Obama, Twitter, and Timing
March 25, 2009
“I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak,” claimed President Obama at a recent press conference. The claim has drawn a lot of coverage, including a Christian Science Monitor article focusing on the reaction on Twitter.
I had to laugh. It occurred to me that, of all media with which I’m familiar, Twitter is the one that has least to do with delaying speech until one knows what one is talking about.
Should I tweet this thought? It’s probably too late, by Twitter standards.
Lookybook Closes
March 20, 2009
I described Lookybook as a rather wonderful idea back in 2007. It was a means of test-driving picture books via the web. I still consider it a wonderful idea.
But Lookybook CEO Craig Frazier just sent out email with the sad news that “we have come to the last page in our adventure together.” That’s all I currently know. I’ll try to find out more…
Water Rights
March 19, 2009
Water rights, water rights, everywhere: stories about water rights are springing up all over the place (including Reddit, where I found the two stories to which I link here), even more so now that the World Water Forum is in progress.
The forum is in Istanbul which, come to think of it, is a city in which two continents are divided by water (the Bosphorus River, to be precise). If there is a best metaphor prize at the conference, I suspect it will be awarded for the characterization of water rights as an issue that is snowballing. And the Turkish police deserve some sort of recognition for their treatment of protesters: the cops sprayed them with water cannons.
Thanks to RetloP for the image of a more peaceful aspect of water.
Boston, Limerick, and Beyond
March 12, 2009
The Boston Globe is calling for urban limericks. Here’s the one I posted.
Harvard started in Cambridge, not Boston
Then purchased huge portions of Allston
Allstonians were told
There’d be buildings and gold
But the Crimson, it seems, double-crossed ‘em.
And now, since you didn’t ask for more…
Here is some poetic advice:
A limerick is very nice
With rhyme it’s alive
But of lines it has five
So a haiku is much more concise.
So, move west to east
that is, from Ireland to Japan
try hand at haiku.
I’d rather be in Philadelphia, or…
March 9, 2009
Boston’s current snow/rain combination is like bad fusion cuisine on the part of whoever cooks up the weather. I quite like snow, and, having grown up in the UK, I’m rainproof. But snow and rain together… yuck.
Philadelphia occurs to me because of my in-laws, Paul Cézanne, and WC Fields. (The punctuation in that last sentence is, I think, correct: Paul Cezanne and WC Fields are not my in-laws.) My in-laws live near Philly. I really hope to see the Cézanne and Beyond exhibition that’s on at the Philly Art Museum until May.
And then of course there’s the very quotable WC.
Five By Five For Facebook: 2
March 5, 2009
I started on this about a month ago, so it’s time I posted items 6-10 on my list of 25 random things.
- Astral Weeks is my favorite album…
- … but I intend to avoid Hollywood remake.
- I subscribe to the open source/creative commons notion that it’s good for people to use other people’s words, pictures, etc., provided they engage in attribution and other forms of goodness. That leads neatly into the next item, which is a quote from Campbell‘s 25.
- “I’m absolutely terrible at keeping in touch with people. Really terrible. And it’s only gotten worse since my daughter was born.”
- I expect to post items 11-15 of my list of 25 some time this month.
Two Examples of Political Intelligence
March 1, 2009
Gallup recently surveyed Americans on what the federal government should do about banks. A majority of Americans (54%) favor a temporary government “takeover” of major U.S. banks.
So most Americans would support bank nationalization? Not exactly: when Gallup used the n-word (nationalization) itself, support dropped to 37%.
If, in the search for political intelligence, we turn to our local Boston broadsheet, we find, in today’s Globe, new of Michelle Obama’s sleeves, or lack thereof.
