Gulfstream

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300662 Apple documentation: “What is a third-party product?” And who are the first and second parties? 21:43

http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/06/great-
photographers-on-internet.html Great photographs, as reviewed by people on the internet. “Sam, GORGEOUS scene I luv it! Too bad u couldn't get a little more color in sky area. Blues should be a little more saturated. Also the rule is u need to have either sky or land (lake?) dominate, not just split right down the middle. Try to move the camera after u focus. A great shot though please see my entries and leave your comments. Ted.” 21:34

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2006/07/31/why-is-it-that-
adults-now-deliver-newspapers/ Why do adults in cars now deliver newspapers? Levitt doesn’t know, but there are a few good theories in the comments, e.g. (1) parents are worried about the children’s safety, and so don’t let their kids deliver papers; (2) less houses get newspapers delivered, so it’s more efficient for someone in a car to do it; (3) increases in minimum-wage laws have made it a more attractive job for adults. 21:02

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1832135,00.html An alternative cinema in Brighton is making their own Coca-Cola. (For some reason the recipe calls for a very small amount of vodka.) 20:44

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/
07/23/the_last_ones_standing/?page=full Things I didn’t know: there is still Shaker community, though there are only four of them left. Their website explains why they share all their goods: “Those who give up all material things for the sake of the Gospel learn by that same Gospel that they may learn to live without assurance of the morrow in joyous confidence that they will lack nothing. The spirit of Christian poverty is more than the absence of wealth. The New Testament never condemns wealth as such, only when a person’s possessions come between him and God is there any real danger.” 20:39

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/us/30pastor.html An article on the pastor of an evangelical megachurch who preaches that the church should stay out of politics has (predictably) got NY Times readers all excited: it’s currently the most emailed story on the site.

[Boyd] said he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus singing “God Bless America” and a video of fighter jets flying over a hill silhouetted with crosses.

“I thought to myself, ‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with the cross?’ ” he said in an interview.

(Did the church play a positive role in the civil rights movement, as a critic suggests?) 20:18

http://www.slate.com/id/2146225/ Long Tail doubters: Slate says Anderson is overreaching; the WSJ says his data is bogus. I’m still pretty skeptical of this (previously); whatever the shape of Amazon’s sales tail, it’s a lot fatter than it would have been because if you want a rare book, Amazon’s pretty much the only place to get it. (Another way of looking at this is that if Amazon were the only shop you could buy from (if all purchases went through Amazon), there would be no long tail.) 08:47

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060726/ap_on_re_us/rubber_sidewalks The surprising advantages of rubber sidewalks: they last longer than concrete (in areas with lots of tree roots and/or snow clearing), they’re environmentally friendly (they’re made from old car tires, and weigh a quarter of the equivalent in concrete) and they’re easier on the joints. I wonder how well wheels roll on them—will they serve as anti-skater devices as well? (Looks like Yahoo News is finally using some sensible URLs.) 07:44

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD8P4fE8Yn0 Some really fun Japanese Rube Goldberg devices. 08:48

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902 “Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence”: “... Little did such founding fathers as George Washington, George Jefferson, and ***ERIC IS A FAG*** know that their small, querulous republic would later become the most powerful and prosperous nation in history, the Unified States Of America.” 08:47

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article1192079.ece Fifty-year-old Bill Buford—former editor of Granta, and former literary editor of The New Yorker—recently spent two years working in various New York kitchens, including that of Mario Batali’s Babbo: “Babbo’s kitchen combined two of Buford’s great loves: combative male bonding and learning. ‘The kitchen was a kind of aggressive, hands-on university,’ he admits. ‘The excitement I felt was akin to reading John Donne for the first time or finally getting a command of Shakespeare. It was the kind of excitement I had in university.’” 22:41

http://www.slate.com/id/2146169/ “In defence of M. Night Shyamalan”—though this is a “defence” of the “with friends like these, who needs enemies?” variety. (Similar piece at Crushed by Inertia that quotes from the Shyamalan tell-all.) 16:09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL6E7R4IbCM Three Japanese guys domino a whole apartment-worth of stuff. 13:26

http://www.slate.com/id/2146220 Reviews of street fashion photo blogs. Big ups The Satorialist (suitably). 01:52

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5190256.stm Athens (where 200,000 Muslims now live) is getting its first new Mosque since the Ottoman Empire. (Spain only recently got its first Mosque since the 16th Century also.) 01:48

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5168064.stm Seems like a bad sign: Airbus has taken no new orders for the A380 this year (more analysis). 01:46

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/19/huangyangtan_mystery/
Why does China have a 900m x 700m scale model of a 450km x 350km area of the Indian/Chinese border? (speculation) 12:06

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tnyp9tRXRo Scene from the Miami Vice pilot, uses Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.” Bill Simmons, in his pretty useful YouTube Hall of Fame, says: “Two great things about this one: First, it still holds up -- even now -- and "Vice" is about as dated as it gets. Second, up until that point, there had never been anything on TV even remotely resembling that scene. Remember, this was the same era when A) they were still freezing people's faces mid-laugh during the opening credits of any sitcom; and B) nobody realized that you could use music to accentuate dramatic TV scenes. So this was like watching Bill Russell block someone's running hook shot in the mid-'50s for the first time.” 22:11

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5179232.stm Are cities the new countries? “The most important place to London is New York and to New York is London and Tokyo … London belongs to a country composed of itself and New York.” Mmm, tenuous. 19:34

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TNTq3nhuh0 Stealing a bike in NYC: guy steals a bike (his own) four times, and only once (apparently) does he get accosted by a member of the public—by a guy who offers him advice. At one point the cameraman gets told off by the cops for filming from the street. I meant to take some pictures of locked NYC bicycles to accompany this picture of Italian “secure” bicycles but totally forgot. 18:30

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldonliner/179379698/ Recreation of Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.” 18:11

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/business/media/17adco.html Advertising on eggs: “The best thing about the egg concept was its intrusiveness. … As EggFusion sees it, consumers look at a single egg shells at least a few times: when they open a carton in the store to see if any eggs are cracked, if they transfer them from the carton to the refrigerator, and when they crack them open.” (CBS liked the concept so much they’ve paid for exclusive rights to the laser etching technology.) 12:06

http://www.woostercollective.com/2006/07/another_crate_piece_
from_melbourne.html Milk crate Tetris. 15:57

http://www.viceland.com/int/dd.php?id=225 “There’s a certain combo of facial features and surrounding accessories that screams, ‘I would be an amazing host for a call-in radio show about relationship advice’ so loud even deaf people can hear it.”

I really admire the writing in Vice’s DOs and DON’Ts, those pithy captions aren’t as easy to toss off as they look. Even the winner of the caption contest doesn’t quite nail the tone, and the other entries were apparently rubbish. (The New Yorker’s caption contest is similarly disappointing: despite bringing the distributed power of the internet to bear on the cartoon captioning problem, the results are usually only about as good as an average New Yorker cartoon.) 13:32

http://persistent.info/overplot/ Overheard in NY + Google Maps mashup. Nicely done! 18:06

http://www.slate.com/id/2145424/ Headbutt connoisseurs are raving about Zidane’s recent effort (see also). 11:24

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06187/703844-28.stm The perils of introducing too many snack variants: in the last two years, after Nestle introduced Kit-Kats in flavours like lime crush, blood orange, red berry and more, UK sales dropped 18 percent. 21:12

http://www.mijksenaar.com/pauls_corner/index.html A short piece on airport signage and wayfinding solutions. (One of the reasons I like airports is that I like looking at the (generally excellent) signage.) 21:03

http://iht.com/articles/2006/07/09/features/dlede10.php On the origin and revival of Matthew Carter’s font Georgia. 18:46

http://www.ifoapplestore.com/stores/glass_staircase.html A lot of work (and patents) have gone into the glass staircases at Apple Stores. 10:27

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2709-2002Apr29 The Nocebo effect: thinking that bad things will happen is a self-fulfilling prophesy. (So should doctors lie to patients about their prospects?) 10:49