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In Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, Michael Sorkin, an architect and critic, makes like Jacobs and immerses himself in the rhythms and patter of the street. He has shaped his book according to the contours of his daily stroll across a dozen or so blocks of Lower Manhattan, from the top floor of his five-story Greenwich Village walk-up to his office in TriBeCa. Walking, Sorkin writes, is “a natural armature for thinking sequentially,” providing opportunities for heady musings on all manner of city life. Yet his peripatetic narrative is anything but linear. Proving there’s a raconteur in every flâneur, Sorkin unspools strands of free-floating observations about a scattered array of urban issues and gathers them into a loose weave along his path downtown.

Read the article at The Nation…

Chef Dan Barber’s inspirational presentation at TED Talks 2010 tackles a complicated dilemma facing chefs, foodies and fisherman today: is there a sustainable way to keep fish on the menu? His delivery and observations are enjoyable, and his conclusions are timely and wise:

“How can we create conditions that enable every community to feed itself? To do that, dont look at the agribusiness model for the future… Its high on capital, chemistry and machines. And its never produced anything really good to eat. Instead lets look to the ecological model, thats the one that relies on two billion years of on-the-job experience. Look to… farms that restore instead of deplete, farms that farm extensively instead of just intensively, farmers that are not just producers but experts in relationships because they are the ones that are experts in flavor too…” ~ Dan Barber

[This post was originally published as “How I fell in love with a fish” on the Emmet Carter green design blog.]

Related articles

• Dan Barber Takes a Radically Holistic Approach to Food and Farming With ‘The Third Plate’ (civileats.com)
• Chef Dan Barber Wants to Change the Way Americans Eat and Grow Food (wnyc.org)
• How I fell in love with a fish: Dan Barber on TED.com (ted.com)

Chef Dan Barber’s inspirational presentation at TED Talks 2010 tackles a complicated dilemma facing chefs, foodies and fisherman today: is there a sustainable way to keep fish on the menu? His delivery and observations are enjoyable, and his conclusions are timely and wise:

“How can we create conditions that enable every community to feed itself? To do that, don’t look at the agribusiness model for the future… It’s high on capital, chemistry and machines. And it’s never produced anything really good to eat. Instead let’s look to the ecological model, that’s the one that relies on two billion years of on-the-job experience. Look to… farms that restore instead of deplete, farms that farm extensively instead of just intensively, farmers that are not just producers but experts in relationships because they are the ones that are experts in flavor too…”

The remains of what may be a French fort dating back to the 1730s has been found on the Vermont shore of Lake Champlain.

When engineers determined the old Lake Champlain Bridge was unsafe and needed to be replaced, it seemed like the regrettable end of a historic landmark. The project, though, has led to a major archaeological discovery.

Scientists have found what appears to be a nearly 300-year-old French fort. The fort’s discovery would be significant in its own right, but it would also represent the first physical evidence of a substantial French settlement known to have existed on the Vermont shore of Lake Champlain starting in the 1730s.

“It’s a hugely exciting find — one of the great and exciting finds of a lifetime really,” said Elsa Gilbertson, administrator for the Chimney Point State Historic Site, where the apparent fort was discovered.

“You would be hard pressed to find a more significant archaeological site in Vermont,” said John Crock, director of the University of Vermont’s Consulting Archaeology Program, which conducted the dig in cooperating with the Vermont Agency of Transportation and Division for Historic Preservation.

via ablogabouthistory.com

Exciting discovery just down the lake from us. One more reason to visit the Champlain Valley! Hat tip to @SaundraMitchell for tweeting the post.

Seth Godin (author of Tribes which is captivating me at present) offers an epic list as “a partial answer” to the question, “How can I drive more traffic to my blog?” Here are my “Top 10” favorites from his list:

1. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
2. Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
3. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
4. Do email interviews with the well-known.
5. Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit). Do it with every post.
6. Post your photos on flickr.
7. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
8. Point to useful but little-known resources.
9. Ping technorati. Or have someone smarter than me tell you how to do it automatically.
10. Write stuff that people want to read and share.

Posted by Seth Godin on June 03, 2006 | Permalink

Read the full post here: sethgodin.typepad.com

“Publishers can complain and wistfully wish for the good old days of blog links and Google juice, or they can adapt to the new reality Twitter represents. Getting your content “ReTweeted” on Twitter (i.e. getting people to repeat what you’ve said, usually along with a link) can drive significant quality traffic to your site, which in turn can boost your subscriber numbers… So, how does ReTweeting happen, anyway? Well, here are the 5 factors you need to take into account when trying to get your content to spread virally on Twitter”:

1. Call to Action
2. Timing
3. Links
4. Social Proof
5. Value

Read the post at Copyblogger.

Can you be “just an author” these days, pecking away at a typewriter in a basement somewhere but otherwise completely eschewing publicity and remaining out of the public eye, Salinger- and Pynchon-style, writing in a bubble-like Platonic ideal of authordom?

I think a few authors can probably pull it off, particularly those who are already established. But it’s increasingly rare for authors breaking into the business…

We live in a networked time. The Internet is quickly organizing itself into tribes of far-flung, plugged-in, like-minded individuals and shaping how we learn about the stories we consume… The authors who engage their audience and inspire devoted clans of fans have a leg up over those who sit back and let the publisher take care of that whole promotional thing or who hope lightning will strike on its own.

via blog.nathanbransford.com

Literary agent Nathan Bransford seems to echo what I’m reading all over: no more poet in a garret… Write and write well, but don’t neglect your platform.

I’m not particularly familiar with Lady Gaga, but it’s impossible to overlook her meteoric rise. Victor Niederhoffer’s post covers some interesting territory and merits a quick read if you’ve wondered about this young performer’s Midas touch. #7 stood out for me:

Lady Gaga “stands on the shoulders of giants. She has borrowed from all the most popular idols that preceded her including Michael Jackson, Madonna, Blondie, and Andy Warhol. To be successful you need the base of fans that your predecessors have accumulated.” (Victor Niederhoffer)

Memoirs of a Scanner (Martinibomb Version) from Damon Stea on Vimeo.

I’m always excited by innovative techniques for storytelling in the digital age, and ‘Memoirs of a Scanner‘ definitely qualifies. It’s a giant leap for office nerds! The super creative folks over at Mindfruit Films made this uptempo melodrama using only an office image scanner… It’s short, intriguing, disturbing and only a minute long. How can you pass that up? And it just might trigger some ideas for how to tell your own story in a clever new way!

Check out these links:

• Mindfruit Studios
• View the video on vimeo.com
• View the Neatorama post
• Deconstructing André Breton To Feed The Scanner (Blind Flaneur’s intriguing follow-up blog post)

Photograph via New York Times

Yes, they had come to Bloggy Boot Camp, the sold-out first stop on a five-city tour. It is the brainchild of Tiffany Romero and Heather Blair, the founders of the Secret Is in the Sauce, a community of 5,000 female bloggers. Boot Camp is at once a networking and social event, bringing together virtual friends for some real-time girly bonding, and an educational seminar designed to help the participants — about 90 percent of them mothers — to take their blogs up a notch, whether in hopes of generating ad revenue and sponsorships, attracting attention to a cause or branching out into paid journalism or marketing.

via New York Times