ironic sans has a brilliant post featuring Google street views of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (the address for the White House in D.C.) from around the country. Suffice to say the address in each town does not always live up to it’s famous counterpart.
I read with some interest i09’s assessment of Clinton era Sci-Fi. Never really thought about it but the 90’s did have some great Sci-Fi.
The Obama election has to be hugely significant for people of my generation. Specifically those around 30 years of age. The first election I was able to vote in 2000 saw a great amount of quashed optimism. The second election in 2004 was sort of confusing and frustrating at the same time. No question we weren’t happy about Bush but at the same time there wasn’t a solid candidate to rally behind.
This year was different.
The night of the election an assembly of poor hipsters gathered at the Orphanage (our aptly named Bed-stuy home) and there were those who simply refused to believe that anything good could come of the election — even though they were fervent Obama supporters. My roommate turned to one and said “Just because we’re used to being disappointed doesn’t mean we can’t be happy for a bit.”
Indeed it is a bit bizarre to be even cautiously optimistic about politics for once. Obama is like a touchtone icon for America’s hope and promise for a better future. He also seems refreshingly (at least for now) like a unifying figure after eight years of the country within and world outside wedging itself apart. Perhaps it’s simply the fact that I’ve only ever lived in blue states but I can’t ever remember seeing pictures of our president (elect) posted up in corner stores and apartment windows. Daily online you’ll find ridiculous but hopeful headlines about the future utopia to come.
Here are a few to ponder over: Does an Obama Win Mean a Dark Knight Oscar? Can Obama Save the Auto Industry by Greening it on Day One?
The best and most all encompassing has to be Kottke’s When Obama Wins which randomizes promises of a better future with Obama.
If you find any other overly optimistic headlines about Obama’s presidency post them in the comments.
The passage of Prop 1a is a great opportunity and for me somewhat surprising given this is the first time I’ve voted in a major election outside of California. (As is of course the disappointing passage of Prop 8). The California High Speed Rail Blog has published an excellent list of Next Steps concerning where to go from here to support the High Speed Rail system. In my mind the biggest thing on that list as far as forward thinking planning has to support of current infrastructure (point 6). However, supporting existing rail infrastructure alone is simply one piece of the puzzle. A drastic restructuring of zoning and city planning must simultaneously occur to not only ensure the success of the system but to restructure California to absorb the overwhelming population growth expected in the coming decades.
To be sure, California is going to grow larger and the High Speed Rail project is a landmark affirmation for focusing that growth in existing urban centers in the state. However, the cities themselves need to act resolutely to capitalize on the significant investment to enact change. While in the past several decades urban centers across the state have been financing transit infrastructure improvements — the latest and most notable being Los Angeles county’s Measure R; what has lagged in the state is significant rewriting of archaic (more…)
For reasons I cannot go into at this time I have been advising over the course of the pass several weeks a person older than myself in the ways us younger people (can I still claim that?) use social networks. Most specifically we’ve been looking at Facebook and Twitter.
I’ve been hesitant in my advice for a few reasons: 1. I am basing my lessons purely on my own personal observations with no real outside citations and 2. I have had at length conversations with others my age (I’m 28) about how we don’t fully understand how people who are younger than us use these resources.
However, in thinking about these things I have just proven correct one of my tenets of social web sites. I had been telling my tutee that Facebook is more casual and merely an extension of real-world relationships and twitter is a bit edgier in that it does not rely on approval for connections to be made. Instead Twitter is less about friendship and more about reputation. Browsing around the web today I just discovered some evidence which seems to prove me correct.
I just read an article from Kottke.org about Facebook and Twitter and decided to look Jason Kottke up on both networks. Given Jason’s status as an internet celebrity it’s not surprising he has a large number of Twitter followers (nearly 10,000 as of this writing). A glance at his Facebook page is quite a contrast, however. He has a mere 13 friends. Interestingly he does have a public profile meaning that anyone can browse through a large amount of info on him — that’s something for a separate post.
This probably comes as no surprise to anyone who regularly uses both forums but given that I have been teaching someone social etiquette on these sites it’s nice to have outside verification of my assumptions. I wonder if anyone has done a comprehensive book on how people use Web 2.0. I suspect that it would be outdated shortly after writing it. Until then we’ll have to live with Internet Party as a singular source on the topic.
Not sure which definition of my last name I prefer on
Urban Dictionary.
1. one sexy individual
someone that ooses sex apeal. an extremely wanted person
2. To give a cooper is to be sitting in the front seat of a car while feeling up someone in the backseat of the car. Preferably while their best friend is driving.
The second one is more visual but the first has a certain allure in and of itself.
Crave…
O.K., O.K. I got the picture already about how you shouldn’t format a blog with dark color backgrounds and white text. Hence my white background with black text on it in the new design. Thank you so much Anna and Jess for your endless criticisms — not that either of you are reading my blog anyway…
I finally got around to fixing up natecooper.net. It didn’t take that long because I basically just tweaked a standard wordpress template. I thought I might want to build my own from scratch but this seemed like a better way to get a decent looking site up in a relatively short amount of time since the old theme was effectively broken.
Pretty happy with it and I got to do a lot of house keeping things that I’ve been wanting to do and also try out some new stuff. I’ve surprised myself with my grasp of CSS in comparison to where I was when I first installed wordpress it’s quite impressive. Enjoy and let me know if you think it needs any improvements.
Coffee is a singular experience in New York. Though I have yet to experience the perfect cup of Joe here at the very least it is plentiful and there is a fair amount of independent shops — far fewer per-capita than should be but fair none-the-less. There is, however, a unique ritual to the purchase of coffee at the numerous corner stores (Bodegas in Brooklyn, Delis to Manhattanites). I don’t pretend to be an expert on East Coast culture (candle pin bowling? wtf?) so perhaps the experience is wider spread but to a transplant from the west coast it seems a New York enough thing.
First off when ordering coffee you wont find a little side counter with choices of sugar and creaming agents. Maybe its just a space issue but I’ve found even in coffee shops where space is less premium than at my bodega they insist on filling your coffee for you. This is sort of like traveling to Oregon for the first time and realizing you are not allowed to fill your own gas tank. What results is sometimes a light brew far too milky for my tastes but an experience which makes you feel like you are getting white-glove service. The delivery of sugar being in increments of 1, 2, or 3 is far more reserved and I find a much better fit as I tend to over-sugar my brew.
If the full-service coffee event is easy to adjust to the coffee doggie bag is simply odd to the out of towner. Being from an environmentally-minded town in California I’m probably more sensitive than most to the wastefulness of bags given out almost everywhere. No, thank you, I don’t need a bag for this water bottle that I’m about to open and enjoy instantly, Ms. Duane Reade. But if you visit a corner store in New York with any amount of regularity (usually meaning twice in a week) you may find the same being asked about your to-go coffee. A bag? For coffee?
What a delightfully wasteful practice! How so very much New York. Having moved here two years ago I am happy to have missed the plethora of styrofoam I would have inevitably been exposed to and forced to dispose of on a daily basis. Coffee to-go still comes in a paper cup with a sealed plastic lid like the rest of America. So what’s with the bag offer? Perhaps its an offering to the walking and public transit riding New Yorker who, unlike the rest of the U.S. may suffer convenience for lack of cup-holder in their Urban Assault Vehicle.
Despite the wastefulness, the New York style coffee doggie bag does present a nice little pleasantry I’ve not found elsewhere in the U.S. Often folded closed with care and packed up nicely-fit the bag is often full service with napkins neatly pressed up against the coffee so as to let the cup stand straight upwards and avoid spillage. Not only do the bag and napkin arrangement prevent wet clothing on the run to the subway they also provide a gratifying unwrapping experience. Its like your parting gift at a birthday that you can’t wait to unwrap and when open is overwhelmingly adequate and expectant as well as lacking the splendor of a personal gift. It’s one of the few occurrences in New York I’ve found that celebrates the mundane and whose procedure lends a bit of ritual to everyday life — even if most of the time when asked if I would like a bag I just respond with “No thanks.”
