irrevolutionary

Eric Dezenhall, author of “The Devil Himself,” uncovers the mob’s fight against Nazis during WWII.

Ace Apple blogger John Gruber said yesterday that the iPad 3 is going to be getting a retina display, which is Apple’s super sharp screen.

This adds to the heap of reports that have been emerging lately about Apple adding a high-def display to the iPad.

Of course, this being Gruber, he dropped this news slyly in a post about something else. In reference to magazine apps on the iPad, he said:

"These magazines and newspapers that render each “page” as a static 1024 × 768 image are going to look like utter ass on the iPad 3’s 2048 × 1536 retina display."

For most bloggers the comment about iPad 3 could be written off as a slip, but Gruber is plugged-in, widely read, and very thorough in his writing. If it was a mistake, he would have added an update.

Of course, that little insertion poses a new question: When is Apple going to release the iPad 3? Will it release an iPad 2 HD this fall with this the retina display?

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• Amazon Plans To Beat The iPad On Price With Its Tablet
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• CHART OF THE DAY: Despite Android’s Rise, It’s Losing Developer Support

I’ve spent enough of my life in Washington to take its theatrics with as much seriousness as a Seinfeld episode. A large portion of what passes for policy debate isn’t at all — it’s play-acting for various constituencies. The actors know they’re acting, as do their protagonists on the other side who are busily putting on their own plays for their own audiences.

Typically, though, back stage is different. When the costumes and grease paint come off, compromises are made, deals put together, legislation hammered out. Then at show time the players announce the results – spinning them to make it seem they’ve kept to their parts.

At least that’s the standard playbook.

But this time there’s no back stage. The kids in the GOP have trashed it. The GOP’s experienced actors – House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McDonnell – have been upstaged by juveniles like Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann, who don’t know the difference between playacting and governing. They’re in league with tea party fanatics who hate government so much they’re willing to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States. Washington has gone from theater to reality TV – a game of hi-jinks chicken that could end in a crash. 

So now the GOP’s experienced actors are trying to retake the stage. They’ve set a vote Tuesday for a so-called “cut, cap, and balance” plan – featuring an immediate $100 billion-plus cut from next year’s budget and a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.

The plan would be a disaster for the nation, of course – a cut of that magnitude when the economy is still struggling to get out of recession would plunge it back in, and a balanced-budget amendment would make it impossible to counteract future recessions with extra spending and tax cuts.

But, hey, it’s all for show. The GOP’s adults know the President would veto their cuts and they couldn’t possibly muster the two-thirds of the Senate and House needed to override the veto. Nor, obviously, do they have the two-thirds necessary to pass a constitutional amendment.

The point is to give the kids more votes they can wave in the direction of their tea party constituents. It’s hoped that the “cut, cap, and balance” plan — along with Mitch McConnell’s proposed Republican vote disapproving the President’s move to raise the debt ceiling (which the President will then veto) — will be enough to get the juveniles to raise the debt ceiling before the August 2 deadline.

“The cut, cap and balance plan that the House will vote on next week is a solid plan for moving forward,” John Boehner told reporters Friday. Translated: I hope this will be enough playacting to get their votes on the debt ceiling.

But even if it’s enough, the bigger problem remains: There’s still no back stage where the real work of governing this country can occur. At best, the vote to raise the debt ceiling kicks the can down the road only until the end of 2012. By then, if we don’t elect adults, the kids will be in charge. 

​UPDATE: Police have provided us with a few extra details about the alleged hammer murders of Blake and Mary-Jo Hadley.Cops in Port St. Lucie say a 17-year-old kid murdered his parents, then decid…

Continue reading "Cops: Kid Beat Parents to Death With Hammer, Threw a Party With Their Bodies on the Floor" >

“We are not, not, not going to let the minority come in and dictate the terms of this agency, rip its arms and legs off before it’s able to help a single family.”

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• Rachel Maddow Is Practically Speechless Over How FNC Has Been Covering The Murdoch Scandal
• Chris Matthews Attempts To Make Sense Of The Murdoch Scandal
• Grover Norquist: The President Is Having A "Hissy Fit" Over Taxes

The latest government jobs report is bleak, weak, and dismal. But somehow, some of you are still managing to get hired. Last month I asked readers who had been out of work for a year or more to tell how they overcame the dreadful economy, the psychological battering, and the stigma of long-term unemployment to land a job. Dozens of you wrote back, from recent graduates to sixtysomethings, from those looking for entry-level work to people with decades of experience and advanced degrees.

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Here’s a blogger sharing a concern of many buyers of upscale notebooks:

What should I write in here? I just spent $10 on this notebook – I’m not going to waste the space on things that don’t count.

I have heard this particular concern from countless Moleskine converts. Because the books are so nice (yes, I love the silky paper and the magic secret pocket, too), there’s a natural tendency to try and protect them from the random musings of our brains.

Stop that! Stop it RIGHT NOW!

You heard me, folks. The Moleskine notebook is awesome. It’s beautiful. It’s $10. But above all else: it’s for you to write in – whatever that may yield.

The reason that we spend $10 on nice notebooks is that they entice us to write. Do so, and do so with reckless abandon. After all, you spend more than $10 on lunch. Fill that puppy up, and get that melon empty.

Read more at Contextual Bias » Blog Archive » The Great Moleskine Dilemma.

Imagine a traveler’s surprise as they walk across artist Mark Nixon’s Chimecco and the hidden chimes begin to play a ghostly tune. If they don’t jump off the bridge in terror, they’ll probably get to enjoy a nice haunting song. More »

Despite her arrest yesterday, Sky News is reporting that Rebekah Brooks will appear before Parliament Tuesday morning alongside James and Rupert Murdoch to testify in the phone-hacking investigation that is threatening to take down Murdoch’s News Corp.

Following yesterday’s arrest it was unclear whether Brooks would be able to testify leading some to question the timing of the arrest and whether Scotland Yard was attempting to shield itself from more damaging revelations of its cozy relationship with News Corp.  

Yesterday afternoon the head of the Metropolitan police, Sir Paul Stephenson, resigned in connection to the phone-hacking scandal.

In 2003 Brooks admitted that NOTW had paid police officers for information. 

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• Did Rupert Murdoch Just Push Out ‘Favored Daughter’ Rebekah Brooks To Save Son James?
• Rupert Murdoch Gave Disgraced Exec Rebekah Brooks A $5.6 Million Severance Package
• Rebekah Brooks Resigns From News Corp. Over Hacking Scandal

Robin Williams turns 60 on Thursday and I nearly died laughing watching the five minutes of his segment on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” — all before James Lipton got a chance to ask his first question:

I’ve written before about the importance of smiling on the phone, or psyching yourself up before an interview, or getting a mirror so you have someone to smile back at you while you’re talking.

The job hunt is stressful — interviews are stressful, phone calls are stressful, negotiations are stressful — and telling yourself “don’t be stressed!” doesn’t, for obvious reasons, work.

So getting a little help makes sense. Perhaps the antic “legalized insanity” of Robin Williams gets you to that good place where you’re at ease, laughing and feeling confident.

For me, it’s a Barton Hall ‘77 Morning Dew. For you, it might be the poetry of Seamus Heaney or the ESPN’s Top 10 Touchdown Celebrations.

Recognize that as a professional, your goal — your duty, really — is to make sure that you do everything professionally possible to ensure a great performance.

And when it comes to your performance on the job search, ensuring a great performance includes ensuring that you’ve got the performer in the right state of mind before the big phone screen, before the big interview, before meeting the future boss for lunch to put the final issues to bed.

So use a psych-up video, a face-melting guitar solo, or an awesome highlight reel to cut the tension and reduce the naturally occurring stress of the job search just a little bit and get the most out of your performer.

And I think the other thing to take away from the clip above is that we can’t all be Robin Williams, and we shouldn’t try.

Robin is such a natural loon. He is beautiful, bizarre, unique, singular: a national treasure. And when the role meets the man, we feel that something special has happened beyond the stars, that he creates constellations from our scrutiny.

If you were going up against Robin for an interview for a stand-up comedian slot, well, you wouldn’t get the job. And once you knew what the competition was like, you’d probably not feel quite so bad about being beaten out. (And when Robin went out for the “Old Dogs” or the “Patch Adams” audition, we probably wish somebody else had gotten the job instead of him!)

Similarly, you don’t know who else is going out for the job you’re interviewing for this week. Some roles are naturally you, and some roles will be off the mark. Maybe the company is looking for somebody more or less: experienced, brilliant, structured, spontaneous, logically precise, emotionally connected, big picture, get-it-done, or any of a number of other characteristics.

Thing is, you’ll never know.

And you’ll never quite know whether the job was going to play to your strengths the way improvisational comedy plays to Robin’s, or whether you’d have been the Old Dog in a miscast role.

You know, even Robin Williams can’t be Robin Williams in the wrong job.

So beating yourself up over not being picked, over not being the right one, over not being Robin Williams, is, well, kind of missing the point.

The job search is a search for the right role. And while you’ll just never know enough about the one that got away, the way to get ahead is to not worry about the lost chance to be something you’re not, but to put all your energies into finding the line that’s going to make you shine.

So a Happy, Happy 60th Birthday to Robin Williams this week, Readers, and here’s wishing a great week in the search to you!

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