offhand remarks

Here's a question:

Is the idea of shamelessly pimping your goods or services with "all proceeds going to [insert disaster victims here]" a uniquely American and/or 21st Century idea? Or is it just serendipity and the fact that in the New New New Economy, everyone is a marketer and, like marketers of days gone by, they have no soul?

Or, more likely, am I just offended because I was taught that anonymous charity was the highest form of the stuff?

Hanging out on the high road,

your pal,

H.

Best Chuck Taylor Ad Evar

(via The Big Picture)

On a related note: The stuff going on in Iran is simultaneously frightening and thrilling, but mostly thrilling since all of the abuse-of-power elements are pretty much a given, in my worldview. I truly hope they get some progress out of this cataclysm. Looking at the people taking to the streets, it seems like they deserve it.

Minors and "Minority Report"

It occurs to me, watching this Microsoft teaser reel for Project Natal, that it will indeed be the 12-year-old kids that get to live in the sci-fi future while the homicide police, pictured using similar technology* in Minority Report, will be stuck with Cold-War-era PCs and old copies of Excel.

* Similar, but more primitive. There were control gloves, as I recall.

This is really funny...

Great bit by Louis CK. Too bad about the resolution and aspect ratio on this YouTube clip. I mean, I'm just broadcasting NETWORK TELEVISION on my BLOG. Why isn't it in HD? Geez...

I'm So Ready for the Next Four Years...

I got new shoes! Hooray!

(And the whole new government administration thing is cool, too.)

I'm wondering...

The President-Elect seems to like giving press conferences and answering questions from the press corps. Does anyone know when he passed the number of Press Conferences and Q&As that GWB gave in the past 8 years? I suppose, technically, that Bush could turn on the afterburners and give a whole bunch in the next month, but I really don't think he's going to catch up.

I have a new blood-pressure medication...

Wassup

A Great Day in California

Today's news is really wonderful -- that the California Supreme Court has overturned two laws that stood in the way of same-sex marriages. It's a ray of hope in what's been a pretty dark decade so far for my country.

Of course, there was a mind-blowing moment that accompanied the news. It came in the form of this little bit of context:

The California Supreme Court was the first state high court to strike down a law barring interracial marriage, in a 1948 decision called Perez v. Sharp. The United States Supreme Court did not follow suit until 1967.

I'm not exactly sure what that says about the pace of justice in America, but looking at these issues in hindsight, it certainly seems like we're taking way too long to sort out "All men are created equal."

Story of Our Lives

Jenny and I met at a reading at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park on May 17, 2000. We both knew Charles Baxter from our college days. Jenny had taken a couple of classes from Charlie at Michigan. I'd met him when he was a visiting writer at George Mason. We hadn't both seen Charlie since before we got married. In fact, we hadn't seen him in a very long time -- not until his recent appearance at Stanford University, where he read from his new book, The Soul Thief, and was as charming and wonderful as ever. It was good to catch up with him after all these years. Here's a blurry photo to commemorate the occasion...