telescreen.org

Some linky goodness while I try to decide where to have lunch:

• Cool 360-degree panorama of the Airbus 380's cockpit;
• Scientific proof that double-dipping transfers bacteria from your mouth to the communal guacamole;
• Cops detaining you for not giving them copies of your pictures?  Not cool.  (And, um, illegal.)  I have respect for the police -- they have an extraordinarily difficult, thankless, dangerous, and ill-paying job, but that respect is contingent their following the laws that they're sworn to uphold and enforce;
• The new exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art about the conservation and restoration of the terrazzo map (check out its current condition here) from the New York State Pavilion at the '64 World's Fair looks really interesting;
• the current patchwork of regulations governing interstate wine shipping is asinine -- and check out the risible quote from the wholesaler in that article, arguing that the current system keeps minors from illegally purchasing alcohol.  Yes, because of course your average 16-year-old is going to be buying wines direct from the wineries on the Internet, and having them shipped to his house in order to drink while underage.

Because Midtown Manhattan -- particularly this part of Midtown -- just needs more glass-slab excrescences:  the Newsweek building at 1775 Broadway will be re-clad in glass.  What's wrong with simply cleaning the nice old brick facade?  It's a decent-looking building, with a good base.

The owners are changing the address, too, to "3 Columbus Circle."  Shouldn't your building have to be, y'know, actually on the circle to get that kind of address?  This building's a block away.

Now this makes a confirmed airplane geek like me jealous:  Phil at NYCAviation got to ride along on a North American Airlines repositioning flight from JFK to LaGuardia.  They're only nine miles apart...and taking a 757 is faster than driving, after all.

His description and a bunch of pictures are here, but here's the flight path:

This tickles me.

So apparently CNBC's blowdried talking head Erin Burnett penned an article for Men's Health a while back on eight ways to impress her, should you wish to snuggle up to the "Street Sweetie."  (What?  "Money Honey" was already taken, and we gotta differentiate these gals somehow.)

Now, I'm not sure I should use the words "gold-digging", "greedy", or "entitlement complex" around La Burnett, but some of these ideas for impressing her seem to come down to one thing:

3. Do Something Special for My Parents
Family is important to me, so round-trip business-class tickets to Australia and New Zealand for my parents would earn you big points in my book.

4. Relax Me
Yoga keeps me calm, so I'd be impressed if you thought to send a yoga instructor to my apartment for private sessions. . .

6. Edify Me
Reading is a passion of mine, so a gathering with a couple of my favorite authors, especially Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) and Robin McKinley (The Blue Sword) would make for an exceptional evening.

7. Please My Palate
Hiring a personal chef to prepare meals for the few nights a week I am home would be unforgettable.

See, guys, mere thoughtfulness isn't enough.  'Cause thoughtful doesn't cut it, apparently, unless you're rich. 

Which made me all the more pleased to surf over to Deus Ex Malcontent and see that Chez had already laid the verbal smackdown on her:

[If] her almost impossibly over-the-top list of turn-ons is some kind of Kaufmanesque joke, she's also the coolest woman on Earth. But it's not beyond the realm of possibility that she's completely serious when she insinuates that the simple gestures she longs for all involve the use of an American Express Black Card.

Go read the whole post; I especially like Chez's counter-list of things that Erin could do to impress him.

A little linky goodness for your Saturday night/Sunday morning perusal:

• Loved the photo caption at the bottom of this article;
• Loaded gun makes it through airport security...and the owner, who'd realized his mistake, went back and reported it to the TSA, who promptly got him arrested.  Does this mean that the gun owner should've just continued on to his destination?

This is awesome:  Google Calculator supports the Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures.  (Here's a full description of the Potrzebie System.)

Apropos of nothing at all, I found this tidbit of information oddly compelling:  there are only five airlines which fly to all six continents (scheduled airline service to Antarctica being essentially nonexistent):  Emirates, Air France, British Airways, Malaysia Airlines and South African Airways.  (Emirates is especially notable -- with their recent addition of Dubai-São Paulo service, they're the only airline to serve six continents with one hub.)

There hasn't been a US airline in the club since the demise of Pan Am, but Continental could be in if they add service to Africa, or Delta could make it in if they add service to Australia/Oceania.

(All of the above info courtesy of Patrick Smith's consistently fascinating "Ask The Pilot" column on Salon.)

tilley_color_1, originally uploaded by darkpony.

The New Yorker is running a fun contest:  they're asking readers to submit their versions of Eustace Tilley, the magazine's dandyish longtime mascot.

The Flickr pool of entries to the contest is great fun to browse, and I've enjoyed seeng so many different takes on the same pose and character.

(The version above is by my friend darkpony, and I like it a lot.)

A little linky goodness for your Friday afternoon enjoyment or enragement:

• Translate anything into nightingale song (I tried talking with them once, but their grammar is atrocious);
• Nifty Times article on the history of the fortune cookie;
• Why were '70s and '80s TV themes so awesome?  (feel the Mike Post love!)
• And let me add a little love for the themes of the '90s -- the "ER" theme and opening montage is really good, but the one that always blows me away is the long version of the "NYPD Blue" open -- theme by Mike Post, natch, and a beautifully-edited montage;
• Generic Names for Soft Drinks, by U.S. county.  A fascinating map;
• Something's a bit wrong with this:  a CD for deaf people, containing music and subliminal messages that will restore their hearing (!)

Drinking to the New Year, N.Y. (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

I'm pleased to have my first (of what I hope will be many) contributions to NewYorkology.com up on the site today.

The picture above doesn't just express my mood, though -- it's part of the Bain News Service collection of old news photos from 1910-1915.  The Library of Congress is working together with Flickr users to tag the photos for future historians.  My post covering the initiative is here...but  the real fun is poring through all the old shots, trying to spot the locations, and seeing what's changed (and what hasn't) in almost a hundred years.

My undertaker friend GJ got profiled by AMC's horror-movie blog today.  So cool.

Just wanted to update you on some happenings over on Cocktailians, another blog I run and contribute to:  I posted the recipe for the very first cocktail I've invented, a spin on the Sidecar called the Pêche de Resistance.  Check it out, and I hope you enjoy.

"A Newspaper Can't Love You Back" -- gorgeous essay by "Homicide" and "The Wire" creator DavidSimon, about working for the once-great Baltimore Sun.  (I wonder if he ever worked with my cousin George Hanst, who worked on the Evening Sun for many years.)

Rebecca is telling us that we have to start writing, that the piece needs to be early if it has any chance at the Sunday front. . .I leave Zorzi on the street, telling him we have to locate the mother, that the piece can’t run without quotes from the woman who brought Dontay Carter into the world. . .

He pulls a name and an address on Lennox Street.

“How the hell did you find me?” asks the mother as Zorzi comes through her door, notepad and pen akimbo.

“We got the mother,” I tell Rebecca minutes later, doing my best to make it sound inevitable. We were Baltimore’s newspaper, and we were writing about a kid who had terrorized Baltimore. And that kid had a mother. In Baltimore. Of course we got her.

As I say, it was not an important story or the best story. It doesn’t much matter to anyone past the Sunday when it ran. But it sits in my mind today as the moment when I was, if not living the life of kings, then at least among the princes of my city.

I see that Laila Ali has been hired as a correspondent for CBS's Early Show:

"Laila has a unique skill sets that I've come across in broadcast news," Early Show Senior Executive Producer Shelley Ross says in a press release. "She has been a dedicated educator and author in areas of heath and fitness. She has a spiritual side, while being a fearless competitor. She's a great addition to The Early Show team."

...and there we have in a nutshell a large part of what's wrong with television news in general and the network morning shows in particular.

I don't see any mentions of her journalistic acumen.  Her skill at uncovering information, verifying it, and presenting it to the public.  Her experience in reporting from around the world.

But hey, she's pretty, she's related to a mega-celebrity, she's got "a spiritual side", and she's been on "Dancing with the Stars" and hosts "American Gladiators"...what's not to love?

Because my Firefox is running slowly, due to all the tabs I have open of things that I want to blog about, here's a linkdump for your Wednesday afternoon perusal:

• "You Don't Understand Our Audience" -- John Hockenberry on his escaping the schlock-network-TV (wait, am I redundant?) beast;
• speaking of TV, the guv'mint will give you coupons to reduce the cost of an DTV converter box;
• a delightful list of easter eggs (and other in-jokes) in Pixar movies;
• the world's first (and only) rotating boat wheel -- I guess its advantage is that it can cover more of a vertical spread than a lock can.  Expensive, but wow!
• Guy asks question on Ask MetaFilter about charitable giving.  Guy answers self, using a sockpuppet account, pimping his own website (which loudly trumpets the "transparent', "honest" nature of said website.)  Long, protracted smackdown -- as only MeFi can do it -- ensues.
• Amazing protip on sending text messages by e-mail.  (It's an old one, but it's new to me.)
• Bill O'Reilly uses assault and battery to "uphold the Constitution."  Nominate this guy for a Freedom of the Press Award STAT!

Reuters:  "Bush is the first U.S. president to visit Jerusalem since Bill Clinton a decade ago."

um, really?  How'd he pull that off?

How to Read the New Yorker in 10 Easy Steps, by the very-cool Heather Champ.  (Magazineer looks like a blog I will definitely have to pay attention to.)

By the way, I read it from front to back.  Every time.   I usually tiptoe through the letters to the editor, only skim the listings of things going on around town, utterly devour the Talk of the Town, luxuriate in the big long Profile or other non-fiction piece in the middle, and skip the fiction.  Then I take a deep breath (this is where Shouts and Murmurs would ideally go -- you need a breather in the middle of the magazine, something like the perfect natural pause between the Peace and the Great Thanksgiving in the Episcopal liturgy) and plunge into the reviews (hoping that it's a Sasha Frere-Jones, Nancy Franklin, and/or Anthony Lane week) before the after-dinner mint that is the Cartoon Caption Contest.  (One must, of course, keep the cardinal rule uppermost in one's mind, along with Daniel Radosh's Anti-Caption Contest.)

From the Times' marvelous (but, alas, temporary and now-shuttered) Jet Lagged blog, A User's Manual to Seat 21-C.

Via the inimitable ColdChef, the worst headline either he or I've seen in quite a while:

New Orleans has new flood -- of fans

The 'Chef helpfully points out, "As opposed to the last flood, which killed over a thousand citizens."

(And the lede's pretty bad, too...)

I thought it was interesting that on New Year's Eve, the FBI announced that they were seeking public help in solving the D.B. Cooper case, going so far as to release never-before-seen pictures of Cooper's tie and some of the money that was recovered in 1980.

If you're not familiar with the case, Crime Library has a very thorough account, but here's a short version:  a man calling himself "Dan Cooper" hijacked this Northwest Orient 727 in 1971, asked for and received $200,000 cash and four parachutes, and disappeared out the aft airstairs of the plane, never to be seen again.  In 1980, a young boy discovered $5,800 of the stolen money while digging in the banks of the Columbia River, but no other sign of D.B. Cooper has ever been found.

As I understand it, it isn't odd for the FBI to ask for the public's assistance in solving major crimes, but it is a little unusual for them to ask for help again, 36 years after the investigation commenced.

A couple things:

• Useless Beauty, my photoblog, is one year old today.  Go check it out, comment, recommend to friends, et cetera. 
• Also, today I'm soft-launching Cocktailians.com, a new group blog devoted to cocktails and their culture.  As I say in the introductory post, we're interested in exploring cocktailian culture:  cocktail recipes, reviews of drinking establishments, pictures of cocktails, roundups and links to other doings on the other cocktail blogs out there, tidbits of cocktailian history and ephemera, interviews with bartenders, and whatever else we can come up with.  Go check it out, comment, recommend to your friends...you know the drill.

Cheatline, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

I, for one, welcome our subterranean tuberous overlords...