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September 30, 2004

Debate reactions

I was going to write up my reaction to the debates here, but I noticed I already touched on all the major points in these three posts at MetaFilter.

Overall, I think Kerry did well and won by a nose, though both held up and didn't make any huge gaffes. I'm happy to see the repetitious talking point tactic that Bush used over and over again to make Kerry into an indecisive candidate backfired for the most part. For me the most enlightening thing was hearing Kerry actually articulate his points. Until now I've been firmly in the "not Bush" camp and wasn't too hot on Kerry as the choice, but this was one of the first times I've actually heard him lay out some details and I was happy to hear his stances on issues.

After the debate, as CSPAN swept their cameras through the crowds, I saw John McCain there and it reminded me that even though I disagree with McCain on many issues, I would have probably voted for him over either Kerry or Bush this year. Maybe even back in 2000. He's always been good natured, has integrity by the truckload, and doesn't seem to toe his party's line. God I hope that guy runs in 2008. It just might be my first republican presidental vote.

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Music to cry softly to

As we head into the first of three "debates" I realized after seeing a few song titles go by in iTunes that it would make a perfect mix to describe how I feel about the impending doom debate:

Little White Lies, Baby Watch Your Back, Scared Straight, All The Negatives Have Been Destroyed, Everyone Choose Sides, Hopeless, I Can't Win, In Harm's Way, It's a Long Way to the Top, and finally, Peace of Mind.


iTunes screenshot (note: "peace of mind" added for the sake of irony)

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September 29, 2004

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September 28, 2004

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September 26, 2004

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September 25, 2004

Review Roundup

A roundup of the stuff I've seen and used in the past few months:

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links for 2004-09-25

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September 24, 2004

W's False pride

This is interesting: Republicans for Humility.

When I look at the W presidency and closer at the man himself and ask myself why I would not vote for him, humility ranks at the top (the lack of it, actually). I've seen time and time again, whenever he is asked a challenging question, or given the opportunity to reflect on past decisions, Bush will respond in ways that approach complete arrogance.

Progress is continuing well in Iraq. I've never made a mistake in my presidency. Rumsfeld is doing a terrific job. The economy is strong and turning a corner.

Some write it off as optimism, but when he was asked about any bad decisions he's made earlier this year and said he's never made a mistake, he lost all credibility with me. Mistakes aren't always a bad thing, they're an opportunity to learn. And great men make thousands of mistakes on their way to greatness. When I heard him state his complete lack of mistakes, one word came to mind: Pride.

For a religious man, he should know about the sin of Pride and even to the non-religious, most folks have a low tolerance for arrogance. The line between "That guy is really optimistic" and "That jerk thinks he's perfect in every way" is a fine one.

It's great to see a republican-run site asking for some humility. People aren't perfect. Even great leaders make mistakes. The greatest leaders we've ever had took the time to reflect on them, acknowledge them, and repair any damage caused. When it comes to W, I'm not seeing any of that, just a complete lack of introspection and humility.

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September 23, 2004

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September 20, 2004

OpenBlacklist

I do think that money has kind of ruined politics in the US and I applaud the transparency efforts of OpenSecrets.org, but I always had a feeling the site could become a blacklist of sorts for those craven enough to exploit it. I'm sure it has happened before, but this is the first major story I've heard that could demonstrate that. Opensecrets even lets you do reverse lookups by full name, making it fairly easy to plop a potential new hire's name into it, like I just did here for Howard Zucker. It's not much of a stretch to think future employers that like to play politics would use this as a hiring decision tool for most any job while being able to easily explain away a rejection that hides the real reason why they weren't hired.

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links for 2004-09-20

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September 19, 2004

Straight Outta Portsmouth

I don't know how I missed Straight Outta Portsmouth during last year's Talk Like A Pirate Day, so I'm posting it here to make sure you don't miss it this year.

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No on 36: Help save Oregon marriages

Plenty has been written about the mastery of language in use by conservative think tanks these days and I'm reminded of it every time I turn on the news or watch a discussion show featuring conservative guests. I used to discount the importance of language and framing of issues as overly simplistic, but this really is the death of liberals right now. It's in the liberal nature to tell both sides of the story and/or go for a nuanced discussion of issues, but people don't have time or energy to keep those kinds of things straight on hundreds of subjects in the news. I'm constantly impressed by conservatives that can gain traction with somewhat crazy ideas, but do it using such simple language that leaves little room for interpretation.

One instance that is driving it home for me is seeing signs for prop 36 in Oregon. Proposition 36 is the vote on a change to the State Constitution, to clear up the ambiguous language that says "anyone over 18 can marry..." so that is says "A man and a woman over 18 can marry..." I hear the issue is currently polling at around 50%-50%, which surprises me because I thought gay marriage had zero chance of survival in the wild, but looking at the signs it's clear that the No side's language isn't helping them, while the Yes side is killing it.

The No on 36 folks have these complicated signs that say "no on constitutional amendment 36" and although the NO and 36 are the biggest things on it, it still requires them to push a negative with a screaming NO on it. The color is drab and you can't read the words "constitutional ammendment" from a car. The Yes folks have a great distilled message, with multiple colors. It says "One Man. One Woman. Yes on 36." It's simple, concise, and gets the point across without the need for a five-syllable word.

So here's the thing: why don't liberals champion the power slogan? Why can't liberals drop the "yeah, but..." from everything they want to say? Conservatives never feel the need to spell out the specifics, or the drawbacks, or the exceptions, while liberals are almost happy to do it. It obscures the message when you have to add "yeah, but..." to everything you say.

Here's my suggestion for the No on prop 36 folks: Go simple. Your new slogan is "Support Marriages. Support Families. No on 36." That's it. You don't have to explain these are new marriages or expanded definitions of family, just go with short, emotional slogans. People love marriage. People love family. A no vote on 36 means thousands of marriages don't have to be dissolved.

Just as a conservative might repeat the phrase "Progress in Iraq" over and over, you could easily spin gay marriage as a way to encourage more marriages, help create more happy families, and help spread love instead of hate. And when your opponents try to point out "but! but! you're going to ruin civilization!" you can ask they why they hate the institution of marriage, why they want to deny love, and why they want to break up families.

And you can't argue with that on a 2 foot-by-3 foot sign at 60mph.

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September 18, 2004

Badass Mashup

If you love Queen, John Hughes movies, and classic 80's hip hop music, drop everything you're doing and download The Kleptones' "hip-hopera" mix. Download the giant zip file and there's a single 90 minute long mp3 file.

There's no way to describe it other than totally badass [via].

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September 17, 2004

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September 16, 2004

Time for loving

I can't believe how much I love FuzzyClock. If you've never heard of it, it's a simple app that puts the current time into natural language. So instead of 2:53 it will say "ten til three." At first I thought the lack of accuracy could be a problem, but I've got lots of meetings and have never been late (just wait until it says "shortly before eleven" and you'll be on time for it). Here is what it looks like on my current menu bar (also running: audioscrobbler, slimbattery, and instiki).

On the surface, it simply saves you a half-second of converting the numbers 3:41 into "about twenty to four" in your head, but in practice it removes a small mental tax you put yourself through dozens-to-over-a-hundred times per day. After months of running this app in place of the standard clock (I disabled it in my OS prefs and run fuzzyclock on startup), I feel liberated in a small way. I've spent my life surrounded by clocks and never realized how much easier it is to read "half past twelve" than reading numbers.

Last week, I noticed Flickr does timestamps on comments this way, which is a great idea and something I should really do at metafilter. Someone's already written a function for it in PHP, I'm sure it'll be a MT plugin soon, if it isn't already.

Posted by 11:52 AM | TrackBack

Geek ear

So I'm eating dinner and half-heartedly watching junk TiVo recorded, including this episode of Landscaper's Challenge (in case you're wondering, it's a homeowner thing), and I'm not actually watching but listening kind of and I hear the client make some jokes and I know that I know that voice from somewhere. I start watching it intently and racking my brain for a few minutes. Where have I heard that before? Books on tape? Narrator in a car commercial? Cartoon voice? And then it hits me: I've heard this guy "Al" dozens of times, but I've never seen him before. He does the commentary tracks on all the Simpson's DVDs.

It was show writer/director Al Jean getting his backyard done.

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Please leave a message after the beep

While I loathe "I'm busy, will post later" weblog posts, I feel this is necessary after looking at this site and realizing how neglected it appears.

In gearing up for this concert in NYC, I've been crazy mad busy with a million loose ends to tie up before that day, and recently I started playing with this new beta feature of del.icio.us to post my daily distributed bookmarks here. I sorta helped coax Joshua to code the feature, so that I could basically do what Jeff Veen does on his site, but without all the perl/MT frippery. What I didn't realize is that once I could post links interesting to me in a very low threshold way, it would totally satisfy whatever craving I had to post anything of substance to this site.

So yeah, expect the trickle of daily links for the next week or two as I descend back into the bitmines to crank stuff out. Oh, if you're in NYC next week, and you're attending the concert, be sure to look for me and say hi.

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September 15, 2004

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September 14, 2004

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September 11, 2004

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September 10, 2004

Flickr keeps 'em comin'

Stewart just showed me the new slideshow feature on Flickr. I tried it out here with a band I like and blammo! instant huge gallery of photos I've never seen before, but about a subject I'm interested in. It's a cool visualization.

My bet is that the Dos Pesos slideshow runs for three days without a repeat.

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links for 2004-09-11

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Charts! Graphs! The colors!

Are You Better Off Now Than You Were Four Years Ago?

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September 09, 2004

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September 08, 2004

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September 07, 2004

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September 06, 2004

For the love of God, please vote

I've never been a spectacular history student, but I did enjoy a civics course during my senior year of high school. After learning the basics of our gov't, I counted the days until I turned 18 and could register to vote. I happily voted in local races that first November and have voted every chance I've gotten since then. Back when Clinton was running for his first presidency, I recall getting into arguments with folks, insisting that every young person was like me, and I predicted 50% of the youth would vote (I can't remember the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure I was way off).

Of course, back then, you had to look up the local registrar, call them, then cut classes or work to show up and fill out the registration paperwork. These days you can register from the comfort of your keyboard, at any time of the day or night.

If you're not currently registered to vote, I don't know what perfect phrase I can add here to get you involved. Personally, I feel it's the backbone of our nation and without anyone voting, democracy breaks down. Every year I read my little voter info packets that come in the mail, I do some research online, and I vote after weighing the options. It doesn't matter if I'm pleased with my representitives or not, I vote every chance I get.

The last few elections have had abysmal turnouts and when the voting for a single week's American Idol approached the number of folks that voted in the last presidential election, I knew something had to be done to coax more folks into it. This year, please take advantage of your right to vote. It's one of your only chances to participate in this democracy.

The guys behind HotOrNot are upping the ante and giving away $100,000 to someone that registers to vote at their site (and if you win off that link, I get $100k too). I'm amazed Jim and James are ponying up the dough, but I hope it has an effect and gets more people involved and voting.

So if you're not registered, please, for the love of God, Country, and (in this case) Money, register to vote already!

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September 03, 2004

Chess for Girls!

Here's something I've never seen. While downloading a new patch to Style XP, I noticed they offer two versions of the full product, one for "Men" and the other for "Ladies." One has pink themes, the other manly ones. That seems odd and really stupid.

And to anyone that's ever heard Demetri Martin, you'll probably agree the term "ladies" lends an extra air of creepiness.

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