RSS

Tag New York

Slow News Day Digest

0 comments By Brian Filed in Amuse, Links, Misc, News Tagged with , , , , , , , January 27th, 2012 @ 11:30 am

Good Evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and All The Ships At Sea!

FLASH!
The New York Daily News recently reported that one Colin Hagendorf of Brooklyn, New York has completed his quest of eating a slice of pizza from every single pizza place in Manhattan. For his next quest, Mr. Hagendorf will make use of every public toilet in Manhattan.

FLASH!
The citizens of Dog Shit Village in Guizhou Province, China, were ecstatic to learn that the government has finally awarded their town with a new name. Until the presentation of the new town sign.

FLASH!
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told a group of Florida voters yesterday that if he is elected he will order NASA to build a colony on the moon. No, really, he did. No joke. Except for Gingrich himself, of course.

And now let’s go live to our correspondent for breaking news from a situation developing on the expressway…Steve, over to you…

EmailStumbleUponRedditFacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Related Posts:

Notes On The Occupation

By Brian Filed in Links, News, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , , , October 17th, 2011 @ 11:30 am

That might not be the catchiest of buzzphrases, but it certainly covers quite a lot of ground.

Not all protests are created equal. Compare these first-hand accounts of Occupy Boston and Occupy Austin. Then, read about the near-riot conditions at the protest in Rome over the weekend.

Philosopher/social theorist Slavoj Žižek spoke to the protesters in New York on October 9th and reminded them that the real point of the demonstrations is not simply the romance of symbolism, it is about trying to catalyze real change:

There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after. When we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then. I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like – oh, we were young, it was beautiful. Remember that our basic message is: We are allowed to think about alternatives. The rule is broken. We do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?

Seems to me real change comes more often from the sort of actions that took place in Rome than the ones that come from the careful deliberations in Boston or the hippy-dippy party in Austin. Power is rarely given up willingly because a group of polite people issued some communiques. The situation in New York late last week where the city tried to kick out the protesters with some bullshit about cleaning up the park shows that the powers-that-be already see the need to short-circuit the rather toothless action before it finds some teeth.

If you’ve got some time, this Russia Today interview with journalist and author Chris Hedges runs for about 10 minutes, but is really worth watching. Hedges’ latest book, The World As It Is, is a pretty unflinching look at the collision of the economic crisis, political paralysis in the United States, the rise of corporate control of world government, and America’s militaristic adventurism. In the interview, he calls it as he sees it, but even still finds reason to be optimistic that Occupy Wall Street and its growing global reach might be able to affect actual change:

EmailStumbleUponRedditFacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Related Posts:

More Assorted Infographics

By Brian Filed in Infographics, Links, Misc Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , September 20th, 2010 @ 1:35 pm

My September 11 post this year consisted of a pie chart of the total number of victims of the Global War On Terror from 9/11/01 to the current date. Here’s a bar graph that displays the same data which should help make the point even better:

Newsweek tries to put the plight of those Chilean miners into perspective with this amazing infographic from last week’s issue:

There are four access holes from the surface to the miners, each exactly the size of that circle (which I have attempted to show here exactly as it is on their website), and EVERYTHING they receive from the outside world until the rescue shaft is completed must fit that diameter.

This one might be a little hard to discern at first:

That is a density map of the Boston metropolitan area indicating racial makeup. Red represents white people, blue represents black people, orange represents Hispanics, and green represents Asians. As you can see, honkies got the bruthas surrounded. It’s not new knowledge that Boston remains a deeply-divided city racially, but it’s still a little startling to see it displayed so markedly. Compare Boston to the maps for New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and you’ll see that the difference isn’t in the segregation but in the overall diversity of a metro area. These maps were created by a fellow named Eric Fisher, who created similar maps (all based on 2000 Census data) for 40 major American metro areas (which I found via this Fast Company post)

EmailStumbleUponRedditFacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Related Posts:

The Only Big Dick From Wyoming Is Cheney

By Brian Filed in Amuse, Links Tagged with , , , , , March 30th, 2010 @ 10:45 am

Sex accessory retailer Condomania has released a ranking of all fifty states by average penis size, and the state with the smallest dicks is Wyoming, home state of the previous Vice President.

The biggest dicks in America? New Hampshire. Ayuh.

They also rated cities by average penis size, and it turns out that New Yorkers aren’t as dickish as you probably thought, rating only #4. The Big Easy gets the top spot, with the nation’s capital rating #2 (Congress must have been on recess when they conducted the survey). Boston ranks 15th since, as we all know, people from Boston aren’t big dicks, they’re (m)assholes.

EmailStumbleUponRedditFacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Related Posts:

Like Sardines

By Brian Filed in Infographics, Misc Tagged with , , , , , , , March 23rd, 2010 @ 2:05 pm

Larger version

Nothing like a little infographicporn to brighten one’s day. This one asserts that if you took all 300 million-or-so inhabitants of the United States and packed them all into one place at the population density of Brooklyn, NY (which is to say 35,000 people per square mile), everybody would fit into an area about the size of the state of New Hampshire. (graphic found at Strange Maps, actual origin unknown)

Now, if you really wanted to pack ‘em in, you’d want to go with the population density of Mumbai, which has a population density of 76,793.5 people per square mile. That would squeeze everybody into a space the size of Connecticut, with each person’s own space coming to about a little over 4,600 square feet. Heck, a one-bedroom apartment in New York is lucky to be 750 square feet, so that’s PLENTY of room for each person!

Sorry, no pets, no smokers.

EmailStumbleUponRedditFacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Related Posts:

Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

By Brian Filed in Links Tagged with , , , , , September 19th, 2008 @ 11:50 am

Starting this week, the State of New York has begun to issue driver’s licenses with RFID chips embedded in them. For the moment, the one “enhancement” that the licenses offer is to allow anyone who has one to cross the border into Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and some other Caribbean islands without a U.S. passport. The present system apparently does not contain any personal information about you, merely a code that can be read by a border crossing guard that verifies you as a U.S. citizen. We are officially on the slippery slope to RealID now, but I guess we’ll just have to deal with the practical aspects first, namely keeping your RFID-equipped tracking devices “enhanced ID” from being swiped.

This company in Standish, Maine makes and sells a handsome wallet they call the “Rogue Wallet”, and they now offer a model that has built-in RFID shielding. I would expect that within a couple of years, pretty much every wallet maker in the world will be pumping out wallets with RFID shielding, but their wallet has a few other nifty features: it’s designed to go in your front pocket, which is a traditional deterrent from pickpocketers (not a big problem in this country, but travellers should know that pickpocketing is rampant in many other countries). It’s also significantly slimmer than a regular wallet, even when you load it up with a pile of plastic cards. That should help to avoid having to explain the bulge in your front pocket to everyone. Plus, for their non-shielded models they have a wide range of styles, including an animal-free version for the vegan crowd, and an alligator-skin version for the die-hard carnivore crowd. The RFID-shielded model is more expensive than their standard models, but not out of line for a nice wallet.

Washington, Vermont, Arizona, Michigan, Texas ands California all have some sort of program in the works to issue RFID-enabled driver’s licenses. Ironically enough in this context, Maine is one of the states that has refused to go along with RealID, so Mainers don’t need to rush right out and buy these wallets, unless they have other RFID-enhanced cards (several credit card companies are issuing RFID credit cards already). Whether it’s your driver’s license, your credit card, or even just one of those security cards you need to get in and out of an office building, the days of carting around a whole stack of RFID-enabled cards is here, so don’t dally on keeping them safe from would-be sniffers.

EmailStumbleUponRedditFacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Related Posts:

Papa Ratzi Must Be Busy

By Brian Filed in Links, News Tagged with , , , , , , , , , February 8th, 2008 @ 2:35 pm

I suppose Ash Wednesday and Lent and all that has been keeping the Pope occupied, so it has been up to the Church of England to fill in with the assorted dumbass remarks this week.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has put everybody’s panties in a wad with his statement that it will be "unavoidable" that Sharia law will have to be accepted in the U.K.  As is the case throughout Europe, there are more and more Muslims emigrating to Britain.  The Archbishop, Dr. Rowan Williams, told a BBC reporter that he thinks incorporating elements of Sharia into the legal system would help Muslims feel more a part of British society by not forcing them to choose between religion and state.

Well, didn’t THAT set off a shitstorm!  I can see where Williams was trying to go with this — he was trying to suggest that private courts using some parts of Sharia law become available to settle business disputes and other intra-community arguments. Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in the U.K. and in the U.S., for example, operate their own rabbinical courts that adjudicate divorces, personal disputes, and matters of religious doctrine.  But in the process of talking about the idea, what he managed to say was that one should not have to choose between one’s religious beliefs and a "universal" law, and that’s what has everybody pissed off.  That he said it in the context of Sharia law, which grants few legal rights to women and is notorious for harsh corporal punishments and death sentences only makes things worse.  Oh, and then there’s that whole "multiculturalism" and "PC" argument.  AND that he’s talking about freedom-hating bomb-throwing A-rabs.  Any way you look at it, he should have kept mum about the whole thing, because he’s got liberals, conservatives, Christians and Muslims all up in arms.  His Holiness would be proud.

MEANWHILE…N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham (the #4 guy in the CofE), is trying to bump up his GDI to 100,000,000 with his latest set of remarks about "heaven"  Seems he’s more of a Rapture sort of fellow than the sort who think heaven is like those Philadelphia Cream Cheese ads, but sort of in reverse.  It’s the "saved" people who will be up and running around when Jesus gets back, and he’ll be putting all of you to work.  This hasn’t gone over too well with some of his parishioners, but, as always, what the guy with the collar says is right and they’re wrong…or so says the guy with the collar.  The amount of mental energy that has to go in to thinking up all this bullshit is simply astonishing.

EmailStumbleUponRedditFacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Related Posts:

When Worlds Collide

By Brian Filed in Amuse, Life Tagged with , , , , August 22nd, 2007 @ 11:09 am

Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up:

Last week I posted about the predilection of the members of my household to vomit in our master bedroom. And also, not so long ago, I posted about my current favroite TV show, “Dirty Jobs”.

Bridget and I were talking about the vomit-inducing qualities of our bedroom just as last week’s episode came on. It was about a place called….(wait for it)…Vomit Island. The whole episode was about a bird sanctuary in Lake Huron and the volunteers who monitor the birds who live there and how the birds barf and crap as defense mechanisms whenever they feel threatened by the presence of visitors. Needless to say, good ol’ Mike Rowe spent the entire episode getting thoroughly soiled. I guess he’d feel right at home with us.

I was reminded to tell you this story because of this New York Times article today about the cormorants in New York Harbor. The cormorants are rather unpopular with the locals because they are prodigious vomiters. At my house, we probably wouldn’t know the difference.

EmailStumbleUponRedditFacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Related Posts:

Are You Really A Masshole If You Live In Providence?

By Brian Filed in Links Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , July 17th, 2007 @ 12:00 pm

greaterboston.gif

So, I just read this post by one of the contributors at Mental Floss, where she did a little quick figuring to address the question of how likely it is that anyone from a given state in the U.S. will be from that state’s largest city. In other words, if you’re from New York, how likely is it that you’re from New York City?

In the case of New York and NYC, it’s actually almost a 50-50 proposition that a New Yorker is also a New Yorker, if you follow me. But she looked at a bunch of cities and has posted the results for your interest.

Somehow, she left Boston off the list. Tragic oversight, obviously. So here I am to fill in the gaps for you.

The City of Boston’s estimated population as of 2005 is roughly 559,000 people (and you thought Boston was A LOT bigger, didn’t you?). The population of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was 6,437,193 in 2006. you can do your own math, but the answer is that only 8.68% of the people who live in Massachusetts are residents of Boston.

Which seems to fly in the face of reason, right? Well, that’s because most of us who “live in Boston” actually live in the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area, our grandparents having had the good sense to flee the city decades ago in favor of such charming burbs as Everett, Randolph, and the like.

According to that Wikipedia link, these days the reach of the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area extends to about 30% of the total area of the state and has a population of 4,411,835. That’s 68.53% of the total population of Massachusetts, meaning 2 out of every 3 people in Massachusetts are “from Boston” in the larger sense. If you fold in some of the satellite cities that are also considered part of the total statistical area such as Manchester NH, Providence RI and Worcester MA, the overall population is 7,427,336, or 115% of the population of Massachusetts.

That’s a lot of Massholes.

EmailStumbleUponRedditFacebookTwitterGoogle+Share

Related Posts:

All Original Content Copyright © BrianKaneOnline
All Other Content Copyright © Its Original Authors

Built on Notes Blog Core
Powered by WordPress

Switch to our mobile site