blog.shrub

Listen to People Look Around.

Oh yeah… Starbucks called a month ago too. We told them to take a hike. San Diego’s independent coffee shops are sponsoring us :)

Keith Olbermann writes:

Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system - in terms of its timing. President Bush’s speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation.

I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences - a political downturn for the administration, followed by a “terror event” - a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.

Bush Thanks Soldiers in Rehearsed Talk:

Paul Rieckhoff, director of the New York-based Operation Truth, an advocacy group for U.S. veterans of Iraq and
Afghanistan, denounced the event as a “carefully scripted publicity stunt.”

Over on his media center blog, Matt Goyer wrote that Front Row “really validates what we’re doing converging digital entertainment with the PC in the living room.”

So you’re saying that a product that “doesn’t even have feature parity with the first version of Media Center” from three years ago validates what you are doing? I guess the folks in Redmond need some help in the self-confidence department. :)

Our friends at the Bonita News took a moment to suggest their local venue book newer, up-and-coming acts:

“I’d like to see more up-and-coming, rather than name acts that may or may not still have it,” he says. “Some of the newer people that Myra can count as a discovery.”

Floridians deserve good music too, not just the crap from Clear Channel.

Merlin and Danny make the New York Times. Cool. But ever more interesting is this excerpt:

But did more screen area actually help with cognition? To find out, Czerwinski’s team conducted another experiment. The researchers took 15 volunteers, sat each one in front of a regular-size 15-inch monitor and had them complete a variety of tasks designed to challenge their powers of concentration - like a Web search, some cutting and pasting and memorizing a seven-digit phone number. Then the volunteers repeated these same tasks, this time using a computer with a massive 42-inch screen, as big as a plasma TV.

The results? On the bigger screen, people completed the tasks at least 10 percent more quickly - and some as much as 44 percent more quickly. They were also more likely to remember the seven-digit number, which showed that the multitasking was clearly less taxing on their brains. Some of the volunteers were so enthralled with the huge screen that they begged to take it home. In two decades of research, Czerwinski had never seen a single tweak to a computer system so significantly improve a user’s productivity. The clearer your screen, she found, the calmer your mind.

Which sounds like good justification for a cinema display.

Build Almost Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.

Choice government careers for the taking. No experience necessary.