Kerry goes higher

Les & the Kerry clown

Today we went to "recycle Bush". We brought our recyclable wine bottles, beer cans, plastic water bottles etc. to the Flores Recycling center on Sunset Boulevard. The total amount of redemption - 86 cents - we donated to the Kerry campaign. We also got some ballons and other stuff from the very friendly coordinator Jennifer (thanks, Jen!) for our upcoming John Kerry House Party on Sunday (link). And Leslie - of course - bonded immediately with the quirky clown on stilts. For Kerry's victory - size doesn't matter!

Secretly hold detainees at Guantanamo

Why doesn't that surprise me, part 2: According to the L.A. Times the Pentagon aimed to hold detainees at Guantanamo Bay in secret - "for intelligence reasons" - despite pledging yearly reviews for all prisoners held by the U.S. military.

Surf cities catch an arts wave

Artsy surfboards in the streets of Hermosa Beach

Note to myself: I have to go to Hermosa Beach where the exhibition "Surfin' Hermosa 2004" opened today. Throughout the city 20 artsy surfboards are displayed - each of the 6-foot-tall foam and fiberglass boards apparently features a different and unique design. And while I am there I also should visit the highly praised Surfing Museum in Huntington Beach. There is this great international surfing exhibit going on which shows a great variety of surfboards, surf posters, brochures, T-shirts and other artifacts from all over the world. And over the weekend I will finally watch the legendary movie "The Endless Summer" on DVD. Life is a beach...

Nation of bloggers & surfers

Two interesting internet facts: According to comScore Media Metrix the number of monthly unique visitors to three leading operators of Weblogs - Blogspot.com, Blogrolling.com, Typepad.com - jumped 61 percent to 5.4 million in May, up from 3.4 million in last November. That traffic includes the visitor count for all the personal weblogs these companies host. And as the Pew Internet & American Life Project writes, there are 128 million people online today - or 68 percent of the U.S. population. That is almost twice a much as in the late '90s.

Oops! Bush files destroyed

Why doesn't that surprise me? Microfilm records related to President Bush's service in the Air National Guard three decades ago were "accidentally destroyed" when the military tried to improve its files, the Pentagon said. George W.'s whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue, with critics accusing him of shirking his duty.

Ipod goes fashion

Retro-chic or fancy & stylish - that's the question du jour for Ipod lovers. As part of its spring line, fashion label Gucci is selling a $195 carrying case designed specifically for Apple Computer's popular music player. At that price, the ebony-and-beige, coated-canvas case costs nearly as much as an iPod itself. For those who want to dress down their favorite MP3 player Retropod (pictures) is a must-have. It is a case that hides the iPod inside the outer shell of a 1980s-looking Sony Sport Walkman case. It might be a good deterrent against reported iPod-jackings. But the $100 price tag means retro-chic does not come cheap.

A daily dosis beach

Since we're living not THAT close to the pacific anymore (at night I dream of the good things of our former home in Venice Beach) and I can't go for a stroll in the sand every morning I decided to get my daily dosis beach via cyberspace. Why not start out which the live web camera from Hermosa Beach...

Our John Kerry House Party!

Finally! We set the date for our first fundraiser event for John Kerry. Our House Party is going to happen Sunday, July 18th from 4 PM at our home in the Highland Park area (map). We sent out over 30 invitations but we'll be happy if even more people show up. We'll serve wine and cheese and other hors d'oeuvres and look forward to exciting discussions with other supporters of a change in the White House. Join us! For more information check out our House Party website and my Kerry supporter homepage.

The Peanuts fix is overdue

Confession: I loooove the Peanuts. Snoopy has been my favorite since childhood. And for years we have been watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" during the holidays. So why not having a Peanuts fix in the summer season and go to see the "World According to Snoopy - On Ice" show at the famous entertainment park Knott's Berry Farm? I also want to see the highly praised Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. Apparently there is this great exhibition "Literature and Movies in Peanuts" coming up. Good grief! (Plus: the official Peanuts website, a comprehensive guide to Charlie Brown & Co. and a fabulous fan page)

Michael the Blogger

Popdex crawls over 14,000 sites daily to determine the most popular links on the Internet. And guess which website is among the Top 3? Michael Moore's brand new weblog (which was launched three days ago). In the meanwhile his movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" broke the $60 million mark at the box office.

Bush about Kenny Boy: Zip it

During a briefing with the media today, a visibly upset President George W. Bush refused to answer questions he was asked about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth Lay - and stomped off the stage. According to the White House Lay has been a simple "supporter", but in reality the controversial businessman was not only but also a personal friend of the Bushes, but also a close adviser and fund-raiser for Bush and his father. The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit group, said the Lays had given $139,500 to George W. Bush's political campaigns over the years. Plus: The investigative website The Smoking Gun offers access to tons of original memos and correspondence between George W. and "Kenny Boy".

Looking for a job in Lala Land

I am looking for a full time/part time job in Los Angeles and I am open to anything. I have 10+ years background in European journalism and communications and am good in conceptual work, (copy) editing, proofreading, translating (English-German), research, administration, computer and internet savvy. Check out my resumeand some examples of my published news stories (in German).

David Mamet rules

Last night we watched the political thriller "Spartan" on DVD (btw: Netflix is great). Another fabulous and fascinating movie by David Mamet (biography, filmography, story, interview). But my all-time favorite flick by this guy is still "Glengarry Glen Ross" (musical soundbites)...

The political power of weblogs

Phantastic! What started out as a way to have a cyber-rant or just share a personal thought, has become cutting edge media with a role to play even in the US presidential election race. For the first time, weblogs will be accredited media at the major party conventions when John Kerry and President George W. Bush will be officially named the Democratic and Republican candidates. The Democratic Party has decided some of the 15,000 press passes will be assigned to bloggers at its July 26-28 convention. Meanwhile the Democratics have launched their own Weblog to cover the event. The Republican National Committee has not yet chosen the accredited blogger for its convention starting August 30, but will announce them soon. "This is a real landmark for the legitimacy of the blogger and a testament to their growing influence", said Jonathan Dube, who blogs about online journalism. Plus: Cyber Journalist lists the bloggers covering the Democratic convention. Among them are some of my favorite online news sources Political Wire (receives 105000 visits a day), Daily Kos and Talk Left.

Great new restaurant

For Les: According to Daily Candy we have to check out this new restaurant in Silver Lake.

Bush's buddy Kenny indicted

Finally! I already thought it's never going to happen. But now it did: Former Enron Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth Lay has been indicted for his role in the company's collapse in 2001. Charges could include fraud, securities fraud or insider trading. Lay is the biggest fish landed yet by the Justice Department in its long-running investigation into Enron's stunning collapse. Remember the Enron case? Who wouldn't. Still a little refresher course:
- Enron was transformed from a sleepy pipeline operator into a Wall Street darling that was the U.S.' biggest energy trader. The company's market value catapulted from roughly $2 billion to $80 billion. Its market value was $41 million at the time of Lay's indictment.
- Enron has also been tied to the California energy crisis of 2001. According to internal memos, Enron profited by manipulating the unregulated electricity trading market in California using techniques such as phantom power transfers and megawatt laundering. The company used undisclosed reserves to keep as much as $1.5 billion in trading profits off its books.
- In 2001, Lay sold 491,000 shares of Enron stock, clearing $16.1 million after exercising stock options. All told, Enron officials made nearly $117 million on stock sales in 2001. Thousands of Enron employees, meanwhile, were forbidden from selling the shares they had purchased for the retirement accounts.
- Lay was a close adviser and fund-raiser for President Bush and his father, earning him the presidential nickname of "Kenny Boy." Enron contributed $300,000 to the current president's inauguration celebration.
- Lay had even been considered a contender to become Treasury or Energy secretary in the Bush administration. He is thought to have been one of many energy executives who spoke with Vice President Dick Cheney in a still-secret process to craft a national energy policy in the spring of 2001.
- Lay is the 30th person to be charged in the Enron probe, including 22 from the company and eight from banks, financial firms or accounting firms that did business with Enron.
- Lay told the NYT last month: "I did nothing criminal."

Europe's long siesta is over

"The Europeans have created a leisure society, while the Americans have created a work society," said Klaus F. Zimmermann, the president of the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. "But our model does not work anymore. We are in the process of rethinking it." A great article in the New York Times explains why Europe - "a victim of chronic economic stagnation, deteriorating public finances and competition from low-wage countries" - says good-bye to its long siesta and increases the working hours for its residents. FYI: Europeans work an average of 10 percent fewer hours a year than Americans. Germans, with the lightest schedule, work about 18 percent fewer hours.

Mega trend: Life caching

Interesting! The website Trendwatching.com runs a bigger story about a new, emerging trend called 'life caching': collecting, storing and displaying one's entire life, for private use, or for friends, family, even the entire world to peruse. Trendwatching writes: "The life caching trend owes much to bloggers: ever since writing and publishing one's diary has become as easy as typing in a Blogger.com (editor's note: the software provider of my weblog), millions of people have taken to digitally indexing their thoughts, rants and God knows what else; all online, disclosing the virtual caches of their daily lives, exciting or boring. Next came moblogging, connecting camera phones to online diaries, allowing not only for more visuals to be added to blogs, but also for real-time, on the go postings of experiences and events. (..) This Life caching introduction is just the tip of the iceberg. Obviously, providing consumers with the software, hardware and storage space to start building, unlocking and showcasing their 'lifelogs' should be high on your priority list if your business is in any way related to the world of photography, publishing, video, music, SMS, instant messaging, search, blogging, cell phones, email, memory sticks, PDAs etc." (BTW: Caching is a expression from the computer world and defines the process of storing remote data locally designed to reduce network transfers. The cache is the ‘storeroom’ where the data is kept.)

Life caching - business is waiting

It seems to be a given to say: where a trend emerges - there are business people waiting to cash in. A lot of products are already waiting for the life caching aficionados. For example:
- Nokia just launched its Lifeblog service: software that automatically arranges all messages, images, notes, videos and sound clips that consumers capture with their mobile phones,
- Microsoft is working on a badge-sized wearable camera called SenseCam which captures up to 2000 VGA images per day. In addition, sensor data such as movement, light level and temperature is recorded every second. The camera is part of Microsoft's MyLifeBits program, an experiment in lifetime storage.
- Samsung's current "Show Your World" U.S. ad campaign urges camera phone users to record their daily lives and turn them into movies. In Samsung's own words: "the most vibrant way to capture and share life experiences with family and friends." In other words: The camera phone will become the centerpiece of life caching around the globe.
- Apple's is developping a new version of its mega-popular iPod with up to 50 Gigabyte of storage space. Which means even the biggest music fanatics will be able to forever build, store and carry their entire life collection of music. After the successful launch of iTunes in Europe Apple could go for the next level and turn the iPod into a camera phone. And integrate it with Apple's ever expanding software iLife....
- The famous Swiss company Victorinox launched an army knife with 64 (or 128) Megabite USB memory stick. More storage also in watches and lots of other products. In Asia key cord memory sticks and mini-MP3 players are the new fashion accessory: with sticks storing up to 1 GB of content, consumers can wear their entire 'digital life files' around their neck, from music to movies to documents to photos to presentations. It's life caching going mobile: with sticks, MP3 players and camera phones boasting increased storage capacities, consumers will soon be able to show, play and share their entire LIFE with whomever, wherever.
Wow! The only question remains: Do we really want that?

The creative urge of the "generation content"

And, by the way: a trend also needs a target group. And heck, here it is: the "Generation C" (a.k.a. content). According to Trendwatching.com, "the generation C phenomenon captures the tsunami of consumer generated 'content' that is building on the Web, adding tera-peta bytes of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis". And what's fuelling this trend? "The creative urges each consumer undeniably possesses. We're all artists, but until now we neither had the guts nor the means to go all out." Ok, got it.

Howard Dean - up and moving again

He fell from the highest of political heights. But now Howard Dean is up and moving again, writes the New York magazine.

U.S. media ignores children abuse in Iraqi prisons

I'm shocked. Here is a highly disturbing peace of news - and NONE of the big media in the United States covers it! More than 100 children being held in prisons in Iraq were arrested and suffered abuse from U.S. and coalition soldiers, according to the Red Cross, reports the german news magazine Spiegel. The report affirms that the abusive episodes also took place in Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad prison where other cases of torture were reported. “Between January and May of this year, we registered 107 children in total during 19 visits to six different prisons,” said Florian Westphal, International Red Cross spokesman, in an interview. These were prisons under the control of the occupation forces, Westphal emphasized, adding that the number of detained children could be even higher.
I am speechless. I hardly can find other follow-ups on this report. The Cuban news site Digital Gramma mentions it briefly. And the Norway Post reports that the leader of the Norwegian Parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee calls for those politically responsible in the US to step down. Plus: The UNICEF knew about this children abuse already in May.

Kerry/Edwards - "a new team for a new America"

Good news to start the week with: Presidential candidate John Kerry (political views) picks Senator John Edwards (biography, political views) as his running mate. Funny thing: While the website of John Kerry immediatley started to promote the "new team for a new America" briefly after the news broke this morning, the campaign logo of John Edwards' website still claims that he is still running for President.

Me - an internet broker?

A couple of days ago I was invited for an job interview at the internet brokerage company Global Futures (ecclectic management). They were interested in hiring me. Do I want to become a broker in the day trading business (warnings from the SEC)? No.

Relaxing Holiday

Home, sweet home. For once we didn't join any Fourth of July parties. We were just hanging out at home, relaxing, reading and barbecueing. Later on we watched the fireworks of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena from distance and had a yummie ice cream at Foster's.