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Just when I was getting a little worried...

PBS has remade Beavis & Butthead with female leads, and the debut episode was great. But why did they air it right in the middle of the RNC? What a weird programming decision.

The New York Times, George Bush, and the Electoral College

Yesterday The New York Times published a compelling editorial entitled Abolish the Electoral College. Here's my favorite paragraph:

The majority does not rule and every vote is not equal - those are reasons enough for scrapping the system. But there are other consequences as well. This election has been making clear how the Electoral College distorts presidential campaigns. A few swing states take on oversized importance, leading the candidates to focus their attention, money and promises on a small slice of the electorate. We are hearing far more this year about the issue of storing hazardous waste at Yucca Mountain, an important one for Nevada's 2.2 million residents, than about securing ports against terrorism, a vital concern for 19.2 million New Yorkers. The political concerns of Cuban-Americans, who are concentrated in the swing state of Florida, are of enormous interest to the candidates. The interests of people from Puerto Rico scarcely come up at all, since they are mainly settled in areas already conceded as Kerry territory. The emphasis on swing states removes the incentive for a large part of the population to follow the campaign, or even to vote.

People are always tough on Bush for screwing New York, and rightfully so. But it should be noted that he's screwing us not because he hates us, but because it's clearly in his interest to do so.

Related: Northeast Loses in Reshuffling of Housing Aid, Unclaimed 9/11 Funds are about to expire, and another NYT editorial about Bush and the City.

Rosario Dawson Arrested, New York Daily News article

Actress Rosario Dawson was arrested yesterday when filmmakers used the anti-Bush demonstration to inject a little too much realism into her upcoming flick.

The New York-born actress was filming a scene for "This Revolution" at Eighth Ave. and 35th St., against the backdrop of the massive protest.

Dawson was wearing a black bandanna over her face when NYPD cops arrested her.

Dawson, 25, and co-star Vija Brigita Grosgalvis were bundled into a police wagon as director Stephen Marshall tried in vain to show cops city film permits. Police cited city laws barring protesters from hiding their identities with masks.

When Marshall protested the arrests, cops handcuffed him, too. "Take my camera," he shouted at his film crew before disappearing into the police van.

I love this story. I wonder if this arrest wasn't part of the movie all along. And if the cops end up in the final cut, how much money will they make? And does the city get a cut? Does UFPJ?

(via the Daily News).

RNC roundup

"You're soaking in it." (?)

• RNC Text Alerts - these text alerts are great - up to the minute protest alerts as they happen from people on the front line.
• RNC photoset on FlickR - Some moblogs I took with Finn during last night's critical mass (over 3000 cyclists, 24 arrests). Finn's pictures are over at WeSeeRNC.
• Radical Reference Librarians - On call for fact checking and research.
• Village Voice Weather Report - Resisting the RNC. Nice moblog.
• Yahoo Photos: Critical Mass (via Finn).
• Pro-Choice protesters march across the Brooklyn Bridge.

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.

...

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.

...

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!")

Gymnastics

Adriana has been googling for an hour straight, mumbling about the long gone Glory Days of gymnastics. I request a post, to which she replies "I can't put it into words."

The Google IPO

Links related to the Google IPO (in which I close all my tabs):

• Google: GOOG
• LA Times: Wall Street May Have Taken Google to School Dartmouth Professor Kent Womack: "I'm sure this is the wave of the future, it's just a question of how soon the future is."
• CBS Marketwatch: Lessons of Google`s Dutch auction Features University of Florida professor Jay Ritter, who was retained by Google to evaluate the IPO market. "Even though that market turned out to be more cool than hot, the company still fared, more or less, as well as it would have using Wall Street's traditional methods for going public. Ritter felt that it was a no-lose situation for Google, since the best-case scenario was much better than the alternative and the worst case was no worse."
• New York Times: After Months of Hoopla, Google Debut Fits the Norm "For a long time, Google was like this lovable cute little baby toddler," said Konstantin Guericke, the co-founder of LinkedIn, a business networking company and one of Silicon Valley's higher-profile start-ups. "Right now we're seeing them in the teenager phase. They're trying to grow up but they're flailing around." (hello.typepad would love to flail around to the tune of 27 billion dollars)
• Financial Times: Ignore Wall St's whining - Google's IPO worked Google went public without underwriting from a major investment bank, without handing out favours to well-connected executives and without dictating a price in the manner of Soviet central planners. Because it did, it now has hundreds of millions of dollars that it would not otherwise have had.
• News.com: Judging the Google IPO It is not well known by the public, but Google uses a sophisticated auction technique to price the ads that generate 95 percent of its revenue. The success and seamlessness of this auction approach probably had something to do with the company's decision to eschew the traditional investment-banker-led IPO.
• Marginal Revolution: A Dutch Auction Primer There has been a lot of negative publicity about the Google IPO but my guess is that this was stirred up by the investment banks who are fearful that their halcyon days are ending.
• Kottke.org: Surowiecki on the Google IPO A classic case of middlemen who are no longer needed (or at least needed less) fighting to retain control over what they think of as their domain. What cheeses me off is all the "journalists" who uncritically covered the IPO and gave the investment banks and money managers a platform from which to attempt to manipulate the market like that.

I'm not entirely sure why this is such a bad deal for investment bankers. They don't get to pocket the pop, but let's say that in a typical IPO Google might have started trading at $40 instead of $85. Jay Ritter says that Google IPO underwriters got a 2.8% commision instead of the usual 4%. But isn't 2.8% of 80$ a share still more than 4% of $40 a share?

I bought 10 shares at $102. I hope that GOOG can outpace the my credit card interest rates for the year, because Providian Visa is underwriting my investment.

Surrender

I'm not sure when karaoke became a cornerstone of every twentysomething's wedding ceremony, but I think it's awesome.

Golden Girl Like Blanche

Which Golden Girl Are You?

Still on Vacation

I forgot how good tomatoes were on the West coast!