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The Catch

Paul Greenberg's The Catch is ostensibly the story of the Chilean Sea Bass, but the story of the Sea Bass is so epic that it's background characters include Augusto Pinochet, los artesanales - a generations-deep band of independent fisherman struggling to keep up with multinational conglomerates and fish-farms, modern day pirates, celebrity chefs, environmentalists, incompetent bureaucrats, and a giant squid.

With nowhere else to go but farther out to sea, los artesanales moved onto the abyssal waters of the continental slope. Bobbing around in small, brightly colored boats, they let their lines down farther and farther, all the way down into the Humboldt current, a frigid shunt of water that moves along the base of the Chilean continental slope at depths exceeding 5,000 feet. It was then that they began to haul out a strange fish they had never seen before.

About the size of a German shepherd, the animal had an air of the prehistoric to it. Thick scales covered its body. It had large eyes, mounted near the top of its head. Those, combined with a set of sharp teeth jutting from an underslung jaw, gave it a kind of cross-eyed, Alfred E. Neuman grin. When the fishermen gutted them, they found their innards were as cold as the polar seas. Toothfish, it seemed, were using the Humboldt current to make their way from Antarctica up the Chilean coast.

Who knew the Chilean Sea Bass was the size of a German Shepherd? Not I. I used to sit near Paul at Mediarights.org, so I know that he has spent months researching this story because he was constantly disappearing for weeks at a time to Chile, the Falkland Islands, and other wayward ports. And by the way, the world is running out of fish. (If you've read this far, now is the time to click over to The Catch)

Google Picks the Oscars

In preparation for our Oscar pool, I  punched all the Oscar nominations into Google, to see who the Internet picked as winners. I decided to go with straight search terms, which gave a huge advantage to movies like "Ray" and "Ryan" and punished some movies severely - "Sister Rose's Passion" only got 11 votes.

There are obviously many ways this could have been done better. "Movie Name" or "Actor's Name" AND movie would have made "Ray" much less formidable, for instance, but I think that Academy members subsconsciously vote for the words that there most familiar with. I could have used Google News to measure buzz, or I could conceivably have bought a directory of the Academy voters, found their average longitude and latitude, and used some Google Maps magic to measure their proximity to different search terms (like this.) I also spent about 4 minutes considering using Net::Google to try a few of these different options.

But plane jane search rules in the end, and the big winner was Ray with five awards including best picture and best director, followed byJohnny Depp for best actor, Morgan Freeman for best supporting actor, Kate Winslett for best Actress, and Natalie Portman for best supporting actress. Click on the ballot above to see all the results. 

Installing Math::Pari on OS X

Perhaps you were bored with my Apprentice notes?

Mark Pascal asked for platform specific advice to install Math::Pari. I got this to work in Panther, and previously posted my solution to the mt-dev mailing list. Mark wants us "trackback" to his post. Because Yahoo groups don't support trackback and six apart is too cool for comments (or to link to the mt-dev archives MARK), here it is...

Iraqi Government "bans" Al-Jazeerah

Al-Jazeerah does give a platform to Iraqi dissidents, but they also do ask tough questions of, e.g. Sadr's representatives. Anyway, there are no grounds under the interim constitution (which guarantees freedom of speech) for the government to close the offices of a news organization. It is not an auspicious start for the new Iraq, and these kinds of measures, once taken, become foundational.

Juan Cole notes that the new "democratic" Iraqi government is attempting to ban (jam?) Al-Jazeerah's satellite signals. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am.

Speaking of banned, both Sprint and T-mobile (see full entry) customers claim to have been shut out of the txtmob sms service during the RNC. Of course, I don't know if I missed any txtmob messages, but I felt like I was getting a lot of them. I never did hear from the Seahorse Liberation Army (I was anonymously asked to join) but maybe I was supposed to, and I didn't get the message. I'll keep you updated if I find anything out.

Txtmob.com is licensed under the Creative Commons GPL, but I can't find a link to download the code. Please comment if you find it, I'd love to see what makes it tick.

Magic Thumb

magic_thumb
Originally uploaded by S Dog.

The Seattle Public Library

As part of our recent (too short) west coast vacation, Adriana and I set out with my mom and my sister to the Seattle Public Library. I took pictures, of course. There have been lots of glowing reviews of the library (Paul Goldberger, Julie Leung, Herbert Muschamp) and the Seattle Times Library homepage is a great resource, but the Project for Public Space's critique hit a nerve with me.

PPS would like nothing more than to announce that this library is part of a new wave of iconic buildings that succeed as public spaces. But while some of the library's spaces are comfortable, active, and visually stunning, the building as a whole turns inward from the city around it, limiting its effect on downtown. Of course, there are contemporary buildings out there that contribute to lively streets and public spaces. These buildings may not have earth shattering ambitions, but they are indeed important additions to our cities and towns (see sidebar). You just wouldn't know it from reading most architecture reviews.

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Considered in a vacuum, these spaces do function quite well: They are often full of people reading, browsing the web, and mingling. But, situated above street-level without any relation to the sidewalk below, they relate to the city outside in a purely visual fashion. If the library were a true "community hub," its most active areas would connect directly to the street, spinning off activity in every direction.

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A more sober analysis would point out the obvious: The building's relationship with downtown is only skin-deep. When it comes to actual human activity--the kind that brings real benefits to a city by encouraging people to stay and explore downtown--the spaces around the library are dead zones.

When you're done with the full article, waste the rest of your Friday night at PPS's Great Public Spaces page.

(Hello.Typepad's 5 loyal readers wonder - "To what to do we owe the pleasure of 3 posts in one night?" and I answer: "We set aside an evening to watch the Olympics. Big mistake!")

Tour De Jeopardy

As much as unpredictably and tension fuel humanity's obsession with contests and sport, I believe we're also comforted by those whose performance we expect. Just as we all have food, clothing and music that elicit feelings of instant nostalgia, I'm reassured that the universe is in order when an athlete performs exactly as expected. The consistency of Lance Armstrong dominating Le Tour, Serena Williams (Anna who? Serena represents the pinnacle of human physical potential) winning a grand slam, Michael Jordan hitting the big shot in his heyday, even Takeru Kobayashi shaking down four and a half hot dogs a minute. Even losing is comforting - after a long solitary walk and falafel dinner last night I found myself in a Bay Ridge bar guzzling Bass and watching the Mets. They lost, of course. If they start winning I'm not sure what I'll do with myself.

Anyway, I'm thinking about all of this because I googled Ken Jennings and Jason "Mr. Google" Kottke's entry The cult of Ken Jennings was the first result. Jason, I salute your continued dominance over the world's greatest information resource. It's quite a streak. (Other Ken Jennings pages: wikipedia: Ken Jennings, TV Game Shows: Ken Jennings, JeopardyJennings: Ken Jennings).

Remember Manifesto?

On Monday O-dub posted a link to a Mos Def interview from 1998 on his blog Pop Life (not that Pop Life). A discussion about the role of white people in hip-hop ensued, and in his postscript O-dub says:

Now, if there's one thing I love, it's seeing white people bitch about black people bitching about white people

I love this too, and I'm white. Anyway, if it's not the most insightful discussion in the world, it's spirited. Hip-hop was a huge part of my life in 1998, and I identify with the sense of lost hope that O-dub is feeling. I must have played Manifesto 500 times; I literally burned through 4 copies of that vinyl. I definitely consider myself still a part of the culture, even though I'm mostly just a bedroom dj now.