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I just looked out the kitchen window, over the top of my neighbor’s house, to see… Angel Island on fire!

(Update: Jeff has posted much better photos over on his site.)

There’s nothing about it on television news at the moment (~9:20pm), nor on sfgate.com or kron4.com.  Yet, several Twitter users are clearly seeing the same thing I’m seeing, as the screenshot of the search shows below.

I’m not sure I’m ready to agree with the claim that Twitter can compete (in some ways) with AP and other news wires, but I can now see its utility in connecting you to others who are sharing a common experience.

What? Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are going to be face to face in a movie again for the first time since Heat?  And the movie’s coming out next month?  Why didn’t anyone tell me this?

Too bad I can’t say the word “righteous” with a straight face.

I’ve been working on this theory that there are just a handful of small actions which, if observed, can reveal volumes about a person’s inability to be a leader. In other words, bad leaders have “tells.” If you’re fortunate enough to spot one of these tells early enough, you can take action and save your group or your business or your community — or you can simply get far enough away to save your own sanity.

One of the tells goes like this: When a very serious question or issue is placed before the supposed leader, he or she attempts to make a joke. This is often played off as “having a sense of humor even in tough times.” But the truth is that it’s a tactic to distract people and avoid having to give a straight answer.

Here’s a real-world example, from President Bush’s press conference on Thursday:

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. I’d like to ask you about the Petraeus report, which as you say, will be in September, and report on the progress. Doesn’t setting up the September date give the enemy exactly what you’ve said you don’t want them to have, which is a date to focus on, and doesn’t it guarantee a bloody August?

And while I have you, sir, the phrase you just used, “a different configuration in Iraq” that you’d like to see, is that a plan B?

THE PRESIDENT: Actually I would call that a plan recommended by Baker-Hamilton, so that would be a plan BH.

The transcript doesn’t say it, but if you’d watched the conference on TV, you’d have noticed the complete lack of even a courtesy laugh from the crowd. The President continues speaking, but then catches himself — and, as if on stage at a comedy club, asks the crowd, “You didn’t like it?”

Not really.

And while it’s a bit late — and granted, a bit overplayed — to be looking for Bush’s tells at this point, it’s not a bad time to start looking at what the various 2008 candidates are giving away about themselves. For instance, there’s that certain candidate who decided that the best response to a question about taking action against Iran was to sing “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.

War, ain’t it hi-larious?

People say dumb things. Things they don’t mean. Things that just come out wrong. Things that are exaggerated. Things that are embarrassing. And they do it all the time. It’s just the nature of verbal communication.

And for most of us, it’s just not that big of a deal. We usually know what the other person meant to say, or else we’ll ask for clarification and will get it and will move on.

In the case of American politics, though, it seems that even the smallest slip sets off a tidal wave of gasps and accusations. Oh my GOD, John Kerry said you should get an education lest you be stuck in Iraq — he must truly hate everyone in the military and their families!

Look, if you watch the video, it’s pretty clear that he was going for some joke or emphasis and it just came out awkwardly. Stuff like that happens to all of us. In fact, if our enemies hired assistants to follow us around all day taping everything we said in public just so they could catch us when we slipped up — as is the case in most political races now — I’m sure we’d all be embarrassed. So can we move on?

And unless you think I’m just making excuses for the Democrats, consider that I find the outrage over Republican George Allen’s “macaca” comment to be just as manufactured. Was it in bad form to publicly make fun of someone? Completely. Was Allen’s possibly inadvertent use of an old East European racial slur (that most Americans have never heard) a sign that he secretly wishes the KKK would call him some time? I doubt it. (Now, whether other evidence shows he has a more deep-rooted history of racist actions is another story altogether — but even then, “macaca” would barely have a part.)

The good news is that it seems people can actually get over an embarrassing remark. Remember McCain’s “gook” comment back in 2000? (It was insensitive, he apologized, and we moved on.) I just wish we could get to that point sooner this time around. We’ve got an election coming up with real issues at stake. Can we get back to that? Are you listening news editors?

I know the following two items have both been covered — separately — in the news this past week, but I think it’s important to put them together and turn the spotlight on them again (seeing as there’s clearly still some confusion on the matter):

1. Zogby Poll: 46% of American voters believe there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 terror attacks.
2. Senate Report: Hussein had no ties to Al Qaeda or any other radical Islamic group and did not want to cooperate with them. (via Chicago Tribune.)

That’s essentially one in two people who has the facts wrong. That’s one in two people who are eligible to vote in the next U.S. election. Help spread the right information.

Good lord. I’ve just returned from the conference on international citizen journalism — at which many of the discussions focused on overcoming government and corporate censorship (both explicit and implicit) — and the news today is uncannily about government censorship of new media. In particular, Indian Internet service providers are blocking access to blogs at the request of the Indian government.

So the story so far is that the government only asked the ISPs to block a handful of sites, but that the ISPs had no way of blocking select blogspot and typepad sites, so they just banned them all.

In response, a group of Indian bloggers have set up a “Bloggers Against Censorship” wiki to collect and share news about the ban (and ways to get around it.)

So, two wrongs and a right:

• Crackdown on freedom of speech (by a country often referred to as the “world’s largest democracy.”)
• Terrible, half-assed application of technology to filter content.
• Affected group using the Web to organize, draw attention to the issue, and overcome the ban.

I’m curious to know: Why now? Is there any relation to the recent train bombings?

At tonight’s NetSquared event in San Francisco, I listened to Creative Commons CTO Mike Linksvayer tell the story of how a group of environmentalists is working to subvert Monsanto’s claim that it owns the copyright to the DNA of its genetically modified crops.

According to Mike, this group is working on cultivating related crops nearby whose DNA is licensed more openly, under the “free” Gnu Public License (GPL) scheme.

This is interesting because, according to the terms of the GPL, any work that is based on (derived from) another GPL-licensed work must also be released under a GPL license. So, if the Monsanto crops and the GPL-licensed crops were to cross-polinate and yield a hybrid crop, that would — theoretically — mean the hybrid was freely available.

Regardless of where you stand on Monsanto’s policies or politics, or whether this would hold up in a court of law, you have to admit that this is an incredibly clever tactic.

Making a donation to the Bush campaign in my name is either the cleverest joke or the most patient jab anyone has ever unleashed upon me. Bravo, you bastard. Whoever you are.

(And a side note: What happened to Bush’s wedding ring?)

(Update: The ring is actually there, but it’s barely visible. Oh well.)

Today, I used the phrase it’s not a tumor without invoking Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I’d like to propose an amendment that disallows people from proposing amendments that are based on the argument that “my god says so.”