Aquarius - The best things to attain—wisdom, positive relationships and self-respect—cannot be bought with money. You’ll trade your energy and focus to get what you want.

[wapo]

food inc review: incredible learning experience—vote with every bite; change requires shock to system; radicals don’t know best. must see.

Today, a column by Tom Shales regarding Obama’s prime-time press conference yesterday evening. Although I didn’t get to watch the conference live, I saw it later as well as kept up with it through twitter.

Shales has some interesting things to say, although to be honest I could care less about what his main focus of the column was (that Obama’s comment about the Robert Gates arrest may cause “a brief fuss”). More interesting was Shales critique of Obama’s performance:

As usual, Obama turned in an admirably effective performance at the news conference, even if it did seem a little too tidy — and even rehearsed — for nearly all the reporters to fall in line and stick with the matter at hand rather than pursue their own little butterflies as in many administrations past. Obama had a list of reporters and called on each one in turn; the assembled reporters played pass-the-mike, using a rather primitive hand-held microphone to address the president and pass along questions that could hardly have been very surprising to him.

Still, viewers who sincerely wanted to know the essentials of the president’s health-care reform plan got an opportunity. Television even became an issue in the discussion, when one reporter asked if Obama had been true to his pledge that the debate on health care be available on C-SPAN, the public-affairs channels supported by the cable industry.

Obama’s use of the personal and the colloquial helped keep him from seeming pompous, as when he said many Americans are being “clobbered” by high health-care costs, and then explained the necessity for a deadline on debate and action by saying, “If you don’t set deadlines in this town, things don’t happen.”

Though polls show his popularity in slight decline, Obama did nothing at the news conference — other than preempt or delay some prime-time shows — that would seem potentially harmful to his image. About the most justifiable criticism that could likely be made: “Barack Obama still seems too good to be true.” It’s doubtful any president would lose sleep over such criticisms as that — no matter what the Cambridge police department might be saying about him Thursday morning.

Obama is in control—that’s really all there is to it. He’s a master of the podium, and he has the best communications team we’ve seen in a Presidency since Reagan (or possibly even before). You can mark him down for healthcare all you want but you can’t say he hasn’t been on message—any failings with the approach to healthcare so far have come from congress.

Obama speaks out to the American public genuinely and openly, every single week. This is far different from the Bush administration. Here there are no dealings behind closed doors, no puppeting by the Vice President (God love you Joe Biden, but… no) and no lying or hiding things from the people of the greatest country on earth.

Anyway, here’s the rest of the column. Enjoy.

[wapo]

So I apologize for the severe lack of updates lately, unfortunately I have quite a bit going on what with friends visiting, quick trips to New York, forms to fill out for studying abroad, etc. However, I am working on a fair amount of original content that I’m going to be posting on the new and improved alexpriest.com once I finally get the time to design it and launch it (which I am determined, will happen before I leave for Denmark).

Anyway, in today’s reading the Washington Post had a great little article about how D.C. police are connecting with citizens via e-mail and electronic newsletters. The kicker, though? Right here:

“We’re evaluating the use of Twitter. That’s coming down the line,” said Los Angeles police Lt. Rick Banks, who leads the online unit.

Pretty cool stuff. It amazes me how people are still innovating in radical ways using twitter—this just one more step.

[wapo]

Also: check out how Best Buy is innovating with twitter here, via Techcrunch.