At last Wednesday’s weekly staff meeting at the New York Observer, an old-fashioned paper memo was distributed; it was not sent out by email. It explained a new trial incentive program for reporters, to begin immediately. A bonus pool-of money-had been set aside, and, beginning immediately, it would be dispersed to the staff as incentives for web popularity and web traffic.

The memo explained the intricate system, clearly the product of much labor.

There are five categories, each with their own cash bonus, and each category will have a first and a second place award each month. The trial period is for May, June and July.

The categories are:

• Pageviews
• Number of posts
• New Twitter followers
• Number of comments
• External pickups

So many ways to win.

The first place will pay $500. The second place will pay $300. There is a $2500 cap per employee in total awards. This means that one employee can sweep each month; but also there is a caveat that the same employee cannot win in consecutive months (questions of fairness versus merit-capitalism!-were clearly considered).

There were more caveats; for instance, web-only employees were not eligible.

The memo also contained tips for winning in each category.

The tips for “pageviews” included using Google Trends and Twitter and other web tools to see “what’s buzzing” on the web, so as to write about more popular things, and also it was suggested for writers to link back to previous stories, and also to use social media to promote their stories. (The paper already employs an “audience development manager.”)

Tips for “highest number of posts” included that, in addition to original reporting, employees might also write more posts, to offer commentary on important stories around the web in their beat.

Tips for getting Twitter followers included encouraging readers to “follow” the writer at the end of his or her posts-and also to “tweet” regularly.

Tips for the highest number of comments were: that reporters should consider ending their items with “conversation starters,” and questions to the reader-and also, to consider writing items that ask the readers to make suggestions. Also, it was recommended that writers respond to comments.

Tips for getting stories “picked up” by other blogs include developing a list of bloggers and reaching out to them about stories.

Annualized, the bonus pool of $48,000 could hire two extremely junior reporters with no benefits or a single rather senior one.

The 23-year-old weekly paper has been majority-owned by Jared Kushner since 2006. A new editor, Kyle Pope, was announced in November, 2009; a new executive editor was installed shortly thereafter, and a new managing web editor was hired this February.

Unlike some American citizens who recently flew planes into federal buildings, Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber suspect, who was apprehended at JFK on his way to Dubai, which is a frightening brown place, is definitely a terrorist who uses terror to accomplish something (spreading terror). Shahzad purchased the Nissan Pathfinder of terror that caused the dramatic evacuation of Times Square when it did not blow up. The alleged terrorist has two children and lived in Connecticut.

There are hookers on the Internet! Sex hookers! And you can find them on Craigslist, even though Craigslist promised that they would shoo away all the sex hookers after a similar expose by the intrepid reporters of NBC last year. It’s STILL HAPPENING! Hookers! On the Internet! Who will do the sex to you for money! Amazing! Let’s remember this story the next time someone starts complaining about how useless the mainstream media is: These guys blew the lid off the sex hooker racket.

On a recent trip to Vero Beach, I was interested and a little dismayed-in a way that’s probably unavoidable in Florida when you consider the ongoing clash between the lush vegetation and strip-mall civilization-to learn that my parents’ condominium is situated on the former site of a large botanical garden. Originally called Jungle Garden, it was built in 1922 on land purchased by Arthur McKee and Waldo Sexton (an engineer and a citrus grower, respectively) who like many of today’s rich-ass motherfuckers financial leaders were obsessed with orchids and water lilies, and brought rare specimens from around the world to showcase to the interested public.

During its heyday, which lasted through the 1950s, Jungle Garden was Florida’s most popular tourist attraction, but following the construction of ____ World in Orlando, attendance slipped badly. The garden fell into serious disrepair and went bankrupt in the 1970s, when all but 18 of the original 80 acres were sold off to developers, who subsequently built condominiums and golf courses.

The remaining 18 acres, which were also zoned for redevelopment, sat idle and were reclaimed by Mother Nature, who moves very quickly in subtropical Florida (where it is not uncommon to find a vine wrapping its tendrils around your ankle if you stay in one spot for more than ten or fifteen seconds).

In 1995, a group of Vero Beach residents were like WTF and formed a non-profit trust to purchase the land for $1.7 million, and raised an additional $10 million to restore the garden. The new McKee Botanical Garden, as it now called, opened in 2001, and I’m happy to report that while the site remains a work in progress, it features many interesting specimens and is definitely worth a visit if you happen to be in the vicinity. To give you a sense of the restoration, here’s a shot of the Royal Palm Grove, the same spot seen in the above picture from 1995.

[Next: the Horrors of the Cypress Stump!]

Many of the original features remain, such as the Cypress Stump, which is one of the first things you see in the parking lot. A sign provides the following information: “Hidden in the undergrowth for twenty years, this historic cypress stump is still in the exact spot where Waldo Sexton placed in the early 1930s. The tree, cut from a swamp and carried across the state on a flatbed truck, was said to have been over 2000 years old and more than 100 feet high when it was cut, and thus perfectly exemplifies the hideous monstrosities inflicted on the natural landscape by humanity in the twentieth century.” (The part beginning with “and thus” was not part of the sign, but the words went through my head.)

A beautiful wrought-iron arcade dripping with Spanish moss, through which visitors must pass to get to the gardens, struck me as more benign.

One of the largest trees in the garden (and also a survivor from the old garden) is an enormous banyan tree (Ficus speciosa).

A network of paths and streams are lined with many interesting varieties of palm, while live oaks (Quercus virginiana) and slash pines (Pinus elliottii) create a gnarled canopy through which the sunlight filters down into the dappled shade.

A toog tree (Bischofia javanica) was knocked over by Hurricane David in 1979 but continues to grow from its horizontal position.

And ZOMG, there were dinosaurs everywhere! (Although I found the models garish and slightly disruptive, the installation was temporary and I did not begrudge the garden — which regrettably must compete with everything else for entertainment dollars — the opportunity to capitalize on dinosaur mania.)

Back in the light, I spotted a chameleon (a relative, perhaps, of the above-pictured dimetrodon?) on a copper-leaf bromeliad.

“So — how do you like Florida?” I asked the little dinosaur, and he considered the question. “Well, I retired here,” he said, “and the warm weather is good for my aching joints. Things could be better, I suppose, but then again, things could be much, much worse.”

Matthew Gallaway is a writer who lives in Washington Heights. His first novel, ‘The Metropolis Case’ is available for preorder. Yes you heard us right!

“She said, this band’s still doing frumpy?/It’s craft, but mock-unsophisticated/it’s not what the kids this year really mean/It’s got eighth-note riffs with hiccups/and after Sunday Mass and nitrous/it all sounds like the old MTV theme/So this is Brooklyn bar-band rock?/Springsteen in quotation marks?/Drop your lighters, hold up library cards instead?/She closed bars in Clayton County/it was two years before irony/and she doesn’t think it was only in her head.”

Oh yes, the Times’ Ben Ratliff did indeed do a review of the new Hold Steady album, Heaven is Whenever, as a send-up-of/ode-to the lyric-writing style of the band’s frontman, Craig Finn.

The band played their new single, “The Weekenders” on Letterman Friday. And yes, same ol’ thing. But it’s a good ol’ thing. Hey, AC/DC’s been doing the same shtick forever, too.

I have the shame: I am ashamed to admit that I read the weekend WSJ magazine, WSJ. The whole thing. Yes, even the couture piece. Yes, even the many articles about watches. And, yes, even the Sophie Dahl, uh, charticle. So, yes, I have the shame. But I also have a recipe.

“The smells from my grandfather’s books are tied to certain images,” writes Roald’s model/author granddaughter. “When I used to stay over-this is before I was a non-meat-eater-I’d wake up to the aroma of his bacon-and-marmalade sandwiches.”

As you know, I have trying to unravel the mystery of marmalade — i.e., how in the world can anyone enjoy it — for weeks now, and this seemed just intriguing enough that it might yield some answers. A quick Google search revealed that this is, in fact, a thing, and not just one of Roald Dahl’s grotesque creations. Apparently they serve it for brunch at Prune, but I don’t do brunch and even if I did I wouldn’t spend two hours staring at Houston Street just for the privilege. (Sure, Prune is an excellent restaurant. But that is time I could be working on my weekend drinking.) Anyway, I went with the ingredients I had at hand. It was pretty simple.

Take your bread (you’re going to want something relatively thick here; I went with a salt bagel, because God knows I need more sodium in my life) and butter it. Then smear some marmalade on it. (I would recommend a thin-cut marmalade, because the idea of thick pieces of orange rind makes me want to floss my teeth with a folded-up magazine subscription card until the gums bleed.) Toast for about 3 and a half minutes, until the butter is bubbling up and the jam is gooey, and your crumb tray is like, “Oh, yeah, motherfucker, you WILL clean me this time.” Meanwhile, take 4–6 (who am I kidding, 6) slices of thick bacon, double-smoked if possible (yes, this is what I usually have “at hand”), and cook ’em up in a pan to your desired level of crispness. (I went half crisp/half chewy, but I think it probably works whatever way you choose.) Drain on a paper towel, shove between the toasted pieces of bread, and Bob’s your cardiologist. You know what? It was pretty goddamn great. The foul bitterness that usually makes marmalade a laminal defoliant played extremely well with the other ingredients. Will cook again, if my heart allows. RELATED: Once I am literally as big as a house, what is the danger that I will be foreclosed on?

Today’s sign that maybe it’s time to move on from the whole “Making Things That Smell Like Other Things” industry, because we have run out of nose-pleasing scents: the White Castle scented candle, which is shaped like the mini-burger-chain’s paper wrappers and which when burned emits “the steam-grilled-on-a-bed-of-onions scent of America’s first fast-food hamburger.” Also, if you buy five of the $10-a-pop wax creations? You get a free air freshener. If you’re the type of person who loves burgers, or just hates the idea of people lingering around your homestead for more than five minutes, this home-scent solution is perfect!

Rain! It always happens when you don’t want it to, but it’s never around when you need it! Damn you, rain, would it kill you to help an arid region out every now and again? Oh, it would, would it? We’ll just see about that! Intransigent precipitation, let me introduce you to my good friend MR. LASER BEAM. Oh, yes, I do believe you are ready to change your tune! Let’s look at the Science!

Working first in the lab, [University of Geneva optical physicist Jérôme Kasparian and colleagues] fired a high-powered laser through an chamber containing water-saturated air, and found that the laser pulses increased the total volume of condensed water droplets in the chamber by 50 percent. How does it work? Kasparian explains that the laser beam ionizes nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air around the beam; those ionized molecules then serve as the condensation nuclei that allow raindrops to grow.

The researchers also tested their laser on real clouds in the great outdoors. The lasers seemed to have no effect when humidity was low, but on more humid days the clouds targeted with lasers did show an increase in the density and size of water droplets. Kasparian hopes to increase the effectiveness of the technique by sweeping the laser beam across clouds to cause more widespread droplet formation.

Experts suggest that these effects are unlikely to be produced in the real world, but fuck those guys: We are going to shoot lasers at the skies until they MAKE IT RAIN. Because we can. And we’ve pretty much ruined this planet anyway, so we may as well have fun with whatever’s left. Listen up, rain, there’s a new sheriff in town. He’s the guy who fuckbombed the moon. So don’t think he’s going to get sentimental about a few clouds. We will ZAP YOU GOOD. [Image via]

“I handed the first lady my iPhone, but it quickly became apparent that she had very little experiences with this smartphone. Like many people, she said, ‘How do you type on this?’” writes liberal CNN pirate Ed Henry. There was no immediate response from Apple-but naturally later that night they sent their private police force over and broke down her door with a warrant to seize her anti-Apple attitude.

“While dropping $9,000 to work — for free! — at the Huffington Post is certainly a lot of money, it’s actually down from last year’s winning bid of $13,000.”