At the Ice Pellet Café...

... have a drink of your favorite precipitation. Please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you'd like. No one seems to be ordering ice pellets but I'm thinking it's a bit like bubble tea.

"Welcome to New York, pal — now go to jail."

"An Italian tourist spent his second night in the city behind bars after staff at an upscale East Side steakhouse called cops when he claimed he left his wallet at a friend’s place."

Graziano Graziussi, a 43-year-old lawyer from Naples, is a regular at Smith & Wollensky....

“I was going to leave my iPhone,” he said. “I suggested they bring a bus boy with me... It would have been an easy trip.”

One police veteran told the Daily News he wasn’t surprised to hear that the restaurant wouldn’t take the phone as collateral.

“How do they know that iPhone was his? It could have come from anywhere,” the cop said.

The restaurant is getting some horrible press, but I'm sure people rip off restaurants all the time with the old forgot-my-wallet routine. If you let the guy leave, 9 times out of 10, you never see him again. I made up that statistic for rhetorical purposes. What do you think the statistic is? How much money do you think restaurants lose every year? They'll have to compensate by charging more to the people who do pay. But now they're stuck with the bad PR, because they called the cops on a photogenic lawyer, which means: 1. Focused outrage, 2. Ability to contact and talk to the press, 3. Big newspaper willing to run the story.

***

Readers of this blog might be thinking: Smith & Wollensky, where were we just talking about Smith & Wollensky? Was it in "The Great Gatsby"? It sounds like the name of the place that's been around long enough to have figured in "Gatsby," which takes place in 1922, but it opened in 1977. It adopted an old-fashioned image way back then. It was founded by Alan Stillman, the man who invented T.G.I. Friday's.

According to Stillman, there was never a Mr. Smith or a Mr. Wollensky involved. He opened the Manhattan phone book twice and randomly pulled out two names, Smith and Wollensky. The announcements for the opening, however, carried the names Charlie Smith and Ralph Wollensky. Stillman later admitted that Charlie and Ralph were the names of his dogs.

What's the deal with Stillman and Friday's? T.G.I. Friday's started back in 1965. Stillman — Wikipedia says — was a "bachelor perfume salesman [who] lived in a neighborhood with many airline stewardesses, fashion models, secretaries, and other single people on the East Side of Manhattan near the Queensboro Bridge, and hoped that opening a bar would help him meet women."

At the time, Stillman's choices for socializing were non-public cocktail parties, or "guys' beer-drinking hangout" bars that women usually did not visit; he recalled that "there was no public place for people between, say, twenty-three to thirty-seven years old, to meet." He sought to recreate the comfortable cocktail-party atmosphere in public despite having no experience in the restaurant business.

So he kind of invented the singles bar?

With $5,000 of his own money and $5,000 borrowed from his mother, Stillman purchased a bar he often visited, The Good Tavern at the corner of 63rd Street and First Avenue, and renamed it T.G.I. Friday's after the expression "Thank God! It's Friday!" from his years at Bucknell University....

Aw. I'm rooting for this guy, who made his mom happy, by facilitating a million fucks, some of which were his. Ah! Here's a whole interview with him, complete with photos:

NCR: Did your strategy work? Did you meet good-looking girls?

Stillman: Have you seen the movie Cocktail? Tom Cruise played me! I was lucky enough to do it for three years — he only did it to make a movie. Even today, the advantage of being the guy behind the bar is huge. Why do girls want to date the bartender? To this day, I’m not sure that I get it.

Ha ha. But, Althouse, get back to where you were going: that time we were talking about Smith & Wollensky on this blog. Yes. It was 9 days ago, and the story was about some job applicant who was presented in the press as a young guy who used what I called "the old honesty-modesty routine." Posting, I accepted the media cue that he was a gutsy, charming underdog, but — using Smith & Wollensky as my clue — I got suspicious in the comments:

A key line in the letter, as reprinted in the Daily Mail is: "I met you the summer before last at Smith & Wollensky's in New York when I was touring the east coast with my uncle, ***** ******"

Why put the name of your uncle in the letter unless it's intended to influence the hiring? Perhaps this person's seemingly refreshing attitude is just the cheeky confidence of a young person from a privileged background.

Would a guy working his way up from a working-class background ever write a letter like this?

Which guy most nearly won your heart?
	Graziano Graziussi
	Alan Stillman
	The guy that wrote the cover letter
pollcode.com free polls

Speaking of Presidents and nightmares...

I had a dream last night that I woke up, looked at my iPhone, and saw a terrible headline in Drudge. I tried really hard to yell it out to Meade, who was asleep. It was impossible to yell, which should have tipped me off that it was a dream, but it was so realistic — the dream of waking up in bed and doing something that you tend to do while still in bed — that later, when I really did wake up, I grabbed my iPhone, went right to Drudge, and I was so relieved to see the same headline that was there when I went to bed Friday night.

It's a particularly cheerful headline — "Stocks Hit 5 Year High" — with a picture of wine glasses splashily clinking, angled together in a position that parallels Oprah's hands in a picture just above and to the left. Oprah looks alarmed/outraged, but only because "He even lied — to Oprah?!" And how reassuring that is. The outrage of the day is Lance Armstrong, doping and lying, the same old thing, and it's something that only vaguely affects us. Thank God.

What was the headline I saw in my dream? I won't tell you. It's not that I'm superstitious, but ideas affect minds, and it's an image I won't put out there.

"My daughter has repeatedly brought home books from the school library that I have a problem with. I'm a feminist and I'm anti-censorship. I'm lost."

So wrote a woman at Ask Metafilter:

Yesterday, for the THIRD time, LittleTaff brought home a fairy tale... this time Rapunzel. Objectified women with little or no agency, basing marriage decisions on the appearance or wealth of the men, and WITCHES!!!!

After the second version of the Little Mermaid came home, I had a phone interview with the head and told her that I wasn't happy about the way women were portrayed, that I could see some historical merit in the books, but thought they were more appropriate for older children... but also that the Disney version of the Little Mermaid had no literary nor historical merit and did the school need some fundraising for books. (I'm on the fundraising committee. )

We were just talking about the Disney "Little Mermaid" yesterday, specifically the song "Part of Your World" — remember the singing "dads" — and my son John emailed me a link to his Ask Metafilter answer to that worried woman:

Really, [the Disney "Little Mermaid"] has no merit? Listen again to the song "Part of your World." Do you not hear the feminist themes in that song — about "bright young women . . . ready to stand?" What could be more feminist than a young woman expressing her interest in scientific discovery — "what's a fire, and why does it burn?" (The lyrics are fresh in my mind since I sang it in karaoke the other day along with a female friend.) I'm sure there's a great feminist critique of the movie to be made. But do you really want to prevent your daughter from seeing anything that could potentially be the subject of such a critique?

You seem to assume that you've seen all the truth that exists to be seen in your world, and educating your daughter is just about transmitting these truths to her. On the contrary, it matters relatively little whether your child shares your views. What matters more is equipping your child to deal with the world in her own individual way.

So I say, let your daughter be exposed to all of this. I'll bet she can handle it. Focus on talking to her about it instead of trying to create the perfect parental filter (considering that the filter is never going to last anyway). You might even learn something from her in the process.

You can probably tell I didn't filter my children's reading/watching. And I can't remember my own parents ever saying one thing about my choices — even my choice to watch just about anything that was ever on television (when they themselves rarely watched television). (My parents spent nearly every evening sitting around talking to each other. Not reading and talking. Just talking!)

Speaking of controlling your children, I was just listening to one of my favorite old Lovin' Spoonful songs "Younger Generation" (video and lyrics at the link):

Why must every generation,
Think their folks are square?
And no matter where their heads are,
They know mom's ain't there....

Listening to it now, I'm not sure whether it's a sincere expression of a desire to let children range free — "I must be permissive... all my deepest worries must be his cartoons" — or making fun of hippie-style parents who don't know where to draw the line:

Hey, Pop, my girlfriend's only three,
She's got her own videophone,
And she's taking LSD,
And now that we're best friends,
She wants to give a bit to me,
But what's the matter, daddy,
How come you're turning green?
Can it be that you can't live up to your dreams?

Crazy dreams! (And yet, today the little girl does have her own videophone.)

"If we just wanted the [new i]phone we could have ordered it online."

"It's more about camping out. It's a cool experience. Meeting new people. That's the best part."

"So why did Apple sue Samsung, the Galaxy hardware manufacturer, and not Google, maker of the phone's Android software?"

"Apple sees Google as its chief competitor—this is no secret."

Steve Jobs so hated Google's Android that, even as he struggled with cancer, he told biographer Walter Isaacson: "Google . . . ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. . . . I'm willing to go thermonuclear on this."

Twas the night before Scott Walker Recall Day, at the Capitol Square.

Not a protester was stirring, but the media were there.
The microphones were set up next to the CNN tour bus...



In the hope local politicos would soon kick up a fuss.
When out by the monument, there arose such a clatter,
Meade sprang from his B-Cycle to see what was the matter.
He grabbed for his iPhone and opened the app,
Looked for the shutter and started to snap.



With a lovely lady driver, so lively and quick,
She was smoking what some folks call a cancer stick.



So up to Heg's statue the Freedom Van drew,
With flowers and angels and a militant capitalist smoker too.



It was Lynda all in blue from her head to her foot,
And these clothes were not tarnished with ashes and soot.



Her friend wore Clay Matthews' number 52 on her back,
Who is Clay Matthews? He's one of The Pack!

The stump of a cigarette Lynda held in her teeth,
And the smoke it encircled her head like a wreath.
She had a sweet face and a cute little belly,
That shook when she laughed, like a bowl full of jelly!



"The truth shall make you free," the van bumper said.
And that gave Meade to know he had nothing to dread.



"Vote Walker for Governor" — then, 'cause she's one of those jokers,
She wrote: "But Walker, please keep promises to smokers."
Meade sprang to his bike, and he rang the little bell,
And away Meade then flew like a bat out of hell.



Lynda heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight,
"Let Walker finish his term, and to all a good-night!"

"If you order a Bloody Mary in Wisconsin, it comes with sausage, cheese, and beer!"

Chris, caught Facebooking at Graze.

Also on the skewer: an olive and a pickled brussels sprout.

Why Apple took its jobs overseas and — as Steve Jobs told Barack Obama — "Those jobs aren’t coming back."

A long article in the NYT.

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

They're hungrier... and you can fuel them with biscuits. And that's why we have iPhones with beautiful glass — not plastic — screens. Steve Jobs wanted them "perfect" and "in six weeks," and that meant: China.

The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day....

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

"Actually, Patron X said he had no idea he was the culprit."

"He said his company replaced his BlackBerry with an iPhone the day before the concert. He said he made sure to turn it off before the concert, not realizing that the alarm clock had accidentally been set and would sound even if the phone was in silent mode."

“I didn’t even know phones came with alarms,” the man said.

The day iPhone turned its VoiceOver option on.

I had a hell of a time this morning after iPhone — on its own somehow — started behaving as if I'd turned on what I eventually figured out was a function designed to help the visually impaired. Suddenly, it spoke aloud everything that appeared on the screen, including the demand that I enter my security code.

But it wouldn't receive my security code in the normal way — apparently because the method of entering numbers is different once you activate the VoiceOver feature. You can interact with Siri without entering the code, but Siri would not respond to multiple different efforts at telling it to turn off VoiceOver. I'd used my laptop to search and figure out that the thing that was driving me nuts was called VoiceOver. I had many interactions with Siri like:

I do not want to hear VoiceOver.

If you don't want it, don't want it.

I worried that some extravagant virus had taken over iPhone, coopting Siri and who know what else. Why didn't Siri understand references to a feature within the iPhone software? Siri was acting insolent and obtuse, taunting me!

Eventually, using the laptop, I found instructions about how to use iTunes on the laptop screen to turn off VoiceOver in the iPhone. But, man, that was nuts.

What if I had been out with my iPhone without my laptop? What would I have done? And VoiceOver was making noise, including saying the numerals of my security code out loud. This would have been crazy in a public place!

Asking Siri "Where can I get an abortion?"

Prompted by this blog post — "10 things the iPhone Siri will help you get instead of an abortion" — I asked my iPhone "Where can I get an abortion?" and this is the answer I got:



Here's Associated Pregnancy Services. You can see that, despite what Siri says, it's not an abortion clinic. It's also "a little ways" from me, 71 miles away. A search of the Planned Parenthood site reveals that there are 2 abortion-providing clinics within 7 miles of my location and 20 within 80 miles. What's going on with Siri and abortion? I asked the same question 4 times, and each time I got only the one result that you see in the screen shot.

Perry's screwup goes viral.

A hilarious and eerie interaction with iPhone 4s.

After having some trouble understanding me, the new iPhone has gotten quite good at hearing my speech. I said, "Play 'Poses' by Rufus Wainwright" and it did. I love that song, but with Meade listening too, I was afraid it was dreary, so I told the phone "Stop playing that song." It complied.

Meade said, "There's a real person listening on the other end." So I asked the phone, "Are you a real person listening to me, like maybe in India?"

Here's the answer I got, my next statement, and the response:



Freaky!

"I'm not aware of any meetings about 'the antiwar march hare in Madison.'"

My new iPhone's Siri program just got closer than ever before to understanding a question I asked, which was: "When is the anti-war march here in Madison?" I know there's an anti-war march today, and I'm trying to find out when. To be fair, Googling my question doesn't pull up the answer either.

But I love the robotic intelligence that substitutes — for "march here" — March Hare:



Hey! It's a tea party!

UPDATE: I just asked "What time is the Badger game today?" and was understood exactly and the phone immediately brought up the official UWBadgers site. So... go iPhone. And... go Badgers!

UPDATE 2: The phone seems to have figured out how to understand me. I asked "What's the best blog written by a law professor?" and it got it word for word. It wouldn't express an opinion however, but asked if I'd like it to "search the web" for the answer. That is, want me to Google that for you? I tested it with "Who's the best Republican Party candidate for President?" and, again, it offered to search the web. The iPhone is opinion neutral. And it's not cruel neutrality. You need a human being to get cruel neutrality. The robot provides bland neutrality.

My trouble getting Siri to work in iPhone 4s reminds Chip Ahoy of his mother and his dog.

He writes:

The dog jumped on the sofa, Mum said, "Tina, get down." Tina obeyed. She dropped into the down position but she stayed on the sofa even though Mum was not her trainer. It happened Mum uttered the precise command that works: the dog's name, the single-word clear command.

Mum said, "Tina, I said, get DOWN!" Tina dug her little doggie elbows deeper into the sofa.

Mum said, "DOWN!" The dog dug her nose into her paws trying to be further down into the cushions. Then Mum looked at me and said, "That dog of yours doesn't listen at all."

Me: "Tina." *ears perk* "Get off the sofa." The dog jumps to floor and immediately sits alertly awaiting her next instruction. It's a bit Nazi-like actually, when you see it. A bit frightening, the dog is black, after all. In fact, her down command was so fierce that she was in the down position before the word is pronounced. We could not do this on hard surface because I feared she'd crack her elbows, but she sure was fun to practice on grass or on carpet.

And — oh, how we love Chip here at Althouse! — he animates the photo I took with the phone:

Testing the new iPhone 4s.

Here's a photo I took today:



Can I get it to take me Siri-ously? Not yet. It doesn't seem to understand a thing I ask, other than what time is it. It can't understand the question "What's the temperature?" And when I asked about the Milwaukee-Muskegon ferry, it started opening a Face Time connection — i.e., a video phone call — with a person who happens to be in my contacts whom I only know slightly!

After a number of reasonable questions that were answered "No match found," I asked: Are the Brewers going to win tonight? The answer was: "Playing songs by Rufus Wainwright." The song "California" (from my iTunes) started playing.

Ridiculous!

ADDED: I said: "Play the new episode of Rush Limbaugh." (Note: I have downloaded the podcast of today's Rush Limbaugh show.) It answered: "Playing songs by the Lovin' Spoonful."

UPDATE: The phone seems to have figured out my apparently distinctive approach to mumbling and bumbling through the English language. Let's repeat the question: "Play the new episode of Rush Limbaugh." Ah! It understands the question now, but says it can't find Rush Limbaugh "in your music." Ha ha. Not everyone understands the "music" of Rush Limbaugh. You need a good ear for... fill in the blank. I rephrase the question: "Find the new podcast of Rush Limbaugh." It says "Here's your Rush Limbaugh" — which sounds like something someone might say while making an obscene gesture — and starts playing the new podcast!

A new app — WeBIRD — identifies birds when it hears their songs.

“In fact, not only can WeBIRD tell you which species you’re hearing, it’s good enough to identify individual birds from their song.”

Designed by Mark Berres, a University of Wisconsin–Madison ornithologist.

IGotYa app sends a photo of the person who steals an iPhone to the phone's owner...

... but what if you only look like the guy in the photo and the police arrest you?

"It looks a little like me," [Brian] Chattoo told police. But he said that the scar over his left eye is different than the one on the man in the photo. Chattoo noted that his scar is horizontal while "his [in the photo] is vertical," adding, "I don't do robberies."...

His sister, Laura, said her brother's face was shorter, his lips were plumper and his eyebrows were more manicured.

"He does them himself," she said.

Oh, man. On top of all your troubles, you've got a sister telling the world that you do your eyebrows.

I'd say: Compare the ears. Ears are distinctive, and these 2 guys have completely different ears. (That is... assuming the photo provided by the family is accurate.)

"I received a text on my iPhone on the morning of October 6 that said, 'ᎣᏏᏲ, ᎩᎾᎵ.'"

"It’s a simple Cherokee greeting, akin to “Hello, friend” in English.  It’s pronounced 'oh-see-yo, gee-na-lee.'  It may not seem like much to the casual observer that has been sending and receiving texts for years, but seeing the Cherokee syllabary appear in that tiny bubble on my screen is a profound thing.  And I have Steve Jobs to thank for it."

Writes Roy Boney Jr.