this is new york...

... and it is terrifying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/nyregion/thecity/15part.html

This city is the US is a nutshell: it doesn't make anything, it just shuffles money and sells the illusion of sophistication and cool to itself and the rest of the world. Anybody else get the feeling this economy has been running on confidence and gas fumes for about 30 years?

cheney can suck it

Can you believe the cahones on this guy? Under the administration he served (or ran) the US suffered its first attack on domestic soil since Pearl Harbor, two wars that have still not been won or achieved their most basic objectives, income discrepancy between Americans became astronomical, and the economy was gutted to the point of near collapse. And still he criticizes Obama for reversing the torture memos.

This, coming from the guy who directly authorized this: “I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.”

As Mark Danner elucidates in an excellent New York Times Op-Ed drawn from first person accounts of the CIA black sites (Thailand? Poland? Almost the most remarkable thing is that these guys could be taken prisoner and then taken to places anywhere in the world...) the upshot of torturing perpetrators of crimes is that any real trial or persecution is rendered moot, because they have been tortured, let alone the damage done to the United States' image as a world leader. What educated and liberal... Pakistani person, say, could unequivocally support the US after it came out that we abduct anyone in the world on hearsay, then torture them, then lie about it?

proposed mta budget cuts...

I've been pretty relentless about this my gmail away messages and facebook page, but I thought I should aggregate a lot of the info on the looming MTA budget cuts in one place.

Basically New York State (like pretty much every state in the country right now) has a HUGE budget crisis, and the poor Metropolitan Transit Authority will be taking a BIG hit, with several eliminated subway lines (goodbye W and Z), reduced bus service all over the place, and a 23% (!?!) hike in fares. A monthly metrocard will jump from $81/month to $104/month.

To get an idea of the proposed cuts, you can plug any New York area zip code into this site and it will tell you how the MTA will be affected in that area.

Also, I wish it was a google maps mashup, but here are a series of PDFs with detailed maps showing how all trains and buses will be affected:

Map of Manhattan Service Cuts [pdf]
Map of Brooklyn Service Cuts [pdf]
Map of Queens Service Cuts [pdf]
Map of Bronx Service Cuts [pdf]
Map of Staten Island Service Cuts [pdf]

I have a hard time getting worked up about many political issues, considering how nuanced they are, but this one really struck me. I don't know a single person in New York who doesn't depend on the MTA almost every day. I can appreciate the budgetary crisis, but at the same time I totally selfishly want a good MTA. Balancing the budget is not my job as a citizen and tax payer, it is simply telling the government where I want them to put their priorities.

And beyond the convenience, I LOVE public transit. I took the 7 train out to Flushing this weekend and stood at the front of the first car and just looked out, watching the train sweep over the storefronts. (Granted, it is noisy as hell down below.)

So it is exciting to see that an alternative plan that would keep MTA service as is, and only see an 8% increase in fares is currently being debated.

The authority’s board is scheduled to meet on March 25 to choose from a menu of proposed fare increases and approve a range of service cuts. In order to balance its budget this year the authority says it will need to increase fare and toll revenues by 23 percent while cutting service.

However, officials have said they can avoid most service cuts and trim the fare increase to 8 percent if the state approves the rescue plan, which would funnel badly needed money to the authority.

So click on this link to find out who your state representative is, and write them a quick email asking them to support this plan! Also take a minute to print out and sign this petition.

It doesn't take any money, just a few minutes of your time. And considering what you might soon be paying for subway service, I'd say it is definitely worth your time.

ooh... pretty

This animated video was made from 6000 separate paintings, done by an art student over the course of about two years.


Khoda from Reza Dolatabadi on Vimeo.

But with that much time and effort, couldn't he have gotten slightly better music?

nerd time!

Although I'm not a huge fan of dancey-electronica, I found myself really enjoying Röyksopp's first album. And I found myself enjoying this really wicked video too.



Although I'm sure if this were blasted into my cell in guantanamo on repeat it would terrify me.

this would break me...

A prisoner recently released from Guantamo confirmed that part of his interrogations included being subjected to "The Eminem Show" at a thundering volume, on repeat. For hours. Other songs used included Metallica's "Enter Sandman", the Barney Theme Song, and Matchbox 20.

As easy as it is to take this lightly (remember the scene in Back to the Future where Marty convinces his dad to take Lorraine to the dance by subjected him to Van Halen at maximum volume?), this is, like pretty much all the news to come out of Guantanamo, sickening. I once came back from a month of backpacking with no media or outside stimulation, and listening to the Beatles on the bus at the end was overwhelmingly emotional. And that was a benign, voluntary experience.

Now imagine being ripped away from your family, shipped off to a foreign country and imprisoned in a location where you have no idea where you are, routinely submitted to physical torture (like waterboarding and electric shocks), psychological torture (stripped naked, humiliated by members of the opposite sex), and on top of that you're locked in a room forced to listen to Metallica scream "Exit light/enter night/take my hand/we're off to Never-neverland" for hours on end? Hell on earth.

way to fool me again huffington post...

They illustrated a story about ads on wind turbines with the above picture, making me believe for a second that Nike was designing swoosh blades for our future renewable energy sources. Like the great tabloid they are, they took a little creative license with it, admitting "our little photoillustration is a little misleading." Just when I had my bemused indignation up.

Look out Tokyo...

I experienced dozens of large and small earthquakes in the few years I lived in Tokyo, but never a volcano eruption.

best display of athleticism at Superbowl 43?

Not the Steeler's linebacker making an interception at the one and running it back 100 yards for a touchdown to close out the first half:



Not Santonio Holmes' game winning catch in the last forty seconds, toes just scraping grass to allow the six points:




Nope, it was clearly 59 year-old Bruce Springsteen power sliding into America's face crotch first during the halftime show:

a few movies I'd like to see:

Romance, hipsters, San Francisco. That young black guy from the Daily Show.





Heroin, midwesterners, 70s New York. Pre-Godfather Al Pacino.






Adultery, Mennonites, Mexico. No one you've ever heard of.

humor in the new era of responsibility

There were a brief flurry of articles before the inauguration on how media satirists like The Onion and the Daily Show will have to work harder in an Obama administration. (I seem to remember Stewart giving a quick plug to go out and vote before the 2004 election with the plea: "Please, make my job difficult.") But The Onion seems to have hit on one possible angle for Obama: his nerdiness.

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

Also, did anyone notice how The Onion closed out the Bush administration by subjecting him to a series of extremely painful pratfalls each week before killing him off on inauguration day?

11/12/08 Bush Tumbles Wildly Down Washington Monument Staircase
11/19/08 Crocodile Bites Off Bush's Arm
11/28/08 Bush Passes Three Pound Kidney Stone
12/4/08 Bush Dragged Behind Presidential Motorcade For 26 Blocks
12/8/08 Bush's Eyelid Accidentally Nailed To Wall
1/14/09 Spider Eggs Hatch In Bush's Brain
1/20/09 Bush Dies Peacefully In His Sleep

how to complain about a false obituary

Well, happy 2009 all, sorry about the extended hiatus, I think the awesome January weather has been making me sluggish and forgetful. To the point where I leave this blog at the George W. Bush video Christmas letter for a month. Seriously, we're in the Obama era people. The age of the internets! So here are a few interesting tidbits I've come across:

Salon has a great piece on how the current administration (or any administration) should navigate their use of the internet, including what a White House blog might look like, how to monitor comments, etc. Even what the protocol is for a facebook page. It was all hip when Obama was a dude running for President, but we're in uncharted territory on what it means to be facebook friends with the leader of the free world.

Also, following brief mistakes on Wikipedia claiming that Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd had died, the site is considering changing its editing rules, subjecting it to more oversight. Which doesn't make much sense to me, the only advantage of Wikipedia over a standard encylopedia is the speed and ease with which it can be updated. Mistakes and errors are to be expected, I expect pretty much everything on there is hearsay, with a strong tendency towards accuracy. Both of the errors were corrected within minutes, which makes the issue seem moot to me.

And a friend had this letter to Virgin Airways and Richard Branson as their away message, proving that no one complains better than the British.