Human beings shouldn't get up at 5:00am... even if they have to be on a dog sled at 10:00am in Lake Tahoe. There's no sun. It's still night time. Night time = Bed time.

Ack. My ride is here.

Before moving a fat couch up three skinny flights of stairs, look down at your feet. If you're wearing sandals, you've chosen poorly.

That banner ad down there is really muddy and not at all engaging. Click it anyways. Those MoveOn folks are too busy trying to make things better to worry about top notch design ...Especially when the man is sticking it to them on multiple fronts. This time CBS won't show their nice add about the deficit, because it's controversial. The thing is, it isn't. There is in fact a giant deficit. Too big for the current generation to pay off. Kids will eventually have to pay for it. Pointing those things out isn't controversy, it's discourse.

CBS: A democracy without discourse, isn't a very healthy one. Please start doing your part. Thanks.

Brian Flemming ads a little perspective to Dean's post Iowa speech. (via: Mr. Pierce)

As you enter the main area, you will see an EKHARD oiled solid-oak dining sideboard. Quickly kick it apart to acquire the TABLE LEG WITH NAIL.

...

Now you must find your actual DBE items in the SELF-SERVE WAREHOUSE. This labyrinth can be very frustrating and will require your full attention to navigate. Do not rely on the warehouse shelf locations printed on the purchase tags of your items -- due to some translation bugs introduced while porting IKEA from Swedish to English, they are almost never correct.

In The Morning News .

Over at truthunfolding.blogspot.com, this very blog is linked in the sidebar ....under the heading "neat people. (non-dirty)". That's a common misconception. Truth is, I'm a ravenous slut.

Errol Morris's new film, The Fog of War, is structured around 11 lessons Robert McNamara has learned during his life as a key figure in the extremely violent 20th century. These lessons all revolve around the nature of war... covering topics like empathy, perception, and human fallibility.

As the movie progressed, I found myself empathizing with McNamara more and more - Irregardless of some of the mistakes he made. For all his faults, he was genuinely trying to do what he thought was best within the confines of the reality in which he operated. That reality consisted mostly of war time - Which is inherently contradictory, and in many cases, absurdly so (such as the two very different letters from Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis) . Because of this, I stayed with him. In that place at that time, it's hard to say he should have done something else. You can't change the past.

The future is a whole nother story....

Lesson Number eleven: "You can't change human nature." McNamara said this along with the statement "There will always be war". He was attempting to absolve himself from wrong doing by deferring his actions, and those in which he actively participated, to fundamental human nature.

That's a cop out. Riding truth only so far as to make it meet your personal needs, is a pet peeve of mine. It especially bothers me in this case, because McNamara has obviously spent some serious time reflecting on his life. He understands that we often only see what we want to believe. He even says those exact words (lesson number seven). Yet he couldn't get over that hump.

We, as human beings, possess a nearly infinite capacity for knowledge and the curiosity needed to fill it. Our nature is one of compassionate discovery. It is true that we can't change this... but we can and do fight it. We fight it with such determination that it spills out of our own day to day personal struggles into full scale war - Once you remove the arbitrary definition of sides, war is nothing if not a fight against ourselves.

There will only be war for as long as we want it. If people in positions to create it (like McNamara) would start taking full responsibility for it, they might stop wanting it so much. ...He had his chance to take that responsibility. The biggest anyone of his era has ever had. He came real close. Went right up to the door... but couldn't bring himself to knock.

Not that I fault him for it... much like war is a large scale reflection of ourselves, we all routinely deny similar responsibilities on smaller scales. It might not be our nature, but historically, it is what we do.......

I was going to post a little something about my experience buying music from Bleep, but I'd be repeating everything Nelson has already said. Go read his instead.

I kinda want to go to this on Sunday. ...I've never seen traditional dance from Indonesia, India, Mexico, Cuba, Poland, Tahiti, Etc, Etc. It's quite a deal too. At $5.00 to get in, I'd be paying less than 50 cents per country performing.

I finally got around to seeing the post Iowa speech Dean gave, that has been causing such a ruckus (if you haven't seen it, watch it here). Um, what exactly is the big deal? He's not angry... or even mad, much less hot tempered. He's just trying to motivate his people with intensity... in an unscripted matter. It's all barely worth batting an eyelash over... Yet somehow there are all sorts of character attacks spewing forth from the press.

Wouldn't it be better if we talked about the important things instead of all this silliness?

My Bookmarks @ del.icio.us

My G5 is still running on the stock 512MB of RAM. I tried to order some from Crucial, but my work address isn't a known address for my credit card. They wouldn't ship to it without some sort of rigamarol involving faxed credit card statements. That's too much work. I never did it and the order was canceled.

I was sharing this sad tale with Stevej one night, when he recommended I use my google.com email address. A little odd... But worth giving a shot. So I made the same order, with the exact same billing and shipping addresses. The only thing I changed was my contact email - google.com instead of similarselection.org.

Right this very moment, there's a FedEx package full of reasonably priced high quality RAM sitting at my feet.

Thanks Steve.

Just the facts folks:

100: Number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003

0: Number of funerals or memorials that President Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq

+6%: Percentage change since 2001 in the number of US families in poverty

$116,000: Amount Vice-President Cheney is expected to save each year in taxes

Many many more eye opening numbers can be found in the Independent.

For those of you that have found your way here by searching for "presidental canidates", I just want you to know that I feel your pain.

About a month ago, I took some of my Christmas bonus and bought a shinny new 40GB iPod. I love it. Literaly every song I own can easily go with me anywhere... and they do. Shortly after the big purchase, I was waiting around in the 16th Street BART station - With my iPod comfortably resting in the front pouch of my hoodie. On a bench near me, a young man wrestled with his portable CD player. He was simultaneously trying to hold the player open and remove a CD with one hand, while fishing another CD out of his backpack, then opening it's case, and finally putting it in the player with his other hand. As I stood there watching I remember thinking to myself "That kid right there is a sucker". I knew, because I used to be that sucker too... but never again.

Compact Disc's, you've seen the last of me. I wish I could say it's been swell. Really it's just sort of been. I wish I could say it was me, not you.... but honesty is the best policy. It's been you. You're bulky and awkward. The only thing worse than you, is your packaging. A typical jewel case experience involves spending 42 minutes removing the various anti-theft stickers, only to have the hinge break as soon as I open it - Causing you, my new CD, to fall to the sidewalk and roll down Haight Street - Where a hippie dog eats you in one starving bite. That ain't cool... and neither are you.

I'll see you when I see you.

"In order to fund Bush's PR campaign for space - a series of pointless but publicity-rich manned flights to the moon and Mars - NASA will have to abandon the Hubble telescope. The shuttle mission to do routine maintenance and battery replacement has been canceled, and the telescope has been slated to die sometime in 2007."

- Douglas Rushkoff

The other day I was browsing through art.com, hoping to find something nice to hang on the front door of my apartment, when something I hadn't seen in a very long time happened. I clicked the now standard 'Add to my Wish-list' button, but instead of a wish-list, I got a dialog box informing me that the wish-list feature only worked with IE 6 or newer. I was using Safari. It's kinda new and sort of obscure... I guess. So I switch over to Mozilla. Same thing. No wish-list for me. So I emailed support, kindly informing them that I've used lots of wish-lists with my browser of choice and asking why I couldn't use theirs too. Today I got a response:

Thanks for your email. Our website simply wasn't developed to work with less popular browsers. I apologize for any inconvenience. Please feel free to contact us again with any further questions or cocnerns. Thanks again.

--------------------------------------------
Dawn Anderson
Customer Service Representative
Art.com, Inc.
services@art.com
1-800-952-5592
1-919-831-0015
---------------------------------------------

The emphasis is mine. The rest belongs entirely to Ms. Dawn Anderson. I'm sure she's just saying what she's supposed to. I'm sure she's not retarded... but the company she works... thats a little cloudy at this point. "Simply wasn't designed for less popular browsers?" Goodness gracious. Let me count the ways of wrong in that single statement. 1] It's a wish-list! How could browsers that are significantly newer and much more standards compliant not display the list of things I've tagged to save? The site displayed all sorts of lists to me while I was browsing through it. 2] Regardless of the sloppy lazy coding I'm sure they pay a ton for, how can you tell something like that to a potential customer? "You don't use the most popular browser, so we don't care about you." Fair enough. I don't care about you either. I'll be taking my platform independent money somewhere else.

If anyone can tell me what crazy IE only features I'm missing out on, I'd appreciate it. The curiosity is killing me.

"DIANE SAWYER

(Off Camera) But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

So what's the difference?"

From Talking Points Memo

Warp records is selling it's entire catalog in MP3 format, for $1.35 a song. ...Including sub labels like Lex. Best of all:

Bleep music has no DRM or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals - DRM is easily circumvented and just puts obstacles in the way of enjoying music.

Formerly vinyl only From Left to Right EP, here I come.

I've been a follower of Salam Pax's site for some time now. Although not consistently... I've found there's a limit to the amount of real news I can take about the war (and our current depressing state of politics in general). Upon receiving his book Salam Pax - The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi (made up entirely of blog posts between 2002 and 2003) for Christmas, I was looking forward to skimming through it and reading the chunks I had missed on the site. ...I ended up reading every word. It's fascinating. There's something about reading through the events before, during, and after we American's took Iraqi, with the addition of hindsight, that you don't get just by following the blog "as it happens". There's a bigger picture there and along with it, a better perspective. With that you can see the struggle inherent in what war means - it's a quick means to an ends, but a horrible one.... that will create a whole slew of new problems. None of which are especially new conclusions... but it's very eye opening when it comes from the everyday life of a directly effected human being. I give it a solid 3 out of 3 stars.

Within a span of 24 hours, President Bush twice attempted to mislead the American people about the economy and his tax policies.

I recently noticed that Amazon started putting a small "Why?" link next to things it auto-magicly recommends to you. Clicking it pops up a little window showing the products you've previously purchased, that lead to their recommendation.

From a shopper standpoint this tells me just how much I might like the purchase, based on comparing it to how much I liked the items I already have. From a curiosity standpoint, it gives me an interesting peak into how they make their choices.

Recently Amazon told me I might like "The Two Towers" on DVD. ...So what in particular make's it up my alley? Clicking the link showed that it's because I previously purchased "Donnie Darko" and a Linksys wireless router. ...In other words: I'm a big fat dork.

Neat.

click for bigger

"Mission Barbie: Not to be confused with the similar SOMA Barbie, this streetwise maven is a creature of the night. Accessories include: rainbow scarf and gloves, but no winter coat (80's down vest optional), portable mp3 player loaded with live Modest Mouse bootlegs and a vegetarian cookbook. She studies philosophy at CCSF and knows 15 bartenders at 12 different bars by their first name. Ken works for a moving company. Neither has a cell phone."

Craigslist - These new Dolls just out...

Counterpoint: Downloading Isn’t Stealing - Aaron Swartz

The pre MacWorld bloggers lunch was good. I shook some new and some familiar hands... and ate a damn fine lunch. Specialty's switched out my old favorite peanut butter banana and honey sandwich with a new and improved peanut butter banana cranberry sauce and apples sandwich. I've never tasted such a delight - Sweet and creamy and mushy and sour and crunchy all at the same time. It is without equal.

The same can be said for MacWorlds it's self. It's easy [for me] to forget that at it's heart, it's really just a tradeshow. This means booths upon booths of things I've already seen or have no interest in. As a result, we didn't stay long. Maybe 20 mins, including bathroom break. Thankfully Mean Marc Brown showed why no one calls him that, by sneaking us in with his passes - skipping the hour long wait to register and the 70 bucks for two fees. That made the 20 min (trade)show more curious than upsetting. All and all I'm glad I went. I got to see what all the hype was about. And now I know for sure why I won't be going back any time soon (the hype was about hype).

Also in the thankfully column, our short stint as Apple fanboys left us plenty of time to head across the street to SF MOMA and see the Diane Arbus exhibit (runs through the first week in Feb.). It was comprehensive, to say the least. Not only did they have an amazingly complete collection of her work, it was interspersed with notebook entries, equipment, and photos she never "used". It turns out, she was a little bit crazy. ...In that beautiful way that leads to a wonderful view of life, people misunderstanding you, and all too often, eventual suicide. I'm glad she was so diligent in sharing that view with us, before she had all she could have of it.

"I'm definitely heading up to Macworld Tuesday. I will attend this bloggers' lunch deal (Tuesday 1pm) and meet a few, uhm, bloggers.

Are you gonna be there?" - Mr. Brown

Count me in. Her too. We'll also be hitting up the exhibits, thanks to Other World Computing's free passes. ...Hope to see lots of folks there!

I know it's only the third day of this new year. The brand new calendar hanging on the wall directly in front of me tells me so. The little date in the upper right hand corner of my computer says the same. So does common sense. Yet, all that being said, I must say: If you only see one movie this year, see The Triplets of Belleville. ...If you're the sort to enjoy beautifully colored surrealish animation, with wonderful characters and a fat dog that can hold a serious grudge against trains, that is. If not, you should probably see something else.