Papercuts
Adam Yoshida on why Dean cannot win, or any other democrat for that matter.#
Frankly, I suspect a Howard Dean being presented before national audiences launching hatred-filled tantrums against the President will come off, more than anything else, as a little nuts. Yet, if Dean attempts to move towards the middle now, he won't be able to win the nomination. But, if he doesn't start to move towards the middle, he won't win the general election.
What is shaping up now, especially as Dean seemingly begins to bleed momentum, is the worst-case scenario for the Democrats. Dean will probably win Iowa and New Hampshire but, I suspect, with less support than expected. The question of whether Dean is electable will nag at voters as they step into the booth. Dean will manage to limp through the rest of the primaries in the lead, but fail to win enough delegates to take the nomination. Other candidates will limp along as well, but not with enough to win even if they combined. A furious Dean and his enraged supporters will move into the summer, confused and lashing out. The Democratic National Convention in Boston will be the most exciting (and damaging) in memory. Either the party will manage to nominate a badly-wounded Dean, or it will manage to anoint someone else, to the fury of Dean's supporters.
Gina Smith on her reviewing philosophy.#
I reviewed software and hardware products for a few years, mostly for industry pubs like PC Week and PC/Computing. PR people besieged me with samples, my office, trunk and home garage were filled with every version of TurboTax, every make and model of hard drive, you get the idea.
How to decide what to review? I had a philosophy. I automatically reviewed a product in print only if 1.) It was hyped in the news and everyone was waiting for word on how it worked. OR 2.) The product was great, even if it was obscure. OR 3.) The product was just piss-poor, even if it was from a major company known for good products.
Gina Smith quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn.#
"Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Toby Stern links to The Stealth PATRIOT Act II.#
On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing - on a Saturday - as "the President signs bills seven days a week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shuttng down the federal government the following Monday.
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.
[...]
The Bush Administration has yet to answer pivotal questions about its latest constitutional coup: If these new executive powers are necessary to protect United States citizens, then why would the legislation not withstand the test of public debate? If the new act's provisions are in the public interest, why use stealth in ramming them through the legislative process?
Wirearchy writes about the transformation and the abysmal road ahead.#
Anyone elected in 2004 who is not Bush does not have the time nor the constituency to deal with what has been put in place since 2000 (or, consider the cumulative effects of Reagan, Bush I, and the current administrations, in toto). Efforts to undo all this will just make things more divisive, and stranger.
Looking to organizational change theory and evidence, fundamental change does not occur until a true crisis happens - an existential crisis that threatens the identity and life of an entity. I don't think that crisis has happened yet, although I do think that the core elements for such a crisis are in place. I think George Bush should be re-elected and "we" should bear witness to the unfolding of a truly unequal, dispassionate and cruel buggering of a society (and world) in which the poor, the ethnic, the intellectuals are ushered to the cheap seats, and then are locked into the cages that were installed in the stadium the night before.
It takes a long time for change to happen quickly. I think that trying to set out on a path to a more sincere and real democracy, a more just society, is a Sisyphean task in the current environment of disinformation and rigged influence. It's thankless, and more importantly, probably impossible. The dishonesty, corruption and moral bankruptcy that passes for leadership now must become so clear, so evident that even the blue-collar good ole boys start saying "waasssuup?"
The Black Saint writes about Dick Gephardt.#
I've found it difficult to take Gephardt seriously ever since I watched this C-SPAN interview with Tom Daschle, in which he revealed that Pres. Bush once had forbidden Gephardt from entering the Oval Office until he put on his suit jacket. Now, that was probably humiliating -- like the snooty host at some fancy restaurant forcing you to wear the germ-laden coat they keep lying around for whenever someone from the lower orders wanders in off the street.
Whenever Gephardt lays into Pres. Bush, I just want to say to him, "This is really about the suit jacket, isn't it?"
AKMA on his lurid past and fun hobbies since departed.#
I'm not even a good amateur type designer, though when I'm in a whimsical mood I play with others' designs to add ligatures or other useful alternate glyphs to typefaces that lack characters I need. It's fun, but I don't have the hand with beziers that digital design requires. Nor, for that matter, do I have any real type design tools; whereas PC users have (or used to have) at least one highly functional freeware type design application, Mac uses have always had to rely on commercial wares. Fontographer hasn't been updated in years, doesn't run under OS X, and still costs more than I could possibly afford — even if I had time to use it. So for the time being, I've given up type design. I have way too much to do, to indulge that particular distraction.
Strange Women Lying in Ponds on rampant and illogical ideology in Iran.#
But certainly the Iranian people deserve better than what they are getting from their government in this. Jeff Jarvis has more, including a link to a report that the mullahs are accepting aid from all countries except for one. That is, in and of itself, a terrible injustice, not against Israel, but against the Iranian people who need the most competent and logistically convenient assistance available.
Israeli expertise in rescue operations would be a natural choice, if it were not for the mullahs' intractable philosophy of hate against the Jews. The mullahs' political position on Israel is indeed to fundamental to their philosophy that any acceptance of Israeli aid would seem to largely negate their raison d'etre, and therefore undermine their authority. After all, where would the mullahs be without their enmity toward Israel? What would they have left to burnish their Islamist credentials? They would probably be in danger of being marked for assassination by their own hard-line radicals.
Don Park on the impermanence of "permalinks."#
An irony of the blogosphere is that permalinks are not permanent. Whenever a blog changes service or software, its permalinks breaks. While breaking of permalinks is not worth crying over, it's pretty annoying because internal links break as well. [...]
Having your own domain name doesn't protect you either if you decide to switch blogging software. This is why bloggers are leaving a trail of blogs behind them like a breadcrumbs. Nice huh?
Adam Gessaman writes about the emptying and destruction of blogs as a tangent to this.
This applies to bloghosting as well. I don't really talk about it a lot here, but I run a little blogging collective which houses blogs for my friends and some of their friends. Although I don't believe that I've ever explicitly stated that I will keep the site running forever, there is an implicit understanding that as long as they are interested in using it, I will provide the space. The catch, however, is the emphasis on the word friends.
I have a fairly loose definition of 'friend' in this context, but situations do arise where I have been forced to decide between my inherent liberal idealism — and its associated belief that everyone deserves the right to be heard — and my definition of the word 'friend'. In one situation, a former girlfriend felt that her blog (which I will not be linking here) which I hosted out of my own pocket was the perfect platform to fire back at me for all of the wrongs, perceived and real, that I had done to her. The second situation was less of an overt act and more of a subtle slap where an individual with whom I had a temporary falling out deleted her journal entries, presumably out of spite.
He offers some suggestions for questions and policies to ask and have if you are a blog hoster.
Steve Friedl has an interesting article called Reading C type declarations. I think it is funny that C programmers feel it is okay to NEED such a guide.#
Thomas Friedman on the cure to Anti-Americanism.#
After two years of traveling almost exclusively to Western Europe and the Middle East, Poland feels like a geopolitical spa. I visited here for just three days and got two years of anti-American bruises massaged out of me. Get this: people here actually tell you they like America — without whispering. What has gotten into these people? Have all their subscriptions to Le Monde Diplomatique expired? Haven't they gotten the word from Berlin and Paris? No, they haven't. In fact, Poland is the antidote to European anti-Americanism. Poland is to France what Advil is to a pain in the neck. Or as Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs specialist, remarked after visiting Poland: "Poland is the most pro-American country in the world — including the United States."
What's this all about? It starts with history and geography. There's nothing like living between Germany and Russia — which at different times have trampled Poland off the map — to make Poles the biggest advocates of a permanent U.S. military presence in Europe. Said Ewa Swiderska, 25, a Warsaw University student: "We are the small kid in school who is really happy to have the big guy be his friend — it's a nice feeling."
Lisa Williams on how the blogosphere really is an exchange of ideas rather than a battle.#
One of the things I really enjoy about blogging is that you actually see people change their minds online (I need to start collecting examples of this phenomenon so I can point to them easily). It's not like AM radio or cable news shows, where you have host plus two talking heads, one pro and one anti and no one ever changes their mind, they just holler at each other in a display of rhetorical ping-pong that we are all supposed to find fascinating. The best thing about the blogosphere is that it isn't this kind of deathlike media stasis, a sort of Tombs of the Emperor Kings Media, which is what I think of every time I turn on the news or a talk show: it's not an exchange of ideas, it's two sarcophagi with dead, unchangeable ideas in them put next to each other in a ceremonial display of Journalistic Balance.
Ryan Overbey posts new pictures. My favourite.#
Matthew Gross posts an email from Joe Trippi that has a link to the contribute page FOUR times and is a desperate cry for money.#
Everything you've worked for is at stake right now. Everything we've fought for and everything we believe in comes down to these last four days of this quarter and then the last nineteen days before Iowa.
We need to raise $1.5 million before midnight on December 31 so we can win Iowa. With just four days left to go, we're $1.2 million short. Please take action right now, because these are the most critical days our campaign has ever faced
They acknowledge that you need money -- not people -- to win.
AccordionGuy writes that it is the declaration that counts.#
Rich: So what makes a date a date, say rather than going out with a bunch of friends?
Kate: You have to call it a date.
Me: Yeah, I think you actually have to say "I would like to go out with you on a date."
Rich: So it's the declaration that makes it a date?
Kate: Yes. It's like the military. You have to declare a war, otherwise it's just a police action.
AccordionGuy says he prefers dating to "hooking up". Up until a couple of years ago, I thought "hooking up" meant getting a phone number at the bar. My friends, just before we were heading out, would tell me such things as "Richie, you're going to hook up tonight!" (To women who go to bars looking for some hot lovin': everything else being equal, would you prefer to "hook up" with a guy named Richard or Rich, or Richie? The question is half-honest, half-rhetorical.) Anyway, guys who are self-conscious about how they look in social situations find it more difficult to get laid when they're told they're gonna get some than if they're not told so. Same goes for "have you hooked up yet?" Hopefully that information comes in handy for your self-conscious friend that you wish the best for.
Richard links to Anne Kingston on television as drugs.#
Such is the world in which we live that there was little surprise last week when Paris Hilton, star of Fox's The Simple Life (a television program so dumb it makes Green Acres seem like it was written by Edward Albee) drew more television viewers than George W. Bush's interview with Diane Sawyer. Think of it. A bratty rich girl best known for her contribution to Internet porn is of more interest to the North American public than the leader of the free world sharing his vision in these dangerous times.
Perhaps we should question whether one of the dangers facing that free world resides within the paunchy body politic itself, couch-potato comatose as it appears to be. But we don't. Fascination with Hilton is merely chalked up to the seemingly endless appetite for the stupid, the titillating and the trivial, that TV triumvirate that tends to breed more of the same. Or, as network executives spin it, they're only democracy's pimps, giving the public what it wants.
Kaye Trammell on blogs and gender.#
One of the first pieces of advice I give to anyone who asks me how to create a "secret blog" (the anonymous kind where you can write evil things about your best friend) is to engage in a little gender swapping. I tell such bloggers that they should pick a template that is very gender opposite. So if it is a frilly girl who likes pink & flowers then I tell her to pick the navy blue & black template. Then, I tell the new bloggers to try to avoid referring to friends as "him" or "her."
Being gendered can help or hurt you. For Tracy, she was interested in Dinky's content especially because she thought it was a mom blog. Others might be drawn to Tony Pierce because he's a "lady's man - man's man - man about town."
Kristin is the new Martha Stewart sans-criminal impulses.#
so this semester, i set out to make snickerdoodles at the home of tim, conner, and matt. with the recipe before me, i carefully measured out each ingredient and stuck the perfect little balls of dough in the oven with complete satisfaction. a satisfaction that lasted exactly 10 minutes and 15 seconds, when my cookies emerged from the oven as little round disks of death.
those cookies sat in the kitchen all evening, the boys eyeing them suspiciously after conner nearly lost a tooth to his first bite. they gathered dust for the next couple of weeks until the boys decided to test their capabilities. after throwing several of them into the street, the guys informed me that not only did my cookies sustain massive impact at high velocities, they would also likely be preserved fossil-style in their front yard until the end of time. thanks guys.