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Tuesday, August 5, 2003
Missed spellings 
Sky lights
| | Looks like I won't be in Southern California for the next launch from Vandenberg, which will probably happen at 1:31AM tomorrow morning (meaning late tonight). The launch window runs from that time until 7:30AM, but customarily the launch happens as the window opens. |
| | Without the Sun peeking over the edge of the earth you won't get eerie business like we had in this launch here. But still, it's likely to be pretty spectacular, and visible over much of the Southwest. |
| | Check here for more info. |
Brand old story
| | This one appears to be a fight between BMW and its customers. |
The vs. Story
| | Many years ago, when I was still doing PR for tech companies, my firm handled SPARC International, the consortium of chip makers that had signed on to make Sun's SPARC chips. |
| | At the time, the only two chip companies that the press cared about on an ongoing basis were Intel and Motorola, which were cast as mortal enemies. Every Big Issue was always covered as an Intel vs. Motorola story. |
| | Since all the press knows how to cover when it's being lazy is a fight between two combatants, and since journalists are generally a lazy lot (present company included), my PR crew came up with a simple and effective idea: Pick a fight with MIPS. Like SPARC, MIPS was a new RISC chip, and an also-ran in the default Intel vs. Motorola story. By positioning SPARC against MIPS, without even mentioning Intel or Motorola (especially since Intel didn't have a RISC story), we created a fun fight for the press to cover. The RISC story became a simple contest between just two companies. |
| | The whole story wasn't that simple, of course. But it was very effective at the time, and for the next several years. |
| | But this post isn't about chips. It's about politics. |
| | The Dean campaign had issued an on-line call to supporters to out-raise Cheney. |
| | According to the Associated Press, "Vice President Dick Cheney spent about 30 minutes in Columbia Monday, raising about $300,000 for President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. |
| | The Dean campaign drive started on Friday night and went until Midnight Sunday. According to the Boston Globe : "Dean raised $344,000 for his campaign by the time of the Cheney lunch." |
| | 30 minutes for the Veep, 48 hours for Dean. The Globe points out that the Dean campaign counted the $20,000 per day they raise under normal circumstances as part of the total; but to be fair, the Cheney event took time to set up in advance, so the 30 minute number is misleading as well. |
| | The Dean campaign made the point that it received donations averaging about $50 - as compared to the $2,000 tab to attend the Vice President's lunch... |
| | The Dean campaign, in effect, had to stop everything else it was doing to make this goal. It was a short term effort - a successful effort - but short term. |
| | The Bush/Cheney campaign can, and will, do $300,000 events on a regular basis from now until it doesn't need any more money. |
| | The difference is the SUSTAINABLE level of activity which each campaign can endure. |
| | Richard's right, of course. But notice that he's not talking about Kerry, or Edwards, or Kucinich. Why? They're not in this fight. Dean is. |
| | See, Dean has a story. Sorry, but the other guys don't. They may be trying to tell some story or other, but nobody's listening. Like him or not, Dean's story — fund raising from ordinary folks rather than Big Boys — and fighting big trees with grass roots, is working. As box office goes, you can't beat a good fight. (How long it lasts is another question, of course.) |
| | Also, as the campaign moves along, Dean's probaly not going to need as much money, either. He's also tapped an artesian well of support. Bush has one too, but it's a familiar one. Dean's is a New Thing. Very interesting to the press, too, for that reason. |
| | (Until it stops being new. When that happens is yet another question.) |
| | I've heard a lot of wondering about how well Dean's grass roots support on the Net will leverage into the still-larger non-Net world. In fact, that was a big concern at the Dean MeetUp I attended in Santa Barbara last month. |
| | Well, I dunno. It depends on how well the Bush & talk radio people succeed in painting Dean as a tax & spend Liberal. Or that Dean succeeds in painting himself the same way. |
| | With his New England background, which has a streak of flinty conservatism (town meetings and all that), Dean may not be easy for the Bush folks to position as a full-bore lefty. |
| | But, again, I dunno. We'll see. |
| | Alas, Howard Dean, Man of the Cyberpeople, is not going to be President this time around. What we are seeing here is a classic case of peaking far, far too early. What we are also seeing is the terrible political condition known as "knowing far too much too soon" about a candidate few have heard about before. And the more you know about Howard Dean, the nicer he seems as a man and the less fit he seems as a potential president. |
World of beginnings
| | While apparently chaotic, webbed conversation is self-organising. It has many of the features demonstrated by simpler systems like Daisyworld and Life, except that people and computers are part of the program. Google relies on people organising the web as much as people rely on google to organise the web. A computer cluster and a people cluster operate in symbiosis. Right around now, this author started thinking of the web, not as a web, but of an organism of organisms. It's a dynamic, living thing. The spread of thought waves is like weather. Each piece of text on the internet is the flapping of a butterfly's wings. |
| | When thinking about people try to remember what you aren't measuring. We've only managed to encapsulate thought as text so far. All the products of the other senses remain out of reach. Unencapsulated. |
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