Crazed Teacups

Mischief Managed!

Hackers got into construction signs outside of Austin, TX to warn citizens of a zombie attack.  (I suspect the Weasley twins. Or Ned.)  Thanks to Wooster for the story.  Here's an article from the Austin Stateman about it.

Quote of the Day

Mr. Scott told the world that Wal-Mart was embracing sustainability. He laid out ambitious, possibly unattainable, long-term goals for the company: running its operations solely on renewable energy, creating zero waste and selling products that sustain the earth’s resources and environment.

Wal-Mart’s suppliers had little choice but to follow its lead.

In came the fluorescent bulbs. In 2007 alone, Wal-Mart sold more than 100 million of them. For a manufacturer, selling a bulb that lasts longer means fewer sold. But it would hurt to lose Wal-Mart as a customer. So G.E. and others ramped up production of fluorescent bulbs.

By selling only concentrated liquid laundry detergent, an effort it began last year, Wal-Mart says, its customers will save more than 400 million gallons of water, 95 million pounds of plastic resin, 125 million pounds of cardboard and 520,000 gallons of diesel fuel over three years.

“Lee pushed me,” said A. G. Lafley, chief executive of Procter & Gamble, and “we totally, totally changed the way we manufacture liquid laundry detergents in the U.S. and, now, around the world.”

Wal-Mart says it now saves itself $3.5 million a year just by recycling loose plastic and selling it to processors. After changing the design of its trucks and how efficiently it loads them, its fleet had a 25 percent improvement in fuel efficiency. Amory B. Lovins, a MacArthur fellow and chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit research organization, said Wal-Mart would save nearly $500 million a year in fuel costs by 2020.

- From "Green-Light Specials, Now at Wal-Mart" by Stephanie Rosenbloom and Michael Barbaro in the NY Times

Let's Make a Deal

Dear Sunday NY Times:

I love your work.  Really, I do.  But please, I'm begging you, try, just try, to get through one edition of a Sunday paper without referring to George Balanchine or Leonard Bernstein.  They're dead 26 and 20 years respectively now.  I appreciate their brilliance (admittedly because, of course, you've been telling me about their genius, just about weekly, for decades now), but you've got to let it go.

This week was really too much.  I simply couldn't fathom why on earth you would devote three full pages (including the cover!) of the Book Review to a book about essays on dance in Russia from 1911-1925.  Could you find a book that covered a narrower scope?  A one-page review, sure.  I get that.  But would you publish three pages - about 1/6 of the entire book review! - for essays on sculpture between 1818-1825, a book on spelunking in the 1750s, a history of the professional athletes from Nova Scotia? 

But ah, all became clear.  The review contains no less than 5 references to Balanchine, and 2 more under his Russian name, Balanchivadze.  And the review is by former Balanchine protege Toni Bentley.  So we have another excuse to extol his talents.  Again.

Sunday NY Times, I think we can compromise.  I'll accept your weekly tributes to the B-Boys if you promise to pay greater attention to mysteries and thrillers, currently confined to about a paragraph a piece every few weeks.  Besides, reviewer Marilyn Stasio is a fun writer - give her a little room to breathe. 

Deal?

Raise High the Book Price, Carpenter

I was in for a very pleasant surprise today.  While at Powell's on Hawthorne, I was looking at their information board, filled with upcoming events and new releases, when I saw a listing under Rare Books that said a copy of J.D. Salinger's Twenty-Two Stories was going for $450. 

I blinked.

Then I walked over to the rare book case and saw a wrapped copy of what looked exactly like my copy of Twenty-Two Stories, which I bought at Reading Frenzy in 1998.  For $10. 

I went over and asked the guy behind the information desk if there was something unique about the copy in the cabinet, like if it was a hardback or a special edition or something.  He said nope.  He then began reminding me that it was essentially a bootleg, an unauthorized printing of which only 1000 copies were actually produced.  He said if I had one, I had the real deal.  "You should've bought 10 of them," he said.  Indeed.

The book itself is navy blue, with no writing on it, and a white sleeve that slides over the top that has the title and author on one side and a description and chronology of the stories on the back.  There's about a 3/4 inch tear in my sleeve, but otherwise is in great condition.  I'd love to open it up and look at some of the stories now - "Wake Me When It Thunders" was a favorite - but now I'm afraid to damage that sleeve any further.  With the exception of a few other first editions and signed books, I'm not used to owning anything of real value.

(Perhaps it's only fitting, then, that I went to see Slumdog Millionaire tonight.  Although I thought it was beautifully directed, I seem to be the only person in the world that thought it was just okay.) 

On the way home from Powell's, I came across Chinese dragon dancers, fireworks and all, outside of the Monkey King celebrating the Year of the Ox.  So I thought it would be fun to look up my Chinese horoscope (I'm the Year of the Pig - jokes to yourselves, please) for 2009, and it's quite funny. It seems to directly answer my dilemma of earlier this week, which I burdened some of you with as well -  that is, do I take advantage of the great British Airways Seattle - London deal for $178 (one way) in this economy?  i decided against it, and my horoscope agrees, telling me to earn, not spend.  Specifically, it says "Do what you are best at Piggy: buy items of enduring value", such as "paintings and sculptures."

Or books, perhaps?

Last Night's Final Jeopardy Question

I couldn't figure this one out:

“Her third husband won a Best Actor Oscar in the ‘90s; her second husband, like her dad, is a rock & roll Hall of Famer.” 

Answer in the comments.

Quote of the Day

"In the scale of embarrassing place names, Crapstone ranks pretty high. But Britain is full of them. Some are mostly amusing, like Ugley, Essex; East Breast, in western Scotland; North Piddle, in Worcestershire; and Spanker Lane, in Derbyshire.

"Others evoke images that may conflict with residents’ efforts to appear dignified when, for example, applying for jobs.

"These include Crotch Crescent, Oxford; Titty Ho, Northamptonshire; Wetwang, East Yorkshire; Slutshole Lane, Norfolk; and Thong, Kent. And, in a country that delights in lavatory humor, particularly if the word “bottom” is involved, there is Pratts Bottom, in Kent, doubly cursed because “prat” is slang for buffoon.

"As for Penistone, a thriving South Yorkshire town, just stop that sophomoric snickering."

- From the NY Times article, "Stop Snickering: That Road Sign Means Something Else"

Quote of the Day

From Mercury commenter JasonC:

Question: could Adams resign, then run in the special election? Risky, but moves him onto higher ground compared with a recall, and resolves things faster. But first the AG has to find that he's telling the truth about waiting until Breedlove was 18.

Sam Adams: A Portrait

Stride Toward Freedom

The Teaching Company is offering a free 50-minute lecture by Professor Dennis Dalton (Barnard) on Martin Luther King, Jr. called Stride Toward Freedom.  It's particularly interesting to learn how King was introduced to, and consciously began carrying out, Gandhi's doctrine of nonviolent protest.  According to Dalton, King headed up the Montgomery bus boycott because the movement needed a spokesman, but, despite being a believer in Gandhi's methods, he had no larger Gandhian strategy in mind when the boycott started.  In fact, the term they used at the time was a doctrine of "Christian love."  It was a librarian named Juliet Morgan in Montgomery, AL who, in a series of letters to the editor of the Montgomery paper, first linked the Montgomery bus boycott with Gandhi's beliefs of nonviolent protest.  Dalton quotes King as saying:

Miss Juliette Morgan, sensitive and frail, did not long survive the rejection and condemnation of the white community, but long before she died in the summer of 1957, the name of Mahatma Gandhi was well known in Montgomery.

Dalton says that he wishes more was known about Morgan and what happened to her, but a google search yielded a remarkable story about a very bold woman who risked her income, her friends, her family and reputation on fighting the injustices of racism in the best ways she could.  Sadly, the ostracism became too much for her, and she killed herself in 1957.  But as someone who helped King translate Gandhi's civil disobedience to the civil rights movement, her legacy is large.

The lecture is free to listen to and download until Feb. 2.

The Defense Rests

John Mortimer, creator of the Rumpole series, died on Friday.  He was 85.  I only became a fan of his recently, reading three books of his year (breaking my usual rule of reading only one book by an author per year) and enjoying them immensely.  Horace Rumpole was a witty, curmudgeonly lawyer who defends the occasionally innocent criminals of London, drinking his claret and quoting poetry liberally along the way.

Upon hearing the news of Mortimer's death, I flipped through the Rumpole of the Bailey and came across Rumpole quoting Keats' Ode to a Nightingale: 

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain

But that seems to serious a note to end on, even if Rumpole is just battling the flu.  So I prefer these lines, which Rumpole speaks in the same book, as my tribute to John Mortimer.

"'Fare thee well! and if forever still forever, fare thee well!'  It takes a bad moment to make me fall back on Lord Byron."