No more lectures about not “letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.” For my part, I’m okay with letting the lame and disappointing be the enemy of the totally, execrably unacceptable.

Better yet, how about letting the nothing-at-all be the enemy of the totally-meaningless-simulacrum-of-a-political-victory? Why should the Republicans be the only ones who get to indulge in the odd pyrrhic victory? The more I think about it, I am going to call my congressman — to tell him, “kill the fucker.” No bill. If the progressive wing of the party is going to have any relevance at all, Rahm can’t be allowed to call this shit sandwich a win.

What was so frustrating about the speech was that rhetorically it *was* a really eloquent and forceful articulation of the problem and the urgency of the need to address it, but in terms of content all he did was formally indicate to Congress that he’s ready to concede his key provision. Do you think they won’t take him up on that? Like all of his speeches it was an exquisitely beautiful container, but in this case the payload it delivered was “I give up!” If he’s not leading the fight, who’s going to get the public option through? The progressives? I wish, but I doubt it. It’s over.

You’re right about the scatological imagery though, I did go a little overboard there…

I’m hard pressed to think of another sport where an athlete team can be upbraided for essentially not *letting* the other guy win. I get that it’s a little more complicated than that, but the crux of this controversy seems to be the presumption that it was “George’s turn,” and that Astana & Garmin failed to stick to the script dictated them by custom and chivalry, which required them to stand aside and let Hincapie have his moment.

At the same time, it’s hard to overlook the role the Hincapie played in advancing the vaunted career of Lance Almighty over the years, and it would have been classy of him to return the favor. Come to think of it, very similar questions of whose-turn-it-is and who-owes-whom-what seem to be at the heart of the whole Armstrong/Contador rivalry, whether you see it as manufactured made-for-TV drama or a genuine conflict, or something in between…

This decision will slow down the “overt” sharing but it’s an impossible battle to win. It’s like Sony when they release new firmware updates for the PSP handheld because hackers keep breaking the previous one. After countless firmware updates, at some point you accept that this battle is going to go on forever. Jail-broken iPhones being another example. It’s actually impressive to last a full 24 hours before the next crack happens.

on a recent macworld podcast i heard, the consensus view was that apple has essentially made peace with the inevitable jailbreaking, accepting that a certain segment of their market is always going to want to bust open the hardware and fiddle with it. instead of cracking down, they’re tolerating it and simply refusing support outside the terms of the warranty. seems like a reasonable compromise: you’d prefer people stick with the original firmware and use their iPhones in ways intended by apple, but you effect the desired behavior by incentivizing it rather than by trying to punish those who behave otherwise. i choose not to jailbreak because, largely thru the app store, they’ve offered me an attractive alternative to total user-control which includes a certain level of support. i’m free to go the other way if i choose, with no hard feelings or retaliation on apple’s part, but then i accept the consequences of my choice, including the possibility of bricking — kind of a sartrean attitude, total freedom equals total responsibility and whatnot. they’re betting that more people will choose option A, which seems smart to me, and perhaps illustrative of the kind of truce content providers are going to have to make with consumers in order to stay viable. who knows? maybe TPB 2.0 will be something along these lines…

Gaikai Technology Demo (JULY 1, 2009) from David Perry on Vimeo.

one more gratifying newspaper column, this one from the Trib:

Once again, a humble Midwestern state is being laughed at by cosmopolitan smarty-pants on the East and West coasts. The victim this time, of course, is Iowa, which recently had the gall to legalize gay marriage and attempt to mess up decades of perfectly good Midwestern stereotyping.

People on the coasts gasped: “Iowa? Isn’t that where they grow the corn our personal chefs turn into polenta?” Jon Stewart piled on, showing a picture of a lone farm tractor pulling a trailer and claiming it was a shot of Iowa’s most recent gay pride parade. Among gay marriage advocates, the mantra soon became, “If they can do it in Iowa, they can do it anywhere.”

You see what’s happening here? The Midwest – and that includes us, fellow Illinoisans – is again being painted with a broad, sable-hair brush. Some see the Iowa Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling as staggering not because of what it accomplished but because of where it went down.

i thought the Daily Show’s spot was pretty uninspired too. no big surprise, but  disappointing in light of how self-righteous Stewart has been on the marriage issue (the old “i understand teh gays better than you ’cause I live in Queertopia USA”).

Bill Maher also had a pretty gratuitous crack — something along the lines of “the gay community in Iowa was elated…both of them! but then they realized, oh fuck, we live in Iowa.” but he went on to acknowledge, in what I guess passes for a sincere tone coming from him, that Iowa had succeeded where California failed, and that Iowa is therefore, in fact, “hipper.” considering how smarmy and superior Maher habitually comes off, especially when talking about the hicks and goobers of middle america, it amounted to a pretty classy gesture.