Monthly Archives: April 2006

Alarm clock Humidifier Electric toothbrush (after every minute brushing) 3 telephone handsets Clock radio 2 desktop computers 2 laptop computers (actually, 3 at the moment) Washer Dryer Fridge Freezer Coffee maker Dishwasher Oven Microwave 2 digital cameras Fax machine 2 … Continue reading →

Karita Mattila and Anja Silja are two of the greatest actresses of their respective generations. You haven’t seen them in the movies, you probably haven’t even seen them on the TV. But if you’ve seen them on stage, the chances … Continue reading →

Anybody who read Clive Thompson’s excellent and fair-minded piece on Google in China in the NYT magazine this weekend will have flicked past yet another piece of real-estate porn to get there: a double-page spread from Zeckendorf Development, LLC advertising … Continue reading →

Roberta Smith gets the front page of the NYT arts section today to gush over the Donald Judd installation at Christie’s. She’s much less worked up than Tyler Green was over the fact that the Judds aren’t going to museums: … Continue reading →

Andrew Revkin has been covering global climate change for the New York Times since 1988. Today, he gets the front page of the Week in Review section to try to answer the key questions, which he puts this way: Is … Continue reading →

It was my birthday on Friday. I’d already got a couple of presents early: a wonderful tough & waterproof watch for when my grandfather’s very fragile one isn’t suitable, and a fabulous lab-flask-to-be-used-as-a-decanter inspired by this post. But then on … Continue reading →

Warning: highly digressive post ahead. It starts talking about suburbia and ends up in the more familiar realm of meta-media. Feel free to dip in and out… No posts for the past week – I was away on a work … Continue reading →

Wow. This is HUGE, and no one seems to have noticed it. Back in May 2005, Sarah Theule Lubienski and Christopher Lubienski published a report in the Phi Delta Kappan saying that after controlling for student background, mathematics achievement in … Continue reading →

Here’s a question for Curbed types or anybody else: where’s the best place in NYC for hailing a cab? I’m looking for somewhere you can get a cab more or less immediately, at more or less any time of day … Continue reading →

My sister’s blog has now been spun off to its own site, rhiansalmon.com – which has just been updated with a fascinating post about the results of all the science she was doing in Antarctica. By measuring lots of different … Continue reading →

I’ve just been to a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, the new film about climate change featuring Al Gore. Gore, it turns out, has spent the past few years perfecting a new stump speech, this one solely dedicated to the … Continue reading →

Once upon a time, there were "apartment houses", which soon got shortened to apartments. In England, we have flats. Sometimes, when people start talking in real-estate jargon, you might hear about condos and co-ops and duplexes and other such arcana. … Continue reading →

Lauren Rouleau of ReganBooks just sent me an email asking if I would like a review copy of These Things I Wish, the new book from Lee Pitts. ReganBooks has taken a popular internet meme, which has already been published … Continue reading →

Bill Keller, the editor of the New York Times, weighs in today on the subject of the Sudan advertorial. Here’s what he has to say: I know that the executives on the business side of The Times argued long and … Continue reading →

I love this story about a $218 trillion phone bill. Yahaya Wahab said he disconnected his late father’s phone line in January after he died and settled the 84-ringgit (U.S. $23) bill, the New Straits Times reported. But Telekom Malaysia … Continue reading →

Keith Kelly in the New York Post yesterday: Art & Antiques has been sold to Curtco Media, which aims to bring a new sense of urgency to a once sleepy cultural backwater of publishing that is suddenly percolating to life. … Continue reading →

You can take your news straight, or you can take it with a generous dose of snark. Either way, the story seems clear. Here’s Amy Norton, of Reuters: Middle-schoolers who sport alcohol-branded T-shirts and caps may start to drink sooner … Continue reading →

According to Eater, my new neighborhood gastropub, EU, having failed to get its liquor license, has now been barred even from operating as a BYOB: the full story is unclear, but it seems as though the police busted the police … Continue reading →

I was wrong. When I came back from Marfa, I was convinced that it didn’t really matter what happened to Donald Judd’s gallery works, because his real masterpieces are permanently installed at Marfa. But now I’ve seen the show at … Continue reading →

Does the FT have a web strategy? I just spent a bit of time clicking around ft.com, and there seemed to be big problems with the subscription firewall. If I clicked on a story with a blue "s" for subscription-only … Continue reading →

Updike reviews Fernanda Eberstadt’s Little Money Street in the New Yorker this week. Here he is talking about Gypsy girls: Her value, as a virgin, is ascertained not by the young groom on the wedding night but, according to archaic … Continue reading →

Two things struck me about this story. Firstly, it’s well known now that HIV+ individuals can lead long and healthy lives. What I was less aware of is the fact that the same is true of people with Aids. The … Continue reading →

Rents in Leipzig are cheaper than rents in Manhattan! This astonishing news is brought to you by the New York Times. But they still manage to get it wrong: What Mr. Amrhein is paying, per month per square foot, in … Continue reading →

Why isn’t there a free wine database on the web somewhere? It could start in the US, but very easily expand worldwide. The problem is that wine is the ultimate long-tail business – I would say that more wine sales … Continue reading →

I’m a big fan of Mark Hurst and his This Is Broken website. But today’s entry, to me, speaks much more about the ridiculous level of American self-entitlement than it does about bad design. Hurst stayed at the Marriot Monterey, … Continue reading →