The Onion Summarizes John Kerry's Platform

When the only tools you have are tools…

The Onion Summarizes John Kerry’s Platform.

This does seem to hit the nail on the head:

The Onion | Kerry Unveils One-Point Plan For Better America: Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry outlined his one-point plan for a better America: the removal of George W. Bush from the White House. “If I am elected in November, no inner-city child will have to live in an America where George Bush is president,” Kerry said, addressing a packed Maize High School auditorium. “No senior citizen will lie awake at night, worrying about whether George Bush is still the chief executive of this country. And no American regardless of gender, regardless of class, regardless of race will be represented by George Bush in the world community.”…

Kerry also spoke on the subject of national security. “This country has embraced a new and dangerously ineffective disregard for the world,” Kerry said. “In order to win the global war against terror, we must promote democracy, freedom, and opportunity around the world. My national-defense policy will be guided by one imperative: Don’t be George Bush. As will my plans to create a strong economy, protect civil rights, develop a better healthcare system, and improve homeland security.”

Joining Kerry at the podium, Edwards raised one issue not discussed by his running mate: the environment. “Let’s not forget one important point,” Edwards said. “We need to set a new standard of environmental excellence for America by renewing our nation’s promise of clean air, clean water, and a bountiful landscape for all. In the 21st century, we can have progress without pollution as long as we have a Dick Cheney-free White House.”

[Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]

Harry Wessel on blogs in the workplace

This is a pointer to an overview of blogging by Harry Wessel of the Orlando Sentinel. It’s been popping up in various newpapers and been pointed to by various bloggers. This time it shows up in St. Louis, which is my old home town. Maybe someone from my high school days will get in touch. I don’t love the editorial slant that got put on it, but I’m not trying to sell papers. And most organizations are likely to think of risks before they see opportunity.

On the other hand, I did get to have a good chat with Harry while he was writing it courtesy of an introduction by Buzz. Better yet, I got a good quote and they spelled my name right! Here’s what Harry had to say:

Jim McGee, director of the Huron Consulting Group in Chicago, said blogs are among “the most important developments in technology in doing knowledge work that we’ve seen in 15 years.”

McGee is a former clinical professor of information technology at Northwestern University’s business school, and he’s an influential blogger (mcgeesmusings.net).

“I track something like 320 sites that are relevant to my work,” McGee said. “In terms of leveraging my time as a knowledge worker, I have at least an order of magnitude of maybe 100 times improvement in my productivity. If part of your job is to be informed, this is the fastest way to do it.”

A few minor quibbles. I’m not the Director of Huron, I’m one of many; it’s a big place. Also, what I remember saying was that blogging gives me between an order of magnitude and a 100 times improvement in productivity. I can see how Harry transcribed it as he did in our phone interview. It’s a reminder to me to be mindful of how what I say is likely to be heard.

STLToday: Blog slog can get you in trouble in the workplace. Sensible words of warning: don’t blog about your sex life or your boss’s dirty laundry without considering the impact it could have on your job security. At some jobs, it doesn’t really matter what you blog about; you boss or… [Business Blog Consulting]

Buzz and Charley from street level

Buzz continues to keep us up to date on the view from the street in Florida. As Ernie says, Buzz is a great storyteller. I wish it took something less than a hurricane to get him posting regularly.

Charley…the second morning after…. Sunday morning, hot humid, but life seems to be creeping back to normal. Rumors that friends have power float by. Starbuck’s is jammed, bagel shops sold out, but grocery stores seem to be humming, particularly the take out food sections…. [buzzmodo]

Einstein and Freud Go to a Bar, and Freud Says . . .

A review by David Gelernter of The Invisible Century which examines how Einstein and Freud went about thinking. Definitely something I intend to check out.

Einstein and Freud Go to a Bar, and Freud Says . . .. Richard Panek argues that Einstein and Freud revolutionized intellectual history by running thought experiments, not interpreting evidence. By By DAVID GELERNTER. [The New York Times > Science]

More on Woody Guthrie’s sense of humor

I don’t get a whole lot of comments here, but when I do get them they are generally well worth sharing. I thought this one was worth elevating to the level of its own post.

Comment on post 4343 on 8/10/04 by mrG. Woody had more than a sense of humour, he actually lived what he preached, and as yet another proof, here’s a story I first heard from Utah Phillips and later had it confirmed from someone who had toured with and heard it from Steve Goodman: The story goes Woody and Huddie (Leadbelly) walked into a NYC music publisher’s office to sell a new song they’d written. The publisher heard their song and knew it would be a hit, so he started fumbling through his desk to find a standard contract. Woody and Huddie said, “No need for all that. Gentleman’s deal: You pay us $50 cash, we shake on it, the song is yours.” You can imagine. The NYC bigshot music publisher’s eyes lit up with dollar signs. He peeled $50 out of his own wallet, gave it to those yokels and they gave him the sheet music, and they shook hands and parted. The NYC bigshot music publisher was ecstatic: He’d just bought a sure-fire chart-topping double-platinum hit for $50. Woody and Huddie were pretty happy too: That was the fifth NYC bigshot publishing company they’d sold it to that morning … By the time the lawyers were through with it, nobody owned the song, it became public domain, free for all, part of the artistic commons to be freely sung and resung by anyone with a mind to sing it. the song was “Goodnight Irene”.

The day After Tomorrow – Best Review

I would happily contribute to bribing this fellow to do more reviews of any movies where Hollywood butchers anything to do with science or logical thought, which ought to cover most films.

The day After Tomorrow – Best Review. Here is the review written by a paleontologist who bet the world that he would not see the film unless he was bribed $100 Another Gem by Jason… [Robert Paterson’s Weblog]

We need more reviews like this. A grassroots-derived review system. [A Man with a Ph.D. – Richard Gayle’s Weblog]

Stripe Snoop Homepage

Aren’t you just a little bit curious about what is hiding on the back of those credit cards in your wallet? I see some soldering iron time in my future.

  • Stripe Snoop Homepage.

    Stripe Snoop is a suite of research tools that captures, modifies, validates, generates, analyzes, and shares data from magstripe cards. The data is captured through different hardware interfaces (or stdin), the contents decoded into the correct character set, and then a CDDB-like database attempts to figure out what the contents mean.

    Originally a proof of concept for an interfacing project, and then a spin off from a research project, Stripe Snoop has matured in the definitive software for accessing and understanding magstripes.

    [Privacy Digest]

Friday Fun: A One-Minute Vacation

Just the ticket to refocus on a warm afternoon in Boston. Go check it out.

Friday Fun: A One-Minute Vacation — In case you can’t manage 2 1/2 weeks, the quiet american: one-minute vacation might help…

Surely you can spare a minute to clean your ears? Take a one-minute vacation from the life you are living. One-minute vacations are unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen. Sixty seconds of something else. Sixty seconds to be someone else.

Stick your earbuds into the audio out on your internet reading machine and try out this mp3…

may 24, 2004 – 800 KB — The recording was made in the back garden of my house in Manchester, UK, on the first of June, 2003, at around 9:30 p.m., when it was still light. This is one of those rare, fortuitous moments which will probably never happen again, at least to me. I had just switched on the MD and gone out of the back door to record the birdsong, when just at that very moment it started to rain. So I stood underneath our oaktree and kept recording. You can hear, amongst other things, blackbird, swifts, starlings, blue tits, and of course the rain on the leaves, gradually getting heavier. The equipment used: a Sony MD Walkman MZ-R700 and a Sony ECM-MS907 stereo mic. You must believe in spring indeed.

Chill out in these dog days of summer. [Frank Patrick’s Focused Performance]

Woody Guthrie had a sense of humor

Somedays the thing I worry about most is the total loss of humor that seems to infect lawyers and accountants, particularly those in the vicinity of intellectual property. In a world this complex, humor and perspective are more necessary than ever. Ultimately, this is why I expect the hacker mentality and ethic to prevail.

JibJab Threatened Over Use Of Woody Guthrie Song. For the last few weeks, the JibJab site and their amusing political parody of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” has been getting passed around the net. It’s well done, and deserves much of the praise it’s been getting. However, it appears the folks who own the rights to Woody Guthrie’s music are anything but pleased, and are demanding that JibJab stop distributing the flash movie. Their biggest complaint seems to be that “This puts a completely different spin on the song,” which will “damage” the song. Anyone who can’t see how utterly ridiculous this is has no job watching over Woody Guthrie’s music. Guthrie, after all, is the same singer who once put the following copyright notice on his work: “This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.” Apparently, no one told the folks at the humorless Richmond Organization. [Techdirt]