Month: August 2010

E-mail Footer Madness

by Conor Friedersdorf

I'll tell you what common practice I find insane, beyond engagements with diamond rings, the embarrassing movies Eddie Murphy has chosen for himself over the years, and Spain's failure to embrace the cuisine of its colonial offshoots: I object to the footers you find at the bottom of emails sent via corporate accounts. Here's an example from a few days ago, when I received a message from an employee of JP Morgan Chase, and found this at the bottom:

This communication is for informational purposes only. It is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument or as an official confirmation of any transaction. All market prices, data and other information are not warranted as to completeness or accuracy and are subject to change without notice. Any comments or statements made herein do not necessarily reflect those of JPMorgan Chase & Co., its subsidiaries and affiliates. This transmission may contain information that is privileged, confidential, legally privileged, and/or exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of the information contained herein (including any reliance thereon) is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. Although this transmission and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defect that might affect any computer system into which it is received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus free and no responsibility is accepted by JPMorgan Chase & Co., its subsidiaries and affiliates, as applicable, for any loss or damage arising in any way from its use. If you received this transmission in error, please immediately contact the sender and destroy the material in its entirety, whether in electronic or hard copy format. Thank you. Please refer to http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/disclosures for disclosures relating to European legal entities.

I love that URL at the bottom, as if anyone in Internet history has ever read through that whole message and thought, "Ah, I think I'll click over and read the disclosures mandated in Europe!" This reminds me to post what Cory Doctorow once had in his signature (and might still):

READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED  agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (”BOGUS AGREEMENTS”) that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

Ah, but what if the employer is in Europe?

Unfinished Wars

by Patrick Appel

Tom Ricks remains pessimistic about Iraq:

The Iraqi mess is far from over, and I don't think the Americans have extricated themselves. The best we may have done is reduce the American presence sufficiently to let natural political forces begin to work and Iraqi politicians to break through the current stalemate. This is likely to be a violent process.

He's more upbeat on Afghanistan:

In Afghanistan we do have a couple of aces in the hole. The biggest one is that the Afghan people have lived under Islamic extremism and fundamentally they don’t want it to come back.

The problem in Iraq is none of the basic political questions in the country have been solved. This is one reason we’ve gone so many months now without the formation of an Iraqi government.

But the basic question is how are these three major groups in Iraq going to get along?

Let the Corpses Decay

by Conor Friedersdorf

In case you missed it, this week's reader question prompt was, "What widely accepted practice, custom or societal norm do you regard as irrational, absurd, offensive, silly, nonsensical, counterproductive, or morally wrong?" 

Perhaps 200 people responded, and the most frequent answer was that it makes no sense to say "God bless you" after someone sneezes. Lots of readers also lodged complaints against eating meat, mistreating animals, believing in God, practicing organized religion, driving SUVs, and the societal practice of pairing off in monogamous relationships.

Less expected responses will make up the bulk of what I post. Let's start with a common answer that I didn't anticipate:

Carol objected most concisely: "Pumping dead bodies full of embalming fluid and burying them in a sealed casket, instead of wrapped in fabric in a pine box so they can decay as quickly as possible."

Says Carmel:

Burial.

Perhaps not so much the fact that we as a society bury bodies at all, but the manner in which we do so is, frankly, grotesque. First we embalm the corpse. The body is preserved with gallons upon gallons of formaldehyde and ethanol, and the face is set in the "proper" expression, as if it were a child's doll. (It should be noted that the average burial puts hundreds of gallons of embalming chemicals into the soil, so this practice isn't merely twisted, it's an environmental disaster.) Continuing this monstrous parody of dress-up, the body is then groomed, makeup is applied, and the deceased is dressed in its Sunday best for all to see. The body is then displayed in its casket, so that mourners may admire the embalmers' handiwork. Then, and only then, is the corpse finally buried–in an overpriced mahogany box lined with satin pillows that look like rejects from Hugh Heffner's interior decorators.

We're not honoring our dead loved ones by doing this; we're desecrating them. People may as well taxidermy their dearly departed. At least then you can use your beloved Aunt Mable as a hat rack.

Lisa writes:

I find myself, so far as I know, very much in the minority on the issue of having open caskets at funeral viewings. People have insisted to me that being able to see the deceased in this manner brings some sort of 'closure.' Personally, I find it morbid, gruesome, voyeuristic and unnecessary.

This isn't a matter of squeamishness on my part – I'm not freaked out by the sight of a dead body. I simply don't see the need to put the deceased 'on display' in this matter, if only out of respect. I myself have told my husband and kids in no uncertain terms that they are NOT to do this to me when the time comes. Closed casket, cremation, donation to science, whatever…but no traditional 'viewing.'

I've requested that I be cremated, but that a life-sized, cosmetically accentuated ice-sculpture version of myself be displayed at the funeral so that my friends and family can look upon me one last time, bidding their goodbyes as I melt into eternity.

I'm kidding! But the descriptions above make that seem preferable to being embalmed.

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #12

Vfyw-contest_8-21

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I dated a German girl for a few years, and so spent plenty of time in various parts of Germany and Austria. The architecture from this photo is very familiar. It’s clearly Bavarian. So I’m going to go with the longtime capital of the former kingdom and now Bundesland: Munich.

Another writes:

This one could be anywhere in southern Germany, eastern Switzerland, or Austria, from my eye.  The church tower is very typical of that region and I think I’ve seen them in towns along the Donau.  The square tower nearby also generally fits my hazy memory of an architectural style from that region.  The buildings in the back argue for a large-ish city, and the spike tower in the far background could possibly be the needle from the 72 Olympics in Munich (or just a crane, hard to tell).  How about somewhere south of Marienplatz?  My wife promises me a dinner if I ever get one even close enough …

Another:

It looks like the city where they shot the last scenes of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – Nordlingen, Germany?

Another reader thought the same thing. Another:

This one was deceptively difficult.  It feels like this should be in Germany, but for the life of me, I can’t figure it out.  I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit pouring over databases of high-rise buildings trying to place that angular glass building in the background.  I thought the small flag in the foreground could point towards a location, and now I know more about Germanic heraldry than one person should ever have to learn (I’m now convinced the flag just decor).  And with all that, I have naught but a guess: Bremen.  (I know, I know, not even close…)

Another:

The picture looks very much like Sweden, although it could conceivably also be in Russia or Georgia. If I had to guess, I would say Visby, Sweden. A quick Google image search reveals quite a number of churches and other building remarkably similar to those picture.

Another

I am going to guess Cordoba, Spain, near the river there is a fort like building in the old section of the city. The buildings in the foreground remind me of the architecture there, while the modern buildings in the far background look like they would have been built in the construction boom in recent years.

Or too much mosque on the brain. Another:

Wow, this one is obviously from Catholic East-Central Europe, but where?  A million cities flew through my mind, and my gut says “Prague”, but I think this is too obvious.  Still, it’s somewhere that has seen some strong recent economic development – those are obviously capitalist and not communist high-rise buildings in the background. I’m going to go with a dark horse and guess Vilnius, Lithuania (homeland of the ancestors on my mother’s side of the family).

Another:

I believe the picture is from Riga, Latvia. My first guess was Brugges. But my husband, who has been to Brugges, shot down that idea.  He insisted it was Germanic-style architecture. I noted the flat landscape, the lack of skyscrapers and the Russian-y look to the steeple.   Latvia popped into my head, and I googled church steeples in Riga (the only city I know in Latvia) and found an image that looked very close.

Another:

Prague, Czech Republic? I’m pretty sure that red-and-white stripey thing off in the distance is the Žižkov TV tower. And the mix of old-timey and modern architecture more or less comports with the city as I remember it. Even if I’m right, I know someone else is going to be able to identify the location down to the exact GPS coordinates. Or else it’s some tiny suburb on the outskirts of the city, where one of your readers lived for a year. I tell you, I continue to find this contest both exhilarating and despair-inducing.

Another:

Lisbon, Portugal.  I have my reasons.

Another:

I checked the Dish from my office one afternoon not long ago and the VFYW photo showed the very building I was sitting in at the time, taken from someone’s apartment window across the street. How cool is that? Why couldn’t that have been the first contest photo?

Another:

Finally got one.

Although I suspect this one will be very easy and lots of people will get it and someone will get the angle/location of the shot much more precisely. At first I thought Bavaria and searched Bavaria and steeple in Google images.  This yielded some similar things, but no hits.  Then I tried Czech, the Slovakia … closer.  Then I gave up.  But after a walk and brunch, suddenly the thought Estonia popped into my head.  And there it was!  St. Nicholas Church in Tallinn, Estonia.

I figured this week’s contest would be relatively easy, but not this easy: the vast majority of entrants guessed Tallinn (out of about 300 total).  For that reason, a map of the plotted guesses wouldn’t be that interesting this week. (Plus, I’m still sorting through all the great suggestions for dynamic maps sent in by readers – thank you!).  Below are some of the best entries for Tallinn. One reader writes:

At last, I’ve finally been to one of the featured window views!  So we have St Nicholas’ Church, Old City, Tallinn, Estonia. To quote the tourist blurb: “Founded by German merchant/settlers from the island of Gotland sometime around 1230, the sturdy church was designed to double as a fortress in the days before the town wall was built.” The church is well known for its organ recitals – they were pumping out the tunes during my visit in ’08. I could put GPS coordinates up and post pictures but hey, I’m just happy to be in the right country for a change!

Another:

The window the photograph was taken from is somewhere around 59°26’10.90″N, 24°44’26.45″E.  Here is the result once I determined this location:

Tallinn-image001

Thank you very much for this opportunity to dedicate a whole day of sleuthing.  It was great fun!  Hopefully I’ve come fairly close.  Maybe one day I’ll actually get to visit the area.  It looks really interesting.

Another:

The street address is Niguliste 3, 10146 Tallinn, Eesti. The Wikipedia page is here. My wife and I took a roundabout path to the answer.  We instantly, though mistakenly, placed this scene in Central Europe, where we have traveled a bit.  The ornate Baroque tower reminded us of that area.  In the background is a bit of wall, and that inspired my wife to search Google for images of German walled cities.  The first picture in her list showed the church from nearly the same angle, although much further away.  (The linked site was this one.)  We were shocked to find out it was in Tallinn.

Another:

I was terribly excited when I saw this photo, because my wife and I spent the last four days of our honeymoon in Tallinn, two winters ago. I’m browsing our photos, because we have a few that are nearly identical to this shot. We were there in January, when every storm creates the closest approximation you will ever see to a life-sized snow globe. Thank you for posting this!

Another:

I’m the commissioner of the “superfan” league you wrote about here. I’m sure there will be quite a few Tallinn win editguesses of the correct answer (Tallinn, Estonia), but my girlfriend and I are confident we’ve nailed the exact coordinates:  56° 26′ 10.77″ N  and 24° 44′ 25.97″ E.  Here’s the Google Earth view of the spot!

Since I last wrote, we’ve turned our league into a “head to head” style VFYW league, similar to fantasy football, where we have matchups each week and standings based on wins and losses.  At the end of the two month season, we’re doing a seeded playoffs where the top seeds have a mileage spread!

By the way, as a Latvian, it’s good to see you represent the Baltics. (Side note: the most attractive people in the world come from the Baltics – true statement!)

Another:

This one is too easy for us readers of Estonian descent, of which I suspect there are many.  By the way, Estonia and Estonians tend to favour your brand of principled conservatism – the government is small, sensible and low-cost.  It is often recommended as a model, but only really works when the governed are also pragmatic and stoic, as Estonians tend to be.

Another:

I still have a bottle of Vana Tallinn not 5′ away from me that I brought back after my 1995 visit to Estonia while on study abroad. Such a magical place with the old historic city walls still well preserved. It was like stepping back in time – I seem to remember the old historic pubs the best, don’t remember much about the churches. Perhaps it was the drinks we had of Vana Tallinn with 45% alcohol that made the place seem so magical.

Another:

This took no time at all.  The tower was distinct, so I knew I had a good chance. First, I latched onto the tiny flags topping the church steeple and the medieval tower.  But a Google image search of church and city flags got nowhere.  Then I decided (maybe foolishly) that the number of towns with a church right next to a medieval wall must be relatively finite.  I googled “Churches near medieval walls.” That worked.  Incredible.

Jackpot on page 3 of the results, courtesy of this website. Specifically, the black and white church tower is located at 59.435922, 24.742756.  It is called Tallinna Nigulste Kirik.

So!  I’d found Tallinn in 15 minutes.  The rest was Diff-anglean hour (or, uh, twice that) trying to pin down the angle to find the right window.  For this, the Google Earth feature is awesome.  It let me zoom through a 3D virtual Tallinn and line up the triangular building and red-and-white smokestack in the background. In my exploring I also found that under the red-topped tower is a cafe that sells pottery, called Bogapott.  Bogapott has an encouraging website.

In the end, I decided the VFYW photographer (assuming he or she followed the rules and took the photo from a window) was on the second floor right here: 59.436348, 24.740658

I’ll let those coordinates be my official official guess coordinates.  Google doesn’t really give an address for the building.  The corner building (corner of Pikk Jalg and Piiskopi) may be Pikk Jalg 16. Attached is a photo looking East along the front yard of 16.  To the left, you can see what is likely the VFYW foreground tree, the photographer’s window out of frame.

Two final notes.  First, given this technology, in 5 years we won’t be able to play this game at all; it will be too easy.  We’ll be able to pinpoint any spot on the planet in 10 minutes.  And secondly, I did all this on Saturday morning, when there were 3 or 4 decent photos of that area of Tallinn pinned to Google Maps. When I went back to Google Maps on Monday afternoon, I discovered what seemed to be dozens more photos pinned there. Meaning, I take it, that plenty of your readers uploaded their photos over the weekend.

Another:

Thanks for helping a couple of 911 dispatchers keep alert on a slow Saturday.

Another:

I usually give up on this contest after about ten minutes, but today I have a new puppy and too much time on my hands.  Using Flickr and Google maps, I was able to narrow down a city with red roofs and black steeples.  After a few more minutes,  and after considering both St. Nicholas church and St. Olaf’s as the steeple, I discovered it was actually the medieval town hall, or ratusz, in Tallinn Estonia: 10146 Tallinn, Estonia 645 7900. Apparently people used to be executed in the town square directly in front of the building.

Another:

Wow, check out this cool website:

55A0

You can see the view almost like your photo. And it’s a 360 shot, one can play with it. Wonderful.

Another:

This isn’t an actual entry into the contest, as I found the answer by cheating and wanted to let you know how.  Using the Google Goggles app on my phone, I took a picture of the tower in this week’s photo.  Goggles was able to match that to another photo from Tallinn that happened to have the same tower.  I went through a few other VFYW entries and wasn’t able to cheat on those, but I just wanted to let you know that this sort of thing is possible.

Disclaimer: I’m an engineer at Google and I work on Goggles.

Another:

The reason I am choosing Tallinn is because the steeple and tower in the picture appear to be the same steeple and tower that were seen in another VFYW picture that you Tallinn_estoniahad narrowed my guess down to England or Eastern Europe.

I’m not going to try to guess exactly what window this view came from, but I’m sure some of your other readers will (especially since I’m sure you have readers who live or have lived there, or visited the church on vacation, or had their first kiss in that very steeple, or …). I’m glad that you print some of the e-mails from people who have guessed; it is so enlightening to see the details they are picking out in order to guess the location. And no matter how many details I pick out to guess the location, your readers always pick out many more that I have not even noticed.

Another:

That’s definitely Tallinn, Estonia – though I may have an unfair advantage, having submitted a similar photo that was featured in August 2008.

Another:

Since this will be more a test of one’s ability to stand out in the crowd than a real contest to get the correct answer, I’ll start off by making this a little bit about me.  [600 words later …]  So, how to distinguish myself Me in tallinnfrom the many correct answers?  Sadly, I probably shouldn’t use the google maps screenshot on which I marked up the field of view because that might present copyright issues.  I don’t have much of a personal story about the location.  Although I can say I was there, on a very pleasant warm summer day three years ago, I didn’t get married there or otherwise mark the moment in any sort of spectacular fashion, and it’s probably too late (or too expensive) to plan something between now and Tuesday.

Best I can do is send along the attached photo evidencing my visit to Estonia, as to which I can say without question I own all copyright and hereby give you full permission to use. That’s the best I can do.

Gosh, I love this contest.

So many inventive and accurate answers, but we have to choose one.  So the winner of the free Blurb book goes to the following reader, who not only nailed one of the most difficult prior contests (Dili) but who also included an excellent window view – not too vague, not too obvious, several intuitive clues – to use for a future contest. (One of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects of crafting a contest is finding suitable windows from the limited number of unused photos sent to us.) The winner writes:

This time you’ve selected a picture which is simply too easy.  I’m betting 200 entrants get it correct.  This is going to be my third correct entry (I’ve previously gotten correct the photos of Dili, Timor L’Este and Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina).

In the photo this week, the architecture is clearly Baltic.  I’ve been previously to Riga, Latvia, and Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania, the other major Baltic cities, and I thus know it’s not a view of any of them.  So I presumed it must be Tallinn – which I haven’t visited.  All you have to go is google images of Tallin and it’s clear this is a view of Tallin’s old city.

Make it harder next time.

You can count on it.

Three, Four … Twenty Blocks? Ctd


The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Loathe Thy Neighbor
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Do you guys remember this story from late 2006?  A proposed mosque in an unincorporated area of Katy, Texas was met with local opposition.  A neighbor of the proposed development held pig races in protest.  It garnered some national media attention at the time, including a story on the Daily Show.

Things have quieted down since then.  (I live in Katy.) The neighbor only held the pig races a couple of times, and construction on the mosque hasn't yet begun.  But there's a local group — Preserving the Lifestyles and Neighborhoods of Katy (or PLANK) — who continues to "monitor" the development.  They also have fliers.

Another reader sends this news item from yesterday:

Community members say it is economic concerns, not religious prejudice, that has caused them to not embrace the idea of turning a one-time fast food restaurant in Chicago's West Ridge neighborhood into a mosque. "It's a key property zoned for retail… That's what we want to keep it," said Amie Zander of the West Ridge Chamber of Commerce, explaining that converting the property into a place of Islamic worship would take it off the tax rolls.

From all the facts presented in this story, the chamber of commerce sounds like it has a legitimate, non-bigoted reason for wanting the mosque built elsewhere. But another tragic consequence of the Cordoba controversy is that other seemingly similar cases of zoning disputes won't be evaluated on their own merits; they will get rolled into the broader, politically-charged narrative.

Housing Tanks

by Patrick Appel

Felix Salmon gasps at the National Association of Realtors report:

The news … means that there’s a big gap between buyers and sellers: the market isn’t clearing. Sellers are convinced that their homes are worth lots of money, or will rise in price if they just hold out a bit longer; buyers are happily renting, waiting for prices to come down. And entrepreneurial types, whom one would expect to arbitrage the two by buying houses with super-cheap mortgages and renting them out at a profit, don’t seem to have found those opportunities yet.

Tom Lawler evaluates the homebuyer tax credit:

[W}hat did we learn from the home buyer tax credit? (1) “if you pay them, they will come”; (2) if there is a deadline, they will rush to meet the deadline; and (3) when the deadline is over, sales will fall WAY below trend!

Some folks still like the tax credit, because (a) it helped “stabilize” home prices (short term it does appear to have); (b) it would help reduce excess inventories (for new home sales it did, but existing inventories have kept increasing); and (c) it would “generate interest” in the housing sector. On the latter score, the stabilization of home prices and reports of earlier strong sales DID appear to generate interest in housing – but mainly from previously “discouraged” sellers who decided to put their homes on the market (in many cases again) – which appears to be the major reason why active listings have INCREASED despite the tax-credit “goose” to sales!

The report compels Megan to defend her decision to buy a house:

Should we rethink buying a house?  Well, we can't; at this point, we're couch-surfing our relatives while we wait for our house to close; there's no way out but forward.  And in our case, we're planning to stay put for a long time, so as long as DC rents don't utterly collapse, this is still a good plan for us.  But this only reinforces my belief that housing is no longer a good way to generate wealth.  The government can't fix this market, which needs to find a new, lower level.  It can only very temporarily distort it.

Avent repeats himself:

[T]he biggest policy failure of the recession, on the part of either administration or Congress, was the inability to put in place measures to meaningfully address the crisis in housing markets.

Can Church Be Hip? Ctd


The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Hold Steady
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

As far as contemporary music that can be thought of as Christian yet still pass the "sniff test", recent Colbert guests The Hold Steady fit the bill. Their latest album, "Heaven is Whenever", is a more rough-edged tour of spiritual feelings than Sufjan Stevens' maddeningly lovely, folksy records. Here's a bonus track titled "Ascension Blues."

P.S.  Lead singer Craig Finn has sported a pretty sweet beard recently.

Finn Hold-steadyBoston College, which is a Catholic college. I guess as I got to be about 30, I started thinking more, and bigger things were happening — like, your problems when you're 30 are bigger than your  problems when you're 20. Family, health things, whatever. Things that drive people back to faith.

I started really thinking about the role the church played in my own life, and the fact that even though I didn't believe every little bit of what the Pope thinks, there's a lot of beauty in the Catholic church and a lot of beauty in the teachings. Things like forgiveness and redemption, the Ten Commandments, it's hard to argue these as negative things.

So, it's kind of embracing the Catholic church as my own culture, and my own ancestors and my own background, their way of explaining morality and explaining some of the wonder of the world that's beyond our grasp.

Mormons On The Mosque, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

As a former Mormon of 40 years, I would like to think adherents of that faith would support the Mosque building in lower Manhattan. This may get you started on the "more varied opinions on this [topic] among Mormons at large" suggestion from one of your readers: For starters, their 11th Article of Faith, something every Mormon child is expected to commit to and repeat from memory, states, "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

Furthermore, the mosque issue is directly tackled in this post by the Mormon political blog, The Millennial Star (named after a Mormon magazine of the mid 1800s). The comments section if full of opinion both for and against the building of the mosque in its proposed location.  One might fairly assume that many if not most commenters are faithful Mormons.

The Millennial Star's Brian Duffin moderates:

Sadly, not only were thousands of lives lost [on 9/11], but a religion was hijacked by the worst kind of extremists, extremists who do not represent the majority of Muslims who practice Islam. The broader question, I think, for Latter-Day Saints, is will we let our faith be hijacked by politics and sacrifice one of the most basic tenets of our faith and a right guaranteed in the American Constitution: the free exercise of religion? Or will we stand up for the rights of others and let them worship how, where, or what they may? We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, but will we allow all people that same privilege?