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Headed up to Syracuse today for TONGUES WILL WAG at Redhouse--two shows this Friday and Saturday nights. If anyone has any advice about things to do in Syracuse--let me know. Tickets are sold out for one of the shows, but I believe there is a wait list, and full details are here.
Next week I'll be performing at Speakeasy Stories on Tuesday at the Cornelia Street Cafe, as will my director, wife and co-collaborator Jean-Michele Gregory. I don't know what story she's telling, but odds are our stories will contradict deliciously, and then there will be a knife fight. Joy! You can find out more here.
Finally, I'll be performing my first ever HOLIDAY SHOW this December at the Brooklyn Public Library as part of their performance series. It's called CHRISTMAS: FRIEND OR FOE? and happens on December 15th at 7pm. The library is describing the show in this way:
"Master storyteller Mike Daisey holds forth on the secret nature of gifting frenzies, flying fat men, and the collision of mania, decadence, and celebration that marks the end of every year."
I was drunk when I told them this, but I stand by it--I have great enthusiasm and respect for the idea of the holiday show, and every year there's a certain story I make a point of telling at a small venue around NYC concerning the holidays. This show will contain that story and tons more--I'm actually giddily excited about the entire enterprise. Tickets are cheap, and full details are available here, and the SmartTix link is here.
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Daisey, Goddess, Orlandersmith, et al. Set for Under the Radar: Theater News on TheaterMania.com:
Works by Mike Daisey, Rha Goddess, Young Jean Lee, and Dael Orlandersmith will be part of the Public Theater's Under the Radar 2008, to be held January 9-20.
This fourth annual event, curated by Mark Russell, will feature plays and performances from all around the world, including Daisey's How Theater Failed America, Goddess' Low: Meditations Trilogy Part I, Lee's Church, and Oerlandersmith's Stoop Stories.
Other artists who will be represented in the festival include the Belarus Free Theatre, Michael Melamed, Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, Mark O'Rowe, Jay Scheib and Leah Gelpe, The Suicide Kings, and Reggie Watts.
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LEGO LEGACY:
NOW that Norman Mailer has passed on, the big question is: Who gets his Legos? The incendiary novelist built a 15,000- piece "City of the Future" with two pals in his Brooklyn apartment - but where it will go next, nobody knows. Our source mused, "Imagine what a one-of-a-kind artistic creation by one of last century's most acclaimed literary figures would be worth at Sotheby's. But how would you get the damn thing out of his brownstone without breaking it up? You could reassemble it by hand, but that wouldn't be quite the same thing as something actually assembled by the master, would it?"
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J.F.K.’s Death, Re-Framed - New York Times:
And why has it taken so long to realize that the assassination and the Zapruder film are not one and the same? Part of the answer lies in the power of the film itself. As the critic Richard B. Woodward wrote in The Times in 2003, the assassination became “fused with one representation, so much so that Kennedy’s death is virtually unimaginable without Zapruder’s film.” To that, one has to add the element of distraction. The Warren Commission did not pursue its May 1964 insight because it was fixated not on the shot that missed but on the ones that killed the president.
If this belated revelation changes nothing from one perspective — Oswald still did it — it simultaneously changes everything, if only because it disrupts the state of mind of everyone who has ever been transfixed by the Zapruder film. The film, we realize, does not depict an assassination about to commence. It shows one that had already started.
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Why does Putin bother to arrest the "Other Russia" protesters? Because he can.:
In the past year, things have changed. The still-unsolved murder of journalist and Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya was followed by regular physical and verbal attacks on the president's opponents. Typical of the latter was Pravda.ru, which last spring called the anti-Putin opposition a "motley army of deviants, criminals, wannabe politicians, fraudsters and gangsters on the fringes of Russian society." Putin himself calls them scavenging "jackals" who live on foreign handouts.
But if they really are deviants and jackals, why arrest them? If Putin really is wildly popular, why bother calling them names? Kasparov himself answers this question—one of many political mysteries in Russia at the moment—by arguing that Putin is far less secure than he appears to be. During a recent lecture in Warsaw, I heard him convince a large crowd that Russian opinion polling in general should be taken with a grain of salt: In an authoritarian society, especially a post-Soviet one, who tells the truth to a stranger over the telephone? He also claimed that polls asking more specific questions—"Is your city well-run? Is your mayor corrupt?"—produce a far less contented portrait of Russian society than questions like, "Do you approve of Vladimir Putin?"
Maybe so—but that doesn't exclude the other, grimmer explanation, which is that Putin beats up his opposition because he can. The dollar is sinking, Bush is fading, and Europe still doesn't have a unified Russia policy. Meanwhile, Russia is awash in oil money, next week's parliamentary elections will go the Kremlin's way no matter what, and why should the Russian president care if there's some name-calling in the Washington Post?
Putin and his entourage have already got most of what they wanted from the West—including the chance to host a G8 summit in St. Petersburg. If this weekend's photographs look like they were taken 30 years ago, why should they care? Few in Russia will see them. And most of those who do will surely draw the intended conclusion, keeping well away the next time a crowd gathers in a Moscow square.
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Nuclear Exaggeration: Is Atomic Radiation as Dangerous as We Thought? - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News:
A consensus in the West has been reached about what happened next. Soviet nuclear scientists stand accused of having irradiated the environment and of otherwise poisoning the surrounding area. The result, it is said, has been thousands of cancer deaths and myriads of deformed children. Indeed, this autumn, Mayak (of which not a single historic photo exists to this day) celebrated a gruesome anniversary. In the fall of 1957, a tank filled with 80 tons of nuclear waste exploded. According to an eyewitness, a "strange, bright red fog" rose several thousand meters into the air. "In the winter," says the eyewitness, "I would have terrible headaches and nosebleeds, and I almost went blind."
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New York
I live in a beautiful place, a city
people claim to be astonished
when you say you live there.
They talk of junkies, muggings, dirt, and noise,
missing the point completely.
I tell them where they live it is hell,
a land of frozen people.
They never think of people.
Home, I am astonished by this environment
that is also a form of nature
like those paradises of trees and grass,
but this is a people paradise,
where we are the creatures mostly,
though thank God for dogs, cats, sparrows, and roaches.
This vertical place is no more an accident
than the Himalayas are.
The city needs all those tall buildings
to contain the tremendous energy here.
The landscape is in a state of balance.
We do God's will whether we know it or not:
where I live the streets end in a river of sunlight.
Nowhere else in the country do people
show just what they feel--
we don't put on any act.
Look at the way New Yorkers
walk down the street. It says,
I don't care. What nerve,
to dare to live their dreams, or nightmares,
and no one bothers to look.
True, you have to be an expert to live here.
Part of the trick is not to go anywhere, lounge about,
go slowly in the midst of the rush for novelty.
Anyway, besides the eats the big event here
is the streets, which are full of love--
we hug and kiss a lot. You can't say that
for anywhere else around. For some
it's a carnival of sex--
there's all the opportunity in the world.
For me it is no different:
out walking, my soul seeks its food.
It knows what it wants.
Instantly it recognizes its mate, our eyes meet,
and our beings exchange a vital energy,
the universe goes on Charge,
and we pass by without holding.
Edward Field
3:43 AM
Tonight's the final night of GREAT MEN OF GENIUS at Joe's Pub. It's been a marvelous experience, and a wonderful residency for us in New York--thanks to so many who came out for the shows, and there is a wait list at the door for the completely sold out show this evening.
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DHS to firefighters: snoop on emergency victims for evidence of terrorism - Boing Boing:
The Department of Homeland Security is asking firefighters to snoop around in homes they're called to for emergencies. The DHS likes the idea because firefighters aren't bound by pesky warrants and probable cause and can therefore report on suspicious material like blueprints, anti-American literature, and potential bomb-making materials (e.g., the bedrooms of every friend I had, circa 1985). Firefighters are just the latest legion of potential snoops the DHS is leaning on -- they've also asked meter-readers to peer into our windows and sheds to find evidence of bad-guy-ery. This stuff doesn't work and won't work: amateur pecksniffs snitching on their neighbors just flood cops with bad intel, and turn the country into East Germany, a land where everyone is on alert lest they say the wrong thing and get turned in to the secret police.
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A devastating critique of Mr. Isherwood over at the Huffington Post from Jon Robin Baitz can be found here; here's a taste of what it sets up.
And now to the slightly unpleasant part of this essay. Mr. Isherwood, as a critic, will never be noted for his generosity of spirit. He is not Harold Clurman. He tends to be waspish, dismissive, cool, and brittle - as a writer. He can be gratuitously insulting, and his reputation is marred by the general consensus that a good mind is not matched by a particularly big heart. There is a whiff of Grinch in his criticism. Mr. Brantley, more and more seems like a breathless writer of gossip and gush for fan mags, and his intelligence - which again is not in question - seems to fail when it comes down to the big picture. The Times critics present themselves as advocates for consumers, and not as advocates for the theater itself. Unlike Clurman, Ken Tynan, say, or even Frank Rich, who could be withering but always managed to let it be known that he was passionate for new voices, passionate for promise, and uncompromisingly rigorous, as he is as an op-ed writer on Sundays. Speaking of Sundays, the Times used to have a Sunday critic, but have dropped that, thereby handing a monopoly of opinion to Isherwood and Brantley.
You can read reactions from others here, and Michael Riedel, as usual, has the very best quote from another playwright:
Warren Leight, who wrote the Tony Award-winning play "Side Man" and is now head writer for one of those "Law & Order" spinoffs," has his own take on Isherwood's article. "Charles Isherwood asking playwrights to return to the stage is kind of like Ted Bundy wondering why no one hitchhikes anymore," he says.
OUCH.
I might be more generous and not link to this kind of character assassination, but Mr. Isherwood's most recent advice for Thanksgiving weekend is that since Broadway is for the most part closed, so obviously there's nothing else to see in the city, so people should go to Trader Joe's or watch TiVoed TV episodes or simply get drunk rather than see anything else that is playing.
Seriously. Read the article. It's rare to see someone's true colors on such full display.
Mr. Isherwood failed to show up at my run at Joe's Pub, which he had ample notice of; I find it hard to believe that Joe's Pub, even in Isherwood's eyes, counts as such a "downtown" space that it would be excluded from his beat. It's perfectly fine by me--the shows are selling out without the Times' magnanimity, and while we do have a marriage of convenience at other times it is actually quite wonderful to not care whether he'd be showing up or not.
Many others don't have this luxury--many artists struggle to find any audience, and that's good. They should struggle. Life is struggle—but the NYT is a cultural arbiter on a national level, and the idea that there's simply nothing new worth mentioning is contemptible.
What's worse, it's lazy and inaccurate. If he really cared about theater as an experience beyond the overpriced, almost-laughable-if-it-didn't-make-one-weep suggestions he makes in this article he'd be able to tell readers about a number of excellent shows running in New York right now. I know--I've seen them, and I can be a tough critic myself.
He rhetorically asks what a theater reviewer should be doing with this strike on. The answer is simple--he should be doing his job.
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City Homicides Still Dropping, to Under 500 - New York Times:
New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 homicides this year, by far the lowest number in a 12-month period since reliable Police Department statistics became available in 1963.
But within the city’s official crime statistics is a figure that may be even more striking: so far, with roughly half the killings analyzed, only 35 were found to be committed by strangers, a microscopic statistic in a city of more than 8.2 million.
If that trend holds up, fewer than 100 homicide victims in New York City this year will have been strangers to their assailants. The vast majority died in disputes with friends or acquaintances, with rival drug gang members or — to a far lesser degree — with romantic partners, spouses, parents and others.
The low number of killings by strangers belies the common imagery that New Yorkers are vulnerable to arbitrary attacks on the streets, or die in robberies that turn fatal.
In the eyes of some criminologists, the police will be hard pressed to drive the killing rate much lower, since most killings occur now within the four walls of an apartment or the confines of close relationships.
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Jump the Shark - New York Times:
Today, pool hustlers have joined American heavyweight boxing champs, complete-game pitchers, hockey goons and drug-free cyclists as relics in sports. Endearing bit players in the cast of American culture, hustlers have been written out of future episodes. “It used to be that you had to turn down action; then you had to look hard for action; and now there’s no action,” Bucky Bell, a Cincinnati-based pool wizard, lamented to me. “A lot of guys who play real good pool are having to look for real jobs.”
The pool hustler wasn’t murdered by any single suspect, but the last man holding the knife was Kevin Trudeau, the bestselling author of the “Natural Cures” series who once served a prison term for felony larceny. Mr. Trudeau out-hustled the hustlers — and killed off a national archetype in the process.
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Daisey hits the stage without using a script - Syracuse.com:
During the last decade, Daisey, 34, has performed works about a variety of subjects, from the dot-com era to Sept. 11. Every piece has an autobiographical element, some of which can be highly personal, Daisey said.
So why would anyone be willing to stand in front of strangers and improvise a monologue about the most intimate details of his or her life?
Traditional theater is "entirely too dependent on dead playwrights and dead words," Daisey said recently during a telephone interview from his home in New York City.
3:35 AM
Tonight we're having a KEG AND LOBSTER party--planned under the influence of beer last evening after flying back from Maine, the idea has taken hold of our fevered imaginations and won't let go. An ENORMOUS NUMBER OF FIERCE LOBSTERS, a full-on BEER KEG and an assortment of FASCINATING ARTIST-TYPES AND N'AER-DO-WELLS should conspire together to create MAGIC.
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The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan:
I always admired Giuliani, marveled at what he did with New York City, liked his social liberalism, admired his way with bureaucracies, enjoyed his knockabout style. Any pol who's happy to put a dress on for a bit of fun is fine by me.
But that was before 9/11, and before the Bush-Cheney presidency. All the things I admired about Giuliani as mayor loom as liabilities as president. The security state is understandably more pervasive and powerful than before. But the newly empowered executive branch - with powers to seize anyone anywhere without charges and torture them if necessary - makes a man with the instincts and temperament of Giuliani a real danger in the White House. Oddly, then, it is 9/11 that has made Giuliani intolerable to me. His obsessive loyalty to aides, his reflexive defense of the security and police forces, his discomfort with any argument smacking of civil liberties, his mean streak, his desire to extend his own term of office as New York City mayor, his authoritarian, meddling instincts, and his frequent, hotheaded outbursts: all this make giving him the Cheney-style presidency a huge risk.
3:29 AM
Daring Fireball: DUM:
After chewing it over all day, I’ve concluded that Amazon’s Kindle is going to flop. Or at least I hope it does.
What it comes down to is that when you purchase books in Kindle’s e-book format, they’re wrapped in DRM and are in a format that no other software can read. There are no provisions for sharing books even with other Kindle owners, let alone with everyone.
Barring physical catastrophe, I expect that the real books I own — the ones printed on paper — will remain in good condition long after I am dead. With digital Kindle books, I’m not even sure they’ll be available 10 years from now. They’re only useful so long as you own Kindle-compatible hardware. What happens to these e-books if Amazon, having lost money on the endeavor, stops producing Kindle readers a few years from now? What are the odds that these files will be readable 50 years from now?
With DRM-protected audio from iTunes, there’s a reasonable out: You can burn your audio to DRM-free AIFF files on CD. You can also share Apple’s DRM-protected audio and video with a limited number of family and friends. With DRM-protected Kindle books, you’re stuck. The only way to lend a friend a Kindle book is to lend them your Kindle reader. “Unshareable books” sounds downright oppressive to my ears.
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Microsoft’s Outrageous Office Profits — RoughlyDrafted Magazine:
Microsoft’s Office suite represents the third pillar of the company’s core trio of monopolies, next to its Windows desktop software and its Windows Server products. Here’s why the company’s monopoly position in productivity applications is holding back innovation and why the mainstream tech media has absolutely nothing to say anything about it.
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Home again, home again. It was a fantastic few days, and I'm delighted
we're back with some time to decompress before Monday's final show at
Joe's Pub.
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We're celebrating Black Friday here in Maine--shopping started before
dawn, and it is a bizarre FESTIVAL OF CONSUMERISM! Woot!
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I'm in Maine, engaging in an American holiday tradition--the pilaging
of the outlet malls. As I type this my wife and sister are
systematically demolishing the Banana Republic, where the sign that
everything in the store is 40% off made them both spontaneously,
simultaneously orgasm.Yesterday the flat tire was recovered from in record time, and despite
snow, winds and stormy weather we made it to my Mom's place for
conversation and dinner. My other sister, Beth, and her son Nicholas
made an appearance--I like that kid.After this, Tgiving preparations.
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1:57 PM
> We've landed in Maine, where we're having a return to family--it
> should be a fun couple of days. As part of an experiment I have left
> my laptop behind--it's invigorating. I'll be holding down the fort
> with this iPhone, an Alphasmart Neo and a few clever web services.
> Naturally that may all fail, but it's not as if anyone pays for this
> site, so there you go.
>
> As soon as we landed it began to snow...and my sister has a flat
> tire. Happy Holidays!
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Gothamist: Pencil This In:
Enthralling monologuist Mike Daisey is at Joe’s Pub for the third night of a four-show residency called Great Men of Genius, in which Daisey spins his signature solo style into “bio-logues about megalomania and desire.” Tonight’s subject is Nikola Tesla, “mad genius, brilliant scientist and visionary who sparred with Thomas Edison and died insane and penniless writing love sonnets to pigeons after bringing the world electricity as we know it.” The series concludes next Monday with L. Ron Hubbard; Daisey's previous 'bio-logues' were Bertolt Brecht and P.T. Barnum. Michael Criscuolo calls it “smart, funny, engaging theatre that is not to be missed under any circumstances.”
Tonight I'll be talking about the magic and mystery of NIKOLA TESLA at Joe's Pub--I hope you can make it. Tickets are almost sold out, but still available as of now at this link here.
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Waxy, Waxy Anglo-Saxy - Film - The Stranger:
I guess old-fangled human actors are okay—always using their eyeballs and faces to communicate emotions and stuff (so pretentious). But what would be really great is if you could use a camera to film human actors, and then take a computer and scribble on the footage until the humans look like expressionless, waxy, reanimated corpses! Wake up, Louisa May Alcott—it’s called the 21st century (nice bonnet). And speaking of modernity: Yeah, I’m kind of into Anglo-Saxon heroic epics, but you know what would really jazz that shit up? BOOBZ. Hella boobz. Plus, have you heard about these new individually wrapped prunes? They’re totally changing the way I eat prunes. Jesus Christ, I love the future.
Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis’s retardedly modern, 3-D, motion-capture reworking of Ye Olde English yarn, uses technology to murder the shit out of entertainment.
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The death of e-mail. - By Chad Lorenz - Slate Magazine:
Those of us older than 25 can't imagine a life without e-mail. For the Facebook generation, it's hard to imagine a life of only e-mail, much less a life before it. I can still remember the proud moment in 1996 when I sent my first e-mail from the college computer lab. It felt like sending a postcard from the future. I was getting a glimpse of how the Internet would change everything—nothing could be faster and easier than e-mail.
Ten years later, e-mail is looking obsolete. According to a 2005 Pew study, almost half of Web-using teenagers prefer to chat with friends via instant messaging rather than e-mail. Last year, comScore reported that teen e-mail use was down 8 percent, compared with a 6 percent increase in e-mailing for users of all ages. As mobile phones and sites like Twitter and Facebook have become more popular, those old Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts increasingly lie dormant.
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"Worry is one form of prayer I find acceptable."
Virgil Thompson
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Other Scientology Loans Financial Products:
Finally, all the helpful, life changing benefits of Scientology are no longer prohibitively expensive for the average person. Well, its still expensive, but we now offer a variety of loan packages to fit any budget to get you the help you so desperately need.
As you are surely aware, Scientology is the proven fact and science of alien souls, killed by the evil galactic ruler Xenu 75,000,000 years ago, attaching themselves to us humans and causing all of our "bad" feelings. Scientology is the only known means to rid you of these destructive beings, enabling you to finally find the peace and happiness you deserve through the very expensive process of Scientology Auditing.
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BEST. HINT. EVER.
macosxhints.com - 10.5: Get rid of the translucent menu bar:
One down, one to go? Steve Miner somehow managed to figure out how to disable the translucent menu bar. He posted a solution that involved editing a system-level plist, and then commenter Krioni came up with a one-line Terminal command.
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 0.63
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Miseducation - Theater - The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper:
The individual that High School Musical worships is the most nihilistic human being history has ever produced. Because this type of person has no content or history and because s/he absorbs everything s/he encounters into the nothingness of consumer comforts, this person is a perfect onion, a vegetable of pure layers. This thing that dances and sings and expresses its emptiness without thought or worry, this thing that is so stupid that it doesn't even know how to be bored—this thing is killing our planet.
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I'm participating in this as a playwright--it looks like it'll be a lot of fun.
On December 1st and 2nd, 2007 The Monarch Theater Company presents THE ONE MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL at The Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Curated by Dominic D’Andrea THE ONE MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL is an informal festival of incredibly short plays. Thirty-four of today’s most exciting playwrights were challenged to write plays with only one rule: it must be under 60 seconds from lights up to lights down. Then eleven directors were assigned several plays to be staged with a small ensemble of actors. And all of the plays will be presented in the course of a single evening!
THE ONE MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL features PLAYWRIGHTS: Mando Alvarado, Trista Baldwin, Andy Bragen, Abigail Browde, Clay McLeod Chapman, Alley Collier, James Comtois, Emily Conbere, Migdalia Cruz, Mike Daisey, Bathsheba Doran, Michael John Garces, Jason Grote, Ashlin Halfnight, Christina Ham, Jakob Holder, J. Holtham, Kyle Jarrow, Rajiv Joseph, Sibyl Kempson, Callie Kimball, Courtney Brooke Lauria, Matthew Lopez, Qui Nguyen, Emily O’Dell, Matt Olmos, Daria Politan, Mac Rogers, Trav SD, Lloyd Suh, Adam Szymkowicz, Andrea Thome, Gary Winter, & Anna Zeigler
DIRECTORS: Isaac Butler, Jay Cohen, Dominic D’Andrea, Michael Gardner, Marlo Hunter, Yana Landowne, Taibi Magar, Jennifer Ortega, Michael Silverstone, Max Williams and Jordan Young
THE ONE MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL will be presented on Saturday, December 1 at 9PM and Sunday, December 2nd at 7PM at THE BRICK THEATER, 575 Metropolitan Ave. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Tickets are $15 suggested donation and are available at the door only.
www.monarchtheater.org
www.bricktheater.com
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Off Goes the Power Current Started by Thomas Edison - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog:
Today, Con Edison will end 125 years of direct current electricity service that began when Thomas Edison opened his Pearl Street power station on Sept. 4, 1882. Con Ed will now only provide alternating current, in a final, vestigial triumph by Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, Mr. Edison’s rivals who were the main proponents of alternating current in the AC/DC debates of the turn of the 20th century.
12:17 PM
Kremlin uses software piracy laws to shut down dissident media outlets - Boing Boing:
The Kremlin is using Russia's new anti-software-piracy laws to target dissident media outlets and shut them down. This is an eerie echo of the Soviet era, when black marketeering and other universal activities were used as the excuse for arresting dissidents and other inconvenient people.
The difference is that this time, the anti-piracy laws were enacted at the behest of the US trade representative, who made stringent patent and copyright enforcement a condition of the recent US-Russia free trade agreement, forcing Russia to take on board stricter laws than those in place in the US. This includes laws that would never pass Constitutional muster stateside, like a scheme for police licensing and inspection of CD and DVD presses. Imagine that: Russia reinstates state control over the press at the behest of the US government! The Framers of the Constitution would be very proud, I'm sure.
The thing is that everyone in Russia is an infringer, which means that everyone is guilty of breaking these strict new anti-piracy laws. That means that anyone can be arrested for being a pirate, so there's no need to gin up a law against dissent, political organizing, homosexuality, or looking cross-eyed at a cop.
It's true in the US, too. Everyone's an infringer. At every talk I give, I say, "Is there anyone in this room who isn't a copyright criminal?" No one ever puts up a hand -- not at universities, law schools, technology conferences, or at motion picture studios.
Once everyone is a criminal, no one is free.
3:11 PM
Charles O’Rourke : Hierarchy:
With the release of Mac OS X 10.5.0, Apple took away a feature of the Dock that had been present since Mac OS X 10.0 — the ability to right-click (or control-click) on a folder in the Dock and see a hierarchical menu of the contents of the Dock.
Hopefully Apple will restore this functionality to the Dock in a 10.5.x update, but in the meantime, Hierarchy is a freeware application that will create a small palette that replaces the functionality of placing folders in the Dock. Any folders or files can be dropped into the Hierarchy palette. Files can be launched from the palette, and folders can either be opened in the Finder with a left click or browsed in a hierarchical menu by right- (or control-) clicking.
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Most at NYU say their vote has a price - Lily Quateman - Washington Square News - Politico.com:
Two-thirds say they'll do it for a year's tuition. And for a few, even an iPod touch will do.
That's what NYU students said they'd take in exchange for their right to vote in the next presidential election, a recent survey by an NYU journalism class found.
Only 20 percent said they'd exchange their vote for an iPod touch.
But 66 percent said they'd forfeit their vote for a free ride to NYU. And half said they'd give up the right to vote forever for $1 million.
But they also overwhelmingly lauded the importance of voting.
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11:47 AM
Starbucked.com - Consumer Activism is for Everyone:
On Dec 9, 2002, my husband went into Starbucks at 9642 Allisonville Road in Fishers Indiana. He told the clerk to give him his regular coffee and he was purchasing a coffee brewer for me for Christmas. The clerk pointed out the boxes, (which all look alike), my husband gave her his Starbucks card and got his coffee. He picked up what he thought was the coffee brewer, went over to the counter to put his sugar and cream into his coffee, then went to his car, parked right outside the front door. He stood there about 5 minutes after taking a cell phone call, put the box into his trunk and left. He goes into this store 4-5 days a week. 5 days later 2 police detectives come to our home, read him his rights and inform him that he had stolen a more expensive machine. They followed him to his office, took the machine, (which he then realized was the incorrect machine) and informed him they would be in touch. 2 days ago they called to inform him that a warrant for his arrest had been issued. A warrant for Class D felony theft. Today I have to take him in to pay $750.00 bond, get a mug shot and finger prints. We will have to pay an attorney $3000.00 for pre-trial fee's, and another 5-10,000 for trial. All over a simple mistake. He is in the store so often that they knew his name. That is how the police knew where to come. Now tell me this: wouldn't the normal avenue have been to simply stop my husband at any time before he left and tell him of the mistake? Does it make any sense that a person who frequents a store 4-5 days a week and people know who he is would steal? I called Starbucks Corp. and got no help there. They said it is a legal matter. My husband has lost 25 pounds since this started a month ago. His Blood Pressure was 190/86, and that is with Blood Pressure medication. I now realize that our legal system is not here to protect the innocent, but to cause as much pain as possible. PLEASE, do you have any advice?
11:46 AM
11:33 AM
Camille Paglia on Hillary Clinton, Norman Mailer, Ellen Degeneres and more | Salon.com:
Penthouse magazine had similarly tried to bring Madonna and me together, as had HBO, which proposed filming a "My Dinner with André" scenario of the two of us chatting in a restaurant. But Madonna, no conversationalist, always refused. When Newsweek asked her in a 1992 cover story whether she would like to meet me, she said, "First, I'd like to see her across the room and then I'd like to decide whether I want to approach her." (I said when I read it, "What is this, a sorority party?")
11:32 AM
Personal History: Parallel Play: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker:
From early childhood, my memory was so acute and my wit so bleak that I was described as a genius—by my parents, by our neighbors, and even, on occasion, by the same teachers who gave me failing marks. I wrapped myself in this mantle, of course, as a poetic justification for behavior that might otherwise have been judged unhinged, and I did my best to believe in it. But the explanation made no sense. A genius at what? Were other “geniuses” so oblivious that they couldn’t easily tell right from left and idly wet their pants into adolescence? What accounted for my rages and frustrations, for the imperious contempt I showed to people who were in a position to do me harm? Although I delighted in younger children, whom I could instruct and gently dominate, and I was thrilled when I ran across an adult willing to discuss my pet subjects, I could establish no connection with most of my classmates. My pervasive childhood memory is an excruciating awareness of my own strangeness.
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12:10 AM
Bush Vetoes Major Domestic Spending Measure - New York Times:
President Bush on Tuesday vetoed a major spending measure that would have funded education, health care and job training programs, saying it contained money for too many of the special projects known as earmarks. But he signed a $459 billion bill to increase the Pentagon’s nonwar funding.
12:05 AM
My deepest thanks to everyone who came out for the show last night--it was a great pleasure to perform at Joe's Pub again, and I'm beginning to fully relax into the space.
Michael Arthur, the resident artist at the Public, came to the show last night and sketched this piece that found its way into my inbox this morning:
I've admired Michael's work in the green room and dressing rooms of the Public, where he sketches and paints signature pieces for the productions that happen in the building--it's an honor to be included in such fine company. It appears he's a local artist in my neighborhood from his blog, where you can find more drawings, and you may wish to check out his main site, which has details on shows he's doing and how to purchase his pieces.
What a cool thing to happen the day after a show.
1:28 PM
1:22 PM
David Byrne Journal: 11.03.2007: Social "Hateworking", IKEA:
Why does everything have weird names? Every container, shelf, cabinet or appliance had some odd name, as if people from Planet Sweden anthropomorphized these objects, naming each one they encountered as best they could**:
BESTA
HEDDA
BJARNUM
LERBERG
INREDA
EKTORP
GRUNDTON
BERTA
KARNA
One soon realizes that one of the goals of this “game” is to decide which cabinets, in which wood or wood-like material, would, could or should be combined with which counter materials, and then to match them to a particular style sofa and upholstery, and finally, to select the color and texture of floor material that would coordinate best with all the above.
There are free measuring tapes available to help you, dotted lines are painted on the floors (to help determine square footage), and personnel hover at computers waiting to guide you through the whole mix and match system — game spoilers, one might say.
1:01 PM
1:00 PM
US intelligence honcho channels Orwell, redefines privacy - Boing Boing:
Donald Kerr, the US Principal Deputy Director of Intelligence, has decided to kill privacy. He says that human beings can no longer expect governments and companies not to spy on them; instead "privacy" will now mean having the right to expect that governments and companies won't tell other people what they learn when they spy on you.
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12:24 PM
The Degentrification of Red Hook -- New York Magazine:
Gentrification is a wave that’s flooding the city, transforming block after block. And Red Hook was directly in its path.
Pochoda remembers it clearly. "That moment was there. It was definitely there. Everyone felt it at the same time. And then," she says, "it just went away."
For the last two years, people in Red Hook have been waiting—some hopefully, some fearfully—for that wave to crash, the hordes to come, the towers to sprout. Weirdly, though, none of that has happened. In fact, for all the heraldic attention, the neighborhood now seems to be going in reverse. The Pioneer bar has shut down. So has the bistro 360 and, just recently, the live-music venue the Hook. Buildings put on the market for $2.5 million have stayed empty and unsold. Landlords hoping to get $2,500 a month for a Van Brunt storefront—the rent that Barbara Corcoran was asking—have found no takers. In fact, Corcoran’s spot sat unrented for over two years, until a local business took the space at the cut rate of $1,800 a month. The perception of the neighborhood got bad enough that in August the Post ran a story headlined "Call It ‘Dead’ Hook." Somehow the neighborhood went from "undiscovered paradise" to Dead Hook in just over a year.
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12:07 PM
Eco - "Writings: IBM vs. Mac":
The Holy War:
Mac vs. DOS
By Umberto Eco
The following excerpts are from an English translation of Umberto Eco's back-page column, La bustina di Minerva, in the Italian news weekly Espresso, September 30, 1994.
12:07 PM
11:04 AM
The James Burton Story:
I've heard that you were asked to do the NBC Special in 1968.
Yes, the producer of the show, Steve Binder, the contractors and Elvis' people all tried to call and contact me to play on this thing, but I was in the studio doing a record with Frank Sinatra. So I was not available and I recommended a guy named Mike Daisy.
11:03 AM
2:23 AM
Suicide Bombing Makes Sick Sense in 'Halo 3':
So after a few weeks of this ritual humiliation, I got sick of it. And I devised a simple technique for revenge.
Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I'm only making it easier for them to shoot me -- and thus I'm marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero.
But at the last second, before I die, I'll whip out a sticky plasma grenade -- and throw it at them. Because I've run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I'll die -- but he'll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off. (When you pull off the trick, the game pops up a little dialog box noting that you killed someone "from beyond the grave.")
It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber -- or a kamikaze pilot.
2:22 AM
2:22 AM
Great Men of Genius:
Daisey's facility for bringing such disparate-seeming threads together is astonishing. In addition to his quicksilver extemporizing (he has notes, which he never looks at, on the table in front of him), he commandingly takes the audience down many separate roads without once losing their confidence. Even if it looks like he doesn't know where he's going, the viewer never doubts for a moment that he does. That's how totally in control he is. Plus, he's a gifted raconteur: he's so damn funny and personable (one feels as if they're having their own private audience with him) it's impossible not to be riveted. And when he closes the evening by stating that it's "difficult and challenging to live without shame," he movingly and magically ties everything together with the utterance of a single sentence.
By the time this review goes up, Daisey will be readying the second installment of Great Men of Genius, which focuses on Bertolt Brecht. Subsequent weeks will bring evenings about Nikola Tesla and L. Ron Hubbard. Whichever one of these you catch, I urge you to go see Daisey in action. His performances are as inspiring as they are mysterious: you don't know how he does it, but you can't stop watching.
2:58 PM
Tonight I'll be performing at Joe's Pub, telling stories about Bert Brecht at Joe's Pub.
If you want a taste of the show, listen here.
If you'd like to hear the fabulous Ute Lemper talking about Brecht and playing recordings of him appearing in front of the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities, listen here.
If you'd like to see the whole thing live, get tickets here.
12:09 PM
12:03 PM
Cult of Mac » Blog Archive » NBC Direct Download Service Launches, Mainly Serves Bertolli Ads:
# NBC Direct is actually a shell on top of Windows Media Player. Yep, not actually its own application. It’s built on OpenCASE, Extend Media’s super-locked down video platform. Slogan: “Automation, Ingestion, Encryption.” Yep, that’s how consumers think about video, all right.
# NBC Direct has no support for Macs — but NBC recommends Boot Camp. How thoughtful! I have a PC from work, though, so I put it through its paces.
# Bertolli pasta is just like real, homemade pasta — only frozen, and on NBC Direct! Yum-o-licious.
# Installation is hell. You must download the application from Internet Explorer for Windows. Even though the program works without a web browser once installed, you can’t download with Firefox. NO SENSE. Then, because of its ties to Media Player, you’ll likely have to upgrade Media Player — NBC Direct was created with Vista in mind — genius! Then, after all of that, it’s capable of playing Bertolli commercials. But if you want to actually watch a TV show, you’ll probably need to launch Explorer and install another DRM fix — because you can’t spell Windows without “Service Pack.”
# Content is limited. No, make that pathetic. Only five TV shows, “30 Rock,” “Friday Night Lights,” “The Office,” “Bionic Woman, ” and “Life”, are presently available. You can download their most recent episodes, or set up a weekly subscription to get new episodes as posted. I presume these are all of the NBC-Universal produced series, as opposed to all shows airing on NBC. But I’m not a TV executive; why the heck do I care who made the show? If I want an NBC show, it would be nice to download anything they, you know, air.
# You have 48 hours before self-destruction. All TV shows downloaded from NBC Direct self-destruct within 48 hours of when you start to watch it. That’ll stop you from peskily re-watching a TV show you like, interrupted by Bertolli commercials as you go.
# All episodes vanish, both from the application and from your computer, within 7 days of their original airdates. No matter what. Exactly what I always wanted! I want the convenience of being told when to watch TV!
# NBC Direct supports absolutely no media players. Or CD, DVD, or external hard drive back-up. I hope you like watching TV shows on your Windows PC!
# There’s a writer’s strike on. So this should work for, oh, about a week or two.
12:01 PM
My first attempt at using NBC Direct to view content--
Marvelous work, people. I suspect the iTunes Store is quaking in its boots.
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3:22 AM
TV Shows: NBC Direct Goes Live, Completely Blows:
NBC uses a proprietary player, which is a hassle to install and set up. The player only works with IE, which must have the most current security update. Everyone else is out of the free viewing loop. If you do indeed meet the prerequisite criteria, you can download full episodes of your choice from a bank containing videos that are only seven days old or less. Once downloaded, the video validity period starts to tick away—you have 48 hours to view before your show self-destructs. Further, as yet, you can't take the video on the go, which really brings the point of the service into question.
3:21 AM
3:21 AM
We just saw this at HERE, and while I have had issues with Theater of the Two-Headed Calf in the past, this was really kickass--a heartfelt spectacle that really works, a fusion of punk and kabuki that rocks out loud. Highly recommended.
Playing Now:
DRUM OF THE WAVES OF HORIKAWA!
Loud, violent, transgressive and fueled by radical politics, both Kabuki and 1970s punk rock represented unforgiving performance movements that captured the stories of social discord. Combining live music performed by two drummers, a keyboardist and a bass player with traditional elements of Japanese performance, the show reinterprets this 18th Century classic that teems with lying, cheating, drinking and assassination.
12:03 AM
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3:49 PM
Norman Mailer, Towering Writer With Matching Ego, Is Dead - New York Times:
Norman Mailer, the combative, controversial and often outspoken novelist who loomed over American letters longer and larger than any writer of his generation, died today in Manhattan. He was 84.
2:40 PM
12:53 AM
Slashdot | Ex AT&T Tech Says NSA Monitors All Web Traffic:
"A former technician at AT&T, who alleges that the telecom giant forwards virtually all of its internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying, says the whole operation reminds him of something out of Orwell's 1984. Appearing on MSNBC's Countdown program, whistleblower Mark Klein told Keith Olbermann that a copy of all internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office — to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access. 'Klein was on Capitol Hill Wednesday attempting to convince lawmakers not to give a blanket, retroactive immunity to telecom companies for their secret cooperation with the government. He said that as an AT&T technician overseeing Internet operations in San Francisco, he helped maintain optical splitters that diverted data en route to and from AT&T customers. '"
7:24 PM
RIAA Demands Jammie Thomas Pay 'Reasoned Award' of $222,000 for Infringing 24 Music Tracks:
The Recording Industry Association of America says the $222,000 a Minnesota federal jury concluded Jammie Thomas should pay for infringing 24 copyrighted music tracks "represents a reasoned award," according to court documents filed late Thursday.
The RIAA, which also accused Thomas on Thursday of trying to "shirk her responsibility," was responding to the single mother's motion urging a Duluth, Minnesota federal judge to reduce the award amid claims it was unconstitutionally excessive.
Thomas, of Minnesota, was the nation's first pirate to face off in front of a jury against the RIAA. The bulk of the 20,000-plus copyright infringement lawsuits the RIAA has brought have settled for a fraction of what the jury said Thomas should pay.
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