So what’s the bottom line story? Simple. Sanford is in love. Palin is in pain. Sometimes what it seems to be is what it is.

I’m no fan of Sanford or Palin. I won’t go into details, but one problem I have with both of them, relevant to this discussion, is that they both seem so insulated from their constituents. Both show signs of narcissism, and (at least with respect to Sanford), I’ve come to doubt that they have any ability to connect with individuals outside of political purposes. In Sanford’s case, I have been proven wrong, and quite to the extreme. I saw him as an “everyman” while watching him ramble on about his infidelity. I’m not saying every man cheats, nor that it is excusable, but an affair and a very public apology/longing really brings out the humanity in people, right?

As for Palin, as much as she has been maligned in the public eye (and I’m not saying that isn’t all without merit), it is indeed possible that she is ready to say “the hell with it” and move on. The unwillingness to take her ramblings at face value might be a double standard (we’re led to believe, in many instances, that she simply must be shrewdly calculating her moves, something women in public life seem to be accused of more often than men). I believe she’s frustrated. She might be calculating, and this might be an early move towards 2012, but who cares? She wants out. But if she believes Alaska is better off without her, why can’t we agree that America would be, too, and forget any sort of 2012 run?

        

We often think of Iran and the Middle East as a far-off place that will never be settled. I’m sure we would probably all agree that Ahmadinejad is a problem, and that Iran could use a better government, but that’s a cool observation made from our skimming of headlines. Here, in upstate SC, what sort of connections do we have to the place? What would push us a little further into the fray, and make us follow the news as if we cared? Certainly, we all care about Iraq and Afghanistan, but our men & women are over there in harm’s way right now. Of course we care. People we know and support are being shot at.

Elections aren’t a foreign thing, nor are rigged elections. I don’t believe for a minute that Ahmadinejad won. Protests aren’t foreign things either. So you have people protesting a bogus election. People protest in America all the time, and (barring the 1960s), most everyone nowadays is able to drive back home after the protest and have dinner with the family. In Iran, people are dying because they’re protesting a bogus election. Neda, the girl in the video, went out with her dad to exercise what we consider a basic human right. Next thing you know, she’s covered in blood and her dad is hysterical. Folks, this is not excusable.

We can’t go over there and join in protests, nor am I suggesting that we should. If you don’t feel any sense of pain for what’s going on halfway across the world right now, fine. But if you’ve ever protested anything (and we had a wave of that stuff over the past few months here) and not been killed, thank God, and pray for the families in Iran (such as Neda’s) that are caught up in this mess. Pray for the country. (I know there are people of different faiths over there, but don’t we still believe that God has the WHOLE WORLD in his hands?) Start following the news stories. Join a Facebook group in support.

Most of us enjoyed a good bit of comfort today with our fathers. Many fathers in Iran are mourning the loss of their kids, who were shot in the streets. If you’ve never paid attention to world news, now is certainly the time to perk up your ears.

        

Those ads are often met with counter-ads that point out how rude and insulting it is to expect folks to do such work for absolutely nothing. While I’ve thought about doing that myself, I realized that it would be a waste of space (no better than the fluff ads themselves, right?). No, my blog is a better place to deal with this.

I’ll be blunt. If you’re going to ask someone to edit a two-page journal entry for you, that’s one thing. But to ask someone to edit a 100,000 word manuscript “for credit in the book” is absolutely insulting. Yes, writers & editors have an appreciation for the written word, but we are fond of money just the same. More importantly, to ask someone to perform a service without due compensation is a flat-out scam. I wouldn’t ask an upstart plumber to fix a leaky pipe in my house and expect him to want to do it “for the experience.”

        

Fast-forward to today. My wife & I stopped by the local Starbucks. We prefer independent joints, but the spring semester is finished at Clemson and the hours of other (independent) coffee shops are spotty. I ordered an iced mocha. I haven’t had one of those in quite some time, having developed a taste for the simpler iced latte. As I sat and enjoyed the drink, I started thinking about the summer of 2003.

Why? There’s a Starbucks across the street from the old college library in Charleston, and I would often walk across Calhoun to get an iced mocha. The taste became forever associated with that summer, those hours in the cool library studying Latin and listening to classic Chicago, then walking out into the sun and muggy air of Charleston. Iced espresso beverages vary in taste, and I know I’ve had an iced mocha between now and 2003, but not one from Starbucks. Taking that first sip from the straw really brought me back to a great summer.

        

A few posts ago, I wondered if the new iPod Shuffle would become Apple’s own version of the MemoryStick. Proprietary technology has its place, but when you’re dealing with memory or headphones, it’s best to play nice. In the last issue of MacWorld, Dan Moren has similar misgivings:

Alas, no more. The decision to put the controls on the headphones means that unless Apple opens up the controls to third parties, you can’t even play music on the iPod without using Apple’s own earbuds. What happens if, as is also not unheard of, Apple’s stock earbuds break? Your iPod is completely useless until you get another pair of approved headphones. This is not Sparta, this is madness.

        

When facebook did the first major redesign, I was pleased. That put me in an initial minority. Others complained until they finally accepted it, and life went on. This time around, though, I am definitely in the majority. My objections started in the previous version, wherein “applications” multiplied exponentially. The clean interface was increasingly marred with requests for apps ranging from vampires to sports waves. My notification area gathered so many requests, one day I simply wiped them all out without even looking to see what they were about.

Why the hard feelings against apps? Personally, I find them counter-intuitive. Having seen friends’ MySpace pages, I appreciated facebook’s almost minimalist approach. Applications came along and began the slow morphing of facebooks’ clean interface into the visual hell that is MySpace. The core facebook features seemed to get less and less attention (and screen real estate) as the applications multiplied.

This most recent redesign has put the applications to the forefront and hidden more of the basic functions. Did the developers consult any usability experts in this process? Petitions have gone up, groups have been formed, and all the developers did was throw a bone (in the form of new preferences) to the users. This, from a “service” that would have us believe that the end users and our online experience are dearly important. If you believe that, I’m sure you still think that those posted photos of you drunk and half-naked in the front lawn of a frat house are private.

        

On the other hand, as Tom Reestman writes, mastering the new Shuffle still requires only three basic functions, it’s the most feature-rich Shuffle yet, and being able to store the 3G Shuffle on your person without having to keep pulling it out for control is a handy thing.

Rob Beschizza hints at the hesitation I share about the new 3G Shuffle: “…for today’s show, the part of Sony will be played by Apple.” When Sony introduced the MemoryStick, I worried about the proprietary technology. It’s turned out reasonably well, but isn’t it frustrating that you can’t use a MemoryStick in all digital cameras, and you can’t always use a XD/SD card in Sony digital cameras?

The bottom line here is that, like a Sony camera and MemoryStick, your iPod will be forever paired with a set of headphones to control it. Forget using your custom headphones, and if you lose the pair that came with the Shuffle, it’s not like you can just grab a spare set from another device. Further, the comparisons to the other iPod models that have headphone remotes don’t fly, because if you lost the headphone remote, you could still control the iPod by the buttons on the device.