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Inauguration · I’m not an American but I’ve certainly enjoyed the political theatre this last couple of years. Yesterday morning I was walking through a hotel lobby in San Jose at 9AM (noon in Washington) and there on the big TV in the restaurant was the inauguration. The lobby had emptied as the staff crowded in to watch. Then everyone joined in a big round of applause. I was touched, but it was complicated ...
[7 comments]
[7 comments]
Dear America · I must open with heartfelt thanks to all of you for the passion and drama and rhetoric and personality you’ve offered each other and the world, in the political-theatre context, for the last couple of years. Unless the tools of Statistics have suddenly become empty shells, Mr. Obama will be your forty-fourth President; I’ve said my piece on why this is probably a good thing. Here’s some more ...
[13 comments]
[13 comments]
Giving Thanks · This is the day where those of us around the world who are in the US-centric high tech business, but not Americans, give thanks for the fact that our phones are silent and for the certainty that no major high-tech announcements or initiatives will occur. Facetiousness aside, this is, as Dan Gillmor says, America’s best holiday. There’s a lot to be said for a major civic celebration that has nothing to do with theologically-significant births or deaths that happened millennia ago in the Middle East. Here’s a charming, very personal, small-scale narrative about remembering—and, implicitly, giving thanks.
