Former San Francisco Mayor, former Speaker of the California Assembly, and therefore formerly the most politically powerful man in the state, Willie Brown entertained a good-sized crowd at the Commonwealth Club last night.  Billed as his annual speech on political trends, Willie put on a face-paced, witty, informative, and satisfying liberal tour de force which kept us snickering, smiling, and nodding knowledgeably for the entire hour. He touched on national, state, and local politics, and scattered gems of insight along with sugary left-wing candy prophesies that had us smacking our lips for more. He sees the national Republicans in disarray.  Acknowledging that [...]

... but, I would like to create podcasts for my clients who can invest the time in creating regular content.  And, I'd like to play with audio and maybe some video. Yesterday I went to the Apple Store downtown for their demo in podcast creation using Garageband. Damn. The software they showed allowed for easy editing of audio, video clips, and photographs.  The manipulation of the components was quick.  The audio editor had built-in sounds for broadcasting (royalty-free background music, studio audience noises, and special effects). Any non-professional editing programs I have seen for media creation on a PC have [...]

Protest song from Arianna's site: "I'm the Decider" (Work safe. Clever. Okay, vicious. But, mixed ad hominem message: egghead Bush laments not having a brain. Fun anyway. Thanks, Hollis.)

Check out profkampf's daily gift image.  It does it for me.

Rush Limbaugh flared up in the news this weekend. Despite the dead-news-time scheduling of the announcement of the plea bargain letting him off the doctor-shopping charge in Florida, the second-string weekend editors of the mass media managed find the story on the wires and to trot out file footage detailing the drug consumption crimes. The reportorial tone was that of mentioning a done deal: a footnote to last year’s news. Limbaugh’s light escape from the criminal justice system put me in the same conflicting muddle I felt when death penalty opponents were arguing for clemency for Tookie Williams. […]

Coming home from a business mixer about 8:30 last night, we took Market to Castro. We were inadvertently trailing a police car which had passed us with red lights and siren a mile before, quieted and slowed down, and started preening again as we followed him into the left turn lane. Castro was blocked off with police crime scene tape, emergency equipment littered the street, and clumps of people were scattered inside the roped off area.  We made a normally illegal hard left turn into17th Street, rolled down our windows as we detoured up Hartford, and heard someone on the [...]