this is sippey.typepad.com

now that's a quote

Regardless of your feelings for either Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley, you have to appreciate what the great communicator had to say about the "polysyllabic" champion of conservatism.  This Reagan quote is pulled from the Times obit of Buckley...

"You didn't just part the Red Sea -- you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism.  And then, as if that weren't enough, you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom."

But somehow I doubt that Reagan wrote that himself... Sounds a lot like Peggy Noonan, no?

insert obvious gmail joke here

There must be some German or French word for that oh-so-frequent combination of feeling "not surprised in the slightest" and "jaw-droppingly amazed" at the same time.  From the AP:

There were no archived e-mails from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney from Sept. 30, 2003, to Oct. 6, 2003, just as the Justice Department was launching its investigation into whether anyone at the White House leaked Valerie Plame's CIA identity, according to documents provided to the House panel. The only e-mails that could be recovered for prosecutors were from the personal e-mail accounts of officials in Cheney's office, according to the report by Waxman's staff.

is your dog a werewolf?

Moving on from the runaway children of Beautiful Children (deep cleansing breaths, wash hands well with scalding hot water, hug kids one extra time before bed) to the three roving packs of werewolves in Toby Barlow's new novel-in-verse Sharp Teeth. I seem to have missed the cultural pivot point when books began to have full blown flash-intro websites with viral video, but check out this little ditty, which will help you determine once and for all if your dog is a werewolf.

liveblogging reading some of the liveblogging of the oscars

Last night, 10:30 pm:  Finished watching our Tivo'd version of the Oscars.  Ba-boop'd our way through the montages.  Did email during some of the songs.  Didn't liveblog.

Last night, 10:40 pm:  Check in on Vox neighborhood.  Hey, Anil liveblogged the Oscars!  Skim skim skim, scroll scroll, scroll.  Here's a funny line: "Poor Nicole Kidman, ruined herself. Used to be fetching. I'm just saying. I do like her brave choice to wear a chandelier."

Last night, 11:30 pm:  Oh, hey, looks like Jason liveblogged not watching the Oscars. How clever.  "My liveblogging outfit this evening: jeans by Banana Republic, long sleeve tshirt by American Apparel, socks by Wal-Mart, boxer shorts by Muji." (Ahem, that sounds like a series of Facebook is statements to me.)

This morning, 11:00 am:  Wow, David liveblogged 'em, too.  "I think Owen Wilson should take over Heath Ledger's career."  Yes!  Excellent idea. Couldn't have said it better myself.

This morning, 11:25 am: OK, that's enough.

"There are certain stories like the U.S. attorneys that might never have seen the light of day had T.P.M. not pursued it in the way that they had. ... We now count on T.P.M. and other blogs to do the investigative work that reporters used to do."
Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, in the NYTimes piece covering Joshua Michael Marshall of Talking Points Memo winning the George Polk Award.

beautiful children

Just finished Beautiful Children. Though there are stretches of great prose, I couldn't find my way into any sort of a plot arc, other than what Ponyboy wants to do to Cheri, and the slow and obvious disintegration of Lorraine. I didn't believe any of the characters...only its setting; the book itself is a lot like Las Vegas -- well marketed, seems like it'd be a lot of fun, pretty on the surface and leaves you feeling empty.

more reviews like this, please

Wil Shipley of Delicious Library fame posts a fantastic review of the Air, hitting all the right notes, including this pitch-perfect one:

Jonathan Ive should design a laptop bag as beautiful as the Air, that just can contain the machine, a power cord, and a Wireless Mighty Mouse. I'd be in heaven. Nobody seems to have addressed the "I want a small, slim bag that can still hold a power cord without having a giant wart in the side" market. Like, duh, bag designers, STOW THE POWER CORD ABOVE OR BELOW THE LAPTOP, not STICKING OUT THE SIDE WHERE IT CREATES A TENT AND LOOKS UGLY AND BANGS MY KNEE.

+1

a quick note to the kindle team

Dear Kindle team,

I just finished a week of travel with a new Kindle, and I'm well into reading my third book on it. So far so good -- the screen is very readable, even for long stretches of time; I don't have a problem with the next page / prev page button placement; the little e-ink flash when you turn pages isn't that annoying; and the battery life is great.

The UI for finding and buying books is pretty good, and it will be interesting to watch how you use the limited screen real estate and UI controls as a merchandising advantage as more and more titles come online. I can't imagine using the device for browsing the web or reading email -- the screen refresh is fast enough for reading books, but not for skimming web content.  And while I wish the keyboard were virtual (I only use it when searching the store), I get why it's there and appreciate the tradeoff decision re. price & touchscreen.

A key feature of the device is a simple and elegant way to highlight and clip sections of text -- and once you get the hang of it you find yourself doing it all the time. When reading real books I'm always marking pages or making notes in the margin; the Kindle makes this a quick click and scroll action. But I was surprised to learn that these highlights stay on the device, and don't sync up to your Amazon account. (You can download them with the included USB cable, but who wants to do that?)

So here's the feature request that must be on your roadmap: send my clippings back up into the cloud, where I can copy and paste them for future use. Bonus points for giving me the opportunity to connect my Kindle account to my blog, and have the service automatically post new clips via Atom or MetaWeblog. Extra bonus points for illustrating those with a cover thumbnail, and embedding my Associates code in the URL back to the store.

Best,
Michael

pattern recognition

So I'm making my way through The Black Swan; highly recommended. IAONAN (I Am Obviously Not A Neuroscientist), but Taleb's argument that our brains just aren't wired for outliers seems to be the flip side (in a good way) of Jeff Hawkins' descriptions of conscious thought in On Intelligence. Our brains are constantly doing pattern recognition, looking for how things fit...and being (quite literally) surprised when they don't. (And "click" went my brain.)  Plus, I haven't come across more descriptive terms than "mediocristan" and "extremistan." Perfect.

olafur eliasson

olafur eliasson at the sfmoma, originally uploaded by Agent Kira.

We took the kids to see the Olafur Eliasson show at SFMOMA this weekend. First impressions are everything, and long after we left they were still talking about what happens when you step out of the elevator on the fifth floor.  Simply mind blowing; highly recommended.