philly

Philadelphia Inquirer

Is it just me or do other people find it odd that the Philadelphia Inquirer doesn't have a proper web presence. Every other major newspaper I can think of has a wonderful site. The NY Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune to name a few I read daily [well, almost daily].

I think that Knight Ridder has a great bunch of papers who do some great reporting that the "majors" don't pick up on, but I think that they're crippling the web presence of their papers with these crappy ass sites. It's almost a crime. Let's see if any of the KR papers pick up on this.

Post-It Mario

Probably one of the coolest student art pieces I've ever seen in my life. It is no ponderous piece nor a STUPID bunch of sheets covering something. Nope. It is approximately 3800 Post-It^® Notes used to make a four-story Mario Bros. mural at the University of California @ Santa Cruz. To be precise, at the E2 building.

I saw it first here on /. and the pics of the project here.

Here's the final image which took twelve people about 90 minutes to construct:

I am fully in a state of 633k-awe. Long live 8-bit in this terabyte world. It will be taken down Friday night so if there are any readers of this blog from the Santa Cruz area, please go take a look and snap some pics of this incredible work.

If their servers fry, I have all seven of their photos here.

Friedman's Fictional Account of a Conversation

I have just one question about President Bush's trip to Europe: Did he and Laura go shopping?

If they did, I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Laura must have said to George: "George, do you remember how much these Belgian chocolates cost when we were here four years ago? This box of mints was $10. Now it's $15? What happened to the dollar, George? Why is the euro worth so much more now, honey? Didn't Rummy say Europe was old? If we didn't have Air Force One, we never could have afforded this trip on your salary!"

From his latest essay in the NY Times Op-Ed page.

Why is that sword getting closer? Because global markets are realizing that we have two major vulnerabilities that this administration doesn't want to address: We are importing too much oil, so the dollar's strength is being sapped as oil prices continue to rise. And we are importing too much capital, because we are saving too little and spending too much, as both a society and a government.

"When people ask what we are doing about these twin vulnerabilities, they have a hard time coming up with an answer," noted Robert Hormats, the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. "There is no energy policy and no real effort to reduce our voracious demand of foreign capital. The U.S. pulled in 80 percent of total world savings last year [largely to finance our consumption]." That's a big reason why some "43 percent of all U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds are now held by foreigners," Mr. Hormats said.

And add in that $2 TRILLION we're set to borrow if the privatization of Social Security is passed.

On Monday, the Bank of Korea said it planned to diversify more of its reserves into nondollar assets, after years of holding too many low-yielding and depreciating U.S. government securities. The fear that this could become a trend sparked a major sell-off in U.S. equity markets on Tuesday. To calm the markets, the Koreans said the next day that they had no intention of selling their dollars.

Oh, good. Now I'm relieved.

"These countries don't have to dump dollars - they just have to reduce their purchases of them for the dollar to be severely affected," Mr. Hormats noted. "Korea is the fourth-largest holder of dollar reserves. ... You don't want others to see them diversifying and say, 'We'd better do that, too, so that we're not the last ones out.' Remember, the October 1987 stock market crash began with a currency crisis."

So, don't worry your little heads!

Gator and Homeland Security

Seeing that headline, you'd think that the Department of Homeland Security is clamping down on the malicious spyware company that is [hey, it is what it is] Gator, who is widely credited as having started and spread the whole spyware thang back in the day. But no. As Salon.com reports, that the D.H.S. has, instead, appointed the "Cheif Privacy Officer" of the Claria Corporation [formerly Gator] to its twenty member "Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee"

The fact that a "privacy officer" for a company that made its name sneaking onto computers all over the word is now helping to determine what should be done with data collected by the Department of Homeland Security might be alarming to some people. But is it really all that shocking? The D.H.S.'s own chief privacy officer is no stranger to the ins and outs of interactive marketing either. She used to work for the online marketing firm, DoubleClick.

Isn't that just wonderful?

Please suh, I'd like another helping of sad, sad irony please.

***UPDATE 11.42a***
Wired News's writeup on the committee.

The D.H.S. page with all of the committee's members, in .xml no less.

Sixers Trade for Webber

The 76ers traded for Chris Webber. It stinks like a classic NY Knicks trade; getting a past-his-prime big-name player to stir up things in the news. The only difference? The 76ers forgot to get three other players in the deal eating up all the cap room they have for the next seven years. But I guess that was a good thing on the 76ers part.

I'm just bitter I guess, but not at the Webber part: he reached his peak one second before he called that timeout. The Bricks just can't help themselves when they see these huge contracts.

Chaney Suspends Himself

I would like to apologize to St. Joseph's University, its fans, student-athletes and head coach Phil Martelli for my reprehensible behavior during Tuesday night's game. I spoke to Coach Martelli [yesterday] to voice my apology to him and his team. Temple University president Dr. David Adamany called to express my apology to St. Joseph's University president Father Timothy Lannon.

Quite the change of tone from his earlier comments:

That's what happens. That's what happens. I'm a mean, ornery SOB, you understand? When I see something wrong, I try to right it.

And now, he's suspended himself for one game.

Temple v. St. Joe's Part II

Matt has brought up a part of the game that I didn't really know was there until he told me. Apparently, Temple coach John Chaney sent in a "goon" during last night's game to knock people around. The Daily News has their opinion, but here are the pics:

There's Chaney jawing at the ref about the moving screens and picks a second before the god T'd up.

There's Chaney going after the ref after getting T'd up.

The tech free throw and the crowd starting to get into the game for the first time.

There's Chaney drawing up the gameplan following his T and Ingram (#33) getting ready to come in and go to work.

Ingram knocking St. Joe's John Bryant as he was going for a dunk.

Bryant sprawled on the floor underneath the basket.

Separating everyone after the hard foul, the one that sent Bryant out of the game and Ingram to the bench, being his 5^th foul.

AARP on Social Security

It's not often I discuss AARP to any extent, but when they take out a full-page color ad in the local alt weekly [where I work] which targets a younger audience, I take notice. For those of you who don't know, AARP is for the oldies, 60+ or so, I'd say. They are also the most powerful lobbying group in America, so I'm told. But why are they taking out a full page ad in a paper that also advertises heavy metal shows, strip clubs and body piercing joints as well as your normal restaurants, bars and clubs? Social Security.

The old folks, from what I hear, mostly voted for W. They thought that he was going too look out for them. Ha. He just laughed in their faces and put privatization on the board and their lives are at stake. Their lives and ours, actually. Now, AARP is launching their own campaign against Social Security. I'm sure we'll all be seeing more of these Social-Security-blue colored ads in the weeks to come informing the public and asking us to take action.

W's privatization plan is just bonkers. I've written more about it here on philly.

Well, I guess it's better late than never.

Hair Products

I have been using this one gel/cream mix by Artec: Texture Line Texture Shine for the better part of a year now. It's the best. But it's very very hard to find around here it seems. I'm all out of it and would ver much like to get my hands on some more. Does anyone know of a place that carries it? I've called many many hair salon places [yeah that's right] and the ones that I've called don't carry it.

In it's stead, I've tried Redken's Water Wax and Sebastian Collection's Molding Mud and neither do the job that the Artec does.

One of my clients is a salon and I told the owner of my predicament and she offered to special order it for me, but I don't want to make a fuss over it. But then again, I did recently give her a couple of tickets to a concert, so... We'll see. I'll do a little more searching. But then again, she may give it to me at cost. But I'd feel obliged to get like 3 can-thingies of it. We'll see.

Temple v. St. Joe's Hoops

I went to see Temple play St. Joe's Tuesday night with my buddy Russ. He had an extra ticket because his ladyfriend was sick. The tickets were his Christmas gift to her, the big hoops fan. But he was left with me. Too bad for him and her, good for me!

I think the last live sports game I went to was the game when Michael Strahan broke LT's single season sack record at Giant's Stadium against Brett Favre and the Pack. But we left halfway into the fourth quarter and missed it! We had unreal seats, on like the 40 yard line about 10 rows back from the field.

Russ got there just in time and with a great spot! We snuck down and were about 17 rows back. We were pretty close. It was a pretty good game, but Temple lost.

I'd like to see more live games, but oh the price of tickets these days. I remember when games used to cost a nickel! Heh.