One downside of publishing a daily links post is that I can’t always give credit where credit is due. However there are a few sites that consistently provide fodder for morning links, and I’d like to acknowledge them here.
The Morning News — The inspiration for this site’s morning links, and they do it twice a day! Certainly one of the most diverse and interesting sites I peruse in my RSS reader.
ColdMud — Absolutely the site to go to for daily food news.
Marginal Revolution — Tyler Cowen has lately taken to posting daily links, and given his wide-ranging cultural interests and economic insight it’s no surprise that he links to so much intriguing material.
The Agitator — Radley Balko needs no introduction on this blog and his site is consistently a great source for daily updates.
The Stogie Guys — I don’t smoke frequently enough to make good use of their cigar reviews, but their Friday Samplers of tobacco-related news always provide something interesting.
BlURL — Lately I get just as many, if not more, useful links from Twitter as I do from RSS feeds and traditional news sites. However I can’t always follow Twitter throughout the day. BlURL handily provides a list of only tweets that include links to other sites, making it an incredibly useful service when I’m looking to round out the morning links.
What am I missing? What are the sites I should absolutely be checking every morning?
Update: I should include Google Reader too. The “shared items” link is one of the first I click when starting up my computer.
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I’ve been remiss in not linking yet to a couple of new sites from my friends.
First is Stimulus Watch, designed by my Crispy on the Outside co-blogger Jerry Brito. It’s a wiki site that lets citizens track stimulus spending proposals, vote on their importance, and supplement the descriptions with local knowledge. It’s searchable by location so you can find the proposals in your area. Oregon has 159 “shovel-ready” projects in the website, ranging from the plausibly appropriate to a $1.5 million dollar request for resurfacing tennis courts in Eugene.
The second is one of my new favorite blogs, Fr33 Agents by my friends Jason Talley and Tom Pearson. They profile libertarian activists and cover the “this movement like the fan boys and girls that we are.” Their daily updates are a great source for keeping up with grassroots opposition to big government interference in our lives. Go check them out.
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Though I’m not a coder, I’m always interested in what the guys at the 37 Signals blog have to say. A couple of their recent posts deal with their philosophies of employment. Here, this quote stands out for me:
I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that not all of us excel at the same things, but I’m coming to believe more and more firmly that this whole “typical person” entity is a myth. I’ve never met a typical person. There are only people who are passionate about what they do, and people who aren’t. When the latter become the former, they become “atypical”, because suddenly they are self-motivated, insightful, excited, optimistic, and happy.
Another entry explains the workplace experiments they’ve been running, including four day workweeks, funding the development of employees’ outside passions, and discretionary spending accounts.
Oddly enough, the posts remind me of what I miss about working full-time in coffee. Though the pay and the prestige are both lower than I what I enjoy now, the flexible hours, unrationed vacation days, and enthusiasm from management for their workers’ outside interests allowed much more room for personal growth. The passion for coffee that excites many of us baristi makes us more interesting people as a result. PR? Not so much.
My tamper grows dusty on the shelf. It longs to feel those 30 lbs. of pressure.
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Debi points my attention to the SnūzNLūz, an April Fools’ Day alarm clock from ThinkGeek:
The SnūzNLūz uses the very complex psychological phenomemon known as ‘HATRED’. Basically it’s human nature to wish harm upon your enemies. Similarly, it’s human nature not to give your enemies gobs of cash so that they can grow big and dominate the world with their totally wrong, stupid and invalid point of view. ThinkGeek realized that. That’s why everytime you hit the snooze button, the SnūzNLūz will donate a specified amount of your real money to a non-profit you hate. The problem of sleeping in is solved.
Sound familiar? I like the new wrinkle about donating money to a hated enemy instead of to a beloved charity or wasting it in a paper shredder, but I think I had them beat on this one.
And yes, I’d definitely buy one if it were a real product.
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Should you go to culinary school? Should you pay for your kid to go? To get a taste of life in the restaurant industry, Dana at the Tasting Menu says:
Along with information about various schools and stuff like how to gain experience before getting there, I offer this piece of advice. Have them clean the kitchen at night for a month strait. No days off, no watching TV before, or taking a phone call. Have them clean the dishes, wash the counters, sweep the floor, take the towels to the laundry.
Make them this deal. If they can commit to one month of cleaning your kitchen, then you’ll consider helping to pay the steep tuition at one of the nations many expensive private culinary schools. Be it the fault of the Food Network, or the rise of celebrity chefs, teens are choosing culinary school more and more. Culinary school is an expensive choice, and to ensure your child is aware, put them to work cleaning.
Full post here.
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I try to be a person of good taste, but cars are my biggest failing. I actually like my Aztek… from the inside. The outside, I admit, is a monstrosity. Every once in a while if I catch it at just the right angle and squint my eyes a little bit, I think to myself, “That looks like one sleek, shiny, powerful rhinoceros.” Then my eyes refocus and I realize that, no, it really is just a monstrosity.
Oh, but what could have been! A recent Car Connection article names “ten concept cars Detroit should have built.” Amazingly, the Aztek is on the list. Not the Aztek that made production and became an instant punchline for the auto industry, but the much more stylish prototype:
That’s a respectable vehicle. Yet without the humor value offered by the production model, I don’t think I would have found it nearly as fun to drive.
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After a long absence, my friend Chad Wilcox is back with a new blog, a new URL, and a new job. Check out the new Quiet Declarations.
Also, because three blogs just isn’t enough, I’ve started guest blogging on a fourth. I’m now writing for aBetterEarth.org, the environmental policy website of the Institute for Humane Studies. If you’re tired of my food, coffee, and smoking ban posts, maybe this site will be a good change.
The RSS feed listed on the site is incorrect. This is the link that works.
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Your handy site of the day is BillMonk.com, an application for keeping track of shared bills or loans among friends. Add on as many debts as you want and when it’s time to settle up, BillMonk spits out the amounts everyone owes each other. The interface is admirably simple and the service integrates with Facebook and text messaging.
I got my roommates to sign up last night and am already glad I did. Travel partners, friends eating out , and stingy daters will also find it useful.
[Via BoingBoing. Earlier post on credit card roulette here.]
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With the plug-in not working, we’ll have to do this manually. Here’s what I’ve been bookmarking this week…
Perhaps my limoncello didn’t appeal to you. How about weeniecello? Personally, I’d rather consume the vodka infused hot dogs than the hot dog infused vodka.
Speaking of alcohol, government continues to make it harder to drink. In Chicago, bottle service — groups of customers buying a bottle of liquor for the table instead of ordering one drink at a time — is now considered illegal. And the TSA’s liquid ban is bad news for wine tourism.
Some good news for people like me: a new study finds that while moderate and light coffee consumption could increase one’s risk for heart attack, heavy coffee drinkers seem to face no additional risk. So drink more coffee! Heck, put an espresso machine in your car if you have to!
While on the subject of coffee, what’s up with this Craigslist ad seeking a “male barista?” Is it a dumb joke about how a barista can be a man despite sounding like a feminine noun (it isn’t), or are they really seeking only men for the job?
For the economists in the audience, Tyler Cowen talks about comparative advantage. And do tall people earn more because they’re smarter?
Movie buffs, enjoy this compilation of instances of the Wilhelm Scream. And for music, here’s a collection of Beatles covers.
Lighting a park with heliostats looks like a cool idea.
These six horrifying parasites are interesting, but the faint of heart probably won’t want to click.
Finally, something erotic and safe for work… stone porn!
[Update 8/27/06: Hooray! The plug-in is working again. Apparently del.icio.us changed its API and I needed an updated version to make things compatible. If any WordPress users want to add the plug-in to their site, find the newest version here.]
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Back when I first started this weblog with such an immodest URL I cautioned myself against letting the site drop into the narcissism pit. Today we ignore that advice completely and take the plunge…
1) First, from my friend in S.F., here’s me imagined as a South Park character. Double-fisting the coffee and the beer is especially appropriate given the blog’s subject matter of late.
2) Second, here’s what I would look like as an East Asian man and as a woman (scary). These come courtesy of David Barzelay, who had way too much fun with the Perception Laboratory’s Face Transformer. It’s a neat application to try out if you’ve got some time to kill or have been considering drastic plastic surgery.
3) Finally, for no good reason at all I’ve added a Frappr map to the sidebar. Waste some time at work and add yourself with this new Google Maps application.
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The Prospect and Foreign Policy are inviting readers to vote for who they think are the top public intellectuals. The magazines have narrowed it down to 100, from which five can be chosen. My selections (in no particular order):
1) Richard Dawkins
2) Hernando De Soto
3) Lawrence Lessig
4) Martha Nussbaum
5) Richard Posner
They also invite one write-in vote. I was tempted to go with Douglass North, but being already long on economists I submitted Antonio Damasio instead.
Your picks?
[Yet another hat tip to The Morning News.]
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by Jacob on August 21, 2005
Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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