How Many Leaks Does My House Have?

Today a man named Paul Schmidt came by the house. He wore a Red Sox baseball cap and held a clipboard. He works for Honeywell, and was there to inspect my new furnace. As gas and oil prices go up and up, I thought about how much more important people are who help us conserve energy and plug up the leaks. But the sad thing is that their budget has been pared way back, so now the only rebates they have left are for big ticket expenses like new furnaces.

My basement's pride and joy is my new Buderus super efficient boiler that pumps water into my old steam heat system for efficient home heating. This expensive marvel earned me $800 back from the electric company, and Paul told me I'd be saving a lot when this shiny blue furnace was operating. He said that for $75 I could have a guy come and do an infrared scan of the whole house, showing each tiny leak. Or they could hook up a blower door that would show all of the air leakage that comes in, wasting energy in little cracks and leaks. Air infiltration can account for a whopping 30% of my heating costs. Bring on the blower!

The Failed Kinsley Experiment is Over

Nikki Finke writes with a sharpened pencil in the LA Weekly. She published this screed after Michael Kinsley got bumped out of the editorial page job at the LA Times in early August.

"The Kinsley Experiment, which officially ended this week at the Los Angeles Times not with a bang but with him whimpering to a rival newspaper. It also leaves behind a readership confused by Michael Kinsley’s yearlong fling with editorial freedom during which he flippantly recast the venerable editorial and opinion sections into a comedy of errors — describing readers as “assholes,” hyping wikitorials, inciting blog porn on the Web site, and snidely dubbing his domain “The Opinion Manufacturing Division.”

Increasingly, Kinsley’s sections were packed with pablum penned by lefty cronies and wacko neocons. One of the few significant takeouts he published, part of what was to be an ambitious monthslong campaign against malaria in Africa, proved tainted. That’s because the disease is a major philanthropic emphasis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where Kinsley’s wife is the co-chair and president.

That faulty attitude was only compounded when Kinsley hired the imbecilic Time magazine columnist Joel Stein, king of the conflict of interest, to write jejune rants about showbiz. Together, Kinsley and Stein were like the Beavis and Butt-Head of the LAT editorial and opinion pages, a pair of cutups thinking up new ways to annoy so that people would notice them. That’s why Stein railed against Harry Potter, and why Kinsley took the contrarian view that Judy Miller shouldn’t protect her sources. That they’re coming off as sophomoric putzes doesn’t matter — they’ll sacrifice principle for a PR prank."

America's CEO, Bill Clinton

Tina Brown writes about a place I wish I could have been, Bill Clinton's Global Initiative conference at the Sheraton Hotel in New York last week

"Welcome to Planet Clinton, an interconnected world that's a solar system and a wormhole away from Bush country. Here Shimon Peres and Oprah Winfrey are just members of the audience. Barbra Streisand looks like any peppy matron taking an extension course. Brad Pitt's staccato hair and Angelina Jolie's duvet lips (sighted in the audience of Jeffrey Sachs's poverty panel) are reduced to a responsible human scale. Wandering out of a kitchen exit I found myself in a milling informal think tank with the former president expounding to the two guys who founded Google and a sprightly "Planet of the Apes" figure who turned out to be Mick Jagger.

A weird reputational exchange has taken place between Clinton and President Bush. After so much dishonest reasoning it's the vaunted "CEO president" who begins to look like the callow, fumbling adolescent. And it's the sexually incontinent, burger-guzzling, late-night-gabbing Bubba who is emerging as a great CEO of America.

"We are so arrogant because we are obsessed with the present," he told his guests at the conference's end. "I've reached an age now where it doesn't matter whatever happens to me. I just don't want anybody to die before their time anymore."

The Great Arab Silence

Foud Ajami writes in the Opinion Journal on the deafening silence from Arabs.

"The remarkable thing about the terror in Iraq is the silence with which it is greeted in other Arab lands. Grant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi his due: He has been skilled at exposing the pitilessness on the loose in that fabled Arab street and the moral emptiness of so much of official Arab life. The extremist is never just a man of the fringe: He always works at the outer edges of mainstream life, playing out the hidden yearnings and defects of the dominant culture.

Zarqawi is a bigot and a killer, but he did not descend from the sky. He emerged out of the Arab world’s sins of omission and commission; in the way he rails against the Shiites (and the Kurds) he expresses that fatal Arab inability to take in “the other.” A terrible condition afflicts the Arabs, and Zarqawi puts it on lethal display: an addiction to failure, and a desire to see this American project in Iraq come to a bloody end.

Zarqawi’s war, it has to be conceded, is not his alone; he kills and maims, he labels the Shiites rafida (rejecters of Islam), he charges them with treason as “collaborators of the occupiers and the crusaders,” but he can be forgiven the sense that he is a holy warrior on behalf of a wider Arab world that has averted its gaze from his crimes, that has given him its silent approval. He and the band of killers arrayed around him must know the meaning of this great Arab silence."

But the Pants Fit So Well!

Firemen wore SS uniforms, reported Ananova today on the Howie Carr website.

"Two German firemen are in trouble after they tried on Nazi SS uniforms they found in an old farmhouse. The firefighters reportedly paraded up and down in the uniforms in front of a group of boy scouts.

The two voluntary fire fighters from Coburg in Bavaria said they came across the old uniforms, that included hats with the SS symbol on them, while carrying out safety checks on the farmhouse. It was being used as a base for the scouts who were on a camping holiday.

They admitted trying on the clothes after public prosecutors presented photos of them wearing the uniforms, but said they were just playing around, and had only put them on to see what it felt like.

Wearing or owning Nazi symbols is illegal in Germany."

A Self-Cleaning Esquire Article on Wikipedia

Daniel Terdiman writes on CNET today about Open Source magazine writing.

"When Esquire magazine writer A.J. Jacobs decided to do an article about the freely distributable and freely editable online encyclopedia Wikipedia, he took an innovative approach: He posted a crummy, error-laden draft of the story to the site.

Wikipedia lets anyone create a new article for the encyclopedia or edit an existing entry. As a result, since it was started in 2001, Wikipedia has grown to include nearly 749,000 articles in English alone--countless numbers of which have been edited by multiple members of the community. (There are versions of Wikipedia in 109 other languages as well.)

The idea is that, despite the fact that anyone can work on any article, Wikipedia's content is self-cleaning because its community keeps a close eye on the accuracy of articles and, in most cases, acts quickly to fix errors that find their way into individual entries.

"The idea I had--which Jimmy (Wales, Wikipedia's founder) loved--is that I'd write a rough draft of the article and then Jimmy would put it on a site for the Wikipedia community to rewrite and edit," Jacobs wrote on the page introducing the experiment. Esquire "would print the 'before' and 'after' versions of the articles. So here's your chance to make this article a real one. All improvements welcome.'

The article was edited 224 times in the first 24 hours after Jacobs posted it, and another 149 times in the next 24 hours. The final draft, which was locked on Sept. 23 to protect it from further edits, reflects the efforts of the many users who worked on it.

Google's Newest Category Killer: Classifieds

New Media Report is usually full of interesting insider stuff about the web, it's edited by Elizabeth G. Hines. This is from today's emailed report.

"The news: Google has been quietly gathering classified feeds. The question: Is there a Google classified service in the works? Classified Intelligence—a classified ad industry intel service—thinks so, reporting that Google has been asking classified web sites to share their feeds with them.

And while it's long been noted that anything Google touches automatically transforms itself into something new and golden, no one expects major online classified providers like AOL, Yahoo, and Craig's List to just curl up and die.

More than likely, Google either intends to provide a classified search service to compete with services like Oodle (rather than publish classifieds of their own), or they plan to integrate classified ad search results with their normal web results. Either way, sounds like more cha-ching for the Google boys to us."

Yaz and Ted Don't Go Fishing

"From certain angles, the tanned Yaz looks like Ted Williams in the old Sears fishing ads. Tanned and muscular, but much quieter," writes the Boston Globe.

"On these September fishing trips, in a place where the coast of Massachusetts is protected and timeless, where the geese outnumber the people, Yaz relaxes, and the memories come flowing back.

''I remember Ted asked me to go fishing with him once at Winter Haven," he says. ''It was one of those ponds that are stocked with fish. He told me not to bring any live bait. I got there and he was already waiting for me. He said, 'What's in the cooler?' and I said, 'I brought a couple of beers.' He said, 'No beer on this boat,' and I said, 'No fishing for me on this boat. See ya.' "

Now Yaz just brings bottled water. 'I haven't drank beer for 15 years,' he says."

And Finally, The Daily Hampshire Gazette is Sold

Steve Szkotak just emailed me from Richmond VA with news that the Daily Hampshire Gazette and Amherst Bulletin have been sold to the Newspapers of New England, publishers of the Recorder, Concord Monitor, and other papers. I have a connection to the old Gazette, I worked at the paper from 1986-1995 in the advertising dept, and I have an article coming out in their Monday business section next week.

The Gazette has always prided itself in being a very old newspaper that's never been part of a chain. They reported on every Presidential election ever held in the U.S., and used to make a lot more money. But times are different now, and circulation, advertising revenues aren't what they used to be.

Interestingly, publisher Peter DeRose, who will be collecting a whopper payout check, is staying on the job, and for now, Tom Brown, the new CEO says all of the staffs will remain in place. But 'combining resources,' as Pete said in the Globe story, is never good news for employees.

Nathaniel Cosme, four months on the earth. 

Just Call Us Wilmer

Sacha Pfeiffer, (a helluva a name there) reports on law firm names in today's Boston Globe.

"A growing number of law firms nationwide are shrinking their lengthy rosters of stodgy-sounding surnames to names that are quicker, livelier, and help establish an identity. That means experimenting with unorthodox slashes and hyphens rather than traditional ''ands" and ampersands. It can mean eliminating commas and, as with WilmerHale, spaces. Above all, it means reducing the partner names on a shingle to a select few, and sometimes only one.

Fueled by a heated scramble for top clients, renaming is one of a litany of sophisticated marketing techniques long common in the corporate world but only recently embraced by the legal industry.

''The general rule is that law firms are dropping names and shortening them to become like corporate brand names, like Coca-Cola," said Stephen Barrett, a law firm marketing consultant. ''Everybody wants to have a nice, clean, crisp, contemporary name instead of one that sounds like it was designed out of copper plate type fonts in 1877, which might be great if your only practice is old, Yankee, WASPy money, but for every other purpose only tells the world that you're behind the times."

What To Do When You're Bumped

Yesterday we got a call at the GoNOMAD offices from KAHL AM 1310, a talk station from San Antonio. They had found us after Googling 'airline passenger rights' where we come up numero Uno, and wanted our take on what to do if you're bumped.

Bumping had happened to a wife of one of their producers, so of course, after being shuffled around and missing flights on Continental due to mechanical problems, they wanted to know what their rights were. "The airline doesn't owe you anything," I counseled, reading from Kent St John's story. But I did give them advice, to join an airline's frequent flier mileage club, and to try to find a supervisor at the airport to help, since after the fact there isn't a lot you can do.

And don't yell at the person behind the counter, as it will only make them as mad as you.

One Man's Scheme to Rule the World

The Chicago Tribune's Charles M. Madigan has a scheme for any reporter who's been bought out, phased out, laid off or fired.

"My thought is that it's all the same stuff presented in a collection of different packages. Who better to create the same stuff than the people who have known how to create it forever, all of those veterans who are being asked to stop coming to work?

What this idea needs is some money (which I just don't have because that's not one of my skills) and some moxie and some coordination.

I would figure out a way, very soon, to create a consortium of high quality from the ranks of the journalism castaways.

There would be a very aggressive Web site. It would have to become an irritant and a competitive threat.

Then I would go back to the industry that invited me to leave and say, "Here is what you need. We don't want to work for you. We work for us. We want to sell it to you."

It makes a lot of sense, journalism by journalists for business folks who need it. You are all welcome to take this idea as your very own. I wish you immense amounts of good fortune.

If you have been outed, don't get angry.

Get busy."

The Joke's On Mitt

Mitt Romney is getting a lot of laughs with his anti-Massachusetts jokes on the stump as he tries to build momentum for a presidential run. The AP followed the Gov last week.

"Instead of talking about his home state with the usual lip-quivering pride, Romney uses it like a vaudeville comic would use his mother-in-law, as a laugh line.

'There are more Republicans in this room tonight than I have in my state," joshed Mitt.

When he speaks to an audience out of state, he uses a different blueprint. He does describe policy successes achieved during his term, including the streamlining of state bureaucracy and improvements in educational opportunities. But then he goes after Kerry, mocking his suntanned face as "code orange." That is bad for Kerry but it also reminds people that Romney's state elected him."

She's HOT!

Comments from readers after seeing Marissa Mayer's photo in the post below.

She looks like Scarlett Johansson. [dreaming]can't you just see her in the opening scene?{/dreaming]

She's hot.Anon


Good read, and yes, she's a honey too :)

wobert



I'll fall in love with her in the middle of Dinner!

Corey


Good summary.. and she's really hot! it's amazing to see girls (hot too) working with computers. hehe...

Kmos


And finally, these cads are upbraided by this liberated Man Geek named Jay:

It's probably partly thanks to crude reactions like this from male geeks that more women aren't in IT. For God's sake, people, grow up and start treating your female peers as peers, not sex objects in glasses.

Jay

Marissa Mayer, Google Star

Google Facts....a talk withMarissa Mayer, Product Manager for Google, from a standing-room only session last week at PARC in Palo Alto.

"The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.


Marissa Mayer of Google. 

Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked 'Whats up?' to which they replied "We are waiting for the rest of it". To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.

One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the "Did you mean..." feature. This instantly doubled their traffic.

The infamous "I feel lucky" is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.

Google has the largest network of translators in the world.

The name 'Google' was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for 'Googol'

Gmail was used internally for nearly 2 years prior to launch to the public."

Why I Was Late for Work

This was what some guy in California found on his motor after hearing a popping sound. He was late for work. Thanks Eric Jayne for this. 

Hillary Fans Revved Up By Women Pres. on TV

Kristen Lombardi writes in the Village Voice about the excitement over tonight's premier on TV, where a woman becomes President, in the new show with Gina Davis called "Commander in Chief."

The Voice cites a poll that states 39 percent of Dems would be in favor of Hillary being the next democratic nominee for president, and many believe this fictional step will do wonders to pave the way for a real life woman to take over the Oval office.

Former toe-sucker and White House aide Dick Morris is writing a book on the 2008 race called Condi v. Hillary the next Great Presidential Race. Catfight anyone?

In tonight's show, the President is dying of a brain aneurysm, and his last words are to ask her to resign, to let a man run the show.

Something tells me this ain't gonna happen.

Fun Words From Around the World

Interesting words from around the world from boingboing.net.

Adam Jacot de Boinod wrote a book called The Meaning Of Tingo, "a collection of words and phrases from around the world." Here are some of the words in the book (from a BBC article.

katahara itai: the action of laughing so much that one side of your abdomen hurts. (Japanese)

gigi rongak: the space between the teeth. (Malaysian)

bakku-shan: a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front. (Japanese)

nakkele: a man who licks whatever the food has been served on (Tulu).

Putzfimmel: a mania for cleaning. (German)

Backpfeifengesicht: a face that cries out for a fist in it. (German)

uitwaaien: walking in windy weather for fun. (Dutch)

igunaujannguaq (literally meaning frozen walrus carcass): The game involves the person in the centre of a ring trying to remain stiff as he is passed around the ring, hand over hand. (Inuit) Link

At 8, I Wanted to Be Maxwell Smart

When I was eight, I decided that I wanted to change my name to Max. The reason was simple: I wanted to be like Agent Maxwell Smart, of the Get Smart TV Series in the late '60s. My namesake passed away today, here are some memories of Don Adams, by Bob Thomas of the AP.

"Smart's beautiful partner, Agent 99, played by Barbara Feldon, was as brainy as he was dense, and a plot romance led to marriage and the birth of twins later in the series.

"He had this prodigious energy, so as an actor working with him it was like being plugged into an electric current," Feldon said from New York. "He would start and a scene would just take off and you were there for the ride. It was great fun acting with him."

Adams was very intelligent, she said, a quality that suited the satiric show that had comedy geniuses Mel Brooks and Buck Henry behind it.
"He wrote poetry, he had an interest in history ... He had that other side to him that does not come through Maxwell Smart," she said. "Don in person was anything but bumbling."

Adams had an "amazing memory" that allowed him to take an unusual approach to filming, Feldon said.

Instead of learning his lines ahead of time he would have a script assistant read his part to him just once or twice. He invariably got it right but that didn't stop people from placing bets on it, she recounted.

"Get Smart" twice won the Emmy for best comedy series with three Emmys for Adams as comedy actor.

Are We There Yet? Taking My Parents to Italy

\ 

We just put up a new story about our trip to Le Marche on GoNOMAD.com. It was a wonderful time, we learned a lot and enjoyed the most beautiful surroundings and savory food we could imagine.

Bush's Favorite TV Show Won't Be On

A Hollywood producer has been charged after allegedly taking $5.5m (£3.3m) from investors for a TV drama he said was backed by US President George Bush.
The US attorney’s office alleges Joseph Medawar, 43, collected money from investors for two years but spent the majority of it on himself. It said Mr Medawar had falsely claimed the White House had endorsed the proposed series, called DHS.

More than 70 investors, including churches, had invested money in the series on the basis that DHS - Department of Homeland Security - had been personally approved by Mr Bush…

Here is the Los Angeles Times' take, from Boing Boing.net. "Saying his drama had the blessing of President Bush and others in Washington, D.C., Joseph M. Medawar quickly found plenty of backers for the show — one that he promised would be followed by a reality-based series titled "Fighting Terrorism Together."

Medawar told NPR "I, I -- if I may add something, it was very funny. Our head of production turned to Mr. Ridge and said "Who would you like to see play your part? And Mr. Ridge kind of giggled, and he says 'Hold off two years. Maybe I'll come back and play it myself.'"

But on Friday, in an ending that might have been foretold by anyone with a healthy skepticism of the Hollywood pitch, Medawar was arrested by FBI and IRS agents on charges that he bilked at least 70 investors — many of them from local churches — out of more than $5.5 million. Virtually all of the money, according to authorities, went to a lavish lifestyle that included luxury cars, shopping sprees, fancy dinners and $40,000-a-month in rent for a Beverly Hills mansion."

DeLorean Believed His Own Myth

Charles McGrath writes in the NY Times today about an automotive icon.

"With the possible exception of Lee Iacocca, John DeLorean was the most colorful car man ever to emerge from corporate Detroit, and though no one knew it then, he was also the beginning of the end of carmaking as it used to be known. At first he was a little like the Wizard of Oz, a tinkerer with an even bigger gift for packaging and spectacle, but in time his story took on overtones of ''The Great Gatsby,'' P.T. Barnum and ''Saturday Night Fever.'' He eventually succumbed to that most American of delusions -- he believed his own myth. The Times story then explains his transition later in life, as he dated younger women and tried to be young again.

"By then, like a carmaker bringing out a new model, DeLorean had retooled himself. He lost 40 pounds, dyed his hair and grew sideburns. He also had a nose job and a chin job that entailed the insertion of foamlike material into his jaw line to create a craggier profile. To Davis, he looked as if ''a third thumb were sprouting from his chin.'' DeLorean took to carrying a compact so he could check on his appearance. He traded in his dark sack suits, the official uniform of corporate Detroit, for sleek Italian jobs and began wearing gold chains and high-necked shirts with collar points so long they resembled batwings. In photos he looks a little like Tom Jones or Engelbert Humperdinck.

When he finally died of a stroke at 80, in his casket he wore a black motorcycle jacket, blue jeans and a denim shirt. A pair of shades was tucked into the zipper."

Saying Goodbye to Cocktails

I visited my doctor recently and he told me the results of tests that I had done about a year ago. Inexplicably, I had not gotten the message to come in for a follow-up, so this year-old news was news to me. He said that my liver was stressed out and that alcohol was to blame. Wow. What I took that to mean is that my cocktail swilling, beer guzzling, red wine loving days are behind me.
It's not some grim prognosis that will paralyze me with fear, or radically change how I live my life. It's just time, I realized, to make booze a small, insignificant part of my life, instead of a regular practice of daily life, like tying my shoes or brushing my teeth. What once was a habit will now be a treat.

I went to a small party last night, and sipped teeny, weeny sips of red wine, making two small glasses last the whole party. This was my booze for the week, I thought, tomorrow night there will be Yerba Mate tea, or seltzer, or water. There are a lot of people in the world who get along just fine without any alcohol. Now I'm determined to be one of them.

The Wall Street Journal's Weekend Bellyflop

National Journal's William Powers skewers Dow Jones' newest edition...their much touted Weekend Journal.

"Deep breath, and here goes: I love The Wall Street Journal. Love the archaic text-heavy look; the little hand-done portraits of story subjects ("hedcuts," to the trade); the What's News column; the formulaic yet delightful front-page features ("A-heds"); the market-speak; the straight-ahead Washington and international coverage. And, ideology aside, the paper's opinion pages are a marvel of cogent argument and tight editing -- for pure craft, no liberal paper can touch them."

Then Powers reviews their new Weekend paper.

"In one of the more spectacular bellyflops of modern media history, The Journal published a newspaper without a single inspired or memorable moment -- a paper that felt like work to read, on the very day most of us are not working.

It's like a scary cyborg of the Journal--convincing, lifelike resemblance, but no heart or soul inside. Perhaps, as the weeks pass, it will learn to be better. But don't hold your breath: This is the newspaper business, where getting new products horribly wrong is a way of life."

What Makes Ariana Run

Adam Penenberg of Wired News provided details about Ariana Huffington's blog, one of the fastest successes ever that was panned by many at its inception.

"In its first month, The Huffington Post started out with more than 700,000 visitors, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. By inking deals with AOL, Tribune Media Services and Yahoo, site traffic has grown to almost 1.5 million readers a month -- a leap of more than 60 percent from the prior month -- who click through 10 million pages.

"Huffington: Simply put, blogs are the greatest breakthrough in popular journalism since Tom Paine broke onto the scene. I've been a fan -- and an advocate -- of the fast-moving blogstream ever since bloggers took the Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond story, ran with it and helped turn the smug Senate Majority Leader into the penitent former Senate Majority Leader.

When bloggers decide that something matters, they chomp down hard and refuse to let go. They're the true pit bulls of reporting. The only way to get them off a story is to cut off their heads (and even then you'll need to pry their jaws open). They almost all work alone, but, ironically, it's their collective effort that makes them so effective. They share their work freely, feed off one another's work, argue with each other, and add to the story dialectically. All of which has made the blogosphere the most vital news source in our country -- and led me to take a flying leap into it with The Huffington Post."

Google is Thinking Big. Really Big.

The latest buzz is about a big, big idea that will be coming out of Google in the coming months. They are planning a new internet. Here is what Om Malik wrote in Business2.com today.

"What if Google wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user’s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world’s information could become one of the globe’s biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. Sounds crazy, but how might Google go about it?

First it would build a national broadband network -- let's call it the GoogleNet -- massive enough to rival even the country's biggest Internet service providers. Business 2.0 has learned from telecom insiders that Google is already building such a network, though ostensibly for many reasons. For the past year, it has quietly been shopping for miles and miles of "dark," or unused, fiber-optic cable across the country from wholesalers such as New York’s AboveNet. It's also acquiring superfast connections from Cogent Communications and WilTel, among others, between East Coast cities including Atlanta, Miami, and New York. [Remember Google has $7 BILLION in cash burning a hole in it's deep pocket.]

Such large-scale purchases are unprecedented for an Internet company, but Google's timing is impeccable. The rash of telecom bankruptcies has freed up a ton of bargain-priced capacity, which Google needs as it prepares to unleash a flood of new, bandwidth-hungry applications like video and telephone-over-internet. These offerings could include everything from a digital-video database to on-demand television programming.

Google has also leased thousands of square feet of office space in NYC, says Web Pro News, where communications hubs are located. They will need these when they launch their scheme to take over the internet.

Meg Sanders' Ride Is Sadly Over

Meg Sanders loved to ride, and died on her bike this week in Northampton, MA. The sad story was featured in the Daily Hampshire Gazette today. Reading details of her 23-year long life, you sense that this young women truly cared about the world and worked hard to make it a better place. She worked at a women's shelter, trained as a fire-eater, and learned to bind books in Easthampton.

When she was a teen in Tennessee, both her parents died of AIDS, and she was later raised by an aunt. She want to Hampshire College, graduating in 2004. More than 100 people packed the First Churches for an informal memorial yesterday.

"Meg would immediately forgive the driver of the armored truck, who is probably suffering," said Janet Aalfs, a friend. "she was an angel, she really was. She was always doing kind, beautiful things for people. "Her life was about giving back to other people," said a colleague.

Doing Talk Radio in Portland on Saturday

This Saturday at 8 am Pacific time, we'll be on the Azumano Travel radio show, on NewsTalk 860 KPAM-AM in Portland. We talked with the host Pat Boyle about GoNOMAD's brand of adventurous, participatory alternative travel. We told Pat about the latest stories we've posted, such as Keswick, in England's Lake District, Sony's Around the World Semester at Sea Voyage, Kentucky's Country Music Highway, and Kashgar, the Market at the Top of the World.

Just rattling off the list of these stories gives a flavor for what GoNOMAD is all about. We hope to do more of these types of shows, and the producers were interested in speaking with more of our writers to do segments for their program. The station is a 50,000 watt Am Talk Station. I love talk radio more than any other genre, so I'm glad we're working with these folks.

Musharraf Denies What's On Tape about Rape

Last Monday I enjoyed sitting in a cafe on Pleasant St. in Northampton MA and reading the Boston Globe. Too often coffee comes in takeaway cups, it was so much more civilized to read the paper and look at folks coming into the cafe.

I read about Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf, denying something he said into a tape recorder to three Washington Post reporters. "this has become a money-making concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada, or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped."

Musharraf made these remarks while discussing the case of Mukhta Maj, a 33-year-old illiterate woman who spoke publicly about being gang-raped on the orders of village council in 2002. Earlier this year, Musharraf was rebuked by the Bush Administration when he blocked her from traveling to the US to publicize her case."

The Blogging Biz: It's Not a Zero Sum Game

Uber Blogger Nick Denton threw a party at his SOHO loft. Denton, the man behind Gawker Media, a chain of large blogs that get a lot of mainstream press, impressed the west coasters and the buttoned down media with the copious cocktails and the swish hors d'oeuvres. Arianna Huffington reported in Yahoo.

"And much was made of how unusual it was to have Denton throwing a party for one of his perceived competitors. But then one of the great things about the blogosphere is that it's not a zero-sum game. It's not like Good Morning America fighting to take away viewers from the Today Show -- and now the other way around. The growth is limitless. Indeed, the growth of Denton's sites made it easier for the Huffington Post, just as the growth of HuffPost makes it easier for others. And so much is about linking to each other. So a new site's success can actually help boost your readership.

But trust me, the night wasn't all business. When it came time for toasts, Denton hopped onto a table so everyone could see him and asked me to join him (which made me feel -- as soon as I had kicked off my high heels, that is -- right back in Greece).

I loved his toast, especially when he read from Nikki Finke's hysterical review of HuffPost which, within hours of our existence, declared us "such a bomb that it's the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar, and Heaven's Gate rolled into one." To which Nick responded: "In the annals of media criticism that was a misjudgment as embarrassing as, well, 'Dewey Defeats Truman.'"

Filming My Entrance on a Scooter

This morning I drove to work on my yellow motorscooter while being filmed for WGBY, Springfield's public TV station. It was for a segment of their home grown television series, "Making It Here," that will air in January on Channel 57. It was a sunny morning, and Marla Zippay was there to interview me and capture a little of what our business is like and how we run it.

I sat for an interview and she asked me softball questions. I tried to hit them out of the park, including references to our many dreams like our branded television program, our podcasting ambitions, and our radio show idea.

Later on I signed up for a travel show in London in November. I think we will attend, since doing shows like this in faraway places is how we keep GoNOMAD ahead of the curve, and associating with bigger travel businesses and media is always good.

"I'll Be Makin' More than Dad Next Year!"

This is from a November 2004 profile in Fortune Magazine by Fred Vogelstein. You can bet all of the numbers are far higher now than ten months ago. Amazing!

Jon Gales loves Google, but not for the reason you might think. It's a terrific search engine, sure, but what Gales really likes is that Google is making him money. Gales's website, Mobiletracker.net, is a compendium of news and reviews about cellphones that after a year and a half attracts about 200,000 users a month. Google supplies the ads for the site, visitors click on the ads, and because of the site's popularity, Google sends Gales monthly checks of $5,000 or more.

That's a decent chunk of change for any sole proprietor. But for Gales, the numbers are eye-popping. He's only 19 and lives expense-free at home with his parents in Tampa, posting four or five items in the course of the day while parked on the living room couch with his laptop. Says Gales: "If things keep going the way they are going, I'll be making more money than my dad next year."
Matt Daimler is a 27-year-old networking engineer in Seattle. Two years ago Daimler got so frustrated with getting bad seats on long business flights that he started Seatguru.com, which collects and displays information about the best and worst seats on airplanes. The hobby became a business when he and his wife added Google ads to the site. Days after they had signed up for the service, Google began sending scads of travel-related ads their way. The company takes a cut of the ad revenues—it won't tell guys like Daimler (or us) how much—and sends the rest as a monthly check. The ads turned the site into a $120,000-a-year business."

You Can't Always Get (the Change) You Want

Read a blog today about a traveling pair who went to Turkey. Below is their entry about Turkish money.

"Two sets of money - Turkey is undergoing a change in currency. The old Lira was in millions. So if I buy a juice using the old money it comes to 2 million lira. Using the new system it comes to 2 lira. However, both currencies are being used until the end of the year and it can be confusing looking at the paper money. You need to count the zeros on the old lira so you know you are not being ripped off (a 500,000 paper note looks a lot like a 5,000,000 paper note.

Also, some of the old money used to be in coins that have now been converted to paper and some old paper money is in coins using the new money. It is sort of mind boggling when you consider that every time you go to buy something you need to calculate the exchange rate in your head on top of the old/new currency conversion.

Change problem - There is also clearly a change shortage in the country. Everywhere we went it was difficult to pay for things unless you had exact change. Sometimes you couldn’t get the store owner to accept your money if you didn’t have exact change so you couldn’t buy the product. He/she would rather lose the sale, than have to give out coins. Another example…let’s say you went to a restaurant and your bill was 81 Turkish Lira. Instead of giving you 19 Lira back, you would always get 20 back. The shops and restaurants would rather lose the money than part with their change. Plus, they usually don’t have change and have to run down the street to another store to get it."

You Can't Ask Jeeves

Barry Diller has decided to let the butler go. He's retiring this symbol of 'Net Past, the Ask Jeeves cartoon character. The Street reports...

"Jeeves is a reminder of the "playful, early days of the Internet," said Rob Frankel, a Los Angles-based branding consultant. "A brand is not doing its job unless it can show it's the ultimate solution," he said.

Only last month, Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz said at a conference in San Jose, Calif., that the butler was "safe for the moment," CNet reported. At the time, Berkowitz noted that Jeeves was looking leaner than he had in some years.

But physical fitness aside, Diller said Wednesday that the butler has outlived his usefulness. "I don't see many tears on the floor," he joked.

Jesse We Hardly Knew Ye

September's Esquire included a profile of Jessie Jackson by John H. Richardson.

"In the end, Jackson's dilemma is like a curse in a fairy tale: Since he chose to base his power on fame, he's perpetually compelled to chase fame. Yesterday he was in Florida, tomorrow he'll be in Atlanta, today he's talking to a TV camera in an industrial park in downtown Phoenix. "This filibuster protected a minority in the Senate," he says, "not the minorities outside."

But they didn't invite Jackson here to speak about the filibuster decision. He's appearing as "Michael Jackson's spiritual advisor," come to address such weighty matters as whether a guilty verdict will force the pop singer to sell Neverland or perhaps even the Beatles catalog. So he waits politely and tapes his segment and then pleads with the producer one more time. "Tell Chris [Matthews] I"m interested in talking about John Bolton and the filibuster issue."

"I'll tell him," she says, a total blow-off."

My mother Valerie, Cindy and me in Le Marche. 

Plane Landing Drama on CNN

In four minutes a plane will be landing at LAX with a front wheel facing sideways. Paula Zahn just let us all take a commercial break before the scheduled emergency landing on the Airbus's back wheels at 8:25pm est.

This is a new twist, instead of watching a white bronco, we're glued to the set watching an anticipated crash, or at least a smoky landing. What will happen? What would it be like to be on that plane? Are the flight attendants calming down crazy passengers or is it all calm as they circle Long Beach?

This blog is going up now, before anything has happened. Waiting for Lost at 9, but a little scared for those people in the plane.

My New Website--Cute, Huh?

We've borne a new website here for our sister company Computer Cleaners. Joe designed a compact nice looking template and I created 14 pages of content, covering all aspects of computer viruses, how to avoid them, and many other details about our services. One feature is a cool Google Maps link that shows a satellite photo of our street with a big green arrow pointing to our office.

This compact yet informative design is how we think websites should perform, answering all of your questions, simple in the Google way. What do you think? I still want to get that billboard on Rt 91, maybe it will look like this:

COMPUTER TOO SLOW?
Computer Cleaners
413-665-5005

Sayid Speaks..Ohh How Sexy!

My girlfriend loves Sayid. She swoons when he appears in the Lost TV show, each syllable out of his lips romantic and memorable. The man himself commented during the new season premier bash in Hawaii last week amidst frenzied fans:

"It was in marked contrast to last year where the crowds who turned out to see an unknown ABC pilot filmed in Hawaii didn't know who the actors were., said the AP.

'There is a slight difference, isn't there? It's quite shocking," said Naveen Andrews, who plays former Iraqi soldier Sayid.

With thrilling twists, unpredictable story lines and a diverse cast, "Lost" has attracted a loyal following. The official "Lost" magazine comes out soon and the recently released DVD box set of the first season is a top seller at Amazon.com.

"The success of a show to this level is always surprising. It takes on a level of pop culture which you can never fully predict," said Dominic Monaghan, who plays rock-star junkie Charlie. "Because of that, it's a little trippy."

Binn's New Boston Book Blurs the Line

Alex Beam writes in the Boston Globe about a new magazine on the scene called "Boston Common," written for the rich, which blurs the distinction between advertising and editorial. The new mag is published by Jason Binn, a 37-year-old BU grad who publishes similar books in Washington and New York City.

"A glance inside Binn's glossy covers shows the symbiotic nature of Niche's journalism. Fox News advertises in Binn's Washington magazine; two of its anchor people appear in a ''power" profile. (''It's their first ad ever," Binn says.) An article in Capitol File reports that Barneys New York's creative director and his partner ''both have new projects bringing them to D.C."; Barneys appears on Niche's list of national advertisers. ''They don't advertise in Capitol File," Binn says. ''There is no connection whatsoever."

"Dual agendas abound. Aerosmith's Steven Tyler appears on the inaugural cover of Boston Common, and he happens to be plugging a new clothing line. Larry King is a contributor to the Washington magazine, advertises his charitable foundation in the magazine, and appears in a full-page photograph attending one of Binn's bashes. ''So Larry King likes to come to our parties," says Atkinson. ''What's the big deal?"

'His magazines are a perfect example of when marketing and journalism merge into one entity,' says Samir Husni, chairman of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi. ''I know a lot of people in the media hate his guts, but it's a matter of jealousy. I think he's doing a marvelous job."

Tim Leffel's Got the Gift

Tim Leffel is a wonderful writer who has the gift. He sent us a story for GoNOMAD about Nashville, and here is how he began...when people ask me what it takes to be a travel writer, I'll tell them "just write as well as this guy."

"My home of Nashville, Tennessee is the mecca for country music stars and thousands of wannabe songwriters. But where do they all come from?

Nashville is the industry center for country music and bluegrass, but there’s nothing in our swimming-pool-tasting water that turns young girls into ballad-belting country singers. There are no local family dynasties of Nashville-bred songwriters who can mix hard luck and a few guitar chords to come up with a jukebox masterpiece. Few great mandolin pickers or fiddlers sprung out of the shadows of our replica of the Parthenon.

The gifted people have mostly drifted here from elsewhere. Often that elsewhere is along a rural ribbon of road in Kentucky dubbed the Country Music Highway. I recently spent a few days meandering around the eastern edge of Kentucky, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It's a land where McMansions still look oddly conspicuous and “urban sprawl” would only apply to city folk stretching out for a nap. A land where the nicest building on a road is still liable to be the church. Where people say, “down by the strip mall” and there's only one place that could mean."

Lawsuits Are Partly to Blame in New Orleans

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr isn't somebody I'd usually quote. But his column today about Al Gore makes a compelling case against the environmental movement.

"The very day he spoke (to the Sierra Club), a congressional task force reported that the levees that failed in New Orleans would have been raised higher and strengthened in 1986 by the Army Corps of Engineers were it not for a lawsuit filed by environmentalists led by who else but the Sierra Club. Among those 'leaders of our country to be held accountable for the flooding' would Al include the Sierra Club? Or Save the Wetlands, which according to the LA Times, were responsible for a 1977 lawsuit that stopped a federally funded plan to protect the city with a massive hurricane barrier. A judge found this have to wait until a better environmental impact statement was filed.

Now, because those who would have improved hurricane protection in New Orleans were prevented by the environmentalist rigorists, the wetlands are polluted and imperiled and New Orleans has suffered the damage that practical minds have been trying to prevent for three decades."

The Thrill of Throwing Cell Phones

At the post office this morning I found a discarded copy of Network World, where there was a story about a recent contest held in Finland involving hurling cell phones. The contest is simple, requiring only a basket of discarded and broken handsets, an open space, chairs for the three judges, measuring tape and sponsors. But cellphone makers have steered clear. Even giant Nokia, the star company of this small nation, spurned the notion. They got a licorice and a beer sponsor instead.

The champ, Mikko Lampi, a 23-year-old window maker from Vippula, hurled a Siemens cell phone a record 312 feet. Compare this to other hurling records: Javelin, 323 feet, football, 297 feet, boomerang 1401 feet.

"People just like throwing them," said Christine Lund, who came up with the idea. "as a way of working out the ambivalence the devices introduce to modern life."

The thrill of the hurl, reports Network News, seems to be spreading. This year Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and UK will all hold their own contests.

An Idea from Bolivia: No Cars Day

I read this on a Bolivian blog today. Why don't we have the nerve to do this?

"Today is one of my favorites in Cochabamba, “Pedestrian Day”. On this Sunday (repeated once each year) there are no cars on the streets of this city of 700,000. No giant green Ford Explorers. No white 1991 Toyota station wagon taxis. No “trufi” minibuses imported from Korea (with the Korean lettering still on them as proof). No red, white and value painted Micros (that look like small re-painted US school buses).

No vehicles except for bikes, bikes in abundance, and families out on foot for the afternoon. Ice cream anyone?

Imagine. Imagine if my old US stomping grounds, San Francisco, did this for a day. Imagine flying on two wheels from the foot of Market Street up through the Haight, onward through Golden Gate Park and then to the Pacific Ocean, all without seeing a car.

Here is something really special that Bolivia has to offer to the rest of the world, a message. One day a year, just one day, say No Cars! It really isn’t quite so hard as you think and, truly, it is amazing to see (especially when it is isn’t accomplished because someone blocked the roads as a protest)."

Is Fox Switching Sides?

Tina Brown writes in the Washington Post that Rupert Murdoch is famous for switching sides for business reasons, and he just may be doing that against the Bush administration.

"The difference between Fox News and Murdoch's other news outfits is that Ailes is almost as formidable a figure as the boss. And Ailes is a former GOP operative to boot. During the Katrina crisis Fox has excelled at the basics of covering the story while toning down some of the political bluster. Ailes does not spend his day reading Rupert's tea leaves, but if Bush continues to slump in the polls, a shift of gravity to the center -- or any rate a lowering of the bullhorn -- might ultimately serve his interests as well as Rupert's. Being constantly tagged as a Bush stooge has become a drag for Ailes, whose success at Fox owes more to his inventive TV gifts than to Republican positioning.

Recent friendly meetings between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Murdoch, recorded in the New York Observer, may be early signs of embryonic bet-hedging. Has Rupert begun to stir and put his loyalties in play again? Given his oft-expressed contempt for "gabfests" it's interesting that he will be showing up for the Clinton Global Initiative that starts in New York today.

Murdoch knows that occasionally shifting his political support in an unexpected direction is a tactic that increases his power. It means no one can ever take him for granted, and it is an effective means of convincing politicians that helping him with his business interests is both prudent and wise -- that what's good for the News Corp. is good for America/Britain/Australia."

FEMA Website Pads Pat's Coffers

Frank Rich doesn't hold back when he writes about the transgressions of the Bush adminstration in his NY Times column.

"When there's money on the line, cronies always come first in this White House, no matter how great the human suffering. After Katrina, the FEMA Web site directing charitable contributions prominently listed Operation Blessing, a Pat Robertson kitty that, according to I.R.S. documents obtained by ABC News, has given more than half of its yearly cash donations to Mr. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. If FEMA is that cavalier about charitable donations, imagine what it's doing with the $62 billion (so far) of taxpayers' money sent its way for Katrina relief.

Actually, you don't have to imagine: we already know some of it was immediately siphoned into no-bid contracts with a major Republican donor, the Fluor Corporation, as well as with a client of the consultant Joe Allbaugh, the Bush 2000 campaign manager who ran FEMA for this White House until Brownie, Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate, was installed in his place."

Despite Imitators, Avedon was Inimitable

Philip Gefter wrote evocatively about photographer Richard Avedon in today's NY Times.

"Through Avedon's eyes, female beauty is not viewed with distrust, as a collection of wiles and veils that can manipulate, obfuscate or seduce. In one photograph, the model Liz Pringle stands effortlessly poised in a boat, with the manner of an heiress in a breezy movie from the 1950's. She holds a cigarette and looks our way with the sly grin of a secret shared, as if we are among her closest friends. You know the picture is all about the clothes, but the soignée sophistication of the scene is what draws you in.

Despite decades of imitators, Avedon has proved inimitable. His curiosity fueled his imagination. He anticipated the tone of each era with a sophistication that was precision-cut in the stratosphere of art, fashion and culture at which he so naturally, and tenaciously, hovered. He never stopped experimenting with the photographic image and, always, his pictures reflect a regard for women that was truly debonair."

Alerts Around the World

Got this news on email today from Eric Jayne.

"The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings, thelevel has just been raised from "miffed" to "peeved'! Soon though, the levels may be raised yet again to "irritated' or even "a bit cross"! Londoners have not been a "bit cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out.

Terrorists have been re-categorised from "tiresome" to "a bloody nuisance."
The last time a "bloody nuisance" warning level was issued was during the great fire in 1666.

Be aware that the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "run" to "hide". The only two higher levels in France are "surrender" and "collaborate". The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralysing their military capability.

It's not only the French that are on a heightened level of alert. The Italians have increased their alert level from "shout loudly and excitedly" to "elaborate military posturing". Two more levels remain, "ineffective combat operations" and "change sides".

The Germans also increased their alert state from "disdainful arrogance" to "dress in uniform and sing marching songs". They have two higher levels, "invade a neighbor" and "lose".

Seeing this reaction in continental Europe the Americans have gone from "isolationism" to "find another oil-rich nation in the middle east ripe for regime change". Their remaining higher alert states are "attack the world" and "beg the British for help"."

Empty Vessels One Way are Full Coming Here

Last night after the big finale dinner of the tradeshow, we made our way to the bar called Phins, in our Niagara Falls Hotel. There we met a pair of men from Holland. Kent bought them a pair of Grey Goose Vodkas on ice, (I think they wanted shots) and they told us about their lives.

"I am a shipper," said one man, "I come to the U.S. a lot. We ship Heinekin bottles to Anguilla and Barbados." He said that the costs to ship goods to China is only about $250 per container. "But if you want to ship from China to the U.S., it costs about $3000.

In a true sign of the times, it seems, shipping costs reflect the way the traffic goes. "Ships are almost empty going to China, but from there, it takes a lot longer and costs ten or fifteen times more."

Capt Bruce's Life on the Water

 


Bruce Blakelock used to work for a big chemical company in Niagara, but seven years ago he made a break for the water. He's a fishing captain and co owner of the Riverside Motel, in Lewiston NY. He took us out fishing in his 18' boat yesterday. He said he goes fishing in February, and the big ones really bite at that time of the year. I thought about being out in this open boat on the river, during a winter storm. Casting out into the icy water.

He used an electric trolling motor at the bow of the boat to precisely keep the boat just next to the shore, drifting, but away from the rocks on the American side. Over there was Canada, a high long arched bridge stretching over the river with big trucks running back and forth, slowly, waiting for customs.

Bruce said said he smokes one cigar every trip out on the boat. It is a Baccarat, a sweet large cigar that lasts him the entire day, lighting and relighting that big stogie, while controlling the electric motor with his sneaker on the foot pedal.

Shooting Photos of Presidential Notes

Daryl Lang writes in Photo District News, about Reuters, which recently shot a close up photo of a note written by President Bush asking it he could take a bathroom break.

"The news service explains why they put the photo on the wire: "Heads of state seldom attend Security Council meetings, and it's possible that Bush was simply asking his secretary of state what the proper protocol was to be excused.

Online, some accused Reuters, and the media in general, of being insulting or juvenile. A letter writer to Editor & Publisher wrote, "You ought to all be ashamed of yourselves for this stupid trivia and childish focus."

It's unclear how widely the picture was published; Hershorn says The (Toronto) Globe and Mail published it but he wasn't sure of any other outlets. Hershorn says he decided to transmit the picture because it was interesting.

"There was no malicious intent," he says. "That's not what we do."

Zipping and Flexing in a Green New Way

Today's USA Today was outside my hotel door, so I picked it up and read about car sharing. This is offered by two growing companies, Zipcar and Flexcar, and they offer a fleet of cars you can rent by the hour or the day, using the internet as an easy way to manage the details. Jim Hopkins explains.

"Then there's the intangible "green" factor that car sharing ventures promote as they add gas electric hybrids to fleets: The companies say they improve the environment by reducing resources, including land, devoted to cars. Benchmark General Capital (a Zipcar investor) says 20 cars are removed from the road for every one car added to Zipcar's fleet. Kevin McLaughlin, who runs carsharing.net, says that this trend will be big some day. "There's no doubt that this business will be a mainstream thing in large cities in the way there is a Starbucks on every corner."

Unsightly Niagara

We drove miles and miles over the New York Thruway. The unending fields and rows of corn were interspersed with golf courses, glimpes of deer in fields, and peeks into broken down upstate towns. When we finally exited the Thruway, after 270 miles, we drove toward Niagara Falls. The sides of the road, Robert Moses Expressway, were lined with chemical plants like Olin and Dupont, and overhead, rows and rows of high tension wires added a sinister look. There was a grain elevator, owned by Nabisco, and shuttered factories, with old crumbling smokestacks.

We are here to meet about tourism, but this had been a ghastly introduction to this region. You would think that they would want to route the road to avoid where toxic chemicals and the remains of superfund clean-up sites are visible, but we had to pass all of this to get here. Ugh.

Shuffling to Buffalo

Up really early today, thinking about where I need to go. Can you believe I am going to drive to Albany this morning then continue on all the way past BUFFALO?

I am just back from my trip to Italy Sunday, but obligations call me to Niagara Falls. It is for a worthwhile reason, though, it is the Travel Media Showcase.

We enjoyed super luxe accommodations in Tucson, where this gathering was held last November. TMS brings together hundreds of tourism boards from all over the US and many more travel writers where we have 15 minute meetings to hear about destinations and discuss doing stories. That is fun, plus being with so many other journalists and tourism folks is fun. This kind of networking is why we are always sending writers for GoNOMAD.com out on trips. We get the opportunity to hear about cool new destinations and we meet the people who organize the trips.

So I will bring a pillow, snooze a little bit, listen to the Ipod and Kent's satellite radio in the car and shuffle past Buffalo all the way to Niagara Falls today.

The Piano Couldn't be Salvaged

Terry Gross interviewed Sony Rollins on her radio show Fresh Air. Rollins talked with his somber hoarse voice about lving in Tribeca and having to move out of his apartment after 9/11. "I left my piano there, " he said, "Monk played that and Dizzy and many others." Rollins explained that he feared toxins from the explosions from the towers and the air that was polluted had seeped into the piano. So when he moved out, he left it there, with many of his books, records and other treasures from a lifetime, 30 years, in a 39th floor apartment in New York.

Rollins has just issued a CD recorded at a concert held in Boston four days after the event. While people were still shell shocked, there is a renewal in the playing, a kind of defiance, that is refreshing.

Cerfin' Right Place, Right Time

In Deauville, a town hard by the Northern coast of France, they honor film and writers with a festival of cinema. One of the honorees was 90-something "ex Hollywood Prince" Bud Schulberg. He hung out with Castro in the early days, joining him for a tall vodka with Erroll Flynn in the 50s. He got a big break, as told in the International Herald Tribune, when he was at Dartmouth.

"I ran the newspaper, at Dartmouth, and there was a marble quarry strike about 40 miles away." Schulberg said. "I took the side of the workers. There was fury on the campus; the adminstration was in an uproar. The students took food and clothes to the workers. My crazy luck was that publisher Bennett Cerf was there lecturing and read my stuff in the paper. He said, 'Young man, this is awfully well written. If you think about writing a novel, come see us."

And the novel he wrote was "What Makes Sammy Run,"about Hollywood's seamy underbelly, a great success that made a lot of people mad and changed Schulberg's life forever.

The Ghost Train Leaves New Orleans

Found this on little Green Footballs this morning, from the Washington Post."[New Orleans Mayor] Nagin did not tell everyone to leave immediately, because the regional plan called for the suburbs to empty out first, but he did urge residents in particularly low-lying areas to “start moving — right now, as a matter of fact.” He said the Superdome would be open as a shelter of last resort, but essentially he told tourists stranded in the Big Easy that they were out of luck.

“The only thing I can say to them is I hope they have a hotel room, and it’s a least on the third floor and up,” Nagin said. “Unfortunately, unless they can rent a car to get out of town, which I doubt they can at this point, they’re probably in the position of riding the storm out.”

In fact, while the last regularly scheduled train out of town had left a few hours earlier, Amtrak had decided to run a “dead-head” train that evening to move equipment out of the city. It was headed for high ground in Macomb, Miss., and it had room for several hundred passengers. “We offered the city the opportunity to take evacuees out of harm’s way,” said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. “The city declined.”

So the ghost train left New Orleans at 8:30 p.m., with no passengers on board."

New Orleans Sounds Warning for Other Low Lying Places

We picked up the Wall Street Journal Europe on the plane and read this report about the lessons learned by the Dutch after the devastation in New Orleans. Molly Moore wrote about the terrible flood in 1953 that killed 1900 people in the Netherlands.

"New Orleans is a good lesson for us. It has illustrated the real case of a flooded city. Now people will be more ready to believe us than before. A five year study coming out in January will include disturbing new calculations of flood threats to the Netherlands and gaps in the country's readiness, according to experts. "Our fear was that it would be hidden. Across Europe, the greatest natural threat in the coming years will be flooding as global warming sends more water gushing through passageways bordered by densely populated areas and overdevelopment. The potential for catastrophic devastation and death is so high in so many countries that the European Union is preparing continentwide guidelines for water management and flood control."

Finding Calamari by the Adriatic & Turkey in Roma

Back in the U.S. after a relaxing and fun vacation in the Le Marche region in Eastern Italy, I am trying to do that catching up that is needed to wire me back in. So nice to read my friend Kent's blog, love hearing about his sailing adventures and the guy who likes the look of his lovely wife Lisa!

We spent most of Saturday driving across the length of Italy, going all the way out to Civitanovamarche, a seaside town on the Adriatic. I was eager to enjoy seafood; the inland menus were uniformly good but never included fish or chicken. After so many antipastas and veal, I wanted to taste calamari and fish. We dined at a place right on the beach, watching the slender Italian women in their tiny bikinis lolling in the sun while we enjoyed another three course meal with a carafe of white. We got back in the car and Cindy drove the long, long way back across the autostada to Rome, where our hotel directions were impossible and we finally reached our hotel near the airport at 7:30 pm. Time for one last meal--we had turkey filet!--and then today we said good bye to Italy until next year.

Showing Google the Door

In September’s Wired came a long story titled ‘Reinventing Television.” He contrasts Yahoo’s sophisticated approach to integrating the website with television through video search and their own web tv programming to Google’s stumbling, not yet ready for primetime approach. It might be because Yahoo’s chairman Terry Semel spent 24 years at Warner Brothers.

“At a meeting with CBS last year, Google execs proudly mentioned that after working on an index of the grand old network’s video collection they had compiled a digitized database of CBS programs. Never mind that 11 million households around the country are doing essentially the same thing with their DVRs; CBS executives were aghast. The problem wasn’t so much that CBS was unaware of the TiVo phenomenon. It was Google’s Spock-like gaffe of plainly stating an obvious but painful fact: The network’s stranglehold on content is slipping away. The meeting ended abruptly, and the Googlers were shown the door.”

Far from kicking Yahoo! Out of the room, Hollywood refers to Semel, Braun et al as kindred spirits. “There are companies that are more technology-oriented, and companies like us and Yahoo that are more consumer-centric,” says Showtime executive VP Mark Greenberg, who worked with Braun’s group on the Fat Actress deal. “It helps that they talk the same language as we do.”

The Tyrant Who Shot the Bears

I took a book called “Wild Stories” with me on our trip to Italy, and read this passage called “Creatures of the Dictator,” by Rick Bass.

“The reason there are now so many grizzlies in Romania—back in the 1940s, for example, there were only about nine hundred—is that Ceausescu liked to shoot them, sometimes killing eight or nine a day. He brought bears from Poland, and had a very active captive breeding and propagation program, raising scores of zoo bears and then turning them loose near his favorite “hunting” spot. He would bait the area with dead animals, horse meat and vegetables to keep the bears close, and each dusk when they came in to eat, he’d shoot the shit out of them.

Then he would have his picture taken next to the carcass and, if the bear was large enough, apply to have his name entered in the record books. This practice ultimately led to a large overall population (though, like communism, it was hell on individuals) because Ceausescu forbade anyone else to kill a bear, even if it was raiding crops or livestock—although he’d allow wealthy foreigners to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege.

Of course, he’s gone now—the bears outlasted him. It’s new blood that’s being turned over now, the old blood that’s soaked into the soil being furrowed and spaded and chopped and graded and there’s a new government, new hope and it’s springtime. Maybe this time it will be different.”

We want to buy this house!! 

Our House--for a week!

Casa Fontanelle, our rented house in Le Marche where we are staying with my Mom and Dad this week.  

Dialing it up in Le Marche...s l o w l y !

Waiting and waiting here in this computer shop in Passo Sant'Angelo, Italy, for our emails to come up. Is this what is used to be like back in the dial-up era? We can't believe how annoying this is...wow. When I think that most of the world's internet is this slow, I can't believe they'd ever wait. But finally we did get to check email during our trip here to Le Marche. This area of Eastern Italy is hilly and remote, and off the radar of most American and British tourists. So when you go to a cafe to order your cappuccino, you don't get answered back in English, and the people around us are local folks. Comforting to know that Italy still has these wonderfully authentic places.

We had lunch in a family restaurant in the local village. Spaghetti carbonara, veal scallopini with lemon, an omelette with local truffles....and two desserts with espresso to wind it up. We chatted with the proprietor and learned that the villa we rented is for sale. Wow, maybe .... well it's too early for that but we do have our eye on that other house on the hill over there, pictured here.

What Stays in Vegas

Las Vegas' tourism commission is fighting to keep its slogan from being hijacked. But with licensing rights worth potentially millions of dollars on the line, the clothing company is fighting back in court, arguing that Las Vegas is hardly the first place in the world where people have promised to look the other way.

There's that old saying among traveling salesmen: "What happens on the road stays on the road."

And the one from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings: "What you see here, what you hear here, whom you see here, stays here."

The clothing company's lawyers also cite a sign in a now-defunct Cambridge, Mass., tavern that declared, "What Happens Here, Stays Here." That was nearly 10 years before Las Vegas launched its ad campaign.

Finally, there are all the variations on the phrase used in Las Vegas itself, such as the pitch used by one major resort-casino: "What Happens at the Palms Never Happened."

Thinking About Flying to Rome Tonight

Up early, as tonight we fly to Rome with Nat and Val to spend a week at our rented hilltop house in the Le Marche region, near the Adriatic coast. We arrive in Rome at 7 am, then we drive the width of the country across mountains to our house.

The anticipation of flight, and thinking about waking up in another land is always intoxicating. I have never gotten over that childlike excitement, and Cindy felt it too, of counting the days and hours til we leave. The trip we planned nearly a year ago, so now as these final hours tick down to lift off, we are all nervous yet excited about enjoying time in Italy together. It will be the first time since I was 15 that I spent a whole week with my parents.

I'm not going to be hooked into email or to my blog as I usually am, so forgive me if my postings drop off a bit during this journey. You'll read about the experience in the Valley Advocate and on GoNOMAD.com. Ciao!

There's More to the "Loot vs. Find" Photo Caption

Chris Graythen is the AP photographer mentioned earlier with the 'loot vs. find' caption. He wearily replied to the hundreds of emails pouring in from readers on sportsshooter.com.

"I wrote the caption about the two people who 'found' the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not 'looted' them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water - we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it.

It had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow. I wouldn't have taken in, because I wouldn't eat anything that's been in that water. But I'm not homeless. (well, technically I am right now.)

I'm not trying to be politically correct. I'm don't care if you are white or black. I spent 4 hours on a boat in my parent's neighborhood shooting, and rescuing people, both black and white, dog and cat. I am a journalist, and a human being - and I see all as such. If you don't belive me, you can look on Getty today and see the images I shot of real looting today, and you will see white and black people, and they were DEFINATELY looting. And I put that in the caption.

Please, please don't argue symantics over this one. This is EXTREMELY serious, and I can't even begin to convey to those not here what it is like. Please, please, be more concerned on how this affects all of us (watch gas prices) and please, please help out if you can.

This is my home, I will hopefully always be here. I know that my friends in this business across the gulf south are going through the exact same thing - and I am with them, and will do whatever I can to help. But please, please don't email me any more about this caption issue. And please, don't yell at me about spelling and grammar. Im eating my first real meal (a sandwich) right now in 3 days."

Her's Was the Best of Them All

Kelly Westhoff from Plymouth, MN is the winner of our 2nd $500 Travel Grant.  

The Winner: Poor Uruguay!

Last night we drove out to Great Barrington and had chicken mole on the porch of a Mexican restaurant with an unpronounceable name as the rain pelted down all around us. Then it was on to business: Kent, Lisa, Cindy and I were meeting to read and judge another stack of entries into the GoNOMAD Travel Awards. After much deliberation, we all agreed on our winner.

Kelly Westhoff's proposal began like this:

Poor Uruguay. Look at a map of South America and Uruguay seems almost ready to disappear. Top heavy Brazil could swallow this tiny country whole: yet Argentina is likely to buy the joint first. Kelly will visit the tiny coastal village of Cabo Polonia in a few months.

Among the equally compelling yet just under the wire were these proposals:

Vivien Savath's 'slightly cheesy and borderline desperate proposal' to write about her parent's homeland Laos.

Robert Isenberg's "The End of the Road" a weeklong drive to the Arctic Circle, where all roads end.

Tom Koppel's 'Journey to the Ice," a journey into the Canadian High Arctic on a small Russian ship.

Carl Weaver's trip to discover Buddism and the new Thai Wine country in Loei, Thailand.

We'll mail a check for $500 to our winner Kelly this week. Bon Voyage!

Payback Time for Poles and Others Against France

Jim Hoagland writes in his syndicated column today about why France lost the bid to host the Olympics to London. "The well prepared systematic French bid to persuade delegates to award the games to Paris after Beijing hosts them in 2008 was thwarted by a politically motivated last minute swing of central European countries, according to diplomats involved in monitoring the nation-by-nation secret ballot.

It was the French referendum campaign, rejecting the EU constitution, where opponents warned that the document would deluge the country with 'Polish plumbers' and other job stealing from the 10 new members admitted to the EU in 2004. "When it came down to a choice between London and Paris, why would the Poles and the others do France a favor after that?"