there will likely be snacks, too. And then there are the DVD rentals, the toys, etc. Lots of ways to make money in a way you can’t with other types of film. Indeed, now we have 3D movies (that charge more) that will drive sales of 3D entertainment centers all home. All that show business driven by kids movies.
It looks like Hollywood finally figured it out. Now there are LOTS of fims for families and kids, as the article shows. And for now, it looks like this will continue to increase. Will it increase until most films are family films? Will parents stop taking their kids to movies? It will depend how greedy the movie business gets. It’s still an affordable form of activity to participate in with your kids, but if that were to change, parents might forgo going to the cinema for some other form of cheaper entertainment.
Time has not been good for the movie business. It’s lasted alot longer than vaudeville, but if vaudeville is any lesson to the movies (or radio or even TV), it’s that nothing is guaranteed to last forever. Sad for me to say, not even the cinema.
(Link to the lamp icon comes from the Pixar Corporate Overview page. )
THIS is a brilliant video. First off, the animation itself is remarkable. Secondly the talk itself, by Philip Zimbardo is fascinating. He explores how people think about time affects the way they live and how well they do in life. He generalizes that people tend to be past, present or future oriented, and that makes a big difference in terms of your behavoir and outlook on life.
But don’t read me: watch (and read) the video
And check out more videos from RSA Animate on Youtube
| "Lucile Dorsey" <triflerwnxk6@recael.com>
08/13/2010 09:35 AM |
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This combination of Firefox, Greasemonkey and the Super Kiwi cloak script is a great way for me to avoid those sites that eat into my productive time while at work. If you are comfortable installing a tool like GreaseMonkey in your Firefox browser, I recommend you do so and get the Super Kiwi cloak script. I think Super Kiwi works a bit better than the Invisibility Cloak script, at least for me.
For more info, see Stop procrastination on the internet – Konrad Voelkel’s Blog r Geek to Live: Ban time-wasting web sites. Or comment here and I will see how I can help.
Now there are many ways to think about this. For example, this could be drawn in terms of percentages, but even then, the dramatic difference in the higher income range would likely not go away.
Taken from Ezra Klein – The Bush tax plan vs. the Obama tax plan in one chart
How? by doing this: Pledge to do some GREEN for your community with STARBUCKS and EVERGREEN
It’s easy. And it is likely something you are doing or would want to do. Why not treat yourself (or a friend) to a free coffee.
Thanks to Starbucks and Evergreen for supporting this.
The secret of success, I think, is well summed up by Woody Allen in this quote taken from an interview of Woody Allen on Stardust Memories:
I make so many films, that I don’t care about individual successes and failures. I made Interiors and I made Stardust Memories, and before they came out I was working on something else. The film could be a big hit like Manhattan or Hannah, to me it doesn’t matter. I’ve tried very hard to make my films into a non-event. I just want to work, that’s all. Just put the film out for people to see, just keep grinding them out. I hope I’ll have a long and healthy life, that I can keep working all the time, and that I can look back in old age and say, ‘I made fifty movies and some of them were excellent and some of them were not so good and some were funny…’ I just don’t want to get into that situation that so many of my contemporaries are in, where they make one film every few years and it’s a Big Event. That’s why I’ve always admired Bergman. He’d be working quietly on the island and would make a little tiny film and put it out, and then he’d be working on the next one. You know, the work was important. Not the eventual success or failure, the money or the critical reception. What’s important is that your work is part of your daily life and you can lice decently. You can , as in my case, do the other things I want to do at the same time. I like to play music, I like to see my children, I like to go to restaurants, I like to take walks and watch sports and things. When you’re working at the same time, you have a nice, integrated life.
This nicely incorporates a number of guidelines to success that I’ve heard in the past, such as:
Thanks to the blog Letter to Jane for this.
I can understand that to a certain degree. I can’t say I am a skydiver or a
cook or a manager if I have never practiced any of those skills. But let’s
say that I have. Let’s say that I have made many a meal at home: Am I a
cook?
I would argue that am I, based on the spectrum view of skills. Every role
has skills associated with it. Those skills have varying degrees of
difficulty in acquiring. Some skills can be picked up right away. Others
take years to learn, if one ever learns them at all. You may learn enough
about cooking to feed you and your family. To me, that makes you a cook.
You may not be a professional cook nor one of the best chefs in the world,
but that should not exclude you from thinking you are a cook. Same hold
true for a lot of other roles.
Now you should not think that just because you are a cook or a writer or an
amateur carpenter that you are equivalent to everyone else who calls
themselves a cook. You are on one end of the spectrum, and they are on the
other end. However, with hard work, talent and luck, you can progress along
the dpectrum from one end to the other.
One thing I like about marathon running is that it is very supportive of
this idea. If you are fit enough to finish a marathon and you enter a big
city marathon like New York or London, you will be a) in the same race as
the best runners in the world and b) you will be considered a marathon
runner. People will support you and encourage you to do better. No one will
say: you aren’t in the top finishers so you aren’t a marathon runner.
Runners generally are supportive and inclusive of runners of all types. I
wish all professions were like this.
In the oriental martial arts, it was mostly the case that you were either a
white belt or a black belt. It was polar: you either were a black belt or
you weren’t. This gave way, at least in North America, to coloured belts:
yellow, green, brown, etc. This is more of the spectrum approach to skills,
and encouraged students not to give up by showing their progress as they
made their way from white to black belt.
I think it is important for people when they are starting out in acquiring
skills that they believe that they can acquire skills and that they can be
a carpenter or a cook or a writer or a computer programmer, and that even
if they are not the best in the role that they have chosen, that they still
can consider themselves to have the necessary skills to be that role an
do.worthwhile work. There is a place on the spectrum from the barely
knowledgeable to the elite, and by encouraging more people to think that
way, the overall contribution to society will be much greater than if we
have just a few practioners.
I think the polar approach discourages people from taking up certain
skills. I also believe that people are less supportive of the spectrum
approaches when it is hard to discern one person from another. Why don’t
the best marathon runners worry about being compared to me? It’s because
they can finish a marathon in just over 2 hours and I cannot. But with hard
work and some luck, I could get closer to them.
Thanks for reading this, and thanks very much if you have any comments.
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.
Have you ever thought it would be great to produce a film or a play or other work of art? If you thought it would require alot of your own money, think again. Kickstarter provides a way to pool money from various smaller sponsors to fund a bigger project. It’s a great idea, and you can learn more about it here at their Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):
Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors.
We believe that…
• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.
Top ↑
All-or-nothing funding?Every Kickstarter project must be fully funded before its time expires or no money changes hands.
Why?
1. It’s less risk for everyone. If you need $5,000, it’s tough having $2,000 and a bunch of people expecting you to complete a $5,000 project.
2. It allows people to test concepts (or conditionally sell stuff) without risk. If you don’t receive the support you want, you’re not compelled to follow through. This is huge!
3. It motivates. If people want to see a project come to life, they’re going to spread the word.
For more on it, go to the site.
Simple. See this room:
Most of the things in this room are low cost: shelves, stools, rug, fridge. The overall impression is greater because it is all white.
From 2 or 3 things i know
This superb video by fiilmaker, Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter, Tanya Davis addresses the first point. According to the artists, “Davis wrote the beautiful poem and performed in the video which Dorfman directed, shot, animated by hand and edited. The video was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia and was produced by Bravo!FACT http://www.bravofact.com/“
You can see it here:
And find it here on YouTube – How To Be Alone
Not only is it a superb video, but it is also a video with quite alot of views. For the story behind that, see this blog post, Viral solitude – updated at the always good Contrarian blog.
All in all, some excellent work by fellow Nova Scotians. As much as anything about the video, the N.S. settings, both inside and outl, made me homesick.
What am I talking about? Mini-goal chalkboards! You can see a number of them here at the always delightful blog, oliveloaf design.
Go to a dollar store, buy some paint, brushes, and small chalkboards with chalk, and soon you can have your own version.
So add that to your list of two things to do today:
See? Already you are having a productive day!
Jonah Weiner at Slate Magazine has a great review of Inception (How to make sense of all those dreams-within-dreams in Inception) that does a great job of tackling some of the criticisms of the film. If you’ve seen the film, and then read the reviews, I recommend you read his review. He nicely takes them to task.
And then there is this smart comment of his:
If there’s an element in Inception that mitigates the bleakness, it’s the giddy way in which Nolan pilfers from cinema history. The alpine showdown and Mombassa street chase are straight out of James Bond and Jason Bourne. The deathbed set in Robert Fischer’s unconscious recalls the Star Trek holodeck. The zero-gravity fight scenes evoke both The Matrix and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The spectral wife, Mal, haunts our hero like Hari in Solaris. Added up, Inception is something of a love letter to some of Nolan’s favorite films, and his extracting, forging, architecting heroes are not simply culture-bludgeoned victims, but emblems of that liberated Postmodern figure, the remixer, who bends and subverts mass culture to his will.
The more I think about the film, the more I am starting to think that it is a masterpiece that will be talked about and analyzed for time to come.
John Dickerson and his team at Slate Magazine have done an impressive review of how well Sarah Palin and her team manage her Facebook page in order to present her best side, so to speak. I was impressed not only by the analysis, but by the effort Palin and company put into the managing of comments on the page. Whatever you think of Sarah Palin and her politics, you should look at what her folks are doing. Just like Obama did during the last Presidential campaign, she is serious about social media, and it shows.
The film Inception has alot of ideas, but one I don’t hear people talking about is the notion of privacy. After all, what the characters are doing is an extreme case of invasion of privacy. There is alot to think about when you watch the film, but when you watch it, think of that, too.
For other thought on How to think about privacy, check out the rough notes I jotted down after reading Mark Zuckerberg say The Age of Privacy is Over, here on this blog, Smart People I Know.
Thanks!
Over at Slate is a great article — actually, it’s more a great conversation — by people with their own theories Inception. (Brow Beat : Five Ways of Looking at Inception)
While I like what the author, Nina Shen Rastogi, has put together as a list of ways to think about the movie, I highly recommend you also read through the comments. They are insightful, and the debate and discussion going on in that section is really good (unlike the commentary on alot of other sites).
Afterwards you may want to go back and give the film another look. I have seen it twice now and reading this article and the comments makes me want to go back and see it again.
P.S. There is talk about there being alot of material taken out of the movie: if so, that could make for a fantastic DVD when it comes out.
P.S.S. While the film is very intelligent in terms of content, it is a great film in cinematic terms, too. Here’s a trailer.
Even though I have not made many long distance trips by plane, most of them have more or less followed this humourous visual diary found at
amygeek’s posterous site. For example:
Nice.
Thanks to Adam Schwabe for sharing this.
Rihanna’s Rude Boy feat. Miss Rani Taj ( The Punjabi Dhol Mix ) [ Awesome ]
Read this: At the Bar – But for the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights might not guarantee very much. – NYTimes.com.
Currently the battle is about preventing foreigners from having their children becoming American citizens. But the 14th Amendment is about much more than that. It is part of the Reconstruction Amendments that were created after the Civil War. They are three of them, and according to Wikipedia: “The Thirteenth Amendment (both proposed and ratified in 1865) abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment (proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868) included a redefinition of citizenship, the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. The Fifteenth Amendment, (proposed in 1869 and ratified in 1870) grants voting rights regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”.
I find it mindboggling that anyone in the United States, especially anyone who knows the history of these amendments, would think of changing them. But read about them and decide for yourself.
How? By following the example set by this man at The Sartorialist.
He is wearing a simple outfit, but his shirt is a very casual dress shirt: white, loose, and rolled up; it makes him more dressed up than someone in a T shirt or a polo/golf shirt. Likewise his shorts are also casual, but they are dressier than cargo pants or swim trunks. Finally, he uses accessories really well and they also dress him up. Not to mention that he is wearing shoes, not sandals or swim shoes. It’s a great outfit that would look great reading in a park or on a patio in terribly hot weather. Smart.
Everything that makes Bill Murray…well, Bill Murray!… comes out in this interview in GQ. Read it now. Because he is very very unlikely to do another one for years.
The History of The Beatles as told by their hair can be found at the always inventive FlowingData web site.
Can you guess which head belongs to which Beatle?
It’s remarkable how much the Beatles changed their looks in such a short period of time.
If you have seen and loved “Inception”, you might want to go back and see Blade Runner: Final Cut.
In many ways, there is not much difference between the “Director’s Cut” and the “Final Cut”. Ridley Scott lengths some scenes slightly, and there are some small additional scenes (like the strippers in the bar). As well, he cleaned up some things (e.g. visible wires). I recommend the Final Cut, especially if you have only seen the original version of the film with the voiceovers.
Here’s the trailer:
Most guidance from writers for writers is worse than useless. I am not sure if they are trying to be clever, mystifying, or stupid with the guidance they provide, but the conclusion you are lead to is that it is impossible to give good advice to other writers. That’s simply not true, for if it were impossible to give guidance to writers, there would be no “Elements of Style”.
Fortunately there are writers who show it is possible to provide good advise. You can find it here in the LA Times: Janet Fitch’s 10 rules for writers.
Anyone who writes, be it for fiction or simply email, can benefit from reading this.
(Via kottke.org)
As you can see from this article, Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning. As a parent, these things worry me. The person who wrote this closes with this:
And parents – children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.
If you have the slightest doubt, save them first, and let them complain later that they weren’t drowning and you were overreacting.
(via kottke.org)
This explains alot, actually. From Flavorwire » Awesome Infographic: Hipster Fashion Cycle, and found via SwissMiss.
What is the great music TV show of our time? I was asking myself this after considering older shows like The Midnight Special and Night Music. Certainly there are great shows, like PBS’s Austin City Limits. And of course, there is alot of music video shows (though I don’t consider them great).
What I do think is great and certainly something that captures our time and our popular music is BBC’s Radio 1 Live Lounge. (Strictly it’s a radio show, but YouTube/the Internet makes that distinction somewhat irrelevant.) It has great performers doing something unique and worth watching / listening to. I blogged about it before, and I recommend you go to the BBC web site or YouTube and look them up. In the meantime, here Lady GaGa doing a great cover — mistakes and all — of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida.
YouTube – Radio 1 Live Lounge – Lady GaGa – Viva La Vida
What I like about the Zi6 so far is the design of it. It’s a bit think, but it is around the size of an iPhone and fits in your hand nicely. The controls are easy to use and obvious. I like the fact I can add my own SD cards to it. The screen is nice and big, and the USB interface is simple.
I also liked the videos it takes. It took some videos in HD60 mode and watched them using QT and they looked good. They also looked good on FB. I think it captures the video at 720p at 60 fps in HD 60 mode. Not quite as striking as 1080, but still pretty good and miles better than the videos I was taking with my Blackberry!
You can take stills with it too. So far the quality of those is only fair. I may need to experiment with that.
You need rechargable batteries, but Kodak provided some and a charger. Nice! And they are cheap these days: so much so, it doesn’t make sense to buy anything other than rechargeable.
You can mount it on a tripod, which is nice.
I picked up one of these today at a discount electronic store for a great price ($69) and so far I really like it. My first digital camera that I bought in 2003 was a Kodak, and even at 2 MP I used it for along time because it took great pictures and it was easy to use.
I have a JVC camcorder, but it still uses tape and it is clunky, and as a result I have not been using it at all. That’s a shame, because I felt lots of moments in life were not being recorded because my old cameras were not up to snuff. I hope to get alot more saved with the Zi6.
You can see more about it here at Kodak Online or you can try Amazon too.
I wrote about this before, but the quality of the video was poor. This version of on YouTube of Amy Winehouse performing He Can Only Hold Her – Doo Wop (That Thing) is Live HD and looks great. Sounds great too. A fantastic version of these two songs:
Sad to say it seems not long ago I was commenting on the new sound of people like Amy Winehouse, and now she already seems like so long ago.
This is from the 60s, but I saw them in the 80s and they were still great. And decades later, this song is still great. And the perfect summer song.
There have been alot of delays on the TTC subways recently. Blame the G20 and the heat. It can be frustrating to deal with, not to mention unpleasant. What to do?
Well, if the subway is not going to be going your way for some time, and you have a laptop and a Metropass, consider hoping off, heading for your nearest Starbucks, and grabbing yourself a nice cold drink while you take advantage of their free WiFi. You can tell whomever you were supposed to meet that you were delayed, and that in the meantime you are catching up on your email, work, etc. You can also keep track of the subway — I follow @bradttc and @ttcupdates on twitter — so you will know that it is all clear and you can proceed to work (or wherever you are going).
Hey, when life gives you lemons, go to Starbucks and have a Tazo Black Shaken Iced Tea Lemonade! 🙂
Can be found here at http://www.homeperformance.com. They have a complete list of rebates, including advice on what information you need to gather in order to make sure you are eligible for your rebate.
Before you buy anything, make sure the person / company selling you a product or service conforms with the terms of the rebate. Don’t get caught buying an air conditioner, for example, that is not energy efficient enough. Not only will you not get your money, but you will end up with a less energy efficient product, which is doubly bad. Cavaet emptor.
Smart People I Know 