Let's say I want to order an Android GSM phone from Amazon, for delivery no later than Monday and am willing to spend up to $400.

Which one should I buy?

 4/22/2011; 3:18:46 PM.   .

I'm going to Amsterdam next Tuesday and will stay through May 5. Might take a day trip to London. But right now the plan is to spend the whole time in Amsterdam.

Now, on my todo list is figuring out what to do about phones. It's always seem to end up spending hundreds of dollars just to make a few phone calls and check my mail.

This time I don't think I'll make any phone calls. What I really want a phone for is to take pictures and upload them to Flickr in realtime. That's how I like to be a tourist these days, even at home in NY.

So rather than go through the crazy hellish bureaucracies of American phone companies, I have accounts with both Verizon and AT&T, how about getting:

1. An unlocked phone.

2. A SIM with a good data plan.

3. Delivered to my hotel in Amsterdam.

To my European friends, how does that sound? Or maybe there's a better way to approach this?

I have two phones: An AT&T iPhone4, and a Verizon Droid. Wouldn't mind getting a new Android phone.

Update: I think I have the answer -- I have an iPhone3 that's been sitting around doing nothing since I bought the iPhone4. Is it true that I can just change the SIM and have a usable European phone?

 4/22/2011; 9:36:53 AM.   .

I try not to watch the news because I find it irritating how they play dumb about things they can't possibly be that dumb about.

For example...

I watched Elliot Spitzer's show last night. I think he's better than anything on MSNBC. At least Keith Olbermann was entertaining if not a bit paranoid, but even the wild super-crazy Olbermann connected with reality better than Spitzer did last night.

Spitzer has his own way of doing things, and occasionally he nails it, but not last night. He was interviewing a lawyer about Donald Trump. They were lamenting how Trump is taking advantage of stupid and hateful Republicans who are probably racist by playing off the theme that Obama wasn't born in the US and therefore isn't qualified to be President.

But that's not who Trump is playing.

He knows that if he says it a few times, things that are obviously true like "Some people are interested in this subject," or "He should just give us his birth certificate," something He hasn't done for Us (true, but irrelevant) -- the idiots in the press will give him airtime. Put his name out there. Shake their heads at what an asshole he is. But all the time being assholes themselves by repeating the bullshit.

And by the way maybe the birthers aren't quite as ignorant as the talking heads make them out to be. Maybe they're just as cynical as Trump, and know that as long as the press is talking about Obama's birth certificate, they are making the President look like an idiot, which is what the Republicans want. At all costs. Geez, maybe they're even smarter than the reporters. Unless there's another level of cynicism that I can't see (probably is).

Anyway the real people to blame for the birther story that won't go away are the people who complain the most about it -- talking heads on news shows.

And last night Spitzer let a Republican from Utah walk all over him with the "cutting up the credit card" nonsense. If the Republicans want to get rid of deficits so bad they should propose a budget without deficits, which they never ever under any circumstances do. Otherwise they're just playing a dangerous game of chicken with our livelihoods. Not some theoretical future generation -- us -- right now -- in 2011. And with nothing to gain other than hurting the Democrats. Gee thanks Republicans. I'll be thinkiing about you when I'm standing on the soup line. If we're lucky enough to have soup lines.

And Spitzer wants to go skiing with this piece of shit.

There's some cronyism for you.

 4/22/2011; 4:09:53 AM.   .