And you are here why?

Staggeringly cynical, and just about as true. Sometimes, I weep for my country :-( ( from Non Sequitur )

Began my work life as a sysadmin 24 years ago. Have done many things since then, but at heart, the sysadmin still abides, As usual, User Friendly and Dork Tower say it best

The Pig (don't ask. Long story)  Fried stuff on a stick (of course) In fact, *too* much fried stuff on sticks

I guess we're not the only ones that have been taking the 7 train out to Flushing for some seriously awesome Chinese food.  From the NY Daily News, we have this  The neighborhood also has an array of Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Malaysian and South Asian restaurants. But Yu pointed out that it can be tough to find Americanized Chinese food favorites, such as chicken and broccoli, in the neighborhood. “Most of the food that’s being served in Flushing, is authentic Chinese food,” he said Robert Donato, food and beverage director at Deluge, an Asian fusion restaurant at the Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel in Flushing, said he’s seen more non-Asian out-of-towners in his restaurant over the last few years. “People are more comfortable venturing out and trying new things,” he said. Stephan Hengst, a spokesman at the Culinary Institute of America, in Hyde Park, N.Y., said culinary tourism is “growing dramatically.” “Food is playing a role in travel like never before...

WHERE TO STAY Parkview Guest House (~$150/night) is right on St. Charles Avenue on the edge of Audubon Park.  It’s in an old New Orleans mansion, so it’s very atmospheric.  Since it’s on the streetcar line, it’s easy to get into the French Quarter, or to the stuff up on Carrolton Avenue (see below)  This is where we always stay. Ritz (very expensive) if you’re feeling flush, this is an AWESOME hotel. It’s in the old Maison Blanche department store on Canal Street, so it’s really old-New-Orleans architecturally, and it’s on the edge of the French Quarter.  It has a good restaurant, with Ritz-level prices. Windsor Court (very expensive) is down on the south edge of the French Quarter.  It’s a modern hotel, but very luxe.  Also has a really good, really expensive restaurant. The Hilton or The Wyndham near the Riverwalk (mid-range) these are total chains, but are conveniently located near the French Quarter and well run. WHERE TO EAT (in no ord...

I suspect, in the history of mankind, nobody has ever said " I wish I *had* drunk that Sake-tini last night " That is all.. (via Nicole Paolini-Subramanya )

Tim Buckley nails it w/ his review of The Dark Knight Rises   If Lucas - Lucas! for crying out loud! - could get immortalize Darth Vader whose face you couldn't see, ya think Nolan could have done an equivalent job w/ Bane.  But no, you instead end up w/ a garbled cognitively dissonant rasp that seemed to come from somewhere else...

From Jason Davies , we have El Patron de Los Primos , probably one of the coolest prime number visualizer that I've seen.  For every Natural number, he draws a periodic curve that intersects at that number and each of its multiples.  Needless to say, prime numbers are touched by only two curves (itself and 1 ). You can scroll to the right, and move up the prime food change. (The image above is a screen grab.  Go here to see the actual thing)

The Mel Brooks collection from Amazon - $29 (Insert some commentary about people moving to different media consumption patterns, etc., etc.)

Holy F**k! Seriously. 7.5+%!!! Commentary is pretty redundant at this point, suffice to say that this is not the picture of a country able to borrow in the markets at reasonable rates. I guess this can can't really be kicked much further down the road...

From The Big Picture , more evidence that the financial crisis was entirely, and completely, foreseeable . We’ve known for   4,000 years   that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see   this . We’ve known for   2,500 years   that prolonged war bankrupts an economy. We’ve known for   1,900 years   that rampant inequality destroys societies. We’ve known for   thousands of years   that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse. We’ve known for   hundreds of years   that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies, as it destroys all trust in the financial system. We’ve known for   hundreds of years   that monopolies and the political influence which accompanies too much power in too few hands is dangerous for free markets. We’ve known for   centuries   that companies will try to pawn their debts off on governments, and that it is ...

A guide to avoiding the ultimate punishment - from Lapham's Quarterly... (click to embiggen quite a bit)

(From the awesome mind of Tim Buckley )

From the awesome Fog and Smog , comes Mixologist, the Music Video , with the tag line "Hey Mr. Mixologist..., did you have to college for this ? Here it is, in all its glory... On a side note, check out the items on the menu (helpfully transcribed by Eater ) ·   The Avon Barksdale : Hennessy, soda, free range heroin foam ·   A Wilson's Boulevard of Broken Dreams : Single mash gatorade, bitters, smirnoff ice, human tears ·   Moist Yoga Mat : Hemp vodka, 12 year kombucha, wheatgrass with a coconut water back ·   Hyphy Hangover : Grape 4 Loko, Peychaud bitters, thizz face ·   Chewbacca's Jacuzzi : Kashyyyk champagne, muddled slim jim, carbonite rinse

From the LA-Times (hat-tip Kevin Drum ) No shit, Captain Obvious...

GigaOm drills into the shared-data plans from AT&T / Verizon - which are, to put it mildly, entertainingly complex.  First, to cut to the chase ...in general if you’re looking to connect more smartphones, AT&T comes out on top, but if maxing out data usage or connecting a lot of non-smartphone devices is important to you, Verizon’s plans fare better Now that that is out of the way, what is it with the "used car salesman" approach to pricing?  I know, I know, snow the buyer with a ton of data, and work on the principle that if consumers overpay, its their fault because after all, they had all the data right? (Lets pretend that the logical conclusion of this - the financial crash of 2007 - never happened) Still, here is the beginning of how the AT&T plan works First, you need to select a data bucket. The following prices are for shared data between any number of devices either directly connected to the carriers network or tethered via Wi-Fi or cable. Fo...

project WNYC has put together a nifty visualization of NYC "Stop & Frisk"s by block. Go there to get the live info (the image below is just that, an image...)

Which is fairly impressive, given my track-record of being able to kill virtually any plant (including Basil). Then again, Neem trees are found alongside roads all over India, and given the general condition of roads/traffic there, I guess I'm a breath of fresh air... Incidentally, this is what they were like on April 6th .... Incidentally, FWIW, the Might Huntress of Plants is not leaving them alone.  When she is not asleep, she actually tries to chew on the leaves.  Which is quite amazing, given how bitter they are.  Go figure...

From Non Sequitur

via Cory Doctrow (hat-tip Ben Phenix) we have this frightening picture showing the high-tide line of an aluminum spill from a chemical factory in Hungary. Awesome, in a horrific kind of way...

Noah Smith explains how (and why) inflation is a good thing if you are in debt, and a bad thing if you have a bunch-a savings.  Its wonderfully written (go read it), but I'll give you the money quotes Who has more savings than debt? Old people and rich people. Who has more debt than savings? Young workers who are paying off mortgages. In other words, the video has it exactly backwards - inflation will not take your house away from you, inflation will   prevent   your house from being taken away from you. It will save your American Dream. If you don't believe me, go back and look at my example again. It works. Just remember:   Inflation hurts people with savings and helps people with debt . An awful lot of Americans these days fall into that second category. Before you go embracing the hard-money, Austrian, gold-standard stuff, think about which category includes you!   The bottom line though is what I started off with - if you have a lot of savings, i...

Actually, get it at submarine-cable-map-2012.telegeography.com Click to embiggen (a lot), or better yet, go there to get the real deal

Then --> Green is Good Now --> Greed is Good You all saw Apple removes green certification from its product range   here we are with word that Cupertino is no longer considered to be environmentally friendly where their product range is concerned, especially after Apple had requested the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) group which is in charge of setting environmental standards for electronics to remove all 39 – yup, you read that right, all 39 of its products from its green registry. Followed by the pretty rapid flip-flop In a letter to customers posted on the company website, Bob Mansfield, Apple senior vice president of hardware engineering, admitted it was a "mistake" to remove its products from EPEAT, a nonprofit rating group backed by many manufacturers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. So what was it? Greed? Idiocy? Orneriness? Me, I'm betting on greed...  

For Coors . What, seriously, is he wearing?

Interfluidity has a nifty writeup - " What is a bank loan ", which explains, in lucid prose, exactly what is sez, viz, what a bank loan is. Suppose I go to my local bank and ask for a loan. The bank says yes, and suddenly there is “money in my account” where there was not before. Am I now a “borrower” and the bank a “creditor”? No. Not at all. The transaction that has occurred is fully symmetrical. It is as accurate to say that the bank is in my debt as it is is to say that I am in debt to the bank. The most important thing one must understand about banking is that “money in the bank” also known as “deposits” are nothing more or less than bank IOUs. When a bank “makes a loan”, all it does is issue some IOUs to a borrower. The borrower, for her part, issues some IOUs to the bank, a promise to repay the loan. A “bank loan” is simply a liability swap: I promise something to you, you promise something of equal value to me. Neither party is in any meaningful sense a credi...

On our recent stay in Curacao, the the Titanium Explorer , (view from our balcony above) a drillship owned by the Vantage conglomerate was having a crew changeover at the dock outside our hotel.  Its a $630 million ship which ...is a self-propelled,   dynamically positioned   drillship suited for drilling in remote locations because of its mobility and large load carrying capacity. It is currently equipped for drilling in water depths up to 10,000 feet, and is designed to drill in water depths up to 12,000 feet. Another Vantage subsidiary is party to an eight-year contract with   Petrobras   to operate the Titanium Explorer. Its really, really hard to get perspective on the ship, but the next Patel Snap shows you the dock slightly better view of the dock and the lettering on the bow (each of the letters is around 8 feet high!). So yeah, the whole ship is  781 ft. long by 137 ft. wide.  Basically, HUGE . A night shot... And below, its ...