the White House will be adorned by a downright moron

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

-H.L. Mencken
Baltimore Evening Sun, 26 July 1920

Podcasting is here, things are gonna change

Hard to get my head around the potentially massive impact but I have a gut instinct that Podcasting is gonna be huge. Basically Podcasting takes an audio streem, combines it with Really Simple Syndication, known to you acronym buffs as rss, and thus allowing you the user to create a stream of audio based on the providers you subscribe to. This could be say talk radio shows, dj mixes, live band sets, comedy routines, etc. etc. etc. It has been made easier than ever by, who would have guessed it, ex MTV V-Jay Adam Curry.

Now my prediction is that someone will expand it to enclose video and you can cancel your cable TV subscription.

Could our grandparents conceive of

Could our grandparents conceived of the internet, the web, or what the web would synthesize. Another good music site, after betterpropaganda, is magnitune. The site is not the easiest to navigate, or I should say not that easy to find just the right music.

Magnatune Remixed is a set of guys who took some magnitune tracks and made a mix, hopefully more people will wade through the tens of thousands of tracks and make mixes.

On the digital photography front is flickr, an online photo-sharing service. You can browse pretty pictures for hours. Be sure to check out there groups where people file their photos into collective categories.