Archives > Did You Read About... > December 2004

December 31, 2004

Informative Flash special feature on the tsunamis at the NY Times

December 30, 2004

J-pop star Ai Otsuka's bukkake-looking billboard in Harajuku
"It looks like she gave a strawberry a blowjob." Knowing the Japanese mind, it had to be on purpose.

Slate reveals one of the closest guarded secrets on the web: Amazon.com's customer service number

Most popular baby names for 2004
For the U.S., anyway. It's basically the same list as last year. What a bunch of unimaginative parents.

December 29, 2004

Well, Masa received 4 stars from the NY Times
For ~$1,000 for two I sure hope it's 4 stars. That hokey mall now has two of the six 4 star restaurants in the city.

December 28, 2004

New York magazine's 2005 dining guide
Damn there's a lot of places I want to try. Dinner, anyone?

iTunes 4.7 can organize PDFs
Because iTunes Music Store is providing PDF liner notes with some albums now (U2's "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" and "The Complete U2").

A little basic tsunami science

The New Yorker article about the guy who walked every street in Manhattan

Good coverage of the tsunami and earthquake at Wikipedia

What happens when you wash your cat

December 26, 2004

Short but interesting article in the NY Times on what they call "three of the most prominent building projects completed in 2004" and how the users think of them after the hype subsided
The three projects all seem like successes, usage-wise. I wish they had found a high-profile project that is completely unusable.

How communities are re-using those huge-ass big box buildings

A cute little year-end quiz from NY Times
Post your score in the comments section. I only got 15 out of 27... Pretty lame for someone who spends as much time as I do reading the news. Just another reminder that my memory fails me a little more every year. I'll be senile soon.

A profile of one of China's wealthy
Who built some kind of Frankenstein/Las Vegas-style reproduction of Château Maisons-Laffitte cobbled with Versailles' gardens and St. Peter's colonnade. It literally hurts me to read stuff like this, because, sadly, it is entirely representative of what the average mainland Chinese person thinks is in good taste. (Be sure to look at the accompanying horrorslideshow.)

December 24, 2004

The dollar continues its freefall against the euro, now at $1.3548

Article about Karl Lagerfeld
Article is not in-depth, but I get the sense this dude is not too well adjusted (no, not because he has 70 iPods)...

December 23, 2004

Yann Bertrand's ariel photography
I actually saw these at an outdoor exhibition last month on a street in Milan. Beautiful photographs, especially at the exhibition's size of about 4x6 feet (much is lost at web-resolution). Amazing details, I couldn't believe they were shot with 35mm equipment from a helicopter. Not the helicopter part, but that 35mm film can deliver that much detail at that size print.

The decline of fashion photography

Do you know what your BMI (Body Mass Index) is?
Mine is 21.8. Nothing to celebrate as somehow my body stores all its fat from the neck up. If there's a separate BMI for the head (HMI—Head Mass Index?), mine would probably be about 30.

December 22, 2004

Nonalcoholic beverage pairings at top restaurants
Interesting and in theory I would like to try it at least once, but how can I say no to wine at a fancy dinner?

December 21, 2004

Car-to-car ad-hoc WLAN being developed

December 20, 2004

Google Suggest's JavaScript dissected

For those of you too dumb (or lazy) to figure this shit out on your own, NYT breaks down MetroCard discounts (taking into account the new price hikes) and lets you know which card is best for you
That is if you are one of those poor suckers who takes the NYC subway.

December 19, 2004

An interesting view that America may have traded smoking - a truly lethal habit - for the lesser deadliness of eating too much

December 18, 2004

The two-page Firefox ad that ran in the NY Times

Some dude calculated the bejesus out of Monopoly

December 17, 2004

Another year, another New York real estate record sale: $44 Million
In cash. Monthly maintenance: $21,469.07. That's a bizzare number. They couldn't just round it up or down?

December 10, 2004

Google Suggest beta
Suggests search terms as you type. Very, very cool. Try it out.

If you missed it, you've GOT to see this... T-Mac 13 points in 33 seconds (four threes)
Holy cow... (Link goes to streaming video.)

December 9, 2004

NYC real estate is out of control... $800K to $1.675M for Henry Street?!?

December 8, 2004

Less road markings and traffic signals = more safety?
Makes more sense then you might think.

It's official: IBM is selling its PC business to China's Lenovo for $1.25B (+$500M in assumed debt)
That's just a horrible name, Lenovo. I hold hopes that this sale won't affect the quality of ThinkPads to come; but a "Lenovo ThinkPad" doesn't sound right at all.

December 6, 2004

Everyday is a holiday somewhere...
I'm not that bored (contrary to popular belief), otherwise I would be interested to know if that were actually true by clicking through all 365 days of the year to see if there is a day with no holidays anywhere.

December 4, 2004

Welsh cities to ban happy hour
What's so interesting about this article? In it, it mentions that at their height, cheap drink promotions reached ridiculous proportions with one bar in Glasgow offering "all you can drink until you need the toilet". I had to laugh because if you know me at all, you'd know about my incapacious bladder. I'm not sure I could even last two beers.

December 3, 2004

Some potential Cooper Sq./Astor Pl. developments, for those of you interested

Cool map tool on NYC.gov site
I've added it to my links section. It's very useful. For us New Yorkers, anyway.

Pretty fun game to waste some time on

Duchamp's "Fountain" named the most influential modern art work of all time

$800 haircuts in NYC
I love this quote: "And anyone who pays that much money to go to the meatpacking district to have their hair done is a meathead." Said by someone who "only" charges $155 per haircut.

IBM putting its PC business on the market

December 2, 2004

So, Giambi took steroids, whoop-dee-doo, big surprise
I know it happens all the time, but I wish confidential grand jury testimonies would remain confidential.

December 1, 2004

NY Times' article on heroes
Great, now all the sandwich shops will be packed with stupid suckers who try anything the Times writes about (you know who you are)... And yes, I am one of those suckers.