Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Visits NY; Upsets a few

CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/25/un.iran/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/20/ahmadinejad.ground.zero/index.html?iref=newssearch
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/24/ahmadinejad.candidates/index.html#cnnSTCText

CNN's Christiane Amanpour goes one-on-one with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on "AC 360." Wednesday at 10pm.

Associated Press
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jaTR37ZRhA7Q06i3l7feFzoJqmcw

BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7011938.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7010962.stm
Profile on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4107270.stm

New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/us/25protest.html?ref=world

His speech at Coumbia University

Myanmar : 1,500 Monks March

CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/09/25/myanmar.protest.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/09/19/myanmar.monks.ap/index.html

BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7011655.stm

New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/world/asia/25myanmar.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Water Parks

Global Guide to Water Parks : http://www.waterparks.com/

Splish Spalsh in Long Island
http://www.splishsplashlongisland.com/

Tuff Gong

I am obsessed with all things Marley these days... specifically Stephen and Damian.. I can't get enough! This talented family is in heavy rotation on my ipod and in the car. Check it out if you've been sleeping.

Traffic Jam


Stephen Marley
http://web.stephenmarleymusic.com/index.jsp

Damian Marley
http://www.damianmarleymusic.com/index.php

The Proust Questionnaire

Do you read Vanity Fair? Great Mag, you should. On the back page they ask a number of questions to a specifc celebrity. It's one of my favorite parts of the magazine. Have you ever wondered where they came up with these questions or why they ask the specific ones they do? Here are some answers..

The Infamous Proust Questionnaire

In the back pages of Vanity Fair each month, readers find The Proust Questionnaire, a series of questions posed to famous subjects about their lives, thoughts, values and experience. A regular reference to Proust in such a major publication struck me as remarkable, and it was only until I'd read Andre Maurois's Proust: Portrait of a Genius that I understood what this was all about.

The young Marcel was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was asked to answer the following questions in the birthday book, and here's what he said:

• What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
  
  To be separated from Mama
• Where would you like to live?
  
  In the country of the Ideal, or, rather, of my ideal
• What is your idea of earthly happiness?
  
  To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater
• To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
  
  To a life deprived of the works of genius
• Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
  
  Those of romance and poetry, those who are the expression of an ideal rather than an imitation of the real
• Who are your favorite characters in history?
  
  A mixture of Socrates, Pericles, Mahomet, Pliny the Younger and Augustin Thierry
• Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
  
  A woman of genius leading an ordinary life
• Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
  
  Those who are more than women without ceasing to be womanly; everything that is tender, poetic, pure and in every way beautiful
• Your favorite painter?
  
  Meissonier
• Your favorite musician?
  
  Mozart
• The quality you most admire in a man?
  
  Intelligence, moral sense
• The quality you most admire in a woman?
  
  Gentleness, naturalness, intelligence
• Your favorite virtue?
  
  All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtues
• Your favorite occupation?
  
  Reading, dreaming, and writing verse
• Who would you have liked to be?
  
  Since the question does not arise, I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.

This questionnaire tells us much about two things, the character of petiit Marcel, and the amusement of the young in the Belle Epoque. We see Marcel as a sweet and dreamy Mama's boy, brainy, aesthetic, a young citizen of the world with much sympathy for the feminine. What he sees in Pliny the Younger, famous only for speaking and writing letters, is hard to grasp.

What is fascinating about this questionnaire is that it was considered so great an amusement to very young people in Proust's time. It is hard to imagine a party of 13-year-olds in these times being quizzed about their favorite virtues, painters or characters of fiction and history. If the questionnaire were not to smack of exam, it would have to ask "what's your favorite TV show?" or "what's your favorite band?"

Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20:

• Your most marked characteristic?
  
  A craving to be loved, or, to be more precise, to be caressed and spoiled rather than to be admired
• The quality you most like in a man?
  
  Feminine charm
• The quality you most like in a woman?
  
  A man's virtues, and frankness in friendship
• What do you most value in your friends?
  
  Tenderness - provided they possess a physical charm which makes their tenderness worth having
• What is your principle defect?
  
  Lack of understanding; weakness of will
• What is your favorite occupation?
  
  Loving
• What is your dream of happiness?
  
  Not, I fear, a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say what it is, and if I did I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of putting it into words.
• What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?
  
  Never to have known my mother or my grandmother
• What would you like to be?
  
  Myself - as those whom I admire would like me to be
• In what country would you like to live?
  
  One where certain things that I want would be realized - and where feelings of tenderness would always be reciprocated. [Proust's underlining]
• What is your favorite color?
  
  Beauty lies not in colors but in thier harmony
• What is your favorite flower?
  
  Hers - but apart from that, all
• What is your favorite bird?
  
  The swallow
• Who are your favorite prose writers?
  
  At the moment, Anatole France and Pierre Loti
• Who are your favoite poets?
  
  Baudelaire and Alfred de Vigny
• Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
  
  Hamlet
• Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
  
  Phedre (crossed out) Berenice
• Who are your favorite composers?
  
  Beethoven, Wagner, Shuhmann
• Who are your favorite painters?
  
  Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt
• Who are your heroes in real life?
  
  Monsieur Darlu, Monsieur Boutroux (professors)
• Who are your favorite heroines of history?
  
  Cleopatra
• What are your favorite names?
  I only have one at a time
• What is it you most dislike?
  
  My own worst qualities
• What historical figures do you most despise?
  
  I am not sufficiently educated to say
• What event in military history do you most admire?
  
  My own enlistment as a volunteer!
• What reform do you most admire?
  
  (no response)
• What natural gift would you most like to possess?
  
  Will power and irresistible charm
• How would you like to die?
  
  A better man than I am, and much beloved
• What is your present state of mind?
  
  Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions
• To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
  
  Those that I understand
• What is your motto?
  
  I prefer not to say, for fear it might bring me bad luck.

The second set of questions and answers give us Proust as a young man, mad for conquest, drawn to love crossing conventional sexual lines, still fixated on Mama. His aesthetic sensibilities have grown more serious (I, however, would not give up Mozart for Schumann, with all his interminable faux endings.) In these responses are early threads of character found in the narrator of Remembrance.

The Vanity Fair Story...

When the editors of Vanity Fair gathered to discuss a regular interview format for coming issues, one staff member suggested creating a "Vanity Fair Questionnaire." The magazine's London editor, Henry Porter, and Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter, brought up the idea of the Proust Questionnaire, which met with the hearty approval of the numerous Proust afficianados on the staff. Senior Editor Aimee Bell , a fan herself, took on the task of researching and producing this feature, with the assistance of the University of Kansas professor Theodore Johnson, a noted authority on Proust. Since July of 1993, a major celebrity has responded to a version of the questionnaire, found in the back pages of each issue.

I mentioned to Ms. Bell that I had not dared to contact Professor Johnson, or any of the other university Proustians, because my own work was so unacademic. "Why?" she said, "Proust would have liked it."

Daily News : July 16th, 2007

Scores Killed in Iraq
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSYAT71336220070716?src=071607_0817_TOPSTORY_scores_killed_in_iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/world/middleeast/16cnd-Iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

North Korea's Reactor Shut Down
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSP1037320070716?src=071607_0817_TOPSTORY_scores_killed_in_iraq

Earthquake in Japan
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUST14801720070716?src=071607_1032_DOUBLEFEATURE_poverty_in_america

Libya Host's Darfur Crisis Talks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6899323.stm

Forbidden City Starbucks Closes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6898629.stm

IHOP is buying Applebees
http://money.cnn.com/2007/07/16/news/companies/ihop_applebees/index.htm?cnn=yes

Edwards Starts Poverty Tour
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1430431820070716?src=071607_1032_DOUBLEFEATURE_poverty_in_america

"Too Sexy for my Bus"
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL161097420070716

I Love it, It's Perfect, Now it Changes
http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/i-love-it-its-perfect-now-it-changes/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/fashion/15discontinued.html

Dame Dash
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/fashion/15POSS.html?ref=style

Grapefruit a Link to Breast Cancer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6900482.stm

Some people throw rice at weddings. This bride and groom threw each other, and then had a "celebratory brawl" with 100 guests. Surprisingly, no booze was involved
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.wedding15jul15,0,2728722.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Drink in the Open Air.. Great Outdoor Spots in NYC
http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2007/33996/

Christian Louboutin
http://video.nymag.com/?fr_story=ba1cff21e39e15e75f6781e3229e013c85907af7&rf=bm

Worse than Uggs.. the CROC
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/magazine/15wwln-consumed-t.html

Nude Photos Haunt Lindsay Lohan
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07162007/gossip/pagesix/pagesix.htm

Sour Patch Kids

http://www.soursweetgone.com/

Lily Allen & Mark Ronsen : Oh My God

Hey Paula

Have you seen this hot mess? Every time I watch I laugh, then feel bad, then laugh again. She truly needs to fire her whole staff. What exactly are the doing to better her career? She getting ratings via us clowning her. sad.
http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collections/F2007CTR/runwayshows/index.html

Paris Couture Fashion Week

Elie Saab Dress
http://nymag.com/fashion/fashionshows/
http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collections/F2007CTR/runwayshows/index.html

Daily News : July 12th 2007

Bush to Declare Gains on Some Fronts in Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/world/middleeast/12surge.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Iraq Progress Mixed
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1034793420070712?src=071207_0858_TOPSTORY_iraq_progress_mixed

What?!
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1127787520070712
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/11/nuke.sting/index.html

3rd Suspect Arrested in Shooting of NY Officers
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/nyregion/12cnd-cops.html?hp

Katrina, oh yea.. remember that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/nationalspecial/12exile.html?hp

A Nuclear Ruse Uncovers Holes in US Security
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/us/12nuke.html?ref=washington

The World's Best Candy Bars
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/dining/11cand.html?ref=style

Addict Snatches Bouncy Castle
http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=161818&command=displayContent&sourceNode=161644&contentPK=17811376&folderPk=88499&pNodeId=161375

Britains Biggest Dog
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/11/ndog111.xml

Magnolia Bakery Shut Down by Health Officials... Noooooo.. I LOVE cupcakes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN1126314920070711

Ms. New Jersey in Trouble : This is an ongoing theme.. keep your online profiles CLEAN. People have lost their jobs over their online profiles and now possibly crowns.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288922,00.html

The Aahhh ace or the Ohhhh Face
http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_5750

Armani's Vision to tower over Tokyo
http://wwd.com/notavailable/dotcom?target=/issue/article/117280&articleId=117280&articleType=A&industryKw=issue&industryKw2=issuearticle

Spider Pig

http://www.7-eleven.com/kem.asp

Daily News : July 11th 2007

US Teenagers Have Little Interest in News: Study
http://uk.reuters.com/article/email/idUKN1036737320070710?rpc=92

Four Jailed for Botched 7/21 Bomb Plot
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL1179745020070711

Lybian Court Upholds HIV Death Sentence
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL1028348020070711

Time Limit on Iraq Troop Deployments Fails in Senate
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11cnd-cong.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

House Backs Big Changes in Student Aid Programs
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/education/12cnd-loan.html?hp

NY Traffic Plan
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/nyregion/11bloomberg.html?ref=nyregion

Bush Instructs His Ex-Counsel Not to Appear at Hearing
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11cnd-attorneys.html?ref=washington

Al-Quaeda Issues Pakistan Threat
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6293914.stm

Zawahiri Mocks US Bill
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6630421.stm

Soldiers Killed in Algerian Bomb
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6291232.stm

Brown Downplays Iraq Terror Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6290882.stm

Springfield, Vermont : Voted Simpsons Town
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6287064.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6252856.stm

Super Casino in Manchester
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6291764.stm

Military Files Left Unprotected Online
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/ap_on_hi_te/military_online_insecurity;_ylt=AsLDYW26aYoPGUcaztqWYVvMWM0F

Fake cop tries to pull over real cop who then busts fake cop for pretending to be a real cop
http://wcbstv.com/local/local_story_192084908.html

Sony to Launch Slimmer PSP
http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKN1122813620070711

Giant Squid Washed up on Beach
http://uk.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=59998

Chinese Roll Up for a Condom Fashion Show
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKPEK7797820070711

Check out W Magazine for the Beckhams

Wild Style 25th Anniversary Reunion

Wild Style 25th Anniversary Reunion
The Chief Rocker Busy Bee
The Cold Crush Brothers
GrandMaster Caz
DJ GrandWizzard Theodore
Fab 5 Freddy + special guests
Film screening of Wild Style Sunday, July 29, 2007
From 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Central Park SummerStage

Sunday, July 29, 2007
From 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Central Park SummerStage

Before all the hits and headlines, before the bling and bullets, hip-hop was a comparatively naïve scene centered in New York’s South Bronx. Aside from the records themselves, nothing evokes these fantastically vital early years as well as Wild Style. The 1982 film by Charles Ahearn tracks the fortunes of a young graffiti writer as he makes his way from street artist to gallery attraction. This 25th reunion event will include a screening of Wild Style, plus live performances from legendary figures that appeared in the film, such as The Cold Crush Brothers, Grandmaster Caz, Theodore and Busy Bee. There will also be new works of graffiti art created live onstage and special surprise guests.

Daily News : June 27th, 2007

Tony Blair Steps Down
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/27/nblair127.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6243558.stm

Brown is UK's new PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6245682.stm

New Poll Finds that Young Americans Are leaning Left
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/washington/27poll.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Iran, Fuel Rations Spark Violence
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6243644.stm

Girls feet cut off at the ankle on a ride at 6 Flags Kentucky
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/26/six.flags.accident.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Wrestler in US, Murder Suicide
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6242806.stm

Demand For Nike Pushes up Profit
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6243718.stm

Curried Trees
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/26/indonesia.marijuana.ap/index.html

The Yakuza
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2112374,00.html

In Food Safety Crackdown, Chine Closes 180 Plants
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/world/asia/27cnd-China.html?hp

Lily Allen in NYC
http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2007/33972/

Beat the Heat! Public Pools in NYC

http://nymag.com/guides/summer/2007/34002/
http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_things_to_do/facilities/af_pools.html#top
http://gonyc.about.com/od/summer/a/swimming_pools.htm
http://manhattan.about.com/od/governmentandpolitics/a/swimmingpools.htm

Eating Your Way Through the Big Apple Chapter 7 : New York's Best Food Carts

New York Magazine : New York’s twenty best food carts ranked, in order.

• By Robin Raisfeld & Rob Patronite

1. THE AREPA LADY
Roosevelt Ave. nr. 78th St., Jackson Heights
Maria Piedad Cano might be New York’s most revered street vendor. She’s a Chowhound cult favorite, a former lawyer and judge, she says, and, most telling, the subject of a MySpace page that forecasts the likelihood that she’ll be appearing at her regular spot each weekend. Her presence is iffy and weather-dependent; she winters in her native Colombia and reassumes her curbside position in spring, but only on Friday and Saturday nights and generally after ten o’clock. And for a former officer of the court, the once-permit-challenged corn-cake specialist hasn’t always been a stickler for the letter of the law: When asked by Chow.com why she works the graveyard shift, she replied, “Because there are fewer police walking around.” Still, faithful fans make the pilgrimage for her specialty: two types of ethereal Colombian arepas, brushed with margarine and griddled until brown and crispy. The arepa de queso is thicker and smaller, its soft insides infiltrated with melted cheese. The flatter, wider one, arepa de choclo, is made with a different corn batter and folded over salty grated cheese. There are skewered sausages and denser, smaller arepitas, too, but they’re not what’s earned the mild-mannered sidewalk chef her infatuated following, or the nickname “Sainted Arepa Lady.”

2. ANTOJITOS MEXICANOS
Roosevelt Ave. nr. 61st St., Woodside
You don’t expect to find culinary bliss amid the cacophony of this Woodside hub, where the LIRR and the elevated 7 train crisscross and every three minutes or so a jet thunders overhead on its descent into La Guardia. Yet there it is, ensconced below the tracks—an unassuming bastion of Mexican tamales worthy of an interborough expedition or a pit stop en route to anywhere else. Like a gift, the Oaxaqueño tamale comes wrapped with string: Peel open the banana leaves to reveal a hot, steamy mass of fluffy corn masa riddled with hefty chunks of ineluctably fatty pork and dripping with enough greasy red-chile oil to make a magnificent mess. More portable are the smaller corn-husk-wrapped varieties, in which morsels of chicken are dispersed sparingly, like condiments. Another version combines stringy melted cheese enlivened with red and green peppers. But it’s the masa that haunts you, with its moist, springy texture, toasty corn aroma, and earthy, mouth-filling flavor.

3. SAMMY’S HALAL
73rd St. at Broadway, Jackson Heights
“Money doesn’t really matter to me,” says former taxi driver Samiul Haque Noor of Sammy’s Halal. “I love to serve.” What he serves is mainly marinated dark-meat chicken, chopped up on the griddle and plopped down over a pile of fragrant Afghan-style long-grain rice with a side salad, for $3.99. Order it with the works, in this case a trio of sauces—one hot (red), one mild (white), and one somewhere deliciously in between (green). The red and white are toothsome, but some say that Sammy’s isn’t Sammy’s without the green sauce. If you persist, Sammy will tell you the green sauce is a mixture of garlic, cilantro, lemon, a little jalapeño, some yogurt, and, of course, various secret spices. That Sammy yields to no one in the spice-procurement department is a point of pride: “I go far, far away to get my spices; if it’s not right, I go farther; even if I have to go to Jersey, I go to Jersey,” he says. Sammy’s is so popular that the business has grown in six years from the Jackson Heights flagship to a five-cart mini-empire, with three downtown, one in Astoria, and plans to invade midtown any day now.

4. KHAN’S
73rd St. at Broadway, Jackson Heights
If you ever thought that the chicken-and-rice platter at this unassuming cart parked next door to the wildly popular Sammy’s Halal tasted suspiciously similar to its neighbor’s, you would be correct. As it turns out, Sammy himself has taken Khan’s owner Parvez Zaman under his wing, and you might as well consider Khan’s the sixth branch of Sammy’s. Not only does Sammy share his suppliers and secret spice mix with Khan’s, but he occasionally drops by for a friendly chat. The proof, however, is in the platter, and a side-by-side chicken-and-rice taste test showed the two to be virtually indistinguishable: Sammy’s had more cilantro in the salad and perhaps a surplus of onion, but Khan’s was a tad more fiery overall. Nor did Khan’s splatter us with furiously chopped chicken parts while we waited in line. But as far as the chicken-and-rices go, call it a tie.

5. TACOS GUICHO
Roosevelt Ave. at Gleane St., Jackson Heights
It’s a party every night at this popular stand, where Alejandra Gonzalez and Pilar Juarez feed what seems to be half the neighborhood—some making quick taco pit stops, others pulling up a folding chair and settling in for a spell. Even though tacos of chorizo and carnitas get the most local love, we recommend the carefully constructed tortas, or the sporadically available sopes, those thick rafts of masa flour piled high with beans, lettuce, crema, salsa, cotija, and the meat of your choice. For a meatless repast, two dollars buys a luscious quadruple-decker chalupa, each crispily griddled corn tortilla slicked with red or green salsa and garnished with diced onion, cotija, and crema. The combination sounds simple, but the cheesy, salty, crunchy whole far exceeds the sum of its seemingly humble parts.

6. HALLO BERLIN
54th St. nr. Fifth Ave.
For 24 years, Berlin-born Rolf Babiel has been slinging sausages from his just–off–Fifth-Avenue pushcart. That’s like 192 in street-cart years; factor in the Giuliani crackdown period, and call it 200. Five days a week, Babiel—or his brother Wolfgang—serves his super-snappy wursts on crusty rolls or sliced into bite-size pieces in a formidable contraption that looks like a cross between a paper cutter and a guillotine. Our favorite of about a dozen or so is called the Mercedes (bratwurst). Wolfgang’s favorite is the Skoda (alpenwurst). You can gulp down both in a Democracy Special combo—a choice of two wursts topped with a heap of fried potatoes, braised red cabbage, sauerkraut, and excellent homemade mustard and curry sauces, plus two meatballs for $9. In good weather, dine on one of the cart’s red-and-white-checked foldout trays and watch the Fifth Avenue world go by, while a Babiel brother lowers the sausage guillotine.

7. TONY “THE DRAGON” DRAGONAS
62nd St. nr. Madison Ave.
Even people who don’t eat street food eat Tony Dragonas’s street food. In a typical lunch-hour line, you’ll find an oddball assemblage of Bloomberg number-crunchers, fashionable Madison Avenue retail clerks, stout delivery guys, and traitorous cooks from nearby kitchens including Aureole, Amaranth, and Nello. Speaking of Nello, says Tony, “he wanted me to go into business with him.” He’s not the only one: “You’re the best! You’re the best!” barks a man wearing a black T-shirt, cargo shorts, and a mullet one recent afternoon. “I tell ya, Tony, I’m working on capital; we’re going to take this enterprise national.” What’s the reason for all the hoopla? Chicken breasts, shish kebab, burgers, sausage, steak, and an excellent prosciutto-mozzarella-and-basil sandwich. But the juicy char-grilled chicken is the thing, marinated overnight and available wrapped in a thick grilled pita or as a platter with yellow rice. A tinfoil container with a crisp romaine salad, all of it drizzled with homemade tsatsiki, it must weigh about five pounds and goes for $6, up from $5.50 the last time we checked. “Inflation,” Tony says resignedly.

8. CARNEGIE JOHN’S
56th St. nr. Seventh Ave.
To put it in SAT terms, Carnegie John’s is to Tony the Dragon’s as Mary’s Fish Camp is to Pearl Oyster Bar—the difference being that unlike those feuding fish ladies, should Tony and John meet up on the street, neither would attempt to scratch out the other’s eyeballs. Tony Dragonas, you see, taught his Greek compatriot John Antoniou the chicken-and-rice ropes, letting John run the show when he was away. When there was nothing more that Tony could teach John about grilled chicken breasts, Italian-sausage sandwiches, and combo platters, John, as straight-A students often do, struck out on his own—with Tony’s blessing, of course. What’s the most important lesson John learned from Tony? To start things off on the griddle, move them over to the charcoal grill, and then back to the griddle. “It seals in the juice and gives everything a nice flavor,” says John. Although the lines at John’s aren’t nearly as long as the lines at Tony’s, in a blind taste test, you’d be hard-pressed to tell John’s $5 chicken platter apart from his mentor’s. John also grills a mean $1.25 hot dog (Sabrett), which you’ll want to top with his terrific homemade onions. His pièce de résistance, though, is his $4 cheeseburger—a big fat-streaked patty of unknown provenance (“Maybe sirloin?”). Dare we say it’s better than the one you can get at the perpetually mobbed Parker Meridien Burger Joint right down the block? We do. And you won’t have to wait in line for a half hour either.

9. HUAN JI RICE NOODLES
Grand St. at Bowery
The cheung fun cart might be the hot-dog-and-pretzel stand of Chinatown, only cheaper and less tourist-friendly. The steamed rolled rice noodles, snipped with scissors, topped with your choice of spongy curried fish balls, soft, ultra-fatty pork skin, or tripe, and doused with a quartet of sweet and spicy sauces, is a popular sidewalk snack everywhere from Elizabeth Street to Pike Street. You won’t pay more than a buck or two, depending on serving size (a smaller Styrofoam container or larger plastic pint cup). The proprietress of this one has been manning her bustling cart just off Bowery for twenty years, and she’s done well enough to open a four-items-for-$3 joint on Eldridge Street, where the cheung fun is offered for breakfast. Besides the ever-popular rice noodles, the cart also dispenses mei fun and the string-tied, leaf-wrapped sticky rice packets called joong, all of which can be enjoyed alfresco at the Hester Street Playground down the block, where the handball games are fast and furious.

10. THE ESQUITES MAN
Fifth Ave. nr. 53rd St., Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Although ears of corn slathered with mayo, cheese, and lime are as ubiquitous these days as bagels at a Sunday brunch, you still have to amble over to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, for a good Styrofoam cupful of esquites. Literally translated, esquites means “toasted corn,” but more commonly refers to the irresistible Mexico City street snack of corn kernels sautéed in butter and lard or vegetable oil and flavored with fresh epazote, the pungent herb whose name roughly translated means “dirty skunk.” Nearly every other taco cart along Fifth Avenue from 45th to 55th Street does a sideline business in esquites, but our favorite is the version served with a flourish by Luis Garcia, who operates from a red shopping cart near 53rd Street: A quick scoop or two of esquites from a five-gallon Igloo thermos, a wooden spoonful of Hellmann’s scraped off onto the side of your cup like a cocktail twist, a sprinkling of sharp cotija cheese, a dusting of cayenne, a squirt of fresh lime juice, and, for $2, you’re on your way.

11. DOGMATIC DOGS
Bleecker Street Park, Bleecker St. at Hudson St.
Over the past few years, so-called fine-dining chefs have made incursions into the gritty street-cart world, a trend we heartily endorse. While Mario Batali’s GelOtto ice-cream cart and Adam Perry Lang’s Daisy May’s chili and barbecue carts seem to have become mired in bureaucratic red tape, Jeremy Spector’s haute hot-dog cart has returned to the West Village plaza where it debuted last summer. The Employees Only chef is the co-creator of the “dogmatic gourmet sausage system,” a concept that utilizes a spiked gizmo to pierce and toast the insides of Pain D’Avignon baguettes, into which gourmet sausages are inserted, along with a choice of zesty condiments. The slender, spicy beef, turkey, and pork franks ($5) all have the finest credentials, coming from contented animals that have been pastured at Sullivan County’s Violet Hill Farm. They can be had, if tradition requires, with ketchup and mustard, but much more enticing are the creamy jalapeño-Cheddar, feta-and-sun-dried-tomato, and truffle-Gruyère. An asparagus-stuffed baguette makes a nifty vegetarian option, and the homemade ginger and strawberry sodas ($3) are flavored with vanilla bean, allspice, cinnamon, clove, and cardamom.

The Jamaican Dutchy cart. (Photo: Ben Stechschulte)

12. THE JAMAICAN DUTCHY
51st St. nr. Seventh Ave.
“I’m running low on plantains” aren’t words you want to hear when you’ve waited a good twenty minutes on a line that waddles so slowly down 51st Street you start thinking Le Bernardin would have been quicker. But at least the chef at this midtown newcomer, bless his soul, rations his plantains instead of taking a pushy paralegal up on her offer to pay extra for more. Although Wall Streeters have long had access to grab-and-go Jamaican at Nio’s truck, this gleaming new satellite-dish-equipped stand is an anomaly in midtown, and an affordable lifesaver for the West Indian expats (executives, secretaries, FedEx guys) who work there. There is a certain liberty taken with the Styrofoam platters, which never seem to contain all the sides the menu promises (boiled dumpling, white rice, rice and peas, plantain, yellow yam, vegetables). But what is there is choice, and—except for those plantains—plentiful: a quarter of a spicy, herb-rubbed jerk chicken, hacked with a cleaver on a cutting board; a flavorful if not fiery serving of tender goat curry on the bone.

13. XINJIANG KEBABS
Division St. at Forsyth St.
No best-street-cart list is complete without some meat-on-a-stick, the irresistible scent of which can trigger a primordial drooling reaction in even the most abstemious vegan. Although its schedule fluctuates, the excellent cart that operates near the Manhattan Bridge, just past the bargain-bus brigade, is hard to beat. If you get lost, look for smoke and then a yellow sign that reads lamb, chicken, beef, chicken kidney, chicken heart, grill fish ball, grill corn, and more. The key is that it’s all imbued with the fire-licked flavor of hardwood charcoal, and, since every stick goes for a dollar a pop, you can linger about ordering sticks o’ meat as if you were at an alfresco tapas bar—albeit a rather gritty one. Our surprise favorite meat stick: the hot dog carved up like a street-cart mango, painted with a sweetish barbecue sauce, and sprinkled with cumin powder.

14. KWIK MEAL
45th St. nr. Sixth Ave.
Sixth Avenue in the mid-Forties is a hub of Manhattan street meat, with competing chicken-lamb-and-rice carts occupying each corner. But only one cart is operated by a chef’s-jacketed, floppy-toqued veteran of the Russian Tea Room. Mohammed Rahman runs his gleaming silver box like a mini-restaurant, expediting orders to his busy crew and chatting up customers. The Bangladeshi immigrant’s claim to fame is his marinated lamb, a succulent triumph of cumin, coriander, yogurt, and green papaya that’s actual lamb meat, not compressed gyro, rolled up with yogurty white sauce in a puffy pita or served over basmati rice. His falafel is idiosyncratic and more Greek than Middle Eastern, what with tsatsiki subbing for tahini and the kind of pita you’re likelier to find at Greek gyro stands than Israeli falafel joints. Regardless, it’s a tasty, rich sandwich, and, along with his distinctive jalapeño hot sauce, part of the winning repertoire that’s enabled the sidewalk chef to branch out with two more midtown carts.

15. CALEXICO
Wooster St. nr. Prince St.
There’s no such thing as a cheap lunch in Soho, you say? Then you haven’t been to this yearling cart, the joint venture of three brothers from Southern California. Most weekdays, hungry hipsters lean against the side of a nearby building, waiting patiently for tacos, burritos, and Mexican-style grilled corn. Come early or risk missing out on some of the more popular items—the chipotle pulled pork, say, or the medium-hot salsa verde. But Calexico’s raison d’etre is the marinated skirt steak called carne asada, a carefully cooked, well-spiced piece of meat cut into manageable chunks and piled into overstuffed $7 burritos or $3 soft-corn-tortilla tacos, properly garnished with cabbage, cilantro, and onion. The marinade recipe is a closely guarded secret, of course, but we thought we detected a subtle undercurrent of A1.

16. NY DOSAS
Washington Sq. S. at Sullivan St.
In a carnivorous cartosphere, NY Dosas is a beacon in the street-meat wilderness, attracting cash-strapped NYU students, spice-craving South Asian natives, and vegetarians of all socioeconomic stripes to the southern edge of Washington Square Park, where Thiru Kumar’s parked his popular cart for the past five years. The lanky and aggressively mustachioed Sri Lankan native once worked at Flushing’s Dosa Hutt, where he perfected the art of the lentil-and-rice crêpes that he griddles and stuffs with spiced potatoes and vegetables and serves with the traditional accompaniments of lentil soup and coconut chutney. The Special Pondicherry Masala might be Kumar’s best seller, but it’s the diaphanous Special Rava Masala Dosa, a lacy wisp of red-raw-rice-and-cream-of-wheat batter dabbed with chile paste and griddled to the quintessence of crispness, that could make you consider giving up meat.

17. HALAL CHICKEN AND GYRO
53rd St. nr. Sixth Ave.
These days, there may be more halal carts than hot-dog stands, but you will recognize this one by its never-ending line. You will also know it by its signature bright-yellow plastic bags and employees’ T-shirts, which proclaim, in no uncertain terms, we are different. tasty. delicious. This opinion is echoed on a fan-based Website (53rdand6th.com), in a Young Muslims of North America chat room, and especially by the polyglot mixture of cabbies and bridge-and-tunnel pleasure seekers who crowd the corner every night, turning it into an impromptu alfresco cookout. The stand has even made it onto Wikipedia, under the name “Chicken and Rice,” and gained a more tragic form of notoriety last fall, when one customer stabbed another to death after a line-cutting scuffle. While no $6 lamb-and-chicken-combo platter is worth dying for, this one benefits from the constant turnover and the harmonic convergence of a hot red-chile sauce and a mysterious white one, the contents of which the Halal Chicken and Gyro crew cannot be sweet talked into revealing. An even bigger secret than the white-sauce recipe is the fact that HC and G operates a second cart across Sixth Avenue, on the southeast corner of 53rd Street, and even though it’s parked there until 2 a.m., it’s never cultivated the same devout following—proof, perhaps, of the herd mentality: The longer the line, the better it must be.

18. KIM’S AUNT
46th St. nr. Sixth Ave.
Not everything at this pushcart, tattooed with the slogan food is love and parked next door to Moshe’s Falafel in midtown, is great. But what’s good is very good, especially the fried-fish sandwich (choice of whiting, $3.50, or flounder, $4.50) served on Wonder bread (white or, for health nuts, whole wheat). The fish is nicely deep-fried to a crisp golden brown and finished with tartar and hot sauces. The next best thing to the fish sandwich is the Korean dish, bulgogi ($6), highly seasoned, thinly sliced beef, served over rice with a sad sack of a side salad. As for who or where Kim or his or her aunt is, no one around here seems to know, least of all Moshe.

19. ALAN’S FALAFEL
Cedar St. nr. Broadway
Every weekday, in broad daylight, a tahini-splattered falafel war is waged in Liberty Plaza Park, Wall Street’s great outdoors lunchroom. To the west, weighing in at eleven falafel balls, alongside hummus, baba ghannouj, fried eggplant strips, a stodgy grape leaf, and a cold pita, is the $5 platter at Sam’s, one of the beloved Liberty Plaza carts that was displaced after 9/11 and greeted joyfully by regulars upon its eventual return. Five yards to the east, weighing in at a belly-busting thirteen balls, is the similarly stocked platter of its arch-rival Alan’s, a cart with virtually identical signage and product. But as the constantly shifting lines at each pushcart demonstrate, there are enough famished tourists and office workers to go around. A falafel face-off determined that besides being more generous with its balls, Alan’s excelled in texture (perceptibly crisper and a tad lighter) and flavor. It could have been just that particular batch, and we might have been swayed by sheer volume, but all’s fair in love and lunch-cart war.

20. ALL NATURAL HOT MINI CAKES
Grand St. nr. Bowery
How to end a tour of the city’s best street carts? With dessert, of course. You need no more incentive than the stop-you-in-your-tracks aroma emanating from the mini-cake carts of Chinatown, where the going rate for twenty sweet puffy confections is one smackeroo. Half the fun of eating them is watching their production, especially at this tidy little stand where septuagenarian Shao Chen blasts classical music on the world’s smallest boom box. Forearms protected with elasticized pull-on shirt sleeves that make him look a little like a riverboat gambler, Chen has honed his technique into a carefully orchestrated rhythm: Brush the lingering bits out of a multi-holed waffle-iron contraption, pour the flour-sugar-and-egg batter from a metal teapot, bake for just over a minute, scoop out the sweet, spongy balls, and separate them with a spoon. For the street-cart connoisseur, they’re the closest thing to Proust’s madeleines.

New Subway Cars

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/06/magical_new_subway_cars_arrive.html

Wind Farms

Our future energy source?
American Wind Energy Association
http://www.awea.org/

Wind Turbines
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/wind_how.html


Getting Wind Farms off the Ground : From the Economist

IF IT ever seems windy where you live, be thankful you do not live 10km up in the air. At that height, the jet-stream winds blow stronger and more constantly than ground level winds, carrying up to a hundred times more energy.

So, just as oil companies are drilling deeper and in more remote locations in search of new reserves, pioneer wind-power engineers are looking higher in the sky for new sources of energy. Conventional turbines will not take them there—the highest to date is just over 200 metres tall. So they are trying to invent a whole new technology for harvesting wind: electricity generators that fly.

One of the most ambitious ideas has been developed by Sky WindPower, a company based in San Diego and led by Dave Shepard. Mr Shepard began his career cracking Japanese military codes during the Second World War, then developed machines for reading written text. His work led to the squared-off numbers still seen on bank cards today.

Mr Shepard’s flying generator looks like a cross between a kite and a helicopter. It has four rotors at the points of an H-shaped frame that is tethered to the ground by a long cable. The rotors act like the surface of a kite, providing the lift needed to keep the platform in the air. As they do so, they also turn dynamos that generate electricity. This power is transmitted to the ground through aluminium cables. Should there be a lull in the wind, the dynamos can be used in reverse as electric motors, to keep the generator airborne.

Mr Shepard estimates these rigs could produce power for as little as two cents a kilowatt hour. That is cheaper than the three to five cents conventional energy generation costs. It is an attractive idea, but a flying generator is difficult thing to build—and there is a limit to how helpful existing helicopter technology will be. Aircraft require maintenance after a few days of operation, if not sooner. To operate cost-effectively, wind turbines will need to keep turning for many months without upkeep.

Mr Shepard, however, thinks he has a way out. Stabilising and directing a conventional helicopter requires that the pitch of the individual blades be adjusted with every rotation—up to a thousand times a minute. That puts massive stress on the turning mechanism and wears it out rapidly. On a four-rotor arrangement, you can achieve the same effect by changing the pitch of one or two whole rotors, rather than adjusting the pitch of individual blades. Mr Shepard reckons that this will make a big difference, and will increase the periods between maintenance enough to make the project viable.

Exploiting the jet stream represents the zenith (both literally and figuratively) of aerial wind-engineers’ ambitions. Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution who has worked with Sky WindPower, estimates that harvesting just 1% of its energy would produce enough power for the whole of civilisation. But even at lower altitudes, the winds are stronger than they are at the surface, and that has attracted the attention of other inventors.

In Canada a company called Magenn Power has developed a proposal for a wind generator filled with helium. It turns around a horizontal axis, rather like a water mill, and could fly at an altitude of up to 1km. The firm sees its system as an alternative to diesel generators in remote locations where ground-level wind is insufficient for a normal windmill.

Meanwhile, Wubbo Ockels of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has been developing another approach to airborne wind generation at lower altitude, with backing from Royal Dutch Shell and Nederlandse Gasunie, a natural-gas company. Dr Ockels’s idea is that a kite (without rotor blades) be launched from a ground station, turning a generator as it rises to an altitude of several hundred metres. When it reaches its full height, it alters its shape to catch less wind, and can thus be reeled back in using much less power than it produced when it was being paid out.

An arrangement of two or more of these kites could act together to produce a steady supply of power. When one kite was being released, part of the electricity produced would reel the other kite back in, and vice versa. The whole system would thus remain in surplus, and if well designed could deliver a constant current. This system has the advantage that it requires only simple parts—generators, kites and cables—and should thus be much cheaper to build than a conventional turbine.

Controlling it, however, would be a different matter. Dr Ockels is working on kites with wings and rudders, which look much more like a plane than anything you might see flying in the park. The wings and rudders themselves would be under computer control—a technology already well established for flying aircraft without too much interference from a human pilot.

To test the idea, Dr Ockels’s team is building a 100kW prototype. He hopes to start testing a full-scale device, which would generate 10MW, within five years. That would be large enough to power around 10,000 homes. He believes the system should be capable of generating electricity at a cost of just 1 cent a kilowatt hour.

Any promise of such cheap energy has to be treated with scepticism, and all these projects are still a long way from the full-scale test rigs needed to prove they will succeed. No-one denies that it will be hard to build a flying generator that can make money. However, the political impetus behind renewable energy is growing and space is limited at ground level. Perhaps it is time for the wind power industry to reach for the sky.