Category: Gleanings

• The New York Times asks “Is the Champs-Elysees turning into the Times Square of Paris?”
• Jim Hightower examines what’s realy behind Wal-Mart’s attempt to appeal to a more affluent customer.
• Yahoo News reports that The Police will be reuniting for the Grammy Awards on Feb 11. The band hasn’t played together since they broke up in 1984.
• The trailer for Reign Over Me is amazing. I’m counting the days until March 23.
• iConcertCal is an iCal plugin that uses your iTunes library to generate a custom calendar of concerts in your area. Looks like a similar solution getting a bunch of rss feeds from SonicLiving, which is what I do.

On my mind and in the reading queue this week

• President Bush’s approval ratings hits an all-time low (30%) following his State of the Union address (via Alternet).
• Rudy Giuliani may be running for president. And he may not be.
• Alternet now has RSS Feeds for all of its columnists including Jim Hightower, Annalee Newitz and Molly Ivins. Which makes me all kinds of happy
• Puzzlehunt is a series of puzzles leading to a final answer where puzzlers compete against each other over a continuous block of time. Microsoft’s famous puzzlehunt started in 1999. MIT does one called the Mystery Hunt. Someone told me about puzzlehunts at dinner last night which got me way excited. I love these things
• A NY Times article about black indie rock fans. Yes, they exist (via LHB).
• Wired’s article on RSS supping up has got me playing with all sort of cool stuff including RSS reminders of what’s playing at your favorite movie theater.
• I’ve been visiting Done Waiting’s SXSW Music blog everyday now in hopes they will post a list of bands playing this year. Thus far only dribs and drabs. Maddening.

• Senator Barak Obama is all but in for the 2008 presidential race. Here’s the video where he makes the announcement.
• Humorist Art Buchwald has died. The New York Times has included a video obituary from Buchwald himself which is part of the newspaper’s new project to get liviing video testimonies from famous people about their lives. A little on the end of his life…

  But perhaps no year of his life was as remarkable as the last. It became something of an extended curtain call. Last February doctors told him he had only a few weeks to live. “I decided to move into a hospice and go quietly into the night,” he wrote three months later. “For reasons that even the doctors can’t explain, my kidneys kept working.”

  “Refusing dialysis, he continued to write his column, reflecting on his mortality while keeping his humor even as he lost a leg. He spent the summer on Martha’s Vineyard, published a book, “Too Soon to Say Goodbye,” in the fall and attended a memorial for an old friend, the reporter R.W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times. He gave interviews and looked on as his life was celebrated.

  “The French ambassador gave me the literary equivalent of the Legion of Honor,” he wrote. “The National Hospice Association made me man of the year. I never realized dying was so much fun.”

• According to a recent article, the majority of American women are single, not married. In 2005, married people became a minority in America for the first time in the nation’s history.
• Cooling Man is an attempt to make the annual Burning Man festival a carbon neutral city.
• Booksfree.com is trying to do for books what Netflix did for movies. Anybody tried this (via Written Road).

• Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut has announced that he’s running for president.
• R.I.P Robert Anton Wilson (via Laughing Squid).
• New York magazine reports that Norman Mailer has enemies. And the earth is round (via Readerville).
• According to their myspace page, The Polyphonic Spree’s third album titled “The Fragile Army” will be released this spring.

• The “surge” of troops into Iraq may be over before it begins. This morning Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts introduced a bill requiring congressional approval before any additional troops are deployed. Look for a showdown between not only the White House and Congress but the first real test of Democratic unity. Senators Lieberman and Graham both support the surge (via Huffington Post).
• How are you monitoring the announcements at Macworld? I’ve got Gizmodo and CNET rollin’ with the geeky goodness.
• I’m dying to listen to Sacha Baron Cohen’s interview (not in character) on Fresh Air.
• After 16 years in the Bay Area, Keith Knight of the K Chronicles comic strip, is moving to LA. Sigh.

• First Night Boston, the oldest “First Night” celebration in the country, will be putting on its 31th festival this evening. First Nights are arts-related alternative celebrations of New Year’s Eve (via NPR).
• Although I can’t find a link for it, I have heard that many chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor runs on New Year’s eve for fellowship members
• My Friend’s Place is a homeless youth center on Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles. I’ve been interested in the dichotomy of wealthy cities of dreams like Los Angeles and my own since seeing the movie Where the Day Takes You many years ago. I’m on the lookout for a similiar organization to support here in San Francisco (via KCRW).
• The New York Times discovers that (surprise) Google is a fun place to work.
• Cinema Treasures asks “What are your movie going rituals?”

• Does the LA Times have a Latino problem? (via LA Observed).
• San Francisco is considering building the tallest skyscrapers in the city’s history. SFgate has the story.
• Business Week looks at Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presentation from a public speaking point of view. Very instructive (via Micropersuasion).
• Arts Journal has completey redesigned. Man, is this thing dense.
• Pandora has a bunch of new community features. Anybody tried them yet?

• The London Times reports that experts predict that the North Pole will be open sea, i.e. no ice, i.e. curtains for the polar bears by 2040. Which is the worst news I’ve heard all year (via Buzzfeed).
• The New York Times reports that rape charge have been dropped in the Duke Lacrosse case however charges of kidnapping and sexual abuse remain on the books.
• Radar Magazine asks “Is 2006 the year that antisemitism made a comeback?”
• Jim DeRogatis’s essay on the Criterion Collection edition of Dazed and Confused, one of my favorite ever movies. I have to get this thing
• The Feedburner podcast has featured an episode called “How to avoid Podfading”, i.e. how to keep from losing enthusiasm for your podcast. I so need this as my two podcasts are stalled big time (via Micropersuasion).
• Modern Mask is a new online journal of the arts. My friend George is contributing.
• A pictoral history of the MGM lion via Wikipedia. Quite relevant to my research on my current book.

• What’s the next big Jewish idea? (via Jewschool)
• The size of movie theater auditoriums has been shrinking for years. But, this article indicates, that the trend may be reversing itself (Cinema Treasures).
• Art Car World, an art car museum will be opening to the public in Arizona (Via Laughing Squid)

• CNET has an analysis of Yahoo’s big reorganization which I need to read because I don’t get it yet. Something about peanut butter, right?
• Forbes has a giant special report about the state of the book industry (via Readerville).
• The LA Times looks at why there are still so few women in executive positions at the music industry’s major labels (via Largehearted Boy).
• Aweome list of Back to the Future trivia (via Mental Floss)
• Wordie is Flickr for vocabulary. Neat idea (via TechCrunch)