"Losing His Bearings"

You gotta hand it to Barack Obama: He knows how to keep his cool. Responding to McCain's statement that "Senator Obama is favored by Hamas," Obama employs his typically imperturbable air of cool detachment to dismiss the smear as "an example of [McCain] losing his bearings" -- and then wraps up his articulate response by talking about the need to raise the level of political discourse. The contrast between the "hot" temperament of McCain and the "cool" temperament of Obama should make for an interesting general election campaign this fall.

Into the Arena: Michael Schenker

Flashback to 1983: I'm a 17-year-old headbanger at a rock concert in Cardiff, Wales (U.K.). The Michael Schenker Group is on stage, ripping through the instrumental anthem "Into the Arena." This vintage footage captures the experience:



MSG was big in Europe in the early 80s, although the band never quite succeeded in making the jump across the water to the U.S. But Schenker's precise, melodic brand of metal had a wide influence on many guitarists of the period. Twenty-five years later, watching the video reminds me of the band's teenage headbanger appeal, although I can't really say the music has stood the test of time. But it sure was fun back then.

Quote of the Week

"When someone is beating you over the head with a hammer, don't sit there and take it. Take out a meat cleaver and cut off their hand." - Bill Clinton, as told to Time magazine in 1981. (Source: Politico)

Beef: It's the downer that's for dinner.

A few weeks ago, the USDA was shocked (shocked!) to learn of an undercover investigation by the Humane Society that exposed a California slaughterhouse forcing sick and diseased (so-called "downer") cattle into the hamburger supply chain for the National School Lunch Program, right under the nose of USDA inspectors. The prospect of an outraged citizenry watching callous ranch hands using taxpayer dollars to turn abused cows into diseased meat products for underpriveliged children was simply too much to bear for Washington bureaucrats, who promptly initiated the largest beef recall in the history of the United States.

It's fairly obvious why the USDA decided to "do" something. The undercover video is not a pretty sight:



But these hideous and illegal practices really shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone -- least of all to the USDA. As this 1993 video by the Farm Sanctuary shows, California slaughterhouses have been violating cattle, health regulations, and the public trust for several decades:



Ironically, this 15-year-old video ends with a sincere but pathetic call to action, urging viewers to contact the USDA to put an end to the abuse. That strategy didn't work too well, it seems.

So now we know the extent of the USDA's "leadership" on this issue.

Yes, We Can? No, You Can't

The singer will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas put together an earnest (though slightly corny) video tribute to Barack Obama's campaign a few weeks ago:



Now, a parody video has come along to offer the GOP perspective. And it's worth a few chuckles:

Monument to Antigravity

Rock sculpture at Tennessee Valley Beach, Marin Headlands, Calif.

Best Handsfree Solution for Cars

Everyone knows it's prudent to use a handsfree phone setup while driving. Trouble is, traditional Bluetooth headsets just aren't very suitable for use in cars. Here's why:

Option # 1: While still parked, you can attach an unsightly headset to your ear in anticipation of answering a call while driving. Downside: It's a pain to remember to do this, and you'll look and feel like a dork with a blinking headset on your ear the entire time you're driving -- especially when you're not talking to anyone.

Option # 2: Leave the handsfree headset within reach. If a call comes in while you're driving, attempt to answer the call on your mobile phone while simultaneously fumbling for and mounting the wireless headset on your ear; this is especially fun in the dark. Downside: Driving into a ditch while your attention is diverted by dealing with not just one but two pieces of equipment.



The BlueAnt Supertooth II Handsfree Speakerphone solves this dilemma. Simply mount it on your visor with the included magnetic clip, pair it with your phone, and you're set. When a call comes in, just press the button on the speakerphone to answer the call. There's no fumbling, and no hardware stuck to your head. What's more, the built-in speaker is loud and clear, and the noise cancellation system works wonders. Top marks for this gadget -- it's well worth the money.

"America's Mayor" (aka "The Beast") Calls It Quits

"The beast is dead." - Ed Koch, upon hearing news that Rudy Giuliani is bailing out of the race for the Republican nomination for president.

"America's Mayor." - The feel-good brand that Fox News' relentless pro-Giuliani propaganda machine tried to attach to Rudy. It didn't stick, but they sure did give it a good try:

One Laptop Per Child

Over the past week, I've had a chance to play with the XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Conceived in 2005 by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte as a "$100 laptop" for poor children in developing countries, the project reached production in November 2007 -- albeit with a shipping price of $200.



What follows are my first impressions, after several days of testing.

THE GOOD

Durabilty. The case uses heavy-duty, sturdy materials. What's more, the laptop has no moving parts internally -- it uses solid state Flash RAM rather than a hard disk for storage. It can definitely take a beating.

Efficiency. The device uses very little power (less than 2 watts), is completely silent, runs cool to the touch, and has good battery life.

Display. The screen has high resolution, and features both a transmissive and a reflective mode -- for use both indoors and out.

Open-source software. The laptop leverages free, open-source software. That includes the OS, which is based on Red Hat's Fedora Linux distribution. There is also a suite of innovative educational software applications that are guided by the Media Lab's philosophy of enabling children to learn by creating (as opposed to just consuming) their own media, programs, and ideas.

THE BAD



User Interface. It can be a healthy thing to challenge existing conventions of user interface design, but the team behind the XO laptop has taken this approach to such an extreme that real-world usability suffers greatly. While elegant, the case design is so eccentric that I was literally unable to open the clamshell without consulting online documentation. Once the laptop is turned on, the user interacts with the Sugar UI, which runs on top of Linux. With its disregard for commonly accepted UI conventions, heavy use of cryptic icons, and lack of on-system help files, Sugar forces users to relearn the process of using a personal computer from scratch. It's a bit like trying to drive a car in which the steering wheel and pedals have been replaced by hidden new control surfaces. After consulting online documentation yet again, I was able to complete basic tasks such as web browsing -- but one wonders how teachers and students in developing nations will fare without extensive training materials. The built-in educational applications have no help files whatsoever.

Performance. The XO laptop is quite sluggish in use, but the biggest problem is its lack of real-world web application support -- particularly with respect to multimedia and Web 2.0. The web browser's support for Flash isn't just marginal, it's abysmal. Even the Yahoo home page isn't supported by the browser. And you can forget about watching YouTube or CNN videos. The upshot is that the XO's utility as an information device is severely constrained. A massive amount of Internet content is simply inaccessible to students using this laptop.

Bugs. A couple of strange bugs surfaced after a few days of use. For example, the keyboard stopped responding and had to be fixed by a reboot; no teacher wants that kind of distraction in the middle of a lesson. Also, the web browser displayed inconsistent behavior, refusing to let me navigate a simple site after I had accessed it just fine the day before. Other reviewers have noted similar issues.

THE VERDICT

The XO laptop is a great concept that embodies some very innovative ideas. But the execution just isn't where it needs to be. The eccentric user interface design, poor real-world performance, and system bugs are putting its mission at risk.

I hope Mr. Negroponte's team gets the execution right soon, because this laptop represents an idea that deserves a chance to succeed.

Happy New Year

Quote of the Week

"God is too big for just one religion." - Michael Franti

Left Foot Shank

The year: 1995. The place: A record store in Oslo, Norway. I'm browsing the aisles when some very deep downtempo beats start playing on the sound system. "What's that?" I ask the clerk. She hands me a compilation titled Left Foot Shank, from an obscure British label called Oceans Eleven. As it turns out, they have just one copy of the album in stock. "It's this new thing called trip hop," she says. "Damn," I say to myself. "I gotta have this."

In the wake of buying that rare CD (which featured some pretty obscure artists), I became aware of more mainstream trip hop groups like Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky, Morcheeba, Fila Brazillia, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation, Hooverphonic, etc. But this album always had a special place in my collection -- until it was "lost" in 2000 (along with 300 of my best CDs) by the hoodlum movers who shipped my stuff from Virginia to San Francisco.

Though it was long out of print, I never quite gave up hope that I would find another copy of Left Foot Shank. And last week, after seven years of searching, I finally struck pay dirt: An outfit in the Netherlands called Black Rhythm Records had several used copies in stock -- and they were selling them for $4.86 each. Voila.

Ain't the Internet great?