Sometimes Going Green Goes into the Red

The Wall Street Journal is, as Cindy would say, a great source of Blog Fodder. Last night's editorial page was about a good idea gone bad. A good green idea that just didn't work out.

In 2005, the Nevada legislature decided to go green. So they passed a bill that would cut property taxes in half for any new buildings that complied with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED standards. They also lowered sales taxes for building materials to just 2 percent. These are well intentioned guidelines that promote using recycled materials, reduce water use, and promote conserving electricity. That sounds great...but Nevada is already a low tax state with no income tax and billions in construction going up every day.

According to two environmentalists Auden Schendler and Randy Udall, LEED is a "costly, slow, brutal, confusing, and unwieldy, a death march for applicants administered by a soviet-style bureaucracy that makes green building more difficult than it needs to be."

And guess who got the biggest share of this tax giveaway? The casinos, including MGM, who saved $270 million in taxes on their 7.4 billion City Center project.

Fast forward to 2007: It turns out that a plan that was anticipated to cost $250,000 per year is now a groaning $974 million in losses over 10 years. So the legislature "essentially asked for a mulligan" and has worked out a compromise to end the sales tax cut and push the tax break to a maximum of 35%. The Journal's point is: sometimes the market is a better promoter of energy efficiency than tax policy.

Why Are High-Paid Editors Uploading Jpegs and Podcasts?

Douglas McLennan, editor of ArtsJournal.com, pops the Newspaper business right in the kisser with his thoughts on Poynteronline today.

"Newspapers started out with enormous advantages going into the digital age (remember "content is King"?) and have squandered it while others innovated. To take even one small example: there isn’t a single newspaper that has figured out a really usable way online to find out what’s going on tonight without lots of clicks and searching. So dozens of upstart online companies are finding a big audience. What a missed opportunity.

How many newspapers have reconfigured their staffing to reflect the new hybrid print/online reality? Why are high-paid editors and reporters uploading jpegs and podcasts when digital assistants ought to be doing the mechanical tasks? Fast-moving web companies have learned to move with audiences and make those audiences part of a community. Newspapers, for the most part, hold on to rigid models and jump on new tools (everybody blog now!) without understanding how those tools can be used.

If I was pointing fingers, I'd aim squarely at the business managers who are so locked into the old ways of doing things that they don't even understand what the new issues are, let alone solutions to them. Journalists are being failed by those whose job it is to figure out the business side, and now journalists are paying the price for that lack of vision. Like somehow cheapening the product and giving readers less is going to attract more customers.

To speak directly to the rant about Google: Google is an infrastructure, potentially the best friend any content producer has at the moment. Google sends floods of traffic around the internet in search of content its users want, presented in ways they can use it. Newspapers have always been about finding a readership and advertisers who want to reach those readers. There shouldn't be a conflict here.

Google is a reality. Any news organization that wants to make it in the new digital world better find a way to work with companies like Google and the next YouTube rather than thinking about "class-action suits." Jeesh!"

Ultra Cheap Birth Control is a Gift in Brazil

I read in the Republican today as I gazed out the cafe window. Sunny and bright, and people are full of cheer. I am too, since Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gave the green light to a new plan: Cheap Birth Control for all.

"The plan would give poor Brazilians the same right that the wealthy have to plan the number of children they want. " The move is pivotal...and comes as the pope just got finished a government-backed visit to the country. He denounced the plan.

At more than 10,000 drug stores, birth control pills will sell for as little as $2.40 PER YEAR! So offering the pills at this drastic discount is the best way to get them to those who need them.
I can't think of a better way to spend money than to make them availble like this: in a store, not handed out by the government. I hope that Bill and Melinda Gates get news of this, and that they extend the offer to African countries.

Part of why this is a great plan is because it gives them the power to be consumers, not just recipients of government largesse. And I bet there is still profit for the drug companies at these pitifully low prices.

Hundreds of Years Before Gutenberg, Books Existed

A few years ago, an Amherst writer named Dick Teresi came to interview me about a story he was writing for the AARP magazine about RV'ing. I picked up the recent issue of the magazine tonight, and found out that the article ran in the May/June issue.

While trying to find the text on line I instead found a review of one of Teresi's books called 'Lost Discoveries," in which he challenges the notion that Europeans and whites were the great and earliest inventors in math and science. The paragraph below was especially enlightening.

"The specific non-European discoveries that make up nearly all the book are too numerous to detail. In India, for example, the atomic theory appeared centuries before it did in Greece. Indian mathematicians not only used the zero and devised algebra, logarithms, trigonometry, and the ancestors of our current numerals, but also developed a form of calculus centuries before Leibnitz and Newton.

These discoveries were adopted and expanded by medieval Moslems, who among other accomplishments invented decimal fractions (e.g., .5 for 1/2). Again, all three of the discoveries that Francis Bacon credited with marking the beginning of the modern world -- gunpowder, the magnetic compass, and printing -- came from China.

When Gutenberg set the Mainz Bible in print in 1456, Chinese libraries already held editions of numerous books printed in movable type, a technology developed in the 1040s. The Chinese still preserve thousands of printed texts from every period going back 2,000 years."

Nobody Wants to Eat Whale Meat Anymore

In the weekend WSJ, there was a story that was short but sweet. It was about the challenges facing the whaling industry. Next week there will be a meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Anchorage. But interest in their products seems to be fading away, moratorium or not.

It's just that whale watching has become such a big business, and not as many people want to eat whale as in the past. I can vouch for that--we ate some slivers of whale on a few occasions when Paul Shoul and I were visiting Greenland. Boy was it terrible. Hard to chew, blubbery, and just plain awful. Our hosts of course were pretty gung ho about the meat, though they reserved their most lavish praise for the blood red seal meat.

The article states, "Japan's whale meat reserves grew by one quarter last year, while fishermen in Iceland are struggling to sell the whales that they caught last year, in defiance of the moratorium. Meanwhile, whale-watching has turned into a thriving business."

Greenfield's Wilsons Doesn't Disappoint

Today was a glorious Saturday, and I made the rounds, using the GPS system to navigate to each tag sale. Then we made our way up to busy Greenfield. We shopped at Wilsons. And as usual, it was a pleasant experience. I wanted to find a belt. Had tried to find them in several other stores, with no luck. But Wilsons..rack upon rack of nice looking leather belts. So I picked out two.

Then I asked them about the impact of being featured on CBS TV's Sunday Morning show. They said a sale immediately after was their best ever. I told them that I'd blog about them.


I like this place, and I am glad they are having success. Then across the street, a farmer's market was on. I met a man who grows ramps in Colrain. Ramps, damp and full of dirt, dug from a hillside by a river. Eight bucks a pound, a big handful.

A girl walked by. She had a flute, and she wore a bikini top. Her enormous belly protruded, not pregnant, just big. Her companion played the accordian, he wore a red bandana that held back his large dreads.

The town also has a new cafe, Bart's right on Main St. I stopped in and said hello to the patrone, who recognized me with my Gonomad Cafe T-shirt. I wished him luck and he said thanks for coming in.

No, Virginia--The World Doesn't All Speak English

Today is a gorgeous warm day, and at 9:30 it's already 80. Time to kick back and read yesterday's WSJ, where a story about foreign language web content caught my eye. Yes, Virginia, only 30-40 percent of the web is written in English. The rest is a treasure trove of other languages...until recently not accessible to those of us who remain monolingual.

But search engines are making it easier--and the article by Jessica E. Vascellaro details some of Google and Yahoo's plans to allow searches in English that crawl the other language versions of Google to find better results. Granted, the translations are not always perfect, but they are usable. "An English-speaking user could type in 'Bordeaux tasting' and a particular town in France and select from a pull-down menu--an option that lets him search French web pages. Google then automatically translates the query into French, finds the most relevant results among French Web pages, and presents those pages back to the user in English."

Yahoo has taken a different approach--they use humans to answer questions on their Yahoo Answers page. In a dozen languages, the service lets users ask other Yahoo users questions in their language. "Outside the US, there is information that is still in people's heads that doesn't appear on the web," said Tim Mayer, VP Product development at Yahoo Search. "This is a very large opportunity."

After Ben Hur, They Just Had to Race Chariots

I felt motivated thinking about the upcoming holiday, so this morning I mowed the lawn to a glorious green sheen. Then I picked up last night's WSJ and read about chariot racing, an ancient sport that is making a comeback. Matt Moffett wrote a story with a Sao Simao, Brazil dateline.

It all started, the story said, with Ben Hur. On two different continents, men watched this 11-Oscar epic and decided they wanted to race. Just like Ben did, flying around the Circus Maximus on two-wheeled horse-drawn chariots.

Luiz Augusto Alves de Oliviera is one of these men, he is a sugar-cane farmer in central Brazil. He's built a race course on his ranch and has big plans to expand beyond his thinly populated state and bring big crowds to a new course in a bigger town , Cravinhos. His racing career began after he was laid up after a motorcycle accident, and watched Ben Hur over and over again, inspiring him after he recovered to build an aluminum chariot.

In Sweden, another man shared his vision. Stellan Lind got financial backing from the Jordan Tourism Board to hold re-enactments of Roman chariot races in a hippodrome in Jerash. He even found a prop man who worked on the movie and borrowed a chariot he had stored in Rome to use in a race.

The sport is big. Big! More than 300,000 spectators jammed the Stade-de-France last September when director Robert Hossein "staged five performances of a $17 million Ben Hur re-enactment, with hundreds of extras appearing as charioteers, gladiators and pirates....the sports appeal was no mystery to Romans. Fans often would camp out the night before a race at the Circus Maximus, which held 250,000, to get a good seat."

The Sign Says...

Sign, Sign, everywhere a sign.
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind.
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

The Five Man Electrical Band said it so well in 1972....here is the new sign that local artist and signmaker Jim Taylor just made for the cafe. No matter how many times I'm pitched on advertising schemes, nothing tickles me more than a big new sign!

Cows and Pigs Dine on Kitkats, Trail Mix and Ramen

Last night I got back out on my bike for a 12-mile jaunt. Felt great. I came home and later that night read the WSJ and found out what cows and pigs eat these days. A story by Lauren Etter said they used to eat mostly corn, but today, the corn market is way, way up due to the use of corn to make ethanol...so farmers are finding it too expensive to give to their cows.

So now the farmers are feeding livestock all sorts of interesting things. Such as trail mix, chocolates, spent grain from breweries, and even pretzels. There are brokers who can arrange to ship out a truckload of oversalted trail mix, or burned cookies. These ingredient companies are passing along these odd wares and the pigs and cows are loving it.

The list of foods now served in styes and pens across the US is varied. In California, grape skins from vineyards and lemon pulp from citrus groves. In Idaho, truckloads of uncooked french fries, tater tots and hashbrowns. In Pennsylvania, near the famous Hershey plant, animals dine on waste trimmings from Kitkat bars or scraps from the squiggly noodles in ramen. One farmer said he often watched his cows fighting over a whole potato.

A Gorge 10,000 Feet Deep is Driving Hell in China

Navigating China’s deepest gorge: This from MSNBC today, complete with a movie showing the harrowing drive up a gravelly road up a steep mountain. Adrienne Mong wrote this account.

"Tiger Leaping Gorge is believed to be the world’s deepest gorge, measuring some 10,000 feet deep, between the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and the Haba Mountain in Yunnan, and running only nine miles long.

Its narrowest point is only about 100 feet, hence the name -- it’s believed a tiger once escaped a hunter by jumping over the rushing Yangtze River below, from one mountain range to the other. We had just four hours to make our way to the top, film a bit of the landscape, and get back down to continue our journey toward the Sichuan border.

At first, Yang drove a hard bargain, citing the tough road conditions. But as with other haggling cultures, you never accept the first offer. Besides, we still thought his price a bit high so we negotiated a lower rate by arguing that he still could book an afternoon tour after he’d taken us up to the lookout.

Several minutes later, as our bread car approached the path, heading upward in a series of endless hairpin turns, we realized our folly. Yang had not been exaggerating when he said the road was difficult. If anything, he’d understated it.

Made of loose gravel and dirt, barely wide enough to accommodate a car -- let alone a minivan -- with no barriers overlooking the gorge, the road also served as a repository for falling rock.

We eyed the pebbles dribbling down with some trepidation, but the driver had better things to worry about. He was lurching right into the first hairpin.
With mastery, boldness of spirit, and not a little exertion steering, Yang commanded his bread car up that mountain whilst we held our breaths.

It wasn’t until after we’d climbed to the top and he’d mopped the sweat off his forehead that our driver told us that just a few days ago a landslide had toppled over a minivan, killing three people - including the 19-year-old driver -- and injuring five others.

America Can't Get Enough of Ty

In Costco today, I stopped to read a magazine that was all about one man. That man is Ty Pennington, the host of ABC's hit show "Extreme Home Makeover" and a pitchman for Sears, and many other brands. He's a one-man conglomerate and has a finger on the pulse--why else a whole magazine about him?

Ty is famous for yelling into a megaphone and for making America weep during the sappy show that pours sudden largesse on sad and unfortunate yet deserving families. At the end, everyone in the audience and on screen is wiping away tears.

The magazine was in a popular category known as shelter mags. Shelter, like health and videogames, is one of the most popular topics in publishing, and the magazine was unrelenting in its love of all things Ty.

There was Ty-tech, where new gadgets are reviewed. There was Ty-books, where we get a glimpse at the tomes on the big guy's bookshelf. And of course, Ty-style, where we get a look at how he socializes with cool LA guys and gals.

There was a feature about his ADHD Gallery, which is a dual anagram for the affliction that Ty takes pride in having, attention deficit disorder, and for Art, Design, Home Decor, which is how he makes his living. The groovy gallery is located in Venice, near where Ty and his attractive gal pal Drea Bock make their home.

What does it take to be so popular that an entire magazine is devoted to what you read, what you do, what you think and who you choose as your girlfriend? It has to do with being able to sell products...and damned if Ty isn't a master at that.

Xeni and the Gang Coin a Jet's New Name

The co-editors at Boing Boing, one of the world’s most popular blogs, have named a new Virgin America aircraft: Unicorn Chaser. The airline’s first aircraft was named Jefferson Airplane in October by the band’s lead singer, Grace Slick. This is from a press release sent out by this new airline in the US.

“The idea of Unicorn Chaser first popped up on Boing Boing to serve as a cleansing of the palate after a viewer has been subjected to a distasteful internet image or experience” said Xeni Jardin, a tech culture journalist and co-editor of Boing Boing. “Nothing takes away the sting of a jarring experience better than an image of a nice unicorn prancing in the meadow.”

“Unicorn Chaser fits the Virgin brand - compared to my recent experiences of flying domestically, I'm sure Virgin America will be a welcome relief!” adds John Battelle, Boing Boing’s business manager and Chairman of Federated Media.

Members of the public are invited also to name the airline’s new fleet by taking part in Virgin America’s Name Our Planes program at www.virginamerica.com. The airline will announce new names in the lead-up to launch of service which it hopes to introduce in the Spring.

Gray's Anatomy Sure Beats a Record Contract!

John Jurgenson writes in today's WSJ about Ingrid Michaelson, a young singer on Staten Island who struck it big in the Web 2.0 way. Secret Road Music Services found her Myspace Page and liked her music. So tonight's Grey's Anatomy final episode, the high-rated season ender, will feature her song at the end. They'll pay her $15,000 for each song she has on the series.

She's earned more than $39,000 selling 60,000 downloads of her tunes on iTunes. She gets .63 per download. Compare that with .10 or .15 she might make from a major label. But the song America will hear tonight won't be on sale, it's reserved for the series soundtrack that will come out in the fall.

"Three of her songs have already been aired on this season's 'Grey's' as the sonic backdrop for the drama's soapy tales of Seattle Grace Hospital. The exposure sent one of those songs to No. 13 on the iTunes pop music chart. Tonight's placement will likely widen her exposure, and help to generate more ka-ching at her store."

Just What Vegas Needs: 46,000 New Hotel Rooms

Tonight I looked over a eye-popping chart in the WSJ. It was a list of planned hotel/casinos that are being built in Las Vegas. I counted more than 12,000 planned rooms, and thought, "how could one city possibly fill up that many hotel rooms?

But the answer is equally impressive: Today the city of sin's 154,000 hotel rooms are occupied more than 92% of the time, and this is a full third more than anywhere else in the US.

So the fact is, the 46,000 more rooms on their way will likely be quickly filled up. So companies like Wynn and MGM will keep on pouring billions into amenity filled hotels with names like 'Encore' 'CityCenter' and 'The Plaza.'

One small hitch didn't seem to bother the Israeli owner of New York's Plaza chain. There is already another hotel with this name in the city's downtown called Plaza Las Vegas. "We're not anticipating any issues," said a spokesman.

The part I don't understand is, where will all the water come from to run the 46,000 new showers?

Victoria White Loved the Dogs, and They Miss Her

A sad story in today's Daily Hampshire Gazette mentioned Victoria White, who passed away at 51 several months ago. It said that her business, DogHampton, would close soon. It was just too sad without her, her partner Deb Lohmeyer told the paper's Rachael Hanley. Many dog owners in Northampton will be sad too, as this doggie day care spot was popular, as was its founder, Victoria.

It is always sad to read about folks who die young. And cancer is so cruel, it sneaks up on so many of us. I remember that Victoria was one of the most sincere and friendly business owners I'd run into. I used to visit her when I sold tee-shirts and other products. She was unfailingly kind, and pleasant, and she made me feel good about our customer/vendor relationship.

I remember sending her emails a few years later, thinking that she might want to order products from the new company I was with. She would reply with an encouraging email, saying 'thanks for thinking of me,' and letting me know she was interested. When you send out a bunch of these emails, the few people who are friendly and kind do not go unnoticed.

Victoria's business, Eclectechs, will keep on going. But it is sad news that the Dog business she began out of her love for the animals can't keep going without her big heart.

Porn Is Tougher Than It Looks

Browsing Wired.com, I found a story from 2002 about how tough it is to make money in the porn business. Edward Cone did the reporting.

"It's still possible to make a modest income by posting some free pictures and links as part of an affiliate program. "If you have some expertise at getting search engine traffic or using thumbnail galleries," says Ron Levi, one of the principals at Voice Media, owner of Cybererotica, "you can make a couple of hundred bucks per month."

But even that's harder than it was. Until last year, most pay sites dished out $50 per conversion. Now $40 is the norm. According to a July 2000 poll taken by YNOT, half of porn sites gross less than $20,000 per year. "The number of adult webmasters who aren't making money is higher than ever," says Oz, president of TheAdultWebmaster.com.

And taking on the big companies is near impossible. PrimeXTC, the most-hyped entrant of recent years, capped a lavish trade show launch with a private concert by David Lee Roth - then quickly disappeared. "The guys in charge didn't have a clue," says former webmaster Charles Kindall. "They wanted to meet chicks, but they failed to build the business."

Even the part with the nude models turns out to be a drag. "Content acquisition is a pain in the butt," Adam says. "It's constant hand-holding. I have one photographer in New Jersey - I say to set up a shoot, then the model backs out. I send money, harass the guy with email, and get my hundred shots three months later." And don't even ask how Adam's wife feels about it.

Not even a legendary brand can guarantee riches. Playboy.com has lost almost $50 million in the past two years and last October laid off more than a third of its employees. "We underestimated the cost of creating inventory for the Web," says Playboy.com CEO Larry Lux. To keep the site alive, it's diversifying into online gambling in Europe and Asia.

Levi pities anyone dreaming about breaking into porn these days. "When we started in late '95, our conversions were about 1 of 20. Now our average is 1 of 200," he says. "If you started now in this business with $5 million and didn't make a single mistake, I still don't know if you'd make it."

Marketing Ideas that Dazzle are Par for the Course

Some times the people who work for you amaze you. Such a thing happened yesterday when our cafe manager Liz came up with a brilliant idea. She is going to shoot photos that we'll enlarge into sepia-toned wall panels showing where we get our food from. I'll pose with Nora's chickens, I'll pose with High Lawn's cow next to me. We'll have a shot of the Pierce Brothers roasting coffee, and the chocolatiers at Richardson's making chocolate pretzels. Then the Teaguys packaging loose tea in Florence, and maybe our Pittsfield bagel bakers doing their thing.

Lizzie thought up the concept, I said yes, so she's running with it, and I can't wait to see the shots.

It's all about local, buying local, being local, and sharing that as a marketing message. We think it matters...and so that's the new campaign you'll see rolled out this week with our newspaper ads. These are about the Pierce Bros.

It's warm and sunny and there is a full house at the cafe. Boy we must be doing something right, because we're packed and the summers a coming.

Shields Shuts Down Free Store Without Ever Seeing It

Tim Blagg, the editor of the Recorder in Greenfield, MA, wrote a column today that made a whole lot of sense. The subject was the town landfill's Free Store. This is a place where people can take and leave objects of value, too good to just chuck into the landfill. In other towns this works well...you take it or you leave it, and it just makes New England Yankee sense.

I remember going to the West Tisbury landfill's Take it or Leave it store and finding an incredible array of valuable stuff like clothing and furniture. Of course this was on tony Martha's Vineyard--but the point is that it is a sensible idea.

In Greenfield, the acting Public Works Superintendent Sandra Shields has never been to the Free Store. Yet she decided last week to close the store. "It was an idea so good, that it got too big for its own good," she sniffed. Blagg wrote that 'too many people were using the facility--a wide spot in the road--and that created some problems. Rather than trying to fix the problem, or getting the community involved in trying to help solve them, the town decided to just close it down.'

Shields says people from out of town were using the store (the horror!) and they were (oh no!) collecting good items to sell at tag sales. SO WHAT!

Blagg finishes: The bottom line is that most of the things that used to be brought to the Free Store didn't wind up in the landfill or incinerator. "These people really needed the store, and they shut their source down," said Wayne Elie, the volunteer who ran it.

Why Didn't the Taxi Drivers Pay for It?

Today we woke to chilly but sunny skies at Green Lane. I read some of the news alerts about airport parking. One item caught my eye, and it made me wonder who is more important. Airport customers or airport vendors?

A blogger named Don Singleton wrote about a new policy at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix. Like me he asked the question above.

The local TV news reported Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix has installed a cleanup station to help Muslim taxi and limo drivers meet their religious needs. Two faucets located two feet above the ground enable the drivers to conduct ritual cleansing, including washing of the feet, before they pray. They are part of washroom facilities in a fenced-off parking lot on the west side of the airport where taxi drivers wait to be called forward to the terminals for fares.

"The cab drivers were asking for more washroom facilities as a group, and a majority of them wanted some place to wash before they pray," said Deborah Ostreicher, public information officer for the airport. "Sometimes there are as many as 400 drivers waiting, and they can be there for hours at a time. This is a way we thought we could reach out as a customer service."

The taxi drivers are not your customers; the passengers are your customers. The taxi drivers are vendors.
The facility was funded through airport user fees, she said, not taxpayer dollars.

Why didn't the taxi drivers pay for it?

Singleton had a more outrageous post with a headline that said it all. 'Death to people who leave Islam.' Here is the link to explain this whopper, that is a law being proposed in Pakistan. Wow!

Wealth Erosion Pits Rich Against Fisherman

Today I took the train into the city from Pelham, just like thousands of other commuters, with my friend Tom Bricker. Tom totes a skateboard to make the last mile a little easier. He works at a top-notch ad agency and their office is full of incredibly talented graphic designers, flash experts and copywriting wiz kids. He's the senior man, at 50, all of the other workers are decades younger. It's fun to see where someone spends their days, after knowing them for many years.

I read the WSJ at an expensive breakfast joint across from Grand Central. A story titled "Wealth Erosion" told the story of rich Nantucket summer residents who face erosion of the cliffs right next to their multi-million dollar homes on Siasconset's Beach. So the rich folks have pooled $23 million to perform their own private beach restoration project. But they face the wrath of fishermen like Josh Eldridge, who say that sucking up sand will ruin the rocks and gravel that make up a prize striped bass habitat. It's the classic battle, that I remember so well when I spent many, many days out on that Rock, 29 miles at sea.

The rich on Nantucket aren't just rich. They're Big Time Rich. Eldridge: "These people have enough money to move their houses or buy another one. If I lose my fishing business, I lose my house and it's my only house. Unlike these other people, I don't have a ski chalet in Aspen or a place on Palm Beach."

Another fisherman I know was also unmoved by the plight of the 'Sconset millionaires. Said Bob DeCosta: "These are people who are used to getting their way. They love their houses and I don't blame them for wanting to save them. But it's not worth the cost to Nantucket."

Halberstam's Gift: A Big Question Mark

I'm riding the bus again down to NYC. The driver goes right past NY and takes the GW Bridge over to Jersey, then around into the Lincoln tunnel. I guess the extra miles are worth it since traffic is terrible. I ride the bus with a group of immigrants. Up front a man sits with a seeing eye dog on the seat beside him, and two Russian women are behind. An animated conversation in Spanish drifts up from the back. I love the bus because I hate driving and this affords me a chance to read, type, and listen to the sounds of travel. Oh, and I also watched part of the movie 21 Grams on my laptop.

In this week's Newsweek, I read a wonderful memorial to David Halberstam, the writer who died a few weeks ago, written by Anna Quindlen. She recounts one time that she showed up a dinner at his house and he told her she looked like 'a vietnamese peasant.' Which coming from one of the war's most lucid reporters, was actually a compliment. Quindlen writes about her late friend with fondness and admiration.

She remembers that each time she and her husband would visit the Halberstam's for dinner, upon their departure, David always said the same thing as he rumbled ahead of them to take his dog out for a walk. "Aren't we lucky?"

"He was the most curious person I have ever known. His totem was the question mark. Sometimes he would turn himself into one, head lowered, broad back curved. He was a big imposing man with dark, drill-bit eyes, and perhaps because of that, when he spoke to certain people, kids mainly, he would arrange his body closer to the ground. he was an aerobic listener who asked questions in a voice so sonorous that it sounded like an avalanche in a deep canyon."

New York's Bryant Park is the WiFi Refuge

I write this from Bryant Park. Which apparently is the only place in NYC where you can get free WiFi. I am sure there are many more but this was the best and only I could find after much trudging. It's busy here, people filling up the park, sitting on the grass, and a band made up of police officers is playing jazz on the bandstand.

This morning I went to an event at the Italian Tourism Board, it was a showcase about Abruzzo and Trentino, lesser-known regions of Italy. The provincial governors of the areas were there and they addressed the standing room only crowd of journalists in Italian, as a young woman patiently translated. I felt a bit out of place since every man in the room except me was in a formal suit. Oh well, I am a dot-com guy.

Abruzzo, reads one of the brochures, "is a great producer of silence, an archaic silence that hosts animal sounds, and the rustlings of vegetation, all subdued, as if absorbed in the great image of the scene." This was what Giorgio Manganelli once said. The Abruzzians are excited about a new airline route, NY to Pescaro. This route has been a success for Ryanair for years, now it will be a summer experiment out of JFK.

We hope to take this flight and drive up to Le Marche to write about the historic villages there in September. This visit to NYC is all about laying the groundwork. It began with my short meeting with Giulio Silenzi, the President of the Province of Macerata. Tomorrow I'll hear a bit of opera from this famous city, and meet more officials who will help us plan our trip there.

The Big Boxes Can't Always Beat the Local Guy

Big box savings? HA! I have a good story to tell anyone who thinks that they'll always save more money if they shop at the big boxes. The Wal-Marts, the Targets, the big ole stores like Home Depot that so often get our business.

I was shopping for a deck for my house. Not a huge deck, but a lot of lumber. So I went to the Home Depot in Greenfield, and they helped me write up a list of materials I'd need. They also gave me a price, around $650.00. I took the plan to the local building inspector for a permit and they pointed out that the layout had strung the joists the long way, ten feet, instead of the shorter way, eight feet. This was a fundmental error, since it would be stronger to have shorter spans.

With the permit, I took the same lumber list to my local lumber yard, Leader's in South Deerfield. They came back to me with a price of about $450, and knew enough to plan the deck with the joists in the right place.

It goes to prove you don't always save at the Big Boxes...they just run enough ads to make you think you do. Besides, the guys at Leader come and eat at my cafe, so I want to give them the business.

Let's Sing It Again--Happy Birthday Dear Nathan!

Nathan Cosme has decided he loves that song, 'Happy Birthday to You.' So on Sunday he asked us all to sing it one more time. Mom Kate on the right and her best friend Jane on the left joined in.

Va, Va, Va VOOM: Japan's Women Get Curvy

Today's WSJ had a story by Amy Chozick that caught my eye. That's because it was about the new curviness in Japan's young women.

Apparently, the stores and designers there have caught up with the US, and the old style of kimonos that flatten the bosom are being replaced with "the love bra" a cleavage boosting creation with less padding aimed at curvy 20-somethings who are showing it off these days.

It's mostly because, well, they can. Women in their 20s here wear a bra at least two sizes larger than their moms. Waist size, too, has gotten smaller to create a perfect "bon-kyu-bon, or Big small big--the sexy curves we've seen on these shores for decades.

"Nami Sakamoto, an advertising agency employee, embodies the new look. The 26-year-old is tall, by Japanese standards--at 5 feet 5 inches. She's also voluptous, with a 35-inch bust and 35" hips. "I had a hard time finding button down shirts that would close," she said. Sometimes the buttons would burst off."

Kumi Koda is a young pop star who started the craze of showing off skin. She performed at a Japan Record award show wearing thin tape-like gold satin straps over her breasts that revealed nearly everything when she danced. I guess that was the tipping point, because now the revealing look and 'showy bras' are the rage.

A Good Sunny Day for a Drive

Today's a gorgeous day with the resulting smiles on all the faces of people I've seen. I took a road trip on a long and winding Route 9 all the way to North Brookfield. I passed sad little towns on the periphery of the world, towns like Ware and Brookfield that seem to just be so far away from every place I know. But the sun was out and I was en route to see my friend Anne Gillette at her restaurant equipment store.

I picked out a hefty new convection oven and a hearty new blender. I had been warned at how many blenders we'd blow through in the course of selling smoothies. So here's to blender number five, that it may last the season!

Then I got a call from my old chum Peter Heller. Pete's a raconteur and writer for National Geographic Adventure and Outside magazines. He said his new book about his time in Antarctica with the Sea Shepard Society, fighting Japanese whalers, will be published in September. The article in the magazine was first rate, he captured the tenseness of the fight and the passion of the opposing parties. We'll publish an excerpt on GoNOMAD, and we will be building him a new author website too.

A Tiny Light in My Life Turns Two Today!

Today is a big day for a little guy named Nathaniel Javier Cosme. He turns two years old, and this is the day of his big birthday celebration! This little guy has been a light in my life, making me feel so happy to be blessed with his formidable presence. He learns so fast and takes up so much energy it is a wonder.

Being a grandfather is a pleasure I never knew would be so much fun. Hearing my name called out, hearing that little tap on the door and hearing him come into my room to wake up grandpa. These are joys that make life rich and rewarding.

I remember so well that day he was born. I was out in the middle of the California desert, stark naked with hundreds of other nudists, and I got the call. I'm happy to be fully clothed now, and looking forward to our backyard barbeque in honor of the little man who just turned two!

You Choose the New Seven Wonders of the World

You have probably heard of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Well in July, a Swiss organization will announce the results of the election to determine the New 7 Wonders of the world.

I found out about this on ETurbo News, which reported on the Egyption government's refusal to allow the pyramids of Giza into the voting. They are incensed that a Swiss group dare even discuss seven new wonders for the 2200 years since the ancient ones were designated.

On the New7wonders.com site, it said there are about 63 days left to cast your vote. Among the contenders are Russia's Kremlin, the Statue of Liberty, The Roman Coliseum, the statues at Easter Island, the Sydney Opera House. Others are the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Petra, Jordan, Timbuktu, Mali, the Great Wall of China and Alhambra, in Granada Spain.

It's funny that the aformentioned pyramids are listed as being 'honorary New7Wonders candidates...this must be a nod to the angry Egyptions--and the rules state that 'you cannot vote for the Pyramids of Giza as part of the New7Wonders campaign.'

Vote here, and remember you only get to choose seven.

A Ten-Year Journey of Over 500,000 Miles

Don't you love it when you have a great book to read? A book that you look forward to every time you pick it up? I have such a book that came to me from our friends at Motorbooks. They publish a huge catalog full of books on all sorts of topics, many of them relate to moving vehicles and such. The book that I am loving now is by Emilio Scotto, and is called "The Longest Ride."

This intrepid Argentinian set off in 1985 for a ten-year around the world journey on his Honda 1100 cc Gold Wing. The story behind how he bought this massive bike involved currency. He was working in Bueno Aires for Pfizer, and was being paid in US dollars. The loan for the bike was in pesos. When the currency did back flips in 1984, his $13,000 loan was reduced to $3000, and he was soon off on his odyssey.

He travels with little or no money. The only place he gets pulled over is in the US. He didn't know there were speed limits--hey out in the desert who would think anyone cared? And so 13 times in California he faces the blue lights. The cops are hostile and treat him like an outlaw.

His travels in Africa are mostly futile attempts to pass where no roads exist. He is turned back in Guinea Bissau, the track is full of very deep ruts filled with yellowish water called covas. So deep that his bike almost gets caught in them. Then he runs into a tribe who lead him into a hut. He wants to sleep, they want him to drink a foul stinky liquid out of a gourd. He flees for his life, jumps on the bike, and guns it. I'll find out later what happened but I assume this attempt to drug my Argentinian friend does not succeed.

Start Your Own Cafe

This beautiful little espresso maker is for sale. To a good home. We used this Bezzera for one year til we upgraded to a two-headed Mazza machine. So stop by and see what you can buy to make espresso at home.

Sites That Take Two Different Approaches

Ahhhh the blog. Did you ever wonder how I write so many of these things? Well....you've gotta be excited about the content...and that I usually am. I really am interested in the details behind things. So today I found a story in the WSJ about the French election.

It's a tale of two websites....one filled with videos that portray the candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, as a great singer, a horseman, and other characters. One shows him singing a Lionel Ritchie song, 'Hellllloooo" but instead they say Sarkooooooo! I loved that detail. But the Sark, who some in France fear, is a guy who they wanna soften up. So there are the movies that depict him as a cowboy, riding through the Carmargue, in the far south of France, in a red-checkered shirt and jeans. Both his and his rival Segolene Royal, are getting between 50,000 and 70,000 hits a day.

Her website is much different than her opponents. She wants to document her interest in dialogue, presenting long discussion boards for the French to debate and make suggestions. "We didn't want it to be about an image but about a person who listens," says Mr. Thieulin.

Expanders Don't Make Happy Users

I am blogging from the street, outside the GoNOMAD Cafe. The temps are sort of warm, not embracing, yet the sun is shining. I had a moment of solidarity today, corresponding with Sean Keener of Bootsnall about a type of ad that was proposed to run on our site. They're called..."expanders." They are innocent looking ads that get bigger when you run your mouse over them. I felt at the offset, no no, we're not running that. Sean concurred, saying "I hate those."

I remember when we took a taxi downtown in New York a few years ago, and Sean said he wanted to make it about the user. Whatever is good for them is good for us. So that is what I thought about when I heard about these expanders. No. Just don't wanna annoy my GoNOMAD users.

Then yesterday I came across a brilliant idea of Google's. It's called the website optimizer. This new tool lets webmasters create unlimited versions of landing pages so that they can test the results of different headlines, photos and selling text. This will let the advertiser know which one is the most efffective...and both Google and the website will make more money. Whoever heard that by helping your customers make more, you would make more? Well...that's the Google way. Love it.

A Print Magazine for People Who Eschew Print

Troy McCullough writes in the Baltimore Sun about a new magazine for an unlikely audience. "An old-fashioned trade publication for bloggers? Seriously?

The new Blogger & Podcaster magazine - "for aspiring new media titans" - has met with a tepid response from a lot of those titans. Some were sure it was a prank, while others laughed at the idea of reaching bloggers with a print publication.

But the magazine is for real and, so far, immune to the irony of its own existence.
Publisher Larry Genkin explained his decision for charging $79 a year for a subscription to a magazine whose core readership would most likely prefer the free online version.

Blogger & Podcaster has shown it has some early potential. The most recent issue included tutorials on podcasting, interviews with "industry experts," strategies for making money and an interesting story (albeit with an unflattering cover photo) on blogging and tech giant Robert Scoble - all interesting and useful information to a lot of bloggers. But the uphill battle ahead appears especially steep.

Over on Gawker, commenters blasted everything from the design - "Looks like they stole that font from Quilter & Needleworker" -to the magazine's concept - "Exactly the kind of forward-thinking, Web-optimized content that cements New Media's prowess. Well played, duck-shaped, pasty cover guy."