I only wish I were kidding here, folks. From JLFinch at Daily Kos and Wonkette, we find out that Dan Riehl is pulling a Peggy Noonan It-Is-Irresponsible-Not-To-Speculate smear job on a dead guy who can't fight back:

Was Census Worker Bill Sparkman A Child Predator?

Update: Before any more people start going bonkers that I'm accusing Sparkman of anything, take a breath. ... . ...All I'm doing is looking at any and all possibilities. ... Why strip him naked and bind and gag him, which has serious sexual overtones?

I have no idea what happened, but from the reporting I've seen, neither does anyone else. If he adopted a boy as a single man, or was married and split with the wife and kids, who knows. But I never assume I know a story or motive until I know it. Right now we don't. I'm simply speculating on one possible alternative, however impolite.

Well, golly, Mr. Riehl, I'm sure Mr. Sparkman's wife and son must really enjoy your coy little efforts to smear their tortured-to-death husband and father:

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of our co-worker," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with William Sparkman's son, other family and friends."

Gee, how would Dan Riehl like it if we asked, without any evidence to back up our questioning, if Dan Riehl had raped and murdered any little boys? I suspect he wouldn't like it at all.

But of course, this isn't the first time Riehl's been deeply amoral and stupid in public. It isn't even the first time this month. That's just par for the course with him.

Eater.com is counting down the days until New York Times restaurant critic and "baby bulimic" Frank Bruni files his last review for the Paper of Record, going so far as to speculate who would succeed Bruni and prognosticating the odds of some favorites.

Names added to that list yesterday included one local writer: the ludicrously prolific Michael Nagrant of Hungry Mag, Serious Eats, New City and just about any paper or website that publishes a byline. Owning to all sorts of biases here as both a colleague and friend, if the Times really wanted to make a splash in naming Bruni's heir apparent few food critics have the resume of Nagrant; one that includes collaborating on a Beard Award-winning cookbook; a critic whose voice is constantly evolving; a entertaining and engaging writer equally comfortable in traditional and new media; one whose personal code of food journalism ethics is downright Orthodox Catholic in the age of the Yelp! Elite Squad.

I contacted Nagrant about his name popping up. He responded by saying that he's sent Times "Dining In/Dining Out" Editor Trish Hall samples of his work in the past two months for her consideration. Nagrant replied, "The New York Times food critic position is one of the most important jobs in American food writing. Whether it's (Ruth) Reichl or Bruni or (William) Grimes et al, as a writer I've looked to those who've held that chair and always tried to write to that standard. The NYT critic spot is very much a goal of mine." As to wanting to take the job in these uncertain times for print journalism, Nagrant said, "In these tough times for print journalism where some would rather be the next food TV star or own a restaurant, I want to write. I don't want to be rich or famous. I only want to sustain myself, practice the craft and get better everyday. I want nothing more as a writer and I'm willing to give everything I am if the honor came my way."

Nagrant acknowledged Eater's speculation yesterday with (natch) twitter updates, paraphrasing Groucho Marx and even providing a headshot so the Times doesn't have to.

We recently sat down with Ryan Singer, lead designer at 37signals, to ask him several questions that are on web designer's minds. He talks about copywriting, being a project manager, frontend development skills, handcoding and where to find inspiration. Here's a transcription of the interview

What websites do you usually go to for design news, inspirational, or tutorials?

I'd have to say probably my favorite place right now for inspiration is ffffound.com. It's not really web design exactly but it's a lot of really cool imagery, a lot of cool colors, shapes and stuff like that.

As far as design news, I don't know if there's anything so interesting out there that I'm really watching for, but there's new great design in all directions, coming from all different places all the time. Things like poster design, new typography ideas, etc.

Is there a particular web designer that you're looking up to right now?

You know, I'm seeing more and more good design actually all the time. However, I can't say that I have a favorite right now.

Generally I'm seeing just a lot of cool stuff and stylistically, style continues to advance. But the copy and the clarity isn't necessarily getting better. I'm not seeing very many sites where I think, Wow this was really well thought out and well written. I still don't see a lot of that.

Why is there a lack of copywriting skills among web designers?

Nobody seems to be talking about it. Where are all the blog posts about how to make really super-clear content?

The thing that's really easy to look at and copy are pixels, color combinations and type. I think it's really hard to look at a website as a writing project because as a designer, we have all these magic tricks we can do with our CSS and our HTML and everything and we kind of have to put that in the back and make that take a back seat to, do I really have anything to say here?

Last week I posted to our blog about Jacob Neilsen's site, praising the the Alertbox articles. Each one is completely crafted as a piece of writing. Something to be read and understood and digested. I love the way certain points are bolded and the way the whole thing is structured is really well thought out. I think it's a really inspiring example of great copy.

If you're a designer who doesn't do any writing, you're going to hit a brick wall in your career at some point.

What books can designers read to get better at copywriting?

One of my favorite books is by a guy, William Zinsser, it's called, On Writing Well. That was an inspiration for me and I remember reading that and feeling like it really helped me a lot.

What's the one skill that new designers focus on?

You gotta start handcoding! It's the number one basic craft of web design, if you don't handcode then you're not going to be able to move into doing web app interfaces, which is really what I'm doing now.

You're not going to able to work on applications or collaborate on code or make apps, websites that really have a lot of behavior unless you get into handcoding, so I think that's like the barebones thing that for sure everybody should be doing.

What software do you use for coding?

I happen to use Vim, which is a little bit of a nerdy tool, but a lot of my coworkers use Textmate and love it. A lot of people say that BBedit is great and I also hear that Coda is really nice. There are all kinds of options out there.

As a designer, do you need to understand frontend development?

The more you understand about frontend development, the better designer you'll be. If you are really familiar with handcoding and you understand basic HTML markup and you know how CSS selectors work then you're really well prepared, for example, to use the fact that jQuery and Prototype both have a way to refer to pieces of your mark-up using CSS selectors even though your not using CSS.

If you're designing web app user interfaces, then I think it's important to get into understanding how an MVC framework works like Rails or Django. If you can understand how your templates fit in to the view, as the V in MVC then that's a huge leap. You can really start doing work with programmers and you can have ideas and you can make them into reality instead of just making designs and handing them off to somebody and hoping that someone else can plug them in.

How do you learn about MVC?

It depends on your situation. If you're a designer and you work with programmers already (who are friendly) then just ask them questions. They can really get you started on the right path. Don't be afraid to ask dumb questions - they'll appreciate the fact that you're trying to learn.

If you are a little more programming minded and you're on your own, there's all kinds of stuff you could read, a basic primer on Rails would help a lot.

Getting into programming in general is quite useful. Before I did web design I setup Access databases and Filemaker databases and stuff like that. Jason Fried did the same thing actually - he started with Filemaker databases, and I think that basic understanding about how does a database work, just what are the pieces and trying to visualize, how could I display that or how could I manipulate that data, is a really good kind of foundation level.

What is a typical day in the life of Ryan Singer?

Ugh, it's pretty busy lately. We are a small team and we try to do a lot with a few people. We actually just brought on a new designer, so we're up to three designers now which is going to help. I spend a fair amount of time designing UI for new features. We always design the interface first, before building anything.

So part of my day is actually designing new features, another part of my day, because I'm also working as a product manager here, is to figure out what we should be doing next and who's going to be doing it.

Also I love, I just love, getting into Rails and making things work too, so I do a fair bit of programming everyday. As much as I can plug stuff in, I do it.

Do you think being a product manager has helped you become a better designer?

No, not at all. I think that it's the opposite actually. When you're wearing your Manager Hat' you start to create a barrier between you and the designers and developers that are actually implementing the app.

It's really harmful to the product because anytime you have a separation from the one whose coming up with the ideas and the ones who are doing the work, it's a bad thing.

As a designer, is it important to be interested in the business side of things?

No. Either you're interested in the business side or you're not. However, if you have an understanding of what compels people to make buying decisions and how marketing works, you can feed it into your design work.

Okay, well with that, I think that our time is up, thanks so much for your time.

Yeah sure thing, thanks for chatting.

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Photo Credit: DHH

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It's the bottomless write-downs! According to William Tanona of Goldman Sachs, the write-downs we've already seen at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch aren't even close to being final. Indeed, he reckons that both banks will see 11-figure write-downs in the fourth quarter alone, over and above what they've already taken.

Especially in the case of Merrill Lynch, this is very serious money: the $11.5 billion write-down that Tanona now expects in Q4 is equivalent to 37% of the bank's book value, and is likely to result in a single-quarter loss of $7 per share.

But if Tanona has managed to draw a bead on the magnitude of Merrill's upcoming losses, that means that the same question now arises at Merrill that I had about Morgan Stanley earlier this month.

Not only has Singapore's Temasek bought into Merrill to the tune of $4.4 billion, but US-based Davis Selected Advisors is putting in $1.2 billion as well. So let's try to run through the different possibilities here.

1. Temasek and Davis are investing $6.6 billion into Merrill at $48 per share, but have no idea what Merrill's Q4 loss is likely to be. If it turns out to be enormous, they'll be surprised, and they'll be very upset at John Thain for not warning them of the enormity of the upcoming loss.
2. Temasek and Davis have done their due diligence on Merrill, and have been warned by Merrill that a large write-down is coming in Q4: they're walking into this announcement with their eyes open. In fact, they understand that their capital injection is necessary for Merrill to be able to take this write-down in the first place.
3. Temasek and Davis have done their due diligence on Merrill, and they know exactly what skeletons are located in its various closets. To them, it's largely immaterial whether and how Merrill marks its CDO holdings on a quarterly basis, since they're long-term investors. If Merrill decides to take a large quarterly loss, they might be surprised, but they won't be upset, since it's of no great matter to them.

Of these, the first is highly improbable: Thain would never treat a white-knight long-term shareholder in such a manner.

The second, I'm pretty sure, would constitute a breach of SEC regulations. Not on the part of Temasek or Davis, but rather on the part of Merrill. If Thain knows today that Merrill is going to take an enormous 11-figure write-down in the fourth quarter, that's material information, which he needs to communicate to the markets in a timely manner. ("Timely", in this context, has a precise definition: four days.) If he doesn't communicate that information by the end of the week, then one can assume that he doesn't have it.

What we're left with is a world in which the facts on the balance sheet can be known, but the way they're accounted for is largely left to the discretion of the bank's executives. Merrill has a shedload of CDOs on its books and isn't sure what to do about them? Well, now that it's got its capital injection, it can afford to take an enormous write-off. On the other hand, it could just as easily get away with not taking that write-off right now.

The last possibility is the most likely, but you'll never find a bank which will admit it's the case. According to them, they conform scrupulously with GAAP and all other reporting regulations, they have little if any discretion over what their results will be in any given quarter, and they certainly don't have discretion over whether or not to realize $11 billion in losses.

If Merrill reports a loss of more than a couple of bucks a share in the fourth quarter, then, it'll be very interesting to see which of these options they say corresponds to how things actually happened. Because none of them is something that Merrill would be very happy admitting.