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Surströmming - Manhattan User's Guide

Surströmming is one of the world's foulest-smelling dishes. Thank you, Sweden. When the can of fermented Baltic herring is opened, all smell breaks loose. It's probably more myth than anything else that the cans explode a lot, though they do expand as the fermenting takes place. In any case, the airlines, again sensibly, will have nothing to do with it. We've never seen it in New York, not that we've looked that hard. For some reason, there isn't much demand in these parts for canned fermented herring. When we mentioned to someone at the Swedish Consulate that we wanted to track down some surströmming, he said, "Oh, I don't think that's a very good idea."

via manhattanusersguide.com

How should Shakespeare really sound? - Telegraph

Inspired by working with Kevin Spacey, Sir Trevor Nunn has claimed that American accents are "closer" than contemporary English to the accents of those used in the Bard's day.

The eminent Shakespearean scholar John Barton has suggested that Shakespeare's accent would have sounded to modern ears like a cross between a contemporary Irish, Yorkshire and West Country accent.

Others say that the speech of Elizabethans was much quicker than it is in modern day Shakespeare productions.

Well, now you can judge for yourself.

via www.telegraph.co.uk

Click on the link for sound clips.

Many linguists point to Ocracoke Island, part of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, as being closest to the English of the time of the first English colonial settlements--an English that is often presumed by the same linguists to have changed little in accent at that time since Shakespeare's era.

Somewhat similarly, American spelling in many regards preserves British spelling of the early 1800s, thanks to Webster, more than current British spelling does. Melvyn Lord Bragg highlights this fact--with examples--in his 2003 documentary, The Adventure of English.

On the ground...but not on the yard

I've recently returned from my annual holiday trip home to central Iowa. While there, a state legislator told me Rick Santorum would carry the local county on Jan. 3rd or come in a close second-place behind Ron Paul.

I was incredulous relative to Santorum doing so well. About 48 hours later, the first polls were released showing that a surge in the former US Senator's popularity had been occurring. I then recalled a pundit on ABC's This Week having said earlier in December to not underestimate the potential dividends of Santorum's months-long hard work in Iowa. It reminded me of the value journalists find in informed, honest, and sufficiently forthright sources near to the action, and in their own experience. We'll see if the legislator’s prediction and the pundit's observation hold true. Based on my own inexpert observations while in Iowa, I think Santorum may in fact win or come in a close second-place in the county that I was in, but I think Romney will win the state.

The only frontline observation of my own that I make with any confidence is that yard signs are thin on the ground! I saw only five signs in four days in and around a town of 15,500 people fairly near Des Moines. Also, I saw not one bumper sticker! When I was growing up in Iowa, forests of candidate yard signs cropped up in neighborhoods. Farmers put them in fields and ditches, and sometimes even painted the sides of barns with their favorite candidate's name. Even in December 2007, while driving along I-80, I recall seeing Clinton, Obama, and Edwards signs galore--at least one barnside proclaiming HILLARY in red, white, and blue, and plenty of signs for Huckabee, McCain and others.

Does the disappearance of the yard sign reflect a lack of voter enthusiasm, or perhaps indecision—an unusually long wait-and-see stance by Hawkeye Republicans? Or maybe smaller campaign budgets? Maybe lesser focus on Iowa by the campaigns? Has the rise of social media or the dominance this cycle of televised debates displaced the need for the valiant foot soldiers of Iowa caucus campaign advertising, those brave little signs that endure wind, snow, the rare defacement attempt, and the more common assault from dog urine? Here's to the return of the humble yard sign.

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UPDATE: Nate Silver's Iowa 2012 GOP caucus analysis - Updated Jan. 2, 2012 at 12:11 PM ET

	Vote Projection	Chance of Win
Mitt Romney	21.8%	42%
Ron Paul	21.0	34
Rick Santorum	19.3	20

UPDATE: Unofficial caucus results from my parents' precinct in Jasper County, Iowa - Updated Jan. 3, 2012

161 votes:
Santorum 48
Gingrich 39
Romney 31
Paul 29
Bachmann 8
Perry 4
Huntsman 2

Every Tree in Town (photo series)

Every Tree in Town is a series that documents every spruce tree in the old mill town of Willimantic, Connecticut. The series of 1,017 photographs was created as Matthew Jensen systematically walked the 89 miles of streets within the city limits and documented some 2,187 trees. The trees in the series are cultural artifacts from the town's industrial past and the Victorian-era immigrant population who came from Northern Europe, where the trees are native. Today, Willimantic's population is a third of what it was in its heyday, and the pervasive trees remain as the last living link to the past.

View the photographs in this series, which was featured on the front of the Hartford Courant and was curated by the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art for an exhibition in Ridgefield, CT.

Set of thirty 10" x 14" photographs. Also available in sets of three and six. It's free to register on artspace.com to make your purchase and participate in future sales on ArtSpace.com.

Top 25 hedge fund managers earned more than all S&P 500 CEOs combined

From Tyler Cowen's "The Inequality That Matters," The American Interest, January-February issue:

For 2004, non-financial executives of publicly traded companies accounted for less than 6% of the top 0.01% income bracket. In that same year, the top 25 hedge fund managers combined appear to have earned more than all of the CEOs from the entire S&P 500. The number of Wall Street investors earning more than $100 million a year was nine times higher than the public company executives earning that amount. The authors [Tyler Cowen quoted] also relate that they shared their estimates with a former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, one who also has a Wall Street background. He thought their estimates of earnings in the financial sector were, if anything, understated.

WindTronics' Imad Mahawili

Mahawili's design looks like a giant bicycle wheel with 20 nylon spokes. At the outer end of each spoke is a magnet and stationary coil, which generate electricity. Because the electricity is created in the blades themselves and not by spinning a heavy shaft, Mahawili's design can capture two to three times as much energy as traditional models, according to Honeywell International

via www.businessweek.com

Urban Outfitters Faces Boycott Over Gay Rights

[P]resident and founder [of Urban Outfitters, Free People, Anthropologie, and Terrain,] Richard Hayne donated $13,150 to the political campaigns of Rick “gay sex leads to man-on-dog love-making” Santorum.

via www.deathandtaxesmag.com

Remember this from 2006? Didn't think so. Remember this from 2008, when Urban Outfitters pulled a pro-gay rights t-shirt from its line? Didn't think so.

If all—or even half—of pro-gay rights [Urban Outfitters] customers committed to quit the brand for one quarter (3 months) they would draw substantial press and cut deeply into the store’s revenue for 2011. Make it 75% of pro-gay shoppers for two quarters and the company would start bleeding all over their floral jumpsuits and rubbery braided belts.

Image: Richard Hayne, net worth: $1,800,000,000.00. Want to help him out? Sure you do. His company operates Urban Outfitters, Free People, and Anthropologie and Terrain.

What might be the secret to Germany's current economic success?

In the Eurozone, one economy stands out as others struggle to shake off slow growth. Germany grew by 3.6% last year and is expected to grow by more than 2% this year. Unemployment is falling and exports are booming. What might be part of their success? Small businesses. Small businesses that actually make things. Small businesses that invest in their employees and think about the long term.

 

The Kindle as a good e-reader for academic papers

I read a lot of academic papers linked to from the wonderful website, Medievalists.net. Academic papers available online are often downloadable as PDF files. They're almost always several pages long (sometimes 100's of pages!), which can make them hard to read for any great length of time on a computer screen or (so I've heard) on an iPad. It's a bit like staring into a flashlight after all--not the sort of illuminated manuscript I have in mind. Printing out all the academic papers that interest me is a somewhat expensive and certainly rather wasteful proposition, too. Even printing double-sided pages presents problems: it can take quite a while; it can increase the chance of a printer jam.

PDF (.pdf) files

However, for Christmas I got a 3rd generation Kindle (also know as a Kindle 3), and I've discovered that the Kindle handles PDF files pretty well. I recently transferred several PDFs from a folder on my computer over to the documents folder on the Kindle. The Kindle 3 comes with a USB cable. You can simply copy (or cut) and paste (or simply drag) files from a location on your computer to the Kindle's documents folder.

A PDF document formatted to standard paper sizes may be too small to read comfortably on the Kindle screen without a fix. There are probably better fixes than this, but it's the one I've discovered so far. Simply change the Kindle screen from profile to landscape orientation, leaving the default "fit-to-page" setting alone. The text will then be big enough for most users to read easily.

MS Word (.doc) files

Apparently, MS Word documents are handled well by the Kindle, too. One online forum recommended first reformatting the Word document that you want to read on your Kindle, using the specifications below to get the document to display optimally on the Kindle's screen:

The Kindle has varible text size and text spacing, so there is no set number. With [W]ord, I set the paper size to 3.3 [inches] wide and 4.75 tall with margins set to zero -- this gives an error and windows sets the margins at a mandatory minimum. This gives you a page that is roughly a [K]indle standard screen. I use Times New Roman font text size 11 (which is the sort of standard [K]indle text style/size). This will give you a close representation with the print preview [function]. Do not place page breaks except for new chapters. And the Kindle will sort out the format for you.

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy" - Thomas Edison. "A History of the World in 100 Objects," episode 100 of 100

There are currently 1.6 billion people across the world without access to an electrical grid. In these areas, objects such as this [solar-powered lamp and charger shown here] allow people to study, work and socialise outside daylight hours, vastly improving the quality of many lives. Additionally, households using solar energy rather than kerosene lamps are able to avoid the risk of fire and the damage to health that kerosene can cause. Once purchased, this kit costs very little to run, making it a very efficient option for many people living in the world's poorest countries.

[L]iberating, low-cost, green, clean technology is not only transforming lives in Africa and Asia. It may ultimately help to save the planet, reducing our current dependence on fossil fuels and their contribution to climate change. It's a hope that was expressed years ago by an unexpected prophet of renewable energy: Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light bulb. In 1931 Edison observed to his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone:

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

via www.bbc.co.uk