landspeednyc

For native Czech speakers who want to sound like Elvis...

Why not study at Elvis Language school?  And for the english speakers- they're hiring!
(As seen in the Prague Post)

mmm, cheese. mmm, Murray's cheese webisodes

Murray's Cheese is up to webisode 6 of Portion Control:

Portion Control Episode 1: Lightly Aged Goat Cheeses
Portion Control, Episode 2: Bloomy Rind Cheeses
Portion Control, Episode 3: Washed-rind Cheeses
Portion Control, Episode 4: Pressed Cheeses
Portion Control, Episode 5: Cooked Cheeses
Portion Control, Episode 6: Blue Cheeses

It took snow in London for me to know there's such a thing as "the etiquitte of snowball fights"

The etiquette of snowball fights
With swathes of Britain covered in snow this week innocent folk have found themselves the unwitting targets of snowball attacks launched by grinning children. But how to react, asks Brendan O'Neill?

When police in Hertfordshire warned children that throwing snowballs in an "irresponsible way" could face arrest or a fine, they were branded "winter killjoys". Yet one man certainly struggled to see the funny side after his van was pelted by a snow-wielding gang of children near Alexandra Palace in London. He pulled out a Stanley knife to frighten his woolly-gloved assailants away.

So what is the proper snowballing etiquette? Is it acceptable for children to lob snowballs at adults, including perfect strangers? And should the chucking of a snowball ever become a police matter?

Phoenix, kidnap-for-ransom capital

Interesting time to have a first trip to Phoenix planned for next week, as the LA Times reports:

Phoenix, kidnap-for-ransom capital
Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was abducted last month in front of his home and ransom demanded. Hundreds of such incidents occur each year in Phoenix, and Mexican drug-smuggling is usually involved.

Black Lips flee India

Had seen already a few articles on public displays of affection in India recently:

No kissing please, we are Indians

A court in India recently dismissed criminal proceedings against a couple who were arrested for kissing. The BBC's Soutik Biswas examines India's tangled relationship with the kiss.

India couple's kiss 'not obscene'

Public displays of affection and sex are still largely taboo in India

A court in India has dismissed criminal proceedings against a married couple charged with obscenity for allegedly kissing in public in the capital.

Now (via the MeanRed Productions e-mail), is this letter from the Black Lips:

A LETTER FROM INDIA 

Dear fans,

Unfortunately, we have had to flee the country of India due to having our whole tour canceled and having to escape being held by police for indecent exposure during our most raucous set in Chennai at the Campus Rock Idol showcase.

After the fiasco, which the kids seemed to like, the financial backers of the event were furious and threw us off the tour. They tried to get security to restrain us until the Tamil police arrived. We locked the door while they were kicking and banging on it. Meanwhile, we slipped out the other emergency exit.

And that's only the start...

Feeling gravity's pull: is Peter Arnell the Alan Sokal of the ad world?

Ad Age reports:

'Breathtaking' Is One Word for Purported Arnell Pepsi Doc
Mad Ave Buzzing About the Deep Thinking That Supposedly Went Into Brand Logo Redesign
NEW YORK (Adage.com) -- Over the past 24 hours, adland has been abuzz about "Breathtaking," a 27-page document purported to be the thinking behind Arnell Group's recent revamping of Pepsi-Cola's logo. Littered as it is with marketing jargon, images of yin-yangs, mobius strips and Da Vinci's Vitruvian man, you'll maybe wonder whether Michael Phelps wasn't the only one hitting that bong.

See the .pdf for yourself here.

Who was (is) Alan Sokal?

The Sokal affair (also Sokal's hoax) was a hoax by physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated on the editorial staff and readership of the postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text (published by Duke University Press). In 1996, Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, submitted a paper for publication in Social Text, as an experiment to see if a journal in that field would, in Sokal's words: "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."

Crain's NY on the middle class exodus, wall street's compensation structure

Saw this article in Crain's NY Business: 

City’s middle-class exodus seen accelerating
“New York has long been a city that has groomed a middle class, but that’s a more arduous job today,” said Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based think tank dedicated to independent research on cities, and one of the report’s authors. “There’s a tremendous amount of positives about the city, yet so many middle class families seem to be stretched to their limits.”

Big surprise, that.

But it reminded me of this infuriating WNYC interview with wall street shill Greg David, Crain's editorial director, on bonus-based compensation. Worth checking out,or at least reading the comments!

Punctuation as ideological warfare

 The globe and mail reports:

The city council of Birmingham, England, has decided to eliminate apostrophes from its street signs. Apostrophes are of course normally quite common in British place names, in constructions such as St. Paul's Square and Acock's Green. Apparently Birmingham has been quietly removing them from official signs since 1950, and now it faces a non-standardized mishmash of usage across the city.

Not exactly as interesting as "No Snickering: That Road Sign Means Something Else," the new york times article about UK place names:  

CRAPSTONE, England — When ordering things by telephone, Stewart Pearce tends to take a proactive approach to the inevitable question “What is your address?”

He lays it out straight, so there is no room for unpleasant confusion. “I say, ‘It’s spelled “crap,” as in crap,’ ” said Mr. Pearce, 61, who has lived in Crapstone, a one-shop country village in Devon, for decades.

US Airways double miles promo through 3/31

Via View from the Wing, US Airways is offering double elite qualifying miles through 3/31; now if only other airlines will match....

Oneworld Alliance 10th anniversary specials and chance to win a business class round-the-world ticket

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the Oneworld Alliance (with members including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Qantas and more) is having a series of promotions. Included are 10% off their oneworld products, including oneworld explorer round-the-world tickets (now bookable online, even), and a chance to win a business class RTW.

Then again, it's a pretty good value-for-miles (on AA) to use miles for an RTW....