J Larsen

I just thought of a couple other things: MOMA hosts an art/dance party on Saturday afternoons in the late spring and early summer at PS1 (a former school) in Queens. It's usually pretty cool, although it has become a bit watered down in the past few years. Check to see what's going on at the Jazz Gallery. If you had any inclination to do it in the first place, skip the Bronx Zoo - I find it extremely depressing. If it's a rainy day, or if you're just plain tired, fork over $1.50 to take the city bus up Fifth Avenue and just look out the window. If you're into architecture, go to greatbuildings.com, search for New York City buildings, and make a list of the addresses of buildings you'd like to see in person. It's probably worthwhile to get the Zagat 2004 New York City Restaurant guide to carry around with you. If you get hugry walking around, it will give you a wide choice of excellent restaurants in almost any neighborhood. I buy the new one every year and find it incredibly useful. I'm forgetting one really essential thing I always recommend (I remembered it for a split-second, which is why I started this post in the first place). It will come to me later.

My favorite hotel is the Algonquin. It's not too pricey (vis-a-vis Manhattan hotels in general, that is). In addition to all the classic museums (Met, MOMA, Gugg, Whitney, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Frick), I've never gone wrong by sending anyone to the lower east side tenament museum. AMNH is cool, but better if you are taking kids, and not necessarily something that you can't find a similar version of in many other cities. My favorite cafes are closely guarded secrets, but I'll give you a couple tips: Cafe Regio on Macdougal (lots of REALLY, and I mean REALLY hot European women hang out there, plus they make amazing Cappucinos), and this little French cafe on Spring and Mullberry with very strong coffee and incredible deserts. I always forget the name, but it's the only thing on the blook. For art gallaries, just wander around in the Meatpacking district - it's becoming the new Soho. You can check out SOHO too, but it is rapidly becoming a shopping mall. If she's into clothes shopping, SOHO is the place to go. For favorite restaurants, you'd really have to give me a price range and a cuisine. You have to go to Peter Luger's (inner Brooklyn)- you'll drop $100/head, but you'll never have better steak. Grimaldi's (just across the Bkln Bridge, which is a great walk) probably has the best New York style pizza. Lombardi's and Nick's are close. Daniel is an incredible French restaurant - but it's pricey. Union Square Cafe and Gotham Bar and Grill are consistently the top-rated restaurants in the city, but they cater to an older crowd. Not really my bag. One if by Land (west village) is the ultimate date restaurant - I took my gf there for her last birthday. Fireplaces, chandeliers, Bill-Evans-esque piano player, somailier, the whole works, but not done in a stuffy way at all, and not TOO expensive (but bring two credit cards just in case ). Plus it's in Aaron Burr's old farmhouse. It's close to a must-go. For Italian, I like Genarro (UWS) and Babao, a small, pricey restaurant in the Village. Never eat Italian food in Little Italy. DO NOT DO IT! You'll fork over a pile of cash for trashy food. Beyond restaurants and museums, the quintessential aspects of New York really depend on your personality - the great thing about this city is that almost anyone can find their "thing" here. My personal "essential" New York tour would include: walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, walking up along the Westside peers, walking through the side-streets (ie not Canal) in Chinatown in the late evening, hanging out in the Lower East Side late at night, popping in and out of bars/clubs, finding funky cafes (a dying breed) on funky streets (another dying breed), popping in and out of vintage clothing stores (which have become more expensive than new clothing stores ), a long, long, long walk in Central Park on a nice day, and having dinner at at least three fancy restaurants in addition to lower-key neighborhood ethnic spots. I've found it hard to go too terribly wrong eating in Chinatown, for instance. Have fun.

JM, as far as I'm concerned that quote is what they invented the phrase "WTF" for. Uh-oh - we aren't in the politics forum, are we...

Believe it or not, Walmart has a good selection of academic books online, with prices generally lower than those found at amazon. I picked up a stack of advanced (and hence somewhat obscure) math and physics books at Walmart.com a couple years ago at about half the publishers' recommended price. I've also had good luck with Powell's (I used to shop there in person, too - it's an incredible store), but I've found that they tend to somewhat overrate the condition of their used books on their website. I can think of one book I bought from them for around $100 used that was advertised as VG, but was actually quite musty and had a considerable amount of mildew damage on the inside, as well as a severely sun-faded jacket. On the other hand, if you call before ordering they will give you an honest assessment.

Fresh mozarella is definately worth going out of the way for. Fortunately, it's made at a place just a few blocks away from me, so I don't have to go out of my way, but I would if I had to! I find Tillamook to be very bland and lacking bite (it's cheap on the east coast too, btw). For cheddars I stick with the extra sharp WI and NY varities. RD is right about the Tillamook factory, though. My grandparents used to take me up there when was a small child on the way to visiting my aunt who lived in Rockaway, OR. I remember getting ice-cream scoops there that were about the size of my head. As someone else mentioned, smoked gouda is good when you need to shake things up a bit. Nothing beats cambozola on a craker or on a baguette. NOTHING. But alas, I'm on the first diet of my life, so no cambozola for me. Moose, what exactly is it about Velvetta that you feel is "cheese-like"?

The cd stores here are great. But the rents are so high that walking into one is equivilent to financial suicide.

Sorry, I didn't get that out of his posts. In any event, "insider trading" refers to trading based on non-public information. It doesn't matter who you directly get the information from - if it's not public, it's not legal to trade on.

Doc: I'm not 100% sure I understand your question, but I think I do and it really gets to the heart of why insider trading is nearly impossible to prove (Waskal pleaded guilty in order to minimize damage and avoid a potentially harmful investigation). Say Martha's story is true - she really had a standing $60 order. Then the sale is completely lawful, even if she receives the inside tip without disclosing it prior to the sale. There are three stages to proving insider trading: 1) Prove that the person recveived the information (this part is relatively easy). 2) Prove that the information, if made public, would have substantially altered the trading value of the stock (this part is very easy). 3) Prove that the seller did not intend to sell the stock prior to receiving the information. It's the third part that is nearly impossible to prove - prosecutors normally avoid charges that involve proving intent.

If anyone is saying that the point is that her sale caused a drop in the stock value, they are wrong and missing the point of insider trading laws entirely. Take the used car analogy. Say I sell you a used Lexus at top dollar, say $40,000, knowing that everything in that car is about to fall apart. I know that it only has another 500 miles on it, and that after that it will be worth $1000 for scrap parts. Does my selling you the car CAUSE it to decrease in value by 97.5%? Of course not! Is it ethical for me to sell the car at top dollar without disclosing its problems? Of course not! Does it hurt you? Well, if $39,000 is a non-negligible amount of money to you (it is to most people, including those who own stocks), then of course it does! Is it legal? Well, in the case of cars I imagine that varies from state to state. Fortunately, when it comes to stocks, federal law makes it very clear that this sort of behavior is illegal. In the stock market, the law clearly states that if you have insider information on a stock that you reasonably believe will seriously affect its future value, you must publicly disclose that information before selling. If you are not able to do that due to binding confidentiality agreements, you simply can't sell.

What Martha did was equivilent to selling someone a used car at top dollar value, knowing full well that it is going to die within days. It is ignorant to say that her crime did not hurt anyone. Now you're going to say that she wasn't convicted of that crime - she was convicted of covering it up. That's true, and it is also not as unusual as you might think. Insider trading is notoriously difficult to prove, because it is a matter of proving intent, which is very, very difficult for prosecutors. It is much easier to prove that you impeded an investigation into an alleged crime, because that conviction relies on facts. It comes down to "did person A tell an investigator X when, beyond reasonable doubt, they knew Y to be true?" The reason that insider trading cases are rarely persued isn't *only* because the people most often guilty are well-connected. It is also just too difficult to prove. Martha knew that, so lying to the investigators appears to have been pretty dumb. I personally tend to believe it was more a matter of arrogance. Most folks around here know me as a scientist - I know a little about this subject because I briefly worked on Wall Street when I was early in grad school and desperate to make ends meet (which Wall Street does a damn good job of, I must say...)

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/ontech/0,15...00.html?cnn=yes

Yeah, I know it's in print in the UK, but I really don't want to pay $20+ for something I already have on two formats. Thanks, though. BTW, did any of you ever see them live? They put on one of the grossest live shows I've ever seen... Still a great band, though.

Matthew, where did you find the Rhino re-issue? Was it some insanely limited thing? I can't find it on their website or in stores. I'm actually interested in getting a cd copy. I have a record and a tape from when I was a teenager, but I really want a cd that I can rip to my iPod.

The Grammies happened? Hey Ya isn't a bad song, but it certainly isn't going to age nearly as well as OutKast's best material.

The only way to get a truly close shave is to use a Mach three with a high-end handle. Using a Mach 3 with the handle supplied by Gillette is like using a VPI turntable with a Radio Shack tonearm. May I suggest these: http://www.theartofshaving.com/cgi/SoftCar...cstore+uyoo3712

Sorry I can't link the article - this is from a pay site. BTW, Nature, the journal in which this work was originally publised, is one of the three most rigorous scientific journals around in terms of peer review, so this is worth taking seriously. Smart Robot Automates Science Technology Research News January 27, 2004 What better entity to assign repetitive scientific tasks, like working out the function of specific genes, than a robot? Researchers from the University of Wales, Robert Gordon University in Scotland, and the University of Manchester in England have put together a robot scientist that can devise a theory, fashion experiments to test the theory, carry out the experiments, and interpret results. The researchers put the system through its paces testing yeast to determine gene function, and also had a control group of computer scientists and biologists perform the same scientific task. The robot performed as well as the best humans, and was three times cheaper than simply choosing the cheapest experiment and 100 times cheaper than random selection, according to the researchers. The approach could make scientific research less expensive, and could be applied within a few years in areas where the level of laboratory automation is already high, like drug design, according to the researchers. Today's state-of-the-art drug design uses brute force automation. The robot scientist consists of a fluid-handling robot, a plate reader that visually examines yeast, and artificial intelligence software that generates a set of hypotheses from information about biochemistry and plans experiments designed to eliminate potential hypotheses as quickly and cheaply as possible. It conducts experiments by dispensing and mixing liquids and measuring yeast growth. The system could be ready for practical use in three to six years, according to the researchers. The work appeared in the January 15, 2004 issue of Nature.

skeith, I realized after my (drunken) post above that the Poe house was torn down a couple of years ago. I tried to forget about that, I guess. I beleive the Twain house still stands. I passed by it fairly recently.

This closing (which is not official yet, BTW) has NOTHING to do with the post-9/11 NYC economy and EVERYTHING to do with the fact that the two worst landlords in NYC are NYU and Columbia University. NYU demolished the Paladium and the Fillmore East long before 9/11, and they've been trying to tear down the Poe and Twain houses for many years. Not mentioned in the article is the fact (admission: I have this "fact" from a bartender at the BL who is an old friend of mine from another context) that the reason BL is so far behind in their rent is that NYU jacked the rent with the specific purpose of forcing them out so that they could use the space.

Bunn probably makes the best home coffee maker, but there's two things you need to know: they are about three times as expensive as a regular coffee maker, and they show up on your electric bill. The later drawback is a function of the fact that it keeps boiling water in reserve at all times (this is also why it makes such good coffee). The home unit generally produces better coffee than their commercial machines that you often see in restaurants. (Actually, I think this has more to do with the fact that many restaurants just don't know how to make a good cup of coffee than anything else. Perhaps restaurants just tend to assume that many people just don't like good coffee.) Someone recommended a French press. If you go that route, do not buy a cheap one. The cheap ones are made of thin glass and do not insulate heat very well at all. Coffee always comes out best when the water is as hot as possible while the grounds are being soaked (this is exactly why the Bunn is such a good machine). However, heat dissipates very quickly through thin, transparent glass. Even if you get one with thick glass, the coffee will come out much better if you wrap a towel around it while the grounds are soaking. Also be sure to press the plunger down slowly and to a slight angle to avoid causing the carafe to explode. I've heard of this happening to other people.

You can be sure that they forked over at least $100K to some consulting firm that told them their market research indicated dropping Latin music prices would not be fruitful...

Fear and George Harrison both had memorable appearances on SNL.

Not much to add to this thread, but I love McCoy's Milestone output as well. For me, Trane's Impulse years and Tyner's Milestone years are two of the greatest runs any jazz artist has ever had. BTW, you can download just about all of Tyner's Milestone cds at emusic.

No point, just an observation.

My understanding is that they made 20 of those and they are never making any more. According to what you've said, you've accounted for 20% of the market.

I think it's a great movie, "politics" and all.