I use the Google API’s jQuery, and it automatically upgraded my whole site to jQuery 1.4.   In jQuery 1.4, they decided to tighten up the JSON parsing engine, so that it is now unforgiving of any lax standards.  You have to follow the JSON standard spelled out here — to the letter.  In my case, that meant changing any single quoted values or names to double quotes, and getting rid of opening and closing parentheses.  Like most fixes, it was an easy fix, once I figured it out.  Hope this helps.

-Colin

Teddy White had a fascination with politics and power that probably approached some kind of clinical obsession.  We follow him from his early days as a reporter in China, before the outbreak of WWII, and then through the war years in Asia, reconstruction in Europe, and then 60’s and 70’s presidential politics in the US.   Throughout, he describes his fascination with the big players:  Chiang Kai Check, Mao Tse Tsung, MacArthur, Monnet, Harriman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and his efforts to cultivate relationships with these men.

Obviously he had to get to know them, he was reporting back for Time and other weeklies.  But he seems to have been very very eager, for reasons that go beyond the merely professional, to hobnob and get to know these guys.  As if he got his personal thrills, his shivers in life, from being around the movers and the shakers.  A fascinating self-portrait, because it would seem like the next logical step would be to try to become one of the movers and shakers.  And you see him dip his toe in, with advice given here, messages passed there, that go beyond, arguably, the duties of a journalist.  But he always backed away, retreating to the safety of his self-avowed journalistic professionalism.  A moth playing with a candle fire, fluttering around it, backing away as soon as it feels the heat on its wings.

So you get a double treat here, a great tour of 20th century politics, and a portrait of a very complicated, driven, yet somewhat repressed, personality.

Buy it at Amazon

No such luck.  On my first visit, they ripped me off and still didn’t fix the problem.  The kicker is, the problem turned out to be so simple, I ended up fixing it myself, and am stunned and disappointed they didn’t find it themselves.

I was driving across midtown and a coolant hose blew, a hose that takes coolant from the engine block into the bulkhead.  The hose didn’t break, it just burst off its fitting.  I didn’t realize this until I had already called the tow truck.  ( I was on 51st Street, right by St. Patrick’s, at 9 AM.  The best thing to do was get out of traffic fast).

I got a tow to Cybert, who had done my annual inspection.  The owner assigned a mechanic to the truck, and told me they would call me to tell me what they had found and give me an estimate of the repairs.

The mechanic called that afternoon, and in barely intelligible English (he was African) said he had replaced the hose and that with a coolant flush and radiator pressure test it was going to cost $370 or thereabouts.

“Well, what had been the problem?” I asked.

“Bad hose.  Replaced hose.”

“That sounds like the symptom.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m saying, what would cause pressure to build up to the point that a hose would pop off its fitting?”

“It’s a old hose.  You want coolant flush?”

“Can I talk to the owner?”

“Ok, one minute.”

The owner got on the phone, I started to ask him what he thought the root of the problem might be.

“Look, it’s gotten really busy.  I understand George has got it fixed.  He’ll tell you about it.”  Seriously.  I was smelling the snow job.

George was back on the line.

“You want the flush and pressure test? $375?”

“I’m trying to understand what the problem was.”

“Is an old hose.  That’s it.  Somethin always gonna break.  That was it.”

“That was it?”

“Yeah!”

“Ok.”

What else am I suppose to do over the phone?  Apparently $375 is not enough to allow for a discussion of causes and symptoms.

I got the flush and pressure test done, and picked up the truck that evening, for $375.

I was suspicious, so I drove it around midtown traffic for an hour, half hoping the hose would burst again, or the temperature gauge would shoot up, as it had right before the hose burst.  No such luck, everything was fine, and I took the truck back to its garage, with a lingering feeling of auto-angst.

The following weekend on a Saturday evening, I took the truck out for a road trip to Hofstra, in Long Island,  to go see a friend in a concert.  Had to be there by 8PM.  Never made it.

I was on 495 going past LeFrak city in Queens (one of the ugliest landscapes in NYC) and the temperature gauge  – which had been suspiciously high — shot up into the red.  I pulled over to the shoulder and had no choice but to let the engine cool down.   When it was cool I drove off again.  Within six miles, the gauge shot up again.  I pulled over.  It went on like this until I managed to pull into a gas station and, with nothing else to try, decided to buy some antifreeze and see if the level was low.  I really couldn’t think of any other explanation.

Turns out it was low.  I ended up adding a gallon of antifreeze to the system.  Now, why was it low?  Cybert had just filled it earlier in the week.  They had pressure tested it, and found no leaks.  I never saw any leaks beneath the truck where I parked.

Turns out, believe it or not, that the culprit was the seal on the radiator cap.  Yes.  A little rubber seal the size of a silver dollar.  It was not broken.  It was just bent over itself.  So it wasn’t sealing well.  I was at wits end, and didn’t think that unbending the seal would solve this problem, but I had to try something.  So I unbent the seal,  set it right in the cap, and haven’t had a problem since.

I guess the bad seal was letting some coolant evaporate off the top, thereby bringing the level down too low to cool well, etc….  That’s  the only explanation I can think of.

Now, why couldn’t the guys at Cybert have just taken a look at that radiator cap?  Isn’t that the first thing one does, the first thing a pro does, with radiator issues?   They didn’t do it because they just don’t give a damn.  They just want to charge for big ticket service (radiator flush, pressure test), get you out, and move on.

Well, fuck them, I have moved on.  Will never be back.

But I have to ask: if the magazine app wasn’t a hit on PCs, why would it be a hit on tablets?  The same problem will exist on tablets:  readers will be able to get their news and pictures from other normal web sites that don’t charge, just like they can on a PC.

So what if the tablet will have dimensions more like those of a magazine?  So what if it will make for a better “lean back” experience?  These qualities will make reading the same old free internet from the comfort of your couch a much better experience, too.

Web page designers might redesign their sites to fit the tablet format better, just like they created smart phone versions of their sites.

Basically, on tablets like on PCs, if you can get if for free, why ever would you pay?

I see two freighters trolling with a big net between them, picking up a current of garbage, and then maybe using it as fuel, rather than storing it (incinerating plant would have to be built in to the freighters).

This could be funded by the plastics council, and therefore, plastics manufacturers, since most of the garbage out there is plastic.

Why not just charge $1579 for all 12 months?  The following reasons come up:

1. When it comes time to renew the lease, the landlord is going present the assumption that negotiations are starting from the listed rental price, $1895. But that makes for an effective rent increase of ~17%, even if the rent doesn’t go up past $1895.  Most rent increases are of %5. If the economy doesn’t shoot back up in a year’s time for all boats, people are just gonna move again.
2. Landlords are trying to preserve the appearance of higher rents on their rent rolls, which they have to present to banks in order to obtain or maintain financing.  This is what a real estate broker told me.  But when I pressed the broker about the charade that this is setting up, I didn’t get much of an answer.

Reason 2 is a charade.  A loan officer worth his title is now going to look past the rent rolls, to the balance sheet for the period of the lease, and see that there are two big holes for the free months.   This is going to make the loan officer hesitate, just as he would if he saw steady rents of $1579.

That is, assuming the loan officer isn’t in on the charade.  Because maybe he is in on it.  Maybe he is the one telling the landlord:  ”Just keep the rent rolls steady.”  The bank’s goal may be to repackage the loan into high quality bonds.  And if that is the goal, then the loan officer will be happy to see rent rolls that say $1895, and ignore the two free months.  The loan will be described as high quality to some derivatives packaging house, and we’re back to 2007, with junky real estate based bonds being sold off to unwitting investors as high quality paper.  Because aren’t the two free months pretty much equivalent to two missed mortgage payments?

Somebody please explain this to me in a way that puts it in a more positive light.

We always hear the first clause these days, touted as some kind of rationalization for free, ad-sponsored journalism online.

I have not heard the second clause in a long time. Yet, if consumers want an independent, brave, hard-hitting, press, they are going to have to pay for it themselves. No journal that depends solely on ad revenue will ever be truly independent of its ad clients. Ad clients will never be given negative coverage.

On the other hand, the more a journal depends on reader/subscriber revenue, the more it will tell it’s readers what they find useful. The bottom line is: you have to buy news you can use, people.

It’s a good cheddar.  Good with apples.  A little dry with bread — but most cheddars are, aren’t they?

Apparently, sea salt crystals are added during the maturing process.  Hmm.  Nibbling here on the last few crumbs, I guess I can taste a little saltiness.  Not bad.

Nothing “salty” jumped out at me while I was eating big chunks with my apple, though.

Much more affordable than the Fiscalini — the Ferrari of cheddars.  But, maybe not quite as tasty.

This is an English cheese, pasteurized cow’s milk.  $9.99/lb at Fairway in September 2009.

The goal, he said, is to create “a truly national deterrent” to hiring unauthorized labor that would “change the practices of American employers as a class.”

I could not agree more with this goal.  If employers were very clearly facing stiff fines and jail-time penalties for hiring illegal immigrants, they would never hire them.  Immigrants would then have no motivation, or much, much less motivation, to enter illegally and look for work.

The Bush administration’s dramatic roundups of illegals in workplaces was shameful grandstanding.  It put unfair blame and penury on illegals and let employers off scott free.

Hopefully this more enlightened policy will only continue, get stronger and more widespread, and prove truly effective at vastly reducing illegal immigration, and illegal employment.

Employers should also be more widely encouraged, or mandated, to use E-Verify to validate employee’s residency/citizenship credentials.

Illegal immigrants are, in the great majority, hard working people who just want to provide for themselves and their families.  If they risk their lives and freedom, and forsake their family ties back home, to try to work here in the United States, we can only imagine how bad working conditions must be in the places they left behind.

An effective anti-illegal immigrant policy will have two fronts:

1. maximally deter employers here in the US from hiring illegals, thereby removing the motivation for illegal immigration.
2. pressure – or help – the countries from which illegal immigrants come to improve their own socio-economic environment, thereby, again, removing the motivation for emigrating.

Nonetheless, this is a good cheddar.  A very good one.  It is sharp, strong, not stinky, moist but definitely not soggy.  Goes great with an apple.  If you’re going to serve cheddar on a well dressed cheese plate, and dress up for the occasion yourself, then this is a good choice.

As decribed by Fairway:

“Supreme champion limited edition:  Cheesemaker Jorge Mariano Gonzalez.  Hand made.  Bandage-wrapped raw cow’s milk cheddar.  Voted best farmhouse cheddar at the 2002 American Society Award.  From Modesto California.”

A very good raw milk American cheese.  I do make an effort to look for these.  I need to find something equivalently tasty, but at a more modest every-day snack kind of price.

$19.96/lb at Fairway, NYC, September 2009.