Betterness by Kawika Holbrook

Privacy on Sale

This top-10 list of privacy resolutions means well, but doesn't begin to convey the effort necessary to divorce yourself from direct marketing efforts. I value my privacy, but seem more and more willing to give much of it up for better deals, faster access, and simpler accounting.

When Terra Firma Isn't

The magnitude of yesterday's 9.0 Indonesian earthquake barely hit home today. Jenny and I were thinking of visiting Phuket, Thailand's Marriott resort in a couple of years. And now? Resorts around the Indian Ocean are destroyed. Thousands of coastal residents and visitors washed out to sea. Millions are homeless. And no one really knows how many may die from disease and starvation. Dry and drier explanations of the disaster, while intellectually helpful, dull the sense of the tragedy. And as the toll grows larger, the disaster becomes more remote. Incomprehensible, really. But even as man-made disasters like the war in Iraq push countries apart, I hope this natural disaster can bring them together.

I Should Know Better

Got up this morning on time. Went to the gym for a light workout. Ate a healthy breakfast. Now I feel energized at work. I always feel energized when I start the day this way. And I almost never start the day this way. Instead, my brain deludes itself into believing that -- unlike all the other times in my life -- this time, an extra nine minutes of sleep actually will make a difference. Nine minutes later, I'm worse for the rest. The alarm goes off again. Miraculously, I convince myself that ... okay, this time an extra nine minutes will help. It doesn't. Mornings like this morning do help.

Political Effluvia

At one point before the election, I wanted to write about how so many Republicans and conservative journals were coming out against President Bush's re-election. But then, before I could come up with some grand theory, he got re-elected. Now all I have is these links:

Afghanistan, Iraq: Two Wars Collide -- They are not the same, no matter what the Administration says.

The Case Against Bush -- He has no principles, only a narrative. Apparently the majority of voters conflates a simple story with strong leadership.

Without a Doubt -- "This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy," says a libertarian supporter. "He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them." Scary.

Why We Cannot Endorse President Bush For Re-Election -- A conservative newspaper explains my reservations about Bush all too well.

The Case Against George Bush -- A conservative magazine explains my reservations about Bush all too well as well.

The Choice -- So many voters seem to completely ignore The Administration's dismal foreign and domestic record, one lawyers would call dispositive. Instead, the damage done is only growing worse by the week.

There were more articles. More of the same. Deeply researched, thoughtfully written, terribly insightful. In the end, the facts didn't matter. I have to remember that next time I need to make my case to a myopic group like "voters."

Wicked Worn

Rather than write something interesting, I'm engaged in the thousandth redesign of this site. I've been toying with something ever since I saw HBO's logo for the series Carnivale. I didn't know what to call the style until I saw Cameron Moll's "That Wicked Worn Look." Then I saw the look everywhere: the personal websites of Jason Santa Maria, Greg Storey, a bunch of old fruit crates, and one Australian kumquat grower's logo. Yes, I thought, that's it. The wicked worn look applied to a new logo for Betterness on a site that became a retro-hip satire/homage to branding, advertising, and making the most out a little. The site could take the form of a dozen product packages from years back, all of which could be changed by the user just like the look of the CSS Zen Garden. It would only take me a month or so to design and code, during which time I would write almost nothing. That sounds perfect. Man, the effort I expend to avoid expending effort.

Shocking

Lightning on Saturn 1,000,000 times stronger' than on Earth. Let's get some satellites in orbit and have them drop cables a few thousand miles down to harvest that energy. They could power a space station. That could house scientists. That could study the universe. That would bring us closer to understanding the very nature of our being. That more than half of Americans would ignore because they don't believe in Evolution. Sigh.

Cathartic Typing Attempt #76

Again, I'm reading way more than I'm posting. I'm still worrying about how to write, rather than simply writing. And it's sucking all the fun out of this. So, quickly, more links:

The New Military Life: Heading Back to the War -- What are we doing to our soldiers who can stay home long enough to establish a routine with their families?

Israel Says It Will Release 170 Palestinians to Please Egypt -- This is "a gesture of good will, friendship and gratitude" from Israel's leader to Egypt's leader. Palestinians call it "cosmetic." Why do I get the feeling that near the end of my life, I'll still be reading stories that start with what seems to be good news and ends with the bad?

Republicans are criticizing Defense Secretary Rumsfield -- Can't be good news for the man who admitted to using a machine to sign condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq. Really, I'm not sure what I wanted to say here. My first sentence had way to many prepositions, and I was more concerned with that then writing about how 1,300 families have gotten letters signed by a machine so the government could "speed up the process." How about if the government speeds up the process of more armor, or a better plan, or a withdraw, or something other than obfuscation. "Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a great job," Andrew Card told the press. "The President has already indicated he will continue to be Secretary of Defense and has great confidence in how he's doing his job." I'm babbling now. Ugh. This isn't cathartic yet. I don't feel like I'm back in form. The only thing I can do is keep writing. Sooner or later I'll get in the groove again.

I'm publishing now. I'll do separate entries for everything, just to get the open web pages off my computer, even if the entire entry is a single link and I despise what little content this site has.

Linking Log

Too many links to write about with insight or concision. Here's a log of half of my readings from the past 24 hours:

Home-Brew iPod Ad Opens Eyes -- Homemade ads will play a big part in marketing, just like blogging is shaking up the news.

When saving the world with song, mind the lyrics -- "Do They Know It's Christmas" raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia. The lyrics, complain some today, "fail to help ordinary Westerners understand that it is politics, bad governance, unfair trade arrangements, and burdensome debt that are crushing Africa...." Well, yeah, but none of that is as catchy as singing about snow.

File Sharing Goes to High Court -- File sharing is "inflicting catastrophic, multibillion-dollar harm on petitioners that cannot be redressed through lawsuits against the millions of direct infringers using those services," the appeal by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and other entertainment companies says. So complained movie studios about the VCR, and composers about radio, and back and back and back. Dinosaurs always complain about the weather.

Who was Minnesota's faithless elector? The pledged 10 electoral votes to John Kerry during the election, but one voted for John Edwards instead. Mistake? Protest? The ballot was secret and no one will admit to doing it.

Missteps Cited in Kerik Vetting by White House -- How does someone with more skeletons in his closet than Jeffrey Dahmer get nominated to run Homeland Security?

Security Issues Plague Windows-Based PCs, Impairing Ease of Use -- "The current Mac operating system has never been attacked by a successful virus, and almost no spyware can run on it."

More to come.

Ho Ho Uh Oh

It's Santa Claus vs. St. Nicholas in a Seasonal Smackdown. Santa is a symbol of consumption reports the Christian Science Monitor, and the town of St. Nicholas isn't going silent into the night: "The myth of Santa Claus evolved from the fusion of two figures: gift-bearing Saint Nicholas and the representation of the infant Jesus known as "Christkindlein" (Christ child), which later became "Kriss Kringle." After Dutch immigrants brought Sinter Klaas to the US, German immigrant Thomas Nast drew a lasting image of a man with the white beard and sparkling eyes. Then in the early 1930s, Coca Cola, in need of a spokesman to boost sales, tapped the merry figure, completing his path from saint to salesman." Seriously. Are we to believe that St. Nicholas was a real bishop who taught us giving make us richer, not poorer? Bah humbug. Regardless, it's going to be iPods, iPods, and more iPods this iChristmas.

The New Math

The Iraq War is financed almost exclusively by the United States, whose deficit is 90% financed by foreign lenders. As a group, lenders like the value of their investments to go up, not down. Well, the dollar is going down, the war hasn't an end in sight, and the Bush Administration has decided that more deficit spending will help pay to privatize part of Social Security, which does nothing to stave off its slide into bankruptcy as Baby Boomers retire. Speaking of social services we won't be able to afford, half of Medicare's budget pays for the sickest 5% of the elderly population accounts for more than half of Medicare's budget, mostly because the 1.5 million frail, homebound elderly who need doctors most aren't seeing them regularly. Thankfully, our burgeoning police state will merge nicely with China's when it buys the U.S.'s assets for pennies on the yuan and confiscates our family's meager retirement savings plans to pay for 50 years of trade deficits. But I'm not bitter or anything.