BRIEFING| The Block, Bowdoin, political fiction, hunting, fishing and newspaper circulation

Good afternoon. It’s an abbreviated work week. Be happy.

Web sites
• Zach van Schouwen, a Seattle-based Web designer, is the creator of The Block, an animated history of Eldridge Street between Rivington and Stanton streets. It’s a terrific look at the evolution of a city block that was once part of James Delancey’s farm. van Schouwen details the history of every building that’s ever been built on the street, starting with modest Federal-style houses and ending with the public housing project built on the block in 1985. Check it out.

• Some students at Bowdoin have decided that there’s a lot of style in Brunswick and, inspired by The Sartorialist, they’ve decided to document it. Bowdoin Style is a neat little piece of Web real estate that could and should be copied by the Canton crowd. Such a project would be a great opportunity for The Hill News.

• Executed Today, which I happened across last week, charts the history of capital punishment. Each day, the blog examines a historical execution and the story behind it. As a Canadian studies major, I was entertained by the recent mention of Louis Riel.

• Autocompleteme.com made me laugh, and therefore, it should make you laugh too.

Reads
• Turkey shooting has arrived, or more likely returned, on Long Island. The five-day season started there on Saturday, the Times reports, but the initial harvest was unimpressive.

• Dave Lamoureux, a Cape Cod fisherman, catches massive bluefins from his kayak, the fortitude. That is simply awesome. The Times reports.

• I enjoyed “Night Walk,” a piece of political fiction by Adam Haslett that appears in this week’s New York in which the president enjoys a well-earned cigarette, makes a critical decision about Afghanistan and reconnects with life outside the White House bubble. Haslett’s 2002 collection of short stories, “You Are Not a Stranger Here,” was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award and the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. His first novel is due next year. The piece is one of seven in this week’s magazine that fictionalizes the lives of contemporary political figures.

• Gawker’s Foster Kamer fires back at Stephanie Marsh, author of an essay titled “New York has lost its edge,” that ran in the London Sunday Times, with delight.

• A change in Audit Bureau of Circulation rules that allows some newspapers to count folks who subscribe to both print and Web products as readers, the AP reports. This may cloud the realities of circulation decline.