...but we're driving back from vacation that day.

I understand they're now putting these events online too (not sure if audio or video) so with any luck that will be an option too!

Looks good, King! I think it does what you need, which is (a) letting you keep doing things exactly the way you always have when that's appropriate; and (b) giving you more flexibility to do them differently when that's called for and you want to. Congrats to you and the designers.

You have to remember that Wolff has made a career out of taking the tales of his own failures and writing them large on the media wall. He did it with "Burn Rate," which in 1998 or so predicted the inevitable doom of the whole Internet industry based on his own failed startup experience. Now it seems he's painting his own sexual problems on the wall of national politics.

"Burn Rate" at least was funny and had some elements of truth behind its ressentiment. This stuff is just plain dumb.

I came away convinced that Ballmer doesn't have a clue how to compete with Google.

Here's what he said: "You need scale, and business innovation, and technological innovation. You need breakthrough innovation and incremental innovation. You need it in search and in advertising. You need to bring it all together. And you need it at all levels of the stack."

Whenever I hear a CEO say, "We need to do it all!" I translate: "We really don’t know what the hell to do here."

I went to BlogHer, not Netroots Nation. I thought it was likely to be far more interesting, and regretted that I'd missed previous editions. I'm pretty sure I made the right choice. Definitely something big and important going on there.

While I can understand disappointment with perceived condescension from the Times, I think the most important thing that the BlogHer bloggers -- or any other group that is busy defining itself and presenting its own face to the world via its own media creations -- can do in regard to the Times is stop worrying about what it says. Newspapers are suffering a slow eclipse with all its attendant pains. Bloggers are better off doing their own thing than obsessing over the Times' coverage.

Fortunately, from what I could tell at BlogHer, that is exactly what most of the attendees are busy doing.

Dirigo is right; it's all about, you know, rhythm.

It's also about hierarchy. You need the semicolon to promote those commas between clauses when the clauses themselves contain commas.

Of course, the combination of semicolon and dash, together in one sentence -- just for fun -- can truly tickle; and if these gender surmises are right, then why not bring them together for a little romp?

It's a desperation move, and a mark of how thin the GOP bench has become.

Calling her a "one-term governor" is really not fair to the experience of one-term governors, since she has actually been governor only a year and half. Before that her experience was as a small-town mayor.

I can't believe that any thinking American would feel comfortable with having someone with that resume -- male or female -- the proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency. Particularly when her president would be a 72-year-old.

She will have a lot to prove. I think we're back in Dan Quayle territory.

I dunno, Andrew. I think you may have been the only person watching that speech who was actually able to mine some policy nuggets out of it.

For most of the viewers (and the press) the tabloid/reality TV aspect of her nomination overshadows *everything* else. Now we've got the National Enquirer alleging an affair, so that pretty much seals the deal. She has the spotlight, but not for the reasons McCain gambled on.

The one hope McCain had to turn things around (and he got a little traction on it in August) was to make Obama the story. As long as everyone was talking about Obama and whether he was a celebrity and whether he could do the job, there was hope for McCain. But now all anyone's going to talk about for weeks is Palin and her daughter and her baby and her troopergate and did she have an affair and was she for the bridge before she was against it and does giving National Guard orders really endow her with military leadership qualifications and what about that Jews for Jesus thing, anyway? -- and on, and on.

And meanwhile, Obama will be smiling off to the side, giving beautiful speeches, talking about the economy, and letting the undecided voters pig out on Palin's soap opera until they slowly awaken to the realization: Oh, right -- the last eight years sucked. And we're voting for president.

It's a despicable but utterly predictable move. The press is the enemy. The more the GOP can set Palin up as a hounded victim of the elitist media the more they win with the base. Jay Rosen's analysis from last week got into this:

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2008/09/03/mccain_strategy.html

The critical question is: do the independents, the undecideds, the middle-of-the-road midwest voters look at this drama and see: "Maverick Candidate Pisses Off Blowhard Reporters By Resisting Their Demands"? Or do they see: "Unprepared GOP VP Nominee Hides from Reporters with Legitimate Questions"? It will, sadly, be all in this framing, and I don't think we'll ever even get to the basics of, y'know, "Governor Palin, here are six questions for you."