Mobile Blog Test
Trying out the dreaded mobile blogging, scourge of the waiting room and balm of the bored. I’m at the place where I get my hair cut (I’m too manly to have a stylist). See?
I Swear This Is Not A Political Blog
Wait, we live where?
This isn’t a political blog, but damn it, sometimes things get so unreal out there that I feel the need to point it out, just in case it’s me that’s crazy instead of the world. Today I have two unrelated news items that separately give me the willies. Together they’re downright surreal.
Item One: Unreasonable search and seizure laws permit checkpoints on the border that would be illegal anywhere else in the US. That sounds okay, until you realize that the border definition here has a width of 100 miles, which happens to cover two-thirds of the entire US population.
Item Two: Yesterday the Supreme Court said that evidence obtained through illegal searches is okey-dokie to be used in your trial.
Hell, why not just chuck the whole 4th Amendment? There’s really nothing left of it now but the box it came in anyway.
Free is Good
If you’re an iPhone user, I have good news for you. You can now access the Random House Free Library directly from inside the Stanza application (which is a free ebook reader).
In there you’ll find the complete Hank Thompson trilogy from Charlie Huston, which is Totally Awesome(tm).
Rumor has it that this trilogy will stop being free at the end of January, so just in case that turns out to be true, I’d snag it now. Speaking of Charlie Huston, go pick up his Joe Pitt series as well, it’s even better.
One more thing about Stanza, both the iPhone and the Desktop versions have access to several free libraries, so I highly recommend checking it out. Getting free books is great, but even better is being exposed to new authors that you might otherwise not want to take a chance on.
Earth From Above
Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand has seen the Earth like few people ever have; vistas both alien and beautiful, prosaic and delightful. Even better, he’s able to capture these images with such consummate skill that others can share in that stunning moment of discovery when looking out onto a new world.
His Exhibit, Earth From Above, is coming to New York next May, but you can see a little of it right now, wherever you happen to be reading these words, courtesy of The Big Picture:
Image from Yann Arthus-Bertrand's Earth From Above
We Hear What We Want to Hear
According to the MediaCurves poll about the first presidential debate last night, Republicans overwhelmingly saw a McCain smackdown, while Democrats overwhelmingly saw Obama as the clear winner.
Are people crazy? Kind of. Confirmation Bias is something we all have, but few recognize or actively try to compensate for. Basically, we tend to seek out information that reinforces our beliefs, and avoid or discount information that goes against them. I call this Football Team Syndrome. If we screw up, it’s your fault, if you screw up, it’s your fault. There was a time when this was a pretty clever strategy, keeping people centered in the tried and true tribal knowledge that kept them in food and rabbit pelts, and away from that guy who always claimed that bears were full of delicious candy.
Today, this tendency is easily and gleefully exploited by political parties who know that lying in an ad won’t hurt them with the faithful, and might just sway the fencesitters. This is why you can hear the most absurd, outrageous things in a commercial or a speech, and at the same time see people in the same room nodding to themselves in satisfaction.
We all have confirmation bias, it’s just how we’re built. But having it doesn’t mean that we can’t overcome it. Seek out information about the other side and think about it. Be skeptical on an item by item basis, and consider the source based on past performance, not affiliation, and when in doubt, check with less biased sources like factcheck.org.
Critical thinking is the single most important part of personal independence. Enough people are working day and night to manipulate you, don’t help them by fooling yourself.
Why Do We Overspend in America?
Take a look at this:
Clicking on the image will take you to the flash app created by the New York Times. What it shows is the per capita consumer spending habits by nation, divided by country. The bigger the block, the bigger the spend. Click through each tab, and you’ll notice that we Americans always have the biggest block. We spend more, per person, than anyone else on everything.
Why is this?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s not because we’re vapid consumer whores. Okay, we’re not vapid consumer whores for no reason. Let me share a statistic with you.
We see an average of 1600 ads per person every single day.
I know, right? Maybe it’s more amazing that we don’t wake up every morning and sing jingles at the top of our lungs while sticking logos all over our bodies. Although it’s close. Popular songs are now jingles, so I guess we do sing songs that have become advertising anthems, and of course, people have been paying money to wear corporate logos for some time now. But the victory isn’t complete yet, and with any luck, it never will be.
When you see an ad from now on, think about what it says and how it says it. Beautiful people high-fiving each other over Product X is not what how I want my culture defined.
Pervasive advertising is an assault on your judgement, treat it as such.
Chrome is Shiny
Google is having a beta release of Chrome, their new browser, tomorrow. In a nutshell, the claim is that it’s faster, more memory efficient, more stable, and smells like puppies.
Famed comic guru Scott McCloud has helped them gin up a comic explaining why Chrome is cool.
I, for one, am dying to give it a spin. Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some good old FF3, but I’m also a sucker for “better/faster/stronger”.
Read the comic here, and try it out tomorrow.
Respect is a Two Way Street
I don’t care which side of the isle you sit on, you should be able to applaud Senator Obama’s remarks to the media today, when he told the press to leave Sarah Palin’s family alone.
It sucks when people get so wrapped up in their own agendas that they stop acting like human beings, and start seeing everything in terms of attack vectors. It is, frankly, plain jackassery.
Standing against this kind of thing instead of loading it into your smear campaign is even harder when you actually have something to lose by acting human. So congrats, Mr. Obama. You gave some respect where it was due.
That earns you some right back. Good job, sir.
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
David Byrne and Brian Eno’s new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, is out at last. Stream for free or buy it (buying is better, it encourages a next time) from here.
One Second Review: Quirky, dense, awesome.
H.P. Lovecraft Knows Chocolate
Oh, McSweeney’s, will you ever fail to delight? The evidence points to NO.
Take, for example, this snippet from “Selections From H.P. Lovercraft’s Brief Tenure as a Whitman’s Sampler Copywriter”.
Coconut Creme Swirl
They say that the Coconut Creme Swirl sleeps. But if the dread Coconut Creme Swirl slumbers, surely it must also dream. It is certain that while it dozes the Coconut Creme Swirl is absorbed by terrifying visions of exacting its creamy tropical vengeance upon mankind! Consume the Coconut Creme Swirl before it awakens to consume you!
More eerie and discomfitting confections await you here!
Fugitive Prose 