Gabble Musings

Focal Length

2009-06-06T02:07:00.002+03:00

So, I'm trying to teach myself a little bit about photography. The amount of info online is just incredible. After reading this post, I decided to play around with using different focal lengths for the same item. Here are the results:

Focal Length: 18 (35mm equivalent: 27) Exposure: 1/8 Aperture: f/3.5 ISO:1600

Focal Length: 33 (35mm equivalent: 49) Exposure: 1/4 Aperture: f/4 ISO:1600

Focal Length: 55 (35mm equivalent: 82) Exposure: 1/8 Aperture: f/5.6 ISO:1600

I used the automatic settings, and i'm not sure why the middle shot had a longer exposure. There's no question that the closer shot has better detail and is sharper. So I guess the take away here is that you should get as close to your subject as the situation allows.

Focal Length: 55 (35mm equivalent: 82) Exposure: 1/3 Aperture: f/5.6 ISO:1600

Focal Length: 35 (35mm equivalent: 52) Exposure: 1/3 Aperture: f/4.5 ISO:1600

Focal Length: 18 (35mm equivalent: 27) Exposure: 1/4 Aperture: f/3.5 ISO:400

One interesting facet of this last photo is that if you zoom in on the cheekbone of the figurine 2nd from the left, you can see a strange bright green blotch. No idea what that is. I also find it interesting that none of these shots are worth a damn, only because the ISO is so low, that they are all too blurry, although I'd be curious to see if a tripod helps any. I've read that tripods are not useful for digital cameras, but I don't believe it.

For Wordsworth:

2009-05-18T18:08:00.000+03:00

My soul comprehends beauty passing fair,
Fills with contentment at the harmony of a scene,
Cannot but yield upon spying the craft of the artisan,
Yet crumbles when called to create.
Woe to the songbird that has no muse,
Bereft of poetry must sit there mute,
Lacking all power to master the base elements,
Which stubbornly refuse to coalesce.
Perception is not a finer art,
Conferring wisdom upon us for our troubles.
We cannot make what we have not held
And our delight falls wasted after the flood.

Whatever scares you the most, yeah!

2008-11-10T08:50:00.001+02:00

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Funny stuff

Something is Stirring in America

2008-10-29T15:04:00.002+02:00

The last six paragraphs of this post are beautiful:

Back at the rally, after the march had left MLK Gardens, I'd gone back for the car while Brett took photos, and I spotted a very old black man in a sharp Sunday suit walking slowly at the very back of the huge march. He hadn't yet arrived at the voting center, and I decided to find him when I got back.

I wanted to go talk to him, to ask him what this moment meant to him. He was a guy who you take one glance at, and know, that guy's seen it all. I wanted a quote. I had my journalist hat on. I thought, this will be great.

So when I got back to the voting location with the car, I went to find him in the line. Eventually I spotted him, and was ready to walk up the few feet between us and introduce myself when I stopped in my tracks.

A young black boy, no more than eight years old, walked up to this man, who was at least eighty. The boy offered the man a sticker, probably an "I Voted" sticker, but I couldn't see. The man took the sticker and paused. Silently, he looked down at the boy, who was looking back up at the man. The man put his hand gently on the boy's head, and I saw his eyes glisten.

I didn't ask the man for a quote. I didn't need to. I walked over by myself, behind the community center, and I sat down on a bench next to the track, and wept.

If you can read that passage without feeling something well up inside you, well, you're made of sterner stuff than I. (click on the link to see the picture).

Joe the Plumber

2008-10-19T21:51:00.002+02:00

I have to admit, Joe's got me thinking. That coupled with some of the arguments I've read on Obama's tax policy, have made me wonder whether Obama's financial strengths aren't all smoke and mirrors. All I've read of the Joe Plumber exchange was "spread the wealth", hardly a promising campaign slogan.

Well, watch the clip:

Obama really is amazing. He just won my vote all over again (I admit, I have been wavering)

He met the challenge, knowing he was talking to someone who would probably never vote for him, but he tried to talk to him (not use him as a symbol, but actually address Joe's situation) and he stayed with him, for a while, really talking about the complicated issue which are (is?) taxes. (side note: I had a wonderful conversation with My friends Gini and Paul about subject verb agreement related to sentences like this)

Anyway, I'm back into the fold.

Speaking of which: check me out at 3:09

Why Obama will win

2008-10-16T02:01:00.003+02:00

watch this video and you will see why Obama will win this year's presidential election (don't peek at my explanation after the video):

Did you see it? No, it wasn't how well he handles the crowd. It wasn't his quick, light and even banter with the ladies. It wasn't how much like a good guy, smooth, and temperentally ideal for the current crisis he seems.

If you thought it was any of those things that guarantees Obama the win you missed it.

Did you see the gentleman standing slightly behind Senator Obama? Monitoring everything. Moving forward slightly to prep the situation, then hanging back to make sure it all went smoothly? With multiple bluetooth devices plugged in? He is Obama's secret weapon:

Reggie Love!

Obama's body man is Reggie Love.

McCain never even had a chance.

The Tax Man Giveth

2008-10-14T16:59:00.004+02:00

Last year, when I filed my taxes I got a huge refund, so large that our summer plans suddenly opened up because we had extra money to use. I was confused by this because I don't have taxes deducted from my paycheck; an advantage to earning income overseas is that it is tax exempt, except for the payroll taxes. In fact the refund I got back actually exceeded my annual payroll deductions. I couldn't understand how this worked until I read this article in the Wall Street Journal.

I have to say, in general, I am very uncomfortable with this tax policy. First of all, because, as the WSJ rightly says, it is welfare disguised as tax policy, so well disguised, in fact, that I wasn't aware that I was a beneficiary of welfare until I read the article.

Which leads me to my second problem. I don't want welfare, and don't feel I need it. I wouldn't apply for it even if I knew it were available for it. In this system, however, I have little choice to apply for it, since I have to file my tax claims. I'm sure I will continue to take the "tax refunds" I'm eligible for, since I have my tax claims prepared for me online, and don't have much to do with the actual details.

The fact that this has become a way for welfare to sneak back into the system, in a form much harder to resist than the old welfare system. WSJ rightly faults Obama for using this formulation as a way to claim that he is giving "tax cuts" to 95% of the American people.

I do believe in progressive tax rates, but this is silly. If you want to redistribute wealth, then do it above board. Welfare, though is so unpopular that it would never pass. If that's true, then it shouldn't be snuck into the tax system.

On the other hand...

2008-10-06T10:55:00.002+02:00

I was impressed by Biden's performance in the VP debates and thought Palin spoke empty and meaningless platitudes.

WSJ points out some serious problems with the "Kid from Scranton":

We think the word "lie" is overused in politics today, having become a favorite of the blogosphere and at the New York Times. So we won't say Mr. Biden was deliberately making events up when he made these and other false statements. Perhaps he merely misspoke. In any case, Mrs. Palin may not know as much about the world as Mr. Biden does, but at least most of what she knows is true.

Homer's Wine Dark Sea

2008-10-05T10:35:00.002+02:00

This morning I fell into the NYTimes Op-Ed page and found an uncommon richness. Will Self started my morning off with a tasty (if somewhat sardonic) snapshot of Ibiza in the summer

On the horizon the superstructure of a freighter piled high with containers wavered in the heat, never seeming to progress: all that stuff, cars and car tires, dishwashers and dialysis machines — the whole lot being thrust through Homer’s wine-dark sea. The sheer inertia of global commerce began to make me feel dizzy — there was this, and also the sense that with our ceaseless advances and retractions we were in some way mimicking the vacillations of our own culture, with its Promethean thefts always being found out by the aeronautical engineering of Icarus.

I began to worry: would we become lost here in the Ibizan hinterland? Meeting perhaps with other Brits who’d gone feral? A lost tribe, stark naked save for denim penis-sheaths, who called themselves “the Ex” and enacted weird psycho-sexual rituals.

Next, Pinker has an interesting article on Palin's debate performance:

SINCE the vice presidential debate on Thursday night, two opposing myths have quickly taken hold about Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. The first, advanced by her supporters, is that she made it through a gantlet of fire; the second, embraced by her detractors, is that her speaking style betrays her naïveté. Both are wrong.

Then Judith Warner has an utterly depressing piece on the financial crisis:

And those of us who felt, well, like losers, are feeling like even bigger losers, as we shove our unopened 401K or (if we’re double-loser freelancers) SEP-IRA statements into bottom desk drawers and wait for a cathartic burst of schadenfreude that simply refuses to come.

Schadenfreude is impossible because the fat cats — the ones who bent the rules, the ones who pushed the envelopes, the ones who paid lower taxes because capital gains were most of their income, the ones who opposed regulations on the banking and mortgage industries — are taking us down with them.

Just thought I'd share my Sunday Morning reading with you.

Gotcha Journalism

2008-10-02T09:14:00.003+02:00

Katie Couric is obviously in the tank for Obama. :eye roll:

Don't I look like Obama?

2008-09-29T01:11:00.001+02:00

Blog Love

2008-09-28T19:53:00.001+02:00

Chiba has a lovely post about his daughter:

My kid's friend invited her to the Disney On Ice show at the Patriot Center this morning. It fell to me to deliver her to her friend's house. I meant to get up at 7, get her up immediately, get her ready to go, and leave at 8. Naturally, I overslept. Woke up at 7.30 with a start and went looking for my kid.

She was sitting at the table, eating her breakfast. Bagel, yogurt, and a cup of milk. She got it ALL by herself. I was so proud of her. It's a pretty big step for a kid to move into some semblance of self-sufficiency like that. She was even already dressed. I nearly cried.

Sniff

just because you're paranoid...

2008-09-28T19:17:00.003+02:00

This afternoon, I found myself in the strange position of wanting to write a post defending Sarah Palin.

I know, very strange. Until now, I've considered her candidacy, and especially her interviews to be a train wreck that I wanted not to watch but couldn't help tuning into with horrified fascination.

Well, I read an article this afternoon, from Fox news, which was condemning her and it made me think twice about whether or not she was really so bad.

Imagine my surprise when I get home, prepare to write a long post defending her and I look for the article online only to see that it has completely disappeared!

My guess is that Fox suddenly realized that one of its reporters had refused the kool-aid and yanked the story.

Here's the (dead) link to the story: Conservatives Begin Questioning Palin's Heft

I will print my defense of Palin when they put their article back online.

Update: the link has now disappeared from the google news listing, but, as of 7:28 Sunday night, was still on Digg:

My head just exploded

2008-09-26T15:06:00.002+02:00

After reading this:

" . . . where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh -- it's got to be all about job creation too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing, but 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that."

And the video is even worse, because Palin says this blather with such conviction.

In related news, Palin has decided to evade conviction in Troopergate by employing the Chewbacca defense

Trying to avoid work

2008-09-25T02:04:00.002+02:00

copied from Chiba

* Put your music player on random.
* Post the first line from the first 32 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
* Let everyone guess what song and artist the lines come from.
* Bold the songs when someone guesses correctly.
* Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!

1. See a man standing over a dead dog
2. These twenty acres and one [june meal?] from the alabama trust
3. Maybe you wanna give me kisses sweet
4. Flying in silver bird across the sky
5. She's got her ticket
6. Meet me where the river turns
7. Yo, looking back on the boogie when cats used to harmonize?
8. You call me the rock, I can rock you all night long
9. Give me back my broken life
10. I was not created in the likeness of a pod
11. Sorry, is all that you can say
12. Elevator going up! In the cleaning corridor of the 51st floor
13. Well now its two, there's two trains running
14. There I was one night, just a normal guy
15. There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear
16. I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands
17. Baby Baby baby, what's it going to be?
18. I got the cocaine to keep me the cocaine to keep me home
19. Untie these strings from my heart
20. Unburdened of their passengers the taxis have all scattered
21. Now along about 1825 I left tenessee very much alive
22. Now I don't I used to Now I'm in Now I don't
23. I think I lost it let me know if you come across it
24. I drew a picture of you you and your anchor tattoo
25. When your weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes
26. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
27. When you seem like days to me, no time on my hands
28. Sleeping, always sleeping, you so sleepy you can't even hold your head up
29. Yo yo what's up, yo gimme some of that gangsta ass shit, yo know what I'm saying
30. Our fingers touch upon my lips, its a morning yearning, morning yearning
31. Hey baby I ain't asking what you do
32. Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Housebreaking the Students

2008-09-21T12:38:00.003+02:00

In Socrates Wake directed me to this article, which has a wonderful line about teaching:

“My view is that you really fall into a trap when you start allowing what you believe about your students to dictate how you teach your discipline,” he answered. “Too often these days we end up setting up our courses in light of what we believe about our students and we end up not teaching them. At best, we end up housebreaking them.”

I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment, although the principle is sound. In general, we cannot say that a student has successfully learned, for example, how to write, unless he attains an absolute level of proficiency. This measure must ignore what level they started at. While our students arrive in the class with a variety of backgrounds, skills and talent, they should leave the classroom with some uniformity of proficiency.

It is derelict in the extreme to excuse poor students because "they started off too weak".

That being said, we must first meet our students where they are, not where we would like them to be. I may have a goal for the end of the semester, but I cannot begin the semester losing half the class because I speak in ways incomprehensible to them or use terms that they don't understand.

I, however, would love to explore ways to avoid housebreaking my students.

My beautiful election enters its dark phase.

2008-09-19T14:43:00.003+02:00

Peggy Noonan is well on her way to becoming my favorite columnist. Today's piece just put it over the top for me. I mean:

Bambi is playing Chicago style.

There's a musicality to that line that has been resonating with me all morning.

Noonan also has voiced a thought I've been having for almost a year now:

A final point. Do you ever have the passing thought that the presidential election doesn't matter as much as we think? Whoever wins will govern within more of less the same limits, both domestically and internationally. A New York liberal leaning toward Mr. McCain told me this week he has no fear that Mr. McCain may be a more militant figure than Mr. Obama. We already have two wars, "we're out of army." Even if Mr. McCain wanted a war, he said, he couldn't start one.

The funny thing about this idea is how vehemently my friends, both liberal AND conservative react to this idea.

The Good War?

2008-09-17T15:42:00.003+02:00

This article (hat tip:Andrew Sullivan) reinforces my concerns with our next president, whoever he may be.

While I recognize the national interest in nailing down areas of civil disorder in order to prevent anti-American terrorist from gaining toeholds and training grounds, I wonder whether we could do more good than harm by waging war to control the areas.

Obama has been much more forceful than McCain on sending more troops to Afghanistan. I worry that, bad as Iraq has been, its nothing compared to what a protracted conflict in the tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan could be.

Are we going to end up looking at the Bush years with nostalgia? I shudder to think.

Charles, an introduction

2008-06-02T18:58:00.000+03:00

All the men in my family have messy handwriting. My writing looks like a child’s, big, loose loops, tails that come off the letters in inappropriate places. My A’s look like they have mutant u’s growing out of their backs. My K’s resemble a pair of chromosomes, caught in flagrante delecte. My father’s handwriting is the hardest to read, like a doctor’s prescription. His words are perhaps the platonic essence of the letters, nothing more. A faint hint of the letter, a suggestion of an r, that trails off into another slight bump, it could be any letter, really. Aren’t they all the same, anyway? Reading my grandfather’s script, on the other hand, just makes my muscles tense. It’s amazing how much chaos can be contained within such an orderly form. Each letter, marching down the page precisely, perfectly accurate, absolutely legible. And yet, not a single straight line. Like a wrinkled uniform, hopelessly unable to pass inspection, yet standing at attention, eyes forward nonetheless. His writing has no swoops, no curls, no flourishes at all. The N’s are wrinkled, the L’s uncertain. Each line, painfully concentrated upon, carefully conforming to the standard, and yet abjectly failing the final test.

All three of us, with our imperfect handwriting have tried to compensate for our shameful lack of penmanship. I learned to type in grade school, was allowed to turn in all of my assignments on typed sheets, even math. I moved from manual, to electric, to Apple, to the laptop I now carry with me wherever I go,my crutch, my addiction. My father rarely writes anything, relying on secretaries, or girlfriends (or wives) to take dictation. I college, I would get a weekly letter from him, typed by Diane, who was something in between a friend and a patient. She would insert her own opinion occasionally, comments within brackets, always a few exclamation marks thrown in. Annie, my father’s third wife (so far), was the most recent stenographer. As their marriage worsened, her comments (also between brackets) became more caustic, more critical, less patient. A tottering marriage, mapped out parenthetically. Charles, on the other hand, forced himself to write in his cramped, wobbly script. Everything by hand. He filled dozens of notebooks, kept logs of everything, took notes, wrote letters, briefs, labels, postcards. I have them all somewhere, in leather trunk growing over with green mold, in a storage unit I keep in Michigan. Every summer, I go back to the unit, perform triage on the unit. Throw away anything I can stand to part with. So far, nothing I inherited form him has been tossed. I keep hoping I’ll learn some use for his belongings, the things his (third) wife discarded. When she gave them to me, I only read a handful, mostly the ones referring to times I might be mentioned. Then I boxed them up, to be examined later.. Here in Cairo, some six thousand miles from the place he died, I only have one example of his writing.

I found it on my shelf last week, when my three-year-old daughter was rummaging through our book shelves. It’s on a cream-colored, yellowing photo album, only filled a quarter of the way, with 24 pictures taken on a spring day in 1991. On school break, I was visiting him in Cambridge. He took me on a walking tour of Boston. A few months later, he gave me the album. Here’s a photo of a juggler behind Fanuil hall, perched on a ten foot tall unicycle, about to dropped one of his bowling pins. Here’s one of the old cemetery. The gravestones there are phenomenal. Those puritans really got into the idea of death. Rich, evocative bas reliefs of skeletons with scythes, hourglasses running out of sand, hooded characters with bad intentions. Death is like that, I suppose, grim, taking away what we most desire. What we need the most. The photo album has cute little captions next to each picture. Phallic Tree on Harvard Street. Love under a balloon. His handwriting only beginning to reflect his 72 years. There aren’t any pictures of him, of course, but you can still sort of see him. The wry comments, the choice of subjects, but especially the handwriting on the labels. Cramped, wobbly, totally giving him away, but struggling so hard to fit in.

About six months before he died, just as he learned that the cancer had metastasized, my uncle convinced him to make a record of his memories, for the grandkids, for the family. A bit of history. He talks about cost of tuition, about traveling to Nazi Germany as a high school student. About going to Harvard two years younger than he should be. A 16 year-old, son of a hat salesman. A Jew at Harvard in the Thirties. He talks about anti-Semitism as though he were a history professor, giving us notes for the final exam. Or perhaps he’s telling a joke. It’s so droll, he seems to imply. They had me room with the other Jew on our trip. The German official told us that Hitler had no ill-will to toward the United States. He is proud that, at 16, he could detect the irony of the Nazi’s words. Even in 1936. How clever he was.

I sit on the couch to watch the video with Makaylah. That’s my Grampa. My daddy’s daddy. Grampa Micky’s daddy. I think she gets it. Sometimes its hard to tell. He sits in a highbacked chair, Oreo (the cat) in his lap. At this point, at age 79, with several years fighting cancer, his age shows. His cheeks, always long, now have a crease down the middle. He slumps in a chair slightly. His digestive system seems to be troubling him. There are frequent interruptions on the tape, where, I assume, he had to take a break. Not visible are the morphine patches he was wearing on his chest to minimize the pain. Perhaps the slight glaze in his one good eye is the only evidence of the influence of the drug.

The last stop on our Boston tour was Harvard yard. We walked across the quadrangle, stopped at a statue of John Harvard. Grampa explained to me, with pleasure, how there were at least three things wrong with the statue, historically speaking. He told me about his first semester as a Harvard student, showed me his dormitory. Enjoyed pointing out how strict they were about propriety, an unaccompanied girl may only be in the room before 7pm, the door must be open in excess of one foot. He described in detail the logistics of the dorms. The cost of tuiton, how often the maids came in to clean. How big the suites were. There are three pictures of Harvard in the photo album, one of historically offending statue, another of a Henry More sculpture, and finally he put a picture of a couple, a balloon over their head, sitting at the entrance to building, on top of a broad flight of steps, holding hands and kissing.

Makaylah and I sit together on the couch watching him tell about his time at college. About the isolation he felt, too young, too ethnic, blind in one eye (and thus, an awkward athlete). Completely unable to cultivate the effortless sense of belonging that draped off of his classmates. Makaylah loves the video. Its Grampa Mickey’s daddy, Daddy’s grampa, the magical algorithms at play here, mysterious relationships at once static and dynamic, completely entrance her. She has no idea of what he means by alienation. I sit on the couch with her, my arm draped over her shoulders. I don’t know if it’s to snuggle or to protect, to hold her close to me, or keep her far from everyone else. ….

How he once got invited to a mixer, but it must have been by accident. Case of mistaken identity, maybe just a joke, invite the jew. For him, it is a non-story, something to mention in passing, another funny story. For me, it is a coda to his entire life, and by extension, to mine. I imagine him, crossing the quad, dressed nervously in a garish jacket, maybe a bow tie. Thick glasses between him and the world. At the door, a few guys are smoking, a habit he never picked up. They are taking sips from a paper cup. He’d love to be offered some, waits for a moment, but passes on after their conversation stops. He enters the party hall, knows no one. Crosses to the drink table, pours himself some juice. Has a bite of a brownie. Notices a guy from his labor law class, tries to think of something to say, nothing comes to mind. It is unnerving to be motionless at a party, though. Either you are engaged in raucous conversation, making bawdy jokes, or you are moving through the crowd, looking for your set. I imagine he walked through parties the way I do, sweaty palms, moving from room to room, pausing long enough to rest, catch a snatch of someone else’s conversation, but not long enough for anyone to notice you. Notice that you don’t belong. Eventually, the illusion of fun becomes completely untenable, and you can slip outside, back into the dark, back to the lonely dorm room.

At least, that was what my college parties were like. Sweaty palms, no conversation, nothing to say, really, but a desperate need to fit in, to be funny, liked, admired. I assume it was the same for him. My daughter sits there on the couch with me, totally entranced by her great-grandfather’s image on the television. She’s too young to have messy handwriting, to young to notice she doesn’t fit in. But I see her in groups, already leaning to the outside, and I cringe.

A Typical Day at the Moos House

2008-06-01T20:30:00.002+03:00

Of course, this video is several days ago, a time which will be known henceforth as her pre-walking stage.

You can tell I wasn't the camera operator by its non-avant-garde angles and traditional orientation, how cliche!

Mark your calendars

2008-06-01T19:24:00.001+03:00

Its official, my girl can walk! For the record, she has managed more than two steps at a time, but we were unable to recreate the results in the lab.

In defense of LOLcats

2008-05-31T11:08:00.002+03:00

Shirky writes:

I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: "Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves."

At least they're doing something.

Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

And I'm willing to raise that to a general principle. It's better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, "If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too." And that's message--I can do that, too--is a big change.

This article, while quite interesting, has the danger of being an elaborate rationalization of behavior. I'm not convinced that what I do (for hours and hours on end) on my laptop is categorically different than what I did (for hours and hours on end) with my TV in the 80s.

Occasionally, I post something on the blog, write on someone's wall, send a brief message, post a photograph, correct a piece of misinformation on Google earth. So, in that sense, it is active, rather than passive, but the majority of time I am sifting through large pieces of information which is irrelevent to my daily existence. I no more need to know the origins of the word hookah, than I need to know the theme song to Silver Spoons.

Still, I find this article comforting and reassuring. I guess that's what a good bottle of gin should do.

Ouch!

2008-05-30T00:38:00.000+03:00

Um, this is funny, I guess:

But, your honor, I'm an orphan!

2008-05-25T23:14:00.003+03:00

Harris at Politico nails it:

This weekend’s uproar over Hillary Rodham Clinton invoking the assassination of Robert Kennedy as rationale for continuing her presidential campaign is an especially vivid example of modern journalism as hyperkinetic child — overstimulated by speed and hunger for a head-turning angle that will draw an audience.

The truth about what Clinton said — and any fair-minded appraisal of what she meant — was entirely beside the point.

A few lines down:

The RFK remarks were deep in a 20-minute clip of an otherwise routine conversation. Then, once we actually got to the relevant portion of the video, it was hardly an electric moment.

Clinton does indeed mention the Kennedy assassination, speaking in a calm and analytical tone: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Martin and I both thought we saw a slight twinge in Clinton’s facial expression, as though she recognized she had just said something dumb.

Whether she recognized it or not, she had.

But it was also clear that Clinton’s error was not in saying something beyond the pale but in saying something that pulled from context would sound as if it were beyond the pale.

It would be a big story if Clinton said something like this: “Hey, I know it looks bad for me now. But, think about it. Obama could get shot and I’d get to be the nominee after all.”

It is a small story if Clinton said something like this: “Everyone talks like May is incredibly late, but by historical standards it is not. Think of all the famous milestones in presidential races that have taken place during June.”

It seems pretty obvious that the latter is what Clinton meant, and not too far from what she actually said. It was not surprising that the Argus Leader’s executive editor, Randall Beck, put out a statement saying, “Her reference to Mr. Kennedy’s assassination appeared to focus on the time line of his primary candidacy and not the assassination itself.”

But where Harris gives us a brilliant demonstration of Chutzpah, at the end of the article, is where he smacks down the msn, for following his lead!!

The revival of Soul?

2008-05-13T23:55:00.002+03:00

Brooks describes the pushback against a militant materialism in an interesting article this morning:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

Its a bit strange to see the things I've believed for 20 years start to creep into the mainstream. I'm not really sure how I feel about it.