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History Is Coming Soon!

Pant-Hoot: Comedy in Brooklyn

I am producing and hosting Pant-Hoot, a new monthly comedy show at Magnetic Field in Brooklyn.

I've got a great lineup for the first show.

Pete Holmes (VH1's Best Week Ever, Comedy Central's Premium Blend)
Dan Allen (Comedy Central's Premium Blend)
Amy Crossfield (Comedy Central's Open Mic Fight)
Pat O'Shea (Host at Freddy's)
Claudia Cogan (CollegeHumor.com)
Hosted by me with an educational interlude from Monkeywire.org.

Pant-Hoot
Magnetic Field
Tuesday, August 28 @8PM
97 Atlantic Avenue (Hicks / Henry)
Brooklyn Heights

See you there?

311 street photo project could use your help

Steve Lambert and I are working on photo project called "People's 311" and are asking New Yorkers to submit photos of 311 conditions in their neighborhoods. To give you a rough idea of what we're going for, see flickr.com/groups/311/.

In order to launch this right, we need to get a lot more photos up (cell phone cameras are ok!). Here's what we need photos of:

* potholes
* sidewalk or bikelane hazards
* illegal outdoor advertising
* dead or dying street trees
* peeling paint in public places (subways)
* damaged or open fire hydrants
* missing or dangling traffic signs
* fallen over newspaper boxes
* illegal dumping

...and the like. You can submit them via our flickr pool. If you know how to map photos in flickr, please do.

We'll also be doing a web page (http://peoples311.com) describing the project. In a nutshell, People's 311 is a crowdsourcing response to Bloomberg's 311 Scout program, which he announced last week.  He'll be sending city workers out to "drive every city street on a monthly basis" to report 311 problems.  Seems like something citizens could help with...

NYC's new 311 plan

On WNYC today, I heard about a new Bloomberg plan to create teams of "SCOUT Inspectors," who will drive across every city street once a month and report on quality-of-life matters: overflowing trashcans, street potholes, and the like. This struck me as strange: Isn't this what 311 is for? Are there not enough problems reported to 311 that the City needs to hire investigators to drum up more work? Is there something I'm missing here or is this some lame PR move?

If Bloomberg is serious about fixing public streets and spaces, there's got to be better way of going about it. Here's one thought: why not try crowdsourcing and utilize the cheap labor of motivated residents? A website that allowed people to submit photos of 311 conditions (potholes, overflowing garbage, SUVs blocking sidewalks), along with the locations, would be neat. If substantial numbers of people participated, the City wouldn't need to invest so much in SCOUTs and would be better equipped to prioritize what needs tending to.

City officials would never go for it, but if such a photo pool was public, it'd be a neat tool for keeping tabs on the city's progress... not unlike Uncivil Servants. On my block, several bricks in the street are missing, making it dangerous for bikers; and there's a dead (or dying) street tree. Photos of this kind of think would, if collected in large numbers, be helpful to city agencies, whether they realize it or not.

I'm tempted to try launching a flickr pool and seeing if other people are up for documenting city decay. It'd also be fun to solicit and include photos of things that the city doesn't normally count as a quality-of-life violations: illegal street advertising, for instance.

Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts on the above, please be sure to comment.

Death Made Delicious

This bakery in Oakland, Calf., was recently shut down:

The Black Muslim Bakery: Now more hereafter than ever!

Thanks, Frank!

Dog Days for Nike

While we're on the subject of animal abuse, Nike made a big deal of suspending Falcons quarterback Michael Vick after his indictment for an interstate dog fighting operation. It is hard to accept Nike's moral indignation on this point, however, because Nike has previously used dogfighting to give street cred to their brand. You can see Nike's commercial on YouTube here.

Live by the street, die by the street, Nike. It must be tougher in Beaverton than I realized.

On a related note: thanks to the inventor of the Michael Vick chew toy, dogs can now metaphorically avenge their fallen brothers. Even if the charitable intentions of the manufacturers are shady, the fact that the toy has Vick's lawyers in a lather is good enough for me.

(Via Adfreak and Unconfirmed Sources)

Dodge caters to dog-burning SUV market

I'll be the first to admit that, on occasion, violence against animals is hilarious. Loony Tunes, cat juggling, twirl-a-squirrel, maimed rats: funny. Commercials where pets are mutilated to sell products: not funny.

It's hard to imagine a commercial less funny than this Dodge SUV spot, which is so brazenly sadistic you can't believe it got made. In it, a family dog pees on an SUV tire; in retribution, the car brutally electrocutes the pup until all that's left of him is a charred corpse. (No doubt this kind of thing appeals to prospective SUV buyers, but still...)

Alone similar lines, Adfreak points to this 2004 ad (see also Snopes), in which a cat gets its head cut off by the sun roof of a Ford Spotka, billed as "The Ka's Evil Twin." Why? I have no idea. Maybe pet-mutilating is "in" now. Reminds me of George Saunder's take on "mean TV."

(Via Adfreak)

The new Apple Potato®

My New Favorite Thing: Walkscore

Location, location, location may be the mantra of real estate agents but you seldom hear walkability cited as key in making places great. Cheers are in order, then, for Walkscore, a handy website for assessing the walk factor of neighborhoods in the United States, Canada, and the UK. You just type in an address and it gives you a score from 100 (walkers' paradise) to 0 (the Mariana Trench).

I must say it is mysteriously accurate. My block in Prospect Lefferts, Brooklyn, rates 86, below my old place on the northwest side of Park Slope, 97. Mother-in-law HQ in suburban Queens rates a 63; my old house in Carrboro, North Carolina (where I biked everywhere), 58; and my childhood home in car-addicted Clearwater, Florida, 34.

Too bad we're not moving again anytime soon 'cos this site would come in handy.

Co-op Bar Comedy Night - Thurs. in NYC 8pm - free

Co-blogger Charles Star and I have organized a Comedy Night at the Co-op Bar, an underground bar/art piece I have installed at Eyebeam. Admission is free, the drinks are cheap, and all the profits go towards no-bureaucracy, mini-grants for artists. Charles has put together some great comics and it should be a lot of fun. Bring your friends!

Thursday Night - 8pm
Eyebeam
540 W. 21st St between 10th and 11th.
email Steve Lambert for info - slambert at eyebeam dot org

* Becky Donohue | Comedy Central’s Premium Blend and Tough Crowd
* Moody McCarthy | Last Comic Standing and Jimmy Kimmel Show
* Mike Dobbins | Magnet Theater
* Adam Wade | 2006 GrandSLAM Champion at The Moth
* Rachael Parenta | NYC Underground Comedy Festival
* and your host, Charles Star | Stay Free Daily, Onion Network News

How (not) to advertise baby videos

One thing you'll never see on the website for a baby video company? A picture of a baby watching a video. Instead, you'll see kids petting farm animals, playing in the sun, and reading books—everything but sitting glassy-eyed in front of the tube.

I realized this when I went to look for an image for my earlier post. Figures. In the same way that cigarette ads portray active, healthy people out sailing and riding horses; and SUV ads show thriving green mountains and forests, advertising is most effective when it conceals the true nature of the product.

Fortunately, there's always flickr.

Study: Baby Vids make you dumber

We blogged a while back about how the makers of Baby Einstein and their ilk make ridiculous claims about the educational value of their products.

BabyFirstTV "Encourages children to develop language through introduction to words, signs, and languages from around the world."

Baby Einstein "foster(s) the development of your toddler's speech and language skills."

Finally, someone has formally studied the effects of baby vids on language development and, as we suspected, the results aren't pretty. The study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, infants ages 8 to 16 months who watched baby vids were found to have significantly reduced vocabularies; and the more they watched, the less they knew. For every hour per day spent in front of the tube, the infants scores on a language text dropped precipitously. (Download a pdf proof of the study here.)

The study, based on a survey of 1,008 parents, didn't measure causal relationships. So it's possible that parents who allow their infants to watch videos are less involved and less communicative than those who don't. No connection between videos and vocabularies was found among an older group, kids 17 months to 24 months.

Still, the drop in language skills was so strong among infants that the study should give pause to those who think propping up little Sophie in front of the tube is going to come without costs. Considering the cost of education these days, a real live babysitter may be cheaper than they think.

(Via Campaign for a Commercialfree Childhood)

My New Favorite Thing: Ubuntu Linux

If you know what linux is, you also probably know a super geek who can't help but extol how much better it is than Mac OS X and Windows.  And you probably can't remember what else they said because you stopped listening.  At the risk of becoming one of those super geeks, just hear me out.

Linux has been around since the early '90s and is the most prominent example of free software and open source development, just above OpenOffice.  While OpenOffice functions as a free alternative to purchasing popular and expensive licensed software like Microsoft's Office Suite ($150 for students, to $650 for a "full version"), Linux is more than a computer program, it's the operating system.  Windows and OS X are operating systems.

While operating systems are usually hidden in the cost of a computer, your OS actually costs money when you need an upgrade.  The recent Windows Vista upgrade could cost $100-$250.  An OS X Tiger upgrade is $129. These are recurring costs that can come up every few years. Linux, however, is free. And all the other programs for linux that you may want are also free. 

But there are plenty of reasons to consider open-source software beyond cost. Many people see more stability, security, faster start up times, less need to restart, less maintenance and other performance benefits. And, there's the other kind of free - like freedom from using proprietary software from the company owned by the richest person on the planet.

I must admit, I had no inclination to use Linux until a few weeks ago when I discovered Unbuntu Linux. A mail program, web browser, and office software are included. The "exposé" tricks I've become dependent on in OS X are available (and more). It will work with an iPod. The installation is simple, and the interface looks clean and polished.  The OS can be run from a CD if you want to try it out.  You can dual-boot and switch back and forth from one OS to another (on intel macs too) so you don't have to commit completely.

One of the best features is the "Synaptic Package Manager."  Say you want to install VLC, a video player that seems to be able to handle any file one can throw at it.  Open the Synaptic Package Manager and search for VLC.  It finds the files, downloads them for you, installs the program, and tells you when it's done. No searching the web for the right version.  Looking for something like Illustrator or Dreamweaver, but don't know the Linux version? Go to osalt.com and find open source versions. Search for it in Synaptic Package Manager, and it will install it for you.  Say you don't want to install Ubuntu?  Dell has begun shipping new computers with Ubuntu pre-installed.

For people who use their computer for email, the web, instant messaging, word processing or spreadsheets, and to manage their music and digital photos, Unbuntu is a perfectly viable option. Of course, Linux is not without a learning curve, but every OS has a learning curve. So why not go with the free one?

 

The War on Emoticons

The International Herald Tribune had a great article yesterday about the insidious creep of emoticons into emails between "adults." It starts light:

There are many ways to console someone when a multimillion-dollar business deal falls through.... [Alexis Feldman] was working on a major deal when, "at the 23rd hour," she received "an e-mail from the broker saying: 'Sorry, my client is not interested in the space, too bad we couldn't make the big bucks' " And then there was a frown face emoticon.

Oddly enough, the article gets deadly serious:

Christopher Michel, the founder and chairman of Military.com, a military and veteran affairs Web site, said that usage of emoticons had grown "hyper-pervasive" in his communiqués even with admirals at the Pentagon, where they provide a certain cover for high-ranking leaders to comment on sensitive matters.  "A wink says quite a lot," said Michel, a former lieutenant commander in the navy. "An admiral could say a wink means a thousand different things - but I know what it means. It's a kind of code."

How the hell did these little slugs, designed to clear up ambiguity and appropriate only for IM's between half-literate teenagers, morph into the military's solution to 'plausible deniabilty'?

I almost can't wait for Alberto Gonzales's next attempt to justify his lies about the domestic surveillance program. "The cameras weren't on me when I was answering your question, Senator, but as I'm sure you recall, I was sticking my tongue out of the left side of my mouth. I have asked the stenographer to add that to the record of my testimony."