vote obama Nov 4th

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Republican National Convention, monday: Hiding Behind the Skirts of Women.

The send out Laura.

President Bush and Vice President Bush are deemed too distasteful so they push the women forward. Laura Bush, who is not entirely objectionable is the sacrificial lamb. As a blinking-like-a-deer-in-the-headlights, President Bush is at the emergency operations center trying to appear interested; he mugs for the camera, then realizes he has to be serious as the Texas Governor briefs him on the relief efforts.

So, we watch Laura. We watch Sarah Palin. And now we watch Bristol Palin 5 months pregnant. 

We're in for a great show!

3pm: Then they trot out Cindy McCain, looking as though she's fresh from raiding the 'developing nations' charity medicine cabinet for painkillers.  Hiding behind the skirts of women.

Democratic Convention Thursday

The most memorable soundbite from tonight's convention, so far, has been from the unassuming Marion Indiana worker, Barney Smith who noted we need a president who 'will work for Barney Smith not 'Smith-Barney'.

Watching the convention while working on some fundamental site revisions to the epoca website. 

That Obama - Biden become president and vice president, must come to pass.

7:30pm the obama speech: a promise to eliminate the dependency on foreign oil in TEN YEARS! Health care - insurance companies must offer coverage to those who are sick. ; tax cuts for 95% of middle american.; and asking Americans to take 'individual responsibility and mutual responsibility'.   Direct challenges to McCain.  timeframe to remove the troops from Iraq ($79 billion in surplus ). 

"this election isn't about me; it's about you!" Change doesn't come FROM Washington; change comes TO Washington.   Finally evoking Martin Luther King of 45 years ago - we cannot walk alone, together our dreams will be won; America we cannot turn back, we must pledge to march into the future,.. and a final quote to scripture to appeal to the 'faith-based' voter.

All in all. Great. The right tone, hit the right notes.  Now bring up Joe Biden. Finally Michelle and the girls onstage.. Bring up Biden.. as well. but good work.. and some Beijing style fireworks.. ; not the bird's nest, but we get the idea.  and Biden does make it onto stage. good.; and ticker tape!! Yahoo!! Finishing with dramatic 'nail-biter, blockbuster thriller' soundtrack music and it;s s a new era in American politics!

A new dawn for the American public!

A new responsibility in American Government. and not a moment too soon....

personal health impact toxic oil based paints

As handyman, Doug, his adult children (all of whom's names begin with the letter 'C' ) continue work on the downstairs retails space, the health impact is very real and disconcerting.

 

It's been difficult to sleep and concentrate. I've caught a cold, flu whatever. Sore throat, headache and light-headness. Its of real concern to me that we are not alerted to the use of toxic chemicals in our living space. Its like living in a FEMA trailer.

 

so, another day, of being forced out of my work/live space to seek healthful air. the construction at this property has been going on for 4 years now. Doug is dismissive as I ask him about when the job will be completed.  Its as though Doug is a part owner of the Bay Street apartment properties. Its is such a weird relationship.

A housing issue: McCain not sure how many they own

The Fundamental McCain Disconnect from the Pressing Concerns of Ordinary Americans.

Quoted from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/08/21/politics/p080858D21.DTL&tsp=1:

A housing issue: McCain not sure how many they own

Days after he cracked that being rich in the U.S. meant earning at least $5 million a year, Republican presidential candidate John McCain acknowledged that he wasn't sure how many houses he and his wealthy wife actually own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain responded to a question posed by Politico, according to a story Thursday on the publication's Web site. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

Later, the McCain campaign told Politico that McCain and his wife, Cindy, have at least four in three states — Arizona, California and Virginia. Newsweek recently estimated the two owned at least seven properties.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama used the remark to jab at McCain for his views on the U.S. economy. Campaigning in Chester, Va., Obama told voters, "I guess if you think being rich means you've got to make $5 million and if you don't know how many houses you have, it's not surprising you might think the economy is fundamentally strong."

epoca and march

the march 18th epoca email went out today and garnered some good activity ;

march epoca newsletter

work and leisure

Its a friday. The intention will be to rent a budget car for the day saturday and drive north for a hike.

Before all that, some work projects of the week.

Finishing up a new contact page flash for Laurie Ghielmetti Interiors. Using flash CS3 and AS3 plus the Caurina tweener engine for the transitions.

Two ads(epoca and Dane Robert Wilson Interior Design) have been submitted for the San Francisco Decorator's Showcase house Catalogue. 

Royce Color and James Cotter and Associates (JCA) did the proof and color match for print.   A separate ad is being prepared for the Los Angeles Antiques show .

Next week we begin the website build out for Dane and an email for epoca.

Last evening, Kelly Hartgraves (epoca) and I attended the Showcase House hardhat party with Dane. Its a large home with some amazing detail : a tiffany glass domed ceiling over the main stairwell, fine marble fireplace in the dining room and an intricate lattice ceiling in the entry foyer.  Kelly knew a bit of recent history for the house and some of it's rather sad, entailing the 'Ellis Act' eviction of some elderly women a few years ago.   As George Bush put it: " Sometimes, money trumps.. uh... uh.. " 

Researching inositol as a remedy for moderate anxiety and sleeplessness as I begin battle with the IRS and State over taxes. I have some wonderful support from Sterling Tax in San Francisco. Maybe less therapy and more accounting.

notes on cycling in San Francisco

My usual early morning ride the USF koret pool takes me from Bay Street down Polk, cutting west on Jackson up and over into Pacific Heights past the schools; I head south at Presidio, turning west again on Sacramento to Parker. Here there was chaotic congestion of cars and trucks; I breezed left and crossed California as the light turned green. On over the speed bumps on Parker to Geary and across Geary. I hesitated at the median strip and finished crossing Geary where upon I'm told to pull over by the SF PD, an officer Jon Rodriquez gets out and informs me that I crossed a red light.

Hmmm. Did I?

 This opened a dialogue of approximately 20 minutes. At times I was getting a ticket, at times he was letting me off with a warning.

rainstorm

raining in San Francisco; bike  riding in the rain and
added rainy entrance to the epoca website;

epocasf.com

 

Thoughts on New Hampshire

Watching c-span

McCain: a surreal speech by John McCain, the fossil. The cadence was robotic.   The content empty platitudes: what was he talking about. He got lost a few times. Then, to accentuate this 'back to the future' candidate, the campaign finished off with the '50's -- THE FIFTIES  hit by Bo Diddly, Johnny B. Goode. This was an entirely uninspiring speech. Cindy McCain looked very good in a red state dress with that stepford wife blond hair swept up: trophy wife.   But, hey, Gavin Newsom's got himself a telegenic trophy wife to take him on to the white house as well.

Romney: Mitt's speech was 'Washington's broken'. Set in front a set full of that handsome strapping family: all of them attractive. Which one is the Romney of the future.  But again, sixties music.. "boston you're my home.... " I get it, but, its the past, backwards looking.

 

Clinton: Hillary with a heart - emoting is effective! How she achieved underdog status is amazing. Absent on the podium is the old guard of Bill and Madeline Albright, et. al. Hill goes solo with a crowd of youthful supporters behind her: a page from the Obama playbook.  Smart call to action of hers to mention the website. Much better stage presence than Iowa. A nod to the youth. Effective. And the song - 'an american girl' best choice so far.  

Obama: His oratory and cadence is evocative, compelling and effective. The speeches are powerfu, seemingly heartfelt, and powerful. He hits all the right notes. Another really great speech. -- Steve

What is remakable this time around -- this election, is the genuine interest. People are paying attention this time.   Noticeably different than in 2000 or 2004. Something has shifted. People realize this time it's serious.

Publishing That’s All About Me - New York Times

morning w. the New York Times- makes me somewhat wistful for Squaw Valley, skiing KT; not thinking of technology but finding great skiable terrain. 

Quoted from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/business/media/07carr.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=print:

Publishing That’s All About Me - New York Times

January 7, 2008 The Media Equation

 

Publishing That’s All About Me

By DAVID CARR

Last Wednesday, I boarded an airplane, one of the last gated communities for major media. Up there — for the most part — there is no e-mail, no YouTube, no cellphone. Just me, my 11-year-old daughter in the bulkhead seat next to me and a stack of newspapers and magazines.

For 12 days, between a family Christmas in Minnesota and five days of visiting with friends in Lake Tahoe, I had been blessedly off the grid. A week into the trip, the BlackBerry was out of power and the cellphone was wet and sputtering from a skiing pratfall. In a mountain house above Truckee, Calif., I was far more riveted by the day’s snow conditions than the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses, so I had no urge to run into town for a newspaper.

But by the middle of last week, the vacation was over and it was time to put away childish things like skis and index back into media culture — to find out why Barack Obama was surging, Benazir Bhutto was dead and Spears the younger was pregnant.

Sitting on the tarmac at San Francisco airport, I grazed the headlines in The San Francisco Chronicle and read a few sections of The New York Times, and then began flipping pages in the magazines I had neglected on the way out, all with the intention of regaining my footing in the news.

But a funny thing happened on the way back to Newark. When we reached cruising altitude, I popped open my computer to check on a few things and noticed the new photo icon on my desktop for the digital camera Santa had brought. It contained 1.35 gigabytes of photos and videos from Christmas and the skiing trip that had followed.

There was my daughter Maddie on Christmas Eve day making empanadas for the annual family hors d’oeuvres contest. A group shot of my mother-in-law’s birthday at Nye’s Polonaise Room on the day after Christmas. A video of my daughter Erin and me, preparing to ski KT-22 at Lake Tahoe, a storied, steep run, and portraits of the friends we stayed with and their three pound-rescued mutts.

Sound boring? Maybe to you. For me, time and the waiting magazines drifted away, replaced by the urgency and engagement of personal media. It was both riveting and a huge time suck, precisely because there was so much of it.

I was madly editing, wiping out photos where my comb-over was too punishing with a click of the mouse and putting slices of video into minimontages with an ease that would have taken a $20,000 video machine 10 years ago countless hours to complete. Instead of grocery bags of photos in the basement waiting to be memorialized in an album, I could create a publishable version of the Griswolds on skis by the time we touched down, ready for Flickr or Pickle.

And therein lies the rub, at least for people like me who make a living in mass media. Mainstream publishing is intended to assemble a tribe. In the instance of personal media, a tribe is already assembled and then surrounded with customized media. The guys across the aisle in Row 7 might have briefly been interested in the comic image of me doing a header into a mogul, but not a single other image on that hard drive. This was the ultimate in niche publishing.

“Some technologies and applications are age-specific, but narcissism is not one of them,” said Clay Shirky, a new-media professor at New York University and the author of a forthcoming book on social media called “Here Comes Everybody.” “The pleasures of the self reaches all demographics.”

When Mr. Shirky arrived for a scheduled chat over coffee, I was noodling on my laptop with some of the photographs. I resisted the urge to share.

“What you were doing is as much communication as content,” he said. “It used to be that communication came over the telephone and content came over the television, but those lines are not as clear as they once were. The ease of sharing, the low cost of storage and the simplicity of production means that this is a way for you to create content and communicate at the same time.”

Is it any wonder that last year had the fewest number of new magazine start-ups in 16 years, according to Samir Husni, a professor at the University of Mississippi who keeps track of such things? Or that publicly traded newspaper companies have lost $23 billion in value in the last four years, according to Alan D. Mutter, a former newsman and currently a managing partner at Tapit Partners?

By Thursday night, I was at the kitchen table, still culling the photos. The downside of being able to shoot and store all the photos you want at little or no cost is that you can shoot or store all the photos you want. (Experts are suggesting that the average number of times a photo is viewed is dropping from one toward zero very rapidly.) Still, my public, however small, however niche, was calling. Just a little more editing and then I would be ready to upload to a photo site.

And then, Wolf Blitzer of CNN reared into view on the kitchen television set. Behind him was a graphic indicating that Mr. Obama, a black first-term senator, was about to win a profound victory in the Iowa caucuses. (And what a graphic it was: the CNN set looks as if it doubles as an atom smasher.)

I tried multitasking for a while, but somewhere between Hillary Clinton’s brave concession speech with a former president at her side and Mr. Obama’s bracing call for a new kind of unity, I lost interest in the 12th picture of the steam coming off Lake Tahoe with the mountains in the background.

I grabbed an external hard drive and moved the pictures over to work on later. It is still down there in basement, next to the bags of photos waiting for incarceration in albums. History — a communal experience shared by all members of a culture — had come knocking. Personal, digital immortality will have to wait. Dang.

U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan

 

Today's Headlines: U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan

New Covert Push Within Pakistan
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
The presidential candidates rushed into a final weekend of compressed and often harsh campaigning as they presented new themes to New Hampshire voters.