Sailing
2010-02-08 09:25

I heard that the America's Cup Races were coming up and got excited. Then I caught up on two years of litigation between two zillionaires battling to run the show. As you might expect, all that money and ego has crapped up the race.

They're going to sail multi-hulls, which go scary fast in a straight line, don't like to tack and really hate to jibe. So we'll get the equivalent of a drag race on water. All technology, no tactics. They're allowing motorized winches and pumped ballast, so no crew athleticism is required. You probably could sail one of those mothers with a Nintendo joystick.

It may be an amusing way to piss away money, but it's not the America's Cup.

Pendulum
2010-02-06 09:19

Boy, that was a fast swing of the pendulum. A year ago the Democrats won their dream election and began their reign burdened with a nasty recession. They continued Bush's conventional pump-money-into-the-economy policy, but botched it with continuing TARP favoritism and stimulus mismanagement. While the nation worried about jobs and deficits, the politicians obsessed over healthcare reform, which everyone knew would be crazy expensive, no matter what Nancy Pelosi said.

In reaction, the nation is taking a hard swing to the fiscal right--lower taxes, lower deficits, and less government. The most interesting part may be that the movement seems somewhat neutral on social issues, focusing on the core concerns that unite them. The Tea Party started out looking like a bag of loonies but is quickly becoming a serious and formidable political force. They mean to take the country back, whatever that means.

This fall is going to be hilarious.

This has got to stop
2010-02-01 11:06

She's the mayor of Tampa, for cryin' out loud.

Class meets trash
2010-02-01 08:52

Taylor vs. Britney. Tough decision.

Down
2010-02-01 08:32

I just tried to Tweet my followers to let them know that Twitter is down.

Symbols
2010-01-31 09:23

The principal political divide around here is between those who believe that the community should manage its growth a bit and those who believe that the more thoughtful approach is to let 'er rip. A let 'er rip party candidate for county commissioner towed a little house on wheels into town, put it in the parking lot of a title insurance company and plastered it with his placards. I commented on the overt symbolism to Jeanne, and she said that she hadn't made the connection. I am going to e-mail the candidate and, as a communications professional, recommend that he add a bulldozer.

iPad
2010-01-28 09:33

iPad. It's as good a time as any to declare print media dead. Newspapers, magazines, books. And cell phones, and smart phones, and PDAs. Tablets will soon include phone, camera, internet access, etc. They will be the all-purpose device. They will get lighter and thinner, but they will not get a smaller frame, because people will quickly discover that the larger screen makes everything better. They will replace the briefcase. They will have handles or straps or bags or something and they will become as normal as a wearing a watch (remember watches?). Get used to it.

Maybe I should buy one.

Just a regular guy
2010-01-25 08:23

Tweet
2010-01-24 10:36

Jeanne sent this graph to me. We both had the initial impression that it shows that Twitter popularity is sliding. This morning I looked more closely. It shows that month-to-month growth is sliding. Twitter is growing more slowly. That's not surprising, given that it has 48 bazillion users. Who's left to join? And notice that the current "low" growth rate is 3.5% per month. That's 42% per year, a rate that any business would consider an insane success.

Here are three more stats from the same report:
• Today the average Twitter account has 300 followers; in July, it had 70.
• The average account now follows 173 accounts; in July it was only following 47.
• The average account today has posted 420 updates; in July that number was 119.

I think that the tweet-per-person ratio will decline; it probably is declining already. People get a Twitter account and after a few weeks they stop tweeting. But they keep watching. It's like television. 95% of all families have a TV, but very few families are on TV. And of those that are on TV, 95% shouldn't be.

Bad health
2010-01-22 09:20

After a year of alternately making us livid and boring us to tears, health-care reform is now massively screwed up. Scott Brown's election has little to do with that. His arrival merely puts a period at the end of the sentence. Reform was screwed up by Nancy Pelosi, who shoved a gargantuan, expensive, government-heavy bill through the Senate, repeatedly granting offensive special favors in the process, only to discover that the more common-sense Democrats in the House wanted nothing to do with her grandiose schemes. If Pelosi and her colleagues had been more restrained, if they had coordinated with the House instead of proceeding on their own arrogant course, if they had heeded the rise of public discontent, health-care reform would already be a done deal.

And some credit for the debacle must go to President Obama, who largely stood by and watched it unfold. Pity.