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From NYTimes.com: Feasting at the Table of Taipei

…food is one arena where Taipei — the world’s most underrated capital city, according to Monocle magazine — blows Beijing away. Its food incorporates more influences, spans street food to haute cuisine with greater aplomb and is out and out more delicious than that of its mainland counterpart.

When I was in China for business, the businessmen that I worked with were all from Taiwan and apologized profusely for the food we were about to eat.  They all said it was OK, but not nearly as good as the food in Taiwan.

From Salon.com: Sarah Palin’s dead lake

Some frightening insight into Sarah Palin’s job as mayor of Wasilla.  A must read article.  Here are a couple of the lowlights.

Palin recently told the New Yorker magazine that Alaskans “have such a love, a respect for our environment, for our lands, for our wildlife, for our clean water and our clean air. We know what we’ve got up here and we want to protect that, so we’re gonna make sure that our developments up here do not adversely affect that environment at all. I don’t want development if there’s going to be that threat to harming our environment.”

But as mayor of her hometown, say many local critics, Palin showed no such stewardship.

“Sarah’s legacy as mayor was big-box stores and runaway growth,” said Patty Stoll, a retired Wasilla schoolteacher who once worked in the same school with Palin’s parents, Chuck and Sally Heath. “The truth is, Wasilla is just plain ugly, it’s not a pleasant place to live. It’s not thought out. And that’s a shame.

“Sarah fouled her own nest, and I can’t understand why. I hate to think it was simply greed or ambition.”
…
“I try to avoid driving to Wasilla so I won’t get depressed,” added the official, who asked for his name to be withheld, to avoid Palin’s “wrath.”

“You get visually mugged when you drive through there. I take the long way, through the back roads, just to avoid it.”

Wasilla City Council member Dianne Woodruff hears the same lament about her town all the time. “Everywhere in Alaska, you hear people say, ‘We don’t want to be another Wasilla.’ We’re not just the state’s meth capital, we’re the ugly box-store capital. Was Sarah a good steward of this beautiful valley? No. I think it comes from her lack of experience and awareness of other places, how other cities try to preserve what makes them attractive and livable.

From LATimes.com: Sarah Palin said yes, thanks, to a road to nowhere in Alaska

The 3.2-mile-long partially paved “road to nowhere” meanders from a small international airport on Gravina Island, home to 50 people, ending in a cul-de-sac close to a beach.

Crews are working to finish it. But no one knows when anyone will need to drive it.

That’s because the $26-million road was designed to connect to the $398-million Gravina Island Bridge, more infamously known as the “bridge to nowhere.” Alaskan officials thought federal money would pay for the bridge, but Gov. Sarah Palin killed the project after it was ridiculed and Congress rescinded the money. Plans for the road moved forward anyway.
…
“Surely we won’t have to commute on the highway if there won’t be a bridge,” said Jill Jacob, who has been writing and calling the governor’s office for the last two years to protest the road. “It’s a dead-end highway, a dead-end road.

From Newsweek.com: Palin Admin. Oversaw $26 Million ROAD to ‘Nowhere’

A campaign led by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) to redirect the funds to a New
Orleans bridge damaged by Hurricane Katrina failed. But Congress
amended the legislation allowing most of the money to be used for any
transportation project in Alaska.

For reasons that remain unclear, the bill left intact language
requiring that $48 million be spent on “earthwork and roadway
construction” for the Gravina Access Project.

According
to Menzies, the Alaska DOT official, that meant the money could only be
used to build projects directly associated with the $398 million
bridge. The only alternative, Menzies said, was to return the money.

“I don’t think there was any discussion about that,” he said.

This stuff just gets crazier and crazier as you dig into it.  The money could have been used to fund repairs for a bridge damaged by Katrina, instead it goes into a road that goes nowhere.

From AP.com: Palin supports $600 million ‘other’ bridge project

Gov. Sarah Palin may eventually have said “no thanks” to a federally funded Bridge to Nowhere.

But a bridge to her hometown of Wasilla, that’s a different story.

A $600 million bridge and highway project to link Alaska’s largest city to Palin’s town of 7,000 residents is moving full speed ahead, despite concerns the bridge could worsen some commuting and threaten a population of beluga whales.
…
At the time, Palin’s running mate for the Republican ticket, Arizona Sen. John McCain, derided both projects as wasteful. He called Young’s highway bill a “monstrosity” that was “terrifying in its fiscal consequences.”

$600 million dollar bridge for the 7000 people of Wasilla? 

Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere and then kept the money when it was canceled.  And now she’s for the Bridge to Wasilla, her hometown.

How McCain can continue to tout her as a reformer is beyond me.  She’s just a product of Alaskan politics, power and cronyism at its worst.

In honor of John McCain’s new tactic of “damn the country, I’m going to win at all costs”, I’ve created a new campaign sign that reflects this new reality.  Enjoy!

So “Windows. Life without walls” is the campaign slogan. I can already hear what a Seinfeld not paid by Microsoft would say in his monologue: “If you live a life without walls- why on earth would you need windows?”
— Jan, Mississippi

This election isn’t American Idol or some other reality show where you just choose someone for President because you like them or you can see a little of you in them. This election should be about ideas and who’s best able to implement them. 

From Valleywag.com: Microsoft announcement tomorrow: No more Seinfeld ads!

Microsoft’s version of the story: Redmond had always planned to drop Seinfeld. The awkward reality: The ads only reminded us how out of touch with consumers Microsoft is — and that Bill Gates’s company has millions of dollars to waste on hiring a has-been funnyman to keep him company.

These ads were horrible.

Microsoft has no clue how to market the company hence this new marketing roulette.  The problem these days for Microsoft is that they’re completely reactionary now, trying to catch up in areas where they’ve been soundly beaten.

It really helps to have a product innovative enough to be worth talking about.  Not just another copy.

Related story:
From The Huffington Post: Jerry Seinfeld: Microsoft’s New $10 Million Pitchman

From MacRumors.com: Commuters: Get Extra Sleep with iNap

Ever wanted to get some sleep during a train ride, or a quick powernap on the bus to work? You either hoped to wake just in time not to miss your station, or set an alarm to wake you far too early… Let iNap wake you when you get close to your stop!

The application uses the iPhone GPS to wake you when you arrive at or within a certain distance before arriving at your destination.  Pretty cool.

Gas here in Cincinnati has been $3.99 since the wind storm blew through the city on Sunday.  Most places now seem to have power and no shortage of gas, but the prices are still pretty much $3.99.  I have a feeling that $3.99 was chosen because it was the largest amount they could raise prices without seeming to be gouging customers.