A Different Take on the Congressional Defeat

An elderly friend of my friend's father, over drinks at a small 4th of July dinner party on the seventh floor of their Cocoa Beach condo, pointed out that the economy still had a way to fall. He maintained that if history repeats itself, as it always seems to do, then the overall economy had only fallen two thirds of the 30% historical average. It would appear that it -- the economy -- is still falling and is probably closer to 30% then it was a few months ago. Let's hope that this plunge in values and earning power rebounds at this magic historic marker.

But this didn't stop congress from overturning what appeared to be a sure-thing vote to pump $700 billion into the well of bad mortgages and loans. I read the draft version of the ‘‘Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008’’ -- it's not light reading, but you do get the gist of how these things are done -- yet I had my doubts about just how sure the legislators were about this bill. This is a big chunk of 'throw it against the wall' money. Most of the guys and gals voting on this are politicians and not economists. They can throw out their chests and sound deeply authoritative, but what do these people know but what they've been told?

Here's the rub: If you really think change is the 2008 call for action then you've got to believe that not doing the establishment thing, i.e. pitching dollars at the big banks that bought up these huge bullshit mortgage pools, is definately the way to go even if you can't see the other side of what might or might not happen. If you also believe that capitalism is best when government isn't your partner you didn't support this legislation either, even if the change-thing isn't your cup of tea.

In either case you're willing to bet on the ingenuity of the American people and American business community, hoping [praying?] that citizens left to their own ingenious devices (and occasionally prodded by the evolving regulatory hand of government) will assure the success of this great American capitalist experiment. I like that.

Tired of Political Coverage

I'm tired of the coverage of the presidential campaign:

1. I'm exhausted by the programmed campaign "speak", as though endlessly repeating the same tiresome campaign positions will somehow make me more aware of the issues.
2. I'm bored with the young, lower level campaign operatives and surrogates that appear on cable political channels, obviously to fill some empty air, babbling programmed campaign "speak".
   
3. I'm dismayed by the lack of focus and objectivity in TV coverage: grabbing little snippets of candidate campaign banter -- often out of context -- and endlessly flexing a few words into meaningless interviews and headlines; on-air personalities graciously letting us know that they are as big a part of the story as the candidates themselves; and interviewers not controlling the programmed campaign "speak" of major political figures or sidestepping opportunities to dig deeper into how the candidates think.

I'm convinced more than ever that there is a major disconnect between the current media campaign culture in both parties, and, how Americans see themselves and view the media and the Internet. The electronic press is a pawn in the larger campaign process, not the Illuminati they'd like to see themselves as. The blogosphere is a merely a blip; chatting loudly among themselves and occasionally sucking the electronic press into covering the occasional online blog shout out; assuming an overblown importance endowed by the cable media.

People, as a rule, are pretty insightful about the opinions that are bounced off their eyes and ears through the media. They can tell the difference between repetitive campaign "speak" and the issues that affect them every day. They also know just how little influence the federal government has over their daily lives -- voting repeatedly to keep this influence as small as possible.

What matters in the end to Americans is which philosophy lives in the White House. Our elections have been close for years, which leads me to believe that we're not looking for huge wholesale change, just adjustments at the edges.

We're Spending Less

In our house we've never been frivilous spenders. We owe nothing on our credit cards and don't have a second mortgage chewing away at our budget. We've got two boys in college which is a big chunk of money [one out-of-state], but all things considered, we're spending less.

It shows up in fewer lunches and dinners out, stretching out maintenance on our cars and home, driving fewer miles so there are fewer dollars spent for fuel, and fewer weekend hops. I can't imagine that we're unique, and that this reduced spending isn't hurting businesses that rely on discretionary spending.

What I haven't decided is whether we're spending less because we think we have less to spend or because we're at the phase of life -- our fifties -- where you naturally get a little more frugal? Comments invited.

Ike brings back the anxiety

We lived in Miami in 1992 and weathered Andrew, losing power for almost a month. In 1998 we moved to Merritt Island, Florida -- about 200 miles north of Miami on the same coast -- and weathered the trio of hurricanes in 2004. This year we hunkered down for the lingering and very wet Fran which dumped over 20" of rain in most of Brevard and over 30" in Brevard's Palm Bay area.

The anxiety of an approaching storm is difficult to explain to everyone but those that live on the Gulf Coast, Florida's coast, or on the coastal areas of the United States. We're never sure where the storm will hit and what the wind speed will be. For a major storm the local governments demand mandatory evacuation, which may or not be required after the tropical storm or hurricane barrels through.

The storms generally pass through at night, which means you can hear the howl of wind and rain, and you can catch occasionaly glimpses of palms and trees bending at odd angles. You'll hear the occasional crack of a limb breaking and falling and just as likely the sound of something heavy slamming against your home.

After 12 hours or so the storm will pass and we can poke out heads out the doors to see what's been damaged. After Miami's Andrew I can vividly recall being dumbfounded by the incredible sight of entire trees unrooted and huge limbs from previously sturdy oaks lying across rumpled automobiles and homes. I remember walking down to the corner of our street which intersected with LeJeune Road, a major 2 lane road that runs from the top of Dade County 20 miles away to a traffic circle a few blocks from us, and seeing hundreds of trees lying across the roadway like injured soldiers. It was a mess.

But the danger of the storm barely compares to the sheer aggrevation following the storm ofclean up and subsistance living. 

• There is usually no power for weeks. No electricity to power tools, stoves, refrigerators, stoves, radios or televisions, but most of all no power for air conditioning. The weather in August and September in stifling with high humidity. The air at night is still. After a major storm there is a lot of standing water which eventually produces mosquitoes.
  
• The chain saw that might have worked 2 years ago isn't working now and it barely has the power to handle two foot diameter limbs. It takes exhausting days to slowly feel, cut and stack your way through the limbs, brush, and leaves.
• Everything is disrupted. Lawn debris that would normally be picked up weekly -- but is now a massive pile of fallen limbs -- is picked up 2 or three months later. Regular trash pickup is spotty. 
• Water and food is a huge problem. We collected rain for drinking water and showered in cold municipal water (which felt great after a long day or hot, difficult work]. We pooled our remaining frozen and canned foods and prepared interesting dinners on the gas barbeque.

I am of the opinion that this is no way to live. Despite the natural beauty of area and the warmth of Florida, the annual threat of major storms takes off the luster of Florida living for me. A future category 4 or 5 storm in this area will hasten our departure. Although my wife does not agree, I will have had enough. There are easier -- although colder -- places to live in this great country.

Good luck Texas! We're thinking and praying for you.

A Run [amuk] on Theatre Posters

Since joining an 8 week improvisation class at the Melbourne Civic Theater I've taken on a couple of little pro-bono assignments that are entertaining for me as well as the client [hopefully].

I'd like to think that pro-bono work is a logical place to do the work that you want to do. Paid work is another story. We push and pull to do what we think is best for the paying client, and the end result is either the exhilaration of acceptance, huge changes, modest compromise, or utter failure. This should not be the case for free work, however.

Creative Notes: The concept was simple: People not regularly in the theatre having some fun. I drew the cartoon, traced it in Illustrator CS3, added color and cleaned up a few blemishes. The typography is ITC Franklin Gothic, very slightly modified.

Andrea Mitchell drips with contempt over Palin

On cable news some hide their contempt better than others. For example, Keith Olbermann reeks of distain for the current Bush Whitehouse. My biggest disappointment is Andrea Mitchell and her hectering of guests and fellow pundits about Sara Palin's qualifications on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

She shakes her head as though she just can't believe what she's hearing.

You can see the dislike of Palin in the tone of her questioning. This is the same NBC correspondent who didn't believe that network political coverage was leaning left. Add her to the list of MSNBCers that shouldn't be hosting debates...

New Electronic Newspaper Reader Mimics Look of the Paper.

Does it matter that an e-newsletter resembles a real newspaper? When will a newspaper cease printing everyday and make the full time plunge to online? Will they still call it a news 'paper'? 

I read a handful of newspapers online everyday and have become accustomed to the 'feel' of my digital dailies. They don't look like print newspapers, but that's not an expectation that I have of a newspaper on my browser.

My problem with reading the paper online over coffee is that it annoys my wife to see my notebook on the kitchen table in the morning. Since I've grown accustomed to a web-based newspaper in the short term it makes sense for a newspaper to deliver a single function, letter-sized, sleek electronic newsreader instead of a printed version. Give me the choice of a printed paper or a subscription-based reader.

[image above belongs to the New York Times]

The chattering classes, avoiding Bush, and Sara Palin

Bush bashing requires no courage anymore. It's spoken by the media and democrat friends as though -- regardless of our party affiliation -- we're all insiders to the punch line of a big joke. After all, how could we all still support GW...he's mindless, not intuitive, not intellectually curious! The world will be a better place when he and his rabid cronies and neocons are gone!

There is a stream of media patter that continually reminds us that McCain should keep his distance from GW; that any association with the current President will cause Republicans and Independents to sit on their hands on Election Day. It's spoken by pundits as though it's the gospel truth. For a time I thought to myself, "that's odd, but these are experienced pundits and they must know of what they speak."  

Truth is, however, that they are wrong. They are so bound up in their anti-Bush proclamations that they've come to misunderstand a basic tenent of human nature: we can disagree with someone from time to time, but it doesn't mean that we dislike them or wish them ill.

I know that George Bush is not John McCain and that McCain is not Bush. They are two different men. That they are politically similar doesn't surprise me. I would expect McCain to agree with Bush 95% of the time, just as I would expect Obama to agree with Harry Reid.

It would surprise me if abandoning Bush is an element of McCain's campaign strategy and this behavior is encouraged by his staff. If it is, let's just hope that they don't abandon Sara Palin when the media and opposition start applying pressure.

The new Chrome browser; where to from here?

I've been using the new Google Chrome browser for a few days. I've run into a few problems [mostly compatibility with plugins], but generally the experience has been positive. I like the clean interface and the simple tools section. There's plenty of room for improvement -- afterall this is version 0.2.149.27...not even 1.0 -- but for the average user this should work just fine. I'm looking forward to updates and plugins.

If they can port this to my handheld [Samsung Blackjack II], my office Mac and PC, as well as my home PC notebook and allow me to keep my bookmarks, data, browsing history and settings synchronized between all machines -- which doesn't seem like a much of a stretch for Google since they already let me do a variation of this via Google Docs -- this would valuable at home, work and on the road.

I've also wondered why the browser couldn't be the operating system as well? Why bother with Windows, Linux, or OS X when all I'm doing is working through a browser interface and using web apps?

So do you really want a bigger, more regulatory government in the US?

"MEPs want TV regulators in the EU to set guidelines which would see the end of anything deemed to portray women as sex objects or reinforce gender stereotypes."

If you're still worried that other countries won't like us -- or we're not sophisticated enough to play along with the Europeans -- the proposed plan to ban the free exchange of ideas should set off an alarm. 

Who needs the Koran when you've got European regulators?

Kindle is a good idea in a lower wattage world

My wife Susan, daughter Lizzie and I spent a couple of weeks in July motoring the crazy narrow roads and beautiful highlands of Scotland.

Scotland, which would appear to owe much of its prosperity to tourism, is awash in bed and breakfasts.

All of Europe is fully immersed in the battle against climate change, using less power, driving small cars, and wearing the lapel pin of efficiency and environmental goodness. Scotland is no different.

The bed and breakfasts of Scotland, in tune with the rest of Europe, have adopted energy efficient lighting. It's bright enough to find your way to a bathroom but not bright enough to read by [particularly if you're in your mid fifties] despite the 11 PM sunsets.

As an alternative to alcohol [not exclusive, tho'] I'm in the habit of reading when I turn in for the night. This ritual -- reading, not drinking (which is encouraged over there) -- was nearly impossible in Scotland and subsequently presents a plausible reason for buying a Kindle and stocking up on electronic books.

A kink in the armor of my argument is my gut level aversion to purchasing and collecting books. Don't get me wrong, I love books. I have a resource near my home that provides an endless array of things to read at no cost -- my library. Although it's difficult to find popular new novels at the library, there are endless rows of good fiction, science fiction, historical and biographic books.  I think books look better on public library shelves then they do collecting dust on mine [I have similar feelings about CDs and DVDs].

But it's clear to me that we're entering a more energy efficient era [which is a good thing, btw]. Low lighting is going to be more common and that electronic books or annoying little lamps that clip to my library books are going to be the standard. Since I don't travel with library books overseas, the Kindle seems to be a good alternative.

A multi-humped camel

Over the past few years I've worked on a couple of projects with Celsius Holdings, a marketing company in Palm Beach County Florida. Their principals, a great husband and wife team with rich corporate experience -- Shaun and Regina Lewis -- dig up projects that are always interesting but often politically complicated at many levels.

The Palm Beach Partners project is a good example of committee work on steroids. If they say a horse designed by a committee becomes a camel, then this camel has a dozen humps.

This is what I call a 'window dressing' project for a well-meaning committee that doesn't deal well with visual metaphors or unusual creative and copy treatments. The project's audience is small businesses of every strip, ethnicity, color and business acumen seeking to hook up with the purchasing departments of really, really big companies that like to spread work around to the business-less-fortunate. Apparently the big companies teach the little companies how to get business, too.

Committees like to provide direction in their memos. This committee provided my client links to graphics they liked; all were mundane and looked alike. After talking with Celsius we settled on a simple approach:

• The people in the foreground will tell the tale of inclusiveness
• something structured for the backgroundthat would take typography without too much difficulty and not get in the way of our foreground figures
• typography would be straightforward; and finally
  
• visual should pop off the banner, poster or advertisement.

The concept worked with all the items that typically would promote a program like this: advertising, promo brochures, posters, a web site, stationery package, etc.

Gustav's dry [wet?] run

Had Gustav been a Cat 4 instead of a Cat 1, and had the storm steered a bit more to the east, the results would have been absolute property mayhem. The agencies involved should be a bit less congratulatory and more thankful. It wasn't their efforts that saved the community, it was the path the storm chose to take.
But it was an excellent dry run for a huge storm. Big populations on the U.S. coast have seen the future of an approaching storm: buses, trains and planes. Keep a bag packed by the door.

Theater Poster; a work in progress

What I enjoy the most is developing designs that quickly identify a concept. In practice, a logo is the most basic example I can use as an illustration. However, there are larger applications -- my most recent example is a poster for a local civic theater.

This is a work in progress [I’m missing copy]. The Dracula visual is a simple marker line drawing that was scanned, auto traced, altered quite a bit, and then filled with color. The red and black color palette is simple and dramatic. The serif font [Clarendon] is easy to read and doesn’t compete with the graphic. I thought about finding a more visual font, but the edited artwork turned out well enough that I didn’t think it needed the additional competition of a special font.

This original marker drawing was my starting point for the art. The hair, eyes, eyebrows, and mouth were heavily adjusted in Illustrator (CS3) as the graphic took shape. Adding attitude via an arched eyebrow and slight smile gave the Count rogueish personality. The final design was assembled in InDesign.

Palin selection stroke of genius

Forget the look of anguish on HRC's face when Sarah Palin takes the oath in 8 years. This is a victory for everyman and everywoman. This is a victory for all of us who wonder what it would take to run for high office without the pedigree of years in political life or excessive ambition. Most of all, it's a victory for all of us who have said, "If I were the President...".
Imagine running for county commissioner or schoolboard today and finding yourself propelled into national office in 2020; free from years of dealmaking in the Senate or House; free from multiple appearances on CNN or Meet The Press.
Then -- as an added bonus -- image that you can live your life fully and freely without the narrowing prism of public life.
Even as a man I am more like Sarah Palin than I am like Obama, McCain or Biden. She has liberated us from that faulty impression that we are too old to start the long march into meaningful public service.
Is she qualified to be President? Yes. She's over 35 and she was born in the United States. Just like I am. And you.
This isn't just a stroke of genius for McCain, it's a stroke of inspiration for us. If he can make this kind of decision as a candidate, he'll do just fine as President.