Can Jane be Jane without Jane?
“The magazine should be called ‘Brandon,’ after the new editor. Jane doesn’t exist. Jane has left the building,” says Robin Steinberg, director of print services for Publicis Groupe’s MediaVest…”I will definitely monitor to understand the audience’s reaction,” she adds. Today’s Wall Street Journal weighed in: Tradition says that magazines named […]
Let’s Drop Dropping the F-bomb
In May a New York television reporter who apparently thought he was off the air lit into two men who had intruded on his shot, broadcasting a word-bomb to the five boroughs. From the New York Times Style section July 31 “This month a card player at the World Series […]
Here, You Want More Coffee?
Jackie Mason on his least favorite coffee shop, Starbucks. “You want coffee in a regular coffee shop, they’ll give you all the refills you want until you drop dead. You can come in when you’re 27 and keep drinking coffee until you’re 98, and they’ll start begging you: “Here, You […]
Mind if I Brush?
Esquire Magazine has begun arriving in my mailbox, and I am usually impressed with their ribald mixture of anecdotes, intriguing photos and plain common sense. In this month’s Seven Most Remarkable Things about Culture, they included this tale about the world’s most famous blond. “She was wearing a diaphanous, totally […]
Pot Farms Destroying Sequoia Nat’l Park
Famed for the biggest trees in the world, Sequoia National Park is now No. 1 in another flora department: marijuana growing, with more land carved up by pot growers than any other park. Joe Robinson wrote about this in the LA Times. “Parts of Sequoia, including the Kaweah River drainage […]
Fighting a Crowd for a $50 Laptop
An estimated 5,500 people turned out at the Richmond International Raceway in hopes of getting their hands on one of the 4-year-old Apple iBooks offered for $50 apiece recently. The Henrico County school system was selling 1,000 of the computers to county residents. New iBooks cost between $999 and $1,299. […]
Wireless Dreams Coming True
A few years ago, cities wanted to be wired. Now it’s all about being wireless. Tempe is at the forefront of what is going to be the next big thing in municipal oneupmanship: Making your entire city a WiFi hot spot. Tom Gibbons writes in the East Valley Tribune yesterday. […]
Wouldn’t It Help to See a Photo on the Map?
David Utter in Web Pro News reports on the latest in search engine schemes. Showing actual photos of the blocks and stores you might find when you use their mapping features. “Fargo, ND, made it onto the list of major cities getting the Block View treatment from Amazon’s search engine, […]
A Recipe for Keeping Newspapers Alive
Michael Socolow, a professor at Brandeis, serves up a recipe for success, and explains some of why newspapers are in so much trouble in this article from the Baltimore Sun. “Yet other key, but too often ignored, issues in the history of the newspaper business have played a role in […]
Cindy’s Impeachment Tour Stops in Crawford
Tom Engelhardt writes on tomdispatch.com about the phenomena of the Soldier’s mother who is haunting Bush on his long Texas vacation. “And then, if matters weren’t bad enough, there was Cindy Sheehan. She drove to Crawford with a few supporters in a caravan of perhaps a dozen vehicles and an […]
The War Is Over on the Happiest Day in History
From Garrison Keillor’s wonderful poetry and writing website Writer’s Almanac came this today. “Today is the 60th anniversary of the day on which President Harry Truman announced that the Second World War had come to an end. You might argue that more human beings were happy on this day in […]
Under Size Me? Losing Weight at Mickie D’s
Today’s Boston Globe incuded this Associated Press story: One person went so far as to make her own independent film about dieting at McDonald’s. “Me and Mickey D” follows Soso Whaley, of Kensington, N.H., as she spends three 30-day periods on the diet. She dropped from 175 to 139 pounds, […]
Americans to Bush: We’re Outta There!
Frank Rich writes that the war is already over, but President Bush doesn’t know it yet. “What lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson’s March 1968 plan for retreat in […]
Gross Spam as "Comments" on my Blog!
I just opened my email to find comments posted about yesterday’s post about Chinese Sweet Wormwood. BUT IT WAS SPAM! Some freakin’ auto loan outfit put up ‘comments’ pitching new car loans….in the guise of blog comments. This is a sinister development, one which I hope can be stopped. I […]
There’s Something About Sweet Wormwood
Howard W. French writes in today’s NY Times about the acres and acres of a new crop, called qinqhat, or sweet wormwood, that’s become a huge cash producer in China–Because Novartis is making anti-malarial drugs with its active ingredient. “Even peasants closely associated with these efforts, however, say they are […]