May 2005 Archives

To be fair, she isn't even 10 yet.

David Corn calls it as he sees it.

I love the base-closing issue. It turns all these conservative Republicans in states losing bases into socialists. Military socialists, that is. In a flash they would object to the US government spending money to create civilian jobs in, say, the solar industry. But they're all for using taxpayer money to preserve jobs in their states or districts that the Pentagon says are not needed. How Soviet of them. Pass the vodka, comrade.

Oh yeah, it was windy today.

Every once in a while I make the mistake of hitting slashdot to see what happened three days ago. Today there was a post about the upcoming browser war. The submitter's quip that, "For the average computer user this is a very good thing as it should drastically improve browser performance in a short period of time." Also gracing the front page is a post about Mozilla possibly trying to extend JavaScript. The question pondered is, "will this speed up AJAX development." Because, you know, AJAX stuff that only works in Mozilla browsers will get wide adoption...

Sigh. Have we really learned nothing from Browser War I? As a web developer I am loath to go through another round of idiotic leap-frog "innovation." Browsers are just now getting to the point where it's possible to support a majority of users without having to dig too insanely deep into the bag-o-hacks. But no! Innovation is on the march! Nuts to innovation, I say.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and this round of browsers will just continue to improve support for standards and will leave out what ever the next <blink> tag is. Hahahahaha. Yeah, I didn't think so either.

Anna (and The Monkey?) will love that NIN gave MTV the finger over Bush.

MTV:

"While we respect Nine Inch Nails' point of view, we were uncomfortable with their performance being built around a partisan political statement. When we discussed our discomfort with the band, their choice was to unfortunately pull out of the Movie Awards."

Trent:

"We were set to perform 'The Hand That Feeds' with an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop. Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me."

Rock the vote indeed...

Next to feed links on some flickr pages there is now a little "Add to My Yahoo" button . I can't believe that I had to find this out on my own instead of reading about it on Zawodny's blog. The indignity of it all!

The Chicoan.

I like crazy stuff. What can I say?

The Bull Moose thinks that Howard Dean, in addition to giving a much needed smackdown to the GOP on Press the Meat with Tim Russert, should "acknowledge the Democratic deficiencies in addressing the cultural concerns of Red America."

What the hell does that mean?

RUSSERT: Will the Democrats continue to leave out the "gay bashing" plank from the party platform?
DEAN: Absolutely. The Democratic Party will continue to view people of non-heterosexual orientations as human beings that should be treated with dignity and respect and not some group that should be feared. They are your sisters, your cousins, your sons, and even your daughters.
RUSSERT: "Red America" is afraid of gays Mr. Chairman. They are afraid they are destroying marriage.
DEAN: I understand that and we have to change their perception, Tim. Marriage is already being destroyed in Red America and it is not the fault of gays, lesbians or same-sex marriage. You know what is really hurting marriage Tim? The weak economy -- and I don't mean the stock exchange. I talking about the bulk of Americans who go out and work hard just to make ends meet. The people who aren't looking for the government to take care of them, just to make things a tiny bit easier. What you call "Red America" is being hit hardest by the president's economic policies of consolidating wealth and raiding the national treasury to give away to his corporate pals. When a person can't find a job how are they supposed to provide for a family? When you don't feel that your economic situation is stable, how likely would you be to have children? We have to improve the economic situations all over America or we'll continue to see high divorce rates in what you so quaintly refer to as "Red America." If we improve the economy like Bill Clinton and Al Gore did in their 8 years and we'll see a drop in divorce, a decline in abortions -- which by the way have increased under the Bush administration, and a continuing decline in the crime rate. The GOP would rather focus on fear than solutions.
RUSSERT: So you're for gay marriage then? That could really cost the Democrats in 2006. Yes or no?
DEAN: You didn't hear a word I said, did you?
RUSSERT: "Red America" demands gay bashing, Mr. Chairman.
DEAN: Barak Obama hit the nail on the head in his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention when he said, "The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats." He was talking about you, Tim.

Thanks for the advice Mr. Moose, but if you think Howard Dean is going to turn on gays like Kerry did, think again. If you think we have to concede that gays aren't people and need to be feared and/or destroyed to win over "swing voters" -- well, I think you're wrong. Of course if you were talking about responsible budgets or making sure that people don't get raked over the coals with risk, then I don't think the Democrats are the ones with a deficiency at all.

Update: Read what Dean really said or watch a clip. Oh, and if abortion was one of the "cultural concerns" The Moose was talking about, Dean did just fine without kissing the ass of the GOP.

All the King's Men

If you say so...

The iPod on "Shuffle Songs" mode starts playing "The World Has Turned And Left" right when I click on the e-mail from Apple about Weezer's new album "Make Believe" (iTunes link). How did they do that?

Abuse of a biblical metaphor? Perhaps. But on Sunday I did a tiny bit of digging on the pastor who thought it would be a good idea to cleanse his flock of icky Democrats (read: sinners) and the whole church/non-profit IRS thing. Nothing big. But I thought the news that he was fired resigned should at least warrant a post.

That is all.

Mark Morford's Boy Scout leader was Jim West. Yes, that in-the-closet-gay-hatin' Republican Jim West. His column this week is relatively free of snark as he runs down his history with West. But I think he hits on a good point, one which Bill Hicks made as well.

And someone should really do a national, once-and-for-all study to back up what everyone already knows -- which is, of course, that the more repressed and sanctimonious and uptight you are about sex and love and gender and religion, the more likely you are to be involved in secret kink, in deep perversion, illegal perversion, perversion that crosses the line from healthy and slippery and delicious to degrading and morally reprehensible and Karl Rove. Just ask -- did I say this already? -- the Catholic Church.

Yeah, yeah...painting with a broad brush. Just do the study and then watch them all say "numbers lie" until they are blue in the face.

ESPN still has NHL as a category in their ticker. Scott, I'm thinking of you...and laughing.

That being said, Chris Berman should be arrested for that jacket. Day-um.

Op-ed

Much as we all delight in the latest horse-milking joke, the happiest news in comedy last week was the announcement that "The Daily Show" will be spinning off a new half-hour on Comedy Central starring its "senior White House correspondent," Stephen Colbert. Make no mistake about it: the ratings rise of Jon Stewart's fake news has been in direct relation to the show's prowess at blowing the whistle on propaganda when the legitimate press fails to do so. The correspondents' dinner, itself a "Daily Show" target last week, could not have been a more graphic illustration of why, at a time when trust in real news is plummeting, there's a bull market for fake news that can really be trusted to know what is fake.

There was a story that started out in a Daily Kos diary about a church that was kicking out people who voted for or were registered as Democrats. It sounded pretty messed up and it was just a DKos dairy entry. It's not that I thought it was made up, just that DKos dairies aren't my primary news source.

Now churches, and other non-profits like EFF, are exempt from lots of the tax code, but there are a few strings attached (PDF):

• the organization must be organized and operated exclusively for religious, educational, scientific, or other charitable purposes,
• net earnings may not inure to the benefit of any private individual or shareholder,
• no substantial part of its activity may be attempting to influence legislation,
• the organization may not intervene in political campaigns, and
• the organization's purposes and activities may not be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.

It seems simple enough. Keep your nose out of government influence and you can not pay taxes. Now it looks like Pastor Chan Chandler's lawyer just told him that he was putting his church's tax exempt status at risk by being a political hack.

From the Washington Post article.

Chandler told WLOS-TV in Asheville on Friday that the actions were not politically motivated, but on Saturday he refused to comment, citing the advice of his attorney.

This will no doubt turn into a "liberals hate God" issue. This is funny to me because liberals are typically derided as "Godless" -- so what is there for us to hate? The simple matter is that there are rules and they need to apply to everybody for the system to be fair. Yes, fairness. It's the liberal fatal flaw.

Update" I wondered how long it would take before a law would be introduced to allow churches to do this and retain their tax exempt status. I give you H.R. 235. Wow.

I helped keep people from sneaking into the track meet today. This shot was taken before the stadium opened.

The good news is that it made it all the way from freakin' China to the shores of the good old U.S. of A. The bad news is that it's in freakin' Alaska.

Sigh.

On the plus side, this shows that I can still post stuff that isn't political or photo related.

These are the last 16 photos that I've marked as a favorite at Flickr.

That's the "good news." The "bad news" is that it's starting point is in freaking China!

Recently when trying to start a chat with a buddy from the iChat status menu bar widget I get the following error:

Hopefully a solution to this problem is coming soon...

Update: Using Cocktail I deleted the User and System caches, rebooted and iChat now functions as expected. I suspect that something got screwed up in the iChat URL scheme.

I've been quite delinquent on updating Wally Watch. A slew of new posts are up right now.

I've gone and done it. I ordered a mac mini, with Bluetooth and a SuperDrive. The primary reason was cost. The things are cheap. Damn cheap, for Apple gear at least. But this isn't a debate on price or value or even comparison shopping.

I have two macs at home right now. A G4 Cube and a 15" TiBook with a busted display. I have one MiniView USB KVM switch that allows me to share a keyboard and a monitor between the two. The mini will easily be better than both of the combined, if I could combine them.

It will be sad to finally put the TiBook away. It's only good as a desktop machine thanks to the busted display and the mini will be a far superior desktop machine. I'm not sure what to do with the Cube. It's such a neat piece of hardware that I hate to just give it away. Of course it was roundly mocked when it debuted. But the Cube was the groundwork for the G4 iMac (yes, the one that looked like a lamp) which was incredibly popular. So, it was R&D money well spent in my mind and seeing as how I'm an Apple shareholder my opinion on this does matter. Of course, it only matters about 40 shares worth...

Now the wait begins. I'm itching to get a brand new machine and install Tiger on it. Everything I've heard or read so far has been almost over-the-top positive with the few minor quibbles, here and there ( cough Quicktime Nagware! cough ). The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and of course Ars Technica. Update: The Washington Post thinks Tiger isn't worth it.

Of course, this only means that Apple has delayed the inevitable death spiral for a few weeks at best. They're beleaguered! They have no market share! DOOMED!