Blogging News

I'm pretty psyched to share this bit of blogging news. I've come to love this so much that I decided to move my blog to a more powerful and versatile platform. The new blog is a Wordpress blog which is considered by many to be the gold standard. So Signed, Sealed, Deliverd is now at a new address. Here is the link. If you had bookmarked my site, or were a "follower" please visit the link below. If you have questions about how to subscribe to my new blog, pls let me know. And thanks for your continued support.

Happy Holidays!

http://onehundredvoices.com

Say Hello to Steven Chu - Secretary of Energy

Lord have mercy. Take a step back and allow yourself a moment to savor this: we now have national leadership that not only respects intellectual achievement, but celebrates and exploits it. Steven Chu will be the new Secretary of Energy. He currently leads Lawrence Livermore Labs in Berkeley. One word: brilliant.

The video is only nine minutes long. You can pick up some interesting factoids -- about climate change, California's success in energy consumption and a grass that produces 15 times the ethanol that corn does. Have a look.

Here is a brief CV;
Professor of physics and molecular and cell biology, UC Berkeley
Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2004-present;
Chair, physics department, Stanford University, 1990-1993 and 1999-2001;
Head, quantum electronics research department, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, N.J., 1983-1987;

Bachelor's in physics and mathematics, University of Rochester;
Ph.D in physics, University of Califorinia, Berkeley, 1976.

Here is what James Fallows says:
"...the ability of an incoming administration to select such people, and -- even trickier -- convince them it will be worth their while to move to Washington and wrestle with the most complicated politico / technical / diplomatic problems, given all the hassles and built-in frustrations and lack of privacy in governmental life, is both surprising and encouraging. Very good news."

True Conniptions

Well, well, this is really interesting and curious. David Denby, film critic for the New Yorker, has written a book on snark. (Definition below.) Publication is set for January.

Not to toot my own horn here, (for who am I compared to David Denby) but I'd been contemplating a humble blog posting on this very topic.

I have been a HUGE devotee of snark for years. Not sure where I first bumped into it, but I think it was in the pages of the Washington Post Style section, which has had a long, proud tradition of boiling the English language in a large, black, cauldron, pouring it into beakers and pouring it back onto the pages of the Post as a tasty, nasty, elixir. I confess to falling head over heel. This was language that took risks, lived on the edge, played with fire. That found novel ways to create metaphors, that connected seemingly random bits and bytes to surprise, delight and outrage. Wicked fun!

But I've grown tired. It's everywhere now and frankly, as my wife says, a little goes a long way. Plus there is the issue of competence. It's not everyone that has the chops to pull it off well. James Wolcott of Vanity Fair is an Olympic caliber snarkster but there are few that can match him. And of course he is featured in the Denby book.

Here's a sampling of the Wolcott style. Delivered in response to the Denby project.

"Because no way would Denby register his bearded disapproval of snark without naming me as one of the Woody Woodpecker instigators. It is has been one of his articles of faith since the late Renaissance that I lack the seriousness (intellectual, moral, epiglottal) that he has in such abundance that he reach it with a backscratcher without throwing out his elbow. In fact, I blush to admit that such is my yearning pride that I wondered if Denby might devote an entire chapter to me and my unworthy antics entitled Snarky's Machine or C.P.O. Snarky* or something equally punny."

I'm not sure when I got tired of this, but recently while watching the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC, I thought to myself, I'm tired of this snark-style delivery. I like Rachel Maddow a lot. But that delivery...slightly knowing, slightly condescending, wears thin. It calls attention to the messenger more than it does the message...

More thoughts later.
Definition from the publisher of Snark: What is snark? You recognize it when you see it -- a tone of teasing, snide, undermining abuse, nasty and knowing, that is spreading like pinkeye through the media and threatening to take over how Americans converse with each other and what they can count on as true.

The Wonder of the Internets

First there was Google Books. An attempt, currently underway, to digitize millions of books so Web freaks such as yours truly could peruse the pages of just about any book imaginable. Big project. Kind of like the Big Dig in Boston.

Now we are moving to magazines.

This is from the official Google Blog:

Search and find magazines on Google Book Search

12/09/2008 09:47:00 AM
The word "magazine" is derived from the Arabic word "makhazin," meaning storehouse. Since Daniel Defoe published the world's first English magazine back in 1704, millions of magazines catering to nearly every imaginable taste have been created and consumed, passed from person to person in cafes, barber shops, libraries, and homes around the world. If you're wondering what cars people drove in the eighties or what was in fashion thirty years ago, there's a good chance that you'll find that answer in a magazine. Yet few magazine archives are currently available online.

Today, we're announcing an initiative to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles from titles as diverse as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony. Are you a baseball history fanatic? Try a search for [hank aaron pursuing babe ruth's record] on Google Book Search. You'll find a link to a 1973 Ebony article about Hank Aaron, written as he closed in on Babe Ruth's original record for career home runs. You can read the article in full color and in its original context, just as you would in the printed magazine. Scroll back a few pages, for example, and you'll find a two-page spread on 1973's fall fashions. If you'd like to read further, you can click on "Browse all issues" to view issues from across the decades.

Maybe Google would be willing to run GM.

Blue Note Cool

I Give You Mr. Robert Lutz

This just beggars belief. Meet Robert Lutz, Chairman of the Board at General Motors. Mr. Lutz is in the Times today, and he is responding to talk that is emanating from Congress and other quarters about tossing GM CEO Rick Wagoner overboard.

“This is the equivalent of the Incan or Mayan days when everybody would go to the top of the volcano and throw a virgin in. It’s the feeling that if we make a sacrifice that somehow the gods would be appeased.”

Until now, GM has kept Mr. Lutz under wraps because, as we can see from the above quote, he has a tendency to speak in, um, rather colorful terms. Remember the guy on late night TV who used to sell you steak knives? The guy who yelled, "But Wait! There's More!?" Well, there's more.

Robert Lutz says he has felt hostility from Washington his whole career. And listen to the reason why: “But it’s partly self-inflicted, because I think there was a period in the U.S. automobile industry where we did not treat Washington and the politicians with sufficient respect.”

He doesn't say there was a time in the U.S. automobile industry where really bad decisions were made, or that the industry made crappy cars, or that the industry was totally out of step with the market. No.

Robert Lutz thinks that Detroit has not felt the love from Washington only because Detroit has not kissed a sufficient amount of Washington DC ass. And this will come as no surprise. Robert Lutz once said that global warming is a "crock."

And this is the company who wants 20 billion dollars, give or take, to keep their business alive.

But wait, there's more!

Robert Lutz is the man behind the Dodge Viper!


2008 Dodge Viper Overview
The 2008 Dodge Viper SRT10 is offered in two models, the convertible Roadster ($83,145) and GTS coupe ($83,895). An ACR model is due soon. The government adds a Gas Guzzler Tax to this, however. Viper comes standard with leather/suede sport seats, air conditioning, power adjustable pedals, tilt steering column, full instrumentation, CD player, power steering, power disc brakes, power windows, power locks, power mirrors, console, composite bodywork, bi-Xenon headlamps, fog lamps, limited-slip differential, and emergency flat-tire repair kit.

MPG (Highway): 22

An $83,000 car that gets 22 mpg AND comes with a government gas guzzler tax! If only they kissed more ass life would be so much better.

See the USA, in your Chevrolet!

What a Wonderful World

Check this out in iTunes if you can.
I'm going to try to put up one of the songs from this CD on a subsequent post, so stay tuned. It's particularly cheerful music for a difficult moment.

Priceless

First Words

I'm launching a new kind of post where I bring you the first sentence of some great novels. Today's First Words belong to George Orwell, one of the true, undisputed giants.

From 1984, published in or around 1950, and considered by some to be one of the 100 most influential novels ever written.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Calling Richard Clarke

I'm wondering what Richard Clarke might have to say about this idea that is now bouncing around the Republic; i.e., That Bush kept us safe.

I'm not so sure.

I'm pretty sure that Bush was President on 9/11 and there were some folks at the time - Richard Clarke being the bravest one, who stood up and said that the White House was AWOL. In a big way.

But here is Peggy Noonan, a writer (and conservative) who I admire saying stuff like this:

"In the seven years since 9/11, there were no further attacks on American soil. This is an argument that's been around for a while but is newly re-emerging as the final argument for Mr. Bush: the one big thing he had to do after 9/11, the single thing he absolutely had to do, was keep it from happening again. And so far he has. It is unknown, and perhaps can't be known, whether this was fully due to the government's efforts, or the luck of the draw, or a combination of luck and effort. And it not only can't be fully known by the public, it can hardly be fully known by the players at all levels of government. They can't know, for instance, of a potential terrorist cell that didn't come together because of their efforts."

There are some serious qualifiers in that passage, to be sure, but I'd like to advance a different meme. President Bush was in office when the worst attack on the American mainland took place. So in fact Bush did not keep us safe. He failed us. In more ways than we can count.

Like Richard Clarke said, "Your government failed you."

Wow! For Women the Jury is Still Out on Obama?

Who knew? This is really interesting. In a long piece at The Nation, Katha Pollitt, (who, I am both embarrassed (I didn't know her) and happy to announce, is a monster writer with extremely impressive credentials (Learning to Drive/ Random House 2007) and you should read her) tries to get at the unease that Obama seems to set off in some feminists. I'm not sure what the "momification of Michelle" has to do with Barack Obama, though. I'm guessing that nobody is telling Michelle Obama what she is going to do.

"For some women who care about women's equality, the jury is still out on Obama. They voted for him, but they don't trust him to do the right thing for women. Left feminists aren't impressed that he's nominating Hillary Clinton for secretary of state. Mainstream feminists like Salon's Rebecca Traister are disquieted by the "momification" of Michelle. No one has forgotten that Barack called a reporter "sweetie" months ago at a press conference."

The piece goes on to talk about the persistent nature of gender inequality. The parking attendant who makes more than the child care worker. The fact that marriage is still not very often a partnership of equals.

Hillary's candidacy fueled a longing in a LOT of women. FINALLY! We've got a leader who understands. Only it didn't happen. What Pollitt says is that Obama has to meet that longing that many women had, and make gender equality a cornerstone of his administration. Tax policy, Social Security, welfare reform, etc.

I had my eyes opened here. But an interesting question comes up for me. One of the realities of Obama's election was that there was much less gender and identity politics than usual. Identity politics has derailed the Dems for years now; the country looks at the Democratic party and decides that it only represents these specific groups, African-Americans, gays, women, poor people and you know the rest, the latte-sipping, Volvo driving, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.

But this really is a legitimate question. And the further question is to what extent WILL gender equality be at the forefront in the Obama Administration? Michelle? What say you?

Read the whole piece here>>

Talk About the Dark Side

"Barack Obama’s grandfather was imprisoned and brutally tortured by the British during the violent struggle for Kenyan independence, according to the Kenyan family of the US President-elect."

That's the opening shot of a fascinating piece in the Guardian. It seems that the British Colonial Government imprisoned Hussein Onyango Obama, the President-elect's paternal grandfather for two years. He'd become involved in the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for the British.

The whole piece is here>>

Heads Us - Here's A Couple More

Andrew Sullivan posted this yesterday. It reminded him of what Barack Obama has to do.
Thanks, Andrew. If you tie the guys hands behind his back then I think we get a little closer to Obama's challenge.

Duke Ellington, Obama and black boxers...

Stanley Couch has a great piece on The Daily Beast. He's exploring the reactions of the Obama phenomenon inside the black community. Specifically, he's answering the charge that a lot of black folks didn't know anyone like Obama in their communities.

An excerpt:

This began with the writings of Richard Wright and James Baldwin, both of whom painted essentially one-dimensional portraits of black experience that were determined to shame the white people into removing black people from the limitless house of pain reserved for them. Racism made black people ashamed of their hair, their skin color, their lips and noses, their supposed intellectual inferiority. Were there truly bad things that had been done to black people and continued to be done and are still, in some ways, done to this very day? Yes and no.

Read the whole thing here>>

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