The Runcible Blog

I went to Windham on September 12th to see Howard Dean make a stump speech in someone's backyard. Apparently, about 300 people showed up on a Friday night to hear what he had to say. Actually the audience seemed to consist mostly of yuppies. I liked what he had to say and was surprised that he appears more "electable" (read: appealing to a broad audience) than many columnists have tried to portray him. Right now I'm listening to the speech Dean made in Boston the other day. I'm impressed. He's not afraid to oppose Bush's boneheaded policies, and he has real alternatives. Other candidates hope to win by agreeing with Bush (I hiss at Lieberman) or by ignoring him (Kucinich says he doesn't mention Bush in his speeches because he wants to run a positive, optimistic campaign. fooey to that!).

Here are some pictures from Dean's Windham stop:

Dean also made a stop at the Eagle-Tribune world headquarters in North Andover to be interrogated by the editorial staff. Even Über-Republican fanatic Ken Johnson wrote a positive column about Dean after the encounter. After the meeting fellow Dean groupie, Kate, and I posed with the gov'na for this photo. (Wow, his neck is bigger than my head!) (oh, and that's Al White behind us looking on with envy)

Isn't it interesting that I probably wouldn't nearly have been as politically conscious were it not for Bush's failure as a president and his outrageous, offensive, and down-right nasty decisions? Thanks, George! I hope you enjoy clearing brush at your Crawford ranch; you'll be spending much more quality time there after 2004...

Out of curiosity and boredom I've compiled this list of 2004 election campaign web sites with their vital stats from Netcraft. Analysis follows:

As you can see, most candidates are using open source solutions for hosting their content. Front-runner Howard Dean's site uses a Java back end, which shows he's not afraid to tackle complicated issues -- like installing Java on Unix. Also, his use of FreeBSD reflects the robustness and tight organization of his campaign.

John Kerry, on the other hand, has opted for Red-Hat Linux with a multitude of Apache modules. The choice of linux foreshadows a fragmented, disjointed, frustrating campaign, while his inclusion of FrontPage, python, PHP, and Perl modules proves that he can't make up his mind about anything.

Dennis Kucinich also uses Linux for his campaign site, but what's this .us domain? He receives extra credit for having a .us site (although I guess those aren't as special as they used to be). Other than that, it's a plain Linux server running PHP. Yeah, he's a boring candidate.

Although Joe Lieberman is quick to criticize Dean, the two candidates apparently agree on their choice of hosting provider and, consequently, software. It's clear to see that Lieberman continues to attempt to play catch-up with Dean. He's betting heavily that his brand of "me-too", Republican-lite politics will help him win the nomination. Unfortunately for Joe, we don't live in Bizarro World.

John Edwards and Dick Gephardt are both using Windows. Their campaigns are obviously doomed to failure if they rely on Microsoft products.

Bob Graham sports a spartan Linux server with FrontPage extensions (bleh!) while Al Sharpton mixes it up with a Solaris box. Now we know where all of Sharpton's campaign budget is going.

Carol Moseley-Braun's site uses an Apache module called mod_webapp. It sounds interesting, but not interesting enough to care about. Kind of like her campaign.

And of course, we have the incumbent George W. Bush's site which runs on Windows. Do we need any more evidence that he's evil?
And this is weird. In October of 2000, Bush's site was hosted by a company called Illuminati Online. See:
Linux Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) PHP/3.0.16 6-Oct-2000 206.224.90.149 Illuminati Online
Need I say more?

What the heck is this? As of now, this blog is worth $1,712.27. Wow. What does that mean?

Where do I cash in my "stock", and who are these people "buying" shares?

Gee, I must be way out of touch with the blogosphere...

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.

From the Washington Post

In other news, a new Washington Post poll indicates that at least 69% of Americans are idiots.

Andrè Kertesz once remarked (according to my fuzzy memory anyway) that "everything is picture" (English wasn't his first language). He considered almost anything in daily life worth photographing. Although I'm not in Kertesz's league, I've been feeling similarly inspired lately while driving around town. Friday and Saturday nights I patrolled Lawrence, listening to my scanner and looking for photo opportunities. Lawrence is actually quite busy on weekend nights, I've learned. Unfortunately I'm not courageous enough to walk around by myself downtown. My main concern is that I don't know where I could park my car and expect to find it intact when I return. The Park, Myrtle, Arlington, and Lawrence Street area seems to be the most "active" at night.

So while I'm driving around I'm seeing all sorts of potential photographs and imagining how they might look, but I haven't taken any pictures yet. How sad. Once I get a better feel for the city I'll venture from my steel and bondo confines (much like a diver wandering from his shark cage). I'd hate to play the race card, but I haven't noticed many fellow crackers hanging out in Lawrence at night. Also, Lawrence is not Boston -- Bostonians and Cambridge folk (?) are used to seeing snot nosed kids with cameras on the street. Lawrencians, it seems, are more suspicious and paranoid. So, my minority status combined with a somewhat photographer-hostile town makes for an awkward environment. I shouldn't make excuses though.

On another note, I've been thinking about documentary filmmaking. PBS and even HBO make some excellent documentaries that are really inspiring. I'm not sure if I'd be interested in or capable of making a video documentary though. I wonder if it's possible to convey the same ideas and emotions in the same hard-hitting style using still photographs rather than video or film. Well I know it's possible, but I don't see many examples in "mainstream" media. I shouldn't even mention the Eagle Tribune's sorry excuses for photo essays. Bleh.

I'm watching Tim Russert interview Paul Krugman on CNBC, and I noticed a couple things:

I'll have to check out his book, "The Great Unravelling". If there's a lot of economic mumbo-jumbo, I might lose interest. Ideally, it'll be a fun pop-up book.