As you may be aware, I have been spending more and more time with a certain special lady, including travels to London and Brazil. Things have been going really well, I think. Since one of the purposes of ye olde blog is informing people in my weakly-tied circle of cohorts of life-update kind of information, this warrants a long-overdue post. Read on for the romance report.

I've been doing the politics thing in a mostly mainstream way since 2003, following the action, participating heavily at times, trying to steer the Big Spaceship a little more to my liking. Following the horserace (or sometimes bloodsport, or sometimes commedia) in DC can leave one detached from the original motivation. One of my cousins asked me recently what my "real political values" are, I'm guessing because I tweet about class war and sound generally agitated. It actually made me stop and think, and that was nice. Here's what I came up with...

I took a bunch of books with me on vacation — facilitated while traveling light thanks to the Kindle (that's my one and only plug; I'm aware opinions are mixed) — and over the past three weeks I managed to get through five volumes. Today I'm going to write a little about the two non-fiction works, Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus), Umair Haque's New Capitalist Manifesto and David Mitchell's novelly-structured novel, Cloud Atlas.

I'm off to Brazil! A new nation, a new language, sweet escape from the Northern Hemisphere. It's been a nice stay in NYC. Snowpocalypse meant more quality time with my mom and my sister vs. socializing with friends, but that's not really a bad thing. I'll be offline for the trip; books but no laptop; looking forward to the recharging mental space that brings. I'll be back at it in SF come Sunday the 9th, so watch out then!

Reading Red Mars, sociological sci-fi, gets me thinking about life in all its rich variety and how we never really know what's coming. The patterns that have led me to where I stand now, the wider world around me, and where I (and it) go next.

Just to put some data in the chamber, I think Wikileaks is an important development. While the leaking of diplomatic cables is hardly cut and dry a blow for good, I strongly agree with the big-picture strategy. It's also clear that Julian Assange is being personally persecuted and the organization frozen out online. All of this has happened before. Keep that in mind when parsing the news.

Starting a new tag, "Things I Consumed," I'll tell you about the things that I read, ate, watched or otherwise consumed, but more what they made me think. First up is The Big Short, Michael Lewis' exploration of our latest financial bubble via the lenze of those who saw the end coming and had the balls to invest in collapse.

I've been writing online at a relatively enthusiastic (if occasionally uneven) clip for nine years now. A lot of things have changed in all those days, and renewing my effort means taking a trip down memory lane to remember why, exactly, I started all this in the first place.

With the help of the fine folks at ToDrupal.com, I've upgraded to Drupal 7! This is still beta software, so bugs are to be expected, and I've already stubbed my toes in a few places. Have some ideas for ways to improve things too. Nothing like "scratching my own itch" to get the contribution train rolling again.

2010 mid-term election summary. Lot's of darkness, a couple points of light, and a Kleptones music video. Click "read more" for the full story.