He Was Right

All I'm saying is that Barack is doing a lot of the things Karl Rove suggested. I hope he destroys in Indiana and North Carolina, because I think the whole country is tired of this campaign. How about we have a presidential race already?

a minor beta

So, I've been planning to make a slick content delivery blogging machine for the upcoming academic year. I'll have plenty of pictures to share and want to deliver little updates easily. That transition has two steps.

Step 1: A twitter account. Twitter will give me a way to deliver bite-size, 140 character, long posts in an instant. Most people use twitter to tell their friends what they're up to (bad grammar I know). It can be dull stuff like "Buying toothpaste" to neat stuff like "Going to Natural History Museum". A neat way to give a people an idea of what you're doing.

Step 2: Tumblr. Now tumblr is a "micro-blogging" site. Which means you're supposed to have short/micro posts. The main advantage for me is that it looks fantastic. Blogger is a champ, but it's bland. So tumblr will be my replacement for Blogger. You can see the future home of a minor here.

I'll make a proper transition to both new blogging platforms in the Fall. For now they're mostly test-beds for layouts and etc. I think it will be a 1000x better way to share content and really enjoyable.

Neat

There's a website called Slideflickr (slideflickr.com) that let's you create an embeddable slideshow from your Flickr photos. See an example below.

Damn He Is Good

Karl Rove may ruined me in 2004 by getting G.W. to win, but these days he's a political analyst. He works for Fox News (big surprise) and Newsweek. As part of his new career he wrote six tips for getting Barack Obama back up to his top campaigning level. I may despise him, but these six tips are on point. They are too long to put into a blog post, but a link to the article is below.

Newsweek

Neck & Neck

I love the Donkeys.

Why Are We Doing Nothing?

You may have caught word of the election problems in Zimbabwe. Basically, the current president who is starving his people to death with poor government is refusing to leave office, even though it is likely that he lost. His party have refused to release the results for the presidential election and have decided to recount the parliamentary results. The recount is, not surprisingly, turning from an opposition win to an incumbent win.

The worst part of all of this, and Darfur and the recent elections in Kenya is that the people that can help are doing, have done, absolutely nothing. The African Union has not put any pressure on Robert Mugabe, the standing president, the EU has done nothing and the US has done nothing. Robert Mugabe and his party are currently beating thousands of supporters of the opposition and have killed at least 10, and nothing has happened. The world is basically letting Robert Mugabe steal an election and keep the people of Zimbabwe is crushing poverty, and yet the most anyone can muster is a call to release the election results.

I know that the West is afraid of being called Colonialists again if they intervene in Africa, but how can the world be mad at the West for stopping a man from stealing an election, after he has put 80% of his people in poverty?

But I Just Can't Let It Show

"This Woman's Work" by Kate Bush one of those songs that can ruin you. So, if you feel like being ruined or just want to listen to great song, "This Woman's Work" is a place to start.

Fresh

I already have a watch, which I like, but I'd trade it in a second for this. It reminds me of slick mid-century industrial design. Oh, but it's $300 and there are too many other things I should spend $300 on. Like a new pair of shoes.

Right On Spain

I believe my only post about Spain involved them legalizing gay marriage. Well Spain has made it back onto the blog with the appointment of Carme Chacon as the first female Defense Minister, ever, anywhere. Beyond that she's 6 months pregnant. Despite that she still manages to look like a stylish badass. Good work Spain. You may be a lesser power in the EU, but you are tearing it up on the equality front.

More Mac Tips

I'm sure you've had the issue where you can't get the volume just quite right. The perfect setting lies right between two little white blocks on your Mac. Well if you have Leopard there's a solution. Hold Option + Shift and hit the volume buttons. This will adjust volume by quarter step increments and help you fine tune your volume. Tiger users will have to use the volume slider on the menu bar, sorry.

Another issue I had with my Mac was the lack of an app to replace Paint from my old Windows days. Not too long ago I found a great app that is a great Paint alternative. It's called Paintbrush. It's simple, lightweight and does everything that Paint does. Check it out at http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net/

Oh No You Didn't!

If you watched the "debate" last night you would have noticed that the first 45 minutes were all silly questions about political gaffes and had nothing to do with substantive issues. I almost always stick through every minute of a debate, but I just turned off the TV. Well my boy Barack has something to say about the gotcha questions. I get the feeling he's been bumping "The Black Album" recently, because his response to attacks was to brush the haters off. Skip to the 2:00 mark for the shoulder brush.

Propaganda Failure

You've probably heard from time to time that leaving Iraq would be a massive propaganda victory for Al-Qaeda. There's also the fear that Iran will gain more power. That would only make sense without an understanding of religion in the Middle East. First Iraq is run by a group of Shia politicians. Iran also happens to be run by a Shia government. This mean, as happened recently, that Iran would actually help Iraq's safety by backing their government. Al-Qaeda is a Sunni group and therefore the Shia Iraqi Government would have no interest or desire to allow Al-Qaeda is exist within Iraq. They are viewed as infidels and heathens. That's like people saying that if Martin Luther had taken over the Vatican it would have been a huge propaganda victory for extremist-Catholics.

World's Worst Dad

I stopped watching "Family Guy" a while ago, but I caught this hilarious moment while watching an episode on Hulu. Watch and see.

How Dare We Be Optimistic?

At the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, Al Gore made an updated speech about the importance of acting on global climate change. If you haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth" watch it. This speech, however, really shows how passionate Al Gore is about the issue and I think it's very inspiring. Watch his speech at TED below.

John McCain, Still Whack for America

Westport, Connecticut

"When Senator John McCain was asked here this afternoon how he plans to balance the budget, he said that he hoped to do so by stimulating economic growth – and approvingly cited the example of President Ronald Reagan.

There was one thing he did not mention during his response: the deficit nearly tripled during the Reagan presidency, partly due to tax cuts and increases in military spending."

"A member of the audience stood up and asked Mr. McCain, who has called for balanced budgets, how he plans to do it.

'Basically, which is it?' the man asked Mr. McCain. 'Straight talk: Do you want to raise taxes, cut entitlement spending, cut defense spending, or have a deficit?'

Mr. McCain did not explain how he plans to balance the budget, but spoke generally about hoping to stimulate the economy – and cited President Reagan."

Reaganomics is called "Voodoo Economics" for a reason, it doesn't actually work.

NY Times

Maybe I Should Live In Switzerland

Forget the Alps and the idealistic landscape, Switzerland, specifically Zurich, is home to a new Google office. As far as work environments go, it's hard to beat Google. What other office has a slide in it?

Lykke Li

If you know those Swedes, you know they create some top-tier music. Friend of Swedish heavy-weights like PB & J, Robyn and Shout Out Louds: Lykke Li just dropped a record in Sweden and some tracks are finding their way across the Atlantic. Lykke Li makes sparsely arranged, hall-way right outside the bedroom pop. While well produced, the feeling of the songs are still of a group of people with kind of junky instruments jumping into a song spontaneously. She also occasionally sings poorly on purpose, which I enjoy. Definitely worth a listen. I've been playing "Little Bit" a bit too much for the past few days.

Peep her 'space to hear a sampling of songs.