There’s a fascinating discussion about the future of the music industry—whether it has, or deserves, any future, and whether music will get worse if it gets cheaper, and whether you’d buy more CDs if they only cost $1, and many other things—here. Poke around Holbo’s blog a little while you’re at it. It’s thoughtful and erudite and funny, capturing just the kind of tone I aim at and miss so often.
Archive for September, 2003
As anyone who has been paying attention knows, the Bush administration is heavily leveraged. I mean Enron-style leveraged: they’ve gotten by so far purely on promises and public relations. They have no accomplishments to point to: the economy is in the tank, the deficit is huge, homeland security is under-funded, our international credibility is in the toilet, Afghanistan is reverting to tribal rule, and Iraq is a mess. Their support hangs entirely on trust: trust that things are going to get better, and that they are telling us the truth. As Enron found out, when you’re heavily leveraged, one small tremor can bring the whole enterprise tumbling down.
For the Bush administration, that tremor might finally be here.
Grip has discovered his hands. Actually, I don’t think he realizes that they are his hands, but he does get very excited when they happen to be in front of his face—particularly the mouth part of his face. He’s still trying to figure out which finger/thumb combination is the best for sucking.
Poor Grip’s face is covered in baby acne. He looks like a shrunken teenager. Thank goodness he can’t drive or pierce anything just yet.
MoveOn.org is a very cool grassroots political organization that has risen from modest roots to become a serious force in national politics. They raise a lot of money, quickly, for a variety of issues, and are attempting to build a media machine that can counteract the highly coordinated rightwing attack machine that has been pummeling the unorganized left for years. Everyone should join, of course, but my point in this post is to draw attention to a new email newsletter they offer.
Before Griffin was born I read and heard quite a bit about the difficulties many women have breastfeeding: cracked nipples, problems with the baby latching on, mastitis, etc. So, I was (I thought) fully prepared to have to work at it. Turns out we were lucky enough not to have any of those issues.
So there I am: 3:15am, laying in bed, just about to drift asleep after hours of obsessive online research of something or other, when Jen says, “can you change him?” Shake myself awake. Yes, I am a Dad, and I change diapers! To the fray!
Wesley Clark has officially declared that he is running for President as a Democrat, thus ending months and months of fevered speculation among political junkies like yours truly. On paper, Clark is a dream candidate-smart, articulate, strong-but-internationalist on national defense, moderate on domestic policy-but he has not been tested in the political realm at all.
Last evening, as I was frantically strapping my son into his carseat to dash to our neighborhood polling place in time to vote in the Seattle primaries (30 minutes before the deadline), I had occasion to wonder: why is voting such a hassle? The way we vote is, unlike almost any other activity in our 21st century lives, inflexible and user-unfriendly. We must show up at a particular place on a particular day between certain hours. We cannot choose a time that accommodates our schedules, nor can we vote from home. As a result, most people don’t vote.
I’ll join with everybody else in linking to this extremely interesting (and depressing) interview of Paul Krugman on Calpundit. While I’m at it, let me just plug both these guys, for the benefit of my (2 or 3) readers, who may not be familiar with them.