Driving In Silence

We will become what we value

2010-02-04T14:59:00.004-06:00

Without a critical rethinking of how we calculate wealth, or GDP, to include the benefits of a healthy and well-educated workforce, we will never stall the slow loss of our national economic security.

We need a national health care plan. We need an across the board increase in taxes to pay for quailty education curriculums, quality teachers, and new facilities in our schools. And, above all else, we need to remind our citizens that sacrafices are needed in order to regain stability. We did not become an economic giant without sacrafices, and we certainly won't remain one if we do not admit this fact, embrace our hardships, and shoulder the burden of our parent's mistakes.

We still have hope, but not much time.

A Quick Thought

2009-09-23T06:09:00.020-05:00

An odd and always changing sleep schedule is just about the only consistent thing in my life right now. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. I do my best to take advantage of different waking hours and enjoy them for what they offer. One of my favorite things about being awake this early in the morning is watching the news networks start their political coverage at 5 am. Yes 5 am!!! I'm a diehard political junkie and even I don't want to know what's going on in politics at 5 am. Give me game scores, jokes, and water skiing squirrels!

Sigh.

Sadly, I crave the silly, non-essential stories because the media have long since abandoned covering pertinent issues in a responsible and rational manner. After all, they have 24 hours of television to fill every day. For the past three days I've watched MSNBC's Morning Joe (Fox News isn't an option and the CNN people don't randomly joke about being drunk) and they've been obsessing about President Obama's weekend media blitz on five Sunday morning talk shows and the Letterman program on Monday night. The consensus on Morning Joe: President Obama is wasting his political capital by overexposing himself.

Jokes about exposure aside, I really just want to observe aloud that there is no winning with the media these days. (President Bush rarely spoke to the people and that too was criticized) It's been true for a long time that the weekly stories in politics are set and controlled by what is said on Sunday mornings. That means a strong communications strategy will effectively use Sunday newspaper stories and popular surrogates on the morning talk shows. So when lies and distortions (death panels anyone?) have made it impossible for a fair and honest debate about health care reform to take place, it makes sense for the president to put himself out there in order to re-establish the facts by presenting his argument directly to the voters.

Unfortunately, rather than focus on the President's message, the pundits have decided it is necessary to obsess about the number of interviews the President gave one weekend in mid-September. When the President speaks to the people it is far more important to analyze his words than to debate the process story. There is a time and place to discuss new political strategies in this constantly changing media environment, but it should be kept separate from policy.

smiley

2009-06-05T21:22:00.006-05:00

"Hey man, could you grab that end?"

2009-04-29T09:01:00.005-05:00

The Official White House Photo Stream is quite fascinating.

I'm working on some more in depth articles for you. Hopefully I'll start turning out some content next week. Until then, enjoy the photos!

Good Shoes Bad Feet

2009-04-23T08:02:00.002-05:00

So it appears that buying those hi-tech sneakers with impact resistance, spring cushions, and alien technology designed to magically give you orgasms (what?) don't actually help. The report shows that there may be a linkage to hi-tech sneakers and the increase in knee and foot problems. Who would have thought?

El Paso

2009-04-17T01:06:00.003-05:00

Melissa del Bosque writes a fantastic article in The Texas Observer about the real situation at the El Paso/Juarez border. I won't inject my own opinion on this item except to say that it's a great moment to be considering this issue, given President Obama's visit with Mexican President Calderon.

Hey, that's my armrest!

2009-04-16T09:59:00.003-05:00

One of my constant complaints when flying around the country is people's theivery of my armrest. I don't understand how people can justifiably try to wager control of both of the armrests around them. They don't seem to possibly even fathom the idea of sharing. Let's not even get into the fact that some people's body actually flows over the armrest...well actually lets:

United is now charging passengers who can't fit into their seat (with a seatbelt extender) for 2 seats. About damn time. I don't have anything against fat people (enough people are harsh enough to fat people without my two cents) but if you are ruining my quality of service then something is wrong. I can understand how fat people can call this discrimination but it's ultimately affecting the fellow passengers more than the airline.

Here's a cheers to owning your piece of seat without someone overflowing into you.

George Will is better than you

2009-04-16T05:55:00.006-05:00

So, anytime I'm with the family discussing some hollywood piece-of-shit movie, or the quality of discourse in America, my sister calls me an elitist... Well, if I'm an elitist, I don't know that we can even begin to define how fucking lame George Will, the conservative commentator from the Washington Post and Newsweek, is.

At any rate, George Will obviously didn't have any facts to distort about the severity of Global Warming, so he used his space in his Post column today to mock Americans for wearing denim. Seriously, George Will is the last person who should be judging others for their fashion choices.

Will lobbs several insults towards the denim-wearing unwashed masses in his piece. My favorite put-down occurred when Will claims that "Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults and cartoons for adults." Way to keep it classy, George! I suppose it's all ok since he's mostly just elaborating on the thoughts of some douchebag named Daniel Akst. I don't know who he is, so I'm gonna just stay mad at boy George.

I personally am a fan of denim, and will continue to use it as my go-to casual wear because it's comfortable and matches with EVERYTHING. Also, it's hard for people to tell when denim gets dirty. That's pretty key for me.

On a side note, I'd like to welcome new writer to Driving In Silence, Give Him A Gun. He is both a gentleman and a scholar and may be responsible for a change in our web address soon.* Keep an eye out for his posts.

* By "gentleman and a scholar," I of course mean "guy who texts me from the toilet."

FCC finally decides to do its job

2009-04-09T08:38:00.003-05:00

It looks like the FCC has finally taken it upon themselves to start a National Broadband Plan. For years we've been lacking in basic broadband coverage and broadband quality (speed speed speed). [Wired Article]

Australia already has a huge plan to spend almost double we will. It's about time we kick some aussie ass. Obama has earmarked up to $7.2 billion after it was found that we were ranked 17 in broadband penetration out of the entire world!

Hopefully this will somehow simultaneously kill Time Warner's monopolistic practice of tiered pricing. I would LOVE to see 100mbps connections straight into residential houses which would give us streaming HD media on demand. We'd no longer need 5 different connections to our house (phone, cable, internet, satellite, plumbing [okay we may need this one still but I'm hoping the internet solves that]).

Oldest profession in the world

2009-04-08T22:27:00.004-05:00

Apparently human beings aren't the only species with a prostitution problem.

Time Warner Finds New Way to Make Money

2009-04-03T05:49:00.003-05:00

Time Warner has found a new way to fuck over its customers with its "plan to charge Internet customers based on how much Web data they consume."

In its operation in the State of Texas, Time Warner has chosen the cities of Austin and San Antonio to test out its tiered usage system. The new charging system, which will be implemented sometime this summer, is similar to most cell phone plans where users pay for a certain allotment of minutes and texts and are charged heavily when exceeding their limits.

For a more extensive analysis than I'm capable of providing on this issue, please head over to burntorangereport.com.

All about the Benjamins

2009-03-30T10:57:00.004-05:00

Time magazine details a report telling consumers to carry around $100 bills in order to save money. The theory being that people are less likely to spend money when they're carrying their cash in large denominations.

That's a fine theory and all, but it'll probably backfire on people who have an insatiable appetite for cocaine, hookers, and booze. What say you to that, Time? hmmm?

Didn't think it would be so long

2009-03-30T10:43:00.001-05:00

Taken from aim:

mhud523: ok, i guess i'll do a mile, better than nothing
neriosowigga: heh
neriosowigga: have fun
mhud523: shut it

Time lapse. . .

mhud523: i surprised myself and did 2.5
neriosowigga: sweet
mhud523: i was just below 1 and then went until first time out
mhud523: didn't think it would be so long haha
neriosowigga: that's what she said
mhud523: damn

Funeral for Lucky

2009-03-30T10:36:00.002-05:00

Much thanks to a friend of The Lost Texan for this contribution from College Humor. Here, we have the cutest funeral ever

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Top 10% Rule under review

2009-03-30T09:45:00.002-05:00

The Texas House of Representatives will debate altering the top 10% rule that has been in place on public universities in the State since 1997. The Texas Senate already approved a similar bill.

I think it should be pointed out that the University of Texas would not be under nearly as great a strain under this law if the State actually invested in Education so that Texas could have the same number of high quality public schools as California. As the system exists now, the vast majority of top High School students have only a few reasonable in-state schools to choose from.

If video killed the radio star, what did the internet kill?

2009-03-30T08:29:00.004-05:00

The New York Times reports that MTV is going to introduce more music into their daily schedule... And by "daily," I mean "nightly." And by "nightly," I mean "starting at 3 am."

A few quick observations about what I think this means.

MTV has not been a major factor in launching new sounds in nearly a decade; so can playing music again, even if only 6 hours between 3 am and 9 am, really make them a music station again? The answer is, of course, no. MTV's strategy here is only to survive the recession with limited loss by cutting costs on all those crappy reality shows they've been trying to pawn off as as entertainment.

With the creation of youtube, mp3 players, internet radio, and other tools where the user can control content, MTV's presentation of bad pop music will remain irrelevant to the music scene. The most promising thing for MTV on this programming adjustment is that, maybe (and this is a big MAYBE) some adolescents will tune in for some music before heading off to school. Anytime a station wins that demographic they should do well with advertising revenue. But I wouldn't count on it.

Do you know who's in your kitchen?

2009-03-29T19:50:00.002-05:00

Just a quick link today. The Foggy Monocle is a place where stories of drunken debauchery are shared. Some of the posts are good, others not so good.

But if you read just one post from Foggy, make sure it's this one . And remember kids, the moral of the story is that good things happen to those who drunk text...or something like that.

See ya tomorrow.

Teleprompters

2009-03-27T09:49:00.004-05:00

Michael Gerson Defends Obama??

It seems a bit odd, that President George W. Bush's former speechwriter would use his column to defend President Obama's use of the teleprompter. But it's not if we accept the fact that Gerson writes primarily to defend the concept that prepared remarks are no less authentic than an off the cuff response. After all, Gerson made his career carefully crafting ideas for Republican politicians. Regardless, this is a good article about "the importance of writing to the process of thought" and governing.

Also, speaking as a former Rhetoric major, I'm a bit sick of hearing "rhetoric" used interchangeably with "bullshit." I'm glad someone else feels the same. (even if it's a Republican)

Here's what's been keeping me going these days...

2009-03-27T09:31:00.004-05:00

This movie looks like it has three awesome things: Monsters, Aliens, and the City of San Francisco. I'd be a sucker not to see it!

Finance and such

2009-03-27T08:47:00.003-05:00

This week people finally calmed down a bit about AIG and their band of merry-million-dollar-bonus-having executives. I think the so-called "populist outrage" over AIG was mostly a fabrication of the media, but that doesn't mean there isn't something there. Anyway, I saw a few interesting articles written this week about American anger towards the financial industry that I thought I'd pass along.

On Wednesday, Nate Silver, the genius behind FiveThirtyEight .com, posted a brief story about his friend, and former wall street banker, Vijay. Silver uses the biography of his friend to effectively denounce "blanket assertions that Wall Street business people are 'greedy, selfish and utterly immoral.'" He also makes a great point against that the proposed (and now dead?) Bonus Tax idea is discriminatory in nature. The only critique I have of Silver's argument is that he dismisses the idea that greed, particularly the greed of the financial industry, is bad.

For more on the evolution of the financial sector from a boring and stable industry into one that balooned up and exploded, see Paul Krugman's article in this morning's New York Times.

Yesterday, Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com posted his ideas on what he called the "social contract under strain."

I don't want to summarize this article because I think it should be read as a whole. But I will post this short passage that seems to be vital to arguments that approve of the outrage over executive bonuses:

"When the companies have come to the taxpayer hat in hand, begging for money, at that point you're into the average citizen's moral space, in which it becomes her or his business whether you really deserve that much money -- something that people just don't think is their business as long as you're talking about private corporations making or not making money in whatever way they're able."

Ok. It's Friday, so enough about AIG.

A Facebook Glitch

2009-03-26T20:01:00.003-05:00

My friend, Tom Krieglstein, recently encountered an interesting glitch on his Facebook account. He was accidentally given administrative control of some very large corporate Facebook pages, including Delta Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, and the Star Wars fan page. You can see Tom show off this glitch on AllFacebook.

In a conversation about the glitch and Facebook's recent upgrade with PCWorld, Tom states his belief that problem was due to "a kink in the new code." However, Facebook claims this was an "isolated inciendent."

Facebook "fixed" the problem today by removing Tom as an admin from all pages, including Swift kick and Red Rover, which he actually owns. Hopefully this problem is resolved shortly.

Wild Things

2009-03-26T09:06:00.005-05:00

"Where The Wild Things Are" was easily one of my favorite books growing up. I'd be lying if I said i wasn't worried about this movie ruining my perception of this story. After all, wasn't the book only about ten sentences long? There's definitely going to be a lot of added plot in this Spike Jonze film.

But the film does have a great look to it, and the Arcade Fire song fits the preview very well. It's possible Jonze combines the two to create a bridge between something we loved from childhood (the book) and something we love now (awesome music by Arcade Fire).

BTW, the wild thing you hear in the the beginning is voiced by James Gandolfini...

Quick Thoughts before we begin...

2009-03-26T05:57:00.007-05:00

So, I created this blog a long time ago and was uncertain what I wanted to do with it. All I knew was that I'm an opinionated asshole and had a lot of free time on my hands, so why not do something constructive?

It was a good idea, but, as is often the problem with wanna-be-creative types such as myself, I didn’t know how to channel my opinions and ideas into something that would be interesting and fulfilling. Should I apply my trivial knowledge of pop culture? Should politics be the focus? Should I get incredibly vain and tell you how I spend most days hanging out with my dog, Rascal, on the couch playing wii sports and watching rerun episodes of How I Met Your Mother over and over?

My tentative decision is to begin without rules. It’s difficult enough to stare at this blank screen and create content, so I’m not going to make that process more difficult than it needs to be. Also, I’m hoping I’m not narcissistic enough to subject you, dear reader, to too many details of mine and Rascal’s lives, but I suppose we’ll see how that works out. ;)

That’s all for this round. Here's Rascal:

dawn

2008-05-22T09:20:00.000-05:00

This morning I awoke just before 6 am. I am not generally an early riser, but I felt it necessary to get downstairs to let the dog out and fill the kitchen with a fresh aroma of eggs, bacon and toast. As if, to re-create something from the past.

Twenty seconds later, upon arriving in the kitchen, I found that letting the dog out was all I had the energy to do. I ate cereal instead.

I am one lazy bastard.