Arcade Fire release Miroir Noir - a film about the Arcade Fire.
Tired of holiday cheer and tired of shopping, time to get angry and get active because the MTA has proposed huge budget hikes!!!
The hauntingly simple sounds and harmonies of the Fleet Foxes have a tendency to be appreciated without the outcry of celebration that some of the more outlandish indie bands receive. NPR's listeners have claimed the Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes to be the top of their lists for 2008.
Alone Together. Manhattan is the capital of people living by themselves. But are New Yorkers lonelier? Far from it, say a new breed of loneliness researchers, who argue that urban alienation is largely a myth. - from New York Magazine
Read about A Land Rush in Wyoming Spurred by Wind Power.
image and text below from NY TimesFor decades, people in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, have lived with the possible health hazards from oil spills in their industrial waterfront. Up to 30 million gallons of petroleum — almost three times the amount dumped off the Alaskan coast by the Exxon Valdez in 1989 — made their way into Newtown Creek and surrounding neighborhoods from dozens of refineries over more than a century.
On Beadel Street, one homeowner said she refused access to investigators for fear of condemnation or a loss in property level.
Now residents have a new anxiety: Toxic gases may be rising into their homes from below, the legacy of dry-cleaning plants, foundries and other manufacturers that once operated in this hub, which has long been home to immigrants and, more recently, artists and young professionals.
Such vapor intrusion — chemicals from contaminated soil and groundwater that become airborne, entering buildings through pores and cracks — has become a growing public health concern around the country in recent years. Contaminants that spread from industrial activity, or that were mistakenly believed to have been contained or eliminated in environmental cleanups, have been discovered wafting into basements. Since 2005, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has been testing around the state to gauge the extent of the problem....Continue reading here.
Animal Collective's newest album (coming out in January 2009 - album cover above) is called Merriweather Post Pavilion and the released track "Brothersport" can be found for a limited time here as acbrothersport.mp3. Animal Collective hosted a listening party on October 28, 2008 up on 145th St.
Brown Clouds over China image from NY TimesThrough this developer portal, we provide code snippets, technical documentation and an interactive demo to help developers use UMI's data. You may register for our free neighborhood API and read more about what we offer.
This is sad: Drummer Mitch Mitchell from Jimi Hendrix Experience passed away
Phillies win - congrats to them and their fans...
image from Dempsey's website
The CMJ Music Marathon starts today. Make your custom schedule here. What is CMJ?
After hearing the presidential candidates discuss his life in such detail last night, plumber Joe might just consider something brash. Anyway, No Impact Man addresses a point made; if environmentalism is about use less stuff, make less impact, have less effect, might we all be better if we just committed suicide? Might not that be the easier solution?
With all of his new tax breaks maybe plumber Joe is in the market for Apple's latest line of brick (one solid piece of aluminum that saves materials and lightens the computer) laptops or a Google phone.
For example, this dude blogs about living with solar panels at Transition Culture. 
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| Image courtesy Partnership for Parks. |
If you have some free time on Saturday and you are in Brooklyn check out the Gowanus Harvest Festival at The Yard. Green Brooklyn discusses it here.
Here's the pledge:
I pledge to Break the Bottled Water Habit by Thinking Outside the Bottle and using a reusable water bottle instead of buying bottled water. I also pledge to support the efforts of local officials to stop spending public funds on bottled water and prioritize strong public water systems over bottled water profits.
Read the Center for a New American Dream's five tips for kicking the bottled water habit here.
OpenLayers 2.7 released.Last week, I wrote an entry on my blog that began like this:
“One of these days, I’m going to write a book called, ‘The Basics.’ It’s going to be a compendium of the essential tech bits that you just assume everyone knows–but you’re wrong.
* You can double-click a word to highlight it in any document, e-mail or Web page.
* You can hide all windows, revealing only what’s on the computer desktop, with one keystroke: hit the Windows key and “D” simultaneously in Windows, or press F11 on Macs (on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo). That’s great when you want examine or delete something you’ve just downloaded to the desktop, for example. Press the keystroke again to return to what you were doing.
* You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, it’s the Command key and plus or minus.
* The number of megapixels does not determine a camera’s picture quality; that’s a marketing myth. The sensor size is far more important. (Use Google to find it. For example, search for “sensor size Nikon D90.”)
* You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.
* You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.
* Google is also a units-of-measurement and currency converter. Type “teaspoons in 1.3 gallons,” for example, or “euros in 17 dollars.” Click Search to see the answer.
* You can switch from one open program to the next by pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).
* Just putting something into the Trash or the Recycle Bin doesn’t actually delete it. You then have to *empty* the Trash or Recycle Bin. (Once a year, I hear about somebody whose hard drive is full, despite having practically no files. It’s because over the years, they’ve put 79 gigabytes’ worth of stuff in the Recycle Bin and never emptied it.)
What are your favorite basics-that-you-thought-everyone-knew? Let us know in the comments for this column at nytimes.com/pogue!
The NY Times has a nice feature on Doodletown, an abandoned small town on the west side of the Hudson River near the Bear Mountain Bridge. I've hiked through the town and its pretty cool, yet a little creepy for some reason too. Read more about Doodletown from Wikipedia.
Apollo Sunshine have been driving at this sound since the beginning, and this album represents a certain maturation of their ability to construct a record. Don't read mature to mean dry or dull, though-- this is still exuberant music that celebrates its sudden shifts in direction. Shall Noise Upon is a great record, and an impossible one to digest in just one sitting. That's hardly a problem, though, because coming back to it is so rewarding.-Pitchfork
Good news, legislators are close to preserving the Great Lakes' water being shipped away. The NY Times reports.
Here's a shot from near the art show gallery near the North end of the Island
There's a few great art peices outside that all deal with rats. I liked this one a lot.
And at the concert stage there was a 1920's festival going on. Here people are learning the Lindy-hop on the temporary dance floor.
On Sunday I rode the 55 mile route for Transportation Alternatives (TA) Century Bike Tour. After torrential downpours on Saturday, the weather was spectacular on Sunday. The ride consists of riding with traffic and on some dedicated bike paths. TA handed out some crib sheets that consisted of the turn by turn directions of the trip. I'm going to suggest that next year they use maps! 
