Piper Jaffray is the first analyst to agree with me that Apple is already set to dominate the emerging music download market.

Candace and I went to the Station Inn the other night, because we heard that Pat Flynn was playing with some other people. Pat is a masterful guitar player and he plays on Candace’s CD, so we didn’t want to miss it. When we got there, Pat was in the middle of an incredible mandolin improvisation and the band was really cooking. There was Dave Pomeroy on bass, Kenny Malone on percussion, a fabulous fiddle player, and a great dobro player, whose names I didn’t get, and a guy playing a really hot harmonica.

The harmonica player turned out to be Buddy Greene. I hadn’t heard of him, but Candace knew about him. He not only played great harmonica, he also turned out to be a great singer, a great song writer, and a very funny guy. The music was as good or better than anything I have heard since coming to Nashville, which is saying a lot, and the jokes were funnier too. They were having a great time, and so was I, and so was the audience. It was a full house.

The audience, while appreciative, was kinda quiet compared to me in my somewhat inebriated state. When I looked around, the people seemed a little straighter than the usual crowd at the Station Inn, but I didn’t really think about it. Gradually it became clear that Buddy Greene is a Christian, and this was a church crowd that had come to hear him. Now I am on record as loving Jesus, but I have always shared the liberal prejudice against church-going Christians, especially Southern Christians, especially born-again Southern Christians.

But now I’m gonna have to reconsider. Here I was right in the middle of a whole bunch of ’em, and they were not only really nice, well-behaved people, but they had better music and better jokes. Maybe they’re on to something.

I’m a programmer. I’ve spent my life programming computers, in a dozen different languages, on all kinds of computers, from Atari game machines to IBM 360s. I’m like those guys who have spent their lives playing guitar, or being machinists, or cabinet makers. If you play guitar all your life, and master your instrument, you see the world that way. You see the world as a giant guitar that you have to learn how to play. I have spent my life constructing complex logical patterns. That is how I see the world. This is both useful and frustrating.

Useful because logic is an unexcelled way of analyzing factual situations. Frustrating because human behaviour is not logical. Love, politics, war, economics, art, religion. These are disciplines that defy and transcend logic. I, like all humans, live my life within them, in spite of their alogicality. But I am brought back again and again to the view with which I am embued: logic. I am offended by illogic, in any sphere. I recognize that logic is not all there is. Nevertheless, I can’t subscribe to any notion that does not include it, at some level. It is an inevitable concomitant of my profession. Here are some things which I find to be illogical:
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We have a few photos, more on the way. Here’s a QuickTime slide show(2.9 MB). If you need QuickTime for Windows, you can download it here.

On the blue moon in the Smokies. Then off on a honeymoon on the Georgia Sea Islands. Be back in a week.

What kind of man (I know I should say person, but I’ve never gotten comfortable with the awkwardness of gender-neutral pronouns) sets his sights on becoming President of the United States, as a teenager, and remains committed to that goal throughout his adult life? Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry are such men. John Kerry filmed reenactments of himself being a hero in Vietnam. He volunteered for Vietnam even though he was against the war. He was thinking about the presidency. Clinton and Gore both calculated every move all their lives with the white house in mind. I suppose it’s laudable, in a strange kind of way. I have a difficult time identifying with it. As teenagers and young men, they could not possibly have had any kind of fully-formed vision of how and where to lead America. It’s not about that. It’s about what is to me almost unimaginable ambition and will.

I suppose it makes sense that these are the kind of people who wind up becoming the most powerful man or woman (see what I mean?) in the world. Not always though. George Bush spent his youth doing everything possible to avoid becoming President. His ambition and will only kicked in when he reached middle age. This is a psychology I can understand. My impression is that John Edwards and Joe Lieberman, although both ambitious men, also did not imagine the possibility of being the President, until later in life. It might be interesting to separate past Presidents into these two groups, and see which ones did a better job.

My daughter always knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to be a veterinarian, and now she is. Although I’m not one of them, I realize there are people like that. Maybe it’s no different than that. Some people want to be veterinarians. Some want to be the President of the United States. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s the same. There’s something scary about it.

Who could believe that the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan was motivated by a desire to increase profits for Unocal? Who could believe George Bush and John Ashcroft are plotting a fascist takeover of the United States? Who could believe that Hilary Clinton ordered the murder of Vince Foster? Who could believe that Bill Clinton was a drug lord overseeing a huge cocaine smuggling operation? Who could believe that George Bush is somehow in league with Osama Bin Laden? And yet millions of people in the U.S. do believe these things. Some of them are my friends. It’s just a wild guess, but I would estimate that somewhere around 20% of the adult population believes one or more of these things, or any one of a number of other crazy conspiracy theories.

If an individual were 20% convinced of any of these paranoid fantasies, he or she would be considered to be at least border-line psychotic. And that’s just the U.S. if we look at the world as a whole, it is much worse. It would seem that the principles of the Enlightenment, i.e., the scientific method, the rules of logic, etc., have a long way to go, to propogate through the collective consciousness.

This is the world we live in. We are, and have been, under attack by affiliated organizations of millions of psychotics. And we are living in a time when rapidly advancing deadly technology is becoming available to more and more people throughout the world. And yet many Americans, more than 20%, believe that the Bush administration is exaggerating the threat. Myself, I think that, if anything, they are seriously understating it. Exaggeration would be very difficult.

I saw part of the appearance of Michael Moore on Bill O’Reilly’s show. Whenever O’Reilly confronted Moore with some factual information, Moore would say, “Would you sacrifice your child to secure Fallujah?” That is such a slimy, demogogic, when did you quit beating your wife, question, purposely designed to create heat without light, a question that it is impossible to answer yes or no to. The legitimate question hiding within the propogandistic wrapper is, “If your child chose to volunteer to put his life at risk, in order to help liberate Iraq, would you approve of his decision?” That is a question that can be answered yes or no. Whenever questions of fact are raised, Michael Moore pulls out one of these cunning misdirections. He is obviously very bright, very quick, but there is no truth or integrity in the man.

At the Democratic convention, Michael Moore sits in the President’s box, next to Jimmy Carter. 95% of the delegates are against the war in Iraq. But if you listen to the speeches, or read the platform, you hear and see nothing about being against the war. Whenever Kerry is forced to mention the war, he sounds like George Bush, except he adds some vague rhetoric about getting more cooperation from our allies. He never says how he would do this. He never provides a serious analysis of why France, Germany, and Russia, are not supporting us. He never says what he would do different. He never provides an alternative vision of how to fight the war against Islamic fascism.

Maybe, if elected, he will turn out to be a great war president. There’s no way to tell, really. But that’s not what these delegates believe. They believe that he is secretly against the war, just like they are, just like Michael Moore is, but that he is saying what he needs to say to beat George Bush. So the anti-war crowd is gong along with the dodge. Maybe it’s a dodge, maybe it’s not. I don’t know what John Kerry would do as President. I have no idea. But I have a very clear sense of what George Bush will continue to do. I have no doubt that he will continue to confront the Islamic Jihad, the axis of evil and its satellites with all the means at his command. His perception of who are our friends, and who are not, seems very accurate to me. I will be very surprised if the voters throw him out, and put John Kerry in his place.

I agree with Andrew Sullivan. The Democratic convention has been shockingly well-managed so far. The anti-war, Bush-hater vote is sewed up. Kerry doesn’t need to pander to them anymore. They will vote for anyone but Bush. So now it looks like the slogan is changing from “Let America be America” to “Tough but wise”, which is, I must say, a brilliant move. Who’d of thunk the Democrats could be this smart? I still very much doubt that Kerry will be able to convince us that he really is tough but wise. Nevertheless, it is the perfect note to strike. I have to hand it to the Kerry team. They seem to know what they are doing.

Andrew Sullivan, my, and many others’ favorite blogger, has been riding the fence lately about Kerry vs. Bush. Many of his devoted readers are taking issue with him about this, accusing him of being obsessed with one issue, i.e., the FMA, the proposed anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment. He defends himself in today’s blog. Here is my response to his defense:

So what it really boils down to is that you do not believe that the war necessarily trumps all other issues, because 1) Bush has not been that great in the post-victory phase in Iraq, and 2) Kerry might not be so bad. That is certainly an arguable position, wrong but arguable.

My suspicion is, though, that were it not for the FMA, you would not be quite so pessimistic about the current situation in Iraq, nor quite so optimistic about Kerry’s secret plan to continue fighting the war, which he doesn’t like to call a war, which he discusses only when pressed, and then in the most vague terms imaginable. I think this is what many of your readers are sensing, that your understandable passion about the FMA is skewing your view of the main issue of this campaign.

The FMA is almost certainly doomed to failure, and may even turn out to be a boon to its opponents. The Islamic fascist war against America is not at all doomed to failure. It is real and will continue for the foreseeable future. The outcome is uncertain. Time is not on our side. If Kerry is elected President, it will be with an anti-war mandate. This cannot help but be a victory for our enemies.

This is why I, and others, are questioning your hopefulness about Kerry. We can’t be electing someone President because we hope he doesn’t mean what he says, and what his supporters say, just because he doesn’t support a doomed anti-gay amendment to the Constitution.