The words are:

1- In the 18th second: “كل نفس ذائقة الموت” (”kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt”, literally: ‘Every soul shall have the taste of death‘).

2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: “كل من عليها فان” (”kollo man alaiha fan”, literally: ‘All that is on earth will perish’).

I asked many of my friends online and offline and they heard the exact same thing that I heard easily when I played that part of the track. Certain Arabic hardcore gaming forums are already discussing this, so we decided to take action by emailing you before this spreads to mainstream attention.

We Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending. We hope you would remove that track from the game immediately via an online patch, and make sure that all future shipments of the game disk do not contain it.

It took less than 24 hours for Sony to respond.  In addition to pulling all retail copies of Little Big Planet off of store shelves worldwide, a “day 0″ patch will be distributed over the Playstation Network.  When the game is eventually released, any existing copies of the game that somehow made it through the cracks will have the offending song removed via Little Big Planet’s online component.

Sadly, offense has become the name of the game.  When he says that “we Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran[sic] deeply offending,” solid08 pretends to speak for the entire nation of Islam, when that is clearly not the case. 

The writer and performer of the song in question, Grammy award winning recording artist Toumani Diabaté is himself a devout muslim.  ‘Tapha Niang’, is Diabaté’s reimagining of a traditional Malian folk song about a beloved hippopotamus that is shot and killed by a white hunter.  Diabaté adapted Tapha Niang as a tribute and lamentation on the death of his brother Mustapha, who died very young when they were both children.

Diabaté’s record label, World Circuit Records, provided MTV Multiplayer blog with this explanation, on Monday:

Moussa draws on the excerpts from the Koran to console him & help him overcome his bereavement.

In this way, his intention (”Neeyah” in Islam) is a good one. He is not blaspheming or taking the Koran out of context.

He is trying to draw strength from the words of the Prophet.

“كل نفس ذائقة الموت” (”kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt”, literally: ‘Every soul shall have the taste of death’).
“كل من عليها فان” (”kollo man alaiha fan”, literally: ‘All that is on earth will perish’).

It is important to remember that everyone - no matter who you are or what you do – will die one day. It is the will of God.

The premise of this shit storm is that “certain Arabic [gamers]” who shall remain nameless have a problem with anyone setting the words of the Qur’an to music.  They think its blasphemy.  Unfortunately for them, the vast majority of the muslim world probably doesn’t share this opinion.  In fact, given the context of the story that Tapha Niang tells, a lot of muslims would probably appreciate having their cultural tomes included in this little parable. 

Islamic law does not explicitly forbid the inclusion of verses from the Kor’an in song.  According to Diabaté, in Mali, “it is quite normal to play music and be inspired by the words of the Prophet Mohammed.”  Many examples of this tradition can be seen on West African television.

It’s also worth pointing out that, before Little Big Planet, when these were just a few Arabic words in a song by a critically acclaimed but relatively unknown Malian artist, no one seemed to care.  Now, Tapha Niang is added to the soundtrack of what will arguably be Sony’s biggest entertainment release of the year and suddenly an unknown number of people are “deeply offended.”  Little Big Planet is expected to sell well over 10 million copies worldwide.  More importantly, Sony has positioned LBP as a “system seller,” a game strategically placed to kick start the Playstation 3 out of third place in the video game console market.  Billions of dollars are literally at stake.  That’s enough for any group with an agenda to try and exploit the situation.  That seems to be the case here. 

In all likelihood, those at Media Molecule who were originally responsible for placing Tapha Niang on the Little Big Planet soundtrack were not familiar with the translation of the song’s Malian and Arabic lyrics.  Like most Westerners who have heard the song (myself included), they probably just thought it sounded cool and that it melodically and or rhythmically fit the mood of that part of the game where it was placed.  More troubling would be a scenario where the music directors at Media Molecule placed Tapha Niang in Little Big Planet with full knowledge of its meaning, in an attempt to say something about equalizing solemnity of death and then were forced to remove the song for the sake of an alleged sensitivity.  Either way, Sony’s reaction to this whole fiasco seems overly reactionary, ham fisted and, at once, a bit totalitarian.

Even in the muslim world, the merits of the complaint against Tapha Niang and Little Big Planet are, at best, debatable.  But a lot of money is at stake and, based on it’s actions, Sony is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure the success of its new franchise.  If, in this case, there is a choice between supporting artistic license and expression and ensuring commercial success, Sony has made its priorities clear.  With Little Big Planet, this initial censorship may also be a warning of things to come. 

Little Big Planet’s most promising features center on the creation and sharing of user-generated content.  Players can use the game’s creation tools to make completely new games and then upload them to the Playstation Network for anyone to download and play.  The possibilities are limitless.  In reality, Sony’s recent actions have demonstrated that strict limits will be placed on what gamers can make and share with Little Big Planet. 

On planet earth, the societal costs of Sony’s self-censorship will probably be even higher.  By automatically caving to a perceived threat from a small group of fundamentalists, Sony is setting a precedent for the limitation of expression.  Religious zealots who would seek to control what people can do or say will likely be encouraged by this recent outcome and seek more influence and control in the future.

In an interview with Edge Online, M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., head of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, had this to say: 

“…To demand that [the game] be withdrawn is predicated on a society which gives theocrats who wish to control speech far more value than the central principle of freedom of expression upon which the very practice and freedom of religion is based.”

Jasser added, “The fact that the music writer is a devout Muslim should highlight that at the core of this issue is not about offending ‘all Muslims,’ but only about freedom of expression and the free market.”

Even though Sony Computer Entertainment has developed a short history of gaffes and alleged offenses to religious groups, their reaction in the Little Big Planet case may not surprise you.  If you believe in freedom of expression, it should never-the-less disturb you.

In the public space, it seems that news is becoming an outlier, only turned to in a time of absolute crisis. On 9/11, every TV in every bar in America was tuned to CNN.

It’s not that I don’t understand why sports are king.  I just resent it.  In our culture, they have become the only common denominator (not necessarily the lowest).  Watching sports does not require thought or critical thinking. 

Between observers, the only communication that is sometimes required is a show of allegiance.  We vicariously cheer, when someone scores, or doesn’t score, or places first, or crashes and burns.  In our time, sports are the only event that we can seem to follow as a nation, perhaps because it is the only thing on offer.

I like movies, especially science fiction.  Despite its stigma as geek domain, it’s a great medium for confronting a wider audience with hardcore social and philosophical issues.  It’s nice to go to a crowded theatre and watch something like the Matrix.

I wish I lived in some bizaro world where the default TV choice at your local bar is the Sci-Fi channel.  “Hey is that ‘the Day the Earth stood still’?”

Living in Boston all those years, without a car and with an extensive transit system in the MBTA right outside my door, I still found that even my modest 4 mile commute to work could be covered in about half the time on a bicycle as it took riding the “T”. Likewise moving back to Tallahassee, after Boston, I found that city’s StarMetro service to be severely lacking and for almost two years, I made my bicycle my primary and only form of transportation.

Thus, an unfortunate series of events brought me back to this Tampa, the fair city of my youth and more unfortunately, I discovered that riding your bike in most of Hillsborough Country is more or less a suicide trip. I’m no stranger to the car culture. I have a valid Florida drivers license. I’ve previously owned several cars. I grew up HERE, after all. I just didn’t want to get back behind the wheel, saddle myself with more debt, just to spend two hours in sizzling traffic every day, commuting to a job so that I could afford the privilege of…sitting in sizzling traffic for two hours a day!

So, here I am, in Tampa, and I’m taking the bus. Thus, the primary criteria on which I’ve evaluated my perspective employers has been their accessibility to the services of the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART).

My bus is Route 30. I take it to work every day, Monday through Friday, from my neighborhood off Hanley Road in Town N’ Country, through Tampa International Airport and the Westshore Corridor, to the Palma Ceia area which is sort of like Tampa’s Midtown. The ride itself takes about 45 minutes but there is a healthy 15 minutes of walking on each end of the bus ride.

Compared to other cities where I’ve lived, the HART transit system is pretty good for it’s size. I’ve been particularly pleased with the buses on-time record. They are hardly ever late. The buses may be on time, but unfortunately there just aren’t enough of them yet. Most of the busy buses run every 30 minutes on weekdays and every 60 minutes on weekends. For someone, who can choose to jump in a car and get to their destination within 15 minutes, 30 minute service just isn’t flexible enough. 15 minute service would be ideal.

More service, of course, costs money and in this area Hillsborough County has only recently caught on to the whole idea of adequately funded transit. For the past few years, when the county was flush with new real estate dollars, HART started to expand service. Then, last year, the legislature decided that local taxing authorities like HART needed to cut their arbitrarily cut their millage rates. That resulted in a level-funded HART budget last year. Next, we got the ‘Save our homes amendment’ forcing more cuts to the max millage rate and HART is now pushing a 16% fare increase just to break even with another level funded budget year.

Despite these setbacks, HART brought in a new CEO, David Armijo and he has managed to squeeze every last nickel and dime to improve service in key areas. Route 2, Nebraska Avenue, the busiest route in the system, was the first HART bus to achieve 15 minute service during peak periods. 15 minute service is also planned for implementation on Route 34, Hillsborough Avenue, by 2010.

And finally, as part of it’s annual recommendations for service improvements, HART recently announced a proposal for weekday 15 minute service on Route 30, Town N’ Country, and an improvement from 60 minute to 30 minute service on weekends. These improvements were projected to cost an additional $1.2 million in operating expenses. Unfortunately, for me and everyone else that rides the 30 to work from Town N’ Country, the weekday improvements were only proposed for the segment of the route that runs from downtown Tampa to Tampa International Airport.

As familiar with the 30 as I am, I was almost sure that there were just as many people riding the bus West of the airport as there were riding East of the airport. I spoke to a senior staff member at HART about the discrepancy. He assured me that my self assessment on the ridership was not accurate. “However”, he said, “the service improvements are not about ridership. The downtown business community has been pressuring us to improve service between downtown and the airport. We don’t think that there are people waiting at the curb to catch that extra bus. We do think that 15 minute service will provide that extra incentive to get people to take the bus who wouldn’t have previously considered it.”

I have to agree with that logic. However, I think the argument that more service will eventually bring more riders is just as true in Town N’ Country, if not more so, than it is downtown. I also wasn’t convinced about the ridership. So, I was able to get HART staff to pull the ridership reports for me.

The first thing that I learned from the ridership data is that the ridership data isn’t that accurate. Up until very recently, HART has only had a limited number of automated passenger counters (APCs) available to audit their ridership. A great deal more were recently ordered and are currently being deployed but as far as current data is concerned, any given route is only surveyed a handful of times, 3 times a year. The senior staff member was right about more people coming from Downtown, but not by as much as he let on. Of passengers originating East of Westshore Mall, versus passengers originating West of Westshore Mall, it’s about a 60-40 split skewed towards downtown.

When you just look at people getting on and off at the airport, it gets even more interesting. Within 5%, there are just as many people who get off at the airport from either direction. The statistics for people who get on the bus at the airport as basically the same.

The bottom line is, if you’re trying to improve service to the airport, then you should heavily consider those people who already use the bus to get there. If you do that, then it doesn’t make sense to double service on the downtown side and leave the West side as is. Especially in a lean budget year.

Last year, when the budget started to get lean, the HART budget voted to eliminate weeknight service after 10:00 p.m. on Route 30, West of the airport. By there own estimates, HART staff concluded that by eliminating these two late night buses, over 900 riders annually would be affected for a savings of $26,000. Now, one year later, HART wants to put $1.2 million in new service East of the airport.

Needless to say, I was incensed. I prepared my analysis of the ridership data and submitted it to HART as part of their public comment process. I also testified at their public hearing on July 16. I asked that HART improve it’s ridership data collection and to compromise on the service enhancements by spreading the extra buses out over the whole route on a 20 minute interval.

Wednesday, HART staff released their revised proposals, based on the public comment process. They have recommended that the Board of Directors defer it’s decision on the Route 30 enhancements until March 2009, halfway through the 2009 fiscal year. The stated reason being that the new buses that were to be dedicated to the route will not be available until then. I have no reason to doubt that my testimony on the matter has had little effect and that HART still intends to pursue the downtown enhancement of Route 30 at Town N’ Country’s expense. I can only hope that the delay will provide additional time to convince the HART staff and board to take a more equitable stance.

In the case of the power supply, my brick and mortar options were limited. As I discovered the age of the one stop “computer store” is long passed. After it put it’s competitors out of business, CompUSA went the way of the dodo itself this year. You can buy hard drives and network cards at Radioshack but for something as seemingly exotic as power supply, the only “buy it today and take it home” option are the sketchy looking independent computer repair shops that you can still find in immigrant neighborhoods or a pawn shop gambit. The gambit being buying a similar looking and relatively overpriced tower and cannibalizing for parts, hoping that they will match up.

I wanted some vague assurance that what I would buy would eventually work with my system. There seemed to be no place left in Tampa where I could walk in and expect this gurantee with my immediate take home purchase. I was forced to look online for a solution and in doing so was resigned to the fact that I’d end up paying upwards of 30% of the total cost for shipping, in order to receive my needed component within one business week.

I’ve bought two computers from Dell without a problem. Both of them have far outlasted the warantee. Though I’ve heard the horror stories, you could say I’ve had no reason to be warry. The power supply purchase continued the trend of well met expectations. I bypassed the website and called the sales office. The call probably took about fifteen minutes. Once I was connected to the appropriate rep (a very helpful South Asian), she quickly guided me to the appropriate part and set up my order. The order arrived promptly two days later. Unfortunately, delivery of the power supply lead me to discover that it was not what I needed. Further diagnosis and research lead me to discover that the motherboard and or processor had failed. I don’t blame Dell at all, in this regard. They gave me exactly what I asked for, even though it turned out to be not what I needed.

This, of course, led to the realization that instead of having a $50 fix on my hands, I was looking at a minimum of $100 for a replacement motherboard from a third party vendor of unknown reputation. Or, I could buy a “new” refurbished tower with a one year warantee from Dell Outlet, that would fill my LAMP server needs at a price of about $300, shipping included. Thus far, my experience with Dell led me to believe that the $300 option was the best course.

The Inspiron 531 mini-tower desktop had an AMD 2.3 ghz processor, 2 gigabytes of RAM, a DVD-R/W drive and a 160 GB hard drive; more power than I would ever fully utilize. Total cost with tax was about $245. I paid $59 for two-day shipping. Now, just because you pay for two-day or even about $100 for next-day shipping, Dell has no obligation as to when they will actually ship the order. Needless to say, my experience told me that Dell would ship within 2-3 business days and that it would arrive within 1 week of order. The extra $30 over ground service can save you up to a week of waiting and I’ve usually found it worth the money. Sure enough, I received the shipping confirmation that following Monday, meaning by system would arrive, at latest, exactly one week from the time I had placed the order. Par for the course, I thought.

As it turns out, the order was actually delivered one day after being shipped from the Dell distribution center. Here’s the punchline; instead of being delivered to my home in Tampa, it was delivered to a business address, previously unknown to me, in Hunt Valley, Maryland!

I first became suspicious after receiving the shipping confirmation from Dell. Two days later, the tracking information was still not appearing on my order page. I called Dell customer service and spoke to a rep, I’ll call him Jim, who informed me that the order had been delivered by DHL the day previous. He dictated the tracking information to me, 10:14AM, signed for by receptionist, name I didn’t recognize, etc. Jim confirmed for me the shipping address, the correct address, my home in Tampa, where there is no receptionist at 10:00Am or at any hour. I questioned the validity of the delivery, citing the lack of a receptionist. Jim seemed unphased by this turn. He did, however, offer me an option, that I assume was meant to placate me.

Jim said that he could file a “claim” for a lost order and if the “claim” was found to be valid, I could receive a replacement for my order within…2 weeks! Needless to say, I was beside myself. In less than five minutes, I had been transformed from a paying customer into some sort of claimant in a quasi legal hell. I told Jim to proceed with finding me a replacement and before I got off the phone with him, I persuaded him to give me the DHL tracking number that had been so conspicuously missing from my order page.

I called DHL customer service and was able to get a rep to transcribe the details of my computer’s travelogue. The computer had shipped without delay from the Dell distribution center to it’s intended destination in Hunt Valley. I say intended, because as far as DHL was concerned the Maryland address was were it was supposed to go. It was the only address that they were given by Dell.

Armed with this new information, I called Dell again. “You see, my computer isn’t lost. There’s no need to “replace” the order. Just contact DHL and have them retrieve it in Maryland and send it to me.” In the bizarro world of Dell support, that’s apparently not an option. As far as my new rep, Chuck [sic] was concerned, I had filed a claim for a replacement. Within 5-10 business days, read two weeks, Dell would find a new computer for me and send it to me with a “free” next day shipping upgrade. “But I paid $59 to have my computer delivered in TWO DAYS. It wasn’t delivered in two-days. Now, you want me to wait up to two additional weeks. What about the $59? You’re going to refund that right?” Chuck said no.

“Okay Chuck, my expectations are not being met here, let’s just call the whole thing off, shall we? I want to cancel my order!” In a way, I was bluffing. Two extra weeks or not and despite all the disservice up to this point, I didn’t think I would be able to get a better deal anywhere else. Although no one had presented it as option till now, it was my prerogative to walk away and I wanted to put it on the table. In phone support terms, the bluff did have the desired effect. Chuck upgraded me to the next level of support and transfered me to his supervisor. I’ll call her Mary.

Mary took the news of our impending termination with stride. She took the few details she needed to process the transaction and then asked me, very rote indifference, if “there was anything else she could do for me”. “Yeah,” I said, “you can ship my computer to me immediately, or at least on a more rigid time line than what your normal replacement procedure dictates and you can refund the $59 that I’ve paid for shipping, since I clearly did not get what I paid for there.” Mary informed me that this wasn’t possible. As far as she was concerned, I had two options, wait for the replacement system to arrive in 1-2 weeks or wait for my refund to be processed within 3-5 business days. I opted not give Dell another dollar of my money and I hope not to ever do business with them again.

Two blocks from my house, in a strip mall storefront that at different times housed a comic book store and an ice cream shop, there is an independently owned and operated computer sales and repair shop. I’ve probably walked past it a thousand times without giving it another thought except to ponder when it would go out of business. Compumania is owned and operated by Ricardo, a guy from Colombia who makes his living catering to the personal computer needs of my increasingly immigrant community. I stopped in to see Ricardo a couple of times last week, on my way home from work. I eventually agreed to have him build me a custom tower with a Duo Core processor and all of the same specs as the Inspiron tower I was going to buy from Dell. We made sure that the processor architecture was compatible with my build of Ubuntu and I was able to boot my existing server with only a minor modification to the network adapter installation. He personally delivered the whole thing to my door, two days after I paid him. The total price tag came to, you guessed it, just under $300. The only downside is, that although the processor and motherboard are waranteed for a year or more, the system itself has no warantee or service contract. Even Ricardo doesn’t know if he’ll be around next year. But chances are, the new server will last over a year. For $300, what more can you ask for.

The whole debacle has got me reflecting on the state of retail computing. Dell and Gateway have effectively put the one stop computer stores out of business. Consumers can buy individual components from any number of online sellers, whose prices are usually inversely proportional to their reputation. But when a small business or individual needs support or upgrades for their existing enterprise hardware, where do they turn. As I see it, the current landscape offers two distinct options that I will be bound to explore in the future. First, theirs the boutique route offered by Apple, it seems like a good way to go, if you’ve got the cash. Second, Best Buy and Circuit City, respectfully, have been developing their Geek Squad and Fire Dog tech support services for a couple of years now. Their competing directly with Dell in the area of add-on service contracts for new hardware purchases. They also offer their services a la carte. This seems like a good way to go. The next time I need some support, I’m going to check them out.

So, it seems appropriate for me to weigh in again on the Democratic presidential primaries. I feel it necessary to update my predictions, since I had previously predicted that Hillary Clinton would steal the election. One thing that the Clinton campaign certainly failed to understand is that a 55-45 split is not a “win”, it’s a 55-45 split. It’s been a long time since a primary was contested through all 50 states. It’s clear now that the Clintons did not expect to have to contest nearly that many states. They expected to knock him out after five or six races.

As we all know, that didn’t happen. When you’re only contesting less than half of the primaries, as has been the modern practice, you can squeak out a narrow margin in New Hampshire and say that you won. When your opponent is in it for the long hall, and half of New Hampshire’s and every other states delegates go to him, it’s a lot harder to declare victory.

This was a very close race and the party should be better for it. Certainly, Obama and Hillary were capitalizing on TV coverage all Spring while McCain was mulling around with nothing much to do. However, the race certainly did lag on longer than it should have. Somewhere around late March, it became a mathematical impossibility for Hillary to clinch the nomination. Yet, like some sort of zombie vampire bitch, she refused to concede. My favorite columnist, Matt Taibbi, wrote about this phenomenon for Rolling Stone. He does the topic more justice than I ever could. I suggest everyone check him out, if they haven’t already.

The whole Michigan, Florida debacle was infuriating to me. Living in Florida, as I do, I was pretty upset that my vote wasn’t going to count for shit in the primary. This, of course, was nothing new. Since, the trend of presidential primaries in my voting lifetime has been to only contest 10-15 states (not Florida) before anointing the nominee. Parties are not governed by the Constitution and are regulated by very little Federal legislation. The people that run the parties generally do whatever they want, though logic would dictate that they do what is in their collective interest. Therefore, the DNC was operating under the premise that it was in the party’s interest to exclude Michigan and Florida from the primaries.

In fact, the whole “short calendar” regime that places South Carolina’s importance above Florida and Michigan and New Hampshire above all is in the party’s interest only if you define the party’s interests in terms of it’s ruling elite. Read Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Clinton’s assumed that a short calendar was in their interest, if only they could knock out all challengers without a fight. It saved them money, time and resources, to not compete in Michigan and Florida, and that’s why they were oddly silent during the whole pre-election disenfranchisement story. Four months later, the short calendar strategy did not actually work out. They were out on a limb and suddenly they changed their tune.

The whole thing irked me more than usual, because my vote was actually caught up in this bit rate tv drama. I didn’t vote the Presidential ballot in January. I had been assured by Chairman Howard Dean that my vote didn’t and in fact wouldn’t count. Not wanting to give the dog and pony show any legitimacy, I turned in a blank Democratic ballot. I wouldn’t have voted at all, if it wasn’t for that pesky “save our homes” property tax amendment.

Then, months later, the Chairman and his minions, who are starting to seam more and more like the oligarchical politburo that they are, decided that my vote did count; counted for half, anyway. This end result ended up being an even greater insult and injustice than if they had just continued with the plan to wipe Florida off the electoral map. Think of all the mouth breathers out there that didn’t even bother, because the television and the newspaper told them it didn’t matter. We have the Clintons to thank for this sorry state of affairs. They’ve had their way with the party since Bill was elected. If they didn’t personally engineer the original Florida penalty, they certainly stoud idly by and let it happen. Then, they came along and pretended to be our half saviors, when it served their interest.

Thankfully, the Clintons are politically dead. Or are they? We still don’t know who Obama’s VP nominee will be.

I’m not surprised that Clinton won New Hampshire last night.  New Hampshire is a tiny state, whose population is concentrated around the two urban areas of Manchester and Nashua.  In those population centers, the Democratic party has most of the characteristics of a traditional ‘machine-style’ system of patronage.  Jobs, contracts and favors are handed down from state government, through the local Mayors office and down to the ward and precinct level.  This organization is tightly controlled from the top down and is usually for sale to the highest bidder.  John Kerry bought it four years ago.  Clinton bought it this year.

Among the public, New Hampshire has a reputation for small towns, “retail” door-to-door campaigning and independent minded voters.  That image may characterize the majority of it’s voters.  However, the decisive plurality of most primary elections comes from the tightly controlled and bartered constituencies of Manchester and Nashua.  I propose that the reason New Hampshire retains it’s position as the first primary state is because of it’s arranged reputation to deliver victory to the establishment candidate.

Here in Florida, of course, our primary doesn’t matter at all.  The DNC offered the Florida Democratic Party a choice: keep our election on January 29 and award zero delegates to the convention or schedule after February 1 and face the likelihood that the race will probably be over.  The FDP didn’t actually have a choice, since the election was scheduled by the Republican controlled legislature.

Because the media does not report on such things, most people don’t even realize that the Democratic primary is not about which candidate wins which state.  It’s about how many convention delegates each candidate earns.  Candidates win delegates proportionally, based on the number of votes that they win in each state.  Based on their performance in Iowa and New Hampshire, so far, Barack Obama has earned 25 delegates, Hillary Clinton has earned 24 and John Edwards has 18.  2026 delegates are needed to secure the nomination.  The New York Times has a helpful election calendar that includes each state and the number of delegates at stake.

The buzz from CNN and the New York Times this week was first that several polls projected Clinton down 10% from Obama in New Hampshire.  When Clinton actually won New Hampshire by 3%, the same sources were quick to capitalize on the “comeback” story.  For months, Clinton has been the clear favorite in New Hampshire, largely because of her lock on the urban machine.  When Barak Obama won Iowa, it did not change the political situation in New Hampshire.  I believe that the Clinton campaign spent the last week commissioning those ‘10% down’ polls and lowering the public expectation overall.  This enabled her to make the most out of her small margin of victory and to claim the mantle of “comeback gal.”

The Democratic race will likely be concluded on Tuesday, February 5, when a record 23 states will hold their contests on the same day.  2075 delegates will be at stake.  Between then and now, there are four primaries.  The Nevada and South Carolina primaries have a total of 87 delegates at stake.  Michigain and Florida have both had their delegates stripped.  The results of those races will likely be the same as New Hampshire and Iowa.  Clinton and Obama will each gain approximately one third of the delegates.  The other candidates will split the remaining third.

Although Obama and Clinton will remain relatively even up until the Super Tuesday contest, I expect the media to spin the race in favor of Hillary Clinton.  Little attention will be paid the delegate total.  The vote percentages will be presented in a distorting manner;  South Carolina has almost twice as many voting Democrats (and delegates) as Nevada but the results of those two races will be presented with the same significance.  Finally, the results of the ‘zero-delegate’ races will be thrown around to muddy the waters.

Within that context, the Clinton war machine will swing into full gear.  In the next 30 days, she’ll probably be in a position to outspend Obama 2 to 1; and that’s exactly what she’ll do.  She’ll have twice as many ads on TV in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.  Expect some very negative content as well.  Meanwhile, to carry her banner, she’ll hire every two-bit party hack and AME minister from Atlanta to Chicago.

When the smoke clears on February 5, it will still be close.  Obama will probably be down by less than 200 delegates.  However, because of the obscurity of the process, Hillary will be painted as the big winner.  If allowed to compete in states like Wisconsin, Texas, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, Obama would probably kick ass.  He also probably won’t get the chance.  Obama will be out of money and all of his political and financial backers will be banging on his door, telling him to give it up “for the sake of party unity.”

Mark Saturday, March 1 on your calendar.  It’s likely to be a slow news day.  Obama will concede.  Edwards and Kucinich might stick it out, if only to grab a little limelight before their next book deal comes through.  For better or worse (worse), the whole party apparatus is going to fall in line behind Hillary Clinton.  Flashback to 2004.

Remember last year? Remember 2006? Remember how lean it was? Remember how many meals you had to skip? Remember when American obesity reached an all-time high? Remember how you wanted to get a new ipod and a new flat screen, but you decided to wait for a price drop on that ipod and ended up getting an iphone this June instead. Yeah. Well apparently this year was only 3.6% better than that. In fact, retail growth hasn’t been this low since the dark, dark days of 2002!

The Times is regurgitating numbers published this week by MasterCard Advisors, a division of MasterCard. During a given period, they’re able to draw on data from almost all purchases made with one of their affiliated credit or debit cards. They take these millions of transactions as a sample, in order to estimate the total sales numbers. According to MasterCard, retail sales are up 3.6% from last year. That includes just about everything bought or sold in a real-life, “brick and mortar” stores, including gasoline.

How much is that in dollars and cents? Seems like a good question right? What exactly was the total retail sales number for that period? Unfortunately, that’s either a question that the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and CNN either neglected to ask or that MasterCard declined to answer. MasterCard doesn’t have a copy of their press release online but I’m guessing that the totals are missing from every major news source that covered this story today because that isn’t the message that the creditors and retailers want you to hear.  They didn’t say, for instance, that total sales came in at $375 billion, up from last year’s $362 billion.  That just wouldn’t sound as depressing.

Keeping in mind that we’re just talking about “holiday” sales numbers here, things get even rosier when you add the internet.  What’s that, you say.  We weren’t counting the internet?  No, in fact, if you add internet sales, combined holiday spending totaled $401.29; up 4.5% from last year’s $384.01.

Comscore, a market research company dedicated to serving internet businesses, reports that online sales totaled $26.3 billion, during the period from November 1 to December 21; an increase of 19 percent from the previous year.  Representing the interests of internet sales, Comscore clearly has an agenda.  Internet sales are up.  They aren’t up as much as the 26% growth they had last year but their up a lot and that’s exactly what they want you to hear; a message of optimism.

Mastercard, on the other hand seems to be doing everything it can to spin modest net growth pessimistically.  This begs the question why?  I’m not a business expert but it seems worth looking into.  Who profits from a Bear Market?  What does Mastercard have to gain here?

My sister, who had suffered a life long illness, passed away in April. Since then, I’ve been living close to my family in Tampa. Tampa was not the place I saw myself living ten years ago. Having grown up here, I always took it for granted. The grass is always greener, etc. Now, having lived and worked for long periods in both Boston and Tallahassee, I have to say that Tampa is growing on me. It’s not just my family. My best friend Matt lives here too. We’ve known each other since high school but lived apart for most of the second half of our lives. It’s nice to be able to hang out with him every week.

Besides friends and family. The bay area seems to be rife with opportunity for a guy like me. I’ve previously made my money in nonprofit, social services and database administration. There is plenty of that to go around. I’ve also dabbled in politics and since being back I’ve taken a keen interest in what’s been going on with homeless services, affordable housing and public transportation.

In July, I took a job with Island Media Advertising, Inc. They specialize in marketing small business oriented web pages, directories and hosting to businesses in the Caribbean and Bahamas, their signature service being the Island Yellow Pages; not affiliated with Island Cable and Wireless. Take one look and I’m sure you’ll be thinking, “Scott, isn’t that just some yellow page replacement scam?” The short answer is no. Needless to say, in the short time I worked there, I gained years worth of stories to tell and I intend to tell them here, in due time.

Quickly thereafter, I was placed by a staffing agency to a company in South Tampa that specializes in purchasing database mapping for hospitals and group purchasing organizations (GPOs). My temporary job as a researcher is to basically, “cleanse” thousands of items from one purchasing database to another. It’s slow tedious and unforgiving work but the people I work for and with are very nice. The environment is very casual and permissive. More on them later.

So, I’m in Tampa for good and I’m looking for a prime gig. In the meantime, I’ve been putting in some hours with my favorite time suck, Xbox Live, cooking and riding my bike; though not as often as I’d like. The streets around here are not as forgiving as Tallahassee or even Boston.

Finally, the crux of the matter. We’re coming to you live from my very own LAMP server. This has been several months in the making, not that it should take that long. I kept hitting the same road block, every time I tried to set this up. Apparently, Apache configuration files can have an effect not unlike muscle relaxers. I’ll have to remember that, the next time I have insomnia. More on LAMP configuration and other cool tech stuff later. For now, I’ll leave you to it. The best has yet to come.