I can now ssh into my servers, telnet to port 25 and install any debian packages on my phone.

Progress is wonderful.

I'm sure the Nexus One won't let me do 1/2 of that...although the more pressure on Nokia to deliver a "killer iphone/googlephone" the better.

Is about to arrive...pix forthcoming.

Very snowy.

Icycle

Health care twitter, I suppose.

werkz review: if you like dim sum, Ping Pong will scratch your itch, for a fairly cheap price.

Turkey Day was great...as usual. Hence the quiet.

werkz review: the special effects are amazing, the conclusion less so.

The problem with all disaster flicks is that the reason you go to see them is the spectacle...Cameron did it best in Titanic, because he made a boring movie with a great ending.

Sadly, 2012's best moments come near the beginning and middle, in a series of sequences that are heart-stopping, jaw-dropping-ly amazing. It's the problem that plagued the Poseidon adventure. Shorter summary: go see it in the theater, but not worth it on video.

This interstate map is amazing. Go check it out!

Lou "I Hate Immigants" Dobbs is gone. As much as I enjoyed laughing at Dobbs, I'm glad to see him go. He's venemous, and not a real journalist.

Big news from Bing.

I like both Wolfram Alpha and Bing, so this is great.

It's a alternate way to divide that's somewhat cool.

I like the sloppiness of it...it let's you be fuzzy without penalizing you.

is golden.

We've gone fairly far.

Now that I have a Kindle DX, I can finally start to reduce my number of books. More on this later...

The TiVo sound returning to our house is very pleasant to hear.

Be-Boop!

He sounds cool.

Now if only I could convince my office to purchase me one.

Getting to Mooney was quite, educational, given the chains involved.

The longest time I've ever been without internet starts...right...now

Defined.

Snap

Want some pictures? Fine. Here's the first of a few from our Ohio adventure:

That's right, it's the mysterious revolving ball of Marion, Ohio!

If only it played ogg vorbis, I'd go buy one today. It's that good looking.

Interesting.

I've always prided myself on being relatively good at a large number of things, rather than specifically good at one thing. Think Thomas Jefferson versus George Washington.

Yes, I guess I am.

Pictures from Ohio forthcoming...

Go, Al, tell it like it is.

Yes, it's Friday. Wayback anyone?

I too, like Futura better than Verdana. Having said that, it's not the end of civilization. They traded one big sans-serif for another that looks better on the web. Sheesh.

A good comparison shot explains it.

Why? Because it's counterintuitive.

While proofing this myself I discovered a second cool truth: OneNote does arithmetic! (Just type in "22/7 = " and it'll fill in the answer...)

They're almost finished with the gilbert's corner roundabouts.

It's worth reading in full but here's an excerpt:

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House, his proposals to anchor America's nuclear defense in intercontinental ballistic missiles -- instead of long-range bombers -- and form closer ties with Eastern Bloc outliers such as Yugoslavia were taken as evidence that the young president was secretly disarming the United States. Thousands of delegates from 90 cities packed a National Indignation Convention in Dallas, a 1961 version of today's tea parties; a keynote speaker turned to the master of ceremonies after his introduction and remarked as the audience roared: "Tom Anderson here has turned moderate! All he wants to do is impeach [Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl] Warren. I'm for hanging him!"

Before the "black helicopters" of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a "civil rights movement" had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would "enslave" whites. And back before there were Bolsheviks to blame, paranoids didn't lack for subversives -- anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists even had their own powerful political party in the 1840s and '50s.

The instigation is always the familiar litany: expansion of the commonweal to empower new communities, accommodation to internationalism, the heightened influence of cosmopolitans and the persecution complex of conservatives who can't stand losing an argument. My personal favorite? The federal government expanded mental health services in the Kennedy era, and one bill provided for a new facility in Alaska. One of the most widely listened-to right-wing radio programs in the country, hosted by a former FBI agent, had millions of Americans believing it was being built to intern political dissidents, just like in the Soviet Union.

It's uncanny, the similarities.

Wow. Who knew being an adult was so bad? Well, this guy does now:

The difference in writing skill between sixth and seventh graders (between eleven year olds and twelve year olds) is quite noticeable. Many of sixth graders could not get past the literal definition of the word adult, describing the qualities that make an adult purely in terms of biology: Age, height, strength, puberty, armpit hair. Many others focused on accomplishments or privileges that distinguish adults from children: Advanced education, having a job, knowing how to drive a car, and being able to stay up late without getting yelled at.

Remember, these are just the funny sentences/excerpts. Do not assume that all students write like this. The assignment is given under standardized test conditions: 90 minutes with nothing but pencil and paper, with one additional hour available upon request.

You have to see all the answers. The one about collage is great.

Wow. Ezra nails the idiocy promoted by IBD:

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Sigh. You could write some long response to the rest of the lies and distortions in that IBD editorial, but the more appropriate reply is to just warn people against ever reading the editorial page in Investor's Business Daily. It's not just that they didn't know that Stephen Hawking was born in England. It's that the underlying point was wrong, as you'll note from the continued existence of Stephen Hawking.

Hilarious.

Only 1005 messages in my inbox. (And only 707 of them are important!)

Really? Yes, indeed.

I despair at some times.

It's scary. A great David Frum piece:

The apocalyptic despair heard from today’s conservatives is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong as a description of reality, wrong politically, wrong psychologically, wrong morally.

It’s wrong first because it denies and traduces the successes and achievements of the conservative movement. The story of the world since 1975 has been a story of the marvelous return and spread of liberty, in the United States and around the world.

In 1975, the federal government set the price of every airline ticket, every ton of rail freight, every cubic foot of natural gas and every barrel of oil. It controlled the interest rates paid on checking accounts and the commission charged by stockbrokers. If you wanted to ship a crate of lettuce from one state to another, you first had to file a routemap with a federal agency. It was a crime for a private citizen to own a gold coin. The draft had ended only two years before, but not until 1975 itself did Congress formally end the state of emergency (and the special grant of presidential powers) declared at US entry into the First World War.

It's a good piece.

People are irrational, yet easy to predict. That leads to all sorts of corporate misbehaving

But all of this research is also available to companies. Perhaps they knew some of this before from trial-and-error, but there is no question that many of the techniques corporate America uses--and we as consumers find ourselves "up against"--is cutting edge manipulation of our decisions.

We worry a great deal about how corporations lobby to shape their regulatory environment. This is a struggle that is at least 150 years old in its modern form (e.g., railroad concessions), and much older if we think about powerful people bribing their way into advantageous relationships with the state.

In addition, companies now have powerful new tools to shape how we perceive our potential choices. Some of these tools might be good for us also--I'm open to argument on this. But within some particular spaces, including financial products, it's clear that many of these "innovations" are actually clever ways to extract value from consumers.

One of the nice things about working in technology is that the goal is to make things more efficient, not to make things more expensive. Even the slowest machine purchased today would be $10,000 if purchased 10 years ago. Imagine if the financial industry guaranteed you a 1% return on your investment today, and a 2% return next year, and a 3% return the year after that. Within a few years you'd be rolling in cash. Ah, to wish.

Only three days until I'm comfortably pushing sand around. Each tick of the second hand seems interminable.

I haven't seen either one (as I'm at work) but here are a couple of trailers that could be interesting:

• Cheshire
• Flynn

Enjoy!

As I was relating to someone the other day, it doesn't matter if you score an 89.5 or a 99...either is still an "A".

So the fact that I garnered a new certification by the skin of my teeth is secondary to my pleasure I actually pulled it off.

In unrelated news, Medium is back.

Perhaps there's a correlation between cutting spending and reducing posts on the site. Regardless, with Tilda 0-2 in our current face off it looks like I might have to pay for spider-killer myself.

Wow. You have to read this great IR breakdown of Jay-Z vs The Game:

So what does Jay-Z do? If he hits back hard in public, the Game will gain in publicity even if he loses... the classic problem of a great power confronted by a smaller annoying challenger. And given his demonstrated skills and talent, and his track record against G-Unit, the Game may well score some points. At the least, it would bring Jay-Z down to his level -- bogging him down in an asymmetric war negating the hegemon's primary advantages. If Jay-Z tries to use his structural power to kill Game's career (block him from releasing albums or booking tour dates or appearing at the Grammy Awards), it could be seen as a wimpy and pathetic operation -- especially since it would be exposed on Twitter and the hip hop blogs.

You have to read the whole thing. Priceless.

Happy Bastille Day!

The budget off was a battle of attrition in week one, with both sides taking heavy losses. I'd say Tilda's union side (better industrial base, larger set of resources) took the larger loss, due mostly to Edward's irregular confed actions (playing dirty, eating fairly awful but cheap food, etc).

Week two awaits, although some of the rear-guard action last night was dispiriting to my side. All signs point to a cheaper week, though, so that's good!

How he managed to top Sanford for weirdness is beyond me:

Now, Ensign's sex life is basically his own and his wife's business. But when a US senator submits to a lecture about that sex life from a group of outsiders, then has himself driven to FedEx to mail a letter breaking things off with his girlfriend -- who, incidentally, is his best friend's wife -- before secretly disavowing the letter right afterward and continuing the affair, he simply becomes hard to take seriously as a human being, much less as any kind of candidate for anything.

And in case that doesn't make Ensign out to be pathetic enough, there's a capper: after all this, when it finally came time to cover his tracks and get the Hamptons out of his office, he couldn't find it in him to tell Cindy himself -- he needed his religious buddies even for that. "Cindy ultimately was asked to leave basically by The Family," Doug Hampton told Ralston.

Pathetic, but strangely amusing at the same time. I used rank breakups in this order:

1. Face to face.
2. Over the phone.
3. Over email.
4. Over text message.

Now, sadly, I need to add the following:

1. Having your friends write a letter and force you to FedEx it.
2. Having your friends get together and break up for you.

That's just crazy!

Ah, the good doctor

The Republicans just make things up out of whole cloth. Nothing they say about health care is true. It's all just nonsense and fears and what-ifs. It doesn't happen. First of all, Medicare doesn't dip into government reserves. It has never happened. It might happen in 10 years if they don't cut benefits or raise taxes, but so far, never in the history of America has a program like Medicare used public reserves. The Republican tactic is to raise objections because they never have anything positive to say themselves.

I'm sure Tilda disagrees...but from personal experience, as someone with an HSA, he's spot on: it encourages you to wait until the last possible moment to get health care. There needs to be some sort of financial incentive for people to:

• get preventative care
• stay healthy
• choose least-cost providers

If my health insurance company gave a discount for gym attendance, or doctor visits (checkups) I'd definitely modify my behavior. I just need a nudge!

The energy tracker site mentioned earlier is now live. Go give it a whirl!

Stuart defeats his nemesis.

Hopefully Coleman will go away now.

interesting

Boss Hogg, we hardly knew thee.

Booke was born in Buffalo, New York, a cousin of Max Yasgur of Woodstock fame. Fluent in five languages (including Japanese), Booke graduated from Columbia and Yale Universities and served in the Korean War as a counterintelligence officer. He had parts in noteworthy 1960s films such as Black Like Me, A Fine Madness, and Fail-Safe before focusing primarily on television parts in the 1970s and 1980s, and voice acting in the 1980s and 1990s.

Go down the movie list. He's been in tons of stuff!

The GOP seems to be bad at it.

Over the past year, he said, his relationship with the woman in Argentina "developed into something much more than that. And as a consequence, I hurt her. I hurt you all. I hurt my wife. I hurt my boys. . . . And all I can say is that I apologize."

This would be amusing if it were a friend of mine. And no one were married. As it is, it's disturbing on many levels. At least it wasn't his own staff member!

I don't know anyone involved.

the site is back up

It was only a year ago that I wished I could move into a super-cool house with a roofdeck with Tilda.

I accomplished the feat, after the most hellish set of circumstances possible that didn't involve physical pain, but missed the timeframe I wanted: by July 4th.

This year will be different. Fireworks* at St. John's Wood!

*invitation to follow

Some recent purchases have been made which should make every single visitor happier.

Pictures of some of them are forthcoming...

It's worth a read:

I'm talking out my ass here, I guess. Kenneth is a naive, earnest page who runs around the set trying to put out fires and make everyone happy. Scooter, on the other hand, is a naive, earnest GOPHER who runs around the set trying to put out fires and make everyone happy. Totally different.

Worth a look. Makes me almost want to watch 30 Rock!

Is almost ready for someone to purchase. If only I had $900 burning a hole in my pocket!

Yes, it's from the New Yorker, so I'm sure Kevin will appreciate it. Regardless, this article on health care is worth a read:

If doctors wield the pen, why do they do it so differently from one place to another? Brenda Sirovich, another Dartmouth researcher, published a study last year that provided an important clue. She and her team surveyed some eight hundred primary-care physicians from high-cost cities (such as Las Vegas and New York), low-cost cities (such as Sacramento and Boise), and others in between. The researchers asked the physicians specifically how they would handle a variety of patient cases. It turned out that differences in decision-making emerged in only some kinds of cases. In situations in which the right thing to do was well established—for example, whether to recommend a mammogram for a fifty-year-old woman (the answer is yes)—physicians in high- and low-cost cities made the same decisions. But, in cases in which the science was unclear, some physicians pursued the maximum possible amount of testing and procedures; some pursued the minimum. And which kind of doctor they were depended on where they came from.

You should start at the beginning and read it all.

I'm sure most of you have seen this by now, but it's worth checking out if you haven't. Thus, the venn diagram of business and happiness.

We can always make things better.

Both my laptop running Windows 7 and xbox blew up yesterday afternoon. Combined with a rain storm that left me 100% soaked, even with an umbrella on the way home, it wasn't a fun evening.

(And yes, Brad, I'm getting the xbox replaced on my dime. No, we won't lose anything on the hard drive either, which I'm sure Tilda will be thrilled about.)

Curse, you, RROD!

It looks damn cool.

Only a few days until -1 day. I feel excited already!

The National Spelling Bee is across the street, as usual. The twist this year?

There are protestors.

The idiocy is that English's mongrel background is precisely why it's a superior language to write, think and shout in! Let's let Salon break it down, in the context of the Sotomayor vetting process:

But most ridiculous of all is the idea that something is not "natural" in English. In all the world, there is no more mongrel or polyglot tongue than English; no language more gleefully willing to taint its purity. English borrows from every other language with abandon, steals "foreign" vocabulary without remorse, scoffs at any and every linguistic boundary. Such free-and-easy kaleidoscopic adaptability is English's great strength. Hey, gringo! Why are you so gung-ho to get rid of the chandeliers and blitzkriegs?

Well spelled.

It begins.

This story about Sotomayor's, er, taste is too crazy to believe.

Bolton said the source was drawing, "a deductive link," between Sotomayor's thoughts on Puerto Rican food and her other statements. And I guess the chain goes something like this: 1). Sotomayor implied that her Latina identity informs her jurisprudence, 2). She also implied that Puerto Rican cuisine is a crucial part of her Latina identity, 3). Ergo, her gastronomical proclivities will be a non-negligible factor for her when she's considering cases before the Supreme Court.

Insane!

No pix uploaded yet to share. But if you're interested in determining a unique identity based on location data then this website describing a new paper might be interesting to you:

Philippe Golle and Kurt Partridge of PARC have a cute paper (pdf) on the anonymity of geo-location data. They analyze data from the U.S. Census and show that for the average person, knowing their approximate home and work locations — to a block level — identifies them uniquely.

In the words of Tilda, "so what?"

I won't tell you mine.

Junior Giuliani has fun getting bounced. You have to read it for the juicy golf references. Section D is a must!

As I mentioned before the new Wolfram | Alpha engine is now live.

Enjoy!

Some

Sample

Inputs

Cool. They still have some bugs to work out, as the "plaintext inputs" don't appear to be working quite properly. (See the last example.)

It's long past, but still amusing:

Hilarious.

Screen on the Green has been canceled.

Can we save it?

If I hear one more person begin a sentence, "So I went to the chiropractor and apparently..." I'm going to engage in some anger management.

Update: The only statement worse than that is when one follows it up with "...and now I need to go back for them to run some diagnostics..."

NEWSFLASH: Chiropractors are not doctors. They cannot run diagnostics! From the wikipedia article:

Chiropractic's early philosophy was rooted in vitalism, spiritual inspiration and rationalism. A philosophy based on deduction from irrefutable doctrine helped distinguish chiropractic from medicine, provided it with legal and political defenses against claims of practicing medicine without a license, and allowed chiropractors to establish themselves as an autonomous profession. This "straight" philosophy, taught to generations of chiropractors, rejects the inferential reasoning of the scientific method, and relies on deductions from vitalistic first principles rather than on the materialism of science.

Rejecting the scientific method, eh? Good stuff!

Because I care.

Quick! Go read Walter's latest:

I am a Democrat, and everyone knows it. No one is more aware of it than I am as I write stories for The Washington Post. I worked for Senator J. William Fulbright twice in the 1960s, when I was lucky to run two eighteen-month Foreign Relations Committee investigations for him. The first grew out of magazine articles I had written about lobbying in the U.S. by foreign governments. The second focused on military involvement in foreign policy, and grew out of discussions I had with Fulbright during my initial time with him. Those two sabbaticals were among the most important and enlightening years of my life, and influenced my view of reporting on government. They showed me how little I knew as a reporter about how government really worked.

Part of the explanation for this lack of knowledge is the emergence of the idea, among reporters in Washington and perhaps elsewhere, that we should avoid socializing or developing friendships with public officials—even those who are our peers. As a result of this artificial separation, public figures remain one-dimensional to many journalists; they have no wives, children, or lives outside their professional positions.

Not to me. After fifty years of living and working in Washington, I’ve had personal friends in Congress, on federal court benches, in high government positions, even in the White House. We should be measured by our work, not by what we say or do elsewhere. I certainly hope that as witnesses to wars, civil-rights riots, peace marches, famines, and terrorist events these past decades, we all have developed opinions which at times we may discuss or even argue about—or we just are not human.

Such experiences make us better observers and thus better reporters. With more and more PR peddled as news, journalists need the experience to sort out what really is news, and to deliver it in context.

The full article is a must-read. The idea of the fairness doctrine/neutrality, the production values of newspapers and the web/print debate all come into play.

In a word: awesome!

In this state of mind, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden took a short - but wholly noticeable - motorcade ride from the White House to Virginia and pulled into a small, independent burger joint called Ray's Hell Burger.

The two leaders went right up to the counter where the meat was being grilled and ordered.

Each fetched cash from his pocket and paid, and then the pair stood like the rest and waited for their number to be called before going to a table.

Hopefully the restaurant didn't fill with smoke the way it did when I visited Ray's last time.

I used to enjoy going to the CIA world factbook because it offered so much relevant data on a yearly basis.

Well, move over factbook: there's now a new fact engine going live this month of May, from the guy who brought us Mathematica. It should allow common fact-based requests to be answered based on public data sources. Give it a whirl!

It struck me as slightly hilarious that while watching The Great Escape last night, that the Nazis...er...Luftwaffe decide that the "worst of the worst" prisoners in their camp will receive a garden, a library and sporting activities. How true to life this is isn't as relevant as the point that we depicted our enemy displaying a level of generosity we have been notably absent of lately.

Further, Froomkin makes the appropriate holes in the Krauthammer argument. To equate people who don't sanction torture with non-military people is idiotic and offensive.

No one in my office appears to be observing no pants day. Sad!

An interesting health site.

If I had time, I'd check out all the newcomers.

Where is everybody else around here?

An interesting perspective.

After reading this point of view I have to say I think this side of things is correct.

Dynamic web fonts are coming. Actually they’re already here, but most of Our People haven’t noticed yet. But they will, and that’s going to be a huge boon to somebody. I see you’ve decided that it won’t be you. Well, have fun shuffling your little bits of metal around. The rest of us will be over here, using the only fonts we’re allowed to use: Everything But Yours.

Intellectual property is obviously a subject that evokes strong feelings, especially when it comes to software. But in this case, the "software" we're referring to hasn't been changed significantly in years.

It's as if aspirin and acetaminophen were only still sold by Bayer and Tylenol.

I hate that the left-hand side of my site has to use images, because dynamically embedded fonts (believe me, I spent about two weeks attempting to get this to work back in 2004) didn't work. If someone had a knockoff font that aped the correct serifs, I'd use it in a heart-beat. Now that the technology is finally coming around, you can bet I won't bother to license an expensive font.

I'll use a cheap one that looks good and never look back.

Be very afraid.

Part of a long-standing argument I have with multiple people, involves the idea of compensation. My principal problem is that currently, people associate wealth with worth. Go read this piece on Wall St. compenstation to get the full effect:

As the hue and cry to return the money grew, the traders had thought that Liddy would stand up for them. The ruddy-faced, 63-year-old former Allstate CEO, who had been installed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in September, was, if not exactly one of them, at least someone who understood the rules of the game as it had been played—and who understood what they were entitled to under those rules, even if those rules were unspoken. In AIG’s glory years, executives like Joseph Cassano, the former head of financial products, took home more than $300 million. That was the kind of money you couldn’t talk about.

More:

Their anger takes many forms: There is rage at Obama for pushing to raise taxes (“The government wants me to be a slave!” says one hedge-fund analyst); rage at the masses who don’t understand that Wall Street’s high salaries fund New York’s budget (“We’re fucked,” says a former Lehman equities analyst, referring to the city); rage at the people who don’t “get” that Wall Street enables much of the rest of the economy to function (“JPMorgan and all these guys should go on strike—see what happens to the country without Wall Street,” says another hedge-funder).

Once you accept the wealth/worth connection, it becomes taboo to talk about salaries, and people glowingly say "his business just made $40 million!" as if this reflected well upon a person's worth.

The more insidious connections come next, the idea that because one earned a great deal of money, one is smarter, more useful, deserving of praise.

The final, worst transition occurs just as often: the idea that if one does not earn lots of money, their worth is diminished.

Don't get me wrong: I think the hidden-hand-american-greed argument has served America well over many years. But just as my current occupation has a particular income level (one that I'm significantly below...another nice feature of the wealth/worth corollary: the idea that because one is underpaid, one is actually worth much more than they appear) due to scarcity, if there were twice as many IT people running around DC, I imagine the cost per person would come down.

Scarcity really is the driving factor behind most of the wealth/worth problem: if you're a lawyer, you want to go to a good school, to get into a good firm, so that the firms can pay first years a large salary. Being a doctor is different, but it does boil down to numbers: if there were 50% more doctors around, salaries would be lower.

To be sure, many of these positions require smart, hard-working people. But so do many other jobs. Reporters, teachers and certain civil servants often make tiny wages, yet work 24/7. Many are incredibly smart.

The only real solution, in my mind, is to push back on the wealth/worth connection at all times. If a friend says "wow, my boss was a millionaire at age 30", just ask how she got there. If the answer is that she invented a cheap shamwow knockoff, your answer is already there.

Your daily must-read story:

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

4 pages and well worth it. Hat-tip to those who emailed me!

For the record, I don't even enjoy juice all that much.

I especially enjoy contrarian.

Speaking of those on the other side of the political fence, here's a ne'er-do-well's new blog.

All I can say is that I hope he's not looking for fool's gold!

Teabaggin' Time!

I love certain Adobe products, but this site is a welcome step back.

This hits pretty close to home for me. Go read it all:

1. Find and quote industry experts with the biggest possible conflicts of interest – preferably those who make their living thanks to the public paranoia about cybersecurity. Make sure you give them enough space to quote their latest anti-virus solutions and consulting services. Since nobody important would talk to you on the record anyway, nobody expects your quotes to add any value to the article. Remember: it's all about the metaphors. Ideally, find "unbiased" experts who have never been to Estonia or Georgia, don't know the language, have gathered no data of their own, but who think that cyberwar is going to destroy us all (unless their firm is selected to help us save us from the evil hackers).

Every century there's a new flavor of snake-oil to sell.

interesting

Only six weeks until Tilda and I venture west to Dirtytown, USA, kicking off another summer of adventures.

Will we be trapped in a car wash? Will wild dogs attack us as I idle? What will catch fire? The possibilities are endless...

Wow.

Hopefully he'll do better than his miming performance in Superman Returns.

I've already submitted some predictions. The premise is simple: if a pundit makes a claim, let's check them on it.

Ideally, the cream will rise to the top.

If only there were a companion site for apologies...

An intriguing idea.

My initial thought was: this will be hard to get good designers to work quickly enough on a day to day basis. Then I remembered that for the vast majority of stories in the newspaper, the development of a story occurs long before it's in print. So the design could proceed at the same pace.

In the long term, yes, the newspaper is probably dead. But for the next 10 years, with good design, it could certainly limp along. And the best part about good design is that it translates into good web design. So newspapers with bold graphics and interesting appearances could become the web destinations of the future.

If only I had a kindle!

Now that the second-most expensive purchase I ever made has been paid off, perhaps it's time to go fully electric.

Of course, if Brad has something burning a hole in his pocket...

It's an interesting idea.

The thing to remember about FDR is not that he came up with a few brilliant ideas, and ran with them; rather, he came up with many ideas, a few of which worked (some of which were even constitutional!) out in the long run.

Ray's and Good Stuff are already gone! It makes me wonder that someone would go to BLT and order the burger but apparently people are hitting places like that (and Central) and being low-brow.

Oh, well. There's always Stoney's!

Happy Nowruz!

The best part is that Obama is celebrating it as well:

Change starts with small steps.

The AIG bonus solution fix passed the House by a large 328-93 margin. The best part? The Democrats were united (243-6) while the GOP split nearly in half over the measure (85-87).

I'm not sure how the GOP is gaming this out, but the 87 who voted 'Nay' aren't thinking terribly quickly here.

So the S9, almost a year too late for me, is set to debut on the 30th.

It's good to see DC is moving forward, transit wise. The Feds are also moving ahead which is terrific news!

The answer to the bonuses is really too simple.

Like many of you, I was outraged to learn over the weekend that AIG is paying out another $165 million in bonus compensation. For a company that has required $170 billion in U.S. taxpayer assistance and is 80% owned by the United States Government, this is clearly unacceptable. That is why I will be introducing legislation that will instruct the Secretary of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service to develop guidelines that tax at 100% any bonus compensation that is not directly related to a commission for any recipient of TARP funds where the United States government is the majority owner of the company. This will allow AIG to continue to meet their "contractual obligation" to pay these bonuses, but will ensure that the recipients are not allowed to keep this money.

Best of all, this is a targeted solution to the problem that won't affect the legality of the contracts themselves. Perfect!

Who knew Madoff was more popular than most Republicans?

That's insane!

Reminded me of the mighty octophant.

Now back to your regular work!

You can now, thankfully, build your own.

Great movies, whether from Pixar or Lucas, always seem to follow a similar arc: someone comes up with a great story, and then all the pieces fall into place from a directorial perspective, followed by a decent post-production grunt period.

The first part of Raiders reads like the perfect film. Just some guys sitting around coming up with cool ideas, characters and scenes.

Enjoy the Cramer trainwreck.

Fascinating

Jon breaks it all down.

Worth every second.

It's jumped the shark, sure, but it may have just reversed itself, backed over the damn shark, and belched fire.

Obama was great. And, had I not fallen asleep post, I would've been able to witness one of the greatest rebuttal failures of history.

For a great reaction, see Greg over at TNR It's worth deeply excerpting from it, precisely because it lays low the recent Dems who have also quailed before the bright lights of the SOTU rebuttal:

The real crime here is that Jindal, who’s clearly an ambitious guy, could’ve scanned recent history and decided to save himself the pain*. In all the heated discussions last summer about who Obama’s running mate should be, whenever Kathleen Sebelius’s name came up, people would talk about how impressive it is that she’s a strong Democratic voice in a conservative state and that she has true policy credentials--and then they’d say, But did you see her rebuttal? Similar deal with Tim Kaine, who was plagued by his dead fish performance in ’06. Gary Locke, Obama’s likely next pick for Commerce, gave such a bad speech six years ago that it’s a breathtaking act of charity that he’s been allowed to talk in public, in front of other people, with cameras around, again. Much of the blame, of course, rests with the individuals: These aren’t the most dynamic orators in the political world. But I think SOTU rebuttals are so consistently wretched for more systemic reasons. You arrive onscreen directly after the president, and the optics are terrible. Instead of addressing a joint session, you’re hanging out by yourself a room fit for a Bing Crosby Christmas special. Also, you’re consigned from the get-go into a defensive position, making it more difficult to pounce effectively. And by the time the president’s done speaking, the viewing public has endured about an hour of political oratory--well beyond most right-thinking people’s threshold. It takes a truly remarkable performance to stand out that late in the night.

The great recent exception, of course, came in 2007, when Jim Webb went full metal and excoriated the hobbled president and Republican brand.

We need more Dems like Obama or Webb, and more GOP stalwarts like Bobby Jindal.

Oh, and yes, Obama's speech was pitch-perfect. Time to jump back into the stock market!

The military-industrial complex is puzzled by HKS.

Better than the stick-figures.

And the correct term, moving forward is, "receivership".

I finally got around to seeing Helvetica last night. It's a good film, and one of the interviewees is the designer behind my cool Obama poster.

Getting an A for effort is really idiotic...and yet at many companies "met expectations" seems to align perfectly with what the college students quoted describe. That's depressing.

I love the fact that the administration is hard-wired to the information age.

The Recovery website is a perfect example of this. Go check it out...it's really amazing. And no flash excluding the youtube link!

One can always hope for a new computer.

my new phone

It begins again.

I am not Matthew Baldwin.

Refreshing.

It helps to get the facts right.

If only I knew someone with an iPhone!

My 401k provider won't let me pay my loan back early.

And people wonder why there's a financial crisis...

Very well done. Almost makes me want to watch^H^H^H^H^Hread it!

$100 million per year.

Interesting.

I don't link to godin that often, but this thought is worth exploring.

My answer to his question, for me, is simple: #2

What is yours?

Would you?

For the year of 2009, I have received, as of January 28th, 7157 email messages.

I have sent 641 messages this year.

Sigh.

For the wall? Perhaps.

This is worth a look.

Worth remembering the pictures.

Cold but historic. Pictures later, if they came out.

It begins...er...continues.

The new administration is doing fairly well on all fronts, in my mind.

So I save up for a year (neglecting my health care in the process) in order to meet the minimum level for investing in an HSA and what do I get?

That's right: a whole slew of sales loaded, 12b1 fee'd up mutual funds.

I suppose I should complain to my fund administrator, but this is what's happened to me before at each company's 401k offerings: the idiots running the show want to get their cut, so instead of having some simple index funds tied to the S+P 500 or Russel 2000, they provide the same "idea" only with lots of skimming off the top.

Sigh. Back to scrimping on health care for another year, I suppose. Wall Street's gotta eat...at least until Obama provides national health care. I can't wait!

Last week's episode was really too sad to be true.

I thought the show would be biased, but I was surpised to find it bent over the other direction, to show an innocent man (and his family) being harassed at gunpoint, and the specter of "terrorism" replaced by some minor drug and/or work visa violations.

The weird disconnect culiminated in last night's 24, which was good, as always. It made me think though: do DHS agents actually think they're saving America from terrorists when they process drug violations?

I wish I had time to be documenting myself in such detail.

Then again, that's what others are for!

Enjoy them!

Coleman leads Franken by a mere 15 votes right now! It's looking great for Al...

Simply amazing images.

It lives!

Really, the headline says it all.

Seen it yet?

Now to get some shots of the tree...

Very, very cool.

Celebrate however you wish to.

So I just moved our condo to entirely using wind power for electricity. It's a little more expensive, but for obvious reasons, I feel it's a good start.

The nice thing about energy competition is that once it starts to be deployed to multiple providers, there will be an incentive for power companies to offer greater services.

Best of all, as much as I love the idea of selling electricity back to the grid, it's simply cheaper at the moment to use economies of scale to generate clean electricity in other areas of the country and then transmit that power here. Do we need a new smart grid? Sure. In ten years, perhaps every residence in DC will be fitted with a smart power meter. Until then, this is the next best option.

Who knew I'd empathize with Jeff?

What gmail theme are you?

People are idiotic.

Is here! It's not a convertible but still looks quite cool.

There aren't much in the way of details but I'd be interested to see the performance aspects.

The list of suck is priceless.

I'm trying to wrap my head around Thomas-Kinkade-meets-Barry-Lyndon. Wacky.

Somewhere, my slightly immoral namesake is smiling.

The first rule of any engagement is to know your enemy. I occasionally peruse the corner to do so.

It looks like they just lost Frum.

The more they push to the right, the more they will marginalize themselves. The sad thing is that I feel like many of the right's slogans "smaller government, more personal responsibility" track well with America. The problem is that they came into office, held all the levers of government, and produced nothing useful.

Democrats are the party of solutions.

Quantum starts today! It's been a pretty long spell since I saw a semi-decent movie. I'm keeping my expectations low...

Speaking of big announcements, everyone should check out the new tiny nuclear power plant.

Yeah. It's small enough to only power 20,000 homes. Within ten years, we could actually have a Unified Smart Grid utilizing these guys, along with many other power sources.

This article about a tax law change is ridiculous. The key grafs are here:

Section 382 of the tax code was created by Congress in 1986 to end what it considered an abuse of the tax system: companies sheltering their profits from taxation by acquiring shell companies whose only real value was the losses on their books. The firms would then use the acquired company's losses to offset their gains and avoid paying taxes.

Lawmakers decried the tax shelters as a scam and created a formula to strictly limit the use of those purchased losses for tax purposes.

But from the beginning, some conservative economists and Republican administration officials criticized the new law as unwieldy and unnecessary meddling by the government in the business world.

"This has never been a good economic policy," said Kenneth W. Gideon, an assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy under President George H.W. Bush and now a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, a law firm that represents banks.

The opposition to Section 382 is part of a broader ideological battle over how the tax code deals with a company's losses. Some conservative economists argue that not only should a firm be able to use losses to offset gains, but that in a year when a company only loses money, it should be entitled to a cash refund from the government.

So if your business is unprofitable, you should expect money from the government. That's idiotic. And it's certainly not "conservative". I hope Obama and Congress rein in this mistake immediately, and move to put someone with greater intelligence in charge of Treasury.

In fact, change is already here.

We just added North Carolina into the fold.

Not as big as Virginia, but still, great news all the same.

Working in the commonwealth the last few days was some of the most rewarding work I've ever done. Not because it was hard, but because I got the chance to turn my home back to the Democrats. I couldn't be prouder of what happened.

Words fail me.

U St was basically shut down last night due to the celebration. I'll try to post some pictures later of the fun.

For now, it's time to reflect on what we all accomplished, and the challenges that we face moving forward. It's time to show the GOP how true progressives can govern effectively. It's time to show the world that America works.

Before I go off the grid to help the campaign in the final few days, a last post.

I voted today, absentee...and almost could bring myself to vote for a Republican in the at-large council seat.

Then I stopped, and thought.

Why would someone run as a Republican in DC? Obviously, the deck is stacked against being elected here. The only clear reason would be to run for the at-large race, the sole race where Democrats vote one person into office, along with a member of another party.

Perhaps Mr. Mara is a Democrat. Certainly his position on the issues incline that way. But the one advantage of being a GOP member is that in the at-large race, DC's tiny GOP wing gives one a boost over the "independent" candidates. Combine that with a large newspaper endorsement, and Mara may just get elected.

In the end, in this environment, its difficult to imagine being a Republican and standing on the "issues". Conservatism seems adrift, from financial mismanagement to simple intolerance. Anyone who wishes to align themselves with such a party must, now more than ever, be deluded.

I voted for the Democrat, Kwame Brown. I left the final slot unchosen. I support Mayor Fenty and his reform ideas, and giving Chairman Gray another supporter, one who seems particularly ill-qualified for higher office, seems silly. Therefore my vote wasn't wasted, it was decided.

The council is being fairly tough on Rhee, even if she doesn't have the best presentations:

Barry took exception to Gray's decision to allow Rhee to appear first, ahead of a long line of witnesses. He said it violated a council tradition of allowing private citizens to speak first.

Rhee said that parents and other people schedule meetings with her many weeks in advance and that they would have to reschedule if she waited several hours to testify. Rhee came to a July 11 council meeting but left after four hours without speaking because of other commitments.

Hmm. Sounds like Barry is grandstanding and preventing useful business from being accomplished. Typical.

(Don't get me started on the idiocy of writing in a GOP councilmember who couldn't win in her own primary...at least Mara had the good sense to knock Schwartz off!)

In honor of John McCain's campaign.

From TNR, via Getty:

A great picture. I love the secret service guy as well in the background.

A good mix of business cards.

Tilda and I caught part of Meet The Press yesterday...and watched the most painful moment of the campaign. I actually felt bad for McCain:

The best part for me, is that Alex "I'm in Control Here" Haig made the cut, but someone else didn't!

So the short story of this hilarity is this:

1. Conservatives "discover" that sub $200 contributions to the Obama campaign are accepted without proper addresses
2. Conservatives decide that they need to "test" this hypothesis
3. Conservatives start contributing money to the Obama campaign
4. Profit ensues.

I remember in college that there was a deductible tax that went to the nader-front groups associated in the past. The tax was easily turned off, by a simple check on a piece of mail. So it really amounted to a stupidity tax on students who didn't bother to read their mail.

Still, this goes one step further. If the hypothesis you're testing is that your opponent is raising too much money illegally, why would you illegally contribute money to him? It defies belief!

Considering the average donation to Obama is around $100, I only hope these rubes realize they're helping lower the average contribution each time they give cash. Hilarious.

This is hilarious:

By the way, before Cashill hit on his theory, I noted some eerie similarities between Dreams of My Father and the Horatio Hornblower novels of C.S. Forester, which also contain nautical references and are written on a high school level, but I gave up my investigation when I realized that Forrester died in 1966 and probably could not have written Obama’s book. Why didn't I think of comparing Obama’s book to Ayers’ book instead? I guess that's why I'm not one of the A-list bloggers.

Must-read.

It's all everyone is talking about

The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

Insane. More...

But all the spending by other candidates pales in comparison to the GOP outlay for the Alaska governor whose expensive, designer outfits have been the topic of fashion pages and magazines.

Wow.

Via Kottke, it's brilliant

We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.

I said, "The book depository didn't send me that book, but the other two were nice."

Someone tried repeating the question: "What do you think about that book?"

"I said they didn't send me that one, so I don't have any judgment on it."

The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet. There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late."

It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn't believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.

The article is a goldmine!

Are you undecided?

Addictive.

It really helps if you make a parallelogram instead of a trapezoid.

It's too amazing not to tease:

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f*. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:...

You have to read the entire piece to get the full effect. We're winning people over because they're sick of the GOP.

Since 1929, one thing has been clear:

$1700 in growth under Republicans, $290,000 under Democrats. Even if you exclude the failure of the markets under Hoover, Democrats still come out with six times the results of the GOP.

Of seven Republican presidents, three turned in negative results and the average rate of return was only 0.4%. Every Democratic president since 1929 has turned in a positive performance, with Bill Clinton setting the record at a 15.2% rate of growth.

Those are some scary good number for Dems!

Update: Top Line Numbers in CBS Poll: Obama 53; McCain 39.

Before the final debate, some great poll results:

Credit to the Obama campaign, which has taken hold of the tax issue, not shirked from it as Democrats have in the past. They have aggressively driven the narrative and successfully gotten the message out that not only will Barack Obama cut taxes for 95% of working families, but John McCain will tax employer-based health care benefits. The Republican messaging on the other hand has been vague and unevenly applied, relying on what they thought were iron-clad pre-conceptions of Democrats rather than creating a compelling message about McCain himself on the issue.

I wonder too whether McCain's insistence that he's not your run of the mill Republican, that he's a maverick, is actually hurting him here. It's almost as though because McCain has tried to distance himself from the party brand that he's not accruing some of the benefits that come with the brand, such as an automatic advantage on taxes. But at the very least, this result shows just how dominant the Obama campaign has been in terms of message control over the course of this campaign.

Right below this piece was an advertisement saying John McCain would raise your taxes by $2,800 on your health care. Those ads are driving the narrative home...tax cuts for 95% of Americans vs a tax increase of $2,800.

The debate format was awful, Tom Brokaw insufferable. But that one managed to maul McCain, repeatedly.

My favorite moment came when Brokaw served up a juicy softball to McCain, asking about "service". The answer was as you'd expect: a call to youth to give to their country, a call for all Americans to sacrifice, a look backward at the missed opportunity following 9/11 when Bush asked us to shop. In short: National Greatness...a belief in American exceptionalism.

Did I say McCain? I meant Obama.

It's inversions like these, where Obama makes points that make everyone in the audience remember that it's all right to be patriotic and progressive, that Democrats and Republicans are both Americans, that people respond to.

The insta polls bore this out and as Markos mentions, they prevent the GOP from spinning away a clear Democratic victory. Here's the raw numbers:

Forty percent of the 516 uncommitted voters surveyed identified Barack Obama as tonight's winner; 26 percent said John McCain won, while 34 percent saw the debate as a draw.

After the debate, 68 percent of uncommitted voters said that they think Obama will make the right decisions on the economy, compared to 55 percent who said that before the debate. Fewer thought McCain would do so – 48 percent after the debate, and 41 percent before.

Before the debate, 59 percent thought Obama understands voters’ needs and problems; that rose to 80 percent after the debate. For McCain, 33 percent felt he understands voters’ needs before the debate, and 44 percent thought so afterwards.

80% for Obama on understanding needs and problems? That's a huge win.

The gloves are off starting this noon!

McCain can't hit back with sludge on this, or it'll seem irrelevant.

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

I love it! The best part is that McCain telegraphed his intention to go dirty on Friday. Obama must've had this in the can, ready to go, for just such a point.

I hope someone asks about the scandal on Tuesday night. That will complete the media narrative!

This ad connects the dots

McCain wanted to bet Social Security on the market. This week, more than ever, it became apparent that was a bad idea. Not because the market didn't work, but because the market did work, and punished those who made bad investments.

Oh, wait. It didn't. To the tune of $700 billion.

The free market needs regulations the same way a sporting event needs referees. When you pull the refs out, and the game goes sour, why should the American taxpayer foot the bill?

Is alive and kicking!

It just keeps getting better:

When you have seven homes, that's a lot of garages to fill. After the fuss over the number of residences owned by the two presidential nominees, NEWSWEEK looked into the candidates' cars. And based on public vehicle-registration records, here's the score. John and Cindy McCain: 13. Barack and Michelle Obama: one.

Thirteen cars? Go down the list and it's actually pretty depressing what cars they have:

McCain's personal ride, a 2004 Cadillac CTS, is no gas sipper, but it should make Detroit happy because it's made by General Motors. "I've bought American literally all my life and I'm proud," McCain said in the interview with Detroit's WXYZ-TV. But the rest of his fleet is not all-American. There's a 2005 Volkswagen convertible in the garage along with a 2001 Honda sedan. Otherwise, there's a 2007 half-ton Ford pickup truck, which might come in handy on the Sedona ranch; a vintage 1960 Willys Jeep; a 2008 Jeep Wrangler; a 2000 Lincoln; and a 2001 GMC SUV. The McCains also own three 2000 NEV Gem electric vehicles, which are bubble-shaped cars popular in retirement communities.

They own three bubble-shaped cars that are "popular in retirement communities". That's just sad.

Avast there!

You know things aren't so hot in the fourth estate when you've lost Richard Cohen:

McCain was going to fix all that. He was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.

But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.

It's the most-viewed article on the entire WaPo site. If McCain things he can continue to lie his way out of this, he's mistaken.

It's reached the point where's it's pretty simple: McCain is a liar.

Sigh.

A good response:

Barack Obama accused the McCain campaign of "lies" and "Swift boat" politics Wednesday, after nearly a day of claims his 'lipstick on a pig' comment was a sexist attack leveled at GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin.

"Spare me the phony outrage. Spare me the phony talk about change," Obama said at the start of an education event in Virginia. "We have real problems in this country right now. The American people are looking to us for answers, not distractions, not diversions, not manipulations. They want real answers to the real problems we are facing.

"I don't care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics," he also said. "Enough is enough."

The McCain camp is rapidly squandering their goodwill with the press. In another week, the narrative is going to shift because the media is starting to push back on the constant stream of lies.

A very good ad:

I like how Obama has moved the election to a referendum on change rather than a referendum on experience. Palin's pick only reinforces that meme...meaning that at the end of the day, voters will have to decide which of the two tickets offers a better chance for change. Needless to say, with ads like this, the Obama camp is making the choice easy.

Wow. I actually fell asleep during his speech, toward the end. It was written poorly and just didn't possess any energy. Worst of all, there were no specifics, just some bland platitudes towards the GOP plank.

At one part, he even railed against the Republican party for a minute. Why should people vote for a Republican to be responsible after the past 8 years? That was never made clear.

All in all, the fact they screwed up the background is the best summation of the entire event:

I'm surprised this hadn't occurred to me. But several readers have suggested that perhaps one of the tech geeks charged with setting up the audio/visual bells and whistles for the evening was tasked with getting pictures of Walter Reed Army Medical Center but goofed and got this instead. At first I thought, No, that's ridiculous. This is a major political party with big time professionals putting this together. Nothing is left to chance. I mean, is this the RNC or a scene out Spinal Tap or Waiting for Guffman? I still have a bit of a hard time believing they're quite that incompetent. But when you figure in what appears to be the utter lack of any logic for this school being behind McCain and the fact that it has 'Walter Reed' in its name, I'm really not sure you can discount this possibility.

Brilliant.

I hadn't seen any of the RNC before last night...it defied belief. Speaker after speaker got on to trash the Democratic ticket, claiming they'd "raise taxes" or "increase government" and completely ignoring the budget shenanigans the GOP has fostered for the past eight years. Next, Guiliani and Palin both attacked Obama for leaving college to become a community organizer (did they want him to leave Harvard Law School and immediately start racking in money at a big firm?!?) because that wasn't "real work". First the Republicans attack the government, and now they're attacking community organizers. Who's next? Traffic guards?

The oddest moment of the night came in Guiliani's speech, when he claimed that Obama's success story could happen "only in America" and the audience began to laugh. Maybe I just don't get it. Why would that be funny? Do they think America has too much opportunity?

Palin came across as a dyed-in-the-wool GOP knife fighter, eager to lie (Obama's tax plan actually cuts taxes for 85% of middle income Americans by over a grand....way more than the McCain plan, which costs $40 trillion but mostly deals with corporate taxes) and obfuscate (she actually fought for the bridge to nowhere....but now baldly claims she was against it!) to get elected. Ugh. Hopefully the media will call her out on her distortions (a few did last night.)

The contrast between the two conventions couldn't be starker: Obama's final speech, in which he said that we should never question the patriotism of those in the other party stands in clear opposition to every speech given last night, where GOP member after GOP member slammed the Democrats for being weak on economics or national security. It's like we're in bizarro-land, where President Gore has presided for the past eight years.

Sigh.

I've been a huge fan of firefox over the years. But chrome is amazingly slick. Rendering is faster, pages are more responsive, and the UI just. makes. sense.

Firefox and IE need to adapt quickly. Since IE8 is already almost ready to be shipped, both teams are going to have to readjust quickly.

I never thought I'd be happy to see the return of the browser wars, but I am.

The sheer size of this audience is why we'll win.

Obama had one chance to nail it and did. In front of more people at one moment than ever before. Most Americans didn't know Barack Obama before last night. Now, at least 1 out of 8 has seen him. That's an amazing statistic for our country.

Any good feminist, regardless of gender, ought to be outraged

So maybe Team Obama should go on the offensive, having some of its female surrogates express their disgust and dismay that McCain apparently considers women candidates to be interchangeable, regardless of their experience or policy views. (This was, after all, a common gripe among Hillary voters whenever it was suggested that Obama might tap Kathleen Sebelius as his number 2.)

This is actually why I think Palin is a good pick. For the Democrats. She is a GOP standard bearer in the same garb as Clarence Thomas, or Bobby Jindal: an unexceptional person who merely acts as a placeholder. Can you imagine if the Democrats nominated candidates based merely on color, or gender?

Posted without comment.

Well, they saved the best for last. Obama's speech managed to inspire, attack and educate all at the same time. I don't think he could've put together a better speech, or better optics. The GOP next week needs to be seriously worried at this point...and Democrats may be able to breathe easier for the first time in a few weeks.

There were so many good lines, it's hard to focus on two, but these really stood out for me:

What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's about you.

and...

Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than 90 percent of the time?" Obama asked. "I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change.

Regardless, Obama threw one hell of a political touchdown pass last night.

Tonight I have to disagree with the pundits:

1. Warner's speech was great. He was a much better orator than anyone else on the dais, hands down. I still wish he were VP, but he's going to make a great senator. I'm not sure why the audience inside didn't like it more (not enough call-and-response?) but they were never the point. The point was middle America watching on tv. He nailed that group. And as David Gergen pointed out, when was the last time you heard a major political figure discuss science and technology in a speech? If Al Gore could've cribbed some lines, he might have picked up some points. (And I love Al Gore!)

2. Schweitzer was just the opposite. I found him a little too jokey and filled with energy. He kept bouncing around like a ball onstage. Of course, he was able to whip the crowd into a frenzy, and many of his lines were good soundbites (drilling in John's McCain's numerous backyards, for instance). Conversely, he also had some horrible puns that left me thinking Warner seemed far better.

3. HRC was good, but the expectations had been lowered so much that she didn't need to do anything at all. I'm still not sure why the media is lapping up the RNC-based idea that Clintonistas hate the Obamanauts, but it clearly isn't true. She said what needed to be said, and got the crowd going to boot. But at the end of the day, HRC is just not that gifted a public speaker. I expect more from Bill tonight, to be honest. He is truly a great orator.

The Media, on the other hand, thought HRC was "amazing" and that Schweitzer was "the best speech yet" and that Warner was "clearly a bomb". Apparently, treating the American people as anything less than idiots is beyond the VRWC.

The best piece I've read on the convention is right here.

All of which suggests that Republicans are rarely offered advice because there is not much to advise them on. Republicans do not need to be told whether to take the high road or the low because they always take the low road. They do not ponder whether brutal campaign tactics will affect their ability to govern, since they care so little about government. If liberal media pundits are not particularly interested in offering conservative politician advice, conservatives understand their role as cheering their side on. No wonder Democrats are viewed as more likely to make mistakes. You can only make a mistake when you have a choice.

Excellent points.

I'm [very glad I'm getting my ps3 fixed] rather than a new one. Apparently all PS2 love is going away...no shipping PS3's support it anymore. Nice move, Sony! Where otherwise could I get my katamari on, since there is no ps3 version?

Day One of the Convention Recap:

1. News media seem to think that Dems should be angry. Don't worry, guys, there will be plenty of red meat later. If Michelle had come out of the gate screaming bloody murder, she'd have been savaged in the press.

2. Speaking of Michelle, she was amazing. She managed to easily explain the guiding principles behind the Obama family: looking out for those who don't have the same opportunities.

3. Ted Kennedy's speech wasn't great. But the sheer willpower he displayed was unreal. The guy is fighting for his life, and to get up there in front of everyone took some serious guts.

4. The optics by the Obama crew were brilliant. Much like a live-version of a great looking website, the branding reached across all spaces to produce a slick-looking convention floor. From the signs, to the backdrops, to the tiny touches on-stage, everything was branded perfectly. I'm so sick of the bad branding the other campaigns have have. It makes me proud to be a DNC contributor to see such a good job performed.

5. It's real. There are some crazy people out there.

I can't wait for HRC and Governor Warner!

For all the mcsame houses.

More mccain house hilarity.

As a recent condo purchaser, it really does hit home that they have no idea the pain most of us go through to save up money to purchase a house.

Post beach pix aren't uploaded yet, sadly. Hopefully they will be soon.

The combination of delayed work plus Brad's presence has slowed posting. If only I didn't have to work during the day...

Worth watching

I know Tilda is somehow responsible for this travesty.

Fight for the right to keep your laptop private!

Good morning Los Angeles! DC isn't the same without you.

Well, here we are sans furniture:

Throw in a few pieces and you arrive at this:

No pix of the subzero or the viking range yet. You can make out the viking dishwasher, though. The balthazar/brad storage area is also unseen so far.

Truth be told, Tilda and I have been working overtime just to get things squared away and former houses emptied. We should finally be able to post some pix this evening...

...on the positive side, we now have enough free space to house a small army. Provided, of course, that the soldiers are capable of hovering.

We're in the new condo. Finally. The nightmare is over. Pix will be forthcoming...

When I saw a McCain ad talking about how Obama was to blame for high gas prices, I almost died laughing.

This ad is far better

Enjoy!

Seriously? Seriously

Last time my car was vandalized I wished the next time someone broke in that they'd simply cut the roof and let themselves in rather than shatter the window.

A day or two ago I commented to Tilda that she hadn't been posting enough.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind!

Nothing says the 4th of July quite like having your car broken into, again. Sigh.

I guess this is the solution to rising gas prices: instead of spending money on America's large oil conglomerates, I can wisely spend money on a deductible for America's large insurance companies!

On the plus side, it still drives like a charm, and this is just another reason to keep the top down. Even better, the rain that was let in from the storm when the vandals sliced the top actually cleaned my rear seat. Now that's service!

I told you so.

Further, there is likely to be more structure brought to a political operation that has largely been delegated to the Regional Campaign Managers. The campaign currently has no political or field director.

The lack of any real campaign apparatus was idiotic from the get-go. I'm sad that McCain will be tougher to beat moving forward, but at least the retooling will take some energy away from him. The more he rebuilds, the less donors will give him, which feeds a vicious cycle.

Perhaps Brad should pick up one of these:

The company has just introduced a fully-electric, five passenger sports sedan dubbed the Model S, which will be selling for a shockingly affordable $60,000, and will manage 225 miles on a full charge

60k? 225 miles per charge? That's insane...

It's sad, I know. But for the next month I'm off the social grid. Once Tilda and I manage to settle St Brad's Wood, I can hop back on.

Until then, it's ramen vs potatoes every night.

You heard it here first. Why?

We're taking Florida

Once the big three, Ohio, PA and FL are out of the mix, Obama will have the ability to play offense in VA, CO, NC, GA and IN. The McCain coattails will shrink just as Barr's will grow, resulting in a fairly large pro-Democratic party vote.

The best part about this scenario is that an Obama wave will instantly produce journalism meta-stories about a "mandate" for his various policy positions, something Clinton never had with his two sub 50% victories.

The CW moving forward will be that McCain lost the election the day he flip-flopped to support offshore oil drilling. When I saw a McCain surrogate opining while using the debunked China/Cuba drilling connection as evidence last night, I realized they were in a tailspin.

It has to be linked to, because it is so very awesome

Barack Obama's new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH.

Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.

Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD, a BASEBALL TEAM, and a COMPUTER HE BUILT HIMSELF FROM AMERICAN PARTS. He travels mostly by FORKLIFT.

The forklift really sealed it for me.

My trusty N95 will be dethroned, later this year, as the king of camera phones when Sony releases an 8 megapixel beast.

What gives me hope?

This sketchy video of Android running on a N95. That's right, it's a little google-meets-nokia mashup.

I love Symbian for the UI, but the overall execution, especially on a phone as powerful as the N95, is lacking.

This graphic of tell-all Bush books is hilarious.

Go check it out.

Wow. Even I, the eternal optimist, am amazed after tonight. Change is finally coming!

The contrast between Obama and McCain's speech couldn't be more striking.

You have to see it to believe it.

I'm tempted to slap some GPS receivers on some birds, raise some funds, and take bets!

I rarely say something is a "must-read". But this article on TNR summarizing this piece from a GOP supporter is a must-read:

The poll asked 800 likely voters their opinions on various issues, first giving the positions in a vacuum, then attaching them to their respective parties. The results are pretty surprising: The Democratic position, even when not attached to any party, consistently beat the GOP position by 11 to 25 points. In other words, it's not the Republican "brand" that's the problem--it's their policies.

You have to read the original post to fully appreciate what's going on here. Even with a brand advantage, the public hates the GOP ideas. Go see it yourself. The Democrats could easily successfully build the best brand for the next 10 years, by combining great ideas with good policy execution. That last part is key, because the GOP used to have ideas people liked, but couldn't implement them. Now they have neither.

I especially enjoyed how the GOP author couldn't spell "lose" properly. That might be a bad sign of why they're "loosing"! Ha!

I'd been thinking about obtaining a Scooba but now I've finally found the robot I want:

Metal Storm Warrior

No need for Johnny 5, right?

I scored a 95.

How about you?

I built some links at the bottom for people having trouble going back/forward in time. They're not perfect, but I don't have time to debug them further. Caveat emptor.

The new Indiana Jones movie is far better than The Temple of Doom. Digest.

I think a great many Democrats were idiotic about Obama's support in states like PA. The point many of us kept making was simple: Obama puts Virginia, Colorado and many other states into play that simply weren't there before. HRC did not, choosing to play defense.

Now we can see the real numbers.

Obama beats McCain by 8 points in PA, by default. That's huge.

In a financial nutshell:

MRIS has released its data for sales of existing home sales in April 2008. Fewer units sold, lower dollar volume, condo prices down, single family home prices up. The severity of the downturn in the District is striking. The condo market appears to be in free fall.

Craziness.

HRC won WV. Not a big surprise.

On the other hand, Democrats winning MS-01 is a huge deal.

Following on the heels of Democratic victories in special elections in Illinois' 14th district in March and Louisiana's 6th district 10 days ago, Republicans pulled out all the stops to try to hold on to Wicker's seat, which should be a GOP stronghold. President Bush won the district by 25 points in 2004; he won the Louisiana seat by 19 points and the Illinois seat by 11 points.

Vice President Cheney visited the district to drum up support Monday. The cash-strapped National Republican Congressional Committee shelled out at least $1.3 million on the contest -- more than it spent on the Illinois seat, which falls in the expensive Chicago media market -- and the conservative group Freedom's Watch also ran several hundred thousand dollars worth of ads.

But Democrats were able to match the GOP on the financial front, and Republicans' efforts to tar Childers as a typical liberal out-of-step with the district appear to have fallen flat. Davis ran ads attempting to tie Davis to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and the controversial words of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. As was the case in the Louisiana special election, this tactic did not seem to work for the Republican candidate, bolstering the argument by Obama supporters that his presence at the top of the ticket will not be a hindrance downballot in conservative districts.

25 Points? 25 Points? What's next? What GOP seat can be safe if a 25-point district is in the mix? If the Republicans try to run against Obama and they come up short in a place like this, this is a total catastrophe for the GOP.

I just received the following text alert from the DC government:

NWS issued a Flood WARNING for the District from now to 5:30 pm . Please drain catch basins and avoid flooded streets and ...

Whoops!

please stop calling me at my place of business. i know when you call me, because my callerid says "unknown caller".

the reason you continue to be placed in my voicemail is because I Do Not Wish To Speak To You!

i had hoped that you would take the hint after several days of my behavior, but you appear to be rather thick-headed.

thank you.

If Karl Rove, Joe Scarborough and David Brooks all agree that the continuing Democratic primary process is bad for Democrats..and registration of Dems continues to increase in every state, can't we all just agree the drawn-out primary is helping Dems in the fall?

I say this as an Obama fan. But it's the truth: neither the attacks on Obama or Hilary are making either lose their luster against McCain.

I'm predicting a HRC win by 8% in the commonwealth. Would I be happy? A bit. Any lower than 5 and that's an Obama "win". Lower than 10% could also be spun as a win by Obama, but HRC could continue to the next round. Higher than 10% is what HRC needs to do to actively stay alive, although her delegate count probably won't move much, or her total popular vote count.

Unlike Ohio, I think most people are predicting around 8%, so the expectations have been gamed somewhat better than Ohio.

We'll see...in order for HRC to actually have a chance, she'd need to best Obama by an absurd amount (20%) to pull in enough popular votes and delegates to make it competitive.

What t-shirt do I want this week? Simple:

"Mentally Challenged Gun Owner"

Who wouldn't buy that?

Last night's debate was singularly awful. The candidates did their best, but the moderation by ABC was simply dreadful. Near the end, I just wanted it to stop. Only Obama's closing statement seemed to rise above the boring, brainless banter.

Update: there's more right here.

In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim association with a former '60s radical -- a question that came out of rightwing talk radio and Sean Hannity on TV, but delivered by former Bill Clinton aide Stephanopolous. This approach led to a claim that Clinton's husband pardoned two other '60s radicals. And so on.

More time was spent on all of this than segments on getting out of Iraq and keeping people from losing their homes and other key issues. Gibson only got excited when he complained about anyone daring to raise taxes on his capital gains.

Craziness!

The al-qaeda memo is priceless:

"I obtained 75,000 rupees for you and your family's trip to Egypt. I learned that you did not submit the voucher to the accountant, and that you made reservations for 40,000 rupees and kept the remainder claiming you have a right to do so. . . . Also with respect to the air-conditioning unit, . . . furniture used by brothers in Al Qaeda is not considered private property. . . . I would like to remind you and myself of the punishment for any violation."

Craziness!

Posting will be sporadic for a bit. No offense to others intended.

Despite being completely closed, Tilda and I visted National Harbor over the weekend. It was good to see the metal man, even if he was encased in sand:

Almost as cool were these pairs of metal eagles:

They were a little Reifenstahl-esque, but still very compelling.

I'm referencing [this New York Times article](http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/2-philly-counties-flip-to-democratic/.

The four suburban counties have long been Republican strongholds, with more Republican voters than Democratic ones. The last time there were more Democrats than Republicans seems lost in the mist of time.

But a new day is here. Voter enrollment in both Montgomery and Bucks Counties has flipped from Republican to Democratic.

Hooray!

This is ridiculous. It's beyond parody at this point...kind of like a super-smash-political brothers.

What's next? Linda Tripp for Hilary?

One of the few flaws with my new office is the rather irregular elevator service. Having said that, the old school 50's styling is quite amusing:

It turns red when going down...

Who knew...I guess I also remembered it incorrectly!

I'm actually reading the second Obama book right now, and it struck me on my way back to my office that the most powerful four words any progressive can ever utter are these, "I have an idea."

It's what distinguished FDR from most presidents in history. And unlike the GOP candidates of recent times, most Democrats have always had ideas about how to move the nation forward.

If the Republican party is currently structured around "we have lots of problems" the Democratic party needs to be structured around "we have lots of solutions". That's a party I'm proud to be a member of.

Obama made a great one.

One of the tragic things about race is that many people are uncomfortable discussing it, which only hurts matters.

Tilda and I are engaged!

I'll try to upload some pix from this weekend this evening. Understandably, it's been crazy.

This is priceless, even if it is a pdf document.

One has to simply read it in full.

If they are defining downward spiral as a series of events in which the Clinton campaign has lost more votes, lost more contests and lost more delegates to us – I guess we will have to suffer this horribly painful slide all the way to the nomination and then on to the White House.

Amazing!

Sometimes I feel like the anchor here.

Hilarious.

This is interesting.

Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times asked, “Senator, can I ask you about Senator Kerry. I just went back and looked at our story, the Times story, and you told Sheryl Stolberg that you had never had a conversation with Kerry about being about vice president...”

McCain testily replied, “Everybody knows that I had a private conversation. Everybody knows that. That I had a conversation. There’s no living American in Washington -- that knows that, there’s no one.”

One of the few media narratives that ever slights McCain is that "he gets angry". It's as silly as the Gore-is-boring or Quayle-is-stupid memes but it's been repeated enough the press tries to hang many things on it.

The Daisy Ad worked once. Perhaps it could work again...

Obama's map is pretty cool.

Clinton's map is much less cool.

She doesn't expand the field beyond Kerry, whereas Obama makes deep inroads into traditional GOP states. The thing to remember is that Democrats are fired up...and if we take a bunch of red states, we can rely on a very strong state organizations to take care of states like PA, NJ, WV and FL.

IE8 is now out. I'm not amused by certain bad decisions they made but at least it passes the acid test.

I'm going to stick with my dual Minefield + IE8 setup for now.

Those of you that upgrade to IE8 may see a bit of code exposed on the site that I've used for the past several years to ensure standards are compliant. (A doctype check) Just warning you.

It now appears to be down to a long slog through the Democratic mud for both Obama and Clinton.

I'm not unhappy, though. Democratic voters continue to come out in droves, and both HRC and BHO appear to have a decent chance to run the table with McCain, albeit from very different directions. (It is slightly absurd that Obama would have to tack left and Clinton right, in the general...when both are already more to that side than they need be)

Hilary's got a solid lead in Ohio.

Texas is the toss-up state...if Obama eeks out a win there, I don't see how HRC continues. If he loses both Ohio and Texas, look for the fight to get nastier and more filled with vitriol.

I had almost forgotten what it felt like to eat lunch outside. Suddenly every task seems lighter.

Money was spent. Animals were seen. More money was spent. Pix later, I suppose.

But you see, this is exactly the point with Obama many of us were making months, if not years, ago.

Case in point. I put up a post about Hillary Clinton accepting a Fox debate over at the Huffington Post. It got 265 irate comments. I put up one about McCain breaking campaign finance law while accusing Obama of doing so, and got -- 10. (And I should say that in the grand scheme of things, Clinton accepting a Fox debate is just not that important. On the other hand, John McCain is breaking a law that calls for him to virtually shut his campaign down now and stop traveling until September, so it's hard to see how the stakes could be higher.)

I really like Hilary Clinton and she'd be a great president. But the media and a large section of the populace (influential or otherwise) simply hate her. With those high negatives, she'd always have a tough time in a general election. It's not a personal criticism of her, just an observation.

Obama, on the other hand, gets kid-glove treatment from the media and many people because they simply like him. John McCain as well.

If we're going to go toe-to-toe with someone popular, we have to bring our A game, and Obama is it. He can take the gloves off and go after McCain in a way that Clinton never can, because she'll be vilified in the press.

I mentioned this the other day to some friends, the fact that Obama's campaign is expertly designed. A couple of articles flesh things out more.

While candidates' every turn of phrase is fodder for endless analysis, their visual language, seen on endless yard signs and bumper stickers, lapel pins and mailers, and on every TV and computer screen, goes largely unexamined. Only graphic designers, lifelong students of the ubiquitous, obsessive about the nuances of typography, treat campaign iconography with the seriousness it deserves.

Paula Scher, a partner at the New York design firm Pentagram, dissected the Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards logotypes in a 2004 New York Times Op-Ed piece. In Bush-Cheney's graphic identity, with its bold, sans serif capital letters, she read "strength, integrity and steadfastness." In the Kerry-Edwards type, a thinner, fancier serif face, she intuited weakness. The "overall design is tentative," wrote Scher. "It conveys congenial subservience." (Note that Scher is no Republican; upon winning a National Design Award two years later in 2006 she refused to attend a White House awards ceremony, decrying the Bush administration's "assault on meaning.")

The brand is also discussed specifically here

I think it's just as good or better. I have sophisticated clients who pay me and other people well to try to keep them on the straight and narrow, and they have trouble getting everything set in the same typeface. And he seems to be able to do it in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Houston and San Antonio. Every time you look, all those signs are perfect. Graphic designers like me don't understand how it's happening. It's unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted.

Branding is such an important part of business that it's amazing so many companies (and even a greater number of campaigns) do such a bad job with it. For the millions campaigns spend on direct mail, designing a simple, powerful logo can accomplish so much more.

Obama gets it.

I love my roomba and can't wait to see a scooba in action, but for now, the coolest idea ever for those who hate to clean the kitchen is this guy right here

Go readybot!

Actually worth seeing.

The debate was sadly quiet. Sadly, I suppose, for HRC.

It only took three years, but yesterday, I was finally able to subscribe to paperless billing from t-mobile, meaning I can finally stop receiving bills in the mail.

On the eve of the primary tonight, an interesting look at the general from surveyusa.

My argument has consistently been that Clinton is a great Democrat, and would do wonders for the country, but that she's a weak general-election candidate because of the media. Obama, by contrast, would do wonders for the country, and would do great in the general election.

Tonight should be interesting: if Clinton is unable to win Wisconsin, Texas will be much more difficult than before. Between Texas and Ohio, if Clinton fails to win both contests, she's over. There simply aren't enough delegates on the table to allow her to compete.

And yes, I know she could attract "pledged" delegate support because of the way the Democratic primaries and caucuses work, but the media would have a field day if she tried. And most pledged delegates would be loath to switch, as they were elected precisely to support a particular candidate.

Wow. He's finally gone.

Go read it yourself if you like.

No, not that Edwards, this one. The little races matter and this was the biggest little race around; now we'll have a true progressive in a deep blue district.

It was, overall, a great night for progressives...Obama managed to win almost every single group according to the exit polls in Virginia. White men, latinos, old, young, rich, poor, right down the line.

I'm ecstatic.

I voted at 7:05am this morning...there was already a huge line inside almost stretching out the doors. Bizarrely enough, there were only three people in the "P-Z" line, and no people in the "H-O" line. The vast majority of people in my ward, apparently, have names beginning with "A-G".

Go Obama!

My new bus stop opens tomorrow. It's networked and super-cool looking.

A close up reveals the cool detail of the gradient.

The details don't end there. From the tiny dc flags in the center pane of glass...

...to the networked sign showing how soon the next bus is arriving, these new bus stops put the old ones to shame.

I've never been so excited to take the bus!

Now get out there and vote, district residents!

I saw an ad today depicting a man jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. As the ad progressed, I became increasingly concerned that it was a horrible political ad.

See the ad here.

The only thing worse than that? Possibly this youth-oriented ad.

It's mind-numbingly stupid.

Obviously, the Clinton campaign is hurting for cash, but seriously, why don't they go hire the biggest gun out there and just run up some debt? Any dollars spent on ads like these are simply wasted money.

And Obama, you listening? Hire Crispin now and you'll ensure you win the primary and the general. Hands down.

Blu-ray just won the format war.

To those who say this is irrelevant, as everything will be online in the future, I would respond that for the next 2-4 years, there will still be content delivered via optical disc. And it looks like that disc will be blu-ray.

The hd-dvd backers (Toshiba, Microsoft, et al) will probably now aggressively push online content in a way that they weren't previously, because they had a fall-back with hd-dvd. So in the end, everyone will win because of this.

Look to netflix to implement more Video-on-Demand titles because of this. (Currently only 2 movies in my queue have VOD enabled...)

Normally, Amazon is fairly good at sending me e-mails with predictions for things I might wish to purchase. Today, however, I found this in my inbox:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated The Clinton Wars by Sidney Blumenthal have also purchased Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47, Telecommunication, Pt. 20-39, Revised as of October 1, 2007 by Office of the Federal Register (U.S.). For this reason, you might like to know that Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47, Telecommunication, Pt. 20-39, Revised as of October 1, 2007 will be released on February 20, 2008. You can pre-order yours by following the link below.

Wow! The Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47 is coming out next week! I just can't wait! (As an aside, what does this say about people who read "The Clinton Wars"?)

As most of us realized long ago, Obama is a better general candidate than Hilary

• Obama 48%, McCain 41%
• Clinton 46%, McCain 46%

Read it to figure it out.

So sad. At last mittmentum looks like joementum.

We'll all miss Mittens!

Since the election last night, Obama's campaign has been raising a great deal of cash from small donors.

Hilary, on the other hand, just loaned herself $5 million.

How much cash has Obama raised? Well, this graphic says it all:

Over 5 million? I'd be interested to see the total number of contributors...but in any case, with over $30 million in contributions in January, he's in excellent shape.

There were no knockout punches but overall, I think last night helps Obama, especially with his victory in Missouri. Each week his candidacy lives is another week Clinton's argument weakens.

In many of the states Clinton won, Obama had surged from far behind to narrow the gap in the days before Super Tuesday. Her ability to hold off his charge brought a sense of relief to her campaign advisers, but the likelihood that neither would emerge with a significant advantage in delegates was a sign that their roller-coaster competition would continue.

The DC/VA/MD primary is coming up next Tuesday...we'll see how the battle holds up.

Here are the latest polls across the board.

Clinton appears to be leading primaries in most states, with 2-4 exceptions. On the caucus side, Obama is rumored to be doing better.

California seems to be trending heavily Hilary, at least according to SurveyUSA.

Overall, a fairly mixed bag, with Obama still an underdog. We'll see how it plays out.

A well-dressed man informed me at Cosi, while waiting for his salad to be made, that "the list of indictments coming down today is HUGE!" My ears perked up and I responded "Oh!"

He said "Yeah, Orrin Hatch was listed."

I replied, "Well, Orrin Hatch is crazy."

His response? "Of course he is. So is Danny Glover!"

"Really? Danny Glover?"

"Yes, of course! Danny Glover is at the center of the whole thing. He's really behind it all..."

I mumbled some platitudes, paid for my meal and left. Bizarre.

werkz review: not worth it.

Tilda and I hit Cork last night, a new trendy wine-bar near 14th and S St. The interior design was unique, with faux-vacuum tube lighting and a mix of DC history and modern sensibility. The hostess was taking a break when we walked in, which was confusing as guests were piling up without a clear exit, but eventually we were seated.

The trouble? The wine. Why go to a wine bar for wine that tastes, well, ordinary? The food, sadly, also didn't measure up to Vinoteca's fare, which was disappointing, considering the latter was far cheaper and has much worse decor.

In the end, if you're on 14th and you want some wine in a cool, interesting designed space, save your money and your pride and hit St. Ex, which has calmed down recently to allow more breathing room upstairs.

Was dreadfully boring.

For a President who's run roughshod over Congress for years...it was lacking any sort of grand vision. The state of our nation, it seems, is not great.

This cartoon is amusing, but the point is not entirely valid. Let's check the results from Obama's huge SC win

About seven in 10 white voters said they would be satisfied if Obama became the nominee; eight in 10 African Americans would be happy with Clinton as the party's choice. But here, too, there were differences in levels of enthusiasm. More than eight in 10 black voters said they would be "very satisfied" with Obama as the party's nominee, but 38 percent of white voters made the same statement.

So at 70% of voters would be happy if the other person was nominated. That sounds about right: there are always a few crazies on both sides, but that should increase as the nomination rolls around. The GOP side...well, I don't feel is the same at all.

I think Marc nails it.

But meters are coming, eventually, and now Fenty has scaled back the fares the city originally announced--and substantially so. Gone are the rush hour and additional passenger surcharges, and down, down come the initial fee and the snow emergency fee. If you're a cabbie in this town, the concept of meters was rough enough, given that they will likely diminish or eliminate Washington's grand tradition of owner-driven independent hacking in favor of the chain operations that dominate the suburban cab business. But now the proposed flag fare drops from $4 to $3 and the other pieces of the overall fare will substantially lower cabbies' income.

Check it out. The comments are rabid against him...I've never seen such venom directed towards a single group of people.

Now should be working...there are still a few bugs to work out, but I think the section links are at least functional.

Just read it. Bizarre.

Sometimes I enjoy my job a great deal. This is cool.

I think that the following picture is a great image of german-american relationships:

Von Braun is the stereotypical German, with Gordo Cooper looking about as American as one can get.

This site is great and long overdue.

You have to see it to believe it.

My favorite? "lost interest here"

What's yours?

Is invading the purple valley. Nice!

Solomon is moving to the Times.

Finally, the worst excuse for a reporter at the WaPo can go where he belongs. Now if we could just get Michael Getler back!

Obama is hitting his stride again, and I'm looking forward to Nevada. Having said that, if Bob Johnson wants to use racial code words against him, then that's reason enough to vote for Obama. Johnson is acting for the Clinton's, but he's doing Senator Clinton a disservice.

And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood –­ and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book –­ when they have been involved.

Riiiight. You were insulted? Seriously.

This site is simply too disturbing for me to grasp.

My god. This is just shocking

I always liked President Payne a great deal. He was hired to be a big fundraiser, and did a great job. I'm not sure why people knocked him.

We came in second. I'm obviously not happy about that, but seeing Obama's speech, I'm reminded by why I'm supporting him.

On to SC!

The trouble I have with stories like this has nothing to do with accuracy or the media at all:

But I'm not focusing on the accuracy of horse-race predictions here, but instead, on the fact that the traveling press corps endlessly imposes its own narrative on the election, thereby completely excluding from all coverage plainly credible candidates they dislike (such as Edwards) while breathlessly touting the prospects of the candidates of whom they are enamored. Their predictions (i.e., preferences and love affairs) so plainly drive their press coverage -- the candidates they love are lauded as likely winners while the ones they hate are ignored or depicted as collapsing -- which in turn influences the election in the direction they want, making their predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies.

My problem is that this is accurate yet Democrats often have so much trouble figuring out how it works.

If the Media love unfettered access, and the Media love to predict who will win and the Media are able to anoint the next president, then why aren't we better at working them?

I could, and did, say in the past that Hillary Clinton would be a great president but that, since the media dislike her, would be a poor general election candidate. Obama, by contrast, is loved by the media.

And there you have it: if Democrats were smart, we'd always choose the media savvy pol to run against the crusty, whiny GOP idiot. Instead of whining, why don't we recognize media bias and use to elect progressive, intelligent, hard-working officials!

Is that too much to ask?

New Hampshire is tonight, but the narrative has already been written.

So all eyes are on NH. As predicted, the bounce favors Obama greatly. I think this Post article pointed out something a little more odd:

"Republicans tend to go with the early front-runners whereas Democratic front-runners, barring vice presidents like [Walter] Mondale and [Al] Gore, tend to fall by the wayside" in nomination races, said Berggren, who published his findings about the patterns in Democratic and Republican primaries in Presidential Studies Quarterly. "Since 1952 to 2004, with the exception of 1964, Republicans have had a Nixon, a Dole or a Bush on their national ticket."

Seriously? 3 Families always on the ticket? That's just bizarre. Really bizarre.

And yes, if you notice I'm quiet, it's because I don't want anything to change. Obama is looking better and better every day, in words and action. In the last debate, both Edwards and Obama made the choice clear: either you're voting for the status quo, or for change. (How that change manifests itself is interesting, as detailed in this Wapo piece.

For more fun, check out what the markets are saying.

I was, thankfully, wrong.

Obama's victory came after the longest, costliest and most intensely fought campaign in the history of the Iowa caucuses. The year-long competition produced a huge turnout that temporarily swamped some precincts and reflected the energy and enthusiasm among Democratic voters determined to recapture the White House in November.

Party officials said turnout exceeded 239,000, far above the 124,000 who participated four years ago and eclipsing even the campaigns' most optimistic forecasts.

With momentum, New Hampshire is the last state that matters, in my opinion.

Is tonight. 4 years ago I was...well, the caucus hadn't taken place yet. Let's look back

The real story should be why we placed third when our own internal polling had us ahead. Our ones were soft is the simplest explanation. (Ones are people rated as "strong Dean supporters" when identified...Fives are strongly for someone else and threes are neutral.) We had a strategy to get tons of people who hadn't participated in the caucuses to show up and vote for us. Well, tons of people did show up. Attendance was one of the highest ever. Those newbies just didn't vote for us...they voted for Kerry or Edwards. Another factor was that Kucinich supporters went for Edwards, after the two campaigns worked out a strategy beforehand. Now I feel the same way about Kucinich people as I did about Nader people last year. But finally, and more importantly, our ads were awful. We had an army of people on the ground, but voters weren't being convinced by us because ads had already told them that Dr. Dean was going to "privatize social security" (someone actually told me this! an Iowa voter!) and raise taxes and end democracy as we know it. And our rebuttal ads had the good doctor in front of a white screen talking calmly. It was very lame.

I'll predict right now that it'll be Edwards/Obama/Hilary. We'll see though...the softness of support seems lower than in previous years, but both Obama and Hilary are trying the Dean approach of "getting out new voters" which just doesn't work, in Iowa. Let's recap, Elftor style. Yeah

If any dc residents want to meet up and watch the fireworks, buzz me.

Only 400+ e-mail messages to go through. Fun!

I'm out of commission until Wednesday. So light posting, okay? I leave you with this, a picture my friend took, of a building that's on my way to work:

And yes, I'm super happy not to be working right now.

And yes, I'd rather be here:

Sadly, I'm not. It feels a long time ago.

It's been one of those weeks:

Yeah, that about sums it up.

I saw I Am Legend over the weekend. It was good. Not great, (the ending was a weak spot) but entertaining.

Werkz advice: worth seeing in the theater.

This is how you do CYA in the government properly: ask your lawyers to ensure that the entire chain of command is implicated.

Obama on why America matters in the world:

Still, Obama stands by the universality of the American proposition: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness under a constitutional government of limited powers. "I believe in American exceptionalism," he told me, but not one based on "our military prowess or our economic dominance."

Rather, he insisted, "our exceptionalism must be based on our Constitution, our principles, our values and our ideals. We are at our best when we are speaking in a voice that captures the aspirations of people across the globe."

An important stance.

They just bought sharebuilder.

Cool.

One of the few cool things about capitalism is that when the tools for the rich are pushed down to regular people, sites like ING and Prosper can be built to enable even ordinary people to reap larger rewards on their money.

Go support the other side of the river by voting for Anacostia in the HGTV sweepstakes.

Go. Now! Vote!

I've noticed several features aren't working properly on the site in IE7. I'll be working to get them resolved as quickly as possible, so hang in there.

This is disgusting

Little Rock, Ark -- As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee aggressively pushed for the early release of a convicted rapist despite being warned by numerous women that the convict had sexually assaulted them or their family members, and would likely strike again. The convict went on to rape and murder at least one other woman.

Confidential Arkansas state government records, including letters from these women, obtained by the Huffington Post and revealed publicly for the first time, directly contradict the version of events now being put forward by Huckabee.

Huckabee is toast in the general.

Really? You didn't see the NIE report?

Bizarre.

Kuhn: I don’t know to what extent you have been briefed or been able to take a look at the NIE report that came out yesterday ...

Huckabee: I’m sorry?

Kuhn: The NIE report, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Have you been briefed or been able to take a look at it —

Huckabee: No.

Kuhn: Have you heard of the finding?

Huckabee: No.

Crazy. Kind of like Bush himself.

Toles nails it:

Greg expounds

If she points out the obvious -- that the story might have done more than just reprint Obama's denials of the rumors and instead might have come out and said they were false -- it's not impossible that WaPo's editors will feel compelled to take this extra step in future stories. In which case all our yelling might end up paying off in some small way.

Nothing is worse than having the truth portrayed as a shade of gray.

Yes, it's yet another web-based Presidential pick system

The nice thing about this one is that you can select the issues that matter most to you, rather than simply a grab bag. My results?

1. Barack Obama: 87%
2. Chris Dodd: 85%
3. John Edwards: 83%

The only thing I really disagreed about with Obama on the issues I selected was the re-authorization of the Patriot Act. And the only real reason I wouldn't reauthorize it would be because it has a number of bad provisions in it. If it were to be totally re-worked (keeping the good provision) I wouldn't have such a problem with it.

Who did you guys back?

The clubman is back.

It's pretty sweet looking, from the suicide doors to the barn doors. Thoughts?

Someone is throwing down the gauntlet.

Senseless

The witch is dead

Lott, the minority whip, made the decision over the Thanksgiving weekend with his family in Pascagoula, Miss., according to a senior Republican insider. Lott's move shocked Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have seen a wave of veterans announce their decision to not seek re-election next year as the GOP looks increasingly certain to remain in the minority. But Lott is the most senior Republican to retire, and his decision comes barely a year after he won re-election to a six-year term.

He's the #2 in the Senate! The #2!

I've long derided the New York Times, but today is a landmark day in awfulness

Republican authoritarian warmongers who swagger around in tough guy costumes -- Friedman's Cheney and Dowd's Giuliani -- are Real Men whom we need to keep us safe. Men who don't crave war are faggots and aggressive Democratic women are unshaven, threatening bitches. That's the core belief of the Beltway Religion of Seriousness, as practiced on Sunday so vividly by these NYT columnists.

You have to read the whole thing to truly appreciate it. Dowd and Friedman are doing a disservice to the country, and to their paper.

Contrast that to Robinson in today's Post, or even Cohen. Not our two best columnists (Robinson is consistently good...but Cohen is decidedly mixed) but a far greater performance from them.

I think people tend to underestimate what winning Iowa represents, at least in terms of media coverage. That's why I'm excited to see Obama is the #2 choice for many Iowa voters:

In another positive shift for Obama, 55 percent now see him as their first or second choice, an important trend in a state where a person's second choice can matter and voters often switch their support at the last minute.

According to Democratic Party rules, candidates must draw at least 15 percent at each caucus site for the votes to count; if that fails to happen, their supporters often throw their votes to a more viable contender. In this poll, 34 percent of those voters would make Obama their second choice, 28 percent Edwards and 15 percent Clinton.

Most supporters of the three front-runners said they will "definitely" support their chosen candidate on Jan. 3. About two in 10 said there is a "good chance" that they will change their minds. That level of certainty suggests the race will continue to be close in the weeks ahead.

I can easily see Edwards supporters arguing, in a caucus, that their candidate is the most electable. Obama supporters can argue that he represents the best change for a sea change in Washington. But I still don't see what the argument is for Clinton, against those two arguments, unless it is for Washington "experience", which isn't a quality Iowa voters tend to go for.

werkz advice: don't see it

i expected beowulf to be a classic action/adventure yarn, something akin to conan. it is not. why?

• it is computer animated, something i didn't expect
• the screenwriting is awful
• the plot (regardless of its fidelity to the original) is ridiculous

I'm the first person to say computer animation has come a long way since the beginning, but in every minute, for every 5 seconds of "oh, this looks like a real movie" there were 55 seconds of "wow, this looks really fake and cheesy".

• Anthony Hopkins' face = very realistic
• Every woman = an extra from Shrek

Do yourself a favor and skip it.

I think Cillizza nails it in terms of debate coverage.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Clinton's performance in tonight's debate will quiet (if not totally silence) talk that her campaign is struggling. Clinton set the tone early on by pushing back aggressively against Obama and Edwards and, in our mind, got the best of both exchanges. She was clearly aided by a sympathetic crowd who decided early on that they weren't interested in watching the candidates fight. As a result, Clinton largely got a pass on her three biggest weaknesses: her equivocation on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, her vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and her vote in favor of the 2002 use of force resolution against Iraq. On a question about playing the gender card -- another potential problem area -- Clinton was clearly prepared and delivered her line of the night: "People are not attacking me because I am a woman, they are attacking me because I am ahead."

Barack Obama: Yes, we know he fumbled the same question (driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants) that Clinton muffed in the last debate. And, yes, of course he should have known that sort of question was coming and been better prepared to answer it cleanly. But, put that flub aside and Obama offered himself as a credible and -- more importantly -- safe alternative to Clinton in last night's debate. The first 15 minutes were dominated by a back and forth between he and Clinton (a good thing for a campaign trying to turn this into a two-person race) and for much of the rest of the debate Obama offered his "we can do more" vision succinctly and forcefully. "Don't keep on assuming we can't do something," Obama scolded Blitzer at one point. "I am running for president because I think we can do it."

Joe Biden: We can't help it, we like the guy. Biden is regularly the life of these debates -- launching self deprecating one-liners one minute and riffing on how he was introducing legislation before some of the candidates on the stage were even born the next. Biden is at his best when talking foreign policy and he got plenty of opportunities to do that last night. He spoke eloquently about the dangers posed by Iran and scored points on Pakistan by noting that he had spoken to both President Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto before President Bush had.

Edwards just didn't get enough time. Richardson was good, but I'm not sure what alternative he's presenting. Dodd wasn't good at all, and Kucinich was, well, Kucinich.

A couple of the softballs about women seemed ridiculously easy for Clinton to knock into the upper deck, especially with the favorable crowd...and many of the questions were straight out of a GOP playbook, from a wedge issue on immigration, to constant mention of abortions, to a trick question on teacher's unions. CNN really needed to decide whether they wanted a firefight, or a civil debate. I think most people watching would've preferred the former.

I'm not supporting Hilary. Why? Because the media hates her, and continually comes up with horrible opinion pieces like this, from David Broder:

No one can reasonably expect that partnership to end should Hillary Clinton be elected president. But the country must decide whether it is comfortable with such a sharing of the power and authority of the highest office in the land.

Really? Really? Why would the country be uncomfortable with having Bill Clinton in the White House?

But what really burned me up was the caption "Two-headed Clinton Monster" someone at washingtonpost.com added to the heading. Later (when I posted this up) I noticed it had been removed...thank goodness Media Matters caught the idiotic move and archived it:

Washingtonpost.com featured Broder's column in the opinions box on its homepage with the headline "Billary Burnout?" The caption, accompanying a picture of Bill and Hillary Clinton, read: "The prospect of a two-headed Clinton monster as president could test the tolerance of the American people":

Ugh.

Greg Sargent outlines some more thoughts

How to explain this weird yearning for the voters to see Bill as Hillary's albatross? Maybe it's just that pundits keep hearing other pundits say this and just mindlessly repeat it. Or maybe a return by Bill to the White House would represent some kind of defeat for the pundit establishment. In the late nineties your pundits were deeply invested in the priggish conviction that Monica-gate would convince voters that Bill was thoroughly unfit for the Presidency -- but voters roundly rejected this view, and continued to reject it for years after. Now we're in round two, and this time, by golly, the voters really will see that the pundits were right -- they'll finally realize just how bad Bill was for the country.

It just doesn't make any sense. It does, however, make we want to support Hilary...and simultaneously argue for an Obama ticket, simply because he won't start out with so much media blowhards gunning for him. Which will mean an easier path in the general election, and once in office.

If Senator Clinton wins the nomination, I'll back her proudly, and hope she wins the White House. Because these sort of attacks are completely baseless.

Everyone needs to read this

The truth is that if you're an educated and reasonably well-off person who has time free to read about politics during the day at TPM you very likely have one or more pieces of ID, in all likelihood a drivers' license. But among minorities, low-income voters, the young and the old that's often not the case. And those who don't have acceptable voter IDs are disproportionately Democrats.

Remember, the point of voter ID laws is not to eliminate fraud it is to eliminate Democratic voters. So if your voter ID law disenfranchises 10% of voters and 80% of those are Democrats you've just handed yourself several percentage points that can win you a bunch of close elections -- it's certainly easier than winning them the old fashioned way.

People often spout off about politics in a vacuum, as if one decision or another was purely based on science or common sense, when in fact, it tends to help one side primarily. Voter "Fraud" ID laws tend to help the GOP by a significant percentage because Democrats tend to be less likely to always have a driver's license.

Put in perspective, you don't need a driver's license to vote: you merely need to be registered and to prove you are who you say you are. The number of people who are valid voters who are turned away from casting valid votes is not trivial. And it is not a group of people who favor the Republican party.

Conversely, there really isn't an issue with fraud. Most people who show up to the polls without a valid ID are not running to multiple poll locations in order to "vote early, vote often". If you're not on the registered voter list, you can't vote anyway (you'll receive a special ballot) so the odds of massive fraud are quite small, especially in comparison to simply denying people their valid right to vote.

The real question is this: why are we making the barrier to entry higher, rather than lower? From poll-taxes to moter-voter laws, America has always moved towards more permissive voter rights legislation, not less. That has kept our democracy in good shape, throughout the years.

Milbank, as usual, is in fine form even in video format.

All I want is a simple turkey, cranberry and wensleydale sandwich.

ABP used to make them...but now I can't find them! Where can I get one?!

Tilda pointed out to me the new 2008 model from Ford

Ford doesn't build Mustangs to fly. That was true back in 1968 when Steve McQueen sent a GT 390 soaring over the hills of San Francisco in Bullitt. And it's true of the new 315-horsepower 2008 Mustang Bullitt.

Go check out the video!

Bush now trumps Nixon's unpopularity:

Meanwhile, Bush reached an unwelcome record. By 64%-31%, Americans disapprove of the job he is doing. For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they "strongly disapprove" of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.

Over 50% strongly disapprove. Wow.

I'd never been there until this weekend. But it's much larger and cooler than I imagined.

There's a huge amphitheater surrounding the tomb of the unknown soldier that's amazing looking. It's definitely more impressive than the old Lee house onsite.

The only downside was that all of JFK's quotes were literally rubbed off to the point that one couldn't read them.

Got gmail 2.0 yet?

I do!

It doesn't look much different...but under the hood, who knows?

The mere possibility is horrific

AT THE MOSUL DAM, Iraq -- The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. officials.

Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. "The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability," in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.

Half a million dead. That's staggering. That's more than the state of Wyoming, or around the total amount of residents in DC.

Also enjoyed over the weekend was, by far, the most depressing corn maze I've ever seen. Tilda and I drove by a large farm and noticed the sign for the maze.

We got out, and immediately noticed that the "maze" was composed of Corn barely a foot high, with pathways entirely of mud. Apparently, corn has been having a bad year, and this was the result. The maze itself was so forlorn (it was about two football fields long, which made it all the more pathetic that each stalk of corn was barely up to my knees) I can't show it here.

Instead, just look at the poor animal they had penned up to attract children:

He was obviously the highlight, other than the mini-tractor pull...

So some guy I know sent me this short video of a van he saw in Maryland over the weekend. It's your standard mini-van, but on the back, in white letters it said it was the DUSTBUSTER. Oh, and it had one key after-market accessory:

That's right: a spoiler!

After a training shortened week, where else to go but Piney Point!

This is a shot of the giant petroleum tube going into the deep channel of the Bay.

And here's the dock leading to it all:

Nice, eh? Just wait till you see the dustbuster...

party: excellent

training for three days: much less so

Fill the void, guys!

Go visit it. Then vote for Obama if you're like me.

The results are announced in November, I believe.

The lesson of Xerox PARC: take a good idea, copy it, and make it better.

Nokia gets it.

My only worry? The "flip it over and the alarm turns off" idea. Now I'll never get up!

A strange day, really, when I'm up so early that I see a Maroon 5 video channeling that other Ed.

Odd

This "Blog" has to be one of the more amusing typographical commentaries I've ever seen.

I don't know what kind of towing-like activity will take place, but I wouldn't stick around if I were you. Or if I were Keith, who took this picture.

You have to see it to believe it.

Again, if you haven't been watching layer tennis each Friday, you need to.

Week one was great.

Is it true that devoting two years to the development of the web application Mint has left Inman's visual skills atrophied? So says one inside source whose name I promised not to reveal, who was Kevin Cornell. Is it true that the funnier the comic strip, the more fragile the psyche of the artist, and thus the more prone to crack under the pressure of competition?

Week Two less so.

I can't wait to see week three with Kottke commenting. Although, seriously, Gruber's points were spot-on.

I'm always curious about stories like this

The electric bill was $1,775,194.96 last year: nearly $1,400 per employee.

Workers worried about global warming -- or Metro's budget deficit -- might be inclined to turn the lights off when they're not needed, but they can't. Metro offices have no individual switches.

Used to be, the lights were on all the time. About two decades ago, Metro installed a computer system to control them, which was considered energy-efficient at that time, officials said.

Needless to say, no one thinks that anymore.

"That wouldn't be efficient. That's obvious," said Jeff Niesz, business development director for Pepco Energy Services, which Metro has hired to reduce energy costs.

$1,400 per employee?? That seems incredible. Especially in a modern office building. I'm certain that several of my prior homes have had awful insulation and almost no energy efficiency. Yet the highest I've ever seen my bill go was to $200 per person for the worst month in the summer. So how is it possible that per employee, Metro is spending close to $100 a month on electricity?

So the more I thought about the lack of DRM, the more I realized that its demise would have severe implications for the way culture is consumed in America.

DRM, in a nutshell, restricts what we can do with our content. This could mean fast-forwarding through commercials, or finding a unique song and forwarding it to a friend. In either circumstance, what the customer wants to do is being defeated by existing DRM technology.

Without DRM, then, what would the world look like? I'd like to look at the music perspective first. It's not an idle question, with Amazon now selling DRM-free music and it calls to mind Benjamin's thoughts, years earlier.

Without DRM to prevent people from copying music, what would the music scene look like? Obviously, artists would still need to be paid to perform, but without a large recorded music scene, most would earn money strictly from live performances. This is, ironically, much like the situation today where large labels make most of their profits from CDs and artists receive the majority of their funds from performances. So the sea change really would be to simply cut the bottom out of CD purchases, or even online music.

The repercussions would be large: without cd sales or online music sales, artists would be forced to focus almost exclusively on live performances. Versions of songs that were superior would almost immediately displace inferior versions, as fans would have access to the entire catalog of music. As the cost of production decreased, the ability of lower-level bands to achieve high-production results (who needs a studio when you have a garage?) would level the playing field between all artists.

In short, it could be a very good time to be a music fan, for artists and fans.

The only downside I see is that as live events become the main place for artists to perform (for money), the price of entrance goes up significantly, much like attempting to see my local football team play. Then again, watching a sold out football team play on TV is often as good, if not better, than going to the game itself. (Especially if the fans are shelling out hundreds of dollars for tickets!)

Best of all, because the playing field will be level once more, small artists who are good will be able to shine without large studio support. This will mean that artists who are pushing the envelopes, rather than merely mainstream, should flourish.

The law will be slow to catch up, and royalties will be a tangled web, but I can foresee the future of music and it's a much greater place than today, thanks to the death of DRM.

There is some sort of law, let us call it: edward's maxim, that an inverse relationship exists between the boredom of others and the labor of y.t.

Thus, this is for you.

I myself don't have time for such distractions. I barely have time to eat anymore. Work. Work. Work.

Go see what John Gruber said.

It remains to be seen how well Amazon can market their MP3 store, and how quickly they can raise awareness about just how cool it is. But in terms of online store technology, it’s already in the bag. This is what Amazon does; it’s exactly the sort of business that makes Amazon Amazon.

In fact, the tragedy is that Amazon could have built this store 10 years ago — the music labels simply wouldn’t allow it. What’s happened now is that the music label executives — at least at Universal and EMI — have finally gotten it through their thick skulls that it’s the iPod that drives iTunes sales, not the other way around. Apple’s FairPlay DRM isn’t (at least primarily) some sort of lock-in scheme to force people to buy iPods; FairPlay was a requirement stipulated by the labels, without which they would not have allowed Apple to sell their music at all.

I intend to check out the Amazon mp3 store this evening. Maybe even purchase a few tracks of DRM-free goodness...

DRM is dead

Get to it! Amazonmp3.com

Digital Rights Management or "DRM" commonly refers to software that is designed to control or limit how a file can be played, copied, downloaded, shared, or accessed. DRM-free means that the MP3 files you purchase from Amazon.com do not contain any software that will restrict your use of the file. When you make a purchase from the Amazon MP3 Music Downloads store, you are accepting and bound by the Amazon MP3 Music Downloads Terms of Use.

Nice to see. I'll be posting some thoughts about the implications of a DRM-free world shortly.

This is not what my apartment looks like at the moment.

But it was what it looked like in the past.

Pushing Daisies comes out next week.

In an amusing aside, while clicking on the creator, I discovered this gem about the creator

Fuller is one of several openly gay creative people...

Of course, the ellipsis includes the name of "another" openly gay creative person, followed by the actual important point, namely, that said people have "have created and produced shows in the last several years." Oh, okay, right. Important point for wikipedia to note, don't you think?

Also amusing: instead of focusing on real details, most of the Fuller article seems devoted to whether he's dorky enough. As in, which version of Star Trek he enjoys best. Blech.

Wow.

Worth watching. The "B in Econ 101" is priceless...and that's in the first 10 seconds!

More pix you say?

I guess the gun-theme was more in keeping with yesterday. Oh, well. Also, note Tilda's careful camouflage...a feminine version of realtree.

The scurvy dog Brad asked for me pix, so here they be:

This be my new port!

Yargh, it be, once again, talk like a pirate day! for all you landlubbers!

ARGGGGHHH!

Want to create a quick website? Jottit!

I'm back on the grid at The Rutledge Suite.

Return of Layer Tennis

Meet Virginia's next senator.

With Governor Warner and and Senator Webb in office, Virginia would return to its Democratic roots. (We've always been a D state with the exception for a brief period in the late 20th century)

Okay, all you econ people...what's the name for this particular game?

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.

An interesting article, to be sure.

A somewhat enjoyable waste of time.

I'm right here.

You?

And yes, many of the questions were poorly worded and idiotic.

If you haven't read it already, head over to TNR to check out Chait's finest work from his new book:

American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane. The scope of their triumph is breathtaking. Over the course of the last three decades, they have moved from the right-wing fringe to the commanding heights of the national agenda. Notions that would have been laughed at a generation ago--that cutting taxes for the very rich is the best response to any and every economic circumstance or that it is perfectly appropriate to turn the most rapacious and self-interested elements of the business lobby into essentially an arm of the federal government--are now so pervasive, they barely attract any notice.

The "Big Con" as the book is called, is sure to be great. Let's check out the famous Laffer curve portion:

That fateful night, Wanniski and Laffer were laboring with little success to explain the new theory to Cheney. Laffer pulled out a cocktail napkin and drew a parabola-shaped curve on it. The premise of the curve was simple. If the government sets a tax rate of zero, it will receive no revenue. And, if the government sets a tax rate of 100 percent, the government will also receive zero tax revenue, since nobody will have any reason to earn any income. Between these two points--zero taxes and zero revenue, 100 percent taxes and zero revenue--Laffer's curve drew an arc. The arc suggested that at higher levels of taxation, reducing the tax rate would produce more revenue for the government.

At that moment, there were a few points that Cheney might have made in response. First, he could have noted that the Laffer Curve was not, strictly speaking, correct. Yes, a zero tax rate would obviously produce zero revenue, but the assumption that a 100-percent tax rate would also produce zero revenue was, just as obviously, false. Surely Cheney was familiar with communist states such as the Soviet Union, with its 100 percent tax rate. The Soviet revenue scheme may not have represented the cutting edge in economic efficiency, but it nonetheless managed to collect enough revenue to maintain an enormous military, enslave Eastern Europe, fund ambitious projects such as Sputnik, and so on. Second, Cheney could have pointed out that, even if the Laffer Curve was correct in theory, there was no evidence that the U.S. income tax was on the downward slope of the curve--that is, that rates were then high enough that tax cuts would produce higher revenue.

I've never believed the Laffer curve. Why? Because as a good capitalist, I always want to be earning money. If I'm making $500k a year, and I'm in a (fictional!) 90% tax bracket, that would mean that I'd only earn $1,000 for each $10,000 I earned above the rate. I'm sure most Laffer curve proponents would agree that a 90% tax rate for all income if one is making 500k a year would certainly be on the "high" end of the curve.

Yet when you think about it, if I was making 500k a year, would I really stop working because every 10k worth of income was reduced to 1k? Or would I simply find new and ingenious ways to make 100k, thus enabling me to make more money?

The idea that at a certain amount of money, Americans would say "STOP! I want to get off the capitalist carousel!" is illogical. It's far more likely that people would try to evade taxes through complicated schemes than through not working.

Let's put this another way: say I tell everyone in my office that this year, our taxes would be 50% less. Would people, newly flush with cash, work 50% harder? Because that's what the laffer curve assumes: that people work harder when they have lower taxes. (I know what you're thinking: why would people with more cash in their pockets work harder??) Conversely, if people were told that their taxes were going up, and they'd be bringing home less money, why would these people work less??

Economists always love to talk about markets, and about the invisible hand, but the truth is this: people very rarely make decisions based on tax rates, especially for those of us making less than 100k a year. Better yet, the people who DO make decisions based on tax rates almost always are doing so to make as much money as possible. The idea that even the very wealthiest would "work harder" if their taxes were lowered is ludicrous.

Americans like to make money. Period. Find me someone who says that they'd work less if their taxes went up and I'll be looking at a fool. (And no, this isn't an argument for raising taxes so much as is it an argument against idiocy. Higher taxes are no panacea, and frequently can retard growth in key areas. But as far as individuals are concerned, I've never met someone who said they'd work less to stay in a lower bracket.)

The Rutledge Suite is now open for business!

E-mail me or drop a line to come on by...

I hate the Yankees. This article comparing the all-star logo of this year to years past is a good example why.

And I love Trajan. But it has a time and place...

The Rutledge Suite is about 85% finished. Hopefully over the next two days I'll be fully moved in, at which point I'll have people drop by to check it out.

Highlights from the final move included:

1. becoming best friends with everyone at Bulk Trash due to the car I drive
2. watching a fight almost break out due to free machines being given away on craigslist
3. firing the opening salvo in my ongoing battle against kipple

The new place is certainly different from my past locations and I can't wait to show it off.

Worth watching

Remember when e-mail was fun? It's been a long time...

reduce

Really? Wow

Should Do This is pretty fun. From the good people over at the Robot Co-op.

Add something to The United States Government.

I like WaPo Radio...but even from my limited listening time, I saw this coming.

Listeners had every reason to wonder what had happened to the increased depth they had been promised. Print editors accustomed to a more serious news menu clashed with radio producers who argued that their medium required a more populist and lowbrow selection of stories. In each newsroom, too many people rolled their eyes over the cluelessness of their cross-town partners.

When the radio-side producers one morning invited on the air and lightly questioned some nutball hawking a conspiracy theory about how the U.S. government had arranged for the 9/11 attacks, editors in the Post newsroom went ballistic. Although many attempts would follow to find a happy medium between the two news sensibilities, the basic reservoir of mutual respect had dropped suddenly and permanently to a dangerous low.

This was the principle problem: the WaPo radio promised hard news, but delivered mostly soft stories. Instead of having cool stories from reporters in the field, they had puff pieces for hours at a time.

I blame the Bonneville folks.

And yes, I heard the nutball theory segment and I turned it off. It was antithetical to everything WaPo radio stood for.

This is what I don't get about this story:

How does a Senator from Idaho know about a bathroom in St. Paul's airport??

Color me confused.

It finally happened

First Rove and now Gonzales! Any bets who's next?

Here I go again!

Warming to be announced later...

This analysis is spot on:

Two points in response. The first is that I think the Democrat best positioned to deal with GOP political mobilization in a post-attack environment is going to be the one who isn't reflexively inclined to see failed Republican policies resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Americans as a political advantage for the Republicans.

The other is that I think there's a pretty clear sense in which the further one is from Bush's Iraq policy, the easier it is politically to say that the failures of Bush's national security policy should be blamed on Bush's failed policies. Obama has a straight shot ("this is why we should have fought al-Qaeda like I said") and Edwards (and Matt Yglesias) has a straightish one ("this is why we should have fought al-Qaeda like I think in retrospect") whereas I'm not 100 percent sure what the Clinton message would be. Most of all, though, I think the politics of national security call for a strong, self-confident posture that genuinely believes liberal solutions are politically saleable and substantively workable, not the kind of worry-wort attitude that says we need to cower in fear every time Republicans say "terror."

Matt gets to the heart of why I find this tripe frustrating: Hilary Clinton, while a great candidate, was simply wrong in her debate with Obama.

The American people aren't idiots, and treating them as such is a horrible position for any politician to take. Did hurricane Katrina rally people around the GOP? Has the Iraq War buoyed Republicans around the nation? I think not.

Obama has an advantage here, and needs to press it. Edwards doesn't so much, but still can claim, belatedly, that Clinton is wrong. Clinton, despite having many good policy positions, is simply wrong in this case.

You can see where this is going.

Weighs in on Senator Clinton.

The problem is not, as Clinton seemed to suggest, that anyone believes that lobbyists are evil. Of course they are not evil. Lobbyists are often among the best educated, hardest working, most sophisticated people in Washington. They know their stuff. They are fantastic at conveying the message. They are typically decent, polite and honorable people. They are not in any sense corrupt, any more than lawyers, or press secretaries, or union stewards are corrupt. They have a job; it is to persuade. The people who succeed in that job succeed because they are good at what they do.

But just because a system is populated with good people does mean the system itself is not corrupt. And the problem with this system is the way it obviously queers good judgment when so much effort by politicians must be devoted to raising money in order to keep your job.

Put differently, if there were a way to fund campaigns that wouldn't create the stain of corruption, we would still need (and want) lobbyists. Their job would be simply to make policymakers aware of the interests they represent. But just because your job is to educate politicians, it doesn't mean you have to be able to give politicians money.

I agree.

A site worth checking out.

If I hear this tripe one more time I'm going to kill someone.

A hilarious quote from his diaries:

"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this morning and...

-- Ronald Reagan in his recently published diaries, May 17, 1986.

Read the whole thing.

It's friday. Some Friday pictures are in order:

Okay. Time to rest for a bit.

I'm not sure if I buy this list of the 50 most powerful people in DC.

This wasn’t an easy choice for #1, since there’s no telling if Cheney will once again commandeer our foreign policy (as he did with Iraq) before leaving office. But Rice, the ultimate yes-woman as national-security adviser, has become a much needed check on the Office of the Vice President.

Really? Condi? Really? #1?

So Rove is gone. A happy day, all around.

Why not celebrate with some pizza?

This timeline in Iraq is sobering.

Simply cool

I played a single round of katamari last night.

It made me wistfully recall when I still had free time.

Is Obama going out on a limb? I don't think so. Neither does Oliver

Yes, I finished Harry Potter. Yes, it was quite good.

Yes, I saw the latest Bourne. It was also quite good.

My old prof opines about SC

Grant Farred: I'm quite sure there are people who feel they came to athletic intelligence with ESPN, but I remember the moment I got turned off by it, which was when it got taken over by Disney [in 1996]. It mostly became promo ads after that. There used to be something to the idea that ESPN was an upstart and found its way to the top with wit and intelligence.

It's weird to think that over the course of the past 10 years, I've gone from watching SC to Countdown with the same level of interest.

It's worth reading

Overall I didn't see anything too crazy in this, a well-thought out policy speech. He didn't call for the overthrow of Pakistan or for us to pull back from the fight against terrorism.

When you travel to the world’s trouble spots as a United States Senator, much of what you see is from a helicopter. So you look out, with the buzz of the rotor in your ear, maybe a door gunner nearby, and you see the refugee camp in Darfur, the flood near Djibouti, the bombed out block in Baghdad. You see thousands of desperate faces.

Al Qaeda’s new recruits come from Africa and Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Many come from disaffected communities and disconnected corners of our interconnected world. And it makes you stop and wonder: when those faces look up at an American helicopter, do they feel hope, or do they feel hate?

To be an America we're proud of again, Obama posits that we need to be creating allies, not enemies. It won't be entirely just a military or economic solution. But it will be a new direction.

With the party over and Brad departing, it is time for ascetic Ed to return.

Substitute n95 for e70 and you have this maddox article

Enjoy...while I go grab ssh for my N95!

No, I don't have a new house to live in yet.

Yes, I'm tired of you asking.

Sometimes, re-reading this old essay seems appropriate.

You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office - six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio." Will the clerk quietly say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task?

Yes, the inspiration was a lie. But hell, that's what the American Dream was founded upon...an idea that never met up with reality. There's nothing wrong with that: it created the most powerful nation in the world. It created an ideal we all have to keep striving to reach, even as it lets us down.

Now about the work environment...

From the MtP listserver:

Last night I came home to find two large stuffed animals in our front yard. I brought them inside in case it rained, so if you are missing a large white/gray shaggy dog and a white tiger that growls, please let me know. They both still have tags on and look fairly new.

A tiger that growls, eh?

This article about bias is well worth a read.

The point is simple: people are biased, and not because there's a good reason to be.

The results of the millions of tests that have been taken anonymously on the Harvard Web site and other sites hint at the potential impact of the research. Analyses of tens of thousands of tests found 88 percent of white people had a pro-white or anti-black implicit bias; nearly 83 percent of heterosexuals showed implicit biases for straight people over gays and lesbians; and more than two-thirds of non-Arab, non-Muslim volunteers displayed implicit biases against Arab Muslims.

Overall, according to the researchers, large majorities showed biases for Christians over Jews, the rich over the poor, and men's careers over women's careers. The results contrasted sharply with what most people said about themselves -- that they had no biases. The tests also revealed another unsettling truth: Minorities internalized the same biases as majority groups. Some 48 percent of blacks showed a pro-white or anti-black bias; 36 percent of Arab Muslims showed an anti-Muslim bias; and 38 percent of gays and lesbians showed a bias for straight people over homosexuals.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Why? Because the non-surprise is this:

The voluntary questionnaires have allowed Banaji and her colleagues to arrive at one of the most provocative conclusions of the research: Conservatives, on average, show higher levels of bias against gays, blacks and Arabs than liberals, says Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and a principal IAT researcher with Greenwald and Banaji. In turn, bias against blacks and Arabs predicts policy preferences on affirmative action and racial profiling. This suggests that implicit attitudes affect more than snap judgments -- they play a role in positions arrived at after careful consideration.

Surprised?

Cate sent me a link to this artist and I was intrigued.

Cool, eh? Click through for more...

Saw this on TPM, but it's worth posting:

This is fun. Watch these two successive promos for shows on Fox News Channel and tell me whether you can figure out which is the 'real' news show and which is the 'fake' news show ...

Hilarious!

Virginia is finally, back to trending Democrat. Some key graphs:

As will be explored in subsequent articles about the survey, Virginia has a higher concentration of true swing voters than the nation as a whole, and the state is less likely to be home to those who are not interested in politics.

Virginia's independents, 35 percent of whom live in Northern Virginia, have been steadily trending Democratic since the start of the decade, often providing the margin of victory to winning candidates.

Partisans are still mostly supporting their side, at least in Virginia. But, the important point is this:

Although independents are dissatisfied with Bush, the poll indicates they are open to and even prefer the GOP's position on some key issues.

Independents rank the two parties evenly when asked which party better represents their views on managing the economy. They also side with the GOP on tax policy and give it an advantage of 14 percentage points on the question of which party would be better at fighting terrorism.

Wonder why? This might help.

Politicians do best when they play on emotion, not on logic. And Democrats in Virginia have started to realize this...

So I'm on the bus yesterday afternoon, which was crowded but not unnaturally so, sitting near the rear doors. A stop comes up and a man gets up and walks to the rear doors in anticipation, with a few minutes still to go.

Spritz! Spritz!

I notice that another man, who had been sitting nearby, has removed a small blue canister which he has used to spray the back of the other man's butt.

You read that correctly.

The entire rear of the bus reacted in shock. First there were whispers, then some muffled laughter, as it became clear the sprayee had no idea he'd been covered with mist. By the time he exited the bus, several people, y.t. included, were laughing pretty hard.

The sprayer stayed on the bus for another few stops, during which most of the people who'd seen the incident left. Finally, around Lamont and 16th, he disembarked. As I was talking about him, my eyes caught sight of him patiently waiting at the light to cross. Behind a man in a red shirt. Sure enough, his arm extended, blue bottle in hand...

Spritz! Spritz!

Another image from the weekend:

It almost makes me wish to remove the height limit in DC. Then I realize I prefer the difference...each city is special on its own.

A spontaneous trip to NYC was in the works this weekend, spearheaded by Fincher (and Mr. Fincher!), with appearances by Brad and Tilda and y.t. of course.

Pix follow, of course:

A mural by some guy.

You don't see these in DC!

Of course, the most spectacular views were to be found on the roofdeck of 230 fifth, which sadly, didn't play to the strengths of my camera. Suffice it to say that unlike the narrator of the linked piece, we managed to:

• get in the club within minutes
• get some beverages within no time
• obtain a table equally easily
• roll upstairs to the fabulous rooftop with no effort
• steal a "reserved" table without breaking a sweat
• get every drink on the roof comp'd

Yes, there were palm trees mixed with evergreens; besides this oddity the place was great.

From the sushi dinner beforehand (a place I wish I had taken some pix of; including a great ice sculpture!), to the halal lamb in the late morning hours, a fun foody time all around.

The absence of text hit home when I read about the increasing numbers of "usability experts" being hired by major corporations these days in The Inferior Paper during product design.

The goal, of course, is laudable: having devices work as they intended makes everything work smoother. Yet boiling everything down to IKEA instructions inevitably allows people to gloss over complex concepts.

Ideally, there'd be a healthy mix of pictures + words to allow people to learn concepts. The inevitable result, however, of textless learning is that people train themselves in a manner which prohibits new growth.

If I have a new phone, and someone shows me the cool features on the phone, I'll assume that there are no additional features. If, however, I'm forced to wade through a manual to learn of the original features, I might be exposed to a greater variety of concepts and ideas. There simply isn't a way, with pictures, to explain complex concepts as concisely as with text.

Taking things a step further, the inclusion of text in most instructions allows people to grasp how something works, rather than merely that it works. This is important, because as my own experience with IT people has shown, curious and incurious IT people tend to be divided by a neat line: the idea that tweaking something will "break" something else. Users who have learned a concept as a series of steps, absent any meta-level idea of what is going on, often assume incorrectly that deviation from the series will result in a problem. A more text-driven approach, by focusing on concepts rather than operational learning, lets people experiment more, which fosters even more learning.

My worry is that, ten years down the road, product design has become advanced enough that the curious are discouraged from poking around. Even now, most products with advanced features, like computers, are dumbed down to ease the greatest common denominator. In a rush to simplify then, devices which can do so much more are walled off (much like the original Mac's refusal to provide a command line interface) in the interest of reducing problems.

Will the youth of tomorrow be allowed to experiment? Hopefully. Will they learn merely graphically? Hopefully not.

Originally, I thought the problem was that there's a direct correlation between ease of use and understanding. Easy to use products (like microwaves, toasters, etc) didn't require much knowledge to operate, so they didn't force any lower level understanding of how things worked.

But the converse then would be true: and difficult to use devices (programming a vcr, or a scientific calculator, or yes, a computer) would help people understand how they worked better. My own personal experience with many people working in IT showed the error of that logic.

Upon further reflection I realized that the people who were IT-oriented and yet somewhat dim were the perfect lens to view the issue. Why would someone, who had worked for so long, with a product so complex, still be fundamentally ignorant about how things worked?

Almost all the IT people I've met who aren't very savvy display a similar trait: they're fine as long as the subject area they see is a familiar one. But if things stray too far afield, they develop an almost cargo-cultish mentality towards technology, where things "simply aren't done" because they didn't work in the past. Complex concepts are boiled down to smaller items, so a particular task (say, creating a user) becomes a series of simple choices "click here, move there, click there" completely devoid of context. This lack of context, almost invariably, coincides with a black-box nature of the process involved. Things "simply happen" rather than be caused by users.

The thread, between the lack of knowledge and the task being performed, is the interface itself. A slick, intuitive GUI, lets people do their jobs much faster. Yet it also allows people to be lazy and elide over what is taking place when they perform certain operations.

What's missing? Simple: text.

So I'm sitting here, at work, performing some mind-numbing-but-necessary patching of servers. Ugh.

I think over the past few years I've started to realize that most people simply aren't very text-driven. There was a brief moment I think, in the mid nineties, when the web started to explode, that most people simply said that "young people understand the internet and computers" and left it at that. The implication was simple: those people born before 1975 simply never could grasp what the rest of us could intuitively about computers, having never grown up with them.

The curve fell rapidly, and soon everyone had a web page, or went into chat rooms, or got their news from an online newspaper. The number of people who responded to a job query by saying they "did computer stuff" soared.

Yet that curve trailed off. It wasn't the dot-com burst. It wasn't the explosion of blogs. No matter what the reason, the outcome was the same: people who are just leaving high school these days, fully a decade my junior, aren't more savvy than I am (or was) with computers and the internet.

It's puzzling.

I always assumed that my sister would be better with computers than I was. Not because of any desire of hers to out-geek me, but merely because she grew up alongside so many of them. And yes, she does spend hours chatting with her friends online in a way I never did. But if her computer (a mac) breaks, she doesn't fix it. And even simple network issues aren't her cup of tea. So clearly, merely being around computers a great deal doesn't magically transfer into knowledge. I don't know a great deal about cars simply because I drive them all the time, either.

But the cars-to-computers analogy elides over something different: yes, it's true that as computers broke less, people needed to fix them less. At the same time, when cars exploded onto the scene, there wasn't a huge repository of information that anyone with a decent set of eyes and hands could view to look up information. There were books about cars, sure, but the detail available on the web today is unprecedented. With a single wikipedia search I can gain at least a passing knowledge of fields I'd never imagined.

So why is there the gap?

Fourth of July pix should be uploaded this evening. Then posted tomorrow.

Someone last night complained that they weren't aware of the names on the site.

Have at it.

Keep in mind these are very, very old. So the descriptions may no longer be quite apt...

We visited Cooperstown at one point, having lunch at this location:

It had an impressive view of the Otsego Lake (nee Glimmerglass) which you can see here:

or here:

Enough said.

The first picture of many:

It's the major's inn...

Well put

Let's call it department of calm heads vs. department of headless chickens. In any event, our friends in Britain are providing a model on this.

On the way to New York on Friday, I heard a person on talk radio start to rant about how "if the government cannot protect the people, the people need to protect themselves" seconds before saying that we needed internment camps.

Internment camps.

This is about as idiotic as one could get, especially because:

a) these attacks were poorly executed and ridiculously low-tech b) the attackers were reported not even to be all of middle-eastern origin c) the constitution should be able to survive a couple of cans of propane gas

Seriously, why is the media whipping this up? Terrorists have no power if people are not afraid of them.

Pictures and a recap will be posted later this evening.

My god.

246,679 contributors to the Obama campaign. I'm going to cough up some change, but the point is staggering: if this many people are engaged in the second quarter, that number could swell greatly by the later end of the cyle.

Compare that to 4 years ago, when Dean attempted to raise $7 million. Crazy, eh?

Anyway, I feel it's worth $10 to put another number on the list. Go have at it.

So, this weekend, I'm driving around and suddenly notice a man wearing a pith helmet. Not an everyday sight to be sure. Yet upon pulling closer I realized that not only was he wearing a pith helmet, but that seated next to him was a large stuffed gorilla! See for yourself:

Insane! He didn't have any problem with me snapping a shot of him, which was nice. Then he drove off into the noonday heat..

I don't often lust after computers. Each week, something faster comes out, and sadly, the design aspect is often limited. But it's nice to see Dell finally designed a nice looking laptop.

Anyone want to chip in and get me one?

As I mentioned to Brad the other day, my problem with the immigration bill is primarily because of the weird "let's create second-class citizens" aspect of it. What he, and I, did not know, is that the existing program of temporary visas is designed not to wreck the labor market

And those employers won't have to pay their new indentured servants any more than the minimum wage. See, unlike the existing H-2B visa -- the visa that governs most "unskilled" temporary workers in the US today -- the proposed temporary worker program contains no requirements that employers pay their temporary help the federally determined "prevailing wage" for their occupation and the geographic area. Today, if a contractor can't find an qualified electrician to work on a project in Chicago, the contractor can apply for an H-2B visa. But the contractor is required to pay any foreign electrician entering the US on the H-2B no less than $53.57 per hour, including benefits. That's the prevailing wage for an electrician in Chicago, according to the Department of Labor. And by requiring H-2B sponsors to pay their foreign help the prevailing wage, the H-2B program limits the ability of employers to use guest workers as a tool to undermine wage markets. The proposed temporary worker plan changes all that.

I think this is reason enough to oppose the bill. It's bad enough that it creates a separate class of people working in America who never become citizens (legally or not), but to use those same people to take jobs from Americans seems downright awful. Why not simply abolish the minimum wage while you're at it?

Still, it's somewhat fun to see so many on the GOP self-immolate on this issue. If they never make it to closure, the Dems have found themselves a great issue to pound the Republicans with.

Now that Jules, Jill and Deborah are back in town for the summer (at least!) things should be even better this summer.

If only Helena had time to visit...

Why do I support Obama? Because he's just as good as Spitzer himself:

We cannot settle for a second Gilded Age in America. And yet we find ourselves once more in the midst of a new economy where more wealth is in danger of falling into fewer hands; where the average CEO now earns more in one day than an average worker earns in an entire year; where Americans are struggling like never before to pay their medical bills, or their kids’ tuition, or high gas prices, all while the profits of the drug and insurance and oil industries have never been higher.

Lessig is a smart guy. So is Obama. Time to return the White House to grownups...

The no spin zone, condensed by Olbermann

O'REILLY: "Unresolved Problem" segment tonight: the increasing problems with bears.

Nothing more to add.

Edward's word of the week: snarkastic!

A pity I didn't coin it.

10 people? You've got to be kidding!

Answer: We currently have ten Foreign Service Officers (including the Ambassador) at Embassy Baghdad at or above the 3 reading / 3 speaking level in Arabic.

You'd have to assume at least 3 native speakers for each embassy, right? So the largest embassy in the world only gets 10? Sheesh. I wonder what the average of native speakers is at each other embassy.

Anyone know?

An image from this weekend:

A nice balloon, complete with flames! Click on the image for the full size.

Okay, time for some pix from the phone. The vast majority are at my house currently, but I'll try to upload them tonight to the web. For starters, let's look at the fountain in Franklin park where I have lunch sometimes:

What do you think?

I'll try to take some images this weekend to test out the whale.

Until then, feast on the flickr charts of usage. The n95 is coming up!

The budget explained.

My new phone has arrived. It is quite cool. Commencing charging...

Saw Blue: meh.

Perhaps White or Red will be better...

yes, i know i need to fix the easter egg "gear" that appears everyone so often in the upper-left-hand corner of the site.

if only i had more time.

I like to argue.

I find this argument particularly compelling:

It's ok to disagree. It's ok to run primaries against people based on good faith disagreements. When I talk about Hillary Clinton being principled about her hawkishness, I am not any less inclined to want to see her defeated in a primary. But that's because I don't agree with her ideas, not because she's this or that as a person. It's really remarkable how many supporters of hers read into her ideas their own liberal instincts instead of trusting what she says. And when John Edwards refuses to acknowledge that he disagrees with Hillary Clinton, while obviously dancing in the media with a high profile apology that implies a whole lot of disagreement with a whole lot of people, he's avoiding the argument the party needs to have. Edwards is putting forward real and different ideas about America's place in the world. He disagrees with Clinton and Obama about a bunch of stuff. That's fine. There's no reason to hide it.

What Americans want is people who say what they believe, rather than say what people wish to hear. Period.

• obtained king crab (great!)
• saw pride parade (bear invasion 2007!)
• didn't obtain coolest phone ever (yet)
• watched ocean's 13 (good!)
• work work work work (!)

Rotary to straight-line motion. A very cool idea that's integral to any sort of motor. It's part of the golden era of linkages.

I'm looking for a new house. You know what doesn't fill me with confidence? When your ad says this:

"This is a nice room."

Riiiight. I'm sure.

Oh, the halcyon days of yore...when I used to have time to watch tv while I worked out in the gym.

This intrigued me:

And would someone introduce the people at MSNBC to the basic television programming idea that if you have a relatively highly rated show, and that the ratings for the show which follows fail to keep that audience, you should consider replacing it.

The numbers are really quite startling. I've found myself watching a few minutes of SC post Countdown, only to turn it off in disgust shortly after I realize Pat Buchanan is a constant contributor.

adults should never use the euphemism lol.

in fact, now that t9 is everywhere, i look down on those who choose not to use it.

My phone is currently in Kowloon Bay, HK.

zero effect: bad

I'm confused. How is it, that at 10:30 on a Thursday night, every pizza place in DC would refuse to deliver pizza?

Previously, the U St Pizza Hut's repeated shortage of pepperonis seemed the most egregious, but at least they could deliver a pizza to me, sans meat.

My ps3 now does upscaling of regular dvds.

I rode the Griffon on Friday. It was one of the best, if not the best, roller coaster I'd ridden in a while.

I worked 22 hours in a row on Memorial Day, went home, showered, then went back to work two hours later this morning.

Am I out of time? You bet I am.

An interesting thought experiment about a Gore/Obama ticket.

The only part I don't get is this:

The left has done that, too, I would add, in its overemphasis of diversity and in the more virulent of its racial and sexual identity politics. (Remember mau-mauing? The Weathermen? Rioting? Various kinds of sex police? Heterophobia?) Andrew commends Obama’s “new kind of politics,” which would work to end the “active demonization of political opponents” by doing more to “cultivate social empathy.”

Um, what? I don't remember mau-mau, or The Weathermen or rioting or sex police. God knows what "heterophobia" refers to...

In many ways, contemporary writers and opinion-makers associate "youth" with "leftist" and "the left" with a period of time in the sixties. You can see it in the debates over Iraq: while reasonable people can disagree as to the motives for why we went into Iraq, it's quite clear, empirically, that terrorism has increased as a result of our occupation.

Sometimes I wish we were already 30 years in the future. Then these silly arguments would be over.

I saw 28 weeks later over the weekend, and was somewhat disappointed. It was an interesting sequel, but by no means an Aliens in terms of excitement. The numerous plot holes also undermined my feelings.

The feeling of running around constantly, with never any time to rest, however, was eerily familiar...

A notable day

Last night's Tuesday Porchin' was much better than I anticipated. Thanks to all the guest chefs who provided dessert items: there were hardly any leftovers!

Leave suggestions for next time's theme in the comments, if you like.

is working...i think; it's been bad the past week

The time is out of joint. For some reason, when you post articles, they're showing up an hour late. I'm working on the issue...but for now, if you post an article and it doesn't show up on the main site, just wait!

Who knew google now offered a free newsfeed reader? Not me.

Hopefully it won't foist Atom on those of us who prefer RSS. (1.0 not 2.0!)

I'll have to give it a spin and compare it to my current favorite, feeddemon, which integrates nicely with Newsgator.

yeah, you noticed...

Yes, the site is having problems. They still aren't completely fixed yet...working on them.

Is the new job killing my posting ability? You bet.

My solution? Head into work super-early and post at least one item. And yes, pathetically, this may be today's...

Thanks go out, obviously, to Ron, for throwing some stuff up. But in my time of need, where's Dwight? Or Forrest? Or Brad? Or Helena?

While listening to the radio this morning, I heard someone defend Imus by saying his words were just "taken out of context". The real "context" is that Imus has always been racist.

Wilbon put it best. That's all I'm going to say on the matter.

Happy Gagarin Day!

We're getting gallic this evening at Tuesday Porchin', so in honor of that, here's a little tribute:

What would Camus do?

I've been rather remiss in posting lately, especially reviews. Rather than churn out a bunch, let me catch up; here are the books I've finished over the past two weeks:

• Edwin Mullhouse
• The Simulacra
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Sophie's Choice

All were, fortunately, excellent. And I made a slight bit of progress on Montaigne, which still has a daunting amount of pages left in it. Fortunately, it may be consumed piece-meal, as a series of essays allows.

Next Tuesday Porchin should be good...I'm going to send out an e-mail tomorrow detailing what the theme is. (Right now I'm thinking Gallic!)

If, for some reason, one absolutely cannot make Porchin' and yet one wishes for alternative entertainment, I have two free tickets to a prescreening of Hot Fuzz at Landmark Theater on E St. If interested, drop me a line!

Earlier this week, in an effort to free up my evening, I decided precipitously to go to the gym in the morning. Let's be clear: I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination or muscles. My typical (ideal?) gym time would be in the 8:00pm range, simply because it means I can watch Countdown with Keith for an hour which keeps my heart rate in an ideal range. Any later and I stray into Scarborough Country, which pushes me up to the purple heart level (apparently, the machines have detected that I am older than I used to be and thus, go purple prematurely in my opinion) and forces me to consider my own slightly askew past history of exercise. (LAX/BB -> XC/SOCCER -> CYCLING) Yet going in the morning presents a new set of problems. Let's ignore getting up at a godawful time in order to be there before 6 to be able to park outside for an hour without a ticket. Why?

Because the worst part is the people.

Somehow, someone decided that the 5:45am shift of the gym is the official over/underweight class category. Being a late-night gym goer, I'm used to the workaholics and those who seem to think that if they go for the final hour the gym is open, they won't have to work as hard or care what people think. But the morning wraiths are far, far worse.

You've first got your regular garden variety anorexic. Unlike in the afternoon and evening shifts, when one feels pure hatred for the 50 pound person going 1.5mph on the stairmaster while reading the latest copy of vogue e-v-e-r s-o s-l-o-w-l-y, the people in the morning can start their routine at 5:30 promptly and work straight through to 7 or even 8 without getting too many dirty glances. (I am certain that, for a small percent of the population, possibly other anorexics and men who need female companionship, these people provide some bizarre spectacle of "beauty". For the rest of us, edward's rule is simple and straightforward: if I can break a bone of your body using only my two hands, you need to get help. Serious help.) Instead of pure hate, one is left with an overwhelming sense of guilt, as if (were it possible) instead of working out, I should be purchasing donuts at Krispy Kreme and distributing them.

At the other end of the scale, there are the people who are coming in terribly early because they obviously want to go in a less crowded time in order to minimize their discomfort at being out of shape. I empathize with these souls, as I'm always out of shape when I'm in the gym. Right? Because if I were in good shape, I certainly wouldn't be getting up at 5:30 to run over to the gym for god's sake! At the same time, due to my nasty competitive streak, while I'm easily able to blow past the skinnies in terms of calories burned (1200 in an hour? no problem for fat edward!) per hour, those with wider girth can make me look like a lightweight, stats wise.

The real issue, though, is the lack of ordinary people. Old/young, fat/skinny, rich/poor, you-name-today's-metric: the people who go to the gym in the morning tend to be both ends of the curve, leaving a nasty donut hole of aberration for the rest of us.

Of course, there are free machines at 5:45. And I can park outside for a full hour without paying.

On balance, the optimal solution is for the new Target/WSC/Best Buy in Columbia Heights to open soon. Once it does I can bid a not-so-fond adieu to the Dupont WSC and it's motley collection of gym characters.

A must read story

For instance, The Note actually thought the Terri Schiavo right-to-die debacle was going to be a home run for Republicans. "[T]he Republican leadership seems to have succeeded in framing the discourse around a moral question," wrote The Note at the time, faithfully regurgitating GOP spin.

The Note thought Republicans were winning the post-Katrina spin war: "Mr. Bush still hasn't found his footing or his voice on this story, but his side clearly won the last news cycle in raw political terms."

During the 2006 congressional debate about withdrawing troops from Iraq, The Note thought the Democrats' anti-war agenda -- the same agenda that won them control of the House and Senate in November -- was a huge loser. In other words, they were "on the precipice of making Iraq a 2006 political winner for the Republican Party," in part because "Democrats remain united in their disunity, defensiveness, and distraction." That's right, The Note, deftly reading off Karl Rove's notes, announced Iraq was an electoral problem for the Democrats. ("If I were them," Halperin said of Democrats during a June 22, 2006, interview, "I'd be scared to death about November's elections.")

I enjoy the Note somewhat, but the blatant pro-administration bias does tend to grate at one's nerves. As a reflection of inside-the-beltway-conventional-wisdom, the Note is perfection, however. Only now, as fissures turn into chasms beneath the Bushies, does the Note's often derided prognostication seem quite so shameless in defense of the White House.

Thankfully, we still have Froomkin's excellent White House Watch which is just as insider-beltway, yet uses snark to hold the administration to account.

today's random celebrity sighting: while walking on 14th street returning from a client this morning i passed within a foot of Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft!

If you could kill one word from the English language, not because it is an "icky" word, but because it has been so badly misused or misunderstood, which word would you kill? My answer is, as usual, in the comments.

Please defend your choice.

Was I at the ocean in March? You bet I was. Even dipped a toe or two into the water. Pair that up with some windy mini-golf and you have a delightful (if brisk) day at the beach.

The start of many weekends to come, hopefully.

total number of pranks pulled by me yesterday: 2

total number of people pranked: 4

I'm working on CSS issues with the site. Currently:

1. things display in IE6 again, although everyone should use IE7
2. IE7 isn't letting you click on the menu items on the left
3. minefield is displaying the page correctly once more

Do you guys have any other weird display issues with the page? Add them in the comments.

I've always been a fan of distributed computing projects, although I've preferred distributed.net to the now more popular folding@home

However, now that I've seen the new ps3 version of Folding@Home, I'm changing my tune. Check out the very cool images F@H displays while running. Each dot on the huge globe represents one single folding at home user in the world, and they're updated in real time. That lonely ps3 owner in mongolia is doing his part as well!

Nice, eh?

A friend's blog.

So as I walked back from lunch today I noticed an advertisement on a bus saying that customer's who came into H&R Block would receive 40% off their refund loan if they put the money on a new H&R Block credit card.

From the promotion itself:

Classic Refund Anticipation Loan If you don't need money today, you could get money in as little as 24 hours if you're approved for a Classic Refund Anticipation Loan (Classic RAL).¹ This year you could save up to 40% on the cost of a Classic RAL* when you load it on an H&R Block Emerald Prepaid MasterCard®. The H&R Block Emerald Card can save you money, add convenience, and can be safer than carrying cash. Plus, your H&R Block tax preparation fees are paid out of the loan, so you pay nothing out-of-pocket.

This is predatory lending at its worst: a company which had been making money preparing taxes (a task which many state governments offer for free, and for which the federal government could similarly offer, if it chose to) now offers loans to consumers for the tax refunds. So if the government owed me $500, I might get charged $50 for tax preparation, and then have to take out a loan for $450 (paying interest to H&R block at a certain rate, let's say 5%). If I move it to the credit card, then that same $450 might have less fees but would go to an even higher loan rate which might begin earning even more money for H&R Block.

Keep in mind, we're talking about money the government owes consumers!

In an ideal world, the IRS would simply let everyone fill out their taxes online (or over the phone, as I used to do in the late 90s) and that'd be it. You'd get a refund check direct deposited in a few days.

The argument against the IRS doing this has always been that it's "meddling with private business" to do so. However, that argument is moot if H&R Block are using their services to, in essence, borrow against the government's supply of capital to charge fees to consumers. How many people will walk into H&R Block and spend all of their refund getting their taxes prepared and loaned back to them? That way, if the government is tardy at inserting the money, the consumer is on the hook for the loan!

Good credit is tough to obtain. Predatory practices don't help.

Tilda pointed me to a Salon article about the Secret. It's worth a look.

Worse than "The Secret's" blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular "secret" of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that "like attracts like" and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite -- positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles -- and the rest of "The Secret" has a similar relationship to the truth. Here it is on biblical history: "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of." And worse than the idiocy and the bullshitting is its anti-intellectualism, because that's at the root of the other two. Here's "The Secret" on reading and, um, electricity: "When I discovered 'The Secret' I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good," and, "How does it work? Nobody knows. Just like nobody knows how electricity works. I don't, do you?" And worst of all is the craven consumerist worldview at the heart of "The Secret," because it's why the book exists: "[The Secret] is like having the Universe as your catalogue. You flip through it and say, 'I'd like to have this experience and I'd like to have that product and I'd like to have a person like that.' It is you placing your order with the Universe. It's really that easy." That's from Dr. Joe Vitale, former Amway executive and contributor to "The Secret," on Oprah.com.

Placing an order with the Universe, eh?

This weekend was full of activities, yet the only one I'll mention is the discovery that a half shamrock, half chocolate shake is delicious.

• Wired -> Minefield
• Tired -> Gran Paradiso
• Expired -> Firefox 2.0

And yes, things do look different in the future!

So, everyone, congrats go out to Ron, who is now an official Racing President!

Temperamental

Guns

Your thoughts?

Yes, it's true: I left the toaster oven set to "broil" at lunch today.

No, the building was not evacuated.

the only negative thing about winning the house and the senate was the fear that if things continued to go badly for america, the democrats would suffer.

thankfully, that has not been the case:

from libby's conviction to the ongoing scandal at Walter Reed to the still expanding probe into the fired US Attorneys, Democrats have used their power to shine a bright light on the failures of this administration.

we can only hope the good work continues...

I need this.

Think anthropologie is boring?

Well, then, you're not thinking enough:

See, any place can be fun as long as they have movable letters and are in a high-traffic mall like Georgetown Park!

from now on, members of the GOP will be known as REPLICANS.

be warned!

the weekend was fairly uneventful, except for a large attack of ICE.

while on a trip to a local target down route 66, a large minivan in front of me had an entire block of roof ice fly up in the air. the speed at which it took off was enormous, leading me to believe i could drive underneath the several-inch-thick sheet.

i was wrong.

a second after it took off, the ice sheet slammed full force into a overpass, breaking into a few smaller pieces and falling down right onto the cloth top of my car.

ugh.

luckily, no major damage was sustained.

as the evening drew to a close, the car fully stocked with wegman's booty, tilda and i made our way quickly onto the gw parkway. too quickly!

as the cars in front of us slowed, i realized the lightly frosted road was, in fact, completely iced over. the dynamic stability control system began to kick in and the engine began to cut-off erratically.

the car started to slide.

nervous now, i disabled the DSC and proceeded to slide my way up to the intersection of 123 and the GW, where i felt the road had to get better.

i was wrong.

the car lost control completely, slamming into the left side of the parkway, repeatedly. i managed to get some measure of control back and started slowly climbing the numerous hills i'd never noticed before. each hill left the car spinning, wheels barely getting traction. owners with 4 wheel drive vehicles sped up ominously, only to slow down when they realized the entire traffic group was poking around.

thankfully, the delicious foodstuffs were delivered to the district without mishap.

werkz advice: skip it.

Going into Ghost Rider, I knew it was going to be bad. Obscure comic book character? Check. Somewhat talented actors phoning it in? Check. Lack of a believable plot? Check. Wacky religious references? You bet.

As a camp-fest, Ghost Rider is fine. If you feel compelled to watch it, I'd suggest being under the influence of as many drugs as possible. Why? The writing, the blocking, hell, the special effects! They all combine into a nauseating pulp. If I were you, I'd steer clear.

I have discovered, mirabile dictu, that if the sun hits the building next to me, at just the right angle, it will reflect some sunlight into the interior office window I am next to.

Happiness is a clear blue sky.

Olbermann keeps heating up.

Take that, Billo!

Google Maps now has Metro Stops listed on them. I've wanted this feature ever since the maps were revealed.

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Or Lupercalia, if you like...

This video explaining Web 2.0 is simply amazing:

Go check it out.

And grab Gran Paradiso while you're at it. It loads up pages fine, and uses Gecko 1.9

Sans-serif. Thoughts?

My coworker just put it best by saying, "hey, did you hear that jessica nicole just died?"

I rarely refer to work, but today I had the pleasure of having a user come up and inform his office that the internet "had been down since 11". He declared the situation "completely ridiculous" and things seemed bleak. To demonstrate the problem he showed me an e-mail which had bounced back from reaching him. Why? Because the sender forgot to append .com to his e-mail address.

Problem solved.

Now onto more fun fare: a delayed review of the Super Bowl ads. Stevenson failed to mention that both Coke ads, as well as the Izod ad, were old and not created for the superbowl. Or that the second Doritos commercial was far funnier than the first. And who couldn't like the Emerald nuts ad with Robert Goulet?

One things for sure: those chevrolet ads were awful.

This story just keeps getting weirder.

Menino is going on TV and insisting he's going to send a 27-year old artist to jail for not breaking any law, because his police department overreacted and wasted a million dollars feeding a media frenzy and terrorizing the population of his own city. That's a cowardly act of self-preservation, and were he not threatening the life of an innocent young man it would be laughable.

In order to be a "hoax" the ad agency would've had to be pretending to create bombs not little lite-brite things.

Regardless, go check out the movie and show your support for Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Jill brought this story to my attention:

(WBZ) CHARLESTOWN The Sullivan Square T station and a section of Interstate 93 North in Charlestown were shut down for about an hour Wednesday morning so police could remove and blow up a suspicious device.

A source close to the investigation told WBZ it was a "sophisticated electronic device" that somebody placed there for a reason. It was not an explosive device and police say it did not pose any danger to anyone.

Now, the kicker: go to the site and look at the picture of the device in question!

That's right...they're doing it as hard as they possibly can!

Dear CNN,

If you continue to insist that you have "the most news in the morning" will you kindly refrain from showing segments about Tyra Bank's weight or a racehorse being euthanized? They cheapened an otherwise somber morning show covering politics and the war in Iraq.

Note to programmers: the weather man should be the time for humor and lightheartedness. Everything else that is "news" is typically serious fare, for adults.

Sincerely,

Edward

Highlights from this weekend:

• obtaining vernor's despite the heights' giant being sold out of it
• going bowling
• snow!
• watching bittorrent'd v.mars episodes

Lowlights from this weekend:

• smokin' aces
• bdc misadventures
• republicans in the service industry

You guys?

werkz advice: skip it.

I caught smokin' aces this weekend with Tilda. Despite artificially lowering my expectations, the movie itself failed to live up to the great cast. The main problem was simply the writing of Joe Carnahan and the somewhat idiotic casting (Ryan Reynolds makes no jokes? Alicia Keys as an ambivalent bisexual? Jeremy Piven acting depressed?)

Instead of a nail-biting explosion-laced witty-dialog laden affair, Shane Black-style, we instead get violence without humor, meaningless plot-twists that are foreshadowed hours in advance to the audience and almost no memorable lines or characters.

Forrest noted today a few Democratic Pres/VP combinations:

Obama / Biden or Clinton / Richardson

And his personal suggestion:

Edwards / Biden

What do you guys think? I'm not a huge Biden fan...I actually think Edwards would, once again, make a great VP, but he'd never stoop so low. Richardson has some serious baggage, but the guy's akin to Rendell: a guy's guy who doesn't mince words.

My current favorite would probably be Obama/Clark. Clark's flameout last time around was almost entirely due to his early flatfootedness. Plus, it would defend against any criticism of Obama as "not seasoned enough", freeing Obama to go on the offense on almost all topics, something he's done before.

If you're on facebook, go join obama's group. They're aiming for a million members, which would certainly be something to see...

While you're at it, all good Dems should join the Democratic Party group.

Today's must-read:

Q Here's what Jim Webb, senator from Virginia, said in his Democratic response last night. He said:

"The President took us into the war recklessly. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable and predicted disarray that has followed."

And it's not just Jim Webb, it's some of your good Republican friends in the Senate and the House, are now seriously questioning your credibility because of the blunders, of the failures. All right, Gordon Smith --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash. Remember --

Q What, that there were no blunders? The President himself says there were blunders --

Read it all.

Ever want to know the full list of gchat/googletalk (the chat feature inside gmail that uses the jabber protocol) smileys? Here they all are!

A forgettable State of the Union speech, overall. No human-animal hybrids, or references to steroids. Overall, actually, quite a snoozer.

The one bright spot that I felt occurred afterward, with the Democratic response. For the first time in years, I felt like the Dems hit back hard and strong. Senator Webb's closing statement that if Bush didn't lead, that "we" would, was great. I'm glad that others agree with me.

This worries me.

Good ads are a rarity in politics.

So tonight, feel free to join me at Tonic, in the fond hope that we'll get to see the President issue a stirring call to arms for human-animal hybrids in the State of the Union speech.

On a more serious note, let's check those polls:

ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Jan. 16-19, 2007. Adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?

Approve 33 Disapprove 65

Do you approve or disapprove of the way Nancy Pelosi is handling her job as speaker of the House?

Approve 54 Disapprove 25

Wow. Pelosi is killing him! Something tells me the SotU won't help Bush out unless he makes his getaway in a hydrogen-powered car.

I was waiting for the bus to take me home today when I noticed two WMATA employees chatting to passengers at the stop while simultaneously monitoring radio traffic on their sets. Apparently, a series of manhole covers had exploded on 16th st, derailing traffic.

As they stood and joked with the riders, a car driving down 14th st hit his horn in frustration that some pedestrians weren't walking fast enough. Immediately, one of the WMATA guys looked over and said to the car, "Hey, where do you think you are? New York? This ain't New York! That's not how we do it!" to which the other riders all chimed in with their stories of how New York drivers stank, or of "that time" they saw someone in DC incongruously hitting their horn in a non-DC fashion.

Second only to our habit of waiting in lines patiently, people here simply do not use their horns. It's what makes DC such a great city. (The downside is that this similar level of politeness extends to the metro escalator system...DC riders never do more than simply cough when someone stands on the left-hand side)

If it's going to be this cold, it should snow. Falling snow in DC make the entire town seem different, somehow.

I'm hoping it will stick, but for all of you complaining about the cold, here's some july grass to keep you up:

For now, I'm hoping for more white flakes.

For some of us, MLK day comes late. But an icy cold sunny day is a good way to spend it.

And, if you had your head buried in the sand this morning, you may have missed the news that Obama is in. Count me on his team.

In somewhat less-than-inspiring-news, it appears Emily's List will support Sen. Clinton Ugh.

The Democratic wave keeps coming:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Wayne Allard said today he will honor his term-limits pledge and leave at the end of 2008, creating a replacement fight that should turn Colorado into one of the country’s biggest electoral battlegrounds.

We'll make Colorado solid blue yet, courtesy Udall and his impressive lineage.

today's question: does anyone know of any good unzoned streets in DC to park along? MtP has evergreen terrace...but besides that, I don't know of any others. do you guys have any knowledge of places for non-residents to leave their cars at?

The fact that it's supposed to reach 70 degrees today is unbelievable. Sure, it's supposed to drop to frigid temperatures in a few days, but the important point is that it's the result of climate change, not global warming.

I took my old one-handed watch into the watch repair shop last week to get the battery replaced. To my chagrin, they informed me that the battery was fine but that it needed "to be cleaned" which would cost $80. With no other choice, I left the watch with them.

This weekend I returned for the watch and discovered, mirabile dictu, that the watch now had three hands. I expressed surprise to which the watch repair man said, cryptically, "this is the new version...that's what they sent us". I explained that there was no "new version" of my watch, and that it only had one hand. He countered that perhaps they could just remove the second and minute hand. My retort was simple: find and put the old hand back on. After ten fruitless minutes of searching, he finally found the old hand and said that they needed another couple of days to fix things.

So at this point I've already been to the watch repair place 2 times, with a third coming, and an $80 bill, only to see them mess up the entire point of my old watch.

It's enough to make me hot. But that's what the weather is for, right?

So during lunch I fixed one of the major problems plaguing the site: where a very short article would artificially make the site boxes go haywire.

Yes, it was a simple css hack.

Next up? Getting IE7 to behave. And this I feel will be a far more difficult struggle.

Now that vantage scoring is in place, I checked my credit. Currently, I'm at a 864, which is a "B" under vantage scoring. All I need is 36 more points and I'm in "A" range. The problem? Here's what they told me:

Your report does not show any usable/valid real estate loans, such as a mortgage. Having valid real estate loans with good payment history as part of your credit history can have a positive impact on your credit score. (50)

The sum of balances on your credit card accounts is too high. Having high balances on your credit card accounts has a negative impact on your credit score. (BN)

Your report shows that the available credit across your open, recently reported revolving accounts, such as a credit card, is too low. Having low available credit amounts on revolving accounts has a negative impact on your credit score. (RL)

Your report shows that the time since your oldest revolving account, such as a credit card, was opened is too short. Having revolving accounts open for a longer period of time can have a positive impact on your credit score. (RP)

Buying a house? Get older? We'll see. Only four months left until my next update.

After a long drought, some much-needed good news on the Democratic convention front:

The labor pains were hard, but the DNC finally has its 2008 convention city locked down: Denver.

A Democrat who was briefed said that chairman Howard Dean made the final decision yesterday, weeks later than planned. DNC comm. dir. Karen Finney declined to confirm the choice.

Colorado is a marquee states for Democrats, who have, in the past two years, gobbled up the governor's mansion, control of the state legislature, and two congressional seats.

Denver represents the future of the Democratic party: inclusive, high-tech, and progressive. We already have a great base there, and avoiding holding the convention in NYC was a must. Hopefully the planners in Denver have gotten their act together from their first proposal.

Now I just need someone to score me tickets!

'werkz review: go see it!

It's been a very long time since my last movie review. But after checking out Pan's Labyrinth last night, I felt it was time to get back in the game. The combination of an advance (free!) screening was too much to pass up, especially when combined with Tilda's snark while forced to wait in line for an hour to get in.

The story is definitely not aimed for kiddies. It's more of an old-school Brother's Grimm (the german original completed with plenty of blood and gore) tale, juxtaposed with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. The odd mixing of fantasy and reality leaves one somewhat disturbed.

Overall, though, the movie works well. del Toro keeps things bloody and violent, but not exploitative. At no point do any scenes feel forced, which is odd, considering the large amount of fantastical scenes contained. From start to finish, the movie is made well. Go check it out!

Remember when Congress, you know, enacted new laws? Well, it turns out they're getting back into the swing of things now that the Dems have control.

Voting 299 to 128, congressional Democrats, backed by scores of Republicans, delivered on a key part of their "100 hours" agenda. The nearly 300-page anti-terrorism measure sets new mandates to scrutinize air- and ship-borne cargo, send more federal aid to areas at the greatest risk of terrorism, improve emergency communications, fight nuclear proliferation overseas, and strengthen a civil liberties watchdog board.

Wouldn't it be great if they could keep up this pace (the whole 5 day work week, etc.) for beyond the first 100 hours?

And why are people concerned that it's "too expensive" to do port security? I for one would feel safer if every cargo container was inspected.

damn

Never has my love for symbian and nokia been so sorely tested...