When I shot tourist video of him in 2006 he was proud to be featured in Vanity Fair, “Julia Roberts on the cover and me in the middle!” Joe Ades died Sunday. An appreciation is in today’s NYTimes: Somehow, Joe Ades got people’s attention as the crowds swirled by at the Union Square Greenmarket, on their way to eyeing and buying the produce. He was the white-haired man with the British accent, the expensive European suits and shirts — the man selling the $5 peeler. For carrots....

In LA a couple hours ago. Wondering why? Some background from Claire Hoffman writing in the LA Times Magazine in the summer of 2006: Joe Francis, the founder of the “Girls Gone Wild” empire, is humiliating me. He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He’s pushing himself against me, shouting: “This is what they did to me in Panama City!” It’s after 3 a.m. and we’re in a parking lot on the outskirts of Chicago....

In an effort to fan the flames of the healthy comment thread going at this morning’s Michael Phelps post, here, a retread that’s as true now as it was when I first posted it. The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and one of the U.S.’s leading addiction researchers, Nora Volkow [she's also Leon Trotsky's great-granddaughter], was interviewed on Fresh Air the other day a couple years ago. She says studies show that marijuana is no gateway drug: GROSS: So, you know, a lot...

I was one of those impressed that Obama had a whole new whitehouse.gov site live at noon on inauguration day. On the other hand… At the exact moment Barack Obama was inaugurated, all traces of President Bush vanished from the White House Web site, replaced by images of and speeches by his successor. Attached to the Web site had been a booklet entitled 100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration—they may never know them now. When the Web site changed, the link was broken...

The NYTimes reports today that despite enforcement on both sides of the border, the Mexican marijuana trade is stronger than ever. That’s according to law enforcement officials! Anita Bartholomew looks at the price tag of the War on Drugs and concludes America can’t afford marijuana prohibition. And Michael Phelps’ apology is still making the news rounds. Radley Balko has a letter he’d like to see (but won’t): Dear America, I take it back. I don’t apologize. Because you...

The Times of India: A $10 laptop (Rs 500) prototype, with 2 GB RAM capacity, would be on display in Tirupati on February 3 when the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Techology is launched. The $10 laptop project, first reported in TOI three years ago, has come as an answer to the $100 laptop of MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte that he was trying to hardsell to India. The $10 laptop has come out of the drawing board stage due to work put in by students of Vellore Institute...

From TechDirt’s Pointless Law department: John writes in to let us know of new legislation in Congress that would require all cameraphones to “click” when taking a photo. The idea, of course, is to “protect the children” so that predators can’t secretly take photos. The law is similar to one found in South Korea, so it’s hardly a new idea — though it still doesn’t make much sense. Someone looking to do something illegal with their cameraphone...

Ondi Timoner’s documentary, We Live in Public, won a grand jury prize at Sundance Saturday. The documentary video looks at often overlooked Internet pioneer Josh Harris, a dot com millionaire who built a television network for the web, Pseudo Programs, back when most of us were still on dial-up. Pseudo closed down in September 2000, and Harris moved on to his Quiet “lifecasting” experiment. In it 100 people were to live together for 100 days in a bunker watched over by dozens of...

Twenty-two year old Corey Vidal is a Canadian YouTube Partner and popular video content provider. Shooting videos in his basement, he was propelled to YouTube fame by the unlikely success of a 30 minute step-by-step demonstration of how to dance the choreography from Ciara’s music video, 1, 2 Step. Since then he’s gone on to produce scores of videos viewed over 12 million times. [Later: He tells CNet his traffic is 3.4 million to 4 million views per month.] His most recent hit (below)...

The NYTimes: On Monday alone, companies across the employment spectrum announced more than 65,000 job cuts in the United States and around the world, a stark sign that businesses are enduring a painful, protracted downturn. Monday’s toll included 20,000 cuts at Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of construction and mining machinery; 8,000 jobs at the wireless provider Sprint Nextel; 7,000 workers at Home Depot, and 8,000 from the expected merger of the pharmaceutical makers Pfizer and Wyeth....

You will remember that when Larry Lessig was interviewed on The Colbert Report, Stephen warned viewers. Nobody should…ever ever never ever take anything of mine and remix it! Some have… Colbert is mad! And so he’s upped the ante: Now let me be very clear here. I do not — NOT! –  want you to take my interview with Lawrence Lessig and remix it with a pumpin’ k-hole groove. Nor do I want you to remix excerpts from my book, particularly chapter 7 entitled HOMOsexuals,...

Virginia Heffernan’s Confessions of a TED Addict: A TED talk begins as an auditorium speech given at the multidisciplinary, invitation-only annual TED conference. (This year’s 25th-anniversary conference takes place next week in Long Beach, Calif.) TED then creates videos of the speeches and puts them online so they can find a broader audience — and usurp my life. There are around 370 speeches and counting on TED.com. A new one is added every weekday. TED (which stands for “Technology,...

A new documentary — and new revelations triggered by it — have Ted Haggard in the news again. The HBO film by Alexandra Pelosi, The Trials of Ted Haggard, premieres Thursday. The revelation it unintentionally triggered is that Haggard had a previously undisclosed “consensual sexual relationship” with a twenty-something male volunteer that “went on for a long period of time … it wasn’t a one-time act.” And, it turns out, New Life Church paid the young...

Towards the close of his first weekly address, President Obama promises: We’ll launch an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov. More transparency via the web. For now the site is only the message pictured above.

Received wisdom is that Obama will face his biggest challenges from the left. With that in mind it’s worth watching this week’s Bill Moyers Journal. His guests include Thomas Frank, David Sirota, Patricia Williams and Melissa Harris-Lacewell. From much to quote, I choose Princeton’s Harris-Lacewell: One of the images I’ve been using as we’ve been going around the country trying to place the King holiday in the context of a new Obama era is I’ve been using the...

David Pogue (above) likes it. His print column on Windows 7. Endgadget has benchmarks galore, “it looks like XP is still the outright speed champ on current hardware.” Here’s 7 v Vista and 7 v XP. CNet’s Don Reisinger has been using Windows 7 beta for a while, “he’s surprised to say that he’s excited for the final release.” ArsTechnica has an in-depth tour, “the major work in Windows 7 is to the user interface.”  Scott Merrill at TechCrunch...

Ouch: Software maker Microsoft announced Thursday it will cut up to 5,000 jobs in the next year and a half, or 5.5% of its global workforce, citing further deterioration of global economic conditions. The company also posted lower fiscal second-quarter earnings that missed analysts’ forecasts. Microsoft will slash 1,400 positions immediately, with the rest of the cuts coming by June 2010. The company said it will save about $1.5 billion in operating expenses and $700 million in 2009 capital...

ReadWriteWeb ran the full text of Obama’s inaugural address through the tag cloud generator Wordle.net. Then went on to do Bush, Clinton, Reagan and Lincoln. Fascinating. Susan Mernit opines: Bush’s speech seemed to be addressed to the  world stage and had much abstract language with powerful concepts attached: freedom, liberty, America, country. Obama’s speech is addressed to the American people and has much more change and inclusive language: keywords are people, common, change,...

The Newshour’s Gwen Ifill was on the mall. Watch the piece. It’s stunning. One stand-out among many: GWEN IFILL: Eugenia Pete managed to hold it together all the way from Tulsa to Washington, right up until the moment President Obama actually took the oath of office. Traveling cross-country to see the new president she said was essential, but actually witnessing the oath turned out to be overwhelming. Eugenia, you look like you want to cry again. EUGENIA PETE: It’s just awesome....

Andrew Nusca has helpfully provided a list for all of us. My picks from his: CNN has partnered with Facebook to provide live streaming of the swearing-in and Obama’s speech. A Facebook window on CNN.com’s Live channel will aggregate your friends’ related status updates. C-SPAN will debut its Inauguration Hub on January 20, featuring an online “control room” of various webcasts of inauguration activities. Users can choose from one of four live feeds featuring events like the swearing-in,...

Pilot William Langewiesche writing in the January Vanity Fair: There were so many opportunities for the accident not to happen—the collision between a Legacy 600 private jet and a Boeing 737 carrying 154 people. But on September 29, 2006, high above the Amazon, a long, thin thread of acts and omissions brought the two airplanes together. From the vantage point of the pilots, the Brazilian air-traffic controllers, and the Caiapó Indians, whose rain forest became a charnel house, the author reconstructs...

NYTimes Tech Guru, David Pogue, has a Twittering Tips for Beginners piece in the Circuits Section: Basically, you sign up for a free account at Twitter.com [link]. Then you’re supposed to return to that site periodically and type short messages that announce what you’re doing. (Very short — 140 characters max.) Then, you’re supposed to persuade your friends and admirers to become your audience by subscribing to your utterances (called tweets). Big-name tech pundits amass tens...

Breaking news via WCNC: A US Airways flight headed to Charlotte has crashed into the Hudson River in New York City. Flight 1549 left from Boston and was headed to Charlotte when it tried to divert to La Guardia Airport in New York City. The plane landed in the Hudson River. New York City firefighters are responding to the crash. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries. They have live video. NY waterway ferries are helping with the rescue. MSNBC: The plane is an Airbus A320. NBC News identified...

Late yesterday afternoon in a letter to employees, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced he will take a medical leave of absence until the end of June, “during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.” Jobs said he will “remain involved in major strategic decisions” throughout. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, will take over Jobs’ duties until the end of June. Apple shares plunged 10.8 percent in...

Over at Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting, Lisa Belkin spotlights Lok8U, a British manufacturer of a watch, called Num8, that will track your kids. From its website: num8 is the world’s first GPS locator device that has been specifically designed with children in mind. It tells you exactly where your child is… And unlike similar locator products, num8 has been cleverly concealed in a child’s digital watch that is securely fastened to your child and cannot be removed or deactivated without...