Happy Holi Day everyone! Today we take a look at the situation in Libya, the single most imp. document in the history of NYC, and a yearbook full of funny people. Plus,the moon had a big day this Saturday, and everyone has been having severe cases of FOMO lately.
1. Libya. What’s happening in Libya, explained: [MotherJones]
FIRST TO FALL News organizations reporting from Benghazi said that a fighter jet was shot down on the outskirts of the city. It was not immediately clear whether the plane belonged to attacking Qaddafi forces or the rebels, or how it had been shot down. Col. Muammar Qaddafi, in his first remarks since the U.N. Security Council’s resolution on Libya, warned against the enforcement of a no-fly zone by France, Britain and the U.S. (Photo: Patrick Baz / AFP-Getty via the New York Times) [ION]
- RT @Galrahn: US Navy has fired 122 of 124 Tomahawk cruise Missiles so far. UK has fired 2. [@antderosa]
- Why are we bombing Libya, when we’re nearly broke and already fighting elsewhere? [TDB]
- Andrew Sullivan on the “Imperial President.” [TheAtlantic]
- With no debate, and no objective, Obama enters a war. [TheExaminer]
2. The unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan is affecting the national food source there. [NYT]
I love this: [Eyeteeth]
Overunder (Erik Burke) and No Touching Ground just finished a mural collaboration in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which includes a plea to donate to help the victims of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. The “helping hand” image is a blown-up shot of Burke’s arm, which features a tattoo of a notepad, but there’s an underlayer of paint beneath the wheatpaste. “That way, over time the piece would of course disintegrate, but also introduce a new mural,” he writes.
3. It’s the 200th birthday for the map that made New York. Constructed by two historians described its map, regardless of its flaws, as “the single most important document in New York City’s development.”
[John Randell's field notes at the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan. Randell spent 10 years staking out the intersections he had mapped from First to 155th Street.]
- Read all about the map and what it meant for the development of our city here: [NYT]
- And, read about the man who executed it; John Randel Jr., the secretary, surveyor and chief engineer for New York City’s street commissioners, here: [NYT]
4. Check out David Carr’s thoughts on the NYT pay wall.
“People, real actual people, went and reported that information, some of it at personal peril and certainly at gigantic institutional expense. So The Times is turning toward its customers to bear some of the cost. The Times is hardly alone: AFP, Reuters, The Associated Press, Dow Jones, the BBC and NPR are all part of a muscular journalistic ecosystem. But it seems an odd time to argue against a business initiative that aims at keeping boots on the ground during a time of global upheaval.” [NYT]
- How to read the NYT for free once the paywall hits. [Gizmodo] Author’s note: I support paying for your Times.
5. The New Yorker has a great cover this week. Inside there’s: Evan Osnos on the earthquake in Japan. James Surowiecki on disaster economics. Ben McGrath on Barry Bonds. Alexandra Jacobs on Spanx. Malcolm Gladwell on Helena Rubinstein. Peter Schjeldahl on “Bye Bye Kitty!!!” [NewYorker]
6. This Saturday, the moon was the closest to the earth in, like, 20 years or something. This “super moon” didn’t look much different from my vantage point in LA, but check out this photo taken of the moon rising near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. [Nasa]
7. The Estimated Value and 2010 Revenue of Top NYC Startups [SoupSoup]
8. Happy Birthday, Twitter! Five years ago today, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey blasted off his first tweet. In ’07, Twitter averaged 5,000 tweets a day. Today, it’s a staggering 140 million. [CNN]
9. Congrats to Foster Kamer who has just been named Senior Editor of the New York Observer. I have gone on record saying that the dude (who I frequently catch catching a smoke break outside on the Bowery next to the Village Voice building), is one of my favorite NYC Media writers out there. He has the old soul of a J.J. Hunsecker, and the foresight, some may say outlandish balls, of the new social media kids- not thinking twice about how jumping on the Twitter/Tumblr bandwagon would affect his journalistic cred. He was one of the first I started following. Most importantly, Foster is passionate about his subject matter. From Gawker to Blackbook, to The VV, to Esquire, and now to The Observer, this one is worth (trying to) hold on to. [Observer] [Foster's Notes]
10. Newsweek gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. citizenship test. 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. 73 percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. 44 percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. [Newsweek]
11. Separated at birth, do SPY Magazine’s celebrity look a likes still look alike? [Slate]
12. Mindy Kaling has a new book coming out, Is Everyone Hanging Out With Me (And Other Concerns), about “FOMO” (Fear Of Missing Out”). Check out the cover of it. Love her! [NYM]
13. Speaking of FOMO, the NYT did a big article this weekend on how Twitter’s most popular for being a major bragging tool of the social media set. Well…no, DUH. [NYT]
14. Billionaire Eli Broad talks about how he went about building his art collection in the [LATimes]
15. Knut, the famous polar bear from Berlin, died at the tender age of 4 this weekend. No one knows why. [MSNBC]
16. A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. computer programmer was sentenced to eight years and one month in prison Friday for stealing the confidential source code of the investment bank’s high-speed trading system. [WSJ]
17. There is actually a map of the world penis size. Sized by country average. [Disinformation]
18. Check out this “Funny People Yearbook.” It’s really funny. I am such a fan of them all, Jason Bateman, in particularly was such a cutie. [Lizdezia]
19. The NYPL is on Tumblr! [NYPL]
20. “I was really struggling in the last five miles,” he said, “but I said to myself, ‘If I have to crawl, I will.’” Kelly Gneiting, a 400-pound sumo wrestler, set a Guinness World Record as the heaviest man to complete a marathon, after finishing on Sunday in 9 hours 48 minutes 52 seconds. It was POURING here during the marathon yesterday. [LATimes]
21. Ten Spring-Break tips from Glee’s Principle Figgins. [VF]
22. Happy Holi, everyone! Today is the Indian festival of colors where people “play Holi” by throwing powder on each other.
This festival is also the one day where it is culturally acceptable for everyone up North to consume marijuana. The drink is called “bhang lassi” (or “bhaang” – pronounced like “bong”) and is like a green yogurt milkshake. [National Geographic via Oats]
23. Burn your business cards because they are officially dead. [BI]
24. David Lynch’s hair is a work of art: [LeotheGreat]
25. Remember the hipster traps that went up around New York last week? Now there are “Bridge and Tunnel” traps being set up baited with a gold chain, PATH tickets, hair gel, Drakkar Noir cologne and spray bronzer. [Gothamist]
26. Omg. Check out Anna Wintour in the 90′s! [BecauseI'mAddicted]
27. Chicest couple in NYC. Olivia Palermo is still going strong with her boyfriend Johannes Huebel. The pair was recently snapped on the streets with their adorable dog in tow. [ThatKindOfWoman]
28. And next up, the chicest family in the world: Bragelina storming around New Orleans:
Well, that’s all for me today. Do you have something to include in tomorrow’s reading list? Email me: Rachelle@guestofaguest.com!
