New Commenting System

Student Nerds, my other blog, recently switched over to Disqus to host their commenting. Since I want to try to keep stuff as simple as possible to manage and inegrate, I have done so as well. I tried to preserve old comments but that was a bit tricky so we will see if it works. I hope you guys find the new commenting equal to or greater than Intensedebate. If people feel a preference however, let me know and I will certainly consider switching back.

A Moment

A lot is going to be written and has been written about the inauguration tomorrow. Some people are already cynical. But I'm not one of them. I came home after watching Che in the theaters last night, a movie that will warrant a blog post later, and I turned on a replay of the concert at the Lincoln Memorial. It was Bruce Springsteen playing his (awesome) song "The Rising" a song about 9/11 nonetheless for the President-Elect. And I thought about Lincoln, and about the Blood, the gallons and gallons of American blood that was spilled in the civil war, I thought about broken necks and burnt crosses and opportunities denied and about fire hoses and German Sheppard and jim crow and brown and the Topeka board and so many things that happened before me, but so many things that are bigger than any of us ever will be on our own.

This is an inauguration, and the peaceful transfer of power is always a cause for celebration. But it's more than that, it's the culmination, or at least a waypoint on the journey that all those events above lead to.

Tomorrow will be historic, and tomorrow will be world changing.
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Red v Blue

This is from an old story on 538.com (which if you're interested in politics and NOT reading 538, that needs to change) http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/12/red-states-gaining-ground-but-migration.htmlThe analysis basically outlines what has been a growing trend in the past decade, or historically blue states losing population and historically red states gaining. I think on the surface that might be something that a progressive would be worried about, putting their control of Congress at risk but I don't think that's the whole story. The states gaining seats are almost universally Southern or Western states, and they include many states who Nate Silver is classifying as Red, but who went for Obama in '08 or at least where Obama had a significant and surprising showing, AZ, FL, GA, NC, OR, WA, SC. Really the only states who are gaining seats that are truly Red are TX and UT. I think it's important to keep in mind that gaining a seat is a backwards looking event. These States already have the population that is going to give them the additional representation. So if that holds, maybe the fact that Obama won is not inspite of the growth of these states, but because of it. If Latino immigrants (a voting bloc that the Republicans squandered and lots) are swelling the population of the Sun Belt, it's more and more likely that this last bastion of Republican strength is eroding. I think that this, more than anything should be the clarion call to the GOP that they need to reinvent themselves and reconsider those issues that keep them from being winner these voters. The conservative and republican message can be very compelling if presented the right way, this is a classic need for re-branding and realigning to meet the changing times. The Obama election is just one data point, and certainly his success does not exist in a vacuum, a product of demographics alone, but it revolutionary impact cannot and should not be dismissed. The country as always is changing and it's important that both parties work to change with it, otherwise they will increasingly find themselves irrelevant.

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Super Diamond

Went to the Neil Diamond tribute band, Super Diamond last night at House of Blues Chicago. It was a lot of Fun.

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Is Slow Growth Always Worse?

One of the underlying themes that has played a central role in the debate about stimulus, tax cuts, and reviving the economy in general is that advocates of the free market seem apolcolytpically opposed to any systemic changes that they feel will lead to slower growth once the economy gets back on it's feet.  The idea that even though the rapid growth of the financial and housing sectors (which coupled with the decline of our industrial base formed a increasingly larger part of the mid-2000's economy) is a major, major fundamental cause of the sever recession that we are in, that this should be the benchmark of our return to "normal" seems insane to me? Would a slightly lower normal rate of growth, measured by GDP or per capita consumption or whatever, necessarily be a bad thing?I'm not suggesting that people start sacrificing their quality of life here, or that we retreat into austerity as some sort of penance for our sinful ways, merely that we check the previously insatiable demand for more and more consumption.  Rather than bigger boats, bigger houses, and bigger debt. What if people read more, or saw more AAA baseball games or grabbed a beer rather than a vacation down Mexico way.  Downsized the house a bit. 10,000sq ft is a lot,  a lot more than a couple needs.  I think that though the GDP might take a hit, the growth that we do experience will be fundamentally stronger, and if you ignore GDP as the only measure of quality of life, then we might be living better lives as well.
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Gender and the Modern Experience

I could have twittered this link. But I felt that the pictures were funny (and maybe true) enough to warrant a post.


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Apple and the Closed System

This probably deserves a longer post, but I just wanted to make a few quick observations about Steve Job's announcement today that he will be taking a 6-month leave of absence.

1. From a corporate finance perspective this is nuts, we are in a deep recession, near-depression where trust is one of the most valuable assets. And here we basically have confirmation of what most of the "in-the-know" people have known for a long time, that is that Job's is dying. But Apple has decided that lying about this is better. That is short-term thinking and untrustworthy. They will pay for this

2. This lack of disclosure is very much in Apple's DNA. They are a closed company. Music with DRM everywhere (that is now changing with iTunes+ but too little too late I say), iPods and iPhones you have to hack or jailbreak to get to function like a normal device and so on and so forth. Open always beats closed, in corporations, in technology, in society and so on. Apple's had a great run, but this closed system of theirs, and the corporate structure that it gives birth too has caught up to them. The "IBM-Compatible" machine won the 1980's platform war, and not because of the IBM part of the equation.

3. I hope apple sticks around, not cause I look forward to their new devices or their new laptops etc, but because they are the constant reminder that to win, to stay competitive, companies products and devices must constantly become more flexible, more adaptive and more useful or design and UI-geeks will catch you. If we didn't have an iPhone, we wouldn't have a Palm Pre. If we didn't have OS X, we wouldn't have windows 7. Apple is important in what it inspires others to do. And that's an important role indeed.


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Click after Reading

I want to give a shout out to my blogger-buddy in arms Lowell on a great first post. Some of the best times of my life have been spent listening to Lowell talk, especially about the Saw series of movies or about his love of dogs. If his blog is anything like those conversations, it's a must read for entertaiment, commentary and insight. Here's a link to his first post

http://lowellforthesoul.blogspot.com/2009/01/company-open-house-true-view.html

check it out

Traitor

I just saw Traitor with Don Cheadle. It was a pretty good movie, especially for the "Thriller" genre. I recommend seeing it for sure.

One of the most appealing parts for me was how it treated Islam. Unlike many of the other recent action movies set in the middle east, the Muslim characters in this movie was not defined as "good" or "bad" based upon how close to Western values they adhered, in fact we see the main character (cheadle) pray on a muslim pray rug a number of times, speak arabic and recite the Koran a number of times. This is a big deal to me as I feel that as a culture, our acceptance or rejection of others, especially on religious grounds, is an important part of our identity.

I try to be very tolerant of other people's views, I certainly don't always succeed to the extent that I should, but I try. But there is a certain set of beliefs that I have no interest in understanding or absorbing, and that is religious intolerance. It disgusted me during the most recent election to here people say "well, Obama's a Muslim so I can't vote for him." Or some variation of that. Thankfully, this sentiment is mostly contained to right-wing fring elements of the political discourse, (not exactly a demo that BHO had a good shot at winning over anyway) nevertheless it was very disheartening to me to hear.

But I don't worry too much. Because we as a nation have always listened to our better angles shout down our lesser demons when it come to religion. True, we have never elected a non-christian to the presidency, but there was a time when people spoke of JFK being Catholic in the same ways that people now speak of BHO (falsely) being Muslim. But we rose above. We do always rise above. This may seem to be a long way from my original point about Traitor being a good movie, but they are related. For Pop Culture to produce a movie with an appealing muslim character, with real (albeit superficial) muslim characteristics, that is a step forward. That is moving in the right direction and it is a signal that faith in us as a tolerant, accepting and therefore decent people is not misplaced.

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Comments are on

There might have been an issue with the comment system earlier. I refreshed and now they should be working...sorry for the issues.

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