Tuesday, May 11, 2010

It was a creed written into the founding documents?

Saturday, May 08, 2010

Finally Fringe is getting on with the story

Walternate strolled in, in the final minutes of the last episode. Two more eps to go in the season. About time. I’ve been channeling Sringer Bell‘s impatience.

P.S. Levi Johnston is a poor man’s Josh Jackson.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Random notes on my first three hours with the iPad

I was so excited I forgot my area code.

I signed up for the 3G plan: limited bandwidth, $14.95 for a rolling 30 days, no contract. It seems quite fast in suburban Chicago, even loading a movie on Netflix.

Netflix looks beautiful. I hadn’t really tried to predict what I might want to do with the device, except that I thought I would like curling up in bed to read books and watch movies. I’m not sure how I’ll prop it up. The case is nice for creating a school desk slant angle but you need something more like an easel to watch it. Right now I’m using a sort of beanbag pillow.

Public domain books in the iBook store are much nicer than the PD books made for Kindle.

I synced all of the audio in iTunes. Will I listen to audiobooks using it? I have no idea. It might be safer for driving, with the larger controls.

After specifying Gmail in the device settings, it accepted my user/pass, but the inbox never did fill up after several attempts.

It’s a little smaller than I imagined it would be.

I got the keyboard, not Bluetooth, the accessory that the iPad mounts on vertically. The keyboard has a nice touch. The ensemble looks extra sweet. I predict it will be used in many a home magazine or furniture ad.

After using it constantly for the first three hours following unboxing, I wanted to do something else. I can’t afford it, so I’m going to be biased toward loving it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t actually love it. I may already love it a little. We’ll just have to see what it’s good for—maybe something I can’t foresee. I want to make a web app for it to really learn how what its middle ground position in the universe of devices is all about.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Echo from France: Sound familiar?

“Your coming to power is undoubtedly a historic event. For the first time this old Gallo-Roman country will be governed by a Jew. I dare say out loud what the country is thinking, deep inside: it is preferable for this country to be led by a man whose origins belong to his soil… than by a cunning talmudist.”

—A member of the French parliament following Leon Blum’s election as prime minister in 1936.

(Of course Blum really was a socialist.)

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Yeah, I fell off the wagon

Well that didn’t last long. Two weeks ago I said I’d try not to gripe about the Right. Couldn’t do it. You can’t follow the news and keep that pledge.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Cuter euphemism for a marathon session in Congress

Chris Matthews is fond of saying ”Bring in the cots” when daring Congress to duke it out in a filibuster.

Watching an older (1997) Ken Burns series on Thomas Jefferson, I cracked up at the description of the 1800 election, when the House of Representatives convened to break an electoral college tie, but then the House found itself in a tie.  It went on for days, and the congressmen ”had to send home for their nightcaps.” After 36 ballots, Jefferson edged out Aaron Burr.

The had to part is what got me giggling, along with picturing the current session’s members all snug in their nightcaps and powdering gowns, and on C-SPAN. Presumably you couldn’t spend the night away from your nightcap, and it would have to be your own cap.

If the GOP has the gall to threaten filibuster in the Senate on the reform bill, and the Dems have the guts to call them on it, we might see that midnight cap run. I suppose the 21st century version would be roomy new fleece hoodies for all, with promotional logos. Still better, Snuggies all around, red or blue. They’d look like two church choirs competing in a festival. Maybe Goldman Sachs would oblige.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Treme: Can’t wait

Sunday, March 28, 2010

No more junior high school partisan cattiness (at least I’ll try; how about you?)

I think I’ve finally exhausted myself with obsessing over outrages by the right wing. So much resentment poisons you, makes you bitter about everything. I still disagree with Republicans and especially its Tea Party wing, but I’m going to try not to let it run my life, try not to spend my mornings before leaving for work searching for something to be peeved about, try to avoid media outlets that make the divide their guiding principle. It might be a good pledge for a lot of us to take.

Fox and MSNBC shows: you might think about swearing off basing your story lineups on “Can you believe what they tried to pull off today?” Yes, even Rachel Maddow, who I think is great and with whom I almost always agree, aren’t you getting to be a more thoughtful flip side of Sarah Palin? Smiling through the jibes, cheerfully sniping, looking for outrages—hoping for them, even?

Newspaper columnists and bloggers: try talking as much about your own agendas as you do about the other team’s positions. I’d like to hear more about what the camps really stand for, less about what they’re against. Crazy when you have to learn about party positions by reading the other side.

I might not succeed. I’m going to find another channel; I’m outlining some fiction about a small-town conservative politician who has some redeeming qualities. The obsession started during the presidential campaign and it’s hard to break free. Probably a good thing, though, if we could…

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

I knew it was coming

When you hook in through Facebook Connect, it shows you profile picture, too.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

New fightin’ words that might not work

Are you keeping your ears tuned, Luntz-like, for phrases that frame the political debate? The possible upcoming battle to pass parts of healthcare reform through the Senate’s budget reconciliation process is going to be characterized as “ramming it through”—as an arrogant move.

Arianna Huffington on This Week told George Will she hoped it would be rammed through, helping to blunt the negative intent.

If it’s arrogant to be the party in power and push through what you want, then hasn’t that pretty much been happening in democracy all along, certainly during the Bush years, and probably back to the Greeks?

Also, given the public’s contempt for congressional dillydallying, only the most dug-in naysayers are going to disparage a little healthy muscle. The rest of us are going to say “About time, you wienies.”  Really, Dems, it’s FINE to want what you want, don’t let them tell you it’s not. Don’t let them fake you back into the wimperers corner. [but… but… cloture… but elections… afraid…]

Sunday, February 14, 2010

My Capital Rewards

I’ve been on a mission to get clean: paid off my overdraft protection last year and just last month paid off both credit cards. It felt great. And Capital One even granted a reward!

To itself.

On the next statement following the $0 balance they raised my interest rate by 8%. They thought they’d squeeze me a little before Feb. 22 when the new law goes into effect. I called to cancel. The customer service rep asked me why. I explained. She sighed: big breath exhalation. I’m guessing her sigh meant she had heard customers tell the same tale more than once already today.

Meanwhile, Capital One seems to be on a mission of its own—to discover whether there really is a need for small business loans. I don’t mean the kind where you take your hat in hand and sit down with a banker to go over your balance sheet and pay an interest rate a few points above the bank’s cost. I’m talking about the modern kind where they intice your small business to sign up for a credit card to get by and hopefully you fall behind on payments.

Last month I got three promos for such a card in one day, all addressed to a business name I haven’t used for 15 years.  They’re wasting a lot of marketing funds on dumb mailings like that. Wonder how they’re working out. It probably works with desperate little businesses.

Soon all they will have left is desperate business customers to go along with their desperate consumer customers. That doesn’t bode well for anybody, not even Captial One and its investors, not in the long term.

Ask your members of congress where they stand on the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Common sense is in the air, everywhere

President Obama said “Let’s try common sense” in the State of the Union speech Wednesday night.

Here’s the Twitter reaction. Obama fans like the idea. The Right scoffs. (If you see this seven days from now, the search link will lead to an empty results page; Twitter doesn’t keep historical searches.)

Bonus: I found this in my searches this morning—a November 2009 accounting of Governor Palin’s fondness for the phrase by Chris Kelly, a writer for Bill Maher’s show who blogs at Huffington Post.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

‘Common sense’ catch phrase is catching: #TCOT crowd adores saying it

On Saturday I pointed out the newest conservative catch phrase, “common sense,” and suggested libs should just ... take it.

I’ve been listening. It seems to be used more by politicians on the far right. More interesting, talking points aren’t just for politicians anymore. When pols speak the tested words there’s an echo on the internet. Check out this feed of tweets mentioning “common sense” by users who employ the “TCOT” (top conservatives on Twitter) hashtag to filter their remarks.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

A framing proposal: appropriate the term ‘common sense’ for the left

Listening to John Boehner’s weekly address response today confirmed an earlier suspicion that “common sense” must be shaping up to be the newest GOP canned buzz phrase. Maybe it’s been around and it just hasn’t pricked my ears up, but when Sarah Palin and Boehner are both currently pounding the phrase into our consciousness, you have to think it’s been tested and it’s working.

Here’s what I wonder: if the left couldn’t just appropriate it. We’re for common sense, too!

Part of the Republicans’  message must be a dog whistle thing: the lunch pail crowd likes to to believe that intellectuals necessarily don’t have common sense, it’s one or the other. You’re an egghead or you have street smarts, never both. It can’t be both or the blue collar class loses a cherished mode of self-appreciation. “Well, that boss of mine might have a diploma on his wall but he don’t have a lick of common sense [like me].” That’s why you also hear “Ivy League” sprinkled into raps about policy—a sure way to send shivers of defensive disgust up the spines of Real Americans.

I think we could disarm a lot of these culture war weapons by just using them ourselves. It would neutralize the sting, but would be entirely fair. For instance, who says I can’t tout my own sort of “family values” just because I’m very liberal?

We can be angry and populist with the best of them, too. Why cede all those lovely, universally human terms and stances?

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

What good is fear without some nervous window time, and what good is window time if you don’t know which one to peer from? Here’s a public service for shaky citizens who worry about the Guantanamo Bay detainees coming to Illinois.

Map their route to you.