The “real” map of the United States

Paul Krugman posted an interesting map today. It’s this:

I think this resizing is important. In elections, what is more important than geographical size is the number of electoral votes. This map reflects the votes, and it reflects Obama’s victory. For more info, see the post: The decadent left, in its enclaves on the coasts – Paul Krugman – Op-Ed Columnist – New York Times Blog

How to fight off zombies

Here at SmartPeopleIKnow, we …ok…I like to keep you up to date on how to best deal with zombies. Luckily, there is an entire site dedicated to fighting off that scourge. It’s the Zombie Combat Club, featuring combat techniques, weapons, and strategies to fight the living dead.

Did you know?

“During a zombie outbreak, 98% of individuals will have to kill an undead ghoul without the use of a firearm.”

I didn’t know that either. See? You need to check this out out ASAP.

The awesomeness of foldschool


No, not “old school”….foldschool. As their about page states,

“foldschool is a collection of free cardboard furniture for kids, handmade by you. The downloadable patterns can be printed out with any printer. Follow the instructions and assemble a stable piece of furniture.”

How awesome is that? You get to do something creative with your kids and you get to recycle. And if cardboard furniture is good enough for Frank Gehry, it’s good enough for me. 🙂

The designs are free, but they do accept Paypal. After having a blast making this stuff, consider sending them some paper (money) in return.

(Thanks to the always great GeekDad blog….which, by the way, is not just for dads…..moms, uncles, aunts…all are welcome. It does help to be a geek and a dad, but it isn’t essential.)

Sentenc.es – A Disciplined Way To Deal With Email

For each of these four sites Sentenc.es two, three, four and five,  the idea is the same: cut down on the number of sentences you use in email.

It’s not as hard as you think.

State your request in one sentence, provide some background in one or two sentences if necessary, and close the email politely in one more sentence.

People will appreciate it.

All told in five.sentenc.es 🙂

Supersize me (with information about my food, that is)

If you are like me, you fool yourself sometimes into thinking that sandwich you bought for lunch or that muffin you eat on the go for breakfast is not all that bad for you. Chances are, you are wrong. However, if you had better information about the calories you were ingesting, you might choose a lighter alternative, I think.

Health Official in New York City thought so, too.

“Since last May, chain restaurants in the city have been required to list the number of calories for every item on their menus. According to a recent survey, more than 80 percent of those who saw the calorie count were “surprised,” even shocked, that an innocent-looking bran muffin could contain 470 calories and a full-fledged Big Mac attack (with soda and fries, of course) more than 1,200.”

Sounds like a great idea, right? Well, not to everyone.

“Some restaurants are suing to overturn the requirement. Many restaurants also back the LEAN Act, recently introduced in Congress. This deceptively named bill would pre-empt New York’s law, and a similar law in California, allowing restaurants to tuck calorie information at the back of the menu or in a separate brochure.”

I think this is a case of an opportunity in disguise. Smart restaurants will take advantage of such requirements to market new products to clients that help them with calories, rather than try and fool them. Everyone will be better off.

For more information, see the Editorial – 2,000 Is Really Enough in the NYTimes.com

Martha’s slow cooker pot roast – slow cooking done well


I think slow cookers are a great idea. Too often, though, I find the end result is boring.

This recipe, with the not so interesting name of Slow-Cooker Pot Roast from marthastewart.com, is anything but.

I think the secret is the scarce amount of liquid that goes in at first (a few tablespoons). Most of the final sauce comes from the carrots and the onions.

Not only do you not get too much sauce — in fact, it’s perfect — but you also get nicely glazed vegetables because they start off in so little liquid.

In the future I am going to try cutting back on how much water, stock, juice, etc. I put in my  slow cooker: I am thinking I will see better results.

I replaced some of the carrots with parsnips and served it along side mashed sweet potatoes. Perfect for busy fall weekends.

How to do the New York City Marathon in 3.5 minutes?

Easy! Go to this great section of the nytimes.com where you can see a time-lapsed video of the entire course traversed in just over 3 1/2 minutes. I ran it 10 years ago, but I still recognize the course after all that time and despite that speed. The main difference is that instead of cars, you will be surrounded by lots of runners and a fantastic NYC crowd that covers the entire course.

Despite it being short, you have a sense of just how long 26.2 miles is as you zip along.

There’s also a good interactive map that traces the run through the five boroughs, from all the way down in Staten Island to all the way up to the Bronx, before finally landing in Central Park.

10 Amazing Contemporary Sculptures by Oddee

Oddee.com is my guilty pleasure. It is a contemporary “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” (another favourite of mine since I was a kid and they had small TV segments on during lunch.)

This piece, from a post called 10 Amazing Contemporary Sculptures is a scuplture of the King from 50,000 matchsticks!
All ten sculptures are truly amazing, and the Oddee site is truly fantastic. Go see! You won’t believe your eyes. 🙂

A “New” economic model – rentalism/zipcar capitalism

Bruce Nussbaum is onto something he terms ZipCar Capitalism at BusinessWeek. He is…

“…off to the World Economic Forum conference in Dubai on Tuesday night after I vote. Some 700 folks, including Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine, are going to brainstorm about making post-crisis world a much better place. I spent time on the subway this morning thinking about what a new economic model might look like and what might have any chance of succeeding and came up with ZipCar Capitalism. Treehugger calls it Rentalism but that doesn’t ring well in my ears. Actually it’s Tamara Giltsoff in Treehugger who did the fantastic article.”

I think it is a great idea, but I wonder if it is “new”. The use of the Commons, of communities banding together to accomplish something, and many more cooperative ideas, aren’t necessarily new. But it may be a new time to revisit these ideas. More sharing and cooperation wouldn’t be a bad way to tackle the many economic and environmental issues we face.

The contradictions of Louise Bourgeois


On flickr is a wonderful photo of Children on the sculpture Crouching Spider by the great artist, Louise Bourgeois. (It’s part of a fine photostream).

What I love about this photo is that while the sculpture is almost monstrous by itself, with children hanging from it, it becomes something like a jungle gym. It transforms from a thing of horror to a thing of play and joy.

Reading some interview of Bourgeois, the reason for her fondness for spiders comes through. And yet although she is fond of them, she sometimes portrays them in a way that seems to want to play on our fears of them. It’s as if she wants us to think about them positively and negatively at the same time.

I also recalled a quote from her complaining about having children because of how it prevented her from doing her art. But in the interviews I found on the Web, the essays and interviews talk about her fondness of her children.

I wonder what she would have thought of this photograph. I think she would have liked it.

The Strengths of Barack Obama

James Fallows over at The Atlantic has a good run down of why Barack Obama is such a formidable politician.

In short order, it is his:

  1. formal oratory skills
  2. his ability to use technology to raise money
  3. his skill in getting out the vote (and his overall ground game)
  4. his debating technique
  5. his ability to tell stories and evoke emotions
  6. his demeanour

Fallows smartly compares Obama to everyone from Clinton to Reagan to JFK. The thing is, he is all those things, but he is also something new. Someone others in the future will look back for comparisons.

One thing that Fallows left out is this: his ability to make others wrongly underestimate him. This is something Reagan and Clinton had. It’s a ease they have, that allows their opponents to relax or overestimate their own strengths.

It’s going to be an interesting eight years in American and world history. In the meantime, read James Fallows’s posting. It’s good.

 

Denial-of-Service attacks on advocate sites for “No on 8” in CA and “No on 2” (FLA) sites

According to this, there has been a Coordinated Denial-of-Service Attacks on “No on 8” and “No on 2” (FLA) sites

My first response, on hearing someone say there has been a DoS attack on their site is: check again. Lots of problems could have occurred to affect your site. DoS is not usually the first probable cause.

However, when two sites like this are affected like this, the probability of it go way up. And the timing, just as No on 8 is pushing for a big fundraising drive, make it even more likely (and more serious).

I hope they catch who did it and the parties responsible go to jail for a signifigant period of time. DoS attacks may not be as dangerous as physical attacks on people or property, but what they are trying to achieve is the same. And what they are trying to achieve is removing people’s freedom of speech and association.

It’s time for lawmakers and law enforcement to get serious about computer crimes like this.

Listeria update

It’s depressing how many of these alerts I get in my RSS feed reader. Alerts like this:

HEALTH HAZARD ALERT – DELI ROAST BEEF AND SANDWICHES SOLD AT CERTAIN STORES IN ATLANTIC CANADA MAY CONTAIN LISTERIA MONOCYTOGENES

Still, it is better to know than not.

One misconception people should also know about is that store sliced meats are not necessarily safer than packaged meats. It appears many of these alerts are for packaged meats, but this alert also warns about “clerk-served sliced roast beef”.

Caveat emptor.

Patronage and Ana Marie Cox


Normally, patronage in the political arena is seen as a bad thing. Here’s a chance where it can be a good thing.

Ana Marie Cox is one of the bright lights of U.S. journalism currently. She could use your support.

It’s easy! Just click on her name and go from there. As they say on infomercials, act now! 🙂

I am hoping that she meets her funding challenge.

I also would like to request that she take a portion of my money and use it to buy Joe Klein a drink when this is all over. He deserves a drink because (a) he’s written some great posts lately at Time’s Swampland (b) he’s had to put up with alot of unfair abuse from other writers (c) no one can mock Bill Kristol with the finesse that Joe can (he deserves a drink for that alone).

Microsoft Word is the big Two Five

hat’s right: Microsoft Word hits 25 this year. ITBusiness.ca has a good rundown on the history — good and bad — of this software giant. I used to use Word 5 on an old Mac SE 30 and I thought it was just perfect for what I wanted. (Bonus: no $#%&* Clippy!) But Word rolls on, and new features roll along with (and into) it.

Take a walk down memory lane here: Microsoft Word Turns 25

If you want to enter Boston, New York or other big city marathons, you need to plan ahead

Why? Because they are big and getting bigger. As this article shows, Marathons Grow in Popularity, but City Streets Have Limitations (NYTimes.com). So big cities are setting limits and rejecting alot of people.

Should you bother? Most definitely. The NYC Marathon is a fantastic experience. Imagine being in a 26 mile ticker tape parade in New York where you are the hero: that’s what it is like to run that city’s marathon. And anyone who qualifies for Boston has shown they are the top tier of marathon runners.

That said, there are lots of other good marathons out there not in big cities, like Columbus, Ohio, that are not as well known but very well run and very much worth attending. Big Sur on California is another. And Kiawah Island in South Carolina had a marathon in December which is a great time and great place to run. There are lots of great marathons to run. You just need to do some planning and you too can have a great experience.

Bernie’s Rule of Wearing Red Revisited

Awhile back, I explained Bernie’s Rule of Wearing Red. You may have thought it funny, but according to CNN.com, Wearing red may boost your sex appeal. At least, men find women who wear red more attractive and sexier than women who wear blue or green. The article tries to explain why.

I am guessing that men who wear red well will also get the attention of women. Regardless, more reasons to wear red (especially as the weather in this part of the world turns gray).

(Photo by MontyLov on Unsplash )

Remembering Alex Rivera, photographer of the American Civil Rights Movement

There are a number of sites mentioning that Alex Rivera, Photojournalist of Civil Rights Movement died today. Sadly, few of them do much more than edit and print the press release.

This is sad because he took some incredible photographs that are particularly relevant with the pending U.S. election.

Fortunately you can see an exhibit of them here and read about the exhibit here.

For example, in one, taken only 60 years ago, of Sallie Nixon and her family. It says her husband was taken from his jail cell by white men and lynched in 1948. His “crime” was that he had voted.

Go see the site and share it.

Robert Palmer – Mercy Mercy Me/I Want You

Normally, covering Marvin Gaye would be a way to show that you are…well, not Marvin Gaye.

Covering two of Marvin’s songs in this way should just be a way of showing you are….stupid.

But this is Robert Palmer. And while Palmer is always good, here he just digs into these classics and makes them his own. I like his cover of “Mercy Mercy Me”. But as he moves into “I Want You”, he soars.

Robert Parker on “cheap” wines

Ok, I am miffed. I was writing about low cost wines well before Robert Parker, and now he is cutting in on my act! 🙂

Goofiness aside, he has a good article on Fifteen California Wines for Under $25 in BusinessWeek. For Parker, anything in the $20-$25 price range is low cost, and he mentions some here that go as low as $10 (U.S.).

If you can find any of them, I recommend you grab them and given them a try.

PS. If you live in Ontario, you can get the Château St. Jean Fumé Blanc for $20.95 (vs. $13 in the US!), the Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay for $19.95 (vs. $15 in the US), the Tablas Creek Côtes de Tablas for $25.75 (vs $22). If it is indeed the same wine, you can get the Beringer Chardonnay Napa for $27.95 (vs $16!! WTF?!)

Callie Shell captures Obama

I previously showed a photograph of Barack Obama that showed his resoled shoes. It’s a telling photograph, and it was taken by Callie Shell. Click on that hyperlink: it will take you to many more great photographs of Obama on the campaign trail. Not only are the photographs great — TIME has had many great photographers working for them over the decades, including Shell — but the commentary and the context provided make them even more enjoyable.

Eight things I like about Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk is a great site to help you juggle all the tasks you have to do. You can and should Learn More about it: it’s packed with good features. Just some of those features I like are:

  1. I can access it through iGoogle
  2. I can email tasks to it
  3. I can get an an RSS feed of my todo lists and
  4. I can share my todo lists with others
  5. even though there is a Pro version, the free version is really good
  6. the shortcut keys make it fast to update tasks
  7. I don’t use it much, but the offline feature is also good for those times when you want to keep uptodate but you are losing your network connection
  8. It’s simple to use in the best sense