Adam Khan’s

Trail

Saturday 8 November ’08

• Obama’s first press conference. I found the stills from the hotel room election night rather more inspiring.

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Tuesday 4 November ’08

• “The pseudo-proletariat rhetoric that I think is now so poisonous in Republican ranks, the sean-hannityization of conservatism…” I so love dear David Brooks, here on Charlie Rose!

• Review of Nokia N96.

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Sunday 2 November ’08

• The lure of the diner in the WSJ.

• Impassioned pleas from Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson to not vote Obama.

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Saturday 1 November ’08

• According to Spengler, “The low level of violence in Iraq during the past several months owes something to the skill of American arms in the so-called ‘surge’, but it owes even more to a tacit agreement between Iran and the George W Bush administration: in return for leashing its irregular forces in Iraq, Iran would get a free hand with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and American forbearance with respect to its nuclear weapons program.”

  Is this true?!? Is the surge a sham, David Petreus not the great military tactician but merely the beneficiary of a Faustian bargain by the White House with the mullahs? In this case, the Israelis were correct to be wary of America’s invasion of Iraq, fearful the US was biting off more than it could chew and would in the end do a deal with the bad guys.

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Thursday 30 October ’08

• Obama as a Nasser-type figure.

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Friday 24 October ’08

• Oh, oh, Scirocco.

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Wednesday 22 October ’08

• Cuddly OS X pillows.

• 37Signals warns us nicely of future creep.

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Monday 20 October ’08

• Hitch jumps ship

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Friday 17 October ’08

• Melvynn Bragg lauds James Bond, and isn’t it fascinating how weak a writer this public semi-intellectual is compared with modern bloggers.

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Thursday 16 October ’08

• You must read ‘Farmer in Chief’ by the invaluable Michael Pollan of “East food. Not too much. Mostly plants” fame.

• Download iReadFast (Mac only), set it to fullscreen, crank up the speed to the maximum, 950 words/minute, and paste in your latest op-ed fix. Fun way to read?

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Wednesday 15 October ’08

• Betrayed by Dershowitz—Chaim in comment #14 demolishes the great man’s convoluted argument for supporting Obama.

• Tech tips for the basic computer user, like alt-tab and whatnot.

• Talcum powder is now linked to ovarian cancer.

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Monday 13 October ’08

• Scrutinizing the 1960s-era props is part of the fun of watching Mad Men.

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Saturday 11 October ’08

• On his 50-state trip around America, dual-citizen Jewish English gay showbiz “born to play Oscar Wilde” Stephen Fry acknowledges: ‘Yes they have no idea what cheese or bread can be’.

• The following two paragraphs are by William Kristol in ‘Viva McCain’:

  “One is an orthodox and timid liberal, personally ambitious but intellectually conventional. For all his talk of hope and change, when has Barack Obama ever shown a willingness to break with liberal orthodoxy or Democratic dogma? What bold decision has he taken, what unpopular idea has he embraced? The odd truth about Obama is that, for all his unsavory radical associations—and they are unsavory and a legitimate issue in the campaign—he’s not radical enough for the times and challenges we face.

  “The other candidate, John McCain, has been all over the map in terms of domestic policies, and has shown a management style during the campaign that makes one worry about the coherence and purposefulness of his administration. But he’s shown strong character in his life, and he’s done serious things. His general views are centrist, but he’s willing to be bold when necessary. He won’t be passive as president, and he’ll think anew and act anew as he adjusts to the challenges we face, in the spirit of doing what’s necessary to preserve and strengthen the underlying principles of American life.”

• Caroline Glick observes that the US believes that the Lebanese government is a credible ally while Israel on the other hand sees the Hizbullah-dominated government as its enemy.

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Friday 10 October ’08

• Why tea, lemon and honey for a cold?

• There’s a new logo for Best Buy, the consumer electronics chain. The old one seemed better as being visible from the highway, whereas the new one seems more inviting if you’re already cruising within a shopping mall.

• Having just had Aaron over for a weekend, this Telegraph piece on the Brits’ tendency to drink too much, as encouraged by the Queen Mother, read especially relevant/poignant/pertinent/[hic].

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Thursday 9 October ’08

• Obama’s plane stinks and the campaign in general mistreats journalists.

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Tuesday 7 October ’08

• The Veep debate, distilled by SNL... and the presidential debate as well.

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Saturday 4 October ’08

• On the set of David Zucker’s new movie An American Carol.

• OJ convicted—how prescient, the saying that in history tragedy comes around again as farce.

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Friday 3 October ’08

• Brooks of the Times then Krauthammer of the Post on the Biden/Palin debate.

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Thursday 2 October ’08

• Slow-mo hi-def video of people getting punched in the face—is this really how our faces deal with the blow? (Via literaryhack.com)

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Sunday 28 September ’08

• Sasha Baron-Cohen crashes the Milan Fashion Festival as Bruno. Video (scroll to end) complete with commentary by the chick filming it. She tells her audience she loves him and tries to explain to the police that he’s legit, a journalist. So easy to forget the Italian things, like how “journalist” is hallowed.

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Saturday 27 September ’08

• Lamenting a bailout

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Thursday 25 September ’08

• Motley Fool: Buffett swarms in.

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Wednesday 24 September ’08

• IBM on jQuery.

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Tuesday 23 September ’08

• The upcoming Google phone, G1, as reviewed by Walt Mossberg, has both a keyboard and a touchscreen—score!—but is it really a smartphone?

• Palin’s would-be speech on Ahmedinejad.

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Monday 22 September ’08

• Why Constellation preferred Warren Buffett to $35 a share.

• Profile of Stuff White People Like guy.

• Gruber gets it just right on the recent Windows ads.

• John F. Burns, doyen of American journalists in Iraq and now stationed in London, sums up the state of play regarding the prime minister’s political struggle.

• Replacing Heathrow with a 24-hour artificial island-based airport in the Thames Estuary.

• Limit your kids’ cellphone use.

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Sunday 21 September ’08

• ‘Hi, I’m Ruby on Rails.’ ‘And I’m Dot Net.’

• McCartney on Yesterday: I woke up one morning and I had this tune in my head and I spent the next week asking people what it was and nobody could define what it was.

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Monday 15 September ’08

• Orange Pekoe is the perfect complement to a British fry-up breakfast. The writer wins me over with his disdain for the teabag and the sports section.

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Saturday 13 September ’08

• jQuery UI demos.

• The Alaska state budget.

• If I were in New York I’d definitely go to Sushi Azabu.

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Friday 12 September ’08

• How Digg Works.

• Those frothing against Palin fail to distinguish between “common” and “the common touch.”

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Thursday 11 September ’08

• In a funk, is Biden next under the bus?

• Does Palin believe in dinosaurs? Matt Damon really wants to know.

• The touch-screen quandary is solved—for people like us who love QWERTY at any rate. By the genius behind T9.

• Alex Payne’s rules for computing happiness though #4 is wacky.

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Wednesday 10 September ’08

• Delicious rant against the Palin pick by Leon Wieseltier, author of Kaddish.

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Monday 8 September ’08

• Spengler mercilessly skewers Obama on the Biden choice.

• NiiMe: use the accelerometer in your phone to control things on your computer (Windows only).

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Saturday 6 September ’08

• Zeldman walks to work.

• First impressions of the Nokia N96.

• For everything you needed to know about the Republican National Convention, here’s David Brooks, totally sharp, and Charles Krauthammer, dependably wise.

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Friday 5 September ’08

• Despite being a supporter I agree with this scathing review of McCain’s acceptance speech.

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Thursday 4 September ’08

• A letter from someone who has known Sarah Palin since 1992 and is about 70% anti (again via DJ Sanders). My opinion of Palin: a seductive rattlesnake who will help get McCain elected and be far less popular than him by the end of his term.

• Lowdown on the Israel-Georgian relationship. Turns out the Georgian defence minister is a former Israeli.

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Wednesday 3 September ’08

• This needs to be on the cover of Time Magazine (via DJ Sanders).

• The website is down—the best short film (10 mins) I’ve seen on the internet.

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Monday 1 September ’08

• Yves Rossy, rocket man.

• Fourth of four posts on how Symbian S60 and Apple’s OS X play together.

• Upload data to many-eyes.com and display it in various ways.

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Sunday 31 August ’08

• Amotz Asa-El annoints Israel’s next leader, Avishay Braverman.

• Barry Rubin gropes towards an overarching Middle Easy strategy.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers

• Bill Ayers, the next Rev Wrightgate.

• Glick on Biden on Iran.

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Saturday 30 August ’08

• Who is the Chancellor of the Exchequor?

• A first look at the Nokia n85.

• Fred Barnes on Sarah Palin.

• Fred Barnes, Bill Kristol then Karl Rove on Obama’s acceptance speech.

• National Review likes the Palin pick and so does the Weekly Standard.

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Friday 29 August ’08

• David Brooks gives Obama’s nomination speech.

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Thursday 28 August ’08

• From Iran, a conversation with the President of Iran.

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Wednesday 27 August ’08

• More Spengler on Russia: Invading Georgia was a demography-driven necessity.

• Peace was the word, and the Voice of Peace was the station, 24 hours a day. Abie Nathan, 81.

• A return to Symbian from iPhone.

• Armed forces of the world, ranked. Incredibly, Israel is 4th after the USA, China and India!

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Tuesday 26 August ’08

• For Russia, to dominate is to be.

• The American dream of happiness might be a nightmare. What passes for bliss could well be a dystopia of flaccid grins.

• Is it every David Brooks column I link to? Advice to Obama at the Convention.

• Nice, high-falutin’ piece on the web site profession at ALA.

• Another Anglo miracle: solar-powered aircraft flies indefinitely.

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Sunday 24 August ’08

• Zadie Smith, whom I admire but don’t much like, on E. M. Forster, whose Passage to India just gets increasingly spectacular.

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Saturday 23 August ’08

• Returning Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan is the only feasible peacable outcome of the Israel-Palestinian conflict; is there a Saudi plan on the table?

• Some best buys.

• David Brooks tells us who Joe Biden is.

• Krauthammer: The fate of far more than Georgia is at stake.

• The WSJ likes Coogan’s new Hamlet 2 but judging by the videoclip on the page, his phony American accent grates even more than it’s designed to.

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Friday 22 August ’08

• Photo album by an AP reporter of Bush at the Olympics.

• A case for AAPL.

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Thursday 21 August ’08

• Op-ed by the author of The Case Against Barak Obama, who I believe lost the election when Russia invaded Georgia, and this book’s the icing.

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Tuesday 19 August ’08

• We must reject the Russian fairy tale that aid to Russia’s neighbors is a threat to Russia.

• British children suffer from a system of perverse incentives in a culture of undiscriminating materialism.

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Monday 18 August ’08

• Victory jig (via DJ Sanders).

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Sunday 17 August ’08

• None of this would have happened if he had been medicated.

• Both McCain and Obama do well answering questions from a pastor. Update: Now that I’ve heard some of the audio, sounds like McCain trounced Obama.

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Saturday 16 August ’08

• Dennis Miller presents Shofar accompaniments.

• Spengler says Georgia never should have been an ally in the first place.

• The most important foodstuff to buy organic is butter; next priority would be meats.

• It’s a long but heartfelt rumination on being an unhappy youth at Rome.

• The lesson of Georgia.

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Thursday 14 August ’08

• The US is already running circles around Russia Russia in the wake of Georgia.

• Bush saved us, now on to the next boom.

• Face is the place.

• The future is here as Boeing introduces its air-to-surface laser (via Instapundit).

• After cancelling elections, Gordon Brown’s second fatal own goal was abandoning Basra.

• Latte art.

• My new guru Tim Ferriss finally learns to swim.

• Charles Murray undermines the BA.

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Wednesday 13 August ’08

• Let’s do the Time Warp again, again!

• The pill messes up women’s sense of smell in men.

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Tuesday 12 August ’08

• America is slouching, even at elite schools, toward a glorified form of vocational training.

• Design is born of constraints.

• Tufte presents iPhone: For clarity, do detail.

• Once again, George W. Bush is a great president on things both big and small.

• David Brooks interprets the Olympic Games opening ceremony.

• Is Turkey a liability?

• Groups of rollerbladers through Tel Aviv: I was as usual ahead of my time.

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Monday 11 August ’08

• Georgia, the geographic and historical crucible where Russia meets the Turkic and Persian Near East.

• It’s 1982. You need no longer stop at the end of the line for a carriage return.

• The tyranny of clocks, Socrates’ distrust of writing, yada yada: The Atlantic worries about the web.

• Denmark is a model nation—that’s energy independence not Lego.

• Israel has two dogs in the Russian-Georgian conflict.

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Saturday 9 August ’08

• As a proud owner of “wireless headphones from Finland”, I’m among the skewered by David Brooks.

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Friday 8 August ’08

• The Starbucks effect comes to smartphones as Apple yanks iPhone wireless modem app—Nokia should rally around this.

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Thursday 7 August ’08

• Israel threatens Russia that its S-300 anti-missile system will be neutralized if sold to Iran.

• Aircraft carriers are heading towards Iran. Is this it?

• A strong show at the Republican convention next month is McCain’s biggest chance, says Karl Rove.

• More good news from Iraq: Moqtada al-Sadr has laid down his weapons.

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Wednesday 6 August ’08

• “I’m Paris Hilton and I approve this message because I think it’s totally hot.” Via Drudge.

• See Lileks back skillfully into his Solzhenitsyn eulogy then relate his daughter’s birthday outing, both in the same piece.

• The first step in a campaign calling for a mandatory death penalty for terrorist murderers would be to conduct a poll.

• Bolton notes Iran’s progress in both its nuke program and its deterrence against attacking that program.

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Tuesday 5 August ’08

• At 46, Douglas “Gen X” Coupland ponders aging.

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Monday 4 August ’08

• Our concept of the state begins with our understanding of God.

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Saturday 2 August ’08

• Deep inside 7/7.

• To overcome globosclerosis David Brooks supports McCain’s League of Democracies.

• Is Iran training for an EMP attack on America?

• How to address copy-editors over a wrongly omitted “a”.

• The Tale of Gore-Al.

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Friday 1 August ’08

• David’s Horowitz’s sentences are gaining stature.

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Thursday 31 July ’08

• “A myth to Himself. Has to be,” Sun Ra says of God.

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Tuesday 29 July ’08

• “A very peculiar restless thing of the British, isn’t it,” relates travel writer Eric Newby’s widow.

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Monday 28 July ’08

• Today’s top absurdity.

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Wednesday 23 July ’08

• The BatSignal as W in the sky.

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Monday 21 July ’08

• A New York Timesman walks Tel Aviv from the Hilton beach down to Jaffa.

• It was indeed unnerving that the Istanbul Hilton had an airport-style metal detector at the entrance to the lobby; Turkey could fall, Spengler laments.

• The US military will be an agent both for destruction and creation, Lt. General William Caldwell tells Charlie Rose.

• “My father was a Minister of the Church who learned Hebrew and had a deep and life long affection for Israel,” Gordon Brown tells the Knesset as PM.

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Sunday 20 July ’08

• Kimberly Kagan reports on progress in Iraq though admittedly she’s one of the Surge’s architects.

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Sources

• David Brooks
• Caroline Glick
• The Jerusalem Post
• The Atlantic
• Spengler
• James Lileks
• The Wall Street Journal