Today, Liza directed me to an article from The New York Times about Roald Gundersen, aka “The Forester Architect”

Photo: Paul Kelley for The New York Times

He built his house (and 100 by 20 foot solar greenhouse) using whole trees and straw-bails among other materials.  The article is here, and If you have any interest in architecture (*cough*lucas*cough*) you may find the article (and links to other amazing houses at the end of the slideshow) interesting.  My favorite part of the house is this room…

Photo: Paul Kelley for The New York Times

Maybe someday I will live in a house like this… Hey, A guy can dream right

Arividerchi

Being firm believers that one can never (or almost never) speak enough about evolution, especially in view of the numerous and increasingly vocal groups whose world concept has insuffficiently, ahem, evolved to embrace the fact, we felt obliged, though admittedly tardively, to remind all of you that yesterday (24 november) was the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s masterwork “On the Origin of Species”.  Leaving others to debate whether or not someone else may have had the idea prior to Darwin, we’d like to point out an article written by the wise and lovely Olivia Judd entitled “An Evolve-By Date” in the Opinion (!!, see what we mean, not the Science) section of The New York Times (online).  Being exhaustively trained artist-scientists, as we are (right!), we would like to suggest that evolution is as much of an opinion as death is.  On second thought, that’s probably not a good comparison as it appears that there are many people who have an opinion about death, too.  In any case, evolution theory, in its contemporary form, though theory, is based on an enormous body of data derived from detailed study and is without any doubt the best framework for understanding the biological world in which we live.  So there.  Any questions?

In case you have just landed on our planet, or would like to learn a bit more about Darwin and evolution here is a Wikipedia link.

nothingisinvisible@live.fr

by Alexei Barrionuevo, for The New York Times, November 22, 2009.

BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s ambitions to be a more important player on the global diplomatic stage are crashing headlong into the efforts of the United States and other Western powers to rein in Iran’s nuclear arms program.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, is set to receive Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, here on Monday in his first state visit to Brazil. The visit is part of a larger push by Mr. da Silva to wade into the seemingly intractable world of Middle East politics, and follows visits in the last two weeks by Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority.

But the visit is drawing criticism from lawmakers and former diplomats here and in the United States, who say it could undercut Western efforts to press Iran on its nuclear program, and consequently chill Brazil’s relations with the United States and damage its growing reputation as a global power…(continue reading)

Essa semana um dos assuntos mais discutidos nas rodas que tratam a relação dos temas tecnologia, internet e jornalismo, é o caso Murdoch-Bing.

Aproveitando que o assunto ainda está fresquinho resolvi utilizar alguns dos maiores portais de notícia da internet, de forma interativa, ou seja, aderindo ao conhecido cadastro, mas calma aí, não se trata daquele cadastro tradicional, onde “logamos” e escolhemos, através de um menu, o que queremos receber em nossa caixa de correio.

Escolhi três grandes veículos: CNN.com, El País e The New York Times. Esse trio vem se destacando constantemente na forma de interação com o seu leitor on-line.

Vale lembrar que não tenho a intenção de ser um avaliador dos serviços utilizados, por crer que cada pessoa tenha sua necessidade, portanto o que eu poderia dizer não se adequaria a realidade de um ou de outro.

Hoje vou citar o caso do The New York Times, que parece querer se parecer mais com uma rede social. Logo ao acessar a página nos deparamos à uma barra. Na opção ´Get Started´, que está do lado esquerdo da mesma (ilustração 1 – número 1), o visitante é convidado a iniciar seu cadastro. Caso não queira, e pretenda continuar navegando na página, pode tanto fazer-lo com a presença da barra, ou se quiser, retira-la (ilustração 1 – número 2). No caso, optei por fazer o cadastro.

ilustração 1

Depois de completo aí vem o que mais parece uma rede social. Temos um perfil (ilustração 2), como o que vemos em alguns sites de relacionamento, com direito a foto no perfil, divulgação de sua página abaixo da foto, menu que mostra quem lhe segue, e quem é seguido (como no Twitter), além de um campo de busca para procurar possíveis contatos, ou se quiser, ou se quiser, ainda importar outros do Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo, Twitter, My Space e Facebook. Um espaço no centro da página relaciona seus contatos, como indicado na ilustração 2.

ilustração 2

Note que no canto direito da mesma barra citada anteriormente existe o botão ´Recommend´ (ilustração 3). Através dele o usuário cadastrado pode, como o próprio nome diz, recomendar um artigo publicado pelo site, deixando também seu comentário sobre o que achou do conteúdo (ilustração 4). Enfim, é uma forma bastante democrática de dizermos para o criador da notícia o que achamos disso e daquilo. Só espero que essas informações sejam utilizadas para melhorar cada vez mais a qualidade do que encontramos na rede.

ilustração 3

ilustração 4

Alice Rawsthorn has written an article entitled “Eloquent Ode to the Simple” in the Design/Arts section of The New York Times (online) discussing, in brief, the work of designer Konstantin Grcic and the motivations behind his choices for the new show at Serpentine Gallery (London) entitled “Design Real” which she calls his “paean to industrial design”.

Whether you’re a fan of Grcic’s work or otherwise, his highly informed curation of the Serpentine show is well worth your attention.  The show opens tomorrow (thursday 26 november).  The website accompanying the show, www.design-real.com, though currently quite static, once active promises to be quite excellent.

So, if you don’t happen to find yourself in London to see the show, you can at the very least curl up in your Chair_One and see what it’s all about.

designalog@live.fr

I gotta be honest, I expected Mark Sanford’s troubles would end once the details of his affair were no longer the juiciest piece of political news. But it seems that’s not the case. According to the Hotline OnCall:

In total, 18 of the charges have to do with instances in which Sanford flew business or first class without being authorized to do so. Those trips were largely trade missions to China, Austria, England, Germany, France and other destinations — including a June ‘08 trip to Brazil and Argentina, during which he has acknowledged spending time with the woman with whom he had the affair.
Other charges include use of a state-owned plane to transport Sanford to a political event, a book-signing and a birthday party, as well as a family vacation and a trip to see one of his sons’ sporting events. Sanford even allegedly used a state plan to travel to North Myrtle Beach for a haircut.

I love that last one at the end. Mike Tomasky had been saying that Sanford’s true violation was dereliction of duty. I just didn’t think that was really the issue that the GOP was angry about and that Sanford would be punished for. Well, this just goes to show you to leave the prophesying to the pros.

Just for fun, here’s the South Carolina Ethics Commission Complaint via Talking Points Memo (linked to above) after the jump:

Dal sito del New York Times le principali novità in libreria a partire dai prossimi giorni:

“Typhoon” Charles Cumming (St. Martin’s Press)

“Invisible” Paul Auster (Faber)

“The Pursuit of Other Interests” Jim Kokoris (St. Martin’s Press)

Fonte: The New York Times (November 18, 2009)

I went on nytimes.com and the first article that I noticed was an article called, “Making Music Mightier Than the Sword.” This article is a theater review about “Fela!,” a musical about the Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti, that opened on Monday night. The way Ben Brantley described the musical seemed like it would be a show that’s full of life and energy. His description of the stage design and costumes:

“When you arrive at the theater, just look at the stage — transformed into an eye-awakening, graffiti-decorated shrine by Marina Draghici (who also did the celebratory costumes) — and you’ll see the source of that pulse: it’s in the bodacious, miniskirted hips that can be tantalizingly glimpsed swaying in and out from the stage’s wings.”

After reading that, the imagery matched what I thought when I saw a picture from The NY Time’s slide show that is linked on the side of the story. In Brantley’s review, he mentions how lively the musical is with its song and dance, as well as its lighting technique. Reading more and more of Brantley’s review only made me want to see “Fela!” even more. It also made me more interested in finding out who Fela Kuti was as a musician.

Link to The NY Time’s  “Fela!” slide show.

Payback Time – Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government – Series – NYTimes.com

When I read this article this morning  in The Obama Times otherwise known as The New York Times  I could not believe what I was reading.  I actually questioned if someone was pulling a spoof on me and had somehow tampered with my home page New York Times column.  Or something  equally impossible and strange because there was no way the Obama Lovers at the New York Times were going to actually own up to what their  Great One was doing and had been doing to our economy.  Well actually they did try to push the blame on President Bush for doubling the debt by claiming that the spending has been climbing by these leaps and bounds for “two years”.

No.  No.  The leaps and bounds spending started with the Stimulus in October 2008 the last four months of George Bush’s term and then went haywire with Obama’s  Stimulus Bill $784 billion,  Omnibus Budget greater than all the budgets of all the years since the founding of our country! and his fiddling but adding up spending programs like Cash for clunkers and the $8000 pay off for buying a home you can’t afford and will most probably be foreclosed on. (But that’s okay since the bankers will have gotten the tax payers $8000 by that time so no harm done to the people who count.)

However other than that one little trying to slip it to Bush  bit, the article got the figures pretty accurate and made the right conclusions as to what this will mean to our economy and eventually our nation.

Now I wondered where had I seen those same figures and that assessment before.  It kept nagging at me as I saved the draft of this post and  did some other things.  Then over lunch I looked at Lew and remembered my dragging out Glenn Becks’s “Common Sense” to  explain something we had been discussing and that is where I saw these figures.  Hot Dam!  The New York Times was quoting (without the quotation marks) the one and only Glenn Beck!

So when do you know the Glenn Becks and others have been telling the truth about Obam’s agenda all this time?  When  Barack Obama’s staunchest supporters in the nation finally have to admit there is an insurmountable problem that has been caused by following the play book they have supported loud and long.

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.

Read the entire article for yourself just as another shock to your system  in case you have gather up a fresh batch of hope in the last week or so from some errant  sun beam or smiley face.  Then take a good look at the quote I have highlighted in red above.  What does this one sentence paragraph say to you?  Does it look anything like the generational war fare that some (like me)  have been predicting for some years now?  Does it point out that the burden of all the spending and consequent debt foisted on our  young people’s shoulders  will finally cause them to wish Granny and Granddad  could have a shorter life span?   Does it maybe hint that the Great Society of Democrat President Lyndon Johnson and his ill-conceived Medicare for ALL people over age 65 regardless of ability of 60 % of seniors to be self-reliant and ushered in double digit health care inflation just when other costs were going down,  has finally met it’s Waterloo?  Does it give credence  to the fact that the Health Care Reform bill  will cut by $500 billion over 10 years the funds for Medicare and therefore give little clerks in little federal government offices the right to determine the life or death of Granny and Gramps  that Obama and friends are calling “fiction”  when  it is brought up for conversation?  Does it promise that taxes will most certainly raise for all of us because of this huge national debt?  Does it finally admit that we living are pushing our debt onto the shoulders of the yet unborn?  Does it perhaps admit that government spending and Stimulus packages contribute to unemployment and then extended unemployment benefits which are funded thru taxing employers is a real and honest hinderance to employers being able to hire new workers or call back those laid off  (trade offs between spending and taxes)?  I wonder which a worker would rather have a job or unemployment benefits with no employer provided  benefits and  certainly no dignity and feeling of self worth?

I am sorry to say I told you so, but I did.  We finally have to say Yes to all these things, because after all it is The New York Times reporting this “news”.  To get the full picture after reading the article go to The Debt Buildup and study the charts carefully.  This is your future finally  exposed and admitted.  BB

By Stephen Gowans

The New York Times and U.S. politicians are, through assertion and repetition, attempting to create as common knowledge the idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that the last presidential election in Iran was fraudulent, even though there is no evidence to back either claim.

In today’s (November 23, 2009) New York Times, reporter Alexei Barrionuevo writes that “Brazil’s ambitions to be a more important player on the global diplomatic stage are crashing headlong into the efforts of the United States and other Western powers to rein in Iran’s nuclear arms program” (my emphasis.)

This treats the existence of a nuclear arms program in Iran as an established finding.

Yet, Tehran denies it has a nuclear weapons program and the U.N nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, says it “‘has no concrete proof’ that Iran ever sought to make nuclear arms…” [1] The 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate disagrees, in part, claiming that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in 2003, but says that Iran has since disbanded it. In February, “US officials said that…no new evidence has surfaced to undercut the findings of the 2007 (estimate).” [3]

According to the head of the I.A.E.A, Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency has

“not seen concrete evidence that Tehran has an ongoing nuclear weapons program… But somehow, many people are talking about how Iran’s nuclear program is the greatest threat to the world… In many ways, I think the threat has been hyped. Yes, there’s concern about Iran’s future intentions and Iran needs to be more transparent with the IAEA and the international community… But the idea that we’ll wake up tomorrow and Iran will have a nuclear weapon is an idea that isn’t supported by the facts as we have seen them so far.” [3]

Barrionuevo isn’t alone in asserting, without evidence, that Iran is building nuclear arms. U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, told Barrionuevo that “the world is trying to figure out how to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons,” assuming, as a given, that Iran is trying to have nuclear weapons.

Engel also says that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “is illegitimate with his own people,” a reference to the disputed presidential election Iran’s opposition claims Ahmadinejad won through fraud. Barrionuevo points to critics who worry that a planned visit to Brazil by Ahmadinejad will “legitimize” the Iranian president “just five months after what most of the world sees as his fraudulent re-election.”

Yet there is no evidence the election was stolen. All that backs the allegation is the assertion of the opposition that the election was fraudulent and “what most of the world” believes, this being based on the Western media treating opposition claims as legitimate.

This is a circular process. Most of the world believes the election was fraudulent because that’s what the principal source of information on this matter, the media, led it to beleive. Now the New York Times offers the fact that the assertion is widely believed as evidence it is true. This might be called the bootstrap theory of propaganda: legitimize an assertion by treating it as true, and when most of the world believes it’s true, offer the reality that everyone believes it to be true as evidence it is.

The only relevant evidence that would allow us to determine whether the outcome of the election was crooked or fair is provided by the sole methodologically rigorous poll conducted prior to the election. It was sponsored by the international arm of the U.S. Republican Party, the International Republican Institute, hardly a booster of Ahmadinejad. Carried out three weeks prior to the election, the poll “showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin – greater than his actual apparent margin of victory”. [4] The pollsters, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, concluded that “Ahmadinejad is who Iranians want.”

The process of creating commonly held beliefs that have no evidentiary basis, and doing so through assertion and repetition, is not new. To justify an illegal war on Yugoslavia, Western politicians, and the Western media in train, asserted without evidence that a genocide was in progress in Kosovo in 1999. Tens of thousands of corpses were expected to be found littering the “killing fields” of the then-Serb province. But when forensic investigators were dispatched to Kosovo after the war to document the genocide, the bodies never turned up. By frequently repeating unsubstantiated claims, people were led to believe that systematic killings on a mass scale were being carried out, and that the West had a moral obligation to intervene. The public was duped.

Similarly, Western politicians “sexed up” intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Western media went along, acknowledging only after public support for the war had been engineered by the media’s propagation of U.S. and British government lies, that it had got it wrong. The politicians said they had been misled by the C.I.A. The C.I.A said it was pressured by the politicians. All that mattered was that many people believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding banned weapons. When none were found, a new pretext for dominating Iraq militarily was trotted out, and acceptance of the pretext was aided by the repetition of more unsubstantiated assertions.

The bootstrap theory of propaganda is at work again, this time in connection with Iran.

1. William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “Report says Iran has data to make a nuclear bomb,” The New York Times, October 4, 2009.

2. Greg Miller, “US now sees Iran as pursuing nuclear bombs,” The Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2009.

3. William J. Cole, “UN nuclear watchdog says Iran threat hyped,” The Boston Globe, September 2, 2009.

4. Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty, “Ahmadinejad is who Iranians want,” The Guardian (UK), June 15, 2009.

• ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, NPR Ignore Climategate.
  

Yet again, the above networks refuse to report any corruption that will reflect badly on this administration. As of Monday night the leak of e-mails exposing the e-mails concerning the global warming hoax have not been discussed on all major networks with the exception of FOX News. FOX is the only network to cover the corrupt institution, ACORN and the only network to cover the National Endowment for the Arts attempt to politicize tax payer funded art.

• Cooking the Science

“The Corbett Report talks with retired climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball about the recently leaked emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University. The documents expose deceit, duplicity and collusion between climate researchers to maintain the fraud of the man made global warming theory. Dr. Ball shares his insights on what they show and reveals stunning behind-the-scenes details about how this fraud has been developed and perpetuated.”
by YouTube poster, AwakeningMinds

• Senator Calls For Investigation into manipulation and politics of climate records
  

Fox News and Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe (video) http://www.youtube.com/user/JimInhofePressOffice Oklahoma ranking member of Environment Public Works are calling for an investigation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN.

Related article at Washington Post: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/24/hiding-evidence-of-global-cooling/

Sunday, November 22, 2009

By ANTOINETTE MARTIN

DOORMEN have always been rarer in New Jersey than in Manhattan, appearing only at the largest and fanciest condominiums along the Hudson River. Now, some can be found at smaller buildings too — but only in “virtual” guise.

     Hoboken recently got its first virtual doorman service, at the 16-unit Vesta, which opened on Observer Highway in September.

     “Personally, I think this is better, more convenient and safer than a real doorman,” said Philip Marrone, who moved into his two-bedroom unit at the Vesta last month, after renting for a couple of years at Maxwell Place, which has full-time in-the-flesh concierge service.

     Mr. Marrone said he pays far less in monthly maintenance fees to cover the cost of the virtual concierge. It accepts his girlfriend’s packages — “she’s a big online shopper,” he says — along with dry-cleaning deliveries and grocery orders from freshdirect.com. And it never leaves the security door uncovered for even a momentary break.

     The Video Doorman system at Vesta costs only about $1 a day per unit to operate, according to Larry Dolin, the president of American Security Systems, which produced the system and installed it.

     At the 22-unit m650 Flats in Jersey City, another “boutique condo” building that opened this year, Anthony G. Carrino — whose company was the builder and who is a resident himself — said its system, called Virtual Doorman, costs $1,400 a month for the building, which works out to about $2 a day per unit.

     Colin Foster, a vice president for sales at Virtual Doorman, based in Manhattan, agreed with his competitor, Mr. Dolin, that hiring doormen for three shifts per day would cost around $150,000 a year. Mr. Dolin is promoting his company’s system as costing only a tenth as much.

     The system at m650 has a “key safe” — by which residents can be buzzed in if they misplace their keys — and the one at the Vesta has cold storage (a big refrigerator) in the package room. But aside from those differences and a few others, both essentially operate like this:

     Video cameras, constantly monitored by live operators at a remote location, are mounted outside the building, in the lobby, in the package room and in the passageways leading to it.

     A resident uses a specialized key fob to enter the building and can choose whether to interact with the video doorman by speaker, via a panel on the wall.

     Mr. Marrone said he had never spoken to his doorman and did not intend to. “I’m not interested in saying hello every day to someone I don’t know,” he said.

     Those more inclined to talk say that the doorman may be a woman, and that in Vesta’s case she is based in Staten Island.

     When a delivery person arrives, he or she pushes a button on a panel mounted on the building exterior to speak with the cyberdoorman, who buzzes the person in and gives directions to the locked package room. By means of the camera, the doorman watches the person throughout the process of reaching the package room, being buzzed into it, making the delivery and exiting the building.

     If the delivery person were to take something or make a suspicious move, the operator would summon the police. They would have a DVD record to consult.

     “This provides higher security than a doorman would in many cases,” said Marsha LaTessa, a partner in the Vesta Group, the developer of the building. Certainly, the physical presence of a doorman can be formidable as a crime deterrent, Ms. LaTessa conceded. Also, a doorman who opens the door and helps carry in packages is an obvious asset.

     But most newer buildings along the riverfront have “concierges,” individuals standing behind desks who coordinate social activities without providing traditional door service.

     Mr. Marrone, who once worked as a concierge in Boston, said he had often seen situations at buildings where the doorman “ducks out to the bathroom for a few minutes, and anybody really could just slip by, because the door is open.”

     The front door is always locked at virtual-doorman buildings, which first showed up in Manhattan around 2000 and have proliferated in the weak economy.

     Mr. Carrino, the m650 Flats builder, said he first saw the system demonstrated at a building trades show in Manhattan about four years ago, and decided it could help make m650 stand out from the crowd of condos with gyms, lounges and other amenities then going up in Jersey City.

     Mr. Foster said his company had just installed Video Doorman in Edgewater, at the new Aventine Above the Hudson, a 34-unit glass-walled structure with three-bedroom penthouses for $1.495 million.

     Despite Mr. Marrone’s decision never to address any of his remote doormen, “I would go so far as to say I love my Virtual Doorman, even though that is a rather strange way to put it under the circumstances, I guess.”

What’s the most wrongheaded conclusion anyone ever came to concerning computers? I covered three of the most legendary ones–”There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home,” “640K should be enough for anybody,” and “I think there is a worldwide market for maybe five computers” in The 25 Most Notable Quotes in Tech History. But there’s no evidence that IBM’s Thomas J. Watson said the first one, Bill Gates staunchly denies saying the second one, and DEC’s Ken Olsen and his defenders contend that the last one is him being taken out of context.

But here are a couple of seriously silly statements that can’t be disowned–because they appeared in columns in the New York Times in the mid-1980s. Both are by the same guy, Erik Sandberg-Diment (who certainly wasn’t always obtuse–he was visionary enough to found ROM, one of the best early magazines about personal computers). Between them, they add up to one of the least accurate takes on the future of computing that I’ve ever read.

Sandberg-Diment’s first memorably inaccurate piece is from Christmas Day, 1984.  It concerned the PC trend of windowing environments–front ends for DOS that let you run multiple apps in windows. He thought they were a fad that had already come and gone–and even spoke of them in the past tense.

Continuing to write about windowing environments as if they had already failed, he declared that they’d make sense only if computers gained displays as big as real desktops. (A quarter century later, a 30-inch screen still counts as humongous–but isn’t anywhere as spacious as a typical office desk.)

Now, it’s true that in late 1984, the best-known windowing environment that had actually shipped was VisiCorp’s Visi On, which was pretty much dead on arrival. Windows, which wouldn’t show up for another eleven months, was famous mostly as an example of vaporware. So Sandberg-Diment was only criticizing windowing as it existed as of the time he wrote his piece, right?

Well, no, he made sure to end his piece by issuing a pre-emptive declaration of “doom” for Microsoft’s Windows.

A little less than a year later, Sandberg-Diment decided that another computing trend had fizzled. This time it was the laptop computer. He noticed that nobody seemed to be carrying the once-hot portable machines anymore, and once again made plentiful use of the past tense in discussing them.

He argued that people didn’t really want to take computers with them everywhere–why would they, when it might cut into valuable newspaper-reading time?

Then he suddenly shifts course and makes a bold prediction: As laptops get cheaper and better, they’d become powerful tools for traveling salespeople and other mobile workers. Popular ones, even!

But just in case anyone thought Sandberg-Diment was a laptop enthusiast, he stated as fact that they’d remain specialty items. No matter how cheap and good they became. After all, who’d want to take one along on–drum roll!–a fishing trip?

After reading this, I did what I usually do when I need a quick reality check of typical computing habits: I turned to Twitter.

A bunch of folks reported back that they had, as I knew they would–these days, there’s no place that people don’t take computers.

Between the two Times pieces, Sandberg-Diment announced that both Windows and laptops were dead. For the record, as of late 2009, the vast majority of computers sold on the planet are…Windows laptops. (As far as I’ve been able to determine, he never wrote a column mocking the notion of online communications.)

The thing is, his conclusions weren’t completely irrational given the information he had at the time: Windowing environments available in 1984 did stink, and laptops were too pricey, bulky, and limited to serve as newspaper substitutes. It’s just that he didn’t have the imagination to see that the issues he saw would get addressed, and that people’s attitudes towards the technologies would shift. He also made the mistake of blithely issuing permanent, blanket rejections of Windows and laptops based on what he could see in 1984 and 1985, rather than being humble enough to acknowledge that computing was likely to evolve in ways he couldn’t possibly imagine.

Why am I bringing all this up now? In part because there’s nothing more entertaining than looking back at hilariously off-base pronouncements about technology. But there’s a lesson in here, too: It’s always a mistake to think you know where the hell technology is going to take us.

At the moment, for instance, some very smart people are utterly positive that Google’s Chrome OS will flop big time. But maybe anyone who’s about to write such a story should be forced to read pieces like Sandberg-Diment’s as a case study in the danger of certitude.

EPPS media workshop on NY Media at ICG Local 600 sponsored event

Twitter, Facebook and social networks have become mainstream for entertainment writers and editors, Entertainment Publicists Professional Society (EPPS) members learned recently(11-19-09) at a media workshop sponsored by the International Cinematographers (ICG) Union Local 600 in Hollywood.

West Coast Editor Michael Fleeman, People.com said, “Whether we like it or not, reporters are being dragged into new media, some kicking and screaming about it. You have to know how to do it, and you have to file under deadline.”

New York Times Reporter Edward Wyatt, Los Angeles said reporters are being asked to post their stories Online and twitter about it. “Sometimes I record audio interviews or TV interviews and post them on the site,” he said. Wyatt cautions PR Pros to not miss the forest for the trees.  “If you have a webisode that is attracting 50,000 eyes, and you want to tell me about it great, but it the television show associated with it attracts 16 million people a week, that’s the meat of the story.”

Edward Wyatt NY Times

Wyatt covers the television business in LA. He joined the Times in New York in 1995 as a finance and investing reports and has covered education, the redesign of the World Trade Center site, the 2004 Democratic primaries, publishing business, as well as professional cycling and the Tour de France. He moved to LA in 2006 to cover Television.

New York Times Reporter Wyatt also said he’s looking for national stories, because the Times just doesn’t report on Manhattan stories. “When I came to LA I found we had not done a story on Two-and-a-Half Men, which is the biggest comedy on television and watched all over the country,” he said. “A lot of people in Manhattan don’t watch it, but people in Iowa, Kansas and elsewhere do. So if you bring stories with a national pace, we’re interested.”

.

Los Angeles Reporter Andrew Hampp for Advertising Age echoed other complaints of panelists on publicists’ followup calls on a pitch.

Andrew Hampp, Ad Age Michael Fleeman People Mag.

“Please don’t pitch me after you received a big NO from another editor above me,” he said. “We are still a work in progress, and started our website three years ago. We have separate website andmagazine editors and then we share editing staff. It’s about 99 percent original content on the website. There’s not much overlap between the magazine and website. The site is shorter, faster and more newsie, breasier and a younger user,” he said. Hampp said the print version deadline for  Ad Age magazine is Thursday or early Friday, and the AdAge.com has a daily and weekly newsletter so there is much to choose from through the week. He says deadlines are many at AdAge.com

Hampp’s pet peeves of PR Pros is that second followup phone call he receives after the press release has been received. “

Staff Editor Natalie Abrams, TVGuide.com said, “I think my biggest pet peeve is just the coordination on events,” said TVGuide.com’s Natalie Abrams. “ I’ll get three separate emails a network publicist, a studio publicist, a show publicist or a personal publicist for the actor, and it is all on the same thing, making it hard to decide who to respond to, so coordination on that end would be good,” she said.

TVGuide.com’s Abrams also  said they don’t have full time twitter people, but each writer or editor use new media to drive more traffic to TVGuide.com’s websites.

Abrams also agreed with Wyatt about lying, “if you don’t want it out there that your client is going to be killed off of a show, or that your show has been cancelled, we can embargoed it, just be honest with us.”

Natalie Abrams TV Guide

Natalie Abrams, staff editor, TV Guide.com is the west coast Staff editor at TVGuide.com, a one-stop entertainment and video content destination serving more than 20 million unique users per month. From television spoilers to insider scoops, Abrams breaks the latest in entertainment news. Since joining in September, 2009, she landed exclusive interviews with some of the hottest celebs including the cast of Glee, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, 24 and 90210 among others.

Los Angeles Reporter Andrew Hampp for Advertising Age echoed other complaints of panelists on publicists’ followup calls on a pitch. “Please don’t pitch me after you received a big NO from another editor above me,” he said. “We are still a work in progress, and started our website three years ago. We have separate website andmagazine editors and then we share editing staff. It’s about 99 percent original content on the website. There’s not much overlap between the magazine and website. The site is shorter, faster and more newsie, breazier and a younger user,” he said. Hampp said the print version deadline for  Ad Age magazine is Thursday or early Friday, and the AdAge.com has a daily and weekly newsletter so there is much to choose from through the week. He says deadlines are many at AdAge.com.

New York Times Wyatt told EPPS workshop that  his two pet peeves from entertainment publicist who pitch him include: “getting asked ‘who have you been talking to, which is none of your business when I am trying to just do a story”  and when publicist lies to their client, “because what will happen is one day I’ll meet your client at a cocktail party and they will say ‘why didn’t you talk to us to promote this new show of mine?’ This actually happened. I said, “Because I asked your publicist, and he said, “you couldn’t talk for X and Y reasons, and I was there on the set, and you walk right past me three or four times. Just don’t do that (lie).”

All panelist prefer email pitches, and most prefer early mornings, except for Edward Wyatt of the NY Times, because he deals with editors, who are three hours of ahead in the morning.

Wyatt@nytimes.com – 323-617-9034

Natalie. Abrams@tvguide.com – 323-856-4093

Michael_fleeman@peoplemag.com 310-268-7200

Ahampp@adage.com –  no phone number provided

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Being a tour guide at Trinity Church has its many perks. However, becoming one is a grueling and arduous, but intellectually rewarding journey.  Trinity’s docent undergo a 10 week training course during which one is expected to master the art and architectural history of one of America’s most beloved buildings. Surrounded by H.H. Richardson’s massive Romanesque interior, John Lafarge’s awe inspiring murals, and some of the country’s finest stained glass windows, one of my life long dreams came true on Wednesday November 18, 2009.

Pulitzer Prize winning critic Paul Goldberger, former architectural critic for The New York Times and author of several books including On the Rise: Architecture and Design in a Post-Modern Age and the latest Why Architecture Matters elated (at least I was ecstatic) an audience over 100 people with a lecture titled Architecture, Spirituality and the Challenge of Modernism. Goldberger spoke of the sacred and how it relates to modern architecture and relied on Trinity Church several times  as an example of a building that is “fresh and vibrant [which] transcends our normal sense of time.”

According to Goldberger, architecture must express what is not material, that is, the idea of God. This must be achieved by using the physical to express the transcending. At Trinity Church, Richardson was able to create a work of art by inventing new ways for buildings to inspire and move us. It is a space where time loses its fleeting momentum and grounds each and every one of us who experience its seductive and sumptuous interior.  What architecture has done is to establish a connection between everyday life and the sacred.  Who are we to say that Saarinen’s 1954 Kresge Chapel at MIT, or Safdie’s Class of 1959 Chapel at Harvard Business School or Le Corbusier’s Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp are not sacred places? In the end, what makes a space sacred depends on who is feeling the experience. The same way we all experience a building, we can also be moved by it in different ways.

As to the challenges of modernism? Aesthetics have become indistinguishable from the sacred and as an example; Goldberger spoke of Kahn’s Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas as a model of how art institutions have become the emblems of cultural aspirations. These institutions have chosen to attract the beautiful rather than the divine (to illustrate this point, Goldberger questioned whether the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is considered a sacred place, to Mrs. Gardner it may have been, to others, it may just be another museum).

As a student and a professional, I have been delighted to meet and take classes with well respected scholars in the field of art and architectural history. Having attended this inspiring lecture by Paul Goldberger was not only a dream come true, but it gave me a reason to continue writing, learning and being a critic. Thank you Paul!