UPDATE: My love for Freakonomics has turned into an Uncrate post.

I’ve read several books written by Seth Godin recently and have enjoyed them all. Today on his blog Godin talked about seeing Steven Levitt present at a conference. Levitt is the author of the wonderful book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. If you haven’t read it already, go out and buy it tonight. I think I plowed through it in half a day because it was so interesting.

It’s a joy to see two authors of books I love talk about eachother. Godin’s latest book is called All Marketers are Liars and is partly about the lie we (consumers) tell ourselves. Fiji Water does taste better than Dasani… at least in my own head. Fiji Water has way more Google citations, so it must not be just me. Since reading the book about a month ago I have framed so many businesses with that paradigm.

Anyone else read either of these?

Flickr user Alexander Chadwick took a photo of people evacuating the Tube after the bombing this morning. It is being plastered over the networks and web (BBC, CNN, AP, etc). In this post of a screencap of his photo on TV, AlexCHAD says his lungs were burning. I bet!

I wonder what kind of (phone) cam took the photo?

Viva citizen journalism.

Florida can’t buy good buzz. But bad news? That comes in buckets. Last year it was the ample supply of wind, this year it’s sharks. Today there was the third attack this week. None of the attacks have been close to here though thanks to red tide. Said tide may have killed all the bait fish that sharks normally eat too, but what do I know?

[photo via]

"The rich should pay more in Social Security taxes."

They already do. Besides paying at least $14,860 dollars a year in FICA, most "rich people" are employers and thus pay half of their staff’s employment taxes.

How to fix social security? Extend the minimum age for benefits. It’s not reasonable to assume today’s workers need to support yesterday’s workers for 1/3rd of their lives.

Wow! Check out that stunning youth vote that the internet drove to the polls! I couldn’t help but chuckle at the hype this cycle. Sorry Puff Daddy/MTV/RockTheVote, the kids didn’t buy it. Not all young people are that easy to train (besides the ones that bought Ashlee Simpson’s CD…).

Besides GW winning, the GOP keept the Senate and the House. A great day all around.

I think the history books will be looking at the role of participatory journalism and its failure to really accomplish anything. Sure, there were a lot of page views, money raised and curse words uttered… But did it really make a difference? The Dems owned the internet scene and now may not even have a Senate minority leader.

We’ll have a week or two of more media hype, but it should be interesting.

…. Was with a LCD touch screen panel. Oh how that will sound outdated when I tell my grand children (”What?! No retina scan? But how did they know it was you grandpa?”). The UI was really great, no ambiguity in who I voted for.

Just to strive for some sort of eqaulity, here’s a clip from the debate on Friday. This is John Kerry pulling a Bush.

Download John Kerry Can’t Find That Word MP3

Here’s my rough translation:

“And I believe that if we have the option, that scientists tell us we do, of curing Parkinsons, curing Diabetes, curing uhh, uhh, uh, a a a you know some kind of a uh uh of uh uh…”

Shocking that both candidates are human and can have brain farts.

(I am sure that anytime JK stumbles over words it’s because he’s too worried about the current policies of the Bush admisistration to think… Or maybe it was another effect from that flag football game. I am sure the PR flacks have some excuse.)

Are you going to watch the Presidential Debate tomorrow night? It starts at 9pm ET. I will be there even though I know who I will vote for.

This could be one of the more interesting years to watch the debates–Bush is known to be very “to the point” while Kerry is all about nuance and massaging the point. I wonder if our 30-second culture will be more tuned into Bush because of this.

It’s make it or break it time. Exciting!

“Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry told voters in America’s Dairyland on Monday that President Bush had a secret plan that would hurt milk producers after the election.” - AP

The secret out, 2% is actually 2.05%. What did he know and when did he know it?

I just combined some tracking charts for Hurricane Jeanne and Hurricane Frances… Oh man are they similar. Feel free to pass this around. Scary!

Click on the thumbnail to zoom

From what I have heard this is the closest two hurricanes have landed in this short of time (since we’ve kept track).