Well, I've bought my new computer for this year.
I've been buying them at about the rate of one per year, even though I don't actually need a new one that often. It's a weakness I've come to terms with.
Early last year, I found myself needing to carry something with me that could run Windows. I had an Apple Powerbook, but it was from before the change to Intel chips, and it ran Windows very poorly. I wanted to get another Mac for this purpose, because 90% of the time I'd rather use OS X. The new MacBooks had just come out; I bought one, but it had some problems, and I returned it. Besides, I really wanted something lighter than the MacBook.
Still needing to carry something that could run Windows, and wanting something small and light, I got a very tiny Sony PC with a 5" screen. It did what I needed, but it was difficult getting used to such a small screen.
After about a year of using that, I was still dissatisfied. Another need I had was to take notes at meetings, and I couldn't find an external keyboard for the Sony that was small enough to carry around, and worked well enough. After trying several external keyboards, I realized I really wanted a different laptop.
Enter the MacBook Air. This was around April of this year, and the Air had been out for a few months, so I was satisfied that the early kinks should mostly be worked out. I did some research and looked at one in the store - it would do just what I needed, and was phenomenally light, so I got one.

In researching the Air, though, I ran across a phenomenon I'd seen before, but never to this degree: a lot of people really hate this computer. Vehemently. As if it were an ex-lover.
From what I've seen on web forums, this vitriol usually takes one of several forms.
One type is the person who needs an optical drive and several USB ports with them all the time (I can't imagine what they're carrying around), and judges the machine based on its shortcomings in meeting his needs. We all do that, of course, but most of us don't go around the internet insisting that everyone else should refuse to purchase this machine that doesn't fit our own needs.
Another is the type who claims that the only reason someone would buy a Mac is to "look cool". These people usually talk a lot about coffee shops, and seem to believe that Mac users spend all their time there. They tend to make this argument against any Apple product, but the Air seems to bring out the worst in them. Their argument is baloney, of course. I don't doubt there are some people who buy Apple products because they think it enhances their status, but I'm not one of them. I spend my whole day at work fighting with a Windows PC, and the last thing I want to do when I get home is face the same problems. I enjoy the ease of use and reliability, and status doesn't enter into it at all.
Then there's the Spec-Counter. These people think that the only value in a computer is in the sum of its hardware specs, and nothing else. The lightness, ease of use and reliability I mentioned before don't enter into the equation for them, and they can't begin to understand why someone would buy an Air, given so many cheaper Windows computers with more impressive specs on paper.

So, all of these people are trolling the web, actively trying to prevent others from buying the MacBook Air. Why? To what end?

Anyway, I got one, and I couldn't be happier with it. It's light enough to carry everywhere, I can use my cell phone as a modem for it, and if I want more ports, I can hook it up to a hub at home. It has a full size screen and keyboard - I was getting tired of squinting at that 5" screen. It syncs with my other Macs and my iPod, so I only have to enter things like calendar events once.

That's my computer story for this year. I can't think of why I would want a different computer next year, but nevertheless, I'll probably have another boring story about a new computer by then.

I've posted here a few times about climate change, but I don't think I've ever really explained what convinced me that we need to take action.
Most people are now coming around to that view by a kind of mass culture osmosis, but it kicked into high gear for me a couple of years ago, when Al Gore came to town.

Like everyone, I'd been aware that climate change was expected to become a problem, but I hadn't really internalized the fact that it's a problem right now.
(I'm going to mostly use the term "climate change" for the phenomenon, because I think it does a better job of conveying why it's a problem. I've heard differing things about which political side prefers which term, so please understand that I don't intend for either term to carry a political meaning.)
Anyway, I was working the Bus Project table at the line to get in to Mr. Gore's presentation, and once it was about to start, we went in to see it. It was funny and terrifying at the same time. The one thing that I really took away from there was the graph showing the correlation between temperature and CO2 concentration. They march in lockstep with each other for eons, and then CO2 goes off the scale in the last few decades. It's hard to look at that graph and not be afraid that temperatures may rise quite a bit.

There are people who will argue that none of this means the Earth is warming. They make various assumptions to get from here to there, but their basic argument seems to be, "You aren't 100% certain that the rise in CO2 will cause warming, therefore it won't."
Looking at that graph gives me an idea which way to bet, though.
The best argument I've seen that this may not occur is in Skeptic magazine, where there's an article arguing that the uncertainties about the future direction of temperature are greater than the certainties, leading to the conclusion that we can't reliably predict what's going to happen. In the same issue, though, there's a very convincing point-by-point breakdown of why we should expect warming to happen.

The main reason I expect it to occur, sooner and to a greater degree than is predicted, doesn't really have anything to do with those arguments. It has to do with the news.
It certainly seems that warming is happening right now. Every so often, there's an article about another ice shelf breaking off, or another species abandoning its habitat because of the change, or how the permafrost is melting.
Think about that: a region that people saw fit to name "permafrost", presumably because no one could remember a time when it wasn't frozen, is melting. I take that as a piece of evidence.

There's something else about those news stories, though. The scientists who are interviewed are always shocked by how quickly the event happened. There's always a statement about how this wasn't expected for another 20 years, or something similar.
This leads me to believe that one of two things is true. Either the scientists aren't adjusting their predictions by the increased rate of warming, in which case they're pretty incompetent, and warming is happening quicker that they're predicting. Or, they are adjusting their predictions for the acceleration in warming, and it's still happening even faster.
Neither of those possibilities is pleasant.

So, even though it isn't 100% certain that our spewing of CO2 is causing all this, I think there's enough reason to bet on it. And since we have the ability to cut our carbon footprint, we should do it.
Yes, it will mean that everyone can't drive SUVs anymore, and maybe that we can't travel quite as much, and will have to use more local resources.
However, we spent a long part of our history behaving that way, and I don't see why we can't make a few adjustments to go part of the way back to that. It's a matter of managing people's desires and expectations. Maybe the sort of thing a leader would do. Maybe Obama will be the guy to do it.

I didn't bother watching the Tony Awards last night. I thought about it, but I watch very little TV anymore, and when I saw the show wasn't in high definition, I passed it by.
That was a mistake.

My taste in musicals has evolved gradually, to the point where some shows that I didn't particularly like when I was younger are my favorites now. Gypsy is one of those. I think the first time I saw it was the movie with Rosalind Russell, when I was about 10 years old. I didn't think much of it, as you would expect from a child of that age. A few years later, when I was 12 or 13, I saw it on Broadway with Angela Lansbury. Ms. Lansbury may be many things, but Mama Rose she's not. It didn't make much of an impression on me.

Fast forward twenty years. I'd seen the movie a few more times, but I still wasn't in love with it. As I found out eventually, some of the important numbers were excised from the movie, like "Together", and Rosalind Russell isn't really a singer, which hurts the movie. Natalie Wood was priceless, though, as always.
Around that time, a new production was done for television, with Bette Midler as Rose and Peter Riegert as Herbie. This is a role Midler was born to play, and seeing this version rekindled interest in the show for me. I finally realized how powerful the story is, how good the music is, and how meaty the acting roles are for those who can fill them.

By now, it seems that every female Broadway star eventually plays Mama Rose. Bernadette Peters did it a few years ago. I think the world of Ms. Peters, but it's hard for me to see her as Rose, although she got some very good reviews.
And now comes Patti LuPone. She's a legitimate Broadway legend, having made her name in the original production of Evita. Had she never done anything else of note, she would have been long remembered for that. But she's been in the trenches all these years, wowing them every night in shows like Anything Goes and Sweeney Todd.
She's always been excellent at playing strong characters, like Eva Peron, and when I heard that she'd be starring in Gypsy, I was intrigued. I just forgot that there would certainly be a performance from the show in last night's Tony Awards. Which there was.

Luckily, some enterprising soul has uploaded the performance to YouTube, for as long as it lasts there. If you're not familiar with the show, this scene takes place at a train station, where Rose's youngest daughter, the star of their failing vaudeville show, has just left the act. Rose, the pathological stage mother, now has only her older daughter, Louise, and her boyfriend Herbie. Herbie has just suggested that they all leave show business and settle down as the scene begins.

Much has been made of the support Hillary Clinton received in the Appalachian states during the primary season. The votes she received in that region were a major factor in keeping her total near Obama's nationally.
The problem for Obama, I think, lies in the fact that those weren't pro-Clinton votes so much as they were anti-Obama votes. That is a deeply racist part of our country, and it's a problem Obama will have to overcome in the general election. You can't convince me that the 2-1 or 3-1 support Clinton received in those states was because they're a bastion of forward-looking feminism - they're not, although apparently the people there are less afraid of a woman president than they are of a black president. The Democrats are, at least.
Another argument can be made that neither Clinton nor Obama would win those states in the general, so the point is moot. Maybe so, but the question remains, are there enough racists left to derail Obama's candidacy?

I lived in central Pennsylvania for ten years. There's a lot of racism there, and a lot of it is subtle. I'll give you an example.
Where I worked, they piped in one of the local radio stations, run by Clear Channel. This station played "the greatest rock and roll of all time". (My favorite thing about that slogan was that invariably, after they said it, they would play "Piano Man" by Billy Joel, a song that has no relation whatsoever to rock and roll. But I digress.)
This station, which played the greatest rock and roll of all time, never played a song fronted by a black performer. Never once. Okay, there was one exception. They played "Easy Lover" by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey a few times, and then stopped. Normally, they played every song in their playlist ad nauseum, so they must have seen a photo of Philip Bailey somewhere and realized they'd slipped up.
The real giveaway was the songs they would play that had been covered by more than one performer. When they played "All Along the Watchtower", it was the Bob Dylan version, rather than the far more popular Jimi Hendrix version. When they played "Soul Man", it was the Blues Brothers' cover, not the Sam and Dave original. However, when they played the Blues Brothers' other hit, "Gimme Some Lovin'", they played the original Steve Winwood version. This happened with every song you could think of.

That radio station is a small thing, and might seem insignificant, but segregation (de facto, not institutional) and other problems were also rampant there.
One of the best things we can do to fight this, of course, is to get Obama elected. Maybe it'll prove that those people are a dying breed.

The Clinton campaign did a lot of illogical, self-serving and non-reality-based things during the primary season, and I'm not going to rehash them all here.
The one that bothers me the most, though, and I've spoken about before, is their contention that the delegates from the non-sanctioned primaries in Michigan and Florida should be awarded to them, and that if this doesn't happen, the Democratic voters in those states will have been disenfranchised.
The matter was settled last weekend, with the compromise on those delegates, but during the meeting, the Clinton side continued to make that disingenuous argument.
One of the best indicators that the Clinton campaign didn't care about all the voters (aside from their claim that caucus states don't count) is that they were utterly unconcerned about the people who didn't go out and vote. Their argument amounted to telling those voters, "You know that primary you didn't vote in, because we said it wasn't going to count? Well, we've decided to count it after all, so those people who didn't listen to us will get a voice, and you won't. Hope you don't mind."
The only way to count the results fairly would have been to hold new elections, which didn't happen for various reasons. There was never a real possibility of the delegates not being seated, so the compromise works out okay.
That doesn't bother me - it's the fact that a group of people was going to be disenfranchised no matter what the solution was, and the Clinton people chose to ignore that, and claim that only the people who voted would be disenfranchised.
I doubt that I'll criticize the Clinton campaign very much after today, because there's really no further point in it, but I had to vent one more time about this tactic of cherry-picking the pieces of reality you want people to see, and pretending the rest isn't there.