Where this compulsion for order ends up  

Family circumstances have made it impossible for us to do much shopping for the holidays, but the side effect has been that we've finally done what we've been talking about doing all these years... we've ordered nearly everything online. Apart from a few issues with who ends up opening what package on the doorstep, I would call it a success, but what's really blown my mind is the extent to which UPS and Amazon have upped their game. UPS has started making more than one delivery a day at our door, despite the fact that we've had a series of intense snows and plummeting temperatures in the area (also despite my failure to shovel the walk). Amazon, for its part, has managed to get packages out the door much more quickly than expected, so that for instance some items I ordered today will arrive tomorrow even though I selected the slowest shipping option. Perhaps they will send it over via courier, as they sometimes do. Anyway, color me impressed.

It feels like I should title this post The audacity of hope. I should also probably link to this episode from the past.

In re this rather disappointing post in GB (disappointing because I was hoping for pictures of snowed-over gargolyes rather than just a gargolye fan site) I just wanted to point out the probably obvious -- but new to me -- relationship bewteen the words gargoyle and gargle. More at Wikipedia. Things are pressing in on me as Christmas approaches so I won't be able to satisfy the urge to go take some pictures of gargoyles at U of C tomorrow... pity.

Sorry, btw, for being so long absent. Honestly, I have been mulling giving up blogging completely, but I have yet to come to any kind of decision on it. This has been a crazy month for all kinds of reasons, and not only the blog but the whole idea of blogging has suffered as a result.

Executive chefs   {Comments: 5}

Todd Price on the big choice confronting Obama, namely which Chicago chef to take with him to the White House:

I do hope Obama passes on Smith. Oprah clearly loves her food, and stealing Smith might anger her. That’s like offending the gods. And anyone who’s read a Greek epic knows what happens when you piss off the gods at the start of your adventure.

Barack Obama   {Comments: 1}

I'm overjoyed by Obama's election, but the sentiment seems small beside the incredible historical vertigo that accompanies his achievement. I loved going through these political cartoons, and to a lesser extent these pictures of Obama from the campaign. My daughter and I went downtown today for lunch and the air in Chicago just feels different. I don't know what else to say except wow.

Meanwhile it was really disappointing to see Prop 8 pass in California. My initial reaction though is to blame it on the bizarre institutional design that allows Californians to amend their constitution with a simple majority vote by the electorate. Isn't the whole point of having a constitution that it's less transient than the whims of the majority, and therefore offers some protection for minorities? I'm certainly not an expert on democracy, but I've always understood it as a balancing act between the will of the majority and the rights of the minority. Speaking just from an institutional standpoint, it seems to me California overemphasizes the former.

An impeccable conduct and record in public relations  

1. This is from a couple weeks ago, but Ezra Klein has an interesting piece on that mythical creature, the undecided voter.

2. David Pogue reviews a new digital camera concept, a compact-sized camera with interchangeable lenses and an electronic viewfinder. I predict this type of camera will largely supplant DSLRs except at the high end; however, I'll wait for the next iteration (probably from Olympus) before buying one for myself.

3. Circulation is declining for newspapers, but that's no surprise. The real question is what their web stats look like, and whether local papers can make any money by going to an online audience.

4. Chirstopher Bangert has some The Big Picture and WSJ.com's Photo Journal. The former is probably better designed because it clusters photos on one topic, but today the Journal had a shot of the Kramnik-Anand match (go Anand!).

6. Here's an interview with one of the writers working on translating The Wire into German for overdubbing.

Raiding the commons   {Comments: 1}

Today for the first time I ran into one of my photos being used illegally. Jason Kottke linked to this piece about celebrities who have been homeless at one time or another in their lives, and the blog he linked to has one of my photos as its banner. What really makes it obnoxious is that the photo in question is actually listed under a creative commons license that only requires attribution for a non-commercial use. It's not like he had to steal it to use it.

I'm going to fire off a friendly email to him now asking him to either take it down or put the attribution in there somewhere. But it sure does make me wonder what else of mine is floating around the web unattributed.

UPDATE: The owner of Homeless Tales writes back to say it was properly attributed in the past but that the attribution was lost in a recent server move, and I take him at his word. He's added the attribution information to the sidebar on the main page.

This doesn't sound good:

And, in a "disturbing" trend, Castro-Wright said Wal-Mart for the first time is seeing a paycheck-related spike in sales of baby formula, suggesting consumers are rushing to buy such necessities as soon as they have the cash.

A bunch of links I've been meaning to post:

1. A "veteran banker at a major Wall Street investment firm" is interviewed on the financial crisis in the back seat of a cab.

2. Ryan Brenizer, one of my flickr contacts who has turned into one of the best wedding photographers around, was the only photographer allowed into the Al Smith dinner last week.

3. Ezra Klein on John McCain's anger problem after the last debate.

4. Peggy Noonan calls the Palin candidacy "a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics."

5. Apparently some houses in Detroit cost almost nothing.

6. And here is an interview with Dave Jordano, a Chicago photographer who has been photographing the interiors of small African American churches here.

Back from voting  

Miriam and I voted today at the Oak Park village hall. I won't take it as an indication of anything, since Oak Park is kind of weird, but the place was packed on a Tuesday morning at 10am in a state where the presidential race doesn't matter at all. In fact we had to wait so long that I wish we'd just waited until election day. But it's nice to be done with it.

I'm not going to say who I voted for, but here are some cool pictures of Obama by Time photographer Callie Shell. Her pictures of John Kerry are here.

Thank you and good night  

Thank God the debates are over. I for one have had a hard time sitting through them, just because the stakes seem so high and I'm so committed in one direction. Friends have said, "It will be fun to see the debates," and I've had to respond that the suspense of it has taken all the fun out of it for me. I've even felt that there was something a little odd about it when a friend invited me over for a debate party, because this kind of stomach churning torture just doesn't seem like an occasion for a party.

Maybe I need to lighten up, and I certainly can now that the debates are over. As it turns out Obama, while he may not have had a reputation as a great debater before now, was able to approach all three debates with a strategy and an approach that have taken him from being an unknowable other to being both the comfortable choice and a far less risky alternative than his opponent. The strategy was masterful and the execution was pitch perfect throughout, and by all appearances he's going to run away with this thing now, with the only outstanding question being whether or not his coattails will get the Democrats to 60 seats in the senate -- unlikely if you look at current polling, but that may well change after tonight.

As usual Andrew Sullivan rounds up the debate reactions, and picks a very cool photo for the top of the post. I wish I had access to Getty to illustrate my posts.

A gigantic nuclear furnace  

1. You can see some beautiful pictures of the sun here; consider that a million earths can fit inside the sun and then look at the size of that extrusion in the first shot.

2. Nate Silver discusses the Bradley effect and what might have happened to it.

3. Paul Krugman seems to be the best source on Paul Krugman. I've never become a huge fan of his columns -- though I will say I've read him religiously during the financial crisis -- but I learned a lot about trade from a couple of his books when I was in school.

I got a little red bullet  

Lawrence Lessig has a great statement essay up on digital rights and creativity. Here's a bit about the amateur creator:

The work of these remix creators is valuable in ways that we have forgotten. It returns us to a culture that, ironically, artists a century ago feared the new technology of that day would destroy. In 1906, for example, perhaps America's then most famous musician, John Phillip Sousa, warned Congress about the inevitable loss that the spread of these "infernal machines" -- the record player -- would cause. As he described it:

"When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left. The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."

A professional fearful that new technology would destroy the amateur. "The tide of amateurism cannot but recede," he predicted. A recession that he believed would only weaken culture.

A new generation of "infernal machines" has now reversed this trend. New technology is restoring the "vocal chords" of millions. Wikipedia is a text version of this amateur creativity. Much of YouTube is the video version. A new generation has been inspired to create in a way our generation could not imagine. And tens of thousands, maybe millions, of "young people" again get together to sing "the songs of the day or the old songs" using this technology. Not on corner streets, or in parks near their homes. But on platforms like YouTube, or MySpace, with others spread across the world, whom they never met, or never even spoke to, but whose creativity has inspired them to create in return.

One of those unforeseeable external events   {Comments: 2}

We've really been overwhelmed with graphs over the past month, both graphs of the market's performance and graphs of the candidates' performance, but this is the first one I've seen that puts the two together. The correlation between McCain's polling numbers and the S&P 500 index is pretty striking. Arjun Modi (a high school senior inspired by the West Wing!) puts it at .77 and calls the financial crisis a black swan.

Momentary lapse  

It feels sort of odd not to have blogged in almost a month, given that I've been as engaged with events and online media during that time as I can remember ever being. I don't know if I haven't posted because I've been too busy watching calamity unfold or if I just didn't feel like I had anything to contribute to an overwhelming amount of opinion out there already. Anyway, I'm back now, and while I'm not going to say anything about the financial crisis or the presidential campaign right now, I probably will soon.

For now, here are a couple of great links gleaned from Ezra Klein's excellent link blog -- which unfortunately doesn't have an RSS feed (that I can find, anyway). The first is a great post on amateur food photography aimed at the food blogger with a DSLR. It's very much built around the particular style of the author, which means it's a little short on atmospherics, doesn't cover shooting in restaurants or low light generally, and steers you away from ever using a flash. Still, it's full of good ideas.

The second is a recipe for blueberry pancakes full of helpful pancake-making hints and some more great food photography -- this time process shots. I guess I'm already feeling nostalgic for blueberry season.

Many alphabets  

There are some unbelievably creative visualizations of the alphabet here. I'm reminded a little of this business about context mattering more than letter order for reading; some of these alphabets show how the same is true for character recognition.

Such a single-minded focus  

I'm happy to see Obikà, the mozzarella bar, is opening in New York; I just wish they'd open one here in Chicago. My wife and I visited the one in Rome in 2005 just by chance; it was a rainy evening and we both love fresh mozzarella, so we gave it a try, and it ended up being one of the highlights of our week there. We were astounded by the variation between the different mozzarellas we tried there, in texture, flavor, creaminess. Also the service was very good, and I think we got special attention because the place was nearly empty (I'm not sure if this was because it had recently opened, it was a rainy night, or we were just there a little early for dinner).

By the way, the article mentions scamorza, a smoked cheese similar to mozzarella that will only make the New York menu occasionally. We didn't try this when we were at Obikà, but I've had it elsewhere in Italy, and I believe my sister even cooks with it. Because it holds together better when heated than some other cheeses and has a strong smoky flavor, it makes a nice meat alternative.

With bloody shark teeth  

Sorry to have been out of the game the past few days. Here are two quick links:

1. Navy Pier might be getting a bigger ferris wheel. I link to this piece mainly because I had a discussion with my sister about the history of the Navy Pier ferris wheel when she was here and we were walking around the midway over on the U of C campus.

2. This piece about Jill Greenberg's portrait shoot with John McCain is worth a look. It stirred up some pretty nasty responses in some of the photography forums I look at. When I first saw the cover shot (at the grocery store?) I wondered how his handlers had allowed that particular lighting -- his skin looks awfully plasticky. I guess it's not quite as grotesque as the wide-angle hdr-looking shot of Daly on the cover of Chicago Magazine this month.

Your party needs you  

This Gary Hart diavlog (with Robert Wright, who apparently wants to have a different conversation and seems even more confused and rambling than usual) is sort of interesting if you know that Hart briefly considered running for president in 2004 that would probably have struck a lot of the same notes as Obama's has. Hart doesn't have half the stature of Obama, but I still wish he'd put his hat in in 2004, because he foreign policy expertise would have given the whole Democratic slate more heft.

I also think Hart's insight that Obama needs to make the campaign bigger is essentially right -- that's where Obama lived for the first phase of the campaign, and that's gotten away from him a bit, probably because he felt the need to lay out the details.

Your poll is wrong  

The news hasn't exactly been good this weekend if you're a nervous Obama supporter, and I appear to have been off the mark in my assessment of Palin's speech last week (if the polls are to be believed, anyway). But to me this press conference with David Plouffe is encouraging. The Obama campaign's internal numbers and analysis have always been better than what's out there, and they always seem to take the long view, which is the most important one.

Barrett and his family visited us this past weekend, and he was good enough to assemble the above caprese salad for us (it was delicious). The orange and green tomatoes you see above are from the Oak Park farmers market, while the red one is one of the last from our garden this year.

Because we were away so much this summer, the tomato harvest was considerably smaller than it had been the previous couple years. Also, I think because we chose our tomato varieties poorly, they weren't nearly as tasty either. The heirlooms above, by contrast, were some of the best I remember ever eating. My goal at the farmers market next week will be to try a few more heirlooms, get their names, and possibly even keep some of their seeds for next year's garden. If anybody has any advice on how best to accomplish this last item, please share!

UPDATE: My dad writes:

Your grandfather used to save seeds. He just put them on a napkin to dry out and, once dry, put them in an envelope and then planted them in house in the spring time (he used to use milk cartons as planters). I think it is that simple. I only remember this with tomato seeds. (If you do that with heirlooms and they come up, give me a couple).