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@dfdumaresq There are some ChangeCamp like things going on in US. I’ve listed some events at http://opengovchi.pbworks.com/ #VanChangeCamp (in reply to this tweet)
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Visual representation of the ideology on the Supreme Court by the Martin-Quinn score of each justice’s position, sliceable and diceable.(sources: Twitter user @kleinmatic (Scott Klein))
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@acarvin any chance the NPR media player is available for use on other sites? Asking for a friend at a non-NPR community station in MN.
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“In Part 1 of this tutorial we introduced the fechell library by extracting all itemized contributions from individuals made to the Obama For America campaign in 2007 and 2008. In Part 2 of the tutorial we will summarize that data set by importing it into a MySQL database and aggregating contributions by week and zip code. Next we’ll visualize the contribution data amounts on a map, week by week.”
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“When Sachs’ colleague came to me expecting me to hand over my contacts, he did not bother to bring me product samples or to provide me with any evidence that their products were of sufficient quality that I would put my reputation on the line for the products. Nor did he provide any evidence that their organization was capable of executing on their operations in a sufficiently reliable manner that I would want to hand over my contacts to them. They simply expected that because they were from Columbia University, with celebrity cheerleaders and mountains of cash, that I should therefore be eager to open up my network for them. But why should I believe that Columbia University professors can manage a reliable supply chain?”
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“After Arnold upgrades the 8,662-square-foot building at 1610. E. Tropicana to meet county code, he’s going to move in and nearly double the size of his museum.”(sources: Delicious user bigskybuff)
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Inspiring interview with Liberia’s Leymah Gbowee on Moyers Journal http://tr.im/pgYF She says she’ll take on Zimbabwe next.
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(from @mikeliebhold) Maestro Ali Akbar Khan April 14, 1922 – June 18, 2009 ~ Thanks for decades of transcendant music http://bit.ly/v6IBY
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“My friend and colleague David Sasaki reminded GV editors that bloggers had predicted a Rafsanjani victory in 2005, and suffered their “Howard Dean” moment when it became clear that their candidate had little support outside the most liberal bloggers. That’s a very different situation than what’s happening now – the hundreds of thousands of peple in the streets points to profound support for Mousavi – but reminds us that the online voices from Iran, especially the English-speaking ones, probably aren’t representative of mainstream opinion.”
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“Watch President Obama backstage as he records his cameo appearance on “The Colbert Report.” In this pre-taped segment, he orders Colbert’s head shaved, which was promptly executed by General Odierno during the show’s special broadcasts from Camp Victory in Baghdad.”(sources: Twitter user @kleinmatic (Scott Klein))
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(from @mrflip) Lastfm recs for me: Artie Shaw, Andrews Sisters, Jeru the Damaja, Gang Starr, Tommy Dorsey, Gravediggaz. At my nursing home I’m the thuggest
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Chicago Summerdance iCalendar
Since I wanted it for myself, I offer up to you an iCal file holding the Chicago Summerdance ’09 schedule. I used Max M’s icalendar library for Python, which works pretty well, although the file doesn’t validate. I can’t for the life of me see why not. That error may or may not be why it doesn’t seem to work in Google Calendar, but it works just swell in Apple iCal, which is what I wanted it for.
I used BeautifulSoup to scrape most of the information from http://explorechicago.com but then I realized that there are about a dozen events in locations other than Grant Park. Since I’d written the scraper assuming certain invariants about the location and hours, I decided to clean those up manually instead of fussing over the scraper. Unfortunately, any edits I manually made to the ICS file resulted in something which didn’t parse. So I fired up an iPython shell and worked interactively with the icalendar library to adjust the hours and locations. It seems to have worked pretty well, although it would be annoying if I had to regenerate the ics file.
I’m hoping that more web publishers come to realize that ICS is the RSS of Calendars and routinely offer event schedules in this form, but in the meantime, here’s a way for you to keep up with one of my favorite Chicago summer traditions…
NOTE: The downloadable PDF lists two events that are not on my calendar (and not on the Explore Chicago website, as far as I can tell).
- The Etcetera Band, 4 July 2009
- Ghannata International, 13 August 2009
Too bad, ’cause I’ve liked Ghannata when I’ve seen them before, and the schedule already seems a little lighter on African music than in years past…
UPDATE: My friend Amanda has one-upped me and put together Google Calendars for maybe all of the summer outdoor concert series and outdoor movie screenings.
links for 2009-06-21
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(from @santheo) Ezra Stanley Weisz. Born at 9:50pm. 9lb 7oz (!). 21″. Everyone doing awesome. http://the.weisz.es/613/
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(from @perquackey) Hello, world!
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“Perhaps we should not read too much into the government’s reluctance – or, some have argued, inability – to ban tools like Twitter. The reasons for these may be much more banal: These tools are simply too useful as sources of intelligence about what is happening in the country. Not only do they help the Iran government to follow the events closely (as well as to understand the perception of the government’s actions) in every single locality with an Internet connection, they also help it to understand the connections between various activists and their supporters in the West. From the intelligence-gathering perspective, Twitter has been a gift from heaven.”(sources: Twitter user @bekamop (beka economopoulos))
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“Nine West Side High students will operate the in-school branch three days a week under the supervision of Capital One Bank management. The new in-school branch provides an opportunity for select students to work with Capital One Bank to develop practical financial knowledge and skills through a structured work environment and share what they have learned with their peers. The bank will offer tools to help students save for future financial responsibilities such as the cost of attending college, and banking services will also be available to school administrators and teachers.”(sources: Twitter user @corybooker (Cory Booker))
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“Civic engagement does not have to be rocket science. In fact, it’s best if it’s not.”
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“When they asked me to provide some training on Excel and Access, I agreed, but asked for the chance to make a case for teaching any database but Access to students. Specifically, I suggested that universities and training organizations like IRE teach SQLite, which has the advantages of being cross-platform and accessible via a Firefox add-on.”
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“On an unusually hot afternoon this spring, the streets of Barcelona are filled with bicyclist commuters — university students zipping down wide avenues, business men in slim-cut suits, and the elderly, navigating a busy intersection on two shaky wheels. Many of these users have just picked up the sport thanks to the city’s Bicing program, which after only two years, has evolved from a novelty to a force of change, affecting the flow of traffic across the entire city.”(sources: Twitter user @kumar303)
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Hey, @laddiemint, I’m at the Highland Games! Remind me what your tartan looks like again…
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@deezthugs just this last Monday. So far, so good! (in reply to this tweet)
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(from @deezthugs) @JoeGermuska When did you start at the Trib? Congrats!
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(from @santheo) Stupid lawyers & stupid insurance companies compelled Chicago to remove the diving boards at all pools across the city. I’m sad about this.
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(from @neilhimself) When I am 88, I want to be raising money and attention for libraries, like Ray Bradbury is now: http://bit.ly/alQgN
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“Whatever “socialism” could have become, had it not been hijacked by revolutions in the east, what it is in the minds of 95% of America is not what Wikipedia is.”(sources: Twitter user @dweinberger (David Weinberger))
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Tim O’Reilly launches a pretty interesting discussion with a few questions about health care costs.
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(from @qburns) TSA guy checking my record bag at airport told me he used to go to the Paradise Garage; started chanting “house music all night long” …
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Issuu.com brings slick UI to PDF hosting. Magazines look really nice (and there are a lot of them there.)
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“Jay Rockefeller raised the idea that the impression that the Federal Communications Commission is “captured by industry” isn’t helped by the fact that “it is nearly impossible to find information on the FCC’s website…and much of the data filed with the commission is not even accessible online.” Meanwhile, said Rockefeller, FCC staffers are personally calling telecom industry stakeholders to let them know when important votes and other events are coming up.”
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“While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.”
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A geek takes a gag from the XKCD comic and writes the python code to solve it.(sources: Twitter user @timoreilly (Tim O’Reilly))
links for 2009-06-20
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“This will doubtless come as a shock to the millions of Americans who have legitimately purchased musical ringtones, contributing millions to the music industry’s bottom line. Are we each liable for statutory damages (say, $80,000) if we forget to silence our phones in a restaurant?”(sources: Twitter user @papyromancer)
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(from @gleam) Panorama of this afternoon’s insane storm: http://bit.ly/13TKrJ
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(from @azaaza) Apparently, in Denmark breakfast is alive, dancing even, with the taste of bacon. And is in the shape of a Gundam. http://bit.ly/uc6Ob
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“Since 2008, this Appalachian town of 1,827 has been home to two Chicago chefs who turned down the chance to open a Charlie Trotter restaurant in Las Vegas so they could take over a grill advertised on Craigslist.”(sources: Twitter user @whet (Whet Moser))
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(from @JimTheBeerGuy) just saw a guy bike by in the apocalyptic rain and dime-sized hail. godspeed you crazy son of a bitch
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@gizmometer Congratulations! (in reply to this tweet)
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RT @amandaruzin:People in line for iPhones have dressed their 3 small children up like iPods. http://yfrog.com/0p40wzj
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(from @forkandtheroad) The City puts a baseball cap on the Picasso. What about a bike helmet? http://yfrog.com/1jz96j
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“Gov 2.0 types have been all a-Twitter about Data.gov and the feeds being created at a rapid pace. That’s wonderful. There also should be ways to send important and actionable data INTO governments and other civic organizations. It’s time for an open API for sending service requests or identifying issues that have a specific geographical component. For example, reporting a storm drain that is clogged or a streetlight that is out. Imagine if your smart-phone, your local blog, and websites like SeeClickFix could talk back and forth with local governments automatically.”(sources: Twitter user @seeclickfix (SeeClickFix))
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As tweeted by @timbray: “Phil Glass music with Segways & flames & horns & drums & monastic robes & a banjo. Remarkable.”
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“The use of mobile media to incite and organize collective action is only in its infancy. The following unsystematic survey of published reports and personal communication is intended to suggest how broadly today’s earliest forms of mobile phone–assisted collective action are enabling people to effect significant political changes. As both the enabling technologies and the literacies that grow around their use in the political sphere evolve further, the first manifestations noted here might portend more radical phenomena to come.”
links for 2009-06-19
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“If there’s an upshot to the greening of blogs and Twitter, not to mention all the chatter generally, it’s that it seems to have forced the hand of media organizations, which are famously cutting back on foreign coverage, and hopefully convinced them that there’s still quite a bit of interest out there in overseas reportage, even if some of the reasons for it could be less awesome than they seem.”
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“And what were the consequences for getting it wrong? Zip. In fact, most of the (then) pro-war writers have risen to greater heights within the foreign policy community and media world. (I didn’t just link to the Slate piece above for kicks–90 percent of them are doing better career-wise than they were in 2002, despite getting what will probably be the biggest foreign policy question of their lifetime wrong.)”(sources: Twitter user @jayrosen_nyu (Jay Rosen ))
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“I asked DeeDee if they had had a restaurant before, somewhere else, and she said no, they’ve lived in Chicago for 25 years, and cooked things for Indonesian festivals, and people always asked where there was an Indonesian restaurant, and for years they said they were going to open one. Now they finally have; and it’s a good one with potential to be a very good and culturally important one. Don’t just read the food media about it; support it now, and help it grow into what it could be.”(sources: Twitter user @skyfullofbacon (Michael Gebert))
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Show support for democracy in Iran add green overlay to your Twitter avatar with 1-click – http://helpiranelection.com/
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“A pair of open-government groups have settled their lawsuit against the state Office of Legislative Counsel now that a machine-readable database of lawmakers’ voting records has been made available.”(sources: Twitter user @adrielhampton (Adriel Hampton))
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@danielbiss I’m glad you have your priorities straight! (in reply to this tweet)
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“At last, the worlds of cartography, vexillology and population statistics meet!”
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“An array of new circumstances — Democrats in power, economic recession leaving states starving for revenue that could come from taxing cannabis sales, less funds for law enforcement and Mexican drug operatives moving into the US to grow huge amounts of untaxed pot, contributing to the horrible drug violence South of the Border — support the growing public support for legalization of pot.”
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It’s pretty exciting to see folks from inside government (the GSA) interacting on the @sunlightlabs email list. “What can we do to help?”
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(from @daveknapik) @JoeGermuska It’s the second oldest botanical garden in Britain, so lots of gardening and “ooh isn’t that pretty”-ing happens in there. (in reply to this tweet)
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(from @drycounty) “When you’ve got real riots in the street, Twitter-riots do not look that threatening,” – Evgeny Morozov.
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@daveknapik I don’t know about *more* interesting; I love the use of “physic” in the singular. What happens in the Chelsea Physic Garden? (in reply to this tweet)
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“These days, the Internet is so integrated into industry, government — life itself — that even in Iran, shutting it down is the political equivalent of going nuclear.”
links for 2009-06-18
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Very interesting title for a book: “Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France” http://tr.im/oPty
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‘Robin Burkinshaw, a British games design student, created a homeless father-daughter pair in The Sims 3, “moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes.”‘(sources: Twitter user @wondergus)
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“We’ve decided to do something crazy. On Tuesday afternoon, someone handed us a copy of the Recovery.gov 2.0 RFP and we thought: what if we try something truly radical here. What if we opened up the process of government contracting by bidding on this thing? We together– not just we meaning The Sunlight Foundation– are going to bid on redoing Recovery.gov to learn more about the process of government contracting, and to try and build what is perhaps the biggest federal transparency-related website.”(sources: Twitter user @cjoh (Clay Johnson))
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(from @cjoh) All my favorite sentences begin with “What if”
links for 2009-06-17
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(from @chriscyvas) If people couch a lack of requirements as “agile”, run.
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(from @amandaruzin) @JoeGermuska My neighbors used to burn the stuff out of their gutters and off their driveway. It went up really fast! (in reply to this tweet)
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@amandaruzin you are probably right. In any case, Evanston is dense with the stuff! (in reply to this tweet)
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(from @amandaruzin) @JoeGermuska It looks like it’s cottonwood fluff. We had a huge one in my yard, and the drifts were sometimes 6″ deep. (in reply to this tweet)
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Dandelion drifts am inch deep http://yfrog.com/10svrj
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(from @buoyant) @joegermuska just found your radioafricaplus dvd mix/taking to work/somehow never made into itunes
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“The premise is simple: bake your favorite Threadless shirt design into an amazing cake, submit your entry, and potentially win awesome prizes!
(Oh: And eat delicious cake! Even if you lose, you still get cake!) “(sources: Twitter user @figmolly (Molly Schemper)) -
“Fifty-five percent of gay and lesbian respondents reported reading some type of blog, compared with 38 percent of heterosexual participants. Statistically, more GLBT adults read blogs concerning news, entertainment, travel and politics than heterosexual adults.”(sources: Twitter user @sarahconner (Sarah Conner-Smith))
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@claireystew I don’t know, though. There’s something to the image of zombie Keith Moon… could be the premise of an interesting short film! (in reply to this tweet)
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Some pretty remarkable color over Lake Michigan this morning!
WNUR Conference of the Birds, 2009-06-16
“Conference of the Birds” is my weekly radio program on WNUR-FM. It airs on Tuesdays from 5-7:30 am Chicago time (UTC-6). And, of course, when technology cooperates, you can just come here for the archives.
This week’s show was good fun. Kinda all over the place, but I think that’s how I prefer it. I played more stuff from my personal library since I’ve been bingeing, but I am really pleased that I finally picked up the second Indigo Trio album.
I realize now that I totally forgot to mention on air this week, but some of the guys from Atomic are here in Chicago this week playing in mixed groups, culminating in guesting with the Vandermark Five on Friday and Saturday at the Green Mill. I think I’ll be there on Friday…
complete program (137 MB, 2 hrs 30 min)
Artist: “Track” – Album (Label)
Pete Brown Quintette: “Pete Brown’s Boogie” – Stompin’ at the Savoy: Harlem Nocturne (Savoy)
Papi Brandao y Sus Ejecutivos: “Decidete Mi Amor” – Panama 2 (Soundway)
Nicholas Payton: “Fela 1” – Sonic Trance (Warner Brothers)
Indigo Trio: “Anaya With The Moon” – Anaya (Rogueart)
Patato & Totico: “Mas Que Nada” – Patato & Totico (Verve)
Milimani Park Orchestra: “Neema” – Sikinde (Africassette)
Cannonball Adderley: “Azule Serape” – Cannonball Adderley and the Poll-Winners (Capitol)
James Booker: “Hold My Hand” – Jazzy Funky New Orleans (Funky Delicacies)
Gwigwi Mrwebi: “Nick Thethe” – Mbaqanga Songs (Honest Jon’s)
Jürg Wickihalder Overseas Quartet: “The Pocket Trumpet Man” – Furioso (Intakt)
Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy: “Twilight of the Dogs” – Spirit Moves (Greenleaf)
Ted Sirota’s Rebel Souls: “Killa Dilla” – Seize The Time (Naim Jazz)
Spaceways Incorporated: “You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks/Hit It And Quit It” – Spaceways Incorporated (Atavistic)
The Fully Celebrated: “Pearl’s Blues (Your What Hurts?)” – Drunk On The Blood Of The Holy Ones (AUM Fidelity)
Mark Helias: “The Comb Over” – Fictionary (Live) (GM Recordings)
Ornette Coleman: “Humpty Dumpty” – This Is Our Music (Sepia Tone/Atlantic)
Amir ElSaffar: “Hemayoun” – Two Rivers (Pi)
Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders: “Moussa Berkiyo/Koubaliy Beriah La’Foh” – The Trance of Seven Colors (Axiom)
William Parker Double Quartet: “Alpha 60” – Alphaville Suite (Rogueart)
Joseph Jarman/Famoudou Don Moye’s Magic Triangle: “Calypso’s Smile” – Calypso’s Smile (AEC/Katalyst/Southport)
The Debonaires: “Stop, Let’s Be United” – Get Your Lie Straight: Red-hot grooves from Galaxy Records, 1968-1972 (Galaxy/BGP)
Bembeya Jazz: “Sabou” – Bembeya (World Village)
links for 2009-06-16
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(from @MichaelNagrant) Quotes from a food writer’s two year old son: “I don’t like dinner. I like candy.”
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“If you want things to stop sucking you have to go make them not suck. You can’t wait until somebody just hands you a giant platter of not-suck and tells you it’s all yours.”
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“I really do think that in these whither journalism discussions there really isn’t enough discussion as to whether there’s a crisis of writing in newspapers and magazines. ‘Cause I think there is.”(sources: Twitter user @dansinker)
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“On a recent Sunday afternoon, Shtuhl and I picked up a selection of delectable, summery beers. Back on my front porch with two willing participants (thanks, Mark and Kelly), I would describe the artist and the song we were about to hear, play it and then ask The Beerspotter to pair the song with a beer based on its attitude, its backstory and its notes (and, yes, that does work both ways). Three hours later, we matched up six impeccable pairings.”(sources: Twitter user @acarvin (Andy Carvin))
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“A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).”(sources: Twitter user @dansinker)
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(from @tractorfeed) I love that the BBCiPlayer volume goes to 11.
links for 2009-06-15
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Great summery day mostly outside inspired me to fire up the grill. Along the way, I secured an invite to the neighbors’ for dessert. Hooray!
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I should not have waited this long to pick up the second Indigo Trio album! http://tr.im/osjp