Jill, Kevin and others were discussing Borf last night. Lo and behold, DCist answers our questions. Well, er, somewhat, I guess.

Here's my favorite Borf tag:

Cool, eh?

In the latest issue of Wired, there's an article focusing on a new physics think tank in Canada. The objectionable part occurs here:

"IAS is a great place," he says. "And they have this beautiful lunchroom with long tables. But one of their professors told us that for more than 30 years, the particle physicists have been eating at the same table, the astrophysicists at another, and the mathematicians at a third. So what did he advise us? No long tables. We want people to talk to each other."

It sounds almost silly, but this is the kind of thing they're always saying at Perimeter: The key to solving the most challenging scientific problems might be in the simplest of ideas, like the length of the tables in the bistro.

The new building incorporates a lot of that kind of thinking. It has a plenty of natural light and places for spontaneous discussion. A foosball table in the second-floor lounge has already become a popular venue for brainstorming and blowing off steam. The architects designed a nook for an old Mendelssohn piano from Perimeter's former HQ (a bar before it was a think tank). And chalkboards are everywhere, even in the outdoor atrium.

Was it just me, or did we already do this ten years ago? Repeat after me: Foosball tables did not save a single dot com company. There. I feel better already.

I don't think longer cafeteria tables are going to make much of a difference either. Maybe I'm crazy.

The more I watched of Gonzales yesterday, the more I thought..."We can't beat this guy? What gives?"

All we'd need would be a few GOP defections and to keep all the Dems in line. The guy personally authorized torture, for god's sake. How can he be the nations' top cop?

Hooray!

Look, I enjoy healthy debates. But I think Klein is right in wanting to focus on real journalism. Fortunately for my future aspirations to start an all-hard-news network (I just need to trademark HNN and create a good logo!), I'm sure Klein won't remove the rest of the muck CNN forces on viewers 20 hours a day.

The scary thing is that there are real tragedies/wars/etc. with great video that take place in the other 20 hours, but just aren't covered. Contrary to what many believed in the 80's, there is enough news to fill a 24 hours news-channel. For some reason, we just choose not to cover it. Instead we have biased people spew silly opinions about inane subjects wedged between "entertainment minutes" which focus on Michael Jackson.

The ten things I'd do if I were Klein:

1. Eliminate all celebrity court case coverage.
2. Triple the amount of international news coverage.
3. Get most anchors and reporters to cut down on on-air opinions.
4. Make a show. Call it "Fact-Check". Just cut through the silly p.r. spin of the White House, Congress, etc. Use unbiased reporters. Don't bother trying for "balance"...if one side is lying more egregiously, say so.
5. Tell the White House the President needs to start answering questions at press conferences. Pull your white house people if he doesn't.
6. Want scoops? Skip using "anonymous sources" and just focus on item #3 above. There's plenty of choice video, etc. going on in other countries.
7. Believe in the fallacy of objective journalism. I'm serious. It's an impossible dream to achieve, but a worthy goal to strive for.
8. Entertainment is not news. Let the other networks talk about Britney Spears. You don't need to.
9. You can't beat ESPN. So don't try. Just get the guy from Headline News to do the 2 minutes sports rundown a few times a day.
10. Send reporters to dangerous places. With good satellite uplinks. If other networks rely upon radio updates or transcripts, you need to have a guy in Sudan with a crystal clear picture standing next to a janjaweed horse. The technology is here. So put it to good use.

That's how I'd run a network.

If you're not watching the Gonzales hearings, you should be.

This guy authorized torture...kind of makes Ashcroft look like a softie, doesn't it?

a typical edwardian morning follows:

7:30 AM - wake up

8:30 AM - realize I stuffed the alarm clock under pillow

9:00 AM - check office e-mail server, news websites; win solitaire game

9:30 AM - win the race to be the last person to take a shower

9:32 AM - finish shower

9:36 AM - grab pizza from fridge, run out house

9:40 AM - stop by neighborhood store "alem" for diet dr. peppers

9:50 AM - pass by prostitute walking to work; she says "hey, sweetheart" and i reply "hi!"

10:00 AM - gawk at giant wrecking ball deconstructing the old convention center; take picture with cell phone

10:10 AM - arrive at office; check on server to see if we're still under attack from crazy spambots;

10:15 AM - finally sit down at desk and logon to the network

10:16 AM - get article to post on website

10:17 AM - hear complaint from users about being unable to open email

10:18 AM - determine article is a dup; notify author

10:30 AM - determine that bug is a security feature; investigate workaround

10:35 AM - learn relative was seriously damaged in accident

10:40 AM - begin to plow through RSS feeds...

Each year I make the same resolution for New Years, namely, to not make any resolutions. (Eerily similar to my stance during lent...actually.)

This year, though, I think I've broken that streak. I resolve that next year I will rant about:

1. people chewing gum
2. people commenting on other people's clothing choices.
3. people asking me for advice about mp3 players

With all those teeth whitening gums out there, I too have been lured into the trap of chewing gum at inappropriate occasions. But you know what you do? You bite the proverbial bullet and swallow the gum. Having gum at work, for instance, is inexcusable.

As far as clothing is concerned, if you're wearing something bad (choose!) then I'll laugh at you behind your back. But I'm not going to go up to your face and say, "what were you thinking?" Likewise, I'd expect the same level of treatment from you. Saying, "Hey you look really dressed up!" or "Hey you look really casual!" is not a compliment. It's a statement of fact, and a superfluous one at that. "That's a nice tie" is, however, both welcome and appropriate.

You have an iPod. Or another mp3 player. Great. Or you want one. Great. Just don't ask me about it, okay? Because I'll go off on a 20 minute rant about something call ogg vorbis. And it's never pretty. So simply buy something that supports ogg, and I'll be happy. That's the only advice I wish to give.

New Year's Rants seems so much more appropriate than resolutions..any ideas?

I find these sort of opinions intolerable. Why? Because they seem to revolve around a dichotomy that doesn't exist.

Technology is not around to make our lives simpler, easier or to increase free time. I remember getting into an argument once about vacuum cleaners...essentially, my opponent said that the amount of time spent cleaning with modern appliances was the same as with older ones. So the "new" technology didn't make anyone's life easier. I conceded that point, but emphasized that the real emphasis should not be on time, but on cleanliness. Houses these days tend to be cleaner thanks to newer vacuums.

This is what the author of the piece above misses: it's not that some fancy e-mail/phone/mp3 player will make your life more rewarding. It'll simply mean that you can work outside the office, hear a cool new song and go for a run all at the same time. Thus, you'll be busier. That's what happens when you multitask.

The real problem, in my mind, is the inverse of what the author says here:

But let's also not forget the time it takes to master dense manuals and field the extra phone calls and clear out the mounds of junk e-mail. Or the mental energy required to navigate the complexity of four remote controls or remember to program in the coordinates of everyone you meet. Or the added risk if your all-in-one contraption suddenly malfunctions.

I think the days of dense manuals at least required users to read a bit. These days every device needs to be "idiot-proof" which means that when something breaks a typical user won't know how to handle it. Call it the apple-bomb-thesis: early Macs were so much more reliable than PCs that most mac users never had to learn how their system worked. Early Windows machines required editing config.sys and autoexec.bat files endlessly, all to get more memory to run properly or to avoid crashing. Consequently, if a Mac broke, the user was presented with a little bomb, and immediately cried uncle. A PC was expected to be difficult to use, which was a trade-off for the price difference. Those of us who grew up with PCs learned quickly that messing with the files that ran the machine was only natural. Today, most computers are much more stable than in those days. The consequence? Like with early Macs, if a computer breaks, typical users end up calling for help immediately instead of messing around with the problem. The end result is an uneducated user.

I'm not saying that technology should be difficult to grasp. Lowering the entry bar (with Moveable Type, etc.) for blogging has led many people into a field they wouldn't otherwise have been able to do. Again, however, if a system breaks, users aren't able to solve it. Just think: if every user was clearing out mounds of junk mail, perhaps we'd be able to crack down on spammers. Instead, users look for the easy fix (some piece of software to buy) and think it's a necessary evil. I wish there were more people around who weren't afraid to use their "mental energy" for good. To not use your brain should be a crime.

If you want to read a good TNR article, head over to check out this one about marriage.

The nut graph:

What advocates of covenant marriage largely overlook is the fact that most marriages dissolve not because people lack the willpower to make them work (though that's probably true in some cases), but because they simply don't want to be married, at least not to the person they happened to wed. The reality is that too many people are getting married who shouldn't. In Arkansas, for example, the divorce rate is more than 50 percent above the national average. But the marriage rate is almost twice the national average.

In a world where celebrities seem to marry and divorce every week, the point about waiting seems particularly apt. The solution, unfortunately, seems to be somewhat intrusive. I don't personally think the government should be in the business of marriages anyway: it should just sanction civil unions for secular purposes. Such unions, being mainly a legal device, should be able to be forged and broken at will. Yeah, maybe that's the Episcopalian in me speaking, but if it was good enough to found my religion upon, it should be good enough for most of America.

After a few minutes, I stopped watching the Matsui service. It was just too depressing.

Murtha's endorsing Dean.

I really think the new DNC chair needs to focus on the state and local level, to create competitive races in every single district. Dean can do that. Rosenberg can do that. Frost has a great political ability, but I think that talent doesn't lend itself to building a better organization so much as running an existing one.

Murtha should bring the bear the most salient point about Dean, namely, that he represents an organization structure change. This isn't about ideology, it's about common sense.

With that said, I'm sick and tired of some magazines repeating the idiotic meme that Dean is anti-war:

The trouble with Dean goes beyond the merely cosmetic. The single greatest challenge facing the Democratic Party is its dire need to reestablish its credibility on national security. The election made clear that the Bush administration's ineptitude in Iraq and at Tora Bora will not do that work for them--indeed, that the public will not listen to the Democrats' indictment of that bungling until they have established their own authority. Reestablishing this credibility does not mean embracing Bush. It means forcefully elucidating alternatives. Dean has shown little interest in doing so, and, during the primary, his instincts led him to cater to the antiwar movement on the party's left.

Hmm. Let's see. Dean was for the original gulf war but opposed to the current war in Iraq. Kerry, by contrast, was against the first gulf war but for the second. I think we can say Dean was right and Kerry was wrong. Dean was also for the fight in Kosovo and Afghanistan. (You remember Afghanistan, right? The place where UBL was hanging out?) I used to think the anti-war people who supported Dean were idiots, but useful ones. That was before I realized that the pro-war people who hated Dean were equally stupid, but utterly useless. In hindsight, after all the supposed "debacles" of pointing out obvious truths like "the capture of Saddam Hussein will not make our troops safer" I think places like TNR need to stop muttering idiotic memes that Dean catered to the anti-war left. How bad do things have to get in Iraq before they admit they were wrong? Oh wait, they already did. They just haven't screwed up the courage to say they were wrong about Dean too...

Okay. End rant.

Know someone with a laptop? Why not give them this? Yes, I know the holidays are over...but MLK day is almost here!

What's that you ask?

Just the sound of someone hitting the third rail. It's not pretty.

"This is going to be very much like sticking your hand in a wasp nest," said David C. John, a Social Security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation and an ally of the president. "And the reaction will be similar."

Nice. Time to start stinging.

So my brand new puma shoes rock. It's odd, but simply putting them on and walking down the street makes me feel like I riding on air.

The box they came in is a different story. On the side, it says in small white letters, "average contents: 2". At first I thought this was extremely amusing. Then I realized that, perhaps, it's not meant to be funny. In which case it's a little weird. I mean, are there some boxes floating around with 3 shoes in them? Or just one? So far only one other person has noticed this oddity.

What do you think it means?

So after some early morning fun in Tyson's Corner, I went to work to do some maintenance. A couple hours later, I returned home to change clothes, etc.

As I left my house I heard a loud noise and saw that a car was crawling through the intersection at about two miles an hour. The driver of the vehicle behind had finally lost his patience and hit the horn hard. By the time I made it to the local convenience store, the car still wasn't moving and had its hazard lights on.

I snagged a drink and walked back outside. Seeing the car still there, I walked over and asked if they needed any help. A small elderly African American woman, who only spoke Spanish, emerged. I had (only the previous week) helped a Hispanic couple call a mechanic so I was prepared this time, flipping out my cell phone even as the woman came around the front of the car.

First she asked me where she was. I replied, "you're at 11th and S street" and she didn't understand. Finally, she pulled out a business card with a mechanic's name on it. I typed in the phone number and handed it to her. After a minute, it became evident that the mechanic didn't speak Spanish, so she was unable to tell him where she was. She pushed the phone back to me and said "tell him where we are". So I did.

The mechanic said, "you're at 11th and S? Man, she's going the wrong way. I'm up at V St, near Vermont! She lives practically next door to me...I can't believe she got lost." I said I could tell her where to go and hung up. I turned to the woman (did I mention that her face was blue? a little odd...but she was very old and quite small, so it didn't look that out of place) and tried to explain. Her response?

She just gave me the keys to her car.

Baffled, I said the mechanic was just up the street. She smiled and said "you can drive" and so I did. (Riding as a passenger with her seemed crazy). The car was sweltering inside, I couldn't get the seat to move back and the right hand mirror was frozen in place. Terrified I'd wreck her already poorly operating vehicle, I tried not to make any sudden movements. Of course, on top of everything else, it was an automatic, so as soon as I put it in "drive" it began to move. Grr. Next the car announced out loud in a tinny voice that the parking break was on. Thanks, Kitt! A few blocks later, we were at her mechanic. Problem solved. Total Cost? I was an hour late getting back to work, but I felt much better about myself as I began to walk down eleventh street.

The sun came out, and soon made everything warm. A good way to begin one's afternoon.