Simpleton

It seems it was ages ago when the US presidential elections produced George Bush as president for the United States. Back in 2000 the fact that Bush was a bit of a dimwit didn’t bother the slimmest majority that elected him, mostly because of the smart political play that Karl Rove played to move the Republican vote and to ensure that the Florida recount comes out in Bush's favour.

Back in 2000, Bush's ignorance of foreign policy and his inexperience with the countries of the world never bothered the American electorate, but after 9/11 everything changed. That day the consequences of an unbalanced US foreign policy went back home to bite the hand that fed its growth. US foreign policy went up in priorities, and the world got stuck with America’s poor choice of president.

I was reminded of this when I heard an interview on the radio about Bush’s experience with the world before he was president. Someone being interviewed said that Bush never visited any country outside of the United States except for one, and that was Israel!

So, I wanted to verify that and found this answer on Google Answers (which by the way is a great reference).

Anyway to summarise, the AP reported in December 2000 that,

“Bush's foreign travels have been limited to three visits to Mexico, two trips to Israel, a three-day Thanksgiving visit in Rome with one of his daughters in 1998 and a six-week excursion to China with his parents in 1975 when his father was the U.S. envoy to Beijing.”

The Mexico visits were just short trips across the border from Texas. Apparently, as governor he had some shallow “diplomatic experience” with Mexico, which at the time of the campaign had impressed Condoleezza Rice immenesly! In China, according to the New York Times, he was "trying to date Chinese women (unsuccessfully) during a visit to Beijing in 1975."

So, what was the Israel trip about?

As governor of Texas, Bush was invited in 1998 by Isreal's prime minister Netanyahu to visit Israel.

Looking through the internet, I found this. A speech he made after that rare visit outside the United States, attributed to then-governor Bush's press office.

It honestly reads like a “what did I do during my summer break” school essay. It was about his trip to Italy, then to a two-hour visit to Egypt to have dinner with Mubarak, then to Israel to “listen and learn.”

His visit was one-sided, and never mentions the Palestinians. Even when he visited the Golan Heights, his words were about a lady born in Texas that responded to a nationalistic call to move to Israel. She moved from Texas to live in the Golan Heights, which are Syrian lands occupied by Israel. Yet, that never registers in his mind. Why would it?

He goes on to gloat that he saw democracy, and that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel - a democratic country? Israel, the country with ghettos for the indigenous people that aren’t allowed to trade or move. A democratic country where an Arab-Israeli is valued less then a Jewish-Israeli. He never saw that. Why would he?

Towards the end of the speech, the purpose of his visit as Governor of Texas becomes clear. It’s money. He says, “we've got over $600 million of trade with Israel now.” I bet he also got some guarantees of support for his presidential campaign.

So, why troll through this? Why look back at things 6 years ago? Who cares? Well, we all should.

A mistake like Bush should not happen again. With the way his administration has involved America in the world, no one like Bush should ever be elected again. If America wants to involve itself in the world, then it needs to be represented with leaders that are capable of communicating with the world. Through diplomacy, negotiations, and understanding. America should endeavour to build bridges, instead of flattening lands to reconstruct. America should converse to share values, instead of shooting bullets to change minds.

No more cowboys.

As the US mid-term election campaigns start to whirl and post-Bush America start to be shaped, the subject of foreign policy and foreign affairs competency has to be an important metric by which candidates are measured. This is what the world needs, and demands, from America now. Before America’s interventionist attitude further polarises the world, and draw us all into an age of furthermore fear and violence.

No more simpletons.

Music Surgey

Don’t you hate it when you want to listen to some music, but you can’t find exactly what you want? Or perhaps you’re just sick of an album or a playlist that you keep listening to. Do you go through an IPod, click click clicking…up and down…wondering hmmm…how come you can't find something to listen to, when there is so much music!

I think it’s a problem with the way we still think about music. We are boxed into a set tracks of an album. So, we created collections. Burned/taped them and shared them. Wow, what an idea, which now is really old, and replicating it into playlists is both a chore and still restrictive.

Even with suggestions from a friend, staff at a store, or websites, playlists are still restrictive, and there is a lot of wasted efforts with them.

Anyway, enough with the negatives.

Have you heard about Pandora (see right column)? It’s the first application from the Music Genome Project. Basically, they are a group of music enthusiast that came up with a great idea to create a classification system for music.

They thought of breaking down music to its constituent parts. Similar to DNA and its constituent genes. They claim that they came up with hundreds of these parts to analyse music.

Similar to the Human Genome Project, they started to create a database over the past 6 years of thousands of tracks and their attributes.

Now, they released a dynamic and learning application that acts like a streaming radio station.

With a very simple and straightforward design, you just type in a track or an artist, and it will dynamically create a music station based on these music "genes." Later on, you can keep adding suggestions, and even give each track a thumbs up/down to let the station focus on your mood.

Give it a try! Pandora. Or try the stations I created and shared on the right column.

There is a free option, which restricts the times you skip music.

Enjoy :)