Finally a funny President
Intentionally funny, I mean:
–The President’s great unreleased lines: “I’m a casual admirer of Abraham Lincoln. … [He should have seen] my inaugural: He never drew crowds like that. … [To Senator Lieberman] No hard feelings because of the election. My door is always open. Feel free to drop by ANY SATURDAY AFTERNOON. … [To Gov. Palin] I never expected you to be PALLING AROUND with THIS crowd. I want to congratulate you on your Golden Globe for ‘30 Rock.’ …. [To Vernon Jordan] Just because a guy can give great speeches doesn’t mean he’s going to be a great president. … I see Chief Justice Roberts is here to administer my daily oath of office. … [On the similarity between Cheney and Biden] Dick Cheney is a man of few words. Joe Biden is also vice president. … [On the delay in getting a dog] The labradoodle we picked has some problems with back taxes. … [On ‘a better way for our time’ than blaming each other and passing the buck] I ask you to summon that spirit once more, and make future generations proud of what we did WHEN WE WERE TESTED BY HISTORY.” …
Mike Allen @ Politico via War and Piece
the future of newspapers
Steve Coll, who wrote one of the more depressing books I’ve run across in recent years, Ghost Wars, lets fly with his theory on the future of print journalism in this piece from the New Yorker. I’ll spoil it for you: Non-Profit.
In the foreseeable future, it seems, there will be two kinds of nonprofit newspapers—those which are deliberately so and those which are reluctantly so. Ever since I left the Washington Post, in 2005—after twenty years there that included a stint in management—and particularly since I joined the nonprofit world at the New America Foundation and started learning about the management and fund-raising issues at tax-exempt organizations, I have been mulling over this idea: that only by turning the Post into a nonprofit trust and raising a university-size endowment to support the newsroom could the paper retain the vitality it requires to serve as a successful watchdog over our constitutional system.
via War and Piece
john hodgman answers the questions of New Yorkers
This is funny. An excerpt:
I was checking the weather forecast and noticed a three degree difference in the forecast between Manhattan and Brooklyn for Friday (16 degrees for Brooklyn, 13 degrees for Manhattan). Why is this and why would it be warmer in Brooklyn, isn’t it closer to the ocean? Also, on other days there is no difference or a smaller difference. Any ideas?
— Posted by Mulligan
Actually, Brooklyn’s proximity to the ocean would make it warmer, not colder, for two reasons: a) water changes temperature slowly, thus making coastal cities less susceptible to rapid drops in temperature than mountain cities; and b) sea serpent flatulence.
epic ineptitude
via curbed
It’s 5am
I have two cats laying on my legs, I can’t sleep, I’ve played all of the iPhone games I care to play, and I’m getting bored.
So I’m seeing if the wordpress iPhone app works like it should.
And so this post isn’t a total waste, I’m going to attach some photos from my trip to Darkroom last weekend. Hopefully.
all done
we’ve moved everything over to wordpress, and (for me, at least) the address nurblog.nurble.com resolves to the new fancified wordpress site. I have no idea what will become of the links from the old podcasts, but I can only assume that they will be, to use a technical term, fucked.
Your patience is appreciated.
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: nurblenews, random internet awesomeness
amusing
I just read 18 pages of Nick Douglas‘ tumblr blog. Do I call it a “tumblr blog” or just a “tumblr”. Maybe it’s in the tumblr FAQ, or they’ll tell me once I start my own tumblr (blog).
Anyway. it’s funny, and you should add it to your bookmarks, or favorite it, or follow him, or whatever. Maybe twitter it, or twitter about how I blogged about it.
Okay, that last bit was too much, I think we can all agree on that.
In: amusing, random internet awesomeness
You want our money? Well then fuck you
That’s essentially what Bob Reich seems to be saying here. Reich proposes that financial institutions who avail themselves of TARP II funds should be required to sign on to a litany of conditions that (in my limited but ever-increasing experience with banker types) will horrify and outrage their executives.
3. Prohibit any bank that gets TARP II funds from issuing dividends, purchasing other companies, or paying off creditors.
4. Bar any bank that gets TARP II funds from paying its executives, traders, or directors more than 10 percent of what they received in 2007.
5. Require that any bank getting TARP II funds be reimbursed by its executives, traders, and directors 50 percent of whatever amounts they were compensated in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. This compensation was, after all, based on false premises and fraudulant assertions, and on balance sheets that hid the true extent of these banks’ risks and liabilities.
Personally, I like it. But everything I think I know about the financial crisis came from either This American Life’s credit meltdown series or the bartender at Macao Trading Company in Tribeca. I genuinely thought that having the government purchase stock in banks was the way to go, but Reich disagrees, which I find intriguing. Neither does he think we should be buying toxic assets off of the banks. If I’m reading this right, he thinks we should give money to banks, and banks should sell that money to customers, reopening the credit sluice and bringing profits back, albeit slowly, to the banks themselves.
I know that an open dialogue with my readers isn’t really what goes on here at the nurblog, but if anybody has any insight that doesn’t come from NPR or drunken wall streeters, I’d really appreciate it. Plus we can see if the comment section still works.
on foodies
From Eater:
“For me, the word is a warning that says, ‘Hey, I’m not any fun to have a meal with.’ I’m all for people enjoying the hell out of food, but not if it means they have to give themselves a title to lord over ‘non-foodies.’..I like the olden days when people who enjoyed food the most were simply called overweight.” [Fat City via EMD]
In: random internet awesomeness, Uncategorized
nurblecast episode 15
Three months? Pshaw. This one’s dedicated to my 7 Twitter followers. I love you all.
Disko Partizani – Shantel
After buying a series of increasingly downtempo releases from this guy, I was very surprised to see Shantel’s name pop up in the Shazam UI in a bar one night. This is festive music, and it makes me want to carry somebody around on a chair or coax a cobra out of a basket, but it’s very good and it makes me very happy. From the album of the same name.
Hairy Bumpercress – Mr. Scruff
The bulk of this episode was composed around the time when I saw Mr. Scruff and Turntables on the Hudson play at Club Love in New York. I would have stolen a lot more of their setlists via the aforementioned Shazam, but I was too busy jumping around like an epileptic with a rock in his shoe. This is from a mix CD released recently called Ninja Tuna. Dig that stand-up bass sample!
Bakara – Hans Zimmer
A bridge tune, but one that tends to hang around in my “20 most played iTunes tracks” list more than I’d expect it to, given the fact that it’s from a war movie. That movie is Black Hawk Down, by the way.
Mass Appeal – Gang Starr
It’s unlikely that I could tell you anything about this track that you’d find useful, apart from the fact that you can locate it on Mass Appeal: The Best of Gang Starr. Oh what I would have given to be present at the meeting where Gang Starr decided to release a Best Of compilation.
Swing Me Like A Hip Hop Song – Deadbeats
From an album I found thanks to Apple’s diabolical Genius feature, wherein they tell you five dozen other songs you might like based on one track in your playlist. I’m equally surprised at the volume of material suggested and the accuracy of the suggestions. At any rate, the album is Nightmares On Wax Presents Wax On Records.
Music Takes Me Up – Mr. Scruff feat. Alice Russell
Also from Ninja Tuna.
Coste – Peter Kruder
I should really see if he’s going to be DJing New York anytime soon [note: no]. Dude rocks. This is from a single, and a pre-release one at that. I hope there’s more Kruder goodness in the pipeline if only so I can make more dumb jokes based on my idiotic and worn-out Band Math premise. I like this track because it starts off as though it’s going to be a stripped-down version of Personal Jesus, then gets kinda jazzy, then kinda samba-y, all without grinding any gears. Very smooth, Peter.
Love Tempo – Quando Quango
I don’t know if I’ve made it clear what Shazam does, exactly, or if you care at all, but basically it tells you what song is playing by listening through your iPhone, phoning home, and then cross-referencing the results with iTunes. It’s fucking awesome. Anyway. I found this song while sitting at a bar near my house on the day after Thanksgiving. Just held the phone up over my head and waited for it to tell me. Turns out its an old tune from an album called Pigs and Battleships. Never would have been able to get that information otherwise. We truly live in the future. This is a bit long, but stick with it, it’s worth it. Go make a cup of coffee or something.
Step Off – Boca 45
I feel no need to justify my love of Boca 45. Every song is pure funk joy. This is from Vertigo Sounds.
Lava Lava – Boys Noize
Boys Noize is a little more complicated. I swear my girlfriend’s nose wrinkles up every time I put any of their music on. This song sounds like Autechre is being raped by Felix da Housecat. Who cares, they’re weird enough to stand out from a crowd of very boring and very homogenous dance music producers. I first heard of them when they did the Car Alarm remix of Feist’s My Moon My Man (it’s not actually called that, of course), and I’ve been consistently impressed with their musical bravery. This is from their full length album Oi Oi Oi.
World of a Thousand Suns – Chunking
It’s been a while since I played anything associated with Tim Love Lee. I love his mix cds. Love them. His solo albums are a bit weird to put on with any regularity, but (for example) this compilation of music from Lee’s Tummy Touch label, called Sounds Good in the Nude and mixed by him and Tom Findlay from Groove Armada, is filled with equal parts funk, quirk, and solid grooves. Can’t miss party tunes if you ask me, and if you’re reading this still, you basically have asked me. This album isn’t on iTunes anymore, but that link there is to an Amazon digital download which, while more expensive, is completely unprotected by DRM.
Temptation – New Order
Heard this in a club this very week and bought it just today. It really does take me months to put these things together, you know. Yes, they sit idle for long periods of time, but they’re a lot like musical kimchi. At a certain point you just have to bury it in the yard and wait, you know? You’ve heard of New Order already, so I’ll just say that I got this off of the Singles collection on iTunes, which is not exactly priced to move…
thanks as always. See you in March!
Download the podcast here. Subscribe to the podcast here.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In: nurblecast feed · Tagged with: nurblecast