Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Purple Hearts

Republicans think it's funny to make light of other people's service and injuries.

Wy don't you call Morton Blackwell, the person responsible for this on his 800 line and leave him a message? It'll only cost him a few bucks and you a few minutes.

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Monday, August 30, 2004

My Letter to Wolf Blitzer

Write to Wolf here.

While I'm impressed with President Bush's resolve, I'm troubled by this administration's habit of not punishing failure.

If, as he claimed in his 2000 campaign, Mr. Bush seeks to run Government like a business, will he ever find a reason to fire anyone? The Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal is one example I can think of in which no senior administration officials have been taken to task.

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Someting you won't hear at the RNC

Sure, you'll hear a lot of people this week proclaiming that everything bad ever is the Democrats' fault, but take a look at these numbers before you decide who to vote for this November: (via dailykos)

Change, real median household income (2003 adjusted dollars)

Bush II: -$1,535

Clinton: +$5,489

Bush I: -$1,314

Change, number in poverty

Bush II: +4,280,000

Clinton: -6,433,000

Bush I: +6,269,000


Here is the source for these numbers, the Census Bureau.

Sould this story get any traction, look for the Republican noise machine to immediately put forth autoritative sounding evidence that te Census bureau is partisan.

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Sunday, August 29, 2004

Laura Bush Make Me Sick

Or, as Atrios puts it "spits on Veterans".

These people aren't America. They're mean-spirited, bitter and frigid soccer moms and severe, detached dry-drunk dads treating the people of this nation like a scared, codependent child.

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Saturday, August 28, 2004

iPod, Rendezvous and video

It occurred to me after my last post that the WiFi iPod would of course have to have Rendezvous. Think about what that means in terms of updating your iPod wirelessly over your home LAN. Easy cheesy - a bit like updating your phone's address book over Bluetooth, but more satisfying.

The PortalPlayer 5002($latestversion) chip in the latest iPod is immensely capable; it's essentially a dual-ARM7 core CPU with a fair bit of media (vector) and interface logic (USB 1.1 in the 5002c/d and 5003) hanging off of it. (I helped update the processor register and other technical manuals for the PP 5002 and PP 5003 a few years ago, and I think that's about all I can divulge without blowing my NDA.)

I thought it obvious at some point after the first-gen iPod shipped that Apple would add video to the iPod, but before we saw the second generation of iPod, I'd dismissed that notion out of hand.

Video adds a lot of complexity to the software layer of the iPod without a clear demand or content for the feature. Apple is better (in the post-Amelio era, that is) than most companies at cutting out product features that won't be used or have no strategic value. Power budget would go into the toilet with video - a color screen, the extra memory and higher CPU usage would prohibit the current handy form factor - a much larger battery would be needed to "do" video.

I'm fascinated by these things and I still don't have one. I don't see getting one any time soon either, but they're only going to get more capable. when I can afford one, it'll be even better than now, right?

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iPod, Airport, and rumors

I noticed a few rumors floating around in the Mac websphere yesterday about Apple possibly adding wireless support to the iPod.

Well, duh. While I used to work there, I'm certainly not privy to any super-secret product plans. I can tell you that the post-Amelio Apple is never content to let a product like AirTunes/iPod sit around languishing.

When AirPort Express was announced, I was surprised that it lacked some features. Apple's never been very big on remotes. I can remember exactly three Apple products that shipped with or offered optional remotes. (Macintosh TV, PowerCD, and Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh.) That said, I don't think Apple's next addition to the AirTunes product family will be a remote.

I suspect that WiFi will be used to stream music directly to the AirPort Express from the iPod. The only reason this isn't happening now is probably because of power budget for the iPod and the ever-shrinking packaging for the iPod. The first obstacle will fall soon; WiFi chipsets (should only need 802.11b for streaming) are getting less power hungry all the time.

The packaging issue is thorny, though. Where do you put an antenna on the iPod? For a quarter-wave 802.11 (2.4GHz) omnidirectional antenna to work, you need to expose about 1/8" of the antenna. (Exposed in the RF sense; it can still hide behind a plastic window, a la the PowerBook G4 Titanium.) Finding the room and power budget for this feature will likely give a lot more people a new reason to buy an iPod - wireless streaming to the stereo without a computer - and will keep the other companies out there scambling to design something as well-rounded as the iPod.

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John Kerry: Mac User

I noticed when thumbing through Diana Walker's great photo essay in the July 19 Time magazine that John Kerry uses a PowerBook G4 Titanium. The rear ports are visible, and it looks to be either a 400, 500, or 550MHz machine.

Not that I'm surprised, but it does show a capacity for making intelligent decisions. Clinton was a Mac user, too.

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Friday, August 27, 2004

Nice Move(on), Mr. Exley

MoveOn.org PAC has the first ads up from their "10 Weeks" series.

Check out the first one, by Benny Booms. Pretty powerful stuff.

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Republican Radio Rules

I was listening to Rush's stand-in this morning. He seems to attract more moderates than Rush, but his fact checking and reasoning skills are certainly on par with OxyBoy.
Par example:
Paraphrased
"The Olympics...Field Hockey is on now. You know, why can they have field hockey...I haven't seen real hockey in the games yet. When is that gonna be on? How come we can have field hockey and not real hockey?"

For the sports-impaired out there, "real" hockey (and by this I presume he means Ice Hockey) is played during the Winter Olympics.

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Christian Music

Got this e-mail from a friend:

****** been working here from 6-9 (or 10, this week!) in the mornings. As
I was about to put Ice Cube in the CD player/boombox, I noticed it was
switched to "FM", but the volume was turned all the way down.

I turned the volume up and listened for a bit. That damn Christian rock is
ruining the ears of today's kids! All I heard in ten minutes were
two-and-a-half of the worst, most repetitive, limp-wristed 1985 light rock
style crap songs I've ever heard!

I mean this stuff is bad. One song featured a moony-voiced christian rocker
type (probably thin and with a weedy mustache) singing "Alleluia" sixteen
times in a row. What kind of fucking song is that? Listening to that song
made me pine for 3000-year-old father ******* from St. Peters. At least he
put some emotion into his "Alleluias".

The next song was even better. Rocking out to the same wimpy chord Amy Grant
made popular in 1983, another weedy-mustached thin guy started singing about
how he's gonna "want salvation from his holy god".

Got news for you pal - salvation is waiting right underneath singing lessons in your "things to do"
pile.

But I guess not all Christian rock is bad. It sends a positive message to
today's youth: "You might dress like Prince Valiant and act like a
soft-hearted punk, but you can still get rich in the music business trading
on people's desperate hopes and dreams."

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Thursday, August 26, 2004

Bob Herbert Makes You Think

Bush - Repeat Offender

Looks like George W. Bush has presided over prison abuse before. I just got this e-mail from a friend:


Right now....ABC's Nightline exposing Brazoria (sp?) County, Texas Prison Abuses in 1997 under GWB.

GWB knew about the problems and did nothing for months.

Same as he did with Abu Ghraib.

The pictures from Texas are chilling and as bad or worse than Abu Ghraib.

GO NIGHTLINE.....


This would be interesting if the mainstream press would pick it up and run with it, but I don't have much confidence they will. Asleep at the switch.

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First Picture Post



Storm Over Crater Lake and Wizard Island, 2004
Copyright 2004, Doug Broussard. All rights reserved.

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Here's a good read from CJR

I started reading Columbia Journalism review when I was 11.

No, really - my mom has been a subscriber for as long as I can remember, and I used to pick up her copy of CJR and skim through it. I won't say I understood the import of much of that skimming when I was prepubescent, but I could tell it was a serious magazine that was well-repected.



Here's a great article from CJR about the media's complicity in the Swift Boat Liars for Bush ruckus:


http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000851.asp

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Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Got my Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker today...

I got my Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker in the mail today, put it in the rear window of my car, and drove into town earlier.

Already got one nasty look! From a guy in a big, jacked-up pickup, no less.

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Living in a Freeper Town

This is my first post in this format. Blogger sure makes this easy - my first blog was started in 1998 and ran through 2000 - manually updated pages and lots of fun tweaking HTML tables made it too much work after a while.

I'll blog here about political stuff and what it's like to live in an unincorporated town in an extremely conservative (and strangely enough, dominated by white men!) small town in California. I'll also occasionally pontificate on fine art photography, digital printing the right way, and other stuff.

Stay tuned. It should be fun for all of us.

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