I'm astounded by the amount of news coverage the inauguration has generated. Are people truly interested in this or is it that the media is saying we should be interested and we're following along like our usual sheepish selves? Nonetheless, I don't recall a presidential inauguration coming along with so much publicized pomp. One might say that it's because it's historic, but I would say that every presidential inauguration is historic.

We will only have racial equality when we don't have to point out what things are equal. I don't consider this presidency a significant step, like so many news shows portray. We've been stepping in this direction for a long time. That there is a black president doesn't minimize racial discrimination everywhere else. Maybe it serves as an example to many how race shouldn't hold back your dreams, but it's not the catalyst or tipping point or King's dream realized.

It has always bothered me that many people interpret King's dream as giving more rights to people who are discriminated against. That's not it at all. It's about the expectation that everyone has the same rights. In my mind, even pointing out that our president is not white is discrimination. He's just another man, another president, and his color is no more relevant to holding that position than the brand of toothpaste he uses.

Beyond race, I agree that the view that Obama conveys is a nice one. I would like for every American to have affordable health care. I would like for everyone to have gainful employment. I would like a strong economy, ecological and economical transportation, and a solid, world-respected posture on international relations. I think that few people would say they didn't want these things, although they might disagree on how we would obtain them. What I'm wondering is whether Obama will enact a plan besides standing in front of a crowd saying "yes we can".

It's not whether he has a plan. He does. It has been on his web site throughout the election. I think my disenchantment is with the American people. We're really swept up in the idea that we can have the change we want, but I've heard nobody talking as if they've been swept up by the process of change. Nobody is excited about creating work programs, or how Obama will influence international politics. If we're excited about change, we're behind the message, and the message is that we must be involved for change to happen, then shouldn't we also know what the plan is? This kind of bothers me, especially because I know too well how people can get behind a cause and not get involved in a cause.

When you combine that with the media-enhanced rock star personality of our new president, I'm really looking forward to seeing him do something with his new office that will make us feel like his promised change is starting to roll.

I didn't want to vote yesterday. I watched CNN last night, not raptly, but with a sense of knowing what was coming. As a sort of passive observer of the political process this year, it has been interesting to see all of the work finally play out, but I can't help but notice that while, as usual, the election is not really about the issues, it's also no longer about whatever nonsense it happened to be about before.

At a session I attended BlogOrlando this year, a presenter discussed his role in helping change the image of Fiskars, the scissor people, by bringing social interaction to the table to sit beside marketing and branding. In a very compelling part of his talk, he said that the challenge and success was in creating a movement. And yes, apparently, even if delicacy is required, movements can be engineered.

So I'm amused by what I see on TV and in the paper today. I don't necessarily disagree with Obama's policies or ideas for change, but what I do see is a movement for change where perhaps the prescribed change itself isn't the instrument of its creation. I see an engineering of politics that the world has yet to endure - one where social media, an engineered movement, has led people to make decisions that are very large.

It's been obvious to me that McCain's campaign has been a typically haphazard misapplication of social media. For whatever reason (and I have my conspiracy theories), his campaign just did not get it. His people have obviously never touched the web in curiosity, or looked to its huge yet experimentally small pool of users for insight into how social engineering could have been applied to this election. In that, and in many other areas that would be key to becoming elected that have nothing to do with whether he was fit for office, his campaign completely and utterly failed.

There are also tales every year about how the electoral system is no longer efficient for selecting a president; how the electoral vote could easily not reflect the popular vote. I think if you look carefully at the campaigns this year, you'll see some of the most efficient application of this "electoral math" that we've ever seen.

The actual popular vote race was pretty close. But the electoral votes are very skewed in Obama's favor. Even if the movement did not do so well as they had hoped, they still targeted the populous centers of states with high electoral votes so well that they would have won those states regardless.

I'm no so persuaded by the rhetoric. Every year we are promised things by newly elected politicians, and every year things fail to deliver. Sure, some promises are fulfilled, but I think that such a large agenda as Obama's, while certainly ambitious and perhaps even worthy of making happen in full, is not something we'll see come to fruition. I have imagined a scene of Obama's first day in office as one where he realizes that the weight of the country - economically, militarily, socially - is all on him, and that his proposed change is something that requires not just a (in relative terms) simple change in what's being done, but a more significant change in the process of doing things.

Well, at least we see and have evidence that the stumping process has changed as a result of his ideas. Woe be Obama in 2012 if his change isn't in the upswing, because by then the Republicans will have figured out social media, and a different kind of change will be in store for the White House.

Excuse me if this doesn't make any sense, I'm a bit endorphin high. I just got finished mowing the front lawn -- with an electric push-mower.

The lawn has been a battle. We discontinued last year's lawn service because they were doing things that we asked them not to do, resulting in large dirt patches in our lawn. So this year, with no service, our lawn has been growing uncontrolled, much to the chagrin of our mower-loving neighbors.

The riding mower that came with our house has a dead battery from the kids leaving the headlights on (why does the mower have these?) so I tried for a good bit this afternoon to get that working again, to no avail. And in the end, I bought a new corded electric push-mower from Home Depot. It's corded, because the battery on the last one went kaput. Speaking of going crazy while mowing the lawn, Bill Clinton called me today. Don't believe me?

Bill!

Operatives from the two democratic candidates have been going nuts calling me over the past few days, trying to get me to come out for whatever rally they have planned. More accurately, their recorded messages have been talking to me, when they're really calling for Berta. As I've said on many occasions, I'm not a registered Democrat. Anyway, we got interesting recorded messages from Obama himself, Hillary Clinton herself, Governer Rendell (supporting Clinton), and Bill Clinton (supporting his wife, I guess), along with the sultry tones of maybe some intern on the campaign trail.

What interests me about this whole calling thing is trying to imagine how many people they're contacting will actually show up at the rallies, versus how many people will go vote. My thought is that if rather than inviting people to go to some pointless love-fest for the candidate they were likely to vote for anyway, they used those 30 seconds to pitch their actual issues, then they might get people who are otherwise disinclined to vote to do so. I dunno. Calling me the day before to get me to show up at a steelworker's "local" to rally behind a candidate certainly doesn't leave me raring for a candidate.

I heard a good opinion piece on KYW today about this whole lapel flag pin thing today, about how not wearing your Phillies hat when you're not at the ballpark makes you any less of a fan. It does make me angry that they're wasting the debate talking about tabloid crap, just slightly madder than I get when they talk about the same old drivel.

I'll put it this way: I don't care about Iraq. I mean, I don't care when they're going to get the troops out. I mean, I care about the troops, but frankly, they're there, and they're doing a job, and no, we shouldn't be footing Iraq's bill for their freedom, but nobody else is gonna do it, and I'm just tired - tired of hearing about it. Let's just do it right and be done. Or bring them home right now and say "oh well" - I just don't care. But while we're doing either of those things, let's fix things at home so that when the troops do come back, they'll think that they were defending an idea that was worth it. Because right now, I'm not sure it is.

I'm tired of being scanned. I'm tired of losing my privacy. I don't care if it wasn't something to which I was entitled, it should have been. I'm sick of paying money into social security and knowing that I'm going to get nothing out of it. I'm mad that politicians running for office are spending more time fighting with each other (even in their own party!) than explaining what they're going to do to get us out of this depression. Yeah, it's caused a lot by oil prices, but that's just a part of it, and applying remedies to that alone isn't going to restore the strength of the dollar.

After all of the extra taxes I sent in last week, I'm wondering what the heck they're doing with it all. Flushing it all down to chase after last year's. Bah.

So I ordered an Amazon Kindle yesterday, since they came back in stock. It should arrive on Tuesday.

If you don't know, the Kindle is a device that holds digital copies of books and magazines and displays them for you to read. The technology is different from LCDs, since LCDs require constant power to keep the image on screen. The Kindle uses e-paper technology that lets it use very little power to set the image, which remains mostly static. The result is a screen that isn't geared for animation, but is well-suited for reading books and long-lasting batteries.

My goal is to try to use the Kindle as a replacement for my large library of D&D books. I've read so far that they don't translate very well, but I doubt that the people who tried it had access to the source files I do. I have a few well-assembled text files that will likely do better than PDF-versions of the same books. I don't really need fancy pictures with my D&D reference materials. But if I got so inclined, I might make some monster manual translations to Kindle for myself that include halftoned photos.

I hope that I can get the same style source files for 4th Edition. I've got my books on order already! No Kindle version. Boo.