philly web log

Philly.com Sucks--Introducing a Regular Feature

2010-07-12T13:54:00.001-04:00

I'm willing to bet that Philly.com is the worst edited major metropolitan newspaper website in the country. The breaking news articles are basically unintelligible. The design makes reading the paper on the site actively unpleasant, and usually not possible. The design problems can be avoided by just using the mobile site. Unfortunately the mobile site still has horrendous articles on it. For example, here's one, reprinted in full, about the South Street situation on Saturday night/Sunday morning at around 12:30am:

Police deployed horse patrols and tactical units on South Street late Saturday to prevent a repeat of the rowdy crowds that erupted into a melee the night before.

Officers patrolled near Fifth and South Streets, where crowds had gathered until 2 a.m. Saturday. During that confrontation, police arrested Derek Langone, 25, of Chicago, for allegedly shoving and punching an officer.

Others from the crowd dispersed, police said, but Langone fought them. Police used a Taser to stop him.

None of the officers was injured. Langone was being held on preliminary charges of aggravated assault.

South Street has been hit in the past by crowds of youths who organized so-called flash mobs by using text messages and the Internet.

As of 10 p.m. Saturday, police reported the area remained quiet.

First, you should know that the "late Saturday" in the first paragraph, and the "2 a.m. Saturday" in the second paragraph are referring to incidents that took place roughly 22 hours apart. You should also know that everything after the first paragraph refers to the incident in the second paragraph. So in an article called: "After South St. melee, a show of police might," we have twelve words about the show of might, and two of those words make the chronology of events virtually impossible to understand.

Here's a second article, reprinted in full, about the same incident, which, again, took place at 12:30 am late Saturday night/early Sunday morning:

Philadelphia police shut down 11 blocks of South Street between 1 and 2 a.m. Sunday after officers decided that large crowds, estimated as high as 20,000 people, were in danger of overwhelming the area.

Lt. Frank Vanore, a police department spokesman, said Saturday night's crowds apparently swelled because of the Greek Picnic, an event that draws members of African-American college fraternities and sororities to the city each year. He said local teenagers often flock to South Street on Saturday night after the gathering.

As police shut down South Street with the help of state police mounted officers, some of the local youth headed toward Broad Street, prompting reports of disturbances there, Vanore said Sunday.

He said those problems were relatively minor, with 15 arrests for summary offenses such as disorderly conduct and under-age drinking.

"The problems we have had nothing to do with the Greek Picnic events, and they never have," Vanore said. "The problem we have is that kids just kind of congregate on that night."

This is a short article, which doesn't answer the question of whether the crowds on South Street had something to do with the Greek Picnic two separate times. From what I can tell, the argument is that every year kids gather on South Street the night of the Picnic, but this has nothing to do with the Picnic. Whatever. So in addition to adding nothing to my understanding of events, I'd simply like to note that this didn't happen between 1 am and 2 am. I know this because I was actually at South Street when it happened! Here's what I tweeted at 12:16 am: "some shit is going down for real on south st. blocking ppl coming out of femi kuti (which was awesome) w horses making them go west at third[.]" And here's what I tweeted at 12:22 am: "horses and motorcycles walking/driving up the sidewalk to push ppl. horse ran over one dude. 100+ cops. fucking insane." Oh, and just for good measure, I tweeted this at 12:29 am: "oh and this was all for no discernable (sic) reason."

So, to sum this up: this event has now been reported confusingly and incorrectly by the Inquirer two separate times, by two separate people. (By "reported" I mean: "ask the police spokesman what happened, and don't make any effort to figure out what actually happened.") It happened an hour before the Inquirer said it did, and since everyone who was there couldn't figure out why it was happening, I'm going to challenge that there were 20,000 people anywhere close to the area.

Lastly, "some of the local youth headed toward Broad Street" after being forced there by mounted police and motorcycles. (a) I wonder what they mean by "local youth"?!?!?!?!?!??!?!! (b) I wonder how many people? Is this a paragraph about ten "local youth"? 100? 10,000?

If I wasn't on South Street Saturday, I'd still have no idea what happened there.

Festina Peche Glazed Salmon with Roasted Corn Salsa

2010-07-02T18:39:00.001-04:00

One of the dumbest things about being in the Dubs was that I sort of lost my desire to cook. (Among other things, the stove wasn't that good, the pans sucked, the knives sucked, and the fruit sucked. But really, I was probably just depressed.) Anyway, now that I'm back, I'm excited to start up again. This fall, I want to learn how to really cook Asian stuff, but until then, you can't do much better than fish with a light, sweet salsa.

I was inspired by Festina Peche, which rocked my life at dinner last night. One note is that it got super sweet when I cooked it down, so I added some smoked pepper from Green Aisle, which, suffice it to say, does not have a counterpart across the Atlantic. I also got the corn from Green Aisle. I got the salmon, tomato, and poblano from Whole Foods.

To make it, just blacken the corn and the pepper on an open flame of some sort, throw the poblano in a plastic bag for twenty minutes, peel and dice. Add tomato, salt, pepper. Done.

For the glaze, cook down a bottle of the beer till it looks just-under glazey, add some crushed smoked black peppercorns, and let it cool.

Marinate the non-skin side of the salmon in the glaze for about ten minutes, cook off the salmon, drizzle with the glaze, warm the salsa in a pan, and put it on top of the salmon. Then take a sick picture, and do a blog post.

Weird Sentences

2010-07-02T12:16:00.000-04:00

Can anyone figure out what the heck this means?

His mother, Yvonne, hid her Jewish heritage from him but taught him to read for pleasure.

David Brooks on Christopher Hitchens.

Good Morning, Philly

2010-07-02T05:33:00.001-04:00

I can't tell you how great it is to wake up here and know I don't have to leave again.

Oy

2010-06-30T01:12:00.006-04:00

Just two things about this Joel Stein clusterfuck:

1. Does Time employ anyone in, say, an editorial capacity?

2. When I was growing up my grandparents would always tell me about how the 69th Street neighborhood had "changed," which was, let's say, euphemistically simplistic. And I never really had a lot of sympathy for two Jews who lived during World War II and were still stuck on how good things were in the 1950s. But at least I could always chalk it up to a different time, and hey, they were my grandparents so I loved them.

But Joel Stein is not my grandparent, and he is 38-years-old (almost 39--happy birthday Joel!!). So he can go to hell.

And he should feel more than a little embarrassed that he sounds just like my grandparents.

We Actually Really Do Need Federal Money

2010-06-28T08:26:00.012-04:00

Here are the top-6 most read stories on Philly.com as of Monday morning:

Which is only to say: we really need more money, community services, and police, not less.

Not among the most viewed articles on Philly.com as of Monday morning was this article about how fucked PA and NJ are because of the shameful decision by Republicans and Ben Nelson to filibuster the tax-extender bill in the Senate, which:

would reauthorize extended unemployment benefits for people out of work for six months or longer, would protect doctors from a 21 percent pay cut for seeing Medicare patients, and would provide billions in aid to state Medicaid programs.

This awesomeness, it seems, is causing all sorts of $850 million fun in Harrisburg:

the lack of federal money will force more painful cuts to programs, including mental-health and children's services, whose funding has already been eviscerated the last few years.

Not receiving the federal Medicaid funding "would be devastating," said Tim Allwein, assistant executive director of governmental and member relations for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

School districts in Pennsylvania, he said, would likely lose the extra money Gov. Rendell is proposing for basic education, leaving them to raise taxes or slash programs and teaching jobs.

Rendell had one word last week to describe the impact on the state budget should the Medicaid money be permanently axed: Armageddon.

Hyperbole aside, this is sweet, huh? But it could be worse. We could be living in New Jersey, where conservative messiah Chris Christie has decided to compound the above problems by trying to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit--that is, raise taxes by $45 million on 485,000 families who have children and make under $48,000 a year. And this is after vetoing a small tax surcharge on 16,000 New Jersey millionaires because "another tax increase will punish the state’s struggling small businesses and set our economy further back from recovery."

I happen to agree that raising taxes right now is a really terrible idea, which is why Christie shouldn't do it and why the Senate should get off its ass and save our states.

Let's Try This Again

2010-06-28T05:51:00.011-04:00

Okay, so my last blog basically turned into a twitter feed for my parents. I didn't even blog my awesome pictures from Japan. Whatever. It's over. Dublin is over. Explaining why it's a complete fail of a city is over. Suggesting improvements that the people of Dublin might want--but refuse--to consider is over. I'm moving on.

I'm back in Philly. And I will probably ~~forget to/be too lazy to~~ blog all about it. It's gonna be awesome.

Oh, I'll also blog about all kinds of other stuff you aren't interested in. But I'm interested, and it's my blog, and I know my mom will read it. Probably my aunt too.

Ok, fine. One picture of Japan:

Shosei-en Garden, Kyoto