kfed's blog

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2008 United States presidential campaign.

I call California home, but for the last three months I've been living in Utah for a summer internship. And let me tell you, I do not recommend this state to anyone who lives in a better one.

Northern Utah is beautiful; the rivers are stunning; the scenery is simply amazing. Yesterday I drove through the mountain canyons northeast to Bear Lake, a large turquoise water body that divides itself between Idaho and Utah. Along the highway were craggy, red rock-type formations that looked like the Grand Canyon, but those rocks were surrounded by lush forests, a river, some meadows, tall mountains-- almost every type of mountainous nature.

I love good theater, good art, and I appreciate good work, but I save the standing ovations for the moments and the artists who really Wow me. That's what a standing ovation is supposed to be. It's not your basic applause, it's not your roaring applause, it's roaring applause PLUS standing. 

I was thinking about this while watching one of the operas I do marketing for. There are incredible singers in it, but a standing O for the messenger?

First of all, congratulations to this year's contest winners!

Don't worry, this isn't a rant about being a sore loser, though I have, admittedly, been known to get a little pouty over such things.

But I do have an idea about how contests can be evaluated in the future.

We have engaged in this site, many for months or years in some cases, with the theoretical expectation of making a difference, of generating meaningful dialogue.

I'm not sure how successful that's been, but the experience has certainly been eye-opening. "The importance of being kfed," "My mother's daughter" and other posts I've written are some of the most honest pieces I've written, ever. 

We have a responsibility, us bloggers out there, to embrace the technology available to us in a meaningful way.

Yaman Salahi's day in court is over, but his days of writing about people he believes are wrong is just beginning. 

In a related post [Students for Justice (in small claims court)], I relayed the story of Yaman Salahi, a UC Berkeley student and activist who recently lost a lawsuit brought by Lee Kaplan, a right-wing investigative "journalist." As the other article concludes, I really see no evidence for why Kaplan won; I felt Salahi's documents were persuasive and well-supported with evidence, whereas Kaplan's documents were riddled with factual errors and misunderstandings about the way technology works, not to mention brought up far more than was relevant to the ca

My roommate in Utah works in the costume shop, and she comes back to me with the worst of horror stories I have ever heard.

The women who run the costume shop are locals who have lived here most of their lives; they're Mormon and have been on missions outside of the country, but other than that stick to Utah.

And, as many women do in a costume shop, they tell stories about the people they encountered on their missions, or some people they met the other day, that quasi-gossipy stuff that I guess is business as usual in Logan. 

Mr. and Mrs. Rosenzweig. 

I'm offending the masses, one blog post at a time. And this time, it's because of a an elderly couple to whom I eventually sold opera tickets yesterday.