Seattlepi: Commentary: The music fades when shilling is the motive

This is a great piece about the way marketing is changing the music industry. The writer is obviously displeased with this, but he does a nice job looking at the objective inevitability of the current trend.

Some choice quotes:

The question is: What happens to the music itself when the way to build a career shifts from recording songs that ordinary listeners want to buy to making music that marketers can use? That creates pressure, subtle but genuine, for music to recede: to embrace the element of vacancy that makes a good soundtrack so unobtrusive, to edit a lyric to be less specific or private, to leave blanks for the image or message the music now serves.

Musicians who don't expect immediate mass-market radio play -- maybe they're too old, maybe they're too eccentric -- have gotten their music on the air by selling it to advertisers. That can rev up careers, as Apple ads have done for Feist and for this year's big beneficiary, Yael Naim, whose "New Soul" introduced the MacBook Air. (Sites like findthatsong.net help listeners identify commercial soundtracks.)

Perhaps it's too 20th century to hope that music could stay exempt from multitasking, or that the constant insinuation of marketing into every moment of consciousness would stop when a song begins. But for the moment I'd suggest individual resistance. Put on a song with no commercial attachments. Turn it up. Close your eyes. And listen.

I have to admit to being torn on this subject myself. I think when done thoughtfully, marketed music can be a good thing. Playing games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band has broadened my musical horizons, and I am listening to and supporting artists I might have never discovered without these games. The same is true of the music in some commercials. However, when the songwriter goes into the process trying to write something marketers will grab and exploit, then the music and artistry suffer.

To an extent, selling-out may be a necessary component to success. Even performers like Bob Dylan and Michael Stipe have paid homage to the industry, but they have both done so while retaining those qualities in their music that makes them unique. Other artists merely become carbon copies following a cookie cutter song template. As with most things, balance is key. Music for the sake of music is a great ideal, but it may limit your exposure. On the other hand, sacrificing quality for marketability cheats the artist and the listeners.

Tags: media

Looks interesting:



From the site:

The story of Christ's birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love.

So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists.

And when it's all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas?

Apple’s changes to OS X in Leopard affected more than the basic desktop experience. The aesthetic changes permeate the applications and utilities of the operating system. Even applications that aren’t written specifically for Leopard take on the new look-and-feel to some extent. Here is a brief tour, in pictures, of how some of the bundled OS X application changed between Tiger and Leopard.

The Finder

The first major difference in the Finder is the total absence of brushed metal. The new Finder looks more lightweight, and it fits in with the overall OS X aesthetic much more naturally.


The Tiger Finder


The Leopard Finder

I am not a fan of the new folder icons, but I wasn’t too fond of the old ones either. Fortunately, they’re easy enough to change. The overall look is better, and I think the new sidebar is an improvement over the former. There’s not much else to say beyond that.

iCal

iCal also receives some slimming in the window department as it too loses the brushed metal motif that once adorned it. Some elements, such as the day-week-month buttons, are moved around, and I think the new calendar pane is easier to read.


iCal in Tiger


iCal in Leopard

Editing events in iCal has always been a bit of a hassle with an Event Drawer that would pop in and out as you selected events to edit. Now iCal will pop an editing dialog right next to the event in question. This new approach, while only slightly varied from before, makes adding and editing events a much quicker process.

Safari

Safari hasn’t changed much, but it’s yet another application to lose brushed metal in its chrome.


Tiger Safari


Leopard Safari

Safari has also gained security features that check for possibly malicious sites, and the interface for that feature is pretty neat.

Printing

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the improved printing sheets in OS X Leopard. Historically, it’s been easy for developers to use OS X’s standard printing services, but the results were usually pretty sparse. The Leopard printing sheet is much more robust that its predessesor’s, and it even previews the document without having to launch Preview (a feature Microsoft and Adobe have been offering in their applications for some time).


Printing in Tiger


Printing in Leopard

This improvement may be late to the party, but it’s welcome nonetheless.

Conclusion

This is hardly a comprehensive look at the visual differences between Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard, but I hope it gives you a good idea of how Apple is improving the unified nature of the system’s user interface. It’s easy to pick nits over little details, but it’s obvious that Apple’s team has sweated the details when designing Leopard’s interface. It now feels like a unified system rather than a collection of utilities and applications. Hopefully, Apple will continue to prioritize the user experience as it continues to refine its operating system with the impending release of Snow Leopard next year.

Tags: macintosh, leopard, tiger, os x

While I am busy with my last week of teaching before winter break, here are a couple of great videos about the basic design behind the logo for Obama’s presidential campaign.

Part One

Part Two

Obama’s campaign may have set a new bar when it comes to the design and branding surrounding the candidate. Though there were a couple of missteps, Obama’s branding was strong, flexible, and iconic. While not a deciding factor, the branding of his campaign certainly helped the candidate and his supporters spread the momentum.

Tags: politics

“Okay, these are the kids on the bubble, so we need to focus remediating them the most before spring testing.”

“If we can get 10 more kids in this pull-out group to pass, we’ll meet AYP.”

“We have to prioritize which kids we think we can get to proficiency and those we can’t.”

When NCLB was passed, we were told that we wouldn’t have to teach to the test. We were told it would not take priority over standard instruction. After seven years, not only are we teaching to the test, but we are gaming our instruction to increase our odds of meeting AYP expectations.

I sincerely hope our president-elect takes a long, hard look at the adverse effects this bipartisan piece of legislation has wrought.

Tags: education, opinion

Open Mind: Western Sizzlin’

The author of Open Mind writes a great piece regarding regional cold spells and how they do not contradict climate change (read: global warming).

…If we want to study global warming we should pay more attention to the globe than to less than 2% of it; second, that global warming is about climate, and that even if climate changes we’re still gonna have weather.

The real sign of global warming is in the trends, not the momentary hot or cold spells. The real danger of global warming is that it brings with it fundamental changes in a great many environmental variables, including one that is fundamental to human survival: water.

Greenfyre’s: Global Warming is over! once every decade or so …

On a related note, this post drew my attention to the Open Mind piece, and the author shows some temperature trends – Surprise! Earth’s temperature does cycle every decade or so, but the downward cycles have not been compensating for the upward trends during the past forty years.

The author also takes a hard look at the consequences to poverty-stricken peoples of the effect cliate change has on fresh water availability.



Ars Technica: Broadband, green tech get love from Obama recovery plan

"As we renew our schools and highways, we'll also renew our information superhighway," said Obama. "It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption.”

and

What Obama called "the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen" would be part of a broader effort to deploy energy efficient technology in public facilities. "Our government now pays the highest energy bills in the world," said Obama. "We need to change that."

Tags: environment, politics

As noted in the last post (which was longer ago than I care to admit), by the time Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was in the hands of users, the OS X interface had grown quite inconsistent. While not as glaringly distracting as the default Windows XP interface, it did seem evidence that Apple’s reputation as having an eye for detail was growing misplaced.

Leopard seeks to fix the growing divergence of UI elements, but some of the design decisions seem strange. Here are some comparisons and thoughts regarding some of the obvious interface changes between Tiger and Leopard.

The First Impression

For OS X veterans, the default Leopard desktop is immediately recognizable for it’s complete lack of blueness when compared to past OS X desktops.


TIger on my G5 and Leopard on my MacBook

Some of the change simply comes from the addition of a new desktop image, but other elements add to an altered user experience.

The New Dock

Tiger’s Dock


Leopard’s 3D Dock

The Dock has gone from a translucent rectangle to a glossy, reflective, three-dimensional plane. To me, it’s an extremely visually distracting piece of UI, and some icons don’t work well with this new Dock. (Read a detailed analysis of this issue here.) The Leopard Dock is a fantastic tech demo, but it fails from a usability perspective. Fortunately, a little command line work can restore the Dock to a more usable, two-dimensional state.


Leopard’s hidden 2D Dock. Much better.

The Leopard Dock also adds a new feature called Stacks, which bring their own share of positives and negatives to the OS X experience. I want to spend some more time of this feature, so I’ll be dedicating an entire post to Stack sometime later.

The Menu Bar

The menu bar in Tiger came under some criticism for its glossy appearance, even garnering some unkind comparisons to Windows XP. (Sorry if I’m criticizing XP too much, but I really don’t like its native UI.) The Leopard menu bar is a complete contrast to its former self.


Glossy and bright in 10.4


Translucent and subdued in 10.5

You can see the desktop through the menu bar with a slight Gaussian blur applied in Leopard. On the downside, while this menu bar is easier on the eyes, the translucency works better with some desktop backgrounds than others. Fortunately, you can make the menu bar opaque in the Desktop and Screensaver preference pane.

A strange side effect of this darker menu bar is that the menus themselves look out of place up against it.



The menus themselves look slightly nicer than in Tiger. The rounded edges are a nice touch, and the complete absence of pin-striping is welcome. I have to admit, though, that the slightly more translucent menus of earlier Leopard builds were even nicer. I know this seems to contradict my statements about the menu bar, but they were never quite that translucent.

Where’s the Love?

In the next post about Leopard’s interface, we’ll look at how some specific OS X applications have changed. It will be quite a bit more positive than this post, I promise. Windows and sheets have both been reworked in Leopard and with some very nice results.

Tags: macintosh, leopard, tiger, os x

In what is probably my latest OS X adoption ever, I finally picked up Mac OS X Leopard a month ago. As my Tiger overview demonstrates, I’m hardly a master at writing overly technical documents about a new operating system. However, I’m fascinated by some of the subtle and not-so-subtle user interface (UI) changes that have come with Leopard.

A Quick Retrospective

The interface of Apple’s Unix-based operating system has been in a state of constant flux since its introduction to consumers in 2001, and every release has seen changes to various parts of the UI. For some history, check out Steve Jobs introducing the new interface in Macworld 2000.



The bizarre thing about watching that video (outside of being reminded of what a pain dialog boxes used to be) is that OS X looks very little like that demonstration eight years ago even though many of the underlying principles remain intact. Take Mail and Finder, for example. Here’s how Mail evolved between OS X 10.2 and 10.4.


10.2 courtesy of GUIdebook.


10.3 courtesy of GUIdebook.


10.4 on my PowerMac G5.

Mac OS X 10.2 still looks very similar to Steve Jobs’ prototype of Aqua, but the interface begins to evolve in 10.3. Mail in 10.3 sports embedded widow controls as opposed to the floating jewels in earlier versions. Additionally, the pinstripes that once dominated OS X windows and menus are greatly subdued. Finally, Mail in 10.4 adopts an entirely new unified window style, loses the drawer, and sports a new style of pill-shaped toolbar buttons.

The OS X Finder has also seen its share of changes between OS X 10.2 and 10.4.


10.2 courtesy of GUIdebook.


10.3 courtesy of GUIdebook.

If examining screenshots, I have to admit that I’d be hard-pressed to tell the 10.1 Finder and 10.2 Finder apart, much like Mail. However, the visual change to 10.3 is jarring. Mac OS 10.3 Panther marks the height of Apple’s infatuation with brushed metal, and metal windows seemed to randomly litter the interface. Again, note how widgets have gone from floating to embedded. In 10.4 Tiger (not pictured), the Finder retains the brushed metal look, but it’s slightly slimmed.

Where Is This Going?

By the time Mac OS X Tiger was released, the UI was an inconsistent jumble. While Apple had been slowly phasing out old ideas like pinstripes and drawers, several new interface ideas were being introduced – without a consistent pattern. With the introduction of unified windows in Tiger’s version of Mail and a dark version of the same window in iTunes 5, OS X apps could sport any one of four windowing styles. Combine this with a variety of toolbar options, a new HUD palette, and completely custom interfaces like those found in applications like GarageBand, and you have a system interface that is growing more and more fragmented.

In the second segment, we’ll take a look at how Leopard takes great strides in unifying the user experience of OS X as well as its share of interface oddities. Get ready for lots of pictures!

Tags: macintosh, leopard, tiger, os x

Lawrence Lessig was on Charlie Rose talking about his relationship with Obama from his days as a college professor to today as well as his views on copyright in context of a remix culture. To him, it’s about encouraging creativity, a cause I certainly support.



I could listen to him talk all day.

via Ars Technica

Tags: creativity

You know, ever since the election, I’ve felt my will to blog wane. “What to write about?” I would cry, and then The Onion helped me realize I am not alone.


Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Then I realized, “Wait, I’m a Mac user. I still have plenty to ramble on about.” The sun of hope peeked over the horizon, and I knew my life had meaning again. :-)



Balmuda Design: NumberKey

I own neither an iPod touch nor an iPhone. If I did, this would be a sure AppStore purchase. It turns either device into a wireless number pad for your MacBook. Since I use my MacBook as my primary computer, I could see how this might be helpful.

The Classic theme is particularly nice.



Live Science: God and Evolution Can Co-exist, Scientist Says

I find this stuff interesting. In this case, Karl W. Giberson, a physics professor, is saying that being a scientist does not necessitate also being an atheist or agnostic. Faith and reason can exist together without one negating the other.

Giberson has rejected fundamentalism, but remains a believer as well as a scientist. He has staked out a middle ground when it comes to the battle between Christians and Darwinists, stating that they can be reconciled with one another. He is sympathetic toward the motivations of creationists and scientists alike, though he is fed up with much of intelligent design as well as hard-core atheists.

Tags: politics, iphone, religion, science

I’m always interested in trying something new, especially when that something competes in a space where competition seems impossible. Take Macintosh music players for instance. There’s iTunes, and then there’s… Well, there really is nothing else because iTunes effectively killed the market by being both good and free. (I’m talking the Mac version of iTunes here; I acknowledge the debate over the quality of the Windows version.)


the 800-pound gorilla

Singing a Sweeter, Simpler Song

A few weeks ago, I came across an application called Songbird. It’s an open-source music player that runs on the Mozilla XUL Runner platform and is compatible with all operating systems supported by that runtime environment. It’s designed primarily as a music player, and is not ideally suited for podcast viewers or people who use iTunes to access TV shows and movies. The developers want it to do one thing and one thing well.


looking good Miss Morissette

The interface is very similar to iTunes, but there are only so many intuitive things one can do with a media player’s interface. All interface elements are responsive, and the UI looks fine on Mac OS X. I could complain that the scrollbars are out-of-place, but iTunes’ scrollbars are wrong too.

Songbird made some very good impressions on me right away. If you already have an iTunes library (or Windows Media library, I presume), the application will import your media and playlists on first launch – making migration initially effortless. Additionally, the application is pretty responsive, and it has access to several community-developed plugins that allow you to do things like download lyrics, get album art from LastFM, search for concert tickets for artists in your library, and sync with iPods and other MP3 players.

Managing your plugins is very simple with a built in manager that will check for updates automatically as well as recommend popular plugins from the Songbird website. To further simplify matters, Songbird features an integrated web browser that allows you to check out and download plugins directly from within Songbird.


browsing the web in Songbird

For users who think iTunes mini player is a tad large, Songbird also has you covered. The mini player in Songbird is just a few pixels tall.


this picture is full size

Finally, Songbird proved itself to be incredibly stable. It never crashed or hung once for me, but the folks at Ars did run into a couple of snags. Regardless, I find this release an impressive effort that’s worth checking out. It has some problems, but Songbird 1.0 does a great job managing and playing music files without a lot of clutter or distraction.

Some Sour Notes

With any piece of software, especially software as young as Songbird, there are going to be a few issues. Here are some I ran into.

• Protected AAC/WMA. Songbird will import your entire music library – even the stuff it can’t play. This leaves the user to remove protected music from the playlists.
• CD Ripping. Right now, you can’t import a CD into Songbird. The tracks have to be digital.
• iPod Ejecting. This doesn’t always work well.
• Album Art. I couldn’t find a way to automatically search for and add album art. Songbird also doesn’t import album art from iTunes.
• No Equalizer. Depending on your music collection, you may or may not miss this.

Final Thoughts

Whether or not you like Songbird will depend on how much you have invested in iTunes or Windows Media music. Since both of those stores lock their music to their player, you won’t be able to take those tracks to Songbird. However, if most of your music comes from your CD collection or from DRM-free stores like Amazon MP3, you might find Songbird a worthwhile download. It’s a simple application to get used to, and it strips away much of the bloat that’s becoming standard with bundled media players. Through downloadable plugins, you can make Songbird as simple or as complicated as you want it. If you just want a simple application to manage your music files, Songbird may hit all the right notes for you.

Tags: software, itunes/ipods, songbird

This was a great speech, especially the concluding story tying one voter’s life to American history.



TED: Remembering Michael Crichton

The author of Jurassic Park and Sphere died yesterday after a long private battle with cancer. He was 66.

Tags: politics, literature

CNN: Obama's grandmother dies after battle with cancer

"She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure."

The family is asking well-wishers to make donations to cancer research in lieu of cards and flowers.



The Girl Effect

The charitable site is based on the premise of “the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.”





Lloyd Alexander, author (1924-2007)

I’ll wrap this up with a quote that the author of PLANET3RRY posted today:

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

Dave Matthews wants you to know that he is a real American and a real Virginian even if he doesn’t vote the way Sarah Palin wants him to.

Hawking.org: My Experience with ALS

This is an insightful article by Stephen Hawking about growing up and discovering his motor neuron disease. It’s a story that’s sincere, sometimes sad, and ultimately hopeful.

I have had motor neurone disease for practically all my adult life. Yet it has not prevented me from having a very attractive family, and being successful in my work. This is thanks to the help I have received from Jane, my children, and a large number of other people and organisations. I have been lucky, that my condition has progressed more slowly than is often the case. But it shows that one need not lose hope.

Opinion Streams: The Conservative Christian Case for Supporting Obama

He says some of the things I’ve been thinking during this election cycle but haven’t found the words to write. I think the author slightly misuses II Timothy 2:15 by taking it out of context, but the general gist of the article is spot on.

The problem, I now realize, with the union of Christians to the GOP, is that we’ve aligned ourselves with a spokes group that sees Christians as nothing more than a voting bloc to pander to with lip service about two passion-evoking issues while ignoring other values that form the core of our beliefs. And as they grip our hearts with life and marriage, the GOP exploits our values to demonize or vilify those with opposing viewpoints.

Tags: politics

Taking a Sabbatical

After the rapid succession of Prince of Persia titles between 2003 and 2005, Ubisoft gave the franchise a rest while console generations were shifting. In the meantime, the team that developed the Sands of Time trilogy went on to craft two other projects – Assassin's Creed and TMNT (a movie tie-in). TMNT was obviously influenced by the design philosophies of the Prince, and while the game was streamlined for a younger audience, many of the acrobatics found in the recent Prince of Persia games were replicated by the turtles. It even used the same graphics engine. Furthermore, TMNT introduced a team mechanic where a single player could call upon another of the turtles for a limited time to pull off a special move or attack. It was an interesting experiment, and an evolution of this mechanic works its way into the newest Prince of Persia.

Assassin's Creed is an ambitious title, and, based on reviews I've read, it was perhaps too ambitious. (Disclaimer: I haven't actually played Assassin's Creed.) Ubisoft created a world much more real than in the Prince games and forces the player to really think about how to use the natural environment and architecture to get in and out of hazardous situations. Instead of having jump panels or knife holds, the main character is merely presented with basic structures and façades. Where Assassin's Creed may have failed in story and execution, it succeeds in scope and authenticity.


The game engine designed for Assassin's Creed and the new Prince of Persia can support far larger and more open worlds.

A New World, A New Prince

The new game in the series, titles only Prince of Persia, is a break from the Sands of Time trilogy in terms of characters and storyline. Like there are many heroes named Link and many princesses named Zelda, this will be the fourth character to bear the Prince of Persia moniker.


The new Prince is every bit as acrobatic as his predecessor.

This new Prince is a wonderer and adventurer who finds himself transported by a sandstorm to an idyllic garden surrounding a giant Tree of Life. Upon his arrival, the Tree of Life is destroyed, liberating the destructive spirit of Ahriman (Angra Mainyu for the mythology nuts in the audience) to wreck his corruption upon the world. In this place, the Prince meets Elika, a girl with magical powers who can harness the powers of nature to drive back Ahriman's corruption, and they begin a journey to cleanse to world … most likely over the course of multiple games, perhaps a trilogy.


Meet the Prince's new sidekick, Natalie Port -- I mean, Elika.

If it sounds very Biblical in proportion, that's because it is. That and Zoroastrian.

Learning Well From Others

The new Prince of Persia seems equal parts PoP: The Sands of Time, TMNT, and Okami (a Clover Studio game that features a Shinto goddess restoring the world from darkness) with a dash of Zeldal-like exploration and roaming. Some have also drawn comparisons with the 2001 masterpiece Ico, finding parallels with the relationship between Ico and Yoruda with the Prince and Elika. I think, however, that Farah from PoP: The Sands of Time is much more similar to Elika than the nearly helpless Yoruda.


This could end very badly for our hero.

Elika also seems to be influenced by TMNT in that she can help out with special moves and abilities. Instead of envoking her when needed, though, she is always there and seems to be programmed to parallel and react to the Prince's movements. In a way, it's as if the player is controlling two characters simultaneously while only focused on one. Elika also supplants the time-manipulating nature of the Sands in previous titles. If the Prince falls to his death, Elika can rescue him. Furthermore, the new Prince of Persia is far more generous with checkpoints than its predecessors, creating an environment where the player can experiment without being punished.


"Is this ride safe?"

Coming Soon to a PC, 360, or PS3 Near You

Ubisoft revolutionized the Prince of Persia series with their last installments. This title seems more evolutionary, sporting some new moves, mechanics, and a new graphical style. The team has obviously taken their time on this one to get it right, beginning development as they were wrapping up The Two Thrones and continuing work through Assassin's Creed and TMNT (both of those games serving as playgrounds for the developers to try some new mechanics they were planning on including in the new Prince of Persia).

Ubisoft Montreal have set the bar very high with the Sands of Time trilogy. We'll see if they can surpass that standard come December 2. Until then, I'll close out these Prince of Persia posts with a video of the new game in action. It's worth noting that this entire video is done in the game engine as opposed to being pre-rendered.



One last item: as I was finishing this post, Ubisoft released a preview of a comic based on the new Prince’s adventures by the fine folks at Penny Arcade. Here it is.

all images © Ubisoft

Tags: video games, prince of persia

In late 2003, and new Prince of Persia title hit shelves with little fanfare. French gaming company Ubisoft published the game, and it was developed internally by the same team who was behind the original Splinter Cell games. Details on the development of the game were scant, and Ubisoft didn't even reveal the title until a few months before its release. It had been four years since a Prince title had come out, and expectations were low. Could Ubisoft bring the Prince into the modern gaming age where others had failed?

They did.

Entering the Third Dimension the Right Way

The new Prince of Persia games, released in 2003-2005, create a trilogy named after the first game The Sands of Time. The other two games were called The Warrior Within and The Two Thrones. These games feature intense combat as well as the acrobatic standard set by the original games. The developers introduced a variety of new moves for the prince, including rolling, wall-running, and wall-jumping. The combat system was equally refined, initially allowing acrobatic melee combat and eventually allowing multiple weapons in the second two games.

When playing the newer Prince of Persia games, the camera is puled back from the Prince most of the time, giving you a better view of the surrounding environment. The acrobatics are facilitated by (what I like to call) magnetic physics. Knowing the limitations of 3D terrains in performing complex platforming, Ubisoft coded a fairly forgiving physics engine that granted some leeway in lining up jumps. It is implemented so smoothly, though, that the gamer is seldom aware that the game is compensating a bit. Additionally, it helps that the Prince himself has a will to live and will grab ledges and cliffs you might accidentally walk him off. Still, it is easy to die a lot in these games because it can take some experimentation to figure out exactly where you're supposed to fling the Prince.

That's where the Dagger of Time comes in, a magical weapon powered by the titular Sands of Time. As long as the Dagger is powered up, the Prince can alter the flow of time around him. He can slow time down while he keeps moving at normal speed. The sands can power devastating attacks, but, most importantly, the sands allow the Prince to rewind time, giving the player an instant retry in the case of a missed jump or a fatal fall. The acrobatic exploration coupled with the time manipulation mechanics gives this trilogy a very unique place among modern games.

As Sand Through the Hourglass, So Are the Days of Our Prince

This trilogy has the most complicated plot of any Prince of Persia game to date, and the player actually has to pay attention or end up terribly confused. I'm not going to go into details here (lest this essay become too epic), but here's the gist. By the time you complete the first game (as a new Prince) and slay a Vizier who betrayed the Prince's father, you've erased all of the events of the first game because the Prince ends up killing the traitor before he gets a chance to do his thing. This makes the Dahaka, the Guardian of Time, very upset, so it decides it must kill the Prince to set the timeline straight. This leads to The Warrior Within where the Prince goes to the Island of Time, travels into the past, and prevents the sands from ever being created, thus undoing everything that even led up the first two games and getting the Dahaka off his back (only if you get the good ending).

In the third game, The Two Thrones, he heads home with the Empress of Time only to find it ransacked by the betrayer Vizier the Prince killed in the first game, who isn't dead now thanks to the second game. The Vizier kills the Empress, recreating the Sands, and the Prince has to fix everything. In the process, the Prince (now partially turned into a sand monster) runs into the Princess he saved in the first game, who – of course – has no idea who he is, and together they redeem the kingdom and the Prince's slowly corrupting soul. In the end, the player hears the Prince narrating the exact same dialogue that opened the first game, thus bringing the convoluted timeline full circle.

Practically Perfect In Every Way

The Sands of Time nails the level design and platforming elements. The time manipulation prevents the challenging jumping and climbing puzzles from becoming frustrating, and the visuals are stunning. The only place where the Prince lacks in his first new outing is in the way of combat. He really only has two or three attacks, and the fights can become very repetitive. Fortunately, combat is not central to this game. Also interesting is the introduction of a second character. The player never controls the princess Farah, but she helps out both in combat and in figuring out environmental puzzles. You have to be careful in combat though. Both enemies and the Prince can damage her, and her death ends the game. This adds an element of strategy to combat situations.


Hey look, an hourglass, and spike traps are very popular in Persia!


Levels are gorgeous, and the Prince can run on walls!

The Warrior Within features even better level design and a sprawling temple that fits seamlessly together, allowing the player to explore the complex in a far less linear progression than the fist game. The combat system is tweaked, allowing for dual weapons and specialized combos. You can also take more advantage of the environment when fighting enemies. Another high-point comes with the Dakhaka chases that demand fast thinking and precision controls to complete. However, the games darker tone and dominatrix female villains take something from the game. It's hard to take a fight seriously when you're wondering how on earth her outfit is staying on during combat! Aesthetic issues aside though, Warrior Within is an improvement over The Sands of Time in almost every way. In some ways, it's my favorite of the three even if it is the hardest.


Time traveling and fighting a woman in a metal thong. You'd think that would put her at a disadvantage. You'd think that, but you'd be WRONG!


Some enemies are pretty manageable, but others are ginormous!

The Two Thrones mixes the two previous games, bringing the Prince out of the darkness and back to the light, so to speak. It added a few mechanics to the gameplay, such as the Dark Prince abilities when his corruption is threatening to take over. (These sections are made all the more difficult because the Prince's health drops continuously when he is the Dark Prince.) Also, a stealth mechanic allows the player to bypass some of the normal combat. This game's Achilles' heel comes by way of graphical glitches. The game feels slightly rushed through development, and this is evident in the visual glitches and clipping issues that pervade the game, though they never affect gameplay. While still a great game, the Two Thrones left me wondering where they could go from here.


Breathtaking level design and the Dark Prince.


It's easy to die on a chariot, and the Prince shows off his balancing skills.

Fun Facts

• The forgiving physics allows you to glitch your way out of the library in The Sands of Time. I actually didn't discover the proper route out of there until my second play-through.
• The second two games are very gory, but you can turn off the blood in the settings menu. With this option, villains will "bleed" sand instead. It actually looks pretty cool.
• You have to get the good ending in the second game for the third to make any sense. In fact, you need it for the third game to exist at all!
• The clipping issues in the third game sometimes result in Farah's hair coming out of her chest!
• The third game has "nudity" cited as a reason for the M rating. I don't know why.
• Prince of Persia Revelations for the PSP is basically the same as The Warrior Within, and Prince of Persia: Rival Swords for the Wii is the same as The Two Thrones. Why do they have different names? You got me.

Wrapping Up

The Sands of Time trilogy proved that the fundamentals of Prince of Persia gameplay could indeed enter the third dimension successfully. The use of time manipulation was a brilliant addition to the mechanics as well as a nice way of reducing frustration. In all, these games rank among my favorites on the PlayStation 2.

In our final look back at the Prince of Persia franchise, we'll look ahead at the Prince's newest outing on the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.

All images in this post are from the great mobygames.com.

Tags: video games, prince of persia

Today is my wife’s birthday! Happy birthday to her! On with the links.

LittleSnapper in action: Sharing



On his Realmac blog, Nik has loaded a video that walks through using their new application to capture, store, and upload screenshots of websites. He promises more previews to come, and LittleSnapper should be available for download before the end of the year.



Daring Fireball: The Phone Company

John Gruber writes about the iPhone’s success and how it has quickly become the strongest part of Apple’s product offerings financially. Also in the post: iPhones outsold Blackberries last quarter!

A Smattering of Obama Links

Warning: these next links reflect by personal political bias. All opinions below are expressed reasonably and without any appeal to primal fears or phobias.

• The New Yorker: The Choice: I’m late posting this one, but the editors of The New Yorker construct a well-written and persuasive article about their endorsement of Barack Obama. Note that this article was written early after the signing of Public Law 110-343.
  
  
• The Chicago Tribune: Obama no Socialist: How do you know if you’re really a Socialist? Try asking an organizer for Communist Party USA.
  
  
• Rolling Stone: Block the Vote: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Greg Palast write about the GOP’s recent attempts to create voting into an obstacle course that will disenfranchise key demographics who traditionally oppose Republican candidates. This article ties in with their new website Steal Back Your Vote.

Tags: apple inc, iphone, software, politics

Apple finally turned their attention to my favorite part of their product line – the MacBooks. I’m always a sucker for the iMacs, but I’ve never owned one. iPhones and iPods are cool gadgets, but I have come to believe that laptops are the best things Apple does, so I was excited to see the news from Cupertino earlier today.

MacBook Air

image © Apple, Inc

The MacBook Air keeps its repuation for being an incredibly thin and light laptop while losing a few of the limitations of the previous generation. It’s still very short on connectivity, featuring only a single USB port, an audio-out port, and a Mini Display Port, which replaces the Micro-DVI port from the previous model. The new display port can support up to 2560x1600 pixels as opposed to the former 1920x1200 pixels.

Driving this new display port is a much more robust Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor which utilizes 256 MB of the systems 2 GB of memory. The internal processor has been largely unchanged, but internal storage has seen a massive boost over previous models. The last generation of the MacBook Air offered either an 80 GB HDD or a 64 GB SSD. Now it features either a 120 GB HDD or a 128 GB SSD. The new MacBook Air comes in $1,799 and $2,499 configurations with a few BTO options.

Update: I was wrong about the processors not being changed. While the clock speeds remain basically the same, the MacBook Air now uses Intel’s 45nm Penryn processor that runs cooler and has a faster FSB than the Merom processors in the older model. I apologize for the error.

MacBook + MacBook Pro

image © Apple, Inc

I’m combining the MacBooks with the Pro models because they are now so similar. What you see above is the new MacBook. The MacBook Pro is a bit wider and has visible speakers. That’s it when it comes to visual differences between the two models. The new MacBooks now feature the same embedded and backlit keyboard. They have new glass LED displays, and upgradeable components are now much more user-accessible across the board. The new MacBooks also feature a new glass buttonless trackpad that supports a variety of multi-touch and gesture commands.

Internally the MacBooks feature 2.0 or 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processors with the Pro models going up to 2.8 GHz. The MacBooks have 160 GB or 250 GB HDDs with 2 GB of memory standard. They also feature integrated Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics processors with 256 MB of shared memory. The MacBook Pros have storage options of 250 GB or 320 GB with 2 GB or 4 GB of memory. The Pro models also come loaded with two Nvidia chips, one discreet and one integrated, that you can switch between depending on whether or not your MacBook Pro is plugged in. The discreet graphics card can come with 256 MB or 512 MB of dedicated memory.

Apple has dropped the matte displays, which was probably inevitable, but the head-scratcher is the lack of FireWire on the MacBook. The Pro model has a FireWire-800 port, but the consumer MacBook doesn’t even feature a FireWire-400. I find that odd. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros run from $1,299 to $2,499. Also, you can watch a video detailing the design and manufacturing process of the new MacBooks right here. It’s worth watching just to hear Jonathan Ives pronounce aluminum.

Other News

• Apple has retained the white plastic MacBook for a $999 entry model. It features a 2.1 GHz Core 2 Duo and 1 GB of memory. I’m guessing this will just be around until Apple can get the new manufacturing process cost-effective enough to drop prices on the aluminum MacBooks. Curiously, this model retains the FireWire 400 port.
  
  
• Also, Apple revved the 17-inch MacBook Pro with a stronger processor, more memory and storage, and an updated graphics processor. However, it retains the old casing, making me wonder if this model too might be on its way out.
  
  
• Finally, Apple made an addition to their Cinema Display lineup with a 24-inch model that takes on the industrial design of the new MacBooks and the iMac. This display is specifically targeted toward MacBook users with its standard MagSafe connector and Mini Display Port as opposed to more standard interfaces. This is the first Apple Cinema Display to use LED backlighting and to feature an integrated microphone, iSight camera, and speakers.

That wraps things up for this round of MacBook updates. Except for the lack of FireWire on the consumer MacBooks, I can’t find anything to gripe about, so it must be a good update!

Tags: macintosh

In 1999, the Prince made his way back to computers and consoles five years after his previous debut. Much had changed over those intervening years. Super Mario 64, Quake, and Unreal had all come out. Tomb Raider was taking the world by storm. Polygons had replaced sprites, and it was apparent Prince of Persia would have to evolve in order to remain relevant in this new world of 3D graphics engines.

Using the NetImmerse graphics engine (also used in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Dark Age of Camelot, and Zoo Tycoon 2), a team of dedicated programmers toiled to bring Prince of Persia's intense platforming elements and strategic combat to the third dimension.

They almost didn't fail completely.

Doomed Before Release

The story of Prince of Persia 3D is a tortured one at best, and it is a true tragedy of the gaming industry. It was developed by Red Orb Entertainment, initially a division of Brøderbund who published the first two Prince games. Unfortunately, Brøderbund was purchased by The Learning Company in 1998, and a Prince of Persia title did not fit their portfolio. Therefore, the game was shopped around and sold to Mattel. Then The Learning Company bought the game back, but they didn't want to invest any more money into the property, so Red Orb released the game to publishing before it was properly tested. This means the game was released with several severe bugs and graphical glitches (including one level that looked largely unfinished).

This is not how a successful game is made.

Enough History! What About the Game Itself?

Prince of Persia 3D pulled a Final Fantasy when it comes to the plot. Where the first two games lead into each other and even leave an open end for a third installment, Prince of Persia 3D brings a new Prince, Princess, and villain to the mix. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Remember, Prince of Persia 2 was five years old now.

The plot involved Assan, a double-crossing brother to the Sultan – the Prince's father-in-law. Assan wants the Prince's wife for his own son Rugnor, so he puts the Prince in prison and lets Rugnor run off with the Princess to his dirigible. Oh, and Rugnor is a were-tiger. You know, if I explain the plot any more, I'm going to start losing IQ points, so let's get into gameplay!


Do you see the spikes directly below? And, "I'm hitting you with my sword in the air!"

Level design spans from the repetitive and mundane cliffs outside Rugnor's Sun Temple to the outright bizarre Floating Ruins – a level that looks unfinished because many areas are completely untextured. All of these levels are made more difficult by unreliable collision detection, clipping issues (bugs that allow characters to fall through solid floors or walls), and glitches that would halt moving platforms in their tracks. In addition, most of the levels are incredibly dark, and it can be difficult to see exactly where ledges and obstacles are.

Combat is no less frustrating due to the problems with collision detections. Also, some weapons featured such epic opening animations that some enemies could score two or three hits on the Prince before he was ready to fight. Fortunately, in later levels, enemies' opening animations provide the Prince the same advantage. Finally, there is the problem that the Prince can target only one enemy at a time in the game's combat engine. This only affects the player once or twice in the entire game, but those instances will result in much wailing and gnashing of teeth.


"Why am I fighting a man in a tiger suit?" And just try jumping onto that rope on your first or fifth try!

The final component of silliness is seemingly unfinished puzzles. Special weapons and potions in singular locations in which they seem to serve absolutely no purpose are a hallmark of this problem. For example, one level gives you a potion that makes you immune to arrows. It's the only level in the entire game that features this potion! There is only one archer in the entire level! Yeah.

Wrapping Things Up

Watching the developer diaries of this game, it's hard not to feel bad for the programmers working on this trainwreck of a game. They honestly worked hard and were forced to release an unfinished product. Unfortunately, it looks and plays like the unfinished work it is. Have you ever watched a movie that's so bad it's good? Sorry, but this game is so bad, it just stays bad. Reviews of the time were surprisingly forgiving, but I think that's just a testament to how low expectations were. Fortunately, Prince of Persia 3D came out for PC and Dreamcast ... and nothing else.

In our next retrospective, we'll take a look at a complete reboot of the franchise under new owners, setting off a trilogy that became wholly unique and critically acclaimed in the previous generation of game consoles.

Tags: video games, prince of persia

In 1989, a relatively unknown game programmer named Jordan Mechner released the game he would become most famous for: Prince of Persia. Since then, the Persian Prince has graced nine video games across multiple systems (not counting cameo appearances, remakes, and horrible cell phone games which I refuse to dignify). Among characters such as Link, Mario, and Sonic, the nameless Prince has become one of the most enduring creations of the early video game industry.

In about a month, Ubisoft will be releasing a new installment in the multi-decade series, so I thought it would be fun to do a retrospective of sorts, looking back at the series as it has evolved over the years. Unlike some of its peers, the Prince's journey into the modern console generation has not always been an easy one, with as many missteps as masterstrokes along the way, and, unlike the Zelda or Metroid franchises for example, modern Prince of Persia games have departed significantly from their roots while still paying homage to those foundational games.

In this retrospective, we'll take a look at the games that established the principles that define a Prince of Persia game.

Prince of Persia

The original game was developed by Jordan Mechner for the Apple II computer. It was released in 1989 by Brøderbund software (who also distributed such classics as Lode Runner, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, and Myst). Prince of Persia was by no means a complex game. In fact, it was pretty short once you learned how to get through it, but it distinguished itself in a few significant ways.

First, the animation was remarkably fluid for the time period, a result of Jordan Mechner filming his brother performing various stunts and basing his animations upon the film clips. Additionally the game included a rudimentary combat system that involved some actual strategy to be successful in as well as eye-catching pseudo-3D environments. The big draw of the game, though, was the level design itself.

The levels of Prince of Persia were labyrinths filled with tricky jumps, hidden switches, and merciless traps (with some surprisingly gory results). The plot was a simple save-the-princess ordeal with little more explanation, but a wrench was added in the form of a time limit. The player had 60 minutes to complete the game, or the princess would die. No pressure or anything.

Prince of Persia was a phenomenal success, and it was released on more systems than any game has the right to exist on. After the Apple II version, the Prince's original adventure found its way to the Amiga, NES, DOS, Atari ST, SNES, GameBoy, GameBoy Color, Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System, Genesis, and TuboGrafx just to name a few! It was even recently released on XBox Live Arcade as Prince of Persia Classic. Here are some shots of the game in its various iterations.


The Prince looks angelic on DOS, and the Sega Genesis version picks up some bad-itude!


The XBLA version features eye-candy galore.

Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame

The sequel to Prince of Persia came out four years later in glorious sixteen-bit color, and it picked up right where its predecessor left off … in terms of difficulty. Prince of Persia 2 was a very Japnese-style sequel of the time period. Any of you ever play Super Mario Bros. 2? No, not the American one! The REAL Super Mario Bros. 2 that was deemed too hard for American audiences, so it was never released in the States (except as part of a compilation on the SNES). What we know as SMB 2 is really a completely different game that Nintendo simply replaced the character sprites in and released as a Mario game here. Do you know the real SMB 2? Prince 2 is like that, only harder.

Seriously, the game introduces no new controls or weapons of notice, only new traps and harder enemies. It's insanely difficult, and it is still timed (though the developers were gracious enough to give the player fifteen more minutes, not that it matters). There are traps and puzzles in this game that don't even pretend to be fair. You memorize the levels, or you die. On the upside, Prince of Persia 2 introduced a save system between levels, which made things slightly less frustrating.

Prince of Persia 2 was released for PC, Mac, and SNES. Rumors are an XBLA port is in the works using the same graphics engine as Prince of Persia Classic. Here are a couple shots of the game.


What's this? An outdoor environment? And I hated those floating heads in Castlevania. I hate these floating heads more.

It's interesting to note that Prince of Persia 2 featured a cliffhanger ending that, to this day, has never been followed up.

Wrapping Up

These two games gave birth to a franchise. After this point, Jordan Mechner relinquished his role as the primary creative force behind the games, but he would continue with the series as a consultant. In the next retrospective, we'll take a look at the incredibly ambitious Prince of Persia 3D and how the game failed in every respect.

All images in this post are from the great mobygames.com.

Tags: video games, prince of persia

A lot of attention has been brewing during this presidential race regarding one William Ayers and his association with Barack Obama. The question has been one of guilt by association. Is it fair to be critical of Obama – or in fact hinge one's vote – on the fact that he is apparently friendly with someone who once acted as a domestic terrorist as part of the Weather Underground Association?

A Smear Is Born

Apparently, this connection began to make traction when a politically conservative columnist named Peter Hitchens wrote a column for The Daily Mail called The Black Kennedy: But Does Anyone Know the Real Barack Obama? It is a hit-piece, and it reads like one – full of condescending and hateful descriptions. The article was significant for one passage, though:

His list of contributions shows one for $200 from a certain William Ayers. Can this possibly be the same William Ayers, now a Chicago professor, who used to plant bombs in the Seventies and has said: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough"? His partner, Bernardine Dohrn, once "declared war" on the US government.

It wouldn't be surprising. Those (like me) who know the Left-wing codes notice things about Obama that suggest he is far more radical than he would like us to know.

The conservative media smelled fresh meat and pounced. However, this controversy had little staying power and faded slowly into political obscurity.

Context Matters

One problem with the Obama-Ayers controversy is one of timing. Barack Obama would have been roughly eight-years-old when the Weathermen were most active, and he would have been living in Indonesia at the time. I doubt seriously that the activities that made Ayers and his colleagues so notorious would have had much of an impact on Obama's life. I know I'd be hard-pressed to tell you much of world affairs from when I was eight outside of the fact that I was in Mrs. Carters third-grade class, and there was some kind of drama surrounding King Cobra's identity in the G.I. Joe universe. Or did that happen when I was nine?

When Obama met Ayers, they lived in the same neighborhood. Ayers was and is a professor of English at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Their memberships to the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty group, overlapped in the late nineties. Both Obama and Ayers were involved in public school reform. Obama was chair of the (republican-sponsored) Chicago Annenberg Challenge for improving education while Ayers was a member. I have to wonder when the topic came up in conversation, "So, were you a domestic terrorist at any point in your life? Will knowing you damage my political career?" At this point in his life, Ayers was a productive and respected member of the Chicago community. He had reinvented himself.

Here he is in the words of others:

Illinois State Rep. Diana Nelson (R)

It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier … It's ridiculous. There is no reason at all to smear Barack Obama with this association. It's nonsensical, and it just makes me crazy. It's so silly.

Michael Kinsley, long-time critic of Ayers:

If Obama's relationship with Ayers, however tangential, exposes Obama as a radical himself, or at least as a man with terrible judgment, he shares that radicalism or terrible judgment with a comically respectable list of Chicagoans and others — including Republicans and conservatives — who have embraced Ayers and Dohrn as good company, good citizens, even experts on children's issues.

Chicago Mayor Richar Daley:

I also know Bill Ayers. He worked with me in shaping our now nationally-renowned school reform program. He is a nationally-recognized distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois/Chicago and a valued member of the Chicago community.

Quite simply, if Ayers was once considered a threat to national security, that is no longer the case. The Ayers Obama has been in contact with, however tenuously, no longer engages in the same rules as the Ayers of the 1960s.

But He's Unrepentant!

Critics are quick to point out that Ayers is not apologetic about his past and has expressed regret in not having done more. By "not having done more," these critics will take this as meaning "not having bombed more." Interstingly, Ayers has addressed this exact criticism.

It's impossible to get to be my age and not have plenty of regrets. The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being.

During the Vietnam war, the Weather Underground took credit for bombing several government installations as a dramatic form of armed propaganda. Action was taken against symbolic targets in order to declare a state of emergency. But warnings were always called in, and by design no one was ever hurt.

When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough s---."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'

Also, regarding that statement about not doing enough from his memoirs, Ayers has more to say, claiming the quote is being taken out of context:

My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy.

Actions speak louder than words, and apologies mean nothing without actions to back them up. Our political world is full of insincere apologies given solely for the purpose of pleasing a constituency rather than out of any true remorse. Ayers actions demonstrate a new direction in his life that words alone would not convey. He may not be apologetic, but he is a different person.

Do They Really Want to Go There?

I've already noted that this controversy had dwindled once, largely due to a lack of meaningful substance. However, Governor Palin, speaking on behalf of the McCain campaign has felt fit to breathe this smear new life.

"Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."

This is an obvious reference to Obama's casual association with Ayers. However, does she or McCain want the same level of attention paid to their own acquaintances? The governor herself has ties with the Alaska Independence Party through her husband, a political organization whose goal is to break Alaska from the Union. It is a secessionist movement whose founder has criticized the United States every bit as sharply as Reverened Wright, saying:

I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions … My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand.

And this is a group to whom Sarah Palin has said, "Keep up the good work. God bless you?"

Likewise, would McCain like his associations with Charles Keating more openly examined? Furthermore, what about McCain's association with G. Gordon Liddy, a man who has financially supported McCain and who has had the candidate on his talk radio show? You might remember that Mr. Liddy was convicted and imprisoned for his role in the Watergate scandal. He also admitted to having plotted to murder journalist Jack Anderson as well as Howard Hunt to prevent him cooperating with investigators. About Adolf Hitler, Liddy had this to say:

[Hitler] made me feel a strength inside I had never known before. Hitler's sheer animal confidence and power of will. He sent an electric current through my body.

Liddy also once advocated violence against the ATF:

Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head.

Palin nor McCain have made any attempts to distance themselves from these closet skeletons, but they have no scruples against using Ayers against Obama. In fact, McCain said this to Liddy on his show in 2007:

I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family... It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.

Diversionary Tactics

What it comes down to is a continual attempt by the McCain campaign to divert voters from the issues and the general media's willingness to play along. Is Obama's association with Ayers a big deal? My answer is that it is only if you are willing to let Palin's ties to the AIP and McCain's ties to Liddy carry equal weight – those associations are every bit a solid as Obama and Ayers.

When it comes to the issues of energy policy, economics, foreign policy, and education, John McCain has already lost the majority of informed voters. All he can hope for now is to use the same tactics (and indeed staff) Bush used to discredit him in 2000 on his new opponent in 2008. It's a tactic that is below the reputation McCain has built for himself, and it is a tactic that is inconsistent with the values he and his running mate claim to possess.

More Reading

• Washington Post: Obama's 'Weatherman' Connection
• NPR: Obama's Links To Ex-Radical Examined
• Time: Rejecting Obama’s Radical Friends
• The Huffington Post: Terrorists, Secessionists, Sarah Palin and Guilt by Association
• Salon: The Palins' un-American activities
• Media Matters: Why is the NY Times continuing to ignore McCain's "own Bill Ayers"?

Updated with a quote from McCain on Liddy and some more embedded links. I don’t want anyone to think I’m just making this stuff up.

Tags: politics

If you haven’t checked out a web application called SUMO Paint, I highly recommend it. It’s an online painting and image manipulation application that features several shape tools, filters, artistic brushes, a symmetry tool, color picker, and much more. It’s very impressive as a web app, and it’s free to use.


SUMO Pain in Safari

I’m not very skilled drawing with a trackpad, but those of you out there with tablets will be able to produce some great work here. Be sure to check out the image gallery for some examples of work people have done in SUMO Paint.

Tags: software

Did you watch the debate tonight? I did. It was okay. Biden’s smile is pretty contagious.

Daring Fireball: The Fear

John Gruber writes about Apple’s seemingly random rejections of App Store submissions and the possible motivations behind these rejections in the context of how Apple can make App Store a more developer-friendly venue.

I have a theory. It is more, well, emotional than logical. But it’s the only theory I can think of that makes any sense at all and fits the available evidence. The theory is that there is an unpublished rule that Apple — and in this case, where by “Apple” I really mean “Steven P. Jobs” — will not publish third-party apps that compete with or replace any of the four apps in the iPhone’s default “dock”: Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod.

Obama ’08: The Official iPhone Application

The neat part of this isn’t that the Obama campaign released a free iPhone application. It’s that a team of respected Mac developers put this together on a volunteer basis in about a month. Read more at iPhoneDevCamp.

via DF

Tags: iphone, politics

Childhood is a time of imagination, and creativity. However, as time passes, many of us seem to lose the creative spark that we enjoyed as children. While our social and academic skills evolve with maturation, our ability to create seems to devolve. We lapse into a pattern of "I can't sing," "I can't dance," "I can't paint." Fill in your own blank. What is it you think you are unable to do? Why don't you think you can do it?

The answer is probably simple. At some point in your life, one or all of the following happened:

• You had a friend or family member tell you you aren't good at something.
• You had a teacher or mentor figure reinforce the notion that you can't do something.
• You had a teacher or other authority figure consistently model learned inability.
• You had a particularly emotional failure in trying to do something creative.

These outside pressures eventually taught you that you can't sing, dance, draw, paint, sculpt. write, etc. You learned helplessness in a given area of human expression, and those teaching you that helplessness were probably unaware of their own influence.

An Aside About Teaching Learned Inability

One of the tenets of a newer movement in education -- usually referred to as Project Approach, Reggio-Emilia Approach, or Child-Directed Learning -- is that every child is an author; every child is a musician; every child is an artist. My wife teaches with this philosophy, and one of her preschoolers might come up and say, "We need a guitar for our campfire," to which she would respond, "Okay, how can we make one?"

In the Project classroom, every child is a teacher as well as a learner. Everyone is an expert in something, but in too many classrooms of the past and present, children are constantly reminded of how much they are helpless and incapable. They grow to rely on Teacher for everything. It is in this time that they learn they are unable to draw, that they are unable to sing. Implicitly, Teacher may be teaching them to disable their creative spark.

Additionally, we educators occasionally model this form of learned helplessness. "Here's what a horse looks like," we might say to draw a representation on the board, followed by the quick disclaimer of, "I'm no artist." I don't know many teachers who would admit, in front of their children, "I can't do math," "I'm not a very good writer," but we'll disclaim our creative talents without a second thought.

Stuck In Another Century

This brings me to the next part of education's role in stifling creativity: our entire education structure is based on the needs and values of the Industrial Revolution. Our basic educational fundamentals have remained largely unchanged for over a century. We just keep covering it with new coats of paint, but the fact remains. Through most of the United States, teachers are trying to prepare children for a twenty-first century world through a nineteenth century curriculum hierarchy.

Fortunately, some new philosophies like Project Approach encourage children to exercise those creative skills that will help them succeed as unique and innovative individuals in the workplace rather than carbon copies of one another. The point is in learning how to independently find answers to questions and problems, how to uniquely and individually share and/or implement those findings, and how to work as a team to reach a common goal. The point is not in reciting rote information. Now, if only we could get proficiency tests to reflect similar progress…

Back On Point

The truth is that you are a creative person. You can sing. You can draw. You can paint. The problem is that you don't believe you can. Whether outside influences have convinced you or you have simply convinced yourself is immaterial. Your creativity is as integral a part of your being as your academic self. It's in there, but you might have to do some work digging it out. We'll save that task for another post.

Tags: education, creativity

While I'm finishing up my second post about creativity (read: procrastinating), I can't help but write a bit about some upcoming games I'm keeping an eye on. I feel the need to point out that most of these games feature some relatively creative aspects about their design or gameplay!

de Blob

de Blob has already come out for the Wii, and it is an action-puzzler that gives the player a goal of bringing color to a monochromatic world. See, your character starts out as a colorless blob of water, and he acquires pigmentation which he can then … oh, just watch it in action right here!


De Blob (Wii) Gamplay Video, Wii Minute Radio from wiiminuteradio on Vimeo.

Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge is set in a totalitarian future where all communication is heavily monitored. The player takes on the role of Faith, a courier who tries to get messages to organizations and individuals without government surveillance. It's a first-person game, but involves several game mechanics (like jumping and hand-to-hand combat) that don't traditionally work well in that perspective. I'm eager to see how the developers pulled it off. I'm also intrigued by the fact that it's possible to beat the game without firing a single shot.


Mirror's Edge from Adventagious on Vimeo.

Prince of Persia

The Sands of Time trilogy stands as some of my favorite video games ever made. While this reinvention of the franchise borrows heavily from its predecessors as well as Okami, it's definitely taking on a life of its own. Since the last Prince of Persia game, the development team has been working on co-op combat with TMNT and wider environments with Assassin's Creed. It looks like elements from both of those properties are finding their way into this new Prince of Persia Title.



Of course, there are a couple more titles on the horizon like Dead Space and Guitar Hero: World Tour. Also, there are rumblings that Team ICO is ready to unveil a PS3 project, and their work is always impeccable. Many, many games come out that feel like they are manufactured to appeal to a specific audience, but it's always refreshing to pick up games like these where the developers have crafted the game into something more. It's the creative games that make a difference.

Tags: video games

A real honest-to-goodness post is in progress for the rest of you! In the meantime, grab your Weighted Companion Cube and enjoy…


Portal - Still Alive typography from Trickster on Vimeo.

(There's a typo in here I keep hoping gets fixed. Can you find it?)

via Kotaku

Tags: video games

Harper's Magazine: David Foster Wallace In Memoriam

This is a collection of writings by Mr. Wallace for Harper's Magazine. Tragically, David Foster Wallace committed suicide last Friday. He was discovered by his wife of four years.

Here is a quote from a commencement speech he gave that I think is just brilliant:

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

Jeffrey Zedman Presents: A Modest Proposal

This is a fantastic piece of writing about the dishonesty that is allowed and unquestioned in American politics. Here's the opening of the article:

It is illegal to make false claims in a TV or radio commercial unless you are running for political office.

If you’re selling toothpaste, your claims must be vetted by legal and medical professionals. But not if you’re selling a candidate.

If you’re selling a candidate, not only can you lie about his record, but more to the point, you can lie about his opponent.

I also think the first comment under the article hits the proverbial nail on the head:

The most horrifying aspect of false advertising in politics is the willingness of the American public to whole-heartedly accept these claims without even thinking twice.

Tags: politics, literature

Richard Wright, keyboardist and occasional vocalist for Pink Floyd lost his battle with cancer. Here he is with his band at the Royal Albert Hall in 2006 playing and singing backup in Breathe and Time.



Also, last month, Leroi Moore, saxophonist and songwriter with Dave Matthews Band, died of complications from injuries received in an ATV accident. Here he is playing saxophone in one of the songs he cowrote for the band.

Zune Spotlight: Zune Takes Music Discovery to the Next Level With New Ways to Find and Access Digital Music

The Microsoft Zune gets a nice update with new software features and a new blue color. The neatest feature allows users to tag songs they hear on FM radio to buy from the Zune Marketplace. This is great if you are one of those people who always forgets what that song is they really like!



Engadget: Microsoft's BlueTrack mice are here -- laser bids a tearful goodbye

Another nice new Microsoft product. These mice use a new wide-angle blue beam that allows them to accurately function on a greater variety of surfaces.



Lifehacker: A First Look at OpenOffice.org 3.0

Jason Fitzpatrick takes a look at how the new version of OpenOffice is shaping up with emphasis on the improvements in the Mac version.

Tags: microsoft, zune, software

Don't give me credit for the title of this post. Apple made it up.

Anyway, new iPods and a new version of iTunes today hit the world today. Most iPod lines were just gently refreshed. Shuffle got a new paint job (polite applause), iPod classic got a larger hard drive (strained applause), iPod touch got some small enhancements in the way of integrated volume control buttons, a built-in speaker, and a price-cut (grateful yet restrained applause), and iPod nano got another complete makeover (enthusiastic applause).

I think the nano has undergone more exterior revisions more quickly than any other product in Apple history. I have pictures of them all around here somewhere. I'll have to make a post about it. Anyway, the new iPod nanos features a new curved aluminum and glass enclosure, is even thinner, and comes in nine colors. It also features a accelerometer that can activate Cover Flow when tipped to the side, or it will activate shuffle mode when shaken.


image by Apple, Inc.

The nanos come in 8 GB and 16 GB models and cost $149 and $199 respectively.

Alongside the new iPod naos, Apple released iTunes 8 to the world, featuring Genius technology that will generate entire playlists based off of one song. (The technology will also make iTunes Store recommendations, naturally.) HD television shows have come to the store along with a return of NBC programming. Finally, iTunes 8 brings a grid view to the interface, which is a very pleasant way of sorting your music.



The grid view groups music by genre, artist, album, or composer. When multiple albums are grouped together in grid view the icons behave much like Events if you are familiar with iPhoto 7.

All-in-all, no real surprises here. As an aside, Kevin Rose predicted exactly what iTunes 8 would look like back on Sunday. His other predictions were spot on as well.

Tags: itunes/ipods

Venture Beat: Xbox 360 defects: an inside history of Microsoft’s video game console woes

This is a very insightful article covering the production and marketing of the XBox 360 with a strong emphasis on Microsoft's handling of the Red Ring of Death. It's six fascinating pages of history and intrigue about (what has become) my favorite console.

I hope Microsoft learns from these experiences when it's time to release the next generation of XBox.



LiveScience: Autism and Vaccines: Why Bad Logic Trumps Science

Interesting stuff. As far as I know, no truly conclusive studies have managed to connect childhood vaccinations to autism.

According to lead author Dr. Mady Hornig, "We found no relationship between the timing of MMR vaccine and the onset of autism." In fact, the new study showed that often the first autism symptoms actually preceded the vaccination shots, and therefore could not have been caused by them.

The Seattle Times: How Obama got to convention's center stage

This is a truly fascinating insight into Obama's journey from being unable to get into the Democratic convention eight years ago to being the center of it today. Eight years ago, he couldn't get in to see Gore accept the nomination as a presidential candidate. This year, Gore was his lead-in.

Tags: microsoft, asd, politics

Have you ever said to yourself some thing like this? "I'm no artist;" "I'm practically tone deaf;" "I just don't have that good of an imagination."

In our culture (and I'm sure in others), there has developed a form of leaned helplessness when it comes to creative expression. A delusion has evolved informing us that most of us are incapable of true creativity, and we have to rely on others' talents and ideas. This self-inflicted myth is simply that: a myth.

Part 1: A Creative Childhood

Time and again, we read of the creative spirit of children. With few exceptions, they have no inhibitions expressing themselves in writing, in drawing, through song, dance, and other forms of artistic representations. I never hear a first grader tell me, "I can't sing." However, I hear it from adults all the time.

Sir Ken Robinson, an absolute genius on the topics of creativity and education, tells a story of a nativity play in which his son played Joseph. The three magi (also played by children) approach with their gifts of gold myrrh, and frankincense. Unfortunately, the child bearing the frankincense forgets what his gift is called, and he visibly struggles with what to say. Finally, he settles on, "Frank sent this!" The word he was supposed to say was incomprehensible to his mind, but he creatively rearranged the emphasis of syllables to make sense of the phonemes floating about his mind. In other words, he improvised in a moment when many of us would have merely frozen.

The same Ken Robinson also tells a story of Gillian Lynne, a girl who was seen as simply having something wrong with her in the 1930s when she was growing up. Today, she might have been diagnosed with ADHD, but a doctor suggested to her mother that she enroll the girl in dance school. She grew up to become the choreographer for Cats, Phantom of the Opera, the stage version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Imaginary Invalid. She even starred opposite Errol Flynn in a film called The Master of Ballantrae. This was all because the doctor told her mother, "Gillian isn't sick. She's a dancer." I shudder to think how many Gillian Lynnes have been stifled over the years due to encountering the wrong adults.

Speaking of Sir Robinson, take a moment and watch his talk. Don't worry. I won't go anywhere.



On a related note, my wife teaches preschool, and her instruction is heavily influenced by Reggio Emilia and Montessori philosophies. The results are amazing. Her children have built a stage to have plays on, have built a post office from PVC pipe and chart paper. They've created sculptures of tornadoes and set up a classroom weather station (correctly using terms like "hook echo" and "Doppler radar" in their discussions), and these are three to four-year-olds. Think about that for minute. All of the preschool academic foundations are incorporated into the class explorations and projects, sometimes even bleeding over into kindergarten and first grade standards. How much less effective might her teaching be if her kids were just sitting at desks completing ditto sheets?

There is no question that childhood is a time of exploration and creativity, but something happens to that spirit and those abilities as we get older. We'll explore that in part two. Stay tuned.

Tags: education, creativity

By and large, the Democratic party was on faire at this year's convention. Here is just a handful of the great speeches delivered. All of these come in their entirety courtesy of Politicstv on YouTube.

First up, Hillary Clinton decisively throws her support behind Obama under no uncertain terms.





Next up, this is Bill Clinton at his finest.





Joe Biden nails it in his first address as the Vice Presidential candidate.





Watching Al Gore makes me wish we could hit a do-over button on 2000!





Finally, Obama delivers a stirring and powerful acceptance speech.

Tags: politics

43: Folders: Deciding Whether to Read a Book: Some Wildly Reductive Heuristics

Merlin Mann shares some completely unfair and subjective criteria to which one should subject potential reading material – specifically nonfiction. However unfair, though, I think these guidelines would prove quite effective.



Mozilla Labs: Introducing Ubiquity

It's like Quicksilver for Firefox – except you would only understand that reference if you are a Mac user. Here, watch this video. Then follow the link.


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.



National Interest: Reflections on Leaving the Party

Susan Eisenhower writes about leaving the party for whom her grandfather had served as president.

Hijacked by a relatively small few, the GOP of today bears no resemblance to Lincoln, Roosevelt or Eisenhower’s party, or many of the other Republican administrations that came after…

As an independent I will now feel comfortable supporting people of any political party who reflect those core values.

Photosynth

This is a really amazing product coming out of Microsoft Live Labs. Unfortunately, the site only works on Windows machines at the moment, but here's a video of it being demonstrated at this year's TED conference.

Tags: politics, literature, firefox, microsoft, technology

If the oil companies are so eager to expand drilling within our borders while citing our crippling dependence on foreign oil, why are they exporting 1.8 million barrels a day?

The admittedly slanted Huffington Post^• discusses a public letter from Rep. Edward J. Markay in which he pleads for the president to encourage our oil companies to focus their oil production marketing on the home front rather than on exportation. Lest you think Rep. Markay is just vying for attention, note that he is the chairman of the House's Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This is an area in which he should be making recommendations to our president.

In the letter (which you can read here as a PDF) specifically calls out this administration's eagerness to open more drilling locations for the oil companies and compares the potential production of these new areas to what is being currently exported. He states:

However, your own Department of Energy projects that at the height of production, in 2030, increased offshore drilling would produce only 200,000 barrels per day – one ninth the amount of oil we currently send to foreign countries every day. Moreover, at the current export rate, by the time the first barrel of oil could be produced from offshore drilling, we would have already exported the equivalent of nearly 40 percent of the oil that is projected to lie beneath protected areas offshore.

This strikes me as yet another contradiction in the desires of the oil companies and some politicians to open protected lands for drilling.

Unlike Rep. Markay, I doubt it's realistic to call for a halt of all oil exportation, but the sheer amount of exportation raises a question. Who are the oil companies truly looking out for? These are companies based in the United States. They continually try to convince citizens that they are working in the best interests of our country, but facts like this contradict the message. A small but significant chunk of our energy woes would reverse if our oil companies were run with more of a social conscience.

• I can respect HuffPo's bias because they wear said bias on their sleeves. They are honest about it. What I can't respect are news sources that flaunt a major bias while trying to hide it behind a guise of being "fair and balanced."

Tags: environment

Link Collection: MobileMe's Security Mess

How MobileMe handles secure information (or doesn't) is outright unacceptable. Along with making the service more reliable, Apple's MobileMe team needs to be bringing this service up to modern standards in terms of security.

• tlrobinson.net: MobileMe and (lack of) encryption
• Thought Palace: Re: MobileMe Webmail Security — There Is None
• AppleInsider: Inside MobileMe: Web 3 and Web client-server apps (additional thoughts by John Gruber here)

TimesOnline: Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games

The video with this article is pretty astonishing. This animation is miles beyond anything I've seen before in terms of human realism.





Senator Obama's Remarks at VFW National Convention in Orlando, FL

Obama gave a great speech in front of the Verterans of Foreign Wars earlier today. (You might remember that this is the same group in front of whom McCain had accused Obama of prioritizing politics over party.) As is his usual modus operandi, Obama was very Socratic in his criticism of the Republican nominee, but he was far from passive.

From the speech:

Yesterday, Senator McCain came before you. He is a man who has served this nation honorably, and he correctly stated that one of the chief criteria for the American people in this election is going to be who can exercise the best judgment as Commander in Chief. But instead of just offering policy answers, he turned to a typical laundry list of political attacks. He said that I have changed my position on Iraq when I have not. He said that I am for a path of “retreat and failure.” And he declared, “Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president” – suggesting, as he has so many times, that I put personal ambition before my country.

That is John McCain’s prerogative. He can run that kind of campaign, and – frankly – that’s how political campaigns have been run in recent years. But I believe the American people are better than that. I believe that this defining moment demands something more of us.

If we think that we can secure our country by just talking tough without acting tough and smart, then we will misunderstand this moment and miss its opportunities. If we think that we can use the same partisan playbook where we just challenge our opponent’s patriotism to win an election, then the American people will lose. The times are too serious for this kind of politics. The calamity left behind by the last eight years is too great. So let me begin by offering my judgment about what we’ve done, where we are, and where we need to go.

Also:

I have never suggested that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America’s national interest. Now, it’s time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.

Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country. I love America, so do you, and so does John McCain. When I look out at this audience, I see people of different political views. You are Democrats and Republicans and Independents. But you all served together, and fought together, and bled together under the same proud flag. You did not serve a Red America or a Blue America – you served the United States of America.

So let’s have a serious debate, and let’s debate our disagreements on the merits of policy – not personal attacks. And no matter how heated it gets or what kind of campaign he chooses to run, I will honor Senator McCain’s service, just like I honor the service of every veteran in this room, and every American who has worn the uniform of the United States.

To this point, Obama has run a very respectful campaign. He has been very careful to avoid attacking McCain's character outside of critiquing the type of campaign he's running, but you know the smear artists working for and with McCain aren't going to back down. I wonder how long Obam can last before he feels compelled to turn more negative.

Tags: mobileme, apple inc, politics, technology

The Next Right: Jerome Cosi

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard of Jerome Corsi's new book The Obama Nation. (I made that pun up months ago, dagnabit!) You've probably heard the likes of O'Reilly, Limbaugh, or Hannity praise it to high heaven, but there's a problem. It's filled with wild inaccuracies. Here are some summaries:

• Politico: Obama Pushes Back Hard on Corsi Book
• NY Times: Book Attacking Obama Hopes to Repeat ’04 Anti-Kerry Feat
• Washington Post: Par for Mr. Corsi

In this title article posted on conservative blog The Next Right, Jon Henke takes a brief but hard look at Corsi's methods and history, finding him severely lacking. He strongly recommends that conservatives distance themselves from Mr. Corsi as much as liberals do. I can't express it better than the article's author:

I mean, c'mon. Have some standards. This guy does not deserve the platform, he does not deserve the publicity, and he does not deserve to be treated as member-in-good-standing on the Right.

The Right seems to engage today in social promotion of hatchet men, bullies and political hit men. Those people poison the Right, and - whatever their temporary electoral effects - they serve to discredit us all.

MarketWatch: How Adobe can stop Microsoft

Columnist John C. Dvorak opines over Adobe's tumultuous relationship with Microsoft. To give some context, Adobe is probably the biggest non-OS software vendor on the market. Their products are as ubiquitous as Microsoft Office, QuickTime, Windows Media Player, or iTunes. Occasionally, however, Adobe's products run into traction when a company like Apple or Microsoft creates a similar product to Adobe's. In the case of this article, Mr. Dvorak looks at the Flash-Silverlight rivalry that is beginning to brew over Internet media delivery.

The author recommends Adobe adopt a Linux strategy, making their products more universal due to being available on all three major computing platforms. He encourages the software developer to face Microsoft head on rather than continue to outrun them. Unfortunately, Mr. Dvorak fails to address a couple of problems.

1. Licensing. Adobe builds closed-source applications with no sharing among competitors (with a couple notable technologies such as PDF and FLEX). In contrast, any Linux application I can think of is licensed through some sort of open standard such as GPL. I doubt it is required, but open-source is certainly expected on the Linux platform. How would Adobe adapt to this? Would they at all? How would the Linux community react to the applications retaining their proprietary status? Reaction is important because of the second major problem.
   
   
2. Profit. Again, how many Linux applications can you think of that cost money? Of those, how many cost several hundred dollars? If Adobe doesn't consider revising their prices, the Linux could very well balk at the investment required to purchase Adobe products. On the other hand, if they offer their products on Linux at reduced prices (if not free as is standard practice), they risk angering and alienating their core customers on Windows and Macintosh systems. Let's not forget to mention that Adobe also has to worry about shareholders.

Now I could be wrong about these issues as my current experience with Linux is shaky at best. Furthermore, Adobe could possibly pull some amazing strategy to appeal to Linux users that I couldn't imagine, but I don't see it happening easily or soon.

Tags: politics, adobe, technology, linux

The iMac shipped for the first time 10 years ago today (well, actually yesterday by the time I finish writing this), and it quickly became the product that would define and reshape Apple. Since its debut, some products like the iPod and iPhone have eclipsed it in terms of mass appeal, but the iMac will always serve as an emblem of Apple's product philosophy. Here are some links celebrating the iMac's tenth birthday.

• Ars Technica: Hello (again): Apple's iMac turns 10
• Macworld: Eight ways the iMac changed computing
• Wired: 10 Years of Cuddly, Friendly iMacs

As sleek as the current iPhone-inspired design of the iMac is, I think the lampshade iMac G4 is still my favorite. It was charming in a way few technology products manage to be. I also liked the eMac despite (or perhaps because of) its shuttle-nose contours.

The iMac is the product that saved Apple when it was about to collapse in on itself, and it was the first Apple product I owned. Here's to many more years of great designs and great computers.

Tags: apple inc, macintosh

YouTube: I Met the Walrus

Here's the description on YouTube:

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it.

This is a simply amazing video, and the most amazing aspect is that it even exists. During the turbulence of the sixties, you would think anyone sneaking up to a hotel room where a celebrity was staying would be promptly thrown out. Instead, Lennon talks to this young man and answers his questions respectfully. Thanks to the individuals who helped this interview see the light of day.



Barackobama.com: Know the Facts: Response to McCain's Most Recent Attack Ad on Taxes

In this video, the Obama campaign's economic policy director deconstructs one of McCain's ads regarding taxes point-by-point. He addresses each criticism and debunks myths being perpetuated by the Republican candidate.



I haven't seen the Obama campaign do this before quite this way, but its an effective approach. I personally hope this becomes a continued strategy.

via sensico

Tags: politics

St. Petersburg Times: The Girl In the WIndow

This has to be one of the most disturbing yet inspiring things I've read in a while. It's quite a read but completely worth it.



Garfield Minus Garfield: Ballantine Books to Publish Book Inspired by the Webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield

The Garfield Minus Garfield comic is a brilliant experiment, and it's great to see that Jim Davis is so supportive.

Garfield creator Jim Davis was intrigued by—and pleased with—the concept. “I think it’s an inspired thing to do,” Davis said. “I want to thank Dan for enabling me to see another side of Garfield...."

Infinite Loop: Steve Jobs: MobileMe "not up to Apple's standards"

In an internal email, Steve Jobs admits that the MobileMe launch was botched, and he is reorganizing the MobileMe team, putting Eddie Cue of the iTunes team over the project.

Tags: apple inc, education

The Presidential Campaign of Al Gore 1.0

In 2000, the Democratic Party was all but assured another term in the White House. Al Gore swept the Democratic primaries and caucuses. Though widely criticized for his dishonesty regarding an affair with Monica Lewinsky, departing President Bill Clinton was leaving with an approval rating of 68% – a higher departing percentage than any president since polling was established seventy years earlier (unless you count presidents who died in office i.e. FDR and JFK). Al Gore's running mate would be the then-popular Joseph Lieberman, a man who could reach across party lines and attract conservative and value-based voters who might otherwise have shied form voting for Gore.


Al Gore image by Breuwi. Geroge W. Bush image by Shawn Clark

On the Republican side, numerous potential candidates were jockeying for power. There was Steve Forbes, John McCain, Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle, and Pat Buchanan among others. Thrown into the mix was Texas governor George W. Bush, son of a former president. The primaries ensued with Bush trailing McCain by 19% at one point, but Bush pulled out ahead to take the nomination. He was considered by many to be intellectually inferior to Gore, and McCain's campaign accused him of mudslinging his way to victory.

In one of the most controversial elections in this nation's history, Bush narrowly defeated Gore by five electoral votes. He lost the popular vote by more than 500,000 and 0.5%. The outcome ultimately came down to a Supreme Court decision ruling Florida's recounting of votes as unconstitutional. Suspicion also fell upon Florida's governor – George W. Bush's younger brother.

Regardless of the political nuances regarding counting the votes, the election was a huge upset because Gore was such a certain candidate. He wasn't expected to defeat Bush. He was expected to overwhelm Bush, but he didn't.

Al Gore and the Liberal Media

How could Gore have lost this election? One of my family members has suggested that the nation seeks refuge in conservatism after being subjected to liberal politics for too long. I tend to disagree based on the numbers. Again, Bush did win the electoral vote, but he lost the popular vote. The general population did not exactly flock to the Republicans after Clinton, and remember that Clinton – despite scandal – remained a popular president throughout his two terms. Certainly, Al Gore did himself few favors by keeping his emotions so close in check and playing to the middle, a strategy that Ariana Huffington thinks hurt his chances.

In October 2007, Evgenia Peretz published an article in Vanity Fair called Going After Gore. It was the first truly in-depth interview with Mr. Gore since his 2000 defeat, and the author takes a very critical look at the role of the media in that election. The article opens with this blurb:

Al Gore couldn't believe his eyes: as the 2000 election heated up, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other top news outlets kept going after him, with misquotes ("I invented the Internet"), distortions (that he lied about being the inspiration for Love Story), and strangely off-the-mark needling, while pundits such as Maureen Dowd appeared to be charmed by his rival, George W. Bush.

Several eye-opening quotes fill the piece, paining a picture of a media that turns against the candidate it's assumed to be biased for. These are just some samples. Ms. Peretz goes much deeper in her article and examines the election coverage (or mis-coverage) in great detail.

Eight years ago, in the bastions of the "liberal media" that were supposed to love Gore—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, CNN—he was variously described as "repellent," "delusional," a vote-rigger, a man who "lies like a rug," "Pinocchio." Eric Pooley, who covered him for Time magazine, says, "He brought out the creative-writing student in so many reporters.… Everybody kind of let loose on the guy."

"Particularly in presidential elections … we in the press tend to deal in caricatures," says Dan Rather, who was then anchoring for CBS. "Someone draws a caricature, and it's funny and at least whimsical. And at first you sort of say, 'Aw shucks, that's too simple.' In the course of the campaign, that becomes accepted wisdom." He notes, "I do not except myself from this criticism."

In 2000, the media seemed to focus on a personality contest between Bush, the folksy Texas rogue, and, as The New York Times referred to Gore, "Eddie Haskell," the insincere brownnoser from Leave It to Beaver. ABC anchor Claire Shipman, who covered the 2000 campaign for NBC, says, "It was almost a drama that was cast before anyone even took a good look at who the candidates were."

As with all campaigns, the coverage of the 2000 election would be driven by a small number of beat reporters. In this case, two women at the most influential newspapers in the country: Seelye from The New York Times and Ceci Connolly from The Washington Post … "They just wanted to tear Gore apart," says a major network correspondent on the trail.

The article paints a picture of a media that created a far more favorable characterization of Bush than it did of Gore, a media that glossed over Bush's misstatements while overanalyzing Gore. The author describes the media's treatment of Mr. Gore as toxic, and the Democratic candidate had to spend as much time fighting fraudulent information from news outlets as he did attacks from his opponent.

While Gore's presentation of himself was far from the dynamic and engaging speaker and activist he is today, his campaign was severely damaged by a media that was all to willing to deal in caricatures and silliness rather than focus on issues and objective reporting.

How 2008 Could Be 2000 Version 2.0

image by the Center for American Progress Action Fund

Again, we have a clear contrast between the Republican and Democratic candidates. In fact, basically the same intellectual and personality contrasts can be drawn between Obama and McCain as could be between Gore and Bush. Again, the Democratic nominee seems to be a sure win. One advantage Obama has over Gore is a somewhat undefinable presence that demands rapt attention, but, like Gore, Obama has been moving to a more centrist platform as his campaign evolves. Likewise, McCain's positions on several issues have been drifting to the right.

How is the media faring? Recently, McCain and conservative pundits have been complaining that Obama has received more than twice as much airtime after the primaries. However, according to the Los Angeles Times, that coverage has not been kind.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.

You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.

During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Writing for the New York Times, Frank Rich reinforces the idea that Obama is succeeding despite the media rather than because of it:

The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”

Again, the media has begun to deal in characters rather than people, and they are tailoring their coverage of the candidates and events to fit those roles they have cast – McCain the grandfatherly war hero and Obama the socialist (potentially) Muslim elitist.

Think of the sheer number of media blitzes that have surrounded Obama's campaign: the Jeremiah Wright soundbite, "guns and religion," flag pins, "terrorist fist-jabs," madrasah, etc. Every move this man makes, every word he utters, every association he has comes under the most sensational scrutiny. In contrast, McCain receives free pass after free pass from the media.

Here are some examples from Media Matters. Please note, all of these examples focus on only one network, and it's not Fox.

• Media outlets reported McCain's criticism of Obama's "political speech" in Germany, didn't note McCain's own recent speech in Canada
  
  
• CBS News omitted a second McCain falsehood: his characterization of Iraq war as "the first major conflict since 9/11"
  
  
• Despite warning that any "gaffe" by Obama on his trip could be disastrous, nets' evening news broadcasts ignored McCain misstatements in same period
  
  
• Couric did not challenge McCain's suggestion that "five Nobel laureates and 300 economists" agree he can balance the budget
  
  
• CBS' Schieffer left out part of Obama speech that undermined Schieffer's suggestion of a "different take" on Iraq policy
  
  
• Numerous media outlets reported McCain's attack on Obama over public financing without noting McCain's loan
  
  
• Today, Early Show covered Wright interview, but didn't ask McCain about Hagee
  
  
• CBS report on candidates' tendency to "exaggerate ... his or her record" ignored several McCain distortions of his record

This is just a sampling and doesn't cover numerous flip-flops by McCain that the media has largely ignored as well as various offensive jokes he has made or claims to not know how he voted on some issues. On Crooks and Liars, Jon Amato, commenting the media glossing over one of McCain's misstatements once rhetorically asked, "What if Obama had said this?"

"What if?" indeed.

Avoiding a Repeat of History

While I think my political leanings are somewhat evident, I'm not writing this to tell you for whom to vote. I am, however, writing this to tell you how to vote – not as a Republican or as a Democrat, but as an informed individual.

Vote informed, not educated by the mainstream media which doesn't inform so much as it entertains through information. Do your own research on the candidates. Fact-check everything. Read the candidates positions from their own websites (Obama, McCain). Read independent commentary. Go look at their voting records yourself (Obama, McCain). Go to a rally and ask them your questions in person, but don't trust what you see on TV or hear on the radio at face value.

And never, ever use the term liberal media again. Two main contributors hurt the Al Gore campaign of 2000: a political move to the center and a media that was more interested in drama and caricatures than facts. WIth both candidates in this election, political drifting is potentially damaging to their campaigns, but you can eliminate the other variable. Don't vote for some two-dimension cardboard cutout as portrayed by the mainstream media. Look beyond the hype. Don't become acquainted with characters on TV. Acquaint yourselves with the people, and make a decision based on information rather than infotainment.

Update: Media Matters Action Network is creating on online pledge regarding monitoring media bias – especially in regards to Republican candidates and talking points. Check it out if this interests you.

Tags: politics, opinion, media

It's been a long time since I've updated the site's design (over a year!), but somewhere around 11:00 last night I found a stylesheet variation I liked and went with it. If things look strange, hit the refresh button on your browser, and that should fix things. Otherwise you might have to clear your browser's cache.

I've been contemplating changing things up for a while – mostly because the links to the various parts of my site (Simply Robert, Simply Presentation, and Simply Gospel) weren't clearly clickable. Other than that, the new layout is a bit more streamlined. I also fixed a lot of markup in old posts, such as lists, quotes, and headers.

Thanks for your readership, and I hope you like the new look around here!

On Wednesday, conservative radio host Michael Savage had this to say about autism:

…A fraud, a racket. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is.

I have to admit that I didn't write about this the moment I read about it. I had to cool down first. Mr. Savage should be congratulated. He's now one of only four figures in the media who have managed to get under my skin. (In case you are wondering, the other three are Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh.)

Let's start with the assertion that 99% of autism cases are fraudulent. This figure is based on what, exactly? Does Mr. Savage have any scientific studies or educational experience to back this up? Has he personally conducted observation and surveys of autism-diagnosed children to verify the veracity of said diagnosis? No, he does what too many other talking-heads do. He makes up a statistic on the spot – a lie that his loyal listeners will begin repeating as fact.

He supports his hypothesis by citing minority asthma diagnoses.

For a long while, we were hearing that every minority child had asthma. Why did they sudden -- why was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because I'll tell you why: The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket.

Of course, he fails to notice that concentrated minority populations are often centered most heavily around urban developments where air quality is generally poorer and temperatures are generally higher – compounding factors in the development of lung conditions such as asthma. He fails to note that the still-present racial economic divide gives many minority families less access to locations or products providing cleaner air. No, in his mind, minorities are thieves and doctors are supremely gullible.

He also fails to draw a parallel between asthma and autism that should be obvious. If autism, like asthma, is a minority-driven racket, why are the diagnosis rates among racially diverse populations not significantly higher than among Caucasians. Again, he is presenting his information so that his audience infers conclusions that are simply untrue.

Of the parents I come in contact with on a daily basis, those of my autistic children have some of the highest expectations. They are the most consistent, the most structured. They go above and beyond to ensure their children can function properly in a social world. In fact, if money was the issue, as Mr. Savage suggests, these parents picked the wrong disorder. Getting insurance to help with autism treatment can be a difficult task.

Are there misdiagnoses? Of course, especially since the academic and medical communities' understanding of autism is still evolving. However, it's much harder to misdiagnose autism and much easier to later catch a misdiagnosis than with some other learning disabilities such as ADHD. An autism label is not an excuse, nor is it a cop-out. It is a flag that this child does need help in specific areas, and the goal is that of independence – not reliance.

Mr. Savage wraps up with this jewel.

If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, "Don't behave like a fool." The worst thing he said -- "Don't behave like a fool. Don't be anybody's dummy. Don't sound like an idiot.

You know, that's actually good advice. I just wish Mr. Savage and the uncounted other pundits with a venue to vent would take it. The world would be a quieter, less angry place, and the autistic population would enjoy that immensely.

Update: Gedblog provides some more commentary, and the author wonders what kind of backlash these remarks could gather from parents of autistic children.

via Media Matters

Tags: media, opinion, asd, education

Yesterday, Al Gore gave the United States a daring challenge.

…But to make this exciting potential a reality, and truly solve our nation's problems, we need a new start.

That's why I'm proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It's not the only thing we need to do. But this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold new strategy needed to re-power America.

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

Whether or not you believe the climate crisis is real, Mr. Gore's challenge is one worthy of the great minds and innovative scientists in this country.

Consider the number of heart and lung diseases that are caused or aggravated by air pollution and how much more healthy we, as a nation, would be if we could eliminate this form of pollution entirely. Additionally, our current economy is completely reliant on fossil fuels. Rising fuel prices effect everything – from filling your car to airline tickets to grocery prices to school field trips. The oil companies in particular form a sort of hydraulic despotism upon which our entire societal balance hinges.

Pursuing an energy policy that temporarily reduces the price of fossil fuels changes none of this. It is putting an Band-Aid on a tumor. The problem only appears to go away while, underneath, it continues to grow and deepen. It is a policy that only further entrenches our addiction to fossil fuels. Furthermore, the myth that expanding drilling will somehow lower fuel prices is just that: a myth.

Instead, our policies should be aiming toward obsolescing fossil fuels in energy production.

Mr. Gore cites increased efficiency and economy of sustainable energy sources as well as entrepreneurs, investors, and inventors pushing these innovations to their limits. He reminds us that our world is more than capable of meeting our energy needs without us ripping it to pieces.

What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home?

We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.

And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America.

As the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron age have all passed, it's time for the carbon age to close. Mass market energy production technology can move beyond the principles of last century, but timid steps will never reach the goal. We need an audacious vision.

President Kennedy did not say that we put put a man in space with a long-term goal of the moon should it be proven feasible. FDR did not say the only thing we have to fear is the possibility of hard work. Abraham Lincoln did not call out for a phased release of a percentage of slaves over a fifty-year period. DIfferences are not made when the leadership is apprehensive. Mr. Gore is providing us with a bold challenge. Now we just need bold leadership to help guide us there.

Update: Ars Technica provides some great commentary on how this plan can ultimately benefit our culture – whether or not the goal is actually met in ten years. Read the article here.

Tags: environment, opinion

With the release of the iPhone 3G, Apple's developers has given [dot] Mac a long-needed overhaul and have rebranded the effort as MobileMe. Email addresses that used to end with "@mac.com" now end with "@me.com" (though the former still works), "web.mac.com" domains can now use "web.me.com." However, "homepage.mac.com," like this site uses, does not translate into a me.com domain.

The services offered through MobileMe are targeted at both Mac users and PC users, particularly those who have an iPhone of iPod touch – a probable reason why the [dot] Mac moniker was dropped from the branding. MobileMe is designed to help keep things like email, contacts, and calendars synced between your computer(s) and iPhone/iPod touch while also providing a venue for sharing photos and limited backup options.

Logging In

There's nothing really special here unless you are a former [dot] Mac user. The login screen for [dot] Mac was terrible, and this is a huge improvement. Moving on.

iDisk

iDisk has been improved in many ways, using a column view rather than the old list view. Drag-and-drop works as expected between folders as well as the sidebar. Anyone who is used to the Macintosh Finder will feel right at home here. Down in the bottom left corner, a progress bar shows how much space is used on iDisk, and you can conserve space by creating compressed archives of items of folders. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful getting this feature to work while testing.

Mail

Apple's web-based email interface is uncannily similar to their desktop email client. Like iDisk, if you are familiar with Apple's desktop application, the web application will seem right at home. Mail has extensive preferences, including junk-mail filtering, aliases, and the ability to check other accounts as well as automatically forward me.com mail to other accounts. Drag-and-drop support is pervasive throughout Mail.

Unfortunately, I ran into a significant bug using Mail. When I deleted a message, many times other messages would be deleted as well. Needless to say, this renders Mail pretty unusable until Apple irons this problem out.

Contacts

Contacts serves as MobilMe's answer to Mac OS X's Address Book application. After a slight delay, my contacts synced with MobileMe. Contacts can also import and export vCards, which are used by Address Book, Outlook, Thunderbird, and other contact managers. Adding and editing contacts manually is a simple task, and I did not run into the deletion bug here that was present in MobileMe's Mail interface.

Calendar

Calendar is very similar to iCal. (Notice a theme here yet?) Syncing went smoothly. Calendar supports day, week, and moth views. Adding and removing events is a breeze, but I didn't find a way of importing or exporting calendar data outside of using iCal, which makes me wonder how useful this service will be to Windows users.

Other Notes

• MobileMe supports double-clicks on items as well as the delete key. Unfortunately, many other keyboard commands do not work.
• Shift-clicking to select multiple items works as expected as does cmd-clicking.
• When MobileMe is processing something, there is a small progress indicator at the bottom right of the sidebar.
• Dragging a message to the trash in Mail circumvents the deletion bug I encountered.
• I couldn't get photo uploading to work, so that's why the Photo Galley is not included here.

Conclusions

In all honesty, MobileMe is not very compelling at the moment. It promises great features, and it is beautiful to look at, especially when compared to other online calendar or email services. However, the bugs are deal-breakers. Photo Gallery refused to upload any photographs. Calendar offers no standard importing of exporting options, and deleting messages in Mail can result in unexpected behaviors. Hopefully, these issues are resolved quickly.

If you already subscribe to [dot] Mac, MobileMe makes sense to keep. It improves on the previous service in almost every way. If you use an iPhone or iPod touch in combination with a computer for managing messages, contacts, calendars, and messages, MobileMe might be worth subscribing to for the simple syncing features. Unfortunately, MobileMe can't compete with similar online offerings for general users until the kinks are worked out.

Update: It's important to note that Apple has apologized for the troublesome MobileMe transition and is providing all subscribers with an additional thirty days of service, free of charge.

Tags: mobileme, software

I need to start this piece by stating a simple fact: I am not a movie person. Two movies a year is usually my limit. This year will probably turn out to be four, but I only went to one of those because I was being a friend. (The fact that I did enjoy Iron Man does not negate the fact that I went against my better judgment.)

That said, the wife and I usually try to make it to the latest Pixar offering. With the possible exception of the overly-formulaic Cars, Pixar never lets us down, and no movie demonstrates their mastery of storytelling as does Wall-E. Set in a world devastated by human pollution, Wall-E crafts a touching story of hope, love, and friendship – the most basic of human experiences – through its memorable automated protagonists. With few characters and minimal dialogue, the Pixar team has created a deep and gratifying film experience.

It's a movie that is both charming and audacious. It's cautionary as it is humorous. In many ways, Wall-E defies traditional categorization by introducing us to characters and events the children will love while weaving subtexts that demand reaction from the adults. Wall-E does not draw the adult audience in through the traditional cheap ploys of subtle in-jokes or innuendo. No, under the special effects, anthropomorphized robots, and physical humor lay a scathing commentary about the self-destructive, self-centered, and overly commercial culture in which we thrive.

Few intelligent adults will be able to walk away without hearing echos of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth woven through the narrative, without seeing corporate entities such as Wal-Mart reflected in Buy 'N Large, without hearing Bush-like rhetoric from Shelby Forthright. The movie challenges the adults in the audience, but it does so in a way that is compelling and ultimately non-threatening.

Wall-E is a masterpiece of animation, both from storytelling and technical standpoints. It is a work of art, and it is one of Disney's most daring productions. Wall-E succeeds on multiple levels, and I strongly recommend going to the theaters to see it.

Oh, and the Stanley Kubrick references are merely icing on the cake.

Tags: movies, opinion

Conversations On Ghibli: Pixar, Wall-E and Rubber Soul

This is a wonderful article looking at where Pixar has come from and wondering where they might be going. The fact that the author makes comparisons of Pixar to the Beatles makes the read all the more intriguing.

On a related note, Wall-E is a brilliant film. I loved every second of it.

Tags: movies

Mother Jones: What's John McCain's Technology Policy?

You know, there's a reason many people who are passionate about technology are backing Obama.



Think On These Things: Obama 101

Here's a quick and handy starting point if you want to know where Barack Obama stands on a number of issues. This blogger does a good job of debunking a lot of misinformation floating around regarding Senator Obama, and he or she has several posts that explain how some of his policy plans are feasible. Poke around the site a bit.

Tags: politics

Despite claims of Fox News and other Republican mouthpieces, Barack Obama has been very consistent in speech and practice. As the late Frank Herbert might have put it, his words and actions agree with each other (and much more so than those of his rival). One glaring exception to this rule, however, has been Obama's support for the FISA bill recently passed by the House of Representatives – a bill that his most adamant of supporters are strongly opposed to and a bill that supports retroactive telecom immunity, an issue the senator has historically opposed.

Sen. Obama has been fairly quiet on the issue, but yesterday he sent out a response that's also on his site. Here are some quotes:

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.

His claim is that he's still opposed to the retroactive immunity for telecoms that may have violated the law. I am forced to wonder how his vote will go should the immunity clause remain intact.

But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year. The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any President or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court. In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited.

Okay, so far so good.

Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. I do so with the firm intention -- once I’m sworn in as President -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

In other words, he seems to see this as a temporary compromise he hopes to rectify in the future – assuming he wins the general election. I'm cautiously optimistic that he'll keep his word on this, but I, along with many of his supporters, would like to see a little more backbone at this moment. On the other hand, perhaps now is not the time for rigid idealism that could gridlock the system. After all, rigid idealism brought us to where we are today.

One comment I saw regarding this explanation put it very well: "If this decision were made in a vacuum, without a series of other 'drift to ther center' moves, your position would be plausible." Indeed, some of Obama's recent positions and statements seem slightly contrary to his nature without being outright contradictions. It's a move we've seen other Democratic presidential candidates take. Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton all swerved toward the center of the field during their campaigns, and they all eventually lost.

While I still firmly believe Obama is a better presidential candidate for many reasons – energy policy, healthcare reform, education, international relations, to name a few – I fear he may begin to lose his base if he takes his campaign in a more centrist route. Arianna Huffington puts it well:

Go to YouTube and watch the concession speeches of Kerry, Gore, and Hillary Clinton, each of whom decided to run to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters.
…
Tape to your mirror the poll results from July 2004, where Kerry was up by six, and June of 1988, where Dukakis was up by 15... and don't get complacent.
…
When Bobby Kennedy was agonizing over whether or not to run in 1968, he told one of his advisors: "People are selfish. But they can also be compassionate and generous, and they care about the country. But not when they feel threatened. That's why this is such a crucial time. We can go in either direction. But if we don't make a choice soon, it will be too late to turn things around. I think people are willing to make the right choice. But they need leadership. They're hungry for leadership." Forty years later, we are starving for it.

Senator Obama, we the people have been hoping for some kind of shift in government that reflects an interest in us and respect for us. I hope this FISA bill is an exception and that you truly are prepared to be that change you say you represent.

Update: Obama voted for the bill with immunity intact. I wonder if he realizes how much this single act is undermining the message of his campaign to this point.

Tags: politics, opinion

1Up: Diablo III Officially Announced

I think Diablo II was one of the last desktop games I played before getting sucked into console gaming. When was that? 2000? So many memories. You can bet I'll be keeping my eye on this one!

If you're feeling nostalgic, check out this old list: The Too Much Diablo List. (I can't believe that link still works!)



Opposable Thumbs: Rock Band 2 announced, detailed, fans listened to

Let's see … Compatible with existing controllers? Check. Compatible with old downloadable songs? Check. New DLC compatible with the original? Wow. Harmonix seems to be going out of their way to get this one right.

SPeaking of DLC, it looks like a bunch of The Who material is going to become available soon!

Tags: video games

Green Building Elements: Community Solar Power

The case model here is a community in Alberta, Canada that obtains ~90% of their annual energy for heating and hot water from solar panels. Think about that. Canada. Alberta. Winter temperatures there regularly drop below zero, and they have many more hours of winter darkness than we do here in the Midwest.

Seriously, what's holding the U.S. back from replicating this achievement?



Scienceray: Moving Forward with America’s Fastest Eco-friendly Train

This train's route would go from Disneyland in Anaheim, CA to Las Vegas, NV. It will be electromagnetically propelled and travel at speeds approaching 300 mph. I hope this project is a big enough success to see wider adoption.

While the need for coal-produced electricity is not entirely eco-friendly, it is friendlier than the amount of carbon emissions put into the atmosphere by cars for a comparable number of people. Additionally, as researchers continue to discover more efficient ways to harvest and store renewable and ecologically responsible energy sources, transit systems like this could be transitioned to cleaner processes.

Tags: environment

While I'm preparing for a Simply Presentation workshop this summer, I've been browsing the TED Talks website for possible examples to share with the attendees. This involves watching every TED Talk I don't instantly recognize as one I've already viewed or downloaded. One of the joys of this process is discovering some of the technical demonstrations that happen at the TED conference every year.

In this video, Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Microsoft Live Labs shows off a piece of software called Photosyth. The demo is simply jaw-dropping.



Another joy is the outright bizzare but astonishing talents some individuals share. This video has Arthur Benjamin showcasing some unimaginable mathematical skills.

Tags: microsoft, ted

This week has seen two interviews that rank among the best from The Daily Show.

Jon's interview with Lara Long is amazing, and it serves as a humbling reminder as to why it's important we keep hearing reports from the front lines. Regardless of your opinion or my opinion of the administration and the rationalizations that led to this conflict, our troops do deserve more attention and respect than they have been getting, especially in the mainstream media.

Tags: politics, media

For being billed as a "fake news" program, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is incredibly insightful, informational, and, yes, intriguing. (I knew I could get three adjectives beginning with the letter "i" in there!)

Take Monday, June 16, 2008 as an example. First, Mr. Stewart blasts the mainstream media for what he labels Baracknophobia: the fear of hope. While ceaselessly funny, it serves as a great commentary on how the mainstream media plays up silly, unfounded, and often false rumors about a political figure (Barack Obama in this case) and presents them under the guise of "fair and unbiased" reporting.



Later, Mr. Stewart interviews former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias who talks about his job and subsequent termination under the Bush administration. Those out there still arguing that this administration did nothing wrong and that there's nothing suspicious about those dismissals should watch this.



I lfind it intriguing that Mr. Iglesias speaks of using mob infiltration tactics in terms of prosecuting the Republicans responsible for this, but the best quote of this interview?

I thought I was working with the Jedi Knights, and I was working for the Sith Lords.

Keep in mind that this is coming from a U.S. Attorney who considered himself a Republican. Unfortunately, his sense of following due process and honoring the Constitution cost him his position. By the way, here's his book on Borders.com if you are interested.

Tags: politics, silly

Mark Simonson Studio: Indiana Jones and the Fonts on the Maps

DId you ever wonder what fonts are used on the maps in Indiana Jones movies? I know I didn't, and yet this this post is very cool.

via Daring Fireball



NYT: A Remarkable Photo From Tornado Country

Wow. Just wow.

also via Daring Fireball



Ars Technica: Energy storage to smooth green power sources

This is an interesting piece about different options for storing energy generated by renewable methods, hopefully answering the concern that most renewable sources of energy are variable in nature (like wind, tides, and the sun).

Tags: technology, environment

If you are the type of person who likes downloading and trying different web browsers (like I am), then today was chock full of goodness. Not only was Firefox 3.0 officially released today, but the Flock 2 Beta is out as well! (Thanks to Ars for the head's up on Flock.)

Here are links:

• Firefox 3
• Flock 2 Beta

Give them a try. Maybe you'll find a replacement for Internet Explorer if you haven't already. Seriously, if you are viewing my site in Explorer, trust me that it looks better in just about anything else!

Tags: flock, browsers, firefox

ABC News Political Punch: Barack Obama Explains the Meaning of Life

A young man asks what life means for Senator Obama, and, after a little stammering, I think he comes up with a pretty good answer:

What life means to me is that every day I wake up trying to figure out how can I secure their futures and the futures of all children … How can I make sure that we are giving a planet and a country to them that is better than the one we got? And, you know, so I guess what I’ve discovered is that life doesn’t count for much unless you’re somehow giving yourself to something larger to yourself.

Neocrisis: Classic game scenes recreated with Lego

I had fun with this trying to guess what game was being recreated before looking at the caption. The only one I couldn't immediately identify was Bionic Commando.

Tags: video games, silly, politics

This is why I can't stomach Fox News:


image from Salon.com

From Wikipedia:

A baby mama (also baby-mama and baby-mother) is a mother who is not married to her child's father. The Oxford English Dictionary defines baby mama as "the mother of a man's child, who is not his wife or (in most cases) his current or exclusive partner".

Senator Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson were married in 1992. Their daughters were born in 1998 and 2001. Either Malkin is ignorant or vindictive in her use of this term, and with Fox News' history of hateful, racist, and sometimes even misogynistic coverage of politics, the latter would not surprise me.

Tags: politics, media

The WWDC keynote presentation has come and gone, and I think we can all agree that there is such a thing as too many software demonstrations! Other than that, here is the new stuff for today.

iPhone3G

Take pretty much any complaint against the the original iPhone – too expensive, no Exchange support, no third-party applications, no GPS, no 3G networking – and they've been addressed in the new version. Additionally, the software upgrades will be available to current iPhone users for free.



The new iPhone features Internet access over WiFi, EDGE, or 3G now, resulting in web pages rendering roughly twice as fast on the new model. For enterprise customers, Exchange support has been added, and businesses can even internally develop and distribute custom applications for iPhone. App Store for third-pary applications will launch soon, and the keynote featured many applications that will be available at launch.

I'm not going to cover every demonstrated application in detail, but we saw some games, a couple medical applications, a music creation tool, location-based apps, TypePad and eBay clients, and a couple news and video applications. Prices ranged from free to $9.99. In addition to application support, Apple is providing a way for these apps to give you notifications without extraneous background processes through a push notification service.

The biggest news here is arguably the price. When it was released, the iPhone cost $499 to $599. Now the two models cost $199 to $299.

MobileMe

I have to get this off my chest: that font reminds me of Windows Me. There, I've said it. Now let's move on.



MobileMe replaces [dot] Mac. It retains the same price point but adds a few new features and doubles iDisk storage. Webmail, calendars, iDisk, contacts, and image galleries have all received nice web-interface facelifts (with contacts and calendars new to the suite of tools), and information edited here is automatically synced to any Mac, PC, iPhone, or iPod touch set up with the service. Likewise, editing info on any of those devices causes it to be synced with the others.

According to MobileMe's transition FAQ, [dot] Mac subscribers will transition to MobileMe at no additional charge, and anyone with a mac.com email address or webpage will be able to keep using the same address for the foreseeable future. In all, MobileMe looks like a nice upgrade, but I'll miss typing "[dot] Mac."

SnowLeopard

Mac OS X 10.6 will be a departure from Apple's OS strategy of the past few years. Instead of showcasing a handful of impressive new features, Snow Leopard's development seems to be focused squarely "under the hood." It's all about making Mac OS X run better and more stable than ever. Little info about Snow Leopard has trickled out so far, but here's a snippet from an Apple press release:

Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime® X. Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and is scheduled to ship in about a year.

Personally, I think the Exchange support is going to be a big selling point. Speaking of selling, I wonder if Apple will retain the $129 price-point for Snow Leopard or if it will see a smaller upgrade price due to its less-ambitious feature set.

That covers it for today, but we'll probably see some more Apple-related announcements over the next several days.

Tags: apple inc, iphone, os x, snow leopard

If you are interested in tracking WWDC announcements as they happen, these are my favorite two sources:

Ars Technica: Ars at WWDC '08: Live keynote coverage here!

MacRumors: Worldwide Developer Conference 2008 Keynote Live Coverage

Coverage will start at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

You know, I used to never post about politics on this blog because I assumed it would get me in too much trouble. Then I learned that posting about anything can get a blogger in trouble, so what the heck? Anyway, today's link post is a return to those carefree days!

Inhabitat: BMW’s Hydrogen Car Cleans The Air as You Drive

Get this, this car's emissions are so insignificant that they are undetectable by standard emission tests. My only question is this: how quickly can this move from concept to production?



GamesRadar: Game Names Corrected By Spellcheck.

Brett Elston at GamesRadar decides to actually use the suggestions provided by Firefox's spellchecker of some rather unusual game titles. Hilarity ensues.

My favorite? Castelvania being converted to Televangelist. Oh the horror!



MacRumors: OS X iPhone and OS X Leopard Banners at WWDC

MacRumors links to a couple of galleries giving us a sneak peek of Monday's WWDC. I think the outdoor banners look especially nice. However, Apple, if rumors are true about 10.6 coming out soon, you and I are no longer on speaking terms.

Who am I kidding?

Tags: environment, wwdc, apple inc, video games

Okay, so I've been pretty rough on Microsoft for some of their more blatant ripoffs, but I've also defended them when the so-called rip-offs were natural product progressions. This is why I didn't say anything when the Republican party unveiled their new slogan: "Change You Deserve," even though I had some initial reactions.

1. Isn't the basis of conservatism a resistance to change? Is this slogan supposed to be sarcastic?
2. Or is it more like, "I'll give you the change you deserve?" Perhaps it's a threat.
3. Maybe it's commentary on the Republican stance on taxes. "You deserve change, but we'll save you dollars!"
4. Wait a minute, I've seen that slogan in the doctor's office. It's used for an anti-depressant! I wonder if they think I need one. What side-effects do they come with?

Yes, the Republican Party adopted a slogan that was already trademarked by a pharmaceutical. Still, it's the type of mistake that anyone could make. "Change You Can Believe In" was already taken, and I highly doubt any similar tag-lines exist that aren't. Silly? Yes. Big deal? No.

Um, speaking of things we can believe in…


image from johnmccain.com

Does that look/sound familiar to you? Like this familiar:


image from barackobama.com

Like most copies, the McCain version is inferior in many ways. Color usage, typography, image quality, general composition – the original beats the imitation. Still, I find it amusing that McCain would be asking us to believe in him as a leader through a splash image that bears such close resemblance to his opponent's image. In fact, his whole site seems to have taken cues from the Obama camp in its recent redesign.

You'd think differentiating one's self from the competition wouldn't involve imitating the look and feel of the competition's campaign, especially a campaign with such a signature look. Hm, perhaps this imitation makes the statement that, "The Change You Deserve Is More of the Same."

Tags: politics, silly

Over the last couple of days, both Mac Rumors and Daring Fireball have blogged about possible impending changes to Apple's .Mac service, home to my site here for about three years.

I don't know if these potential changes could affect the domain name of my site (making bookmarks and links invalid) or not. I doubt it will. However, keep an eye on my Twitter page should this site up and disappear!

Let me take a break from the problems of the world, political races, and environmental talk and address something small.

Hi, Activision? Yeah, it's me, an obsessive-compulsive Guitar Hero fan. We need to chat. Sit down.

Really, sit down.

So some buddies from church showed the wife and me Guitar Hero II early last year. It was good. Freaking hard, but good. A couple weeks later, the wife and I bought both Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. I guess I should have guessed something was happening at the time because Rocks the 80s had 30 songs to GHII's 66. Maybe it should have been called Guitar Hero Encore: Cash-In, but I let it slide. After all, it was being marketed as an expansion pack, albeit an expansion costing $50.

Still, Rocks the 80s was fun.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock set off some more warning bells. The title seemed slightly pretentious considering only one of the unlockable characters could be considered a rock legend, but perhaps you were referring to groups like KISS, The Who, Cream, Aerosmith, Sex Pistols, Santana, Metallica, and more appearing in the set list. Fine. Maybe Yahtzee's suggestion to call it Legend of Rock is too harsh.

Then there were the poorly animated cut-scenes. It's Guitar Hero. We don't need a story, especially one as silly as the one you included. There was a nice anti-corporate message to the story, but you did a great job undermining that message by cramming product placement in some of the most unlikely places. I mean, an Axe Body Spray guitar? C'mon. At least the companies advertised in the previous Guitar Hero games had something to do with music.

Still, the game is fun, and I'm a forgiving sort of guy.

Then I started seeing more and more silly Guitar Hero products come out, like Guitar Hero Carabiner, Guitar Hero: Air Rocker, and Guitar Hero III Mobile, but this takes the cake:



May I ask you a serious question, Activision? Did any of you – I don't know – watch this before releasing it to the public? Did any employee say, "You know, that looks kind of stupid. Perhaps we should just show some gameplay footage instead?" If so, promote the dissenter, please. Really, I felt like the Guitar Hero: World Tour trailer was pretty bad, but this transcends bad.

Do even know who your core audience is? Harmonix seems to get it. Remember them? They used to make the Guitar Hero games until they moved on to bigger and better things. I know you acted like you've never heard of them at the D6: All Things Digital conference, but the GH: World Tour interface is a carbon copy of Rock Band (just with round notes instead of rectangles).

Here's where I'm going with all of this. You are slowly doing to Guitar Hero what Traveler's Tales did to Crash Bandicoot and Universal Studios did to Spyro after their respective creators sold them to move on to bigger and better things. You are sucking the soul out of the series. You are transforming Guitar Hero from an innovator into a me-too toy. You are alienating your core audience.

Look, I plan on picking up Guitar Hero: Aerosmith at the end of June. After that, though, all bets are off. The chances of you getting me to yell "Rock On" into my DS are pretty slim, and the prospect of the wife and I picking up a Rock Band clone that will cost another $180 is also slim. Let's not even mention additional market saturation from Konami's Rock Revolution.

Those of us who have enjoyed Guitar Hero over the past few years want to believe. We want to think future Guitar Hero games are going to be worth it, but do something for us first. Rediscover the game's soul.

Tags: video games, guitar hero

Huffington Post: Rupert Murdoch Says Obama Will Win

I don't know how to feel about this. Rupert Murdoch – you know, the man who owns News Corp, corporate entity over of Fox News? That Rupert Murdoch said this about Obama:

"He is a rock star. It's fantastic … I love what he is saying about education … I don't think he will win Florida … but he will win in Ohio and the election … I am anxious to meet him."

He also didn't have too many kind words to spare regarding McCain, calling him "unpredictable" and asking, "What's he really stand for?" The man overseeing the news outlet that has been responsible for more lies and misinformation about Obama than about anyone is now all but endorsing him? What's that squealing in the air?



CleanTechnica: 3 Hidden Costs of High Oil Prices

In my opinion, opening up further drilling sites is like putting a Band-Aid on a tumor. Yes, it will put some people's minds at ease in the short-term, but the problem still exists. Only by branching out into alternative energy sources that don't rely on fossil fuels in any way can we break out of this economic and environmental pit.



RapidWeaver 4.0

Realmac software just released an update to their website-creation tool RapidWeaver. Unfortunately, it's Leopard-only, so I won't be upgrading soon. I highly recommend RapidWeaver to anyone wanting to publish their own blog or website.

Update: Here are the release notes.



GameTrailers: Prince of Persia: Next Gen

So the team working on this (if I'm not mistaken) also worked on TMNT and Assassin's Creed. Both of these games featured gameplay elements similar to that of the previous Prince of Persia trilogy with some co-op and environmental enhancements. From the looks of this trailer, it appears TMNT's over-the-top co-op attacks as well as the expansive environments from Assassin's Creed are coming home to the Prince.

From what I've read, this game also seems to be influenced by Okami both in visual style and themes. Good stuff.



I'm so excited by this, I might just have to play the Sands of Time trilogy over again!

Tags: politics, rapidweaver, video games, environment

TCPalm: Teacher lets Morningside students vote out classmate

I can't believe I forgot to post this earlier! Kindergarten teacher Wendy Portillo actually led her class in telling an autistic five-year-old what they don't like about him, and she guided the kids in voting him out of her class! I don't care how much trouble he might have been in, this behavior from a teacher is completely unacceptable (disclaimer: I'm a teacher, and I'm autistic).

The school website seems to be down, but you can visit the district site right here.



Engadget: Hydraulic transmission gives engines, wallets a break

Hopefully, this is another step in the direction of reducing our total dependance on fossil fuels.



Senator Obama Addresses Wesleyan University Graduates



In discussing the need for individuals willing to dedicate time and resources to public service:

Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt.

It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story.

The full text of the speech can be read right here.



YouTube: Is It True About Obama?

Speaking of Senator Obama, this short video covers some of the misinformation and misconceptions floating around regarding him.

Tags: politics, environment

As another year passes, I see another Completion Ceremony video firmly in my rearview mirror – a video that almost didn't happen due to schedule constraints. In all, the Keynote file that served as the project's base was 123 slides with some 240 photographs included. Five days before the ceremony, I only had about forty of those slides completed! It was nuts finishing up the rest, leading to many near-sleepless nights. Still, I'm pretty happy with how things turned out this year, so allow me to take a moment to look back at highlights as well as problems with this year's video.

Let's Start With the Bad News

The time crunch led to one major issue: no opportunities to troubleshoot or tweak. In the end, my soundtrack (composed by a friend and myself) was about thirty seconds shorter than the video. I had no time to write new material, so the video opens in silence. It only looks intentional! Additionally, framerate was an issue. I haven't had problems with this since my first attempt six years ago (using nothing but Keynote 1.0 and QuickTime Pro). Again, given just a few more hours, I know I could have worked this out.

I also felt limited in my adherence to Mac OS X 10.4 technologies. I really wanted to upgrade to 10.5 before working on this video (explaining some of my own procrastination), but it just didn't happen. This hampered my vision to some extent because some of the tools I wanted to use require 10.5 functionality. I still think the video presentation was pretty good. It just wasn't what I had in mind.

On to the Positives!

I ended up following a design philosophy (for lack of a better term) I used last year – that is all backgrounds and objects had to feel tangible and real. No swirly abstract PowerPoint-like backgrounds allowed! The end result is very organic looking, and both parents and kids have an easier time connecting to the static images.




I also used some extracted Keynote elements and Hemera Photo-Objects to add some more depth to the slides, adding small touches to compliment the images. These turned out to be a nice addition to the formula.

iMovie and iDVD worked like champs on my MacBook Pro – which I was grateful to have since the G5 didn't fare so well this year. We will not be replacing it this year, but the PowerMac is beginning to show its age. It produced seven DVDs to the MacBook's thirty, and two of those were coasters.

Covetous Desires for Next Year

• Photoshop Elements 6 - because switching computers just to use Photoshop is a pain.
• OS X 10.5 Leopard - because my favorite quick-and-dirty image editor has picked up some cool new features that rely on Leopard.
• Sibelius 5 - for the same reasons as PS Elements 6. Rosetta is not kind to previous versions of these apps.
• iWork '09 and iLife '09 - because…well, just because.

That's really it for this year. Except for the time crunch, everything went fairly smoothly and predictably. I look forward to trying to diving into this project next year around this time again!

Tags: keynote, iwork

There's so much going on to blog about and so little time in which to write – the events in Burma, primaries, endless right-wing smear posts to critique, autism research, fun stuff like new video games, the beta of OpenOffice 3.0, Photoshop Express, etc.

Fortunately, the end of the tunnel is approaching, and the school year will be concluding soon. So far I only have one big project slated for the summer, allowing more time to blog (or earn XBox 360 achievements). Until then, there's always Twitter!

iTunes: The Official Barack Obama Video Podcast

Did you know Obama offers some of his speeches as free downloads through iTunes? I didn't.

The link opens in iTunes.



The Metal Gear Retrospective: Part One



GameTrailers.com is beginning a multi-episode look at the Metal Gear video game series as Konami readies the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. This video looks back at the MSX and NES days of the series and the birth of the stealth genre.



Davis and Company: The End of the Star Wars / Star Trek Debate

Well, I'm glad that's settled.

via John Gruber



YouTube: Apple Mac Music Video



Bizarre, but cool. via TUAW.

Tags: politics, video games, macintosh, silly

image by woodsy on stock.xchng

Indiana's primary is this Tuesday, May 6. Polls will be open 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Voters must have a valid form of photo ID. These include:

• Indiana Driver's License
• Indiana photo ID card
• United States Passport
• U.S. Military ID
• Student ID from an Indiana school

If this is your first time voting, be sure to bring along a document that shows your current address – like your driver's license or a utility bill.

If you are an Indiana resident, it's time to get out there and make your voice heard.

Tags: politics

Huffington Post: Joseph J. Andrew: On My Switch From Clinton to Obama

Another big endorsement for Obama. He served as chair of the DNC during the Clinton administration and was one of the first to endorse Hillary.

My friend Ben has taken to calling him "the Obamanator." I think he should trademark it.



Ars Technica: Is Lessig's Free Culture just a modern Das Kopyright?

According to The Progress & Freedom Foundation, it is – but you have to look at Lessig's ideas with a fair amount of paranoia and take some quotes out of context to get to that conclusion.



Ars Technica: An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush's lost e-mails

To make a long story short, the current administration jettisoned an archiving implementation that worked and replaced it with one that doesn't. Seven years later, it still doesn't.

I could make a comment here about reoccurring themes, but I won't.

Tags: politics, technology

The school year is beginning to wrap up, and the next four weeks are going to be insane. Here are some links to keep you busy while I try to figuratively keep my head above water.

TED Talks: Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote



This video literally had me saying "whoa" out-loud!



Kotaku: echochrome Demo Changing Minds Tomorrow



Another amazing yet simple piece of technology – makes me wish for a PS3.



Seattlepi.com: Why Hillary Clinton makes my wife scream

While my wife has never raised her voice at a Clinton story or speech, she has made it clear to me that Senator Clinton has entirely lost her vote at this point. While I believe that voting for policy is more important than voting for a person (even if I find that person subjectively unlikable), I can't help but wonder what a Clinton nomination might do to voter turnout in November.

Perhaps my fears are unfounded.



Infinite Loop: Exclusive preview: RapidWeaver matures with version 4

New version of RapidWeaver coming: Yay! I still don't have Leopard (and it's Leopard-only): Boo!

Tags: video games, politics, rapidweaver, ted, technology

So, taking this advice and ignoring other conflicts of interest, which primary candidate would Bill Clinton most strongly endorse?



I miss the Bill Clinton of the past eight years. Why do his forays into politics wear at his character so heavily? I guess some critics would say that what we are seeing now is his true character, but I'm not so sure.

Tags: politics

TimesOnline: I’ve found God, says man who cracked the genome

When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.

Francis Collins describes more in his book The Language of God.



TED: Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis

Al Gore delivers another fine presentation about climate change and what can be done about it.





Ars Technica - Blogging meets literary analysis: why people read blogs

Many studies have been conducted about why people blog, but I think this topic is far more interesting. What is it about blogs that keep people engaged? I hope more studies like this are conducted in the future.



Londonist - “Rape is Like Being Force-Fed Chocolate Cake” Blogs BNP Official

This is beyond outrageous. Conservative British National Party member Nick Eriksen has this to say about the concept of marital/date rape:

Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal…To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting force-feeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence.

Then again, this is the same commendable person who has also said this:

Some women are like gongs — they need to be struck regularly.

I can't seem to find out if this guy is married. I'm guessing not.



YouTube - Cheney in 1994 on Iraq

If only he had listened to his own advice later.

Tags: politics, environment, religion, blogging

Chicago Tribune writers Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss recently wrote an article about Rev. Jeremiah Wright (with digressions regarding Dick Cheny, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton) regarding his military service and how we, as a nation, define patriotism. In this article, the authors opine:

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?

In this context, the authors implicitly ask (though it is not the thrust of the article) about what standards we use to judge character and how we assess the quality of a person from the information we have on that individual.

I would wager that most of us know about Rev. Jeremiah Wright because of his ties to presidential candidate Barack Obama. I would also wager that most of what you've heard about him centers around a specific ~30-second video clip where he proclaims condemnation against America (or, specifically, our current administration and its policies). We've seen the video looped dozens of times, but does this audio bite give us a clear picture of who Jeremiah Wright is?

I would venture to say it does not.

How many of us could have our reputations harmed if we were judged by a random thirty-second bite of our lives? How many of us have never said or done something others might find questionable, objectionable, or downright offensive – especially if taken out of context. This hypothetical edit of our lives is all someone else has by which to judge us. Do we really want that?

The Reverend Wright is an example of this soundbite judgment. How many of us knew anything at all about him prior to this brouhaha? Conversely, how many of us tried to find anything meaningful out about him afterwards? Here are some bullet points you might not have known about Rev. Wright:

• He has a wife and five children.
• He gave up a student deferment to serve in the Marines at the age of 20.
• He graduated as valedictorian from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center.
• He later graduated as salutatorian from the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
• He served as part of President Lydon B. Johnson's medical team.
• The White House awarded him with three letters of commendation by 1967.
• He has been a professor for and served on the board of Chicago Theological Seminary.
• He has been honored by Ebony magazine as one of their top fifteen preachers.

In putting context to the influences and history that have shaped Rev. Wright's views and even bitterness, Barack Obama said:

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

He also outlines much of the good Rev. Wright has been responsible for:

The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

This took about fifteen seconds of casual Internet research, and, already, here is a far more complete picture of a man the media wants to portray as a two-dimensional, anti-American radical.

A Brief Tangent on the Media and Its Portrayal of Public Figures

In an October 2007 article of Vanity Fair looking back at the 2000 election, Dan Rather had some interesting things to say regarding the media's role in public perception of political figures:

"Particularly in presidential elections … we in the press tend to deal in caricatures," says Dan Rather, who was then anchoring for CBS. "Someone draws a caricature, and it's funny and at least whimsical. And at first you sort of say, 'Aw shucks, that's too simple.' In the course of the campaign, that becomes accepted wisdom." He notes, "I do not except myself from this criticism."

The article goes on to point out exactly how Gore and Bush were characterized in that election:

In 2000, the media seemed to focus on a personality contest between Bush, the folksy Texas rogue, and, as The New York Times referred to Gore, "Eddie Haskell," the insincere brownnoser from Leave It to Beaver. ABC anchor Claire Shipman, who covered the 2000 campaign for NBC, says, "It was almost a drama that was cast before anyone even took a good look at who the candidates were."

The basic problem here is a simple one: news programs do not exist to inform you so much as they exist to entertain you with information. Therefore, a media outlet such as NBC Nightly News, CNN, Fox News, and even many blogs will present facts about individuals in as sensational a way as possible to support a nearly fictional drama of events – especially when it comes to politics.

The reasons behind this are simple. News outlets are ad-driven revenue resources. Television programs sell commercial space. Print sources sell ad space, and websites secure advertisement revenue based on page hits. What will attract more attention to drive up advertisement revenue then – a story that rationally looks at some ill-informed remarks in context and discusses the influences that might have led to such statements or a story that vilifies said individual by focusing in the most negative aspect possible?

The media focuses on two-dimensional portrayals of politically hot figures because it makes money – not because it makes you a more informed voter.

Back to the Point

This brings us back to Rev. Wright. Does all of this make his remarks okay? I don't think so. Again quoting Barack Obama:

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems...

However, if we take a minute to turn away from the hype and look at the person, such remarks are easier to understand. It is more difficult to vilify the man because now he is more real. He is tangible. He is no longer a stereotyped character who exists on a 30-second YouTube video merely as fodder for controversy. He is a human like you and me, and we should therefore judge him as we would want to be judged ourselves.

Matthew 7:1-2 is one of the most misused passages of the Bible, but I think it is particularly relevant at this point.

Judge not, that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured unto you.

I would encourage all of us, as we continue into this election season, to be careful of soundbite judgments, to be careful of jumping to conclusions about an individual based on a snippet of information a media outlet deems sensational enough for its purposes. I imagine no one reading this blog would want their lives, beliefs, and values judged in such a way, so let's show enough reason and kindness to extend that same courtesy to public figures as well.

Tags: opinion, politics, media

Hmm, tags are broken in the new maintenance release of RapidWeaver. I hope they get that fixed soon.

John Nack on Adobe: Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe's 64-bit roadmap

Short story: Adobe Photoshop CS4 for the Mac will not be 64-bit. It will be 64-bit for Windows (but you will have to own a 64-bit edition of Windows to take advantage of it).

For more technical commentary on the events leading up to this discrepancy and the potential impact, see posts by John Siracusa at Ars Technica and John Gruber of Daring Fireball.



Ars Technica: Apple passes Wal-Mart, now #1 music retailer in US

I think the title says it all.



BBC News: 'No Sun link' to climate change

I'm not sure that headline is even close to being grammatically correct, but that's beside the point. The lesson here is that, yes, we should still be working on cutting those carbon emissions. We can't blame the sun for everything.

Tags: software, environment, itunes/ipods, adobe

This is quite possibly the best Aril Fools' prank of the day:

Tags: silly, video games

March 21, 2001 marked the official release of Mac OS X 10.0 to much fanfare and gnashing of teeth. Yes, I meant to write that. OS X was a milestone Apple achievement. It delivered on their long-term goal to finally deliver a next-generation operating system to their users. It was a complete break from the aging monolith that was the classic Mac OS. It brought new technologies and a new user interface to the Mac-faithful. However, there were some bumps in the road during those first few months of life.


Apple gave the world the first real look at OS X when they released the $29 public beta in August of 2000. I was an early adopter, and ordered the beta almost the moment it became available on Apple's website. As soon as the software arrived, I performed a clean install on my PowerBook G3. There would be no reverting to Classic for me – it was OS X or bust! (I should mention that my iMac DV retained OS 9 for quite some time, so I did have a serious safety net.)

Those early days – while problematic at times – taught me about one of the most valuable resources Mac users have: independent software developers. In the early days of OS X, the shareware and freeware developers moved more quickly than the corporate giants in bringing their products to OS X. As I browse my Applications folder today, more of the programs contained within are from independent developers than corporations. To this day, those independents, by and large, make software that better integrates with OS X and feels more Mac-like than anything Adobe or Microsoft puts out.


With the release of OS X 10.2 Jaguar in August of 2002, my iMac upgraded to Apple's new operating system. By now, I was more comfortable in OS X than OS 9, and all of the applications I regularly use had OS X-native versions. In fact, many had dropped support for OS 9 by now. System 10 was the unequivocal future of the Macintosh operating systems, and there was no more point in holding onto the past.

10.3 Panther would be the last version of OS X for my aging iMac. By the time Tiger was released, we had a PowerMac G5, but we still had the PowerBook G3. I upgraded the PowerBook to Tiger, but quickly returned to the previous system when it became obvious that OS X 10.4 was jut too resource-intensive for my old laptop. It's still running Panther in my classroom, keeping all of our textbook music in iTunes. It's not many laptops that can say they are still in active service after eight years of use!


I haven't upgraded to Leopard yet. I'm guessing the PowerMac will stay on Tiger, but the MacBook Pro seems to be ready to move on. Things like Time Machine, Quick Look, improvements to Preview, Cover Flow, Stacks, and many other small touches are compelling. Apple really have brought OS X a long way since those first feeble steps seven years ago, and I'm excited to see where things go next.

Tags: macintosh, software, os x

CNN: Asperger's: My life as an Earthbound alien

Here's an interesting piece by by a CNN manager who – at 48 years old – has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. I like how she wraps up.

I could tell you so much more, but instead let me share one last insight. Don't pity me or try to cure or change me. If you could live in my head for just one day, you might weep at how much beauty I perceive in the world with my exquisite senses. I would not trade one small bit of that beauty, as overwhelming and powerful as it can be, for "normalcy."

The Huffington Post: Flashback: Wright's Letter To NYT About Obama

This is a neat piece of history. The Huffington Post publishes a letter from the controversial Rev. Wright to the New York Times regarding their misrepresentation of him and his relationship with Barack Obama in an article they published on March 6, 2007 after Obama announced his bid for the presidency. It makes for a good insight on how news sources sometimes cherry pick facts and sound bites to make a story more sensational than it really is.



Ars Technica: Online Safety Begins with Parents, Not Laws and Government

Just a friendly reminder from the Department of the Obvious (not Ars Technica) that, indeed, parents are the most powerful influencers on children's lives, and they have more power to inform and protect their children than any other source.

The More You Know™



NYT: McCain Stumbles on H.I.V. Prevention

I find this exchange concerning:

Q: ...Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Tags: politics, video games, asd

He died today in a hospital in Sri Lanka. From the New York Times article:

''Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered,'' Clarke said recently. ''I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer.''

Mr. Clarke is probably most remembered for his work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he has authored over a hundred other works covering a variety of topics. A couple of his most visionary predictions include communicaation satellites and the concept of geosynchronous orbit.

via Daring Fireball

Tags: literature

I've heard or read this admission more than once: "A diagnosis for my child is basically a diagnosis for me." At this point, testing for autism or Asperger Syndrome is very likely to occur, and the parent will be supportive of the process. That might not have been the case prior to such a statement. In fact, there is a good chance this parent was resistant to evaluation of their child – an evaluation that might risk damaging that parent's sense of identity and normality.

In 1969, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross released her influential book On Death and Dying, in which she postulated that anyone going through grief will progress through a potential set of five stages. In short, the stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Despite how these stages are portrayed in popular culture, an individual does not have to go through all five stages, nor do they necessarily happen in the same order for every human. (Most people will, at least, experience denial and acceptance.)

Kübler-Ross applies these stages beyond death and dying. She claims any perceived catastrophic loss can bring about this cycle.

This is where autism comes in. Prior to the 1990s, autism was viewed exclusively as a profound disability often associated with extreme antisocial behaviors and mental retardation. After decades of research, the addition of Asperger Syndrome and high-functioning autism to the DSM-IV profoundly altered the landscape of autism. With this alteration came the realization that many adults may be undiagnosed, but they would likely remain that way due to the way special services in this country are handled almost exclusively through the school systems – most notably during the elementary years.

Autism and Asperger Syndrome usually have genetic links to the parents, most commonly the father, but I have seen a couple instances of mother-inheretied traits. It's very likely that one parent identifies more strongly with the child, seeing a younger version of him-/herself in the child. There is nothing wrong with the child because, "He's/She's just like me, and I've turned out okay." I don't type those words disrespectfully or lightly because, implicit in that statement, is a certain hold on reality and identity that an educator may be in the process of shattering.

Compare these phrases to the stages of grief.

• Denial: "There's nothing wrong with my child. They're just like me."
• Anger: "Why are you singling out my child? Why won't you give him/her a chance?"
• Bargaining: "Just wait a couple more years. I'm sure this is just a phase."
• Depression: "I don't know why I try. You must think me a terrible parent."
• Acceptance: "A diagnosis for my child is basically a diagnosis for me."

In all fairness, this progression could be applied to a parent coping with the realization that his or her child has any disability. However, in the case of autism and Asperger Syndrome, I think these stages can become much more pronounced. An educator isn't just asking a parent to shift his or her perception of a child. That educator is also implicitly asking the parent to take an inventory of self and everything he or she has viewed as normal for the past several years – whether or not either party is consciously aware of this internal warfare.

My plea is especially aimed toward educators – among whose numbers I am to be counted. This plea does not come from someone on the outside looking in; someone who is ignorant of the pressures and difficulties inherent in the current system; someone who views you as an enemy; someone who has never seen this painful process from your point of view. I ask you to look at that hesitant and resistant parent with the same eyes with which you look upon your own children, and see what is hiding underneath. Outwardly, he or she might seem belligerent, quarrelsome, and unreasonable, but buried underneath all of that may be a grieving soul who wants to cry out for help.

I remember riding in the car – a red Stanza – on an evening drive back from church on a peaceful interstate, and my fiancée (now wife), while having me grill her over some of the psychology materials she would be taking an exam on that week, suddenly slipped into the conversation, "I think autism could explain a lot of your behaviors." I never believed her. In fact, we would argue about it at times – until my little buddy Nick was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome during my second year of teaching. Then everything clicked into place. That journey took years. Don't expect a parent's journey of self-discovery to be any easier. An ingrained sense of self is a painful thing to shake. Reach out to the parent as you would a child. (Would you really just throw a bunch of badly copied handouts and impersonal informational packets to one of your students?) Understand the potential for grief, and always be ready with a soft answer.

Secondhand diagnosis is not the most pleasant way to discover something hidden within yourself. You, as an educator, can make the journey a little bit easier with a dose of understanding and patience.

Tags: education, asd

I know. Enough with the link-blogging, already, but the teaching schedule is merciless toward my online life. Hold tight. If we stick together, we'll make it out all right. Yes we ... you know.

ABC News: Autism Breakthrough: Girl's Writings Explain Her Behavior and Feelings

From the article:

"Autism is hard because you want to act one way, but you can't always do that. It's sad that sometimes people don't know that sometimes I can't stop myself and they get mad at me. If I could tell people one thing about autism it would be that I don't want to be this way. But I am, so don't be mad. Be understanding."

Just excellent.



Daily Kos: I Refuse to Buy into the Obama Hype

This is an incredibly well-researched post regarding legislation both Senators Clinton and Obama have been involved in and how these bills differentiate the candidates. This is good reading for anyone finding themselves having a hard time deciding which Democratic candidate to support.

I think, by know, you know which Democratic candidate I support. The question is, which Republican candidate do I like better? Inquiring minds...



The Huffington Post: Clinton, Obama And The Belief In The Magic Power Of Words

From the article:

Now, I agree with Clinton that it's important to look at how each of the Democratic candidates uses words and how rhetoric fits into how they've run their respective campaigns. And if you do, you'll see that one candidate does believe that words are like a magic wand: you utter them and reality changes. But it's not Barack Obama -- it's Hillary Clinton.

Clinton's use of words is disturbingly reminiscent of the way the Bush administration has used words: just saying something is true is magically supposed to make it true. Call it Presto-change-o Politics.

Macworld: Apple now No. 2 music retailer in the U.S.

This ranking includes brick-and-mortar locations by the way. I bet you can guess who's number one (shudder).

Tags: education, politics, itunes/ipods, asd

Ars Technica: With HD DVD dead, Blu-ray's next threat is digital downloads

This format war is finally over. Lots of consumers got the short end of the stick. Some companies are poised to lose bucket-loads of cash. I'm not a fan of format wars.


Apple: iPod shuffle Updates

The current 1GB model is dropping to $49, and a 2GB model is coming at $69. I am a fan of the iPod shuffle.



Scribd: Meet iPaper

It's kind of like YouTube for documents. Scribd has been around for a while now, but this software revision looks cool. I'm definitely trying this out!



College Humor: Irish Beatles



Hilarious.

Tags: technology, itunes/ipods, silly

Here we go again!


image from The Cult of Rapture

Signs you've been playing too much Bioshock:

• You start speaking like a 50s radio show.
• You buy brightly colored juices in the store in hopes that one will make you telekinetic.
• People catch you trying to mess with vending machines in hopes they will lower their prices.
• You begin hoarding rubber tubes, steel screws, and other random items to invent your personal arsenal.
• You think weapons in vending machines is a pretty good idea.
• Capitalism begins to scare you.
• Seeing little girls alone in public now sets you on edge.
• You begin taking random pictures of people you don't like in hopes of gaining combat advantages over them.
• You begin collecting books by Ayn Rand.
• You start pointing at things and wondering why they aren't catching on fire.
• You freak out every time you see a security camera in public.
• You stop trusting doctors in general.
• You take up eating slugs.
• Searching corpses becomes a new hobby for you.
• The phrase "Would you kindly" takes on a whole new meaning to you.

Tags: video games, silly

Kotaku: No Gods or Kings: Objectivism in BioShock

I'm beginning work on a post about video games that maturely tackle serious subjects, and BioShock is one of them. Any video game that aspires to incorporate the philosophies of Ayn Rand into the game world is going to be heavy fare, and BioShock does not disappoint. In fact, it delivers in spades!



Daring Fireball: The Appeal of the MacBook Air

John Gruber writes about what makes the MacBook Air an attractive machine despite its obvious limitations. From the article:

What struck me regarding Macworld’s MacBook Air benchmarks wasn’t how much worse the Air performed than the standard MacBook or MacBook Pro, but how much better it performed than their baseline notebook, a 1.67 GHz 15-inch PowerBook G4 — the fastest Mac notebook you could buy two years ago, and the very computer I still use every day. That the Air isn’t as fast as a regular MacBook does not matter because the Air — for most people and most tasks — is clearly fast enough.

The more I look at the MacBook Air, the more taken I am with it. In all honesty, how often do I use all of these ports on my MacBook Pro? I seldom even use its optical drive...



Signal vs. Noise: The MacBook Air could easily be the only machine

Adding to the praise heaped upon the MacBook Air by real people, David at 37signals writes about his experiences with it, and he believes the Air could serve perfectly as the sole computer in many households.

via Daring Fireball



BusinessWeek: Building the Perfect Laptop

If you like the MacBook Air but absolutely need Ethernet, two more USB ports, and a standard DVD drive (oh, and Windows), the new Lenovo X300 might be for you, but watch out. It's base configuration is $900 more than the standard Air model! Still, if I were a Windows or Linux user, this machine would be tempting.

Tags: video games, macintosh

Apple TV Upgrade

The much anticipated software update to Apple TV is available for download. If you own a first-gen Apple TV, this seems like a no-brainer.



Aperture 2

Apple's photo management and workflow manager saw a significant update today. Like version 1, I downloaded the demo. It seems far easier to use, but it still massively hogs memory and CPU cycles. Perhaps that will relent after a few uses.

Tags: apple inc

I don't often post negative experiences invloving people I work with because I don't want to embarrass anyone or cause trouble, but I want to write about my feelings toward a specific event that happened at work. Therefore, I'll just treat those parties involved anonymously. Like Dragnet. You know, to protect the innocent.

This last week was a rough one. I had to take a couple of sick days, and I hate taking sick days. Understand, an unanticipated change to my routine is never a Good Thing. Most breaks, half-days, and days-off are met with a certain quirkiness of behavior, but completely unforeseen sick days are the worst. My brain goes into this strange feedback loop of white noise and repeated patterns on sick days. I may lay in bed all day and get no sleep the night after – leading to further problems.

Wednesday, I felt like I could go back to school. I still was very hoarse and was speaking in a very manly register that sounded like a Caucasian Barry White. (Later in the day was worse. I began sounding like Michael Bolton!) I had stayed up far too late the night before, as I am doing right now, and I had a hard time getting myself around in the morning. Mornings are rough in general as it seems to take twenty or more minutes for mind and body to come to any kind of consensus as to what they are doing, but I think that is a familial trait more than anything.

I glanced at the clock as I rushed out the bedroom. I was going to be late – no question about it. A social seizure surfaced, but I managed to postpone it, so I could keep moving. Then, as I was on the road, I realized I had forgotten to put the trash out. Social seizure number two surfaced. I shouted at myself some, but I still had to stifle the meltdown for the sake of driving. (It's not like anyone else was in the car listening.) Shortly thereafter I realized I was going to be late to a meeting I was facilitating. Meltdown number three begins to boil. All of these surged through my brain within about twenty minutes of each other. This was not a Folgers morning.

Fast-forward to the conclusion of the meeting. Things went fine. Afterwards, a coworker asked me, "How are you feeling."

"Physically fine," I answered, immediately regretting my candor in responding.

"How are you mentally?" the coworker pressed.

"Very autistic today," I replied.

The coworker looked at me with an unreadable expression and said, "I'm moving away."

Cue repressed social seizure number four of the morning. Saying that reaction hurt would be like saying Les Misérables is kind of long. It would be like saying Alpha Centauri is a few miles away. It would be like saying Beethoven was slightly troubled. My brain screamed. My muscles ached. For a split instant, I wanted nothing more than to climb inside one of the room's cabinets and huddle away for the rest of the day.

But I didn't.

I postponed reaction again, so I could do my job. That's what you do when you are an adult with autism.

A highly-functioning autistic adult in the workforce – even one who works in education – gets no one-on-one help, gets no intervention strategies, has no access to a cool-down area, a weighted vest, nothing. Compassion can even be hard to come by. In this scenario, it was particularly devastating. My coworker is an educator! This is an individual who is familiar with IEPs and with accommodations. In theory, I could have confessed this to no better person. Still, all I received was a cold shoulder.

When an autistic individual manages to verbally communicate to you that he or she feels autistic, it is not meant to be a conversation-stopper. It is a cry for help – or at least understanding. Don't ignore that. Don't brush it off. In such an admittance, the autistic individual is attempting to reach out. Rebuffing such an effoort only serves to discourage such overtures in the future. It encourages social detachment and isolation. Don't be dismissive.

Tags: asd, education

Ars Technica: Yahoo to Microsoft: talk to the hand, we say Nohoo!

Yahoo! turns Microsoft's lucrative offer down. At this point, Microsoft can either try to come up with more cash or attempt to overturn Yahoo!'s board. For the record, I called this one completely wrong.



YouTube: The Dark Knight Trailer. IN LEGO!!!

Tags: silly, microsoft

Some time ago, my father-in-law very generously donated his six-string acoustic guitar to my classroom, asking that I give it to a student who seemed interested in learning guitar. For some reason or another, no one ever took me up on the offer. Many of the kids wanted an electric guitar rather than an "old person's" guitar, and, quite frankly, the thing was just too big for most of them.

There was also some sentimental history associated with the guitar. He had purchased it shortly after returning from Vietnam, and he always speaks with such joy about playing guitar, even while he was actively serving in the military. Something just seemed wrong about getting rid of it. Anyway, I had other guitars in my classroom I could give away, so I brought it home.

The most striking thing about the guitar is its manufacturer. Tama. As in Tama the drum manufacturer whose sets are/were used by such groups as Dragonforce, Nirvana, Slayer, Primus, The Police, Styx, Metallica, Black Sabbath, and you get the picture. Tama – who lists no guitars of any type on their website. Some time passed before I discovered any more.



Anyway, I decided to learn to play it, but the e' string broke as soon as I tried to tune it. It was very brittle as it had been in storage for literally decades. (There's a funny story about that broken string that I'll save for another time.) This led us to eventually take the guitar to a local Sam Ash to buy a new string, and I wanted to learn how to take care of the instrument properly. Once there, Ryan came to our aid.

He was quite surprised at the name on my guitar, and he confessed to have never seen a Tama guitar before. Neither had the other individual working with him at the counter. Ryan was very helpful and friendly in explaining how to take care of the neck and frets as well as change the strings, and the instrument looked brand new by the time he was finished. Fortunately, it was already in pretty good shape.

x

After some more researching, I have discovered that Tama did, in fact, produce guitars during the mid-1970s. Digging through mailing lists, and message boards has provided me with the insight that those who have them like them, and Tama guitars on eBay can fetch a decent bid. Truth told, I care little about the value, but I am happy to find out that Tama guitars are good instruments. I'm excited to start learning. Perhaps those many hours playing Guitar Hero can actually count for something!

(Updated with image links to higher quality photos of the guitar.)

Tags: guitar

I was going to post some news on the RIAA, but I felt it would hurt my Karma. Here's some awesome stuff instead!



What Kind of World Do You Want?

Here's a video sharing community by Five for Fighting dedicated to giving contributions to charities you select every time a video you upload is viewed. It's a neat concept, and some people have created some very moving videos.



Adobe Labs: Buzzword

This is an amazing online word processor. It's responsive, recognizes some common keyboard commands, and just plain looks nice.


via Daring Fireball



Fluid

Speaking of web applications, this neat little utility lets you create separate desktop links to all the web apps you use. Each web application opens in its own site-specific browser, giving them their own workspaces separate from your traditional web browsing. It looks really great, but I don't have Leopard yet. However, if you do, it looks worth checking out!

also via Daring Fireball

Tags: riaa, technology, software, adobe

The Washington Post: Why I'm Backing Barack Obama

There's nothing surprising in this article when compared to others who have chosen to back Obama – except for the author. Susan Eisenhower. Yes, his granddaughter. Wow.

Update: And now the Grateful Dead are reuniting to support this guy! I have a feeling lots of people are going to feel disappointed if he doesn't take the Democratic nomination.



Ars Technica: Microsoft Adds Yahoo! to Shopping Cart

Can't get your rival to cooperate? Just buy them with more money than they can refuse. Like John Gruber, I can't see Yahoo!'s shareholders turning this one down.



PC Magazine: Apple's MacBook Air Will Soar

You know, I'm beginning to believe this thing might be a hit. I was listening to some decidedly non-techie friends talking about the MacBook Air over dinner recently, and they were all intrigued by it, a couple implying they were considering getting one. None of these friends are current Mac-owners either.

Tags: politics, microsoft, apple inc

Gizmodo: LEGO Brick Timeline: 50 Years of Building Frenzy and Curiosities

Happy Birthday, LEGO!



The Atlantic: The Autumn of the Multitaskers

This is an incredible narrative of one person's journey through the frenzy of multitasking and his emergence from the mania. I often quote chunks of articles to give you a taste or some part I found important, but, in this case, lifting even one sentence from context would damage the content. It's a long article but worth the read (while doing nothing else).

via Daring Fireball

Tags: multitasking, silly

I'm speaking at the Indiana Computer Educators Conference this Friday. Details are on my Simply Presentation blog. I'll be back soon!

From Disks to Discs

image from stock.xchng

Like the floppy disk of the eighties and early nineties, the CD-ROM has become ubiquitous with computing. Apple, along with Sony, was among the first computer manufacturers to eschew diskette drives in their computers to rely entirely on optical media. The iMac, released in 1998, was widely criticized for its lack of a floppy disk drive, abandoning a technology that was still widely used. In fact, it's not unusual to still see floppy drives on computers these ten years later. By contrast, it was not long before all Apple computers were without floppy drives in standard configurations.


image courtesy Apple, Inc.

Apple bet on a few things. Hard drives were growing large enough to store user documents and files without the meager additional space allotted by floppies. CD-ROMs would become the dominant media for shipping and installing applications, and email would provide a viable means of sharing documents with others. All of these came to be, but early adopters of Apple's diskette-less products did have some hurdles to overcome initially. I remember because I was one of them.

Today, floppy disks are all but useless. Zip drives, SuperDisks, and Sony HiFD all failed to revitalize the technology. Optical disks became the dominant portable media for computers, and they remain so to this day.

Imagining a World Without Discs

While not the first laptop to ship sans optical drive (Lenovo does and Gateway used to), the recent MacBook Air has probably received the most attention for this omission. Apple products garner a great deal of hype and media coverage – more than any other computer hardware manufacturer – so it comes as no surprise this anti-feature is at the center of much attention.


image from stock.xchng