The folks over at the N&O recently put out some expert predictions of food trends for 2008.

Check out the third item under the Mintel International Group predictions.

Those guys are WAY behind the times. Come on. Ancient Grains? That is SO 1996!

And who cares about teff, anyway? Give me spelt. Give me millet. You can keep your lousy amaranth.

On a more serious note, one trend that I do hope to see explode is the ability to text in take-out orders (trend numero uno from Baum & Whiteman Co.). Brookelynne and I already regularly use the Google text message feature to find shops and restaurants, so why not text your order too? Why is texting better than calling, you might ask? Because sometimes texting is less disruptive to what's going on around you than talking on the cell phone in public. Don't we all hate that person talking loudly on their cell phone in the library? And we often get the same items from the same Chinese restaurrant around the corner. Texting makes sending a repeat order as easy as touching 4 or 5 buttons.

I'm curious. How many text messages do you send or recieve in a day? 

Brooklynne has posted some fun Christmas entries over at her blog and you should check them out, especially the Christmas letter entry, since we don't have the postal address for many of you. We also got a new camera to replace the one I broke, so now we can begin posting current pictures again. Stay tuned....

I was planning to do a report card for at least the top 5 Democrats and the top 5 Republicans in the presidential race before the first primaries next week, but my Mitt Romney post generated less interest, and with Christmas, etc. I've just run out of steam. So, I'm abandoning the project for now. I feel especially bad for not profiling John Edwards, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee because each of those candidates deserves to get as much attention as the other four I've already done. Perhaps I'll report on these and other candidates if they remain viable past January. But for now, I conceding the demise of this project.

What I would like to offer instead, is a call for anyone to chip in their two cents about any of the candidates in the comments of this entry. Maybe if you guys bring up specific points about specific candidates, together we can address the most relevant issues/positions piece by piece.

So please take time to comment, if you're still interested in this discussion.

Yesterday, when I was leaving work, I flipped the radio to NPR just in time to hear the tail end of a blurb announcing the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

I immediately felt sick. I'm not sure why.

As many of you know, my good friends Emily and Griff were living in Pakistan (Griff is still there), so I feel a connection with that place, but I'm not really knowledgable about Pakistan's politics or history and I'm not necessarily a fan of Bhutto. I'm not sure she was any better than any of the other power-wielding elite in that region, so my strong reaction to the news of her death was cause for thought.

I think maybe, subconsciously, for me, she symbolized the possibility of peaceful opposition. I think that is the only thing that separates the US from the worst, most unstable, corrupted, or oppressed nations in the world--our ability to peacefully oppose, challenge, and exchange control of government. No matter how hard they work to erradicate extremists in Pakistan, no matter how many poppy farms are converted to other successful ventures in Afghanistan, no mattter how many elections we hold in Baghdad, no matter how many nuclear agreements we have with Pyongyang, or how many human rights protests we have over China, or how many roadmaps we develop in Palestine, or how many missle defense shields we put up in eastern Europe, no matter how many UN peacekeepers are in Darfur, and no matter how many sanctions we impose against Iran and Cuba--until there is repect for life, and a devotion to the existance of peaceful opposition, there will never be peace and security in the world, no matter what we do or how much money we spend. And the saddest, most frightening thing is that I feel like this one, most basic democratic value is even under stain here in the US. We're not perfect by any means.

Lord, what if there are fifty righteous people in the world? What if there are only ten? The world needs your grace.

If you want to follow the events in Pakistan, I recommend Griff's articles for the Washington Post, for which he is the Pakistan correspondent. I've found that his articles are much more informative than the stripped-down, terriblely generic pieces that are widely published by media from the AP. Here's a link to one of his recent articles. You may need to register with the Post in order to read it, but that is a free and easy process.

Brooklynne and I had a scare this week and this is the first chance I've had to write about it. Let me start by saying everyone is fine. But we weren't so sure about that for a little while on Chistmas eve....

Thanks to some very generous gifts, TWJ and several of its fellow bloggers raised enough money to send an XO to a family in Haiti this Christmas, and a second one to OLPC for another family overseas. We made our initial goal of $423 (400 + tax), which is awesome, but I still think the networking/collaboration features of the XO are it's strongest qualities, which means that two are much better than one. So, I will continue to accept conditional offers of support dependent on whether OLPC decides to renew their give-one-get-one program. I'm also putting a persistant link in the sidebar and if you would like to take part in possibly sending a second computer to Haiti, you can comment below or find my email at the bottom of the page. As always, you can also click here to read the origin of the plan.

Of course, it is always worth mentioning that your help in this effort can be nonmonetary also--we welcome links to this entry, which may be just as helpful in raising support. Thanks!

My good friend Steph Newport left the lurking world and placed a comment on the blog yesterday. So that inspired me to see what footage I could dig out of the TWJ video archives that might have to do with Steph or her husband Jamie, who were two of our best friends in Bozeman. Well, I found a classic Jamie video, which (sadly) does not include Steph, but it does feature other Bozeman superstars such as Brooklynne, JDuB Weleber, Hilde Lovdal (another regular lurker), and of course, yours truely garbed in an especially ridiculous outfit. Why did Brooklynne agree to marry me?

Once again, the video is somewhat long, but TOTALLY worth watching to the end.

  Since some of you may not read the comments or the older posts, I've decided to promote this to the front page of my blog. Matt has suggested a community effort to participate in the One Laptop Per Child initiative that I refered to at the end of my previous post about the XO. His proposal was:

I have a proposal. Naomi told me about these, and thought it would be really cool to send one to the Lucien family in Haiti (I mention them by name because BethAnn knows them). I was wondering if maybe a few of us (your readers) might want to go in together on the $400.00 deal where one would be sent to a random family and we'd get the other one to send to the Lucien Family. Their ministry is HIM in the links on our blog. Miles, if you'd like me to administer this proposal on my blog, just tell me. My proposal specifically is:
1.) Buehrles donate $200.00
2.) Others collectively send us the other $200.00
3.) Buehrle's order them and have the computer sent to us.
4.) Buehrles send it to Haiti via the U.S. contact for H.I.M.
5.) In summary one computer goes to whoever the company chooses (the one randomly donated computer), the other goes to Haiti.

I applaud Matt and Nome for coming up with this scheme and putting their money where their mouth is. Much more generous than I can be, since honestly, I don't think I would be able to contribute nearly as much. But if 6 or 8 other readers would be interested in sharing the expense, I think we could all be a part of a very fun act of holiday kindness. If you want to chip in, please post a comment to that effect, and I'll email you the details. If you have a blog of your own, think about posting a link to this entry in case any of your readers would like to be involved. (If we some how found 20-25 folks who wanted to contribute, we could do this twice and send 2 XOs to the Lucien family, making the XO's community networking tools much more relevant.)

The other day, a friend mentioned to me out of the blue, "I'm just going to ask you about the issues. You're very political." It turns out she had been on my blog recently, which is great!!! But, it also signals that since I began the report cards, the blog has gone over the top in its election coverage. I still want to cover a few more of the main candidates, but I'm refocusing on the things that REALLY matter. Like Halleigh.

Here's a new Halleigh Show. It is really long (almost 10 minutes) and thus, a little lower in quality. In the future, I will take my wife's advice and offer shorter, better quality shows, but I just didn't have time last night to slice this up. Brooklynne, Kona and I make brief cameos (and please note that I have had a haircut since this was shot!).

So without further ado, I present to you the Halligator!

Last night Brooklynne and i spent some time outside, and we got really cold for the first time this year. It made me miss Bozeman. Here is a short group of clips that remind me of what winter is supposed to be like. The stars of the show are Cory Cavin and our friend Martin.

Update: YouTube got its act together and the video is working now.

I was cleaning up my desk this weekend and came across a disk of old pictures, including this one from our rehersal dinner. Wow. I was skinny back then.

 

Last Saturday, I got to play with a XO, the signature machine for the OLPC initiative. It was very cool. The design is very kid-friendly and durable, the machine seemed to run well, I had no trouble connecting with the wireless network at Shodor, and when the XOs were on (we had two of them), they instantly connected to each other, so we could easily chat or share small files. The screen flips around into a tablet configuration and includes a very good looking internal camera (much like an ibook).

I sometimes read the Mailbag feature at Tarheelblue.com, and in this week's edition, the question came up over which is the best Carolina team to NOT win a championship. Usually in discussions like this, the 1984, 1994, and 1998 teams always come up. This time, the 1987 and 1977 teams also got a mention.

What I want to know is what happened to the 1997 team?

Why don't they get any credit? Am I the only one who loved that team?

Well, the folks over at the mailbag asked for opinions, so I wrote a quick reply arguing the 1997 case. I'm posting my email here for everyone's edification. Read my letter, decide what you think, and then let me know if I'm the only one who thinks the 1997 squad is worth consideration.

Hey,

Regarding the question this week about the best Carolina teams to never win a championship--why doesn't anyone ever include the 1997 team? I guess it depends on your definition of what makes a team "greatest," but I've always thought that at the end of the season, the 1997 team would have handed the 1998 team a real beat down.

The 1997 team's record doesn't do it justice because, early in the season, they were searching for the right solution at point guard. That hole in the rotation led to a terrible January that included 5 losses while Ed Cota (a freshman) adjusted to playing the college game. But once he got up to speed and started earning more minutes, UNC ripped off a perfect February,  beat Wake Forest and Tim Duncan twice, Dook once, won the ACC tournament, and got a number-one seed in the NCAA tournament. Everyone also seems to forget the vastly under-appreciated Serge Zwikker, who chipped in many, many fine defensive games in addtion to his midrange baseline jumper that opened the lane, his regular 10-15 points, and 8 or 9 rebounds (didn't he work his way up to being a first-round NBA draft pick?).

As for the 1998 team--the "six starters" rotation never seemed to work very well to me, they needed overtime for 4 of their wins, they suffered a bad loss to State late in the season (and at home!), and they played against a league schedule that I would argue was less competitive than the previous year.

To me, losing to Arizona and Miles Simon in 1997 was way more disappointing and frustrating than losing to Utah in 1998. Maybe I'm the only one.

Miles Travis
Durham, NC
Class of 2000

What do you think? Am I crazy? I want to hear about it.

Again, please observe the ground rules.

Mitt's Golden Touch

Of all the presidential candidates, I think Mitt deserves credit for having the best business sense. Everything he touches turns a profit. Some of that maybe luck or coincidence, but I think the number of successful ventures of which he has been a part demonstrates that his leadership must play a positive role.

In some ways, a sharp business mind would serve Mitt well as president. It's almost cliche to claim that this country needs to be run more like a business. However, a business mentality will only get you so far, and "profits" in a government context have to be measured by more than the bottom line.

That's why I'm a little wary of Mitt's hardcore conservative turn since his days as governor. While I think Mitt's political conversion is too convenient to be completely unrelated to political efficacy, I do think Mitt is an honest person who really does believe the positions he has recently adopted. Our government does need to be more fiscally responsible, but we also have to be socially responsible, and I'm not sure of how Mitt would strike that balance. 

Things you never knew about Mitt

1. his father was a presidential candidate in 1968
2. his first name is actually Willard (after Willard Marriott of the hotel chain)
3. his grandparents lived in Mexico, where his father was born
4. he is the fifth Mormon to run for president
5. he was pronounced dead after a car crash in France while on his LDS mission (?)
6. he marched in civil rights demonstrations with his father
7. once drove hours with his dog strapped in a crate on the roof of his car

Bonus Points: Proven record of erasing deficits and creating surplus.

Minus Points: Whole-hearted sellout to the conservative right-wing.

Most interesting links I found: Mister PowerPoint Goes to Washington

Unfortunately, the race will probably be decided by then. But you should still vote. Why? I dunno. Seems silly actually.

If you have ever wondered what it is that I do on Mondays and Saturdays, I work at the Shodor Foundation. Recently, we won a very big prize from Cisco, and as part of the award they made a highlight video for the organization. You can watch the video here. As with all non-streaming files, you'll have to wait for the download. Also, please excuse the blatant Cisco self-promotion. Enjoy!  

I received this email today, and I added my name to the petition. You can too, if you like the idea of making my chosen career more pleasant in the future. Just follow the link.

Sorry to bother you again, but I could use your help. The Library of
Congress is asking for comments on their proposal for the future of
bibliographic records and we'd like to ask them to include a section
supporting open data -- providing bibliographic records in such a way
that they can be reused by projects like Open Library and others.

Our comment is here:

http://www.okfn.org/wiki/FutureOfBibliographicControl

And we'd love it if you would add your name to it and spread the word
to others in this field. Comments are due Friday so time is limited.

Thanks so much for your help,
 - Aaron

Please note that I have turned the comments back on, but I have not had time over the past few days to find and implement any acceptable anti-spam measures, so be patient with me if the spam continues.

Also the obligatory reminder--please observe the ground rules.

Barack Obama: Cheerleader or Commander in Chief?

I usually like what Barack Obama says. I get pumped up when he talks about hope and healing rather than exploiting deep political divisions in the country. As I researched this report card, though, I found that most of these statements are good sound-bites, but they often lack a demonstrated plan to back up his idealist positions. Part of the problem is Obama's lack of time in public service. Maybe, the absence of proven initiatives is most directly related to a lack of time to establish his plans. To be fair, Barack has had consistent success in the few programs he has lead during his time in service. Still, these are not enough to completely put away the feeling that a vote would be a gamble on an unknown quantity, like going to a book store and picking out a novel by the dust jacket.

The question for me is not whether Barack would make good general policy decisions, but whether he would have the ability to make the difference where the rubber meets the road.

Things you never knew about Barack

1. Has won a Grammy (Best Spoken Word Album)
2. Left-handed
3. His middle name is Hussein.
4. He was born in Hawaii.
5. Lived in Indonesia from age 6 to 10.
6. First black president of the Harvard Legal Review.
7. Enjoys cooking chili
8. Holds 6 honorary doctorates
9. If elected, would be the first black president of the US (You knew that?)

Bonus Points: Demonstrated record of being able to work with liberals and conservatives.

Minus Points: Political cheerleading and speech making outpace his own record of real political innovation.

Most interesting links I found (I didn't find anything truely ground-breaking this time, but I enjoyed these):

1. Footage of Barack playing for his high school's varsity basketball team.
2. New Yorker article from 2004 with an interesting snippet about the first time Bush heard of Barack.

The battle against spam continues. For those of you who may not know, I have a slight objection to requiring people to register for my site, or using those annoying little scrambled-up words, or moderating all my comments. So in the past, when I was running an older version of MT, I had an email white-list feature that recognized the email addresses of my regular readers and allowed them to post without any type of moderation. However, when I upgraded to MT 4.0, my white-list pluggin no longer worked. Thus, I've been going without any spam protection for the last three months or so.

Well, my security through obscurity stragey is no longer working either, and there's been a spike in spam lately--too much for me to keep up with. So, I turning off comments for a couple of days until the robots turn their attention elsewhere. Meanwhile, I'll search my soul about what to do about the problem, and decide

whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous spam, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.

Either way, I've got my Barack Obama and Mitt Romney report cards ready to go, but I'm going to postpone them until I've got my comments back on (maybe Wednesday or Thursday?).

If you have a burning desire to comment on my Evel Knievel tribute, or if you just want to get in touch, you'll find my email address at the very bottom of this page. (By the way, if you want to know how I get away with publishing my email address without getting tons of email spam, I have some tricks up my sleeve that I can share with you.)

Butte, MT produces alot of bad @&$es, but Evel was the badest of them all.

Look here for all things Evel, or skip straight to the diagrams of Evel's many injuries.

Now I know what its like to realize that my children will grow up without knowing my heroes.

Thanks to 2SB for the links.

I'm curious. Did anyone else actully pretend to be Evel Knievel when they were little, or was I the only weird one? And how many of us owned at least one Evel Knievel action figure/motorcycle guy? Has any other real person inspired such universal toyhood status?

Miles just told me after reading my latest post that he can't believe how much "Christmas pride" I have. So if you want to catch some of my "Christmas pride," come see my blog. click here

Although, Miles just informed me that because of this post, he is going give you a Christmas theme like you have never seen. Not just candy canes, but sugar plums. You heard right people... expect nothing less than sugar plums. In a second although, since he works on his blog from work, he isn't going to be able to wow us too much since he works with Notepad and Microsoft Paint.

...straight to me from the desk of George Dubya himself.

As promised, here are the parade pictures. Better late than never!

The Golden Compass comes out this weekend. I saw the previews and thought it looked like a fun movie. The artwork and design concepts are awesome, the cast is star-studded, the special effects look to be better than many recent offerings, and the movie promises to be full of action.

I was totally planning to go see it until I started hearing the rumblings about its supposed anti-God material. I read a couple reviews of the movie this morning, and I think the movie (and the books it's based on) probably falls into a gray area where a Christian's feeling toward it will depend on how sensitive they are to criticism of the church, and how easily they separate what they know about their God from a general idea of other people's negative characterization of religion in general. I've taken some time behind the "continue reading" cut to summarize my thoughts.

Warning: perhaps a slight spoiler ahead. Also, I have not read the books or watched the movie, so you can take this analysis with a grain of salt.

If you are like me, you will wonder about the times and TV coverage of the college bowl games about a thousand times over the next 3 or 4 weeks. So, for my reference and yours, here's a PDF of the match-ups and TV schedule.

Everyone did pretty well last time, but let me remind everyone of the rules. Ok, I warned you....

Rudy Giuliani and the Role of the President

Unlike Hillary, I find that Rudy Giuliani is a very likable person.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that he is any more honest or driven by honorable ideals.

Giuliani certainly got results as Mayor of New York, and I like that he has not exactly toed the party line in the past, breaking with fellow GOP folks when it made sense to have his own opinion. But, I'm not sure I like the way he's gotten his results. According to everything I've read, Giuliani was heavy-handed and quick to make power grabs or ignor inconvenient laws in doing so. That makes me a little nervous when I read his statements supporting the Bush administration's efforts to inflate the power of the presidency. Am I too paranoid?

If there's one thing that gets under my skin, though, it's Rudy's handling of the Brooklyn Museum of Art controversy. David Roediger has a great article explaining why Giuliani's reactions were out of place, and I was really disappointed that I was not able to find the entire article online, but I've linked to an exerpt below. If you really want to read the entire text, I can tell you that the whole book is well worth a read and you can probably get it from your local library.

Anyway, on to the report card.... 

Things you never knew about Rudy

1. was once a Democrat and ran a campaign office on behalf of JFK
2. his father was a convicted felon and may have served as a mob enforcer
3. he claims that having cancer was more life-changing than 9/11
4. on September 10, 2001, his approval rating among African Americans was less than 10%

Most Interesting Link I found: Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past, chapter 2

Bonus Points: Presided over two very impressive periods of renaissance in NY (post-80's and post-9/11).

Minus Points: History of using hot issues to his advantage.

This Saturday, Brooklynne and I went out to the Durham holiday parade. A great time was had by all. Halleigh had the most fun and enjoyed clapping a waving to the people as they went by, but she was afraid of the Remax hot air balloon blasters that went by in the back of a truck. As soon as I have the pictures downloaded, I'll post a gallery.

Church at Blacknall was particularly good this morning too. I have to say, I almost didn't go. I hate going to the late service, because it always seems to drag into the afternoon, but we were up so late last night that we slept through the earlier time. We're also going to Anna Efird's dedication tonight at Emmaus Way, so there was a convenient rationale to sleep in, but Brooklynne and I have had trouble finding people our age to hang out with lately (everyone seems so busy) and we're both kind of itching for closer relationships with other people, so I wanted to try a new sunday School class, and I finally forced myself out of bed.

Two images struck me from church today. First, I love the story of Abraham finding the ram on the mountain tangled in thorns--it might be my favorite Bible story. The second image is that of God preparing a house for us. We were talking about Joseph being betrothed, but not fully married to Mary at the time she became pregnant, and the idea that in Jewish culture of the time, a man and a woman were attatched (kind of married?) when they shared a ritual cup, but they would not consummate the marriage or live together until the man went back and prepared a house for his wife. We discussed how Jesus shared a cup with his followers, and then went ahead of them to prepare many houses. For some reason, this was an especially touching image to me this morning.

In other news... I'll try to post the Giuliani report card by tomorrow evening.