All Grown Up and Living with Siblings

Carol E. Lee writes in last Sunday's NY Times Style section about siblings who live together.

"Matt and Frank Goldberg, 28-year-old twins, share many of the same friends, have dated in similar circles and moved in together three months ago. So far, life in their Upper East Side apartment is as good as they imagined. "I come home to a household where I know that there's someone there who is there for me unconditionally and cares about me and loves me," Frank said.

And they don't intend to change that, for now. "I'm sure we'll go our separate ways," Matt said, "probably when we get married."

In a time when adults are delaying marriage and rents are sky-high in many cities nationwide, many siblings in their 20's and 30's are moving in together rather than bunking with college friends or strangers. The perks of these arrangements run the gamut from eating the leftovers in the fridge without a second thought to receiving help from parents when putting up shelves.

Siblings also say they like the security of knowing that their brother or sister won't cheat them on bills, and many find that living together gives them a sense of having a home, not just a bedroom in an apartment. (Yet it's often what happens in the bedroom that can make having a sibling as a roommate awkward.)

Seeing someone new can be particularly uncomfortable for those who room with a sibling of the opposite sex. "I was dating someone recently, and it would be very strange to be laying on the couch watching a movie and my brother walks in," said Wendy Kyritz, 27, who shares an apartment in Hackensack, N.J., with her 24-year-old brother, Steve."

A Porn Star From Easthampton

I've just begun subscribing to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and a few days ago read a story about a local woman who has moved way beyond her Easthampton birthplace.

"In Easthampton, the name Kendra "Jade" Andrews elicits far-off looks and, sometimes, an "Oh yeah," accompanied by a downward shake of the head." OUCH. That would be a bummer wouldn't it, when your name comes up you get that headshake. Why?

The dreaded pornstar label, that's why. The report continues.
"In her early 20s, she left the city to start a career making adult movies under the name Kendra Jade--a career she has later abandoned to become an exotic dancer." Phew, well at least now she strips for a living instead of having sex for money.

The paper wanted to get some quotes from the budding starlet. But alas, her Los Angeles number is unlisted. "She wants to be recognized in any way she can," said Lisa Britt, a former roommate.

Good Bye Town Cars and Fat Fashion Mags

Simon Dumenco writes in Ad Age that the era of fashion magazine staffers using car services is coming to an end. Because glossy print ads will eventually succomb to the lure of the more interactive web.

"But inevitably, fashion advertisers that prop up the glossies will, like everyone else, increasingly migrate to Web and mobile interactive advertising. And here’s why: Google’s emphasis on text-only ads notwithstanding, we’re all increasingly seeing incredibly cool, sophisticated, Flash-animated and even streaming ads that actually don’t crash our Web browsers. (What used to not usually work ... now usually works.)

Suddenly it’s entirely conceivable that say, Diesel could find the right combination of interactive advertising -- animated Web spots, sponsored mobisodes, etc. -- that would not only give it the same aura of cool it used to get from its perversely witty glossy ads, but would be more cost-effective and truly measurable in a way that print will never be. (Diesel has already created one static ad that appears only online, at ZooZoom.com.)

Meanwhile, the runaway success of shopping mags like Lucky and InStyle has set the entire industry up for a fall by converting the formerly immersive magazine-reading experience into a distracted browse that’s just begging for transactionality.

Every month, Lucky includes a page of peel-and-stick tabs that readers can use to earmark products -- the retarded, slow-motion print version of a click on a Web page. Now imagine a next-generation video iPod with a generous touch screen and a persistent high-speed wireless Web connection. A consumer seeing a great bit of seamless marketing embedded within cool, custom-tailored iPod programming won’t have to fuss with some half-assed Post-it Note to buy right now."

Don't Worry, Larry and Sergey Can Afford the Vino

Glimpses of Davos...from the NY Times blog about the World Economic Forum came this post by Mark Landler.

"People flock to Google's party here to gawk at Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's co-founders, who now vie with Bill Gates for Davos celebrity status. But this isn't just a Silicon Valley suck-up. Google and its co-host, Accel Partners, invited Shimon Peres to muse about the future of the Middle East, in the wake of the Hamas victory last week.

They also poured some serious wines, including a 1959 Pauillac Bordeaux and a 1990 Krug champagne. Larry Page told us they hired a wine connoisseur to select the vintages -- though Joe Schoendorf of Accel is himself a wine guy. The connoisseur, Larry said, was aghast to find out hundreds of people were coming. "You can't serve this stuff to anybody off the street," the expert said.

We were moved to thank Larry for his generosity, before remembering that Google has a market cap of $100 billion-plus.

Semel: It's the Ads, Stupid!

Reading today's NY Times business section and found a piece by Richard Siklos about Terry Semel, the chairman of Yahoo.

"Mr Semel's first big decision--and probably his shrewdest--was to make advertising its mainstay business. At some of his earliest meetings at Yahoo, Mr Semel recalled, some executives were advocating that the business instead pour its efforts into trying to extract monthly fees from its registered users.

'He was very early on thinking 'if we can keep users growing and we can keep growing usage, we will be able to monetize this and we will be able to create value,' said Mary Meeker, the Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley. "It sounds like Mom and Pop and apple pie, but it was something a lot of people didn't get in 2001.

Mr Semel and his Yahoo! colleagues are most eager to encourage their registered users, who represent roughly 40% of the one billion people now online globally, to create their own content...the features where people swap information such as Flickr, and del.icio.us, where people swap bookmarks, are keys to a fast emerging media market."

Why Cyprus is Split into Two Halves

I am traveling to the island of Cyprus at the end of February. The first thing I think of about Cyprus is that it is divided. Today I found out more details on why.

In July 1974 a group of Cypriots who wanted the island to become part of Greece tried to kill the president and take over Cyprus. Five days later Turkish troops landed in Northern Cyprus. They said they had come to protect the Turkish-Cypriots, who didn't want to join with Greece.

The attempted takeover didn't work and the president escaped.

The Turkish soldiers stayed and occupied a third of the island. That set up Cyprus as the divided country it is today. 2400 soldiers from the United Nations patrol the boundary between Northern and Southern. It's called the Green Line.

I read a year ago that Turkey and Greece almost reached an agreement to rejoin as one--but there was still too much rancor and arguments about details to make this happen. I hope that when I go I can see the abandoned city (doubtful) that remains in the Turkish side, nobody has gone there since the split. Here is a GoNOMAD feature on dining Cypriot style

The Big Man Reads Tolstoy

Nikolay Valuev was crowned in December as Russia's first World Boxing Assn. heavyweight champion. The LA Time's Kim Murphy wrote about him today.

"Valuev strode into the gym recently during his triumphant return to Russia after the title bout, in which he defeated American John Ruiz on a controversial decision in Berlin to become the tallest (7 feet) and heaviest (323 pounds) world champion in history. He's so big he usually steps into the ring over the top rope … so big that the adolescent pugilists at the Stepashkin Club would have barely been able to land a hook as high as his belly, if they had the nerve to try.

Most just craned their necks and gawked, or melted into nervous grins.

"I don't know about the world, but here in Russia, he's been very famous for a long time. For the kids here, this is such an emotional thing," said Alexei Barsukov, a former trainer who came back for the spread of iced tortes, fresh fruit and champagne laid out in the manager's office in Valuev's honor.

In the rest of the world, Valuev, 32, is known as the "Beast from the East" (promoter Don King wants to call him "King Kong" when he defends his title in the U.S.), but in his homeland, he is more often known as the "Russian Giant."

His brain is played up here as much as his brawn — a boxer who reads Tolstoy and writes poetry to his wife? — along with his diffident, quiet demeanor.

"You can't impose your own manner of fighting on him, and that's because of his life position. He's very calm, and very, very controlled," Barsukov said.

Added Vladimir Grachev, boxing coach at the club: "You have a person born with such a physique once in a hundred years. Such a build, and such an intellect — Russia may not get another such man in our lifetimes."

Celebrities Tire of Home on the Range

Troy McMullen writes in the Wall Street Journal today about the fade of the celebrity ranch, that's put a whole slew of these large properties on the market.

"A decade or so after big names in entertainment, sports and business turned the rugged ranch into a real-estate fashion statement, many of them are packing up the wagon trains and pulling back out.

Actor Rick Schroder is offering nearly 15,000 acres of ranch land in Colorado for $29 million. Val Kilmer just listed his 1,800 acres in New Mexico for $18 million. Leon Hirsch, former chairman of U.S. Surgical, is selling his 17,000-acre Montana spread for $21.9 million (cows included).

For the first few years he owned the property, Don Lucas, a venture capitalist in Atherton, Calif. visited most weekends, flying in his private jet to Dillon, 35 miles away. He rode horses and fished, and cut down his own Christmas trees.

But Mr. Lucas says sometimes the 6,150-acre ranch could be a bit too out of the way. Mail could take a week to arrive, newspapers would get dumped at the property's entrance a day late, and the commute could be taxing. "Sometimes you'd have to fly in your friends just to have people around," says Mr. Lucas, age 75.

For some who've made their second or third home on the range, ranch life has turned out to be anything but simple. Yearly maintenance costs can run $150,000 and up. The remoteness and roughing-it that once seemed so alluring can get tiresome.

"They want second or third homes with lots of amenities and good cell service," says Jerry Ricordati, a real-estate broker at Baird & Warner in Chicago. "They don't want to freeze their butts off roping steer or bailing hay."

A Hummer of a Baby Stroller

I have an RSS feed reader on my desktop. Does anyone else use these things? They give me a chance to catch up on columns I enjoy, here is snip from a NY Times Style section piece from September.

"Pricey, supersize baby strollers like the Bugaboo and the Silver Cross - nicknamed Hummers - have been derided as symbols of yuppie extravagance. (They cost upward of about $700.) But some critics now say that size is not the only problem. What's worse, they say, is the way some parents use them to bulldoze their way through public places.

""I liken it to the SUV experience," said Elizabeth Khalil, 28, a lawyer in Washington. "It's just your mission to mow down everything in your sight because you can."

"These women have a child, and they're like, 'Look at me,' " said Ophira Eisenberg, 33, a stand-up comedian from the West Village who refers to oversize baby strollers as lawn mowers. "It's like this baby is more important than anything, and everyone should be bowing down because they created life."

ONE recent evening during rush hour on a Washington subway, Jose Rivas found himself cornered by a giant stroller, with no clear path of escape. "She saw us," Mr. Rivas, 33, said of the woman pushing the buggy. "She looked at us. She was basically like: 'You better find a way to get out. It's not my responsibility.' "

Mr. Rivas, 33, said of the woman pushing the buggy. "She looked at us. She was basically like: 'You better find a way to get out. It's not my responsibility.' "

When he tried to step around her to reach the door, her look became a glare. The confrontation was like a battle, he said, and the weapon, a long, army-green-colored stroller.

Campers and Verbal Tippers

Frank Rich wields a lot of power as th NY Time's Restaurant critic. A few months ago, he decided to slum it by working as a waiter in Cambridge for a week. He got a taste of the life, from the other side of the table, as he wrote in yesterday's Times.

"I acquired a new vocabulary. To "verbalize the funny," is to tell the kitchen about a special request. "Campers" are peole who linger forever at tables. "Verbal tippers" are people who offer extravagant praise in lieu of twenty percent.

The doors open at 5:30 and soon two women are seated at L-3. They interrogate Bryan at great length about the monkfish, which, in changing preparations, will be a special all week long. He delivers a monkfish exegisis; they seem rapt. They order the mahi-mahi and the swordfish. "It's amazing," said Bryan, "how unadventurous people are."

One table's check is $58 and Bryan sees the man put down a stack of bills. Then, as the man gets up from the table, the woman shakes her head and removes $5. The remaining tip is $4, or about 7 percent."

The Hunter Becomes Prey in the Sahel

In the early months of 2004, a lone convoy of Toyota pickup trucks and SUVs raced eastward across the southern extremities of the Sahara. Raffi Khatchadourian
wrote a long piece for the Village Voice this week.

"The convoy, led by a wanted Islamic militant named Ammari Saifi, had just slipped from Mali into northern Niger, where the desert rolls out into an immense, flat pan of gravelly sand. Saifi, who has been called the "bin Laden of the Sahara," was traveling with about 50 jihadists, some from Algeria, the rest from nearby African countries such as Mauritania and Nigeria. The Chadian soldiers were ill equipped, with little food, ammunition, or medical supplies. In contrast, Saifi and his men were well armed, with rocket-propelled grenades, automatic rifles, ammunition, night-vision goggles, and advanced communications gear. Ramstein had the C-130s airborne in one hour, and 10 hours later, the planes approached an austere military outpost in northern Chad, the Faya-Largeau Airport.

By the battle's end, the soldiers had killed or captured 43 militants. But Saifi and some of his men, once again, slipped away. Hungry, destitute, and uncertain of their precise location, the militants wandered off on foot, only to confront further hardships. In Tibesti's desert mountains—some as high as 10,000 feet—there are virtually no natural sources of food or water. The region is controlled by a secular rebel group known as the Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad, or MDJT, which has been fighting the Chadian government since 1998.

It wasn't long before the rebels found Saifi, put him in chains, and announced that the Sahara's most notorious hostage taker had, himself, been taken hostage."

Low Pay, Little Praise, Daily Potential to Mess Up

Ask yourself: Would you commit to a physically taxing, seven-nights-a-week, deadline-pressure job that offers relatively low pay, little praise and a daily potential to mess up? Bob Richter of My San Antonio.com writes: A great newspaper is nothing if it's not delivered properly.

Circulation's role begins and ends with carriers, about 750 of them, who earn $700 to $800 a month. They're no longer kids on bikes. Carriers today line up in their cars and trucks in the middle of the night — seven nights a week —waiting for the home edition to come off the presses at 3:40 a.m. Then they load up quickly and race off to meet their delivery deadlines (6 a.m. weekdays and 7 a.m. weekends).

No one goes into newspaper work to get rich, but circulation people might be the most unsung heroes of our trade — and the ones most reviled when customers don't get their paper.

A flaw in the process for customers who don't get a paper is that they must call only during certain hours for redelivery. Because that is not always convenient, the Express-News should consider a voice mail service customers may call after hours to get a missed paper redelivered the following day.

"Most people understand if they don't get a paper," Frantzen said. "What they don't understand is if we don't fix it."

Frantzen's and Aburumuh's photos and phone numbers appear daily on Page 2A of the Express-News. They're nice guys, but I hope you never need to call them.

How to Tell if Someone is Having a Stroke

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

Thank God for the sense to remember the "3" steps. Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S *Ask the individual to SMILE.

T *Ask the person to TALK . to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (i.e. . . It is sunny out today)

R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

{NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out their tongue...if the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke}

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher. A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.

BE A FRIEND AND SHARE THIS SOMEONE.

How to Make Your Website Better

I'm speaking at the Adventure Expo in Washington DC on February 10th. I'll keep trying to spread our GoNOMAD Gospel. Below is the promotional text that I hope I can live up to:

How to Improve Your Google Rankings and Get More Business from Your Travel Website

This presentation will outline the key steps needed so that you can improve how you rank on Google and how to build a successful travel website. Using examples of many other sites, this presentation will show not tell, and give the novice or intermediate web administrator good updated and profitable information.

Max has appeared on CNN and many radio programs, and is comfortable with the subject and passionate about the web. He brings an enthusiasm and a wealth of knowledge about the subjects and is a top-rated speaker.

This morning, Cris Carl of the Daily Hampshire Gazette called, she is writing for the paper's Business section and wanted to do a Q & A about the pulse of business in town. I told her that the hardest part of my job was wanting to travel and also build this cafe. Despite all that grounds me here, I am determined to make my trips to Cyprus and Sonoma, and DC, all in February.

Looks Like Hitler Will Win in Jenin

The candidate’s name is Jamal Abu Roub, but everyone here calls him Hitler because, well, that is the name he has answered to quite comfortably since he was a teenager. The Int'l Herald Tribune had the story.

Roub, 40, is a leader of the militant Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in this turbulent corner of the West Bank and has spent the past five years leading his ragtag band of gunmen in frequent clashes with the Israeli military. Roub’s deeds include hauling a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel and of molesting his own daughters into a town square, where the man was shot to death.

Now Roub is a candidate for the Palestinian Parliament and is virtually assured of winning a seat in elections Wednesday. He is wanted by Israel, and therefore does not appear at rallies, yet this seems only to have bolstered his reputation.

In an interview in Jenin, Roub said with a crooked smile that it was his first campaign appearance, and probably his last.

“I leave the campaigning to my brother and my supporters, but this is not a problem because people here know me and trust me,” Roub said. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair is tousled, giving him the look of a man pursued. He chain-smokes Marlboros and gulps his coffee. ...

When Roub was leaving after an interview, a group of Palestinian women spotted him and a buzz swept through the room. “It’s Hitler; it’s Hitler,” they said, one after another. Roub could not resist speaking to them for 15 minutes.

It's Illegal Not to Have a Cellphone

Amrit Hallan writes a blog in India called Writers Cave

"Cell phones are gradually becoming an integral part of generic human form these days. You rarely see people without a cell phone. Whether they are in parks, restaurants, bus stands, hospitals, offices, residential complexes, you see people holding cell phones everywhere. Street hawkers have them, plumbers and electricians have them, school children and their drivers have them – even our last driver had a cell phone. That day I had gone to a shopping complex and there a few boys and girls in their early 20s were sitting under the sun and chatting.

They all had their mobile phones in their hands They have become like essential accessories – the cell phones – and soon there will come a time when, like clothes, if you want a representation of a human being, you’ll have to show a cell phone in his or her hand.

A few months ago I read somewhere that the mobile phones are a crass representation of consumerism and their use should be discouraged. On the contrary, their usage should be encouraged. In our country where infrastructural development moves at a snail’s pace, cell phones can keep people connected even in remote places. I always felt good when Alka could always call our narialwala (the man who delivered raw coconuts to our house) on mobile phone or when Dhan Singh – our electrician in Sarita Vihar — received calls from different clients on his mobile phone while tending to our perpetually malfunctioning wiring, or for that matter, when we called our driver to tell him when he should come.

When I saw that old lady clutching the mobile phone I knew for her it was not some consumer item – with that thing in her hand she knew there were people whom she could call and who would like to call her any time. She was not alone.

How Pandas Do It

These pandas were donated by Thailand to China, and are four and five years old.

How Do Movies Get their Ratings?

In "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," director Kirby Dick uses private investigators to unmask the identities of members of the Certification and Rating Administration. These are the people who rate the movies.

The film presents side-by-side scene comparisons that Kirby contends show how the board's decisions favor studio releases over independent films while also revealing sexist and homophobic attitudes. The film includes interviews with several filmmakers who have gone through the appeals process to avoid an NC-17, a restrictive rating that limits many films' distribution and advertising.

"There's a great antipathy toward the MPAA, even by many people at the studios," Dick said. Yet while the film includes comments from a series of directors and former board members, he was unable to convince any studio executives to appear onscreen.

Yet Dick claimed he was "so surprised by many who declined. They were afraid it would impact the board's view of their films in the future, even some who've publicly criticized their practices in the past. This fear works in the MPAA's favor."

MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman rejects that suggestion.

"I was worried about their personal safety and security," he said. "They were nervous about it. In this era of NSA eavesdropping, personal privacy is very important. If our employees were harassed or outed by this movie, if (Dick) cased their homes in their environment, that's why I saw the film. One man got an e-mail that referred to his child. It was not threatening, but it was disconcerting for him. One man had his trash ruffled through."

Glaciers and Grand Crus

Last night we joined other members of Circolo Italiano for a lecture from a Smith
College geologist. The topic was wine and geology, and Prof. Larry Meinert showed slides that convinced me that how good the wine is directly corresponds with what's below the ground.

During the Ice Age, a gigantic lake was formed in what is now Montana. It was bigger, Larry said, than all of the Great Lakes combined. When this massive lake drained, it formed 200' ripples and dragged millions of tons of rock across thousands of miles, forming huge canyons that are still visible today. Grand Coulee was one of them.

When you view a series of vineyards, the winemakers clearly delineate where the best wines grow, and this corresponds directly with the ground: Where the cobblestones pebbles and rocky materials are is where the grand crus are. The winemakers who made these borders between the $500, $250, and $100 wines a thousand years back didn't realize that geology was what separated the best wines from the vin ordinaire.

Be Glad You're Not Francis G. Keough

Stephanie Barry wrote in today's Republican about Francis G. Keough III's vacation home in Charlestown, R.I..

Barring a legal turnaround, Keough's $700,000 home at 59 Oyster Drive has been drained of value. Neighbors successfully sued him for using their private access road as a driveway. A Rhode Island Superior Court judge issued a decision last Sept. 29 barring Keough from using the road, assailing his credibility and awarding his neighbors $1 in damages

The result: the two-story contemporary with a view of Foster Cove is land-locked with no legal way in or out. The decision followed a jury-waived trial last spring. In addition to enjoining the road, Lanphear also ordered Keough to dig up his septic system, which he embedded in his neighbors' property.

Keough already was fined $1,000 by local environmental officials for cutting down about an acre of wetlands-protected trees to secure his water view.

Craig's List: Do Laundry for Sex

I spent time late tonight poring over Craig's list, and was intrigued by this amalgamation of people's points of view. Particularly noteworthy was the "Best Of Rants and Raves section," where in the true folksonomie tradition, readers voted for their favorite rants.

One woman got right to the point. She hated doing laundry. She owned enough socks and underwear to fill ten to twelve laundry baskets. But she was very particular about how her laundry got done.

She offered any male who would do a good job on her laundry a special reward. You can guess what it was, not the full monte, but almost as good. I am not sure how many takers she had for this intriguing offer.

Another poster provided a chronicle of how he had vexed a Nigerian scammer by pretending to comply with his wishes to wire him a large sum. The poster pretended to be a dumb assistant to a rich corporate type, and emailed false reference numbers again and again, with his fictitious remittances.

He shared an email exchange that included the growing exasperation of the Nigerian scammer, until finally the poster told him what a terrible human being he was by trying to rip off another innocent American.

Amazon Mashing the Media Together

From John Battelle's Search blog tonight.

"Amazon.com Inc. plans to broadcast on its Web site an original show hosted by Bill Maher and featuring performers and authors touting new releases — which, not coincidentally, will be for sale at the online retailer.

The 12-episode Webcast series, which will begin airing June 1, is the first offering in what the Seattle company says is a broader plan to add more original programming to its Web site.

The long-term goal is to help Amazon.com become more of a "destination," where offerings such as this help people find artists whose works they might not previously have thought of buying.

All of the guests on "Amazon Fishbowl With Bill Maher" will be promoting a new release, such as a book, DVD or CD, and Savitt said the shows will include ways for people to immediately buy the products the performers are touting.

After the launch, the free programs will be available for on-demand viewing anytime, although users cannot download them. .

Besides sales, the company is relying on sponsors such as delivery company UPS Inc. to help pay for the show. UPS ads will accompany the Webcasts."We're working with sponsors in a very different way than traditional advertising," Maher will talk about UPS on the show, Savitt said, adding that the companies will be "an interwoven and an important and authentic part of the show."

A Bummer of a Hockey Game

I heard a sorry story over breakfast with Cindy. A work friend of hers came into the office with blue stitches on his bald head. He explained.

"I took my son to see the Boston Bruins. We had really great seats, right up front, front and center. During the first five minutes, a puck came shooting up sideways from the end of the ice, and it flew right into my head. I had to be taken to the hospital, fifteen stitches, missed the whole game.

Ouch! Bruins tickets average about $75 each...and my head hurts thinking about a puck hitting it.

Creating a Cozy Cafe

Designers know how to make things look right. I decided that I needed one as we moved forward on creating the inside look of the new GoNOMAD Cafe. I found a woman with a good eye and an understanding of what we're doing here in Jill MacFarlane. She has done stage sets and worked at coffeehouses, and even made those groovy signs you see all over Whole Foods. So she came in handy showing up as she did, when our flooring man Al Morini was laying out some color choices for the new vinyl floor.

We picked a dark green tile, to replace the carpeting which would have lasted a few days, and so, we move ahead. Since the place is beginning to look like a real cafe, we've had many people dropping by, asking about jobs, and my neighbors keep asking me when we will be open.

I hope that by early February, we can be serving the best coffee and espresso this town has ever seen. Jill's orders are to create a cozy, comfy place where people will want to congregate and visit. I think she's up to the job.

Cringeworthy Blogs I Love

I read somewhere that there are more than 22 million blogs created every year. Wow! But in my world, there are only about five or six that catch my attention and merit a daily spin. One of them is K, a stranger who lives in the midwest.

K's blog is racy. Simply put, Kelly shares way, way more than I ever would and sometimes I wonder what her lovers think of her blogging out so many details of her love life. Maybe it is a secret blog, that none of them see. But secretly I bet she wants them to discover it.

I heard a funny story about my former sister in law. She found all of the details of her 16-year-old's illicit, drunken bash at her house (while she was away) by reading her blog. How much of a secret can it be if it's on the web?

Learning About the Presidents

Last night we had take-out from Boston Market. We still call it Boston Chicken, my kids ask me why, I tell them that "back it the day," it was called that. Television brought forth "Presidents," a look back at the first few dudes who held the highest office, in the 'President's Mansion,' that was completed one year after Pres. Numero Uno died. Washington was a great gambler, he bet on everything.

Because of his enormous height, he was a great horseman. His favorite steed was a white horse named Nelson. And women queued up to dance with him at state dinners, which he very much enjoyed. George was the largest distiller of whisky in the U.S., brewing 11,000 gallons in one year.

Jefferson was very shy and hated the trappings of the office, he never had state dinners and sometimes answered the door to the White House himself. He had the biggest house in Virginia, yet still acted as if he were a man of the people.

John Adams didn't get along with many people, and was tarred and feathered over the XYZ affair, one of the first times that foreign entanglements got a U.S. president in trouble.

Saying NO to Wal-Mart--and Thriving!

Fast Company recently ran a profile of Jim Wier, the head of Snapper lawn mowers. It is a tale of wisdom and shows that in some cases saying no is the wiser choice. From The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman.

"What struck Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president's office, was the seating area for visitors. "It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples." The vice president's office was furnished with a folding lawn chair and a chaise lounge.

It was a Wal-Mart moment that couldn't be scripted, or perhaps even imagined. A vice president responsible for billions of dollars' worth of business in the largest company in history has his visitors sit in mismatched, cast-off lawn chairs that Wal-Mart quite likely never had to pay for.

Tens of thousands of executives make the pilgrimage to northwest Arkansas every year to woo Wal-Mart, marshaling whatever arguments, data, samples, and pure persuasive power they have in the hope of an order for their products, or an increase in their current order.

Selling Snapper lawn mowers at Wal-Mart wasn't just incompatible with Snapper's future -- Wier thought it was hazardous to Snapper's health. Snapper is known in the outdoor-equipment business not for huge volume but for quality, reliability, durability.

But Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap, any more than a Viking range is cheap. The value isn't in the price, it's in the performance and the longevity.

"When we told the dealers that they would no longer find Snapper in Wal-Mart, they were very pleased with that decision. And I think we got most of that business back by winning the hearts of the dealers." Business remains strong as as result of Wier's No.

Web Surfing in the Produce Aisle

This is either really big news, or another example of the Internet going too far. Stop and Shop supermarkets have announced that they will be installing Wi-Fi, (wireless internet) first in their Dorchester MA store and eventually throughout the 360 stores in the chain.

I am having a hard time imagining the marketer's scenario: Will we be seeing soccer moms rolling their carts with their laptops open, checking for coupons? Would their be ads directing them to the produce aisle for the special deal on green beans?

In the UK, and many other parts of Europe, this has been done already. Somebody must have some other ideas we haven't thought about yet...maybe it will be like the DVDs in the back of the minivan, kids can surf their cartoon or game sites while mom shops.

The Six Pillars of Blogging: Naked Conversations

An Excerpt from Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel:

Bloggings's Six Pillars: There are six key differences between blogging and any other communications channel. You can find any of them elsewhere. These are the Six Pillars of Blogging:

1.Publishable.Anyone can publish a blog.You can do it cheaply and post often. Each posting is instantly available worldwide.

2.Findable. Through search engines, people will find blogs by subject, by author, or both. The more you post, the more findable you become.

3.Social. The blogosphere is one big conversation. Interesting topical conversations move from site to site, linking to each other. Through blogs, people with shared interests build relationships unrestricted by geographic borders.

4.Viral. Information often spreads faster through blogs than via a newsservice. No form of viral marketing matches the speed and efficiency of a blog.

5.Syndicatable. By clicking on an icon, you can get free "home delivery" of RSS- enabled blogs into your e-mail software. RSS lets you know when a blog you subscribe to is updated, saving you search time. This process is considerably more efficient than the last- generation method of visiting one page of one web site at a time looking for changes.

6.Linkable. Because each blog can link to all others, every blogger has access to the tens of millions of people who visit the blogosphere every day.

Moving Forward

Getting a Good Web Address for Baby

Luke Seeley, 22 months, has two Web sites of his own, including lukeseeley.com, a domain his father purchased soon after an ultrasound showed that his first child was a boy, four months before the baby was born. Sarah Kershaw writes in the NY Times Style section Sunday.

"Carter and Luke are pioneers in the latest technobaby twist to hit the Web, as parents snap up Web sites and e-mail addresses in the names of the next generation, long before their children can read, eat solid food or, in some cases, have even left the womb.

"It's like owning a piece of real estate online for him," said Mr. Seeley, 34, who lives in Vancouver, Wash., and specializes in Internet sales for an advertising firm. "By the time he's a teenager and he's really into the Internet, who knows what's going to be left in terms of domains?"

The motivation, parents and other experts say, is akin to securing a good street address in a fast-developing city a decade early, so the children do not have to live on virtual Main Street, stuck when they eventually develop the motor skills to log on, with an obscure domain name like lukeseely.ce, or a pedestrian e-mail address like lukeseeley@hotmail.

"Why would anyone do that?" asked Donna M. Stewart, an aspiring artist who lives in Seattle and heard about the baby e-mail fad from a friend. "That's like getting e-mail for your dog."

A Heroin Addict's Life in Tehran

Kevin Sites goes to the world's "Hot Zones," and reports for Yahoo News.

"In the unforgiving world of heroin addiction, 43-year-old Ali of Tehran, is a model of self-restraint. Anybody that is still alive after doing smack for 22 years -- an endless cycle of searching, scoring, shooting -- must know how to hold back a little.

Ali was no poster child for clean living, either. At the peak of his addiction he was pumping four-and-a-half to five grams of Afghani "brown sugar" heroin into his veins -- about a $20 a day habit -- a fortune in Iran, where the average income is only about $100 a month.

"I started stealing," says Ali. "I had to."

The Iranian government estimates there are at least two million people using drugs in a nation of 78 million. Of those, 200,000 are intravenous drug users and at least 50,000 are infected with HIV -- including Ali. Now he has switched to Methadone, supplied by the Persopolis Harm Reduction Center, where they help hundreds of addicts in Tehran.

Ultimately, he says his sons are proud of him and that's all that matters.

"They crawl all over me and kiss my face. I say don't, you might get HIV," Ali says. (Experts say HIV can only be transmitted through blood and bodily fluid exchange).

"'No, we don't care,' they tell me. 'We love you.'"

Bachelet Blazes the Trail for Women in Chile

When I was in Chile, I heard and wrote about the candidate for president, Michelle Bachelet. Today Bloomberg has the story of her victory and new role as first woman preident of Chile.

Bachelet will take office more than three decades after, as a 23-year-old medical student, she was arrested and tortured during the dictatorship. Her father, a general, died in jail less than a year earlier after being tortured on suspicion he opposed the 1973 military coup.

``You know, I haven't had an easy life,'' Bachelet said yesterday. ``Violence entered into my life, destroying what I loved. Because I was a victim of hate, I have devoted my life to reverse that hate.''

She said her experiences influenced her to study defense policy. In 2002, she became defense minister, the first woman to hold that post in Chile.

As defense minister, Bachelet told military commanders assembled before their new chief that she was a woman, a socialist, separated, and agnostic, ``all the sins together,'' Bachelet joked at a news conference in November.

Support from Women

Bachelet, a trained pediatrician with three children, is separated from her husband. She won support from women who identified with her background, said Patricio Valdivieso, a professor at the Pontific Catholic University of Chile.

``She's a regular woman,'' said Carolina Cruz, a computer programmer, who said she voted for Bachelet. ``She'll have to fight down sexists.''

Juan Lindau, a professor at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, said that Bachelet's career suggests she ``has become extraordinarily adept at handling sexism, given her long career in the still largely male political world of Chile.''

`Greater Scrutiny'

Bachelet will ``face greater scrutiny because of her gender and will consequently need a strong first year in office,'' Lindau said.

Easily Pleased Shows the Way on Sprouts

Started out my web surfing today reading a link on Budget travel on line, where Kent and Sony's blogs were mentioned and linked. Then I began reading Kelly Amibile's and Erik Olsen's entries on Gadling, and finally ended up reading a comment by "Easily Pleased," who runs a fun food-based blog with many photos.

Scrolling down a blog provides a backwards view of history, first I see the recipe #2 for brussel sprouts, then a different photo and recipe for #1, then she shows the big old honkin' stalk of brussels she found at a farmer's market, which started the whole thing. Wonderful fun to dash in and out of these blogs, it's a wonder we have time to work with so much to read and look at!

A Day at the Javits

We worked hard today at the Javits and now are enjoying some wine in our 24th floor room of the Marriot Marquis NY. We are returning to our old favorite restaurant, Osteria Gelsi, on Ninth Avenue, with Sony, Paul, Kent, Lisa, Cindy, Joe, Cathie, all celebrating the GoNOMAD brand as we resonate with the travelers of the world.

Being in New York is like being nowhere else. Contacts, new possibilities, and encouraging new ideas all mingle on the show floor. The show brings together so many different people.

At one point I looked up and among the crowd of people passing by were my parents Nat and Val, they had come into the city and came to our both. What a surprise! Everyone commented on my mother's beauty, and how much they enjoyed seeing these spry septuagenarians out on the town.

Waiting for Cindy to come up to the this floor...then we can go out to dinner.

Getting Ready for the 300 Millionth American

In 1967, when the population reached 200 million, Life magazine dispatched 23 photographers to locate the baby and devoted a five-page spread to its search. Instead of deciding on a statistically valid symbol of the average American newborn, the magazine chose the one born at precisely the appointed time. The NY Times had this today.

"Life immortalized Robert Ken Woo Jr. of Atlanta, whose parents, a computer programmer and a chemical engineer, had immigrated seven years earlier from China. Mr. Woo graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and is a litigator. Now 38, he still lives in Atlanta with his wife, Angie, who is also a lawyer, and their three daughters.

"He did feel an obligation to do well," Ms. Woo said. "But I think he would have done well, regardless."

This time, like last, the selection is subject to all manner of qualifications, not the least of which is the conceit that the census can measure individuals so precisely as to determine the exact time that the population tops 300 million or, playing the odds, can define the average American newborn.

Still, demographers do know that the United States, which ranks third in population behind China and India, is still gaining people while many other industrialized nations are not. (Japan, officials there announced last month, has begun shrinking.) Driven by immigration and higher fertility rates, particularly among newcomers from abroad, the United States' population is growing by just under 1 percent annually, the equivalent of the entire population of Chicago (2.8 million).

Given the demographic changes recorded in the 20th century, the 300 millionth American, born in the same year the first baby boomers turn 60, will be a very different person from the paradigm in 1915, when the nation's estimated population passed 100 million, or even in 1967, when it topped 200 million."

Napping Sounded Like a Good Idea

We walked and walked, for blocks and blocks, the way you often do when you are in New York City. The mild weather and anticipation of the show made it a fine day to stroll. We finally reached Via Italia, and had chicken parmesan by the window. I kept thinking of how much the rent must be at these places, and how many bottles of wine and chicken parm you'd have to sell to make the multi-thousand dollar rent each month.

Later we returned to the Marriot Marquis. The bed awaited, in all its six-pillow, soft duvet, Egyption cotton-sheeted glory. I peeled back the sumptous covers to nap.

..wowowowowowowooww...eeeeerrreeeeiiiiee BLATTT BLATTTT BLATATTT...

How many different kinds of sirens must there be? And you can hear them all up here on the twenty-fourth floor. Just as I would be drifting off in those billowy, pillowy covers....ahhhh...then uuuuuyapppp yipp, uwaappp. No use. I derived some peace by just lying there still, relaxing, not moving, listening to the gentle sound of New York's Siren choir.

Late the Interview, Late to the Job?

Today my daughter Kate is handling the interviews for servers at the new GoNOMAD Cafe. We lined up about five candidates, and so far one sounds like a keeper, and the second one who didn't show up, she's not. "Late to the interview, late to the job," said Kate.

I am being updated about the interviews via instant message. At one point she typed gibberish and explained that it was Nathan's handiwork. Nathan also spends time in a playpen she's installed at the office. It is nice to know that somebody besides me is meeting these job seekers, having a second opinion is crucial to choose the right person.

Today we go back to the Javits Center and set up our GoNOMAD booth, and then at 4:30 pm, it will be showtime. That gives us a whole day to get our NYC bearings, make the booth perfect, and at the end of the day, Joe, Paul, Cindy and Lisa will join us and we'll get to work.

Dinner Whores Are the Topic Tonight

Tonight I drove around and around in the New York City traffic, listening to a new FM radio station. One of the hosts was called "Radio Chick" and she lead a spirited discussion on a new topic--Dinner Whores. These are the women who go out to dinner with men again and again, just for the dinner. The callers to the show included men who had wasted lots of money on these dinners, and women, who felt that their company enough was a fine and fair trade for a big meal. Then people started talking about how women would order the expensive stuff on the menu, and take advantage of the guy who was dutifully, paying the bill.

The Travel Show won't begin until Friday at 4:30. So we have a day to get the booth ready and do some walking around New York. We were not inspired by our booth locations, way way way to the left, and an aisle with only a few booths and a lot of empty space. But we'll do fine, and work hard to provide some sparks at our booth for our visitors.

She Loved that Chicken, Cried, & Got Bird Flu

I read a chilling story yesterday. A little girl lived on a farm in Turkey. She loved many of the chickens in the barnyard, and often held them and kissed them. Last week she was playing with one of her favorite chickens, who was ill. The farmer ran outside and saw his daughter kissing the sick chicken, and began yelling at her to put it down.

Upset, the little girl cried. At the moment she wiped away those tears, she infected herself with avian flue, and later in the week, she was one of the country's fifteen diagnosed cases Two of them have died.

While human to human transmission remains, god forbid, still undocumented, this story illustrates how tenuous our grip really is over these terrible flus that killed so many millions back in the olden days.

The Final Prep for the NYC Travel Show

One final push and a list to check off. We're off tomorrow morning to New York City for the Adventure Expo travel show. This show is a biggie: 30,000 people came through last year, and we had a booth that was visited by what seemed like all of them. Like last year, we'll have Kent and Lisa, and Cindy and Joe O, and this year Paul Shoul and Sony Stark will join us.

We've got giveaway stickers to place on people's backpacks, and little giveaway notepads since everyone wants free stuff when they walk a show. We'll make contacts, visit with readers, develop new relationships with travel outfitters and other websites, and generally schmooze our way to a higher profile as a site. This is the groundwork that will make us grow bigger and bigger: Networking wtih the right people in the Greatest City in the World....it will be a relief to leave all of the cafe work and computer repairs behind and dive into the world of travel...where GoNOMAD is very much at home.

Click this, I Promise you will Chortle, if not bellylaugh

We put up a video on the staff page of our Computer Cleaners site. Click the link to see something that will make you laugh. I love this!! hee hee

PLAY CATUS MOVIE

Smoking Gun Deflates A Book They All Loved

On the Smokinggun.com website today, I heard about this. Another writer unravelled.

"In an October 26 show entitled "The Man Who Kept Oprah Awake At Night," Winfrey hailed author James Frey's graphic and coarse book "A Million Little Pieces" as "like nothing you've ever read before. Everybody at Harpo is reading it. When we were staying up late at night reading it, we'd come in the next morning saying, 'What page are you on?'"

In emotional filmed testimonials, employees of Winfrey's Harpo Productions lauded the book as revelatory, with some choking back tears. When the camera then returned to a damp-eyed Winfrey, she said, "I'm crying 'cause these are all my Harpo family so, and we all loved the book so much."

But a six-week investigation by The Smoking Gun reveals that there may be a lot less to love about Frey's runaway hit, which has sold more than 3.5 million copies and, thanks to Winfrey, has sat atop The New York Times nonfiction paperback best seller list for the past 15 weeks.

When recalling criminal activities, looming prison sentences, and jailhouse rituals, Frey writes with a swaggering machismo and bravado that absolutely crackles. Which is truly impressive considering that, as TSG discovered, he made much of it up. The closest Frey has ever come to a jail cell was the few unshackled hours he once spent in a small Ohio police headquarters waiting for a buddy to post $733 cash bond.

Next to the latest Harry Potter title, Nielsen BookScan reported Friday, Frey's book sold more copies in the U.S. in 2005--1.77 million--than any other title, with the majority of that total coming after Winfrey's selection.

Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey's book. The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw "wanted in three states."

Google Buying Remnant Ads in Newspapers!

I worked for the Daily Hampshire Gazette from 1986 through 1995, and one of the suggestions I often used to make was that we sell the unsold space for a discount after deadline. Don Nunes, the ad director, called them "remnant ads," where house ads would usually run. We did offer these with some success back then, it made sense since half price is better than nothing.

In an unusual twist, Crains Chicago Business reports that Google is taking the same tack, running print versions of its text ads in the Chicago Sun Times. "We were eager to help them shut us down," jokes Sun-Times Publisher John Cruickshank. "They're buying ads. We like that."

The benefits for the Sun-Times are obvious: making money on previously unsold ad space, even if that money comes from the biggest player in a business that's undercutting old-line newspapers.

Laughing at Cats on Google Video

I woke up this morning after one of those dreams you keep thinking about. It was about my prep school reunion, and the sadness of saying good bye to all of those old chums. But then I cracked open the laptop and eventually landed on Google Video.

What a treat! First there was a line-up of old shows like I Love Lucy which I could buy and download the episode for $2.95. Nah....then below this was a bunch of homemade or surreptiously taped segments that were free. The one that made me laugh out loud was called "Funny Cats." It is a collection of clips of cats falling, jumping, and generally being hilarious. Google has even added a new feature: they provide code so if you want you can copy and paste the snippet onto your own website.

I don't ever remember technology moving this fast in years before. The convergence, as they would say, has really come.

The "Year of Yes" Gets Her a Man

Like many dispirited single women, Maria Headley feared that her taste in men was sabotaging her quest for love. The bookish, intellectual types she favoured seemed to offer nothing but awkward coffee dates and graceless passes - never romance, nor the spark she craved. Such serial disappointment, she concluded, could only be evidence that her modus operandi was seriously awry. The Telegraph UK had this story today.

"So the budding playwright set about devising her own unorthodox matchmaking scheme. For 12 months, instead of following her instincts, she would go out with anyone and everyone who asked her, regardless of their age, appearance, profession or even sex.

Headley dubbed it her "year of yes" - a dating assault course so physically and emotionally challenging it would change her life. In the ensuing 12 months, she dated more than 150 different people, some more than once.

Soon, the dates came thick and fast. Over coffee, a man from Cyprus asked her to bite his penis. She declined. A 70-year-old neighbourhood eccentric took her salsa dancing. A lesbian she nicknamed "Wonderwoman" asked her to have her baby. She slept with an actress, dated taxi drivers, psychics and carpet salesmen. A 30-year-old virgin wooed her with his exposed brick walls. A train conductor, who sounded so cheery over the intercom that she pursued him down the platform, took her swimming."

Finally the 28-year old Headley married a 52-year old playwright with two kids, after he got a divorce from his wife."The year turned me into a much more open-minded person," she says. "If I had not done it, I would never have considered dating Robert. He had kids and was in a really big, bad, dramatic, miserable situation. I would have been too nervous of what people thought."

Plumbing Blues Can't Bring Us Down

Today was an adrenaline day. One of my first orders of business turned out sour: The plumber, who also turns out to be the Inspector, insisted we have a grease trap in our cafe's sinks. So that means some sort of vertical drilling up through the apartments and breaking through the membrane of the roof. Sounds expensive, huh?

But the GoNOMAD CAFE forges on. Refusing to be derailed by costly problems. We met a qualified young man who wants to come work for us. He's spent time managing at Starbucks, so it might be a good fit.

We are looking into fabric for the celings. Since we're GoNOMAD and all, I figured we should have a cafe that looks like a desert tent. So I am trying to find this fabric in hopes we can cover the ceiloing with it.

Please! You Geeve Me Money Meester!

Paul Theroux' book "The Pillars of Hercules" has been by my bedside for months. I picked it up again this morning and read this passage about the author's descent from a ferryboat from Bari Italy, to Durres, Albania.

"Knowing so little in advance, I had mentally prepared myself for anything in Albania, but even so I was shocked by Durres. My first sight, as I walked off the ship, was of a mob of ragged people, half of them beggars, the rest of them tearful relatives of the passengers, all of them howling.

It was hysteria, and dirt and dogs and heat, but what alarmed me most were the people snatching at me. No one elsewhere on my trip had noticed me. I was so anonymous I felt I was invisible wherever I went. No one had ever touched me. Here they pounced. They took hold of my hand, tugged at my shirt, fingered my pen. "Signor!" "Money!" "Soldi" "Please! You geeve me!" "Meester!"

They fastened themselves to me, pleading, I could not brush them aside--they were truly ruined. They looked hysterical, they were poor, ravaged, bumpy faced with pox scars--mothers with children, blind men with boys, old hectoring crones, all of them plucking at me. "Geeve me theese!"

Third World, I thought, but it was the only third world scene I had ever witnessed that was entirely populated by Europeans--the most dissolute and desperate and poverty-stricken and rapacious, lunging at me, following just behind me, demanding money."

The Wisdom of the Crowd

Today while the snow fell in Holyoke, we watched Sunday Morning on CBS. The lead piece was about the wisdom of crowds, how time after time, a large group of people can be wiser than any single person. One example: a crowd in olden days guessed the weight of an ox. A mathematician averaged all of the guesses, then produced a number 1177 pounds--the real weight was 1178.

James Suroweicki was profiled, he writes an economics column in the New Yorker. He looked at how stocks are picked, and how we can gather information about which stocks will go up by using the wisdom of crowds. Anita Albersy, a Harvard trained economist, has a website that predicts which movies will be successful. Surfers can bet on which movies will win the Oscar. Again and again the predictions are right.

But the lesson is that the experts are not always right. Suroweicki attributed the spectacular failure of the 1960 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba as an example of a president surrounded by 'yes men.' The sycophants did not realize how bad the idea was until it was all over and they looked very bad, since the Cubans did not rise up and throw out Castro.

Paul Shoul's Bilbao Cooking Adventure

Read Paul Shoul's new story on GoNOMAD about Bilbao and the chefs he met there.

Krazy Kow Kan't Be Kaptured

Cow Escapes Meat Plant, Dodges SUV, Train in Montana: The AP had this story today.

"A cow that escaped a slaughterhouse dodged vehicles, ran in front of a train, braved the icy Missouri River and took three tranquilizer darts before being recaptured six hours later. News of the heifer's adventures prompted a number of people to offer to buy the animal.

Police tried to catch the cow, and had her wedged between a stock trailer and a fence, but the heifer barreled through the fence toward the river, nearly being hit by a Chevrolet Suburban.

It was the first of many near-death experiences.

With the police in pursuit, the cow ran toward the railroad tracks and darted in front of an oncoming locomotive, briefly giving the police the slip again. Crossing another road, the cow was nearly struck by a semi tractor-trailer.

"By then it was a madhouse," said police officer Corey Reeves. "People were coming out of the woodwork to see."

As she swam to the west bank of the river, Reeves said she sank lower in the water and was being swept downstream. But the cow found a sandbar near the river's west bank and walked to shore.

As police scrambled to head off the cow on the other side of the river, a veterinarian with a tranquilizer gun was called. Pursuers again believed they had the cow cornered at a chain link fence, but the heifer ran through a perimeter set up by officials. They shot it with a tranquilizer dart, twice, with no effect.

Finally the heifer was captured.

Tennis, Anyone? Anyone?

The LA Times' Dave McKinnen chronicled the change that has put private tennis clubs on the extinction list.

"Lindborg's story is a familiar one. During the sport's peak in the mid-1970s, developers couldn't build private clubs fast enough to satisfy the public's urge to whack a fuzzy yellow ball. The building boom continued through the 1980s, even as the number of recreational tennis players fell by more than half and cheap-to-build suburban public courts flooded the landscape.

Faced with these pressures, owners of private clubs nationwide have found salvation in the real estate boom and cashed out, selling their acres of courts to the highest bidders — usually developers looking to build homes or shopping centers.

The demise of the private tennis club has touched nearly every region of the country, from San Francisco to Kansas City to New York, where four Manhattan facilities recently closed. Hardest hit is Southern California, where private clubs, once only for the rich, proliferated after World War II to serve a growing upper-middle class.

"Southern California was for a long time the vineyard of tennis," said Bud Collins, the Hall of Fame tennis writer, who noted that the region has produced some of the game's greatest stars, including Jack Kramer, Bill Tilden, Pancho Gonzalez, Billie Jean King, Pete Sampras and Tracy Austin.

The L.A. Tennis Club was a place where hoi polloi could rub elbows with Hollywood stars such as William Powell, Errol Flynn, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who were regulars.

The club is still thriving, with about 400 members and a waiting list. So is the Jack Kramer Club in Rolling Hills Estates.

"It's a hard business to make a profit," said Kramer, who won Wimbledon and U.S. Open singles titles in the 1940s. "Paying for the maintenance of the courts, the clubhouse, the parking area — that's expensive…. We couldn't make any money."

Kramer, 84, remembers the glory days of tennis, when a galaxy of stars prompted fans to join clubs, where they would wear pressed white skirts and hip-hugging white shorts, swing wooden rackets and adjourn for cocktails at courtside. It was a civilized venue for a regal sport.

"It's a sad thing when a club closes," Kramer said. "It's like a ship going down."

Proud and Evil Mother of Three Terrorists

Horrific people exist who want to kill us. This is what it must be like in Israel, with Sharon just about dead and a mother who celebrates carnage. Bokertov.typepad.com had this.

"Whatever, who is, in the words of the Associated Press, the "mother of three martyrs." She is also a Hamas candidate for Palestinian "parliament."

As far as I am concerned, she is vile and evil, a genocidal terrorist who should be erased from the planet. Listen to this:

"Allah be praised," she continued, her son Muhammad's martyrdom was "one of the most successful operations of the first and second intifadas."

Muhammad broke into a military academy, Farhat said, and "Allah be praised, there were many casualties. About 10 soldiers [were killed], but Israeli radio always conceals the [true number of] casualties."The operation was very successful, Allah be praised. Ten soldiers were killed and 23 injured."

I could vomit.
Interviewer: Umm Nidal, who sits here in front of me, is classified as a terrorist throughout the world. Not just a terrorist, but also as a producer of terrorists. ...

[Nidal] Farhat: They can classify as much as they like. I am proud and honored to be a terrorist for the sake of Allah. 'Prepare for them whatever force and steeds of war you can, in order to strike terror in the hearts of the enemy of Allah and of your own.' I am happy to implement this Quranic verse myself, and to be a terrorist for the sake of Allah.

Making Progress on the GoNOMAD Cafe

I remember when I used to work for men who had to make quick decisions, and they never did. It frustrated me. Now that I am running these companies, I also have to make the quick snap judgements. Now, decide, spend, save, compare, put-out-fires. Delegate. Well I am good at that, today as I sit in my new office I have Stephen on my right putting up ads on GoNOMAD.com. I have Dave hammering away fixing the new railing for the cafe. I have Eric running scans on a dead computer. And Joe is talking to Verizon and fixing Kent's blog so that he can post. Dave C is working on a new 6 x 7 foot banner for our tradeshow in NYC. We'll also have stickers to hand out that say "GO!" for people who come to our booth.

We are underway full scale banging out all eight cylinders. Our coffee guy Sean dropped by with five pounds today, our plumber is coming back to tell us the news about the sink, a design consultant is working on mock ups for the front signs, and the cappuccino maker is being delivered this week. We're thinking about a fabric ceiling that feels like a Nomad's tent.

By Friday we will have a cafe ready to see. No coffee yet, but time to find our employees.

Watching Birds? Or Just Drillin'

I had a dental appointment last week when it snowed. The doc called and we set up a later time, and I settled in for some drilling. After a while, he stopped, and went away. I asked the hygenist sitting next to me if that was it. "No, no, there's more. He has to drill out the whole tooth to fit in the crown."

Dr Grass came back and sat down. "Back to the grind," he said with a slight laugh.

The drills went on and on. I settled into looking out the window at a faraway tree. The tree towered over all the others, and there was a shape out there. I could discern an image of what looked like a big hawk, sitting up in that tree. Way way way over there. Drilling resumed. I thought about whether that image over there was a snowdrift, or a bird. Finally, I asked her if she had ever seen any hawks out that window.

"Oh yeah, there are two of them. They do sit up in that tree." I was comforted by hearing that she too saw the bird out there on the tree.

The Ultimate Wireless Gadget

Stop reading for a moment. Flip this over. Notice that the backside of your morning newspaper is utterly unencumbered by cords, plugs, telephone jacks or USB connections. The Miami Herald had this take on newspapers today.

To hell with Bluetooth technology. We were wireless long before wireless was cool.
Marvel at our paper-thin technology -- each page 40 times skinnier than an iPod Nano. Take it anywhere. Take it to the bathroom. To bed. On an airplane. When the flight attendants hustle through the cabin shutting down Blackberrys, Razrs, Vaios, Shuffles and Palm Pilots, your Miami Herald keeps on working.

We're particularly dependable during hurricane season. When devices dependent on FPL, Comcast or BellSouth went down the moment a live oak crashed into the wires -- and stayed down for weeks -- The Miami Herald still functioned. Your newspaper may be the only communication device in the high-tech age that operates with candlelight.
When rainwater seeped under the French doors, The Herald came to the rescue. Not to dam competing technologies with faint praise, but just try stuffing your 42-inch Sony plasma television under the doorway.

The Mysterious Google Cube

Here are some fascination prognostications by Sally Hofmeister in the LA Times today.

"Google will unveil its own low-price personal computer or other device that connects to the Internet.

Sources say Google has been in negotiations with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., among other retailers, to sell a Google PC. The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap — perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars.

Bear Stearns analysts speculated in a research report last month that consumers would soon see something called "Google Cubes" — a small hardware box that could allow users to move songs, videos and other digital files between their computers and TV sets.

And that's not the only Google theory out there. Content producers wonder whether Google's push into video search will unravel the economics that make Hollywood hum. If viewers can find and legally download an episode of "Seinfeld" through Google, will that cut into cable and network television's profits?

And what if Google, after equipping cities, starting with San Francisco, with Wi-Fi wireless technology, starts to offer pay-TV service for free?

Still, to date, the company's $123-billion stock market value is based almost entirely on its dominance of one business: global text searches on the Web. Some investors worry that Page and co-founder Sergey Brin could be done in by their penchant for seeing themselves as do-gooders rather than profiteers. But those naysayers are in the minority.

Most industry executives and Wall Street analysts believe that Google's search engine business is robust enough to give the young billionaires two or three years of wiggle room to build nifty services first and worry about making money on them later.

Orlando Swinger Party Upsets Soccer Parents

Some teenage soccer players and their parents saw more sights than they wanted when they stayed at a hotel where about 200 swingers were having a New Year's party. The AP ran this story today, from Orlando.

"Paul Camporini brought his wife, seventh-grade daughter and eighth- grade son from Safety Harbor and said he had to "delicately explain to my Catholic school children that swingers change partners during the evening."

The families said the sexually adventurous partygoers sometimes flashed breasts and bare buttocks in front of the children as they sashayed through the hotel atrium. The parents described the dress at the Crowne Plaza Hotel-Airport in Orlando as "raunchy, despicable and worse than prostitutes."

The teams booked the $92-a-night rooms for Disney's Soccer Showcase, and said hotel management did not tell them about the swingers' party or try to keep the partygoers away from the children.

"We're not prudes by any means," said Rob Young of Greenville, S.C., who said his two daughters, Leah, 13 and Lauren, 11, asked questions he struggled to answer.

"The kids could see through the glass atrium into the ballroom where naked people were dancing. There were exposed breasts, thongs and see- through dresses on women who were not wearing any underwear."

Lt. John Mina, a watch commander for the Orlando Police Department, said Hollis didn't witness anything illegal."

Pretty? Give her a Visa. Ugly? Send her Back

The Sun featured a big story about a brewing scandal at Lunar House, where immigrant status is greatly affected by looks.

“A Lebanese girl came into the office in a foul temper asking for one of the guys who worked there. He had recently moved to another department. “She told us that he’d promised to give her an extension to a visa and that they had slept together at her flat in Brighton.” He went on:

Brazilian girls were treated best of all. If male and female Brazilian migrants came in to extend their visas, the guy would get one year and the girl two — even if both had the same level of paperwork. The girl would only have to smile, bend over the desk and she’d get longer. Officers used to say about ugly girls: “She’s bloody disgusting — let’s send her back anyway.”

If an immigrant was ugly, several officers would leave their desks to go behind a screen and laugh at her passport picture. The photo would be copied and pinned up on a wall

Anthony told how pretty girls would be seen within minutes while other migrants faced queuing for hours. And he said security checks were so lax terrorists could have sneaked into the country.

Adios, Siesta! Back to Work Early in Spain

The long lunch break, the two- or three-hour siesta that typified Spanish life for centuries, has been permanently shortened for government workers, dropping to an hour to keep pace with child-care needs and schedules in the rest of Europe.

Instead of working from 9am until 7 or 8pm with a long break at midday, state employees will adopt a 9-to-5 schedule with only an hour for lunch, according to rules taking effect on Sunday.

Before the days of long commutes and heavy traffic, most Spaniards returned home for lunch and a siesta at midday. Now a trip home is often impractical, particularly in large cities, but the traditional work schedule, with the long afternoon break, has remained.

The long days also deprive Spaniards of sleep, they contend, hurting worker productivity and increasing accidents in the workplace. Spaniards sleep an average of 40 minutes less per night than the average European, according to a study by the Fundacion Independiente.

Give Readers More News About Horse Sex

The Seattle Times Danny Westneat just published a column on the most popular stories of the year. While journalists would prefer to highlight their investigative work or their hard hitting corruption probes, the readers have a more prurient view. In the top five most popular stories, four concern a man in Enumclaw WA who suffered a perforated colon after having sex with his horse. Number five was about a vanity license plate that showed the chemical formula for meth.

A newspaper in Chile is cited where "every editorial decision is based on Web-traffic stats. Popular stories beget similar coverage. Unpopular stories get killed. Reporters are even paid by whose stories get the most clicks. It sounds crass and shallow. It's also now Chile's most widely read
newspaper."

Of the top 10 local stories as picked by Washington state editors for The Associated Press, only two show up in the people's-choice list: the contested election for governor and Joseph Duncan's alleged killing of an Idaho family.

In Praise of Eight-Tracks

Sitting by the fire I read about Cory Doctorow's decision to become a full time writer and give up his day job. Congrats! He is one of the editors of Boingboing.net, where I found this information about the lowly 8-track of yore.

"They're the butt of jokes these days, but 8-track tapes and decks changed car audio forever. The Stereo 8, which first appeared as an option on Fords, had minimal controls and was often mounted under the dashboard with ugly U-brackets, but aesthetics weren't the point. With an 8-track in your car, you were no longer at the mercy of local radio station playlists. That was a very big deal at a time when only the largest cities had stations that played what was then known as "album rock." And the sound!

In those days 8-tracks blew the doors off anything coming from a radio station, despite their infamous fadeouts when the tracks switched. The 8-track didn't last all that long, falling out of favor in the early 1970s as smaller, more convenient cassette tapes (and later CDs) came along."

Supertrains in Europe, but Not In the U.S.

I didn't know how ridiculously dependent we are on the 'Net. Just can't do anything I normally do all the time, such as blog (until now!), use Quickbooks, read GoNOMAD email and put up new stories on the website.

We read the NY Times today as well as the Republican. I read a story about the new designs being used to build super fast trains by Seimens in Germany. The Chinese are investing tens of billions into the 210-miles per hour trains, and many engineers are working out ways to propel the trains by each wheel instead of just by one central locomotive.

But in the U.S., there is only the lousy Acela as a model of how these fast trains can benefit. One European train builder explained that you'd need political will, large densely populated metro areas, and budgets that can cover big capital expenses to build a train system like this. The U.S., he said, has the last two, but the first one will be tough.