Akkam’s Razor

• Obama’s Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators - Umair Haque - Barack Obama is one of the most radical management innovators in the world today. Obama's team built something truly world-changing: a new kind of political organization for the 21st century. It differs from yesterday's political organizations as much as Google and Threadless differ from yesterday's corporations: all are a tiny handful of truly new, 21st century institutions in the world today.

  Obama presidential bid succeeded, in other words, as our research at the Lab has discussed for the past several years, through the power of new DNA: new rules for new kinds of institutions.

  So let's discuss the new DNA Obama brought to the table, by outlining seven rules for tomorrow's radical innovators.

• Primal Health: Eye-to-Eye Contact -
• Elections ‘08 Map Gallery -
• Drag and Drop Game Development with Gendai (video) - Mashable - The ultimate goal is to establish a kind of “YouTube for Games” where members can upload and share their new creations much like YouTube members do with video. However, Gendai wants to help its developers make a little money in the process by allowing them to monetize their games online and on the Apple AppStore for the IPhone.
• Overthinking It - Overthinking It subjects the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve.

From FirstShowing:

The Wave is an compelling German film that premiered at Sundance earlier this year. It’s about a high school teacher who sets up an experiment to demonstrate to his students what life is like under a dictatorship, but it soon spins horribly out of control when he forms a social unit with a life of its own.

Assuming this is the same version (it isn’t) - I saw a 1981 broadcast version of the Wave (as an ABC Afterschool Special, broadcast in primetime) in high school psychology class in 1989/1990 [available in two parts on YouTube].  Both the upcoming and prior video versions of The Wave were based on a book, which was in turn inspired by a 1969 real-life Paolo Alto, California high school ‘experiment’.

• Rhetorical Questions - Who will win the presidential debates? What does each candidate’s use of words say about how he would govern as president? Can Obama’s rhetorical skills lift him to the heights of Lincoln, FDR, and Reagan—or will his speechmaking do him in? After watching all 47 (!) of the primary season’s debates, our correspondent has the answers—and some harsh criticism for the moderators.
• The lives of Barack Obama: An interactive timeline. - By Christopher Beam and Chris Wilson - Slate Magazine -
• The Overton Window, Illustrated -

A great FireFox extension - Extension List Dumper - if not new, than new to me, allows you to get a list complete with version data, descriptions, and URLs of all of your installed extensions by hitting the Dump List button in the Add-In (or Extensions) box.

(Side note to the FireFox team - sharing extension lists between users via social networking has some value to it, doesn’t it?)

My list, as currently installed, is after the jump.

Application: Firefox 2.0.0.5 (Portable)

• ColorfulTabs 2.0.11http://www.binaryturf.com/

  Firefox 2.0 - 2.0.0.*

  Colorful Tabs colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appeal of the interface.

George Carlin is dead.  In his own words:

I’m getting old. And it’s okay. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won’t have to die. I’ll pass away. Or I’ll expire, like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they’ll call it a terminal episode. The insurance company will refer to it as negative patient care outcome.

I agree that he wouldn’t want to be eulogized, so instead reminisce at some of his bits (with more here with some memorable quotations).

Uh-oh.  Looks like McCain may have some trouble with the ladies.  Seems his “trollop and cunt” (that would be a great name for a British pub, dontcha think?) remarks about his sugar-momma wife in response to her comment about his thinning hair have started to enter mainstream consciousness.  The following is NSFW, but after all, if a Senator running for President can publicly call his wife one, why can’t you listen to it being repeated aloud? [via]

YouTube Direktvideo link

Popularity: 3% [?]

One of the prevalent memes circulating regarding John Sidney McCain is that he is his own man, and not like George W. Bush (note, the statistic is that he supports him via Congressional votes 95% of the time). Small problem like that - they are nearly identical, as John Cusack (IMDB) points out in this MoveOn advertisement.

YouTube Direktvideo link

Also curious is how some Bush dead-enders (and McCain supporters) actually maintain McCain will carry on the failed Bush policies, which directly contradicts with the image the kindler, gentler, more moderate candidate McCain desparately needs to project in order to woo independents and hoodwink Bush-Democrats.