Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

It’s been almost a year since my last “best of” list, so it must be time for another one. Amidst the death spiral of the big music companies, there were a lot of good albums this year, so as before this includes more than a “top 10″:
She & Him, Volume One. Okay, so it’s Zooey [...]

I don’t have the energy or time to write the summary of how I feel about the election, except to note that others have already done a pretty good job of summarizing for me.
From a campaign strategy perspective, 2008 will be discussed for many years, but a few things I found interesting in looking at [...]

James Brown, “Funky President (People It’s Bad)”
William S. Burroughs, “When Did I Stop Wanting to Be President”
The Cure, “Primary (Morgan Studio Outtake 9/80)”
Max Roach, “Freedom Now”
Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come”
Virginia Glee Club, “I shall not die without a hope” (Testament of Freedom)
Jay-Z and Danger Mouse, “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”
Youssou N’Dour, “Hope”
Branford Marsalis, “Freedom [...]

Holy cow. 284 electoral votes at 11:01 PM. Barack Obama will be the next president of the US.

I voted this morning at around 8:25 am. I was number 325 at my precinct; a line about 100 people long had been there at 7 am, so I was catching things at a brief resting point. There was a PTA bake sale on the way out. It was a traditional end to a most [...]

A piece in the Las Vegas Sun about Howard Dean caught my attention. After the “Dean Scream” got played into the ground by the media, Dean has largely been ignored by the popular press, but I think his actions at the DNC have been substantial in positioning the Democrats in 2008. And it’s instructive to [...]

Thanks to John Gruber for pointing to Austrian coverage of last night’s debate, complete with this bizarre picture of McCain. I think the caption says that he was reacting after he mistakenly turned the wrong direction to shake hands with the moderator. But there couldn’t be a worse image to sum up his debate performance [...]

What does it say about our politics that one party regularly tries to engage new voters and the other regularly tries to suppress them? If you believe the complaints from the GOP, they’re just trying to stave off widespread vote fraud. But study after study has shown that there is no widespread vote fraud conspiracy, [...]

The commentariat are going to love this moment, because it sums up some things that the conventional wisdom has been saying about McCain — cranky, really angry, hotheaded — and surfaces some new memes. Like disrespectful. Like borderline racist. Like, can’t believe he’s losing to this guy.
I think this is McCain’s “heavy sigh” moment.
YouTube – [...]

I livetweeted the debate last night (start, end) and was reminded of a few things in the process. First, writing about anything as it happens means you’re paying much closer attention to what’s said. I got more of a substantive understanding of Biden and Palin’s positions, a closer awareness of both of their stumbles and [...]

…because something tells me this race is going to be a rollercoaster for the next few weeks.
Screenshot below from the excellent Election ‘08 iPhone App, from Pollster.com and Slate. For a more nuanced view, look to the fine folks at Electoral-Vote.com, which shows Obama’s lead 338 to 185 electoral votes, with 15 ties. This high [...]

There are some moments of karma that are just too good not to post. This is one of them: GOP delegate’s hotel tryst goes bad when he wakes up with $120,000 missing. An attendee of the RNC convention who argued that the US should “bomb the hell” out of Iran and seize its resources to [...]

American representative democracy is based on some non-intuitive principles–that we the people should care enough about how we are governed that we develop an informed opinion on it, that power is best when dispersed and checked–and on some non-obvious assumptions. The one assumption that is absolutely key is that the people will have access to [...]

Though the AP has called the Democratic nomination for Barack Obama based on its own private delegate counts, I think it’s too early–or maybe too late–to celebrate. Cause the weirdness is just beginning.
Aside: An email list I’m on recently sent out an article advising blog authors to focus on one thing only, and I’m about [...]