Author: Rick Klau

Phase 1 of the basement project is done – everything’s framed out. It’s hard to believe that I did this (power tools weren’t my forte) – but the hard work is still ahead. A friend is doing the wiring for me right now and will be done tomorrow; dry-walling can begin next week. But as I contemplate…

If you’ve never listened to Roger Waters’ masterful Amused to Death, find yourself a copy and give it a listen this weekend. It’s an album he started writing in the late 80s, and didn’t finish until the conclusion of the Gulf War. It’s a sad but brilliantly evocative album that focuses (among other things) on wars…

Presidential candidate Howard Dean gave a talk at Harvard last night. He asked an interesting question. Next year, how will we feel when China invades Taiwan because they think they have weapons of mass destruction? Has the new Bush Doctrine, pre-emptive wars, unleashed a philosophy of world power that we may not be so comfortable…

For those of you who have not yet swung by Feedster, you should give it a look. It’s a powerful new addition to the searcher’s arsenal. Many weblogs provide XML feeds. These feeds are in one of two popular formats – RSS or RDF. (Though the flame wars between the two camps are legendary, and,…

Jonathan Raban, a British ex-pat living in Seattle, writes a long “letter“ in this week’s Seattle Weekly about the effect the war is having on the political landscape in the U.S. His conclusion? “Watch Howard Dean.” Here’s the key graph: The immediate upshot of his speech (by no means limited to the war) was an…

I’ve spent most of the last two days in bed, recovering from a stomach flu that I probably got from one of my kids. It’s never fun when you’re going through it, but you take it easy, try and remember that it’s relatively brief and you’ll be back to normal soon. Or, if you’re Tiger…

I’ve heard of similar studies before, but now HP has gotten into the game, studying how large groups email each other within a company to determine what the real organizational structure is. Apparently, they say that how people email each other determines who the really important people are, and who really reports to whom. They…

If you’re looking for downloadable flyers about Howard Dean, head over to deanaction.net – where the campaign has put together three PDFs suitable for printing and distribution. I’ll be sharing a PowerPoint template I put together shortly for use in your own house parties…

The Union Leader out of New Hampshire reports that Governor Dean has picked up ground, pulling into a statistical dead heat among likely voters in NH. Less obvious but just as interesting – the same poll had favorable/unfavorable rankings for each candidate: Kerry: 69/7Dean: 40/9Lieberman: 51/28Gephardt: 50/19Dean narrowed the gap by picking up a lot…

Any fan of West Wing will recall the episode titled Take out the trash. The term taking out the trash is a euphemism for burying news items that are embarassing to the administration by casually mentioning them on a Friday afternoon – so that the effect on the administration in the news is blunted by…