Well, have a look at this.
Category Archives: Asides
The best democracy money can buy
Fascinating New York Times piece about Hillary Clinton’s campaign spending.
“We didn’t raise all of this money to keep paying consultants who have pursued basically the wrong strategy for a year now,” said a prominent New York donor. “So much about her campaign needs to change — but it may be too late.”
The high-priced senior consultants to Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have emerged as particular targets of complaints, given that they conceived and executed a political strategy that has thus far proved unsuccessful.
The firm that includes Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist and pollster, and his team collected $3.8 million for fees and expenses in January; in total, including what the campaign still owes, the firm has billed more than $10 million for consulting, direct mail and other services, an amount other Democratic strategists who are not affiliated with either campaign called stunning.
The article identifies two basic problems: Clinton’s cash flow projections were based on the assumption that by Iowa the race would be efffectively over; and over-reliance on smallish numbers of large donors (who will be hard to tap again if they perceive the campaign to be badly managed) as compared with the legions of small donors who support Obama and are likely to keep on giving as the campaign continues.
The details of what Clinton spent money on are fascinating. For example:
As part of their get-out-the-vote effort in Iowa, the campaign came up with a plan to have a local supermarket deliver sandwich platters to pre-caucus parties. It spent more than $95,384 on Jan. 1 at Hy-Vee Inc., a local grocery chain in West Des Moines, Iowa, in addition to buying loads of snow shovels to clear the walks for caucusgoers.
And,in the event, it didn’t snow! Wonder what they will get for the shovels on eBay.
Footnote: Clinton came third in Iowa.
Striking gold!
I had dinner in Bafta on Tuesday night. This is what greets one on the way up to the club.
Quote of the day
“The problem is time,” offered Walter Hurney, a real estate developer. “There just isn’t enough time. Men won’t spend a whole day away from their family anymore.”
[Source]
ASUS (contd)
The little ASUS sub-notebook continues to amaze me. Tonight I just plugged my 3G HSDPA modem into one of the USB ports. The machine instantly detected the model and I just followed the instructions in the Network dialog box and, bingo! — I was on the Net. This is the way Linux machines ought to be. In fact, it was easier to set up for the modem than was the MacBook Pro.
Jane Fonda’s rude word shocks US
What a weird country is the US. Many of its conservative citizens think nothing of launching a war that kills maybe half a million Iraqis but are profoundly scandalised when an actress uses plain language on television.
Middle America is none to pleased with veteran thespiatrix [sic] Jane Fonda who yesterday entertained viewers of NBC’s Today show with “a four-letter word for female genitalia”.
Host Meredith Vieira had asked Fonda about her appearence in stage play The Vagina Monologues, which contains a section entitled “Cunt”. In her answer, the actress referred to the segment by name, and the rest is history.
Vieira offered a swift on-screen apology, saying: “You know, before we go to break, in our last half-hour we were talking about The Vagina Monologues and Jane Fonda inadvertently said a word from the play that you don’t say on television. It was a slip, and obviously she apologises, and so do we. We would do nothing to offend the audience, so please accept that apology.”
No wonder they tried to keep Ulysses out.
The luck of the French
A cri de coeur from the Washington Post.
If I have to get old, I want to do it in Paris.
It’s not because of the dank weather, the constant personal snubs or a fetish for unpasteurized cheese. It’s because, quite frankly, I’d like to keep having sex.
In the United States, my odds would be grim. Through our 40s, we American women manage to arrange romps on a fairly regular basis. But the latest national statistics show that by our 50s, a third of us haven’t had sex in the last year. By our 60s, nearly half have gone sexless in the previous year. Once we hit our 70s, most of us might as well hang up an “out of business” sign. (Needless to say, men fare much better.)
So much for the gym-bodied baby boomers who promised to make 60 the new 40, using Botox as an aphrodisiac. Among today’s 50-plus women, the problem of sexlessness is as bad or worse than it was for older women two decades ago.
But not in France. Frenchwomen simply don’t suffer from the same dramatic, post-40s slide into sexual obsolescence. Just 15 percent of Frenchwomen in their 50s and 27 percent in their 60s haven’t had any sex in the past year, according to a 2004 national survey by France’s Regional Health Observatory. Another national survey being released next month will report that cohabiting Frenchwomen over 50 are having more sex now than they did in the early 1990s.
Try not to hate them: Frenchwomen don’t get fat, and they do get lucky.
HP is planning a Linux sub-notebook
According to the Register,
HP’s going after the Eee PC with a compact laptop that sports an 8.9in display and more connectivity options than the elfin Asus machine currently offers.
So says Engadget, which has posted some pics and a very basic spec….
It’s interesting to see what ASUS started. Also interesting to find that you can’t buy an ASUS machine anywhere in the UK just now — they’re selling like the Nintendo Wii.
If HP is really entering this market, that’s good news because (a) the company makes nice kit, and (b) it further increases the penetration of Linux in new markets.
As others see us
From Bill Thompson’s Flickr photostream. It’s the first time I’ve ever been grateful for my MacBookPro’s tendency to overheat!
Chutzpah
You have to admire RyanAir. They have to shut down their website for three days to install major upgrades. So they’re using the necessity as an excuse for another fire-sale!