Mapping the credit
Mike Hertz points out that my entry about the evolution of the New York subway map leaves out a few details. He points to a follow-up column by Ray Sanchez that discredits John Tauranac's claims to having designed the map. However, my post of April 7 wasn't about the current map or its designer but rather about a book tracing the history of the subway map. I still hope to see such a book.Random iPod 7
The next 15 shuffled songs on my iPod: As Time Goes By, Jimmy Durante Tightly, Neko Case Stupid Girl, Rolling Stones Flower's Grave, Tom Waits Where You Lead, Carole King Starving in the Belly of a Whale, Tom Waits It's Bad Grammar, Baby, Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks Testament to Youth in Verse, New Pornographers Desafinado, Rosemary Clooney & John Pizzarelli Bummed Out City, Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros Winter Lady, Leonard Cohen Ball and Biscuit, White Stripes GhettoMusick, OutKast Centre for Holy Wars, New Pornographers Jay-Z + DJ Danger Mouse, What More Can I Say I think it's time to rebuild my iPod's library. I see the same artists and often the same songs from one Random iPod entry to the next.The continuous city
Last week, Cory Doctorow posted to Boing Boing his thoughts on Peter Ackroyd's book London: The Biography, which I've been meaning to read for a while. Doctorow discusses the idea of people, books, and cities as continuities--things that shift form, develop, grow, recede, and change while still remaining the same. I realized as a young teenager that the stuff of which I am composed had all died and been replaced many times over. I'm smarter than I used to be but dumber than I will be. Likewise, books. Not only does a particular book's voyage from idea to bound volume morph slowly from one stage to the next, but that same book then acquires a body of commentary and criticism that shapes and is shaped by the book itself. And, as Doctorow also points outs, what we call "book" has changed many times over the past centuries--tablet, scroll, codex, e-text, audiobook, etc.--without changing the essence of what a book is and how it communicates with readers. Cities, too, but here I'll simply quote Doctorow, who says it better than I could:London is continuous. It's not a place -- its borders have shifted and shifted again over thousands of years. It's not a race of people -- its inhabitants have changed in individual identity and culture so many times that the culture and ethnicity of London 2004 is nearly completely different from London 0000. It's not a collection of architecture, or a map of roads, or a political system, for all of these have changed and changed and changed. London isn't even its name: London's had many names over the years.
London is a practice: London is what Londoners are doing right now, which is informed by, midwifed by, descended from what Londoners were doing yesterday. London is what Londoners do. I'm now reading Gotham, and I think it'll be interesting to read it through the lens of the continuous New York.
Justice Dept. drops request for medical records
The government withdrew a subpoena for abortion records yesterday, Newsday reports. The government is defending itself against suits that challenge the ban on so-called partial-birth abortions and requested medical records of women who've sought abortions in New York hospitals. A district court judge ordered the hospitals to comply, but New York Weill Cornell Medical Center refused, and the judge held the hospital in contempt. Last week, an appeals court blocked the contempt charge and agreed to resolve the issue. The government now has withdrawn the request in hopes of circumventing a drawn-out appeals process.Light and gargoyles
Right, so the big news out of Brooklyn in the last couple of weeks has been the opening of the new entrance to the Brooklyn Museum. Timed to support the opening of the new entrance, however, is a major renovation to the Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum stop on the 2 and 3 lines. I should get out there and see it before all the cool new fixtures get trashed.Catcher in the Rue
Via Maud Newton, this amusing riff on book titles: change one letter and get a different story.Exquisite corpse of page 23
From here, because it amuses me. "Don't be silly," I replied. I was fretful about my abilities as a lover. From the salad station at the other end of the line, I saw a brief, slurry exchange between Bobby and some of the guests. M pulled the thick file towards him. His eyes wandered slowly up to the date, which Ford was idly tapping at. The stale, rancid smell of cigarette butts, the ashtrays all brimming. He is gasping now.F resumes Coney service in May
I'm going to miss the "F to Avenue X" PA announcements. There's something so sci-fi about Avenue X. However, I won't miss cringing every time the Jay St./Borough Hall announcer says, "There is a Avenue X bound F train approaching Jay St./Borough Hall." Gah.Sharing the love
Via BoingBoing comes this Business 2.0 introduction to Creative Commons licenses. These licenses allow writers, artists, musicians and other creatives to choose how their creatures can be copied and distributed, under terms less onerous than what copyright offers.Kinja
For those of you who pay attention to such things, I've created a Kinja digest and added the appropriate links to my page (under Syndication). I'm not certain how much I'll use Kinja myself; as one of its principals, Nick Denton, himself notes, "Kinja is an RSS reader for those who don't know what RSS is", and since I do know what it is, it's probably not really meant for me. However, I've been wanting to check it out. I've long thought that blogging and Web publishing in general are needlessly complex for the casual user, who doesn't care to know what trackback pings, RSS, XML, readers, or permalinks are, but who would nonetheless happily use those features if they were de-geeked, simple to understand, and simple to use. Kinja seems like a step in that direction. The other reason I wanted to try Kinja is simpler: all the cool kids are doing it, and I'm nothing if not a crowd-following, slack-jawing, tech-geeking, sushi-eating, latte-sipping bandwagon jumper. I checked out A9 the day it went public, and hell, I'd try Gmail if they'd let me.Copyright: The Killing Fields of Culture
Via Copyfight, this J. D. Lasica profile of Jed Horowitz. Horowitz is a former video distributor who got in hot water with Disney over his promotional tactics: He created two-minute trailers and posted them online as a sales tool. Disney sued, claiming Horowitz violated its trademarks. He's now released a new documentary, Willful Infringement, in which he profiles other artists who've got to the mat over copyright infringement.Campbell's sells Warhol cans
I've never known whether Warhol's paintings of Campbell's soup cans violated Campbell's trademarks in any way, but in an era where big corporations will chase after any parody or satire of their IP, in spite of fair-use protections, it's nice to see Campbell's actually honoring Warhol's art--even if it is 40 years later.
[via BoingBoing]
CFP 2004
CFP 2004--the annual conference on computers, freedom, and privacy--starts today in Berkeley, California. Once again, I'm not there (2005, I swear!), and if you're also not there, you can follow the action via CFP's blogs. (Many talks, last year, were posted to the web in MP3 format. I hope they do that again this year.) In honor of CFP, I'll feature at least one post a day this week on intellectual freedom or privacy issues.Manhattan User's Guide
The 411: Manhattan User's Guide ("a daily e-mail that keeps you on top of the city...from splashy restaurant openings or wonderful hole-in-the-walls to useful services such as the best moving companies or tailors to the best shopping in town") will soon accept advertising, but to attract sponsors, MUG needs to increase its readership. MUG is a daily must-read. Charlie Suisman, MUG's writer, is sharp and savvy, and his writing is crisp, well informed, and witty. Subscribe to MUG and make your inbox happy. (Disclaimer: I have no personal or professional association with MUG or Suisman, nor will I benefit in any way from its advertising revenue. I simply think it's a damn good read, and I think you'll agree.)Random iPod 6
The next 15 shuffled songs on my iPod: Brazil (Reprise), Rosemary Clooney & John Pizzarelli disko, Martin Bonnier Descarga, Tito Puente It's a Beautiful Day, Pizzicato Five Set You Free, Ted Leo Possession (Live), Elvis Costello & the Attractions One Note Samba, Rosemary Clooney & John Pizzarelli The Euphonious Whatever, Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks Public Image, Public Image Ltd. One Tin Soldier, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes The World and His Wife, Elvis Costello & the Attractions Moment of Clarity, Jay-Z + DJ Danger Mouse I Missed the Point, Neko Case This Is Not a Love Song, Public Image Ltd. Lullaby of London, The PoguesWill the Jets help save the High Line?
The Daily News reports that the New York Jets will unveil a plan today that will preserve portions of the High Line and incorporate another portion into the entrance to its proposed West Side stadium. I don't know how I feel about the stadium itself, but I'm glad to see that the city and the Jets are serious about preserving the High Line.Pulps, at TNR
Pulps looks like an interesting idea. The New Republic, which normally reviews only literary fiction, begins a regular column covering genre fiction and non-fiction. I would have thought the introduction was condescending ("After all, influential ideas have a way of turning up in the strangest places") until I read the George Pelecanos mystery Right as Rain and found that I really don't understand the good reviews this novel received. So perhaps mainstream novels really are "strange places" for good ideas. [via Beatrice]In search of the original subway
Writing for the Times, Michael Luo describes a fan trip along the path of the original 1904 New York subway. The trip, led by Joseph Brennan and Joseph Cunningham traced the route from the now-closed City Hall station, up the 4/5/6 line to Grand Central, across what's now the shuttle to Times Square, and then up the 1/9 line to 145th Street. Sounds cool to me.Van Dyke reunion
I used to watch the Dick Van Dyke show in reruns all the time, and I still think it's among the best sitcoms. Now, reunion shows usually suck, but what I like about this idea is that it's just an episode--presumably, just a single half-hour episode. One reason reunions normally suck is that they're just overlong. You might be able to squeeze an hour, at most, out of even the best sitcom, but not two. We'll see how this works out. I'll TiFaux it for sure.CIPA, filtering, and public libraries
Via librarian.net, this First Monday article discusses libraries policies related to filtering Internet content. I've read only the first few pages so far, but it seems to cover the issues thoroughly and well.
April 14, 2004 11:53 AM
Intellectual freedom, privacy, etc. / Libraries and librarianship
Permalink | |
Intellectual freedom, privacy, etc. / Libraries and librarianship
Permalink | |
World's oldest fireboat, still going after 65 years
Launched in 1938, the fireboat Fire Fighter still fights blazes on New York's shores and waterways. In warmer months, tour cruises of the fireboat John Harvey are available.
Ashcroft still targets porn
The Baltimore Sun reports on the Justice Department's latest crusade against pornography. This will make for an interesting war. Many of the largest media companies in the United States distribute and market pornography via cable outlets. Those companies have deep pockets and many ties to the Bush Administration, to Congress, and to the political parties. However, aside from the bedfellowing and the usual moral indignation (Get out of my bedroom, consenting adults, etc.), I learned something interesting while I was looking up other stories about this online. This Boston Phoenix article has a disturbing quote:But perhaps the most important thing about Ass Clowns 3 is this: it could land its distributors, Robert Zicari (a/k/a Rob Black) and his fiancée, Janet Romano (a/k/a Lizzie Borden), in prison for the next 50 years.
As Zicari observed in an interview last week with ABC News’s Nightline, that’s double the amount of prison time faced by Hemant Lakhani, the British national who was recently charged with trying to sell a surface-to-air missile to government agents posing as terrorists seeking to shoot down a commercial airliner. Thank you, John Ashcroft. I'm glad it's more important to protect adults from sexual images than it is to defend against terrorists. [via Politech, Boing Boing, MeFi, and nearly everywhere else on the Web]
I go out walking...
Andrew Womack, writing in the Morning News, offers tips for walking in New York. They're all pretty much commonsense, but any New Yorker knows that commonsense is as common on an NYC sidewalk as a passenger pigeon. Last week, I was walking home from the F train, and I saw a woman gesturing with her cane. She was shouting at a woman across the street and using the cane to point at something I couldn't see. Except she paid no attention to where she was or who was around her, and she lifted her cane up to shoulder level and held it out almost perpendicular to her body--just in time for a man behind her to face-check the horizontal cane. Like watching the Stooges. (Moe's pals, that is, not Iggy's.)Opening day
Today is opening day at Yankee Stadium. Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a damn--baseball just isn't my thing. But I work in the Bronx, not far from the subway station nearest the stadium. The game will let out just as I'm leaving work, and I'll have to push through those crowds to get onto a train. I should've brought my billy club and my brass knucks.Bank-robbing for Smoochie
A 44-year-old Brooklyn woman embarked on a crime spree, the New York Post reports, to earn money for an operation for her cat. Smoochie, a young orange tabby, had a tumor that require surgery. [Confidential to Jen: Don't get any ideas.]Restaurant week in Brooklyn
$18.98 buys a damn good meal, starting April 15, as Brooklyn celebrates Restaurant Week. Newsday has the story and a list of participating eateries.Mapping the MTA
Not long ago, I mentioned to Jen that it would be great to have a book charting the evolution of the New York City subway map. It seemed like such an obvious idea, I was surprised that no one had thought of it first. I was wrong. John Tauranac thought of it [read to the end of the article], but the small minds at MTA turned him down. 4/30 UPDATE: First, the link I've posted above no longer works. Ray Sanchez's story on John Tauranac can be located here. Second, Sanchez wrote an update to that story, and I really should have linked to it. Sanchez's first story could lead a reader to believe that John Tauranac deserves sole credit for designing the MTA subway map. The follow-up story credits others who were responsible for helping to develop the current design.Psychedelic posters of the 1960s
Via Flavorpill comes news of an exhibition of of 1960s psychedelia at the Matthew Marks gallery in Chelsea. The exhibit runs through Saturday, 4/24.