16 October 2006

  • Composer Harry Partch created a vast array of specially tuned instruments--you can play virtual versions of some of them here.
  • New Yorkers will do anything short of burning down their apartments (or their landlords' apartments) to get rid of bedbugs.
  • If finding a purpose is the aim of life coaching, for an increasingly large number of people, going to see a life coach ends with the decision to become a life coach.
  • With an ice skating rink in one set and more than 70 roles across its three parts, Tom Stoppard's new play is one of Broadway's most complex productions, ever.
  • Maybe the internet really can make you smarter (or fake it even better): podcasts from This American Life, videos of Berkeley lectures.
  • To do tomorrow: See New York Hack Melissa Plaut at Here Is New York: Then and Now.
  • It's bad enough when a company lays off employees; it's worse when they take everybody on a cruise only a week before.
  • Whether single or just living together, more Americans are choosing "living in sin" over marriage, and don't you just know the New York Times loves it.
  • After paying over a million dollars in ransoms, it was when his son and his ex-wife attempted a fourth fake kidnapping that his suspicions were raised.
  • Bill Murray attends Scottish students' house party; being invited by "a Norwegian blonde" probably didn't hurt, either.
  • Because you're not even going to vote, you should make fake political signs, post them in your town, and send us photos.
  • Because you might as well vote, here's how, in New York.
  • No fatalities reported, much power lost in massive earthquake that hit Hawaii's Kona Coast.
  • Hamas says cease-fire with Israel is over following raids in which 22 Palestinians were killed.
  • Israeli police say President Moshe Katsav should face charges of rape and sexual assault.
  • Al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents declare new Islamic republic in central and western Iraq.
  • One option the U.S. could consider to stop the fighting in Iraq: Partner with Iran and Syria.
  • Reuters to open news agency in Second Life.
  • CBGB plays its final act.
  • It housed the most influential cluster of bands ever to grow up--or to implicitly reject the concept of growing up--under one roof. Richard Hell on being young forever at CBGB.
  • Today in Digest: Robert Birnbaum on literary feuds and the reviews that spawn them.
  • What American art would be like without Picasso; what Earth would be like with no people.
  • John Kerry may be the only person who's excited about his new bid for the presidency.
  • Why Americans don't vote anymore: Nobody's offering them a beer, or a better job, if they do.
  • "Lanky" Tony Snow sluts it up for $175 a plate.
  • Disneyland employees reprimanded for simulated, costumed sex with either Chip or Dale.
  • Reasons to leave the house dwindling: video from the New Yorker Festival.
  • Improv Everywhere makes the cut on Millionaire.
  • How do you explain "frat" movies to non-Americans?
  • My career at CBGB began--and ended--in one night in late 1993.