Dollarshort

Compare and Contrast: John McCain's 1936 with Barack Obama's 1961

Growing up, my two favorite books were the yearly Almanac and The Book of Lists.  That's  why I enjoyed The Age Factor, a very brief piece in the latest issue of Time Magazine, in which Mark Halperin presents a few famous people who share birth years with John McCain and Barack Obama.

I decided to do a little more research and see who else shares the birth year with these two. As with the Time piece, I left out Hilary Clinton because she's almost right in the middle of McCain and Obama, being born in 1946.


Going a bit further, I looked up milestones that happened in 1936 & 1961. Here's a few:

1936

• 1936 Summer Olympics open in Berlin, Germany
• The first edition of Life is published
• King Edward VIII abdicates the throne
• Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected to a second term

1961

• John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President
• The Beatles perform for their first Cavern Club gig
• The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba begins
• The Vietnam War officially begins

No political analysis here.  Other than the obvious observation that twenty-five years really makes a difference when it's presented with historical events and famous faces  And I may be bias since I'm already an Obama supporter, but anyone born in the same year as George Clooney and Michael J. Fox is alright with me.

Rockwell's America

I’m an unabashed Norman Rockwell fan. My family had a couple books about Norman Rockwell in our home when I was growing up and I spent a good amount of time (probably more than the average kid in 1986 did) staring at Rockwell’s illustrations.

In my Ted Talk from 2006, I mentioned this fascination with Rockwell and how I viewed blogs as a sort of equivalent to his illustrations. Just as Norman Rockwell’s work is mocked for its sentimentality, commercial and pop culture appeal (and so not considered high art), blogs are often mocked for their mundaneness and far too personal touches. Especially when contrasted with pure journalism or published writings.

That’s why I was pretty excited to go and see Rockwell's America: Celebrating the Art of Norman Rockwell at Charlotte’s Discovery Place Museum. Even though it was created for children and their fun little imaginations, my parents and I (and Penelope) had way too much of a good time walking around within the recreations of 20th century living and Rockwell’s covers.

Custom CSS, TypePad and a Blogging Milestone

Greetings to all the folks coming from Web Creme and CSS Mania!

While I haven't written up a tutorial on how I used TypePad's Custom CSS to design this blog, the tutorials posted last week on Everything TypePad pretty much spell out the two fairly minor (but big impact) changes I made to the default CSS -- custom banner, blog background and the content background). I tweaked other values, as well, but you should be able to go along way with just those two customizations. The best thing about this design is that I'm using basic templates that didn't require me to touch any code other than the CSS.

For those who want to play along, check out the TypePad Design Assistant. Tip: I used the Asterisk Wide theme to get started.

Having my design spotlighted on these two sites makes me feel quite honored because after all these years at Six Apart doing a lot of different things and having a lot of different roles, I always can find my bliss pushing pixels in Photoshop.

And because everything in life comes full circle, today is the seven-year anniversary(!) of my launch of dollarshort.org.

Stuff off a Sushi Menu ... From Hell

The first time you were confused. Second time, you were mildly entertain. The third time it was stuck in your head. Fourth time, you said "shame on me". Fifth time, it started to get old. The sixth time, you were really pissed. The seventh to three-hundredth time, you stopped clicking on links.

Because it will never die, may I suggest these fifteen alternatives to a run-of-the-mill RickRoll.

• Rick(Moranis)Roll
• (Little)RickyRoll
• Rick(y Ricardo)Roll
• Rick(Springfield)Roll
• Rick(James)Roll
• Rick(yNelson)Roll
• Rick('sCafe)Roll
• Rick(yShroder)Roll
• Rik(Ocasek)Roll
• Ric(hardDawson)Roll
• Rick(yVasquezRoll) 
• Rick(yGervais)Roll
• Rick(ieLake)Roll
• (Don)Rick(les)Roll 

And last, but not least. Here's the roll that should make you thank the gods for Rick Astley. 

• Rick(Dees)Roll  

The Original Bloggers

Back in college [1], when I should have (according to those with social lives) been drinking Popov out of Dixie cups, I instead spent an inordinate amount of time in the library's stacks. In particular, the magazine archive. Even more particular was that my research never had anything to do with my course work, but rather just my interest in the past.

So, imagine my glee when Kottke did a round-up of magazine archives online.

I spent some time on Friday exploring the Time archives and became immediately sucked into the Letters to the Editor. I like to think of blogs as the 21st Century version of Letters to a global, connected Editor, so it made sense that I would seek out the best example of authentic voice.

As you can imagine, there is a great deal of bigotry, chauvinism and small-mindedness in these letters. That's no surprise. What I find fascinating and most delightful to read are the exceptions. Those who question Time's articles (and the general consensus of the day) and assumption.

Here, for example, is one reader's response to Time's "helpful" 1942 article on "How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs."

Sirs: Your warning in TIME, Dec. 22, that the "few rules of thumb" listed for telling Chinese from Japanese are "not always reliable" is an unparalleled masterpiece of understatement. Such absurd generalities as "Japanese are nervous in conversation, laugh loudly at the wrong time," or "most Chinese avoid horn-rimmed spectacles" would have certainly made the eminent Dr. Samuel Johnson apoplectic. ... I feel the appropriateness of an admonishing Tsk! Tsk! ... MARTIN J. KATZ Philadelphia, Pa.

And then there are the little gems that, with a few words substituted could be written in today's Time. Take this letter from May 10th, 1943 that is a response to a story about high school graduates "who had forgotten, mislearned or never learned many details of U.S. history."

Sirs: . . . There are many reasons why students have failed so miserably in the past several years to maintain creditable scholastic standing and make sound academic records. . . . The present generation has been weaned on the comic strip. It has absorbed huge, indigestible amounts of outrageously inane (for the most part) Hollywood movie fare. It has been given cheap, miserably lean radio entertainment. In short, the younger generation hasn't been given half a chance to improve itself mentally. . . . PRIVATE J. A. FALLON Scott Field, III.

While the site navigation of the Time archive is lacking and it's difficult to browse, it's pretty easy to get completely sucked into a decade and its new stories and letters.

[1] Spending vast amounts of time reading old magazines actually started in high school. Magazines were my Internet and I spent hours browsing. Sadly, when I said I was going to the library (on a Saturday), I was indeed going to the library.

Yeah, He's My Cousin Three Times Removed...

Mike Monteiro, like always, is an inspiration for all of us to follow. He read the fine print [1] at Muxtape  and thought to ask permission from the Dead Milkmen's drummer, Dean Sabatino, before uploading one of their songs. Of course everything Mike does is FTW, so you never can be too sure whether he's playing a joke on us.

Update: Mike's added Butthole Surfers to his mix!

Anyway, Mike's action got me thinking. Everyone claims to have one of those friend of a friend who happens to be a famous musician. And with the internet breaking down all those sort of boundaries that used to matter -- like geography and fame -- it's quite possible to be "friends" with the musicians themselves.

In my dream world, Muxtape would have been so much more interesting if it was a challenge about creating the ultimate mix with songs that you do indeed have permission to use. And, I'm not talking about your standard Creative Commons fare or sneakers-in-the-dryer kind of music.

I'm talking about BIG NAMES. Basically, who could -- through their connections -- make the coolest mix with authorized songs.

Since the musician's permission does not equal the label's, this is just a fun what-if pitch. I'm way more interested in seeing who could come up with the best mix using their connections and how name-droppy it would get.

[1] aka as the language that won't save them from a cease and desist.

Giant Beets

From the Ferry Plaza Farmers market, these giant beets! Ever since I had the baby, I've craved beets without end. It's amazing since I detested them previously. Even so, I couldn't convince myself that we could eat all the beet dishes one of these would yield.

Slavery? Really?

Here's something from the "marketing-tips-from-J. Peterman" department -- the Bourbon and Branch "Spring Telegram" that showed up in my inbox today. An excerpt:

RUM By Thad Volger

Pirates, Revolution, Plantations, Slavery, Communism, Smuggling, the English Navy, Colonialism, Beaches, Palm Trees. What do these all have in common? Rum! If this doesn't excite your interest, keep in mind that rum plays a key role in the evolution of what we now refer to as the cocktail...

They lost me at colonialism. Up until then, my interest was quite excited by the imagery of plantations and slavery. Even with that pitch, I'm afraid that I'm a tequila girl -- I'll drink anything that has to do with conquistadors and the massacre of indigenous cultures.

Dollarshort DonorsChoose Challenge

Last September when Six Apart helped sponsorthe Blogger Challenge at DonorsChoose, I wanted to create my own challenge and participate. However, since I was a bit preoccupied with that whole birthing thing, I didn't get a chance.

I spent some time today setting up my challenge and doing some shopping for the future (aka donating). So if you're inclined to give to good causes, please check out the five projects I've chosen and give big.

And if you're a TypePad user and want to set up your own challenge, we've got a TypePad widget that will make it ever so easy to publicize.

A Bumper Sticker View into Somebody's Soul

On my drive to work today, the pickup truck driving in front of me was sporting a partially peeled off bumper sticker that had seen better days. And by better days, I mean the 1980s. I could only make out a couple words from where I was driving so once we hit some traffic I was delighted to finally read the sticker in all its classiness. The sticker read:

I Wonder if You'd Drive Any Better if that CAR PHONE was UP YOUR BUTT?

I spent half of the remainder of the drive trying to imagine if the owner of the truck -- assuming he was not the original owner -- was more embarrassed by the sentiment or the dated reference to car phones. The sticker was peeling, but had obviously been scraped repeatedly in an effort to restore some dignity to the truck.

The other half of the trip ^[1] was spent trying to figure out the text of bumper sticker that would be even *more* dated and embarrassing than "Car Phone Up Your Butt ^[2]". I came up with "I Get More Tail than Spuds McKenzie" and "Alf is My Co-Pilot."

In writing this post, however, I have decided that "Alf is My Co-Pilot" is a pretty awesome sentiment.

^[1] Keep in mind, I was driving alone with Penelope in the back seat. This was a conversation in my head, not with another person.
^[2] I can imagine this phrase has been uttered during the voting portion of America's Funniest Home Videos.