I am constantly amazed at the great PR Apple gets: this week the iPad was on the cover of Newsweek, Steve Jobs was on the cover of Time and Stephen Colbert gave the iPad the best plug I have ever seen.
| Colbert Report Full Episodes | Political Humor | Health Care Reform |
I want to start with a quote from last weekend by Michael Scherer of Time's Swampland
About
20 hours ago, I was in Bagram Air Base, watching White House advance people
change the television station in a troop mess hall, so that NCAA basketball
would show in the background as President Obama shook hands, not motorcross,
which had been playing.
and then go on to the fact that Obama held a second – now annual – Whitehouse Seder last week. From the article in the NY Times, it seems like it was non-political act. Just a personal gesture that has become a tradition.
and finish with a reference to a story of one letter in an article in the Washington Post on the ten letters -that have been culled from hundreds – that Obama gets every day. The letter is tragic, touching, inspiring, you know – all that stuff.
If you haven't already, read these two articles. They are pretty short.
I am fascinated by Obama's attention to detail, the cautious consideration given to doing a good job, to doing things right – not just as president, but as a man, as a father, as a mensch. In Obama, it seems to be coming from the inside rather than from the outside to look good.
When we read about the war in Afghanistan, we almost always read about it from the US point of view – duh! – or a Marines point of view, or a NGO peace workers point of view.
A couple of days ago, I read a blog in the NY Times (it is amazing how much good stuff is in the Times, I wonder, and not in a good way, where it will go after the Times folds – if it doesn't just disappear) that talked about why the Taliban are such poor shots. And it sort of talked about it , inadvertently, I think, from the Afghans point of view. Among a long list of problems like having and using equipment in poorly maintained condition, relying on automatic fire rather than aiming, using mismatched and bad ammunition, was
a matter of public health. Many Afghans suffer from
uncorrected vision problems, which have roots in factors ranging from
poor childhood nutrition to the scarcity of medical care.
Sunday afternoon, while the rain feel all afternoon, I watched Afghan Star
The two of them, together, left me with an almost overwhelming feeling of how poor Afghanistan really is. Not We have no doctors, poor. but We have no good sanitation poor. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on Earth. So poor, most of the adult population can't see very well.
And there is a huge minority of the Afghan population that is afraid to move away from that poverty,. Afraid that they will lose more than they will gain. Maybe they are right – they will lose community, they will lose their convictions and answers – I don't think they are right to be afraid, but, then, I've eaten from the apple a long time ago. I am biased.
A group of pictures of insects covered with dew drops. It seems to want to viral, so I thought I would do my part to pass it along.
We spent the day wandering around the Carrizo Plain, in the cold, photographing the flowers. The yellows, especially, were vibrant. This is a place that is very scenic, especially with the carpets of yellow flowers, but, in the end, limited. There are very few places to hike – the are several short paths, but nothing long enough to spend more than an half hour – because most of the area is grassland and the thought snake in the grass probably has some basis keeps coming up.
I would like to say that the following pictures are a few samples of the photos of the day but, really, the photos were pretty much all the same. (If you double click, they will get larger.)