Gallery Of New Google Zurich Office… lots of crazy stuff! Some of it looks like it was inspired by Dr. Seuss.

Mostly done working through my starred items in Reader…

A map of the world with the countries scaled by how much oil they have

A little while ago, Google released a new interface to Gmail (and other google apps) for the iPhone/iPod. I like it quite a bit. The interface has been really responsive for me, and most things have been easy to find.

Some people don’t like it, though perhaps it had something to do with the fact that they have to deal with the EDGE network latency.

All of the Democratic candidates and some of the Republican candidates like to talk about change (at least post-Iowa). One quote from Lawrence Lessig that struck me:

If the only “change” at stake here is a change in the party in control, then there’s no much to get excited about.

Very true.

More importantly:
Lessig also pointed out the Clinton campaign’s Rove-style swift-boating of Obama (this post). In short, swift-boating means to take your opponent’s strength and bring it into question in order to distract the voters from how much weaker you are in that regard (which GWB did to John Kerry in 2004 to make people not notice that Bush avoided military service). Obama opposed the war from the start, including speaking at an anti-war rally. Once in the senate, he did authorize funding of the war, but this isn’t the same thing as supporting a war that you’re not in. Meanwhile, Clinton voted for the war at the very outset, and has been voting to fund it ever since.

Anyway, I voted for Obama, so we’ll see what happens of Feb 5.

Barack Obama’s comment about Ronald Reagan that you may have heard about:

And the Republicans being the party of ideas in recent times:

The Clinton campaign then spun these remarks to mean that Obama endorsed the ideas of Reagan and the Republicans. If you listen to what he’s saying, it’s quite clear he’s doing neither of those things. He’s explaining one of the reasons Reagan and Republicans have been successful in the past, and to a large degree, he’s right.

I think it was Jon Stewart who said something like “we’re stuck between a party of bad ideas and a party of no ideas”.

Perhaps a bit more irony today… I keep reaing about Democrats wanting to avoid looking weak, so they support things like retroactive immunity for telecom companies complicit in illegal wiretaps. The non-weak thing to do would be to actually stand up for something, even if it costs you votes. Thanks goes to Chris Dodd for fighting this, even if much of his party has deserted him.

Athlete - Flying Over Bus Stops

I’ve tried several songs for waking up in the morning (usually I don’t set an alarm, but this week I have been). Typically I grow to hate the song after a few days, but this one is fitting well.

“Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.”
–Anonymous