1. Sea urchin isn’t bad.
2. It’s not as good as octopus.
3. You can find good sushi in Des Moines.
4. Go to Manhattan Deli for lunch. Great sandwiches.
5. I rented a car for the weekend when all I did with it was drive to and from the airport.
6. I’m an awful golfer. Yet everyone else put up with me.
7. Des Moines taxi drivers have no compunction to squeal their tires as they drive off.
8. I’m getting too old to live it up on back-to-back nights.
9. My sister can worry about me a bit too much. (Better than the reverse.)
10. I’m a teetotaler compared to some people.
11. Autotune is the tool of the devil.
12. For a bachelor party weekend I took a lot of pictures of food.
13. My sister’s wedding in a few weeks won’t be boring.

Thanks to NASA’s Face in Space program to help celebrate the final two space shuttle flights.

At it’s basic level, the internet is people talking to other people. What can become a problem is we can let ourselves go and say anything with the easy push of the button.

In a recent conversation on EconTalk, ESPN the Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Gary Belsky described online comments and weblog posts as the closest we’ve come to publishing our actual thoughts. The filters between our mental impulses to the utterance slip away. Thus, we see often see raw, primal communication.

Is that a threat to democracy? Will our ethos of government fall apart from being exposed to our fellow person’s Id? I don’t think so. I think we’ll adjust. We have already. For example, it’s no long a story for a reporter to find nasty comments posted on political weblogs like Daily Kos or RedState. Like everything with Man, we’ll stumble upon solutions through the messy process that is living.

Watch the debate and see if I’m full of it.

So, I ran with it, turning my Twitter profile page pink:

The avatar was photoshopped by @slublog.

I freaked out a few friends but had a fun time.

You’ve already sold a bunch of iPads. Congratulations. For offering millions of people good gadgets that add to their lives, you sometimes miss the mark on what they really care about. I’m relying on TechCrunch’s coverage of your interview at D8, so maybe I misinterpreted. You seem to think iPad buyers rejected Flash by buying your tablet computer:

Jobs did say that if the market tells them they’re making bad choices, they’ll change. But so far, that isn’t happening. “People seem to be liking the iPad,” Jobs said to laughs and applause. “We’ve sold one every three seconds since we launched it,” he added.

You’re wrong about the public voting on Flash using an iPad ballot. It doesn’t matter if the iPad supported Flash or not, people would still have bought one. iPad owners were thinking about what they could do with the device: web surf; watch videos; send e-mail; light document editing; read e-books. They don’t care what the underlying technology is. Most wouldn’t know what Flash is or the spat Apple is having with Adobe over it. Heck, the iPad could be powered by magical, invisible greyhounds that feed on nuclear waste. As long as the device functioned the way it does in the svelte package it’s in people would crave it.

Beyond the rarefied world of tech weblogs, people just want gadgets that add value to their lives. They really don’t care how it happens.

Love,

Sean

P.S. Oh, that crack about not wanting “to see us descend into a nation of bloggers,” that’s another unforced error.

“Special Lady for Each Arlington Soldier”

When reading about Dio dying of cancer I learned that before his own band and fronting Black Sabbath he was lead singer for the Deep Purple off-shoot Rainbow. Take a listen to “Man on a Silver Mountain.” It’s not bad. It’s not over-the-top Dio from “Rainbow in the Dark.”

Speaking of which, here’s the music video Ronnie James is most famous for:

“Metal Icon Ronnie James Dio dead at 67″

Mr. Baseball, get well soon:

Brewers Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Uecker has always been better at turning a comedic phrase than turning on a fastball, so it came as no surprise when he delivered sobering news on Tuesday with a touch of his famous humor.

Uecker, 75 and in his 40th season in the Brewers’ radio booth, will undergo heart surgery on Friday and is expected to miss the next 10-12 weeks of the baseball season. Dr. Alfred C. Nicolosi will replace Uecker’s aortic valve and a portion of his aortic root.

After that procedure, Dr. Jim Kleczka will determine whether additional bypass surgery is necessary.

“It has to be done — that’s the bottom line,” Uecker told a packed news conference. “I don’t want to go on the road and ‘take a Dixie’ there. I’d rather do it here.”

What Harry Carey was for Chicago, what Jack Buck was for St. Louis, and what Vin Scully is for Los Angeles, that’s what Bob Uecker is for Milwaukee. For as long as I’ve listened to baseball on the radio Bob Uecker has given me the play-by-play. He’s been my voice of America’s Pastime. He’s made me laugh and his “Get up! Get up! Get out of here. GONE!” with every Milwaukee Brewers home run is permanently burned onto my cortex. Brewers games won’t be the same until he comes back.

“Uecker to Have Heart Surgery”

The Elian Gonzalez story was my first weblogging obsession. I recall staying up way too late at night pouring over news stories, writing up analysis, then hand-coding them in HTML to post to Angelfire. ElianWatch still exists. I’d ask you to enjoy, but the story has no happy ending. Elian and his father are still prisoners–along with the rest of Cuba–of the Castro regime.