Bruner Blog

Adrienne just called (6pm my time, midnight hers, in Budapest) to proudly tell me they’re Europeans officially at last. Fireworks were popping in the background. I think she was choked up. Hard to tell over the sound of whooping Hungarians behind her.

Gratualo! (Or however you spell it.)

Had to check my email this evening, expecting an important work-related email, and for reasons I won’t get into I had my computer with me, so I went to a Starbucks. Previously I had bought into their WiFi plan when it was a debit account kind of thing, so you basically paid for minutes as you used them. At that time, I juiced up my account for $50, which I think was the basic option, and over the course of several months, I’d pop in and draw in down half and hour here and there as needed.

Now, they’ve got a new pricing plan, whereby you can only pay either $30/month subscription (I don’t use it nearly often enough for that) or $10 for a 24 hour period. I felt it was important enough that I had to pony it up, but not without deciding to blog about how angry I was about it.

I really don’t understand why the hell the charge for WiFi at all, frankly. I saw a story once — but can’t find it now — about how Starbucks actually loses money on WiFi, as the whole billing and support infrastructure is so time consuming for their partner T-Mobile that it’s a net loss. Why not just give it away free, on an as-is basis (i.e., no support), and just have a policy that people can’t sit at a table for more than half an hour or an hour without ordering something.

A cable modem or even a T1 line is a fairly negligible expense for one of their stores on a monthly basis, and the router is a one-time $100 fee. If it gets people in the door, buys goodwill and keeps them buying coffee, they’d have a lot more of a margin than pretending they’re a tech company selling $10 a pop for Net access for a margin (splitting it with a partner) much less than what they make than selling coffee and sandwiches.

Grrr.

I’m listening to Dummy. Seminal, I think you’d have to call it. They’re simply so good, they should all be tragically dead or something. But they’re not. They’re alive and well and living in England and they’ve only put out two goddamn studio albums in their career and the last , and the last one was seven years ago.

I used to hunt around their fan sites and Rolling Stone and such looking for an update on when their next fabled album is due out, and it always ends in tears.

Anyone want to cheer me up with some lies about how it’s due out soon?

I heard a great interview this morning on WNYC, host Brian Lehrer interviewing
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor under Carter. He’s got a new book out, with a hell of a subtitle: The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership

That really struck me: we are not leaders in the world anymore. Leaders lead by example. We are little more, under Bush, anyway, than stupid bullies, pushing our weight around without thinking what is really in our best interest, much less anyone else’s. I was thinking about that — imagine having the U.S. for your boss. Where is the carrot? It’s all stick. We’d be the kind of boss all your colleagues would despise behind his back.

I’m up late and just now heard the interview repeated on WNYC, and I took some quick notes this time. Not necessarily an exact trascripts, but here are some fairly approximate paraphrases:

Terrorists are not our enemy. That’s a false premise. The IRA in Northern Ireland are not our enemy. The ETA is Basque Spain are not our enemies. Our enemies are radical Islamic terrorists, and most of them are coming from the Middle East.

[I think it was he whom I heard this moring also say something along these lines: “Terrorism is just a tactical form of warfare, it is not an enemy in itself. It is as if during World War II, we had not declared Hitler as the enemy but instead we declared that our enemy was the blitzkrieg.” I didn’t actually hear him say that again now in the rebroadcast, but I wasn’t paying close attention when it started this time. Anyway, I think it’s a brilliant insight, whoever said it.] …

You don’t plan a Democracy with bayonets. It has never been done that way anywhere else before….

I don’t think the people fighting us in Iraq are terrorists. That’s nonsense. Increasingly they’re nationalists, and that’s terrible….

[Stabilizing the world] by leadership is much more effective. If we try to do it by dominating, we’ll find ourself increasingly issolated…. We have never been as issolated and distrusted in the world as we are today, and we have to ask ourselves why.

It’s a short interview, 10 minutes. I’d highly recommend listening to the audio file online.

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How cool is this? It’s TrailerOn.

Periodically I rant on this blog about cars, and how I don’t especially like them. Sure, they’re useful sometimes, but I haven’t owned one in about 20 years, and I don’t mind being sanctimonious about it. But I have to admit, sometimes they’re useful, particularly when it comes to shopping.

I happen to live about five blocks from the Harlem Fairway, which most Manhattanites know to be one of the best markets in the city. Problem is, five blocks doesn’t sound far, but it’s far enough that you want to make a big shop of it (especially when we have a decent neighborhood deli immediately across the street for milk, eggs, coffee, beer, basic veggies, etc.). But then, when you do a big shop, five blocks, with a big hill in between, is a big slog. Enough so that I normally go to the crappy C-Town one block away. Recently, I also discovered Pioneer, an honest to God supermarket, with aisles wide enough to drive a Hummer down, at 116th and Lenox, which, is close-ish, but still about 15 blocks away.

So, for a while I’ve been thinking about some kind of trailer I could tow behind my bike for shopping. I’ve found a few I like, but they cost $200-400, and I’ve dedicated this year to getting out of credit card debt, so I’m not eager to buy nice-to-haves like that.

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Enter TrailerOn. Such a brilliantly simple desing. It’s basically a piece of PVC pipe with a hole drilled in it for your seat post and a notch cut in it for the handle of some kind of cart — a golf bag cart, luggage cart, lil’ red wagon or, in this case, an old-lady shopping cart. A few heavy rubber bands hold things in place. So elegant in its simplicity, you can’t help but to love it. And best of all, it costs only $20!

Bravo!

UPDATE:
When I blogged all of the above, I had not actually test ridden the product. After doing so, I was initially really pissed, as the cart fishtailed wildly all over the road. Before updating this post with vitriol, as I was tempted to do, I decided to write the manufacturer first with my complaint.

Proprietor Steve Freeman promptly wrote back and offered to refund my money but first suggested a way I might modify my cart, which seemed like a big pain in the ass, and he also suggested people had better luck with larger carts, with wider wheel bases. So this weekend, I bought a bigger cart — same model you see pictured here, but one size larger.

It made all the difference. The thing handles beautifully now. I don’t need the bungie cord you see pictured above, which was my own kludgy idea to keep the thing in place. With the right sized cart, it all holds together nicely as designed. This afternoon I went for a big shop, towing back about as much weight as you’d want to tow behind a bike, and it worked perfectly.

So, I do heartly endorse that you buy this product, just be sure to buy a cart big enough to ride stably behind it.

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UPDATE:
Here’s a photo of the half-mast, as requested from Erika. What follows is the original post (to clarify, there are two different photos in discussion here, the normal one, in the left-hand menu, and this one, showing the flag at half mast).

I’m sorry no one has mentioned yet the new photo I’ve added a week or so ago as a thumbnail in the left margin of this site, just under my portrait, of the American and McDonald’s flags proudly waving one atop the other. It’s what I see out my window all day long as I blog away. (Click it for a large version.)

Anyway, tonight I notice that the U.S. flag is flying at half mast. I thought about it for a second, and realized they’re mourning Jim Cantalupo, CEO of McDonald’s, who died of a heart attack this week. Must have been like that all week, I just didn’t notice before. Ironically, he was the guy who introduced salads, all-white-meat chicken McNuggets and other moves towards a more healthful menu.

I was hanging around on the stoop of my building for a while today as Adi waited for an airport shuttle (she’s off to Hungary yet again), and the whole while some guy was also sitting on the stoop enjoying the warm afternoon. He seemed a bit out of it, muttering to himself and signalling to someone across the street and even shouting to said person, except that said person wasn’t really there, just in weird neighbor’s immagination.

As it factors into the story in a moment, I should mention that this particular weird neighbor was some flavor of Hispanic.

After Adi’s shuttle took her away, I went to a Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood and got some chicken mole. Coming back, 15 minutes later, I walk past the guy, still sitting in the same place, who cursed at me unmistakeably, “Gringo!”

Seemed like kind of an odd thing to say, not only because we’re neighbors and I am unware of offending him in any way, but this is, after all, North of the border, so it seems like he’d have to curse out a lot of gringos to get that grievance out of his system.

Whatever.

It was two years ago today that I started this modest blog.

I just bought the popular grammar book (no, that’s not a typo; it’s actually a best seller) Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss.

I like language stuff. (How’s that for proof?) I know I have a bit of a problem with spelling (have I mentioned that I’m a self-diagnosed dyslexic?), but I am, after all, a Grammar God. I have also noted on this blog previously my affection for The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed and The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed, by Karen Elizabeth Gordon (whom I’m sorry to see was not acknowledged in Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ acknowledgements). I even bought a copy today of Elements of Style, because I was appalled recently to see that it was missing from my reference shelf.

I wouldn’t call myself an out-and-out prescriptionist or even a stickler, but I have a healthy respect for grammar, punctuation and language usage, inherited from my father, who would go out of his way to point out to the hapless supermarket checkout clerk that the sign saying “10 items or less” should say “fewer” (like she could care for $5.10 an hour, or less).

So, suffice it to say, that I’m the ideal target audience for this book. But I had to put the book down on page 5 to catch my breath after reading this, in the context of how language sticklers are hard to sympathize with:

…and we [sticklers] got very worked up after 9/11 not because of Osama bin-Laden but because people on the radio kept saying “enormity” when they meant “magnitude.”

It pains me even to type that out. This is so wrong on many levels (least of which is the gratuitous “very” and the irritating shorthand “9/11″ when she means “September 11th”).

Let me get this right: she’s not worked up about Osama bin-Laden? He doesn’t really bother her? She’s only put out by radio commentators’ word choice, but not by the worst act of terrorism in history? What does she think of the rape of children and kitten torture, I wonder. No problem, as long as the apostrophe is in the right place?

I realize it’s coming up on three years past the event, and I got off Paxil several months ago at this point, but it just seems to me there are some topics better not to make light of. (Say, did you hear the one about the Ashkenazi Jew, the Tutsi and the Armenian who walk into a bar?)

Here’s the rub. I am enough of a word nerd to understand what her point is. It is that most people say something is “enormous” when they mean it is “big”; “enormous,” however, has a connotation of terrible. Here is Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 10th Edition’s definition of “enormity”:

1: an outrageous, improper, vicious or immoral act <the enormities of state power —Susan Sontag> …
2: the quality or state of being immoderate, monstrous, or outrageous; esp: great wickedness <the ~ of the crimes committed during the Third Reich —G. A. Craig>
3: the quality or state of being huge: IMMENSITY
4: a quality of momentous importance
usage Enormity, some people insist, is improperly used to denote large size. They insist on enormousness for this meaning, and would limit enormity to the meaning “great wickedness.” …

So my question to Ms. Truss is, you really want to quibble that September 11th does not merit the word’s connotation of “great wickedness”? I would venture that even Ms. Sontag would grant it that.

Word lover though I be, writing this has gotten me even more “very worked up.” I’m going to have to set it aside and come back to the book, starting on page 6, in a few days.

Investigative journalist Jason Vest, writing for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, has a bombshell story that promises to be the buzz of anti-Iraq war conversations for a while. Reprinted here in the Village Voice, the lede begins:

As the situation in Iraq grows ever more tenuous, the Bush administration continues to spin the ominous news with matter-of-fact optimism. According to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Iraqi uprisings in half a dozen cities, accompanied by the deaths of more than 100 soldiers in the month of April alone, is something to be viewed in the context of “good days and bad days,” merely “a moment in Iraq’s path towards a free and democratic system.” More recently, the president himself asserted, “Our coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country.”

But according to a closely held Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March, the reality isn’t so rosy. Iraq’s chances of seeing democracy succeed, according to the memo’s author?a U.S. government official detailed to the CPA, who wrote this summation of observations he’d made in the field for a senior CPA director?have been severely imperiled by a year’s worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, the memo’s author fears, U.S. efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war.

AdTech is the leading industry event for the online advertising and marketing industry. At the last occasion of the conference, last November in NYC, MarketingWonk and I helped AdTech create the AdTech Blog, where a team of bloggers provided coverage of the event.

More details here.

Adam LeBor, a dear friend from Budapest, is in NYC for the week, promoting his new book, Milosevic: A Biography. For friends, or those interested in hearing about this book, here are some details:

• Tuesday, April 20, Adam is scheduled to be a guest on WNYC radio’s Leonard Lopate Show at noon. [UPDATE: This went very well. Forty-minute interview. Both gentlemen sounded very smart. Hear the whole thing online here.]
• Wednesday, April 21, 6:30 - 10:30 pm, the Manhattan Hungarian Network is hosting an evening with Adam about the book at the Lexington Bar and Books, 1020 Lexington Ave between 72 and 73rd streets. No cover fee, but cash bar. RSVP recommended.
• Thursday, April 22, Columbia University - Harriman Institute. Room 1219 IAB at Noon.
• On Saturday evening, friends will be meeting up somewhere at a bar. Details pending.

Bruner Blogger and Frankenstein

Amy Langfield has posted photos of our Boston road trip to BloggerCon. I especially like this and this.

My latest blog project: BusinessBlogConsulting.com

Business Blog Consulting is a site devoted to demonstrating how effective weblogs can be for communicating with customers and marketing to new customer prospects. You will find here lots of examples of business blogs, as well as resources to help you learn more about the topic.

I’m coming to you live from BloggerCon. Nerds’ paradise. Nothing really very interesting to say about it yet, just wanted to brag. Of course, there are a lot of other laptops in the room (at least half of the 100 or more people in this room) live online via wifi. I’m sure, if any of you are really über geeks and want to follow this in real time, I’m sure lots more folks are taking actual notes. I’ll find some and link, as I don’t plan to bother.

UPDATE:
Connectivity has been spotty, sorry for the lack of updates. Right now in Jeff Jarvis’s Blogging as a Business session — massive overflow. Everyone wants to learn how to get rich blogging, go figure. Details here.

Other coverage of the conference on Feedster.

UPDATE:
A somewhat more thoughtful analysis (okay, not really, but more words) on my ExecutiveSummary blog.