“Use the Web, Luke” – Presidential Candidates Embrace the Web

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Peter Gosselin:

In choosing the Internet to announce she intends to run for the presidency in 2008, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton bowed to the burgeoning political power of the medium and offered a preview of how she hopes to harness it to her purposes.

In declaring “I’m in” the White House race in a video clip on her new campaign website, HillaryClinton.com, the New York Democrat did considerably more than simply appear before the cameras; she invited supporters to join an almost Oprah Winfrey-like session of give and take.

“Let’s talk. Let’s chat. Let’s start a dialogue about your ideas and mine…. ” she told viewers.”With a little help from modern technology, I’ll be holding live online video chats … starting Monday.”

By doing this, Clinton signaled her intention of using the Internet to shore up one of her chief political weak points, what independent analyst Charlie Cook called the caricature of her as “this shrill, raving, partisan, liberal lunatic.”

Hilary’s video is here. Take a look through the window – I wonder when it was shot? Sam Brownback announced on the web as well.

Charles Franklin looks at the polls.

The Utility of Asking Questions

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Ed Wallace finds some answers:

It seems to me that we might actually be standing at a crossroads of history, and 50 years from now historians will either be writing about the genius of our current plans or bemoaning our utter foolishness. But one thing is for sure. Hoping that things calm down in Iraq, wondering if they are going to get that oil law on the books and praying that the government holds and favors Western oil firms does not sound like a realistic energy policy for the United States.

Everything could go right for us; and the Chinese and Russians could still get back their Iraqi oil contracts, which were abrogated after we invaded that country.

Or we can develop a new energy policy for America. Raise the fuel efficiency standards for automobiles (mid to long-term positive results). Slow down the traffic on our Interstates (immediate impact on the amount of oil we use). Quit using so much oil for fertilizers and plastics and so trim all the waste those industries produce. Tune up our vehicles to maximize fuel economy. And determine whether General Motors’ series hybrid electric is credible, and figure the odds of Detroit’s inventing the lithium-ion batteries that would make the Chevrolet Volt feasible. The subsequent fall in the price of oil would deprive many who detest us of the funding their anti-American plans would require.

If GM’s 150-mpg Chevrolet Volt were coming to market this spring, would that breakthrough stop the 21,500 troops headed for Iraq? Probably not. But it would stop 500,000 American troops from heading to the Middle East a decade from now.

Apple iPhone UI Notes

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Bruce Tognazzini:

I could go down through the other “innovations” in iPhone and slowly knock them off. Yes, it’s the first cell phone with a visual display of voicemail messages, so you can randomly move among voicemails, etc., etc. However, such lists have been displayed, in an identical fashion, on enterprise-level voicemail systems and, of course, such lists have been a standard feature in email for decades.

The origins of these bits and pieces, however, is not what’s important about the iPhone. What’s important is that, for the first time, so many great ideas and processes have been assembled in one device, iterated until they squeak, and made accessible to normal human beings. That’s the genius of Steve Jobs; that’s the genius of Apple.

It’s also speaks to the limited vision of the cell phone industry. Exactly why have we never had random-access voicemail on cell phones? We’re talking about hand-held devices with more computer power than the Apollo spacecraft that took us to the moon. We’re talking about devices with screens of more than sufficient resolution. Could nobody think of displaying the messages?

A good friend often reminds me that ideas are easy, it’s execution that matters.
iPhone is a game changer.

An Interesting Chat with David Byrne

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Will Hermes:

Another sign of Mr. Byrne’s constant forward motion is his voracious appetite for new music. He’s a regular visitor to the annual South by Southwest music festival Austin, Tex., where he will be a featured speaker in March. And any concertgoer in New York City is apt to spot him regularly, hanging out near the back of a room, generally without an entourage, his shock of near-white hair adding a few inches to his already impressive height. Last year he could be spotted sipping white wine in the lobby of Town Hall before a Cat Power performance, applauding the debut of Gnarls Barkley at Webster Hall and cheering the Brazilian funk artist Otto (who appears on a forthcoming Luaka Bop compilation) at Joe’s Pub.



“He really keeps his finger on the pulse,” said Ms. Diaz-Tutaan, whom Mr. Byrne became interested in after hearing the CD her band, Apsci, recorded for the tiny progressive hip-hop label Quannum. “That’s really inspiring to me — that this guy who has been around for such a long time and has been one of my musical influences is keeping up with things on a more underground level. He’ll just ride his bike to a venue, go in, check out the band and ride home.”



Mr. Byrne doesn’t seem to think there’s anything particularly remarkable about it. “Sure, I go out a lot,” he said. “I’m in New York, and I’m a music fan. But sometimes I go out to these shows and I go ‘Where are my peers?,’ you know? Where are the musicians from my generation, or the generation after mine? Don’t they go out to hear music? Do they just stay home? Are they doing drugs? What’s going on?”



He laughed and shook his head. “Or maybe they’re just not interested anymore. They’re watching ‘Desperate Housewives.’ ”

Byrne’s blog.

A Traveler’s Look at Russia, Via its Airports

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The Economist:

WORKING as a journalist in Russia, with its eleven time zones, its endless steppe and perpetual taiga, means spending a lot of time in the air. It involves flying in planes so creaky that landing in one piece is a pleasant surprise —then disembarking in airports so inhospitable that some visitors may want to take off again immediately.

But, if he has the strength, beyond the whine of the Tupolev engines and the cracked runways, a frequent flyer can find in Russia’s airports a useful encapsulation of the country’s problems and oddities. In their family resemblances, Russia’s airports show how far the Soviet system squeezed the variety from the vast Russian continent; in their idiosyncrasies, they suggest how far it failed to. They illustrate how much of that system, and the mindset it created, live on, 15 years after the old empire nominally collapsed. Russia’s awful, grimy, gaudy airports reveal how much hasn’t changed in the world’s biggest country—but also, on closer inspection, how much is beginning to.

Traveling in Mexico many years ago, I remember purchasing a ticket at an airport for an AeroMexico flight to the Pacific Coast city of Mazatlan. Walking away from the counter, I glanced at my paper ticket and noticed that there was no seat assignment. I quickly turned around and inquired as to where I might be sitting. The flight (horribly delayed) was sold out. I asked why he sold me a ticket? “There might be another flight…”. And, there was, 10 hours later.

The Case for Artisan Meats

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The Economist:

The artisans themselves also continue to use the same methods they have always used. At some point after the second world war, as food production across Europe became industrialised, making hams in the traditional labour-intensive manner ceased to be a necessary way of life and became a wonderfully tasty two-finger salute to all the boiled, pink, anaemic, mealy, tasteless hams sitting on supermarket shelves and in refrigerated cabinets.


Curing meat celebrates heterogeneity like no other culinary process. McDonald’s manages to make hamburgers that taste the same from Cape Town to Novosibirsk; cured meats, with almost identical ingredients from region to region, taste wildly different. Italy produces six denominazione di origine controllata varieties of prosciutto, all of which are made from the whole leg of a pig, salt and perhaps a bit of sugar or spice. But by virtue of the airborne yeasts and moulds native to the particular region, variations in humidity, temperature and air quality, the diet and care of the pigs and the storage of the resulting hams, each of them tastes and feels quite different from the rest. The only other product for human consumption that varies so greatly from one area to another is whisky, which also relies on tradition, fanatical attention to detail and environmental alchemy. Just as Suntory can buy all the disused stills it wants, mimic the chemical and mineral composition of Scottish water and still produce something completely different from a Highland single malt, so a prosciutto from Parma will be softer, pinker and milder than a prosciutto from Modena, and a Lyonnais saucisson will have a tang that a salame Piacentino lacks.

Related: Fra’Mani:

Our mission is crafting salumi in the finest Italian pastoral traditions, using the highest-quality, all-natural pork.

Our pork comes from family farmers committed to the well-being of their animals and their land. The hogs are never given antibiotics, artificial growth hormones, growth-promoting agents or meat by-products. They eat only the finest grains and natural feed. This old-fashioned way to raise hogs produces pork of outstanding quality, which is the essential ingredient in all Fra’ Mani salumi.