Minggu, 03 Februari 2008

Sunday, Tacky Sunday...

Apologies to U2 concerning the post title.

Via Blog-Buddy Becky (kinda-sorta, with absolutely unintended alliteration), here’s an older (2004) but still relevant video... Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine speaking on “Technology's Long Tail:”

What’s particularly interesting about this video is we have the luxury of hindsight with which to judge the value or accuracy of Mr. Anderson’s prognostications (interesting to me, that is, Gentle Reader. YMMV.). I think he was remarkably accurate.

Further… when I say “kinda-sorta” about this video and associated links, it’s because Becky posted a much different (and arguably much better) vid from TED.com. About which: a waaay-cool site. Lotsa good stuff here, and the site is an hour- or day-killer, if you let it be. Situations like this are where a wife would come in handy, as in “Are you STILL on that @!!$#&% computer?” Coz I spent much more than an hour here this morning. MUCH more.

Which goes a long ways towards explaining why it’s after 1400 hrs and I’m just now getting around to posting.

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So. Ready for the Snoozer-Bowl? I’m only half-jesting… “half” because the ads are usually always much more entertaining than the… uh… actual game. At the risk of offending 66.6% percent or more of America I think the NFL, in general, and Super Bowl Sunday…in particular… represents the absolute worst of 21st century America. That goes for 20th century America, too, if you want to get historical. Ya gots yer tacky, yer bling (oops. That was redundant.), yer crass commercialism, yer over-paid self-important athletes, yer over-priced every-frickin’-thing, yer fascination with the bottom of the triviality barrel, yer… I’ll stop now. The list is endless.

But there are cheerleaders, so all isn’t lost.

Sabtu, 02 Februari 2008

Puzzlements

There’s at least one thing that has puzzled me (ed: only one?) about the GOP primaries: McCain seems to have many, many more endorsements than Romney, particularly from GOP governors (there’s no equivalent list on Romney’s site: I looked. And Romney’ site is sloooow.). The Politico has one opinion on why that is. Excerpt:

As chairman of the Republican Governors Association in 2006, Mitt Romney crisscrossed the country to elect GOP governors and broke the group’s fundraising record by hauling in $20 million.

Yet just two of the 16 governors he worked to elect then are supporting his presidential bid.

In fact, just three of the nation’s 22 Republican governors have endorsed him.

[…]

One reason, said a Republican consultant familiar with the thinking behind some of the governors’ decisions, is that Romney rubbed some governors the wrong way during his tenure at the RGA.

“Everything seemed to have strings attached to it,” the consultant said. “If they were going to make a donation, they wanted a quid pro quo like an endorsement or a donor list or a volunteer program. There’s no interest like self-interest in politics. So when [governors] think their political lives are in a do-or-die situation, that’s not the time to offer help with strings attached.”

The article contains counter-points to the points enumerated above. But Romney’s relative lack of endorsements from his fellow governors should be a warning of some sort to Republican voters. Or at the very least, something to think about.

A small note: Add about a buck and a half to any given endorsement and you can buy a cup of coffee nearly anywhere, including Starbucks. In other words, most folks don’t give two hoots about which poohbah likes which candidate. But… IF you checked the link to McCain’s endorsements, and IF you scrolled down that list, you may have noticed this lil line item:

Colonel Bud Day, MOH USAF (ret), Florida

That endorsement, Gentle Reader, cuts some serious ice with me. Col. Day is one of my biggest real-life heroes and I respect his judgment. Read why here.

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A Bleg, Gentle Reader, but not of the monetary kind… I occasionally chase up Site Meter hits to various EIP posts if the search term used doesn’t exactly ring a bell for me. In so doing I’ve noticed all the pics (seemingly) I put up on a third-party hosting site have gone missing from the blog. I first discovered this phenomenon when I linked the “When I was Eight” series in a comment. Today it was this post (which has been fixed).

Sooo… here’s the bleg. IF you happen to read something, anything in the archives (ha!) and IF you encounter broken images or images that do not display in a particular post, would you please let me know? All you need to do is give me the date and post title. I’ll fix it promptly.

Thanks.

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OK… I know all y’all have seen this, coz just about every milblog under the sun and moon has posted on it. I’m not in the habit of piling on, in the sense of writing about stuff others have written about and who most likely have done a much better job of the writing, as well. Which is all too true in this particular case. What could I possibly add to this story of moonbat madness?

Well, maybe this. I’m here to tell ya, Gentle Reader, Berkeley is every bit as nutty as you’ve read… and then some. As most of all y’all know, I lived in Berkeley during my first year in SFO. I’m probably lucky to have escaped Berkeley unscathed, especially since I was in the habit of wearing one of my more…umm… blatant military tee shirts when I went browsing the record stores (which are among this country's VERY best) and hanging out in the coffee shops, better dive bars, sushi joints, and the like on the week-ends. Shirts like this one:

And of course... my ol’ BUFF shirt, which is long gone. But it was similar to this one, except for the verbiage, which was limited to a simple “B U F F” on the top of the shirt and “Boeing B-52” on the bottom. But the ‘bats got the message. Oh, yes. They certainly did. My tee shirts had a habit of initiating spirited conversation... and that's putting it a bit mildly.

It seems like Berkeley has upped the moonbat ante of late, though. Which isn’t surprising at all to this former resident.

I know there's such a thing as secession, and I don’t think many of us would object if Berkeley were to secede from the Union. We’ll need to rescue the engineering and computer science departments at UC Berkeley first, though. They do good work there.

Update 2/02/2008 1800 hrs: From Zombie, one of the very few sane folks in the Bay Area, an Oldie but a Goodie: photos... taken at the "How Berkeley Can You Be?" parade in Berkeley on Sunday, September 19, 2004. CAUTION: This being Berkeley, there is some full-frontal nudity of the non-erotic type, including an example of a micro-phallus. I'll pass on the "suspicions confirmed" sort of snark. Oops. Too late.

(h/t: Wretchard)

Musical Interlude II

A couple of tunes from artists I heard this morning on Radio Paradise while making the rounds…which I’m still doing. In the meantime, a lil musical interlude… featuring one upbeat tune and one not so upbeat.

The Isleys. Dang, they’re good. And so is Phoebe…

Phoebe Snow has a terribly, terribly sad life story and is just now returning to performing following the death of her daughter in March of last year. It’s SO very good to have her back.

I was looking for Phoebe’s “Shaky Ground,” which was the specific tune I heard on RP. Alas, these here inter-tubes can be SO incomplete at times. So you’ll have to make do with a recycled Lennon-McCartney tune.

You could do a lot worse, ya know.

Jumat, 01 Februari 2008

Hey! Gitcher Foot OFF My Car!

Alternatively: "Need a ride?" She'd be just the thing to spiff up The Green Hornet jes a lil bit, eh?

No, it's not my Miata, although it is the same color. Nope... Just a pic of a Euro-Miata I found while reading some stuff about Miatas.

Guilty Pleasure

Somewhere, carefully hidden, I’ve got a small notebook where I have written down the names of all the men I’ve ever slept with, in the order I slept with them. There’s a little coded dot beside each name for “serious relationship”, “someone I really liked but didn’t last long”, or “one-night stand”. When I married, it seemed important to put that book out of reach, although I never felt I should destroy it. In any case, when I slipped on the magic gold band I seemed to become invisible, and it seemed unlikely I would be making any new additions to the list. There were just a couple of dozen names, but, with the notebook now lost, I find I’m no longer sure of the precise order in which they followed each other.

That would be a quote from “Desperately seeking satisfaction; A 44-year-old woman writes about a lifetime of sexual highs and lows,” which is a book review of sorts.

I was originally inclined to dismiss this article in The Times (UK) as simply another in a long line of tacky tell-all confessions… from yet another woman complaining about the insensitivity and boorishness we all know to be inherent in men, as the received wisdom has it. In a way it is all that and a bag o’ chips, yet in another way it’s not…it’s fascinating. To me, anyway. YMMV.

At the very least you have to marvel about something like this appearing in (arguably) the UK’s flagship paper.

About Right, I Suppose...

…and this is a jpeg, coz the embed code is just totally hosed.

Via Lex, who is also an Eagle. Makes me wonder, coz Lex is a real fighter pilot, and I’m not. But we’re both Eagles. Go figure…

You can take the quiz here, if’n ya wanna. Some other possibilities include the EA-6B, F-16, C-5 (?), F-22, and the C-21, a militarized Lear Jet. Lear Jet? Who’d wanna be a Lear Jet?

TGIF, and This Time I Mean It...

Today’s Quickie…

Senior Class Prank

Who says Today's Kids aren't smart?? (Well, some of them are)!!

I wish I'd thought of this...

At a high School in Montana a group of high schoolers played a prank on the school. They let three goats loose in the school.

Before they let them go they painted numbers on the sides of the goats… 1, 2, & 4.

Local school administrators spent most of the day looking for #3.

From a Bud, via e-mail.

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Occasional reader Doc has put up a new blog to complement the U.S. Air Force Academy’s “War, Literature, and the Arts,” a professional journal published by the Academy’s Department of English and Fine Arts. The WLA blog is fairly new and only has two posts at the moment, but I’m thinking it’s gonna be a hit. And if you’ve not visited Doc’s blog or the WLA, I have to ask “Why not?” Good stuff be there…

In other blog news… I’m a little concerned about Occasional Reader and Commenter Abraham Lincoln. His blog has gone missing with absolutely NO explanation, and it's been at least two days. Just here one day, gone the next…with only a 404-error to show. I hope everything is OK.

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Well, at least Colmes gets it, “it” being the supreme irony demonstrated by Coulter’s rant in the vid below. Who’d a thunk it?

H/t to Allah, who has it right when he says “madness.” I thought I kinda-sorta understood politics. It’s plain to see I don’t. Certain types of politics, just to be clear. Dang. This is the most bizarre US election cycle I’ve ever seen. Bar none.

James Joyner has more. Excerpt:

Thankfully, this over-the-top stuff is being rejected by most conservatives.

AllahPundit calls Coulter’s statement “Madness” and Sean Hackbarth, late of the Fred Thompson campaign, says she is “officially an idiot.”

RedState’s Leon H Wolf warns commenters that they may “complain vociferously about McCain, Bush, or anyone else’s position on immigration” but they will be banned from the site if they do so in racist terms.

Even Jonah Goldberg, hardly the voice of rational discourse while hawking a book about how American liberals are Fascists, thinks “the notion that, variously, conservatism, the country or the party are doomed if he’s the nominee or the president is pretty absurd.”

A.J. Strata has still more on this particular angle, while Ed Morrissey brings up McCain mud-slinging of a new and different type.

And the Left? They’re just eating this up…predictably. Our little inter-familial squabbles are giving the ‘bats false hope, to wit:

Just about everything has gone the wingnuts' way for close to thirty years. In that time we've had a few glimmers of hope and a few more false dawns. The result is that they're brats who demand everything they want, all the time. We're not like that. And right now, that makes us seem like the grown-ups, and maybe it means we'll win one.

Well, not really, Mr. Steve M., but like all stopped clocks, you’re right at least twice a day, ya know. I’ll concede the “makes us seem like the grown-ups” point. To my great embarrassment.

“Interesting times” doesn’t even come close to describing this mess.

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Today’s Pic: My mother in a formal, hand-colored (which was “the style” at the time and has since gone out of favor) portrait, taken sometime in the 1940s. I may or may not have been more than a gleam in the Ol’ Man’s eye when this portrait was done. In other words, I don’t know exactly when the pic was taken. But I DO know it’s one of my favorite shots of Mom.