Happy Birthday to you

Happy 20^th birthday to the Macintosh, without whom...

American Research Group

Here's the American Research Group New Hampshire Democratic Tracking Poll. Keep in mind that this is a 3-day tracking poll, so the numbers shown are an aggregate of the last three days. What's interesting to me are the notes at the bottom: Dean's in 3^rd but his slide has stopped, and Clark's in 2^nd but he's dropped to his lowest number since 4 Jan. It'll be interesting to keep an eye on this over the next few days, as I really think that the Howard/Judy interview should help turn things around.

Sometimes it really is a conspriracy

This good post on the Orcinus blog nicely defines the differences between conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies. Since it's a common tactic of the right to howl "conspiracy theory" when they're called on the carpet, it's good to have some characteristics that help separate the wheat from the chaff.

Cory Doctorow speaks

Cory Doctorow's going to be talking to NBMA Jan. 28 on Copyright, the Web, and Innovation. Tickets are $10 each... and we have some free passes to give away.

If you're interested, reply in the comments. First come first serve, but if you offer to take us out to dinner that night you get bumped to the front of the line.

BushCare = NoCare

From The New Republic (subscription required), the article Sick Joke explains why Bush's proposals to expand health care coverage in this country aren't worth a damn:

Suddenly sensitive to the fact that 44 million Americans have no health insurance while millions more fear losing it because of skyrocketing premiums, the White House has spent the last few days promising that this year's State of the Union address would include a new plan to make health insurance more affordable.

But there was nothing "new" about the "plan" President Bush unveiled last night. It was a hodgepodge of ideas he first touted as a presidential candidate in April 2000, and that he has deployed strategically whenever the polls show health insurance affordability is an issue. More important, it's unlikely these ideas will make health insurance "more affordable"--at least, not for the people who most need the help.

The ideas are so unserious they're barely worth considering, except insofar as they demonstrate just how far out of touch this White House really is.

...

All of these things cost money, naturally--between $50 and $90 billion a year--which is why all of the Democratic candidates are proposing to repeal some or all of the Bush tax cuts to pay for them. But this deal is a no-brainer. Because health insurance is so prohibitively expensive when individuals buy it on their own, the extra cash they'd get from tax cuts isn't nearly as valuable as access to government-provided group coverage, which is essentially what the Democratic plans would provide. It's clear Bush sees the trade-off differently: He'd rather give the money away as tax cuts--most of them for the wealthy--than help people get insurance. What remains to be seen is whether the millions of voters who say health care is a top election concern will grasp this before November.

Good Eats ringtone

Tom was smart enough to understand the real reason I was hoping that GarageBand could export midi files, and was able to find me this Good Eats ringtone. Polyphonic, even!

Go away, Coach

Last night, after the caucuses were over, I watched the Edwards and Dean speeches to their supporters. Now, these speeches weren't just to the people in the room; they were being carried live on CNN and elsewhere. And the candidates knew that. So for many people who are just tuning in to the political season, it was a good place to bring in some new supporters. Bluntly, Edwards passed the test; Dean failed. Edwards' speech was a version of his latest stump speech, and he delivered it beautifully. Edwards talked about taking the victory as the first step in improving America. Dean, on the other hand, was shouting, almost ranting, and his message was about going on to crush the opposition in the future wherever they are, so he could win. I'm a Dean supporter, and I thought his speech was really bad, almost scary. Today, it's being played in some press as "Dean goes nuts," and you can bet videotape on that speech has already landed on the desks at the RNC. The campaign's been fighting the "Dean is angry" meme for months; now this is just going to make it worse. There was a good comment on the Value Judgment blog:

Last night I was hoping for rather more of the Determined, Plain-Speaking Statesman (a la the Announcement and Common Sense speeches) and rather less of the Pumped-Up Wrestling Coach. In fact, if the Coach never shows up again, you've got a better chance. I'm a committed supporter of yours and I was taken aback.

I totally agree.

The Dean Deluge

Now that Dean has come in third in the Iowa caucuses, worse than expected, expect lots of "Dean is doomed" stories in the next few days. We won't know what's really going on with his campaign until after New Hampshire in another week, I think. If Dean doesn't come in first there, I think he'll be in real trouble. He's still ahead of everyone else by around 10 points, so it will be interesting to see how strong Kerry's and Edwards' bounce out of Iowa is. The positive thing for Dean is that his loss in Iowa will mean that other candidates will turn more towards attacking each other. The constant attacks from the whole field (not to mention a lot of nasty, biased press) on Dean in the past two weeks clearly had an effect.

Happy Google Hacks

Tara Calishain, lead author of Google Hacks, has declared this to be Happy Google Hacks Week and is offering a free hack every day at her site. Check it out.

Good price on iBooks

Meryl dropped me a note to let me know that Amazon's selling the Apple iBook Notebook 12.1" M9164LL/A (800-MHz PowerPC G4, 256 MB RAM, 30 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) for $993.99 after rebate. Considering that the list price is $1099, and that Amazon doesn't charge shipping or taxes, that's a pretty good deal. You'll need more RAM, though.

Political Junkie's Nirvana

One of the best things about the rise of the blogosphere is the incredible wealth of reports from dozens of bloggers on the ground where things are happening. If you're a political junkie like me, getting the detailed blow-by-blows at places like Daily Kos is like heaven.

America as a One-Party State

Via Electrolite, here's a real horror story: America as a One-Party State. Read it. Now.

Which iPod to buy?

Sean asked for and rececived a bunch of Amazon.com gift certificates as his holiday gifts so that he could buy an iPod. The question now is, which one to buy? The choices are:

• New 4 GB iPod Mini: $249.
  $/GB: $62, but it's darn cool looking.
• New 10 GB iPod: $220 (or so) from resellers through Amazon.com.
  $/GB: $22.
• New 15 GB iPod: $295.
  $/GB: $20.
• Used 2nd gen 20 GB iPod: $250 (or so) from Mom, based on what similar items are going for on eBay.
  $/GB: $12.50 (and then Mom will buy herself a new one).

Keep in mind, also, that (1) he owns a total of two CDs, and (2) he's already using Tom's old 96 MB Rio which is easily able to hold his entire music collection. But what he wants is an iPod.

So, should he buy now or wait? If now, which should he buy? Vote now in the comments!

Iowa Caucus site

The Iowa Democratic Party Caucus resource site is at Caucus2004.org. I'll be keeping a close eye on this page tomorrow. Go Dean!

CA Taxes at work

A bill, ACR 144, was recently introduced into the California State Assembly. Here's the summary:

This measure would urge the California Building Standards Commission to adopt building standards that promote Feng Shui principles and publish these standards in the California Building Standards Code.

I'm beginning to suspect that CA actually did fall into the ocean and we just haven't yet noticed.