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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.
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.
Disclaimer aside (1), I saw this front page article on the Times and thought, "Woa! That teacher is hot!"
Rebecca Rheinheimer, YOU are an American hero.
I've always been fascinated by the notion that we may all just be a simulation running in some advanced being's computer. Or rather, even that computer's simulation's simulation. The Times has a great article on this. An Oxford professor Nick Bostrum has advanced a theory that it's more likely than NOT that we are all just a computer simulation not unlike say, all the various iterations of Sim video games or World of Warcraft: we're not biological at all, but rather just a series of bits and digital zits. Bostrum contends that advanced human civilization will have the computing power that enables them to recreate ancient or past civilizations virtually, including fully functioning digital individuals. The length of time it takes humans to achieve this amount of computer power is irrelevant.
If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors.
There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world.
The math and the logic are inexorable once you assume that lots of simulations are being run.
Woa. There are obvious critiques, whch the article covers, but it also illuminates an answer, if tongue in cheek, to one of the great questions in life: Why does God allow bad things to happen?
How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude.
To read more click here.
Update: BoingBoing has more on this.
