vedana.net

I saw Howard Dean speak today. He gets it, and I'm not surprised why.

Literally the first thing he mentioned was how weblogs have been fundamental to evolving his platform and campaign since their beginning. Then he talked about MeetUp and how it enables 131,000 Dean supporters (3x as many as the next largest one) to coordinate campaign efforts. Later he plugged biodiesel and explained how it's not just some "Vermont birkenstock fad," but one of the primary ways by which we can wean ourselves off foreign oil.

Nelson was there too, here's his take. And my blurry photos.

Via Steven Berlin Johnson, it looks like they've got a new campaign slogan: "Because Democracy is Not a Spectator Sport." Brilliant, imho.

Kick some ass, guys. Maybe I'll join you soon.

SiliconValley.com, Vietnam embracing open-source products:

"Microsoft Windows and Office cost at least $140 in Vietnam -- way out of reach for most people, where the per capita annual income is roughly $420."

...

"They are promoting a plan that would require all state-owned companies and government ministries to use open source by 2005. And they would require all computers assembled in Vietnam to be sold with open-source products installed on them."

I just got off the phone with Seth Kugel of the New York Times, who's doing a story on how Americans perceive Cuba as a travel destination. Apparently he found my blog post about it on Daypop, and wanted to follow up because I've not yet traveled there (but would like to). The article should be appearing in the Escapes section next Friday, November 7th.

Here come the karma police. More: space.com, Yahoo, CNN, Reuters

Evidently I'm intrigued with vietnamese cinnamon powder... But of course!

[Thanks Dom]

Here are my favorite Panther tricks so far:

• Word completion in Cocoa text fields/views
• Exposé + Tab key

Wow, Panther is fast.

We can relate, Dan.

Excellent, Tourism industry ups pressure to lift Cuba travel ban. Cuba's near the top of my list of places to travel. Why? Like Burma it's nearly untouched by western commercialism (and tourists), thanks to 41 years of US trade embargo.

And I'd like to witness Buena Vista before a tidal wave of American pop culture sweeps it away forever...

Heh, Christina Blogs for Jesus

Christopher Baskind doesn't know this yet, but he provided me with a tremendous amount of inspiration and understanding last week, as I was exploring the troublesome depths of reactive nature at Dhamma Mahavana.

The phrase, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" comes to mind... See, meditation is simply something one practices, but I didn't grok this until last week. In conversation one day, Christopher mentioned how many pleasant places there must be here in the SF Bay Area to "practice," practice meaning meditate. And it started to sink in for me intellectually that meditation needn't (and shouldn't) be a monumental struggle, but rather a practice one approaches objectively.

However, intellect is only a tiny variable in the equation of true understanding; direct, applied experience is what really teaches. And this happened for me on Day 3. The notion that I was merely practicing, combined with the 5-minute breaks between each hour-long sit, allowed me to approach each painful hour as simple practice rather than the intense, frightening struggles they'd been in the past.

Thanks Christopher!

BizStone.com: "Biz Stone joins Blogger team: There goes the blogosphere"

To quote Christine (represent!), I'm hella stoked.

An otherwise normal day turned into a schwaglicious one, thanks to Shellen thanks to David Czarnecki & Marc Brown. Thanks guys!

There's an excellent interview with our fearless leader (yup) over at CNET, except for them misspelling the word 'weblog:'

"As it does for thousands of people who use the Web logging (or blogging) tool to publish online, Blogger enables Google employees to update personal pages within seconds to the company intranet."

---

"We're all about giving anyone a voice, and Google's all about finding out what's important on the Web by what people link to and what people say."

Driving home from Dhamma Mahavana this afternoon, I happened upon a red Ferrari in Woodside (note the statistics), whose vanity license plate read "1 of 15." A massive wave of utter disgust swept over me, having spent the past 8 days working on ego-dissolution in intense meditation.

Anicca. (it's pronounced ah-NEE-cha.)

Then as I approached Kings Mountain Road (a gorgeous, windy mountain road climbing through the redwoods of Huddart Park) I got stuck behind an ugly monstrosity of a machine. It belched nasty fumes and deafening noise all the way up the mountain. At 15 mph.

Anicca.

Then I checked my email: 586 messages, 400 of them spam.

Anicca.

Dhamma.org: "Satipatthana Sutta courses have the same timetable and discipline as 10-day courses. The evening discourses examine the Satipatthana Sutta. In this text, the Buddha systematically explained the technique of Vipassana. These courses are open to serious old students who have completed at least three 10-day courses, have not been practicing any other meditation techniques since their last 10-day course, have been practicing this technique of Vipassana for at least one year, and who are trying to maintain the Five Precepts."

Here I go again...

  I had a dream last night that clever members of the California citizenry had already begun work on Recall #2, and that I could drive to work this morning with a "Recall Arnold" bumper sticker on the back of my car.

Then I woke up to absolute absurdity, as bad as the utter foolishness of the so-called war in Iraq. Mike the Buffalo (happy birthday!) wrote a drunken rant about it. Dom wrote a song about it (wanna hear it?). Sutter thinks it's time for the Bay Area (which voted 80% against the cabrón) to secede. Shellen, ever forward-looking, outlined a strategy for the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate. And Tony Pierce comfortingly reaffirms us that anything, alas, is still possible.

Me? I'm leaving Friday for an 8-day Satipatthana course. And fortunately, Panther is coming.

Bill Maher, Recalls Are for Cars, Not California Governors:

"Yes, in baseball when the team stinks, you fire the manager. But you don't fire him because it rains. And you don't let the opposing team choose a new manager for you."

"And you don't fire him between innings. And replace him with a Viennese weightlifter."

For G$, from Best of Craigslist:

my high school freshman english teacher had us read ayn rand's "anthem" and i fell in love. over the next few years i bought or was given several of her books.

however, any time i'd start reading one of them, my mom would say that i was acting like an asshole. i had to assume that there was some correlation.

now, i sorta consider myself an anti-capitalist anarchist. if you have to put a label on it.

but i still have all these ayn rand books.

perhaps you have a similar yet opposite story and we can respectfully trade off the errors of our youth.

Mer always has the funniest iChat status lines...

VoteArianna.com: The Special Interest Brothel

Happy voting!

[via Natala]

Maná rocked Shoreline last night, it was a magical show. I first heard them in an Internet café in Morelia, 9/12/2001 (the date recalled for obvious reasons). I consider them the "Bon Jovi with a U2 twist" of the Spanish-speaking world, due to the hair and humanitarianism. Favorites from last night were, No Ha Parado de Llover, Corazon Espinado (pic | from Santana's Supernatural album), Justicia, Tierra Y Libertad (pic) & Mariposa Traicionera from their new album. They even had a rotating drum set, 80s-style.

Go get 'em, Paul: "Given the magnitude of the issues that have been raised, and their potential impact on the security and stability of the Internet, the DNS and the .com and .net top level domains, VeriSign must suspend the changes to the .com and .net top-level domains introduced on 15 September 2003 by 6:00 PM PDT on 4 October 2003. Failure to comply with this demand by that time will leave ICANN with no choice but to seek promptly to enforce VeriSign's contractual obligations."

Update: Looks like it worked...

Some un-natural light photos of my new apartment, as well as a 3.4 meg video clip of a brief walkthrough. I'll snap some more this weekend, when I'll actually *be there* during daylight hours.

It's hidden by the trees in the upper-left corner of this photo.

ExtremePumpkins.com

Highlights: Photo Gallery, Power Tools, Design Strategy and Fire, Light & Pyrotechnics.

[via sidesh0w]

Via Mike, an excellent new t-shirt from the defective yeti.