February 17, 2008 - February 23, 2008

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Watching the Oscars? See the Best Picture Posters

Filed under: Pop Culture

For your Academy Award-watching preparations: this site has all 79 posters for the movies that won Best Picture. You'll never get that artichoke dip made now. Might as well just crack open the beverage of your choice and scroll through, counting the films you've missed.

[Via Neatorama]

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 23, 2008 1:10 PM | Comments (1)

 

VP Pawlenty Meter: T-Paw is large and in charge

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet.

When last we left our hero, he was carrying a +2 rating into the vice presidential sweepstakes, having correctly chosen the right horse to ride--and stayed on even when it looked like a broken-down nag.

This Week:
-- McCain hit with allegations involving a mistress, a lobbyist, and the New York Times. (-3)
-- T-Paw named "frontrunner" by influential political site, "The Fix" (+4)

Current odds T-Paw will become our vice president: +3

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at February 22, 2008 12:13 PM | Comments (6)

 

Breakfast of Champions: 2/22

Filed under: Breakfast of Champions

It's casual Friday at BoC, so we're wearing our beloved Stroh's Beer shirt. Check this classic piece of retro fashion:

I wonder what our new fashion columnist (debuting soon!) would have to say about this?

Fresh this morning is an interview with Daniel Ellsberg. One of the great whistleblowers of our time, Ellsberg comes to the Northrop Auditorium on Tuesday.

Elsewhere in the social conscience corner, we point out that George W. Bush has not learned the correct lesson from Rwanda, but we have reason to hope Barack Obama has.

Rachel Hutton longs for the re-emergence of Chef Shack.

Some incredible photos from the Maxwell's fire.

You may have heard this: the New York Times reported that John McCain may have had an affair with a lobbyist. But you will learn valuable lessons about the City Pages staff in the comments. Evidently, one commenter holds, we have no right to get all high and mighty since he bets not a damn one of us has less than 25 sexual partners each year. Well, duh. That's just the print staff, though. We Web editors are straight monastic.

BRAIN CANDY

These are are most-read stories and most-viewed photo galleries from Feb. 13-Feb.19. If missed anything, here's a good place to start. If you read these already, why not read them again? No extra charge.

TOP FIVE STORIES
Nothin' But Trouble
Jay's Place
Letters to the Editor
Iraqi Professor
Condom Nation

TOP FIVE SLIDESHOWS
Fetish Ball
Dean & Britta
Art Sled Rally
Cat Power
Super Furry Animals

TOP FIVE BLOG POSTS
Bang Your Spouse For Jesus
Dog Days at Westminster
20 Songs for Valentine's Day
Reporter's Notebook: Nothin' But Trouble
Hillary Clinton

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 22, 2008 6:12 AM | Comments (0)

 

Maxwell's Fire Causes New Ice Castle

Filed under: Business

Maxwell's American Pub burned yesterday. With the temperature near zero, though, water from firehoses was freezing almost on contact.

The results were these startling photos by Tony Webster.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 21, 2008 7:11 PM | Comments (1)

 

Breakfast of Champions: 2/21

Filed under: Breakfast of Champions

DAILY DISH: WHAT'S NEW AROUND THE SITE

Welcome to everyone who has found the site looking for our feature about the Baldies, anti-racist skinheads who populated a famed local scene. We have a few more elements of expanded web content up, including an audio slideshow with interesting images that lets you hear the music that inspired the crew two decades ago. Also, our web archive unfortunately doesn't run as far back as 1990 -- but another site is hosting scans of the original article.

Culture to Go is going to be packed for the next few weeks until we get the new food blog up and running. Yesterday saw our hale and hearty duo of food critics critics debut; Rachel Hutton offered up the Dish on Dish and James Norton laid out the prospectus for his A La Carte column.

Don't miss Ben Palosaari's interview with the inventor of National Geographic's Crittercam. The accompanying slideshow has images of penguins, seals and lions affixed with the device, making for Cute Overload-levels of kawaii.

What would election season be without a big ol' sex scandal? I think most of us would have predicted that said inevitability would involve a Republican candidate. I'm not sure most of us would have predicted that it would involve John McCain.

Has Tiger Woods taught us nothing? Well, actually probably not, except some lessons involving Nike products. Let's try that again: has that announcer who joked about opponents lynching Tiger Woods taught us nothing? Given that the party invoking lynching this time (Bill O'Reilly) seems incapable of learning, I would guess not.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 21, 2008 7:31 AM | Comments (0)

 

Baldies soundslide (UPDATE: Read the original 1990 article)

Filed under: City Pages

To go along with Matt Snyders' feature and our photo gallery about the Baldies, watch our audio slideshow set to Symarip's classic "Skinhead Moonstomp."

Also, some folks on the Insurgence Records message board scanned images from the original 1990 article on the Baldies, transcribed the piece and put the whole works online. Contrast and compare.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 20, 2008 12:12 PM | Comments (0)

 

Breakfast of Champions: 2/20

Filed under: Breakfast of Champions

DAILY DISH: WHAT'S NEW AROUND THE SITE

Our quick guide shows you a few places to watch tonight's total lunar eclipse. As of this 5:45 a.m. writing, it's crisp and clear, though the forecast calls for partly cloudy skies later. Keep warm and keep your fingers crossed. (And watch for falling satellites, as Minnesota Monitor points out. There's a Billy Bragg joke in there somewhere, but it's too early in the morning to make it).

Our print feature is about anti-racist skinheads The Baldies, and we draw on an article from these very pages two decades ago. Matt Snyders updates the story, and our slideshow juxtaposes photographs from 1990 with images from today. I think the re-creation of our Jan. 13, 1990 cover turned out well.

Our new tandem of food critics is here. Rachel Hutton writes about Nick and Eddie, while James Norton offers up the value-for-the-money Indian locale Hyderabad. Expect to see some blog posts from them on Culture to Go while we set up our new dedicated food blog.

On the topic of cooking, cuisine and culture: Jessica Armbruster interviews Greg Laden regarding these catalysts to evolution.

Jeff Severns Guntzel attended the Walker's "Hey Girl" by Romeo Castellucci, and the overwhelming images left him thinking about gender in society.

Did you know that 14 local bars have webcams that stream live video throughout the Internet? Are any of them place you frequent? Find out here.

Keith Olbermann's latest special comment is outstanding.

BRAIN CANDY

Maybe it's because I'm the proud owner of two basset hounds. But I think this is the best thing ever posted on the Internet, and it's not especially close.

If you don't read Swedish, I'll inform you that this Flash tool is an ad for a telecom company. If we had telecoms in the U.S. that developed interactive basset hound-beatbox games, it'd be a lot easier to swallow giving them immunity from lawsuits, I'll tell you that.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 19, 2008 4:09 PM | Comments (0)

 

You and Your Friends Drunk: Live on Webcam

Filed under: Spotted

The New York Times tackled the topic of webcams in bars, and the Twin Cities is at the core of the story. Among the central examples is Park Place Sports Bar in St. Paul, who use a local company called Barseenlive to show a live stream of the night's business. 14 bars in the area currently run such webcams.

That sound you heard is hundreds of your neighbors frantically clicking to see if their drunken exploits have been being streamed live from the neighborhood watering hole.

Tracking the lushes isn't the stated intent of the system, though.

"When you go out, you want to know if it's busy or not. The camera's not made to spy on anyone or be incriminating," said Jen Renwick, a bartender at Park Place, a bar in Minnesota that set up two Webcams in recent months in partnership with a new company called Barseenlive. She said a couple of people have complained about privacy, but the majority of the response has been positive.

It's 11:30 a.m. on a Tuesday. Do you know where your husband is?

Some of the pro-webcam sentiment comes from partygoers who want to be sure the scene is starting before they begin departing. Others want the opposite, to find a quiet spot to nurse a drink. Still others -- no, really -- are tourists who want their families back home to be able to see them in the bar.

I cannot possibly imagine a scenario where I would want my Saturday night rendered into ones and zeroes for public consumption. But as long as I'm watching others' weekend experiences, why not get one of the big downtown Minneapolis meat markets online? If we could get a high-quality stream of, say, Sneaky Pete's, watching the pickups take shape could be the most visceral animalistic entertainment since Trials of Life.

You could watch on a big screen from house parties, offering lines on which guy would pursue which gal, setting the odds of successful interplay. Just for example:

2-1: Drink purchased
5-1: Phone numbers exchanged
10-1: Sloppy makeout session ensues
50-1: Drink-in-face
1000-1: Mutual, simultaneous drink-in-face

The possibilities of parlays, trifectas and quiniellas should go without saying. It would be the biggest thing since off-track betting. Some see webcams in bars and say, "why?" I see what might be -- an opportunity to gamble on the outcome of pick-up attempts -- and say, "why not?"

Naturally, this isn't what Barseenlive had in mind when they set up more than a dozen of these enterprises around the Twin Cities. That would be too entertaining.

Barseenlive, a directory of bars in Minneapolis, was conceived by three friends who decided at a happy hour that it would be ideal to be able to look up online what the crowd was like at the next bar they wanted to go to. After two years developing the concept, Barseenlive launched with its first bar in Minneapolis last summer, according to co-founder Jon Elizondeal.

Barseenlive runs a dedicated server for the cameras, which span 14 bars around the area, said co-founder Damian Jelich. The company's servers can support around 100 people watching the Webcams, but when it gets to the low thousands the stream will cut out, he said.

Barseenlive's website has a map of all the bars around the area you can check out, from Stillwater to Inver Grove Heights. The service costs bars in the neighborhood of $500 a month.

Privacy concerns are pooh-poohed in the story, with people saying that the video's generally low-quality, the content isn't archived, etc. etc. Then you read this:

Newsome said a woman once walked up to the camera bearing a piece of paper with a phone number, then her friend ran over and tackled her. Barmigo also gets e-mails like: "Who was the girl in the red dress last night, what's her e-mail, and can I talk to her?"

This is a foolproof tool for meeting people. "Hi. My name is [X]. We met in the bar last night. Or, actually, we didn't meet, per se. I watched you live from my parent's basement on a webcam, and ..."

Write your own pickup line in the comments. The possibilities are limitless.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 19, 2008 11:27 AM | Comments (14)

 

Where and How to Watch the Eclipse (Updated)

Filed under: Environment

I'm a sucker for celestial phenomena, but then, who isn't? Tomorrow night brings us a total eclipse of the moon. Not only is this rare, but the time and manner in which the lunar extravaganza will occur -- reasonably early in the evening, in a spot where most of North America can see it -- makes it all the more special.

During these events, the moon can turn colors ranging from bright orange to blood red to dark brown or dark gray. Assuming the sky's not totally cloudy, you've got to check out. Here are three suggested spots (indoor and outdoor) to do so.

For outdoor enthusiasts, Minneapolis Parks is leading a snowshoe trek at Lake Nokomis and Minnehaha Creek tomorrow night.

If the weather is clear, the Minneapolis Astronomical Society's Onan Observatory will be open. If the weather's not clear, then we're all out of luck.

UPDATE: Closer to the cities, the University of Minnesota Dept. of Astronomy will be hosting an eclipse viewing, too. Visitors can watch from the roof of the Tate Physics building from 8:30-10:00 pm. Telescopes may also be set up on Northrop Plaza.

Plan to get lucky, though, and come prepared. Plot out your spot with NASA's detailed eclipse diagrams. Take these detailed photographic tips with you, and maybe you'll catch some great pictures.

Light a candle for clear skies, and ad astra, baby.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 19, 2008 10:09 AM | Comments (7)

 

Breakfast of Champions: 2/19

Filed under: Breakfast of Champions

DAILY DISH: WHAT'S NEW AROUND THE SITE

Everyday life has turned into a health risk. This story reminds me of the old Tom Lehrer tune "Pollution," which is worth checking out if you haven't heard it.

When I dream of costing a newspaper millions of dollars, it generally involves huge checks with my name on them. Par Ridder took a different tack.

To get the President to piss off and stop undermining his campaign, the Republican frontrunner had to take strong steps. We have the exclusive
Dear John letter from John McCain to George Bush.

Three new posts on Balls! Jonathan Kaminsky explains why Gerald Green is the NBA's rightful slam dunk champion. Demko returns to the Champions League. And Benjamin Polk softens just a tad on John Calipari. Coincidentally, "Soft on John Calipari" will be one of the charges levied at the Democratic nominee this fall.

BRAIN CANDY

I pity fans too young to remember the halcyon days of Harry Caray (no, not the drug Halcyon, although sounded like he was on it fairly often). In no other field but baseball broadcasting can a man become a besotted old careless jester and not only keep his job, but charm a goodly portion of the populace.

Harry's been gone 10 years, so this site remembers some of his greatest hits with sound files. I especially recommend Tom Arnold's divorce, Manny "Danny" Alexander, and Booze in the Ice Cream. It's all gold, though, and this might as well be my epitaph.

From 10 years ago to more than two millennia past, we pick up the story of the Antikythera Mechanism. Recovered from a Roman shipwreck a little over 100 years ago, the device has been called the world's earliest computer.

We know it was used to calculate astronomical positions, but until recently didn't know exactly how. Cardiff University researchers, using "modern computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning," think they've got it figured now.

Turns out the scans show it used a differential gear, something scientists didn't think was invented until the 16th century. Nothing even remotely as complex (historical thought currently holds) was built for another 1,000 years.

Where did the technology go in the meantime? How precisely was this knowledge lost? Why didn't any other civilization that we know if invent it? Given these questions, there are some mysteries to unravel yet.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 19, 2008 12:06 AM | Comments (0)

 

$3.8 million dollar man

Filed under: Media

That's how much MediaNews recouped in legal costs from its lawsuit against the Star Tribune and its since deposed turncoat publisher Par Ridder. That revelation is contained in the newspaper chain's quarterly financial report, and was first highlighted by the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club.

That's $3.8 million that the Strib's parent company, Avista Capital Group, might find handy right now, given that its in the midst of cutting three percent of the newspaper's workforce. This follows the voluntary departure of roughly 75 editorial staff-ers last year.

MediaNews, of course, is the parent company of the Pioneer Press. The financial report offers some other interesting nuggets about the newspaper chain's financial shape. Fourth quarter profits rose in 2007 by roughly a third, from $12.9 million to $17.4 million. But this seemingly good news was offset by the revelation that revenues declined significantly. Retail advertising was off by 16 percent, while classified sales plummeted by nearly a third.

All this once again raises the question: How long until we start hearing rumblings of a MediaNews purchase of the ailing Star Tribune?

Posted by Paul Demko at February 18, 2008 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

 

Suppressed Report: Great Lakes States at Great Public Health Risk

Filed under: Environment

An exhaustive federal study about the health of boundary waters between the U.S. and Canada was supposed to come out last July. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suppressed the report, perhaps because of the disturbing information it contains.

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.

That's weighty. Is there any argument for continuing to forestall this information's release? One top scholar who has reviewed it says no.

“It raises very important questions,” Dr. Peter Orris, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago and one of three experts who reviewed the study for ATSDR, told the Center. While Orris acknowledged that the study does not determine cause and effect—a point the study itself emphasizes—its release, he said, is crucial to pointing the way for further research. “Communities could demand that those questions be answered in a more systematic way,” he said. “Not to release it is putting your head under the sand.”

The report has been independently reviewed over a period of years by more than 20 EPA scientists, state agency scientists from Minnesota multiple academics and several boards of review. "As such," Orris wrote in a letter calling for the study's release, "this is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report, internally and externally, that I have heard of.”

You can download excerpts from the report here and check out the findings for yourself.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 18, 2008 9:20 AM | Comments (0)

 

Breakfast of Champions: 2/18

Filed under: Breakfast of Champions

Happy Monday, good people.

DAILY DISH: WHAT'S NEW AROUND THE SITE

Besides the customary quick notes, Over The Weekend includes a full review of three local bands (The Alarmists, Romantica and Chris Koza) at the 7th St. Entry. Tons of new pictures, too.

The St. Paul police want more Tasers. I really, really tried to not use a variant on "Don't Tase Me Bro" in the headline for this post about that. I honestly did. If you have any better headline suggestions, kindly leave it in the comments. I was going to go with "You can't tase me: I'm a rock n' roll drummer!" but that's an inside joke, and we're trying to get away from those.

Or are we?

Charles Barkley is so great I'd consider moving to Alabama just to vote for him. Well, OK, that's not true. But the question I have after reading this post is simple: is Frank Caliendo's Charles Barkley impression (which is amazing) better or worse than Scott Van Pelt's version of Stephen A. Smith? Both performances key around the word "terrible."

Birds, do it, bees do it -- even educated fleas do it. Yes, we posted a video of animals fucking. I predict this to be the fourth-classiest thing we will do this week, unless I have three cups of Yerba Mate today. Then all bets are off.

Unreleased Replacements tracks are coming! W00t!

I really didn't want to lead with "Toussaint Morrison thinks his band the Blend is the best band in town," but he just kept saying it. Gave him a lot of chances to back off it. He wasn't taking 'em. I'm told the band does put on a good show: anyone happen to see that show at the Nomad?

We have several new slideshows up on the site from the last three days, and I'd like to highlight three of them. The Walker's visual arts section has a new suburban landscapes exhibition, featuring artists from near and far. Our image gallery will give you a taste of what that's like. The art sled rally has some really enjoyable images -- I like the X-Wing and the woolly mammoth the best, but the 18 wheeler crash series is pretty awesome, too. Even if you're not into their music, Super Furry Animals put on a heckuva show, featuring giant Power Ranger heads, written signs, obscure gestures and more.

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 18, 2008 8:15 AM | Comments (0)

 

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