Been Awhile

Hey hey. Long time no post. Well, June wasn't a great month and July was a bit up and down, and I just never did feel like sitting down and writing much. I did keep a running list of things to post about, though, many of which are now not so pressing. Some topics were:

- That series in the Post on Cheney entitled Angler, which I found via Chris Hayes, and which Dan eventually posted on too.

- Another disgusting example of big business trying to ruin something good. In this case, good ol' chocolate. See Chocolate Fake.

- iPhone...the mania continues. It's amazing what hackers have got the thing doing already. And a new iMac came out last week. Up next: new iPods!

- Gordon Brown came to America! That was excting! See also, Beckham!

- David Pogue posted on how bad US cell carriers are. No surprise, but still, their gall is impressive. Get a load of this quote Pogue recounts:

As longtime Pogue’s Posts readers know, my biggest cellular pet peeve is the endless recording you hear when you reach someone’s voicemail: “To page this person, press 2 now. You may leave a message at the tone. When you finish recording, you may hang up. Or press 5 for more options”—and so on.

At the conference, I asked one cellular executive if that message is deliberately recorded slowly and with as many words as possible, to eat up your airtime and make more ARPU for the cell carrier. I was half kidding—but he wasn’t fooling around in his reply: “Yes.”

And finally, one more disgusting bit of news from last month. It seems that the former Surgeon General was frequently gagged from addressing important public health issues if they didn't accord with the current administration's political considerations. And to boot, "Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches." Brilliant!

That's all for now. Just wanted to clear some backlog. But I'll be back soon with more on what's been going on here in hot-and-humid-land.