The death of the in-store paging system

A few months ago, I had the dubious pleasure of attending the Red Bull Flugtag here in Chicago.

That was about three different flavors of crazy, largely because of the armies of people who worship at the altar of Red Bull. Honestly, I had no idea these people existed.

While I went to see people crash gigantic pinatas into the lake, others came because they love Red Bull more than the family dog. Yeah, it was odd.

One of the things that struck me - more than the number of unfortunate tattoos and sleeveless shirts - was an announcement to make sure people knew where they'd meet each other if they got separated in the crowds.

I haven't heard this for roughly a decade.

It's so easy today to call back and forth if there's an issue that it's pretty strange to think of what a hassle events like this used to be. If I get cut off from the herd, I pull out my phone and call or text and the problem is solved.

The "will so and so please meet their party in the east end of the park..." message faded so quickly that I never had time to even miss it.

Today, I e-mailed a friend to try and get the username and password for something and didn't think twice about getting a response in a matter of moments. If he wasn't at a computer, his e-mail would buzz through on his phone and the problem would be solved.

I was getting election results from my dad this year faster than CNN could update me on live TV. I know about the weather by checking my phone on the bus by tapping three buttons and seeing the radar map in its postage stamp sized glory.

Just think about that for a second (readers younger than 20 can skip this step, because it's always been like this for you). A phone in your pocket now means instant data, maps, weather reports, sports scores and news. And that's just the tip of this digital iceberg, not taking into account the number of upgrades available on the newest phones.

Say what you will about 24-hour accountability - and I am a huge opponent of it - but damn if it doesn't make life easier in the big picture.

I don't think I'm going too far to say that the stupid bar bet - "He was not the MVP in 1996!"- is on the endangered species list. I'd write more, but I just got an e-mail reply sent to my phone faster than to my laptop and it's time to turn on a little background noise as I work.

(Image from: Sybarites.org)

It's for your own good

Every few days, it dawns on me that I haven't posted in a long while. This is for your protection.

With an expectant wife, I've been trying to reign in the desire to assign meaning to every little thing because we're bringing a little person into the world in May.

Prices of peas rising because of fuel costs? Oh Lord, what kind of world are we bringing a child into?

See a worldwide tragedy? Oh my, this means so much more now that I'm going to be a dad.

I'm working through these issues, but in the meantime I'm doing my best to shelter everyone from endless posts about the changes in my little world.

All bets are off as of mid-May.

You've been warned and most web browsers make it very easy to delete bookmarks when I reach a point of total insufferability. Consider it my holiday gift to you.

The benefit of the doubt

I get it, Republicans. I've been there.

There's no way the President-Elect was voted in fairly. There's no way this was the will of the people, much less a mandate.

Get over it. It'll be much better for your blood pressure over the next calendar year.

There is no liberal media conspiracy. There is no overwhelming order from some sinister place that determines what type of coverage is presented. There are problems with "the storyline" of any given campaign and a reluctance to break from that storyline. This is not something new.

Know what? Today's media consumer is too picky to listen to anything that deviates from their view of the storyline.

Sarah Palin isn't a folksy, charming woman? Liberal slander! Barack Obama is an ambitious man and not the aw shucks candidate swept up in the will of the people and their desire for change? Turn off Fox News!

I suppose it is impressive that the first stage of this odd sequence for both the Bush and Obama administrations begin with conspiracy theories - that we blame outside forces before we blame each other - but it's a little tiresome.

I'll skip to the spoiler and what I needed to get off my chest this evening:

I voted for Obama and I meant to do it.

I wasn't blinded by star power. I wasn't swayed by the media. I didn't see a fancy commercial on the Internet and decide to vote for him. I did my homework and I voted for Obama.

You may not agree with my reasons for doing so and I certainly don't expect you value the things I do, or to weight them the same ways I do. But don't think for a second that I made an uninformed decision because of the result of that final decision.

I mention this because I spent enough time on the other side of this equation to understand what these first few weeks are like. Not for nothing, but at least this election is recount-free, so keep that in mind as you whine and forward new polls to me.

At the end of that bitter path is the realization that while you might not agree, other people have valid opinions as well. While you might feel personally out of touch with the majority of your countrymen, it's pretty arrogant to assume that everyone who voted differently than you is an idiot or was duped into doing so.

Trust me - I spent far too much time assuming that all the idiots who voted Bush were duped. It didn't do much good in the long run. It certainly doesn't help in the event of a successful re-election run.

For love or money?

I have said from the beginning here that I would shy away from politics more often than not because a.) I'm just not informed enough to speak on it in any sort of responsible manner and b.) it precipitates nasty flame wars, even on quiet little blogs such as this. If you need any evidence of just how hot this year's campaign season got, I suggest grabbing a Facebook account and trashing either Barack Obama or John McCain publicly.

Still, the politics that move this country have me thinking and so there may be minor flood of posts with the "politics" tag that thus far has been used sparingly.

More to the point are the ideas advanced by Frank the Tank in his call for change within the GOP. I was also moved by the lengthy and well-reasoned response in the first comment that runs nearly as long as the post itself.

Still, it's not a stretch to say that the Republican party is seen as less inclusive as the Democrats and that is a pretty strange point to arrive at when you begin with Abraham Lincoln as the first Republican president.

I tend to view the parties through a strange prism of what the average voter sees, and by that I tend to weigh the consensus more heavily than the actual nuts and bolts of of each party's political machine. For example, in discussing McCain taking the fall for GOP leaders and their place in the economic crisis with Frank, I can understand that the blame shouldn't fall directly on the Republicans, but unless they could effectively sway voter perceptions, it's a moot point.

Call me uninformed or blind to the fleecing at the hands of a liberal media - a major sore spot for me - but really, if you can't realistically take the pulse of the electorate, you're essentially arguing policy in a vacuum.

With that out of the way, I think it's safe to say that Democrats are seen as the warm, fuzzy candidates and while recent history bears out that people don't always want that quality in their candidate for office, it makes things difficult for GOP candidates courting votes in low-income areas or with the nation's various minority groups.

It also highlights one of the major trains of thought I've had since Tuesday and especially with regards to a few discussions with Frank. (It's worth noting that he is my main source of dissenting opinion because he can carefully formulate articulate arguments without using the words "liberal media," "idiot," "hippie" or "Fox News said." Also, he eats the same garbage food I do when our wives aren't watching, so we are able to plow through all sorts of strange political topics over breaded steak sandwiches at Ricobene's.)

In a few discussions this fall, Frank has repeatedly pointed out that he is fiscally conservative and socially progressive - in short, that he supports many pieces of the Democratic platform when it comes to social issues but can't get behind their economic policy.

To be totally honest, I don't think that I could accurately (much less gracefully) explain the Democratic plans for the economy if I was spotted an hour in the library and a cabinet of top-level advisors. I don't imagine that I'm alone with my donkey-loving brothers and sisters.

And therein lies a major question for me in the polling data - how many of those people who voted Democrat on Tuesday did so because of the party's social agenda and how many did so based on their economic policies. (It's worth noting that for the basis of what follows here, I'm effectively ignoring McCain specifically, who was polling better than "Republican Candidate X" and suffered from an odd campaign stricken by amnesia that presented the candidate in a different light than what got him to that point. Tuesday night is much more suspenseful if McCain runs his campaign with the same tone set in his concession speech.)

A major problem for the GOP, as outlined by the post that I've linked, boils down to the reality that the party needs to focus on both sides and loses voters if they push too far one way or another. I assume that the average Democrat would back an economic stimulus package based on buying a truckload of Powerball tickets if it meant supporting a candidate who would pack the Supreme Court with pro-choicers and proponents of gay marriage.

Personally, I'd have more difficult decisions to make if the GOP held the line with less government interference - because really, who wouldn't want lower taxes - when it came to those issues. Still, for the party that preaches a more hands off approach, they have the hardest lines on who you can marry and what decisions can and cannot be made by a pregnant woman.

I may not be listening well enough, but I rarely hear complaints about what something will cost from the Democratic voters, as long as they support the ideas driving it. They'll pay for universal health care, welfare and other programs as long as they think it will help (which I know is seen as a weakness by some) but I think it illustrates a major division between the voters for the two sides. It's not just what they vote for, but how they vote as well.

In short, the GOP must cater to socially conservative voters who want to ban abortion and gay marriage (and a host of other issues, but those two make for nice shorthand) as well as those who want to keep a sober eye on the bottom line, while the Democrats can focus all their attention on their social stance and not worry about losing too many voters because of the economic road map.

Personally, while I checked out Obama's tax and health care plans just to know what they entailed before I voted, there wasn't a significant chance I'd vote McCain because of the party platform. I doubt the GOP was afforded the same luxury.

And so, Frank's call for a party that loosens up a bit on the reigns and becomes a more welcoming place for a diverse block of voters isn't falling on deaf ears from either side of the aisle.

He wrote:

The Republicans have the opportunity to either perform a make-over to become a true majority party that invites intellectual debate or alternatively could choose to be a vocal minority that only cares about ideological purity. Is the party going to opt to grow and attempt to expand its base by adopting a libertarian platform in light of substantial demographic trends, even in the traditionally Republican strongholds in the South? Or is the party going to look to protect its evangelical core because they are the loudest and most activist group?

It's time for a makeover - someone has to keep the hippies in line. I saw that on Fox News.

(Image from: GOP.com)

What we want isn't always what we want

I've spent a lot of time thinking about politics this year - well, a lot more than I used to - and trying to square away all of my own biases to make sure that I'm making a good decision next Tuesday.

Unfortunately, politics in America has taken on too much of a sports flavor, with too many voters taking a "my team versus your team" stance on elections. While I can admire those who feel so strongly about core issues of abortion, gun control, etc. that they are morally obligated to vote their party's ticket, I think there is a large section of voters who are technically neutral walking into each election cycle.

As we all know, it doesn't necessarily play out like that.

Some of us like to be seen as sober and conservative and vote Republican. Some of us are trying to hang on to our younger days of being carefree and liberal and vote Democrat. Some of us at the front of a long line at McDonald's, staring at the menu and prepare to vote for the Green Party.

In the middle of a campaign, it's easy to ignore the opposition's candidate, waiting for gaffes to appear via YouTube or your Facebook wall to further shore up your own caricature of who he or she is.

I certainly do not claim to be immune to getting swept up in all of this. To be totally honest, I can't tell you why I feel Obama is more qualified to run the country than Sarah Palin. It might have to do with that winking thing, but I'm not sure.

Frankie and I were talking about this as we had lunch today and what fascinates me is just how difficult it is to create a "perfect" candidate. Set aside the actual meat of policy issues and think about just how hard it is to mold a candidate to be universally acceptable.

* We want them to be experienced, but are wary of DC insiders.

* We want them to be loose and human, but we'll question the judgement of putting them on Saturday Night Live. We'll also question whether Kennedy or Roosevelt would have danced on Ellen.

* We certainly wouldn't elect a candidate who was an abject business failure, but if they have too much money, we get suspicious.

* We'd also prefer that they've had success in their lives, but we crucify them for being too driven. We don't want a president who is too ambitious.

* We want our candidates to be smart but not to the point that they seem to be intellectually elitist. (For the record, this drives me crazy. I refuse to believe that a president can be too smart, educated or intellectually curious.)

* We want them to be sober and serious, but not like Al Gore was.

* We expect them to rely on their advisors, but question them if they lack experience. Again, we don't want them to be too smart, either.

* We want a candidate who understands what it means to be middle class in this country, without actually being middle class. Serious presidential candidates can't be cops, teachers or even plumbers before they decide to run.

* We want candidates that campaign well, but if they raise too much money, we'll question how they got it.

* We want our candidates to make connections with the voters without seeming condescending.

* We only want our candidates to look good and sound smart on television, but if they don't, we'll just blame the media. Some of us will go as far as convincing ourselves that it's unfair to ask simple questions with a camera or tape recorder present.

* We want passion, but not if it means sighing/winking/getting upset during a televised debate.

* We want them to look and smell nice, but not, you know, $150,000 nice. We also like war heroes, but not if they look like they've been in an actual war.

Safe to say, we're a pretty finicky bunch. While this was a fun hypothetical exercise to kick around for the past week, it has also depressed me as a voter.

If a candidate has to clear this many hurdles with regards to superficial window dressing, there's not a great deal of hope for someone truly dynamic to break through. That saddens me as an American on a very profound level.

You can blame candidate's handlers, the high ranking members of the party, the media (both liberaly agenda-ed and conservatively hate-based) and anyone else you like, but unfortunately, the buck stops where it starts.

This is not a candidate problem, it's a voter problem. Once we can figure out what we want, I'm positive they'll dig someone out to meet those demands.

Late addition edition:

I forgot three that got the ball rolling for me in my excitement to get this written - I really should keep some sort of notebook for this reason.

* We want our candidates to represent our changing country, but let's keep the names less terrorist-y.

* We want our candidates to be their own person - mavericks at times - but ignore that voting the party line is what they are elected to do. They are in office to represent the voters and at times that means voting for things they might not be totally behind.

* We want our candidates to learn from their mistakes, but if they change their minds too many times, they're tabbed as flip-floppers.

(Image from PunditKitchen.com)

Got two? Need two?

In what is becoming a big, big mess, the tickets to the Tuesday night Obama rally are gone and people are trying to find tickets by any means possible.

In 2008, this of course means that people are hitting the Internet. The hitch is that you need a photo ID and so those blocks of two tickets are really a "one plus" situation.

Buddy system, anyone?

My favorite part of the Tribune's write up is the analysis of the Google trends feature, served with a side of sarcasm:

The Web site Google Trends recorded a heavy volume of searches for "Obama rally tickets" at 8 p.m. Tuesday and an even bigger spike at 7 a.m. today - making it the 38th most popular search term this morning on Google, behind "Rashid Khalidi" and "Tracy Morgan," but still more urgent than "vivisection" and "Halloween facts."

Well, at least we have our priorities straight. I need my Tracy Morgan news at least twice a week, but then, who doesn't?

Grasping at the cool straws

I was driving home last night and hit a dead spot on my radio presets. Moving from the one button to the six, I had a string of commercials that prompted me to start hitting the seek button to find something to entertain me for a few minutes.

One of the first hits was for Q101, Chicago's old standby for alternative music that was a fixture in high school. It hit me at that point that my radio isn't as cutting edge as it used to be.

I have WXRT, which is one of the best rock stations in the country, NPR, a country station, a 70s rock station, an adult Top 40 station and the blank station that I use for my iPod.

I'm betting that one of the signs of adulthood in the Chicagoland area has to be the extinction of Q101 on the preset dial and the addition of NPR.

I never saw it coming, but then again, if my radio somehow got stuck on NPR and couldn't be changed, I wouldn't be in a big rush to take it in for repair. Well, at least until the cash drive twice a year.

(Image from: MobileFun.co.uk)

The fight for your living room

If anyone has purchased a next-gen gaming system in the past three years or so, they have discovered one overriding principle in the experience.

The Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 have higher inspirations than simply playing games or occasionally firing up a DVD when your stand alone player goes up in flames.

They're jockeying to be the air traffic controller of your entire living room.

Microsoft is starting to drum up more noise for their revamped Xbox Live content, which honestly makes it look like a Wii knockoff.

Most interesting to me, Microsoft has entered into a partnership to stream the instantly viewable movies to the Xbox 360 and straight through to your TV. Taking the laptop/VGA piece out of the equation sounds great.

The constant annexation does not.

I'm already uncomfortable with the isolation that's build into my iPod, so as Microsoft keeps making footholds, I'm a little uneasy with this.

Sure, it works out well for me as an Xbox owner, but if I'd gone the PS3 route, I'm out in the cold right now. It's not a stretch to see proprietary hardware, software and cabling taking the whole system down in short order.

I'm really torn on this one. On the one hand, I can't stand system-specific lockdowns that force people to buy only one hardware line.

On the other, this looks pretty cool and I'm a little excited to see what else is included in the next wave of technology. I'm guessing Microsoft wouldn't agree to any partnership with Netflix that leaves them a gap to stream video to the other consoles as well.

(Image from: TheTechHerald.com)

The Neal Factor

Coming back from the grocery store tonight I almost tripped over the eternal keg monument in our backyard. This is the keg that's been out back since Cinco de Mayo and now it has two new friends from the last annoyance our downstairs neighbors held a week and a half ago.

The general rule in these situations is to think back and try to objectively determine if we were any better or worse when I was 24. Did we leave kegs out? Did we annoy the neighbors or try to remain somewhat respectful? Were we ever this stupid?

Usually the answer to any and all of these questions is no.

Granted, we lived in an apartment filled with people in our age group who didn't care, but in terms of making sure that we kept our noses clean and that problems didn't crop up for months on end, we had an advantage.

We had Neal.

While three of the four roommates were pretty content to just let things be and constantly procrastinate, Neal generally kept at us to do the right thing.

While I'm sure a combination of personal responsibility and poverty would have gotten us in gear to return a keg within the same calendar year that it was purchased, we had that one roommate who would remind us to get it done sooner versus later.

Not even in a mean or a condescending way - more of a "fun is fun... now go clean it up" kind of way. After all, this is the same guy who shook a two liter of soda for a few minutes and then whacked it with golf club.

The Neal Factor is not a bad thing. I think everyone is better off when the Neal Factor is in play.

I assume that the three people below us are much worse than the three roommates - myself included - we had and lack any sort of personal responsibility, but there are ways around that.

Hypothetically speaking, I'm almost positive that the scrappers that prowl Chicago's alleys will get bolder in two weeks' time. I'd wager heavily that they've gotten so bold that they'd walk right into our backyard and remove three empty kegs without even thinking twice.

How else would three kegs just disappear by our anniversary on October 20?

(Image from: CBC.ca)

Hold your horses

It's a weak explanation for the silence here, but things have taken on a life of their own at the tour company where I work. Despite my best attempts to alienate customers and never give more than 50 percent effort on any given day, I'm moving to a management role.

I know, I was hoping for zero responsibility for the entire summer, too.

Here, this should help to amuse you. Or you know, anger you. One of the two.

Also, this outstanding rant from Frankie. God, what a wonderful human being and he proves it by dropping this on unsuspecting readers of his blog:

Once again, the lesson for ordering pizza in a group is (1) meat, (2) cheese, and (3) shoot any dissenters. When it comes to ordering pizza, you need to put the sickle down like Soviet Russia.

We'll be back on line shortly.

2K Games fails to keep up its end of our social contract

There are a lot of unspoken contracts in our modern American society. Seriously, just think about how much you aren't required to think about.

You go to any restaurant across the country and you fully expect to not only survive the experience, but to not get food poisoning or ingest any foreign objects like pennies. Likewise, when I buy a game from the store, I pretty much expect to go home, open the package, put it in my Xbox and start killing time.

Only, the video game companies of late have rushed games into production - sports games are notorious for this - and I got burned again by 2K Games which is rapidly turning into the biggest culprit in my little world.

That's not what's killing me, though. That special, irksome problem comes from the lack of respect for its customers that 2K has via its online help desk.

It's my opinion that the company is responsible for selling me a functioning product, especially for a console that has a limited number of variables. Granted, as Microsoft attempts to take over my living room (and next, the world) the consoles are becoming more complex.

Still the product should work out of the box, which 2K is now 0-for-2 on with my last two purchases. When you consider that Rockstar Games postponed the release their major cash cow, Grand Theft Auto, there's no excuse to ship a broken game to customers.

Barring that, the company should be honest and try to keep customers in the loop. If we're taking the time to go online and post to their forums with bugs and other issues we're essentially beta testing their games for free and that seems wrong.

For the $60 per game that customers plunk down, we really should expect more from those producing the games.

Finally, when users go the extra mile and do more than just throw up their hands at a problem and start flame wars on the boards - the "PS3 is better! Xbox is better!" arguements remind me of Billy Madison debating shampoo versus conditioner - they should have a human being on the other end respond, try to find an answer and let people know the updated status of their help desk tickets.

I sat down and wrote what the issue I was having, the steps I took to try and troubleshoot and the fact that the game worked for 45 minutes before crapping out. What I got back nearly two days after 2K said it would respond was a form e-mail that could have been sent without actually seeing my e-mail.

To add insult to injury, 2K won't accept a follow up from me on the issue for seven days.

I'm told to restart the game (duh), check the disc and perform a series of checks that my e-mail had already outlined as being completed. Then I'm basically told that the game should work and 2K seems to have the issue written off as addressed.

I expect more out of a company than a cut and paste job, especially when I'm taking the time to troubleshoot their defective product and outline what I've already done to try and make their game playable. Additionally, this is the second time that I've watched their message boards like a hawk to get word on when the updates to fix gameplay would be available. It's also the second time that their representatives have promised a date for release, seen that date pass and then hidden from their customers who only wanted to know what the new timeline looked like.

Seeing as I live for the new year's baseball title - which is locked up by 2K for the forseeable future - 2K's incompetence has me ready to buy a PS3 so I can buy Sony's baseball game next season and avoid 2K altogether.

Bioshock was great and all, guys, but not enough to make me ever want to do business with such a Mickey Mouse company in the future.

(Image from: KongTechnology.com)

Leadership lessons from Chef Ramsay

There are a few things I'm continually shocked by when we settle in to watch Kitchen Nightmares with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey.

First, is that when you set your TiVo, you get the Fox version - filmed in America for American audiences - and the BBC's original version and the differences are night and day. While Americans know the chef as a foulmouthed bully who has a thesaurus of scatological terms to describe the food people prepare, the British version is a different picture.

Instead of the usual bombastic entrances, punctuated with vomiting and belittling of the waitstaff, Ramsey enters the UK's hard luck cases and almost immediately begins the hand holding and sympathetic looks. It's very different and makes me shake my head at what American audiences either demand or have responded to in the past.

Second, is that amongst the drama, he has a pretty firm grasp of leadership skills and different approaches to problems with his staff. After countless hours spent in leadership retreats, seminars and training sessions, you start to see some of the usual suspects appear in his shows.

Ramsey employs a bit of verbal slight of hand in dismissing groups from the small meetings that take place mid-show with a quick, simple, "Yes?" It's positive, short and doesn't leave a lot of room for further discussion.

Ramsey will offer a rapid fire checklist of tasks (or sometimes wholesale changes that the owners may not be on board with) to rock people back and then shove them into action with that "Yes?" It's really pretty interesting to watch once you see what he's doing.

A new one I caught last night in the follow up show - where he returned to the restaurants from last season - is his urging that his newest protegees, "don't stop." It's a little thing, but it goes a long way from his position as a giant in the celebrity chef game.

It's nothing that will change your world view, but I'm betting somewhere in his home, Chef Ramsey has a dog eared copy of a book on how to motivate and inspire his troops. It actually makes me like the guy a little more.

Being a screaming loon can only make you so interesting.

Oh yes, that guy

As far as power hitters on our city tours go, the Soldier Field stop is pretty much the crown jewel of the South Loop. Regardless of the tour group (either locals or out of towners visiting our fair city) the conversation always goes the same way.

Me: So, this is Soldier Field.

Guest: So this is the home of the Bears? (Out of town) / Woo! Bears! (In town)

Me: Yup.

Guest: Why the hell does it look like that? (Out of town) / Jesus, that looks like hell. (In town)

Me: Yup. It doesn't bother me much, I like what they've done with Lambeau.

Guest: Packers fan? What the hell is wrong with Brett Favre?

To be totally honest, I only have one major problem with the whole situation (aside from ESPN's constant coverage and their feeding the story until it spun out of control like a Tilt-a-Whirl assembled by unsupervised carnies). I feel the team was in the wrong to go down and try to bribe Favre into staying retired.

I feel that showed a total lack of class, especially for a small market, old school team that should know better. It just felt dirty to me. I know Vince Lombardi would have dropped a handful of f-bombs if it would have been suggested in his presence.

Still, after spending some time around a pro locker room - and I think it's ultimately irrelevant that it was the Packers - I feel for Favre, especially as he prepares for his 39th birthday.

Obviously, the team was tired of the on again/off again Favre saga that was a tiring dance the past few offseasons and needed to move ahead with Aaron Rodgers or get ready to lose him to free agency. I worry now with what amounts to three rookie quarterbacks on the depth chart, but there's not a lot anyone can do about it now (and no, picking up Daunte Culpepper is not a viable option).

On the Favre side of the fence, if he sits this year, he's done. The rust crops up on a 39-year-old body and no one wants to go near him next season. Professional athletes have a very short window of opportunity - whether it's a teenager skipping out on college to begin his career in the NFL or NBA or taking one last shot before retirement - and I will never fault them for trying to make the most of their moment in the sun.

I will take teams to task for constantly signing retreads that have no business collecting a paycheck, but the players are hardly to blame for capitalizing on what the market is willing to offer them.

So, in short, I have no problem with the Packers sticking to their guns and going with the youth movement, especially when Favre has very little left in the tank from a calendar standpoint. I also have no problem with Favre coming to grips with his own shelf life and deciding to try and make the most of the time he has left (man, it sounds like the man is dying, doesn't it?)

It seems that most people have come to grips with this and I'm strangely proud of Packers fans who have drawn that line in the sand between being Green Bay fans and Brett Favre fans. I didn't give them enough credit in that department.

At the end of the whole soap opera, Favre comes out looking a bit foolish and selfish and the team looks stronger for standing its ground and backing the future of the franchise. The Vikings come up empty handed at their biggest weakness and the Bears are selling reversible Orton/Grossman jerseys while fans half jokingly await the Tim Tebow sweepstakes.

I just hope Packers fans are ready for life like the rest of the league now - living with an eye trained on the backup quarterbacks in case their starter is one of the three or four QBs to go down with a season ending injury.

This would be a good time to start hoping that there's no such thing as "QB Karma."

(Image from: CBSNews.com)

How does one kill big oil?

One of these days people will get wise and realize that I post way too many links to Wired and that I'd be better served by killing this blog altogether and just linking to their web site and letting everyone cherrypick stories they find interesting.

Just not today.

I hit a confluence of stories today with things I'd read there and the buzz created by Barack Obama's speech about the need to start cutting ties with the oil companies. It's pretty exciting, but of course, that's what convention speeches are all about - creating excitement and giving the candidates a strong surge heading into the fall.

Hey, it beats news that the Republican nominee for Vice President is in favor of teaching Creationism in classrooms. Oh my.

First, from a short essay on Thomas Friedman's new book is a call for action and a systems approach to ending oil dependence. In it is a quote that's been with me for the past few weeks:

"The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stone," he says. Likewise, the climate-destroying fossil-fuel age will end only if we invent our way out of it.

But he's not suggesting a new Manhattan Project. "Twelve guys and gals going off to Los Alamos won't solve this problem," Friedman says. "We need 100,000 people in 100,000 garages trying 100,000 things — in the hope that five of them break through."

Our current efforts are not only inadequate, they're hopelessly haphazard and piecemeal. Friedman argues it'll take a coordinated, top-to-bottom approach, from the White House to corporations to consumers. "Without a systems approach, what do you end up with?" he asks. "Corn ethanol in Iowa."

Ouch. Sorry, Iowa. You might want to make some calls to the good folks at Jiffy Pop to see how they're doing in terms of stock. You might have some corn on your hands to offload.

In the same issue is a rather lengthy piece that highlights a revolutionary new way of manufacturing, running and marketing electric cars. Intertwined with that are stories of a man and a company that I'd work for without question and I'm not the only one.

I know I rarely read lengthy links, so I'll give you the broad points here, but if you have a little time, I suggest reading through it or picking up this month's hard copy and reading through the cover story.

Shai Agassi is a relative newcomer to the electric car market, but has an impressive pedigree and no major hang ups with slaughtering America's sacred cows (like the internal combustion engine). After accepting to Young Global Leaders, he seriously sunk his teeth into environmental issues.

Starting with home energy use, he set his sights a bit higher and dove into the car market. That's where things started getting interesting. First up for Agassi was to outline life with an electric car and to work on batteries first - an issue since the invention of the first automobiles.

Car batteries, then and now, are heavy and expensive, don't last long, and take forever to recharge. In five minutes you can fill a car with enough gas to go 300 miles, but five minutes of charging at home gets you only about 8 miles in an electric car. Clever tricks, like adding "range extenders"—gas engines that kick in when a battery dies—end up making the cars too expensive.

Agassi dealt with the battery issue by simply swatting it away. Previous approaches relied on a traditional manufacturing formula: We make the cars, you buy them. Agassi reimagined the entire automotive ecosystem by proposing a new concept he called the Electric Recharge Grid Operator. It was an unorthodox mashup of the automotive and mobile phone industries. Instead of gas stations on every corner, the ERGO would blanket a country with a network of "smart" charge spots. Drivers could plug in anywhere, anytime, and would subscribe to a specific plan—unlimited miles, a maximum number of miles each month, or pay as you go—all for less than the equivalent cost for gas. They'd buy their car from the operator, who would offer steep discounts, perhaps even give the cars away. The profit would come from selling electricity—the minutes.

There would be plugs in homes, offices, shopping malls. And when customers couldn't wait to "fill up," they'd go to battery exchange stations where they would pull into car-wash-like sheds, and in a few minutes, a hydraulic lift would swap the depleted battery with a fresh one. Drivers wouldn't pay a penny extra: The ERGO would own the battery.

Damn.

This brings us full circle to a Jalopnik post today asking for a Manhattan Project style overhaul of the process, should Obama win in November. Funny, I had just talked myself out of that after the first link...

I think everyone would be well served by taking a meeting with Agassi and just getting a feel for what he's proposing. In one of life's little twists, Hawaii is the frontrunner for implementation in the United States, with a small land mass that is dependent on imported oil for all of its needs.

So, in a week of high ideals and grand plans that seemingly know no bounds, I point you in the direction of another one - Agassi's. It's a long shot right now and would require Americans to accept something different from what they're used to and see as their birthright - bigger, faster cars that can run through hundreds of miles of desert with the air conditioning on full blast.

Count me as someone who loves those cars - and has made no secret of his outright lust for the old gas guzzlers of the 1950s, 60s and 70s - but it's time to face facts and to stop chasing down the same arid dead ends.

Agassi seems to be on the right track - he doesn't think like normal people do.

When I ask Shai if he's worried about a competitor stealing his idea, he stares at me like I'm an idiot. "The mission is to end oil," he says, "not create a company."

It's worth noting

Without any editorializing or clouding what you will take from this, these three events that share the same anniversary, August 28.

1955 - About 2:30 a.m., Roy Bryant and his half brother J. W. Milam, kidnap Emmett Till from Moses Wright's home (in Money, Mississippi). They will later describe brutally beating him, taking him to the edge of the Tallahatchie River, shooting him in the head, fastening a large metal fan used for ginning cotton to his neck with barbed wire, and pushing the body into the river.

1963 - The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream Speech" in Washington, D.C.

2008 - Barack Obama plays to a full house in Denver as he accepts the Democratic nomination for president.

It's a start.