Wait. There's gonna be a show about Mike Tyson raising pigeons and racing them?

Now, in the new Animal Planet series TAKING ON TYSON, debuting March 6, at 10 PM e/p, Mike goes beyond just raising his feathered friends -- he races them for the very first time. With unprecedented access to the neighborhood haunts he grew up in, and in the company of the lifelong friends who surround him, Mike takes audiences on an insider's tour of the highly competitive, bizarrely fascinating subculture of pigeon racing. The stakes are high in this sport, which has just as much machismo as boxing. But this time it's not about money; it's about bragging rights.

We live in a strange world.

Sigh:

The events were not advertised by the White House and were closed to the news media. But a White House official said the two men's message was the same: Win the future.

"Win the future" is easily a top seed for the Tournament of Dumbest Slogans Ever. And, while it's undoubtedly the case that the Executive Branch has better things to do than sloganeering, I suspect they're unlikely to disengage from doing so any time soon. Given that reality, I was thinking: the talents of the Mineshaft seem uniquely suited to coining a better slogan, albeit one that will likely not be utilized.

I hope you won't disappoint.

You are surely all aware of effort to, first, hold recall elections for eight republican state senators in WI, and, second, defeat them in such elections. (Here is a post by unfogged fave saiselgy on the topic.) Here is a page using which one can donate $$ in support of this effort.

I'm sitting at a café where two dudes in suits are sitting together at a table thumbing their individual iPads, which are propped up on little leather cases/stands.

I really do harbor a disproportionate amount of disdain for the iPad. I should probably get over it. Especially since I'm typing this on a MacBook that's currently plugged into my iPhone-wannabe smartphone and my iPod Touch.

Surely, it must be possible not to look like a total juicenozzle on an iPad. I've just not yet witnessed it.

In the mid2000s, I knew many women (but only women) becoming real estate agents. A common pattern was that she was an engineer, married to another engineer, and they were doing great financially, and so she quit to do something she enjoyed more. A second pattern was the stay-at-home-mom who wanted a flexible way to earn money. Obviously all this went kaput.

It seems the void is being filled by freelance photography. It's an accessible career with flexible hours (although it seems it can take huge amounts of time). Off the top of my head, I know half a dozen women (yep, all women) who are trying to start up a photography business.

I guess if I were to make a substantial point (and who wants that?) it's that there's a gigantic hunger for parttime work with flexible hours, and that if employers would take advantage of that, they'd have legions of smart, hardworking people available.

Obviously, tradition and the problem of benefits prevent tapping this market. But these women are already trying to make a go of it without benefits (or on their spouse's benefits), so who knows.

I know what you're thinking: "Sure, Twice Around the Earth was nice and all, but 18 minutes of ambient sounds recorded in a cafeteria in an airport in Luxembourg just doesn't do it for me. I want a really immersive experience." Friend, I have good news for you. All day long on March 4th (35 minutes from TW), sfSoundRadio will be broadcasting the sounds of whatever's going on outside "the windows of a converted box factory in Oakland, California USA".

Apparently, Robert Gates ruffled quite a few feathers with this speech at West Point, including this bit:

The strategic rationale for swift-moving expeditionary forces, be they Army or Marines, airborne infantry or special operations, is self-evident given the likelihood of counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, or stability or security force assistance missions. But in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should "have his head examined," as General MacArthur so delicately put it.

I agree with a Bush appointee! And I really don't believe that the spooky terrorists are going to feel all extra emboldened by Mr. Gates' remarks. Maybe there is some other criticism I'm missing.

Compare and contrast.

"BYU center Brandon Davies was suspended from the Cougars' nationally ranked team for the remainder of the season because he violated the school's honor code provision that prohibits premarital sex, The Salt Lake Tribune has learned. [...] BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said Davies' suspension from the team was for the remainder of the season and that his future at the school has yet to be determined."

"Northwestern students and administrators are defending an explicit after-class demonstration involving a woman being publicly penetrated by a sex toy on stage in the popular Human Sexuality course last week. The optional presentation last Monday, attended by about 120 students, featured a naked non-student woman being repeatedly sexually stimulated to the point of orgasm by the sex toy, referred to as a 'fucksaw'. The device is essentially a motorized phallus."

From Nick S:

Wikipedia points me to this online gallery which is doesn't completely match my memory (the book of his that I've seen, "Diary of a Century" has remarkable photos of early race cars and airplanes, and of his childhood, which aren't well represented) but includes a number of lovely pictures.

You can see his affection for capturing movement

or the famous picture of his sister

And his amazing joi de vive

Here is a nice car picture that captures something of the spirit that I imagine of his childhood

or this
(I think that's his brother in the photograph)
or this

Anyway, I'm sure ttaM could speak better than I about the technical virtues but I love the energy and, for lack of a better word, joy, in his pictures.

Nick

+e
+r

"Running Head".

That is all.

Interesting article about the racial associations of certain typefaces: the Question can be put simply: How did these two typefaces come to signify Africans and African-Americans, regardless of how a designer uses them, and regardless of the purpose for which their creators originally intended them?.

X. Trapnel suggested a post about the ruling that "insurers cannot charge different premiums to men and women because of their gender". As I am pretty much totally uninformed about this stuff, I will simply link to three successive tweets from dsquared on the topic.

I just took part in a survey which was trying to determine if, were they to begin offering recycling bins at Heebie U, would people on campus actually use these bins? I really feel sometimes like I go to work 30 years ago.

A week or two ago, the New York State court administration issued a proposed new ethical rule for judges (who are elected in NY) requiring them to recuse themselves from cases where a party or an attorney had donated more than $2500 to the judge's campaigns over the past two years. This generally seems like a good rule: judges shouldn't be elected at all, and they certainly shouldn't be deciding cases for large donors to their campaigns.

But it did leave me thinking. There aren't many of them, but I've been in front of a couple of judges where it'd be worth $2500 to me never to have to deal with that judge again. I wonder if we're going to see lawyers making defensive donations.

Mountainscapes of data. The colors are especially pretty. Also I have a weakness for landscapes.

Sir Kraab will be in town. "The current proposal is Wednesday at Fresh Salt, 6:30ish. Tuesday's also a possibility."

Between travelling and getting sick, I haven't been on Unfogged since Wednesday. I think that might be my longest break in five years. I missed you all! Anything good happen?

Also, being feverish + super soft mattress meant to simulate luxury = the most restless, unpleasant sleep I can remember having. Eventually I moved to the floor, where I slept much more soundly.

...by popular demand: an Oscars thread. I just want to know if Banksy's gonna show up.

The other day—in fact the day of the meetup with Di—I was sitting at a bar reading abstruse philosophical works and occasionally allowing my attention to be diverted by the conveniently closed-captioned broadcast of Top Chef. The chefs were to make fondue, or something fondue-like, or something like that. The remit definitely included fondue. Everyone made something that, to varying degrees, failed to be fondue, mostly because they felt inclined to put their own touch on it, or do it their way, or some other such arrant bullshit. (One person made pho ``fondue'', which was far closer to being hotpot than fondue; it shared with fondue the act of putting something solid in something liquid.) People: there is nothing wrong with fondue. It does not need your help.

I was prepared to let all this pass without comment, because I have a generous soul and all that shit. But today I read this fascinating and horrifying sentence in the NYT magazine: "The onion soup was reimagined as a rice pudding scented with mastic". Yes. That sounds like quite an act of imagination. Here are the recipes. Note that the new-school dish, combining citron, vanilla, and cinnamon with sun-dried tomatoes and ricotta, sounds kind of gross.

Let my close by recommending that you listen to Danishmendt's "Une Houle d'un Siècle".

Today, I showed up to a group brunch thing, newspaper in hand (in case I was first to arrive and needed something to read to pass the time). As it turned out, I was not the first to arrive, and when I got to the table, one of of my brunchmates asked nervously, "You didn't take that newspaper into the bathroom or anything, did you?"

Now, I had not and replied as much, but what an odd personal preference: aversion to all reading materials that have been in the bathroom?

People are so strange.