a crank’s progress

27B Stroke 6:
Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explained why he voted against the amendment and gave an amazing primer on how the internet works.
Just read it. You’ll learn something, though not what you might expect.
Just to be clear, below the fold is a rundown of some of the positions people are taking on this.
[via]

From AlterNet, Air-conditioning: Our Cross to Bear, Part I and Part II:

Has the ubiquity of A/C and the resulting diaspora of people from the densely-populated (and socially liberal) North to the South undermined traditional American values?

Cheat / The Clash / Black Market Clash
Dissolve / Elvis Costello / When I Was Cruel
Badge / Cream / 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Cream
Change Your Mind / Camper Van Beethoven / Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
Me In Honey / R.E.M. / Out Of Time
The Name of This Thing Is Not [...]

Time to document the various modifications I had added to my Holga.
This is the way it looks now with wirenut-based cable release affixed. If you do this, be careful not to glue the wirenut so close to the shutter release. As it is now, I have to use a cable release all the time, until [...]

Mark Pilgrim’s list of Ubuntu essentials for ex-Mac users:
Cory Doctorow: Mac guru and software developer Mark Pilgrim recently switched to Ubuntu Linux after becoming fed up with proprietary Mac file-formats and the increasing use of DRM technologies in the MacOS.
What I read was more like “I lost a bunch of my own metadata that I [...]

Orrin Hatch’s Flag Burning Remix:
The fact that the [flag-burning] proposal was defeated by only one vote (no thanks to California’s often bewildering Democrat Diane Feinstein) is disturbing, however, and it got me thinking of comedian Bill Hicks’ infamous rant about flag burning from years back. Hicks’ words resonate strongly in the current political climate, and [...]

This is a pretty comprehensive HOWTO.
Worth doing — as it saves US$99/year — but pretty far down the list.

At least I try not to be.
Meg lays it out on food choices (I hope my reply to her original post didn’t provoke her second point). But I think her first point may be more true than she fears. I don’t think most people have their eyes open.
Veganism, foie gras and personal choice:
Since [...]

Daily Kos: Our Founding Moonbat:
It has been said that his journalism is “unfair” and “vicious” and “takes a back seat to everyone, including Jayson Blair, in terms of ethics”, that it “might well have been the best fiction written in the English language”, that “every dip of his pen stung like a horned snake”, and [...]

Anyone have any idea why I have 4200+ requests for this page? No referring URL.
Weird.