Nevada psychosis, via Washington

We can all agree I'm no raving conservative, right? (Right? ;-)

But when Harry Reid says General Petraeus 'isn't in touch' with what's going on in Baghdad, that's just crazy.

I'll take Petraeus' view over Senator Reid's every time.

Did you know?

+ Did you know Lewis Carroll made up chortle?

+ Did you know the most viewed video on YouTube has been watched 49,936,818 times? I actually like that one, and number five (off color) and number seven. For that matter, I've linked number 14 on here before...

+ Speaking of the most viewed videos, a friend sent me the Free Hugs Campaign video, and I watched it ( number 11). Website. Interesting. My openness to more hugs is in conflict with my resistance to saccharine...

+ Brad linked the AP rundown of how the presidential candidates self-report on religion. Even with their busy schedules, it sounds like they attend church more than me! ;-)

We need more Facebook

I absolutely love Facebook's design and interface. The News Feed on your homepage is SO great. Unlike MySpace, where you have to go visit people's pages and there might or might not be something interesting, in Facebook, it comes to you.

It just occurred to me, while checking some feeds and sites, that the app I really want is something like Facebook for the whole web: that kind of integrated news, all in one place, running conversation threads.

I'm sure we'll get this soon. And, actually, it could be from Facebook.

You see, Facebook is getting a lot of (geek) press for the open API (standards) they just rolled out. They already allow me to automatically post from my weblog feed to Facebook...

I say, bring it on.

2 important uses for camera phones

Just a friendly reminder: A lot of us have camera phones now. Don't forget to use them when it's really important. The 2 important uses in this article: personal security (photograph a sketchy or threatening person) and accident documentation.

Camera Phones: Ten Ways to Use Them

Sunday Burst of Weirdness is right!

Jaq links the video of the minor league manager who went berserk. I happened to see it on ESPN at a restaurant today. Glad we have it on YouTube!

Don't fear China

A lot of news this past week on the Pentagon's China risk assessment. We had a post on Ares and a fairly pessimistic comment, which finally prompted me to go on the record, reprinted below:

+ China's economy depends on ours and Taiwan's. they go to war with us, their economy goes in the tank
+ they've got the biggest urbanization in the history of the world going and still hundreds of millions of rural, dissatisfied poor
+ the 'trade deficit' is mostly old accounting, stuff we ship there for assembly and then get back to sell
+ on the contrary, China is funding our military deficit operations by owning roughly a third of our sovereign debt (which they own because it's a rock solid investment. in fact, some argue it's too conservative a place to keep their money)
+ very little oil flows from the Persian Gulf to the West. most goes east to India, China, and Japan
+ China's 'aggressive' military spending is still only about a fifth of ours. if we can't build a better military than theirs forever with those kinds of numbers...
+ they want to be more capable. they want to be seen as a player. they want strong defense. they don't want Taiwan to declare independence for the time being (they're fine with the status quo)

they have said they want to rise peacefully. we can hedge against an alternative path, trust and verify, and benefit from their economic explosion or we can try to set them up as a 'near peer' that we need a new Cold War with. i sure hope we choose the former path.

In the news...

+ Billy Donovan's leaving NCAA Florida to coach NBA Orlando. Prediction: it won't work. Who was the last successful NCAA-to-NBA coach? Can't name one. Now the failure I can name off the top of my head... And the NFL failures, too...

+ Eric Mangini (Jets) helicoptered to his mother's graduation. Nice story.

Amazon's top-selling DVDs

Got this link in email from Amazon. Very interesting. Top Ten:

1. Star Wars - we own, but on VHS. Might need to replace someday.
2. Firefly - I probably need to watch this
3. Pride and Prejudice - check
4. Band of Brothers - I think I'd like it, but it's too long. Maybe I'll read the book first...
5. Schoolhouse Rock - check
6. Pirates of the Caribbean - Curse of the Black Pearl - not remotely interested
7. 24 - Season One - I like what I've seen, but too long
8. Sex and the City - Season Six - nope
9. love actually - interesting movie, even attractive. But the view of 'love' is pretty jacked up
10. Monty Python and the Holy Grail - great movie, but probably not an owner for me

Others of note:
11. Adventure of Indiana Jones - do they send me #4 for free when it comes out? ;-) Only interested in owning Raiders
15. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen comes in as author #2 after George Lucas on this list. That's pretty strong
17. Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Volume One - yep. On my list
21. The Princess Bride - classic
23. Finding Nemo - first Disney movie (and really Pixar). Wonder why that is...
28. Anne of Green Gables - another wholesome, chick flick
43. Persuasion

What do you think? Care to weigh in?

Jaq and that k-guy

+ Thanks to Jaq for linking me in SL100.

+ Cool stuff from kottke: Rem Koolhaas proportional EU barcode flag , flags of the world (analyzed by color), map of Manhattan made of of the countries of origin of its residents .

War, politics, immigration and Google

+ A Wisconsin Librarian has a good post on war-objectors .

+ ZenPundit: Good political critique asking Where are the good men and women?

Partial answer: politics does not draw our best and brightest, in general.

+ Tom wrote recently about citizenship for those immigrants who serve in the military and early responders. Tom Friedman recently suggested anybody who gets a PhD in the US should be offered citizenship. There are some problems with that, but many avantages. Both get covered in in this post by Dan provocatively titled: Improving Americans.

+ Two funny pix about the growing power of Google (the first one uses some vulgar language).

Should we turn them inside out?

'This next song goes out to the Exxon Corporation'

- Michael Stipe introducing 'I Can Turn You Inside Out' on the Green tour, circa 1989.


I had heard that ExxonMobil hadn't paid up on their Exxon Valdez fines.

Well, that's partially true. The Wikipedia article is a good place to start.

They cleaned up and paid a lot of restitution within the first year.

But there was criticism that they didn't act fast enough.

And they still haven't paid 4.5-5 billion dollars in damages. It's under appeal.

What do you think? Has Exxon done their duty? Ever think twice about buying at Exxon?

MySpace v. Facebook

It's not a decision. It's an IQ test.

Totally ripped off from Josh Kopelman via TechCrunch.

Dude at TechCrunch is talking about which platform you'd develop applications for.

But it's kind of fun to read it, also, as where to participate more ;-)

In the end, it would come down to where my people are hanging out. Facebook's been better lately. I like the homepage summary so I don't have to surf to each different person's page to see what they're up to.

And the Facebook design's much, much better.

Want to retire young?

If you're 20, and saved 20% of your annual income, you could retire at 41.

Goin' crazy on the bongos

Wil's latest pick for Daddy-Son-time has been Donkey Konga 2. Now I don't happen to think it's THAT fun, but he likes it, so that's enough, right?

What I do love about it is the rhythm. I think 'What a great, musically educating game!'

Below: one picture for you from Christine's May Highlights album, which is really worth clicking through to.



(BTW, lest you think I'm too goofy, the bongos have a clap sensor, too ;-)

GoogleFilter

Cringely has an interesting and convincing article about how Google is, right now, growing the seeds of that which will replace it.

Is email crushing your soul?

You might need to declare email bankruptcy.

This applies to Inbox Zero, of course. I'm not there, but I've been improving.

Of course, as I always say, the problem with answering email is: it begets more email.

Fewer emails need to be sent, forwarded, and CC-ed. (I am a culprit here.)

Free yourself by answering emails more briefly, if you can (though I find terse emails can often induce miscommunication and/or bitterness).

More emails need to be simply deleted. More need to be never read. More need to be unsubscribed (along with feeds, if you're addicted that way, too).

Most of us need to find ways to pare down what we do, to de-clutter literally and figuratively.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I just want to Get (a few) Thing Done. I'm not looking to be a world-beater. And I'd say, though improvement is possible, of course, that I'm doing pretty well these days. I'm happy about it.

Condolences, sympathy just don't cut it

Jaq and his wife lost another child.

I am so sorry.

Moving close to GDrive

You know, GDrive, the mythical Google storage service.

Well, not exactly mythical. We already know it exists on Google's intranet. It's just us poor nonGooglers who don't have it.

Anyway, in case you missed it, Google doubled the allowable size of attachments from 10MB to 20.

I've already got one message going in my Drafts folder where I keep attachment files I might possibly need away from my laptops. You can set up your own rudimentary GDrive pretty easily that way...

Ken. Brilliant.

Better just quote this whole one:

The saddest sentence on Wikipedia

From the entry on late film critic Gene Siskel:

"The last film he viewed was the Sarah Michelle Gellar romantic comedy Simply Irresistible."

Ouch.  In other news, William Styron was reading The Da Vinci Code when he died and Julia Child's last meal was the new Bacon Swiss Double Melt from Wendy's.

In praise of parental guidance

You may very well have read His Dark Materials and want your children to see the movie when it comes out. But, if you haven't, I plead with you to read the books yourself before you make this decision. At least get more information. They start out interestingly and end with evil is really good and pre-teen sexual intimacy is an appropriate climax. Satan is good because he wants us to be free. Hey, if that's how you roll, great. Just please make your decision for your children advisedly.

To expand on those strong words, I'll append for you below a review I wrote of this trilogy on Amazon. I originally wrote it anonymously. I've been ready to claim it publicly for some time, but can't find a way to change the appellation.

Before the appendix, what do you think? Have you read these books? Will your children be seeing the movies?

Anti-Christian, wrapped in engaging storytelling , October 25, 2002

NOTE: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS.

'His Dark Materials' turns the Christian view of the world upside-down. 'God' is actually an evil, controlling spiritual being/angel who Pullman calls 'The Authority'. Get it? Authority is bad. God is bad. The Church is bad. Eve's 'sin' was actually not a sin at all. She was 'tempted' to 'freedom' by a good spirit who appeared as a serpent. 'Freedom' is good. 'Sin' is good. I don't usually use so many 'scare quotes', but Pullman chooses a moral orientation for these books which is almost entirely contrary to classical Christianity. I hate that teens and kids are getting this totally slanted view reading these 'Young Adult' books.

I'm not suggesting that Pullman has an anti-Christian agenda. But the worldview of these books is strongly anti-Christian, at any rate. In some ways, the results might be worse, since the 'values' are so subtle.

I'll be the first to admit, the Church has done a lot of bad things. I'd agree with most of Pullman's examples. But his presentation of God/the Church/Christianity is a caricature. He presents none of the good things. I hope Pullman just doesn't know. Otherwise, his selective use of information is misrepresentation.

We need to criticize the Church when there is evil in it, or even wrong-doing. But to caricature the Church as all evil and all wrong is false. It amounts to propaganda before unformed young minds.

Pullman takes the common tack these days of coming up with supernatural providence that is bigger than us, but smaller than God. His device is that 'dark matter' (thus 'His Dark Materials') is conscious and good. It's not much different from Lucas' 'midichlorians' in 'The Phantom Menace'. GK Chesterton said 'It's not that atheists don't believe anything, it's that they'll believe anything.'

I read this story all the way through to the end, hoping it would improve, hoping against hope that some turn would take place. But it didn't. It got worse. In the end we have 12 year old sex basically functioning in a redemptive way for a whole universe (and maybe all of them, I didn't read it that closely). You've got to be kidding. And this man has children of his own. This must just be his own wish nostalgic adolescent sex-wish coming out. None of us wants our twelve year olds having sex, right?

Good story, interesting plot devices, fetching characters...and an infernal worldview. It's not wrong to criticize Christianity or to say you don't believe. But to say everything in Christianity is evil and wrong is false at best, and evil and wrong in itself at worst. The product, at any rate, in inexcusable.

A synapse fired

+File under 'Duh': Study: Climate Change Could Harm Crops

+ If Chester Taylor and Adrian Peterson both stay healthy this season...

Could it be that trickle-down really works?

As a recovering Liberal, (now founder of the Cynical Center(TM)), I hate to countenance trickle-down. I was against trickle-down in my youth (but what did I know?). But here's a comment I made over at Tom's that thumbnails my current thinking on the subject:

one legitimate concern about the growth of the gap between the rich and the poor is: what are we doing to help the poor? they're the ones who are in the harder spot.

it's tempting to think we can help them by re-distributing through taxes. it's tempting to think we can help them through welfare. it's tempting to think, internationally, that we can help through ODA. but those methods have been tried and found wanting. as much as i'd rather help the poor more dramatically and more directly, capitalism and trickle down appear to work the best with the least bad side-effects.

kind of like what Churchill said about Democracy: the worst, except for every other way...

What's your opinion? Does trickle-down work? Is there a better way to help poor people than trying to create wealth and help the economy expand in a way where the rich do in fact get richer?

Matthew's interview with me

Matthew's interview with me is up. I am proud to be a part of his project. Nice job, Matthew. And thanks.

Wil got in to the spirit of 'The Silver Chair'

Wil got in to the spirit of 'The Silver Chair'. One night after reading he said he was looking forward to learning what happened. Then he said 'I jolly well want to know what happens next'. :-)

Gas, government, Google geekery, and --g---s

+ Dan (you know, the weblog-engager ;-) has an interesting post about why the price of gas should be higher and how Americans are opposed to the concept of Congress.

+ Great Googley moogley! I totally didn't know that you could change your search in the Google toolbar by pressing Ctrl+up or down arrow ! I shoot up there all the time with Ctrl+K. This will only speed my frequent blog and news searches!

(Though I will say, as I searched for news today from the context menu, the new Google Universal Search brought up the news I was looking for in the top few results most of the time without having to do a subsequent news search.)

+ And, finally, for tonight, I never thought I'd say this, but: Thank you, Oprah! I couldn't agree with you more! ;-)

Weblog soul searching

Something I almost never do: check my SiteMeter.

Yikes! As of this writing it says 4 hits today and 4 hits/day.

I guess it could be wrong...

So how about just a little feedback:

I think some of you still read this. In feed readers?

Has interesting content just dwindled too low? Now that I'm weblogging professionally, I don't post as much personally.

Not that I'm thinking of getting rid of 'interact'. That's the kind of thing Jason would do ;-) It has value as a diary and a placeholder for the top search results for 'sean meade', if nothing else.

Your comments or email are appreciated.

Answers filed

Matthew is 9. He's home schooled and is doing an Internet interview project. It started with interviewing Matthew Baldwin [defectiveyeti.com]. I volunteered to be interviewed , and got the questions from Matthew recently. I emailed my answers this morning and will point you over there when he posts them. In the meantime, check out the other interviews .

Cool project. Good luck, Matthew.

tdaxp matrimony

Dan proposed to his love in a weblog post and she answered yes in a comment! Isn't that romantic?! :-)

(Still waiting on an answer to my question if the engagement was totally conducted online.)

Dan and Fei are in China together with her family right now, so this is a perfect time to get engaged.

Congratulations to the happy couple!

Dan tdaxp is great!

My friend Dan (tdaxp) is, in some ways, the purest weblogger I know. He posts voluminously (with some lapses in proofreading ;-). He links and crosslinks. I have often complimented him and am quite confident he can do whatever he wants in this sphere.

It was so very kind of him to do a whole post on my good news from the other day. Thanks, Dan!

Check out Dan's weblog, tdaxp, especially for his current posts from China, especially if you've never read him before

Rockin'

I give you Hurricane 2000 by the Scorpions and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Why do I like this song so much, especially when it's so cheesy?

I've always liked Rock You Like a Hurricane.

And I love the orchestral part.

Oh yeah: and, when we lived in Tulsa, and I went to a few Golden Hurricane basketball games, they played this music at the start of the game. So that's kind of fun.

(Admittedly, the vocal performance is really bad.)

Wil thinks the drummer is crazy and looks like a girl.

Then he said 'I bet Dr Octopus would be good at playing the drums.'

Enjoy? ;-)