Category: observations

Took a brisk 15 mile or so ride today (I didn’t watch the miles) and worked out some kinks, physically if not mentally.

My goal for now is to keep an eye on cadence and let speed and distance go for now. Keeping it at 85 – 90 strokes a minute seems to work pretty well, though: it seemed to get easier to stay consistently at 90 after I had been out for awhile.

A quick Google search tells me that is 15 miles: I was relying on my memory of riding the Burke Gilman last summer.

My general sense of purpose and worthiness is not much improved, but I’m closer to being too tired to care.

The name change is to avoid conflict with the open source Firebird database project. Note to Mozilla project managers: do a little more searching before you settle on a name. This is the second browser that’s had to be renamed due to a name conflict.

I concur on the praise for the new icons, for both Firefox and Camino.

I couldn’t pick one:

• It’s money that I love
• Hard work pays off some day, sucking up pays off right now
• it might be obscurity but it pays well
• job security through obscurity
• will work for a better grade of crumbs

USATODAY.com – Conservatives tune in, drop out after college:
[ . . . ]
Right-leaning folks wanted to grow young reporters, academics, artists and public servants who would change the culture, not just the campus. Instead, they’ve grown activists who enjoy campus politics, but flee to the business world or conservative institutions after graduation. Until someone convinces young conservatives to battle up the low-paid ladder of newspapers and other mainstream institutions, conservatives will see livelier campus debates and bake sales for their money — but not much cultural change.
[ . . . ]
Despite this pampering, though, only a handful of CN alumni work for mainstream media such as USA TODAY or NBC Nightly News. The highest-profile alumni (including pundit Ann Coulter and National Review Editor Richard Lowry) write, almost solely, for conservative audiences. I call it “syndicated-columnist syndrome.” Turns out, once you experience the royal treatment as a reward for writing polemics in one-sided campus papers, you lose your taste for the tough investigative reporting that convinces unsympathetic editors and readers. You lose your taste for staking out school board meetings, covering police beats and taking other steps on the ladder mainstream reporters must master.

Of the 100 young editors I met at the CN’s November conference in Chicago, only 10 wanted to go into journalism. Most in this handful wanted to talk with reporters from the conservative National Review and Weekly Standard to find out how.

They’ve discovered it’s more pleasant to achieve stardom for snappy commentaries than labor in obscurity as a city desk editor, or to garner praise and press at conservative think tanks than fight unfair tenure decisions at State U. Activists prefer to complain about liberal foundations than battle up their hierarchies, and they’d rather earn big bucks as corporate lawyers than become low-paid local judges who truly influence law.

via [World O’Crap]

Sillybean: Full-screen calendar view in Movable Type Archives

Full-screen calendar view in Movable Type

These handy step-by-step instructions (which work best if you actually read them, unlike my earlier attempts) are all you need to build nice monthly calendar views for your monthly archives. Check ’em out in the left column . . .

And I removed the email address links from the comments that are displayed on the home page: now, all email addresses should be obscured. Take that, spambots . . . . . and anonymous cowards.

This was the “I’m feeling lucky” result on Google for “rush limbaugh millie margaret truman“.

North Georgia Dogma: Comment on “Someone call Tom Daschle, quick” alert:

Here is the transcript of the Chelsea/dog incdient taken from Lexis Nexis:

<transcript>
LIMBAUGH: David Hinckley of–of the New York Daily News wrote this, and what he has–he’s got–it’s very strange. He says, In: A cute kid in the White House. Out: Cute dog in the White House.’ Could–could we see the cute kid? Let’s take a look at–see who is the cute kid in the White House.

(A picture is shown of Millie the dog)

LIMBAUGH: (Voiceover) No, no, no. That’s not the kid.

(Picture shown of Chelsea Clinton)

LIMBAUGH: (Voiceover) That’s–that’s the kid. We’re trying to…

(Applause)

LIMBAUGH: No, just kidding. I’m just getting. Oh. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. That was a terrible thing. That–that was an absolutely terrible–I am–I am sorry. You know, I just–the end of the week, the pressure’s on–actually the pressure’s off, and I relaxed a little bit too much. You know, when my radio show started in August of 1988, a presidential campaign then, and Amy Carter was protesting everything American while at Brown University. And I didn’t, of course, like that. I didn’t like her protesting everything American, and I made a remark on my show that I’ve now since apologized for and I’ve taken it back; I didn’t mean it. I said, You know, she may be the most unattractive presidential daughter in the history of the country.’

(Laughter)

LIMBAUGH: Well, there was outrage. No, there was. I mean, there was just plenty–my–my mom called me at home that night. She said, Son, you know, you–if you’re going to be serious about this, you can’t make fun of the way people look. You’re not supposed to–you’re not–you can talk about how you disagree with Amy Carter. You can talk about how you disagree with her politics and you think she’s doing some bad things, but she can’t help the way she looks, and you can’t–you shouldn’t make fun of that. And, besides, you forgot Margaret Truman.’

(Laughter)

LIMBAUGH: But I–I apologize…

(Applause)

</transcript>

Many Rush apologists have stated it was a mistake and that he apologized. Technically that is correct. However, examining the transcipt leads me to a different conclusion. His comment “No, just kidding. I’m just getting on” leads me to believe the incident was planned but that Rush also knew it would cause objections. So, he pulled the joke and tried to defuse it with an immediate oops and and apology. Sorry, I don’t buy it.

If you think this is acceptable political discourse or commentary, I feel very sorry for you.

drugs cause crime like forks cause obesity.

Tomorrow is the date for the caucuses: today our local NPR affiliate held a mock caucus on the radio, and never got past the first round. Dean and Kucinich garnered enough of the votes to take all the marbles and go home.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring. I won’t be there, though our household’s registered voter will be (I’d go but there’s some pesky business about citizenship that keeps me out of it). She is undecided and we talked some about it this afternoon. There are two competing ideas for me in this whole business. Do you choose someone’s who’s electable, meaning appealing enough to a lot of other people (in this case, meaning Kerry) or do you vote your beliefs, which could mean Dean, Kucinich, Clark, or Kerry?
Continue reading “Washington caucuses tomorrow”

Yahoo! News – Janet Jackson’s Breast Exposure Triggers Suit:

The suit says the defendants knew the broadcast would be watched by millions of families with children but they “included in the halftime show sexually explicit acts solely designed to garner publicity and ultimately to increase profits for themselves. ” The suit mentions the breast exposure but also says the show in general contained “other lewd and sexually explicit conduct.”

So the Kid Rock portion of the show was wholesome family entertainment?

Would it too hard to turn the TV off until they clean up their act, maybe?

I took the political compass again to see where my mind is these days, and stopped at this puzzling question:

A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system.

Now, I agree that the statement is true in that it avoids the arguments that messy democracy requires, but I don’t agree that it’s an advantage. I marked it “strongly disagree.”

I still come out as a left libertarian, firmly in the bottom left quadrant, co-located with Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. Interesting to see how many of today’s national leaders are in the top right (right-authoritarian) quadrant (the leaders of the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, England, Israel, the EU, France).