Viewing entries tagged
New York Times
Interesting non-football related tidbit from Gregg Easterbrook's weekly verbose football column on ESPN.
[T]he Times uses a phone number masking system -- when a Times reporter rings you up for comment, your caller ID device reads: 111-111-1111. This makes it impossible for you to realize the Times is calling, and hence avoid the call, unless you know that 111-111-1111 is the New York Times' secret code. (Well, now you do know.)
I think that number is better than Jenny's.
A historical newspaper specialist (yup, they exist) thinks he may have found an early emoticon in a New York Times transcript of a speech given by Lincoln in 1862. Others think it's a typo, but there's definitely some dissent.
“Ultimately, it is not just one typo but multiple typos that makes it more than a coincidence (spacing before and after, transposition, parenthesis as opposed to bracket). Considering this was all done by hand, it seems to be more intentional as opposed to a slip up typing or Microsoft Word autocorrect making the error.”
Perhaps the typesetter should have embedded “==|;o)>” and left no room for doubt.
I really want to believe that it was intentional.
Read rest here.
Today's issue of The New York Times is sold out everywhere in New York City. And I do mean everywhere. I visited over 9 different newsstands, bodegas and any other place that might sell papers and they were completely sold out, in addition to many other dailies. City Room reports:
A Times spokeswoman, Catherine J. Mathis, said on Wednesday morning that the paper had printed 35 percent more papers in the “single copy” print run, which supplies newsstands. Still, by morning company officials found that papers were “selling out all across the metropolitan area” and decided to print 50,000 more copies for sale in the New York area.
The paper also reported a record-high 2.7 million “mobile page views” for Tuesday.
In the afternoon, customers were still lining up to buy the paper from a delivery truck outside Times headquarters at 40th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.
More photographs of people waiting in line at the Times building in midtown.
[Thanks Annie!]
A recent New York Times correction. This reminds me, maybe I should bring this blog back.
I saw her speak years ago in college and she's really quite an inspiration.
What a curmudgeon!
How did you feel when you heard that Buckley died this year? I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred.
Entertaining interview with this vocal ever critical writer.
Read more here.
The New York Times has this great interactive and pretty captivating graphic that breaks down the demographic of Clinton and Obama supporters. To be Captain Obvious for a moment: the data that the graphic interprets suggests that gender, class, and especially race mattered strongly and had a substantive impact on how people voted. I'm not going into it here, but it's interesting to think about what this data means and what the repercussions, if any, will be for the Republican Party and conservatives in the years to come. View here.
The NY Times jumps on board about this website I had previously blogged about here.
When Dan Walsh, a 33-year-old technology manager in Dublin, started posting doctored versions of the comic strip “Garfield” on his blog in February, he thought he might amuse a few friends.Instead, his site on Tumblr started receiving as many as 300,000 hits a day from the United States and beyond. More recently it has leveled off to 30,000 to 35,000 a day, which is not bad for a site whose content takes about five minutes to create.
Mr. Walsh does nothing to the panels except strip away Garfield and other characters — like Odie the dog and Nermal the kitten — to create a new, even lonelier atmosphere for Jon Arbuckle, the main human. Without the cutesy thought-bubbles of his lasagna-loving cat, Jon’s observations seem to teeter between existential crisis and deep despair.
Read more here.
If you went to school and you studied this industry and you studied economic cycles, why are you now surprised that this is happening? It’s like going into politics and saying, ‘I didn’t know I could be voted out of office." - Recently layed off 50-year-old Merrill financial adviser with 67 weeks of pay severance on a $101,000 salary.
The Times analyze the recent puzzling disappearance of 5-4 rulings by the Supreme Court, led currently by Chief Justice John Roberts, in this term as opposed to the previous term where the judges split 5-4 on 13 cases out of the 41 cases they decided. In addition to the election year effect (a correlation that suggests that during election years the Court tries to achieve more consensus on cases in order to avoid controversy), the Times contends that criticism from the public as well as some from certain respected conservative voices on decisions from the last term might be influencing factors this year, particularly on the chief justice. The combined result is the appearance that the conservative judges shepherded by Roberts are hewing narrowly and "closely to the facts of each case" and avoiding broader activist decisions to appease their liberal colleagues and thus avoid the divisive 5-4 results.
Read more here.
Dignified and trim at the age of 93, Claire Oesch reigns at the Café des Artistes bar, a place she has had a relationship with since the 1940s first as hostess and girlfriend of the bar owner, and later after the bar changed ownership as a guest.
By the time she immigrated to New York from Switzerland, she was already 30, having lost a husband (an Olympic bobsledder) and a baby girl (who drowned while in the care of her grandparents). She took a life out of an Ingmar Bergman plot and transplanted it into the Cole Porter songbook.
Although, she is the only patron of the bar to have a bronze plaque donated by her friends there that states simply "Claire Oesch's seat." Or to have every few years "a wealthy financier, one of the admiring throng, close down the restaurant and give a black-tie dinner in her honor..." She works full time as the hostess of the private dining room at Bank Julius Baer on Madison where she is "as much of an icon there as she is at the restaurant."
I want to age with the same quiet old dignity at Botanica passed out on one of dingy couches rescued from the Salvation Army for $45 buried underneath a pile of $2 PBRs.
Read more here.
What are "upfronts?" Upfronts were lavish industry affairs hosted by the big TV networks so they could preview their upcoming season lineup and schedule to advertisers in order to convince them to part with their money. The networks would whore out their stable of stars at these events giving an opportunity to the mid level ad executive or the reporter to rub elbows with various stars and celebrities. The Comeback, an HBO show which I really enjoyed but unfortunately lasted just one season, had a funny episode involving the upfronts from the perspective of one of these stars, albeit an aging former actress (played by Lisa Kudrow after the conclusion of Friends) attempting a comeback on a new show as the matronly chaperon of a house filled with oversexed young 20-somethings. But the question the Times asks is how will the networks' upfronts change, if any, in light of TV audience's steady decline combined with the impact of the writers strike?
[Jeff Zucker] declared that NBC would be “much more realistic and much more honest” in its presentation of programming to advertisers. ...Fox, which still has a bona fide, if recently weakened, hit in “American Idol,” is planning an upfront as usual, but no surprises or dramatic unveilings are expected. Finally, CBS is doing a programming and advertising presentation. No party.
I just want to be invited to one of these upfronts before they die out completely or stripped of the open bar.
Read more here.
In the New York Times, Edward Luttwak explores the unexpected implications of Obama's Christianity among Muslim cultures. Under Muslim law, by virtue of being born to a Muslim father, Barack Obama was born Muslim. By the same logic, Obama's decision to become Christian means his conversion is a betrayal and crime to the Muslim faith that should be met with extreme persecution, including execution by beheading, stoning or hanging. Although a direct plea and intervention by Pope John Paul II in 1994 for a Christian convert in Iran resulted in a "last-minute reprieve...the man was abducted and killed shortly after his release."
Luttwak writes:
At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.
One man's enlightened conversion is another man's criminal apostasy.
Read rest here.
Update: Some people have written points of clarification to Luttwak's aforementioned op-ed piece.
[Thanks Kaizar]
Frank Rich says:
This is not 1968, when the country was so divided over race and war that cities and campuses exploded in violence. If you have any doubts, just look (to take a recent example) at the restrained response by New Yorkers, protestors included, to the acquittal of three police officers in the 50-bullet shooting death of an unarmed black man, Sean Bell.This is not 1988, when a Democratic liberal from Massachusetts of modest political skills could be easily clobbered by racist ads and an incumbent vice president running for the Gipper’s third term. This is not the 1998 midterms, when the Teflon Clintons triumphed over impeachment. This is not 2004, when another Democrat from Massachusetts did for windsurfing what the previous model did for tanks.
Read rest here.
The New York Times argues that based on their respective websites, Obama is a Mac. And Clinton a PC.
On one thing, the experts seem to agree. The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC.That is, Mr. Obama’s site is more harmonious, with plenty of white space and a soft blue palette. Its task bar is reminiscent of the one used at Apple’s iTunes site. It signals in myriad ways that it was designed with a younger, more tech-savvy audience in mind — using branding techniques similar to the ones that have made the iPod so popular.
I think you could replace "Mac" with "Gmail" and "PC" with "Hotmail" in this article.
Interesting argument for calling an end to the Olympics:
The Summer Games in Beijing are four months away and already a predictable mess. The running of the Olympic torch resulted in arrests and nasty confrontations with the police last week in London and Paris amid protests against China’s recent crackdown in Tibet and other human rights abuses. In San Francisco, the only North American stop, the torch-bearers played literal hide-and-seek with protesters when the route was suddenly changed for security reasons. There have been repeated calls for heads of state to boycott the opening ceremonies. But protests and boycotts are no longer effective remedies.There is only one way left to improve the Olympics: to permanently end them.
I'm personally not opposed to such a proposal. The "magic" of the Olympics that I once felt when I was a kid no longer holds true today. The only global sporting event that excites me, like most of the world population, is the World Cup.
Take a look at this NY Times link of hand signals required to buy and sell commodities on the raucous trading floor (take a look at all three pages, which includes signals for months as well as miscellaneous signals--my favorite is the one for oil). Am I the only one that looked at this and could not stop myself from mimicking the hand motions? I felt like a finance Navy Seal. I am a dork. Good night.
While I was outside chopping wood which was followed by a workout at the gym (chest, biceps and triceps today), Chris, you know who is a big John Mayer fan, e-mailed me this wedding vows write up from today's New York Times. This will probably send all brides and the recently engaged into a fit of jealous rage (For those that don't know, to get mentioned in the New York Times Weddings section is a competitive sport except to the death in the Big Apple), but couple Miho Walsh and Roy Prieb received two Times articles. What brought them together? Dim sum. And World of Warcraft.
A conservative group -– Citizens United -– that has produced a film now in distribution attacking Hillary Clinton called “Hillary, the Movie,” has its sights set on a new target: Barack Obama. The group has budgeted about $1 million to produce a documentary film about Mr. Obama that is set to be distributed this summer. At the moment, Citizens United has its researchers poring over Mr. Obama’s records as a community organizer, state legislator and United States senator in the same way that it scoured Mrs. Clinton’s record with a highly critical eye and a sharply conservative point of view.
I hope the mainstream media doesn't jump into the water and legitimize this sure to be swiftboat hack job.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=7SY2YDwUMP8] I see these Lipitor commercials all the time. The strength of this commercial and the reason why it breaks through the static of all the pharmaceutical ads is because of its spokesperson Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart. That's quite a credential. He gives the ad validity and authenticity. Well, some are questioning his role as a pitch man, and more importantly rekindles the ongoing debate about the ethics of directly advertising serious prescription drugs to the layperson consumer. And now Congress is taking a closer look.
Some of the questions may involve his credentials. Even though Dr. Jarvik holds a medical degree, for example, he is not a cardiologist and is not licensed to practice medicine. So what, critics ask, qualifies him to recommend Lipitor on television — even if, as he says in some of the ads, he takes the drug himself?
And, for that matter, what qualifies him to pose as a rowing enthusiast? As it turns out, Dr. Jarvik, 61, does not actually practice the sport. The ad agency hired a stunt double for the sculling scenes.
“He’s about as much an outdoorsman as Woody Allen,” said a longtime collaborator, Dr. O. H. Frazier of the Texas Heart Institute. “He can’t row.”
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce is looking into when and why Dr. Jarvik began taking Lipitor and whether the advertisements give the public a false impression, according to John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is the committee’s chairman.
I think pharmaceutical companies should have every right to advertise like any other consumer company, however maybe some regulatory oversight in some capacity is legitimate.
