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Super Bowl Thoughts and Comments

For the first time in a few years, I thought that the Super Bowl was interesting enough to give the commercials competition. I give the Giants credit; they thoroughly man-handled the Patriots at almost every aspect of the game. It was Tom Brady, not Eli Manning making wild passes and folding under pressure; it was the Giants linebackers who dominated the line of scrimmage, not the famed Patriots linebackers. Though Eli Manning was awarded the MVP, the award could have just as easily gone to Osi Umenyiora or Michael Strahan. Is this game the scar on the Patriots' perfect season, or the crowning achievement of an underdog Giants team?

I also thought that the commercials were exceptional this year. The R8 one was great, mostly because the R8 is a gorgeous car. It's car porn. The T-Mobile one with Charles Barkley and Dewayne Wade was great. The giant pigeons in the FedEx commercial was enjoyable, though predictable. I also enjoyed the wine and cheese party commercial and the Bridgestone commercial with Richard Simmons.

My favorite part of Super Bowl 2008 was undoubtedly the half time performance. Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers was such a treat. They played well and had a good selection of songs. He slowed the pace of the songs down considerably which made for a mellow relaxing halftime show. By far the best Super Bowl halftime performance I've ever seen.

Can Evangelicals Love a Liberal?

It has been quite some time since I last blogged. This is partially due to the fact hat I've been using the time I usually devote to blogging to redesigning the user experience for the website. It is also due to the fact that there hasn't been anything that has moved me enough to write. I've highly considered it numerous times: when Mike Huckabee won in Iowa, when Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo!, when Giuliani endorsed McCain; but none of those events moved me like the event which drives me to write this entry.

Today, in the Times, the esteemed reporter Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed piece entitled "Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love". My first thought when reading that title was that Kristof had learned a story about some watered-down Christianity which fit into the box that he wanted to place Christians in. Instead, Kristof wrote an elegant, balanced, and reasonable defense of the positive affects of the Christian right. In addition, he even threw in a rather sharp attack on those liberals who preach tolerance toward minority groups, unless, of course, that minority group is Christian evangelicals. Kristof writes,

Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock.

Later, he goes on to say

Scorning people for their faith is intrinsically repugnant, and in this case it also betrays a profound misunderstanding of how far evangelicals have moved over the last decade. Today, conservative Christian churches do superb work on poverty, AIDS, sex trafficking, climate change, prison abuses, malaria and genocide in Darfur.

Kristof does not hesitate to also call out past leaders of the Christian right who did as much, if not more, damage to the reputation of Christianity than the cruades. He says,

Self-righteous zealots like Pat Robertson have been a plague upon our country, and their initial smugness about AIDS (which Jerry Falwell described as �God�s judgment against promiscuity�) constituted far grosser immorality than anything that ever happened in a bathhouse. Moralizing blowhards showed more compassion for embryonic stem cells than for the poor or the sick, and as recently as the 1990s, evangelicals were mostly a constituency against foreign aid.

But the future of the Christian right is bright. Lead by leaders like Rick Warren, and a focus on social justice, United States Christianity is better equipped to be the hands and feet of Christ than ever before.

Kristof gained much respect from me for writing this article which surely will not be popular with the many liberal supports of the Times op-ed section.

Hulu: GREATEST THING EVER. EVER.

Do you Hulu? I do! Hulu is a great new web application which serves up commercial supported TV content. The quality is good, and at this point, probably since it's a closed beta, there aren't bandwidth problems (it only buffered once during the episode of House that I watched this morning). There is a great selection of TV shows (House, The Office, 30 Rock) and a fair number of episodes and clips from each. I wonder if the major TV networks will begin offering their content through Hulu instead of through their own websites. The Hulu user interface is better than all of the TV network sites and the streaming is much more reliable at this point.

Hulu is interesting to me for two reasons. The first reason is that they beat YouTube to the game. YouTube has not yet built relationships as deep as Hulu has with ALL of the major (and minor) TV networks. As being the first to the game, Hulu has a major advantage over anyone else who tries. Very interesting.

The second reason that this is interesting is that the revenue stream is fairly traditional. For the last 40 years, the revenue model for television has been the same: broadcast the TV show with clips of commercials in between. The only difference now is the broadcast media. Now this is a major advance, because there are certainly numerous technical challenges which had to be overcome; however, from a business perspective there isn't a huge difference. It is interesting though that the TV networks have allowed someone to come between them and the consumers. In a way, they are just outsourcing the advertising and delivery and they are focusing on producing the content; however, I thought the power was in the advertising and delivery. Again, very interesting.

You really should get in on Hulu. It's something special.

29 Hours

Yesterday, I made the return trip from Lancaster to Troy after Turkey Day break. I left Lancaster right around noon and arrived in Troy shortly before 5PM. As always, my Product Red iPod Nano came along for the trip and kept me entertained with Nathanson, Clapton, and DMB for the 5 hours I was in the car.

When I arrived in Troy I was ready to get out of the car and get some food, and in my rush I left my iPod playing in the car. When I came back this evening at 5PM to make a Chopper trip, I found that the iPod was STILL PLAYING. Count it folks: that is 29 hours of straight playback. That is one product whose battery life far exceeds expectations. Nice job, Jobs.

Do You Zoom Zoom?

I adore the music in this commercial! I think I'm going to start attending a church with Gospel music!

"I want to hear a poem where ideas kiss similes so deeply that metaphors get jealous."

Ever hear a poetry slam? The TV show Def Poetry is the most mainstream example of a poetry slam. You should definitely check out the following examples. It's wicked sweet stuff.

Amen!

Julio, Your Mother and I Have Asked You Repeatedly to Make All Local Stops

Little brother, running up street: Look at me -- I'm the 4 train!
Older brother, running next to him: Look at me -- I'm the 6 train!
Little brother: Stop running faster than me!
Older brother: Nuh-uh.
Little brother: Dad! Julio didn't stop at 33rd Street!

--31st St, Astoria

Overheard by: five year old kids can figure this out -- why can't tourists?


via Overheard in New York, Aug 11, 2007

im in ur fridge, eatin ur foodz

Earlier this evening I was talking with my good friend Courtney and she asked if I would critique a powerpoint deck that she was building for work. Though I should have expected it, I was surprised to open up Keynote and find 64 slides of cat pictures. Looking at cat pictures has been a favorite past time of Intel interns the past few summers. In fact, they love them so much they have taken to using cat pictures as borders on their cubes. Here are a few of the best for your viewing enjoyment.

Dispatch Lyrics

So I've downloaded the Dispatch show from 7.15 and I just can't get over how great this band is. I love their songs. There are a few in particular that I particularly enjoy listening to over and over from that show.

  • Flying Horses - Take one of the best songs ever written and then add bongos. Wow. Amazing. Simply amazing.
  • Walk With You - I look forward to the day I can listen to this song and understand the sentiment.
  • Customs - Again, irresistible bongos. I need to learn to play the bongos.
  • Outloud - This song seemed especially appropriate this evening. I love the lyrics "Do you suppose, I would come running? Do you suppose I'd come at all? I suppose I would." So good. The best part about this song is that you can hear the African children's choir loud and clear. Those kids were awesome!

Seriously folks, visit their MySpace page and download the tracks. You'll support a good cause and get some great music in the process!

Things Worthy of Note

You've asked, and here is it. Your taylorlehman.com blog update.

This weekend I attended the HSBC Women's World Match Play Championship with my buddy Cody Powers. This golf tournament, held at Wykagyl Country Club in New Rochelle, New York was a very, well, Oriental experience. Of the players that made it to the weekend, all but four were Asian. That number dropped to one by Sunday. In honor of this experience, I'd like to point out a very intriguing website: All Look Same. I took the faces test and got 4 out of 17. And I call myself a technologist.

The weekend before this one I had this distinct privilege to attend the last ever Dispatch show at the Garden. I've never heard a plan play harder, longer, or for a better cause. All proceeds for the night went to the Dispatch Foundation which supports humanitarian efforts in Zimbabwe. If you want to experience the night, and support the work in Zimbabwe, visit their (yuck) Myspace page and download the MP3s of the show. Take some time to watch the videos about Elias and his family too - it's a window into the reality that is Zimbabwe.

I went to my first Yankees game last week and for an evening, sold my soul. I cheered for the guys in pinstripes. I've honestly never been to a stadium full of more obnoxious fans. Even Fenway fans aren't that nuts. While I was there I started to list the MLB parks I've been to and realized that it's a pretty good list:

  • Yankee Stadium in New York
  • Camden Yards in Baltimore
  • Veteran's Stadium in Philly
  • Citizen's Bank Park in Philly
  • Fenway Park in Boston
  • Wrigley Field in Chicago
  • Sky Dome in Toronto Canada

I definitely have some of the coolest ones covered.

There have been a few Broadway experiences this past week to increase my Playbill collection to three: Stomp, RENT, and Lion King. All were good in their own right. Stomp made you smile and I was definitely tapping my foot by the end. RENT is great music and has interesting characters (though I insist that the philosophy presented in that musical is the reason America is in the hole it is in). Lion King was visually impressive. The costumes and scenery made it.

Food. I've eaten recently as well. I've been most pleased with Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian restaurant on 9th Ave. A great lunch spot is Minar on 46th (between 6th and 7th).

That's it for now. I'll probably blog more often as the summer comes to an end.

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