The kids are alright

If you think technology is just turning the youth into mindless sexting automatons, think again.

LATimes: High School YouTube Video Gets Famous By Going Backward

Cost of Twelve Days of Christmas

The eight milking maids received an automatic minimum wage increase, to $7.25 an hour. Even so, they totaled a mere $58, up $5.60 from last year. The eight ladies dancing fared far better, with a 15 percent raise, to $5,473 for each performance based on figures from the Philadelphia modern dance company, Philadanco.
But other performers were not as fortunate, reflecting a jobless rate that doubled this year after hovering around 5 percent for much of the decade, Mr. Dunigan said. Pay was flat for the 12 drummers drumming, at $2,475, 11 pipers piping, at $2,284, and 10 lords-a-leaping, at $4,414.


NYTimes: 12 Days of Gift-Giving Cost True Love $21,466

So festive

I had to sign up for a security alert newsletter for work, and today I got this message.  Ahhh the holiday stray dog cull, a heartwarming tradition sadly lost in the commercial Yuletide hubub outside former Yugoslav republics.

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Scott Neustadter

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Scott Neustadter

Scott Neustadter, as the writer of a semi-autobiographical indie, sensitive movie about lost love, is naturally pretty in touch with his feelings; and naturally those feelings find their expression in songs written by other indie, sensitive men.

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1
Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1 (1)
Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song
Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song (.5)
Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1
Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1

Debbie Downer moment +1
Wild card: "emotional" (.5), "melancholy" (.5), "bittersweet" (.5)
Total: 3 

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Scott Neustadter

Today's Oxymoron: Economist Humor

"We learn that Bernanke played a prank on President Bush one day by coordinating the whole economic staff, along with even Dick Cheney to wear tan socks..."


Satyajit Das's Blog: Fear & Loathing in Financial Products

The friendly skies

The CEO of Ryannair hates everyone.  Management consultants, aviation regulators, staff, and of course...


And then there is that other source of endless aggravation, Ryanair’s passengers. Especially the ones wrecking his efforts to shave luggage-handling costs by checking in their cases (for an extra £30) because they are “too mentally bloody lazy to travel with carry-on bags”.


And he's raking it in while the other airlines flounder.  Soon we may all be flying Michael O'Leary's way.


Lunch with the FT: Michael O'Leary

I want to be myself!

I think there's some people who aren't in such a hurry for Alec Baldwin to be himself.  In the meantime, he should stick to being Jack Donaghy.  Follow the link for a classic 30 Rock moment and Alec Baldwin's existential crisis.

Back Issues: Alec Baldwin

Dawn of the Dorks

If yesterday's video left me hankering for another dose of Doonan, you'll find a link to his most recent column in the New York Observer in my Delicious bookmarks on the right.

What does he mean by aahh stage?

Informative if you're a fellow pork enthusiast, worth it even if you're not just for this paragraph:


My first thought, however, on being introduced to ours, was how on earth we were going to get them in the back of the car. Possibly taking Tony’s advice on costs too far, we had decided against hiring a van. These four were three months old, not two, and well beyond the aahh stage. Judging by the tussle, just young enough, too, to be rolled through the hatchback two-by-two after Caroline had hoisted them by the back legs while I grabbed the front. A struggle, but worth it for the looks on fellow motorists’ faces as the pigs stared out of the back window at them. Not to mention the expressions as we pulled up at an Indian restaurant to shut the back properly.


More Intelligent Life: Pig Farming and the Tamworth Four

Corgi Socks. Corgi Socks. Corgi Socks.

Is it commercialization of Christmas in its most decadent, indulgent form? Yes. But it's still fun.  The "War on Christmas" folks should be thrilled!

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Alice Waters

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Alice Waters


Alice Waters is better than you, OK? Put that Big Mac down, you animal.

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1
Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1
Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song
Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song (+1, calculated for every time she mentioned Chez Panisse- mentions of her food thoughts in general were basically uncountable)
Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1
Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1

Debbie Downer moment +1
Wild card: Aged hippie mini-bingo: Vietnam protest (+.5), people eat too much crap (+2), dancing around while thinking about Barack Obama (.5), "It's a universal language that is communicating feelings of love and peace" (+1).
Total: 5

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Alice Waters

Can't we all just get along?

From Grace Kassab for the LA Times in Beirut.

Harry Truman Was Great Pt. II

The man wasn't afraid of a bold pattern.

mental_floss: 22 Great Photos Found in Presidential Libraries
Part I: Ike always looked shifty to me

The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday

For foreign correspondents who write books explaining their beats to American readers, one of the greatest challenges seems to be pruning and arranging an unwieldy bouquet of anecdotes into an organized, thoughtful narrative.  In this book, former NYTimes Cairo bureau chief Neil MacFarquhar does so nicely.  He doesn't skimp on revealing or humorous images-like Saudi women lifting their veils in a waiting room to get a better look at an Oprah segment he calls "Hunks Building Houses" until a grumbling man changes the channel- but for the most part they're arranged logically around easily identified themes.  The primary questions are why democracy has such a difficult time taking root in the Arab world and, to a lesser extent, how the United States could encourage it.  The first part of the book doesn't really address these issues, focusing instead on MacFarquhar's childhood on an oil company's compound in pre-Qadafi Libya.  During this period there don't seem to be too many Libyans involved in the industry that would transform their country, and MacFarquhar has almost no contact with any.  In a way, the presence of the compound in Libya and its insulation from the rest of the country until the dramatic moment when most of its residents have to be evacuated embodies a lot of the missteps and misunderstandings between the United States and the Arab world; and this book skillfully tries to illuminate them.

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Chuck Klosterman

I'd have thought that a culture wizard like Chuck Klosterman would really moan about how hard it was to choose from his encyclopedic knowledge of pop songs, but maybe when you have such an emotional connection to music it's not so hard after all.

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1
Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1
Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song
Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song
Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1
Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1 (1)

Debbie Downer moment +1
Wild card: Mentions a band that isn't one of the five picks (.5) 2.5
Total: 3.5

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Chuck Klosterman

Saucy trivia

The point of this ad is that the MRI was invented in Scotland.  Now you'll never forget that, right?

The guilty sweater

The Copenhagen climate talks have forced me to think a little about my own carbon footprint.  Unfortunately, that foot is wrapped in a soft, luxurious cashmere sock.

NYTimes: Pastoralism Unraveling in Mongolia

Despot Trivia: Dmitry Medvedev

Medvedev keeps an aquarium in his office and cares for his fish himself.^[76] Medvedev owns a Neva Masquerade male cat named Dorofey. Dorofey used to fight with a cat belonging to Mikhail Gorbachev—who was Medvedev's neighbor—so the Medvedevs had to have Dorofey neutered.^[77]


Wikipedia: Dmitry Medvedev

Santa Muerte

The L.A. home of a Mexico-based sect that attracts people on the margins, such as drug traffickers and transgender prostitutes.  Unsurprisingly, according to a photographer who has documented worship at the shrine (not the one who shot the photos in the slideshow), 'Southern California's version of the practice may contain "a little shtick"'.


LATimes: Santa Muerte in LA: A Gentler Vision of "Holy Death"

Singing Saw

Christmas songs performed on saws.  I think listening to the whole album would put a little bit of a damper on your holiday spirit, but it's definitely an interesting break from Bing Crosby.

Merge Records: The Singing Saw at Christmastime

"Artist"? Really?

Since I moved to a new city, Meetup.com has become a big part of my life.  Each week I get an email listing new groups and meetings; and even though I probably don't fit the target member profile I couldn't help checking out the Raleigh-Durham Pick Up Artist group.  Here's the description of their first meeting.  Would any of these tactics work on you?

Here’s some of the topics we’re going to cover

1. Practice walking up to an attractive woman at a supermarket and getting her phone #. ("Hey, are you good at accepting compliments from complete strangers?" (yeah) "Sweet, me too. You go first, compliment me...."
2. Learn what to say to a woman at a bar to make her laugh, so you can get a date with her. ("Are you shy or something? Because I've been standing here for around ten minutes and you still haven't said Hi to me..."
3. Learn how to pick up women during the day, while you're out living your life, like in a fast-food line ("Damn…I-AM-SICK of this fast food…do you know how to cook??)

Whaddyameanbythat?

What is Facebook telling me?

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Jake Gyllenhaal

"I brought a few songs that have inspired me in different ways. Some in the car, some on set -- a movie set, and some in bed." Maybe the latter is referring to pick #4, “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso,” by Saint-Saëns. 

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1
Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1
Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song (1)
Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song (.5)
Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1
Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1

Debbie Downer moment +1 (1 Traumatized by robbery when he was a kid)
Wild card: Imitations of other peoples' voices +.5 (1.5)
Total: 4


KCRW Guest DJ Project: Jake Gyllenhaal

This sounds so wrong

Yet I will probably end up eating it at some point over the next year.

Serious Eats: Kimchi Quesadilla

For an angry song, I can't stop grinning when I hear it

One does want a hint of color

It goes along with a very depressing story but I thought this photo was interesting, it looks almost like it was taken in black and white and then a few spots were colorized.

Modern-Day Buffalo

Another exotic animal that isn't in such high demand these days: alligator.


"Stolid men wade into shallow tanks and pull the alligators out by hand. Biting happens. After the gators are killed with a stab to the brain, they are skinned and sorted: heads and claws for the French Quarter souvenir shops, meat for the Cajun restaurants, guts for turtles, dogs or anything else whose tastes run that way."


NYTimes: As Sales Vanish, Skins Stay on Alligators

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Jose Andres

This year I am thankful that KCRW picked Jose Andres, the owner of some of my favorite DC restaurants, and boy do I wish I had gone to his house for Thanksgiving.


One of the songs is by Wilco: +1
Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1 (1)
Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song
Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song
Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1
Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1

Debbie Downer moment +1
Wild card: Times he says "Spain" (.25) 3.5
Total: 4.5

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Jose Andres

Is This a Real Thing? Swedish Nail Bed Craze

A Hindu spirit is stalking the streets of Stockholm, armed with this Nordic capital’s latest fad: the nail bed.
...
Of course, as with all health fads, the mats’ salutary effects can be exaggerated, with some people promising cures for everything “from schizophrenia to dandruff,” Ms. Rolfsdotter-Jansson said. But many nail mat users claim relief from sleep problems, migraines and even asthma.


NYTimes: A Bed Where Comfort is Not The Point

Inside Out

When I first saw the premise of this FT blog I was taken aback- Florida prisons let inmates send email? Even if he  is "as innocent of my charge of insider dealing as my beautiful two-year-old triplets ", that's pretty laid back for minimum security! Of course, the joke was on me.


FT: Notes from Inside

My Parents Were Awesome

There's no lack of platforms from which to dispense the idea that Baby Boomers were hipper and more passionate than we are or ever will be; and that nothing truly great had been created in pop culture before their coming of age or will ever be created again now that they've been weighed down with mortgages and children.  Sometimes those very children don't seem to have much interest in proving them wrong.  Case in point: My Parents Were Awesome, featuring pictures of young people in bell bottoms and long vests who are now old people.  A few pictures date back to the pre-LBJ era but not enough for a full My Grandparents Were Awesome site, which I think is a shame.  I'd start it myself if I could track down the lost picture of my paternal grandmother, already well into her fifties in said picture wearing cat-eye glasses and a violently patterned dress, dancing with a man who was not my grandfather and who appeared to be feeling her up.  

Crazy Shoe Bill

Not something that was handed to Carrie Bradshaw- just the weirdest looking bird I've ever seen.

Ugly Overload: Shoe Bills

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Michael Brand

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Michael Brand

Some guests will include at least one fairly mainstream song, maybe a childhood favorite or something like that. Not this guy- pure indie all the way.  Michael Brand is not of the tweed jacket wearing variety of art museum director, despite the fact that he appears to be wearing exactly that in his picture.

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1
Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1
Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song
Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song (1)
Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1
Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1

Debbie Downer moment +1 (1- Cambodian genocide)
Wild card: Shoutout to his daughter's friend  1(1)
Total: 3

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Michael Brand

Dictator Cooties

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is making the face I think most people would make if they got stuck holding the hand of Myanmar's leader Gen. Thein Sein.

LA Times: Now What do the Copenhagen Climate Talks Mean?

Copy of a copy

I heard a snippet of this song in the movie "East is East" and it's taken years for me to figure out where it came from.  In "East is East", Archie Panjabi is lip syncing the song and dancing in her backyard.  In the original film "Pakeezah", the star Meena Kumari is also lip syncing- the voice is that of playback legend Lata Mangeshkar- and the dance is actually performed by a double because Kumari was ill.

Germany's Shame

Germany wishes we could all just forget about its past enthusiasm for a once charismatic but now discredited figure- David Hasselhoff.  Unfortunately, the nation must continue to confront and atone for its past excesses.


Der Spiegel: Our Bad: Germany Still Looking for Freedom from David Hasselhoff

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Ashley Force Hood

Another low score on the cliche-o-meter despite very mainstream selections. I'm not such a big Garth Brooks fan, but Ashley Force Hood won me over with a pick from my adolescent love (Gavin Rossdale), the soundtrack to a movie I rented about 87  times as a kid (Little Women), and her fond childhood memories of a hotel pool in Boise.


One of the songs is by Wilco: +1

Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1

Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song

Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song (There were several but most of them referred to a colleague's tragic death so it seems in poor taste to count them)

Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1

Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1
Wild card: Mentions of "funny car", none of which included any explanation of what a funny car is (presumably not involving clowns): .5 (1.5)

Total: 3




KCRW Guest DJ Project: Ashley Force Hood

Happy Veteran's Day

If the last one doesn't make you cry, you're made of stone.


Mental_Floss: The Late Movies: Dogs Welcoming Home Soldiers

She floats through the air

I hadn't realized women aren't allowed to ski jump in the Olympics! Bogus.  Some female ski jumpers are suing the Vancouver organizing committee, hoping they'll pressure the International Olympic Committee to change its rules.  But whatever the verdict, and even though the plaintiffs often outperform men, that doesn't mean women's events will get the same billing as their male counterparts':


"Women jumpers got their first international circuit in 2004, and were allowed to compete at world championships for the first time last year. But in a sport in which the best European men are treated like rock stars and pocket roughly $10,000 per win, the women are only allowed to compete on a secondary circuit that awards winners $500. And, says Ms. Jerome, women are treated very differently. She and her teammates have eaten meals with barn cats jumping on the table and slept above livestock stalls in lodging arranged by competition organizers."


CSMonitor: Why Women Can't Ski Jump in the Winter Olympics

Is This a Real Thing? Bachelor Pads Dying Out

BS trend piece of the week: the recession is making it difficult to maintain a swinging bachelor pad.  That and the difficulty in finding repairmen who know how to fix a revolving wet bar.

NYTimes: The Decline and Fall of the Bachelor Pad

The lists start rolling in...

I don't think I've seen half the movies on this list from the Times of London of the best movies of the decade but I still think it's a pretty good mix of high/low.  My only quibble- "Monsters, Inc." and "Finding Nemo" over "Wall-E" and "Up"?


Kottke: Top Movies of the 2000s

WANT

"Oh jeez, are you still talking about the giant squid?" said a coworker with finite patience when I had recited a few too many newly acquired facts about said cephalopod, in particular that the esophagus goes THROUGH ITS BRAIN. Hence, I need this sofa.

Anthropologie: Amelie Sofa, Fathoms.

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Tim Robbins

I think it would have been great if Robbins had done this exercise in the character of Ian in "High Fidelity".

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1

Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1

Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song

Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song

Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1

Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1

Wild card: References to political subtext of the song: +1 (3).

Total: 3

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Tim Robbins

A question that answers itself

LA Times: Wardrobe Why: What's so cool about pith helmets?

We're a couple of swells

It's holiday catalog season, bringing lots of flowery copy trying to lend a little extra intrigue to clothing and housewares (number one culprit: J. Peterman). I think this establishment manages more successfully than most.

"The moment when a man truly feels a Man, in the most James Bondian sense of the word, is while he is tying his bow tie in front of the mirror, a bottle of vintage champagne cooling on the dressing table, and he catches a fleeting glimpse of a lady in French underwear skipping into the bathroom. If he has merely caught the reflection of the television set, which is showing another rerun ofBasic Instinct - he is still that Man if he is tying his bow tie himself and not using a ready-tied one."

The Chap Shop

More camels

This time in India, and less likely to be dinner. The captions mention a mustache contest but sadly there don't seem to be any pictures from that event.

Christan Science Monitor: India's Pushkar Camel Fair

Bad puppets!

It's a shame that"exhaustion with political correctness", when translated into action, usually means "white guy wants to make jokes about gay, black, or Chinese people".

NYTimes: Comedy for Dummies

aaaaand snap: What We Talk About When We Talk About Jeff Dunham

Calling it like it is

When Finland became the first country in the world to declare broadband internet access to be a universal right, a lot of tech blogs oohed and ahhed at their enlightenment. The Economist, on the other hand, was the only source I saw that stated the obvious motivations for this declaration.

"Finland undoubtedly has fewer problems than America. But would you want to live there? It's nothing like as exciting or diverse as America, and it's wretchedly cold and dark in the winter.

No disrespect to the Finns, who were all extremely nice to me the only time I visited the place, but one reason why they have such outstanding levels of broadband penetration is that there is not much else to do during a Finnish winter except sit indoors and surf the net."

Lexington's Notebook: Finland is the best place on Earth

Hey there

I'm sure she's meant to look seductive, but to me she looks like she's thinking "how did I get here?".

Shorpy: Private Screening

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Norman Lear

Norman Lear is probably the oldest guest I've heard so I didn't expect him to hit the Wilco point, but I certainly didn't expecting his score to be a whopping one!

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1

Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1

Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song

Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song (1)

Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1

Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1

Wild card: None. Snooze!

Total: 1

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Norman Lear

The Midnight Oil

This makes me feel so guilty for every class I skipped in college.

NYT: New Meaning for Night Class at 2 Year Colleges

We Will Just About Die

Letter to President Eisenhower from Linda, Sherry, and Mickie.

Letters of Note: Whatever You Do, Don't Touch His Hair

Brazil's the place to be

Another Mint map that ended up on the World Bank's blog. This one seems to have even less to do with personal finance but it's still pretty neat.

Mint: The World's Resources By Country

How to write badly well

It's not hard to be a mediocre writer; but to be truly awful requires some boldness of spirit.

How to Write Badly Well

Sally the Camel is DINNER

Squeezed by higher costs and cash-poor butchers, middlemen at an Egyptian market wonder if they'll ever get over this hump.

...

"I've been doing this for 29 years," says Ammar, who wears a white-lace cap and an even snowier pinstriped vest, a risky choice amid blowing dust and rubbish fires. "You have to know your camels, setting price to age. The best come from Sudan. The ones from Somalia don't adapt so well. I can tell if a camel will bite me or just run away. It is essential to know such things."

The traders around him, some with blood splotches on their tunics, nod.

LATimes: Egypt camel trade runs into the sand (Not one but TWO puns before the lede. Nice.)

Onion interview with Bronson Pinchot

Highlights:

And I was doing the scene, and they didn’t have a good budget, so Scorsese takes me aside and says, “I don’t know why you’re playing this character so nervously, but I don’t want you to have that quality.” I said, “Then you need to move that background player over there, because I hooked up with her last year, and she’s staring at me,” and he said “Oh, okay!”

...

Then when we started to rehearse it, I would think of funny things to do, and I was like, “I want to be misting the plants, and I want to be doing this,” and they said, “No, no, no, no, you can’t do anything that’s like actually gay. We’ll give you one line a show that’s like, ‘I sleep with men.’”

AV Club: Bronson Pinchot

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Fritz Haeg

I don't know much about this guy but according to the intro he's an architect and does "radical gardening". So far he's been the most cliche-free guest by my tally.

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1

Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1

Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song

Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song (1)

Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1

Guest references their small town/suburban youth: +1 (1)

Wild card: guest discloses his fascination with animals in clothes +2

Total: 2

Be cool boy

Malaysia and Indonesia are engaged in a skirmish for regional cultural dominance that came to a head when some commercials incorrectly named Malaysia as the origin of a traditional dance. It's too bad the incident was settled with flag burning and rotten egg tossing, instead of a West Side Story dance fight.

LATimes: Indonesia vs. Malaysia: A Culture War

Russia vs. United States

I'm not sure what this is doing on a personal finance blog but it looks pretty. Some of the matchups are very dramatic- murder rate and number of prisoners are right next to each other with pretty striking differences.

Mint: Russia vs. United States: A Visual Comparison

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

This book read less like a standard work of nonfiction than a very long magazine article or "This American Life" segment. Eggers tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a quiet, respectable house painter who decides to stay behind in New Orleans when his wife and children flee from Hurricane Katrina. For the first few days he's invigorated- gloating to his wife how serene the city is while she crawls through traffic to Baton Rouge with antsy kids and a flatulent dog; then paddling through the streets in his canoe giving help where he can. But like the water covering the city, things start turning dark and dirty. He's arrested in one of his own properties and brought to a nightmarish holding facility where he's told he's suspected of hatching a terrorist plot. He's given no chance to call his wife; and the account of her emotional turmoil in the week before he's able to contact her through a helpful missionary is nearly as harrowing as the appalling conditions in Zeitoun's prison- a prison, he realizes, that was constructed immediately after the storm at great expense of human and material resources while law-abiding citizens went without food, shelter, or rescue. The horrors of Zeitoun's imprisonment, and of what happened to the city itself, are softened by the sections of the book that describe the Zeitouns' loving family and the happy life they had built from humble beginnings. But the theme, one that Zeitoun repeats to himself in prison, is unquestionably troubling- how could this have happened in America?

Great Pumpkin Turns Vandal

I always get a little tee-hee from this blog, Best of the Bozeman Chronicle Police Reports, that compiles humorously innocuous crimes from the town's police blotter. This one puzzled me- who is he complaining about?

Best of the Bozeman Chronicle Police Reports: October 19, 2009

North Dakota's moment to shine

Stories keep popping up about North Dakota's relative reprieve from the economic crisis. When will all this good news actually convince people to move there?

One bright spot in the bleak state picture is North Dakota, which has not had to cut budgets because of 20 percent growth in the past year and $1.2 billion in reserves. That has come with lots of planning over the past 10 years, including a diversification of the state economy from primarily agriculture into energy and manufacturing, according to Pam Sharp, director of the state office of management and budget.

She says North Dakota’s basic conservatism helped it avoid the foreclosure crisis because very few homes were purchased with subprime loans. Also, about a decade ago, North Dakota began significant investments in “centers of excellence” – partnerships between state universities and the private sector, to help grow the economy.

“We’ve got a very conservative population and state officials who really think things through carefully,” says Ms. Sharp.

Christian Science Monitor: Economy may be rebounding, but state budgets are still hurting

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta

One of Suketu Mehta's themes is that the physical infrastructure of Mumbau is so awful and overcrowded that only immaterial attractions could persuade people to live there. Maximum City is crowded, but not unpleasantly so, with people who embody some of the forces that give Mumbai its character- the leader and the footsoldiers of a Hindu nationalist movement, a dazzling and tragic dancer, her cross-dressing colleague, and a teenage poet, among others. Some of the people Mehta interviewed seemed eerily familiar, and in a few cases it was with good reason. First there was a whole chapter about the police chief who is portrayed in the movie "Black Friday"; during which I learned that Indian censors will bleep obscenities (I couldn't understand the dialog and there were no captions so I assume that's what was happening), but have no problem with showing beatings of such ferocity that the subject's fingernails fall off. Then in the chapter "Black-collared Workers", I began to notice a lot of similarities between the gangsters Suketu Mehta interviewed and the characters in Vikram Chandra's "Sacred Games". Then I see this sentence: "I am with my friend Vikram, who is writing a novel about the underworld and who has asked to come along." Synergies! There were things I found mildly irritating about this book about Mumbai- when he uses four letter words I could just imagine his face from the book jacked smirking slightly as if to say "Look what I did there!"- but on the whole it was sufficiently gripping that I started arriving places early just because then I'd have time to read it while I was waiting.

Boogie down with trust busting!

The greatest thing about this WSJ chart explaining the otherwise pretty unfunny proposed merge between Live Nation and Ticketmaster is the graphic for the fans. What are they dancing to?

WSJ via Atlantic Monthly Business Channel: Ticketmaster-Live Nation Update: DOJ Doesn't Like It Either

Why it's unfunny: Planet Money: The Economics of Ticketmaster

Hedcuts

Blogger's Blog of Today is by a woman who draws the pen and ink illustrations in the Wall Street Journal. It's interesting to read her take on a craft that seems to be vanishing in the print world. Here she digs up a drawing of Josip Broz Tito, noting the irony that she drew him many times as a child in the former Yugoslavia and 'years later I get to draw him for the American "voice of capitalism"'.

HEDCUTS

A mask of inscrutability

I wish I a. could figure out how my T.V. works and b. could consistently stay up past 10, I'm sure I'm missing plenty more gems like this.

Jezebel: Craig Ferguson Lets Loose About Susan Sarandon Fart

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Bobcat Goldthwait

Bobcat Goldthwait used to have a pretty distinctive public persona; now he's shed the wacky standup voice and is morphing into Joe Pesci's long-lost twin. His fifth pick, "I'm a Cha-Cha-Cha Chihuahua", is by far the strangest pick I've heard on this program in the months or so I've been listening to it.

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1

Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1

Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song

Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song (2)

Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1

Guest references their small town youth: +1

Wild card: guest discloses his fascination with animals in clothes +2 (2)

Total: 4

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Bobcat Goldthwait

Deadline Poet

I'd like to get all my news in iambic pentameter henceforth.

The Nation: Calvin Trillin: Thoughts of a UN Delegate as Qaddafi's Speech, Slotted for Fifteen Minutes, Approaches An Hour and a Half

Who wears short shorts?

I think it's the hand in the pocket that really ties together this jaunty ensemble:

Sexy People: Jaap

Fatherland by Robert Harris

This book was recommended by a history professor of mine when I was in college. He said that while reading the book on the train in Berlin the swastika-emblazoned cover earned him several disapproving looks and, more troubling, the occasional thumbs-up. But while the novel is set in an alternative reality in which Hitler won World War Two, it's certainly not wishful thinking. Instead, the elements of a classic detective story (hardboiled detective with a broken home and running afoul of his superiors, plucky heroine with a few secrets) are set within a thoroughly researched imagining of what 1964 would be like if Hitler was celebrating his 75th birthday, President Joseph Kennedy was taking the first steps towards detente with Germany, and the carefully guarded secret of the reality of the Holocaust was threatening to break loose. In addition to the history porn, nerds will appreciate the prominence of paperwork and government bureaucracies in the plot's climax. Sold?

Guest DJ Bingo: Jimmy Gownley

It's a little late this week, I was in training all last week with nary a moment to spare for criticizing the music selections of celebrities.

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1

Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1

Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song

Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song (2)

Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1

Guest references their small town youth: +1 (1)

Wild card: guest challenges listeners who disagree that R.E.M. is the greatest band of all time to a fistfight +3 (3)

Total: 6

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Jimmy Gownley

To the mat in Lithuania

"Midway through my lunch with Dalia Grybauskaite, I feel a strange urge to launch myself at her. It is not that I am attracted to the president of Lithuania. It is just that she is the only head of state that I know of who is also a karate black belt."

Ahhhh but does she have a video?

Lunch with the FT: Dalia Grybauskaite

There's a sitcom in here somewhere.

'Oh, yes, we are in Room 1223 at the Ho-Chunk Casino in lovely Baraboo, where the days blur and the chitchat says this is no quilting bee:

“I had been kicking chorus in Cleveland ... I worked with Champagne glasses ... It took 10 guys to get the snake off of her. And I said, ‘So now I understand why you don’t work Massachusetts.’ ”'

NYTimes: Burlesque Days Again for the Feather Boa Crowd

Good bye Chicago, Bon Dia Brazil!

I was rooting for Chicago, one of my favorite cities, but I think the 2016 Olympics in Rio should be pretty sweet. If any country can come close to topping the show China put on last year it's Brazil! There'll be all kinds of Monday morning quarterbacking about how Chicago lost out, in the first round of voting no less. But this theory doesn't make any sense at all. Because Rio is supposed to be so safe?

"Luciano Reyes speculated that Chicago was undone by a negative reputation internationally."The violence in the schools became an international issue, and all the corruption; the rest of the world just sees us as Crook Town," said Reyes, 59, currently unemployed, who bought his first TV two decades ago specifically to watch the Olympics.'

Washington Post: Rio de Janeiro to Host 2016 Games

KCRW Guest DJ Bingo: Scarlett Johansson

I've been listening to KCRW's Guest DJ Project for about six months, and I'm starting to notice certain themes among the "cultural icons", mostly show business-types, that appear as guests. And how couldn't there be? KCRW is probably one of the best music stations in the country, and listing your favorite songs (a difficult topic to discuss with much originality for most people) in that setting must be a pretty high pressure situation. Inspired by this Gawker column, I'm going to start tracking some of the similarities on each week's segment. ScarJo's score appears in parentheses next to each applicable item on the list, which will surely grow with time.

One of the songs is by Wilco: +1

Guest complains that 5 songs too few:+ 1 (1)

Guest says the song makes/made them cry: +1 per song (1)

Includes a reference to one of their projects: +.5 per song

Guest describes their taste as very eclectic: +1

Guest bemoans the lame music scene in their hometown: +1

Wild card: .5 for every use of "cinematic" (1) or "ambient" (1)

Total: 4

KCRW Guest DJ Project: Scarlett Johansson

Good work, sycophants!

That's a five dollar word to be throwing into Sesame Street.

Inside the Box

Last August during the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, millions of people probably shrieked "No way!" ("Imposible!" "невозможный!" "!مستحيل") in worldwide unison when the boxes that had moved in perfect synchronization were revealed to be controlled by a person crouched inside each one. David Pogue met the guy who made it all happen; and knowing how it works doesn't make it any less visually striking.

David Pogue: The Secret of the Dancing Boxes Revealed

Back to my home on that old river shore

Maybe it's the influence of my new surroundings, but I heard this song for the first time yesterday and it seemed almost unbearably poignant.

Engineering Fluff

It turns out that Marshmellow Fluff, what you'd probably think of as one of the more delicious but unnatural products of the food industry, needs quite a bit of babying.



Belm Blog: What the Fluff?

Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It

"Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It", by Geoff Dyer, initially seemed like the type of travel book for which I have the least patience- the kind in which the locations are incidental and the real focus is on the author's drug-induced mishaps, relationships with women named Dazed and Circle, and existential crises. But while I wouldn't exactly leap at the chance to join Dyer on his next trip to Bali, passages like this (in which, under the influence of mushrooms in Amsterdam, he tries to change his pants) kept me with him at least through 257 pages:

"In the cramped confines of the toilet I had trouble getting out of my wet trousers, which clung to my legs like a drowning man. The new ones were quite complicated too in that they had more legs than a spider; either that or they didn't have enough legs to get mine into. The numbers failed to add up. Always there was one trouser leg too many or one of my legs was left over. From the outside it may have looked like a simple toilet, but once you were locked in here the most rules of basic arithmetic no longer held true. Two into two simply would not go. It was insane, it took a terrible toll on my head. I concentrated hard, applied myself with a vengeance to the task in hand. I got one leg in and I got the other in. Hooray! A man who has finally put behind him the spectre of thirty years of unwanted celibacy-I'm in!-cannot have felt a greater surge of triumph and self-vindication than I I did at that point.

Such exultation was short-lived, however, for these trousers were wet too. Somehow, I had put back on the wet pair I had just taken off."

Tyler v. Tyler on Twitter

I still don't really understand the appeal of Twitter and understand even less the amount of attention it's gotten, but I read these two opposing viewpoints within minutes of each other and I think they sum up the pros and cons handily.

"How has it come to be that adults in mature settings can bring themselves to say things like: “I just made a tweet about my walk to work”?

Excuse me. You did what on your way to work? Did anybody see you doing it? Do you know there are laws against that sort of thing? You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested for whatever it was you were doing in public because it’s offensive and it pollutes the environment. On second thought, perhaps you should have been arrested for invading the privacy of others, for making your “tweets” all over the place and fouling up an already overburdened media and social networking landscape."

and

"Most of all, the search function helps you tap into a real time conversation on just about any topic you want, including the lecture you just gave. Google is wonderful but it's hard to sort through the mess and figure out where the conversation is now. For sampling opinion on either movies or music, Twitter is essential, or even for researching a forthcoming blog post. Think of it as Google focused on one time-slice and giving the weight of crowd opinion no more than linear force."

Tyler Brule: Bliss of a Twitter-Free Moment

Tyler Cowen: In Praise of Twitter

Deadline? Do you mean train schedule?

This Slate article is comprised of accomplished personages' answers to the question of how they get things done. I'm sure it's a fascinating glimpse into the creative process. Unfortunately, being as I am apparently eleven, Elliot Spitzer's completely sensible response just made me giggle.

"There is nothing like an incipient deadline and three cups of coffee to get the job done."

Slate: Stars! They're Just as Disorganized as Us! via Smarterware

The lost Torah of Kabul

The subject of this L.A. Times article, the self-described last Jew in Afghanistan, is understandably tight-lipped about why he stayed and how he's gotten by. But I bet there's a at least a book's worth of drama on what seems to be the most painful subject- whatever happened between him and the man who was, until his death in 2005, one of the last two Jews in Afghanistan. For starters:

"As their squabbling intensified, Levy reported his housemate to the Taliban-run government...The Taliban responded by seizing the holy scroll and jailing both men. Despite extensive efforts, the Torah was never found, the cousin said. "

L.A. Times: Afghan Jew a one-man upholder of tradition

Poor woman

I don't presume to know what is going through the First Lady's head; but as a fellow tall woman I can say in her shoes I'd be thinking "ohhhhh I could snap you like a twig!"

The Awl: Silvio Berlusconi Wants Warmer American Relations

Ok...progress?

July 8, 2009:

"Above all, the intention to do good must not be considered incompatible with the effective capacity to produce goods," Benedict said. "Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers."

September 24, 2009:

"Mr. Gotti Tedeschi's appointment, one Vatican official said, shows the bank is "moving in the direction of more transparency, but it's hard to predict what concrete changes will be made."

...

In the late 1980s, Italian magistrates investigated the IOR [Vatican Bank]for contributing to the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. The Vatican, which was a shareholder in the bank, repeatedly denied wrongdoing and invoked a treaty with Italy that shields the Vatican from Italian investigations under its status as an independent sovereign state. The Vatican, denying any wrongdoing, eventually agreed to pay $250 million to Banco Abrosiano's creditors."

CNN: Pope blasts capitalism ahead of G-8 meeting

WSJ: Vatican Revamps Its Bank's Ranks