Snow Leopard = MacTablet coming

I have to agree with Andy Ihntako; Snow Leopard is pretty cool, but what it really looks like is a dry-run for a full-featured Mac OS for a low-power (read: netbook) processor. Combine that with nVidia's excitement about ramping up their "media pad" chip for various yet-to-be-announced partners, and the dream is finally here.

Microsoft is about to get pantsed again.

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Ted Kennedy, RIP

Sometimes you can feel history turn over; coming in the year of Obama's inauguration, I both nostalgic and hopeful. On a personal note, my uncle died from the same form of cancer last year. As he traveled regularly to Houston for consultations, I was luck to spend so much time with him. It's shocking how fast that year can pass.

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Fun with Photoshop

We were discussing Sci-Fi mashups when my friend Mike suggested a scene we'd all love to see:

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A Tale of Two Cents

Marc Ambinder has a post up about Chuck Grassley's recent claims regarding the "death panels" and contrasts them with Lisa Murkowski. Little need be said about such mendacity here; I'd rather take up the title of Marc's post: "A Tale of Two Senators on Death Panels."

I recently wrote a paper on Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and used as opening gambit, the observation that no title has been so widely mimicked. The reasons are clear enough -- it's a famous book, which has been widely read (it used to be the standard Dickens novel for highschool curricula, before Great Expectations ascended). But most importantly, the form of the title "A Tale of Two ________" asserts a connection without, well, asserting the connection. It juxtaposes two objects without telling us anything about they're actual relationship. They've just bumped into each other, as it were, in some "tale."

Which is not to say that Marc doesn't get some mileage out of the comparison, or turn it to good use. But in general, the "Tale of Two" formula disguises a lot of mediocre essays, papers, and talks which don't have a clear idea of what connects the two subjects. And to extend the point a little further, this is the basic problem of Dickens' original novel, which sets out to clarify the relation between pre- and post-revolutionary France and contemporary England -- homelands of the "Two Cities," London and Paris, where the action of the novel takes place. Despite a lean but complex story line replete with English and French doubles (to cop David Simon, the full "Dickensian"), the plot is ultimately resolved when its French and English objects agree to disagree; Sydney Carton's heroic sacrifice, with the flight of the Darnay family, mark the novel's failure to tease out the connection it was looking for. England and France settle on divorce. It's left to some hypothetical future time when the Darnays will return to a stabilized France and reflect upon what had once driven them all so far apart.

I guess what I'm suggesting is that, while using "A Tale of Two X" is both lazy and a strong indicator that the writer's having trouble deciding what they're writing about, we shouldn't be too harsh. Dickens came up with the title in much the same situation.

'Sides, it's still more effective than Dickens' working title, "The Golden Thread." Try cribbing that.

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From his lips to your ears

Yglesias nails it:

[T]here’s something bizarre about watching an American conservative movement whose general goal is to have the public sector provide as little as possible to anyone, and whose specific goal is to prevent public policy from extending health insurance to the tens of millions of currently un- or under-insured Americans, posing as the defenders of the right to access to generous health care services.

Are we having fun yet?

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'Zactly

For those thinking of or swearing off marriage, here's what it looks behind the lines:

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Got Punk'd?

Now THAT is "priceless." Ooh, I can't wait to see what Ashton twats.

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Not So Grandparents

Yglesias argues that those emphasizing the lack of support from seniors for the healthcare overhaul are overlooking how much it's just electoral politics:

But the main issue here just seems to be that people who are inclined to like Obama are inclined to like Obama’s health plan. And for all the attention the press plays to demographic sub-samples, the tendency is for presidential politics to be dominated by pretty broad swings. If Obama were more popular in general, he’d also be more popular with seniors, and his plan would be more popular with seniors. To actually get a majority with seniors, he’d have to be wildly more popular than he currently is.

I disagree. I think the lack of support from the Medicare generation is a huge story -- one I'm getting increasingly angry about, and for two main reasons:

(1) They love their federal healthcare. They are currently the broadest swath of recipients of federal healthcare and are generally quite happy with the Medicare program; which means from experience they should be advocates of an expansion of federal healthcare benefits. It's hugely cynical to rely on national healthcare and then show up at town hall rallies and scream at senators and secretaries of health because, according to one woman, "what I see is a bureaucratic nightmare." The kind of bureaucratic nightmare that replaces kidney, and pays for prescriptions? Sounds a hell of a lot better than the $175 a month plan I've got which I can't use because, being healthy, I can't meet my deductible.

(2) They're checking out before the bill comes due. It is incredibly cynical for seniors to argue for the status quo when they won't have to face the financial cliff that's looming as costs skyrocket over the following decades (to 10% of GDP by 2030, 15% by 2040, etc.). This comes as the Medicare benefits they're currently receiving are projected to exhaust its funds by 2019.

Granted, both of these points run counter to the self-interest and party affiliation of seniors. But from the perspective of the financial and physical health of the nation, their obstructionism is crassly selfish. For a generation that still prides itself on the sacrifices it made for the future and for others, attacking healthcare expansion and reform is morally bankrupt. I have a deep love and respect for my grandparents, what they sacrificed and what they've done. But it's time for the "greatest generation" to get great.

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