JohnFrat.us

• The Cleveland Film Festival is coming up starting the 19th, and the film schedule is posted. We used to go to a ton of films every year. I can’t remember the last time we got over there. But I still like looking over the list of films. And by the way, Great Lakes Brewery is offering $2.00 off per ticket.
• Listable: Words it is NOT OK to ever say. A funny list. I’m not sure what some of the words actually mean though. “Nomnomnom”? When would I say that except to make a baby think that the gunk I’m trying to feed her is edible?

• Crain’s:Forest City Enterprises cuts convention center/medical mart cost estimate. To under $400MM, or about $130MM less than their lowest previous estimate. This is completely predictable. Apparently $55MM of the reduction was due to “market condition price reductions” (because the economy’s so bad, I guess). Wouldn’t MMPI also be able to get those same kinds of reductions at any other site? Anyway, MMPI’s already seen the proposal and, while they didn’t reject it out of hand, what they did say wasn’t very encouraging to Forest City: “It’s really a non-starter… It just won’t work.”
• There have been a bunch of articles lately on Alexander Selkirk, who was the real-life inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), one of the oldest novels in English. Selkirk was a “privateer” (basically a government sponsored pirate) who annoyed his ship-mates so much that they ended up leaving him on an uninhabited island 400 miles west of Chile in 1704. He was stuck there by himself for almost five years. The National Geographic Society recently sponsored some archeological digs and did find some sites and artifacts that are likely to be related to Selkirk. Here’s the story from The Telegraph and here’s the slightly spicer version from Der Spiegel.
• BBC: Nature’s Great Events. This is a series by the BBC Natural History Unit, and is apparently quite similar to their earlier Planet Earth. Ned actually used his Netflix queue to rent the first episode of Planet Earth instead of some movie with animated Japanese things. Must mean it’s pretty good stuff.

• NY Times: How Much Water Does Pasta Really Need? Not as much as you’d think. (via Kottke)
• Lance Knobel: A Book for Our Times.  Lance just finished reading the new Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace. Sounds like it might be worth trying out:

Dear reader, if you haven’t read War and Peace, rush to your nearest bookstore and get the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation immediately. It’s a wonderful, gripping read (excepting part two of the epilogue). The characters will stay with you forever, the love stories are as good as any, the court and political intrigues provide a glimpse into a vanished society and the battle scenes have never been bettered. It has tremendous resonance for our (and I expect any) time.

• Wired: Hands On: Dante’s Inferno Turns Epic Poem Into Hellish Action Game. I think I mentioned this before, but EA is making a video game of Inferno. Here’s an initial look at the game. Sounds like quite the pastiche.

• Fish Fries! OK, it’s Lent. And among other more important things, Lent means Fish Fries. Here’s Channel 3’s list. Update: Here’s the Cleveland.Com/Plain Dealer List — much more complete. Here’s the Diocesan page, but there doesn’t seem to be much there yet.

• Daily Routines: A blog about how various famous folks (such as CS Lewis, Winston Churchill, Fred Rogers, and Barack Obama) organize their time. What a great idea!
• NY Times: Tropicana Discovers Some Buyers Are Passionate About Packaging. Recently Tropicana switched from their traditional “Orange with a Straw in it” package design to a much more bland, almost “generic” looking design. Well, they’ve gotten so many complaints, they’re changing back. The article is partly about this, but also about all the different ways that folks can now make themselves heard about stuff like this.
• Cleveland Magazine Politics Blog: Why Now? Some thoughts why the Sheriff McFaul situation is now becoming big news even though pieces and parts of it have been out there for years (since 1996, apparently).

• Bill Callahan: US Bancorp CEO: TARP was meant to fund bank takeovers all along. Very illuminating quotes from Richard Davis, the CEO of US Bank. Apparently US Bank is considered one of the most stable of the big banks. For example, see this. But if you follow Callahan’s blog, US Bank is constantly one of the top banks foreclosing on homes here in Cleveland. Unless they never made any bad loans anywhere else in the country, something about this doesn’t add up. One thing that’s really clear in this whole financial mess is that certain banks are way better at PR than others.
• Neatorama: Evolution of Car Logos. A wide ranging compilation of car company logos and interesting facts about them. Lots of brands missing, though.

• Posnanski: Rough Week. Joe’s dad is in the hospital with some pretty serious GI problems. This prompts Joe to write about some of the great stuff his dad’s done. As usual, funny and touching at the same time.

• Wired: Retro Game Challenge Reheats the 8-Bit ’80s. A very cool sounding game for the DS. Here’s the gist: You play a character who’s been trapped in the 1980’s. (I agree: This would be a disaster.) In order to escape you have to win at a bunch of games that are similar to real games from the 80’s — but were actually written specifically for Retro Game Challenge. There are even fake gaming magazines (in the overall game) with “cheat codes” for the “old” games. This whole thing is a Neat Idea, and apparently quite well done.
• Scene Magazine: Doug Trattner reports on two restaurants in the neighborhood. First of all, The Flying Fig is now open for Sunday brunch from 11-3. Some very intriguing items on the menu, like migas and fried duck egg enchiladas. We will definitely have to check this out sometime. And secondly, The Old Angle has revised their menu. They’ve always been a bar with excellent food, so it will be interesting to see what they do.
• Ubisoft: Prince of Persia Epilogue trailer. One of the games I actually finished last year was the new Prince of Persia. Not to spoil the ending, but let’s just say it was pretty obvious there would be some additional content coming. And here it is! An entire new area to solve. And the rumor is that the boss is Elika’s father. Ubi claims that it will be much more difficult. We’ll see. One thing that’s annoying, but fairly predictable: They’ve announced the Epilogue for PS3 and X360, but not PC. Hmmm.

Some education posts from the NY Times today:

• NY Times: A nice profile of new Education Secretary and former Chicago Schools Superintendent Arne Duncan and how the $100 billion in the stimulus bill is an unbelievable opportunity to remake US education.
• NY Times: Our Greatest National Shame. Nick Kristof on how broken our current educational system is and how it’s becoming clearer and clearer that it is, in fact, fabulous teachers and schools — not parents — that make the greatest difference to kids coming from the toughest backgrounds.
• NY Times: Student Expectations Seen As Causing Grade Disputes. “A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.” There are some quite typical quotes in this article by some of the students.

• URBAN FARMING! Some folks we know are planning a Detroit Shoreway Orchard. Here’s an article from the Plain Dealer on it.
• Jesse Bearden: A Real Tweet. There’s a guy who posts on Twitter as “The Real Shaq”. Jesse and his friend Sean try to determine if it is in fact Shaquille O’Neal. A very funny story.