Aside

The Atlantic: What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq,…

This photo captures the perfect transitory nature of taco trucks in the night. [via Houstonist]

So on Wednesday, when I drove from Oakland to Santa Monica — a drive that I’ve made since I was a kid easily over 100 times — I decided to spice things up a little bit. I-5, as most people know, is California’s most boring section of highway, and it serves exactly one purpose: getting people from the north to the south and vice versa as fast as possible. However, some research on Chowhound turned up the presence of a…

I remember reading “Into the Wild” when I was in 11th grade, and being very captivated by its 14-year-old tale of Chris McCandless and his love of the outdoors and the road. After watching the film last night, and coming back to the story for the first time in about 10 years, I’m still leaning to my initial gut reaction: the guy led a wondrous life, had a great heart, wanted to go on this romantic journey, and all of…

So there’s a really important phone interview that I’ve been trying to set up for months now, and I just missed it. Fuck. He’s in another country, and usually when I schedule interviews across time zones, I just figure out when the interview will be, my time, and input that into iCal with an alarm. However, the time difference between California (ok, plus the other 49) and the rest of the world changed last weekend — and while that normally…

CQ: Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists. The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area. The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd…

I got an early-morning email and did this top-of-the-hour spot news piece on Google’s new announcement. Google – November 5 2007

I’ve been informed that my radio piece on Facebook will air on Morning Edition tomorrow! It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams): New York – 5 am to 9 am Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org Washington, DC – 5 am to 10 am Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org Los Angeles – 2 am to 9 am Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg Boston – 6 am…

NYT: by Cyrus Farivar Nokia, the world’s largest maker of cellphones, has been running ads that read, “Open to Anything” and “Unlock your potential.” The company wants cellphone buyers to know that its phones can be used with whatever carrier they choose, unlike a certain other phone that has been getting considerably more attention lately: Apple’s iPhone. That phone is locked, meaning it is intended to be used with AT&T, the only carrier Apple chose in the United States. A…

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