Category Archives: Quick Links

Hot dog diplomacy

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U.S. embassies this year can invite Iranian officials to their Fourth of July receptions for the first time since the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran. The receptions often include hot dogs, which apparently have a long history in U.S. foreign relations:

There is no record of the founding fathers ever eating hot dogs, no trace, for example, of mustard on the Declaration of Independence. But the hot dog has played a role in American foreign relations since at least June 1939, when the king and queen of England attended a picnic at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s estate in Hyde Park, N.Y., while soliciting American support for England in the war about to consume Europe.

A more delicate diplomatic matter concerned Queen Elizabeth. According to “The Roosevelts and the Royals,” a 2004 book by Will Swift, the queen turned to President Roosevelt and asked: “How do you eat it?”

He is said to have answered: “Very simple. Push it into your mouth and keep pushing it until it is all gone.”

Fleet Foxes. Dungen. First Avenue.

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If that headline doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, try this on for size: Fleet Foxes, one of my favorite new bands from 2008, will be sharing the First Avenue Mainroom stage with Dungen come Sunday, August 9. Dungen is a Swedish psychedelic rock group whose music I’ve been loving since I first heard it three years ago. I caught their show at the 400 Bar on Election Night, and I fully expect the combination of them and the much more mellow Fleet Foxes to be nothing short of an experience. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but I can’t help be excited; in fact, I’m going to order my tickets right now. Oh, and Pitchfork has a small write-up on the tour.

Waxman-Markey

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The Economist this week leads its United States section with an overview of the cap and trade bill working its way through the House. It’s called Waxman-Markey and it’s not as great as you might think.

On May 15th Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, the Democratic point-men on climate change in the House of Representatives, unveiled a bill that would give away 85% of carbon permits for nothing, with only 15% being auctioned. The bill’s supporters say this colossal compromise was necessary to win the support of firms that generate dirty energy or use a lot of it, and to satisfy congressmen from states that mine coal or roll steel.

That’s opposed to President Obama’s plan, which would have raised hundreds of billions of dollars, “most of which Mr Obama planned to give back to voters.”

Overall, ordinary Americans will endure price hikes just as severe as they would have under Mr Obama’s plan, while receiving far less compensation. [American Enterprise Institute analyst Alan Vaird] likens giving permits to polluters to handing the proceeds of a tobacco tax to the shareholders of Philip Morris.

Is this climate change we can believe in?

Jason Hawkes

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The tagline on Jason Hawkes website reads simply “aerial photography.” That’s true, I suppose, but it hardly seems to describe why you should pay him any attention. Hawkes shoots landscapes touched by humankind and clearly inspired by some other greats: You see Edward Burtynsky in his shots of Hong Kong apartment blocks and an English landfill, Vincent Laforet in his urban ariels and David Maisel in some of his more abstract shots. A nice cross-section of Hawkes’ photos is featured in this recent set from The Big Picture.

Are Apple’s ads better than Microsoft’s?

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Adman Chris Matyszczyk ponders over at Technically Incorrect whether Apple’s ads are in fact better than Microsoft’s. If you’re gut says yes, you’re gut is right, but Chris lays out just why this is.

If you asked anyone in the wider beyond to tell you about just one striking piece of Microsoft brand advertising in the last 13 years, you might find them looking as if they’re trying to recall the name of their twelfth one-night stand.

For-profit GlobalPost aims for world coverage

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Serendipity led me to the GlobalPost this afternoon as I tried to clear out the tons of unread items in my Google Reader (after two hours, I still have 1000+ unread items). First I read an article linked from McClatchy’s Inside South America blog about Brazilians’ perception of Americans as ignorant. A few minutes later, I saw that MinnPost has partnered with GlobalPost. I’m glad to see there are people out there trying different approaches to funding good news coverage. I missed last month’s article in the New York Times about GlobalPost.

That ad-supported reporting is only one part of the GlobalPost business plan. If it is to succeed, it will depend in part on how many people sign up for a separate paid section of the site, which was to have been available in test mode beginning last week but is now expected to go online in the coming days.

News comments suck

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Heffernan muses on online news comments, which she calls a “bête noire for journalists and readers alike.” Turns out most comments on news stories aren’t intelligent. Who knew?

Commenters, in short, rarely really sock it to a columnist. They also too often go automatic, churning out 100-word synopses of one stock ideological position after another. But most disappointing of all, for readers, is that commenters don’t, as literary critics say, read an article against itself to show how, for example, an argument framed as incendiary is in fact banal, or one that’s meant to be feminist is retrogressive, or one that touts its originality is a knockoff.

27th Annual Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival

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I was hoping to see Thursday night’s opening film at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, “500 Days of Summer”, but my sieve of a memory prevented that from happening.

I did, however, manage to take in “The Girl from Monaco” (“La fille de Monaco” for your Francophiles) and “I’m Gonna Explode” (“Voy a Explotar”) Sunday night and enjoyed them both.

The festival runs through April 30. Check out their calendar and get your butt in a seat.