JohnFrat.us

• Ruhlman: Lemon Squares: Boxed Mixes?! Michael (and his mom and son) show how buying a boxed lemon square mix is like throwing your money away. This is kind of funny because my daughter just had a sleepover and one of the activities she did with the girls was cooking stuff. We’d picked up a lemon square mix as a simple thing for the group to make together. Looks like it would have been just as easy — and way more fun — to make the squares from scratch.

• Really Bad Cleveland Accent: Horizontal Books. After stopping at the bank for the kids’ monthly “learn how to save money” trip, Ned noticed that Horizontal was open. He made me promise that we would stop in there soon. I’m interested as well, but I’m not much of a book buyer. I don’t re-read books and I can’t see spending money on something I’d use once. Ned, in particular, however, is an avid book re-reader. He’s probably read some of the Harry Potter books dozens of times. So buying does make sense for him.

• Cleveland Foodie: A Perfect Saturday Morning. Michelle heads to West 4th for breakfast at the new Erie Island Coffee. And she also stops by the still-not-completed Greenhouse Tavern. Both sound great. Lately it seems like all new restaurants are opening on W. 4th. I remember just a couple of years ago we went down to Ingenuity and they had many of the art displays in various abandoned storefronts on W. 4th. Those spaces are all now full of restaurants and assorted hot spots. (Of course, this being “zero-sum Cleveland”, the activity there has meant that the Flats are now pretty much closed down and even the Warehouse district is seeing much less activity. There’s just not enough folks around here to support this type of stuff.)
• ODOT: As expected, ODOT is sucking up much of Ohio’s Economic Stimulus money, with the single biggest item being the Innerbelt Bridge at $200 milliion. And $20 million for more preliminary work on the Opportunity Corridor (i.e. a quicker way into University Circle).
• Cleveland Foundation: This quarter’s awards. Mostly to University Circle, which is smart, especially if anyone actually builds that Opportunity Corridor thing. There’s also a pretty smart feedback response from reader “NEOKARMA” to the fact that the Foundation is giving half a million dollars to the Port Authority for more studies on how to move the port facilities to E. 55th St. I agree that Lorain is a far better location for a regional port. Fairport Harbor and Ashtabula are probably even better than that since it would be cheaper and easier to build the necessary infrastructure there. But since those ports are in other counties, I guarantee that nobody at the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority is looking at them. Again, where is Chicago’s port? How about Houston’s? New York’s? Or the largest port in the Western Hemisphere, New Orleans’? (I’ll give you a hint: None of them are in the cities I just named. And one of them isn’t even in the same state. That’s regionalism.)

• Rob Pitingolo: Olympics Fallout. In a post ostensibly about Chicago, Rob links to several articles that show how hard and how fast bad things can start piling up after the Olympics leave town. It’s pretty clear that most places that host simply don’t need a lot of the infrastructure that had been built to support the games. Surprisingly to me, even Beijing is having problems, although it’s unclear whether this is more related to the current overall downturn. The bigger picture, I think, is that expecting any one event or project to provide long term benefit to a region is probably not a good idea.

• WEWS: Cleveland Schools’ Shakeup? Looks like some underperforming schools are going to get new principals. The current principals are being “reassigned” to assistant principal…

• Cash for Clunkers. As the owner of two clunkers this bill interests me greatly. We’ve always said that we will wait for our cars to literally die before buying new ones, but a $5,000 incentive to buy a car would almost certainly push us into a purchase sooner. The catch is that the car has to be American/Canadian/Mexican built. Unfortunately, the two top cars on my list are built in Japan. Luckily, the third is not…
• Sheriff McFaul finally resigns. Not sure why he had been sticking around so long; they obviously have enough on him to send him to jail. Also: my guess is that they re-rename West 3rd St…
• Where the Wild Things Are. Movie trailer.

• Rob Pitingolo: What Causes Long Commutes? Rob charts commute times vs. transit usage rates and sees some correlation. What isn’t clear, however, is any sort of causation. It seems like nobody really knows if public transportation actually reduces congestion or can only succeed if there’s a lot of congestion.

• WEWS: The Big Egg’s Breakfast This Week: One Cent. (With the purchase of a drink…) The Big Egg opened back up this month and this is a promotion they’re running every day from 6 am – 8 am.
• Hulu: Cosmos. This is a great TV series from the 80′s that goes into detail on all kinds of scientific stuff. Hosted by Carl Sagan.

• Crain’s: Weston to pursue development of key block in downtown Cleveland. The Asher family had been partnering with Bob Stark on the development of all those parking lots west of Public Square into a vast commercial/retail/residential project.  Stark has pulled out of that project, but apparently the Ashers still have some hopes for redevelopment there. (By the way, if you click through to the map I’ve linked to above, check out the official name of West 3rd St. in this area. Funny!)
• Posnanski: I’ve chopped this out of a post he wrote on on baseball defense, which is good, but not as good as this aside:

Sorry, I have to interrupt this post for a moment to point out that I’m in a Boise hotel and housekeeping just banged on my door. It is 8 a.m. local time. Now, that’s just way too early for housekeeping to come by, no? I mean, yes, I realize that I could have put the “Do Not Disturb” sign out, but I’ve got to believe that the EARLIEST housekeeping should knock on anyone’s door is 9 a.m. Right? Can we get a ruling on this? And while we’re at it, can we get a ruling on these things too:

1. Are you supposed to tip the concierge for giving you directions?
2. Are you supposed to tip the valet parking person on the way in or on the way out or both?
3. How much are you supposed to tip for restaurant takeout food?
4. Are you supposed to tip the person who shows you to your seat at shows or sporting events?
5. Shouldn’t they put the gas tank on the same side of every single car?
6. If someone you barely know is telling you a story he/she already told you, is it OK to stop them mid sentence?
7. Why do planes allow people to recline their seats ALL the way back? Shouldn’t there be some rear-view passenger rights?
8. Why do some flight attendants insists that you raise your window shade for takeoff and landing? I have spent way too much of my free time trying to figure that one out.
9. Is it a passenger right and/or responsibility to turn in a seat mate who does NOT turn off all electronic devices for landing? Or is there some sort of “Airplane Omerta” that we are supposed to adhere to?

• The Cybils: The Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards.  Given out in January for the third year. Lots of good books on these lists. And this site has a link to KidLitosphere Central, which tries to maintain links to all the blogging being done about Children’s and YA books.
• On related notes: All the authors and publication dates for the 39 Clues series have been announced. And Percy Jackson interviews Blackjack on Rick Riordan’s blog.
• Charles Arthur: When the diggers come for your Town Square, will you know why? Another great example of the current problems in journalism. Charles lives in Saffron Walden. The city/county council there has been making a lot of very questionable decisions. There are no remaining local media other than the free “shopper”-type adverts. And therefore these poor decisions come as a huge surprise to everyone. Obviously in the new model there should be all kinds of “citizen journalists” blogging about this stuff. But in Saffron Walden, at least, it’s not happening.
• Cleveland Mag Politics: MMPI vs. Forest City. I’m completely baffled by Forest City’s actions on the Convention Center. How do you expect to get your way when you’ve completely annoyed both groups of people (MMPI and the County Commissioners) who will be making the decision?