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Finding something inspiring to talk about at our wedding. Noted:...

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:23:00 -0400

Finding something inspiring to talk about at our wedding. Noted: writers generally bearish on marriage.

Photo

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:01:12 -0400

the Esquire e-ink insert, removed from the magazine and...

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:39:00 -0400

the Esquire e-ink insert, removed from the magazine and connected to the board that rotates the text highlights.

the Esquire e-ink insert, unplugged from power and the...

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:38:21 -0400

the Esquire e-ink insert, unplugged from power and the sequencer.

Attacca

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:44:38 -0400

Attacca:

The Attacca Quartet’s front page is done, and I’m working on a backend for the rest. Consider it karmic payment for them playing my wedding for free this October. Also, they’re family.

It’s the very least I can do for my brother and his amazing quartet. I couldn’t pick a more inspiring group of musicians through which to live vicariously. I’m a little steamed that he beat me to the punch on a New York Times mention, but I’ll gladly suffer that. In the meantime, I’m glad to be able to contribute. The Attacca String Quartet, plus one musically-trained Rails developer.

Why You Should Buy a Home From a Realtor, Quoted From That Realtor's Site

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:54:30 -0400

I have lived and traveled across the country, but I have settled in Pittsburgh’s up-and-coming North Side.
During college, I was national recognized for my participation in public speaking competitions while at George Mason University.
I understand the challenges of shopping for a home from a distant location and the difficulties of marketing a home online.
I have Shih Tzus.

"Q: How do you know if you are on a Mongolian train? A: Is the lady car attendant shoveling coal in..."

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:38:46 -0400

“Q: How do you know if you are on a Mongolian train? A: Is the lady car attendant shoveling coal in thigh-high black leather boots with stiletto heels? You are on a Mongolian train.”

- a very small array

Ziggy Cartoon in an Elevator

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:09:00 -0400

Me: Happy Birthday.
Z: ...in April?
Me: Oh.
Me: Congratulations about something. You got a dog?
Z: No.
Me: You swam in the Hudson River?
Z: I swam in the Hudson, yes.
Me: How sad is it that all my social interactions are based on Facebook statuses?

"It is only by making them live in hell that we’ll get drivers to renounce their cars."

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:31:55 -0400

“It is only by making them live in hell that we’ll get drivers to renounce their cars.”

- Yves Contassot, former Deputy Mayor of Paris

"The irony is that you have to be somebody before anybody listens to you,” he said. “I wasn’t an..."

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:06:32 -0400

““The irony is that you have to be somebody before anybody listens to you,” he said. “I wasn’t an expert when I was an expert, and now that I’m not an expert, I’m an expert. It’s kind of curious.””

- “After ‘The Wire’, Moving On to Battles Beyond the Street”, Michael Wilson, the New York Times

"Back then, hoes didn’t want me / Now I’m hot, hoes all on me."

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:03:13 -0400

“Back then, hoes didn’t want me / Now I’m hot, hoes all on me.”

- Mike Jones, “Back Then”

"The motion that appears in a lot of the photographs, for me, emphasized the breaking up of a world,..."

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:36:00 -0400

“The motion that appears in a lot of the photographs, for me, emphasized the breaking up of a world, the breaking up of society, emotionally. Everyone was there. America came out to mourn, to weep, to show their respect and love for a leader—someone they believed in, someone who promised a better future—and they saw hope pass by in a train.”

- Paul Fusco, The Fallen, nytimes.com

Four Things That Happened in the New York City Metropolitan Area on April 4, 1876

Tue, 27 May 2008 14:12:54 -0400

a daily briefing from the archives of the New York Times:

“Some boys were annoying August Levin on St Paul’s avenue, Jersey City Heights yesterday, when he picked up a stone and, throwing it with great force, struck James Gorman, aged ten years, in the mouth, knocking out several teeth and badly disfiguring him. Levin, how had just completed a term in the Penitentiary, was committed for trial.”
“Charles Jackson, a colored man, accidentally shot and killed himself at Englewood, Bergen County, yesterday, while carelessly handling a gun.”
“Coroner Ellinger held an inquest yesterday in the case of Hezekiah Stephenson, who died at the Chambers Street Hospital from the effects of a pistol-shot wound accidentally received at the hands of Thomas Connors. The jury rendered a verdict of accidental death, and censured Connors for ‘going into the room where Stephenson was, as he had no business there.’”
“Charles Gilbert, an Orange newsdealer, stole $500 from his wife’s trunk yesterday, and, it is supposed, has gone to Europe.”

Episode #355 of This American Life does a great job explaining the subprime mortgage crisis.

Fri, 23 May 2008 11:43:00 -0400

Episode #355 of This American Life does a great job explaining the subprime mortgage crisis.:

zachklein:

Listen to the episode for free online.

Besides the fantastic, narrative way it breaks down the mortgage crisis, one of the things I love about this episode (which I’m still finishing) is its focus on how nobody believed housing prices could possibly go down.

You have people whose entire income was built on the idea that since houses would always increase in value, the people at the center of the transaction didn’t matter, their money didn’t matter, and their behavior didn’t matter. forget about greed or fraud or denial; the economy rested incidentally on the thimble-sized assumption that home values will always rise because they just do.

The question I have is, if the appetite of the market hadn’t driven local brokers to such ridiculously fradulent depths—if for some impossible reason, income still mattered—how long would we have continued to operate under that false presumption that the bottom line always goes up, and that individual cases of greed and denial can’t really affect that bottom line?

"DO NOT open bottles with your teeth! You will chip your teeth! Many of my molars are rounded off..."

Fri, 23 May 2008 11:13:00 -0400

“DO NOT open bottles with your teeth! You will chip your teeth! Many of my molars are rounded off from being chipped by beer caps. As a result I can’t even do this trick anymore. As a substitute, I recommend using your eye socket. I can’t do it, but I saw it once and it’s pretty crazy. JK - DONT USE YOUR EYE SOCKET!”

- comment from How To Open A Beer Without An Opener

I like this better than their Ghetto Big Mac piece. True that...

Wed, 21 May 2008 15:10:07 -0400

I like this better than their Ghetto Big Mac piece. True that being poor gets you poorer.

"Schaap puts his frenzied memory and his obsessive attention to the arcane in the service of..."

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:06:02 -0400

“Schaap puts his frenzied memory and his obsessive attention to the arcane in the service of something important: the struggle of memory against forgetting—not just the forgetting of a sublime music but forgetting in general.”

- David Remnick, “Bird-Watcher”, the New Yorker

Yoiks! Blu via Cool Hunting.

Thu, 15 May 2008 12:56:20 -0400

Yoiks! Blu via Cool Hunting.

Photo

Wed, 14 May 2008 15:53:38 -0400

"it was weird… the muttering, the crashing, the cheetos"

Fri, 09 May 2008 16:31:13 -0400

“it was weird… the muttering, the crashing, the cheetos”

- Raul, on his harrowing cab ride