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Two tickets to The Swell Season at The Moore - bought online:
Full Price-Babes in arms not permitted US $32.50 x 2
Facility Charge US $2.00 x 2
Convenience Charge US $9.05 x 2
Delivery (Standard Mail) No Charge
Order Processing Fee US $3.36
Additional Taxes US $0.92
Total Charges US $91.38
Technorati Tags: ticketmaster, once, moore theater, the swell season
I'm just trying to do my taxes on Mac Microsoft Office 2008 Excel and it just keeps crashing over and over and over. At least seven crashes in about twenty minutes. Unlike earlier versions of Office, it almost always recovers the file from a few minutes before I last crashed.
Did someone at Microsoft think that improving the file recover feature was more important than shipping software that doesn't crash repeatedly under normal use? I'm not doing anything difficult - just entering values, summing columns, a bit of copy and paste. I've had similar crashes in Microsoft Word 2008, but not quite as frequent. This isn't just one file, or one program.
Microsoft Office is the butter (Windows is the bread) of Microsoft's cash flow. Is shipping software this broken a sign the end of the company is near?
Technorati Tags: office 2008, mac office, excel, microsoft, office bugs
Mark Penn runs her campaign, he's CEO of Burson-Marsteller:
Penn is a graduate of the Horace Mann School in New York City (1972) and of Harvard (1976), where he was the head of the College Republicans.
In February 2008, the nuclear company Exelon paid Burson-Marsteller $230,627.05, coded as "public affairs." Exelon said the work involved the Exelon-funded pro-nuclear group New Jersey Affordable, Clean, Reliable Energy Coalition (NJ ACRE) and strengthening local support for "the renewal of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant's operating license."
Burson-Marsteller (B-M) has had a close relationship with cigarette maker Philip Morris (PM), having organized the smokers' rights group the National Smokers Alliance (NSA) for PM in the early 1990s. The purpose of the group was to mobilize smokers on behalf of the tobacco industry to protest clean indoor air laws, increased cigarette taxes and other legislated efforts that would affect cigarette consumption.
In January 2004, the Observer (UK) reported that European Women for HPV Testing was a front group being run by B-M campaign for the US biotechnology company Digene. The Observer reported that some of the celebrities cited as endorsing the campaign on the groups website were not aware of the links of the group with Digene. [16]
Burson-Marsteller has been hired by the two firms representing PMC Blackwater USA, McDermott Will & Emery and Crowell & Moring, to help with the account.
See also Burson-Marsteller on Wikipedia:
B-M worked for both the Nigerian Government and Royal Dutch/Shell during and after the Biafran war. Reports of instability and genocide at the time had hurt Nigeria’s international image, they hired B-M to discredit these reports
After the invasion of East Timor around 200,000 people, one third of the population were murdered, the Indonesian government has also been accused of genocidal policies against the peoples of Irian Jaya, amongst many other human rights abuses. In 1996, BM was hired by the Indonesian government to clean up its image[citation needed]. B-M does however deny handling the issue of genocide in East Timor.
B-M has worked for a host of regimes with appalling human rights records including the notoriously repressive and corrupt government of Saudi Arabia, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, and the governments of Sri Lanka and Singapore[citation needed]. Three days after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, in which 13 of the 16 alleged suicide bombers were Saudis, Saudi Arabia again hired B-M to ensure that its national image remains untarnished
In 2007, reacting to claims that they killed several Iraqi civilians without cause, the US based private security firm Blackwater hired Burson-Marsteller subsidiary BKSH to scrub their tarnished image
In September 2007 the firm was retained by struggling mortgage lender Countrywide Financial to promote a public relation effort entitled "Protect Our House" aimed at addressing the firm's image following its downsizing and increased rate of foreclosures.
It's kind of interesting to me that she's had no shame putting him front and center in her campaign from the beginning. I just find the association entirely creepy.
Technorati Tags: clinton, mark penn, burson-marsteller, hillary clinton, 2008 elections
I had a mixed experience at the International Center of Photography museum. I wasn't too inspired by The Collections of Barbara Bloom but I found the room full of newspaper front pages from September 12, 2001 quite powerful. That room has a powerful magnetic almost sinister energy. You walk out but can't quite leave, then look back ... Nearby, there is a collection of powerful black nudes by Mapplethorpe.
Interestingly, the museum received the recently discovered cache of Robert Capa negatives also known as The Mexican Suitcase. Nothing is on display yet but it will surely be fascinating to learn more.
Technorati Tags: icp, robert capa, mexican suitcase, 9-11, barbara bloom
I wholeheartedly recommend visitors to New York city go see Cai Guo-Qiang's installation at the Guggenheim. It is one of the largest and most impressive installations I've ever seen. While not touched entirely by the aesthetic of the artist and conflicted about his apparent extensive support by the Chinese government (he'll be directing the opening and closing to the Beijing Olympics - which I'll tune in to see), the diversity and energy of the installation is undeniable.
While I find the exploding Ford Taurus' at the Seattle Art Museum kind of bland, the exploding Ford's at the Guggenheim hoisted completely vertically into the gallery come off much better. The wolves and the live exhibit of clay reproductions of Chinese farm life as well as the videos and resulting art work of gunpowder-based creations are quite amazing. As you walk up the ramps of the Guggenheim, Chinese artists work live on the clay reproductions ... touching them up and working on new ones as you go.
The Guggenheim itself is one of the most impressive galleries I've seen. It reminded me of my affection for Rome's Borghese Gallery, when a building grabs you as much as the art.
Links:
Cai Guo-Qiang (Wikipedia)
Cai Guo-Qiang (Artist's Website)
Cai Guo-Qiang: I want to Believe
Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune Stage One
Guggenheim Museum New York
Seattle Art Museum: Inopportune Stage One
Technorati Tags: guggenheim museum, new york, cai guo-qiang, inopportune, wolves
At the suggestion of a friend, I went to see Harold Pinter's The Homecoming in New York city last week. While the acting was excellent, I found the play difficult to sit through and disturbing. If the point was to evoke discomfort, the cast succeeded.
After Teddy "comes home" with his wife, Ruth, Max invites her to remain in London. She agrees, in effect, to "come home" as the family's missing mother figure and possibly also a prostitute whom Lenny can pimp, hence filling in the gap created when "their mother died": "I've never had a whore under this roof before. Ever since your mother died" (58).
Mostly, I just felt like I was missing something about the entire disturbing plot lines...but after doing more research on Wikipedia, apparently, I was not. The play has long been controversial and widely analyzed.
A highly ambiguous, enigmatic, and (for some) even cryptic play, The Homecoming has been the subject of extensive critical debate for over forty years.[6] According to many critics, it exposes issues of sex and violence in a highly realistic yet aesthetically stylized manner. ... The Homecoming directly challenges the place of "morals" in family life and puts their social value "under erasure" (in Derridean terms). Teddy's profession as an academic philosopher—which, he claims, enables him to "maintain . . . intellectual equilibrium"
I can't recommend the play to most folks - other than ardent theatre buffs or those interested in dissecting power dynamics between genders.
Technorati Tags: broadway, the homecoming, harold pinter
I've been meaning to blog about Fage for awhile. It's an extremely lean, high protein dairy yogurt. It's become a staple of mine in Seattle but it's only available at Whole Foods and often sold out. New York City coffee shops seem to stock it regularly.
Total 0% offers 13g protein with 6g of carbs. Total 2% offers 17g protein and 8g of carbs. Most dairy and even soy-based yogurts have about 20-30g of sugar-based carbs and 4-6g of protein.
Fage also tastes great. The higher the percentage, the creamier the taste. Enjoy!
Technorati Tags: food, fage, greek yogurt
Generally I enjoy my Jet Blue experiences. But before I fell asleep last night on the plane, I could swear the stewardess said "if the cabin should depressurize and oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, stop screaming and put the mask around your mouth." That was after the electrical system went on the blink on the tarmac leading the mechanic to proclaim, "I've never seen this." while the plane went dark, lots of alarms beeped and rainbow colored lights flashed over head to point to exits. The flight itself was uneventful.
I'm in New York today. It's a windy, dry cold.
Technorati Tags: jetblue, air travel
Funny. Digg readers were the first to publish the encryption key for HD DVD. Now, HD DVD is dead. Coincidence?
As part of my photography class, I've been revamping my old photos and creating a new, improved Flickr gallery.
I found this gem from a collection of photos from my favorite hike in Seattle: Rainbow and Island Lakes.
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