On Saturday, the A's concluded a 7-game losing streak by defeating the division rival Texas Rangers, on the back of a pitching gem by lefty ace hurler Barry Zito. With that streak now complete, the ANtics investigates some of the lesser-known ongoing streaks you may not have heard about, in "Streak Outs for Troops".

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ANtics Archive: 2005/06 ANtics | PDF

Growing up, I was enamored by primary politics. I can remember at the age of 11 hiding behind the couch so I could see the NBC Nightly News reports on the "Super Tuesday" results, scribbling down who had won, state by state. I was hiding behind the couch as my parents had of course told me to go to bed. It was a school night after all. But to me, finding out if Al Gore had successfully pulled off his southern strategy and taken a lead against Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson was more important than catching a few more hours of sleep.

Flash forward 18 years later, and Al Gore continues to come up as a potential ascendant to the presidential throne - if it can still be called that after the last six years of nonsense from the current administration. Given how Bush's popularity is in the toilet, down at the 30% approval range, pundits and voters alike are eager for a change - anything. Polls are already being taken on who should be the candidate on the Democratic side, and whether they would fare well against a similar guessing game of Republican names. And Gore keeps coming up, even if he says he's not interested.

According to a multitude of recent polls, Hillary Clinton continues to poll the highest among registered Democrats, with John Kerry, Al Gore, John Edwards and a host of also-rans falling behind in line. And don't think it's too early to pick a winner. The New York Times ran a front-page piece on George W. Bush's candidacy for the Republican nomination before a single ballot had been cast in Iowa or New Hampshire in 2000. On the Republican side, it's widely expected that John McCain will make a successful run, with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani also being named.

What's different this time around, according to just about everybody, is the ascendency of Internet-based politicking, whether the focus is on issues or fund-raising. It's believed that waiting around for huge donations of soft money from large donors isn't the answer any longer, and he or she who operates the most well-honed Web strategy is going to take the prize. This is well chronicled in "Crashing the Gate", and this week, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek comes to the same conclusions in a piece titled, "A New Open-Source Politics". I believe its one thing to harness the energy of the Internet, and quite another to expect that the Netroots are going to act as efficient replacements for the ATM. If one candidate asks for supporters to pony up the dough too many times, whatever advantage they once had will be gone - as they change from presidential candidate to spam candidate - to be filtered as junk.

For me, the biggest disappointment about 2008 projections is a name that is missing. Howard Dean seems to be the strongest on the issues, and aligns with my preferences in a very clear way. While he is doing outstanding work as the chairman for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), I had wished he would give it another run at the chief executive position. In 2004, he had already withdrawn his name as a candidate by the time we in California had the opportunity to vote, and in the back of my head, I wish we had another shot at it. We don't need another repeat of John Kerry, and Hillary, although formidable, simply can't expect to overcome the hatred of the shallow South. It should be an interesting few years.

Listening to ''Inner Depth'', by Jerry Bonham (Play Count: 3)

More in an irregularly occurring series...

If you were a monster monolith company and found yourself in 3rd place in a major market, what would you do? Cheat to get to the top? What if that's already been done, and you were fined billions of dollars? Turns out the next step is to kiss up to the market leaders or try to buy them. After last month's discussion that Microsoft tried to partner with Yahoo! against Google, the latest rumors have Microsoft trying to buy eBay and make eBay part of the MSN experience. Yikes. I am sure that eBay would see a flood of buyers and sellers elsewhere rather than share their money with Bill Gates, or see beta software impact their auctions, Microsoft style.

Speaking of market leader search engines, Google is now turning the corner on visual design if the latest news is to be believed. Rather than priding themselves on minimalism forever, it looks like the company is recognizing that applications need more visual care than simple Web sites. As a result, they've just taken on a new hire as a "visual design lead", who will bring flair to all things Google.

Guy Kawasaki continues his "Lies" thread, today introducing the Top Sixteen Lies of CEOs. After slamming engineering, marketing, VCs and others, I'm sure he'll get around to the top ten lies of the maintenance crew shortly.

And if you've ever wondered just why the Apple iPod has dominated the music scene since its introduction, The Observer (UK) discusses the unique alignment of the customer experience with a single slick device. I can't remember the last time I looked forward to walking into a warehouse-like record store only to put down $15 to $18 for a CD album. iTunes has made the music buying experience a relative pleasure rather than a seeming chore.

Listening to ''Push Upstairs - Roger S Blue P'', by Underworld (Play Count: 5)

The film has been the talk of the summer - much of it around Tom Hanks' flowing locks of hair and the critics' near universal dislike of Ron Howard's film adaptation of the Dan Brown novel, but the Da Vinci Code continues to pull in viewers, raking in $70+ million in box office its opening weekend, and trailing only the dominant X-Men 3 in its second weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.

My wife and I pulled into one of the later showings tonight, starting the film at 10:15, and despite arriving 10 minutes early, we found the theater packed. In fact, the only row that had two adjacent seats was the very front row, where we found ourselves facing a huge screen that had us craning left and right to see the action ahead, or racing to read the subtitles as they came on screen, when if sat further back we could have grasped them immediately.

Having managed to avoid reading the novel myself, I came in to the film without deep-set expectations or mental comparisons of how the film would perform versus the novel on which it was based. For my wife that was not the case, and after a series of "That's not how it was in the book!", I made it clear I didn't care, and was trying to enjoy the film for what it was - an attempt to cram a novel's worth of detail, symbols and history into 2 and a half hours of less detailed fare. While the plot line itself was interesting and loosely based on historical fact and religious history, it wasn't any kind of thriller that one would go to time and again or widely recommend. It didn't have any scenes that grabbed you for fear, drama, romance or comedy. Instead it pushed forward from clue to clue and limited character development, focusing on only 4 or 5 main actors without delving too far into their background, with snippets only offering yet more clues to how they got there.

As for the movie's main premises, it's not my place to say how right or how wrong they are. The best part of religion in general is having some things make absolute logical sense, and much more unknown, where faith in the unseen bridges the gap. No amount of debate or research can wholly serve that purpose, as more knowledge often leads to more questions.

Listening to ''Assorted Trance Volume 15'', by DJ Irish (Play Count: 3)