Interesting stuff I've read (articles, sites...):

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

OMG Ponies! Wall Street edition

A little background before you read this article excerpt.

It was taken from The Battery Park City Broadsheet - specifically their September 29th - October 14th, 2008 issue - linked here to the original PDF.

Battery Park City is a (our) Lower Manhattan neighborhood, right next door to the World Trade Center site and a very short walk to Wall Street. Needless to say there have been a lot of busy neighbors around of late, and certainly folks who have lost jobs.

Despite all the honest suffering going on, the guy in this article floors me. I'm quite convinced he lives in an alternate reality. Read on...


             The Party's Over
 

The face of the future—complete
with stunned expression and glassy,
thousand-yard-stare—was on view
in the lobby of Two World Financial
Center on the evening of a
September 15. That morning, Lehman
Brothers had imploded and
Merrill Lynch, which is headquartered
in World Financial Center and
has an employee gym in the lobby,
had announced that it was being
bought by Bank of America. Many of
the Merrill staffers exiting the gym
that night appeared defeated and
deflated by the announcement that
the firm, six years shy of its 100th
birthday, would soon cease to exist as
an independent company.

“Dave,” a trader who asked that
his real name not be used, emerged
with a dazed and weary look on his
face. “I guess it could have been
worse,” he said. “I once interviewed
for a job for Lehman Brothers. If I
was there, I’d be cleaning out my
desk right now.” Still, Dave sees
much to worry about.

“I’ve got two small children,”
he said. “This time last year, I was
thinking it would be nice to buy
them both horses when they got a
little older. My wife and I have also
been looking at private schools for
both kids.”

“Now,” he reflected, “I’m
thinking about the payments on my
condo and the mortgage on the
country house we bought back in
2006. Both have gone down in value,
but my payments haven’t. I don’t
know how much longer I’m going to
have a job at Merrill. And most of
my savings was in stock that has
dropped in value over the last two
years. So if I’m unemployed for even
a few months, we could lose one
home, or both.” About the horses
and the private schools he was considering
for his children, Dave simply
said, “forget it.”

Etc..........

* * *

The use of bold is my doing, but everything else is taken direct from the article. Follow the link and check it out for yourself.

Now that said, I'm a little bit suspicious that there was no author listed for the article AND "Dave" isn't his real name. I've seen enough The Wire episodes to question such fishy journalism.

If it is true then I risk karma retribution by invoking the term schadenfreude. 

Now please excuse me while I go polish our second set of silverware (the one we never liked anyway) as I think we might need to pawn it in order to pay our next loan installment on the Mercedes.

Monday, September 29, 2008

10^100

UPDATE: Turns out my buddy Neil from Santa Monica actually helped put this kick-ass campaign together. Very cool indeed.

*******************************
More Googley goodness.

Project 10 to the 100th is a great way to celebrate Google's 10th birthday.
Check out the FAQ or this super cool video for more info...

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Sing along campaign style



My inner distaste of musicals is in conflict :-)

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Just another morning

It occurs to me that this would not be the Lower Manhattan (LoMa) Journal if I didn't occasionally write about life below Chambers St. and today's about as auspicious of a day I can think of.

Other then the memories running through one's head, the most obvious difference in my morning walk to the Subway station is the police presences. Two to four officers stand at each corner with additional folks sprinkled about for good measure.

Police tow trucks are working or stand at the ready. A delivery truck that would normally go unnoticed on Church St. gets hauled away in a matter of minutes.

Looking south down the canyons of West St. and Greenwich there is an almost poetic pulse of emergency lights - the security that much tighter two blocks away encircling a giant construction site which isn't just another construction site.

One of the few variations on the above theme is a lone janitor adjusting the flag in front of my son's school to half mast.

Riding the A train north I was relieved to see a sight more common in the form of my slumbering early morning travel companions catching a few minutes sleep more before their stop approaches.

I know enough that my experiences and thoughts don't amount to very much. I've met enough friends of survivors and folks who were near by that day to know that much.

Those same men and women standing guard this morning will be replaced by men and women standing arm in arm toasting lost friends and colleagues in the local bars on my walk home.

The folks in the bars, riders on the subway, janitors leaving work, all of us remember a morning that wasn't just another.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Polls, polling, and other predictions

I did a Google Reader article post last night (pasted below), and then realized that a more formal post was in order on the sites I'm checking out these days - specifically related to polls and other presidential predictions.

All the major news outlets have their own heat map and to my eye they area all seem OK with a few outliers (far from a comprehensive list). Fox numbers seem pretty divergent from what I've seen elsewhere and no surprise it gives McCain the electoral lead (their map).

ABC seems to have sidesteped the issue by not posting any heat map data (for 2008 at least). Instead you can go in and tweak the results to see what conclusion you can calculate.

The two that seem pretty solid and simple to get data from are...

The stayed sorces out of the way, I have been frequeting a couple unique sites for predictions of the more geeky type.
First the previously mentioned Pollster.com which not only has some fascinating slices of the data but they have lots of commentators blogging about (now get this) not politics but the act of polling itself (dare I say science of polling?).


Finally I go to one of the original futures markets - IEM (Iowa Electronic Markets). Here you buy shares (like on the stock market) for who you think will win instead of being polled on who you want to win. Their sites is not nearly as fancy as some of the above but they have been doing this a long time and so they've historical results to look at. Here is the direct link which can be tough to find your first time there (then you'll wanna click through to "Current Quotes").

I have yet to find a site that redraws the US map such as to proportionally reflect the electorial votes (I think this was nytimes.com previous). I'd love to know find such a map or generally know what other sites folks are looking at so please comment or email me.
Here is the article that sparked this post...





via www.pollster.com on 9/9/08
Bryan:
“I don't wanna loose sight of the goal, but this article along with another posted on huffingtonpost.com seem to suggest some serious tinkering.

I'm not big on conspiracies so I'm left wondering what really is going on here?”
Charts, maps and award winning analysis of all national and state polls for the elections for President, Senate, Governor and U.S. House, updated constantly.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

My review of Zorba The Greek

(Note a shorter version of this review is at bakerland)

Though I love a good travel book to flip through, during and after a trip, there is something about the call of regional literature which makes my travel bug hum. On this particular trip I picked up a book I'd long desired to read but never given myself the chance - Zorba The Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis.

This novel is by a Cretan takes place almost completely in Crete, and is considered a great literary work to boot so the formula seemed right.

I've tussled with Kazantzakis once before (Last Temptation of Christ) and found his style to be a bit tough to crack. To grossly oversimplify, he spends a lot of time exploring the thoughts of his characters instead of letting actions unfold. More on this in a bit.

Starting a few weeks prior to the trip I dove in and quickly worked my way through half the book only to slow down (out of boredom for reasons mentioned and for a desire to finish the book while in Crete).

I'll avoid comparisons to the movie since I've not seen the well known film (though it is now atop our Netflix queue) which may very well have a different mood then the book.

The most striking aspect of this novel is how dark it is. So many people have referred to the buoyancy of Zorba and how he represents so much life and joy in living. I can't deny that he is a fascinating character but any attempt to place him on a pedestal seems unfounded to me. His personality is more akin to a firefly repeatedly ramming a light-bulb in the summer night. His efforts largely amount to naught and often become so perverse it is hard to grasp the humanity of Zorba. At best he is a manic depressive who is enlightening on the highs and quite during the lows.

The novel is presented from the perspective of the friend of Zorba and it is this narrator who's personality really drags the mood down. Zorba represents some lofty ideas (for the reader, author and narrator) which makes him hard to imagine being real and he seems more appropriate as a stand in for what the narrator longs for - some kind of Buddhist presences completely in the now.

I really struggled to find who was a redeemable character in the story.

As I struggled through the book I found myself trying to come up with what exactly is the author trying to critique:

  • - Western Religion
  • - Misogyny
  • - Dated traditions
  • - Male relationships
  • - ???


The first two (Western Religion and Misogyny) consume much of the novel so I'm assuming these are his biggest concerns, but I'd really need to be a little more scholarly in my reading to go any deeper then that.

Much of the narrators angst is of his Buddhist writings he repeatedly references though he never describes in any detail. Here is why I feel Zorba seems the manifestation of those writings, kinda of a Buddha like id floating around the world and at the writings best he does take on such a child like revelry in life that it is admirable, but these moments seem fleeting and are quickly overcome by angst, fear, corporal pursuits or plain brutality.

It is tough to say how direct of a critique of Greek culture is in the book because there isn't much of that culture in there to delve into. This in fact was one of my bigger disappointments in the book as the story gave me more of a feel of these characters and less of a feel of Crete which is almost incidental to the narrators tale.

Some points easily missed (or maybe muddled by the movie's influence - I'm guessing on that of course):

  • - The narrator is Cretan but Zorba is not. In fact, Zorba's nationality seems intentionally ambiguous. The spirit with which the narrator describes him it very much seems something other worldly. Don't get me wrong. Zorba is Greek as the book suggests, but he certainly does let that nationality keep him down. By books end I believe he has immigrated to Russia.
  • - What is up with the narrator's relationship with his pen-pall friend. This is very odd and very close even though you never really meet this character?
  • - Am I manifesting some 'latent' ability at Freudian Theory or rather I really feel there is some kind of homosexual subtext going on here. Not sure what to make of it.
  • - Women are pretty much the toy of man (in particular Zorba). He claims great passion and he does do some things that are very admirable, but come on he is using them at the end of the day.


Did I enjoy the book? Yes.
Did it add to my trip to Crete? Yes, but not as much as I would have liked.
Would I recommend it? Probably not.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Google Chrome - the browser wars anew!

First off. Family, friends, and whoever I encourage you to go and download the Google Browser (Chrome). This comes with caveats as my Apple only friends will be disappointed that there is only a Windows version available.

Now a promise to help folks with getting to understand the browser as well as help you file any bugs or problems you might come across (hopefully few).

I have to admit being quite giddy for some time now with the pending release of this product from Google. Having been able to beta test it internally is one of those privileged kicks that has no monitory value to me directly but is quite the exciting thing.

Why in the world would Google want to get into the browser market? I only have my humble opinion on this one. There are many valid reasons for sure, but standing up to the IE juggernaut seems a big one.


What do I like about it? It's fast, clean and has an easier use in browsers that I've never experienced. I'll try and detail some of my more favorite features in the future (if folks are interested. 

Check out the official blog or read some or all of the comic for a pretty fascinating and full explanation of the browser at. 

Seconds on the iced latte please!

The long story to this post is that I spent almost all of our European trip deprived of good coffee. This may sound contradictory so let me explain....


Greeks (or at least the cities in Crete I haunted) think that Nescafe is a legitimate replacement for real coffee. It isn't.


Germans have gone crazy for automated espresso machines. These price items do everything but look at you pretentiously as they serve you. One thing they generally don't do is make a good espresso. They are better then Nescafe yes, but good coffee no.


I dreamed nightly (morningly) about the Ninth Street Espresso shop in Chelsea Market and today I indulged those desires!

Who's driving this campaign anyway

No crazy talking head liberals hear, just seems to me to be some straight answers with very little content in the answers.

Back To School

I know it is a bit of a downer and contrary to all the excitement my son is having on today his first day in school, but I thought this video seemed kind'a timely also.