“Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, one of Iraq’s two vice-presidents, said that Sunni Muslim leaders may pull out of the new government if they aren’t given more cabinet seats, according to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.”

Hmm, so it seems these people are going to continue to display their utter lack of ability to cooperate with each other until the government is completely disintegrated. If only someone could have anticipated this.

This one’s been on my mind for sometime and has caused a significant number of sleepless nights. Thank God we can put it behind us now…

“CNN is reporting that scientists have solved the problem of unpopped popcorn kernels left in a bag or bowl. The short answer is that unpopped kernels have leaky hulls (seed coats) that prevent the buildup of sufficient pressure to cause the pop.”

If that’s the short answer, I’m fairly sure I don’t want to hear the long one.

Jason just sent me an awesome article about how PR firms are responsible for much of what we see in the mainstream media. In fact, according to the article, these organizations are almost solely behind the “hype” and “buzz” behind certain ideas and products. E-bay actually used one of these firms to create buzz around them early on. As it turns out, the campaign was moderately successful.

Anyway, the article is a must read; here’s one of my favorite pieces which is discussing an article that came out a while back about the return of suits to the office environment:

“Trend articles like this are almost always the work of PR firms. Once you know how to read them, it’s straightforward to figure out who the client is. With trend stories, PR firms usually line up one or more “experts” to talk about the industry generally. In this case we get three: the NPD Group, the creative director of GQ, and a research director at Smith Barney. [5] When you get to the end of the experts, look for the client. And bingo, there it is: The Men’s Wearhouse.”

I think a big part of a person’s strengths is knowing how to properly handle his/her weaknesses. In my case, I hate to be bored. This is particularly devestating to the prospect of getting regular excercise, as the majority of tasks such as running, biking, etc. are all somewhat boring to me when done by themselves.

The thing is, when I am doing something else — something engaging — while participating in an othewise boring activity, e.g. driving, walking, biking, it’s not bad at all. This isn’t a new concept; people have been using Walkmans while running for decades. The spin I’m going to put on it is real-time intellectual benefit via Podcasting.

The thing that got me thinking about this is the fact that I’ve been talking on the phone a lot lately. When I do this, I do it from my cell phone while out walking around my neighborhood. Well, if I were to tell myself that I need to go walking 3 nights a week for at least 20 minutes, it’d never happen. I don’t like excercise for the sake of it; it’s not within me. When I’m discussing some interesting topic or even just listening to a friend’s opinion, however, the time disapears at break-neck speed.

I frequently spend well over an hour pacing at quite a high rate of speed while engrossed in these conversations, and the key is that I never even notice I’m excercising. Of course I enjoy the fact that I am; it’s a great feeling to get out and get some air and elevate the heartrate some, but the key is that I would not be able to do those things unless there was some benefit involved — in this case sharing ideas with friends.

So that’s where Podcasting comes in.

My thought is that I will find a program or three that has the right sort of content for daily consumption. I’m thinking technology, politics, philosophy, some combination of all of them, etc. I find content that fits this bill that fits within say a 30 minute period, and I pull it down daily via Podcast. Then, every night, every other night, or as time permits during hectic periods, I take my iPod and go for my nightly walk.

What this does for me is absolutely essential — it gives me the assurance that I’m not wasting my time. I feel completely unable to go out and walk or ride my bike when I know I could be doing something online that will improve me in some way. Of course I know that the excercise will help me more in the long-run, but that matters not because of my horrible distaste for being bored.

This way, using Podcasting, I can catch up on all the stuff I’ve been wanting to soak in but been unable to because I don’t have a commute. I have XM radio and would love to be able to get consistent news via it or iPod while commuting. Unfortunately I haven’t had that time every day to spend soaking something in during idle time — until now.

My excercise time will be my commute.

Essentially, I have two things that I want desperately to do daily but can’t do individually — excercise and soaking in a daily, intellectual input. This hybrid between the two will enable me to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone. In fact, the hybrid is what facilitates me doing either.

I’m enthused.

Ok, so where’s the good content? I have a few ideas:

• NPR’s All Things Considered
• Some sort of tech commentary ala Chris Pirillo
• Old 2600 episodes
• BR Magazine episodes
• Philosophy content?
• Foreign language osmosis?
• SANS Training

Thoughts? Ideas? Comments?

As this blog post points out, self-publishing isn’t necessarily all bad. As it turns out, O’Reilly (the animal computer-book Gods) self-published 100 copies of his Learning The Unix Operating System in 1985. Well, today O’Reilly is on the way to becoming one of the biggest names in publishing.

This is interesting because I have several friends who are interested in being published (dead tree format), and I think all of them cringe when they hear the words “self-published”. Perhaps there’s potential for it afterall?

I just love cool tools. Ken pointed this one out to me a while back and I think it’s a beauty. Essentially, you can use it to take Word files to plain text or even PDF files in one fell swoop. It’s quite nice.

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