June 2008 Archives

I've been really busy! But this makes up for it. These guys are crazy!

Take the poll. Listen to the band. Produce a new show if you want. This is Conrad's new Kyte.TV channel: ConradTheKat.

This is YouTube on steroids. Explore it. You can create your own video, your own audio chat, your own slideshow, your own polls, etc. Way cool!

You can even watch the Conrad the Kat channel video on your iPhone!--WiFi access needed. Just go to this address: http://kyte.tv/conradthekat

I saw this in an email a few weeks ago and had to blog about it: swimming in shark-infested waters!

____________ \o/________/\____________

I don't think the person who wrote this in an email to me would necessarily want to credited with this, so I will not mention the name. But this is brilliantly expressed, as was the rest of the email:

Our society’s borrow-and-spend orgy of the past generation seems to be coming to an unhappy end. Not only is personal household debt leaving more and more families stressed, bankrupt, or homeless, but our collective debt to outsiders is leaving the United States vulnerable to international creditors who are turning the financial world on its head as China (a leftover Communist regime from the Cold War era) bails out venerable capitalistic icon Morgan Stanley.

Lawrence Lessig's thinking is clear, articulate, and compelling. This video, about his Change Congress efforts speaks in a very compelling way to the need and the opportunity.

Again Obama is blowing my socks off! He really seems to be about changing the order of political power. I just posted about my support of Lawrence Lessig's efforts with this very issue here.

Speaking in Bristol, Va., [yesterday] he told a cheering crowd: "We will not take a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs. We're going to change how Washington works. They will not fund my party. They will not run our White House. And they will not drown out the voice of the American people when I'm president of the United States of America."

Obama is also out front on the issue of fundraising transparency. He said this week that from now on, reporters can come in and cover his money events. McCain, despite his reputation as the primary author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and other reforms, holds his fundraising events behind closed doors. When asked why, he replied, "It's because the people who are raising the money request that."

Source: NPR

From my unknown friends at the BBC came this tip. Worth it indeed!

Yeah, I just don't think it's good to use a cell phone next to your ear. I prefer my bluetooth head set or bluetooth connection to the car. But is bluetooth any better?

Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.”

Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.

Along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s recent diagnosis of a glioma, a type of tumor that critics have long associated with cellphone use, the doctors’ remarks have helped reignite a long-simmering debate about cellphones and cancer.

[Source: Well - Debate Over Link Between Cellphones and Cancer Is Revived - NYTimes.com]

I think Barak Obama and the American people have made history. Regardless of race, a man has won the nomination of his party for the office of president on the merit of his ideas and his uncanny capacity to express them and compel us toward them with earnest. Whether you agree with his ideas or not, he has indeed accomplished an amazing thing.

I, of course, am quick to point out that the ideas he espouses resonate deeply with me. I remember the words of a colleague, several months back, who knows the Obamas, whose children all attend the same school, "Tim, he's the real thing." For me he represents hope and statesmanship. He personifies dignity and thought. Perhaps he can restore honor to the office of president.

This man is about serving as a change agent. I think he, like few before him, has the capacity to bring about change. God knows we need it desperately. I worry that change agents become targets of the status quo, of powerful moneyed interests. Today begins a daily prayer for his safety.

Who will he name as his vice presidential running mate? I wonder if his gracious remarks tonight about Hillary Clinton are a tip of the hat. We will see.

An Obama / Clinton ticket would be a very interesting mix on a variety of levels.