Ike always looked shifty to me

Whenever I try to think of my favorite president, as one does, I'm always stumped. If it weren't for those two atomic bombs, I'd pick Harry Truman in a heartbeat. Which is why I was a little affronted by this snippet from a mental_floss quiz:

"By his own estimation, the $600,000 he grossed for the work [his memoirs] netted just $37,000 in profit after office and personnel expenses (which added up to $153,000) and taxes. The 67 percent bite the government took could have been eased by President Eisenhower, who had the option to deem the work exempt from federal and state taxes and treated as a capital gain, as Truman was not an author by trade. Truman had done as much for Eisenhower when his World War II memoir was published during Truman's presidency. Truman's appeal for reciprocity drew no response from the White House, a manifestation of the chill between the two men that would last throughout the Eisenhower years."

Emphasis mine. Poor Harry.

mental_floss: Second Acts: The Post-White House Lives of Past Presidents

Get back in your bottle!

I'm not sure why she's in this Barbara Eden getup, I don't particularly want to know why, I just know it's a shame.

NYT: Still in Development

To Infinity and Beyond!

I thought I'd be thrilled to fill up my first solo apartment. I leafed through furniture catalogs while watching TV when I was in still in grade school. Thing is, it's exciting picking out furniture in theory (maybe in the same way 900 page history books are exciting), but forking over the cash for it has been less so. But my walls are very sad and beige and calling for help. These posters are sold by 826LA, the tutoring and writing center in Los Angeles, which for complicated urban planning reasons related to its older sibling 826 Valencia's home in Oakland also sells time travel paraphenalia; and even without the feel-good source they beat a Toulouse-Lautrec print any day.

826LA Store: Sundries

No tags

It took me a while to figure out these paintings, which is why it seems odd to refer to them as graffiti.

Wooster Collective: Walls

Tell me what to do

"Ask for money and people give you advice, ask for advice and people give you money." If that's true, this guy's website of videos with Mr. Miyagi-like snippets of wisdom from elderly people he encounters must be a real gravy train. I have to say, my grandfather always has good advice- about money, which fabrics are appropriate for which latitude and season, and which beer has the most alcohol and is therefore the most cost effective- and while these clips are charming, I have yet to find any that are so practical.

Life Advice from Old People

The Arms Trader

Yesterday my very exciting Excel-related tasks were accompanied by this repeat of a This American Life episode, spruced up with a few new voices. The story, about an incompetent but eager-to- please shady character who gets mixed up in an arms sting, isn't a thriller- the main character is so bumbling that the U.S. government has to supply him with decoy customers, vendors, and even a fake missle. So did he actually committ a crime if none of it was real? A jury in Newark thought so. When I first heard it, my knee-jerk reaction is that while he's not Santa Claus, this guy clearly was too dysfunctional, at times comically so, to cross the line between wanting to do something and making it happen. Back at Our Lady of Hope, thinking bad thoughts just got you five Hail Marys and six Our Fathers. But the new additions to the piece brought on an even more troubling conclusion this time I heard the episode- who's going after people who are actually dangerous while the government goes after the low-hanging fruit?

This American Life: The Arms Trader

I wish I lived in Antwerp

Sort of a real-life version of what's happening here, from ad broad: "I've posted about flashmobs before. But what makes this stunt in Central Station of Antwerp, Belgium so refreshing was that it wasn't orchestrated by a global brand to push product, but as a promotion for a local TV program looking for a lead in the musical "The Sound of Music." 200 dancers. 2 rehearsals. 4 minutes of delight for early morning commuters."

Won't you be mine?

My friend works at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and has been watching this and other Mr. Rogers videos for a project she's working on. Does she have a great job or what? These "how it's made" segments used to be among my favorite parts of Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, etc. Now I think it's interesting to watch this video about how crayons are made because in the twenty years or so since I first saw it the title has become outdated- every job performed by a person on this tape is probably now done by a machine.

Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood: How People Make Crayons

Stumped by number 10!

Yesterday I was humbled by mental_floss's challenge to name all the presidents in 8 minutes (sorry Madison...And Cleveland..and Zachary Taylor...and some more I've forgotten already) but I was expecting a perfect score on this quiz! Alas.

mental_floss: This American Quiz

That's a lot of...cheddar?

I'm moving to Italy to start a bank.

"Gianni Zonin, an Italian bank chairman and wine producer, is proposing that banks accept expensive wines and legs of prosciutto as collateral on loans to producers....'The Italian bank Credito Emiliano has long stored hundreds of thousands of parmesan wheels, worth about 300 euros each, in warehouses as collateral while they age.'"

Planet Money: Loan Collateral, Italian Style

If the Cosby Show took place in Jackson Heights...

The Huxtables are my favorite TV family. The pinnacle of my spat of internships with radio stations and wire services was the day I got to interview the guy who played both Denise's husband in the later years and Dr. Huxtable's attempted replacement for Elvin in one of the first few seasons. They always seemed to have a lot of fun with their title sequences, here's one that might have been even better.

I'd never check voicemail without fear again

Vincent Kartheiser on the voice he adopted for ur-tool Pete Campbell:

"Indeed, the actor admits to adopting Pete’s sinister, super-Waspy voice “to weird people out. A few guys have asked me to leave messages for their girlfriends as Pete Campbell. I like that.”"

New York Magazine: In Defense of Pete Campbell

Where am I?

The first time I went to Italy I had the eery feeling that I'd been transported back to my home of Long Island. Economist Tyler Cowen, blogging from Sicily, seems to have the same impression:

"The young people look like they're from Rome, the old people look like they're from New Jersey."

Marginal Revolution: Palermo Notes

Virtual Spitball

I debated whether to comment on this because I didn't want to be negative, but this is so absurd I think it qualifies as self-parody. Maybe I should add a tag for "Aren't I marvelous".

Also on the stove was a huge pot of water that I was bringing to a boil as I prepared to can two quarts and four pints of local apricots. In a couple of hours, when my husband came home, I'd make our simple dinner -- a broiled veal steak (a good value at less than $5.00 for the steak that we'd share) and a salad of baby arugula, mushrooms, red onions and lemon vinaigrette. I'd bought the red onions at the Saturday Greenmarket but the other ingredients were from my neighborhood supermarket's very good produce department....But I was distracted. My mind was back reading the newspaper, specifically Michael Pollan's article, "No One Cooks Here Anymore." ....So no one cooks anymore? "How can this be?" I think to myself as I stir my tomato paste, slice my apricots, and take the steak out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature.

The City Cook: Off the Couch. Back to the Kitchen.

Red envelopes

It's no secret that Netflix is a big part of my life. My mom has all kinds of tricks that she says get her movies turned around faster, but this article about the company's operations indicate that the customer can't do much to improve their efficiency:

"Unmarked Netflix trucks are dispatched to the local main post office at 3:00AM six days per week to pick up cartons of returned DVDs. (Thus, getting your disc in the post early in the day doesn’t mean you’ll get your next movie any faster; there is only one pick-up per day.) The incoming cartons are handed off to employees who open each box and then spend their entire eight-hour shift taking a disc out of the box, removing it from the envelope, making sure that the title matches the sleeve, wiping it down in one motion and inspecting it for scratches or cracks, and then placing it in one of two bins (one for good discs, one for rejects). Seasoned employees perform this sequence about 650 times per hour, which makes them susceptible to repetitive stress injuries. As a precaution, there is a mandatory stretching/callisthenics break every 65 minutes. "

Mental_floss: The Secret Inner Workings of Netflix

Watch out for frisky pig around minute 5

Speaking of Little House on the Prairie, after an exhilerating day of making spreadsheets I thought this video by the owners of Nature's Harmony Farm about their daily tasks looked pretty idyllic. Then I realized where they were taking the cows. Note: there's a Green Day concert about halfway through, it threw me off a little but they go back to the farm after a few seconds.

Nature's Harmony Farm: A Farmer's Weekend

Libertarian on the Prairie

My love on Little House on the Prairie dates back to the early nineties when I asked my mom if we could try making butter for Thanksgiving, thereby condemning my brother and I to almost a decade of shaking plastic containers of cream on November Thursday mornings. Aside from some un-PC illustrations of Native Americans I didn't know there was much political subtext to the books. Turns out I was wrong!

"This emphasis on self-sufficiency may not have been a coincidence: by the time she collaborated on Little House, Rose [daughter of Laura and a major contributor to the series] had already become fiercely political, and would come to be known as one of the "founding mothers" of the Libertarian movement. Infuriated by what she saw as the infantilization of the New Deal, Rose was surely glad to have such a bully pulpit for the spread of her message, organically housed in the context of another era's privations."

Jezebel: Little House on the Fountainhead?

New Yorker: WILDER WOMEN

Wouldn't it be lovely?

'Wired's Gadget Lab has done just that and found that the "combo of iPod Touch and MiFi might just be better than the iPhone."'

Until the Touch gets just a leeeetle cheaper I'll be whispering this to myself every time I feel a wrenching pang of longing when I see an iPhone.

Atlantic Business: The End of the iPhone?