Cyrus Farivar

I know this is a bit late, but every time I come across these songs in iTunes I can’t help but think of the Katrina victims. Blondie – The Tide is High The Be Good Tanyas – Lakes of Pontchartain Dave Cuomo – When The Ship Comes In (Written by Bob Dylan)

My apologies to the dedicated readers out there. My webstats tell me that I have 25-30 readers in RSS and about 30 on the website every day. And occasionally some spooks. Anyhow. Things have been very busy lately both at Macworld and for some freelance assignments, so this post will be somewhat abbreviated. Firstly, go donate some cash to the International Committee of the Red Cross to help relief efforts in Pakistan/India. 20,000 dead. That’s bad news, man. I just…

The New Yorker – October 10, 2005: To assess the effect of the Ivies, it makes more sense to compare the student who got into a top school with the student who got into that same school but chose to go to a less selective one. Three years ago, the economists Alan Krueger and Stacy Dale published just such a study. And they found that when you compare apples and apples the income bonus from selective schools disappears. “As a…

Ed: These are the unofficial bus companies that I discovered while researching my thesis — outside of the seven official ones that I counted. NYT: For many restaurant workers, the number of hours by bus is a critical measure of how far they are from the American center of their universe, East Broadway in Chinatown. Almost all travel by bus, because many do not speak English or have identification, so they cannot travel by plane. A network of Chinese bus…

Macworld: Heard about blogs but scared to dip your toe in the blogosphere? Wonder how it is all these bloggers do what they do? Dori Smith, author of “The Best Blogging Tools for The Mac” in the November 2005 issue of Macworld, can tell you how to blog from your Mac. Caveat blogger: we can’t help you if you become addicted to blogging. Download Macworld Podcast #10 (9.6MB – 20 minutes).

So when I arrived home at my Oakland cottage yesterday I opened up my mailbox. I was surprised to find a letter addressed to me from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Dear Cyrus Farivar, Recently, your story “Green-Collar Crime: How I Stopped an Internet Sex Hoax,” came to my attention. This is the type of story that the Mongerson Prize for Investigateive Reporting on the News honors. Since 2002, the Mongerson Prize has recognized reporters for serving…

Slate: Even if that were so, why would anybody assume that she is the one to do the face-to-face spinning? Wouldn’t it be better to find someone who—oh, I don’t know—speaks the language, knows the culture, lived there for a while, was maybe born there? Put the shoe on the other foot. Let’s say some Muslim leader wanted to improve Americans’ image of Islam. It’s doubtful that he would send as his emissary a woman in a black chador who…

The Wanderlust Geek is going to Istanbul ! That’s right, folks, you heard it here first. For a week, give or take, toward the end of October, Rebekah and I will head to Istanbul, where we’ll meet up with my buddy from Columbia, Tom Grove. With any luck, I can swing a stopover in Paris to see my family there. 🙂

But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky. — Bill Bennett, Former Sect. of Education under the Reagan Administration,…

InfoWeek: Q: Will there be an acquisition in the security space? ELLISON: Sure, it’s possible. ARGH! I hate the use of the word “space” in business/technology journalism. It’s so meaningless. What’s wrong with these other possibilities? Will there be a security acquisition? Will there be an acquisition in the security sector? Will there be acquisition in security? I’m reading John Battelle‘s The Search right now and he’s as guilty of it as anyone. I swear, if I hear about it…