Politics aside, Ronald Reagan was the first real politician that I was aware of growing up. I don’t remember his first election well, but I do remember his terms as President. He was, until I was 13, the only President I knew. Someone like that always leaves an impression.
And, while they will miss him, I’m sure his family takes comfort in knowing that his suffering is over and his memories are his again in the Great Beyond.
Amazon is taking orders for the Simpsons 4th season. We’re finally getting into the good ones: Mr. Plow, The Simpsons Clip Show, and Whacking Day. Must… pre… order…
Well, that just burns me. I bought one of the lowest performers the lowest performer. Damn it.
Thanks to Ars Technica for, once again, doing all the work none of us can afford to do.
Link (or go to the comparison chart)
Scratch this off the list of things to do.
Link [via kottke.org]
Yeah, I’m a tool whore. I can admit it. I love new, shiney, wonderfully bloated software. Well, maybe not bloated, but shiney and new, definately. It’s even better when it’s free.
Which brings me to the point of this post. I switched blogging tools, again. To Zempt. Yes, Earth-shattering stuff, but this is a pretty cool and free (as in beer). Hell, it’s only at version 0.3 and it’s better than the other blogging tool. Check it out.
Oh, in unrelated news, anchor tags should now display underlines and hover properties. I finally got around to inspecting the style-sheet I downloaded and noticed the evil text-decoration : none line. Why people do that is beyond me. If I were a better person, I’d redo this damn thing on my own. But I’m not, so I won’t.
I finally caved in (actually, I finally convinced my other half) and got an iPod. 20GB baby! I have more hard drive space on my iPod than on my desktop computer at work. Twice as much, actually. Unbelievable.
For the longest time, I was skeptical about iPods. Seriously, how could something like a music player be worth $500? Of course, I said the same thing when I bought a portable, rugged CD player in college ($100?? Come on.) I had to lose that thing before I quit using it.
So, I bought the iPod for exercising. Honestly. I know I will ride or work out more just because I have music. It worked before and I need to do something with this gut. What I didn’t think about was that I have all my music with me all the time. Where and whenever I can safely and comfortably carry this little device, I have every song I own with me. I converted all my CDs to MP3 long ago, but I lacked the other component of digital music; portability. Sure, I could burn a CD of MP3s and bring that to work with WinAmp, but that’s not portable. I’m still tied to a desktop. With a portable device, I’m starting to get the portable music thing. I know, I’m a swift one.
I don’t want to sound like a fanboy, but it really is a cool little gadget. Adding the iTrip will hopefully be a good investment, too. I need to play with it a little more, but our radio spetrum here seems to be really packed.
I’m not a dishonest person, in reality or by reputation. But I do have the occasional dishonest inkling. For instance, a former co-worker, sometimes friend of mine is being considered for a job in the armed forces which requires a security clearance. Part of getting this clearance involves someone from the DoD interviewing references.
As I said, I’m not dishonest, but seriously, if anyone has ever been denied clearance or a position through the interviewing process, who are they and what, exactly, kind of idiot are they? I’m not following the thought process that makes someone provide the name of a potential deal-breaker in a list of people they know is going to be asked about the candidate’s past.
Candidate: “I know, I’ll tell them to talk to Ryan.”
DoD Badge-Flasher: “Ryan, is Candidate trustworthy?”
Ryan: “Oh, hell yeah. Candidate’s been holding my stash for a while, you know, until the heat dies down. Wait, if you’re asking, does that mean Candidate’s not? That’s what you think, right? Damn it! I knew it! What happened to my stash?!?”
Not that I sunk my former co-worker, sometimes friend. For what I knew, a stand-up all-around All-American kid. But the process itself makes you wonder how someone, somewhere justified this.
Of course, I’m probably missing some depressingly simple aspect (like body language, eye movements and the like) that are “tells”. If that’s the case then I probably blew it. I long ago stopped reacting like I’m supposed to to questions. It really throws people off. Tell them the truth but then look all around. Really throws off people who have read certain books.
Observer reporter Andrew Anthony recently had a chance to interview Liberal “maverick” documentarian Michael Moore. While praise for the film flows like, well, like Michael Moore himself were writing the copy, Mr. Anthony has some rather interesting observations about the director.
What I think, after my short time in his company, is that Moore is a man you would not want as an opponent, but also one you’d think twice about calling a friend. Though a talented film-maker and a clever showman, a populist who knows how to play the maverick, he is too often both big-headed and small-minded. In his desire to be seen as the decent man telling truth to power, he is too ready to blame those less powerful than himself for his shortcomings. He was justly revered in the Palais, but out on the street no one had a kind word to say about him. At Cannes, Moore may have been the star but he was not, it seems, the man of the people.
This my favorite exchange:
It is doubtless to this mission that he refers in Stupid White Men, when he writes: ‘If you’re white, and you really want to help change things, why not start with yourself?’
With this thought in mind, I ask him why he decided to send his daughter to a private school in Manhattan.
‘Oh,’ he says brightly, ‘I went to private school. Just a genetic decision. My wife and I, we both went to Catholic schools, we’re not public-school [which in the US means state school] people.
So it’s not important.
‘No, I think it’s important and the first five years she went to public school, then we moved to New York and we went to see the local public school and we walked through a metal detector and we said, “We’re not putting our child through a metal detector.” We’ll continue our fight to see to it that our society is such that you don’t have to have a metal detector at the entrance to schools. But our daughter is not the one to be sacrificed to make things better. And so she went to a school two blocks away. She just went to the nearest other school.’
He makes it sound as if the other school was just a random choice, but private schools on the Upper West Side are all restrictively expensive, and mostly white, just as the state schools are disproportionately black.
‘Is that a bad thing?’ he asks rhetorically of his decision, ‘I don’t know. Every parent wants to do what’s best for their child. Whatever I can afford, I’m going to get my kid the best education I can get.’
I suggest that, while that may be a natural instinct, it’s hard to see why it’s any different from the Republican philosophy of each man for himself and his family.
‘I’m not a liberal. When you come from the working class and you do well enough whereby you can provide a little bit better for your family, get a decent roof over their head and send them to a good school, that’s considered a good thing. If,’ he emphasises, ‘you’re from the working class. What’s bad about it is if you get to do that and then shut the door behind you so nobody else can do that.’
Of course, it’s nobody’s business but Moore’s where he sends his child, except he makes it his business to detail the hereditary privilege of his subjects and tends to make his political arguments personal. In Fahrenheit 9/11 one of his stunts is to attempt to get Congressmen to sign their children up for the war in Iraq.
Link [via Arts & Letters Daily]
Interesting… I wonder if CNN knows about this?
IRAQI EMIGRES ON ABU GHRAIB: This is interesting:
n Iraqi engineer who moved to Australia in 1997 and lives in Sydney with his wife and three children. He is amazed at the gullibility of those Australians who have taken the Arab response to the photos at face value.
This sort of brutality goes on all the time, it is happening now in jails right through the Middle East, he says. But of course there are no photos. This is selective outrage.
Kazwini believes that the behaviour revealed by the photos is awful and the US soldiers involved should be punished. But he says some of the Iraqi prisoners shown were Saddam’s killers and torturers. They have been responsible for far worse violations of human rights than the Americans.
Where is the outrage about this, he asks. I haven’t seen it referred to in one newspaper.
Kazwini has a different perspective to most of us here in Australia. Seven people he knew disappeared during Saddam’s time, never to be seen again. Some were members of his family. No one knows what happened to them. No bodies were ever found.
Kazwini himself was once arrested for a poem he wrote. He was interned for six days and beaten and humiliated. Men were stripped and forced to crawl before their guards.
These days Kazwini uses e-mail and the internet to communicate daily with people in Iraq. He is amazed at the persistent claims in the media here that most Iraqis have responded to the photos by turning on the American occupation.
The main concern of the people he talks to is that the photos, and the beaten-up outrage from the rest of the Arab world, might encourage America to leave.
Read the whole thing.
[Via Instapundit.com]
We’re finally home from Baltimore… friggen 12 hours straight to get home. We hated it that much.
I remember being in Boston, SoPo, Maine, and Vermont and having a really good time. Maryland (well, to be fair, I should only say Baltimore), you suck. Sorry. I’ve never been in a place that so segregated the tourists from the rest of the (very scary) city. When you get a book from AAA and it says “Don’t go to this place alone or after dark”, that’s bad. When it’s true, that’s even worse.
The good parts… Kooper’s pub. Very cool place. Inner Harbor?; sure, why not, but it’s like the size of Grand Rapids. Not exactly what we were hoping for.
Phillip’s Restaurant was awesome (well, the buffet was, we couldn’t get into the real restaurant).
The National Aquarium was cool, but we spent more time watching the rays than anything. Maybe we just weren’t in the mood, but I thought the dolphin show was so-so… like I said, may have just been the day.
The bad parts… heh, where to start? Wyndham Inner Harbor is an awful hotel. Awful. I expected so much better from a hotel chain with Wyndham’s reputation. The only thing that remotely saved the stay was Kelli at the front desk; she went out of her way to make up for the crap they gave her to work with.
Shula’s 2 (the bar, not the steakhouse) was disappointing. $10 nachos do not come with nacho cheese product on top.. Use real cheese for goddess sake… It’s not like you’re not making the money back by keeping me drinking.
But, the sum total was not good. We won’t be back to Baltimore if we can help it. I’d still like to do the D.C. thing, but I’m in no hurry. Next trip, it’s Maine.