Thursday, June 10, 2004

TiVo Justice

My pal Tom Hegeman, who is himself a lawyer, sends me this link to an article about some legal issues relating to TiVo and its future plans. Might be worth your time to take a peek.

• Posted at 6:27 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

John Kerry keeps sending me mail. I've never donated money to a politician; to political causes, yes, but most of my giving goes to things like feeding hungry children and disaster relief. Still, I somehow got on some mailing lists that prompt every Democrat (and a few Republicans and Independents) to write to me, over and over, in search of money. I get two or three requests a week from John Kerry alone.

Or at least, they pretend to be from John Kerry. The latest ones are all composed to look like Senator Kerry stopped campaigning long enough to write out a batch of letters and personally mail them to possible supporters. The one I received today really pushes the concept. They've made a font out of what I guess is Kerry's handwriting and the letter was addressed with it. So the intended perception is that Kerry not only wrote the letter but personally hand-wrote the envelope, including his return address.

What's the idea here? Does someone on the Kerry staff think I'm going to get one of these and think the senator from Massachusetts and presumed nominee of the Democratic Party actually sat down at his desk after dinner and said "I'll spend some time with you later, Teresa. I want to drop a note to the guy who wrote the Garfield cartoon show and see if he'll send me a few bucks?" Of course not...so why the pretense? (If by some chance I believed Kerry had actually written this, I'd lose a lot of respect for the guy: Doesn't know how to manage his time...doesn't know how to print out mailing labels or buy a return address stamp. Hey, John! You want to create some jobs in this country? Hire someone to address your envelopes!)

I guess I also resent the ongoing deluge. If I had donated cash to Senator Kerry two months ago, I would look at the twenty-or-so mailings I've received since then and think, "I gave you money! Stop nagging me! And stop using that money to send me more junk mail!"

And this goes for Public Television, too. Several years ago, I accidentally allowed my subscription to KCET to expire. Before I could renew it, I received such an avalanche of envelopes — many of them saying, "We miss you" on the outside — that I decided not to re-up. If they ever go three weeks without writing me again, I might consider it.

• Posted at 6:15 PM · LINK

Doonesbury P.S.

I got the date wrong in the previous item. The strip in question actually ran on Wednesday, June 9, making Trudeau's bit of precognition all the more amazing.

On the other hand, I'm getting reports that the strip, as it ran in most newspapers that day, actually had slightly different copy in it. In the panel I posted, the kid is saying either, "Dad, someone has to!" or "Dad, somebody has to!" with no mention of Tenet. So apparently Trudeau wrote it that way and shipped it off...then a change was made in strips to be posted on the Internet (and maybe in some papers). So maybe he wasn't quite as prescient as it seems.

• Posted at 11:58 AM · LINK

Doonesbury E.S.P.

George Tenet resigned as director of the C.I.A. on Thursday, June 3. One week later in the Doonesbury newspaper strip — on Thursday, June 10 — one of the characters, C.I.A. intern Jeff, announced he was resigning from the C.I.A. because "Tenet can't take all the blame." Now, comic strips are drawn well in advance of publication and while Doonesbury cuts it closer than most, a week is just about impossible...and the current continuity (viewable here) does not exactly mention Tenet resigning, nor has Tenet (in real life) begun to take blame for anything. Still, add it all up and it looks like Trudeau made a darn good guess at where the news was heading. And a lot of people will probably assume he did write this week's strips in response to Tenet's resignation.

• Posted at 12:19 AM · LINK