I know many people who supported Obama because of his stance on privacy and FISA. Why is he backtracking now? I understand the political expediency argument, that this will get him points on the national security front. However, this doesn't hold water. Granting amnesty to telecoms for participating in illegal activity doesn't enhance our national security, it only weakens our civil liberties.

If you break the voters down into two populations -- those who pay attention and think for themselves and those who don't -- Barack is in the process of alienating the former. The latter is already convinced that Barack is a Muslim with an angry black wife who is intent on giving America over to the terrorists.

Just my two cents. Plus the $1200 I've donated to the campaign, on faith that Barack would stand by his principles.

I probably should have taken more time to compose this but I was on my way to a meeting. Feel free to email Bill Burton yourself to urge Obama to filibuster the FISA bill when it goes to the Senate.

For more information on Barack's backtrack on FISA:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/21/obama/index.html

The one-sentence summary of the FISA bill: it legalizes many of the warrantless eavesdropping activities George Bush secretly and illegally ordered in 2001.

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm."

- George Carlin

(via Lonelysandwich)

From the unintentional-gay-humor department:

"Intel Looks to Power Bottom of Market"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121245932291840291.html?mod=hps_us_at_glance_technology

Seriously, this video has it all. Chris Crocker, that singing fat kid, Miss South Carolina... I can't even recount here.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI

They should totally redo this ad with a Mac Mini:

http://www.macmothership.com/gallery/MiscAds/AdamAd.JPG

In the short term, the gay marriage ruling is great news. We stopped by the Castro for dinner and there was literally dancing in the streets. But left to sleep on it, I'm left somewhat pensive. The reason for this is simple:

I hate being a fucking pawn.

It's true that I want to be a part of history, to be someone who got married when it first became legal. But do I want our wedding pictures to be used in right-wing propaganda without our permission? Do I want to be portrayed as an evil which is hellbent on destroying the country? The right-wing will vilify us for fun and profit and, if the protracted fight to get the Dems' nomination ruins their chances in '08, we'll be blamed by the left for spoiling the election again.

On the other hand, it's quite possible that the Republicans shot their wad on this in '04. At least some people realize now that they were duped into re-electing Bush on wedge issues such as this one. Others may be willing to hold their nose and vote against their social convictions based on foreign policy and economic views. But, most importantly, most of the swing states have already passed discriminatory constitutional amendments. There's nothing new to put on the ballot this year to mobilize voters. Massachusetts has allowed gay marriage for years and they haven't invoked Armageddon just yet.

So -- there's hope. But we have to take action this time. Serious action. We need to educate the public, build awareness, and -- most importantly -- VOTE. Don't let a permanent stain of bigotry get written into our state's constitution.

A little back-story:

Since I work on (actually, at this point, manage) the Wiki Server product at Apple, I've been doing WWDC presentations of the product for a few years. At one point I used the term "stuDLycaPs" to make fun of other Wiki products, which often require you to construct links UsingTermsLikeThis. One of my co-workers started referring to me as StudlyCaps and it stuck.

So there we go -- DJ stuDLycaPs.

Well, I got a promotion at work. Or, at least, a promotion-in-progress. I'm now managing the web collaboration server software team at Apple. Neat.

Of course, it strikes me that, as I climb the corporate ladder, it becomes more and more important that I not blog/compose/DJ with the name "appleJohn," because I'm not representing Apple when I do these things. This nickname has stuck so hard that it'll be hard to shake it off.

So I'm on a mission to find a new DJ name. It has a few requirements:

• It can't have a trademarked name in it.
• It can't be lewd (yes, that means DJ Towelrack is out).
• I have to be able to reserve the domain name.

What are your thoughts?

(I already reserved djaaronanderson.com -- Aaron is my middle name -- so that's a decent backup, although it would confuse the hell out of my friends.)

Update: we have a winner! DJ stuDLycaPs it is.

Classic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-5zWw3eeY0

From this article (among many I've seen in the past few days, although The Economist should be a pretty reputable news source):

SIX days ahead of the North Carolina primary comes a story of real sleaze—not Jeremiah Wright-style buffoonery, but Nixon-style illegality designed to dupe and disenfranchise voters—that should surprise precisely nobody who has been following and covering this campaign. A group called Women's Voices Women's Vote (WVWV), which claims to have been "created to activate unmarried Americans in their government and in our democracy" has been placing robocalls to voters across North Carolina that seem designed to fool them into thinking they have not yet registered to vote. Many of the voters who received those calls are black. Voters in 11 states have complained about similarly deceptive calls and mailings that have been traced back to WVWV this primary season.

Guess which Democratic candidate WVWV's founder and president, Page Gardner, has donated $6,700 to (hint: it's not Barack Obama). Guess whose election campaign Joe Goode, WVWV's executive director, worked for (hint: it was in 1992, and it was a winning campaign). Guess whose chief of staff sits on WVWV's board of directors (hint: it was the president who served between two Bushes). And guess whose campaign manager was a member of WVWV's leadership team (hint: it's Hillary Clinton).

It's an odd story: a recording of someone named Lamont Williams calls voters to tell them a voter-registration packet is on its way. It's unclear whether anything arrives; what isn't unclear is that the call is well after the registration deadline. It's not too hard to imagine this call coming to an unsophisticated voter (and let me make this clear: I am in no way saying black voters, who seem to have received the lion's share of the calls, are all unsophisticated; I'm simply positing a scenario), and that voter becoming confused. Perhaps he thinks he's not registered, and calls his state's board of elections who tells him it's too late so he stays home on election day. Perhaps the board of elections doesn't know what he's talking about, and he gets frustrated and stays home, assuming he's unregistered.

In 2004, Rob and I went to Nevada and canvassed Democratic houses, clearing up a mis-informative mailing stating that voters' polling place had changed. Others there had to deal with organizations which would run "non-partisan" voter registration drives and then throw away Democratic registrations.

In this case, this voter fraud has closer and more documented ties to the candidate. It's difficult to say whether Hillary had anything to do with this directly (although I would suspect she probably didn't), but does this "get her elected at all costs," combined with the jingoism, patronizing, and fear tactics she's used, really make her more "electable?" If there's any campaign that has the balls to attempt to beat the Republicans at their own game, it's Hillary's. But, with a sitting Republican president with the highest disapproval rate ever and a weak candidate like McCain on the other ticket, do we need to play these games? And if we're playing them between two Democrats, are we disenfranchising the very voters we're going to need in November?

I know, I haven't posted much lately. I'll report more news in the next couple of weeks -- it's been pretty hectic the past few weeks.

I've been collecting some great music, so I thought I'd put together April's mix with some new stuff and some old. It's a bit more diva-laden than normal, but who cares. It's uplifting and fun.

You can either listen on the Web, or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

I realized that I hadn't posted a link to my podcast here, and I thought I'd do so:

http://web.mac.com/dearjohn/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html

This has my latest (admittedly trancey) March mix, as well as my live set from Bliss (which is... by my humble opinion... AWESOME.)

Cheers -- time for bed.

I don't usually watch Ellen's show, but I admire her for her speech here about the shooting of Lawrence King.

Watch the video...

My mom loves dance music. Especially trance. She downloaded my podcast and danced to it with her husband and her dog.

Somewhat weird but, in the end, very very cool. Maybe eventually she can show up for one of my gigs.

Doing the set at Bliss on Thursday was awesome. Thanks to everybody that showed up!

Life imitates art.

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/view/

Worth watching.

Ironically, I'm what credit cards call a "deadbeat," because I pay my balance off in full every month and never pay interest.

My 33rd birthday is on the 28th, and I've reserved the Blue Room at Bliss Bar (Noe Valley, near 24th and Castro) --if you like dance music you're welcome to show up.

http://www.socializr.com/event/476987960

"Each year, as we watch the State of the Union, we see half the chamber rise to applaud the President and half the chamber stay in their seats ... Imagine if next year was different. Imagine if next year, the entire nation had a president they could believe in."

-Barack Obama

This is cool...

Drifting Light just released a cool little shareware app called Jolt. This app resides in your menu bar's status icons (not in the Dock). One click on the little icon keeps your system awake until you click the icon again. The full version actually allows you to set time limits, after which time your system is allowed to sleep again.

This will be especially useful for me when I'm working on music; the controls on my mixing board don't keep the system awake, so I'm constantly having to reach over and wake my screen up or, before live sets, I have to go to the Energy Saver control panel and disable everything. This also seems useful for anybody who watches (ahem) internet video.