Alternate Entries

2008-10-08T21:53:00.001-07:00

All right, I'm just on the viral bandwagon. I don't care: it's funny. In a scary kind of way.

2008-10-08T15:20:00.000-07:00

"This isn't the time for fear or for panic."

Obama in Indiana:

2008-09-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

Fey looks like her and sounds like her. And the dialog could be hers:

2008-09-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

Hilarious. Really.

2008-09-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

There are a bunch of No on 8 ads out there, and they all have their strong points. But this is a perspective I hadn't really thought of.

2008-09-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist:

Stolen from Soho The Dog

2008-09-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

Apparently, it's not just the West any more:

Palin's position on the bridge that would have linked Ketchikan to Gravina Island is one example of a candidate staying on message even when that message has been publicly discredited. Palin has continued to say she opposed a project she once campaigned for -- then killed later, only after support for it had collapsed in Congress.

As the presidential campaign moves into a final, heated stretch, untrue accusations and rumors have started to swirl at a pace so quick that they become regarded as fact before they can be disproved. A number of fabrications about Palin's policies and personal life, for instance, have circulated on the Internet since she joined the Republican ticket.

Palin and John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, have been more aggressive in recent days in repeating what their opponents say are outright lies. Almost every day, for instance, McCain says rival Barack Obama would raise everyone's taxes, even though the Democrat's tax plan exempts families that earn less than $250,000.

Fed up, the Obama campaign broke a taboo on Monday and used the "L-word" of politics to say that the McCain campaign was lying about the Bridge to Nowhere.

[]

John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters' opinions of the candidates.

"The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent," Feehery said. "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."

Please tell me we can't be this stupid. Please.

From the Washington Post.

2008-08-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

The Guardian does LOLCAT:

2008-07-14T22:52:00.001-07:00

I got a new iPhone. I admit it, I like those shiny new things, maybe too much. But here's the rub: I stood in line Friday for a total of 9 hours and didn't get a phone. First we were told that the servers had been down earlier, but they were up now, and things would be fine. Then we were told that the activation process, which was supposed to take 10 minutes, was taking, on average, 30 minutes, per customer, and sometimes took as much as 2 hours, but that they would stay open until everyone in line got a phone. Then they announced that maybe not everybody, because the store would have to close at 11, so the people at the very end of the line should probably go home. And then, until the people *not* from the very end of the line who were still left standing just outside the store at 11 PM, when the doors closed, until those people threatened to start a small riot, the best that the store manager could suggest was that we all just come back the next day and stand in line again. In the end, most of us got vouchers to jump the line on Saturday. I did, and I got the phone.

Then yesterday I got an email from Apple - "We want to hear from you. We would appreciate feedback on your experience at the Apple Store so we can make your next visit even better." So I went to the survey website, and I let them hear from me. Given that my ratings were, uh, a little on the low side, the survey asked me whether I would allow someone to call me and follow up. I wasn't thrilled, but I said yes, and told them that they could reach at home after 6. At 3 this afternoon, Roberto from the store called and left a message - I read what you wrote and clearly we dropped the ball. I would really, really appreciate it if you would call me back so that we can talk further.

Okay. So around 6:30, after I got home from work, I called him. Another clerk answered the phone: Roberto was "finishing up with a customer," could he call me back afterwards? Sure. And you can probably guess what follows: I make dinner, I play on the computer, I watch some TV. And no call back. And the problem is *now* I'm not just irritated, I'm mad. It's one thing to think that corporate screw-ups of almost unimaginable proportions have stressed badly prepared twenty-something retail clerks so much that they behave less well than one would hope. But to ask someone for their input, and then to respond at a time when that someone has said that they would not be available, and then to ask them for *more* of their time, and then to blow them off, well, that's just mind-boggling. Fix customer service issues by showing yet more contempt for the customer? Interesting approach.

2008-07-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

Heart of Gold just came on my Pandora stream, a song I always associate with my friend M, when she was going to school in New York. I stayed with her there in her dorm room when I was on the way to Paris, and she played the song over and over, picking up the needle and dropping it back on the worn piece of vinyl turning on the stereo. An analog world, universes away. We were both impossibly young.

This morning I got an email from her; her mother died last week. There's no way to describe the place her mother had in my life: she was a force of nature, loud and open and opinionated where everyone in my family was tamped down and bottled up. She'd been living in San Francisco recently, but I hadn't been able to see her: M and some of her siblings have had a falling out of almost Balzacian dimensions, and those siblings had taken control of the mother's life as her health failed. And now she's dead. And I am, like Neil Young himself, growing old.

2008-06-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

I love visualization tools. Wordle.com has a great one. This is a picture of my del.icio.us tags:

2008-03-04T09:56:00.001-08:00

In honor of Another Super Tuesday, the battling Nicholsons:

It's an instant Internet world out there, folks.

2008-02-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure my father didn't believe that death was inevitable, at least not in his case. Three years ago today he was proved wrong, although there was something in his way of going that suggests a combination of will, petulance, and despair, rather than the sheer force of biological imperative. My parents were married in February and a couple of weeks later I was conceived (they were both 26, ancient for that generation, and anxious to get a move on). What would have been my mother's 83rd birthday was Saturday, and today is the anniversary of Dad's death. In the shortest month of the year.

2008-02-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

On the McCain story in the New York Times, from Matt Welch, who has written a book on McCain:

2008-02-19T11:10:00.000-08:00

Obama at Google.

Want to know what specifics he stands for? Take a look.

2008-02-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

From Brian Beutler:

The Senate just voted the Intelligence authorization conference package out of the Senate. It included a provision banning the use of waterboarding by universalizing the interrogation tactics in the Army Field Manual. I'm still not exactly sure why most Republicans voted to invoke cloture on the package, but they did. And when it came to the floor, the final tally was 51-45. One of those 45 was the Sultan of Straight Talk, John McCain.

Just so we're clear: McCain was okay with the idea of our guys using waterboarding.

2008-02-12T14:37:00.000-08:00

Seen Yes We Can? Here's the other side.

2008-01-29T13:39:00.000-08:00

From the Democratic Caucus, another view of the state of the nation:

2008-01-06T16:16:00.000-08:00

This is being created on an XO computer. I did the Give 1, Get 1 thing because I was curious and because it's such a good idea. It's really quite an amazing little device, and I do mean little - the keyboard is made for much smaller hands than my big paws. But it can do all sorts of wonderful things - my neighbor's kids lined up to get their hands on it. With Intel leaving the organization, and continuing to go head to head with the device in targeted countries, who knows what its future will be. But even as a proof of concept that makes a new marketplace emerge where there once was only apathy and neglect, this little box is a stunning success.

2007-12-03T13:37:00.000-08:00

This is Charlie:

Charlie is a coyote who is living, at least for the moment, with a human and a cat. He was orphaned at around 10 days old, and the human took him in. He's adorable. Read more about him (and buy copies of the beautiful pictures) at The Daily Coyote.

2007-11-30T14:45:00.000-08:00

My birthday present to myself:

By Alfonso Huerta

2007-11-08T20:37:00.000-08:00

Larry Lessig's TED talk: How creativity is being strangled by the law

2007-10-21T18:38:00.000-07:00

The power just came back on after 15 hours of being off. Very early this morning some idiot came off the freeway too fast and took out a telephone pole. The PG&E guys got there pretty quickly, but there was apparently a great deal of considering that needed to be done before the new pole and associated wiring could be put in place.

Anyway, it's just weird being without any power at all. Forget no computer - there were no lights, no coffee (electric grinder), no cooking on the gas stove (electric ignition). No vacuuming, no weed whacking, no laundry.

When I was a kid I used to visit my maternal grandparents every summer. They lived on a farm. A farm that had - sort of - electricity (overhead lights in every room, and an extension cord that powered the television on which my grandmother watched her soap operas). But except for the TV there wasn't anything in the house that would have been crippled by the loss of power. The cook stove ran on wood; water came up from the well in the back in a bucket; every room had hurricane lamps, filled with oil, just in case.

In some ways, that world doesn't seem that long ago at all, but in others, it's like a different universe.

2007-10-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

I have an iPhone. I love it. I love the way it looks and I love the way it works. I could do the finger-slidey thing for hours at a time. But mostly I love the rush of creativity it unleashed in the community at large - lots and lots of little applications that Apple didn't think of, offered free to anyone who wanted to use them. Until now. Uncle Steve has put his foot down. Use what we give you, and shut up. The 1.1.1 update just slammed the door on all the work of all those people, and told them to be happy that now they can buy songs from iTunes at Starbucks.

Yeah, that's thinking different, Uncle Steve.

2007-09-04T09:38:00.000-07:00

One way of doing it:

From here.