August 2008 Archives

I'm in LA for a couple days for a wedding. It's an intense time at work (school -- and committees! -- just starting up) so blogging has been sparse. I love my iPhone (spot traffic in LA) and have two followers on Twitter. I'm not yet aware of what the social norms are there. Do I automatically follow them too? ...

ME@TMV TODAY:

• Exploitation? Michael Moore's letter to God -- A good letter, but unseemly as everyone's evacuating? (I had the video that triggered it linked here, it was pulled so now is here.)
• The hurricane and the GOP convention -- different conclusions on the quandary from Right and Left.

ME@TMV FRIDAY

• Obama takes politics back to the future -- my comment on his convention speech.

ME@TMV AUGUST 26TH

• More on C-SPAN's innovative Convention Hub -- A very cool feature. I hope C-SPAN might one day make all programs available this way.
• Jon Stewart: cable news a 'brutish, slow-witted beast' -- Howard Kurtz on Jon Stewart's Dem convention arrival. I was not as impressed by his shows from Denver as I was Colbert's from Philly.

ME@TMV AUGUST 25TH

• C-SPAN gets interactive; text messaging benefits Dems -- first post on C-SPAN's Convention Hub.

ME@TMV AUGUST 24TH

• Obamanomics: my kind of tax & spend -- I should have titled it "The Right Kind of..." It got good comments anyway.
• Bill Kristol to Hillary partisans: Put her name in for VP. (UPDATED) -- Meaningless drivel from Kristol but I thought it would get some attention. I was too late...

ME@TMV AUGUST 23RD

• China plays to win -- I set up a new YouTube account for clips from broadcast news stories. THis was the first, an excellent piece from CBS Sunday Morning.
• Why I'll be boycotting (sort of) the conventions -- anticipating that posting would be light with work and my trip to CA coming up.
• Biden w/Obama in the land of Lincoln -- Doris Kearns Goodwin on Lincoln's bi-partisan cabinet. Triggered by Joe Biden remark.

ME@TMV AUGUST 22ND

• The Accent Game -- an online game and some quotes.
• How many houses does John McCain have? -- the video. Set to "That Feist song."

ME@TMV AUGUST 21ST

• John L. Jackson Jr.'s Racial Paranoia -- Review of Brainstorm blogger's Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness.
• Pay for grades -- does it work? -- The jury's out. I have been wholly for it until this incisive criticism.

ME@TMV AUGUST 20TH

• Lower the drinking age to 18? -- I'm for it. Cautiously.
• Gmail Hacking Tool: it's time to be more careful -- Gmail has some new security features.

Off to the beach now. Wedding in Malibu tonight. Having a wonderful, wonderful time! I fly home tomorrow.

In the Reagan Library... We're in California for wedding. Blogging is slowed. Tweeting has been facilitated by an early birthday gift -- an iPhone! Tweet tweet..

I've finally taken the plunge: http://twitter.com/jwindish

I have been waiting for a friend -- or student -- to introduce me. I decided it would be a good tool for work. I've got a Twitter feed there so colleagues know where I am and what I'm up to. The jwindish feed is my public/personal feed. I'll include it in the sidebar.

Right now I'm having blog design display issues that I can't quite figure out...

A photo from my mother in-law-equivalent.

A lot of catching up to do... And I still want to do more work on the architecture of this site!

ME@TMV TODAY:

• "Caroline: Pull a Cheney!" An Open Letter to Caroline Kennedy from Michael Moore -- all my cobloggers are discussing their picks. I have none. So I was happy to hear from Michael. No need to clickthrough; my only comment, Dream On!

ME@TMV YESTERDAY:

• Nouriel Roubini: economist and pessimist -- The New York University economics professor predicting a continuing crisis in the U.S. economy.
• Futuristic Glass -- One of 10 Futuristic User Interfaces discussed at Smashing Magazine.

ME@TMV SUNDAY:

• High School dress codes: the Confederate flag & the boy in the hot pink boots -- Provocative comparison got not as many comments as I could have had, but they're an interesting bunch. (I posted three days ago and the last comment was posted 18 minutes ago.)

ME@TMV SATURDAY

• Our libertarian leanings as measured in Motorcycle deaths -- Helmet laws got no comments? Saturdays are slow blog days...

ME@TMV FRIDAY

• McCain abortion comment alarms base -- And to think, I had focused on the gay part!
• Happy Birthday: The iMac turns 10 -- with a link to a gallery of 10 Years of Cuddly, Friendly iMacs.
• McCain: The party could "exclude people" for being "pro-gay rights" -- A Kinsley gaffe.
• GPS: illegal search or just cheaper tracking? -- In the comments I link to It's The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It! We have no idea how many of our rights we are letting slip away.

ME@TMV THURSDAY

• Update on the cyberattacks on Georgia -- probably "Russian partisans self-organizing."
• Exploring Obama's Boomer Strength -- The WaPo goes to Macon, GA and Lancaster, PA -- two places I know intimately -- to find that Obama has strength among boomers.
• Debate coach's profane performance caught on YouTube -- Unbelievably bad behavior. He's the debate coach!
• Questioning Elizabeth Edwards' 'Excruciating Anguish' -- Kaus revels in the story, but he has a point.

ME@TMV WEDNESDAY

• Georgia cyberwar garnering attention -- When the NYTimes tunes in, we all take notice.

ME@TMV TUESDAY

• Bleak Broadband Growth -- phone companies are hit more than cable companies. Too bad too, here where I live they have a better product.
• What's Their Real Problem with Gay Marriage (It's the Gay Part) -- behind the scenes at the LATimes editorial board meeting, supporters of CA's Proposition 8 are homophobes.

ME@TMV MONDAY 8/11

• "Traditional marriage" is a moving target -- marriage changes over time.

ME@TMV SUNDAY 8/10

• The Grist on The End of Food -- Paul Roberts' new book takes on food.

ME@TMV SATURDAY 8/9

• Louis Vuitton goes after Dave Navarro for fake guitar strap -- I can't tell which bored the TMV audience more, the copyfight or the rocker.

ME@TMV SATURDAY 8/8

• Scientific proof of the good that religions provide -- The hypothesis is the more disease the less mixing we do, so fewer religions.

OTHER LINKS:

• Dispatches From the Fields: Mowing -- and re-growing -- the grassroots -- A call for a consumer/farmer coalition; consumers make up for the loss of middle sized farmers who once played a politically significant role.
• A Marshall Plan for reading -- Sall Stern makes a compelling case for phonics-based reading training in the very early grades to address the black/white reading/education gap.
• San Francisco Case Shows Vulnerability Of Data Networks -- A very important warning for all about the power of IT.
• As a Professor, Obama Enthralled Students and Puzzled Faculty -- describes his teaching career, style, and relationship to candidacy.

I'll try not to let it go this long again.

A presentation by Merlin Mann.

Who Moved My Brain? Revaluing Time and Attention

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: gtd time)

From Focus on the Family. When "several members complained that prayer shouldn't be used to bring harm on someone else" they said it was a joke and pulled it from their website. Right Wing Watch got it. I got it via Pam@Pandagon.

Via PsyBlog.

Background here. More here.

More here. The mayor describes the raid in an email to friends. Via TMV cobloggers Shaun Mullen and Bridget Magnus.

Steve Benen notes a McCain spokesperson gave the joke policy prescription some credence, then sets the record straight.

ME@TMV TODAY

• Republican same-sex marriage backers reap big benefits -- The money rolls in in NY. Tim Gill's strategy pays off.
• Edwards' political currency declines with each day the story goes unresolved -- the love child story hurts even without the traditional media jumping on the story. Yet.

ME@TMV YESTERDAY

• Are gays the marrying kind? A study says we are. Bonus quotes: Focus on the Family Action critiques the study.
• Study: our implicit biases Lots of awarenes of them. Now what do we do about it? More here, here, and here.

ME@TMV TUESDAY

• PLEDGE - Pledge Language is English Declaration and Government Endorsement - Act of 2008 -- Georgia's most embarrassing pol (Paul Broun) does it again. All Georgia Republicans voted against the eduction bill passed last week by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate.
• "The best way to know you have a mind is to change it" -- wonderful quote from Google's Senior Copyright Counsel William Patry on the occasion of ending his blog.
• Will Texas defy World Court? -- YES! They did it with another execution.
• The Mojave experiment: is Windows Vista as bad as we think it is? -- Microsoft tries a variation on the Folgers ad. I wrote Dan Ariely to see what he thought. He replied with a post on his blog here.

I replied that Microsoft should have used the insights to do something to better position their product rather than squandering the gimmick in an ad campaign. He said I should go pick a fight with the Slate reporter. I would have, but I need a hook...

OTHER LINKS:

• MobileMe's still having troubles. Om Malik explains why.
• Atlanta arborist says he was fired for doing his job too well -- the city doesn't enforce its law against developers. Fires the guy who authored it for saying so.
• Held Suspect -- Republic of T's Terrance on living while black. One of his most moving posts ever.
• Justice department releases a study on sexual violence in juvenile prisons -- An estimated 4,072 accounts of sexual violence were reported during 2005 and 2006.

On the the American Family Association's boycott of McDonald's over its decision "not to remain neutral in the cultural war over homosexuality" Stewart says, "This is the first time you realized McDonald's was gay? Do you have a TV? Have you ever seen their ads?!"

Via John Battelle, "If you liked these, you'll also like this."

Via NewTeeVee, Jimmy Justice's approach to justice is an intimate one:

In Sunday's Washington Post, Keith B. Richburg interviewed the self-appointed vigilante while connecting him to other recent instances of citizen-documented police misconduct, such as this video of a Critical Mass bicyclist being assaulted by the NYPD

ON TMV TODAY

• Brandon McInerney: 19 days too old for justice, stats on the number of kids serving life sentences in this country. Truly barbarous.
• Trolls: Why inflict anguish on a stranger? The NYTimes Magazine story, with lots of links. Including 1 on how to avoid attracting them.
• The closing of The Patry Copyright Blog -- I wasn't a regular reader. Now I never will be. I agree with him that "Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being..."

ON TMV YESTERDAY:

• More on Deibold, the patch, and the 2002 Georgia election -- This from the state that requires a photo ID to stop vote fraud. Yeah, right. And I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you...

ON TMV FRIDAY:

• Arianna on The Huffington Post -- a typical quote, followed by a subtle critique. She says "her biggest mistake was not instituting comment moderation..." and apparently uses it to stifle criticism.
• Indecision 2008: The News Better Run -- commentless video embed. Like I usually do here. In fact, why not...

OTHER LINKS:

• Salon point counter point -- Glenn Greenwald says Let's give Blue Dogs the boot (even if it means losing seats). Ed Kilgore says Wait till George Bush is history, and then decide. I'm with Kilgore, esp. his last 4 paragraphs. BTW, they're talking my Congreemen.
• Google Lively, another pointless virtual world. Includes interesting stats on Second Life.
• Revolving doors -- they really do save energy big time!
• Unmasking the gun lobby mole -- Bravo Mother Jones!
• FSF on the iPhone -- They articulate the argument NOT to buy. "Apple's DRM software and the accompanying legal threats are in place to further their own interests by restricting the freedoms of computer users"

From Race and Politics in America: Where Are We in 2008? at Aspen Institute's Idea Festival. Recorded on July 1. Full program here. Ta-Nehisi Coates moderates and blogs about it here with links to blogosphere discussion of it.