Musings from the Road

Greetings from Nephi, UT, where I am connected via my cellular phone despite the fact that the Super 8 advertises “wireless high-speed internet.”

The cat says hello too.

First, a few observations: the Element holds an amazing amount of stuff but it is still finite; Washington roads kind of suck; and “conditioning shampoo” is an oxymoron as shampoo is designed to get stuff off of hair and the conditioner is designed to leave something on hair; last night we were in a town with a clearly growing local economy, yet there was still room next door to the K-Mart that was across the street from a Wal-Mart for a “$1 only” shop.

Tomorrow we should arrive in Fabulous Las Vegas.

There are two issues I would like to bring to your attention today. First, on the very same day that a White House spokesperson admited that as many as 5 million emails were “accidentally” lost — some of the very same emails that were not in the White House system to avoid scrutiny (and subpoena) — President Bush asked Congress to greatly expand domestic eavesdropping rules that have been in place since the Carter Administration. Because we can totally trust him, right?

Right?

Meanwhile, on the other coast, Google is buying internet advertiser DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion (that’s $3.1 Thousand Million). CNN says the “great irony” of this deal is that “Google is the 800-pound gorilla in online advertising.” No, the great irony of this deal is that Google’s official corporate motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” and DoubleClick’s invasive web advertising is about as evil as you can get without actually writing a virus. This deal is fundamentally incompatible with Google’s professed worldview.

Unless of course their motto is a command to others rather than a guideline for themselves.