April 2011
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“Early data is showing that streaming numbers related to the Royal Wedding sites...”
– That’s Akamai’s Jennifer Donovan talking to PCMag Friday about the web traffic caused by Wills and Kate’s nuptials. Bigger than the World Cup! Livestream said the event was their most popular stream ever, and it even crashed the BBC’s website for a bit. Is there still a...
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New Yorkers Find Love As Efficiently As Possible. Jen Doll has a great analysis on recently-released data from dating website HowAboutWe? The premise of the site is that they match people up based on what they want to do (not as cool as through a person’s salad preferences). “How about we grab a gin gimlet at the Brooklyn Bowl and dance to the soul-funk-shoegaze DJ?” a potential...
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Our Lager, Who Art In Heaven. A guy in Iowa consumed only beer and water for 46 days of Lent , and he says doing it brought him closer to God. J. Wilson, a home-brewer and Christian, kept a keg of beer at work and one at home and sipped on cups throughout the day. He says he felt tipsy maybe three times over the course of his fast. This beer-only diet was done by Bavarian Monks hundreds of years...
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Here is a slideshow of a cat wearing a Union Jack... →
And that is the only Royal Wedding coverage you will see from me.
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Moms Love Their Daughters More than Sons: Study. A new national survey released just in time for Mother’s Day shows most mothers polled would rather live with their daughters over their sons if they had to choose. How much is most? Seventy percent of mothers with both a son and a daughter chose the daughter. The study was done by the StayAtHomeScore.com, which is helping children and their...
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What Makes A Sandwich? More specifically—what item of food will get taxed? New York state’s tax department set out to determine which foods would have a tax added to them, and yesterday came up with a resolution. “We’re aware of the quirky nature of sales-tax law. There are nuances that are sometimes hard to navigate, and we wanted to make it easier for vendors,”...
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“We don’t kiss in public no more.”
– That’s Giussepe “Joey” Gambina at the trial of Vincent Basciano—better known as Vinny Gorgeous. Vinny put the no-kissing rule in place after he became paranoid about the FBI “taking pictures.” There is nothing more gangster than the double-cheek peck.
-KH
[NYP,...
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Bloomberg’s Outerborough Cab Probably Not Gonna Happen. A few months ago, Mayor Bloomberg announced his plan to legalize livery cabs in the outerboroughs. It’s next to impossible finding a yellow cab in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, so many people people rely on car service company or livery cabs. These cabs, though, are not widely regulated like yellow cabs, which can...
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Low Prices = High Protest Entertainment. There is no Wal-Mart in New York City; the closest one is in Valley Stream, close to the Queens/Nassau border. This pains some people—everything is so cheap!. It also makes others proud—we’re one of the few cities in the country that hasn’t sold out to the evil big box store! Through the years there have been many debates and efforts...
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“Instead of [the restaurant owner] getting killed, he’d have to pay a tax....”
– That’s alleged mobster Salvator Volpe, describing the tax one unidentified Staten Island restaurant owner paid the Bonanno crime family in lieu of getting killed. And what did this guy do to deserve this no-death penalty? He impregnated the wife of Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous”...
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It’s National Prime Rib Day! Thank you, Jen Doll, for reminding us that today is the day to celebrate this hunk of meat. Celebrate by trying these spots for prime rib!:
Keen’s Steakhouse 72 W. 36th St., NYC
This old-time steak joint is famous for their King Cut of Prime Rib (and also the mutton chops, but I’ll save that praise for National Mutton Chop Day.) Order the...
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Trump Talks Birth Certificate, LIVE →
Watch Trump talk LIVE About President Obama’s birth certificate.
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“If P. Diddy is really ‘All About the Benjamins,’ he will fully reimburse the...”
– That’s the statement from City Councilman Peter Vallone on the allegations that Diddy received a police escort last week to to travel from Manhattan to New Jersey. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly is investigating. And Vallone is currently driving through Astoria bumping “No Way Out.”
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“New Yorkers get more government aid per person from social programs than...”
– According to this analysis, New York state’s Medicaid program is the most expensive in the nation. We’re #1! The state ranks 28th in Social Security payments and 9th in Medicare, though.
[USAToday, @AziPaybarah]
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Donald Trump is ‘Not A Joiner.’ What’s the old Woody Allen line? I wouldn’t want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member? Turns out Donald Trump, who is a big deal in the New York real estate world, is not a member of the Real Estate Board of New York. His reason (at least the reason REBNY president told Azi Paybarah Trump gave him): Trump is “not a...
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“Gonzalez had been standing behind home plate when Manny came up to bat that day....”
– Sarah Rimer has written about Manny Ramirez for the New York Times since he was a star at George Washington High School in Washington Heights. Today she looked back at interviews and stories and the time she spent with the people around him as he rose from high school phenom to one of the biggest...
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“As a product of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years of trial and...”
– That’s Joe Weisenthal reviewing Jeremy Grantham’s latest quarterly letter from investment mangement firm GMO, that discusses what he calls “The Problem with Humans.” Although we’ve evolved, of course, from our humble beginnings, there are still concepts we don’t,...
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NYTimes, Their Readers Stalk Hobo. The idea of a ramblin’ man is that nobody—not their family, their friends, not those who love a hobo, and especially not the mainstream media—can catch up to them. But last week the NYT’s Corey Kilgannon caught up with a “real, honest-to-goodness ramblin’ man” in Riverside Park, and then even granted him an interview. “Goin’ up...
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“This means you can watch porn.”
– That’s a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Public Library telling the Village Voice that it’s okay for you to go pornin’ on their computers, provided your site manages to slip past the kiddie filter. They even provide privacy screens to users. Normally, I’m in favor of both pornography AND wasting...
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“I had a cat, the cat died, and now the stuff I used to say to the cat all day, I...”
– That’s Colson Whitehead talking about the Internet. And that it’s your own damn fault if you can’t finish what you’re doing because you’re spending too much time on Tumblr.
-KH
[Publishers Weekly, via housingworksbookstore]
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A SONIC IS OPENING TODAY ON LONG ISLAND. We’ve been tortured for years by Sonic commercials airing in New York despite the closest Sonic being across state lines in New Jersey. We cried knowing the fruity drinks, the chili cheese tots, and the corn dogs were out of reach. But we weep no longer; Sonic, America’s Drive-In, is opening a shop today in North Babylon. I think it’s...
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Mac Users Are Hot-Shot City Liberals Who Like To Eat Shawarma. Save the bologna and other bland cold cut sandwiches for a PC user—this infographic from Hunch blog breaks down the major differences between Mac and PC users, and the answers aren’t surprising. I already assumed that Mac users were centered mostly around major cities, and consider themselves the smaller but more important...
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“It makes our block look bad. There are no prostitutes, no johns, no drugs...”
– That’s one neighbor in South Ozone Park, Queens, complaining of an undercover prostitution sting being run by the NYPD. While the cops try to bust prostitutes using area motels, the people who live—don’t work—on the streets are worried about how it will make their block look....
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WatchBeat Boston! Andrew Siff sat down with Pablo Torre, a writer for Sports Illustrated and a member of The 20, to discuss the Knicks/Celtics game. Will Knicks fans be happy with just getting this close, or do they want to go all the way?
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“We call it the Ganges. She takes away your sickness, your pain, your suffering.”
– That’s Madan Padarat, talking not about the actual Ganges River in India, but Jamaica Bay, in Brooklyn and Queens. Local Hindus have been performing religious rituals along the Queens shores, under the takeoff path of planes from Kennedy Airport. These rituals involve the throwing of objects...
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WatchThe Latest “30 Rock” Animated Shorts Accurately Portrays 30 Rock Commissary. I visit the Comm very frequently, and my experience is similar to the above video. I hate it when Brian Williams finishes the last of the fro yo, forcing me to cheat a little and get the Dove ice cream bar in the freezer. It’s almost as bad as that time Jenna Bush used the last of the olive oil in the...
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“We stared at each other, I thought again about that day on the bridge, the...”
– That’s Chris Hondros, who was killed yesterday by a rocket propelled grenade attack while covering the conflict in Libya. Tim Hetherington, another photojournalist, was also killed. One of Hondros’ most famous photos was taken in 2003, of a Liberian soldier fighting in the civil war. He...
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Happy Birthday, Library Lions! When they were placed in front of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, some critics called the lions“squash-faced” and“mealy-mouthed and complacent.” Others demanded they be removed. But now, almost 100 years later, the city has grown to love and respect Patience and Fortitude. And the NYPL is preparing a giant bash in their honor, with sculptures of...
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“I was originally asked to write 150 words of praise for Amy Poehler....”
– That’s the delightful Aziz Ansari writing about his “Parks & Recreation” co-star Amy Poehler in Time’s list of 100 most influential people. Normally, this list just gives Time an excuse to let really famous people say nice and boring things about other really famous people, so +1,000 to Aziz for...
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“She’s been going up to island workers and personnel to say hello. She has...”
– That’s Elizabeth Rapuano, chief of staff for the Trust for Governors Island, describing the cat that they say washed up on the shores of their island. While images of a cat riding a wave on a surfboard in New York Harbor instantly popped into my head, I think it’s more likely that this...
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If Sugar Doesn’t Kill You, Sitting Will. Which is good news because you’re probably reading this while running in the park, and not sitting in front of your computer, at the end of a 9 hour stretch of sitting, right? Last Sunday’s issue of The New York Times magazine section singled out sugar as the biggest danger to humans. But The Atlantic says that what’s actually worse...
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“Blah blah blah blah rain blah blah blah Niese blah blah Astros blah blah Mets...”
– I can imagine it must get tiring being a Mets beat reporter at one of the local papers. It’s not even May, and the Daily News writers are already exhausted by writing about the last-place Mets—but they try.
-KH
[DN, via Mother Jones]
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Twitter Used Against Suspect in Rutgers Suicide Case. Last September, Dharun Ravi is alleged to have secretly videotaped his Rutgers roommate, Tyler Clementi, during a liaison with another man in their dorm room. Ravi is then accused of watching with another friend and posting about it on Twitter, encouraging others to watch, too. Days later, Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge,...
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Think God Is Nice Guy? You’re More Likely To Cheat On A Test. Or so says the latest study from the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. The researchers had test subjects answer math questions on a computer, letting them know that the answers to the questions would appear in a few moments if they didn’t press the space bar when finished. The temptation to find out...
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Sweet Corn Wins Informal Poll For State Veggie. Not satisfied with having just an official fruit, the Big Apple is now looking to declare an official vegetable to represent New York. The two veggies in the running—sweet corn and onion—have been battling it out for weeks; different state senators even put out dueling bills trying to declare the official vegetable. Diane Savino of...
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Free Pizza for High Holiday. Slice NY—the preeminent pizza blog—is reporting that Two Boots—the preeminent corn-meal crust pizza joint—will be giving out free (half) slices of their “Dude” pizza today. The slice, described as a “Cajun cheeseburger” pie, piled high with ham, ground beef, cheddar, and mozzarella, is named after the character from the...
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NY Attorney General Moonlighting As Theater Producer. Who knew Eric Schneiderman had a little Maxwell Sheffield in him? His tax return statements were released Monday, and he declared the $24,000 investment he made in Johnny Guitar—a musical version of the about a woman who opens a bar outside of town—as a loss. The New York Times called the show, which opened in 2004, a...
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School Lunch: An Evolution. AdAge has the story of how Lunchables, the “king of kid’s lunches”, is trying to rebrand their image as a healthy option for parents. When I was a kid, Lunchables were not known for being exactly healthy; I fondly remember the Taco Bell-brand version. But now, with childhood obesity a nationwide concern—and Jamie Oliver all over our TVs showing...
