Category: 2004 US Election

Gravity Monkey:

First, once you fire up red | blue, the phone either connects to the GPS on your phone and gets your latitude and longitude, or asks you to input your U.S. address (depending on your version of the application). The phone then connects to the internet to send that information to the Gravity Monkey servers.

A special thanks to Mike Frumin and FundRace for the geocoded FEC data and the inspiration — indeed, red | blue is merely a mobile extension of Mike and Eyebeam’s innovative web site. If you haven’t checked FundRace out yet, you really should.

Then, like a magical greenback Geiger counter, red | blue will tell you if you’re in Republican or Democratic territory, and will also show you the total amount of contributions for Republicans or Democrats in your area.

A simple algorithm calculates the optimal radius around your location to assess, then generates an index of red or blue that is weighted by proximity — that is, if you’re standing in a Republican town, but at the doorstep of a huge Democratic contributor, the index will lean towards blue.

[via]

Who’s ripe for invasion next? Iraq was hampered by the sanctions and their effect on it’s readiness, so the next candidate might put up more of a fight.

Despite the acknowledgment that the uranium claim was dubious, Rice said the rest of the president’s case for going to war was solid. It was based on assessments by intelligence agencies that Iraq was actively procuring nuclear scientists and designs for a weapon, and might be able to have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade, she said.

By this standard, the list of targets is pretty long: in our own hemisphere, I can see Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil all being able to design and build a bomb by 2010. Venezuela has oil, too. And when you see how tantalizingly close the Ariane spaceport (“Any mass, any orbit, anytime”) is, gosh, they are much more a threat than Iraq was.

Of course, there’s North Korea, but we can’t do anything there without China’s approval: wouldn’t be prudent.

Where else is a threat, based on those terms? We missed our chance to nip India and Pakistan in the bud and they don’t have oil anyway. Anywhere near the Spratly Islands we could take a look at? Oil and gas potential, says the Factbook, undoubtedly why these uninhabited rocks are claimed by six countries.

Continue reading “Axis of [potential] evil”

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 554 This mailbox is full. Please try again later. for joshtpm@xxxxxx.xxx
Giving up on xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.

Isn’t it the current president who has said time and time again how he won’t let foreign governments have veto power over US policy? How does that square with his insistence on some complex 6-way talks over N Korea to mollify China? I’m not saying the 6 way talks aren’t a better way to go — I have no idea — but this sounds a lot like “read my lips, no new taxes” or “no US troops on nation-building adventures.”

After my experiments of last night with linking my “Now playing” tags to tracks at iTMS, I realize it will work too rarely to be useful to anyone. See the graphic: from that album, only one track is available and it’s not the one that’s playing. (and on the track playing now — listed below — the only tracks I could find by searching for “magazine” were audiobook selections from Penthouse magazine [now you can even skip reading the articles and have them read to you?], nothing by the artist.)

So I suppose the best way to do this would be to extend what I already do and embed the affiliate-linked URL in the Comment ID3 tag and let ecto drop that in when the iTunes button is pressed. But since a. I already have Amazon metadata for my existing library, and b. so few tracks are available, why bother?

And on a related note, why doesn’t Apple include that information in the tracks it sells through iTMS? I bought Elvis Costello’s “Delivery Man” today and the only way I can link to iTMS so you might buy it (and credit me) is to track down the affiliate program link maker, not the other one. If they even included the product ID, we could build the HTML around that. As it is now, I have a custom tag that, given an ASIN number (B0002VEPL2), will build an Amazon affiliate link.

Now playing: Stuck by Magazine from the album “The Correct Use Of Soap” | Buy it

Poynter Online – Forums

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: “Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?”

The truth will out: no matter how hard the ideologues try to manage information, the facts will come out, their incompetence and hubris revealed. It’s very late, with thousands killed to save face for a few armchair warriors: I hope it’s not too late.

I have to wonder if Cat Stevens’s recent troubles with the US government (or “How to alienate moderate muslims in one easy step”) will lead to a resurgence in popularity for hits like Peace Train [iTMS].

. . . . just now driving home I had a revelation: perfectly ordinary station, perfectly ordinary night, and the next song was Cat Stevens singing “Peace Train”. I laughed aloud at the thought that the unintended consequence of this particular bit of nonsense is that the Department of Homeland Security has now created the anthem of the opposition movement. Nobody will be able to hear that song, and especially not Stevens singing it, without thinking of it in a new way. Will this make us more secure or less?

I see Keb’ Mo’ has a collection of 60s-era protest standards [iTMS] as well. Where will it all lead?

I was surprised to learn that there is an easier — and better — way to get an almond essence in a plum-based pastry. The flavor is already there, in the plum kernel. Inside the pit is a small almond-shaped nut, perhaps a quarter the size of an almond: the taste is more like marzipan. The kernel is actually the seed, with the pit serving as a protective coating.

My father is responsible for telling me about this: it seems his mother assigned him the task of cracking the pits for their kernels so she could use them in jam herself. I’ll follow her lead.
Continue reading “Colonel Plum’s poison”

Suddenly, there are more and more records selling 10,000 to 500,000 copies each year, and less and less selling 1 million to 10 million. To put it simply, the patterns that used to govern sales no longer work. The industry’s biggest successes are now small ones.

Industry insiders are just as confused by the good news as they are by the bad. Here are the kinds of questions they’ve been asking themselves: Why doesn’t Eminem break out on the order of the Beatles and sell 10 million copies of every release? Why can’t Britney, Whitney, Madonna and Mariah make hits like they used to? Why can’t the Strokes break through to the mainstream, stymied at 500,000 units shifted? Conversely, they wonder how a one-off Sub Pop release like the Postal Service’s Give Up — a mash-up of the niche genres of bedroom electronica and emo-punk — has sold well over 250,000 copies. How could Matador sell a half-million copies of the debut by an unheralded New York band like Interpol? Why are bands like Modest Mouse, the Shins, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Wilco selling hundreds of thousands of records, where a few years ago they would have — optimistically — sold 50 thousand?

Interesting look at how the music business has changed, how we’re seeing more music by more artists, and the resulting decline of the mega-stars: it’s worth reading.

This image is available as a calendar, if you like it.