End of year open browser tab closure link roundup 2007

Loved this very cool NPR piece on the 10th anniversary of the "web log". Travel back in time to the beginning of this blog, also dating back to the late 1990s. First mention of the word "blog" here? May 24, 1999 (the post titles were added later when I brought these pre-blogging software posts into Blogger & later Movable Type).

My friend Buzz found this great quote from Danah Boyd - my one-letter-different web geek conference badge sista - which nicely sums up what's wrong with social technologies. I spend time reading Buzz's Twitterings because he's worth my time.

Nice short little article from the SF Chronicle mentioning great San Francisco bartender William "Cocktail Bill" Boothby, whose 1907 book The World's Drinks & How To Mix Them you may recall my mentioning as the source of the Ruby Cocktail, our featured drink last New Year's Eve.

There's high praise for Boothby in a 1934 piece in The Recorder, quoted here (scroll down to "The Immortal Masterpiece of Mixology").

Bill was placed behind the famous bar of the Palace Hotel by the discriminating Colonel Kirkpatrick. They were all aces behind that mahogany, and Bill was the ace of aces. To see him rotating three cocktail glass between the fingers of his left hand while measuring a jigger of gin or vermouth with the right was to witness a masterpiece of art in the making. Alas! Prohibition came, and Maxfield Parrish's "Pied Piper" looked down upon no more cocktail and highball devotees.

Sadly, I'm not sure the current staff behind the bar know the glorious history. Elixer's counter-example isn't enough to convince me that the presence of televisions in a bar indicates lesser skill on the part of the bartenders.

Boothby fans stay tuned; how does Dinah spend an afternoon off? At the library in the historical collection, photographing every page of that 1907/1908 edition of The World's Drinks! This & other public domain treasures coming soon to a Flickrstream near you...

How did I not know of the the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society? What a totally cool use of all the new techniques for studying genetic information! I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my kit.

Next up: uncluttering the fridge with Serious Eats advice.