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Nope Windows XP Key, no tie here.

In an electronic version of the company’s road show just posted on the Web Windows 7 serial key, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg appears in something he’s more comfortable with: Jeans and a T-shirt.

The high-quality video production has five sections, giving potential investors in its upcoming initial public offering a snapshot of the company’s business Windows 7 Product Key, ranging from current products to finances and its future.

The video uses a lot of soft lighting to make Zuckerberg look well-rested and bright-eyed, and plays Enya-like music in the background to tug at your heart strings as they blabber on about how Facebook makes just about anything more social and has become a central part of our lives.

Check it out for yourself here.

All Things D’s Kara Swisher previously reported that the company’s road show was expected to start in earnest as soon as next week, but was a little more fuzzy on certain details, like Zuckerberg’s choice of outfits.

An Atlantic Cities blog posed a question that consistently bedevils environmentalists: “How do we break Americans’ love for the automobile?” A love enhanced by auto makers who have used design and advertising to reinforce the link between sex and cars.

The blog was inspired by a new book, Making Transit Fun! How to Entice Motorists from Their Cars (and onto Their Feet, a Bike, or Bus), in which designer Darrin Nordahl proposes that we apply “the power positive emotion wields over a person’s choice” to transit, just as has been done with cars. Nordahl believes that good design and branding will make this change happen. He gives concrete examples such as the gorgeous new terminal building planned for San Francisco and the names and logos developed for bus routes in Boulder — names like Hop, Skip replica watches, Jump, Bound, Bolt, Dash, and Stampede. These are fun names that give personality to the experience.

And planners point out that the new generation is rejecting car ownership anyway in favor of renting through businesses like Zipcar or car sharing services. This younger cohort is primed for a message that will make transit more attractive and remove any lingering stigma that the older car-addicts have applied to transit.

But I would argue that transit’s sensory experience will never come close to driving’s magical sense of power, freedom replica watches, control, — and yes, sex. It’s often the first experience of its kind that a young adult encounters. And names that bring to mind speed, like “Bolt,” won’t work either until transit really is reliably faster than taking a car, as it can be in New York.

So if a car’s experience is so fundamentally different than riding transit, what parallel experience can we plumb for joyous attributes?

I would propose we look for a model to long-distance trains and their sense of possibility and romance, not the raw sex of cars. Throughout the last century, trains have been rich sources for stories of adventure and romance. The tight space generates dramatic tension that has special appeal for filmmakers. From Brief Encounter to North by Northwest to last year’s The Tourist, where Angelina Jolie seduces Johnny Depp on a train, trains have been the stuff of dreams.

My chance encounters on trains have never been quite that romantic or fraught with peril, but they’ve been memorable nonetheless.

To some degree, the New York subway shares the dream of immediate and risk-free contact that long-distance trains enjoy. But given the unromantic image of buses and subways replica watches, contact between passengers is generally acceptable only in a crisis. Several years ago when I was riding the Broadway local uptown, the train broke down just north of the West 125th Street stop. I struck up a conversation with a Honduran woman, expressing my admiration for her ability to keep cool despite the summer heat and humidity. Over the course of our conversation, she told me about her autistic child. Our intimacy was immediate and intense, if not romantic.

And yes I’ve experienced joy. On that same line but closer to 42nd Street, a Motown singing group interspersed their songs with such irreverent humor that we all cheered as we put our dollars in the hat. As the lead singer exited the train, he caught my eye and said, mimicking an actor’s angst, “But what’s my motivation?”

Building modern transit stations that match the glory of Grand Central is a wonderful idea. I just hope their creators include a recognition of the adventure that comes from sharing a compact space with strangers and the romantic possibilities. And who knows, someday lovers might boast about their tender meeting on a city bus. Makes a better story than meeting online.

In the new film version of Dark Shadows, Johnny Depp, playing vampire Barnabas Collins Top Tattoo Guns, emerges from the coffin in 1972. The Dark Shadows TV series, sort of an afternoon gothic soap designed to appeal to hip kids, ran on American television from 1966-1971. Like the Austin Powers trilogy send-up of James Bond, more than a decade ago (1997-2002), the movie takes a popular culture icon fondly remembered by babyboomers who grew up in the 1960s, but gives it a comedic twist, whereas the originals had been deadly serious.

Both protagonists – Austin Powers and Barnabas Collins – find themselves in a time-warp. Austin attempts to assimilate in the compact disc age after being gone for three decades Tattoo Gun Tattoo Designs, while Collins, who had been enslaved in a coffin for nearly two centuries, has to comprehend such early 1970s-era essentials as television, miniskirts and Alice Cooper. The similarities don’t end there.

Canadian actor Jonathan Frid, who died last month, originally played Barnabas in the TV series. He received his Shakespearian training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. It is clear from Austin Powers that Mike Myers, a fellow Canadian whose parents were both British, obviously wished he grew up in Swingin’ London circa 1967 instead of Ontario.

At the ‘BritWeek’ Film & TV Summit in Los Angeles this past April 27, sponsored by Variety magazine, film producer Graham King explained that he was talked into the Dark Shadows project by Johnny Depp on the set of The Rum Diary, which was based on Hunter Thompson’s first novel. King recruited Depp for that film. “In return, he brought me Dark Shadows. I didn’t know about the series; we didn’t have it in the UK,” said King, who was impressed by Depp’s passion for the subject matter. Depp gave the producer a book and the DVD of the original TV series. (The entire ABC-TV series was just released by MPI Home Video in a 31-DVD boxed set packaged as a coffin including all 1,225 episodes and priced at US$599.)

Depp brought to the project gothmeister Tim Burton to direct, “and off we went,” said King, who said he never before had been in a preview audience in which there was “non-stop laughter for 90 minutes. It’s a fun popcorn-eating movie.”

The opening weekend audience I watched it with laughed some Kuro Sumi Tattoo Ink, but fell short of the hoopla that King apparently witnessed. King explained that the movie they made was not meant to be to be a remake of the original television series, but rather inspired by it.

Dark Shadows is an early example of Anglo-American cooperation, much like the film production itself (e.g., American star and director; British producer). To wit, young Barnabas’ father packs up the family and leaves Liverpool to set sail across the Atlantic – apparently a few years before the colonies’ revolt – to establish the family’s fishing commercial business. Fast forward two centuries, the Collins family ‘English cousin’ arrives at the doorstep to restore his family’s glory and seek revenge on the witch Angelique who turned him into a vampire after he spurred her eternal amorous advances.

Besides the aforementioned Frid, the movie also features Christopher Lee (who played Dracula in a Hammer Film) in a cameo role of a captain who is hypnotized by Anglophile Depp’s Collins, who no doubt relished using a British accent throughout the movie.

We’re often quick to declare a social network “dead.” Sure, plenty of them have come and gone in recent years, but few have had such a massive fall from grace as MySpace, which has come to be known as “DeadSpace.” The unpronounceable “My____” logo rebranding did not help. Now it’s rumored to be at the dawn of a complete overhaul, but this article isn’t about that. It’s about the hole that MySpace has left specifically in the music community.

MySpace was the first social network that I joined. I snubbed Friendster previously. I would riff about how odd it was to try to make friends online and how checking out your friends’ friends encouraged leeches, moochers and social-climbing. But I caved into MySpace because it had some useful features for musicians. The first one that drew me in was simply the events listing. The year was 2006 and I was about to embark on my first extensive headlining tour. Here was a way for me to not only announce the dates but also post the flyer art and blast out updates if we decided to change venues or add more cities.

As I delved into its functionality Tattoo Machine Kits, I found a complete set of features to serve the DIY artist. One that was surprisingly meaningful was the option of customizing your page’s layout and background. The same way that producers were suddenly able to make their own music at home on affordable software, artists were more than ever in control of their image and branding. Before branding was even a buzzword, we were all recruiting our friends to help us learn basic HTML to design our MySpace pages.

Take my friend Kavinsky for example, of Drive soundtrack fame. I can assure you that in 2007 he was already MySpace-famous for having the coolest looking page on there, complete with a tri-dimensional Tron moving floor. Compare that to Facebook where everybody has the same blue-grey theme that looks like the Post Office. Then of course, before murders were committed over relationship statuses, there was the choice of “Top Friends.” This was by far the most strategic chess move on the network. Placing someone in your Top 8 meant forging an alliance, one which you hoped would be reciprocated. You would put a few of your obvious allies, a couple of extended peers, and some oddball selections to show the depth of your character. A mysterious hot girl? David Lynch? An über-cool niche label from the ’90s?

Even the most straightforward functions of MySpace haven’t been replaced. Look at Facebook’s Fan Pages. How do you post your songs on there? Most people use Bandpage, a third-party app developed by Root Music which you have to embed onto a tab and grab your songs from your SoundCloud account, yet another social network. It’s astounding how complicated that is. MySpace had a music player where you could post six songs (another strategic selection from the artist), and non-musician users could grab one of your songs for their personal page, which turned the “Daily Plays” metric into an extremely useful measure of someone’s popularity beyond their number of friends.

Are you nostalgic yet?

Think about it. I run a record label, Fool’s Gold. We signed a great deal of our artists simply based on their MySpace pages. If I heard about a DJ, rapper or band, I would type out myspace.com/theirname and get their full list of tour dates and venues (“oh wow he’s already playing Mercury Lounge”), their pictures Tattoo Machine Coils, a glimpse of their aesthetics from the page design, their popularity and of course listen to their songs. What website gives your all that info today? None! We have to juggle data from SoundCloud Tattoo Machines Kits, YouTube and Twitter into an esoteric algorithm that I haven’t figured out yet. No wonder I haven’t signed anyone in 2012. And you can forget searching for an artist website: MySpace made those obsolete, and now that it’s gone it left a hole even bigger than before it arrived.

My final point about what MySpace brought to the music community is the ability to communicate. You could send a message to anyone, regardless of whether you were “friends.” I’ll give you an example: there’s a German techno DJ called Boys Noize. I saw him DJ in Miami one year and although we ran in different circles back then, I wanted to tell him that I loved his set and was a fan of his work so I wrote him a message. We spoke a couple times and he asked me to remix one of his songs. The whole thing was set up on MySpace. The remix was released and I won some sort of award in electronic music at the end of the year. The system worked! Now if you want to reach out to a peer that you don’t know, you either look up their birth name and write to their personal Facebook page, which is very creepy, or you tweet them to follow you so that you can send them a short Direct Message. What is this, a telegram?

The point of this article isn’t that I want MySpace to come back. It doesn’t matter if it’s MySpace or another site. I just want there to be a destination that gives me the full picture.

Now pardon me while I clean up my past on Facebook’s Timeline…

What Newt Leaves Behind

- A legacy of great debate moments and material for the Obama campaign  –

- Jon Karl Lists his Greatest Hits – Vol. 1 –

- Greatest Hits – Vol. 2 –

- $4 million in debt owed to staffers and jilted sign makers –

- A ‘Goodnight Moon Colony’ Spoof –

- Insult to Injury – Did Mitt Romney Steal Your Joke? - 

- Obama campaign puts out Newt/Romney Video -

Gossip Girl – Obama’s Old Flames Unmasked by David Maraniss – For Obama in New York in the ’90s there are protestations of love, (“Thank you,” Barack responded.), a sarong, dinner parties, coffee and cigarettes, shirtless afternoons, and letters on T.S. Eliot, class structure, and bourgeois liberalism.  Mitt Romney may have been an English Major, but Obama sounds very much the part in this Vanity Fair excerpt –

Bachmann will Endorse Romney Tomorrow in Virginia

Flashback – 1/1/12 -

Jon Karl – Let me ask you about the others. Mitt Romney. Can he beat Obama?

Michele Bachmann – No he cannot beat Obama because his policy is the basis for Obamacare. The signature issue of Obama is Obamacare. You can’t have a candidate who has given the blue print for Obamacare.  It’s too identical. It’s not going to happen. We have got to have a candidate, a bold distinct candidate in the likeness of Ronald Reagan….

Romney will Meet Santorum in Pittsburgh Next Week –

Hours After Obama Leaves, Explosions Rock Kabul  –

Afghanistan Subtext and Unanswered Questions from Major Garrett – “Obama wants to be the American who stayed. Who didn’t botch victory by heading for the hills. But will America follow his lead? Will Congress?”

Bill Clinton Reviews Caro Book on Johnson – Joel Siegel writes: As a politician, Clinton was notorious for running late and speaking well past the allotted time. His infamous speech at the 1988 Democratic went on for so long, it nearly wrecked his national political career before it began. But Clinton was a model freelancer for The Times, meeting all deadlines and submitting a tightly organized and written essay after he was told “he could have as much space as he wanted Missoni Dresses sale,” said Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The Times Book Review. “We hardly touched it Herve leger strapless sale,” Tanenhaus added. “We do a vigorous fact check of every review. This one barely needed it. There was almost no work to do. He gave us a finished piece of copy.”

Mass Watch -

- Scathing Howie Carr on Warren – Headline: “White and wrong: On the reservation with Elizabeth Warren –  

- Elizabeth Warren Defended Listing Herself as Native American – she was trying to meet people –

- Sen. Scott Brown Criticized for Keeping Daughter on His Health Insurance –

“Politics is Weird and Creepy” – What Twitter Likes This Afternoon – Shep Smith on how politics “lacks the loosest attachment to anything like reality.” –

Veepstakes QOTD – Paul Ryan on Fox News – “”If they ask me to consider it, then I’ll consider it” (Falcone)

Cell Phone Video Captures Romney’s Candid Thoughts on Wealth –

Designer of Ann Romney’s $1K Shirt Says It’s Off The Rack –

Women in Secret Service Scandal Not Tied to Terrorism, Cartels –

Romney, In Va., Says He’ll Be Obama Opposite –

Joe Biden Jokes About Irish Heritage at Cinco de Mayo Celebration –

Campaign Spending Topped $1B Last Year –

Wis. Recall: Gov. Walker In Dead Heat With Top Dem –

Water Guns Banned, Handguns Allowed at GOP Convention –

Richard Mourdock, 2012′s Low-Key Tea Partier –

SHOWS: Nightline This Week World News

In early October, the streets of Rangoon were cast with a kind of calm that was eerie only in contrast. On downtown sidewalks, where the Burmese army gunned down protesters days earlier, people now hawked melons Tattoo Supplies, fishing reels, and Avril Lavigne T-shirts. The area near Sule Pagoda, familiar from video footage of the shooting death of Japanese photojournalist Kenji Nagai, was now just another pedestrian passage, with gabbing cabbies and open-air noodle shops giving the place a lively air. The atmosphere betrayed little disquietude at the violence that shook downtown mere days before.

At first, anyway. Gradually, hints emerged Tattoo Supplies, such as the conspicuous absence of monks—striking in a city in which maroon robes are a ubiquitous sight. In early October, Rangoon’s many monasteries were said to be under military lockdown, with monks detained each night.

Lu Maw, one of the Moustache Brothers comedy troupe, saw fellow comedian Par Par Lay arrested Sept. 25

“The military raids monasteries at midnight. Many monks [have been taken] away,” comedian Lu Maw told me from his Mandalay home. Monks aren’t the only ones subject to nighttime arrests, though. A member of the celebrated Moustache Brothers troupe, Lu Maw stood by as his comedy partner Par Par Lay, a Burmese celebrity and bugbear of the regime, was arrested Sept. 25 while cooking for monks in a religious community hall. 

Almost in place of the monks were the soldiers in red bandanas, who manned Rangoon’s and Mandalay’s roadblocks and roved the streets in flatbed trucks. This particular shade of red was freighted with menace. While soldiers with green or yellow bandanas are authorized to beat and arrest, those wearing red ones may also shoot, as tourism industry worker U Soe Thein*, who witnessed the protests from a downtown office window, explained.

Soldiers at the Shwedagon Pagoda

Another hint was the desolation of Shwedagon Pagoda, one of Burma’s holiest sites and the setting of several demonstrations. A day after it reopened, only about 40 people strolled the marble grounds, almost all of them either army or military police, most armed. Despite the emptiness, one shrine got more action than the rest. A small but steady line of people gathered to worship at the shrine for those born on Tuesday, such as democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. 

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Suu Kyi, whose support for democracy in the face of the oppressive military government known as the State Peace and Development Council won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, continues to be a powerful symbol for everyone I talked to. However, most said they worried that she could effect little change from isolation—she has been under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years. 

“We don’t really know who could save us. We thought in 1988 [when democratic elections were announced] that it was a turning point,” said U Soe Thein, who is in his mid-30s, referring to pro-democracy demonstrations that took place in August of 1988, shortly after then-leader Gen. Ne Win announced democratic elections. The current military government seized power in August of that year when it imposed martial law (though it’s thought that Ne Win probably called the shots behind the scenes until his 2002 death), eventually massacring thousands in crackdowns on peaceful demonstrations. The junta’s rule continued after it refused to recognize the results of the 1990 elections, in which the Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy won more than 80 percent of the parliamentary seats.

“[Now] the outside world can’t do anything,” said U Soe Thein. “Sanctions limit the movement of the government but [create a] hard life [for Burma's] 50 million people.” 

He was referring to the U.S. government’s 2003 ban on investment in Burma. While sanctions helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1980s, the strategy remains controversial. Though championed by Suu Kyi, many I talked to said they worried that the resulting poverty for most Burmese outweighed the possibility of bankrupting the SPDC. Others pointed out that most of China’s multibillion-dollar investments flow into government coffers. “Sanctions have driven us into the arms of China,” said former economics professor U Thuang*. 

China clearly holds considerable diplomatic sway with Burma’s military regime, giving particular significance to China’s Oct. 11 signing of a U.N. Security Council resolution censuring the SPDC for September’s violent crackdown. The statement stopped short of sanctions, but called for the release of political prisoners and “genuine dialogue” with Suu Kyi. 

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The big news of the day came out too late for the newspapers: Fidel Castro has resigned. (The Los Angeles Times managed to include a short story inside.) In a letter published overnight by the Communist Party’s Granma newspaper with no advance warning, Cuba’s head of state for 49 years wrote that “I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief” when the National Assembly meets Sunday. The ailing 81-year-old Castro has not appeared in public for almost 19 months since he underwent surgery and temporarily ceded power to his brother, Raul. Even if he’s giving up his position, Castro insisted that he’ll still be around. ”This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading of ‘Reflections by comrade Fidel.’ “

The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Timeslead with the preliminary results from Pakistan’s parliamentary elections, which appear to show that voters handed President Pervez Musharraf an overwhelming defeat. Several prominent leaders of Musharraf’s party Missoni Dresses sale, including its president, lost their seats in Parliament. The two main opposition parties both appeared to have gained a large number of seats, but final results aren’t expected for a few days. USA Todayleads with a look at how states are increasingly passing records on mentally ill people to the FBI database that lists those who are barred from owning guns. Before the Virginia Tech shooting the database had 165,778 records from 22 states and now has about 402 Buy Emilio Pucci Dresses,000 records from 32 states. But it still is a long way away from listing everyone as more than 90 percent of the records come from only three states. “We’re missing 80 to 90% of the mentally ill. … That’s scary,” the president of the the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said.

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Many Pakistanis stayed away from the polls yesterday, and the LAT cites one expert who estimates turnout was approximately 35 percent. Although at least 24 people across the country died from scattered election-related violence Buy Marc Jacobs Dresses, the widespread fear of a big attack on election day didn’t materialize. But it’s clear that this fear kept many away from polling stations, particularly women who had been specifically warned they would be targets. The NYT cites estimates that predict the Pakistan Peoples Party Buy Missoni Dresses, which was led by the assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, would win 110 seats while the party headed by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, would pick up 100 out of a possible 272 seats.

Whatever the final results turn out to be, all signs point to a changed Pakistan. Early morning wire stories report that the leader of Musharraf’s party conceded defeat today and acknowledged he will now have to “sit on opposition benches.” The papers all remind readers that a parliament led by members of the opposition could move to impeach Musharraf or simply invalidate the controversial results of the election that gave him another term late last year. But the NYT hints at the end of its story that might not be necessary as two people close to the president suggested Musharraf would resign if he has to face a parliament dominated by his opponents.

USAT focuses its Pakistan story on the deep repercussions that yesterday’s election could have for the United States. A government led by opposition parties is likely to be more reluctant to cooperate with the United States, which has provided billions of dollars in aid for the fight against terrorism. The chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Joe Biden, said the United States should increase economic development aid to Pakistan so it can demonstrate that it is interested in more than just the fight against terrorism.

As far as the search for al-Qaida leaders inside Pakistan, it seems U.S. officials would prefer it if the election leads to a power vacuum, suggests the WP in an interesting Page One story that details how the CIA went about killing Abu Laith al-Libi on Jan. 29. The airstrike that killed the al-Qaida commander was carried out entirely by the U.S. agency without any approval from the Pakistani government. Officials said they often get their best results from such operations, where they act alone based on information from well-paid informants (“all it takes is bags of cash,” said one official). After the successful strike against Libi, officials expect support for autonomous operations will grow in Washington, and, if there’s a struggle for power after the elections it could mean Pakistan’s leaders would be too worried about other matters to interfere. But some contend that just because the strike against Libi was successful doesn’t mean the CIA has a good strategy in place or that sporadically killing al-Qaida leaders really has any long-term effect on the terrorist network. ”Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. But overall, we’re in worse shape than we were 18 months ago,” a senior U.S. official said.

The LAT and NYT front looks at how Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been pumping up their populist rhetoric to appeal to voters who are anxious about the economy. Blue-collar voters are a particularly important part of the electorate in today’s primary in Wisconsin as well as in Ohio Replica Herve Leger v neck, where voters will go to the polls on March 4. The WSJ also fronts a look at blue-collar voters and says that the winner of the Democratic contest “may well be determined by white men.” Some worry that pervasive racist and sexist attitudes among many of these working-class men, who make up an important percentage of voters in several key swing states, could end up helping Sen. John McCain.

The LAT fronts an interview with the undercover investigator who infiltrated the California slaughterhouse and was behind this week’s recall of 143 million pounds of beef. The investigator for the Humane Society refused to reveal many details about himself besides that he’s a vegan. He was at the slaughterhouse for six weeks and secretly videotaped what he saw as the most egregious violations with a tiny camera. He insists the alleged violations were out in plain sight and he began to see them on his first day. Humane Society officials say the California slaughterhouse was chosen at random, which leads them to believe many others could be carrying out similar practices.

At least one war appears to be nearing an end. The WSJ and USAT take a look at how Toshiba appears ready to concede victory to Sony’s DVD technology. The WSJ says Toshiba could announce as early as today that it will drop the HD-DVD format, which would designate Sony’s Blu-ray as the winner “of perhaps the most expensive format battle since the VHS videocassette format trumped Sony’s Betamax in the 1980s.” Consumers who had decided to take the plunge and bet on Toshiba’s format are already expressing their anger at the company for abandoning them. Others, however, are eager to see the bright side. “They’re having great sales,” said a man who owns two HD-DVD players. “If you are an early adopter Buy Christian Audigier Clothes, that is the risk you run.”

Click above for a high-res gallery of the Lexus LF-A roadster concept. Cheap Chloe Dresses

Lexus’ L-finesse design language was meant to stand for “Seamless Anticipation Cheap Herve leger strapless,” “Intriguing Elegance BCBG Dresses sale,” and “Incisive Simplicity.” If we put aside the marketing speak for a moment, the point of L-f was to give Lexus design a greater emotional connection with consumers. While it certainly didn’t stop Lexus from selling more cars, we have a feeling that the increased number of wavy lines simply didn’t resonate with the public quite like it was meant to.

Now Lexus is looking for a successor to L-finesse. Emotional connection from a purely design standpoint — not “I just love my Toyota!” — has been a weak point for Japanese cars in this country. Even the GT-R, the LF-A and the last Supra BCBG Dresses sale, technological tour-de-forces that they are (or were or will be) Cheap Christian Audigier Clothing, and for as much emotion as they inspire Discount White Herve leger, are not pretty cars. The LS is a good looking car, but we wouldn’t call it inspiring. Yet Lexus has a pretty good grasp on what its customers are looking for, so while we can’t imagine that whatever’s coming is going to be outrageous, we can hope that it will be a little less birds and clouds and a little more visceral.

[Source: Winding Road]

Related GalleryLexus LF-A Roadster

Michelle Obama

“I was raised to believe that when you get Discount Christian Audigier Clothes, you give back,” Michelle Obama told a group of 13 high school students Tuesday afternoon. She was visiting Mary’s Center, a community health organization in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The kids wanted to know why she’d made the milelong trip north. “We were taught you have to get to know the community you’re in, and you have to be a part of that community. … Barack is real busy right now, so I figured I’ve got the time on my hands and while the kids are in school, I figured I would come out and hear about programs and meet students.”

She described all of this as if the man she called Barack were an ambitious accountant, not the guy who the night before had given a prime-time press conference in the East Room of the White House.

But Michelle Obama wasn’t just there to talk about the power of community outreach. She was offering herself as a symbol. “I was somewhat where you are,” she told the kids. “I didn’t come to this position with a lot of wealth and a lot of resources. I think it’s real important for young kids Cheap Herve Leger gown, particularly kids who come from communities without resources, to see me. Not the first lady, but to see that there is no magic to me sitting here. There are no miracles that happen. There is no magic dust that was sprinkled on my head or Barack’s head. We were kids much like you who figured out one day that our fate was in our own hands. We made decisions to listen to our parents and work hard Herve Leger gown sale, and work even harder when somebody doubted us. When somebody told me I couldn’t do something, that gave me a greater challenge to prove them wrong. … Every little challenge like that and every little success, I gained more confidence, and life just sort of opened up. So I feel like it’s an obligation for me to share that with you.”

In her hourlong visit, Obama talked a little about her husband’s stimulus package and efforts to build strong schools. But she was hardly a wonk. At one point she fumbled for the correct description of the S-CHIP program Obama had just signed into law. She wasn’t pitching, she was collecting data. “What would you tell the nation, because they’re all listening,” she said, noting the cameras and reporters in the room. “What would you tell the president, because I might talk to him tonight.”

When it came to talking about personal responsibility, the first lady’s pitch was identical to her husband’s. “That’s the difference between being a kid and an adult,” she said, describing the call to get involved in a community. “It’s not the money you make or the degree that you have but it’s the choice that you make to be active and involved and a responsible citizen Buy Emilio Pucci Dresses, and no president can mandate that, no mayor can mandate that. It comes from us, our faith, our belief in one another. It’s not just what I need and who is going to give it to me Cheap Chanel Dresses, but what can I do? What kind of citizen am I going to be? What kind of parent am I going to be? What kind of neighbor am I going to be? And what am I going to do the next time a crime is committed? Am I going to walk by? Do I call the police? Do I get involved? That is all part of the conversation we need to have as a society.”

Before leaving, the first lady posed for photographs and signed a poster for the center. “Always think about where you came from and what you’re going to give back,” she told the students on the way out. The kids, who were a slightly quiet bunch, didn’t immediately respond. “Sound right?” she asked them, a little pointedly. They all said yes.

Before sitting with the teenagers, the first lady read to nine preschool children. “What’s going on?” she asked when she entered the windowless classroom filled with art projects, hanging valentines, and big block letters of the alphabet. “Hello, little people.”

The little people were happy, but not excessively so. She had not, after all Herve Leger sale, brought candy. Or maybe they were unnerved by all the flashes from the cameras.

“My name is Michelle, and I’m married to the president of the United States. Do you know his name?”

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“Barack Obama,” said a 5-year-old girl named Anais, who became the star of the show. She also knew the Obama daughters’ names and several other pieces of information. (She was silent, however, on the stimulus bill.)

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A Washington Post article on PCP

Along with child molesters, Klansmen, and the 9/11 terrorists, the illicit drug PCP occupies a space in the news culture so low that a journalist in search of a crowd-pleasing story need not consult the facts or build a compelling argument to write a crowd-pleasing story about it.

It’s been that way for the four decades users have taken the drug, and nothing anybody writes—least of all me—can change that. Mining the public’s dread of PCP this week is the Washington Post, which drew on the slimmest of pretexts Tuesday to declare on Page One that PCP was making a “comeback” in the district.

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All the clichés of PCP coverage that inform our thinking about the drug are there: the Grand Guignol accounts of users ripped on the drug stabbing their daughters, shooting their mothers, and driving their cars into pedestrians; police officers and prosecutors alleging the drug’s rebound; and assertions that the drug is producing a general crime wave.

That PCP stinks is a given, but the drug’s stinkatude doesn’t release reporters, editors, or newspapers from the obligation to tell the truth about it. Take, for example, the story’s assertion that PCP is making a “comeback Replica Swiss Movement Watches,” that there is a “rise in PCP use,” that use is on the “rebound” among criminal suspects, and that the drug is on the “spread.” The article’s author, Keith L. Alexander, cherry-picks the data to make this hysteria-stoking claim: “Ten percent of adult defendants now test positive for the drug, the highest rate in five years, according to D.C. Pretrial Services.”

While it’s true that 2008’s rate of 10 percent positive was the highest rate for defendants in five years, what do you suppose the positive rate was in 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004? That would be 9 percent, 9 percent, 8 percent Replica Sarcar Watches, and 6 percent, respectively, as the stats compiled by pretrial services indicate (PDF). I doubt very much that 2008’s one percentage-point increase in positives over 2007 and 2006, or its two percentage-point increase over 2005, signifies much of a PCP resurgence.

Instead of hyping a PCP revival, Alexander should consider writing a story about how PCP use—as reflected in the crude measurement of drug tests administered to adult arrestees—appears to be pretty flat. Circumstantial evidence can be found in the pretrial services stats for January (PDF), which report that only 8 percent of arrestees tested positive for PCP. Some PCP comeback!

Although PCP has long been part of the area’s drugscape, the Post has rarely done more than accept police department and prosecutor handouts in reporting on the topic. For instance, if the police declare a “street value” for a quantity of seized PCP, the Post automatically publishes it. An Aug. 24, 1978, Post story quoted a street price of $700 per ounce for PCP. On March 15, 1984, the Post wrote of “10 ounces of liquid PCP” having “a value of $1.4 million.” That’s $140,000 per ounce. The arithmetical cartoon continues:

Washington Post, Oct. 22, 1985: 2 gallons worth $1 million ($3,906 per ounce).
Washington Post, Nov. 8, 1985: 46 ounces worth $400,000, or $8,700 per ounce.
Washington Post Replica Baume & Mercier Watches, Feb. 5, 1986: 3.5 gallons worth $8 million ($17,857per ounce).
Washington Post, June 24, 1986: 2.5 gallons worth $2 million ($6,250 per ounce).
Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1987: 7 gallons worth $1.4 million ($1,562 per ounce).
Washington Post: Aug. 25, 1987: 1 gallon worth $735,000 ($5,742 per ounce).
Washington Post, Aug. 27, 1987: 2.25 gallons worth $12 million ($41,666 per ounce).
Washington Post, Feb. 23, 1988: 6.5 gallons worth $1.9 million ($2,283 per ounce).
Washington Post, April 8, 1988: 30 gallons worth $8 million ($2 Alain Silberstein Replica Watches,083 per ounce).  
Washington Post Replica Tissot Watches, Feb. 15, 1989: 28.5 gallons worth $6 million ($1,847 per ounce).
Washington Post, Nov. 23, 1993: 5 gallons worth $250 Replica Emporio Armani Watches,000 to $1 million ($391 to $1,563 per ounce).
Washington Post, June 21, 2007: 5 gallons with a street value approaching $1 million ($1,563 per ounce).

Yesterday’s Post piece pegged the price at $1,966 per ounce (a 178-ounce seizure with a street value of $350,000).

If I haven’t made the point that law enforcement conjures a drug valuation out of thin air and the press publishes it without question, bear with me. An April 24, 1984, Post story stated PCP numbers that work out to $3.12 per dose (presumably one cigarette or other smoking material soaked in a vial of PCP). A June 7, 1985, article indicated a price of $11.54 per dose. I know that prices in underground markets vary widely because economic information isn’t transmitted as transparently as in legal markets, that purchases in bulk are always cheaper than small transactions, and that I’m quoting prices over a span of 30 years, but this is ridiculous.

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