To complete the transfer, I had to chat with one of their customer service reps. I was miffed when I discovered that it will cost me $35 just to do the transfer, then I was doubly miffed when he told me I would be paying $50/month instead of my current $30.

At this point, Comcast is hoping I will curse at them, shake my fist, then open my wallet and submit to their plundering. But wait, what if I just asked?

Sure enough, just by asking I got my promotional discount extended for another six months. Total savings = $120. Just for asking.

The real story in my opinion is the demographic shift. Consider the discrepancy based on age, below:

Young voters overwhelming prefer Ron Paul

For those of us old farts who can still remember 4 years ago, it was the youth vote who carried Obama into the White House. Dare we make any comparisons to Republican voters in 2012? Dare we whisper the unquestionable truth that our current policies force a massive transfer of wealth from the young to the old? Dare we acknowledge that our current tax policies are fundamentally incompatible with an aging population? Might the 17-to-29 crowd be on to something?

On a more depressing note, consider this exit-poll question asking about the voter’s most important issue:

Depressingly, the tried-and-true method of beating the divisive social issues drum to distract from what really matters paid off again for Santorum.

Rick Santorum takes the cake for the slimiest candidate who shamelessly beats the drum of anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-everyone-but-evangelical-Christians, “you’re with us or with the terrorists”, pro-war, pro-Big-Government, anti-liberty, anti-free-thought. It pains me to think that even in 2012, with all the massive global issues threatening human civilization, the Republican Party can still call upon the wedge issue of a woman’s relationship with her doctor to get elected.

Personally, I’m a little more concerned that President Obama (and the vast majority of Congress) just gave the A-OK on indefinite military detention for any American citizen who is deemed a “terrorist” without any due process. Call me old fashioned, but that’s not how I interpret the U.S. Constitution. And that sure sounds like a more important social issue than the personal decisions made by a woman with her doctor.

“Slowly, then all at once.”
–Earnest Hemingway

At the risk of sounding like one of the many pop-sociologists flooding the NY Times book list, I think this really captures our current political predicament. How could the two major parties lose all credibility? Slowly, then all at once.

Let’s quickly take stock of where we stand on the last day of 2011:

We have a Democratic president who was elected on the platform of “change” and who has done little-to-none of said “change”. To all the Obama supporters out there, let’s not deceive ourselves: we’re still fighting wars for fun and profit, we’re still engaged in crony-capitalism through bailouts and crooked subsidies, and we’re still on the march to restrict civil liberties at home. Oh, and we’ve assassinated two U.S. citizens (one a minor) without due process. I don’t know about you, but that was not the sort of “hope and change” I voted for in 2008.

We have a split Congress, with Democrats [barely] controlling the Senate and Republicans controlling the House. The mid-term elections of 2010 brought in a rag-tag bunch of doe-eyed optimistic Tea Party conservatives who thought they could change Washington. While they’ve certainly made a bunch of noise (and passed a bunch of completely useless bills) they have not made a dent in the deficit or in federal spending, let alone the “culture of Washington” they claimed to loathe.

We have the most politically corrupt Supreme Court that we’ve seen in decades. We would have to look back to the late 1800s to see such overt partisan and overwhelming intellectual dishonesty. No, Justice Scalia, the Framers did not intend for corporations to be treated as people with first amendment rights interpreted as unfettered political influence via cash infusion.

Finally, let’s look at the Republican Primaries. The constant shifting of popularity within the primary race reveals what a lousy bunch of duds we have to choose from. The one exception in this sour pack of dimwits is Ron Paul. Could this really be the year we have a candidate who falls outside the typical Republican/Democrat playbook and pushes us to reconsider the role and responsibilities of the Federal government?

Regardless of what happens in the 2012 elections, it’s safe to say that both major parties have hit their high water mark and are slowly easing back into the sea. At some point in the not-too-distant future, they’re going to hit the point where they lose all credibility.

Slowly, then all at once.

Over four years later, I’m proud to report that my iMac is still going strong. Other than upgrading the RAM to 4GB, I haven’t invested any more to keep this machine running strong. I’ve upgraded to the latest OS X 10.7 Lion and it’s still a very respectable machine.

Thank you, Apple, for building high-quality Macs that actually last. Until the screen dies (or Apple releases some new technology that I just can’t live without [I can live without Thunderbolt]) I will gladly continue using the ol’ iMac.

On a related note, I just dug out my original G3 iBook from 2002. It’s no longer compatible with modern OS X (10.4.11 is the best it’s going to get) but it still runs like a champ. Also, who doesn’t love the custom paint job from my good friend Kori?

A funny thing happens when you build quality products. . . your customers actually respect you and are happy to purchase again. Thank you, Mr. Jobs. You will be missed.

Behold:

My personal favorite, Is Facebook Driving the Greek Debt Crisis?

While we can all agree that Facebook is not, in fact, causing the Greek debt crisis, the correlation is plain to see. What’s more dangerous for our Democracy is when crafty politicians or interest groups use the same tactic to demonstrate other falsities like:

• Lower corporate tax rates causes higher employment
• Government policies to encourage home ownership caused the housing bubble
• Longer prison terms cause crime rates to decrease

In each case, it is very easy to show correlation between the two but this tells us nothing about causation. Especially in the realm of economics and politics, we are woefully short on data to back up any claims of causality. We all must be skeptical when presented with data and strive to understand the assumptions and sources that went into the analysis.

And if you see a chart on Cable News, it’s probably best to assume it’s bogus.

Long, long ago, way back in 2007, we had a boom in housing and a relatively healthy economy (or so we thought). Then the floor fell out, a few banks went broke, a few more banks gobbled up their peers, and the federal government gave away something to the tune of $7.7 trillion with no strings attached. Unemployment soared, the economy tanked, and here we are a few years later still scratching our heads trying to answer the question of “what to do?”.

Without question, this financial clusterfuck will define the decade and quite possibly the first half of the 21st century. Politicians will get elected and rejected based in part on their narrative of what happened and their proposals for what to do next. As citizens, it behooves us to understand what lead to this financial mess. This is where real journalism is critically important for a functioning democracy.

Enter the dream team : This American Life, Planet Money, and ProPublica.

Together, they created two hours of radio that do more to explain what happened than the last 3 years of cable news combined. If you haven’t heard these, drop everything and listen. If you have, it’s probably time for a refresher course.

Enjoy :

Don’t Be A Free User (Pinboard Blog) via kwout

Reflecting on this, I’m happy to report that I’m a paying customer of a number of web services:

• I pay for off-site backup
• I pay flickr for a pro account
• I pay TripIt to monitor my flights and alert me via txt
• I pay Apple for the convenience of iTunes Match

By contrast, I’m increasingly disillusioned by the myriad “free” services that happily sell me to advertisers:

• Facebook
• Google
• Twitter
• Websites with targeted advertising

I would much rather have the choice to pay a fee upfront than be sold behind the curtain to shady advertisers. Right on, Pinboard!

Having just filled up my current Moleskine, I cracked open the cover of a fresh one and was horrified to discover they have significantly changed the design of the classic grid notebook. Instead of the faint grid that allows for writing, drawing, and graphing, the new Moleskine has a very dark grid that doesn’t allow for writing. Serious bummer. What’s a guy to do?

With a little googling, I found that I was not the only Moleskine fanatic dismayed by the changes. I also found a replacement notebook that is even better than the original Moleskine: The Leuchtturm1917 Dots Notebook.

As we can all agree, Germans make really high quality products. This notebook is no exception. The paper is really high quality and heavy enough to avoid bleed-through. The dots on the pages are just the right darkness to guide your pen without getting in the way. Pages are numbered, with a dedicated table in the front to build your own index. They even thought ahead to the day when my notebook is filled and I add it to my archive by including stickers for labeling the book. Nice!

Now let’s all hope that Leuchtturm doesn’t break my heart like Moleskine. If you’re a fellow notebook enthusiast and looking to buy some Leuchtturm1917 products, check out Writer’s Bloc.