vedana.net

Posting from the Palm, via GPRS. Boo-yah!

"Please help a brother out!" [via Side Salad]

Also, Engrish.com.

Apple's new iTunes Music Store is brilliant, I bought 4 albums yesterday (yes I'm on a hip-hop kick) and had them downloaded and playing in minutes. And the Rendezvous integration is just too cool; one of the other Blogger guys has a Titanium and an extensive music collection, and I've been streaming his tunes all morning.

For browsing, here are Cameron Barrett's pictures from his trip to Siberia in 2002.

If any of you haven't seen this Honda ad yet (~5 meg Quicktime download), check it out, it's very cool. Evidently it's for real, and took 606 takes to get it just right.

[also via Scoble]

When is Microsoft gonna learn that you can't polish a turd? (directory listing here)

[via Scoble]

Steven Frank: "I wasn't sure I wanted every one of my personal opinions to be evaluated and picked apart right in front of me, on my own home page no less. But ultimately I came to the conclusion that if I was harboring an idea or concept that was just plain dumb, I'd likely be better off getting the feedback than just living in a state of delusion."

This is frightening...

Via Kevin Marks, a quote from Slashdot: "Capitalism is a means to manage scarcity, and it is very good at it, but artificially creating scarcity just so that capitalism may be applied is like shooting people to create a demand for hospitals:"

"Stop shooting people!"

"What, you don't like hospitals?"

Dean Landsman, Vietnam war reminiscing: "A few months earlier I'd been at the very lead of a peace rally, carrying one side of a big flag with a peace sign. It was a peaceful early evening candlelight rally, although violence loomed large, everywhere one looked along the rally parade route, in the ranks of the Indianapolis Police Department Riot Squad. This group of helmeted and armed policemen, with their gear cocked and ready for battle, were an almost humorous counterpoint to our calm and underwhelming pro-peace demonstration."

"The rally came and went without incident. Some of the Riot Squad police looked pretty frustrated over the lack of incident, as they shed their gear, packed it in, got in their squad cars and drove off."

"Later that evening as I was heading back to my dorm room, a drunken hawkish upperclassmen sucker-punched me, then proceeded to beat the shit out of me for being an 'anti American commie pinko faggot New York jewfuck.' To this day I still recall him calling me this long epithet."

[via Doc]

Mike needs "a Google query string which has less than 1000 hits (that's the APIs' built-in maximum) but the results of which change often (I don't know how often Google results get updated, but it'd be nice if it changed every few hours or so). Can you think of something that would fit that bill?"

Anyone?

Mmm... Indian food...

News.com has an article up today about the SixApart announcement, and they mention us a fair amount. Competition is always good.

The blogging world is moving and shaking once again... Excellent.

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt: "I believe that this notion of self-publishing, which is what Blogger and blogging are really about, is the next big wave of human communication. The last big wave was Web activity. Before that one it was e-mail. Instant messaging was an extension of e-mail, real-time e-mail."

He talks about Pyra and Blogger a lot, which is cool.

[via Shellen]

Google has a great logo for Earth Day today. Hopefully it'll migrate to the logos page soon. My immediate reaction? "Attention humans: don't forget where you are in the cosmic scheme of things!" What's yours?

Mark Pilgrim rocks.

Dinner tonight. The twice-baked potatoes were divine, btw.

Lunch today.

Yet another reason why the Internet rocks.

[via Dave]

StopJayGarner.com: "Garner is still, despite his post in the Middle East, the President of SY Coleman, which provides technical support for missile systems currently in use in the Iraq war. No matter your feelings about this war, appointing a weapons maker to the role of peacemaker is a recipe for whipping up anti-American feeling in the Middle East."

[via Mike in email]

I saw my new favorite bumper sticker on the way to San Mateo after work Friday:

"My other vehicle is the Mahayana."

About five weeks ago, I had the good fortune to inherit Oliver, an attention-deprived yet entirely equanimous feline. He used to live with Joel and Sarah down in Half Moon Bay, but with Joel somewhat allergic to cats, Oliver was languishing... Since moving up here though, he's gotten way more attention than any cat should, and he's happy and healthy once again! And so in the spirit of the excellent Textism's Daily Oliver, I give you the Sporadic Oliver (right side of the page). I can't guarantee frequency like Dean, but I promise a noble effort.

I finally copped out last night and bought a Nalgene bottle from REI. Nothing betrays a traveler as a Yank more plainly than Nalgene bottle... I saw far too many while cruising around last year. But they're definitely popular for a reason. I'm trying to consume the recommended 2 liters of water per day, and this 1 liter bottle combined with the filtered water from the snackroom seems like the optimal way to go about it. Sure beats throwing away a bunch of plastic bottles every day...

Via Mike in email, The Roots of War over at AlterNet. Excerpt: "What is it, then, that has made war such an inescapable part of the human experience? Each war, of course, appears to the participants to have an immediate purpose – to crush the "Hun," preserve democracy, disarm Saddam, or whatever – that makes it noble and necessary. But those who study war dispassionately, as a recurrent event with no moral content, have observed a certain mathematical pattern: that of "epidemicity," or the tendency of war to spread in the manner of an infectious disease."

Today's lunch.

Also via BoingBoing, "Missing 1998 Time article by Bush, Sr. on why a full-on Iraq war would be a bad idea." Excerpt:

"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome."

Here's an image of the original article, and here's the ascii.

BoingBoing: How GM Destroyed America's Public Transit: "General Motors is an old hand at villainizing and undermining public transit. Long before it was running Canadian newspaper ads villifying transit riders, GM was involved in a conspiracy that destroyed the effective, cheap and effective public transit systems across America."

Here's the link to which they are referring.

Doc Searls: "Proposed: A barn-raising for civilization:"

"The art historian and archaeologist John Malcolm Russell on The Connection... just called the sacking of Baghdad's museums The greatest catastrophe ever to befall a cultural institution in the history of the world. More than the burning of the library in Alexandria? This guy is in a position to know. Long after everything else from this war is forgotten... this is the one thing that people will remember, he says. Well, I'm thinking, we're part of civilization, too, presumably -- "we" being everybody in the world who goes to the trouble of making it better."

"So here's an idea for the U.S. and British governments, for Coalition Forces, for anybody else in a position of authority in Iraq right now -- plus the rest of us who care..." (read the rest)

Ex-Entropy:

"For as long as we have lived on earth, we have been fighting.
For as long as we have been fighting, we have been discussing the rights and wrongs of conflict.
Clearly, we are still fighting and, thankfully, still talking."

Folks, we have a new member of our BlogFamily: OhioRyan, Dubya's biggest fan! I've added him to the link list at the left, check him out for an alternative view to what you read here. It'll be interesting to see which content-targeted ads appear at the top of his blog; right now I'm seeing Donate to Charity and American Cancer Society. ;-)

BTW, he's "ryan" from all the heated political discussion that's taken place on this site. Alex, you're up next... MattB? Herm? Anyone else? Remember, blogs are free over at Blogspot.

Google Daily Menus, via Ev. Looks like Ben beat me to it, I was planning on starting one as well. No need to reinvent the wheel! FYI, I'll probably point to it, well, frequently (grin).

Jim Griffin: "In the short-attention-span theater that is the American court of public opinion, will we likely remember why we sent a small city across the world to Iraq?"

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

-Theodore Roosevelt

[from the top of the Karelia Weblog]

Linda Diebel, Toronto Star: Bush doctrinaires: Analysts point to strong signs America's war machine will continue to roll. Despite denials, Syria and Iran appear to be next: "Thank God for Helen Thomas. She sits hunched over in the front row at White House press briefings and, as the slick boys and girls of the press corps respectfully clear their throats and try to catch Ari's eye, she goes in for the kill. She's 82 years old, already. What does she have to fear from White House flaks and media spin-doctors?"

[via Mike]

TrueMajority: "Where Your Tax Dollars Should Go"

Operation Oily Residue: "War Is Fun When You Know You Won't Die"

Frank Rich: Bowling for Kennebunkport: "Moore's next film, titled "Fahrenheit 911," is scheduled for release in the two months before Election Day [2004]."

Also via Mike in email, Michael Moore: My Oscar Backlash: "On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at "Bowling for Columbine" in theaters around the country went up 110% (source: Daily Variety/BoxOfficeMojo.com). The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety). It is now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%."

Via Mike in email, A Tale of Two Photos and The photographs tell the story...

NY Times: Taliban Reviving Structure in Afghanistan. "At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long ago. Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a resurgence of Taliban vigilantism."

[via Caterina]

Dervala Hanley: "So I inched straight up on my hands and knees, clutching at razor grass and wondering why in the name of God I was carrying lipstick and mascara--not to mention a tin of smoked mussels and a Carl Jung collection--on my back in the Andes."

Philip Greenspun: "Third World dictators come and go. Preppie U.S. presidents come and go. The U.S. military comes and goes (from various far-away lands). What topic is sufficiently eternal to merit inclusion as my very first blog entry? Public education!"

[via Dave]

+ = employment (!!!), I start Monday morning. :-)

Flag-O-Rama: "Patriotic items for fanatical flagwavers"

[via BoingBoing]

Reverse Cowgirl: Bombing for Peace...

[via Marc]

For all the people who forward email chain letters: forward.swf (you'll need Flash)

Jim Moore: "Second superpower people identify themselves as citizens of the world, and care about social development, collaboration, innovation, open societies, and commons. They believe that at heart all people are precious and are one."

Jim Moore: "There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the people” in a global social movement. The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights."

Wired: How Hydrogen Can Save America: "Adopting Kennedy's 10-year time frame may sound absurdly optimistic, but it's exactly the kick in the pants needed to jolt the US out of its crippling complacency when it comes to energy."

[via nixlog]

Paul Nixon: "The Inevitability of Our Own Humanity

Bruce Sterling: "It may come as a shock that Vice Admiral John Poindexter has popped up as a visionary cyberguru for Darpa. Until recently, the former national security adviser was best known as a convicted conspirator in the late-'80s Iran-Contra scandal."

[via JD]

Mark Weiser: "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it."

Peter Arnett: THIS WAR IS NOT WORKING
(parting comments after being fired by NBC last weekend)

[via JD]

Peacetrack.org, via OnFocus

Doc has some great quotes up today:

Benito Mussolini: "Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power."

Quoted from the book "Nuremberg Diary", by Gustave Gilbert, who interviewed Hermann Goering in prison: "We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction."

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." (emphasis mine)

Flash animation: The Liberation of Afghanistan [via Joi Ito]

Avantbard: "I'm writing this post from Chris's car, and I just rode a Segway. We were driving down Fairfax at 12:30am and Chris said "Holy shit!" as he pointed out his window at the sidewalk. Yeah, there it was, in all its amazing gyroscopic glory. We slowed down and gawked from across the street as we rolled down the window and gave him our thumbs up and shouted "Right on!". The rider smiled and waved back at us." (read the rest)

[via BoingBoing]

Sieburg is moving to the Bay Area, and he's flying in this morning. I'm picking him up at the airport in a few hours... Check out what Sherlock had to say about it (the chart in the bottom-right is the coolest):