Hail, Hail Androidia - Current state of the tablet market

Shortly after I heard someone make the point, I put a poster in my office that said, "A computer will help you do what you want to do. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?"

Without benefit of any special requirements, a very bright friend complimented me by asking for some of my thoughts about "the non-Apple" tablet market. Not wishing to disappoint, I tried to do my homework, and here for the general benefit of anyone else who cares is the result.

“non-Apple” limits things usefully and I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. To focus further:

• HP bought Palm for $3B solely to get their hands on WebOS, which they proceeded to murder and then mutilate. Recent news that over 200 Palm staff were laid off surprised the media only in that it was hard to believe there were still over 200 Palm staff in HP. There are Palm tablets available but there is no point in buying something already at a dead end. As Gertrude Stein said about her Oakland childhood home, “there’s no there there.” 
• The RIM death watch is continuing, and while the BlackBerry tablet also exists, there seems little point to discussing it. No there much longer.

I'm not saying Android is everything we have ever wanted in computing, but it is the most popular platform, has the most applications and can pretty much do anything any other tablet can do (except load data from iTunes). This is where the action is, even if you don’t want to get into flashing your OS with mods.

7-inch Tablets

There are several good reasons why you might consider spending $249 for a nook tablet rather than $199 for an Amazon Kindle Fire (I will leave for another day the question of whether the $80 Amazon Plus membership is a hidden cost of the Fire).

Any Android product will be communicating through Google servers. The Fire, however, also communicates through Amazon’s servers on a dogmeat browser of their own design that is already notoriously slow and won’t be getting faster – this in the interest of “offloading” processing into “the cloud,” which as Michael Hammer would put it, adds hand-offs and thus delays results. Two clouds for the price of one, with delays for free.

One reporter, at the grand Amazon announcement, asked Jeff Bezos if someone using the Fire to shop for shoes was likely to get an instant message from Zappo’s (which Amazon owns) offering a better deal, Bezos’ reply was a terse, “We won’t do that.” Reassuring? Not so much. I was quite impressed that the reporter had internalized the architecture so quickly; many people weren’t yet even sure whether the Fire would support Google’s Market (now known, sadly, as “Google Play Apps,” but for the record, yes, it CAN).

Yes, the Barnes and Noble product will offer you access to Barnes and Noble products, but remember the concept of tablet-as-reader is 180 degrees from the concept of the ereader. eInk does not have backlighting, and many people prefer it to reading books on a computer screen. Barnes and Noble has music products but they aren’t as adept at marketing them as Amazon; they are much less adept at marketing their “cloud” services, although for the nook it serves quite well – books do not have to be stored on the device and do not disappear from the account. The nook Tablet does not REQUIRE B&N connectivity; the Fire doesn’t communicate with the Web without Amazon connectivity.

This is to say, I think Barnes and Noble will be much less of an annoyance on their Tablet than Amazon is for Fire users. Any tablet can download music from emusic, Amazon, Google Play Music and a host of others; the only vendor I know that absolutely doesn’t support Android is…yes…Apple iTunes. I am pretty comfortable with the idea that you can even watch Amazon streaming movies on the nook tablet (and Netflix, and Hulu, etc.). I know for a fact that Barnes and Noble has fewer grand schemes for the use of private data than does Amazon; since a very generous friend gifted me with a nook, B&N has had lots of time to do bad things to me and, so far, the worst they've done is sent me emails for business partners (I remember where my delete key is, so it wasn't too difficult to deal with). The Fire, on the other hand, is an identity theft waiting to happen.

More and perhaps better thoughts about the nook tablet are here: http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/barnes-noble-nook-tablet/4505-3126_7-35059751.html

The Large-Form Tablet

“The sky” right now is the asus Transformer Prime (yes, Hasbro is very cranky about that name, which has nothing to do with Optimus Prime or Bumblebee). A to-die-for tablet, thinner than the iPad 2 (the new high-def iPad is thicker than the 2) that attaches to a delightfully-designed keyboard, this was immediately identified by c|net's Molly Wood as more than just the "Gadget of the Week.". Maximum PC says “KickASS.” BlueTooth, WiFi, HDMI video-out port, micro- AND FULL-SIZE SD ports, a USB port and an earphone jack (the single speaker is okay but not boom-box loud). Worst thing anyone has to say about aTP is, “How soon can you deliver it, please?” I think the combination of touch screen with keyboard is near perfection; it is HARD to type on a tablet. If and when I get back to building Frankenstein, I'm going to look HARD at

The other main competitors for the notPad market include the Sony, which is about the same $500 price as the older Samsung Galaxy.

Sony http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/sony-tablet-s-32gb/4505-3126_7-35003724.html and 

Samsung http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/samsung-galaxy-tab-10/4505-3126_7-34505338.html

Everything else is so many shelves below the two tiers identified above that you just DON'T WANT TO LOOK. 

You will discover that you want the MOST on-board memory and storage capacity you can get. If they don’t offer Ice Cream Sandwich, ask why. Firmly.

Android Apps - a few recommendations

You can download a free application daily from the Amazon App Store, even without a Fire [be careful, though - once you have Amazon in your machine, they will try and take ownership of ALL of your apps, and you might not want that]. But absolute minimum requirements include:

• avast or Lookout security
• Cracked Light
• Dictionary.com
• GasBuddy
• Netflix
• Overdrive Media Console (allows you to borrow books from your library)
• SpeedTest and 
• WiFi Analyzer

Don't panic yet - all of the above are well within your price range, and so far we haven't spent a dime.

I like the highly-customizable GO keyboard(s) and, should you be into such nonsense, I find Super Sudoku to be the best presentation of that particular puzzle, just as I find AI Factory’s Checkers and Reversi not only challenging but attractive. These and many, many other pleasant opportunities are free, too.

If you have $10 left after your tablet purchase, that will pay for both PocketCast (which I find the most effective podcast manager) AND MobileKnox, a secure database for user names and passwords that allows you to back up the data to your desktop (all for one low price).Being more than slightly compulsive, Folder Organizer was well worth the price to me. My work desk may be a mess, but my 'droid walls are tidy!  And your correspondent is not being compensated for these recommendations.

Be aware that many games have in-game purchases, preferably BEFORE your kids start playing. Corby is one of the worst offenders, and news that someone's children spent over $100 buying hats and clothing for the charming main character of the game was unsettling but unsurprising. Google is paying attention, though, and later 'droid operating systems have governors for in-game purchasing in the Setup menus.

C'mon Jellybean! Let's keep building Android Planet!

RodM

Happy St. David's Day - Where is YOUR money?

Another screed about Web design and process flow.

http://irs.gov has a relatively clean and bright home page with lots of topics readily apparent to the casual observer. A pleasant-looking man says, "I'm waiting for my refund" as are many of us, so I click there.

A three-step process appears. How nice, straightforward, clear. Except...warning...

"Please DO NOT CALL our toll-free number unless 'Where's My Refund?' specifically indicates that you should." And above that warning, another curious item - "Keep in mind that IRS telephone assistors will not be able to provide additional information." Good thing I found that, given that I have to keep it in mind.

Look around...aha. Step 3 is "Where's My Refund?" Got it.

Below that...hmm..."IRS toll free hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time." Awkward phrasing, and worse, there is no number provided. No phone number anywhere on the page. Well, let's try working through the process.

• Check 72 hours after you e-file - no problem. It's been a week and a half.


• You need: SSN, filing status and EXACT refund amount - no problem.


• Get your REFUND STATUS [a link] at "Where's My Refund?" [A graphic link]

Wonderful news. My refund hit the bank two days ago. Except, not so much...the bank knows nothing about it. "Please wait until that date to contact us again because we cannot take any action until then. Thank you for your patience." Someone is thanking ME for patience? That's a nice thought...and again, no phone number nor evidence of a link to same. The "Refund Help" gives me much, much more information than I could imagine needing about how to deal with the form I've already finished. Okay, let's back up.

Back at the home page, there's a menu at the top with "Contact IRS." This sounds promising. One of the options on the resulting page is "Contact Us for Status of Your Refund," which likewise sounds promising. Click...

ARRGH, we're back at the 3-step process page. Back to the home page, and back to "Contact IRS." Oh, there's a note BELOW "Contact Us for Status of Your Refund" stating "Want to check on the status of your refund? You can check online with the Where's My Refund application, or call 1-800-829-4477. (Please wait at least four weeks before calling.)" This is the first time that "Where's My Refund" has not had a question mark.

I somehow don't think waiting for four weeks is going to help with whether or not the bank should have my refund, so I dial the number. I go through one minute of information including the cryptic "We will update our systems with the new information very soon." Then I go through an automated process almost exactly the same as "Where's My Refund?" and learn...yes...that processing of my return is complete, it was delayed (for which they apologize) and the refund should be in the bank...two days ago. I am also advised not to contact them before that date, which doesn't seem like it will be a problem.

I finally, after three calls, locate a mechanism by which I can wait for an operator to assist me. The current hold time is 10 to 15 minutes. Unfortunately, I discovered that while I had not been invited to a meeting, my attendance was required in two minutes, so I had to break out of the queue and attend to business.

The phone tree one must traverse to actually speak to a human being is quite challenging, and to avoid any further annoyance to the IRS than this faithful report already provides, I will not go through the procedure. Suffice it to say that one must score correctly on five different levels of automated responses, enter nothing for the sixth and then resist the temptation to press 1 to indicate that you owe the IRS money. This is when you are told how long the current hold time is; my time to this point was 4 minutes and 37 seconds. Once on hold, you are provided with suggestions that you take your question to the IRS Web site, and of course that their representatives are helping other customers.

Please believe me when I say that the attendant who answered my phone call (at 33 minutes, 12 seconds after the connection began) was extremely pleasant, gracious to a fault and very patient with me having violated several procedural steps to make my inquiry.

The problem - this year's program is malfunctioning. The automated systems are giving out incorrect information and the IRS is experiencing processing delays with bank deposits. She suggested that I wait until the week of March 12th to call back and see whether or not further information was available about when the deposit would be made; she also complimented me on submitting a tax return with no errors.

Remembering - in case you "missed all that"

Let's start with a simple association. The 1960 musical, "Bye Bye Birdie," was a comedy about a rock and roll star being drafted, as well as a shout-out to one of the best friends Broadway ever had, newspaper columnist and TV host Ed Sullivan. The film included a break-out performance for Ann-Marget, co-starred Bobby Rydell who himself already had four Top 10 hits, provided Dick Van Dyke his film debut, and continued the fascination Hollywood had with parent/teenager relationships, albeit in a much funnier vein than, for example, "Rebel Without a Cause."

It also - however inadvertently - taught American kids what they were supposed to do when the Beatles arrived. The song chanted by fans of Conrad Birdie, "We Love You Conrad," both formally and informally was transformed into "We Love You Beatles" in January 0f 1964 when Sullivan provided the Beatles for three weeks in a row on his Sunday night variety show.

Elvis was the real rock and roller who had gotten drafted, and in his absence a number of pop stars became part of the popular consciousness. Bobby Rydell, just as dozens like him, sang songs written by other people while musicians behind him played arrangements written by different people. The teen-idol phase of his career was intended to be the star of a longer career, perhaps in Vegas, and that's what happened. Philadelphia gave the world Bobby, Frankie Avalon and Fabian. Detroit gave us Mary Wells and Martha Reeves.

But also in Detroit, Smokey Robinson was writing songs for himself and others. Chicago had the haunting falsetto and socially-conscious voice of Curtis Mayfield. Texas gave us Buddy Holly for four short, prolific years. Dozens of blues musicians recorded whatever they got paid for. At Sun studios after Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash were recording country songs for pop audiences. And with "Maybelline," Chuck Berry appeared to have married country and blues and created rock and roll.

A bunch of lower-middle-class kids in England were eating it all up and spitting it back out with a verve, an intensity and a life all its own. Even now, "Please Please Me" (the Beatles' second single) and "She Loves You" (their fourth) leap out of a set of speakers with startling vitality. In the months to come, a dozen other British music groups arrived to grab whatever scraps were falling off the tables. Some of them had been listening to American blues for years. Some were art school drop outs. A few were kids who'd been stuck taking piano lessons for classical music recitals.

In Greenwich Village, a Columbia Records producer introduced Woody Guthrie acolyte Bob Dylan to the music of Robert Johnson. Not much later, a couple of L.A. kids came out of the theater having seen "A Hard Day's Night" and, deciding they wanted to be rock and roll stars, set Bob Dylan lyrics to electric guitar music and called themselves "The Byrds."

The legendary advice about Hollywood from screenwriter William Goldman applies double to the record industry, "Nobody knows anything." A group of blues players went into a London studio at the direction of their record company to record "a rock New World Symphony." The album they recorded with symphonic instruments and electronic keyboards, songs chronicling a single day, "Days of Future Passed," was not that but, having paid for an album, the company released it anyway and "art rock" began. Even funnier - one band took a section of New World Symphony and grafted it onto Bernstein's Broadway show-stopper, "America" - and almost no one noticed (as I write this, the song is still widely available on collections of the The Nice and still incorrectly credited only to Bernstein; the keyboardist involved soon became friends with Aaron Copland but never quite paid back Dvorak).

This is not an absolute principle but it's close - take any music group working in 1966 and look at the album(s) they released that year in comparison to what they recorded in the five following years and you will notice they have one thing in common - extraordinary growth.

• For the Rolling Stones, the curve starts with "Under My Thumb," goes past "Sympathy for the Devil" and lands at "Gimme Shelter."



• For the Kinks, a British-patter "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" led to the shimmering "Waterloo Sunset" and to "Arthur," a song cycle about the end of the British Empire.



• The Impressions went from "You've Been Cheatin'" to the civil rights anthems "We're a Winner" and "Choice of Colors" to arrive at "Check Out Your Mind."



• Even Elvis had to get on board. His own arc started with yet another movie song, "Frankie and Johnnie," then "U. S. Male," then "In the Ghetto." Along the way his first black-leather suit and his first solo TV special reintroduced him as an idol and gave him his gold ticket to Vegas.



• In 1966, the Who created a generation gap anthem, "My Generation" with a hopped-up singer stuttering "Why can't they all f-f-f-f-fade away?" By 1970, they'd already served as the world's smallest touring opera company with "Tommy" and were looking back to American rockabilly with their loud remake of "Summertime Blues."

In 1970, the film "Woodstock" fed the festival to millions who hadn't been there while allowing thousands who had their first chance to actually hear the music. Rock was firmly established as a canvas on which anything was possible on any instrument one could grab. Flute with a blues band? French horn with shatteringly loud drums? Screaming guitars playing Latin salsa? Tape loops and multiple rhythms and theremin against vocal choir and clarinet? Ho hum; it's been done. What else ya got?

Because the performers were creating their own music, because the industry never understood the music well enough to participate (Motown and Columbia came closest, and both made crucial mistakes, and even Fillmore producer Bill Graham couldn't handle a record company) and because the whole world was engaged in struggles for equality and against the Vietnam war, the music managed to go in all directions at once.

A return to "three-chord" rock by Southern groups only added additional texture, it did not stop the 20-minute science-fictional jams. Disco did not kill rock, but gave some of the older and straighter musicians new jobs while setting the stage for the rebirth of Michael Jackson and rap. Katy Perry may call herself the new millennial Bettie Boop, but the Beatles were cartoons twice, once on TV and then in the visually-anarchic "Yellow Submarine."

We have all been here before, and some of us feel like we owe it to someone to sleep with both eyes open, lest we miss something.

The music of the period endures, despite the expectations of many who, like the unhappy Time magazine reporter renamed "Mr. Jones," simply didn't know what it was that was happening. Solid performers, many who were not born before the day the music died, are available on a new tribute album, singing Buddy Holly songs. All you need, according to the savant who produced the Beatles, is ears. Love helps, of course; it always does.

Starting with 7 Starter - painless tricks for survival

So, you just got a great deal on a NetBook, a reconditioned machine or some other too-good-to-be-true deal? And it comes with a little label that says "Windows 7 Starter"?

The good news is that you have several options. And not all of them cost money.

You could get a copy of Home Professional, or go in with a couple of friends and get a 3-pack (and it's funny, but as I write this, one vendor is selling each of these products for the same price).

But it is likely that there are two key things that are making you ache from the limitations of Windows 7 Starter

• you can't get rid of the Windows logo on the desktop, and
• you really, really want a screen saver, if not more than one.

Would you believe...both problems are easily solvable?

Solution number one involves a freeware called Oceanis Change Background W7. It allows you to pick a background, two backgrounds or more and then either leave one in place or cycle through them all. There's even an option to avoid cycling while you're on your battery.

Solution two...and you're going to hate this one...is even easier.

Hit your Windows button and look in the bottom left hand corner for a small text entry block to appear (the screenshot seems to have disappeared from Blogger). Now for the really painful part - start typing the words "screen saver"...

...and now look at the top of the window.

That's right - they left the function in, they just removed the Control Panel hooks to it.

And you just saved yourself an upgrade.

Best from

RodM

Saturday farewell (except, well, not so much)

This time-sensitive material is no longer relevant and has been removed.

Should you have questions, please contact Unclejack Solutions at unclejackdc@yahoo.com.

Thank you.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Zuckerberg

This isn't a story about me but my context to it seems amusing. Your mileage may vary.

I attended a class on Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week. The PRE-class homework assignment was to create an account on both Facebook and Twitter so that we class members would know what the heck the instructor was talking about.

I remembered this assignment late Monday evening. Certain that I couldn't claim that the cats had eaten my NetBook, I had at it for about an hour. I found several folks I knew already on Facebook and willing to "friend" me. I spent four minutes trying to discover HOW to turn off the "year of birth" field from my birthdate (I'll get to how I knew I should do this in a moment). I didn't get angry, but, well, four minutes seemed like a LOT. I knew this thing was bigger than I understood, complex in ways I hadn't yet guessed, and clunky to use.

I got to class on Tuesday, and I was the only one who had done the homework. So, we didn't look at the class members' Facebook pages.

But what a week to be introduced to Facebook. In the previous weekend, one of their executives had spoken with the New York Times about the "charges" that Facebook handled user data in an indelicate fashion. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/facebook-executive-answers-reader-questions/ They also had launched a new partnership through which your Facebook friends' experience on several other sites would be visible to you.

[Here is new how features are generally introduced in the business world. THEY TELL YOU about the feature. THEY DO NOT TURN ON the feature. THEY TELL YOU HOW to turn on the feature. If possible, they charge you for the new feature first.]

By mid-week, there was chaos about how to turn the new links off. And the "where am I" moment was when the most straightforward, simple and fundamentally easy-to-follow set of instructions was HERE - http://franken.senate.gov/press/?page=news_single&news_item=Facebook_Privacy_Instructions

Yahoo Finance borrowed a small sidebar from the amazing and useful four-page feature Consumer Reports has in their June issue about social media tools and their privacy/security issues. Consumer Union should give an award to whatever editor came up with the title, "9 Things To STOP DOING NOW on Facebook!" (Number two - "Leaving Your Full Birth Date")
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/109538/7-things-to-stop-doing-now-on-facebook

The New York Times created a truly fabulous graph of exactly HOW MANY PLACES in Facebook there are where you NEED to set security settings. ("Joe, I've been looking at this design document you just sent me, and, well, YOU'RE FIRED.")
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html

Thursday night, an all-hands meeting at Facebook Central was held to address the current "bad press."

Friday, a story surfaced with an email in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said unpleasant things about his college colleagues who had entrusted their private data to him and his electronic student directory. Very unplesant things. The implication being that he has not matured and gotten more sensitive in the past six years.

THIS IS UNFAIR.

But, you DO realize that Facebook started as an elaborate prank Mark concocted by which to humiliate a girlfriend who had dumped him? Do you want this man controlling access to pictures of YOUR grandchildren?

Today is Mark's birthday. In case you want to go into Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001100291957&ref=profile#!/markzuckerberg?ref=ts and send him a greeting.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to earn more blood in Vampire Wars and am suddenly immune to religious icons. So, as Carl said in "Caddyshack," "I've got that going for me."

THE COMMERCIAL IS BETTER THAN THE MOVIE - Today's edition

Google Chrome, in my rarely-humble opinion, is a dog so far. I tried seven or eight versions before I even could get it to install. It still is very difficult to configure to do things that other, more mature products (Firefox comes to mind) can do immediately. Although it does fewer things while occupying fewer hardware resources.

BUT - the Googles have done a dramatically wonderful commercial for Chrome that you will not want to miss. The commercial is available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCgQDjiotG0&feature=channel

The too-short, not-really-satisfying look behind the scenes for the commercial is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oarMXGq3gI

An older, charming Google commercial is also available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrDHrwLUtvk&feature=channel

AND ONE MORE THING

What do YOU have scheduled for 10/10/10? The reason I ask is in my next post.

Join up so you don't miss it.

No Tech Today - Object Lessons and Ambiguity

iPads are sold out. We might have to think about something other than new toys.

Early in his book, “Orthodoxy,” G. K. Chesterton makes the case that zealots generally reduce their world to the size of their particular issue of passion, making themselves a sort of king of the reduced kingdom in which they live. Someone who believes the government is eavesdropping on their phone and monitoring their comings and goings, by example, becomes the sole center of their world because suddenly everyone is an enemy and a co-conspirator. This resembles nothing so much as the old TV show, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” which depicted a city in which every shoe-shine provider and newsstand attendant was either an agent or a retiree-on-pension, providing service and regular reports.

There are church bodies whose entire approach to ecumenical activity revolves around whether the other denomination absolutely and completely has the same position about abortion; only with that agreement in place can they work together to provide food and water to non-aborted children in Haiti and Chile.

But in a Northern Virginia conference room on a recent Wednesday night, I got another example of how this “small world” works. The event was a non-partisan presentation on the terrific book, “The Checklist Manifesto,” which tells of a surgeon working with the World Health Organization to create a checklist for operating rooms (if this sounds like a 2009 episode of “E.R.,” you may be watching the same too-much-TV as your correspondent).

The presenter went off-slide for a moment to say that he had learned a lot about medical procedures in the book (which also covers gourmet dining, high-rise construction and rock and roll along the way). He asked the group, “For example – do you know why they put a sterile gown over the patient instead of just putting a dressing on the area in which they're working?”

A quick, haughty response replied loudly, “Because Medicare pays more for a whole gown.”

All the air left the room.

The speaker, significantly startled, tried to bypass the outburst.

“It's because the wires and tubes can catch on the patient's skin, they can touch non-sterile surfaces and then contaminate the patient, and they can get stuck. With a full gown, there's a smooth surface without drag and less chance of contamination.”

Nothing anywhere approaching insurance fraud. How dull.

The person answering the question didn't comment further, but he had made his philosophy clear:

• All health care is crooked.

• Hospitals conduct health care.

• Hospitals are crooked.

• The recently-passed health care bill is as crooked as Medicare.

A strangely simple world, that. Believe one premise and the rest falls into place.

I was startled when a friend began arguing, with remarkable precision and an evident mastery of facts, why the health care bill is insanely bad for the country. I learned later that she has made her living as a writer and research for a conservative lobbying organization, deeply entrenched in fighting the health care bill. Sad to think that for some parties, perhaps including her, the passage of the health care bill could severely reduce income.

She brought up the amount of money the government would spend on health care. I mentioned some of the pallets of cash that had “gone missing” in Iraq and Louisiana. She snapped that she rejects my comparison because there has always been government graft but there has never been so severe an entrenchment of government control over extraordinary debt levels. A nice try, and I allowed her to take the point for the moment as I saw no chance she would understand why I thought there was - is - a difference.

Even Michelle Bachman on the Fox Sunday talking heads admitted that (“unfortunately,” she whispered) the deficit preceded Obama. In fact, Michelle was so far out there that the soulless Chris Wallace had to express some concern about her casual attitude about facts.

This cultural chasm is the reason I'm becoming more and more engaged with ambiguity. P. J. O'Roarke told NPR that the British are better at cognitive dissonance than Americans, and I think we will need to get much better at it if we're going to go through mid-term elections and what is already being identified by most as “an enormous fight” over a Supreme Court justice.

Why not simply nominate Hillary Clinton, get it over with and double all the deals made for health care?

You'd have to be a master satirist to devise the Tax Day scenario where Tea Party attendees were complaining about paying the lowest taxes in 50 years, or a few days later when folks who want to carry guns around (all the better to shoot themselves in the calf, as one athlete recently discovered) said that the state laws are too variable, and demanded a nationwide law from the government they despise. But irony died quite a while back, and the hatred that dare not speak its name is ranting in all directions at once, as usual. Jon Stewart thinks they're mad because they lost an election. Bill Maher is much closer.

But back to ambiguity. In a world that is round and thus has no sides, ambiguity is the large majority point between the rather thin “black” and the equally-thin “white,” the lovely gray middle-ground. Where there is no “either”and no “or,” just a lot of really interesting “possibles.”

There is a risk, of course, that within the wide, uncrowded space of ambiguity, we might actually be discussing with reason instead of emotion. We might become so preoccupied with facts that we are again startled when a public official says two different things on two different days while being filmed with two different cameras, all the better to see through them with. Perhaps we can even help some of those officials retire, and have more time to learn about the 24-hour news cycle and how easy it is to re-run footage over and over and over.

There is the risk that we might not be able to snap our fingers and have emotional mobs attend to our hyperbole.

There is the risk that our stakeholders will expect us to deliver on the promises we make.

But, to borrow a phrase from Orwell, standing in the narrow confines of “black” or “white” seems too much like allowing others to think our thoughts for us.

And for some of us, predictability is overrated.

PS - Happy 87th birthday to rock's longest-working drummer, Spirit's Ed Cassidy on May 4th.