TREE LIGHTING.

Tonight's official Boston Tree Lighting Ceremony (and the tree itself) was brought to you by Nova Scotia. And the organizers didn't let you forget it, with MC shout-outs to Nova Scotia coming every few sentences, a banner over the stage advertising novascotialife.com, commercials for Nova Scotia between segments on the big video screen, and the Garrett Mason Band and other Nova Scotian artists providing the entertainment.

The Garrett Mason Band, a self-described "blues-influenced rock and roll band," followed up a set of bluesy rock jams with a song called "1917," commemorating the Halifax explosion. As it turns out, Boston was one of the first cities to respond to the chaos created by a weapons freighter exploding in Halifax harbor (which killed 2,000 from explosion, fire, and tsunami).

Bryan Mcknight was there too, wearing a very nice tweed trenchcoat with a bright orange lining under the (popped) collar. He didn't sing "Back to One," opting instead for two songs off his new Christmas album - or rather, one and a half songs, since the second song (accompanied by his two sons! one singing and the other holding a guitar and plonking it morosely!) was cut off midway by a POWER OUTAGE. Yes, the headliner of the Tree Lighting Ceremony suffered the indignity of a technical difficulty and walked off stage after a few seconds, never to return. The Nova Scotian dancers tried bravely to put on a silent show in the darkness. When the power came back, Mayor Menino made a speech and lit the tree, but by that time we were already on our way to get pho and warm our frozen feet.

GOING MAINSTREAM.

Girl Talk has made the front page of the NYT website. I guess he's officially uncool.

ECONOMIC STIMULUS.

People talk a lot about the effect of the economy on the campaigns, but what about the other way around? All that donation money flowing into a campaign gets pumped right back into the economy, particularly the flagging advertising markets. And the physical manifestations of the campaign - real estate, food, signs, t-shirts, etc. - go into local economies as well. The Obama campaign even has a problem keeping shirts in stock since they rely only on American union labor. Whereas the most recent economic stimulus package was criticized since much of it was saved rather than spent, campaign money goes straight into consumption. Admittedly, even a billion dollars of campaign spending is small potatoes compared to actual economic stimulus packages, and some large percentage of the donations probably comes from money that would be used on discretionary spending anyway, but hey - it's another reason why unfettered campaign spending isn't all bad.

THREE LAWS.

The LA Times recently published a pair of brief character pieces on the candidates which provide some behind-the-scenes detail on their interactions with the press. A major theme is the lack of access that now characterizes the campaigns: Obama from the start, and McCain more recently. The Obama piece also touches on the inscrutability and discipline of the candidate, which got me thinking - would it be so bad to have a robot as President? Always on message, absolutely disciplined, cooly analytical and unswayed by the vicissitudes of the news cycle. Maybe what this country needs is a Stephen Byerly. Country first!

Confessions from the Obama campaign trail (LA Times)

McCain was frank, garrulous and accessible -- and then he wasn't (LA Times)

SPACING OUT.

I've always been a double-spacer. Hit the period, then hit the spacebar twice. Even now, as I write about how this is an exercise in futility, I'm doing it. But Blogger, being HTML-based, doesn't preserve extra spacing. Submit the post and the extra spaces disappear. And manually adding &nbsp is a hassle. So it looks like all my posts will conform to accepted modern typographic standards for spacing - alas!

REVEALED PREFERENCE.

Looking across the office, I see only two types of computers: Thinkpads and Macs. Admittedly, a few of those Thinkpads are DNC property and the sample size is small, but as the economists might say, there's some revealed preference going on over here. There's no enforcement of uniformity here either - this is a collection of volunteers and staffers from across the country. Based on some possibly unreliable stats on laptop market share (DisplaySearch report, Q2'08), this group is not representative of the nation as a whole.* What the group is representative of, though, is well-informed, tech-savvy, young people with college or graduate degrees. And given that the Thinkpad is the laptop of choice for the bankers and consultants of the world, it's no surprise that the business aesthetic has filtered into the peer groups of the "organization kid". But what does a recessiony future hold for a brand based on cool design, that has doubled down on luxury in its most recent release? Or for the quartermaster of professions that may cease to be a default choice for the elites?

* Dell holds 21.9% of the market, HP 21.4%, Acer 14.4%, and Apple 10.6%. Toshiba has 9%, and Lenovo follows somewhere behind.

FIAT BLOG.

Mic check, mic check, one two - one two.