I don't think she'll be half-ass about it. Condi is one of the most conservative members of Bush's administration and staunchly neoconservative. - Bret Taylor
Asked point-blank if Palin has enough experience, Rice said, "These are decisions that Senator McCain has made. I have great confidence in him." Confidence in Palin? Rice didn't say. Rice added: "I'm not going to get involved in this political campaign. As Secretary of State, I don't do that. But I thought her speech was wonderful." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... - John Craft
I feel sad for Stanford University because Condi will be running it soon :-( - Shakeel Mahate
@Shakeel either than or making her plans for a run at the White House in 2012 - Steven Hodson
@j1m There were some rumors that Condi is hoping to return to Stanford not sure where exactly I read it. Here is another news article about it http://www.paloaltoonline.com/... - Shakeel Mahate
Yes. But as the article suggests, she'll presumably return to her Professor job. - j1m
I agree j1m, I think I misread the article and assumed she would return as a Provost - Shakeel Mahate
My disgust with Stanford goes back many years. I'd gladly give them Rice, Palin, McCain and Stevens. - MiɳiMagɘ (AlwaysMiniMage)
If you want to assault the worlds great universities, there's no need to rain fools down on them -- a tomato cannon should do the trick. - j1m
It's more like the rich the get richer, the poor get poorer. If I was rich I'd be upset to. But some of us struggle with our homes and bills. - orionstarr
@Jason. It is certainly close, but I admit that it's an oversimplification. Doing away with the bourgeoisie (The wealthy) and replacing them with the proletariat (the working class) is a fundamental tenet of communism. - Mattb4rd
The bourgeoisie are not the wealthy, but the middle class. - Alex Scoble CISSP
Communism and Terrorism the two major scare tactic strategies of the right. - orionstarr
No. No it's not. The main tenet is to nationalize the means of production. Progressive taxation is discussed in other Marx works, but Communism is waaaay beyond that. Until someone is talking about taking over the oil companies, etc. bringing up Communism is a red herring. - Jason Carreira
Liberals don't steal from the rich and give to the poor, we leverage the tax base to help out those in need. Conservatives would rather that the poor not exist at all, which is why they kick the vagrants out and they end up in cities like Seattle and San Fransisco. - Alex Scoble CISSP
Matt, in an ideal communist system (not that perpetrated against the Russians/Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Cubans, etc.) everyone is well off because the means of production belong to the workers. Thus, instead of speculators and investment bankers getting rich, the actual people who are performing the labor and adding value enjoy the return on their investment. - steplow = Steve Lowe
The problem with communism is that it doesn't fit in with how humans think/behave. In general, we constantly want to improve. Want to get better at our jobs, make more money, etc. Communism totally goes against that, which is why it doesn't, and never will, work. The only way you'd get Communism to work is if you created a drug that turned off our will to improve and then society would suffer because no one would want to build a better mousetrap. - Alex Scoble CISSP
Agreed, it won't work in practice because people are naturally jealous and competitive. However, that doesn't excuse people throwing the term around when talking about tax policy. - Jason Carreira
Yes...the correct and only opposite of pure capitalism is socialism, not communism. Of course America will never be purely capitalist nor socialist. I'd say though that the pendulum is definitely swinging towards socialism at the moment. Just the natural cycle of things. - Alex Scoble CISSP
I've never seen any reason why we can't have worker-owned companies rather than shareholder owned companies. We abandoned feudalism in favor of democracy for our political system centuries ago, but feudalism still rules the roost when it comes to corporate governance. - Eric P
Bourgeoisie = capitalists = modern day rich people, who are no longer just middle class because monarchs and nobles aren't really as big of a deal as they used to be. What we call middle class today—unless you happen to own your own business—fits squarely in the category of the proletariat. - Victor Ganata
Communism is probably more constrained by the fact that we will never be able to sustain high standards of living for everybody in the world. Scarcity is the reality. While capitalists like to talk about the creation of wealth, certain resources are simply finite and non-renewable. - Victor Ganata
Not every republican is a fascist, and not every democrat is a communist. EESH! - Helen Sventitsky
Thank you Helen, that was what I was trying to say in my own snarky way. There are whackjobs on both sides of things, but basically we are socialists and capitalists with a good number of us a healthy mixture of both. - Jennifer Marie Sandbank
"Even though Palin knew that Stein is a Protestant Christian, from a Pennsylvania Dutch background, her campaign began circulating the word that she would be "Wasilla's first Christian mayor." Some of Stein's supporters interpreted this as an attempt to portray Stein as Jewish in the heavily evangelical community. Stein himself, an eminently reasonable and reflective man, thinks "they were redefining Christianity to mean born-agains."
The Palin campaign also started another vicious whisper campaign, spreading the word that Stein and his wife -- who had chosen to keep her own last name when they were married -- were not legally wed. Again, Palin knew the truth, Stein said, but chose to muddy the waters. "We actually had to produce our marriage certificate," recalled Stein, whose wife died of breast cancer in 2005 without ever reconciling with Palin." - Chris Reed
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I wish I was collecting back in the day. I actually started around 1996, and really got serious in the early millennium. These would have been priceless. - Ryne Nelson
kareem was so tall he had to hunch over to fit in the card! - Cee Bee
the first series of these cartoons is available on YouTube. This first wave of videos is sponsored by fast food chain Burger King, though we assume that other parts of the series will feature different sponsors. - Zee.
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He was also liberal, and progressive. Although, not in exactly the same way those terms are used today. But he did fight the established order of his time. - Nathaniel Payne
Except that he wasn't a 'community organizer'. You can, however, say that Paul of Tarsus was one. - Akiva Moskovitz
Jesus brought together a group of people who joined him on a crusade to change the world. If that isn't a community organizer, I don't know what is. Maybe he was mayor. They have more responsibility, you know. - Nathaniel Payne
He sought an earmark for a bridge over the Sea of Galilee, but canceled it when he realized he could just walk right across. - Nathaniel Payne
Christianity didn't start until after Jesus died; he had nothing to do with it. It was Peter and Paul that actually turned it into a religion. Jesus was just a radical Essene Rabbi. - Akiva Moskovitz
Reminds of the movie Hamlet 2 I just saw (my gf says it's funnier if you were in high school drama) - Chris Lamprecht
Akiva's closer to pegging it than the original quote. Jesus didn't handle much of the organization tasks, even for his own circle of disciples. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Mark: So he was good at delegation? Akiva: Who mentioned Christianity? I'm talking about the man and his life, not the later global repercussions. - Kevin Fox
Akiva: that's about as accurate as saying "Judaism didn't start until after Moses died; he had nothing to do with it. It was Joshua and Samuel that actually turned it into a religion. Moses was just a used car salesman without a lot." - Mark Trapp
Oh, well, in that case, that quote is even more wrong. - Akiva Moskovitz
Yeah, this creepy faith-based stuff has been around a long time. ;) - "Oldengrey" Tannenbaum
From http://www.nycahn.org/communit...: "Community organizing is a long-term approach where the people affected by an issue are supported in identifying problems and taking action to achieve solutions. The organizer challenges those he or she works with to change the way things are—it is a means of achieving social change through collective action by changing the balance of power." Yup, that sounds exactly like Jesus. Just read John 2:13-16. - Rob Reed
Mark Trapp, except that's a hell of a lot more words than I used with a hell of a lot more subtext. It's also wildly inaccurate as Moses did found a religion (although not really by choice) and, as far as I remember, Jesus didn't have any interest in creating a new religion. If I recall correctly, Paul of Tarsus didn't get the ball rolling until some 50 years later. - Akiva Moskovitz
Akiva: You're proving my point. Jesus was trying to foster social change through the grassroots, but wasn't trying to create a religion. The *last* thing I'm trying to say is that community organizers (Obama or others) are trying to proselytize into an organized religion or overthrow the status quo. Rather they're trying to help people at the community level, and that acting to better your community shouldn't be disdained or belittled. Politics is already seen as the vacuum of altruism. - Kevin Fox
Ghandi was probably a good community organizer, too - Mark Dykeman
Akiva, you're belaboring a woefully ignorant understanding of early Christianity that isn't supported by any documentation we have of that time. St. Paul was converted, as most historians agree, circa AD 36, 3 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. Paul, prior to his conversion, was persecuting those spreading the Gospel (indicating that there were religious missions pre-dating Paul). He immediately worked with James and Peter (Apostles of Christ who knew Him personally) before starting his own mission shortly thereafter. Most of our primary sources from Paul are dated 48-55 AD, 15 years after the crucifixion. - Mark Trapp
Akiva, In fact, the Gospel according to Mark is dated as early as 70 AD, only 40 years after the death of Jesus. In all four gospels, Jesus rejects the covenant God has with Abraham, Isaac, and Israel and supplants it with a new everlasting covenant. Josephus, the only independent historian contemporary of Jesus, confirms that Jesus wasn't a Rabbi, but preaching a new religion. Jesus was, by all accounts, preaching a new covenant, not a modification of the old. You know not what you speak. - Mark Trapp
Mark, I appreciate the information; it's been a long time since I've read up on Early Christianity. However, your final statement was an unnecessary punctuation on an otherwise well-appreciated mini-education on something I have never, ever claimed expertise in. I do appreciate you correcting where I was wrong but there was no need for that closing remark. - Akiva Moskovitz
And Jesus answered and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he said, “Rabbi, what is it?” (Luke 7:40)
A lawyer asked him a question to test him: “Rabbi, what is the greatest commandment in the Torah?” (Matthew 22:35-36)
And behold, a [rich] man came up to him and said, “Rabbi, what good thing must I do to have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16)
And someone in the crowd said to him, “Rabbi, order my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” (Luke 12:13)
And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Rabbi, rebuke your disciples.” (Luke 19:39)
Some of the Sadducees came up to him…and they asked him, saying, “Rabbi….” (Luke 20:27-28) - "Oldengrey" Tannenbaum
Akiva, you made a completely inaccurate claim about Christianity with a level of conviction conveying a statement of fact, then pressed the issue when I pointed out that it was inaccurate. As I know you can appreciate, as I've seen you mention it before on FriendFeed, misrepresentations of one's religious beliefs only serves to frustrate those who believe and alienate those who don't. - Mark Trapp
Akiva, going back to my original comment: obviously it's offensive to you to have someone just come in and say Moses didn't really have anything to do with Judaism and was of a completely different profession. It's just as offensive to hear from someone, as you're now saying, who isn't well versed in the literature make a statement of fact that is completely contradictory to everything a Christian knows and believes. - Mark Trapp
I think a rabbi in those days (and these days) was a learned man, a teacher -- as the text itself reflects. He was certainly both. - "Oldengrey" Tannenbaum
Jay: in most other English translations, it's translated as "teacher," not Rabbi, as it would be an equivocation to assume Jesus was of the Rabbinical tradition. Just because Rabbi literally means teacher doesn't infer that teacher means Rabbi. I don't really get it. Do you see any of the Christians here waxing intellectual about Judaism? How do you not see this as offensive? - Mark Trapp
Didn't Jesus' "community" willingly give him up to the Romans? - Sprague D
Oh, and honestly: what does whether or not Jesus started the religion have to do with Kevin's point? I don't get how that was considered a method of refutation to what Kevin is suggesting. - Mark Trapp
Mark: As you can see from my comment. I think we agree. No waxing. Jesus is all yours. Sorry. - "Oldengrey" Tannenbaum
Mark, calm down. I was simply wrong about something and was gracious when corrected. If you're offended, that's your problem. I write and speak with conviction. That's just how I am. If there was any conviction in my tone here, it's because I thought I was right about something. I wasn't. I'm fine with that. No need to continue to be an ass about it especially when I've already expressed appreciation for having been corrected. - Akiva Moskovitz
@Mark: It's all a moot point, anyway, as Jesus wasn't running for President. He might make a good president, but I don't think even the most fervent Obama supporters claim he has the power to work miracles (which might give Jesus the edge over your typical community organizer). - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Okay, 'ass' is too strong of a word. You're not being an ass. Overly defensive and offended, perhaps. But you're not being an ass. I apologize for that. - Akiva Moskovitz
Mark, I think a lot of people would've been asking if America was ready for a Muslim president, by virtue of him coming from Galilee. Even if it pre-dated Islam by 600 years. Akiva, I think you hit two hot points for me, and I went off, for which I apologize. The first of course is the misrepresentation of Christianity, but the second is the tendency in social media for people to say things strongly and forcefully first, then do a "mea culpa, I didn't really know" when corrected. That's just the way a lot of people are: usually I take it in stride, but the two combined really hit a nerve. It's not really personal, I like you, so again I apologize for going at you like such. - Mark Trapp
If Jesus was a community organizer, he didn't do a very good job of it. His community didn't seem to take kindly to what he was trying to do (which is mostly teaching). - Glen Campbell
Seriously, Ghandi... community organizer... good example, right? - Mark Dykeman
@Rizzin - it seems Jesus was close to being a political ruler. That one of the reasons why he was crucified. - Joel
roger ebert goes. the hell. in. on jar marriotti and his leaving the sun times - "n your way out, don't let the door bang you on the ass.
Your former colleague,
Roger Ebert " - Richard Lawler
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all i know is there i see obama coming out to "city of blinding light" and then i know that obama could have spent an hour saying nothing but "i want to be the prez" and you woulda loved it ;) - Rob Reed
Other Dodger minor leaguer is a possible middle-reliever and that's it.... and they didn't have Bay. As for the Pirates, they are the AAA farm team for the Major Leagues. - Chris Reed
And on a personal note, this is huge for my fantasy team now that my 1B James Loney will have Manny batting behind him. - Chris Reed
I'd never watched his Last Lecture before today (Friendfeeders: that's why I'm not at work yet :) ). Watch it now; if you have one hour free, you can't do much better. (and yes, I know the lecture is 75 minutes long, you'll be late for your next meeting and it will be worth it). If you can't find the time to watch it, it's doubly important that you do. - Tudor Bosman
liking so I can come back to it later - Justin Korn
Really, everyone should watch this lecture. I found out about it a half-hour before he gave it and watched the live webcast with another one of Randy's former students in my office at Google. I had no idea that it was going to be so good, important, or worthy of attention when we sat down to watch it, but afterward I was stunned both by the presentation and the number of people form all over the world who were watching it just because he had touched their lives. - Kevin Fox
I guess it's a measure of how out of it I am that I'd never heard of him 'til today's headline. I'm interested in watching the lecture though. - Spidra Webster
More fun from the folks who brought you Farfur, the suicide bombing Mickey Mouse.... - Chris Reed
this is so silly... everyone knows Jews only taste good when marinated overnight in a maneschevitz wine-based sauce... and muslims can't eat that... what a waste. - Rob Reed
And you know I love that Maneschevitz. - Chris Reed
"McCain aides said that the senator's journey to the Internet will span five days and will take him to such far-flung sites as Amazon.com, eBay and Facebook." - Kevin Fox
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Yeah, but I wanted to talk about it with *my* friends. Is it a social faux-pas to try and enforce comment consolidation of someone else's entry? - Kevin Fox
I just noticed how useful it was for Scoble to post that crosslink here -- I wish Friendfeed would find and display these crosslinks automatically. One often misses interesting discussions for lack of crosslinks. - Sean McBride
Kevin: I don't know. I figured your friends might like to know about an interesting conversation going on with my friends. :-) I wish FriendFeed would show where other places a conversation is being discussed. - Robert Scoble
Whoops - hope I didn't step on Kevin's toes by endorsing the interesting crosslink. - Sean McBride
Sean: yeah, I guess Kevin wanted to open a private room here for him to discuss this ONLY with his friends. I think FriendFeed needs to have a construct to make that possible. Maybe my taking items like this into a room where only the friends of that person can get into it? - Robert Scoble
Robert - Kevin raises a valid point when you think about it -- no doubt a software solution is available upon reflection. In any case, I am enjoying the crosslink. - Sean McBride
So my comment about consolidation was intended mostly to initiate a conversation on the subject. Success! To my mind a lot of the value of FriendFeed is the ability to have conversations scoped by friend connections. I actually saw Michael Markman's twitter first, and decided I liked the story, and would like to share and talk about it with my friends, rather than the strangers who were talking about it on that thread. Personally, I wouldn't want someone siphoning off my conversation to the stranger conversation, because the point of my sharing the item is to talk about it with people I know. Also, in this particular case, the phrasing "We're already talking about this over here -->" felt more like an accusation rather than an invitation. Thoughts? - Kevin Fox
Kevin: get over it. I'm going to keep joining these things because I want MY friends to see all conversations on a topic. :-) Of course, if you take it into a room, then I'll probably leave them there. I don't get why you didn't just "Like" the original item, which would have shown your friends the item and gotten them involved in the conversation. What, you don't want your friends to hang out with my friends? I don't get the value of having just your friends see something... - Robert Scoble
Kevin: my thought: Friendfeed should be infinitely flexible. Users should be able to organize conversations every which way, with any level of inclusivity or exclusivity. You've got a valid point and raised an important issue about social protocols here. - Sean McBride
By the way, I'd love to debate this face-to-face on video. I bet it would get something very interesting going. It also explains some of the design behind FriendFeed and why many people I show it to say "it's too noisy." - Robert Scoble
Scoble is operating in the Walt Whitmanesque universal embrace of the cosmos. :) - Sean McBride
Marco: no. But it would be interesting to know your thoughts. - Robert Scoble
"I wouldn't want someone siphoning off my conversation " , Kevin I agree. There are topic and threads which are 'yours' , regardless of whereelse the conversation maybe happening. I would not want (a) somebody to inject themselves into my thread and hijak the conversation (b) to redirect my friend to another thread. We kinda forget our common good sense manners when we get into convos on FF. Both items(a and b) , would be considered rude inturruptions in RL life . Just my way of thinking and I maybe wrong ! - Peter Dawson
I admit, I liked this thread for the FF comments, not the article. - Hao Chen
Robert: It didn't sound like your purpose in commenting was to make sure your followers saw this conversation, but to consolidate the conversation into a single thread. Please don't twist this into a 'what, my friends aren't good enough for you?' I believe that conversational diaspora is a good thing, and that artificial comment consolidation is not. If I had something to say in the other thread I would have not had any qualms about contributing to that conversation but, as I said earlier, your comment read as if you were trying to create a single conversation and cut my own conversation with my own social circle short. If that was not your intention, then I apologize. - Kevin Fox
Actually, the only thing that frustrates me in this thread is that by the time I finish writing a comment, 5 other people have written new comments, making it look like my comment was written with the awareness of those comments. Ugh! Definitely a user experience issue. :-P - Kevin Fox
You know, I'm sure Michael Markman didn't appreciate the siphoning off of comments from his thread when Kevin Fox, authoritative Friendfeed person tons of people are following, reposted the same link. Or maybe it's good to just not worry about where conversations are going? Isn't that the value of Friendfeed? Who cares who's siphoning from whom? Who cares where links are re-shared? Oh, and hey, one more for the road: maybe it's better to assume good faith before having a public, highly visible, comments brawl. - Mark Trapp
Kevin: I wanted to do both. Your friends should know about an interesting conversation happening about that topic somewhere else, and should be able to discuss it amongst themselves too, here. Personally, you should have loaded a comment that made it clear what your intent was. If I want to talk about something with just my friends, I would have loaded a comment with a link to the original, but with a comment saying "I want to talk about it just with my friends, to see what you think." - Robert Scoble
Re a F2F conversation on video: that would be cool. I've been meaning to write a blog post on 'who owns the conversation'. I've got some concrete ideas on the subject, especially how it pertains to conversations about blog posts that happen off-blog, but I also don't feel any one person has the right to speak for others in a 'this is how things should be' kind of way. Definitely one of those social issues that is still contested because it's so new. - Kevin Fox
I actually just made a private room last night just for my real friends (in case any actually decide to join). I think a private place to have conversations is probably a good place to start for people who don't want want to fully expose themselves online. Also, time can be a limiting factor some times and when it is they're the ones I'd most like to engage with. That being said, it would be cool to view all the public conversations on a particular link, so I can jump into the best one. - Raymond
There should be an easier way to view all the conversations on a particular piece of content. FF should connect all the threads in the background through some unique identifier for the content (like the URL that this link points to), then let people decide whether they want to view just their friends' comments or those from extended community (including imported Disqus / Intense Debate comments for the same URL). - Joe Lazarus
Now we know why McCain has not visited The Internet - Shakeel Mahate
@scobleizer on the original McCain/internet piece or the discussion over comment fragmentation it has morphed into? lol - Marco (aureliusmaximus)
In Geoff's best McCain Voice "I need The Googles installed please" - Geoff Schultz
don't have to read the article... the title is priceless - Rob Reed
I'm not quite sure what is "historic" about a septuagenarian visiting the internet. Are we meant to be impressed? My mother is 72 and does quite a number of tasks online, as do many people of her age and considerably older. - Ian May
Apparently Kevin because Robert stumbled on your thread, he was already your friend or perhaps in some other way in your Friendfeed vicinity -- and you say you wanted to discuss this with friends -- so from his point of view your entry may have looked like a dupe. And dupes among segments of friends are indeed a problem on Friendfeed. Nobody minds the dupes we don't notice, but we may mind having the conversation on the same thing split up among segments of our friends. - Philipp Lenssen
@Kevin - allow sub-comments which are comments to comments to make it easier to allow people to talk the person who's talking. Again making this a simple UI is of a challenge as it may soon turn out to be ugly... Also, please allow to scope your post/comment to only your friend/family/colleagues etc So that you dont want every one to see them... I sort of agree with your point of the need for having private/protected/public conversations on FF. I even posted this in the ff-feedback room a few weeks ago. Looking forward to some progress in this direction :) - Krishna Gade
@Mark Trapp... thank for looking out for my feelings. But I don't feel any ownership in discussions about something that Andy Borowitz wrote. Now, if I had written the original piece, I might feel differently. - Michael Markman
@Ian May It's a comedy bit that combines a) McCain's having disparaged Obama for not visiting Iraq and b) McCain's boast to the NY Times that he's learning to get online. - Michael Markman
Andy's piece is well-written. Thanks for sharing, Kevin, wouldn't have seen otherwise. - Stephen Mack
Why is this thread being highjacked to discuss FF features?! I thought it was about McCain visitng the "Internet" :) - Shivanand Velmurugan
This thread keeps growing and still going nowhere. It is really simple: if you want to discuss things only with your friends, make a private room just for you and your friends, and post "friends only" stuff there. No one else needs to find you've created a separate thread of "their" topic somewhere else. - Dread Pirate PJ
I have a very simple model of ff, which is perhaps a lot like Kevin's. I come here to discuss things with my ff friends. Many of them are people I don't know at all in rl, but it's important to me that these conversations are mostly with the same 100-200 people, over and over again. As a result, rooms are not very useful to me, since when I comment on something in a room, it is not automatically placed in the feed of all my friends. Rooms are at least useful for finding content and resharing it..... - j1m
The feeds of people with very many friends, like Robert, are not very useful either. With so many people commonly commenting on his thread, I mostly don't remember who any one person is from one encounter to another, and for me that makes conversation a lot less fun. So Robert's feed, also, is mostly useful for resharing. - j1m
I do really wish that ff would organize feed items that share a url, by presenting them all (that is, all the ones I can see) right next to one another, or joining them into a single nested feed item, that has the different conversations hanging off of it. - j1m
I made a private room with just myself in it so I could discuss this. - Chris White
