Dorkiest Blog Yet

Stapler of the Week. Also, they don't seem to have that famous red swingline.

db Bistro Moderne

We swear the waiter was German, which would make his thick French accent a complete affectation, but the food here was phenomenal.

Also, the wine, Ramsay Pinot Noir, rocked. If you know where to pick up a bottle or two, let us know.

May We Recommend

A Moleskine City Notebook. The combo of map, pocket to hold tickets, and notebook to jot down restaurants, etc, was perfect to navigate the city while we were on vacation this weekend. You are going to want a map in your pocket, so why not grab one of these and fill it with your trip plans a week or so before you leave?

Dylan's Candy Bar

Just came back from NYC, where the inner child went wild for this over-the-top candy store, the brain child of Ralph Lauren's little girl. More pictures here.

Peeps!

from the Washington Post.

What a waste

Most of the Beatles' catalog will be re-issued. On CDs, because EMI thinks that is state of the art in digital audio, not Blu-Ray, DVD-A, or, God forbid, iTunes. Whatever. Chances are the new CDs were mastered on a Mac with ProTools.

Puh-lease

Britney Spears stops performance because of cloud of pot smoke hanging around the stage in Vancouver.

Microsoft v. Apple, Round Whatever

Apple is trying to innovate its way through the Great Recession, but only just: they shipped a workstation with Intel's latest and greatest chip a full month before Intel officially released the chip to other computer makers, but they tethered it to a neutered graphics card, so it is not clear what anyone would do with the $3000+ MacPro if they could actually afford one.

Microsoft, which doesn't actually make PCs, has answered with a campaign of their own: Settle for us.

Physicians and Torture

Medical workers--by which they seem to mean physicians, physician's assistants, and others--helped the CIA torture prisoners at Gitmo. We are physicians, and we remember the oath we took: the physicians who took part in this should be stoned.

Maybe this is how I'll decorate my new apt

Like finger painting, but with spaghetti.

What exactly is a depression?

It is an excellent question, and there really isn't a well-defined answer.

Some combination of negative economic growth, greater than 10% unemployment, and widespread destruction of durable assets for survival, ie, burning furniture for warmth, desperately selling the family land for cash, eating the milk cow--what else? And how to quantify?

Shout-out: Penfold's Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiraz

Pricier than our usual fare at $25 a bottle, this wine rocked. It's a beautiful purple-red tooth stainer of a wine, but deceptively light on the nose. Then you sip and find it filling your mouth almost to the bursting point. This is some highly structured stuff, with a mix of black pepper and fresh blackberries on a background of moderate acidity. We drank a bottle on its own, but the acidity would be great with most any meal.

Steven Spear on Constant Innovation

Blog for Steven Spear's Chasing the Rabbit. McGraw-Hill needs to run a PDSA cycle on that website's formatting, btw.

Wow this sucked

Went to ImprovBoston last night and saw this steaming pile of crap. When we think improv comedy, we think of 1) audience interaction and 2) comedy. This had neither. Worse, it amounted to little more than 4 people practicing their Irish accents on stage for an hour--and all of them still need more work.

Could airlines directly post any changes in departure time or expected delays to passengers' twitter accounts rather than announcing them at the gate area? In our experience, each such overhead announced spawns 200 phone calls that all sound roughly like this: "Hey sweetie. I'm at the gate now. We're supposed to be taking off at 7:20, but they just said we'll be delayed 20 minutes... Is that junior? Hey boy-o! Daddy'll call you when I land!... Oh, wait, they are making another announcement. Gotta go!"