Category: Odds & Endz

• NYT: Al Gore is probably not going to run for president again but he’s keeping plenty busy anyway.
• CJR: “Are women really opting out of the work force or is that a big fat myth?” (via Kottke.org)
• Baltimore Sun: Baltimore’s 70 year old Senator Theater (which I saw hundreds of movies at as a college student and was featured in the film Avalon), has been declared a city landmark and therefore saved from the auction block or the wrecking ball. Wahoo!
• NYT profile of writer Rebecca Walker, who is estranged from her mother Alice Walker.
• Welcome to the world of nano foods

(via My buddy Eli)

• The Signifier is a webzine for people born in the 1980s (via Ben Brown).

• R.I.P Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
• SF Chronicle: “The Castro District Faces an Identity Crisis as Straights Move in”
• Cintra Wilson’s annual Oscar Wrap Up is always a pleasure.
• Salon asks “Will the Internet Make Cookbooks Obselete?”
• New York Times report on the plummeting honeybee population. Experts are baffled.
• Cruel Game is a game of assassination except its all about being nice to one another. Neato
• T-Minus 6 days and counting to SXSW. Look out Austin, we’re a comin’!

On my mind and in the reading queue this week…

• According to the New York Times, Harvard Univeristy is about to appoint its first female president in its nearly 400-year history. The president-elect is Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian and dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study.
• Similarly, The Supreme Court’s first female justices have a word or two to say about the role of feminism in their lives.
• Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs calls for the music industry to stop putting Digital Rights Management restrictions on its downloadable music. Depending on how the major labels respond, this could be huge.
• Heard of the slow food movement? How about the slow reading movement?

• 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?”