Jim Leff's Slog

Apple Genius Seizes and Screws With My Phone

2012-02-02T15:52:00.003-05:00

Last year, there were reports that any iPhones coming in for servicing were being returned with tamper-proof screws swapped in, to prevent people from modifying the innards. The Geniuses and techs reported (off the record) feeling "icky" about doing this, but they had to follow orders. It was creepy, but probably borderline legal, since the phones were being serviced anyway.

Well, how about this? Yesterday, I brought my iPhone 4 and wireless keyboard to an Apple genius (sic) to help with a problem connecting the two. It was fixed, working perfectly, and I was about to thank her and leave when the genius abruptly told me she'd take my phone to the back room just "to make sure it works with her keyboard" ....and off she ran. With my phone. Stunned by the non-sequitor, I had no time to object. Reappearing five minutes later, she beamed about how, yep, it works with her keyboard! And my phone had the new screws.

This is a whole other level. If they replace screws during a servicing, there's weasel room to excuse the swap, creepy though it is. But if they grab your phone from you and do unrelated, unapproved, and unacknowledged stuff under false and ridiculous pretenses (wait, you want to try it with your keyboard? Huh?!?), that's well outside weasel boundaries and into impropriety and, likely, illegality.

I'm trying to decide how big a fuss to make over it. Anyway, I guess we need to treat Apple Store genius visits like prison visits - hold onto your stuff and don't let it be taken from you under any circumstances.

Facebook Ain't It

2012-02-01T20:14:00.014-05:00

Facebook's going IPO, and we'll all soon be able to invest. I believe it's a sucker's bet, and here's why.

Facebook's valuation is so ginormous that they've got to grow their advertising market by something like 30% over each of the next ten years. That's just to break even with expectations. To actually make profit for investors, results must exceed even that!

Such a future might, in fact, be imaginable if this were the Ultimate Web Phenom everyone's been waiting for. Netscape wasn't it. Yahoo wasn't it. AOL wasn't it, nor was MySpace. A number of increasingly large companies have been anointed Ultimate Web Phenom, only to be swept aside in turn. Facebook seems different because of its immense userbase, cultural ubiquity, and thriving revenue (something none of those other companies enjoyed). But it will be another transitional player, because it's still not the optimal model for matching viewers and ads.

Facebook makes its money by selling eyeballs to advertisers in highly specific bundles (teenaged dance enthusiasts, 40-ish female tennis players, etc). Marketers love this specificity, and pay through the wazoo for it. But while Facebook, and its vaunted data, allows much smarter advertising than the old gambit of sticking big banner ads in front of everyone en masse, it's still not optimal. In fact, it's pretty damned primitive, and may never mature within Facebook's framework.

Facebook categorizes us via our stated interests. But we state as our interests those areas in which we're already experienced - the realms we're so deeply into that they define us, and are therefore labels we publicly don. For example, several of my stated interests are yoga-ish, so I get flooded with ads for yoga sticky mats and hatha yoga books. But I'm already into yoga, so I don't need Facebook to tell me where to buy sticky mats and asana books. I'm the guy other people ask for tips on that. I never click on yoga ads, just like you never click on ads for things you know lots about. Facebook knows what we're knowledgable about, but knowledgeable people don't click random topical little ads. They're for saps and neophytes.

The areas where I'm more receptive to ads are ones where I'm a sappish neophyte. For example, I'm considering taking up Chinese cookery. So I'm open to ads for woks, stir frying classes, etc. If I were a seasoned enthusiast, I'd already be tapped into all that, and spurn such ads.

The problem is that we don't list our new and passing interests in our Facebook profiles. And while Facebook may eventually encourage us to do so, none of us would keep that up religiously. I put care into listing interests which define me. They're solid and static; in fact, they're the things that solidify me. But I really have to think to come up with a list of things I'm toying with being interested in at any given moment. That stuff's dynamic, semi-conscious, and volatile - not the sort of thing we proudly broadcast in a static profile.

Facebook will likely never be the vehicle for tallying fresher, more impressionable interests. It's just not what it's built to be. So I will continue to smirk at its ads for yoga, trombone, beer, travel, and art, knowing none will hit the vanishingly small sweet spot of interest for a devotee like me.

So, unless Zuckerberg has something remarkable up his sleeve (not that it's easy for monstrously huge public corporations to make dramatic shifts), Facebook's not the final word.

(Obviously, not every Facebook user is a deep expert in every listed interest. And, obviously, lots of ads are being clicked on, hence Facebook's $2B annual ad revenue. But my point stands. The ability to advertise to groups via "interests" is heady and new for marketers, but Facebook's deeply dug in to the wrong end of that continuum. Yes, people are clicking - more than they ever did on mass banner ads - but they could click a lot more. So, like Netscape, Yahoo, AOL, and MySpace before it, Facebook may be bigger and better than what's come before, but it ain't the final word, either.)

(Also: I do realize that, ideally, Facebook would sell demographics, rather than individual interests. But most people don't tell Facebook their age, their job, their income, their religion, their race, etc. The demographic info is actually quite weak. The data hinges on interests, which is why, for all their prowess and advancement, I'm still seeing slews of frigging sticky mat ads whenever I surf in, even though I have never ever clicked a single one of them - so much for the vaunted narrow segmentation!)

Best Political Show on TV

2012-01-28T16:57:00.017-05:00

I'm not a fan of MSNBC. I find Rachel Maddow overbearingly partisan and maddeningly repetitive. Ed Schultz is a holdover from the Air America Radio scheme of putting forth liberal windbags as obnoxious as their conservative counterparts. Lawrence O'Donnell is more thoughtful and understated, and has deep political experience, but, like his colleagues, his tone is often condescending. These hosts all assume themselves to be broadcasting to idiots, and talk down incessantly (which is why, I suppose, Maddow finds it necessary to repeat each point twelve times).

But.....there's one dynamite MSNBC show you shouldn't miss. Up with Chris Hayes, buried very early on weekend mornings (Saturdays 7-9 a.m. and Sundays 8–10 a.m., Eastern), is highly intelligent. So intelligent, in fact, that I need to pay close attention to keep up. The show is devoted to analysis rather than persuasion or process, and features the sort of discussion insiders have with one other when the public's not present (as demonstrated by Marc Maron's WTF Podcast, great things happen when interviewees assume few people are listening).

Which means everyone doesn't always take the side you'd expect. Last week, Eliot Spitzer offered an interesting and insightful defense(!!) of the Citizens United decision (start the video - after the quick toothpaste commercial - at 3'40" - and, yeah, Melissa Harris-Perry is pretty old-school noisy/indignant, but she's not always on).

As you'd expect on MSNBC, there is a mildly (and sometimes more than mildly) lefty bias, but a conservative is usually present, serving a beefier role than mere straw man. There's little spin - the show's way too smart to rehash the usual tired dogma and catchphrases - just smart talk and analysis. What a relief to hear politics discussed without self-conscious use of the platform to further an agenda.

Good journalism serves its audience, rather than journalists and their bosses. And it doesn't talk down; it challenges you to keep up, and to question your assumptions. "Up" is still young, but, so far, it's very good journalism.

(I wonder where they get the muffins no one on the panel's ever eating; they look great.)

Good Counter Arguments Against Defunding Space Exploration

2012-01-26T12:37:00.001-05:00

These are the best arguments I've seen in favor of space exploration even in tough economic times. Quoting again (as I did last week) from the "Starship Asterisk" forum (the discussion site for the much loved Astronomy Picture of the Day), someone said:

"The money should be instead used for disease research, such as a cure for cancer."

...and someone else added:

"I would rather have a (much needed) subway line in my area than another rover on Mars."

The replies were:

"No planetary mission has been mounted that didn't return a wealth of new information- much of it applicable to our understanding of the Earth as well. And of course, the money invested in these programs isn't thrown away, but is spent developing new technology, and helps the economy both directly and indirectly.

"It's a mistake to think that you can't invest in space exploration without also investing in other areas of research. And realistically, if we were not spending this money on Mars, I doubt very much we'd be spending it on disease research. That's not really how scientific budgeting, or budgeting in general, works in this country."

and...

"Are we really going to argue about the relatively insignificant amount of money that NASA's amazing projects take again? If $2.5 billion dollars could cure any disease it would have been done a long time ago.

"For that matter, why don't you take that $2.5 billion from the $21 billion Harry Potter franchise? Or the $5.6 billion NCAA budget? Why should we have movies, books, or basketball when someone out there has cancer or needs a subway line?"

and...

"I'd rather have another rover on Mars than a subway in your area! (Seriously, there's no chance that money which doesn't go to NASA would ever be used to build a subway line.)"

Not all the logic is airtight. NASA is, of course, funded from public coffers, unlike Harry Potter or basketball. But if we're talking, generally, about where humanity ought to spend its resources, then, yeah, space exploration is at least as important as that stuff. Perhaps we should be spending every last dollar to heal our sick and feed our hungry (in fact, strike that "perhaps"). But we don't. And as long as we're going to be selfish and frivolous, space exploration, like all science, deserves its tiny slice of the pie.

Free App Makes Portable Audio Sound Great

2012-01-24T12:31:00.003-05:00

Programming/guitar wiz Bill Monk hipped me this morning to Bongiovi DPS, a just-released iOs app he's been checking out.

It optimizes audio for small speakers (like iphone or ipod) or for Apple headphones, dock, airplay, and bluetooth. And the difference is profound. It's a creation of the guy who founded legendary Powerplant studios in NYC. And, best of all, it's free (you can upgrade for a couple bucks to make it more versatile and kill the ads). The sole downside is it won't play any DRM tracks (i.e. music you've bought via iTunes).

There's a version for desktop computers, which has been around for a while, too. You can get a free trial, but I haven't used it because I have decent speakers hooked up to my computer.

Here's a direct link to its page in the App Store.

Betting on Disaster For Fun and Profit

2012-01-21T12:20:00.018-05:00

I've long been attracted to the idea of investing in companies in the midst of disaster. Emotional investors always overreact, and there's no more emotional moment than corporate disaster. So unless a given disaster is fatal (and it's not easy to kill a company to bankruptcy in one fell swoop), the stock will always spring back, at least some. The market will, once heads cool, correct the overreaction. And this strikes me as a terrific opportunity for pre-cooled heads.

Have a look at the one month view of Carnival Cruise (CCL), which suffered an, ahem, setback last week with the whole cowardly incompetent captain $90M boat sinking thing.

The stock sunk (sorry) on Tuesday, the next trading day after the news hit, by about 15%. From there, it's been a steady rise. If one had invested Tuesday morning, in the $29s, by Friday afternoon, when it was back up to the $31s, you'd have made nearly 7% profit. And I bet in a couple weeks, it will go to $32, for 10% profit. A great return for a quick hit investment!

Two things to note:

1. This wasn't a situation where more harmful news was likely to unfurl. If we learned that the captain had been drunk, or if additional deaths were announced, that wouldn't have had much additional effect on the stock price. This was a one-hit disaster, and Carnival took the hit all at once. In other words, the low of the trading day following the disaster was likely the true low.

2. None of this could be imagined to permanently injure (much less destroy) the company in the long term. Short to mid-term, sure, some people will be (justifiably!) scared to take cruises. But it's not an existential crisis. It was clear to reasonable observers that Carnival would eventually recover. So buying in at the bottom wasn't a particularly risky thing to do.

Also, have a look at the stock of Martha Stewart Omnimedia (MSO) in March of 2004, which includes the March 5 verdict of Ms. Stewart's insider trading case. It plunged from mid-teens to as low as $8.55 (though only for a moment; really, mid-$9s were the effective bottom). By March 24, three weeks after the bomb hit, the stock had scratched its way back to $11 for a 16% gain from $9.50.

If you watch for this sort of thing, you'll notice that the market always overreacts, and (barring unforeseen and unrelated circumstance), there's usually a short term snap back...if, and only if, the disaster is both one-pointed and non-existential.

Two caveats:

1. It's easier to spot a bottom (the point to buy at) when reviewing historical charts than it is to do so as events unfold in real time. But post-disaster lows tend to appear sometime during the following trading day. On the other hand, there don't seem to be many contrarians with my perspective out there, so there's usually plenty of time to buy in before the overreaction's corrected.

2. Short-term trades such as this are steeply taxed, which eat away plenty of the profit. You might hold the investment for a year so you enjoy long term capital gains rates, but then you're playing a whole other game, and none of the above pertains. I'm talking about short-term recovery, which has to do with market activity, not long-term recovery, which has to do with corporate competence...and which is, obviously, far less predictable.

PS - you can play a bigger, broader, longer version of the same game by investing in index mutual funds (which spread your investment out to most or all stocks) whenever the market falls super low. The same irrational overreaction (both upward and downward) usually takes place, creating opportunity for the cool-headed. And this involves less risk (since you're not betting on one single company) and lower taxation (since you'd be holding stocks through longer swing cycles - years, not days). The downside is that it's incredibly hard to find the bottom of a broad market disaster. We knew on January 17 that Carnival had hit its low, and that's quite a valuable piece of information. But when the broad market slides, the low is anyone's guess. On the other hand, "low" is good enough; you needn't nail the "very lowest" - at least, not unless you're prone to greed and regret!

Small But Helpful Sign-in Tip

2012-01-21T11:04:00.000-05:00

When signing in to Gmail, you don't need to enter your whole email address. For example, I'm jimleff.ny@gmail.com, and I log on with "jimleff.ny".

You can do the same when signing in to Google or any of Google's services if your account is registered with a Gmail address. Just leave off the @gmail.com portion (if your account is registered with, say, an Earthlink or Yahoo address, you've got to type the whole thing).

Lots of people don't realize this.

Disappointed by Obama?

2012-01-21T01:16:00.005-05:00

As a moderate, my two favorite current politicians (not counting Elizabeth Warren, who's not yet been elected to office) are Mike Bloomberg and Barack Obama. I like sensible, practical-minded non-idealogues who don't showboat, propagandize, or spew ditzy talking points. People who, whether you agree with them or not, are clearly trying to do their practical best (not for themselves but for their constituency) within the limits of circumstance.

So I'll be voting for Obama - though I'd have considered a moderate Republican, like Massachusetts Governor Romney, who's unfortunately been replaced with candidate Romney, who doesn't believe in evolution, hates the sort of health policy he himself initiated, and rubs his hands in glee at the thought of attacking Iran.

Make no mistake about it: Barack Obama is, clearly, plainly, oh-so-obviously, a moderate. If you were watching carefully, you saw that he was branded as a Socialist radical shortly after he took office (when he chose to continue the Bush bailout policy), and they've kept the sticker affixed to him with much tape, spit, and Elmer's glue. If Barack Obama's a radical, then Richard Nixon was a commie.

So at least one of the oft-repeated lies about Obama is untrue. The other is that he's done nothing. It's true that his promise of conciliation and joint effort was a non-starter (I used to talk about that stuff, too, until I realized the radical wing of the Republican party would prefer to permanently harm our global fiscal leadership than compromise or reconcile). Yes, it's true that Gitmo is still open and we're still sending drones inside sovereign borders out of American exceptionalism (creating collateral damage certain to fuel ongoing hatred completing the vicious cycle). And it's true that the conciliatory attitude he was elected for was used against him in many negotiations with Congress, making him appear weak.

But in the case of foreign policy, I think Obama was profoundly shaken when made fully aware of threats we know little about (his reversal on issues like Gitmo and drones certainly weren't done to garner political capital - conservative hawks may have been quietly pleased, but they ain't ever voting for the guy). And in terms of conciliation, geez, that's what he was elected for! He's damned for trying to do what he said, and he's damned for not trying to do what he said.

Democrats are, by definition, awfully hard to please.

But the thing is, he's quietly done much good, despite the complaints of uninformed folks (and pundits) who mindlessly parrot conventional wisdom. There are lists circulating of Obama's often under-celebrated accomplishments, and they're actually quite impressive. Moderates who share my dislike of political showboating, should take the time to seek such information out, since Obama is - per our preference! - not one for showy proclamations of "Mission Accomplished".

The problem with accomplishment lists is their cold, empty terseness. But have a look at this curiosity: a paen to Obama from a conservative (Andrew Sullivan): "How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics" ("The right calls him a socialist, the left says he sucks up to Wall Street, and independents think he's a wimp. Andrew Sullivan on how the president may just end up outsmarting them all"). But the title doesn't go as far as the article does.

It's a great read, but if you don't have time, check out Andrew Tobias' highlighted encapsulation.

If you're a conservative who imagines Obama's too liberal, this may change your mind. If you're an Obama supporter who thinks he's been ineffectual, this may reassure you.

If you're a liberal who resents Obama's moderation....well, I can't help you there. In this country, in this time, a true liberal couldn't possibly win. Consider that George McGovern, an establishment liberal running against an ominous sweaty kook back in a far more lefty era with a hugely energized and energetic base, was pummeled. There will be no viable liberal candidate in the forseeable future, and America will remain center/right, so get real and support a smart, practical, moderate like Obama, who'd fit your bill far better than a doctrinaire conservative pressured to pander to his nutty base.

Apple's Amazing New Textbook Initiative

2012-01-19T11:01:00.005-05:00

I've been following today's Apple announcement of their new initiative with text books. It's fantastic: free textbook reading and composing apps, astounding sleek futuristic interactivity...the result is going to be like total catnip for kids, and the major publishers are on board.

Two unstated upsides:

Announcing this as an education initiative is coy. This is more than about creating textbooks. Apple now has the best-ever e-book creation app, e-book reading app, and tablet e-book reader, period. The package is revolutionary in empowering anyone to self-publish ebooks (not just e-textbooks) for the iPad - and since iPad has such a huge lead over other tablets, it's hard to worry about this being a narrow, dead-ending platform.

Also, I don't know if Apple anticipates this, but their e-textbooks will get huge purchases from non-student adults. Wouldn't you welcome a chance to read through Biology or Chemistry (or "Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life", "Natural History Insects", E.O. Wilson's "Life on Earth", etc.) with mega-cool interactive and multimedia aids, for under $15 per book? The textbook end of this alone (and, again, this is about a lot more than textbooks) will tap the adult education market, the self-improvement market, and the documentary film market!

Two unstated downsides:

1. Poor kids can't afford to pay for their own textbooks.

2. Poor kids can't afford to buy an iPad.

And it would be disgusting if this amounted to yet another leg up for rich kids ("Turbocharging tomorrow's income disparity!"). So...there will have to be philanthropy.

Note about the announcement: Apple harms their message and image when they go over the top with inane touts. It's sloppy, and so unnecessary. E.g.:

"There is no reason to assume today that kids need to use the same tools they used in 1950. To do so is to prepare them for a world that's already passed."

"The iPad is more durable than paper."

C'mon....

Holy Crap We're Gonna See Real-Time Footage of a Black Hole!!

2012-01-19T08:35:00.019-05:00

Scientists are planning to network together a number of giant radio telescopes, which should result in real-time imaging of the enormous black hole at the center of the galaxy! (Black Hole Cam?)

Well, of course we won't see the black hole itself. But we'll see its event horizon - the trippy place where physics begins to get screwy and matter and energy edge toward the black hole's death grip.

Ok. I believe we're really in the future now!

Note to those who'd quibble at the term "real time" to describe photography of light that's traveled for 29,000 years: this is actually scientifically defensible. I learned about this earlier this year, and I started a thread on an astronomy forum so I could bone up and defend it here. But, what the hell, go check it out yourself. The first reply is interesting, though not very pertinent. The second, by Chris Peterson, is excellent, and the thread he links to is better still.

Tribute to Yahoo's Jerry Yang

2012-01-18T13:28:00.000-05:00

Jerry Yang, founder of Yahoo, has severed his connections with the company, pushed out by advocate stockholders and others fed-up with his poor leadership. And they're right. He's done little good for a very long time, and his company has, under his watch, squandered vast potential. He's been made a fool of. But I want to discuss an earlier time.

It is impossible to explain to anyone who wasn't online in the early 90s how critically important and amazing and trailblazing and invaluable Jerry Yang's Yahoo was at the dawn of the web.

The Internet evolved from a loose aggregation of academic computers which were, for years, gleefully scaled by tech-ish people in a spirit of sheer geeky brio. There was a gradual transition to the Internet we know today: an inviting glossy service where everyone we know dives in and gets anything anytime. Tim Berners-Lee's browser was the technological key, but Yahoo was the human key.

Back in the mid 1990's, non-geeks would ask me what I actually do on the internet. Until Yahoo, there was no satisfying answer. Then Yang and David Filo built a directory of interesting places to go and stuff to do on the Information Highway. We take for granted such online directories these days. But at that moment, it had never been done before. Online people didn't need it; they had their nerdy agendas. And newbies weren't exactly flooding into cyberspace. The Internet was still a cold and forbidding environment, and Yahoo made it warm, inviting, and super-cool. This is what you can do on the Internet! Very soon after, the flood of newbies commenced. The two phenomena were not unrelated.

If Yahoo hadn't built their directory, someone else surely would have. But Yahoo was spectacularly early. And spectacularly good. I'd been using telnet and usenet and all the other fragmented online tools, and could see how the Web would integrate them all, but Yahoo staked out the first big-time user-friendly point of orientation. And it was so cool. You can't imagine how cool it was, especially in light of how extraordinarily uncool Yahoo eventually became.

Yes, the company badly lost its way at some point. But that takes away nothing from its awesome importance. Einstein's career didn't exactly light the world on fire after his early relativity work. But we revere him, and I revere Jerry Yang.

The Real Secret

2012-01-17T12:57:00.006-05:00

"The Secret" was a popular neo-occult system introduced a few years ago. It taught how to get what you want.

The method was legit. But it's a wicked genie prank, because the problem with getting what you want, as any hedge fund manager or candy store employee will tell you, is that it never satisfies. It never fills the empty place. We convince ourselves a bit more money or power or sex or this-or-that will slake the desperate thirst, yet it so obviously does not. Never has. Never will. Failure to register this evident truth represents the very kernel of human foolishness.

The real secret is not to learn to get what you want. It's to learn to want what you get.

I linked once before to the Tale of the Russian Cosmonaut, but here it is again:

TVHounding and Alan Sepinwall

2012-01-17T00:19:00.003-05:00

I had dinner last night with friends who are passionate about sussing out cool stuff. Hounds are hounds, really; it doesn't matter if it's chow, movies, music, books, youtube videos, or iphone apps. There's a mindset where you're convinced great stuff is happening and you feel compelled to find it, love it, and evangelize it, and the mindset transcends genre. Pizza fanatics are more likely to go of their way to buy slightly more comfortable socks, movie geeks tend to listen to interesting music, and mountain bike fans often drink quality beer. Passion and knowledgability are more versatile than people imagine.

The field ripest for hounding these days is television. For the past decade, that's been where genius has converged. Like food in the '90's, film in the early '70's, rock 'n roll in the late '60s, abstract expressionism in the early 60's, and jazz in the 50's, TV is where it's presently at.

Which is not to say TV programming is all great (any more than all 1973 films or all 1969 rock bands were great). But when smart, passionate people get together, more often than not, they swap tips for great TV series, both past and present (thanks to Netflix and DVDs, everything's omni-available). So last night I scribbled reminders to check out Justified, Mastermind, The Sandbaggers, and "Spaced", and I evangelized shows like Party Down, State of Play, Men of a Certain Age, Homeland, and Breaking Bad,

I'm too burnt-out on managing online communities to launch TVHound, but the next best thing is Alan Sepinwall, a former newspaper columnist (with the NJ Star Ledger) and longtime amateur blogger who a couple of years ago went full-time as a blogging pro. He has a devoted following, and I'm part of it.

Sepinwall's reporting is helpful in three ways: 1. he's good at ferreting out quality shows and getting you excited about them, 2. his reviews are in-depth (and user comments are strong), so I seek them out after I've viewed a show, to get other perspective, and 3. during summer lulls, he does "Rewinds" of legendary series, going back and writing fresh reviews, episode by episode, for viewers who are catching up (the "Newbies" rewinds) or revisiting (the "Veterans" rewinds). Examples: The Wire (Newbies)/The Wire (Veterans), Deadwood (Newbies)/Deadwood (Veterans), and Band of Brothers

His older stuff is archived on his old blog, "What's Alan Watching?". Check out the list on the right side of the page of all series he was particularly jazzed about as of June 2010, and click for reverse-chronological reviews. He's since moved on to a blog under the same title on HITFIX, where his stuff is poorly organized but still high quality.

Some Sepinwall links to get started:

TV Top 10 of 2011: The best 10 (or 11) overall shows (note: this is a video-only report - which allows him to show video excerpts from the shows as he describes them - but you can see a text list in the comments)

TV Top 10 of 2011: The best 10 returning shows

Rookie watch: the best new TV shows of 2011

Particularly valuable is his Best of the '00s in TV, written in late 2009.

John Huntsman Loves Captain Beefheart

2012-01-16T13:44:00.003-05:00

Crap! I was just about to support John Huntsman, but he stepped out of the race this morning.

I learned last night that, almost unbelievably, the guy is a huge Captain Beefheart fan. Not just as a name to throw out in order to seem more quirky and less Mitt-ish. But, per a little-noticed Slate report last September, Huntsman really knows his stuff!

Slate: Do you have a particular favorite era of Beefheart?

Huntsman: I'd have to say that I like Trout Mask Replica, which came out in '68, all the way through Bat Chain Puller -- I mean, they represent the diversity of Beefheart. I'm a fan of the really innovative spirit of Beefheart came with the Magic Band, and they really hit it off in '68.

Slate: Which songs on the record?

Huntsman: Ella Guru, China Pig Hammer -- the whole double album. Part poetry, part improvisation. All cutting edge. And then when you get to Bat Chain Puller, it's a little more accessible.

Slate: But Trout was the one they put together when Beefheart forced them to practice in that house...

Huntsman: Yeah, when he played with Zoot Horn Rollo and Mascara Jimmy, and Mascara Snake -- these were great players. He didn't hold onto them very long. The crew he put together for Ice Cream for Crow was good, too, but it was less experimental.

Also, how do you know about this?

Slate: Well, you tweeted about it.

Huntsman: I didn't think anyone would read that! I put it out there to see if anyone was actually paying attention.

Parsing The Yuppie Honk

2012-01-14T13:58:00.007-05:00

You know that vocal tone young urban women started adopting fifteen or twenty years ago? I call it the Yuppie Honk. It's a deep gritty rasp, and at a certain point, women just started doing it.

Well, not all women. The Honk is constrained to a certain personality type: the energetic high-achieving go-getter who's loads of fun. But it's awfully popular, particularly in the sorts of places where energetic high-achieving go-getters go to have loads of fun. Walk through any trendy cafe in Manhattan, and you'll hear this same voice emanating from table after table. And, like any highly contagious trope, those who adopt it appear to feel that it gives them individuality (it's one of those shifts of perspective I like to write about). The Yuppie Honker is a maverick. All zillion of them.

It's clearly affectation. No one is born a Honker. This didn't exist before around 1990, and, to the best of my knowledge, human larynx structure has remained fixed for several millennia. And if it were a natural occurrence, what a coincidence it would be that it appears only in women who want to project the image of being energetic high-achieving go-getters who are loads of fun!

How did the Yuppie Honk start? My guess is that some pop culture figure happened to speak this way, and stylistic early-adopters picked it up and disseminated. At a certain point, such a thing takes on a life of its own: if you're going to be identified as a certain sort of person, you need to dress a certain way, pepper your speech with certain catch phrases, and, these days, speak in a raspy honk. And since honkers are over-achievers, aspirants and climbers of every stripe had better learn to honk if they're to bust through to success!

But while I can only speculate about the social origins of the Yuppie Honk, scientists actually have a physical explanation for how these women are doing it. There's even a name for the condition - and it's better than you could ever hope. Ready? It's called "Vocal Fry".

Tibetan/Hunan Breakfast Rice

2012-01-11T09:26:00.004-05:00

I'm still trying to find healthy breakfast ways to use up leftover white rice (propolis knocked out my stomach virus quickly, leaving me stocked to the gills with BRAT). Last time it was the unlikely-but-satisfying Spinach Banana Rice Omelet Scramble. This time: Tibetan/Hunan Breakfast Rice.

Spread out 1 to 2 cups leftover white rice in a nonstick skillet, and cook at medium low heat for 10 minutes, or until bottom is crunchy. Use a fork to flip rice (it should remain mostly intact, but don't worry if it doesn't). Cook the other side a bit less, then transfer to a cereal bowl. (Optional step: pour a tablespoon or two of melted butter or ghee over the rice). Salt (preferably coarse grain, e.g. kosher salt) generously. Add six ounces of unflavored yogurt and a generous drizzle of honey or (better) pomegranate molasses or fruit preserves. Stir slightly and serve.

The sweet/salty rice with sour yogurt (and ghee) is adapted from a traditional Tibetan dessert. Tibetans don't crisp the rice, though...that's my tribute to Hunan. The pomegranate molasses are just good.

Endowing Future Me

2012-01-10T22:54:00.002-05:00

For years I've been buying super interesting books - little-known great ones. I hope to read them someday. Also DVDs. And CDs. My coffers overflow with goodness, attained at considerable trouble and expense, all waiting to serve and delight Future Me.

My attention has lately shifted. Like many people, I mostly want to play with my iPhone and iPad. Unsurprisingly, the impulse has transferred. I queue great articles to read later in Instapaper. I queue great web sites to browse later in Pinboard. I download great apps I'll love to try someday.

None of this is mindless/compulsive hoarding. It's all treasure, hunted down with great care. But I rarely touch any of it. It's not for me; it's an endowment that will one day serve and delight Future Me.

At this point, I can hardly read, watch, or listen to a thing. I've built a trove, but where is this Future Me for whom I've been slaving all these years? When will he arrive to bask in all this goodness?

Spinach Banana Rice Omelet Scramble

2012-01-09T15:35:00.006-05:00

You have leftover white rice in the fridge (from yesterday's BRAT diet), but since you're getting over a stomach virus, you don't want to eat anything too controversial, so fried rice is out. You want protein, but it's breakfast. So how about...a Spinach Banana Rice Omelet Scramble?

Wilt a handful of baby spinach in a medium-hot nonstick skillet. Set aside. Layer thin slices of banana on the skillet, cook until the undersides are dark brown. Reduce heat a bit, pour three well-scrambled eggs (or four egg whites) over bananas, let sit 30 seconds. Add a half cup of rice, drizzle very lightly and unevenly with soy sauce (or, better, Filipino calamansi soy sauce, which has a citrusy edge from the calamansi), gently scramble with spatula, reduce heat to low and let sit, covered, or a minute or two. Finish with a generous drizzling of good quality extra virgin olive oil.

Look, I completely understand how randomly juvenile and ditzy this seems. It's one of my dopier kitchen moves. But, really, it worked. And, for easing one's way back to "real food" after a stomach bug, it worked great. It reminded me a little of the sweet plantain omelettes at the wonderful La Carreta chain of Cuban luncheonettes in Miami (there's one right in the airport).

The soy flavor catches onto the dark caramelization of the bananas. The clumps in the leftover rice seem pleasantly breakfasty/curdy/starchy (I wouldn't want this dish for lunch or dinner). The spinach and egg are omelette-ish, and the olive oil binds them all, and surprisingly doesn't conflict with the soy. Between the soy sauce and the banana, blandness was banished, and between the rice and the egg, stomach-settling ease was guaranteed.

I swear, it hung together. Some onion might have made a nice addition, but if you're going to sautee chopped onion, then you might as well fry the banana, and then you'd have a whole other dish...

Propolis for Colds and Other Bugs

2012-01-08T16:23:00.017-05:00

Have you heard about that horrible stomach virus going around? I was up all night with it two nights ago. I started taking propolis yesterday morning, and have now had three doses. And while I'm still laying low and taking things easy, I feel pretty darned good. Propolis is one of my favorite secret weapons.

I stole this image from here.

Propolis is popular in Brazil and other places, but little-known here, and what little information exists on the Internet comes from companies selling the stuff, so it's not very objective. Here's a dump of everything I've learned in my twenty five years of experience.

Propolis is one of the amazing things bees make. It's a resin, used for sealing big gaps in the hive, and it keeps the place very clean (all those bugs living in such close quarters could easily create infections, but that's nearly unheard of....thanks to propolis). Luckily, propolis' antiseptic and antibiotic/antiviral qualities carry over to humans. Beekeepers have for centuries recognized it as a panacea. Medical science would, too, if it weren't for a vexing problem: each hive makes slightly different propolis, since its components are gathered from varied local sources. There is, therefore, no apt way to test the stuff, and so its effectiveness is mostly anecdotal. But I've been using it for years, and have turned friends (like you) on to it.

Resins are hard to ingest (much less assimilate). You can chew it, but it makes your teeth feel fuzzy (no health issue though; it kills plaque). To avoid these difficulties, propolis is often prepared as a tincture. The downside is that the processing and the alcohol is thought to erode some of the goodness. And you've got to take it with honey, or, like the resin, it will cling to your teeth. Easiest to ingest are capsules of powdered propolis, but this is the most processed and least fresh alternative. And in these sorts of natural substances, freshness is a good thing.

I should note that while I'm always seeking out the freshest propolis, I've found that even musty old drug store capsules which have sat at the back of my medicine cabinet for a year or two still work pretty well.

Propolis is impossible to test and difficult to ingest. On top of that, there's at least some risk. Any dense, rich, concentrated food is a boon, due to the concentrated nutrients, but also concentrated are toxins. Fortunately, bees are meticulous in sourcing components of propolis, so you don't have to worry about most sorts of taint. But there's one thing they don't know how to winnow: heavy metals. So, as with fish oil, the dense concentration of nutrients carries a risk of concentration of bad stuff, too. I doubt it's enough to really harm you if you take propolis only occasionally, but it's worth bearing in mind as you 1. source your propolis, and 2. decide when to take it. I've probably taken under two ounces, total, in my lifetime, and view the benefits as greatly outweighing the small risk.

You'll see brands of propolis touted as "organic", but that's a crock. Bees are the ultimate free-range critters. No one can control where they go and what they gather. I'd eat honey from bees in, say, Staten Island, but never anything as concentrated as propolis. So I try to buy directly from beekeepers in rural areas, and I only take it when I need it.

The temptation to take it often is great, because this stuff is a panacea. If you have situations like a cold, mild to medium bronchitis or sinus problems or diarreah (from food poisoning or virus), and are on the fence about resorting to antibiotics (i.e. your condition isn't yet dangerously severe), propolis can bring surprisingly dramatic improvements (though, if it doesn't, please don't be stupid: antibiotics are a nasty business, but they're vastly better than serious infection, toxic shock, and death!).

I've heard that you can use the tincture on burns, or chew the resin for a sore throat, but I've never tried those things. I use propolis whenever I get that "Uh-oh" realization that I'm coming down with something. And it generally knocks it out. I always bring it when traveling, in case of tourist tummy (it's not for ordinary indigestion, however).

Dosage is hard, because, again, no two samples are identical. If you take too much propolis, the first symptom is a slightly upset stomach (no big deal). So one strategy is to find that point, then back off the dosage. A good range would be 10-20 drops of tincture twice/day (mixed into honey for assimilation and to minimize tooth-coating), or a half to one capsule twice/day (most of the capsules are rather high dosage). Hardcore types who chew the resin should start with a chunk the size of a match head. I like the taste, but you may not (if you hate it, capsules are for you).

Propolis is what Chinese doctors call "heating". Actually they don't call it anything, because it's apparently unknown to Chinese medicine. But if they did, they'd consider this one of the most heating substances known. So if you already have chronic symptoms of over-heating (aside from any fever associated with your momentary illness) - such as night sweats, menopausal hot flashes, irritability, or if you're having issues with kundalini energy), go easy on the dosage.

If you're using honey to treat allergies (a really good idea, by the way), you must buy local, to ensure the honey's made from the local pollen that's troubling you. Locality is less important for propolis. You can find a 70% tincture from YS Royal at Whole Foods or Amazon, and they at least seem to be cognizant/diligent about purity, though the "organic" label is, as I said, misleading. They also make capsules.

I'm more confident about White Oak Apiary, a small operation in Brewster, NY. They sell resin for $8/ounce (and an ounce goes a long way) and also make a tincture, which I haven't tried. The problem is you need to order ahead; by the time your propolis arrives, it may be too late to help with your bug du jour! But one nice thing about ordering from White Oak is that you can also stock up on their wonderful honey, particularly the hugely intense buckwheat honey.

For immediate situations, even lousy pharmacies carry cheap capsules of propolis from God knows where (in the vitamin aisle). Know what? It'll work. So if you're feeling skitchy right now, go for it...and then stock up on some good stuff for next time.

White Oak doesn't list propolis on their web site, or sell it at farmer's markets. There's little consumer demand, so you usually have to ask. But wherever you see local honey, propolis will be available upon request.

If you have questions, feel free to comment and I'll reply. And if propolis works for you, pass it around. Half the people I know are miserable this week. So unnecessary!

Less Moldy Milk

2012-01-06T13:29:00.002-05:00

Virtually all commercial milk has an unpleasantly moldy aftertaste. I'm surprised no one else tastes it, but I'm hypersensitive to moldy flavors (which is why, I suppose, I dislike moldy cheeses like bleu or gorgonzola). I've tried all brands, including organic, and all taste moldly (somewhere between production, storage, transportation, and packaging is a step that's never completely sterilized between batches).

Best I've ever found here in the northeast is Five Acre Farms milk, from a cooperative near New York City. It's not completely clean-tasting, but the mold flavor is very faint. They're not organic, but claim to use sustainable methods and to be free of hormones and antibiotics.

Here's a store locator. I mostly buy at Fairway and Key Food.

iPad Stuff

2012-01-06T01:23:00.008-05:00

Some scattered thoughts and tips re: iPads:

I bought a WedgePad for my iPad. It's like a little beanbag rest that props the thing up, either on your desk or on your lap. I love it; it's really versatile, and makes couch-potato reading much easier, but the beans are styrofoam, and quickly compact (no problem; I just bought this to refill). They seem to have only models with white straps in stock now; you may want to email in and ask if they'll be selling black straps (which are less distracting) again.

Metacritic offers a good list of iPad/iPhone games, though they underrate one of my favorites, Dark Meadow.

One feature I just discovered: if you put web site bookmarks in Safari's "bookmarks bar" folder, they always appear atop browser windows (there's not much room, so make the titles terse). This is super handy. Update: you also have to check "always show bookmarks bar" in Safari preferences (in the Settings app.)

Speaking of bookmarks, I find Pinboard (an online way to store bookmarks) absolutely invaluable. It's not a replacement for browser bookmarks - i.e. URLs you visit often. Rather, it's a repository of pages you mean to visit, may one day refer to, or quickly need to pass off to another device. I pay up for the "archive" service, which archives the actual page - handy in case it ever disappears, plus it lets me search text of all the actual pages I've bookmarked in one pass. So cool! You can send pages to Pinboard via email or via bookmarklets, which install in any browser, including mobile (this, by the way, is one of the best items to put in the aforementioned Safari bookmark bar).

With the whole world accepting that tablet computers (i.e.* Apple's iPad) are going to largely replace PCs for much of the general public, I thought I'd crow about having predicted this within a week of Apple's original iPad announcement (at a time when most people were dismissing as an oversized iPhone).

One thing I was wrong on, though: I bought the smallest capacity iPad 2, figuring that since I would only use it on WIFI, I'd stream my music and videos from my computer, freeing up the need to store those files on the iPad. But then I began downloading my subscriptions (Wired, New Yorker, and The Economist), and soon found my storage full to bursting. When will I learn: always buy the highest available capacity?

* - no, I didn't mean "e.g."

The People Can Always Be Brought To The Bidding Of The Leaders

2012-01-04T19:54:00.000-05:00

This quote from Herman Goering is all over the Internet, though I only came across it today. So, apologies if you've seen it. But for those who haven't, it's useful to bear in mind in case the Republican candidate wins and we attack Iran (and the war, like the previous couple, is marketed according to the Cheney/Goering playbook):

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country

Interesting Perspective on Euro Crisis

2012-01-02T11:59:00.003-05:00

I had dinner last night with an ex-guitarist friend who's currently a hot prodigy in the financial analysis industry. He had an interesting perspective on the European crisis: The Greeks and the Portuguese (and perhaps others) may go off the Euro for a while, and there will be incredible fiscal pain in those places, short term, as their economies, previously propped up by the currency union, spin into depression.

But when other countries have undergone massive sudden currency devaluation (e.g. Russia and Mexico), economies tend to lean up, creating stronger roots, and outside investment eventually floods in, attracted by bargain prices (finance abhors a vacuum!).

So, in his view, these European crises were inevitable, will be shorter term than most people expect, and will put the individual countries - as well as the Euro community as a whole - on stronger footing in the long run. This is, in other words, nothing but a correction; a comparatively brief release of negative pressure, healing to the entire system in the long run.

That said, pity the working classes in these places, which, as usual, will bear the brunt. But if you have savings to invest, you could do a lot worse than Greek and Portuguese bonds. Because investors tend to flock, and the flock is now avoiding those supposedly doomed locales....but may not for long.

The Dumbest Idea In The World

2011-12-29T23:37:00.002-05:00

The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value is a much-discussed article about a much-discussed book (Peter Drucker's "The Practice of Management"). Here's a taste (I hope you'll read it all, though):

CEOs and their top managers have massive incentives to focus most of their attentions on the expectations market, rather than the real job of running the company producing real products and services.

The “real market,” Martin explains, is the world in which factories are built, products are designed and produced, real products and services are bought and sold, revenues are earned, expenses are paid, and real dollars of profit show up on the bottom line. That is the world that executives control—at least to some extent.

The expectations market is the world in which shares in companies are traded between investors—in other words, the stock market. In this market, investors assess the real market activities of a company today and, on the basis of that assessment, form expectations as to how the company is likely to perform in the future. The consensus view of all investors and potential investors as to expectations of future performance shapes the stock price of the company.

“What would lead [a CEO],” asks Martin, “to do the hard, long-term work of substantially improving real-market performance when she can choose to work on simply raising expectations instead? Even if she has a performance bonus tied to real-market metrics, the size of that bonus now typically pales in comparison with the size of her stock-based incentives. Expectations are where the money is. And of course, improving real-market performance is the hardest and slowest way to increase expectations from the existing level.”

Interesting stuff. Sometimes somebody has to state the obvious to make us really see deep changes. And this sheds light on a vexing economic mystery: why are the folks at the top of the economy so eager to suppress the middle class, when that's the worst possible move for commerce and economic growth? Harming commerce and growth ought to harm the rich. After all, a thriving middle class was the engine that enriched America's upper class in the first place.

But commerce, I suppose, is just so very last millennium. At this point it's all about the side bets: a few thousand tycoons betting against each other in an arena as untethered from the real economy as those junk mortgage derivatives they so love to swap around.

Hand me my hacky sack; I'm heading down to Wall Street....

GarageBand Sketches

2011-12-26T21:10:00.000-05:00

Fooling around with the iPad version of GarageBand.

The title of the first one speaks for itself: "Merry Drunken GarageBand Christmas"

Merry Drunken GarageBand Christmas

Here's a tribute to some incredible blueberry pierogi I ate this summer:

Blueberry Pierogi

The Burden of a Perpetually Clean Slate

2011-12-26T14:34:00.001-05:00

I've figured out what's been bugging me. Many thanks to niece Laura, who helped piece this together.

Meet the niece

I have, in my lifetime, walked into countless Ecuadorian joints, provoking reactions ranging from mild bewilderment to thinly-veiled hostility. Waiters take a deep breath before approaching my table in halting English, dreading the prospect of trying to accommodate the imperious clueless gringo.

But, in spite of appearances, I speak Spanish, I'm friendly, and I understand the cuisine and the culture. More than that, I actually fit in - if you'll give me a chance. I'm not just some anglo foodie who knows to order guatita; I am 1% Ecuadorian under the hood, and by the time I leave the restaurant, the waiter will be my pal and the other customers will nod amiably and ask whether I have an Ecuadorian grandparent or two (my usual reply: "¡ojalá sea cierto!", i.e. "if only it were true!").

The problem is that whenever I enter a new Ecuadorian restaurant, I always start from scratch. Ecuadorians can't detect the cumulative approval of previous paisanos. And while it's fun to pull off this magic trick, it is, after decades, starting to get tedious. I feel as if I'm caught in a loop, and am developing an irrational expectation that all these experiences ought to afford me some tailwind.

Restaurants aside, the same issue applies in the myriad other circumstances where I must strain to overcome initial impression because I simply don't look like everything I am.

Most people avoid such issues by not meeting many new people or going to many new places. They segregate into tribes and retract into routines. They fit themselves more or less comfortably into narrow circles from which they seldom emerge.

To reject all that and maintain a thirst for adventure requires, alas, locking into a perpetual Groundhog Day loop. Unless you're skillful at making yourself seem special or at projecting a shticky image (Tom Wolfe's white suit, anyone?), you've got no choice but to play each and every new hand without chips.

The Deeper Implications of Holiday Blues

2011-12-24T01:52:00.000-05:00

I'm replaying this holiday piece from a few years ago.

I don't really celebrate Christmas. I guess that's to be expected, considering that my family is Jewish (though I find the teachings of Christ as inspiring as those of any other spiritual tradition, notwithstanding the chunkheads and psychopaths who've commandeered his message over the centuries).

But even an outsider like me can feel so thickly hypnotized by the holiday script of what we're supposed to do and how we're supposed to feel that it's surprisingly hard to get through the day without comparing myself (unfavorably, of course) to the idealized image.

Never mind that no one really lives that idealized image. Even affable families in big creaky houses full of rosy-cheeked children, hot chocolate and earnest singing of carols come up short. Really, the only person having a duly peak holiday experience is some bratty eleven year old who got precisely the PlayStation shoot-em-up game he'd been whining, pining, and begging for since summer. Settled contentedly in front of his screen, blowing up his fellow man in a pleasant flush of adrenaline, he is the only one experiencing the true American holiday spirit. The rest of us feel a little sad this time of year, because real life never matches the image in our head. We never seem to fully achieve Christmas. It's always a miss. Who can possibly live up to the promise of candy canes and Bing Crosby?

But it's a valuable illustration of the central dysfunction in the human experience. Disappointment, pain, suffering, and alienation all stem from the clash of experience, which is real, with mental constructs, which aren't.

Many of us address the problem by trying to force the world into hewing to their mental concepts. That is, naturally, a game of whack-a-mole. Utterly futile. Better to drop concepts of how things ought to be, and immerse in how things actually are. Let life simply unfurl, and partake of the rich serendipity missed by those trying to muscle their way to fixed mental goals. Our problems aren't in the world. Problems stem from the conceptualizing. If you stop telling yourself stories about how things are, then life can be enjoyed as-is, rather than in the context of these hollow stories. My favorite book title, "What's Wrong with Right Now ...Unless You Think About It?", says it all.

The holiday season provides a perfect laboratory for exploring all this. Last night, I sat watching a terrific DVD, with a delicious glass of wine, sunk deeply into my comfortable couch. I was warm and well-fed. Yet my mind would periodically flash on the fact that it's Christmas Eve, and suddenly my experience completely shifted. Suddenly, I felt lonely, isolated and missing out. I was actually having a crummy, small, pathetic night, but hadn't realize it until I'd put it all in mental perspective! Hey, thanks, mind!

Each time the mental construct of "Christmas Eve" flashed into my awareness, my present situation instantly reflected against that context...and my mood fell. Each time I opened my eyes and realized how content and snug I actually felt, my mood rose. This repeated several times, an emotional ping-pong match between reality and conceptualizing. Which is real? Why do we feel so attached to the unreal? Why do we willingly live our lives in a haze of abstract mental concepts, rather than in reality itself? Why, above all, do we make ourselves miserable over nothing?

It's not necessary to slay the concepts. The human mind can't help concocting them; it's what we do. But a smidge of awareness of this process is tremendously liberating and joy-bringing. As empty concepts fall away, only peace remains.

So all this, I suppose, amounts to my extraordinarily contrarian expression of holiday joy. Peace on earth good will to men, indeed.

Note: see a followup article here.

Mind-Boggling Distance

2011-12-21T01:28:00.036-05:00

If you think you can come anywhere near to grasping the immensity of cosmic distances: no. You really can't.

Consider: the Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, has been travelling really really fast. Hurtling away from the sun at 38,200 mph, it's expected to cross over into interstellar space shortly (here's the latest update from NASA). It's now just over 11 billion miles away - so distant that light takes 16 hours to travel from Earth.

A light year, as you know, is the distance light travels in a year. And traveling 38,200 mph for 35 years brings you just these puny 16 light hours. So now just try to imagine a light year (Voyager will go that far in 14,000 years). And remember that the nearest star (aside from the Sun) is over four light years away.

But the mind blower is that there are galaxies billions of light years away (here's one 13 billion light years away).

Here, FWIW, is a particularly pretty one a "mere" 10 million light years away, courtesy of the wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day site.

Previous astronomy posts:

Good Galactic News (when galaxies collide, stars don't actually crash into each other)

The Andromeda Galaxy and You (The Andromeda Galaxy occupies much more sky real estate than the moon)

Tap Dancing on Saturn (hear the sound of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft passing through Saturn's ring dust)

The Photopic Sky Survey (sort of like Google Maps for the Milky Way)

My Nonexistent Upstairs Neighbors

2011-12-20T00:18:00.007-05:00

Here is a recording of my upstairs neighbors. The only problem is that I have no upstairs neighbors. Above me is an (empty) attic, and, above that, the roof.

I don't think it's a woodpecker. It's more of an intermittent clunking than a woodpecker's relentless hammering. It actually sounds a lot like Jacob Marley trudging around (God bless us, every one). Or could it be my old biz partner, Bob Okumura...?

My Nonexistent Upstairs Neighbors

Does anyone have a theory?

Cathy Whimsically Chooses to be Unhappy

2011-12-19T12:54:00.014-05:00

I was driving with a very young friend named Cathy. We hit a red light, and she groaned with exasperation. "I hate red lights!" she grumbled, being at the stage where kids begin to define themselves by their turn-ons and turn-offs.

I proposed an experiment: just for laughs, let's pretend we love red lights. Red lights make us happy. Red lights are like candy. See if we can make ourselves really believe it!

And so we had riotous fun for the rest of the ride, cheering wildly for each red light we hit. Red lights became like old friends. The way a baseball fan feels when his team wins a big game, that's how we'd feel each time a light turned red. We slowed ahead of green lights, madly hoping to see red. And when we did, we'd coo with delight.

"Cathy," I said, "the only reason you hated red lights before is because at some point you just decided to. Or else you imitated someone else who just decided. But you can re-decide anything you want to! So...would you like to know the secret to a happy life?"

"Uh-huh," she nodded.

"Take everything you dislike and make it something you love. That way nothing can ever bug you or make you unhappy."

Cathy thought about it for a moment, and then narrowed her eyes and grinned slyly. "I hate lots of things!" she proclaimed brightly, completely understanding that she was being ridiculous and arbitrary.

And there it is, the precise hinge of all human unhappiness and suffering, right there. It's nothing more than locking into whimsical, defiant preferences as we swiftly forget how childishly arbitrary they were to begin with. We split the world into what we want more of and what we want less of, and it's all a never-ending, pointless, painful game of whack-a-mole from there on out.

Watch this:

Also see: An Adult View on Preference

Christopher Hitchins

2011-12-17T14:25:00.001-05:00

The recently deceased Christopher Hitchins once said "Being a writer is what I am, rather than what I do".

That being the case, I feel somewhat released from the duty to distinguish man from work, and may celebrate the writing's demise without straining too hard to regret the writer's.

PamFax: Cheap Online Faxing

2011-12-15T17:44:00.001-05:00

I don't own a fax machine. Or a landline phone. So faxing's a problem. I'd previously used eFax to fax online, but they stole several hundred dollars from me (I asked not to renew, they pretended not to hear, they renewed me, then promised, twice, to refund but didn't, and my credit card refused to reverse the hideously inflated charge....and this is, Google reveals, not an unusual story with them).

For the past year, I've been running to the drug store to fax, which has a certain Leave it to Beaverish charm, up to a point. Having passed that point, I signed up for Pamfax and loved it. No contract, no obligation. You just pay about 12 cents/page domestically, and international rates are reasonable. You also get a free fax number.

I convert my documents into PDFs, and send via their web interface. Easy peasy.

Note: I'm not earning any commission via that link, though PamFax does offer a scheme for that. But if I did (under guise of offering a helpful tip), then the muffin would have been refused in vain!

Time Magazine Blew It

2011-12-15T01:00:00.002-05:00

Time magazine has once again fuzzed up it's person of the year feature by choosing not to select an actual person (remember when the wince-worthy Person of the Year was "You"?). This year, the honor went to "The Protester".

Really, a person deserved the honor: Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian peddler whose self-immolation launched the Arab Spring.

I understand that Time's point was that protests on a number of fronts shaped the world this year. But why not name Bouazizi, and let Kurt Anderson, in his cover essay, explain how the spirit of protest extended across the Arab world and to our own Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements? The point of the "Person of the Year" is to put a human face on a global trend. So it seems inane to spotlight the trend, rather than let Bouazizi - who certainly deserves it - serve as its face?

SIGA Gets $36 Million

2011-12-12T11:46:00.003-05:00

Note to readers bored senseless by all the SIGA talk: this will be the last such posting for a while. News has been particularly eventful, so I felt obliged to update, but this will be my last until anything dramatic happens. On the other hand, this would be a good point to buy a few dozen/hundred shares for yourself (it won't budge the stock price, so I'm not being self-serving!). There's an excellent chance this stock will septuple within a year or two or three, and having "skin in the game" will make my SIGA postings a lot more interesting for you! But only invest money you can afford to lose...

The first $36M payment is in from the government. So despite all the misinformation, the contract's on, and the company won't need to dilute the stock to remain fully operational.

Someone obviously leaked this news on Friday, hence the stock's mild drive-up. It should have been sharper, but, as I keep saying, don't expect news or "prospects" to do much at this point. Nothing great will happen until the company confirms revenue from multiple sources (and the lawsuit's resolved) a year or two or three from now. The good news is that, short of bankruptcy, it's very difficult to imagine how SIGA would fail to attract multiple revenue sources...even if the bad judicial decision stands on appeal, and even if Chimerix loosens up the primate rule and manages to get a piece of the pie for their inferior drug.

What may happen, however, is another round of propaganda and huffy political nonsense. But that's all about short term shorting, not long term reality. This is the only completely safe and effective drug for pox, including weaponized varieties. Foreign orders (Israel? EU? India? WHO?) await a step or two from FDA. And even assuming Chimerix has their hooks into that agency, eventually we'll emerge from that process, and anyone worried about terrorism will be ready to buy.

Again, it will take time (so your investment may be "dead money" for a while). And the bad guys may drop more shoes. And "stuff happens". But it's been years since I screamed "BUY!" at you. And now's the time. If smart investing means finding extremely undervalued gems poorly understood by the market (stock-hounding!), with known, surmountable downsides, then this is really as good as it gets. This should be a $10 stock right now under the most pessimistic of assessments. And it seems destined for $20 and well beyond.

You're on your own for a while re: SIGA news. If it cycles down, don't panic. If it gears up, don't exult. Give it a couple years for best results. That's my outlook until further notice!

Rats Vs Ayn Rand

2011-12-10T21:04:00.000-05:00

A scientific study has demonstrated that rats are more altruistic than, say, Ayn Rand.

[Revisit a golden oldie: How I Outgrew Libertarianism]

SIGA: Off the Mat!

2011-12-09T13:08:00.004-05:00

Three pieces of blessed reassurance to report on SIGA today.

There've been times when I've wished SIGA CEO Eric Rose would spin and tout more. Or, at least some. But he's not that sort of CEO. As a discreet, low-profile, well-respected science geek, he's the sort of fellow ideally suited for patiently dealing with governmental bureaucrats and scientists. Since SIGA is funded by and sells to the government, that's essential. But his diffidence has allowed louder voices with greater chutzpah and shameless misinformation to run roughshod, with nary a peep from Rose.

Until now. Yesterday, he posted this glorious rebuttal to the insane, gut ignorant press/political assault of the past few weeks. And the fact that he's so not a spin-meister, and so devoted to steak rather than sizzle, makes it all the more powerful and persuasive. Plain facts, amply footnoted. Finally!

Also terrific was the performance of SIGA board member (and Bush administration Homeland Security advisor) Fran Townsend on Anderson Cooper's show last night. She deftly sliced through the gobs of bullshit being proffered by yet another reporter attempting to trump up a scandal from absolutely nothing. If you're a SIGA investor, don't miss it:

Also, some quieter news.

A study shows that application of ST-246, as expected, creates resistance in smallpox virus, making the drug less effective (this is true of all antivirals and antibiotics). However, the resistant varieties are much less virulent. This is really good news for three reasons:

1. ST-246 is easy to create in a lab (the patent is public), but the bad guys can't whip some up and use it to develop a super resistant strain. This makes ST-246 an extra valuable bioterror counteragent.

2. Chimerix can't (yet?) say the same about their drug

3. This opens a pathway to a safer pox vaccine to replace existing stockpiles, which have side effects and can't be used in immunocompromised patients and others (about 4% of the population overall). It's yet another use for this drug.

Finally: when SIGA receives the $40M downpayment due on their contract with BARDA, it will prove to markets that 1. the contract is good, and 2. there will be no need for a secondary offering (because they'll be flush with cash). I don't expect the price to shoot up hugely (that won't happen until multiple revenue sources are achieved and the legal cloud is removed), but it should help some.

I wrote the following paragraph at Wednesday's stock price, but it applies now, as well:

This is a good time to buy. We're at least a year or two from meteoric success, but it's a lot cheaper to buy at $1.85 [or even $2.30!] than at $3 or $4 in a few months. That said, I certainly can't promise it won't drop further. But I'm still quite confident, long term.

The Evil Impulse Behind Christmas Warriors

2011-12-08T14:52:00.023-05:00

I try hard to understand people with whom I disagree. When I hear something batshit crazy, I feel an irresistible compulsion to ferret out some kernel of reasonability. But I can't fathom who, exactly, the "Christmas Wars" zealots (the folks enraged by any description of a decoratively lit winter tree without specific reference to the guy they worship) are speaking to.

I do completely understand when Christians remind each other to "keep the Christ in Christmas". That makes perfect sense to me: we oughtn't be so distracted by commercialism that we forget to celebrate and reinforce what we already believe. Who could find fault with that? I feel similarly urging distracted table mates to take deeper notice of their garlic knots or tacos. Hey, people, let's not forget what we're really here for!

But the Christmas warriors aren't kindly reminding kindred spirits. They're at war. But with whom? What's the aim? Do Jews, for example, need to worship Christ on Christmas? I happen not to, but I don't perceive myself as a warrior against Christ or Christmas or really anything else (except maybe Panera). Why would my disbelief constitute a threat? Must every one of us keep Christ devoutly in mind when uttering the "C" word? Is anything less than that intolerable?

I'd imagine their reply would be that their issue isn't with non-believers, per se, but with general secularization of their holiday. As a mass culture thing, Christmas seems less religious "out there". They don't just want to worship; they want a worshipful environment. And, strangely, their freedom to worship is threatened by all the external unworshipfulness. It's like someone with a preference not to marry a gay person feeling threatened unless the external environment reflects that preference. "My household may not be gay, but the world's my larger household, and it feels increasingly gay out there...and, as I just said, my preference is for not "gay"!" Get it?

But I still don't understand who, exactly, they're fighting against. Who's responsible for this secularization, if not non-believers and other-believers? Hey, I'm one of them! So what, exactly, do I need to do differently? How am I spoiling their Christmas? I honestly don't want to!!

Setting that important question aside, the externalization of preference is disturbing in its own right. I'm missing that gene; I hardly expect anyone to listen to me, much less agree with me, much less hew to my values on a mass basis. So it's difficult for me to relate. But it goes a scary step further when difference is perceived as threat. My differing values, however mildly held (e.g. sending "holiday cards") feel like an attack on theirs.

It's one of those strange shifts of perspective I've previously noted. And I believe I have, indeed, found the kernel, but there's nothing reasonable about it. In fact, it's the root of evil throughout history: "By not reflecting me, you threaten me."

It's the dynamic that's gotten my ancestors (in terms of religion as well as overall creative contrarianism) slaughtered and spat upon for countless generations. Though the Christmas warriors make their point from a defensive posture, a close examination of their perspective reveals the true impulse behind their paranoia, and it pushes ancient buttons.

That impulse is, quite obviously, the most unchristian of impulses. So let me be the first to sincerely, reverently, wish the Christmas warriors a far more spiritual Christmas than they're demanding of you and I.

SIGA: The Return of the Jedi

2011-12-07T16:35:00.003-05:00

Last time, I described a multi-pronged attack on SIGA's smallpox cure by a small group of parties. Those guys may well have a few more cards to play. But lawsuits, propaganda, and stock-shorting will only get you so far in attacking a drug our nation (and all peaceful nations) direly needs. This week, tectonic forces are finally reasserting that need, much to the relief of beleagured SIGA investors!

First, the LA Times, which had published the wildly inaccurate hatchet job (described last time) which started the recent firestorm, printed a response from the Department of Health and Human Services (which oversees the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) - the agency that's paying us a few hundred million bucks per a signed contract, and intends to buy well over $1B more):

"The article ignores the importance of having a smallpox preparedness policy in place to provide antiviral drugs if needed. Smallpox was eradicated by 1980. Although only two labs are authorized to retain smallpox virus stocks for research, undisclosed or forgotten stocks may exist. If smallpox reappears, mass vaccination would take time. Without anti-viral drugs, mass illness or even death may take place[...].

Only two companies, Chimerix and SIGA, are developing a smallpox antiviral drug. Only SIGA can meet our time frame and regulatory requirements. We are committed to developing new smallpox drugs in the event that they are ever needed."

That's pretty clear, if absurdly understated ("death may take place"???). Then there's this big political news:

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved legislation intended to help protect the country against acts of biological terrorism[...]

"Terrorists continue to actively seek out biological or chemical weapons to carry out horrific attacks against us," Representative Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement following the unanimous decision. "We must act to prepare for such threats that we continue to face on a daily basis more than 10 years after 9/11."

H.R. 2405 renews components of the 2006 Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which established the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority[...]

The HHS branch manages the multibillion-dollar Project Bioshield, which was created to provide the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile with additional medical treatments for anthrax, smallpox and other agents that could be used to produce biological weapons or other unconventional threats. Rogers' bill renews the program's Special Reserve Fund, which would receive $2.8 billion from fiscal years 2014 to 2018.[...]

"I hope and pray that we never need to use such defensive measures, but they are critical to ensuring that the public stands protected," Rogers said. "We need to continue to expedite their development and strengthen the national stockpile. Quite simply, we must always prepare for the worst" (U.S. Representative Mike Rogers release, Dec. 6).

This removes the uncertainty that procurement might be cancelled due to budget slashing. Fear of tight government budgets is what recently tanked the entire biotech sector - SIGA along with it - but investors aren't sharp enough to have realized that SIGA's an exception.

Finally there's this, from Reuters:

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS THREAT IS GROWING, U.S. WARNS

The United States called on Wednesday for closer international cooperation to prevent terrorist groups from developing or using biological weapons, a threat it said was growing.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said countries must strengthen their ability to detect and respond to suspicious outbreaks of infectious disease that could be caused by pathogens falling into the wrong hands.

"Unfortunately the ability of terrorists and other non-state actors to develop and use these weapons is growing. Therefore this must be a renewed focus of our efforts," she said in a speech in Geneva. "Because there are warning signs and they are too serious to ignore." She said Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had urged "brothers with degrees in microbiology or chemistry...to develop a weapon of mass destruction."

A crude but effective terrorist weapon can be made by using a small sample of widely available pathogens, inexpensive equipment and "college-level chemistry and biology," she added.

States must do a better job of reporting on measures being taken to guard against the misuse of biological weapons and scientists should exchange views on threats, Clinton said.

Consider the above in light of the statement from HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius last April, who wrote in the NY Times that "The technology now exists for someone with the right tools and the wrong intentions to create a new smallpox virus in a laboratory."

This rebuts the "smallpox is eradicated, so this drug is unnecessary" angle, which seems too stupid to be taken seriously, but is being trumpeted by intellects as formidable as Glen Beck (here's a video of his recent rant against SIGA).

Not many people outside the drama are paying attention to any of this. To most of the market, SIGA's just another biotech company with longshot chances, when, really, they're a leading biotech company with prospects so bright as to attract a blitzkrieg of nefariousness.

And so the dots remain unconnected and SIGA still hovers at a ridiculous $2. But when the contract's fulfilled (the first payment - $40M - is due shortly), and other contracts appear, and the product pipeline's announced, lots of people will be hearing about it. So while I have no idea what's going to happen between now and then, and this is obviously not a ride for the faint of heart (and a terrible investment for money you can't afford to keep on ice for a few years), this might be a great point to buy. And then don't even look at the stock price for a year or two!

TMDTIATW: Community Food & Juice

2011-12-07T02:07:00.002-05:00

The most delicious thing I ate this week (TMDTIATW) was brunch at Community Food & Juice (2893 Broadway, near 112th St, Manhattan, NY; 212-665-2800). Specifically, their crispy potato pancakes with Petrossian smoked salmon, caviar cream, and dressed greens - a steal at $17 (definitely click to expand this photo):

...and their butterscotch pudding, which was utterly priceless:

I tried the much-lauded brioche french toast and carrot hash, which were enjoyable, but couldn't match those potato pancakes (even though they're shredded rather than ground, which is my preference). And the butterscotch pudding was a fiendish trapdoor, plunging both me and my guest to unfathomable flavor depths. This stuff is too potent eaten straight; thank goodness for the thick layer of sublime whipped cream serving as fluffy yin embrace for the fierce butterscotchy yang. The un-billed addition of buttery nut brittle cookies were like a final fatal gunshot to the head, but in a good way.

Immortality

2011-12-06T00:10:00.003-05:00

I've been watching the wonderful two-part portrait of Woody Allen on PBS' "American Masters" series.

It perplexes me that someone so evidently miserable, who lives his life in such a grim and stand-offish manner (friends who've played in his band report that he's performed with the same musicians for decades without ever uttering a word to most of them, not even "hello" or "goodbye") would be so deeply fearful of death. One would think he'd be chomping at the bit for release from this contract!

I kept remembering this line from his own "Annie Hall":

"Two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of them says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions!" Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."

While I certainly recognize the ills of the world quite keenly, I'm far less negative than he appears to be. Yet if I were run over by a bus tomorrow, it'd suit me as well as anything else. My feeling is that we're all very bit players in this cooperative theater project, our roles forgotten soon after we leave the stage. We inject what's uniquely ours to contribute and we make room for the next guy. We're verbs, not nouns. With that view, you do your very best even when no one's watching, you try to unlock the succulence in the seeming mundane, and you do what you can to help those trapped in the hell of taking it all too seriously - who've utterly lost themselves in their roles. And that's about it, really.

When it comes to existence, I can make equally good cases for it or against it. But why would I want to live forever? What purpose would it serve? I honestly don't get it. Is anyone out there really having such a great time that they couldn't bear to see it end?

There are those who bask in the living, and those who are locked into conceptualization - expectation, labeling, etc.. It's surprising that the latter, who seem less than fully alive, are most fearful of death. Those who actually enjoy are often (though certainly not always) more blasé about it all.

Flipping Your Street Smarts

2011-11-30T10:06:00.013-05:00

I'm cursed with street smarts.

My first gig out of college was playing the blues in a crack house in a slummy part of Roosevelt, Long Island, where gunfire erupted on more than one occasion (the trick: never stop playing; no one shoots at musicians). I've played in dozens of countries, and had wild experiences with wild people. Over the course of three careers, I've met and befriended an unnaturally broad range of characters, from crackheads to murderers to movie stars. Having been through innumerable tight situations and seen innumerable people of every background behave under stress, I've developed a faculty for knowing what to expect.

I always figured my street smarts - my ability to instantly know who's who, and what someone's capable of - were a good thing. There's no disputing that they've come in very handy. But I recently realized what street smarts actually are: a nonstop subconscious monitoring and gauging for the very worst in people.

That may sound anxious-making, or even paranoid, but it's actually not. On the contrary, this low-level monitoring makes me feel calmly secure, because I always know what I'm up against. And whereas paranoia is delusional, this scanning provides true, useful info. Much experience over time has borne that out.

I'm not a negative person. This stuff is all unconscious, and it never dominates. Consciously, I appreciate the positive aspects of people I meet. I'd be completely enjoying my conversation with you (not worrying whether you'll attack me!), because you're a nice person! But if the stranger sitting behind you suddenly goes nuts, I'll have spotted him first.

But here's why it's a curse. Human beings have dark depths. Some of us "go there" more easily (and I can smell those people effortlessly). But we also have divine heights. And street-smart people don't monitor for that. There may be conscious appreciation, but it's not part of the humming substructure.

Like most street-smart people, crowds make me edgy. Lots of information, lots of negative potential. But lately I've been experimenting with flipping it. I scan crowd faces (which, if you pay attention, are almost always glum, drained, self-absorbed, burdened, and/or angry in the rich First World), and intuit how close everyone is to erupting into radiant smiles.

It's startlingly, disarmingly easy. To my amazement, it's even true. My radar confirms it's in there! The potential does exist! Always!

And I'm aiming for an even bigger flip. When I talk to people, I'm trying to speak to their latent smile, rather than to their latent darkness. I don't necessarily aim to draw out that smile (which would feel manipulative); I just "get" them in their hidden light, rather than their hidden darkness.

The surprise thing is how easy is.

[Note - this was close to that, and true. But this is truer]

Anti-Intellectualism/Intellectual Arrogance

2011-11-29T10:20:00.020-05:00

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” - Isaac Asimov (via Daring Fireball).

True enough. However, there's a much older cult, transcending national boundaries, of arrogance among intellectuals, nurtured by the false notion that "my intelligence is better than your creativity, your physical skills, your mechanical ability, your bravery, your resourcefulness, or your virtuousness."

We're all born with certain gifts and deficits, and there's a natural tendency to measure others by the faculties in which we excel. But no group does so with more blunt intolerance or withering condescension than the intelligent (having met Isaac Asimov, I can report that he struck me as the very poster child for intellectual arrogance [note: this observation is rebutted in the comments]). This has, for time immemorial, put less intelligent people unfairly on the defensive. And it's perfectly proper in a democracy not to deem oneself a lesser citizen because one's skill set is jiggered this way or that.

So pushback is apropos. But one fault of all human beings is our inability to respond to extremism with enlightened moderation rather than with reciprocal extremism. And so the pendulum has swung too far, and unintelligent people are supported for leadership positions requiring intellect, solid scientific theories are blindly opposed, and intellect, generally, is shunned in some quarters. But it didn't happen in a vacuum. Intellectual arrogance spurred this mess.

Each of us has deficits. The trick is to recognize when you're over your head - no one would play Stephen Hawking as an NFL linebacker - without losing respect for self or for others.

TMDTIATW: Desi Food Galaxy (Somerset, NJ)

2011-11-28T01:22:00.005-05:00

The most delicious thing I ate this week (TMDTIATW) was en route to the most disgusting thing I ate this week (same acronym).

My relatives enjoy playing "Let's Torture Uncle Jim" by forcing me to endure horrendous food (recall my memorable experience at Tavern on the Green).

This year, Thanksgiving was to be celebrated at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in Princeton. (I won't recount the meal except to say that both Ruth and Chris ought to be hustled out to the parking lot and strangled. Oh, and memo to the manager dude who came around to magnanimously accept our congratulations at meal's end: I'm not sorry if you overheard my stage whisper to my niece about your position in the world being indistinguishable from a Burger King supervisor. If the truth hurts, it's not my fault. Believe me, the evening hurt me a lot more than it hurt you.)

I was, obviously, not looking forward to this gustatory hazing. And so when I pulled off Route 1 to escape the mind-numbing traffic in favor of back roads, some dormant inner juju ignited, and worlds of glory were somehow conjured up amid the bland subdivisions of central Jersey. Great place after great place appeared (see details in Saturday's posting), and I started collecting takeout menus from the ones that were open Thanksgiving day.

One might have gotten the impression that I was in no hurry to get to dinner.

My main function for the evening was to chauffer my Mom, who was beginning to fume in the passenger seat while I grew ever more giddily distracted by the accelerating cascade of discoveries. I composed myself and prepared to drive directly to the ~~waterboarding~~ dinner, when, out in the distance, I spotted a sign bearing a phrase I could not possibly ignore. The sirens of central Jersey called out to me, and their name was "Desi Food Galaxy", and I was powerless to resist.

Desi means, loosely, "homestyle Indian". The real thing. A galaxy of the real thing!

Blood pumping hard in my temples, I pulled into the parking lot to grab a menu. But in the vestibule I found about twelve takeout menus. Puzzled, I figured the owner must also own other local places. But then I swung open the door, and viewed a miracle.

Before me was a large space lined with concessions. Gujarati, Hyerbadi, Punjabi, Indian-Chinese, Tamil-ish Southern, a small operation tucked toward the back staffed with shy Pakistani women in head scarves, and, more segregated still, some dude with wild eyes who does something he calls "Indian/Italian", with a menu that made my head explode (click photos to expand):

Also: a juice/lassi bar. A paan (and newspapers) stand. I may be forgetting a few. Oh, and it smelled just fantastic. Sort of like how South Asia must smell from the International Space Station.

Each concession is a separate, independently owned restaurant, with a full-service kitchen turning out not just a few snacks, but a complete menu of impeccably authentic regional treats (including plenty of rare dishes even full restaurants don't often serve).

My mom protested weakly as I pulled her out of the car while making incomprehensible noises of ecstatic excitement, but she soon was won over by scrumptious plates of samosa chat (Punjab), momo (Nepal), and kati rolls - both chicken tikka and paneer achar (Bombay). It was amazing. Furthering the this-can't-really-be-happening vibe, two bottles of Poland Springs water cost $1, total.

We returned the next day and had, from the Southern guys, the best rava masala dosa of my life (even better than at Flushing's Dosa Hutt):

....and very good sarson da saag accompanied by traditional (and exemplary) makki di roti, i.e. corn bread (Sikh/Punjab):

....and, from the Pakistani counter, glorious goat haleem, the best version I've ever had (including killer haleem made by the great Mina in Queens):

The women there were also flame broiling the best-looking chicken kebabs I've ever seen. I yearn for these kebabs, which I didn't get to try:

Quality ranges from very good to earth-shatteringly great, and everything is diligently authentic (this is no shiny, pandering EPCOT-ish gringo ploy; this place is organically Desi all the way). The catch, which worries me, is that prices are, quite properly, restaurant prices rather than snack bar prices. Non-Indian Americans would never accept this, given the visuals. Hopefully their Indian clientele is cool with it. Me? I gladly pay for quality, period.

Desi Food Galaxy is worth a ride from the city. It's worth renting a hotel nearby for a few days. And lord knows it was worth filling up at en route to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.

Desi Food Galaxy
2021 Rt 27, Somerset, NJ
732-322-9421
The Desi Food Galaxy Online (before clicking to their (outdated) site, be sure and turn your volume up for the full audio experience)

P.S. - Want to know why you can't trust Yelp? Have a look at the complete morons' view.

SIGA Stress

2011-11-27T15:40:00.023-05:00

I started buying stock in SIGA (a firm that's developed an impeccably safe and effective cure for smallpox - including the weaponized varieties which are a major bioterror threat) at about $3.50 (my average is about $6), and, after remaining in the mid-teens as recently as June, it's now down to $1.90. I'll be holding onto my eight year old Toyota for a while.

All of this story is painful, but some of it's interesting, even if you aren't a SIGA investor. I'll compress it as tersely as possible. First, let's review the villains:

SIGA lost a lawsuit this year. Pharmathene, the company with whom they long ago discussed merger (but never signed a deal - all paperwork was stamped - by Pharmathene! - "Non-Binding") was awarded 50% of profits from SIGA's lead drug, ST-246, without any risk or participation in development or marketing. Nice work if you can get it! If that seems crazy, thank Delaware Chancery judge Donald Parsons. Oh, and just before this judgement came out, SIGA's stock was shorted massively

Note: a "short" is a bet that a stock will go down, and it can be hugely profitable when it works - because you don't put up any actual money.

Chimerix is SIGA's only competitor in smallpox antivirals (not vaccines; ST-246 is an out-and-out cure, which works even after infection, and works on weaponized varieties, which vaccines do not). Their drug doesn't cure smallpox in monkeys, and since we can't infect humans with smallpox in order to test it, that makes it a deal-killer, according to the FDA, according to the government agencies that want to stockpile a smallpox cure, and according to most scientists in the field. Chimerix won't go quietly into the night, however. They've protested every effort of the government to award a large stockpiling contract to SIGA. Their monkey-killing drug couldn't win the contract, but they could stall the bejesus out of the process via endless protests (finally, the government, in frustration, made it a sole source contract just to get the damned thing done). And, oh: before each stall, SIGA's stock was shorted massively.

Darrell Issa is an extraordinarily wealthy Republican congressman with numerous ethical and financial issues (for starters, this and this). A few months ago he made noise about a potential investigation of SIGA's contract. Issa proclaimed that this was a sweetheart deal, using a slippery sole-source contract, perpetrated by Obama (never mind that SIGA was supported and nurtured during the Bush administration, or that it might actually be good to protect millions of citizens from bioterror).

The investigation never occurred. But neither did Issa ever retract his allegations. The threat tanked the stock (already weakened from the lawsuit and the collapse of the biotech sector as a whole in light of the Tea Party slash-and-burn ethos - which actually won't affect SIGA, because funding for bioterror countermeasures is pre-allocated). And...just before Issa made his announcement, SIGA's stock was shorted massively.

Getting the picture?

It was revealed that Chimerix' lobbyist, McKenna, Long, and Aldrigde, is a longtime contributor to Issa. So the football was handed off to the right-wing press, salivating for another Solyndra-like boondoggle to trumpet. Last week's press wave was started by a journalist with impeccable credentials and no visible ties to Issa, Chimerix, or McKenna, Long, and Aldrigde, who published a wildly unbalanced and inaccurate hatchet job in the LA Times. I won't take time to rebut the article point for point, so let me just characterize it with a single word: "No."

Fox News picked it up, as did Rush and Glen and all the rest. Obama is throwing big money to SIGA (even though smallpox has been eradicated!) as payback to Ron Pereleman, the company's major investor, because he's a Democratic contributor (Pereleman also contributes to Republicans, and Frances Townsend, Bush's homeland security advisor, sits on SIGA's board, and, again, this deal was brewed by the Bush administration, plus - yes, I'm nearly hysterical at this point - this is the sole safe/effective cure for a major national security gap considering that any smart scientist with the right tools can synthesize smallpox virus in a lab and it's a dandy way to make tens of millions of Americans die....but, hey, let's not quibble).

Need I mention that SIGA's stock was massively shorted before this press onslaught launched? You see, shorting's where the real money is! It's hard to make a stock go up, so better to bet that it'll go down, and then do stuff to make it go down! That's a much smarter bet! Not unrelated, you may have seen the 60 Minutes report last week revealing that congressmen are free to short the bejesus out of stocks without restraint - even stocks impacted by their own actions.

Meanwhile, SIGA's drug is very close to FDA approval...and has been for a couple years. The hold-up is determination of dosage - a technicality. Why's FDA stalling? They're not an apolitical agency, so the aforementioned shenanigans are almost surely at play. Next month FDA makes a crucial ruling as to whether, gee whiz, monkeys are really the best test after all. Obviously, Chimerix - which is about to IPO, by the way - would love to see the rule overturned. This has been their game plan: use political leverage to overturn the monkey rule while stalling SIGA in every possible way. FDA's super-sluggish treatment of SIGA indicates they may be sympathetic - or even shorting! Stay tuned for more laughs and excitement.

So that's how my "sure thing" wound up at $1.90. It's basically deus ex machina. And if, meanwhile, terrorists unleash smallpox, just duck and cover. Works like a charm.

On the positive side: forces this titanic aren't randomly unleashed. This is all happening because there are, indeed, gobs and gobs of money at stake (which is why I invested in the first place). So unless SIGA completely dies, which I don't think it will, there should be eventual success. They may be forced to share profits with Pharmathene, thanks to the nutty judge. And they may split contracts with Chimerix, thanks to the crooked Congress and agencies. But it's a great big pot. And right now the stock price doesn't even reflect the $40M shortly due free/clear as down payment for their signed contract with BARDA. But even at $1.90, the shorts are still all in. So it may well go lower before then. The upshot is, as I wrote in September, the stock will go nowhere until multiple contracts are signed (for example, with any country concerned with bioterror) and money's in hand. At this point, news won't do it; only revenue will. So I hold and wait.

The best potential of all is completely undiscussed: ST-246 cures eczema vaccinatum (EV), a rare but life-threatening complication of vaccines that's very similar to smallpox. And lots of major impending medical breakthroughs depend on delivery via vaccine. Plus: don't even get me started on SIGA's pipeline of other drugs (it would be nice if SIGA would update us on them).

On the negative side, SIGA is not defending itself or talking to stockholders. They have not even issued a press release to (easily) rebut the outrageous claims of the recent press blitz. Which makes me wonder about Ron Pereleman's role in all this. I'm not nearly smart enough to see through the veil, but one thing's certain: so long as this company, with prospects so bright as to attract a blitzkrieg of nefariousness, remains a near-penny stock, we'll need to worry about Perelman finding some way to take it private....so he gets all the money (could he be shorting? My head hurts!). This remains my main long-term concern.

In the short and medium term, it's all about yet more patient waiting. Hey, I said from the start that the way would be slow and bumpy!

[Update: there've been some good comments to this post. You may want to give them a read]

Wasteland Wonderland

2011-11-26T15:32:00.004-05:00

Ten miles south and across a river from the Indian conclave of Edison, NJ lies a no man's land of central Jersey. It's so nondescript that the area doesn't really have a proper name. Call it Somerset, or call it North Brunswick, what it mostly is is the wasteland to your right as you drive down the clogged artery of Route 1 between New Brunswick and Princeton. It's all strip malls and sterile housing developments where an enormous unseen hand has plunked down ghastly cookie-cutter abodes in tight, nervous clusters. Welcome to freaking nowhere!

The surprising news is that "freaking nowhere" has the most exciting food scene I've found in years. I spotted a dozen Indian restaurants of scattered regionality, serving a new community of Indians fleeing Edison (Indian immigrants tend to cluster, then develop an irresistible urge to disperse but then all wind up together again in some new enclave....rinse and repeat).

But there's way more than just Indian food. I spotted the following great-looking spots, shopping strip holes-in-walls all, which my chow-dar pronounced killer: Luca's Ristorante (2019 Rt 27, Somerset, NJ; 732-297-7676), an unsettlingly authentic-looking Ischian spot right next to La Casa De Tortilla (2017 Rt 27, Somerset, NJ; 732-398-0660), which appears to offer that rarity of rarities: good Tex-Mex. Just north of those two is a brand new Afghan restaurant (which doesn't google, but I think it was called Chopan). And my chow-dar perked up big time at Istanbul Restaurant & Patisserie (1000 Aaron Rd, North Brunswick Township, NJ; 732-940-1122), right next to an Egyptian grocer, and also at Szechuan Ace (1721 Rt 27, Somerset, NJ; 732-937-9330). Amid all this wonderment is also (as I discovered later, via web search) a location of that great Hyberbadi restaurant I raved about in Norwalk CT. This branch is Paradise Biryani Point (1980 Rt 27, Somerset, NJ; 732-821-6300).

One amorphous "town" south, I'll bet Pho 99 (3151 Rt 27 Unit K, Franklin Park, NJ; 732-821-1828) makes terrific Vietnamese soup, and Aroma Royal Thai (3175 Rt 27, Franklin Park, NJ; 732-422-9300) and Paratha Hut (3191 Rt 27, Franklin Park, NJ; 732-940-1005) are worthy, as well (of course I'm a sucker for anything with "Hut" in the name, Pizza Hut being the obvious exception). Even further south on the same road, I actually got to try Main Street Eatery & Gourmet Bakery (56 Main Street, Kingston, NJ; 609-921-2778), and found their brownies and raspberry bars excellent, though a couple notches two sweet. Their cookies, though, are primo.

But none of this is the really big news. That - the find of the year - will have to wait till Monday.

The Evolution of Beer Festivals

2011-11-23T13:34:00.009-05:00

1980-1995: Closeted beer geeks - taste pariahs in a Bud Lite nation - thrill at the chance to sample lots of great beers all in one place. Brewers bring their best suds, bonds are formed. Food: pretzels if you're lucky

1995-2010: Beer geeks have gone mainstream, and therefore are jaded by omnipresent long beer lists. So beer festivals now mostly serve newbies, and are mostly drunken affairs. Brewers steer clear, sending sales reps with kegs of their most obvious and cheapest products. Food: crass, crappy mustards, novelty beer-flavored cheeses, etc.

2010 - : Hyper-geeky alterno-fests cater only to elite devotees, charging a prohibitive price to filter out drunks and riffraff. No obvious products are served - only the purest and most esoteric beer porn, selected by geeks who know more than you do. Food is awesome and surprising.

In New York, the new crop is best exemplified by New York's Get Real guys. These ever-creative organizers are trying something new, a Get Real NY Beer Bar Fest, on Saturday, December 10 at 404 10th Ave in Manhattan. Here's some P.R. (caution: despite what I wrote above, Rattle 'N Hum's food is anything but awesome...but I'm sure there'll be good stuff, as well):

WHAT: Get Real NY returns this December with its fourth festival – the Beer Bar Fest NYC. The Beer Bar Fest, a premiere craft beer and food event, will bring eight of the city’s best beer bars to one location. Long gone are the days when craft beer bars were known just for their exceptional craft taps. Today, beer bars are launching serous food programs and awakening to the wonders of how well artisanal foods pair with craft beer. Beer Bar Fest NYC Attendees will relish small bites from each bar artfully paired with some of the finest American craft beer available. A cask and oyster festival will also take place on the second floor and educational seminars on beer and food pairing will be given throughout the sessions. 12% Imports, a premier Brooklyn-based craft beer importer, will be serving a carefully curated selection of their finest kegs during the VIP hour.

WHEN: Saturday, December 10, 2011 over two sessions: 1-4 pm and 7-10 pm. VIPs will gain entry at noon and 6 pm, respectively.

WHERE: 404 Space, 404 10th Ave at 33rd Street, New York, NY, 10001

WHY: The National Restaurant Association Chef Survey (results) recently cited “food-beer pairings/beer dinners” as the number four alcohol and cocktails trend to watch for in 2011 (“locally-produced wine and beer” came in at number two). New York City bars are integrating the enjoyment of exceptional craft ales and lagers with artfully crafted food. The Beer Bar Fest is designed to showcase the finest food and craft beer that New York City has to offer.

SAMPLE PAIRINGS: Rattle n Hum will be pairing its first dish - house ground sea scallops, tiger shrimp and cod fish with herbs and hop salt served with garlic mayo and basil on a toasted brioche bun - with the Stillwater Stateside Saison, a Belgian-style ale brewed in Baltimore. The Bronx Ale House will be serving braised short rib chili, which will be paired with the local Bronx Brewery Pale Ale.

Leff'sList.org

2011-11-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

I have a sealed, new, DVD set of the superb "The Ascent of Man" series by Jacob Bronowski (I mistakenly ordered two).

Cost is $42, preferably via Paypal. If interested, email me at jimleff.ny@gmail.com

It's PAL region two, which means it's intended for Europe. But many American DVD players can handle such disks, or can be made to handle them - check Amazon reviews for your model for info on how to unlock all DVD regions; if it's possible, it will just be a matter of plugging in a few numbers with your remote control. And this is a good thing to do because lots of DVDs that are difficult or impossible to find in American can be found at Amazon UK - and shipping's actually reasonable.

Note: the tiny, cheap Swiss Army Knife DVD Player I wrote about a few years ago is currently out of production, but can be found for under $20 on eBay and I still very highly recommend it.

One note on the series: it's scientifically and aesthetically dated, but Bronowski's insights and passion still make this a must-see.

The Brain Storm

2011-11-16T12:49:00.000-05:00

Wow, this is some seriously rich and brilliant comedic stew...and I don't even get most of the insider references. Adding Mel ("oy vey!") Gibson was pure genius, but so's his contribution. Thanks to Barry Strugatz for the tip.

The Brain Storm with Mel Gibson, Jamie Foxx & Garry Shandling from Mel Gibson

Cookie Video Dissected on Chowhound

2011-11-14T10:46:00.000-05:00

There's a very interesting Chowhound discussion going on about that cookie video. There are lots of interesting insights, but, most practically, people have spotted some subtle quirks in how Von does things (like this posting).

There are also some good points made in the comments to the original Slog piece.

Mexican Coke

2011-11-13T20:56:00.002-05:00

I just learned something new. Did you know that Mexican Coke - the kind made with cane sugar instead of fructose, which comes in old-fashioned heavy glass bottles, usually found in Mexican grocers and taco shops - is distributed to those grocers and taco shops by regular American Coca Cola bottlers? I'm not sure who does the importation, but it sounds like Coca Cola is likely handling that, as well.

I can't even begin to parse out the biz angles involved. But there you go...

The Enigma of Von's Magical Cookies

2011-11-12T11:48:00.013-05:00

I've finally completed the video about the great cookies (the trailer was posted a few days ago). There's a story behind why it's so amateurish - I'd originally intended to bring up a production crew - but this isn't the time to tell it. As-is, I invite you to roll with the rough editing, mismatched sound, and fever dream-ish driving footage, and concentrate on the central mystery: why are these cookies so superbly great, when they're made from the most pedestrian recipe and lousy supermarket ingredients? Regular Slog readers will recognize this as a perfect example of the issue that most fascinates and inspires me (see previous articles here, here, and here).

Here's the video (note: you can play it in HD by clicking once in the video frame and then clicking "360p" near the bottom and choosing "HD"). Also: scroll down for the recipe (which I've annotated based on my cookie baking afternoon at Von's). If you try it for yourself, please post your findings in the comments!

Von's Oatmeal Cookies

Crush lumps in 7 oz dark brown sugar (1 cup)

Cream in:
1 stick of Crisco shortening at room temperature
7 oz granulated white sugar (1 cup)

Add
2 beaten large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Add:
7 oz flour ( 1 1/2 cups)
1 tsp baking soda
a bit less than 1 tsp salt

At this point, move quickly, because the baking soda is working!

Add:
9 oz oatmeal (3 cups)
1/2 cup well-chopped walnuts
1 handful (approx 1/3 cup) Heath bits (found near the nuts at the grocery)

Shape dough into balls, put on parchment paper atop a cookie sheet, flatten to 1/2 inch with a spoon while pushing the edges inward with your other hand.

Put sheet low in preheated oven, atop a second (empty) sheet. Bake 7 minutes at 350 while preparing second sheet.

Move first sheet to a higher oven position and replace it with the second sheet. Bake another 7 or 8 minutes, and continue similarly with subsequent sheets.

Transfer cookies to cooling racks one minute after they're removed from oven

Note: if baked for the right length of time and at the right temperature, the cookies will rise and stay risen, which is ideal. If not, they will collapse slightly. Either is ok, though. The taste is the same.

Update: read a fascinating and insightful Chowhound discussion about the recipe and video.

"The Enigma of Von's Cookies": The Trailer

2011-11-09T14:31:00.005-05:00

I'm working on a video about a guy who bakes the best cookies I've ever had. When I went to his place to shoot the process, I was hit with a great big honking surprise, and I've decided to spoil it right in the trailer.

I'm busily editing the final video right now, and hoping I can make some sense of it all. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, the trailer:

TMDTIATW: Another Connecticut Indian Score

2011-11-06T16:19:00.004-05:00

Astonishingly, Connecticut is home to the two best Indian restaurants I currently know. And my latest discovery, Paradise Biryani (280 Connecticut Avenue, Norwalk, CT; 203-956-7133), demolishes the previous fave, Danbury's highly-under-radar Kabab Grill. My meal there last night was the most delicious thing I ate this week (TMDTIATW).

Paradise Biryani is part of a chain, with outlets in places like New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas, and, according to that last link, new ones soon to arrive in Manhattan and Long Island. But that's ok; Indian chains are good (e.g. this one).

There are accomplished chefs who work with great precision and flair, and possess a keen sense of balance and a careful eye for detail. And there are more grandmotherly chefs, less fastidious and refined and fuzzier about details, but whose work devastates you with enveloping soulfulness. The chef here is both: an uber-fastidious technician of great skill and confidence who's easily capable of launching you into a woozy reverie. This incredibly rare combination makes this restaurant well worth a trip from pretty much anywhere. The chain's other locations may be perfectly good, but they certainly won't be the same. Chefs with both chops and soul aren't mass-produced.

Every dish is like a new world, with its own seasoning and lots of unique touches. Don't even imagine you won't need to eventually try every single dish. And don't insult the place by asking me to recommend "what's good". It's not one like that. This is greatness. So much so, in fact, that I'm not entirely sure I deserve to eat here.

The meal was like an Escher painting, in that each new dish surpassed all those preceding, yet, as we returned for second bites of previous items, we always found them better than we'd remembered. Perhaps the experience of each new miracle had made us better people, with improved palates and increased capacity for appreciating greatness. In any event, the math sketches out like this: A is better than B. B is better than C. C is better than A. B is better than A or C. A is better than B or C. Everything is, simply, better.

The place is BYO, but it would be a crime to bring anything less than exquisite to drink. We paid $40 each with tax and tip for a pretty serious repast.

Paneer 65. Grown-up cheese; so much more firm, mature, and nuanced than the norm. It's sauteed until centers are moist and edges crispy. The sauce, like all this kitchen's sauces, makes my head spin. Tons of curry leaf flavor.

Chicken pakora. A cumin-y miracle. So crisp yet so moist. So light and greaseless, you expect them to float. I couldn't escape the feeling that eating these was making me lose weight.

Fish curry. You don't want to fall into the trap of ordering only enticingly-described dishes. This was just: fish curry. But it left me giddy from deliciousness. Sorry for lack of specificity; as I explained once, at a certain quality level, analysis becomes impossible.

Mirch ka saalan, one of many dishes built around chili peppers. The sauce is sesame-based, but tastes a bit like the Lebanese/Turkish approach to lentil soup.

The biryani was puzzlingly similar in appearance to Uzbek plov, the least refined branch of the pilaf tree. The fine basmati rice made it another thing entirely. Yet this, the restaurant's signature dish, which we ordered as a goat version, was merely good-not-great. A great biryani should offer a grab bag; each bite delivering a different mix of components. This was uniform and a bit simple. The meat was added late (and tossed into the bottom, hard to extract), adding little essence to the rice.

Not pictured: Mango lassis weren't made to order, but made use of particularly classy mango. Breads were based on Bisquick, like most places do it, but presented uncommon subtleties of flavor and texture. For dessert, double ka meetha, a buttery Hyerbadi bread pudding, was terrific, but way too rich for me.

Service borders on maddening. It took a half hour to get water and menus (admittedly on a busy night), and we were really looking forward to masala chai at meal's end, but it took a full ten minutes before we were informed that they were all out (and, by this point, the room was pretty empty). Our waiter told us this with a big cheery smile, as if it was really good news. On the other hand, everyone down to the busboy is so absolutely stoked about the food quality here that when they ask how you like everything, they do so with huge Cheshire cat smiles and burning eyes - conspiratorially, as if to say "This is an absolute frickin' miracle, isn't it?" It's exciting.

I'll offer, as a mere lagniappe, a tip about the Polish deli a few feet north up Route 1. Taste of Europe (239 Westport Ave; Norwalk, CT; 203-846-9668) is, I believe, a major culinary point of light. Arriving too late for buffet lunch, I harpooned the remaining single tiny morsel of pork tenderloin from beneath a sea of lukewarm gravy in its steam table tray and found it supernal. There's a short menu of prepared dishes, too - goulash, potato pancakes, etc. I ache to try them. I did grab a take-out slab of Polish cheesecake, and it was as good as I've had. Again and again, I've found that greatness tends to cluster.

So This is Why Trees Shed Their Leaves For Winter

2011-10-29T14:41:00.000-04:00

In Hudson Valley, with three inches of snow fallen and eleven to go, I'm hearing two or three explosive snaps of big tree trunks per minute. This is not good.

The Evil That is Panera

2011-10-27T09:59:00.002-04:00

I've touched up my massive rant against Panera (and everything else evil in our society). It reads a lot better now. If you've never seen it, take a look - if you can stomach a view of the future where branding wins and independent restaurants go the way of independent bookstores. Plus a bite of horrid, horrid, unthinkably horrid pineapple upside down cake.

Naomi Wolf: How I Was Arrested at Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-22T01:12:00.002-04:00

It ends in huffy hyperbole (eroding the power of the piece, which otherwise is wisely cool and factual), and describes what most of us recognize as the inevitable result of defying a cop with his back up (in societies both fully civil and less so). But, still, there are troubling things in this tale of "a middle-aged writer in an evening gown arrested for peaceable conduct".

I don't like one bit what Wolf describes as "the web of 'overpermiticisation' – requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances." And I like even less implications that police may be fabricating new rules on the fly and lying about law in order to make their work more convenient. Protecting the expression of civil liberties must always take precedence over the inevitable inconvenience such expression causes authorities.

Poverty is Relative

2011-10-20T17:48:00.011-04:00

It's a horrendous recession, everyone's unemployed, their homes underwater or teetering on foreclosure, but, man, just try to get anyone to do an odd job at a reasonable price. Last spring I invited an unemployed, in-foreclosure friend to build a new deck for me at an hourly wage that would help pay his bills for a while, but wouldn't kill me, either. He agreed, but, six months later, he's still "too busy" to get around to it.

Many years ago, I was friends with a talented photographer who constantly complained about her lack of work. She could never go out and do anything; there was literally no cash on hand. Things were really tough.

A magazine I wrote for didn't have time to shoot a restaurant facade to accompany my review. I recommended my friend, and they agreed. So I called her up to tell her the good news - that she could make a quick $75 by simply walking a few blocks from her apartment and snapping a photo. I figured she'd be thrilled.

Her reply?

"$75? Tell them they can go fuck themselves!"

Six Writing Tips

2011-10-17T13:57:00.019-04:00

I once was a writer (entertaining examples). Nine books as author, coauthor, or contributor, columns for Newsday and NY Press (back when it was good!), frequent contributor to Newsweek, Bloomberg News Radio, and many others.

My writing here on the Slog sometimes springs from the writerly part of my mind, but usually is more personal - ideas and observations offered informally, without particular care taken in their expression. The following are hard-won writing tips for occasions when you need to take particular care. Many are actually editing tips rather than writing tips. But writing is 75% editing (in fact, that's the best tip of all!).

1. Keep Switching Formats to Edit

After editing out all the obvious problems on your computer, print it out. You'll be shocked by the number of new problems you find. Then try reading it out loud, noting problems (there will be plenty) as you go. Print it out with a different font and line spacings to uncover still more issues. Another trick: have someone read and offer their general impression. Then return to the writing, and you'll view it in a new light - and spot even more flaws.

2. Time Lends Perspective

If at all possible, put the writing aside for a few days (or, at least, a few hours). And pity theater critics, who must always get their reviews in the next day's paper. I honestly don't know how they do it.

3. Close Shave

Now, at this point, pass through looking to relentlessly cut every single unnecessary word (as if you were aiming to trim it to fit an arbitrary word count). Do this as dispassionately as possible, because we all have habits of using certain extra words, so they can seem perfectly ok at your first glance. But you'll find that if you remove them, the writing gets sleek and easier for people to read.

Better:

Now~~, at this point,~~ pass through ~~looking to~~ relentlessly ~~cut~~ cutting every ~~single~~ unnecessary word (as if ~~you were~~ aiming ~~to trim it~~ to fit an arbitrary word count). ~~You need to~~ Do this dispassionately, because ~~we all have habits of using certain~~ extra words~~, so they~~ can seem perfectly ok at ~~your~~ first glance. But ~~you'll find that~~ if you remove them, the writing gets sleek ~~and easier for people to read~~.

4. Butcher Your Favorite Children

Every creative person, without exception, has had the unenviable experience of cutting out their favorite material because it failed to serve the greater good of a given piece of work. Join the ranks of The Miserable, and get used to the idea that literally anything's fair game.

5. Change the More Changeable

It's very common for inexperienced writers to fix the wrong instance.

For example, this:

I decided to move to suburbia, but, boy, was that ever the wrong move!

gets corrected to this:

I decided to move to suburbia, but, boy, was that ever the wrong action!

rather than this:

I decided to relocate to suburbia, but, boy, was that ever the wrong move!

6. Fix the Thinking, not the Writing

When you get stuck, you may feel certain the idea itself is well-formed and the problem is in the expression. You'd be wrong. Well-composed thoughts always express fluidly. If you can't express something, you haven't fully fleshed out the idea. So stop writing, mull over the subject, tighten up your understanding, and then return to writing. You'll find that it flows easily.

(Anecdote: I used to play in a big band alongside a trombonist who was a great player but couldn't improvise. He often complained that he had really great solos in his head, but could never seem to get them out on his horn. I finally asked him to hum one of those great solos. What came out were just vague, unspecific shapes and gestures.)

Finally, see the "Audition" portion of "The Times Everything Worked Out" for a taste of the commitment required to really excel.

I'm Not the Only Bozo

2011-10-16T12:37:00.000-04:00

Google says "thnaks" appears 1,900,000 times on the Internet.

Phew!

I'm incredibly thnakful for the validation....

The Times Everything Worked Out

2011-10-13T16:04:00.016-04:00

Photos
I'd fallen rapturously in love with Portugal on my first trip to Lisbon. My nights were spent playing jazz in a local club, but afternoons were free, so one day I took a trip to Sintra, a mystical mountain renowned for its lush beauty. I brought along a camera, though my photography skills were minimal (I'd point the thing toward whatever I wanted to document and push the button. There: my cousin. There: the boat. There: the building. After all, isn't this what you're supposed to do? I was following the instruction manual to the letter!).

But this day on gorgeous Sintra, I was moved. I saw beautiful scenes, but, raising my camera, felt the daunting near-futility of trying to do justice to them on film. So I applied unfamiliar levels of time and care, refusing to snap the picture until what I was seeing through the camera expressed what I was feeling. Until then, I waited, patiently peering through the lens, micro-adjusting the composition by a millimeter in one direction or another. There were still subtler nano-adjustments, where the shot didn't change but my intention somehow did. Only when I felt an inner swelling of exultation, moved by what I saw, did I push the button.

To my flabbergasted astonishment, the photographs were gallery quality. Everyone who saw them fell in love with Sintra just as I had.

Tasting Notes
A friend and I were invited to a high-end port wine tasting. My friend loved port, but fell ill and couldn't attend. I felt badly, and vowed to capture the experience so evocatively that he'd feel as if he'd tried everything.

The tasting evoked treasured memories of drinking low-end port in Portugal, and I drew on that as I sat alone, blissfully sipping and furiously scribbling, intent on doing justice to these rare and fantastic wines.

Not being a trained wine taster, I lacked vocabulary. But I funneled my writing skill, my vast admiration for the wines, and my fervid desire to create an evocative account into the task. And the results so impressed the tasting's host (a major wine collector) that he spent the next several years opening the best wines of the century for my enjoyment and education.

The Audition
There was a call for restaurant critics at a small Manhattan newspaper. Never having written professionally, I prepared three sample reviews of favorite restaurants, and I did not look up from my computer until these articles were honed to perfection. Each word - every phoneme - contributed to the picture I was painting, and it was all painstakingly arranged to create a seamless rhythm. I applied the minute care usually reserved for poetry or haiku so the reader would immerse in a vicarious experience of eating in these restaurants I loved so much.

I got the job.

Chowhound
Here's a secret about Chowhound. We were not the first restaurant forum. When I built it in 1997, there were a couple of other sites devoted to user-contributed restaurant reviews. They consisted of bland (or cutesy) listings of restaurants, each of which contained a space where you could write your review. Ok: go! Review!

Of course, no one did, and these flat, corporate, soulless sites remained empty edifices. I opened Chowhound, and filled it with personality. Every element was chosen with loving care. People arrived and instantly felt at home. We eventually pulled in nearly a million of them with no budget or advertising.

Girlfriends
Romantically, I discovered early on that if you commit to never touching your partner with less than 100% of your full love and affection, and to focusing 100% of your attention on their every touch - and extend this commitment to the subtlest possible level - nothing else matters.

The Upshot
I wasn't trying to take great pictures, much less have people think I'm a good photographer. I wasn't trying to write great wine notes, much less impress wine honchos. I wasn't trying to become a well-known food writer, or start a massively popular web site, or impress women. I was simply caring...a lot. Possibly too much. And likely to a degree the mainstream would consider odd.

Don't get the wrong idea. My victories have been few; I've failed much more than I've succeeded. I've recounted a few singular high points amid a life mostly spent in a state of rushed, anguished obliviousness, so I can't be smug about any of this! I am, however, confident that I've dumbly stumbled upon the key, even though I only rarely remember to apply it: Love. Care. Fervor. Attention. Intention. Subtlety. Detail. Commitment. "Doing justice to..." Or, as I more succinctly described it in my article explaining the magic of Steve Jobs, it's all about "love and caring generosity and ingenuity".

This is all that's necessary to transcend humanity's needlessly grey, grim, grinding experience. It's the open doorway of the divine. Shakti makes the choice and shakti empowers the result. You only have to give a damn (about what you're doing, rather than about reaching a specific result).

Pot Roast Postscript
My mom, a poor cook, always burnt the pot roast. Literally always. I kept trying to problem-solve the situation, which had evolved into an exasperated family joke. But as we discussed it, over many years, I gradually recognized the truth, which shocked me: she felt that feeding the family, period, was sufficient. Food was on the table. She'd pointed the camera and snapped the button.

Best Coconut Water

2011-10-12T13:31:00.001-04:00

Coconut water's a big craze right now. I've tried many brands, and they all taste more or less the same. But I just discovered Taste Nirvana Real Coconut Water, which is made from a different variety of Thai coconuts than we're used to.

This stuff's so much deeper, clearer, and more alive-tasting; I don't think I can go back to other brands now that I've tasted this. Here is a store locator (I see they're for sale at Whole Foods, and at a reasonable price in bulk from Amazon).

The Actual Deal With Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T17:28:00.043-04:00

I'd like to try to discuss the thing about Steve Jobs that everyone's dancing around - the thing Jobs himself danced around on the few occasions he tried to explain himself.

I'll give it a name. But I'll dance around some, too, because I won't try to define that name. The naming will help, though, because once you have even a vague, intuitive notion of what I'm describing, you'll start seeing it everywhere. It's the thing that made Jobs Jobs - and made Apple so successful and capable of changing all our lives.

People never get to the root of this thing which I haven't yet named. They poke around surfaces, trying to reverse-engineer a recipe, figuring they can achieve similar results by reducing it to rules and then following those rules. Silly humans! JS Bach composed deeply beautiful and inspiring chorales, which musicologists later explained via a series of rules which theoretically allow anyone to whip up chorales of their own. Composers follow those rules even today, though their work is rarely beautiful or inspiring.

Whatever it is, it ain't in the rules. The rules always come after. Bach wasn't following rules. You don't get anywhere great from canned recipes. And, yes, I've just restated one of the primary rules Jobs-watchers (and even Jobs himself) have frequently cited. But, you see, the rule is never the thing. And "the thing" is too slippery to explain directly. I wrote about magic several months ago, describing it as the last undefined term, and the only one with any power left. So here's another facet of all that:

Shakti.

Like "magic", I won't neuter it by trying to define it (you may google and wiki it all you'd like, but you'll only drift further and further away). But you've seen shakti at work. It's what powers those moments when humans do extraordinary things.

Remember how Chris Rock was just so-so on SNL, but then he did that first TV special, and he wasn't just funny, he was deeply, deeply brilliant; so lucid, so razor-sharp, so oh-my-god-I-just-can't-stand-it that you knew a whole other thing was happening? It wasn't just a good comedian getting better. It was an entirely new level. Shakti!

Keith Jarrett's legendary Koln Concert was a great big wave of Shakti, and you can hear it mounting if you listen closely. Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which popped out of nowhere from the 37 year old mind of a respected but not exceptional scientist (who never reached those heights again) was another example.

Whenever someone pushes their game up to Infinity, giving chills or changing the world (regardless of whether the world notices), that's Shakti. It's the ozone one smells during the lightning flash of profound creativity. And it's the fabric of the lightning itself. We know it intimately, because without Shakti, we're all just bags of meat. With a full jolt of it, creativity is boundless, and we are elevated, for a moment, to the Divine.

An indescribable sense of elevation galvanizes your attention. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Picasso's Guernica. The kindness of New Yorkers on 9/12/01. The first hug of first love. Susan Boyle singing her heart out on that sappy song. Stephen Colbert's wit, at least once per show. The Arepa Lady on a good night. Rising unexpectedly to an occasion...that's Shakti. When someone kisses you so ardently you have to breathlessly pull away, that's shakti. Most of all, when you recognize, with astonishment, that someone's lavished heart-breaking love and caring generosity and ingenuity into their creation - so much so that you almost can't stand it, that's Shakti.

"Almost can't stand it." That's it right there. People love their iPhones so much they almost can't stand it. And their iPads. And there was always a buzz to be caught from the unlikely childlike sincerity of Jobs' keynote speeches. Such feelings don't make you a fanboy or a materialistic yuppie. Apple's devices are transcendent, because they are steeped in Shakti. It's incredibly contagious.

What's the source of Steve Jobs' Shakti? He tried to explain in his Stanford commencement address. Ironically, he condensed it into rules. That's always what happens. Again, the rule's not the thing (must one dutifully obey a command to "Think Different"?). You can't codify it. You just gotta surrender to the Shakti. Simple as that.

How do you cultivate Shakti? While I've not used the word (except here), I've been quietly writing about just that here for several years - especially in the entries you may have least felt like reading. This is territory few modern, sophisticated, educated people want to go near (as much as they may covet the results). Jobs wasn't actually very sophisticated. He wasn't even a college grad. What he was, even with all his flaws, was one of our era's foremost karma yogis. And the ozone-like smell in the air this week - so palpable, as multitudes feel unexpectedly crestfallen over his death, and suddenly realize that his creativity was of an entirely different, transcendent level, utterly permeated with love and caring generosity and ingenuity - is the contrail of his shakti.

Aging

2011-10-06T11:38:00.001-04:00

Here's the problem with finding oneself middle-aged yet still feeling youthful and pliant:

As you keep appearing older and older, the feedback you receive from others increasingly conflicts with your inner reality. And the result feels oddly similar to adolescent alienation ("nobody really understands me," etc etc). Which is disturbing, but also, come to think of it, unquestionably youthful!

So, it appears you've got to take some of the bad side of youthfulness along with the good...

After Happily Ever After

2011-10-06T11:30:00.000-04:00

If yesterday's "Happily Ever After" post explains the roots of stress, this previous post offers a practical approach (plus links to some related thoughts). You might especially want to check out the short article about The Monks and the Coffee

Happily Ever After

2011-10-04T12:31:00.013-04:00

I honestly believe that the lion's share of unhappiness in western society can be traced directly to the five words ending most children's fairy tales:

"...and lived happily ever after."

Many of us loved "The Graduate", Mike Nichol's film starring a young Dustin Hoffman and Ann Bancroft. But almost no one remembers the ending - which was the movie's fulcrum, transforming it into a 105 minute shaggy dog story.

Benjamin, an aimless recent college graduate, is discontent with his family's suburban bourgeois values. In his torpor, he allows himself to be seduced by Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's partner. He then falls in love with Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Elaine, but her parents, to say the least, disapprove. They drive Elaine away from Benjamin, and when she's about to marry some jock named Carl, Benjamin storms the church. Elaine, realizing she always loved Benjamin, runs hand-in-hand with him out the door.

What happens next, which few remember, is that Elaine (in full wedding dress) and Benjamin (a sweaty mess), in their euphoria, get on a bus. They find seats, and the camera fixes on them for far longer than you'd expect while they catch their breath, compose their faces, and leak, visibly but ever-so-slightly, into the next story, whatever it may turn out to be (and "happily ever after" ain't it). Nichols has undermined the fairy tale structure upon which his simple story hangs. Ok, we've got each other...for now. But, um, now what??

The truth is that no one has ever "lived happily ever after". There are no happy endings; only uncertain beginnings. Yet we believe in happy endings, almost as a birthright, because the notion was instilled in us at such an early age. Indeed, I see myself and my friends scrambling desperately for a sensation of having landed...of having ducks in a row, needs met, entropy under control, pain averted, noise quieted, tasks completed, and destination reached. Finally, some repose, please, so the real living can begin!

We yearn to be nouns, but life's a verb, with no actual repose. For those with happy-ever-after dreams, existence seems like a crazy-making never-ending game of whack-a-mole.

The girl says "I do", but transforms into a wife, and relationships are hard. You sell your company, but queued life issues aren't solvable with money. You find the house of your dreams, but, woops, what's this nasty cough?

Nothing ever ends, much less ends happily. It's a dynamic swirl, a never-ending question of "Now what??". Problems and change are the very fabric of living, not distracting turbulence to be negotiated en route to an imaginary landing strip. We live in the verb form of unceasing transition, and "happy" is the adjective we might choose to affix to that verb. It's an optional tint for the glasses through which we view change, both pleasant and unpleasant.

Update: if the above explains the roots of stress, this previous post offers a practical approach (and links to some related thoughts).

TMDTIATW: Kitch'n Cook'd Potato Chips

2011-10-03T15:28:00.003-04:00

The most delicious thing I ate this week (TMDTIATW) were potato chips from the legendary Maui Potato Chip Factory. I sent $32 (to: Maui Potato Chip Factory, 295 Lalo St, Kahului HI 96732), waited a good while, and my hero, Mark Kobayashi, sent back four bags like this:

...except full of potato chips.

Here they are, viewed in their natural habitat (please click to expand):

You can't buy these anywhere, including on Maui, where they hardly make it off the delivery truck and onto store shelves before they're snapped up. Mark Kobayashi could increase capacity, and sell them all over Maui, the Islands, the country, and the world, but he doesn't want to expand. He just wants to make the world's greatest potato chips. Frito Lay has offered him big money, but he won't sell out. He doesn't want big money, he just wants to make the world's greatest potato chips.

He just wants to make the world's greatest potato chips.

None of those "Hawaiian style" potato chips you see in supermarkets - some even using term "Maui" - are Mark Kobayashi's chips. That's just Frito Lay expressing its extreme displeasure, with laughable impotence.Mark Kobayashi's chips have nothing in common with them. His thick, brown, soulful spuddy steaks are better than anything you ever had.

The greatest wine in the world is only slightly better than the second greatest wine. The fastest sports car in the world is only slightly faster than the second fastest. But thanks to talent, diligence, love, and a very clear picture of what he wants out of his life (and a willingness to discard the rest), Mark Kobayashi is able to produce chips that are, by my calculation, exactly 3200 times better than the next best.

The Best, Easiest, and Most Sustainable Diet Tip

2011-09-28T16:39:00.001-04:00

At some point in every meal you've ever eaten, the following mental question has arisen:

"Do I want to eat some more?"

It's always asked quietly - so quietly that it may not consciously register. The usual reaction is to shrug and eat a few more bites. What the hell!

Here's the thing:

1. No one in the history of the human race has ever asked themselves this question while still hungry. Genuinely hungry people just eat. The fact that you're asking reveals that you have, in fact, eaten enough!

2. The gratuitous few bites you take after this point will probably add 10-20% more calories to your meal. And most of us are 10-20% overweight. So these are the marginal calories that make us marginally overweight. So drop your fork!

3. This "marginal eating" is the least satisfying part. After all, you're no longer hungry! It's hard to not eat pizza, or to go hungry, or to eat only protein, or otherwise make sharp changes to dining patterns, which are deeply engrained and tie in with feelings of well-being. But marginal eating is just an afterthought. Not deep.

4. Marginal eating is what makes you feel weighed-down after meals. If you stop eating as soon as you ask The Question, you'll feel a lot better afterwards.

5. Once you start listening for The Question, you'll have proven to yourself that eating a "just right" amount makes you feel better. So it will be instinctively received as a welcome signal, rather than a stern rebuke.

6. As you learn to listen for The Question, you'll be surprised how early it first appears. You've been eating a lot more than necessary to feel satisfied. And, again, eating the "just right" amount feels, well, just right. Once you start feeling good after meals (it helps to also balance fat/carb/protein, and to never starve), that feeling becomes a new powerful crave. Häagen-Dazs loses some of its allure once you're addicted to feeling clear-headed and energetic.

7. This is a long-term viable behavior. It's not a hardship to endure while dieting and then throw away once you've lost weight. And so, unlike most dieting strategies, it won't lead to endless cycles of weight loss and weight gain.

8. A tip: if you feel you're having trouble "hearing" the question, that means you're there, right now. Once you start thinking about it, or looking for it, you're done. Drop your fork!

That's the gist. The following is just optional commentary:

This tip resembles a few others you've heard - some ad infinitum. But those others either don't work or are inane. "Always leave food on the plate" is ridiculous; it hinges, of course, on how much food was there in the first place! And setting any arbitrary portion limit will leave you hungry, and hunger-based dieting always backfires (because 1. it triggers fundamental psycho/physiological processes, and 2. it's not long term viable). Simply following this tip ensures, inherently, that you'll never be hungry. It will tailor portion size to your body's needs at any particular moment. What could be better?

We have the notion that dieting involves discipline and deprivation. The "no-pain-no-gain" preconception is why dieting almost never works. The problems stem from a central miscalculation: the way we eat now is "normal", so in order to lose weight, we must do abnormal things. Naturally, we eventually return to "normal"...and get fat again.

So the only thing that makes sense is to create a sustainable "new normal". And this tip is your best bet. Not only is it a gentle way to recalibrate normality, it actually corrects a habitual abnormality in our eating (the result of mankind's current unusual condition of having extra food lying around...at least in the developed world).

That said, the route of natural, sustainable, non-deprivational change is not the fastest way to lose weight. The faster you want to lose, the more abnormal and deprivational you'll need to go. But abnormal changes just snap back to an unhealthy normal. So consider making this much gentler change to your everyday eating, and see if it works for you.

An Easy Way to Magnify the Benefit of Aerobic Workouts

2011-09-27T10:39:00.003-04:00

There are few free rides in the world of fitness, and fewer still which favor newbies. Here's one I've never seen mentioned before.

"Recovery time" is the time it takes for your heart rate to return to normal after exercise. Recovery time is much longer if you're not super fit, and that creates an opportunity. As your heart rate slowly returns to normal, you "ride" at least some aerobic benefit all the way down. You may get an extra four or five minutes of benefit, absolutely free (though, obviously, you won't get full benefit near the tail end of recovery).

Say you can manage a 15 minute aerobic workout. And say your recovery time is six minutes. That's 19 or 20 minutes of de facto workout. But here's the trick: play with that a bit. After your workout, you will be unable to jog (or cycle, etc) with much intensity, but you can surely walk swiftly on the treadmill, perhaps even at an incline. Ten minutes of this will delay your recovery, making light exercise yield a greatly magnified benefit.

You will find, in other words, that a brisk treadmill walk which normally would bring your heart rate only to, say, 90 bps may, after an intense workout, keep your rate at, say, 110 or 120 bps. While this non-peak heart rate won't yield maximum benefit, it's still within ~~aerobic~~ weight-loss range, and you're keeping yourself there with minimal discomfort, since, after all, you're only walking!

And "minimal discomfort" is essential, because for this to work, you must first push hard in your regular workout (i.e. maintaining 140, 160, 180 bps, depending on your age). Don't skimp on that! And don't take any break afterwards (you don't want to allow yourself to recover). Just immediately switch to walking, cycling, etc., near the top end of your easy comfort range, for as much time as is available. Sort of like a warm-down, only a little more vigorous and for a lot more time.

This wouldn't work for a an elite athlete, whose pulse quickly slows to a crawl in the absence of heavy exertion. It's a free ride exclusively for the rest of us!

Another tip: it's been shown that we continue to burn fat for some time after a workout. It's a good idea to wait 30-60 minutes before eating anything, because eating is thought to suspend this after-burn.

By combining these two tips, you can magnify a fairly short aerobic workout into a much more extended fat burning session with little additional discomfort.

Pass it on!

Elizabeth Warren: Moderate's Messiah

2011-09-26T11:52:00.001-04:00

Ok, that title's hyperbolic. But I'm truly excited about Elizabeth Warren getting involved in politics. I haven't been this fully behind a politician since Michael Bloomberg. I like smart, grounded, sensible politicians with a practical streak and specific policy positions, who don't doubletalk or push tribal (i.e. partisan) buttons, and who'd sooner choke than hew to talking points. The country faces pragmatic challenges, and we need pragmatic leaders

If you're a moderate like me, she's your gal. If you're a moderate conservative, whiplashed by your party's co-option by the extreme right, she's your's too. Same if you've never been entirely comfortable with the strident utopianism of the left, or its wishy-washy leadership skills. She's sensible and real, and, man, what a relief that is.

Her opponent in the Massachusetts Senate campaign, Scott Brown, is the darling of Wall Street, with a huge campaign war chest. So, even if you live nowhere near Massachusetts, she could use your help. We will, after all, need a helluva good president in 2016.

Naturally, Warren's being played as "anti-Wall Street" for proposing grievously needed reforms which all sensible Americans understand to be necessary (e.g., unbelievably, the voodoo-like derivatives market that caused this mess is thriving). But that's nonsense, much like calling the push to raise rich people's taxes by 4.6% to Clinton era rates "class warfare" is nonsense. To extremists, sensible moderation always seems extreme, but in Warren's case, the characterization won't stick; she's too eminently sensible and pragmatic to be painted as some sort of radical. I have most of my savings invested in the stock market, and I'm certainly not worried about her.

Unless you're a doctrinaire libertarian (here's why I'm not one anymore), I can't imagine that this 90 second video wouldn't seem like a breath of fresh air to you, and make you want to contribute a few bucks:

SIGA: Feeling a Bit Brighter

2011-09-25T13:19:00.004-04:00

Well, investment expert Andrew Tobias has bought more SIGA. I'm not sure how much of a resonance chamber this is (i.e. my optimism may fuel his buying, which in turn fuels my optimism), but it's hard not to be heartened when one of the nation's smartest investors (and most respected financial gurus...not to mention best writers) understands the potential...while appropriately cautioning that these sorts of investments are only for money one can afford to lose.

SIGA's market cap has sunk below the company's share of a signed governmental contract (funding for which is pre-allocated), and totally fails to price in foreign contracts, alternative formulations and applications, much less the pipeline of in-development drugs. So it's hard not to deem their stock a steal (along with nearly the entire biotech market, currently offering gigantic bargains). The stock price is already starting to bounce back from the lawsuit verdict, and even if appeal upholds their order to share half of net profit, half of "billions and billions" is still billions. So patient investors may have the last laugh yet.

It will take a year or two before we start feeling smug again, however. But it was going to take that long, anyway, to finish off the FDA odds/ends that will lead to foreign orders and the rest. We were always destined for a lull here.

P.S. - I'm glad I didn't hedge with SIGA's opponent in the lawsuit. Naturally, all the retail investors got stomped in the stampede for the exits, and now face a much longer - and less assured - wait than we do (because we're splitting only net profit after all expenses, and SIGA keeps the first $40M....plus it's hard to imagine PIP's management giving stockholders more than a taste of this annuity when it arrives).

Counting My Blessings

2011-09-22T20:47:00.002-04:00

I'd be extremely happy to sit day after day helplessly watching huge chunks of my savings evaporate if that were the only alternative to doing this guy's job!

Note: if this sort of thing seriously upsets you, shut it down after the first couple seconds, 'cuz it only gets worse...

Judge Rules Against SIGA

2011-09-22T13:38:00.005-04:00

I predicted that the lawsuit between SIGA and Pharmathene (the company it failed to merge with years ago) presented little peril to SIGA. But the judge has just ruled, splitting net revenues of ST-246 between SIGA and Pharmathene (SIGA gets to keep the first $40M net).

So I was wrong. And the lawyers and corporate experts I spoke to were wrong. And several respected analysts were wrong. And Fidelity and Vanguard, major institutional investors who'd taken a large stake in SIGA (surely only after having checked out this lawsuit) were wrong.

Well, either that or the judge was wrong. Hey, it happens.

But, lousy news though this is, the recent collapse of SIGA's stock price has overshadowed the legal drama. That collapse was not the result of insiders banking on this decision, because Pharmathene's stock price tanked, too. It was the result of uncertainty from this dragged-out lawsuit, plus the implosion of biotech prices as a sector, plus (as I wrote back in August) the lack of immediate further revenue on SIGA's horizon (they'd recently won a huge contract, but the market, as usual, wanted to know "what's next)?".

So now there's a great big pile of salt on that wound. Having plummeted from $15 to $5 already, perhaps now we'll sink to $2 or $3 once trading resumes. That would not be a happy thing, but neither will it be an entirely new level of pain. On the other hand, bargain hunters may step in, along with investors long sidelined by the uncertainty. I continue to worry about a take-under by Ron Perelman, but that would come at a substantial premium (likely giving me - and most Slog readers who've invested - their investment back plus some). I'd still hate that result, because even shared, SIGA's fantastic potential would still leave enough profit to go around.

The star of the show, and the focus of my attention, is ST-246, an amazing and versatile drug. Whether revenues are split with Phamathene or not (my guess is still not; I can't imagine this will stand on appeal), SIGA is worth better than single digits.

And here's the thing: while a windfall is due from the recent BARDA contract, that revenue will arrive piecemeal, as the drug is gradually delivered. In their last conference call, SIGA gave a very slow forecast for fulfilling the order (in fact, this was one reason the stock tanked). Bearing in mind that SIGA keeps the first $40M in revenue, it will take at least a year before that mark is hit and PIP starts getting their share (and even then, their cut is after expenses, which have been huge). And the appeal will likely be wrapped up by then. This, I suspect, is why SIGA had worked out such a strangely protracted fulfillment process. The revenue comes slowly.

So it's not utter disaster. But that's not to say that I'm not going out right now to drink about fourteen shots of whiskey (cheap stuff, too, as I can no longer afford single malts).

While I never promised anyone SIGA's rise would happen quickly - in fact, I was clear from the start it'd be long and painful - this was a development I never foresaw. But we're still undervalued.

Three Mac Tips

2011-09-22T04:34:00.000-04:00

Ask Different ("Answers for your Apple questions") is a great lesser known site for how-to-dos and tips. Too many users in an online discussion makes for long, frothy threads. Too few is useless. This forum, at least for now, is Goldilocks. Particularly good is this thread on Safari extensions that had some tips even I didn't know (and I'm a fan boy!).

Courtesy of the above site.....if you're a fan of Sogudi or Keywurl (two Safari add-ons that allow you to do quickie custom searches via the URL field), you're probably peeved that neither work in Lion. But Safari Keyword Search does.

If you leave lots of windows and/or tabs open in Safari 5.1, and find that it starts slowing down your system, here's something to try, courtesy of the comment thread beneath this article.

1. Quit Safari

2. Launch Terminal

3. Type (or paste) the following:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugNewWindowsUseSingleProcessWebKit 1

4. Quit Terminal

5. Launch Safari

My Email to Amazon

2011-09-21T07:22:00.009-04:00

If you'd care to add your voice, here's a list of email addresses for Amazon managers.

Dear [Amazon Exec],

I've been one of your best customers since 1996. The web site I founded, Chowhound.com, was one of your first Amazon associates, and I've been an Amazon Prime customer since the program's launch.

I'm disturbed by what I've read about work conditions in your Lehigh Valley warehouse (re: this article). Happy workplaces are an integral branding point for other companies (e.g. Trader Joe's, Costco, Apple Stores) which enjoy tight customer identification and loyalty. If the magic were dispelled and Amazon came to be recognized as just another worker-chewing Walmart, that would be disastrous for you.

I give Amazon more business than any other single retailer. And I try to be cognizant of the sorts of operations I support with my business. So I'll be watching to see how you address this. If I keep hearing about workplace cruelty issues, I'm prepared to break my fifteen year Amazon habit.

Jim Leff

South River Miso

2011-09-21T02:00:00.001-04:00

I made a mistake (currently corrected) in my salmon rice recipe. The company I meant to recommend for miso is South River.

Their four miso sampler is a great way to get started, and highly recommended But their most noteworthy products are a couple of things you might overlook: the Tohum wood-fired tahini and the miso tamari.

Both are incredible ammo to have handy for adding healthful tasty intrigue. If I ever finally write a part 2 to my "A New Way of Healthy Cooking" article, you'll read why such ammo is vitally important.

TMDTIATW: Salmon Rice

2011-09-20T07:52:00.012-04:00

The most delicious thing I ate this week (TMDTIATW) was this salmon rice I whipped up here at Chez Leff.

Chop a one pound salmon fillet (wild Alaskan has the best flavor, if you want to splurge) into bite-sized chunks.

In a large bowl, combine a couple rounded tablespoons of miso paste (I used South River chickpea), a tablespoon of soy sauce (I used "Mother's Best" Filipino calamansi soy sauce, available at large Asian grocers), a garlic clove or two chopped fine, black pepper, a generous handful of chopped scallion or chives, and two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (I use Goya for cooking), plus an optional few shakes of ground marjoram. Dilute with a half cup of water and marinate the salmon, stirring infrequently to ensure even coating.

Chop a medium onion, sautee in olive oil at medium heat. Remove half when it begins to brown, and caramelize the rest. Remove the caramelized onion, set it aside, and reintroduce the lightly browned onion.

Add to the pan 2 cups of chicken stock (I used Trader Joe's low-sodium organic) and a cup of short or medium grained rice (I used Carnaroli - a bit firmer than arborio - from Lotus Foods). Bring to a boil, then stir in a few ground saffron threads and the salmon plus half the marinade - or all of it if you want a really zingy flavor (I prefer not to crowd the subtle rice and salmon flavors). Cover and reduce to simmer.

Cook for 20 minutes, adding chopped carrots after 10, coarsely-cut asparagus after 15, and a generous handful of baby spinach plus the caremlized onion after 19 (also check for salt; note that this recipe tastes great with none additional). If you have leftover veggies, chop them and throw them in at the end, too. Turn off heat and allow to sit a few minutes before serving. Finish with a drizzle of your best extra virgin olive oil.

Firmly scrape the pan with a metal spatula, and top off your guest's plate with the crunch.

Serves 2 or 3

Nitpickers: yes, the recipe doesn't perfectly match the photo, because I'd run out of onion!

Sanctimony is Counterproductive

2011-09-19T14:59:00.003-04:00

"Q: I have definite spiritual ambitions. Must I not work for their fulfilment?

A: No ambition is spiritual. All ambitions are for the sake of the [individual mind]. If you want to make real [spiritual] progress you must give up all idea of personal attainment. The ambitions of the so-called Yogis are preposterous. A man's desire for a woman is innocence itself compared to the lusting for an everlasting personal bliss. The mind is a cheat. The more pious it seems, the worse the betrayal."

--- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj ("I Am That")

"Most of spirituality is a myth and a dream. It belongs firmly to the dream state. 90% of what we call spirituality actually serves the dream state rather than serves waking up from the dream state."

--- Adyashanti ("Complete Interview") (but here's a better introduction)

Symmetrical Radicalism

2011-09-18T14:05:00.009-04:00

The left is terrified by the ambitious radicalism of the right's push for shrinking government (rolling back services, safety nets, regulations, etc.). They appear almost conservative as they reflexively defend status quo, horrified that a chunk of the country aims to force extreme changes which seem un-American.

It's an interesting exercise to contrast this with the perspective of those once forced to accept sexual revolution, moral relativism, multiculturalism, political correctness, legal abortion, and blatant homosexuality and atheism, etc.. These changes seemed, to them, un-American, but the chunk of the country behind them were unflinchingly certain this was inherently beneficial progress which any enlightened person would applaud. They showed no tolerance at all for other perspectives, which were, after all, obviously backward and hateful.

While I, myself, applaud many of those changes, and find it hard to sympathize with the (backward! hateful!) people who begrudged them, I can nonetheless empathize, generally, with the disorientation of being forced into unwelcome change, and the outrage of having one's values summarily disregarded by arrogant-seeming folks living far away. It's especially easy to understand how the unblinking sense of moral superiority would cause offense. And I can examine the evolution of my own attitudes to understand the perspective of those living in places where no societal tides carried them to conclusions easily embraced in places like my own New York City (please read this).

Can anyone on the left spot the symmetry? It seems glaringly obvious. That said, I can hear the objections: the difference is that Tea Party goals are bad, while 60's goals were good. A priori....much like Michele Bachman. The dogma may change, the radical spin may be clockwise or counterclockwise, but the "a priori" attitude is an evergreen. The answer is: no. No one on the left can spot the symmetry, nor would they acknowledge it if it were pointed out to them. There is a seamless firewall of empathy.

Human beings are reasonably empathic creatures on the local, individual-to-individual level. But our innate intra-tribe empathy is extremely poor. That's always been our Achilles heel as a species.

Retailing Trend: Sham "Tibetan" Businesses

2011-09-16T19:13:00.000-04:00

A big retail trend I've been spotting all over lately is Chinese people operating businesses claiming to be Tibetan. Restaurants, spas, medicine, and salons - there are suddenly loads of them.

To my thinking, this is akin to Nazis opening Jewish delis.

Why Charles Bukowski Hates Chicks

2011-09-14T02:17:00.002-04:00

I just ran across the following Charles Bukowski quote:

"Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you."

It's absolutely true. But it's also true of men. This is really a human failing, not constrained to any one group. But we notice universal human failings more sharply in other groups/tribes.

Try something. Each time you hear someone negatively characterize a certain group of people, try to find the truth in it, and then add "...but It's really a human failing." You'll find that it nearly always applies.

Racism, sexism, classism, etc., are nothing more than the incomplete registration of a perfectly appropriate misanthropy.

TMDTIATW: Korean Chain Gangs

2011-09-13T01:21:00.005-04:00

The most delicious thing I ate this week (TMDTIATW) were these thin, ultracrisp, buttery almond cookies from the Norwood, NJ outlet of Parisienne, a Korean bakery chain which also does business under the "Zaiya" brand. There are branches in Manhattan plus their original location in Fort Lee, but I'm not certain the cookies taste the same at other outlets (though they seem to have been baked at a central facility, so they probably do).

Runner-up: the lacquered, perfect Korean fried chicken at the newest outlet in the "Mad For Chicken" chain (the new brand name for fabled Bonchon Chicken), in Bergenfield, NJ (121 N. Washington Ave; 201-387-2000). Ask for soy/garlic, answer an adamant "yes" to spicy, and be prepared to wait 25 minutes, because perfection takes time and everything's made to order.

Patent Hypocrisy (and a proposed solution)

2011-09-12T01:16:00.018-04:00

Check out this excellent short piece by Philip Elmer-DeWitt on the patent war heating up between Apple and Google (via Daring Fireball). Here's the gist:

The difference is that Apple actually invented the technology it accused HTC — and by proxy, Google — of “stealing”.... One of the patents Apple cited in its 2010 suit...is a 358-page document signed by Jobs himself that covers everything from the way a finger touches the screen of a smartphone to the heuristics that turn those touches into commands.

HTC and Google, by contrast, are accusing Apple (whose smartphone designs they have plainly copied) of violating patents they bought fourth or fifth hand.

"Patents were meant to encourage innovation," Google's chief legal counsel David Drummond wrote last month in his famous open letter "When Patents Attack Android." Google's enemies, he complained, were using "bogus" patents to try to "strangle" Android.

"Fortunately," he added, "the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means."

Indeed.

The endless repackaging and trading of patents has had a disruptive and distortional effect on the tech sector (much like derivatives re: the financial sector). What if law were changed so patent ownership could be transferred only once? Inventors ought to be able to sell their inventions, but further resale drifts society further and further from the original impetus of patent law...while stifling innovation and competition.

It strikes me as high time that we firmed up intellectual property rights for those who actually innovate, and stripped them entirely from litigious trolls.

Recalling 9/11

2011-09-10T12:06:00.002-04:00

Thanks to Joshi for pointing out this inspiring interview with an air national guard pilot who helped defend us after September 11

Most people working at the World Trade Center site immediately after the attack were toiling too hard to look around and reflect much. Here's a rare account from an articulate Buddhist chaplain who was one of the very few non-first responders permitted into the area. I found it very illuminating.

In case you missed it, here's the tale of how Hurricane Irene made me remember the deeper, scarier emotions of that time. And the story of a friend lost on United flight 93.

Finally, I've already linked to it a zillion times, but you've just got to read this terrific series of pieces in Slate which worked through the various theories explaining why America hasn't suffered a 9/11 style attack since, er, 9/11.

Balancing Against the Grain

2011-09-10T01:26:00.007-04:00

I don't sound like anyone else on trombone. And I got some great advice once: I don't need to try to sound original; I sound that way without trying. So when I make an effort, the result can sound exaggerated.

In the other direction, my natural social tendency is to introvert. If I don't make an effort to be animated, I come off as sullen - even though I'm not. I need to aim a few notches above my natural inclination, and that takes effort.

It's really helpful to figure out where one needs to push and where one shouldn't push at all. The trick is to take stock of where one's imbalances lie.

There's a natural human compulsion to hyperextend our active sorts of imbalances (natural athletes spend hours in the gym, hyper people drink loads of coffee, the mentally ill hate taking meds because it makes life feel boring, etc.) and to cede to our passive ones (ennui, introversion, depression, etc.).

We exaggerate our exaggerations, and we resign to our inclination to resign. That, of course, is completely backwards.

Bubbles, Slogs, and Selling Out: Part 21

2011-09-09T03:20:00.002-04:00

Previous installment
First installment
All installments in reverse chronological order

Throughout my tenure, I'd clutched to my breast, like a spy's cyanide pill, a last-resort scheme hatched shortly after the shocking phone call where I learned that ~~Darth Vader was my father~~ Clay would be my boss. I called it my "Gone Jesus" option. The idea was that I'd claim to have had a religious awakening, and would load up all my writings, internal memos, Chowhound board postings, and press interviews with heavy-handed scriptural references. I'd subsist entirely on Jesus fish and Ezekiel bread, and claim to have lost all interest in gastronomy.

As previously explained, my employment contract pretty much amounted to indentured servitude. If I were to quit or be fired, I'd be sued. But CNET couldn't fire me over a religious preference. So if I'd Gone Jesus, a mutally-agreeable way would have been found to swiftly ease me out. And so I kept Jesus in the wings. Thankfully, it never quite came to that. But any entrepreneurs caught in this position ought to bone up on their bible studies just in case (I particularly recommend the Book of Job).

It's important to note that my trepidations were mostly personal. I was in for a tough year, but Chowhound, with its well-established culture and long inertia, would be tough to screw up too badly. I was comforted by my observation that Clay was a big dreamer but a poor executer. Endless hours were endured listening to his grandiose "vision", but the saving grace was knowing that none of it would actually materialize. Poor execution mercifully stanches bad ideas.

Here are Leff's Four Scenarios of Authority, in declining order of preference:

1. Smart ideas, good execution

2. Dumb ideas, bad execution

3. Smart ideas, bad execution

4. Dumb ideas, good execution

Scenario #1 is too much to hope for, and #3 is heart-breaking and volatile and makes everyone give up (#4, God help us, is Nazi Germany). Scenario #2 is a stable condition of steady-state status quo (let's call it "Planet Earth"). It's worked well for Chowhound post-sale, which is why I began this saga by noting that I'm generally pleased with how the site's fared.

Of course, I didn't love being in the surreal position of fighting against foolish initiatives which I knew would never be implemented. But even after Clay's departure from the company (not long after I bailed) a dumb ideas/bad execution culture has remained firmly entrenched among the corporate overlords, much to my relief. This is why Chowhound's culture is still pretty much intact.

Competence is beneficial only when wisdom is assured. That's why the Founding Fathers intentionally throttled the ability of any one branch of government to easily launch initiatives. Gridlock's not always a bad thing.

One horrible initiative was actually pushed through, however, and put us on a shaky business trajectory which persists to this day.

To be continued...

Google Buys Zagat

2011-09-08T14:41:00.010-04:00

So Google has bought Zagat. Here are some thoughts:

Impact on Zagat

Aside from the boatloads of money they were surely paid, this rescues Zagat from a slog far longer than the one I endured with Chowhound. Tim and Nina weren't merely slow in extending their brand to the Internet; they were downright luddite about it for years. And even after drawing hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital funding during the Internet boom of the late 1990's - from investors who could see their brand's online potential, even if they themselves couldn't - not much seems to have been done with it.

Every step Zagat's ever taken in the tech world has been sluggish and tottery. The books were great. The branding was great. The distribution was pure genius (bookstore sales were surely dwarfed by sales via the countless unconventional channels they opened). But tech + Zagat, even at this late date of 2011, has yet to fully happen. They've been waiting...and waiting...and waiting...

Impact on Google

Google is all about data. Lots of data brought into their computational fold toward the goal of "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful". Tech nerds, who traffic in algorithms and such, prefer their data normalized (or at least normalizable). That means it's presented in a format which can be organized, standardized, crunched, analyzed, and generally be easily digested by computers.

Zagat offers highly normalized data on restaurants and more, and it's a natural for Google (so what took them so long?). Contrast with Chowhound, a data hairball where lots of people fling information at each other in chaotic plain language, all within only the loosest organization. Try extracting all references to Mel's Diner, much less parsing a nice clean number reflecting its quality relative to, say, Bob's Diner. It's not going to happen (and, for lots of good reasons, it must never happen), and that's why I didn't even talk to Google when I was selling the operation.

Add in the key issue of locality - which Google's previously been slow to seize upon - and it's easy to see why Zagat's a good fit.

One problem, though, is that Zagat's data, while normalized, is highly subjective. And subjective data is not Google's specialty. Moreover, this is not particularly high quality data. It's always been insanely easy to stuff Zagat's ballot box.

Posters to Chowhound offer a rich trail of information about themselves, allowing users to decide who's smart, ignorant, or a likely shill. Still more of that trail is available to moderators, helping them remove dishonest postings and monitor patterns of subversion. Chowhound's not completely honest, nor could it ever be. But it's damned good, and that's because the hairball approach supplies a thick enough trail to keep it that way.

But anonymous individuals plugging ratings into survey forms offer little evidence as to their honesty - much less their savvy. The aggregated result may be sleek - assigning each restaurant a clear rating, which Google's processors can chew on and repurpose to their kernel's content - but it's shallow and iffy.

On the other hand, when it comes to data, the perfect is very much the enemy of the good. In the large view, tons of iffy data is super useful. So load it in, boys.

Impact on Chowhound

Mild positive. The pitfalls of Zagat's algorithmic approach make an alternative like Chowhound more attractive for more dedicated enthusiasts. A few of many reasons:

1. Restaurants are too dynamic for a numerical rating to mean much.
Consider how many of your dining opinions - even your most confident ones - are for restaurants you haven't patronized in months or years. Chowhounds (who by the nature of the forum, strive to offer specifics and currency) often report recent meals, while Zagat raters often lazily report stale opinions (or simply regurgitate conventional wisdom, which is staler still).

2. Averaging restaurant ratings shaves off too much value
An otherwise mediocre restaurant with one mind-blowingly great dish may be a perfect ten for a savvy eater, but will always be underrated in an aggregate. Same for a restaurant with one great cook and one poor one. In both cases, you need to strategize, and Zagat won't help you much with that. Similarly, aggregated ratings lead to distorted results. Should a very good street lollipop vendor rate as highly as a very good French bistro? My answer, of course, is a loud "yes", but I'm hardly Zagat/Google's target.

3. When ratings clash with actual experience, confidence plummets
For reasons above, plus lots more, restaurants don't lend themselves to hard ratings. So when Zagat tells people unambiguously where to eat and their experience drastically differs, that erodes confidence in the brand. Chowhound's hairball approach offers nuanced opinions from individuals, rather than a branded rating. We convey a sense of a dynamic dining scene requiring plenty of strategizing and intrepid exploration - quite a different thing than issuing official pronouncements re: "What's Good".

4. He who controls the agenda controls the outcome.
Zagat's playing field is determined by the listing of restaurants offered for rating, and there have always been (and will always inherently be) limits to the currency and breadth of that list. I like lesser-known places, so many of my favorites aren't even on that list. Chowhound's the place for learning about off-radar venues.

This isn't a sales pitch for the superiority of Chowhound. They're apples and oranges, and the vast majority of people, not so picky, will of course find Zagat's neat, clean orange more useful than Chowhound's fuzzy, sprawling apple. (I actually had a clever plan for polishing Chowhound's data without changing its culture. It would have worked, but CNET rejected it. I'll be recounting it as the final installment of my tale of the Chowhound/CNET merger, so stay tuned).

My point is that for all the attractions of standardized data, much is lost when rich, dynamic, and subjective realms are hammered into machine-readability. And the stuff that's lost is the stuff Chowhound specializes in. Which is one reason I built it in the first place.

But Google + Zagat is a natural, and a great move for both of them. Shoot, I'll make good use of it myself. The standard rap among food writers and aficionados for decades has been that Zagat makes a sensational address book. Well, we're about to enjoy a much more souped-up address book.

With, surely, APIs. Hmmm.....

Jimmy Kimmel's Uncle Frank

2011-09-08T07:13:00.013-04:00

Late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel's Uncle Frank died recently. Even if you know nothing about Kimmel's show, or Uncle Frank's place in it, if you could use some uplift, read on.

First, enjoy this beautifully done (and highly entertaining) remembrance by one of the show's writers. And then watch this touching, lovingly produced field piece Uncle Frank did with Mike Tyson in his urban rooftop pigeon coop:

I dare you to laugh at Tyson or find him pathetic. He's on to something, and it took that rarest of rarities - a fully genuine human being on network TV - to serve as a lens allowing the camera to zero in on the truth of a public figure whose image has been distorted beyond all recognition. Within the hurricane, we now see, is boundless silence and kindness.

Absolutely beautiful. Rest in peace, Uncle Frank.

Bonus: Kimmel's tribute, with Uncle Frank's best highlights (I particularly love the part where he tells Meryl Streep she's got a great future ahead of her).

If you're not a fan of weepy intros, start 30 seconds in:

Michael Arrington: Callow Pundit

2011-09-08T01:01:00.017-04:00

I've been through so much in the online biz world since I started Chowhound in 1997 that I don't shock easily. But this shocked me: Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, who has for years tried to position himself as a savvy expert on tech biz issues, sold out to AOL a year ago. And now he's publicly posted this:

"I believe that AOL should be held to their promise when they acquired us to give TechCrunch complete editorial independence.

As of late last week TechCrunch no longer has editorial independence. Some argue that the circumstances demanded it. I disagree. Editorial independence was never supposed to be an easy thing for Aol to give us. But it was never meaningful if it shatters the first time it is put to the test.

We’ve proposed two options to Aol.

1. Reaffirmation of the editorial independence promised at the time of acquisition. Given the current circumstances, that means autonomy from Huffington Post, unfettered editorial independence and a blanket right to editorial self determination. To put it simply, TechCrunch would stay with Aol but would be independent of the Huffington Post.

or

2. Sell TechCrunch back to the original shareholders.

If Aol cannot accept either of these options, and no other creative solution can be found, I cannot be a part of TechCrunch going forward."

Memo to naive entrepreneurs: the folks who buy your company get to do whatever they want with it. Period. The shower of assurances which rain down prior to closing are mere lubricant allowing you to make a deal you very much want anyway (in Chowhound's case, there was no choice: it was either sell or shut down). When Mike and Frankie on "American Pickers" wheedle you out of your family heirloom, telling you it'll go to nice people who will love it as much as you do, they're throwing you emotional rope, that's all. The assurance is a meaningless, unbinding bit of nicey-nice fluff. Only ditzes take it seriously. And only dunces bluster with public outrage when it doesn't turn out that way.

You took the money. You sold out. There is a sound basis for the pejorative shading of the term "sell-out", and there's nothing more pathetic than a morally aggrieved sell-out. If Arrington believed the assurances, he's a hobbyist, not an entrepreneur...much less a biz pundit.

When CNET was engineering its acquisition of Chowhound, a ton of promises were made, and I didn't feel particularly savvy in knowing to smirk wearily as they spewed forth. I fully recognized that selling means sold, and while I wasn't happy with some of their subsequently choices - and I certainly advocated for what I felt to be the site's best interest - I never questioned CNET's prerogative to do as it likes, assurances be damned. And I'm just a food guy, while Arrington's a supposed authority on just these sorts of business issues.

Arrington's not going to buy it back. His bluff is as empty as were their assurances. This is just whining.

Mac Software Bundle Deal

2011-09-07T16:11:00.000-04:00

I'm not usually a fan of software bundles, full of programs you don't need. But the MacUpdate Promo Fall Bundle is ace.

It's worth it for Data Rescue 3, a much-loved utility for resurrecting failing hard drives (or recovering deleted files) alone.

Good coverage of the bundle here.

Bubbles, Slogs, and Selling Out: Part 20

2011-09-07T12:34:00.004-04:00

Previous installment
First installment
All installments in reverse chronological order

Last time, I was on the receiving end of a sadistic prank by the brutish business development dude who had coordinated the purchase of my web site, Chowhound, by his company, CNET (now a part of CBS). Shortly afterwards, he relayed the terrific news that he'd been promoted out of business development, and would be serving as my boss for the year that I was contractually obligated to work at CNET.

I have a few scattered recollections to close out with (befitting such an epic saga, it will take me a few installments to finish up).

Jumping ahead a few months to near the end of my tenure with CNET, I'd confessed to the NY Times that "insofar as my input, there's a lot of meetings where I'll say, 'I think we should do this,' and they say, 'I don't think so,' and I say, 'O.K.'"

It was my sole blip of public venting (which, to be honest, I kind of regret; I was otherwise very disciplined), and a blogger I don't know, named John Wilson, wrote an article about it:

"Oh, the joys of becoming an employee in a big company.

Lifecycle:

1. Talent starts innovative business

2. Big company buys talent & their company

3. Big company "B listers" sit on top of talent, using their experience of never having had to build value from scratch to direct the new division activities

4. Big company can't figure out why it hasn't continued to see the success achieved by the business it acquired, in the period since purchase and decides even tighter control of new division is required

5. Acquired talent leaves in disgust [taking most of their riches] and lives on yacht for a while

6. go to 1."

Man, does that ever sum it up. Except for the yacht. I didn't make yacht money. But I'm not sure I'm really a yacht guy, anyway.

Also, the corporate talent was more D-list than B-list. Like every other rational entrepreneur in my position, I had fully expected Chowhound to be run by someone with less feel for it than I had; but I never ever imagined they'd put the business development ("bizdev") guy in charge. This is like finding yourself on an operating table and learning your surgery will be performed by the hospital's fundraising manager. And: here he is, with his big cheesy nervous smile, hovering over you, his scalpel poised to cut.

To be sure, the fellow was a whiz of a dealmaker - I've never known anyone with such deep and consistent awareness of the goings-on in his field - but beyond having no food knowledge or experience (or, really, interest), he knew nothing about online communities. Nor did he understand editorial - though he knew the lingo and could bluff a little. And I'm pretty sure he'd never managed workers (if he had, he'd have been put through several anger management courses by then).

So what was my time there like? Again, you know. But let me put it this way: one month into my tenure, a friend bought me, as an ironic gift, a DVD set of The (British) Office. I watched about 45 seconds, leapt violently from my couch, and stabbed the eject button. To this day, years later, I can't bear to watch it.

Yet there were saving graces.

Read the next installment (#21)

Hurricanes, Hijacked Planes, and the Skewing of History

2011-09-06T02:17:00.006-04:00

Hurricane Irene was a bit traumatic. Huge dead tree limbs, which I'd procrastinated removing, hung ominously over the house. A particularly iffy giant tree waved drunkenly above my second floor bedroom, so I spent the night downstairs on an uncomfortable couch, awakened every few hours by the sickening crack of one large tree after another snapped by the wind. I was ready to flee into the basement if any of the Branches of Damocles pierced the roof.

The house was unscathed, but there was little time to exhale, as I got to work cleaning up the jungle of fallen wood. It was a full week before it was all cut, split, and raked.

And then another monster hurricane, Katia, was announced. I heard about it late last week, on a clear, crisp, pre-Autumn day with a brilliant blue sky. Which roused an odd deja vu.

I was transported back to a similar day in the fall of 2001 when my stomach began to freeze as I pondered what might come next. While the loss of 3000 was awful, the crippling thing was the sense that greater doom was imminent. That was where the terror was. New Yorkers were jittery for months - the anthrax scare, a mere footnote in the history of it all, was a really, really big deal.

Historians always know the outcome, and that distorts everything. I knew then, as I was party to history, that the takeaway - buildings and planes went down, so people grieved the loss - would be skewed and incomplete. The anthrax affair would be devalued because it turned out minor. The paralyzing dread, without any concrete event to pin it on, would hardly appear in historical accounts, though that was the tenor of the time.

In fact we do the same with our own memories. September 11 is recalled entirely via images of firemen, debris and fleeing mobs - concrete pictures we can can pin our emotions to. The more intangible emotional layer - the forward-facing dread - is less specific, more limbic. It's much harder to connect our memories to at an intellectual level. And history is always written from the layer of intellect.

But after a night of cracking tree trunks and 75 mph winds, followed by a week of physical recovery and emotional rawness, I received word of another storm headed my way beneath a crisp, autumnal blue sky. And I remembered.

Nice Try, Dick...

2011-09-04T18:40:00.002-04:00

From Fox News (of course):

"Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Hillary Clinton might have been better at building bridges with Republicans if she were in the White House than the current president, as he gently egged on the secretary of state to challenge President Obama for his party's 2012 nomination.

Cheney said a Clinton bid 'would be good for a two-party system.'"

Botched Links

2011-09-04T11:17:00.000-04:00

I completely botched the links on my posting pointing out posts with especially interesting comments. So you may want to take another look, and, especially, check out the book recommendation (I'm reading it now).

TMDTIATW: Connecticut Kababs

2011-08-31T00:09:00.029-04:00

The most delicious thing I ate this week (TMDTIATW) was at the best North Indian/Pakistani restaurant I currently know, Kabab Grill (35 White St, Danbury, CT; 203-205-2222). I wrote about them on Chowhound a few months ago, and I've been making special trips there.

Pretty much everything they make is great. And this time, the many plates we ordered were devoured before I had a chance to photograph them. But I did catch the tail end of our luscious chicken achar (chicken in pickled sauce, traditionally featuring mustard oil and white vinegar) and some beautiful garlic naan fresh from the oven:

As always, click each photo for the full experience.

Kabab Grill is a humble undecorated boxy storefront. They do absolutely nothing to trumpet their quality, and, as a result, it's chronically empty. I live in fear that they will close due to lack of interest. If so, we just don't deserve great places.

Einstein's Epigrams

2011-08-30T00:11:00.000-04:00

I could kick myself for having found the following Albert Einstein quote only after I wrote this article:

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

By the way, Einstein is horribly underrated as a quotemeister. Check out these absolute gems.

Hurricanes Bring Us Cuba

2011-08-27T01:15:00.000-04:00

East Coasters: When the hurricane hits you, don't forget to take a deep whiff. It's like a trip to the Caribbean. Hurricane air masses are dense, so you're breathing at least some tropical air, and you can smell it. Hurricane air makes me feel like I'm in "Key Largo" with Humphrey Bogart!

Mark Zuckerberg isn't Mark Zuckerberg

2011-08-26T01:35:00.010-04:00

Seth Godin is rightest when he's wrong. Or wrongest when he's right.

Here's his latest:

Mark Zuckerberg isn't Mark Zuckerberg

"Mark Zuckerberg" has become a codeword for the truly gifted exception, the wunderkind freak of nature for whom traditional rules don't apply.

Well, sure, Mark Zuckerberg can drop out of Harvard, but you're not Mark Zuckerberg...

Here's the thing: Even Mark isn't Mark Zuckerberg.

This notion that there's a one in a billion alignment of DNA and experience that magically creates an exception is just total nonsense. Mark is successful because of a million small choices, not because he, and he alone, has some magical properties.

Mostly, the best way to be the next Mark Zuckerberg is to make difficult choices.

But the difference between anything and anything else is an aggregate of a million small choices! Everything you or I do - and everything we are - stems from that aggregate. Magic - an alignment of myriad small choices - is precisely what makes Zuckerberg "special". A "one in a billion alignment."

Yes, anyone could do equally well by making a plethora of canny nano-choices. Similarly, anyone could play like Paganini by carefully choosing their hand movements.

The deepest question is: what drives us to make the choices we do? We can't discuss that without getting all yoga. For one thing, scientists still have no idea what consciousness is.

Kudos, Commenters

2011-08-26T00:24:00.006-04:00

I wanted to take a moment to thank our commenters. When I launched this Slog, I considered closing it off to comment, because one of the most unpleasant parts of running Chowhound had been finding myself splayed open for public excoriation by any Internet troll or crazy. I was burnt out on that. And furthermore, I expected my unorthodox perspectives to be misunderstood, and have never devised an effective means of responding to people angered by opinions they've misunderstood (if you have a suggestion, please leave a comment!).

But the commenters here, while few, have been uncommonly thoughtful and courteous, even on contentious issues. I really value their contribution. And invite you to check back to read the commentary on previously-read articles. Like the recent couple about Libya (#1 and #2). Or the terrific book recommendation here. Or this extensively commented golden oldie.

His Darling Condoleezza

2011-08-25T11:38:00.001-04:00

Gaddafi apparently wasn't kidding when he said, a few years ago (of then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice):

“I support my darling black African woman,” he said. “I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders … Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. … I love her very much. I admire her and I’m proud of her because she’s a black woman of African origin.”

A news story today reports that he's been scrapbooking her photos. Eeesh.

On a serious note: if the description of admiring someone for "leaning back and giving orders" strikes you as bizarre, consider it in light of my suggestion a few days ago about tribal societies having very different values (also, have a look at the discussion currently going on in the comments beneath that article).

SIGA's Pipeline

2011-08-24T10:54:00.003-04:00

More good news from SIGA: a $7.7 million grant from the government to develop its drug for Lassa fever and other arenaviruses. According to SIGA's chief scientific officer:

"This grant is similar to the $6.5 million grant for dengue fever drug development awarded to SIGA in May in that both grants are expected to fund development activities that will lead to an investigational new drug application ("IND") that SIGA can file with the FDA."

Dengue fever, by the way, is an enormous potential market. SIGA's lead drug, ST-246, treats a virus no one will catch unless terrorists unleash it (as they well might), but dengue is a growing scourge. It's currently spreading out of Southeast Asia into China, around and across the Pacific into America. The potential profit from a dengue cure would be enormous.

Needless to say, SIGA's stock price appears to be headed into the red for the day on the good news of this grant. Sigh. A SIGA investor's prayer: please, Jesus, let there be no more good news from SIGA for a while so its stock can recover.

Long term, it's great for SIGA to have a thriving pipeline of drugs in development. And it's great to have this income. Between the grants and the whopping prepayment soon due for their smallpox contract, there's little chance they'll need to dilute the stock to fund operations (always a peril with biotechs).

One curious thing. On August 3, SIGA presented to the bigwigs at Goldman Sachs, and their stock immediately crashed on very high volume. Curiously, the other (very bright prospect) biotech presenting to GS that day was DVAX, and their stock also tanked with a very similar chart. It can't possibly be that Sachs found a way to crash both stocks so they could enter cheaply, can it? Well, either way, all good things come to those who wait....very, very patiently!