The Bar Pineapple

The Bar Pineapple
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Found on the counter at the Brady Pub at 82nd & 2nd Ave. And yes those glasses are familiar.

age

Facial piercings look awful on people wrinkling into their mid thirties.

Men hitting forty look weird when seen getting onto the subway with a well worn skateboard.

Using a mobile phone to receive an important call when getting your hair cut, is that ok?

The Subway Blues

A smoke condition at West 4th St. made my fifteen minute commute from 125th St. to 42nd st last an hour and a half, as all 6th & 8th Ave subway service downtown was halted.

That's the A B C & D trains.

Then somebody has the temerity, in a crowded subway car, to bitch about how hard it would be to get out of a crowded subway car in a fire. I wanted to smack her.

Grrr.

A Lamp for Everyman's Living Room

A Lamp for Everyman's Living Room
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Found next to a restaurant with Damn Fine Pho at Pike & E Broadway

Choice of Weapons

Choice of Weapons
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Yulia's picture of me would be much better if unlike her, I was actually photogenic.

teehee

I just saw a commercial for a TV show called "Category 7, The End of the World".

POLITICS: Sensible Rebudgeting from... Tom Coburn?: "That's right, the new ultra-conservative thorn in the side of Senate Democrats, Tom Coburn (R-OK) has added an amendment to appropriations bill HR 3058 that would divert funding from the insanity that is the Alaskan bridge to nowhere and spend it instead on reconstruction efforts in New Orleans. Sound too good to be true? Let's hope not.

We're a little behind Glenn and Michelle - but conservatives have a Hill to Die On - the Coburn Amendment to the Transportation, Housing, & Urban Development appropriations bill (HR 3058)



Make NO mistake - the establishment Republicans are terrified of this bill. The chutzpah of the little people demanding an end to one of the most immoral acts of Congress - earmarked pork spending - has got some in quite the tizzy.



Word is that some are trying to stop the Coburn Amendment from even reaching the floor for a vote.

This amendment will transfer funding from the wasteful pork project, the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ in Alaska, to the repair and reconstruction of the ‘Twin Spans’ bridge in Louisiana. According to published reports, the Alaskan pork project costs $220 million for a 5.9-mile bridge connecting Gravina Island (population 50) to the Alaskan mainland. The cost of the bridge alone would be enough to buy every island resident his own personal Lear jet.

The GOP hasn't exactly acted in a way that anyone could possibly characterize as 'spendthrift' in the past few years, with budget deficits ballooning and balanced budgets a memory of days long past. That Tom Coburn, who in many ways represents the worst of what the current crop of GOP leaders has to offer, is even sensible enough to realize that this is something that needs to be done, should be reason enough to support it. The vote to add the amendment is something to pay attention to; regardless of party affiliation, anyone in the Senate who votes against adding the amendment should be seriously scrutinized by their constituents, both now and when they're up for reelection.

(Written by: legionnaire)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

CULTURE: Strunk and White: The Opera: "It’s not so much that people actually read William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style because if we did, we would all write perfectly formed sentences. Instead, we worship the idea that all grammar and style can be contained in one small book. And so, like the A Brief History of Time before it, Strunk and White’s classic will be illustrated.



And the worship doesn’t stop there.

[Illustrator Maira Kalman] explained that while she was painting her illustrations, she found herself singing the words and dreaming of a Strunk and White opera, or even a ballet. She turned to Mr. Muhly, whom she had known for more than a decade as a family friend and co-conspirator in various neo-Dadaist adventures. (Ms. Kalman once ran a Rubber Band Society - for people who love rubber bands, naturally - and invited Mr. Muhly to compose a work scored for rubber bands, which he did.) 'I knew that Nico and I would have an immediate conversation in shorthand about humor and imagination, and that he'd completely get it,' Ms. Kalman said.



Mr. Muhly, 24, is a talented and audacious graduate of the Juilliard School who has worked with Philip Glass and Bjork. His Strunk and White songs are eloquently scored for soprano, tenor, viola, banjo and percussion. They also include parts for Ms. Kalman's friends and family, who will make 'little gentle noises' through amplified kitchen utensils (vintage eggbeaters and meat grinders) and a set of dice shaken in a bowl.



But even with this lineup, the humor of the piece lies more in its straight-faced seriousness. The vocal writing is cast in a distinctly early-music style, the textures as pure and pared down as Strunk and White liked their sentences. There are frequent moments of disarming beauty, as if Mr. Muhly were tempting the listener to forget the jokes and simply listen.

I look forward to the upcoming Tony Awards where The Elements of Style will compete head to head with a revival of the Roger and Hammerstein’s classic Fowler’s Modern English Usage.

(Written by: Christopher)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Happy Birthday to one of my favorite OSes. I look forward to taking it out for a beer in about eight years (Canadian Drinking age...)

OpenBSD's 10th Birthday: "Thanks to many for writing in to let us know what we knew already ;) Today marks 10 years of OpenBSD. After a bit of confusion, it's been agreed upon that today is the official birthday of OpenBSD according to the CVS repository.

And now for some words from grunk@:

This day, ten years ago, Theo imported the NetBSD sources to found
his own project OpenBSD, after an ongoing dispute with the NetBSD core team did not work out for about 7 months.

During those months, Theo held back about 10000 lines of diffs he was not able to commit because his access to NetBSD CVS was revoked. They made up the first start of OpenBSD.

So, it is 10 years of OpenBSD today. Happy birthday!!!

For more information on the dispute, see The Wikipedia entry on OpenBSD and Theo's collection of the mail dispute.

Have a cake today, and be sure to celebrate this lovely day! :)

"

(Via OpenBSD Journal.)

Kitty: "

Sandhill Trek reports that this cat results in really high hit counts for whoever steals the image.

This cat brings into play the WTF factor.

(Via LiftPort Staff Blog.)

This looks perfect. I no longer have to open up Word to print an envelope.

Widget Watch: EasyEnvelopes 1.0.1: "

Filed under: Widgets

Today's widget is EasyEnvelopes, a Dashboard widget from Ambrosia that makes printing envelopes ridiculously easy. Search your Address Book database for the address you're after, select your envelope size and print away. Version 1.0.1 includes the following changes:

• Minimize the widget by clicking on the postmark
• Fixed a number of bugs where EasyEnvelopes would not properly recognize/use addresses from Address Book that were entered using older versions of Address Book
• EasyEnvelopes widget is now a 'Universal Binary', meaning it is native for both PowerPC and Intel
• Enhanced the Japanese envelope printing support, making the envelopes printed by EasyEnvelopes properly formatted in both horizontal and vertical Japanese formats

Read	Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

Sing with me now: EVERY SPERM IS SACRED.

CULTURE: Sperm Donor Ordered to Pay Child Support: "In the early 1990s a Swedish man donated his sperm to a lesbian couple, now he is being ordered by Supreme Court to pay child support for the three resulting children.

Although the man signed a document confirming he was the biological father of the children, he told the court the women agreed he would not be involved in their upbringing in any way.



But when the women separated, the biological mother of the three boys demanded child support payments from the man.

The trial passed through regular court, before the man took the appeal up with the Supreme court, where the ruling was upheld.



It definetly sucks for the guy, but I cannot see him having any legal recourse if the agreement of his non-involvement was not recorded in some sort of contract.

(Written by: wottan)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

8-bit music fest in NYC this Sat: "Cory Doctorow:
Peter sez, 'I thought you'd like to know that a pretty large international 8-bit music & video performance is going on this Saturday in NYC. Musicians will be performing music on Gameboys, NES, Atari 2600 and other hardware and musical performers will be accompanied by live video artists.'

October 22 @ 7pm

The Tank, 208 West 37th Street, New York, NY 10018

212.563.6269

info@thetanknyc.org

Link

(Thanks, Peter!)

(Via Boing Boing.)

Josh K's sign from China

Josh K's sign from China
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Found next to a dropoff to the Yangtze river.

How to Launder Rats.

Hidden Scandal: "

Former CBS national security correspondent:

There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller's Oct. 16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that is Ms. Miller's revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003.

This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised. It is all the more puzzling that a reporter who as a matter of principle would sacrifice 85 days of her freedom to protect a source would so willingly agree to be officially muzzled and thereby deny potentially valuable information to the readers whose right to be informed she claims to value so highly.

One must assume that Ms. Miller was required to sign a standard and legally binding agreement that she would never divulge classified information to which she became privy, without risk of criminal prosecution. And she apparently plans to adhere to the letter of that self-censorship deal; witness her dilemma at being unable to share classified information with her editors.


...

If Ms. Miller agreed to operate under a security clearance without the knowledge or approval of Times managers, she should be disciplined or even dismissed. If she had their approval, all involved should be ashamed.

"

(Via Eschaton.)