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January 31, 2004, 2:12 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

Virtual Super Bowls predict the past: For the past eight years, a single two-player game of NFL GameDay has accurately predicted the score of the Super Bowl.

This year Troy Brown vs. Stephen Smith ended in Carolina winning, 29-21.

Um... operator error?

Game Spot notes that there are other simulations out there, and gaming experience matters, so...

In order to get a more balanced prediction of which team will get their rings on Sunday, GameSpot staged its own virtual Super Bowl using all three football titles. To prevent the editor with the more calloused thumbs from running away with a two-player game, we removed the human element and let the computer use its arsenal of statistics to play itself. Our results weren't nearly as clear-cut as the Game Before the Game's, but they were certainly interesting and, in the last case, quite dramatic. Hopefully the real thing will be as exciting.

Okay, we feel better, but this method has its drawbacks, too, notably a sense of deja vu. Didn't we already see this game, back a coupla months ago? Call it, "Squash the rally":

Madden NFL 2004: Patriots 28, Panthers 14 The Patriots commanded the game from the start with an aggressive air attack that delivered seven points in the first quarter. In the second quarter, the Patriots struck again, bringing the game to 14-0. Right before the half, a last ditch effort lead by a good running game by got the Panthers their first touchdown of the game. Things were looking up for the Panthers in the third. They started with the ball, but a poorly placed pass ended up as a Patriots touchdown. Another stop by the Patriots and a final touchdown drive ended the game with a score of 28-14.

ESPN NFL Football had the Panthers 13, Patriots 10; NFL GameDay 2004 ended Patriots 26, Panthers 20 in overtime. I've seen those games too, I think: The defensive hold and the late awakening. Stats are the past.

I'm expecting surprises in Houston from the original minds of Belichick, Crennel and Weis, and hoping for a breakthrough: Star turns by Brady, Law, Brown, McGinest, Bruschi, Seymour, Vinatieri, Washington, Poole, Harrison -- all of 'em -- that will set a benchmark for fierce grace.

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January 30, 2004, 4:10 p.m.

Random newsroom Super Bowl predictions: Our intrepid journos are every bit as prescient as the paid pundits -- we're all guessing. We largely see a high-scoring outing for the Pats. Nobody picked Carolina:

Bob Kerr 35-10
Gail Ciampa 27-7
Frank Carnevale 24-10
Mimi Burkhardt 20-10
Howard Sutton 17-14
Steve Smith 17-10
Andy Smith 17-14
Jack Perry 28-17
Bill Troberman 17-7
Sean Polay 45-12
Beth Heaney 24-13
Bill Van Siclen 28-14
Scott MacKay 24-14
Ray Kiernan 24-17
Bill Reynolds 16-10
Kevin McNamara 24-10
M. Charles Bakst 17-7
Lynne Chaput 12-10

I think ... 31-10.

For comparison, I again asked some astrologers to jump in. Here we go:

Andrea Mallis, Sports Astrologer, doesn't predict, but offers some background on the chart of the game itself, and on quarterbacks Brady and Delhomme:

Super Bowl XXXVIII, February 1, 2004, 3:25 pm, Houston, Texas

The Sun in Aquarius exactly conjoins Neptune -- this unusual link happens only once a year. Neptune is the planet of confusion and deception. When Neptune is strong in a chart, the hard world of reality morphs into a dreamspace. Besides millions of people in a simultaneous trance watching the Super Bowl, the half-time show should be rather ethereal, filled with the exotic, bizarre and glamorous at ultra-modern Reliant Stadium. On the playing field, Neptune can cloak issues with vagueness, obscurity, elusion and intrigue. Neptune is the great masquerader -- perhaps the outcome will be in doubt, confusion can reign; lots of replays may be needed when strange alignments occur. A mutable grand square adds instability. Although the NFL is an efficient Virgo, Super Bowl XXXVIII may be chaotic and fanciful -- a super bawl? Remember, the brightest light can cast the deepest shadow.

Tom Brady, August 3, 1977, San Mateo Calif.
All the world's a stage for Leo Tom Brady, and the Super Bowl is the grandest on which to shine. Proud and intensely individual, Leos want to stand out, play the Hero and be recognized for their unique contributions. Possessed by big dreams and the determination, spirit and vitality to bring them into being, Tom’s feeling radiantly confident. With Mercury in Virgo, he’s an exacting perfectionist with meticulous attention to detail. A master of technical skills, he’s one of the most accurate QBs. High energy and independent initiative characterize this time -- his will is strong, aimed at achieving very definite goals. Tom Terrific is trying to be the youngest quarterback to win two superbowls.

Jake Delhomme, January 10, 1975, Breaux Bridge, La.
Hard working, late- bloomer Capricorn Jake Delhomme toiled in NFL Europe, never giving up, knowing his time would eventually come. Driven to prove himself -- ambitious Capricorns persevere through enormous hardship in order to reach goals. Jake’s a force to be reckoned with as Pluto (planet of power) connects to his Mars (planet of physical energy). It’s a time of great striving in life. Work requiring immense effort is easier, because his state of mind makes it so. Enthusiastic, active and dynamic, it’s an excellent time for competitive sports activities. Clear, focused and purposeful, he moves towards goals like an arrow to its target. A powerhouse of energy, he’s decisive, determined and persistent.

Courtney Roberts Conrad emails:

I'm almost sitting on the fence here. I like the Pats, but those Panthers just never quit. I say it's another championship for Tom Brady and Bill Belichick but you might want to take those Panthers against the spread. They are a very good, and inspiring team.

We think the Pats deserve to cap an awesome, storybook season with some hardware.

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Patriots’ Kevin Faulk to reign over Cajun Country's Mardi Gras parade: From the Lafayette (La. ) Daily Advertiser,

LAFAYETTE — Win or lose in Sunday’s Super Bowl, Kevin Faulk of the New England Patriots will still be king.

Faulk, a star running back at Carencro High School and LSU, will reign over the Lafayette Mardi Gras Festival Inc. parade as the 46th King Toussaint L’Ouverture, parade association President Tagg Catalon said Thursday.

Faulk, running back for the Patriots, will lead a parade of 15 floats and seven marching bands on the 5-mile route through Lafayette on Mardi Gras day, Feb. 24. He could not be reached for comment in Houston, where the team is practicing for Super Bowl XXXVIII against the Carolina Panthers. ...

... Getting Faulk in town and dressed for his official portrait proved stressful, Catalon said.

“Every week he would say, ‘Tagg, I’m coming.’ Then they would win, and it would be put off till next week. Then again, they would win.”

The portrait finally got taken on the Saturday before the Sugar Bowl.

Faulk was chosen by the parade association committee at this time last year. He is the youngest king in the association’s 46 years. All other kings have been older, successful businessmen, educators or civic minded gentlemen, Catalon said.

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Milk men: Also from the Lafayette (La. ) Daily Advertiser,

Jake Delhomme, quarterback of the Carolina Panthers (on the right in the photo), and New England Patriots’ defensive back Ty Law are facing off in a pre-game milk ad, appearing for the first and only time in today’s editions of USA Today.

The ad reads, “I want the ball. Come and get it. It’s go time for Ty Law and Jake Delhomme. It’s not time for friendly competition. It’s go time. And we never would have made it without the nine essential nutrients we get in every glass of milk. So this Sunday, it’s winner take all. Loser thinks about it all summer.”

Sunday’s winner will appear in his own milk ad, which will debut Monday.

This hails the seventh year that Super Bowl players have starred in a special version of the famous milk mustache ad. ...

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Joe Namath Undergoing Counseling For Alcohol Abuse: From AP,

Joe Namath is undergoing counseling for alcohol abuse a month after a television interview in which he slurred his words and twice told a sideline reporter he wanted to kiss her.

"Well, I've enrolled, or I've gone into a center, and I'm getting personal help there," the Hall of Fame quarterback told ESPN in an interview aired Sunday. "Yeah, these people are experts and we need to talk."

In an interview during a New England Patriots-New York Jets game in December, Namath appeared intoxicated when he twice told ESPN reporter Suzy Kolber he wanted to kiss her. Namath subsequently apologized to Kolber.

Namath said he had been drinking for several hours prior to kickoff.

Related: Sobering reflections on night with Namath: Skip Bayless of the San Jose Mercury News recalls his own brushes with Namath, and with the bottle, back when he was 23 and a sportswriter for the L.A. Times. It includes an amazing story about the last time Bayless ever had a drink -- it was with Namath -- and why it was his last. Go read it.

His most poignant insight into Namath:

The Namath I saw behind the scenes was very different from his babe-a-night image. Here was a sad, soulful man who had tried everything without fulfillment.

"My biggest regret,'' he once said, "is that I've never been in love.''

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Transcript: Democratic Candidates Debate in South Carolina

Trippi's long, strange trip: Thanks to my Panasonic Showstopper, I whizzed through Chris Matthews' Hardball after the debate, and even caught Deborah Norville's phone interview with an exhausted Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's former campaign manager, who was on the road from Vermont to his home in Maryland.

Trippi choked up at times, and Norville made me wince. I wasn't sure if I could remember it all, but I found that MSNBC, far from wincing, issued a press release crowing about it. Here's where I went "ouch!":

NORVILLE: It's still got to be hard for you. I know you say it doesn't matter who the campaign manager is, but it's just so obvious when you're (sic) voice cracks that this is a sucker punch.

TRIPPI: No, it's not, it is not, this was my decision, and I have respect for the governor, I have respect for everybody left up there in Burlington, who're working their rear ends off every day, and I love the grassroots that's made it all possible.

Ask him how he feels, ask him if he feels "------" (name your adverb), but if she's functioning as a reporter, it's not her job to label his departure after losing two primaries "a sucker punch."

Trippi roused himself quickly, and, as you can see, was vehement in disputing her mischaracterization of what happened.

Related: Joe Trippi's Wild Ride at GQ.
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Howard Dean in a dress: Doc Searls points to a vicious screed -- so seldom is that an accurate description these days -- by townhall.com columnist Michelle Malkin. (Despite the headline it's not about Dean but about Teresa Heinz Kerry.) Then, for balance, Doc links to my pointer yesterday to Kerry's gold, a Guardian profile that finds Heinz Kerry interesting.

Screed indeed:

Boston Magazine reports that she once snapped on Halloween, yelling at three children who had rung her doorbell on Beacon Hill: "I had a big barrel of candy, and it's all gone!" she ranted, shutting the door on the bewildered youngsters. Yeeearghh!

So what? (By the time my big barrel of candy is gone, the "children" ringing my doorbell are bigger than I am. Tough.)

Shrieking Malkin sheds more light on her own snark self than on her victim.

Here's yet another take on Teresa Heinz Kerry, from the Detroit Free Press: HER OWN WOMAN: First lady Teresa Heinz Kerry contender brings candor to campaign. It starts,

Teresa Heinz Kerry isn't good at sound bites. She speaks in paragraphs instead of sentences. Unlike some political wives, she doesn't smile constantly or stick closely to scripted remarks.

On this chilly Sunday morning, she's come to Detroit's Second Ebenezer Baptist Church to talk about her husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Yet she can't help but talk about herself, too.

"A woman that has opinions is called opinionated, and a man who has opinions is called smart and well-informed," she tells the worshipers, who nod and offer murmurs of agreement. "It's time to honor women."

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January 29, 2004, 6:50 p.m.

Bush seeks $18 million budget increase for arts -- and the conservative base is not happy. Here's the AP top:

President Bush is proposing a big funding boost to the National Endowment for the Arts, an agency that once was a favorite target of Republicans. The money would go for a new program to give Americans an up-close look at their arts heritage.

The $18 million increase, a 15 percent hike in the NEA's funding, would be the largest in years. Last year, Congress increased the agency's funding to $122.5 million, up from $115.7 million but still well below what the agency received 25 years ago.

Most of the increase Bush is proposing in his upcoming federal budget would be used for a new initiative called "American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius." The programs will take works of American art on tour to large and small communities in all 50 states, said Douglas Sonntag, director of the NEA's Office of National Initiatives.

Remarks by First Lady Laura Bush on the National Endowment for the Arts today.

... President Bush and I want every child to be excited about the arts. The President -- and this is my big announcement -- has proposed an $18 million increase in the 2005 budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. (Applause.)

I'm proud that this is the largest annual increase in more than 20 years. This additional funding will enable NEA to develop the American Masterpieces Program without cutting current projects. The total NEA budget will also include $53 million for safe arts organizations and underserved communities. ...

Here's the Nation Review Online's defense of this by Roger Kimball, headlined Farewell Mapplethorpe, Hello Shakespeare:

...But things have changed, and changed for the better at the NEA. The reason can be summed up in two trochees: Dana Gioia, the distinguished poet and critic who is the Endowment's new chairman.

Within a matter of months, Mr. Gioia has transformed that moribund institution into a vibrant force for the preservation and transmission of artistic culture. He has cut out the cutting edge and put back the art. Instead of supporting repellent "transgressive" freaks, he has instituted an important new program to bring Shakespeare to communities across America. And by Shakespeare I mean Shakespeare, not some PoMo rendition that portrays Hamlet in drag or sets A Midsummer Night's Dream in a concentration camp. (Check the website www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org for more information.) ...

Here's a more typical conservative reaction, at a blog called The Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill:

This is sheer arrogance on Bush's part. He actually believes he can crap on his base and we will lap it up. Nuts. He blows making the connections between Saddam and Al Queda to appease State, he blows the immigration plan to pander to the Hispanic voter, he blows the Medicar Prescription drug plan pandering to Senior Citizens and he is doing it all with my money and safety. Is it too late for a Republican Primary?

Rush Limbaugh is horrified: Who Needs the NEA?

I'm getting a lot of calls on Bush's proposal to spend up to $20 million of taxpayer money on the NEA. Vote-buying politicians forced Americans to pay $121 million for "art" such as crucifixes in urine last year. Where does the Constitution say the federal government should fund art? This is something that outrages Bush's conservative, smaller-government base - especially when we have a projected budget deficit of $520 billion. ...

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The wit and irony of Phil Ochs live on: A resilient little play carries a torch. From Rabble, a Canadian arts zine, reviews The Ballad of Phil Ochs. (Here's Phil Ochs' site, and Amazon's Ochs CDs, some with clips.)

Since graduating from University, Stevenson has been touring The Ballad of Phil Ochs to college campuses and folk clubs across Canada. This month and next, he will be appearing at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, The Winterfolk Festival in Toronto and the Staircase Café in Hamilton.

The show itself is laced with the wry wit and irony for which Ochs was famous while not eschewing the personal tragedy in his life. Stevens himself bears a remarkable physical as well as a musical likeness to Ochs with a voice that captures much of the nuance and melodic sweetness of the early albums.

Stevens says he also tries to be accommodating with encore numbers after his final curtain call for Ochs' fans who want to hear more than just the 12 tunes encapsulated into the two act play: “There have been some humorous moments following a performance where some audience members have made really obscure requests. That's when I put up my hands and say, okay, okay, I must admit I was only pretending. I'm not really Phil Ochs.”

So far he has self-produced and self-promoted the tours and has managed the difficult financial terrain that any theatre producer faces. Says Stevens: “One of the reasons I feel so strongly about performing this show is because we are coming into a time when apathy is one of our society's greatest afflictions and I think Phil fought against apathy and indifference first and foremost with war-mongering and hypocrisy coming in a close second. Songs like 'Love Me; I'm a Liberal,' 'I'm Gonna Say It Now,' and 'When I'm Gone,' are anthems about being pro-active about your opportunities while you're still alive and can make a difference.”

Phil Ochs killed himself in 1976 at the age of 35. I hope someone brings the play here.

Thanks to wood s lot for the pointer.
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Kerry's gold: The Guardian (U.K.) profiles John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. (Her first husband, the late senator John Heinz, was killed in a plane crash in 1991.)

To friends, the couple are ideally suited and it is a marriage of equals. For his part, Senator Kerry seems unfazed by, even celebrates, his wife's individuality and honesty. His prospective First Lady, he says is 'nurturing and incredibly loving, and fun, zany, witty ... definitely sexy. Very earthy, sexy, European.'

Within and beyond the borders of the US, the still glamorous THK, at 65 years old, offers a refreshing and worldly perspective for a US politician's wife. The daughter of a prominent Portuguese doctor, Heinz Kerry, née Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira, grew up in Mozambique. She attended a school run by British nuns, and later studied Romance languages at senior school in South Africa, where she became involved in the nascent anti-apartheid movement of the late 1950s. At university in Geneva, she was a classmate of Kofi Annan at the city's School of Interpreters. Now fluent in five languages, she graduated and went to New York to become an interpreter at the United Nations, before marrying Heinz in 1966. 'I had no ambition,' she once said. 'I thought of myself as being married and having children, which is what all the ladies did.'

That's no longer the case, if it ever was. When the results in New Hampshire come in on Tuesday night, Mrs Heinz Kerry may become a singularly important figure. 'It's not an easy choice to do this, and she feels it is important,' says spokeswoman Christine Anderson. 'But she doesn't want to be involved in policy per se or hold an official job. She would rather keep working on the issues she cares about. She wants to keep her job to run the Heinz Endowments, and she would keep doing that if she were First Lady.'

Related: First Lady Contenders Who Are Women First by Tina Brown in the Washington Post.
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Goodbye, Joe: Here's a nice Joe Trippi appreciation by David Weinberger -- (Cluetrain Manifesto, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, unpaid Dean tech volunteer, JOHO the blog) at his new Corante blog, Loose Democracy:

I would have bet money on that other Joe leaving the campaign trail before the Trippi Joe. But, spend $40M losing the first two contests with a week left until the next batch, and an organization figures out how to compress its 5 stages of grief into a press release and five-minute "Let's keep our eyes on the prize" speech to the HQ workers.

I am not inside the Dean organization enough to know what Trippi did wrong. I hear the TV ads sucked, and I'm more than a little disturbed that the campaign managed to spend all of the money it raised, but I also saw some things that Trippi did right. Real right.

He came into the campaign with the idea that the Internet could be used to counter big money interests.

He figured out that supporters could move the campaign forward if they were allowed to connect with one another. ...

Here's a different view from onetime lobbyist Richard Bennett (his blog is Mossback's Progress):

Most of the Deaniacs are clearly disturbed that Trippi's gone, as you can see from the comments to the first post above, but some, like this commenter, are happy:

What did you do with our $40 million dollars, Joe? We got our asses handed to us in Iowa and NH, and we can't make payroll. I'm VERY angry at you - the LAST thing this campaign needs is fiscal irresponsibility buried under feel-good hot air. There's the door, you know the rest. ...

... So what is happening? Briefly put, Dean's problem is the Deaniacs. The Internet-driven campaign has enabled him to amass a large following, but they're primarily unbalanced people, fanatical followers, extremists, and wackos. In my experience with Internet-enabled activism, these are the kind of people most attracted to online chat and email wars, so an organization that's going to use these tools to recruit has to prune the weirdos before they run off the mainstream people you need to reach out to the undecided mainstream people whose support you really need in the voting booth. Others have written that the orange-hatted, tattooed, and body-pierced volunteers who flew into Iowa alienated the actual voters, and that's real.

When your core group of volunteers is weirdo, you pretty well guarantee that only wierdos will join the campaign later on, because normal people don't want to hang out with a bunch of lost pups looking for a father figure or a messianic jihad. And when your volunteers are as large in numbers as they are loose in marbles, the constant contact the candidate has with them can't help but rub off in the kind of mania Dean displayed in the "I have a scream" speech. And volunteers are the life-blood the campaign, doing all the indispensable phone calling, door knocking, and talking to voters one by one. Without a core group of people both dedicated and sane, a campaign can't go anywhere. So the Kerry approach, which was traditional politics with a little technology, ramps up slower than a techno-razzle campaign, but it's got quality control that ensures that it won't eat itself in the long run. ...

Dan Gillmor looks at the press's role in Dean's rocky ride, and offers a clueful earful to any other would-be politicians:

...Some say, with a small amount of truth, that this is the new crucible of democracy -- a relentless pounding of the front-runner by a system that has no head and certainly no heart -- and that when the stakes are the presidency we need to see how the candidate and his team weather such scrutiny. Nice theory, however ugly in what it suggests, but there's a flaw.

If this is how things work, why did one candidate in 2000 not get this scrutiny? Why did George W. Bush get to announce that he'd been a bad boy before the age of 40, but that was ancient history and we should all forget about it -- and that's pretty much what happened. The press gave Bush a pass on things -- his failure to show up for some National Guard duty; questionable if not corrupt business dealings; the substance abuse; etc. -- that still smell to high heaven and would have been the topic of nonstop coverage had a Clinton or Gore or Dean been the one who'd done them.

There's a non-conspiratorial explanation for some of this. Bush, the candidate, coddled and flattered reporters. He cultivated an image of being shallow, if not stupid (he may be the former, but definitely not the latter), so that journalists would just laugh off his latest gaffe. In 2000 Gore was standoffish and didn't suffer fools. This time, Dean was the smart-guy front-runner who didn't have time for games with journalists. Who got treated better by the reporters? Guess.

Reporters are human. We are insecure by nature and susceptible to flattery, more than we should be. One of the most telling journalism images of this campaign was a news story (I can't find it offhand) in which one reporter complains that Dean didn't ask any personal questions about him, the reporter -- setting a new high (or low, depending on how you see it) in journalistic self-involvement and insecurity. Add Dean's thinking out loud and pandering, and he was bound to get pounded. ...

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Michael Moore readies new film: This is the hook of a long -- for AP -- profile. Here's the film part:

“Fahrenheit 9-11,” due for release late this summer. As the title implies, the subject is terrorism.

It will feature Moore on a quest for answers to troubling questions - a recurring role he first assumed in “Roger & Me,” the hilarious and heartbreaking 1989 tale of woe in his hometown of Flint after General Motors Corp. shuttered 11 auto manufacturing plants and laid off 33,000 workers.

True to form, his queries will be verbal whacks on the head with a two-by-four. Diplomacy isn’t Moore’s strong suit.

“You know the question a lot of people were asking after Sept. 11 - ‘Why do they hate us?’ The question I want to ask is, why DON’T they hate us - and then take my camera around the world a bit and show what’s done in our name.”

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January 28, 2004, 7:00 p.m.

Trippi out as Dean's Campaign Manager: Joe Trippi, legendary in net circles, pays the price for two second-place finishes. He's replaced by Roy Neel, whom AP describes as "Gore's former senatorial chief of staff, served as chief executive of the U.S. Telecom Association in Washington before working on Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. Neel was named to head Gore's transition team in anticipation of the former vice president winning the White House."

Andrew Orlowski of The Register (U.K.) is right behind, pinpointing Trippi's alleged failures.

Josh Marshall is the first blogger I see reacting:

This has to be one of the most bizarre turns of events I've seen in Dem politics in a very long time.

In the context of Dean's campaign, Trippi is certainly not just a campaign manager. He was at least one of the chief architects of this path-breaking campaign model that we've been hearing so much about and talking so much about for months.

But the appointment of Neel is even weirder than the canning of Trippi.

I'm no purist in political matters, but isn't Neel a Washington lobbyist? An insiders' insider? I don't think that makes him a bad guy. But isn't it a little out of tune with the campaign Dean's been running?

Something very weird happened here.

JD Lasica is second:

One insider told CNN: "He can organize a movement, but he can't run a campaign." Dean named Roy Neel, former Vice President Al Gore's chief of staff, as campaign CEO.

I don't fault Dean for shaking up his staff, but in my view Trippi -- who has become something of a cult hero in Internet circles since last summer -- is getting a bad rap. The problem with the Howard Dean campaign over the past six weeks has been Howard Dean.

Well, maybe the news that Dean only has $5 million left out of $40 million raised engendered some of that remark. ( I have to trust Taegan Goddard's Political Wire on that one -- he saw it in a Wall Street Journal story, a paper to which I do not subscribe.)
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Kucinich: In ABC's The Note today: From ABC News Kucinich campaign reporter Melinda Arons (links are my additions):

While certainly not a shake-up, the campaign is changing its media strategy. National press secretary David Swanson, who kept a grueling schedule as the campaign's main spokesperson but who oftentimes had a prickly relationship with the press, has given his two weeks notice.

Replacing him is author and journalist William Rivers Pitt. Pitt, who wrote War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know with former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and who currently edits the website TruthOut.org, was covering Kucinich last week in Iowa. He blended in so well that Kucinich offered him the position, and he will now travel full-time with the candidate. The campaign worries its relationship with the media has been damaged by its previously defensive attitude toward the mainstream press, something they hope Pitt can remedy. As Pitt told ABC News, "There's a new sheriff in town."

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the wyeth wire: Wyeth Ruthven's all over South Carolina (he's a Hartville native). A Kerry supporter, he predicted back in December that Al Sharpton would take third in S.C. Here's a snip from today:

EDWARDS VERSUS CLARK: Terry McAuliffe is treating Feb 3rd like the Bowl Championship Series - candidates need a "quality win" in order to continue to Super Tuesday. Edwards and Clark will fight to the death. This ought to be an interesting competition between field versus media. Edwards inherited the Gephardt field campaign, but Clark's commercials are some of the best I've ever seen. There is a big debate in the South Carolina Democratic Party about what strategy works best - an air blitiz or a ground game. Edwards versus Clark may settle that debate.

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Off the wall: As I have before the last two Patriots games, I'll blog random predictions Friday from newsroom colleagues, astrologers and anyone else with an opinion. I'm dropping notes to a few astrologers today, trolling for seers, and found myself at Mat Gleason's site, where he drops this political bombshell:

If Hillary is nominated as Vice President, Bush loses.

Her Scorpio Sun will have the trine form Saturn in Cancer that trumps Bush's Sun being conjuncted by the same said Stern Saturn, as it is also Bush's Saturn Return.

There are paid pundits today, such as Bill Safire, fantasizing an open convention, but nobody's talking Hillary for VP that I can find, (despite her fund-raising skills and a Quinnipiac University Poll last July that showed her the choice of 48 percent of Democrats for president).

It would be interesting, though, to see her run for VP -- it's certainly past time for a woman to win that office. And her denials to the press have all involved her running for President. No one seems to have asked about the second spot. The Hillary-haters would hate on, of course, but I suspect the Cheney-haters outnumber that at this point.

With a recent poll showing former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani leading Clinton 50 percent to 46 percent in a hypothetical Senate matchup, she may have nothing to lose.
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Final numbers for all candidates in the New Hampshire primary. The New Hampshire Almanac and Politics1.com offer guides to the also-rans, some of whom are way too colorful.
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The New Face of the Silicon Age: How India became the capital of the computing revolution. Outsourcing from the other end of the argument.
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January 27, 2004, 7:10 p.m.

Breathe easy, Tom Brady isn't even a voter: The Patriots' quarterback's appearance at the State of the Union address set off rumbles that the most liberal state's superhero might be a Republican.

The Smoking Gun, which does the basic legwork of checking public records, went looking for evidence of party affiliation, and finds nothing to indicate that the 26-year-old Brady has ever been inside a voting booth:

California election records show that the New England Patriots quarterback has pledged allegiance to neither major party, registering as "undecided" when he joined the voter rolls in July 2000 (shortly before reporting for his first NFL training camp). However, Brady has never bothered to actually vote, according to San Mateo County election records. The 26-year-old athlete punted on the November 2000 general election, missing the Gore-Bush showdown and the reelection bids of Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Tom Lantos. He later missed the 2002 gubernatorial race, last year's contentious recall campaign, and other assorted local races and propositions.

Brady is also registered in Michigan, but never voted there, either. He is not registered in Quincy, Mass., where he actually lives, The Smoking Gun reports, "according to an election official with the Quincy Town Clerk."

About The Smoking Gun: According to a 2001 interview at Online Journalism Review, TSG editor Bill Bastone and Danny Green "met at the Village Voice, where Bastone spent a dozen years as an investigative reporter covering the mafia and politics. Green interned there, later working a series of freelance and magazine gigs, including editing at Maxim and Ski magazine. They began The Smoking Gun in 1997, publishing part-time out of their homes and offices."
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Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno Start Digital-Music Artists Union: In addition to links, this Slashdot post has the usual overload of comments, gossip and background from readers. Here's what starts the conversation:

An anonymous reader writes "We have long heard stories about how the record companies cheat their own artists with audit techniques that would make Enron blush. They are already applying the same techniques to the revenues they draw from digital download sites like Apple iTunes, which is one reason many artists have refused to allow their music be sold through them (those who can control it at least). Looking to take a stand in the digital music arena before these practices become status quo Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are starting a new union the "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" or MUDDA. Gabriel, co-founder of OD2 - an iTunes competitor - has that company as a first source to negotiate terms with the new union."

The AP story includes this:

"Unless artists quickly grasp the possibilities that are available to them, then the rules will get written, and they'll get written without much input from artists," said Eno, who has a long history of experimenting with technology.

By removing record labels from the equation, artists can set their own prices and set their own agendas, said the two independent musicians, who hope to launch the online alliance within a month.

Their pamphlet lists ideas for artists to explore once they're freed from the confines of the CD format. One might decide to release a minute of music every day for a month. Another could post several recorded variations of the same song and ask fans what they like best.

Gabriel, who has his own label, Real World Records, said he isn't trying to shut down the record companies — he just wants to give artists more options.

"There are some artists who already tried to do everything on their own," he said, adding that those musicians often found out they didn't like marketing or accounting. "We believe there will be all sorts of models for this."

Related: Big Music's Worst Move Yet. "The RIAA's newest legal assault on file swappers is pushing them to encrypted networks, where the damage could become catastrophic," says Business Week Online. (via JD Lasica)

Bonus link: The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution
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Blind Into Baghdad by The Atlantic Monthly's national correspondent, James Fallows, bears the subhed, "The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge. The inside story of a historic failure."

If its 17 pages in print (the link above is to the one-page printer-friendly version) are too much for you to leap into, here's a Washington Post story about the story (The Best-Laid Plans Go Oft Astray). It summarizes the main points, and here's the money quote:

Actually, Fallows shows, many government agencies -- the Army, the CIA, and the State Department among others -- did lots of planning for postwar Iraq. But the Bush administration ignored their planning, fired planners who disagreed with it and, in several instances, barred Pentagon officials from attending meetings with planners suspected of harboring thoughts not approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

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The Nanny in Chief: Bush thinks he knows what's good for you, and he'll spend money to prove it. What's remarkable about this Time Magazine piece is that its author is conservative Andrew Sullivan. He's been breaking with Bush for a while, now there's no going back.

There has always been a tension in conservatism between those who favor more liberty and those who want more morality. But what's indisputable is that Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is a move toward the latter — the use of the government to impose and subsidize certain morals over others. He is fusing Big Government liberalism with religious-right moralism. It's the nanny state with more cash. Your cash, that is. And their morals.

Pair this with A Concerned Bloc of Republicans Wonders Whether Bush Is Conservative Enough, Arizona GOP Defies Bush, Calls For Accountability on Illegal Aliens, and today's "A New York Times poll this month found that Mr. Cheney's favorable ratings had declined to 20 percent of the voters surveyed compared with 39 percent in a similar poll in January 2002. His unfavorable ratings increased to 24 percent, from 11 percent, in the same period. Many voters in both surveys said they were undecided or did not know enough to have an opinion."

Maybe members of both parties will be sporting "Anybody But Bush" bumper stickers come summer.
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Boy swaps MikeRoweSoft for Xbox: A BBC follow-up on the 17-year-old who got a lawyer's letter and an offer of $10 for his domain name from Microsoft.
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American Accent Training aims for the call centers. There are "before and after" audios. Especially frightening: The True Americana patter:

I was rooting willy-nilly through a buncha stuff, looking every whichway for the dinky little whatchamacallit to fix the goldong thingamajig, but good ol’ whatsizname had put it in the hooziwhatsit, as usual! Boy oh boy, what a load of hooey. Always the same old rigamarole with that cockamamie bozo. He’s such a pipsqueak! If I found it, ka-ching, I’d be rich, which would be just jim dandy! I'd be totally discombobulated. You-know-who had done you-know-what with the goofy little gadget again, so whaddyaknow ... there was something-or-other wrong with it. What a snafu! I had a heck of a time getting ahold of whatsername to come over and take care of it with her special little doohickey that she keeps there in the thingamabob. For the gazillionth time, the flightly little flibbertigibbit said alrighty, she wouldn't shilly shally, she’d schlep over with her widget fixer and whatnot to do a bodaciously whizbang job on the whole shebang. That's right, the whole kit 'n caboodle, no ifs, ands, or buts about it ...

It goes on and on like this. No, we don't really talk like this, Ms. Offshore Call Center applicant.
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Who's playing? If you're looking to escape the Super Bowl, "The Gamm" has an alternative for you Sunday night, according to this press release:

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm) offers football widows and others left out in the cold on Super Bowl Sunday an evening of thought-provoking theater. Your $12 ticket to the last preview performance of Aunt Dan and Lemon, Wallace Shawn’s controversial and award-winning play, comes with a complimentary beverage to be enjoyed in The Gamm’s beautiful new lobby.

WHAT: Aunt Dan and Lemon by Wallace Shawn, directed by Tony Estrella
WHEN: Sunday, Feb. 1, 7 PM
WHERE: The Gamm Theatre, 172 Exchange St., Pawtucket
HOW: Call (401) 723-4266 for tickets; visit the Gamm box office; or order on line at www.arttixri.com
Discounts for subscribers, groups of 10 or more, seniors and students

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January 26, 2004, 7:10 p.m.

Spam solutions: Bill Gates foresees three ways to stop spam. I don't think so.

From the Knight Ridder story:

The new software would require that incoming e-mail from an unfamiliar address -- one not in a user's address book -- prove it isn't spam, Gates said. He described three possible approaches.

One, which he called human interaction, would send a puzzle back to the sender. The puzzle would be designed so that only a human could solve it. The e-mail would be accepted only if the puzzle was solved.

The second, which Gates called computational, would require that the sending computer carry out a calculation. Having to do the calculation repetitively would prove costly to the sender, he said.

The third approach, which is the one Gates predicted would become the accepted method, is monetary. It would require senders to pay a fee to a recipient. If the e-mail is legitimate, the recipient could waive the fee.

Gates made his comments at the World Economic Forum, an annual business gathering in Switzerland.

I get several hundred spam messages a day here, but I also send and receive quite a few unsolicited emails (not only from readers and to sources, but also from long-lost friends who see my blog, and invitations out of the blue to write or speak). Here's how I rate his solutions:

1 ...send a puzzle back to the sender. The e-mail would be accepted only if the puzzle was solved. Big time-waster, if I have to solve puzzles for every email I write. (How many puzzles a day would Gates be willing to do?)

2. ... (have) the sending computer carry out a calculation. Invisible, if it works. There's so much money to be made in spam, I think spammers' computers would do the calculations.

3. ...require senders to pay a fee to a recipient. If the e-mail is legitimate, the recipient could waive the fee.

I knew Gates would try to monetize us in here somewhere. Gates' favorite is a double loser: All that fee-waiving is a human time-waster like number one. And, why wouldn't porn spammers pay for postage?

And even if they pay the fee, I still don't want all this crap in my inbox.

But there's big money to be made by any big firm who takes over the cyberpostman job. Could that be... Microsoft?

I suspect that Bill Gates doesn't actually have to deal with his own email, or he might see flaws in his own solutions.
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Garden blogs: I added two new blogs to our garden blogs page today, Orchids from Venezuela (thanks to Liz Donovan for finding that one), with stunning photos, and Toward a Green Thumb, by Pat Anderson, who lives near Toronto and is studying to become a Master Gardener.

With the seed catalogs filling up the mailbox and new garden blogs showing up, I'm ready to dig. Unfortunately, my only choice now is to shovel snow.
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All the world's an art school: The Guardian (U.K.) profiles film director Gus Van Sant (RISD '75), whose latest is Elephant:

...His hair is brown and lank, with white sideburns. He wears a shabby blue sweatshirt and jeans. He's 51, and resembles Anthony Perkins in Psycho more than ever.

There is something comforting in his silence. If he's not saying anything, I reckon I don't need to. So I just stay on the floor, stroke the dog and look around his apartment - it's huge, and crammed with guitars and records and videos and more guitars, a printing machine, a huge telescope, and yet more guitars.

I ask him how many guitars he has. He looks animated. "Ten? About ten." He says he spends most of his free time noodling, playing chords, and starts talking about how he was at Rhode Island School of Design with members of Talking Heads and how he used to be in a band and what a great era it was when groups were radical and formed for just one gig and then split. Suddenly there is no stopping him.

At that time, he had hoped to be a painter, but when all the art students came back from New York and said they didn't have a chance because there were 12,000 painters out there and only 64 galleries, he decided to concentrate on film, and has done so since.

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The General: Did Clark Fail to Salute? A short, smart story at MSNBC that tried to clear up the muddy waters around Wesley Clark's confrontations with his Pentagon bosses. Nobody talked much. But it gives others a clue, a framework on which to base more evocative questions.

(This is a terrible page display, by the way. You have to keep reading through advertisements that take up the whole width of it.)
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Vote Banking: "Stump Connolly" notes,

With all the attention the internet has gotten in this year’s campaign as an organizing tool, fund-raising goldmine and candidate soapbox, how come no one has noticed that little box in the corner on all the campaign sites that says VOTE EARLY HERE?

In Chicago, we call that vote banking. The best of the old line precinct captains have been doing it for years, going door-to-door in the ward with absentee ballots, collecting votes from sure supporters well in advance of election day so they can focus on borderline backers come election day itself.

On the official websites for Howard Dean, John Kerry, Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman (but not John Edwards, hello!), there are lists and links to some 10 state election offices allowing surfers to download absentee ballots. These include six of the seven states that will be holding primaries or caucuses on Feb. 3, plus Michigan where the Michigan Democratic Party for the first time is allowing potential voters to cast ballots directly over the internet any time prior to the end of the caucus voting February 7. ...

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My Late-Term Abortion: By author Gretchen Voss in the Globe. The subhed: "President Bush's attempt to ban partial-birth abortions threatens all late-term procedures. But in my case, everyone said it was the right thing to do — even my Catholic father and Republican father-in-law."

Way too excited to sleep on that frigid April morning, I snuggled my bloated belly up to my husband, Dave. Eighteen weeks pregnant, today we would finally have our full-fetal ultrasound and find out whether our baby was a boy or a girl. I had no reason to be nervous, I thought. I was young (if 31 is the new 21), healthy, and had not had so much as a twinge of nausea. Well into my second trimester, I was past the point of worrying about a miscarriage. ...

... Instead of cinnamon and spice, our child came with technical terms like hydrocephalus and spina bifida. The spine, she said, had not closed properly, and because of the location of the opening, it was as bad as it got. What they knew -- that the baby would certainly be paralyzed and incontinent, that the baby's brain was being tugged against the opening in the base of the skull and the cranium was full of fluid -- was awful. What they didn't know -- whether the baby would live at all, and if so, with what sort of mental and developmental defects -- was devastating. Countless surgeries would be required if the baby did live. None of them would repair the damage that was already done.

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Online Shoppers Shun Shipping Costs: CIO has a chart that shows why people say they abandon shopping carts. "Suprise costs such as shipping and handling" tops the list at 35 percent, followed closely by "Site asks for too much information" at 30 percent.

"Not enough product information to make Purchase" is third at 17 percent and "Deciding to make purchase at store instead" comes in at 14 percent. (The last one may be a variation on number one, since there's no shipping charge if you can find the product at a nearby store.)
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Super Size Me: The filmmaker lived exclusively on McDonald's fast food for 30 days, with devastating results. Here's a review from the Deseret News, hometown paper of the Sundance Film Festival where the new movie is a rave hit:

PARK CITY — For a month last year, Morgan Spurlock's eating ritual was what he called "every 8-year-old's dream." The filmmaker got to go to McDonald's for all of his meals, three squares a day, for 30 straight days — and he didn't have to plead with his parents or swear he'd clean his room later.

Morgan Spurlock, director of "SUPER SIZE ME: A Film of Epic Portions," says he hopes his eating experiment will make Americans think about the way they eat.

And not only did Spurlock feast at Mickey D's enough to be considered "Customer of the Month" — perhaps even "Customer of the Decade" — but he also brought a camera crew along for every single bite, bellyache and, well, barfing moment.

... And after bingeing on everything Ronald's menu has to offer at least once — and supersizing when offered — the previously trim and healthy Spurlock had spent about $850, gained 24 pounds, raised his once-normal cholesterol levels by 65 points, sent his blood-fat levels out of the Playland roof and, in one of his doctor's words, turned his liver into pate.
Plus, he became emotionally and physically addicted to the grub despite repercussions of headaches, chest pain, mood swings, exhaustion, depression, etc. ...

Related: Rumors at Sundance included an injunction from McDonald's, according to indiewire.com, but...

... The gossip circulated widely into Saturday until Spurlock said on stage, while accepting his directing award, that the film will indeed have a release. His reps also confirmed that no such injunction had been issued, nor had McDonalds issued any statement on the movie whatsoever.

In a confirmed deal, cable network A & E Network acquired television broadcast rights to Spurlock's "Super Size Me," yet a source close to the film told indieWIRE that a theatrical deal is still in the works. Distributor interest heated up after Saturday's awards ceremony, according to the source, and a theatrical pact is due in the next days. ...

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Free After Rebate showcases products -- mostly computer-related -- that end up being free after you send in a rebate form and wait a coupla months.
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Women Driving Cars Is a Sinful Thing: Al-Qarni at Arab News. Sheikh Ayed Al-Qarni, described as a well-known Islamic scholar, backpedals from a statement which he considers misinterpreted. Excerpt:

I do not see women driving cars in our country because of the consequences that would spring from it such as the spread of corruption, women uncovering their hair and faces, mingling between the sexes, men being alone with women and the destruction of the family and society in whole.

(Sputter.)

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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com