Brandi Carlile - "Fall Apart Again"

Saw Brandi Carlile open for Jamie Cullum a few years ago. It was a weird mix of styles but Erin and I fell in love immediately after her cover of "Hallelujah." Her best-known song is "Throw It All Away" but I love this one just as much.

The Onion: Twitter Creator On Iran: 'I Never Intended For Twitter To Be Useful'

Twitter Creator On Iran: 'I Never Intended For Twitter To Be Useful'

SAN FRANCISCO—Creator Jack Dorsey was shocked and saddened this week after learning that his social networking device, Twitter, was being used to disseminate pertinent and timely information during the recent civil unrest in Iran. "Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them," said a visibly confused Dorsey, claiming that Twitter is at its most powerful when it makes an already attention-starved populace even more needy for constant affirmation. "When I heard how Iranians were using my beloved creation for their own means—such as organizing a political movement and informing the outside world of the actions of a repressive regime—I couldn't believe they'd ruined something so beautiful, simple, and absolutely pointless." Dorsey said he is already working on a new website that will be so mind-numbingly useless that Iranians will not even be able to figure out how to operate it.

The most interesting thing about Twitter to me is the unintended ways it is being used. All joking aside, I do believe personal, mobile broadcasting is changing the world. In the very near future nearly everyone on the planet will be carrying a device capable of broadcasting and text, images, audio, and video with them everywhere they go. One day soon these devices will all be connected on a high-speed, worldwide data network. There is no question in my mind that this 21st century phenomenon will shape the future in huge, exciting ways we can only imagine. In fact, that's what we must do - imagine and create them.

Quotes: Global Warming, Soccer, and the Emerging Church

"So-called 'global warming' is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don't let them get away with it!" Chip Giller

"Soccer: the sport for fourth graders that foreigners take seriously." Stephen Colbert

"For those fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with all the nuance of Christian subcultures, 'emerging' has often become a catch-all world for new forms of Christian theology and worship - a word that, in actuality, mainly means nothing. But emerging does own the annoying stereotype of being fascinated with all things hip and trendy, a 'relational authenticity' that can very much be its own version of plastic." Winn Collier

Taxation Without Representation

Can't tell you how excited I am about this:

ClearType Makes Fonts Smooth

I spent over an hour the other day fighting to make the fonts look smooth on a website I designed, because some people don't use ClearType.

If you have a PC, I beg you to go here and turn on ClearType (you must use Internet Explorer). It will take 5 seconds and you will never have too look at ugly, pixelated fonts again.

If you have a Mac, you already paid the extra $1,000 not to have to deal with this.

The Jackson 5 - "Who's Loving You"

Two Lies (on Art and Science)

1. Scientists are not creative.

2. Artists are not analytical.

I have expressed this idea here before, but I heard a pretty decent TED talk on it this morning by the first African American female astronaut, Mae Jemison, and I though she put it well. If you don't believe it, just ask Dr. Ramachandran or any music theorist.

Top 10 Things Which Have Recently Blown My Mind

1. A Colin Powell aid says the Bush administration used torture to procure evidence for a link between Iraq and Al Quaeda. Let me run that by you again. An aid to Colin Powell said the Bush administration used torture to justify a link between Iraq and Al Quaeda. Not to find terrorists, foil terrorist plots, or "save lives." To confirm claims the administration used to justify the Iraq war to the American people. If you are skeptical regarding whether waterboarding is torture, you should know the U.S. convicted Japanese WWII POW's of torture for waterboarding our soldiers.

2. General Patreus has stated that the United States violated the Geneva Conventions. Patreus: "I don't think we should be afraid of our values we're fighting for, what we stand for... When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it's important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those." I couldn't agree more.

(For more on this, here's a great post by a friend of mine.)

3. A U.S. missile cruiser mistakenly shot down a Iranian civilian passenger airplane in 1988, killing all 290 passengers on board, including 66 children. The U.S. cruiser was in Iranian waters and the plane was in Iranian airspace. In 1996 the U.S. paid Iran $61.8M in a settlement brought before the International Court of Justice regarding the matter. The U.S. has never admitted responsibility or apologized to the Iran government. In fact, Vice President George H. W. Bush stated regarding the incident, "I'll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever, I don't care what the facts are." The cruiser's crew was awarded Combat Action Ribbons upon returning to the U.S.

4. In 2004 a welder in Granby Colorado, frustrated by the outcome of a zoning dispute which destroyed his business, built a homemade tank in his garage and went on a rampage, destroying buildings belonging to members of the city council.

5. China - the country we are all supposed to be so incredibly afraid of because they own so much our debt and could wage financial warfare on us one day - owns a measly 6.5% of the U.S. national debt. 73% is owned by ourselves. Hat-tip to Drew on this one.

6. Number six, well, you see, number six was going to be that my former governor Mark Sanford is suing the SC General Assembly after they overrode his budget vetoes, requiring the state to take $350M in federal bailout money - after Sanford, in my opinion, spent the last 6 years bankrupting the state. But then this happened.

7. 700 NYC teachers are being paid to do literally nothing. Because union rules and tenure make it incredibly hard to fire a teacher in NYC, teachers accused of wrongdoing from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being placed in rooms and paid their full salary to sit and do nothing while they await their hearings - which can take over a year. This costs NY taxpayers an estimated $65M a year. It's happening in other cities as well, such as Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

8. Illegal drugs account for 8% of world trade.

9. As of 2000, suicide outnumbered homicide in the U.S. 5 to 3.

10. In 2007, medical bills were the leading cause of bankruptcy. Since 2000, average wages in the U.S. have increased by 3%, but health insurance premiums have increased by 58%.

Honorable mention: 24% of the homeless population is employed.

If My Friends Ran for President

I'm sorry if you don't know these folks. I guess you can catch them on the campaign trail! Oh and I'm really sorry if I couldn't think of a slogan for you.

The Bottom Five

You may or may not have noticed that my list of friends' blogs has grown a little long. I decided today to remove everyone who hasn't posted in 2009:

Adventures with J&K

Bleeding Cowboys

Glimpse

Little Girl with a Big Punch

The Blue and Yellow Tree

If you are one of these bloggers, I promise to add you back if you decide to blog again - which I sincerely hope you do!

Of course you may notice one person who did not get cut, my beautiful wife Erin. I, like the rest of the world, am still holding out hope that one day she will post again and share her unique sense of humor with the masses. Hey, a man can dream, can't he?