Sunday, October 31, 2004

Survey #1: Who will win the election? 

Survey #2: When will we know the result? 

On Tuesday at 9AM Pacific, we'll re-open enrollment for BloggerCon for 75 people. There's not much science to this, just a gut feel that our current registration list has at least 75 no-shows. We're getting a lot of requests from people about this, but I don't know many of them, and have no way to decide. So we'll add another 75, and then get on with the conference. 

An excellent six-day forecast. Lots of sun, warm, no rain. Whew.  

If Kerry wins on Tuesday, I have my headline written. 

Marc Canter doesn't want to do a podcast because there's no place to put metadata. He's right, it's a shame to not pass on the data, when we have it. Okay why does that happen? Because the people who could do something about it don't want to work with each other. Pretty simple. It took a lot of arm-twisting and patience to get the developers to even consider adding enclosure support to aggregators, and so far the only blogging tool that has it is Radio. Marc, you'd be a great podcaster. Get over it, worse is better, and let's add your voice to the conversation. Help the users, who are listening, figure out how to explain to the vendors why they need it. 

Newsweek: "The insurgents, by most accounts, are winning. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell has acknowledged this privately to friends in recent weeks." 

MP3 of the Australian podcast documentary. 

A very important post if you want to record or webcast BloggerCon. We have special support for people who want to tap into the audio stream.  

EVP: Kerry 283, Bush 246. 

The Boston Globe captures the history of the Red Sox win. "Pesky was the stand-in for all of the Towne Teamers who'd gotten to the World Series and fell short." 

Ed Cone: "On Wednesday I will wake up. No matter who wins, the dog will have insinuated herself onto the bed. The kids will need feeding before school." 

According to Johns Hopkins University, 100,000 Iraqi civillians have died in the war. If you're an American you know how we feel about the 3000 who died in the World Trade Center. 100,000 is a much bigger number. Is an Iraqi life is worth less than an American's? Give that some thought. 

The day after tomorrow is the one day we are not powerless. We don't have to stand by and do nothing. We can fix the problem.  

Richard Carter via email: "I think you should stop sitting on the fence and tell us which candidate Scripting News endorses." Good idea. Scripting News endorses John Kerry for President. To be fair, Richard put a smiley at the end of his request. But I thought it was a good chance to get in another plug for Kerry. I'm reading Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command. I don't think most people know that Bush has thrown out the Geneva Convention for dealing with prisoners of war. We think of ourselves as the good guys, but we're not the good guys now, if we ever were. Bush may make you feel good, but it's not real. And there's a practical side to it. Next time our troops are held prisoner, it would be a stretch to expect they would be treated humanely according to the Geneva Convention. That's one of the reasons we support it, it's a way of protecting our soliders from torture. Also last night on MSNBC, finally saw a recount of the faceoff between Kerry and Nixon in the early 70s. Kerry was proven right. The Calley massacre was uncovered while the controversy was going on, as were the Pentagon Papers. This should have been covered when the Swift Boat ads were running. An amazing lapse in journalism.  

Podcasting was discussed on Australian national radio. 

My Polling Site: "We offer a free nonpartison web based service to help voters find their polling site in four clicks or less." 

BTW, I didn't mention yesterday that it was one week to BloggerCon. That's when things start to get interesting! (As in the Chinese proverb/curse about living in "interesting" times.) So today it's just six days to BloggerCon (and two to the election.) The last big project for me to complete is the Food For Thought dinners at 8PM on Saturday night (November 6). We'll have eight tables of 15-20 people each, each led by a discussion leader, much like the daily sessions, but you get to eat too. Sylvia Paull and Enoch Choi chose the restaurants, all are adjacent to the Stanford campus and all are reasonably priced. If more than 150 people want to participate we can reserve more tables. The restaurants have all been very helpful in not requiring deposits. I'll put up a signup form later today. 

Also, did I say I'm driving to Silicon Valley? It's true. On Tuesday I vote, then hop in the car and head south. And Scoble-be-damned, I'm keeping my Streets and Trips with GPS, even though Microsoft did screw the Web by sucking up all the browser energy and locking it in a trunk. Why can't I have a nice toy? Yesterday I drove around Washington State, what a beautiful day (sorry no pics) with my GPS. It worked. Now I want to get a new car that has it built in. I can't imagine driving without it. You can be much more adventurous, no matter how hard you try to get lost, you just can't do it. Wow. That's for me.