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Here’s a link to a startling commentary of unvetted citizen journalism and social media in the midst of the killings at Fort Hood.

The author says our constant access to publishing tools has pit our ego against our humanity, forcing our humanity to concede almost every time.

Masks that supposedly resemble the visage of Guy Fawkes, make popular in the movie V for Vendetta. (Photo from The Daily Blank)

Today I was published at The Daily Blank, Chicago’s only satire site that focuses on local issues.

For your enjoyment I’ll paste the entire article below, because their licensing allows it. Enjoy! …And I have one more piece in the queue, so look out.

Daley to ‘pull an Obama’ to fund CPS

In two about-face moves Tuesday, Chicagoans banded together to stand up to the Daley administration, and the Mayor decided to listen to the majority voice of the people.

Following a protest, Mayor Richard M. Daley issued an edict that every corporate executive who had received preferential treatment under the TIF program would voluntarily cut his or her income by 90 percent.

The mayor did not say what the consequences would be if said executives disobeyed, except that “the shit will hit the fan,” he told the throngs of cheering lower-middle-class people before him.

Continue reading ‘First Daily Blank piece’

Here’s a link to a short article about how common houseplants can be very effective at filtering the air indoors: roughly the same quality filtration as human-built devices costing ten times as much. (Their source wasn’t the University of Georgia study directly, but Science Daily.)

Of the 28 species tested, Hemigraphis alternata (purple waffle plant), Hedera helix (English ivy), Hoya carnosa (variegated wax plant), and Asparagus densiflorus (Asparagus fern) had the highest removal rates for all of the VOCs introduced.

Also these plants were suggested for their capacity to remove the chemicals in parenthesis:

green spider plant (formaldehyde)
peace lily (benzene)
gerbera daisy (trichloroethylene)
areca palm (capacity to be a humidifier)

Me standing next to a Bugatti 16:4 Veyron at Gold Coast Bentley, a few blocks from my house (Rush and Pearson, Chicago). Top speed: 253 mph. Cost: originally about a million, I heard. It’s probably around $2 million now. (Photo by my mom, I think)

This article is about the fastest production car in the world, the Bugatti Veyron. The Times reviewed it because they’re releasing a topless version soon to compliment the coupe (next to which I’m standing, above).

I’m sharing not only because I followed the Veyron’s development in middle school, but because of the writing. This writer, Lawrence Ulrich, knew his audience: people who aren’t gonna buy this car. He makes them feel good inside, like, it’s OK you don’t buy this car… or even any other supercar with one-eighth this $2.1 million price tag.

He didn’t diss capitalism, or engineering, but he didn’t hawk consumerism either, which is what most car writers do. In fact he checked it. Good job, Mr. Ulrich.

(And thanks for putting in the green-car plugs. You know where the world’s going.)

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Westcott House, built in 1904 in Springfield, Ohio (Photo by Brandon Smith)

Here’s an update on me: two pieces of mine are sitting in a queue to get onto a local satire site; I’m looking for a writing or researching or restaurant job; I’m waiting for my student loan to come in so I can stop eating just rice and pita and almonds.

I did, however, purchase a 12-person table and set it up last week. The restaurant thing is on its way. Pictures soon.

This post is to share some of today’s favorite articles.

This New York Times piece talks about a construction practice that uses whole trees (albeit dead trees) instead of milled lumber. Not as much waste is generated there—just the bark. Also, using whole trees can hold 50 percent more weight than the same amount of lumber, so less is needed in the first place.

I like it most, though, because it’s true to the material. (This is a time-tested architectural maxim; Frank Lloyd Wright was all about it.) When you look at this wood you know it comes from a tree, something once living. It’s easy to forget when you look at a plank.

Goat cheese, fresh basil and tomatoes grilled on sourdough (Creative Commons-licensed photo from the Flickr account of nasunto)

Last night I mentioned on Facebook the recipe I usually use for grilled cheese—lots of Jarlesberg, a few dashes of cayenne pepper, multi-grain bread and a slow cooking time following an initial braise.

An old friend of mine responded with the name of her favorite Cleveland, Ohio haunt for grilled cheese: Melt Bar & Grilled.

All I can say is, wow.

Continue reading ‘Grilled cheese-tasting’

A demonstration of waterboarding at Coney Island. [Creative Commons-licensed photo from the Flickr account of Salim Virji]

The New York Times reported this morning on the conviction of 23 Americans in a case involving the practice of rendition, “in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, presumably one more open to coercive interrogation techniques,” the Times explained. The criminals were tried in absentia.

I’ve been waiting for this for years. Most of them received 5-year prison sentences, and… wait a minute…

It seemed highly unlikely that anyone, Italian or American, would spend any time in jail.

Unbelievable. Not only does this conviction have no effect on those found guilty—it will have no effect on my sense that justice has failed. At least, justice had failed in Bush’s one-superpower world, which I’m not yet sure is gone under the new U.S. administration.

Continue reading ‘Italian torture conviction to have no effect’

Wired has reported that the Department of Energy has re-classified the company’s car as, in fact, a car, allowing the company to apply for special government loans. (Whereas before, the three-wheeled vehicle was classified as a motorcycle.) This could mean great things for Aptera, whose story I’ve followed for several years now.

(Two posts back there’s a picture of the car if you’re curious. Here’s their corporate website.)

I’ve followed Aptera because, by Wired’s admission, its cars will soon be the most energy-efficient in the world’s history. In fact, they may actually be more energy-efficient than passenger train travel.

Give this project 10 years and full support from the Obama administration, and it’ll revolutionize the transportation industry. How? Since you plug these things in overnight, you primarily use electricity as your fuel. And mile-for-mile, electricity is often about one-tenth the price of gasoline fuel.

Which means, for all intents and purposes, if you buy their model you never pay for fuel again. (If I were them I’d advertise this point.)

Hazelnut and Chard Ravioli Salad, conceived, prepared and photographed by Heidi Swanson of 101cookbooks.com.

I owe it to you to explain why most of the past couple weeks’ posts spoke only of food. (By the way, my menus are compiled at the end of this post.) I have been thinking of starting an underground restaurant.

I had read an article years back about people who love to cook inviting others to their homes for dinner. And charging them. It’s more personal than a restaurant, but it also provides some semblance of an income for the cook, who’d be putting a lot of time into the preparation.

I revisited this idea when I recently sought work in a restaurant and found the old catch-22. That is to say, I haven’t been able to get a back-of-house job because I haven’t already done it for several years. So I figured I’d take matters into my own hands.

Continue reading ‘Restaurant dreams’