I downloaded the new iTunes 4.5 and there are three features that I really like:

1) Free songs--one per week, and this first week they're doing one per day (although I passed up the Courtney Love song--even I have standards, as low as they may be).

2) Party Lists--The mix that iTunes makes doesn't allow for the wild variation in style between my songs, but it's nice to hear songs that I've forgotten to put into playlists. With my ripped CDs, I have over 2,000 songs in iTunes, and some of them get lost in the shuffle, so to speak.

3) Radio Charts--This is nice, to find my favorite stations and sample their on air playlists, buying the songs I like. I went instantly to Philly and 88.5 WXPN, and it was right there.

Nice. And still .99 per song.

Is there nothing I won't do to win a free song from the iTunes music store?

Apparently not. I registered with the site yesterday and got my credit for the free song on the ITMS tonight.

Kevin sent me a link the other day, to this web page. At first glance, I wondered what the big deal was. And then I started to read it.

I don't know about you, but the site was magnetic to me. It really drew me in. I never knew what really happened there; I don't think that the West knew the full story. of Chernobyl or what's happened since.

I think that some people at work need to find better things to do at the end of the day than this kind of activity. They really blew the lid off my planned hairstyle change--now it'll have to be something completely different.

And why do I look like that painter guy from PBS a few years ago?

Apparently I've been dropping the "S" word around the house too much. My children have caught me at it, and boy do they let me know. "Oooooooooohhhhh! Daddy said the "S" word!!!!!"

I know it's bad, and that five and six year old children shouldn't be exposed to these words. I've made a promise to not use the word around the house, but sometimes it slips out.

And they catch me, and again they waste no time in letting me have it: "Daddy, you said it again!"

Yes, the "S" word: Stupid.

It's interesting to see pressure mount on news media to "get the news first!" the pressure is self-inflicted, but based ultimately on advertising dollars (isn't everything based on dollars or power? The ultimate greases that make the worldgears revolve).

This time it's The Onion that makes the "normal" news media circus look like Ripley's Believe it Or Not. Traditional news media are starting to use sites like The Onion for serious sources, because they dont' fact check properly and don't know any better. So we're starting to see news parodies taken as news fact.

Here see here and here to read for yourself.

So eventually we'll be reading urban legends as fact, and "reality" will be even further skewed toward fantasy.

It's all a meme, people.

The Nokia 6600:



I've been waiting since October for it to become available in the states.
It should be here by Wednesday or Thursday. Woohoo!

Or does it? I'd be ticked if I were one of these restaurant patrons. The owner calls the police because I'm eating too much roast beef from the buffet? (Yes, to be fair, the owner called the police because when he approached the customers and told them to stop eating roast beef, they asked for their money back. Still, pretty weak.)

Here's the full story. By the way, isn't it funny that low carb food is the more expensive foodstuffs? Couldn't have something to do with nutrition content, could it?

After sickness and on to health, I come back. just a bit of posting tonight, but much more later.

I'm watching Inside the Actor's Studio tonight (actually a TiVoed recording from earlier), and James Lipton is interiewing Tom Cruise. When they got to the film Magnolia, everyone cheered. I hadn't known it got Oscar nominations.

Was it really that good a movie? If I recall correctly, I remember that Brad wasn't too impressed by it. Should I check it out? Why was it so highly regarded?

There's a story on Mac Daily News about a USC student who reputedly bought 2,500 Pepsi bottles of soda (pop for you west of Pittsburgh)--with his college semester meal plan? He has pictures to apparently prove it.

OK--but there's a flaw here. Each user can only redeem 200 songs, according to the giveaway rules (it's under rule #6, Song Prize Limits). Who did he give the other 2,300 caps to?

The funniest comment on his webpage: "Congratulations--but I hope you redeemed all of those codes that are in your photos before you posted the images. "

Me? Thanks to my wife and her efforts in collecting unwanted caps from her coworkers, I got 53 free songs total. $53 of free songs was more than I'd hoped for--a fun couple of months.

If you're interested in some better reading on the stuff we've been discussing, you might take a look at this reviewer's list on Amazon. Dr. Robinson is one of the few reviewers I've seen who have critiqued books intelligently and without partisan subjectivity. A shame you can't see his extended reviews on the "listmania" page--they're very well reasoned (and don't contain the egregious grammar mistakes I see in other reviewer posts--what a turnoff).

I think I'm going to get (or take out of the library) House of Bush, House of Saud next.

I think that this gets to the core of what I feel about Bush and the 9/11 hearings. I understand if you want to deconstruct the Bush presidency for its failings, but the 9/11 hearing is the wrong forum. Conversely, those who read this as vindication of the Bush presidency as a whole are taking the concept too far out of context. It's just that 9/11 probably couldn't have happened any other way--it's fantasy to suppose otherwise.

I think that the issues to concentrate on are the economic plans, the Patriot Act, and the social issues. Frankly, from a cold-blooded standpoint, 9/11 obfuscated the issue of what the Bush presidency means to America. The previous sentence is asinine, though--9/11 did happen, and it influences everything that goes after. When we vote this year, we vote on our economy, our social issues, our privacy, and our freedom--but also our protection as we go about our lives, and our place in the world among our brethren, politically and religiously. I don't know if there's a single votable answer to most, let alone all, of those questions.

I haven't had time to try this, but heck--how hard can balancing the federal budget be, anyway?

;-)

I mean, my own personal finances are more complex than the budgets of many leading nations already.

Try it out at this site.

Of interest is the "Do Budget Deficits Matter?" link. I'm reformulating my opinions about budget deficits, since I'm realizing more and more that our economy is based on mass psychology anyway (or mob psychology, some might say). Seriously--the gold standard was effectively eliminated in 1933 by FDR--we have only a few drops of gold even in Fort Knox! Our money's value is based solely on faith in the credit of the United States government. Add that to the fact that our banks lend our ten times the money they actually own (no lie--you've never heard of the ten percent law in banking?) and the economy really takes on new meanings.

No wonder the dollar dips in foreign markets when Greenspan gets a cold.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you:

The Subservient Chicken

Feel the power you can have over pseudo-living virtual chickens...yes, endless hours of good, clean fun.

My opinion about witch hunts over 9/11 notwithstanding, this doesn't look too good for the White House (despite the fact that this website is anti-conservative, the webpage is well-documented):

Claim vs. Fact: Condoleezza Rice's Opening Statement

What a shame--everyone loses in this thing, the world's people most of all.

I wish McCain were running this year.

This guy has plans for a $14 Steadicam. A Steadicam is a device you harness to yourself and mount a camera on. Then you film as you're walking, but the shots come out smooth because the Steadicam absorbs the jerks, dips, and bounces from walking.

If you got a DVX100 (the new videocamera that records at film shutter speed) and had this Steadicam, you're well on your way to making film-quality movies.

Well, apart from lighting, dollies, sound, and talent, that is. Still, pretty cool.

'Cause here's the new trailer, in full downloadable glory.

It's worth the download--looks like a good time for all this summer with this flick!

I think that the grammar test in the previous post executes scripts that put spyware on your computer. Kevin called and let me know that three things were installed on his computer after he visited the site (Lycos search bar was one, I think--I forget the other two). Nasty nasty. Kevin said that one clue might have been when several pop-up windows appeared as he submitted the quiz for scoring. I'd never have known, because I was using Safari on a Mac.

Of course, I probably wouldn't have known on my PC either, because I use Firefox and turn off pop-up windows.

Oh well--a word to the wise, anyway. And if you have a PC, you might want to download a good spyware killer like Spybot.

Although Brad is the true paragon of grammar virtue.

Check it out. [Link remove for our own safety--see subsequent post. --The Author]

This is what happens when people take the pagan elements of a holiday too seriously and try to "apply" Christian values to them.

Isn't there another way?

I caught The Ataris cover of The Boys of Summer today on the new "Cool Pop" 106.7 station around here. You know, speeding up a song and thrashing it around does not mean that you've made a cool, inventive cover. And what is up with the "saw a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac" crap? Way to ruin a great lyric, guys.

At least they seemed competent with their instruments.

Or thereabouts, anyway.

Check out the Salon article on Clarke's reaction to Rice's testimony. Or listen to it on All Things Considered.

Pitiful.

The White House is scrambling to deny everything and make everyone else look bad. Clarke is trying to take responsibility and cast it off at the same time. Congress is trying to find a "smoking gun." Everyone is running around trying to find the blame and pin it on someone. It's pathetic.

In the end, it's all Monday morning quarterbacking. NOTHING could have stopped 9/11. The very freedom we enjoyed (note past tense in recognition of the Patriot Act) enabled 9/11 to happen. The White House cheapens itself by discrediting Clarke, but given the environment surrounding the inquiry, they're just playing the game as best they can.

Clarke is a mixed bag. He blames everyone and himself for 9/11, yet states that nothing he recommended would have stopped it. His testimony is a wash, and at this point it would probably have been better if he'd just kept his mouth shut.

The panel of inquiry is an exercise in futility. If a terrible, terrible accident happened to your loved ones, you would certainly spend agonizing time thinking about the ways in which you could have prevented your tragedy, but such thoughts are ultimately useless. Hindsight is meant to learn, not to assign blame to the guiderails of life for not being strong enough. I'm not sure what crystal ball we were supposed to have, but it probably would have shown a public relations witch hunt in the making.

Maybe this time would be better spent looking at the real perpetrators of 9/11 and understanding the tragic culture that made it their aim to kill Americans. Then perhaps we could address the cause of this horror instead of the symptom.

What a waste.

Bye-bye, Vickie Phillips.

But you can find a lightbulb that's been burning for 103 years right here on the Internet (the webcam is a recent addition to the phenomenon).

Yep--that's its offical name, apparently (not Daylight Savings Time--who knew?). Daylight-saving time begins this weekend.

Maybe.

Depending on where you live.

See this story for more details that you ever wanted to know.

I remember in 1973 we turned to daylight-saving time on Christmas Day by order of President Nixon because of the Energy Crisis. No lie.

See? Google is an an amazing thing. I'm not kidding--look halfway down the page.

The Screensavers spent this week on robots, and tonight had a segment on "robots in history." They each named their top three favorites, but here are mine:

1) Maria from Metropolis:


I've never watched all of Metropolis, but the robot (Maria) is etched into my mind (along with the guy who rotated the big clock hands for a living--it looked like a really critical job, right?).

2) Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet:


Billed by my Florida college campus theater as the movie with "the girl with the legs," Forbidden Planet was awesome, with a young Leslie Nielsen as the straight-roled hero. Robbie rocked, and if you see a small resemblance to this guy, you're right--"Robot" from Lost in Space was patterned after Robbie (yes, his name in Lost In Space was "Robot"--no joke).

3) Gort, from The Day the Earth Stood Still:


"Michael Rennie was ill the Day the Earth Stood Still"--three points if you know that lyric reference. A classic scifi movie from the fifties with a simple moral. Few people know that this movie was made from a science fiction story where the human Klaatu is the servant and robot Gort is the kindly master. Worth a viewing if you can see it, although Forbidden Planet is the most easily watchable of my three pics listed here.

So, what are your three top robots from history? I have a feeling that the guys from work will all pick Twicki from Buck Rogers (heh-heh).