if it will be in one spot in the house, and not portable, i recommend a 20″ iMac for $1200 or a 24″ iMac for $1800 because the screen is so much larger than a laptop.

if portability is valued, then i recommend a small, light and white 13″ MacBook for $999 or the new, all aluminum 13″ MacBook with wizzy trackpad for $1300. The difference between these is hard to characterize, the extra memory and the stiffer case and new trackpad are nice. But maybe not worth the extra $300 if price sensitive. Best to go look at both in an Apple store to compare, aesthetically different fell to each. I’d spend the extra for the aluminum one personally.

but if not price sensitive, the coolest laptop by far is the MacBook Air for $1800. just pick one of these up in an Apple store and you’ll know what I mean. Really. they’re just that amazing. blows your mind how light and thin they are. not as fast, but for most of what we do on a computer, plenty fast.

my only real concern though with a laptop, is that the screens are so much smaller. if the computer is going to just sit on a certain desk forever, then the imac is a better solution. it’s basically just a thin, flat panel monitor with the computer built into that, so they don’t take up any more space really. they’re a great value.

but if you really need portable, and a larger screen size, which is my personal situation, then you would get the 15″ or 17″ macbook pro. These are from $2000 to $2800 but then offer more screen and are still quite portable.

and of course if you don’t like the mac software that comes on the computer, you can ditch it and install Windows XP or Windows Vista on these instead. Or run both Mac and Windows as needed. that just costs the additional expense of buying a retail copy of Windows, for something around $100. I know people who use a MacBook Pro and only run Windows on it. they just prefer the mac laptop over dell or alternatives. and it looks like the mac laptops are winning a lot of people over, if you look at market share trends, so if you go mac you won’t be such an outlier anymore.

now les mis is still under copyright protection i believe, since it was scored in 1980. can we change the copyright fair use guidelines now? i’d really like to see more things like this, and i seriously doubt copyright protection was intended to prevent creative uses like this.

that was my favorite guerilla obama ad before the election, and you know, i think it still works after the election. this however, dates me, if you’re not familiar with the original video you should watch that first.

i think portland leans pretty darn left, but i’ve never seen such an outpouring. people were giddy, and still love is in the air. i think we might agree the election swung left because a fair number of people were mad as hell, and weren’t going to take it anymore. of course, only ’slightly’ more than 50% of the country ever elects a president. if you’re among the slightly less than 50% this time and not so happy about the election result, i’m sorry. it will just flip back and forth like that. if you’re someone who votes for one of the < 1% candidates, cudos for voting your conscience instead of participating in the perennial run-off. personally i would prefer to see the electoral system scrapped and a true popular vote instead; even though i tend to vote with a major party i’m not happy with only getting a run-off election each time. i’d rather have open primaries and get to participate in either side of each run-off instead of only getting a say in one half of each run-off.

i’m getting really excited about the possibility of a cabinet level chief technology officer (CTO) appointment and the weight that is given to technology development as a result. any suggestions you would like to make to the america CTO? fiber everywhere? copyright enforcement changes? rethinking the post office? universal ID cards versus privacy? is the internet the next nationalized interstate highway, like korea?

as a young man, race and homosexuality made me uncomfortable. i grew up in upper-middle class, white suburbs of detroit and miami with a brief stint in north carolina. kids in my neighborhoods would use slurs about race or sexuality as part of the regular vernacular, and glare suspiciously at anyone who didn’t look like they belonged. i remember feeling fear when someone clearly not-from-there was driving through the neighborhood or tried to interact with us. kids can be mean.

i’m lucky in many ways though. my parents would not tolerate any kind of language or attitude — racist, sexist, or mean generally — that was discriminatory or even small-minded. i was scolded when anything of the like slipped out. so while it was subtly and not so subtly all around me, i grew up with a clear message that it was not ok; and yet it was part of my larger landscape.

high school started to widen my view. i had a single semester in north carolina, and though i went to an exclusive, mostly white private school there was some diversity and my closest friends were not all white. then i returned to miami and again i attended an exclusive private school. in miami however that meant kids were as often hispanic as not and the school had students from a more international and varied background. and my view widened, but that was a process.

then i was lucky to attend a college where students were from everywhere, all over the united states and other countries. it produced a cultural mishmash that felt like there was no real “from-here” and “not-from-here” like before.

and there i had to confront my homophobia.

a good friend, who i respected deeply and admired, told me that he was gay. but i had known him already for years, and respected him as a person and dear friend already. suddenly the sense of gay people as not-from-here came crashing down and i had to face my prejudice and shame all at once. not in an abstract way, but in my gut and in my heart and in the midst of my deep appreciation for someone whom i respected.

at the same time, i had to imagine how hard his life had been growing up in an environment that was likely very unsupportive, dangerous even, filled with subtle and overt prejudice; doubly so, as an african american gay man. yet, he epitomized to me dignity, cheerfulness, and kindness. he had to me an authentic presence and genuine, good heart. i am now and was then so thoroughly inspired by his example that perhaps what prejudice i had could not withstanding such authenticity and genuineness.

now looking back all i feel is gratitude. i’m not sure how he would feel with such a public thank you, but i wanted to take a moment and acknowledge publicly how it really was one person — genuinely being who he was in the face of adversity — that made such a profound and helpful shift in my view and widened my perspective. and that made many of my friendships i value later in life possible. thank you, my friend, i am deeply in your debt and inspired by your example.

i said yesterday that views on same-sex marriage are changing. here’s a graph of views by age, that i found on the uncommonliberty blog and is based on a 2004 study by the university of michigan’s center for political studies.

one could argue that young people just haven’t made up their mind yet, but i believe this demonstrates a shift in view about same-sex marriage and that it’s just a matter of time before bans on same-sex marriage laws are repealed and constitutional amendments are annulled. in my opinion this will reverse a timeless discrimination whose time has come.

on this topic, i also recommend a couple blog posts from last year by the wisdom of repugnance blog including would you like to have your daughter marry a negro? and what’s in a name? where c.t. pope discusses emotions versus reason in social and bioethical issues. the first post, however, notes how the “welfare of children” argument was used forty years ago in defense of banning interracial marriage. for example, the assistant attorney general of florida at that time, james mahorner, argued to the u.s. supreme court that anti-miscegenation laws would protect the mulatto child from a psychological disadvantage by discouraging mulatto children altogether. pope argues that what really was at issue was creating a sense of unity by separating another group in contrast, and interracial marriages undermined that desire to divide us from them. the context is different with same-sex marriage but i suspect pope’s argument would also apply to that issue. but i am also now contemplating his final conclusion - that change around anti-miscegenation laws did not solely come from arguing the illogic of it but from society adjusting their irrational response. i suspect the same is occurring with homosexuality, but if proposition 8 passes it merely says that the process will take some more time.

update: the absentee ballots are not likely to reverse the expected outcome on this measure.
update: keith olbermann spoke out on this very topic at msnbc on nov 10th, now on youtube, worth watching.

but one issue local to california has long reaching effects across the country, and i’d ask you to consider supporting this or calling any family or friends you have in california to talk about it. it is the proposition to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional in california. it amazes me that the california legislature takes a 2/3rds vote to change the constitution, but a proposition only needs 1/2 to do the same.

this proposition is neck and neck and out-of-state funds are pouring into both sides. i’m strongly against the proposition — i feel it is as discriminating as segregation was in the south only fifty years ago. and for the very same reasons why segregation is considered immoral now, we should all view discrimination against same-sex couples just as immoral and unconstitutional.

but we’re at the turning point of that general sentiment. the younger generation feels overwhelmingly as i do and the older generation not as much. you could say it is only a matter of time before this country swings in support of same-sex marriage permanently. why wait. let us collectively make that move now. the discrimination needs to stop.