Moominvalley House

Interior design by Maria Yasko inspired by Moominvalley. More wonderful photos here (It's not exactly my kind of thing, but still neat).

Cute & Totally Unnecessary

I love stuff like this (Israeli designed too!). Mostly I like to window shop cute yet functional things, they look so much better on the computer screen or in a shop than in my home amidst all the other non-cute crap I have lying around. Because of budget concerns and also my inability to properly decorate I tend to pass on these kind of things, admire them from afar. My sister on the other hand is a master of decorating her apartment with funky accessories that just work.

via Cup of Jo

Nationalized Healthcare Is Great!

As long as you know someone well connected, have money to buy premium insurance, and bribe the nurses and doctors!

via Amy Alkon (again)

Eggtastic!

Eggs are good for you and delicious.

There are also those who worried about the cholesterol contents of the egg – but the purveyors of those utterly disgusting egg-white-only omelettes are having to eat their words, after new evidence showed that the cholesterol content in eggs is not the type to affect blood cholesterol.

I've been doing my own version of a low-carb diet and eggs have been a huge component.

via Amy Alkon's tweets (a bit proponent of high protein diet)

In related news the anti-vegan, Caveman diet, has come to NYC. It's a bit too extreme for my taste by I can see its benefits, to each his own I guess.

The caveman lifestyle, in Mr. Durant’s interpretation, involves eating large quantities of meat and then fasting between meals to approximate the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts. Vegetables and fruit are fine, but he avoids foods like bread that were unavailable before the invention of agriculture. Mr. Durant believes the human body evolved for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and his goal is to wean himself off what he sees as many millenniums of bad habits.

These urban cavemen also choose exercise routines focused on sprinting and jumping, to replicate how a prehistoric person might have fled from a mastodon.

P.S. Title inspired by the Canadian restaurant Eggspectations! It's a great breakfast place that has egg puns in all their menu options.

State Of The Union Reflections

I found Obama did a lot of talking but in the end didn't say much (of the truth). I found it irritating that he chose four (or more, I lost count) ways of saying "it's all Bush's fault," an annoying ploy of "don't blame me." Another thing was his complete disregard for decorum, I found it uncouth for him to berating the Supreme Court decision right in front of the Justices and especially since he got it wrong.

....This time, Justice Alito shook his head as if to rebut the president’s characterization of the Citizens United decision, and seemed to mouth the words “not true.” Indeed, Mr. Obama’s description of the holding of the case was imprecise. He said the court had “reversed a century of law.”

The law that Congress enacted in the populist days of the early 20th century prohibited direct corporate contributions to political campaigns. That law was not at issue in the Citizens United case, and is still on the books. Rather, the court struck down a more complicated statute that barred corporations and unions from spending money directly from their treasuries — as opposed to their political action committees — on television advertising to urge a vote for or against a federal candidate in the period immediately before the election. It is true, though, that the majority wrote so broadly about corporate free speech rights as to call into question other limitations as well — although not necessarily the existing ban on direct contributions.

But this was a populist night and the target was irresistible. There are a variety of specific proposals floating around to address the Citizens United decision. The president offered no specifics and did not endorse any of them. Just as the decision doesn’t lend itself to a sound bite, neither do the fixes.

I was watching it with Obama supporter and she liked that he made a lot of jokes and liked how he told Congress "if you have better ideas I want to hear them" - to me it was empty words, to her it seemed like a show of his good character. Agree to disagree I guess. Also, let me be clear the g&t we made were delicious.

We Cook Therefore We Are Human

I was just talking about this with someone over the weekend. I heard primatologist Richard Wrangham speak on NPR about his book Catching fire: how cooking made us human and was fascinated by his findings.

Cooking, he says, has long been thought to be an optional cultural practice, like wearing jewelry. But really, he argues, cooking was the essential technological innovation that enabled us to produce the metabolic energy we needed to become human.

How? Cooked food is more digestible than raw food. And not just by a little, but by a lot. Learn how to control fire, use it to cook your food, and you free up extra energy — plus time that would otherwise be spent masticating. Spend that time hunting, and your metabolic equation gets even better.

via Kottke (again)

One Approach To Food

via Kottke

Everything Is Okay*

Yet seems like it's not most of the time. This makes me very sad. I'm not sure if this is just life and that's how it is - moments of happiness punctuate life - but nothing is really wrong, yet a lot of things don't seem right.


*(I reserve the right to post this kind of shit since this is my blog and I don't have to pretend to be interesting.)

Wrong Kind of Exciting

So yeah, this happened this morning in the building I work in.
Nothing like a bank robbery to get everyone overly excited and paranoid of a rainy Monday morning.

What's Wrong With Newton?

I guess someone didn't do enough third world country charity work in their twenties and now being middle aged and having sent your kids to prestigious ivies you don't have anything better to do than to knit and invite enemy combatants to live in your town. Good grief.

Abdul Aziz Naji, 34, spent nearly eight years behind bars in Guantanamo Bay.

He was held as an enemy combatant and was finally cleared for release in May 2009.

The US bans former detainees from entering the country, but members of Newton's Board of Aldermen want to change that. They're proposing a resolution to Congress to allow cleared detainees into the US.

via Peter

Update: Surprise! Newton is dropping the resolution.

Following fierce public opposition, the Newton Board of Alderman decided not to move forward on a resolution urging Congress to lift the ban on allowing Guantanamo detainees to move to the United States.

Brown Baby!

I was pretty nervous up to the very end. I'm still kind of stunned. Although as I was making my way to the gym and listening to NPR I couldn't help but gloat how nervous and annoyed the "impartial" commentators were. On the way back it was pretty sweet to hear them talk about how it was the "confused" voters and the lackluster of Coakley that allowed the campaign to happen. And to think back just a few weeks ago the NYT (and almost everyone else) was telling us Coakley will be the next Senator from Massachusetts.

P.S. I loved that the 'burbs told the city folk to go fuck themselves. A nice little icing on the cake.

Smoking In New York

Finding a quiet corner I get the stogie going with a wooden match and settle back to enjoy my favorite pastime – people watching. Unfortunately, people are also watching me.

“That’s disgusting,” a smartly dressed young woman says as she walks past me.

“I beg your pardon?” I reply.

“You look obnoxious smoking that cigar,” she says.

I look at the woman balefully. She’s your prototypical New York babe - cute, dressed in black from head to toe, holding a cup of Starbucks coffee with an iPod plugged into her head.

“I may look obnoxious, dear,” I reply. “But you sound obnoxious.”

“What did you say?” the woman says, popping her headphones out of her ears. I repeat myself.

“What the…” she stammers.

“Have a nice night, Miss.”

The woman looks at me flabbergasted. She tries coming up with a witty comeback, fails, and walks briskly away. I shake my head. It takes all kinds.

Read the whole thing.

via Helen Rittelmeyer's twitter, who itroduces the piece brialliantly: "People walk past a woman sobbing on a street corner, but they take time out to castigate a man smoking a cigar."

A Brief History of the Ampersand

Fascinating stuff on of my favorite typographical character. Turns out it comes from the Latin "et" a combination that over time has come to be known what we use today as short hand for "and."

A Fashion Yes

From here.

Funny Stuff My Boyfriend Says

"I used to think that pedophile meant 'one who enjoys walking.' Many uncomfortable silences are suddenly explained." - Peter entertaining me on our ride home.

The True American Way

IMG_7350, originally uploaded by jakedobkin.

Through alcohol.

Not so random fact about me: Now whenever I drink alcohol, I don't get hangovers right away (like the next morning) instead they come much later and maintain a form of dull pain on the top of my head 24 hours after I consumed any amount of alcohol. Weirdness.

This Is Not A Blog Post

I feel like my brother in law would appreciate the above photo a whole lot. :)

from here

Jerry Yoon Has Redesigned His Blog!

Jerry Yoon has redesigned his photo blog and even though I'm not getting married and the only way I would do engagement photo shoot was if Mr. Yoon and his team would do the honors. Serious photo love here. I mean shots like the one bellow amaze me!

Perfect Symbiosis

This made me laugh.

Be Stupid

In the process of analyzing Diesel's "Be Stupid" campaign CheapJap touched on something quite close to what I've been recently thinking:

Most of us live in two tenses: We plan for the future, or we long for the past. Why do we ignore the present? Because it’s where things change; where what’s done gets undone; where what was to be no longer is. The present leaves us marooned on an island amoral to our individual wants and needs, one where nothing exists before or after right now. The only way to deal with it is to just be what you are, the most honest version of yourself.

I'm not sure why it's so hard for me to be just who I am and stop living in the future and constantly reminiscing about the past, but living in the present seems hard somehow, a condition that I must remind myself to remember to "be in."
I had a profound moment while on vacation, the "be here now" type of thing that I'm a bit embarrassed to even admit. But basically in that moment I felt just right the only thought I had was that I should be where I was and no where else. It was freeing and empowering. The over-thinking, no good can come out of it.

Addendum: I have a few friends who are living in the present and while they aren't necessarily happier they are definitely bolder in their life choices.

Zero Effect Gets Is Due Notice

If you are a Sherlock Holmes fan, you will be thrilled with Zero Effect directed by Jake Kasdan. AV Club reviews the little known movie. Highlighting the excellent performance by Bill Pullman (who used to be a favorite actor of mine back in the day).

Meet Daryl Zero, a sort of Holmes in extremis. The last name suggests a lot about his character. He’s uncompromising in his methods, to the point where he refuses to meet or speak to his clients, for fear of clouding his judgment. Instead, he sends his Watson, Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller), who serves as a trusty liaison and pitchman who’s skilled at explaining why clients need Zero’s services (“he can tell you where you were born, how old your mother was at the time, and what you had for breakfast, all within 30 seconds of meeting you”) while demanding an extravagant, non-negotiable fee. While Arlo, the audience’s surrogate, is suitably awed by his boss’ insights into the human mind, his exasperation gets a good venting, too. Zero’s list of quirks is never-ending, from the harmless (a fridge packed with cans of Tab) to the paranoid (an apartment protected by a bank vault, six heavy deadbolts, and a 10-digit security code) to the embarrassingly naïve (he’s never kissed a girl). He’s mastered the art of detachment, but as Arlo notes, the self-proclaimed “greatest observer the world has ever known” is too afraid to go the dry cleaners.

As played by Bill Pullman, Zero is both a cool, serenely confident logician and a certified nutcase—contradictions well-suited to an actor square-jawed enough to be the president in Independence Day, yet right at home in David Lynch’s Lost Highway. His one tic has always been a tendency to squint through performances, not as if he doesn’t understand things, or he’s dubious about what someone else is saying, but more as if he’s lost in some bizarre train of thought. In one of my favorite moments in Zero Effect, Zero drags Arlo away from his girlfriend in Los Angeles, puts him on a flight to Portland, and winds up communicating with him via two payphones about 10 feet apart from each other. When Arlo asks him why they’re on payphones, the mysteriously bearded Zero replies, with that trademark Pullman squint, “We can’t be too careful. Two guys in an airport… talking… It’s a little fishy.”

At a mere 23 years old, Kasdan not only knows his Holmes, he crafts a seemingly simple yet maddeningly dense plot that’s in line with Raymond Chandler detective fiction.

If you were dissapointed with the latest incarnation of Sherlock Holmes (my brother in law smells a franchise brewing). This might cleanse your palette.

Guess Who The Globe Endorsed?

Exactly who you thought they would. But that's not the interesting part. The newsworthy stunt is that they moved the url address of the endorsement obliterating 400+ comments that were strongly in favor of Scott Brown. Weird isn't it?

AGilday wrote:

Oh, my God, there were over 450 comments on this a few minutes ago with the overwhelming majority of them ridiculing this endorsement.

I can't believe that the Globe deleted them.

Wow, Wow, now there are only 7 comments. I can't believe that they are silencing the voice of their own readers. I mean they don't want the voice of their own readers to be heard, wow.

via

Adore this Portrait of Billie Holiday

The smoke and the stone angel, her expression - just perfect.

I used to be wicked proud about knowing who she was and loving her songs. If anyone would like to purchase a print of this marvelous photo you can do it here.

They have some other fabulous photos from Morrison Hotel Gallery. Some of my favorites:

A Belated Happy New Year From Die Beatles!

Oh Those Wacky Chinese

And by "wacky" I mean scary as hell.

The FBI report estimates that since 2003, the Chinese Army has specifically developed a network of over 30,000 Chinese military cyberspies, plus more than 150,000 private-sector computer experts, whose mission is to steal American military and technological secrets and cause mischief in government and financial services. China’s goal, says the FBI report, is to have the world’s premier “informationized armed forces” by 2020. According to the bureau’s classified information, the Chinese hackers are adept at implanting malicious computer code, and in 2009 companies in diverse industries such as oil and gas, banking, aerospace, and telecommunications encountered costly and at times debilitating problems with Chinese-implanted “malware.” The FBI analyst would not name the affected companies.

A Bit of Navel Gazing

Okay a lot of navel gazing. But isn't that what personal blogging is all about? I found this photo among long ago forgotten photos my sister had. I love it - even though it's dark, blurry, and hides most of my face.

I, like most girls, don't like seeing photos of myself (although I don't mind if someone takes one). There is another photo my sister took that everyone, and I do mean everyone, in my family loved and put on their walls. So while admiring the artistry of the photo, I don't necessarily love it.

This photo above though, this is how I see myself, even though I haven't looked like that in few years. I actually like my profile, even though it typically horrifies me, and I love that I'm talking - something I do a lot (too much sometimes). I look messy, but not too messy. All in all the kind of impression I want to create - pretty, opinionated, curious, and a bit untidy. I don't think this photo actually says that to others, but it says that to me. A sort of ideal version of myself.

Universal Truth

As soon as you feel caught up with one person, there are ten people who feel ignored and neglected. Sigh.

On The Fence

I'm on the fence about mashups. I usually find the original material more enjoyable, but still some are just impressive. This is kind of cool. I really like Vampire Weekend (even if they are a bit one note and remind me of Sting), not only because they will always be a band I associate with one of my happiest periods.

Okay, I'm off to vacuum the house. Living the glamorous life here.

The Usual

Today I was running early, for once, to an appointment. I had finished up all the things on the do list (they were happily crossed off one by one on the notepad). I had found as perfect as perfect can be parking space. I went to look for change for the meter and found none. Only pennies. I searched the whole car. Lying flat on my stomach, my legs dangling outside (while I was wearing a skirt, too!) there was no loose change to be found. Getting out of the car and losing my balance on the icy pavement, I realized that no matter how hard I try I will always be late. No amount of planning ahead or being lucky is going to thwart fate from making me late. Every Tuesday. Dammit.

Yes, please.

Need to get these jeans and about 30lbs off and I'll be all set.

via

Climategate Making A Difference?

Before Climategate:
Last year, while visiting family in San Francisco, I overheard a loud group of 30-somethings discussing, or rather ridiculing, the notion of not "believing" in global warming. In fact they were actually condemning a woman who had the misfortune of dating their great friend while being an (evil) Republican. I rolled my eyes several times.

Post Climategate:
This year, while visiting family in San Francisco, I overheard an old hippie talking to another about global warming. And while it still exists according to him, it's not necessarily all because of the evil humans, but might have to do something with sun.

I know it ancedotal, but if I'm hearing in, of all places, San Francisco (!) that "climate change" is something other than the strict Al Gore definition, then something is in the air and people are starting to notice that things aren't exactly adding up. Maybe Climategate is making a difference.