What’s New With Mick

“I, me, my – three of the most used words in President Obama’s media appearance last night.” – Rush Limbaugh, May 2, 2011

A few years ago I used to ride with Portland Critical Mass every month. Eventually, the numbers became so small that it seemed pointless to continue. Still, I’ve long felt a kinship with Critical Mass rides everywhere. Thus, seeing the following video taken Friday night in Brazil almost made me cry. One minute into the video, the joy and serenity is replaced with insane violence:

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Saturday I drove down to Happy Valley to pick up Graham following an overnight at his friend’s house. On the way there I saw a monstrous building and noted it was a church. On the way back home, we stopped so I could get a picture. I posted the first picture to Instagram (warning: link opens iTunes). In that picture, I included the sign as a point of reference but it somewhat eclipsed the gigantic church so I moved a few steps east and snapped another:

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Have you seen Google’s Public Data Explorer? It’s an interactive interface to some gigantic sets of data gathered from around the world (sorry, requires Flash). I found it when I searched for “population growth” on Google. If you click the chart at the top of the list of results, you can graph the change in population growth rates for any country from 1960 to present. The chart graphs the US population rate by default but you can turn on any combination of countries as well as the world population growth rate for comparison.

After playing with it for a few minutes, I wondered about Iran and Iraq, two countries that we all probably wish we knew less about:

Remember the Iran/Iraq war? You can see it right there in the data. Can you tell who “won” and who lost that war?

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If you’re not on Facebook, this is a couple of screenshots from my “feed” there. This particular person first became a “fan” of  ”Fox Business and 11 others” which included Sean Hannity, Steve Doocy and Fox News. Two minutes later they posted their message opposing the new health care reform law. Subsequent comments revealed that it’s extremely unlikely this person understands anything substantial about the debate.

Here is an amazing video from “YouTube” stars, OK Go. Watch carefully and wonder to yourself how many takes this took:

If you don’t have flash on your device, you can view the video on YouTube with this link. Why didn’t I just embed the YouTube video? Damian Kulash, Jr., one of the guys in the band, wrote a very interesting article on a fan forum a few days ago that did an excellent job of explaining the intricacies of the music industry’s DRM machine. Today Kulash followed up with a tremendous New York Times Guest Op-Ed.

Last week Jon Stewart had some fun at the expense of Keith Olbermann but with a serious point. Olbermann addressed it at the end of his show last night:

Keith’s response was rather graceless and his joke about Jon was a bit mean-spirited. However, he did admit he was wrong and apologized.

Rachel Maddow provides some excellent historical perspective as well as outlining exactly what Obama has accomplished.

My apologies if you had to watch a commercial before the video started.

Proposition 8, which amends the California constitution to limit marriage between a man and a woman, was recently passed by voters. Although California was not the first state to do so, it has probably been the most prominent and controversial. Some of Hollywood’s denizens – including John C. Reilly, Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris and Allison Janney – have responded with musical humor: