everlastinggodstopper

Don't know about you...

2008-07-05T22:30:21Z

...but I want to grow up to ~~be a~~ finish "Debaser" on expert. And now I have. I've also completed "Mr. Grieves". I'll save my next attempt at "Crackity Jones" for tomorrow. I actually haven't tried them on expert again since my first failures. I know I should be practicing them obsessively since I am an obsessive Pixies fan, but I've found drumming comes easier with marination. Spend half an hour practicing the difficult part and then forget it for a while while my subconscious mind does the heavy lifting. And it seems to work, so I'm not going to argue.

Never talk to the police.

2008-07-05T17:48:24Z

Here are two half hour segments from a Virginia law school class. The first talk is from a law professor and defense attorney, James Duane, the second segment is from the opposite side, a Virginia Beach police officer, George Bruch. The law students in this class paid a lot of money for this advice. It squares with everything I have ever heard from the police and lawyers I know. But don't take my word for it—I am not a lawyer, and don't pretend to be—watch it yourself.

And remember it if you are ever involved in a self-defense shooting.

One important thing to note here is that the two do not disagree. In fact, the second segment is not even a rebuttal, it's just an explanation of the various techniques the police will use to get you to incriminate yourself if you do decide to ignore this advice.

The only thing I will add to this—and again, I am not a lawyer—is to reiterate Professor Duane's very first point. Quote, "There is no way it can help." Emphasis his. The cops will tell you it can help. But as Officer Bruch points out, they are legally allowed to lie to you. And will.

(By way of foobiwan, x-posted to guns.)

OMG CZ!

2008-07-04T22:34:01Z

The CZ 75 SP-01 Phantom. An SP-01 with a polymer frame! And a nearly skeletonized slide without forward serrations. That is hot. Of course, it's got the DA/decocker safety and trigger, but I know they can do a SA model of the SP-01, because I have one, so I imagine they will eventually.

Another leaked list.

2008-07-04T20:32:23Z

This sounds pretty solid, as it contains the songs we've already seen from the screenshot taken off of G4 TV. It's also got a lot of artists that are already in Rock Band, and the same kind of broad coverage that we've come to expect from the first game, including a fair amount of indie rock classics. And it doesn't have the big hair metal names Activision is trying to lock up as exclusives for the Guitar Hero franchise, which is sad, but lends authenticity.

I'm hoping that the inclusion of single songs from Talking Heads, Duran Duran, Social D and Billy Idol on the disc means more downloadable tracks from them too. And Against Me is contributing, perhaps we'll get "Thrash Unreal".

1) tangled up in blue (bob dylan)
2) bad to the bone (george thorogood)
3) we've got the beat (go-gos)
4) bad reputation (joan jett)
5) pinball wizard (the who)
6) dammit (blink 182)
7) thats what you get (paramore)
8) the trees (rush)
9) ace of spades (motorhead)
10) chop suey (system of a down)
11) testify (rage against the machine)
12) spirit in the sky (norman greenbaum)
13) ramblin' man (allman brothers)
14) rebel girl (bikini kill)
15) eye of the tiger (survivor)
16) panic attack (dreamtheater)
17) everlong (foo fighters)
18) one step closer (linkin park)
19) lump (presidents of the USA)
20) come out and play (offspring)
21) drain you (nirvana)
22) carry on my wayward son (kansas)
23) peace sells (megadeath)
24) souls of black (testament)
25) livin on a prayer (bon jovi)
26) round and round (ratt)
27) new kid in school (the donnas)
28) alright now (free)
29) today (smashing pumpkins)
30) man in the box (alice in chains)
31) any way you want it (journey)
32) holiday in cambodia (dead kennedys)
33) give it away (red hot chili peppers)
34) white wedding (billy idol)
35) hello there (cheap trick)
36) cool for cats (squeeze)
37) psycho killer (talking heads)
38) ? (devo)
39) one way or another (blondie)
40) de-luxe (lush)
41) push it (static-x)
42) pump it up (elvis costello)
43) master exploder (tenacious d)
44) bandages (hot hot heat)
45) PDA (interpol)
46) my own worst enemy (lit)
47) float on (modest mouse)
48) aqualung (jethro tull)
49) spoonman (soundgarden)
50) bodhisatva (steely dan)
51) suffer (bad religion)
52) i was wrong (social distortion)
53) american woman (the guess who)
56) you oughta know (alanis morrissette)
57) mountain song (jane's addiction)
58) stop! (against me)
59) hungry like the wolf (duran duran)
60) alabama getaway (grateful dead)

Fingers on the pulse of America.

2008-07-04T19:08:11Z

That Breezer bike I mentioned not so long ago? Popular Mechanics just published an article on Joe Breeze and other city bike makers...

Joe Breeze built some of the first mountain bikes, helping to invent the sport in the late 1970s, so his peers were baffled when Breeze turned his back on off-road riding in 2003. He retooled his company, Breezer, to produce practical transportation bikes. "People said, 'Joe, what are you doing?' They thought I was crazy," he says. Some predicted he would go bust.

Now, with gas topping $4 a gallon at the pump, Breeze is reaping rewards for his foresight. Sales are up 40 percent this year. "May was our best month ever," says the Fairfax, Calif.–based bike designer. "And I expect June will be even better."

"It's our fastest-growing category," says Jake Heilbron of Kona, a Vancouver bike company that, like Breezer, once built only mountain bikes. Kona's Asphalt line now accounts for 25 percent of the company's sales.

They even mention how convenient the in-hub gears are.

Damn my laziness.

2008-07-04T17:43:45Z

Last year I was talking to stachybotrys and said, "I wish someone made a fastback cap for my truck, it would be so much more aerodynamic". Today I find this article. Turns out the guy has made two prototypes for the Ford F150, they get him an extra 4 MPG, but he doesn't have the capital to put it into production. He does, however, have a patent application.

This has been happening to me ever since I was a kid. I don't think about patenting them because they all seem so obvious—and they are, because other people obviously have the same ideas—and because my dad was always looking for that one big invention that'd make him rich, and it never worked out. I'd much rather collect a paycheck. Funny thing is, I do have a number of patents to my name, all assigned to my employer, who has lawyers for that purpose of converting my idle musings into intellectual property.

But this is one I would like to own an example of. I just want to enjoy the direct benefits of my invention, even if someone else's name is on it.

Happy independence day.

2008-07-04T16:11:49Z

One of the people on my friends list has a very funny response to the old Revocation of Independence bit. I couldn't help but notice that the email meme has now grown to 18 points. And 18 is a number that has a certain association for me...

You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

Click! One 9mm hollow point in my Glock.

The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut 'without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up 'vocabulary').

Click! Two 9mm hollow points in my Glock.

Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.

Click! Three 9mm hollow points in my Glock.

Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Seventeen 9mm hollow points in my Glock.

Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season.

Slap, shack, click, slap. And one 9mm hollow point in the chamber of my Glock.

To paraphrase one of the precious few good British movies,

"Like a prick, you are having second thoughts. You are shrinking, and your two little balls are shrinking with you. And the fact that you've got 'Replica' written down the side of your gun, and the fact that I've got 'Glock 17 9-by-19' written down the side of mine should precipitate your balls into shrinking, along with your presence. Now... Fuck off!

Of course we're talking about a people who already have such tiny balls that they'll apologize for liking cute little puppy dogs. And shrink in fear from a pointy kitchen knife or a 17-hole salt shaker.

So if any of you "wankers" feel "stroppy" today, bring it.

Good news for film fans.

2008-07-04T14:57:33Z

Uncut copy of Metropolis found.

One of the reasons I'm so opposed to perpetual copyright is that it leads to the loss of our film history. If we can lose a movie as historically significant as Metropolis, how much only slightly less important material are we losing?

From Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture...

Consider the story of Michael Agee,chairman of Hal Roach Studios, which owns the copyrights for the Laurel and Hardy films. Agee is a direct beneficiary of the Bono Act. The Laurel and Hardy films were made between 1921 and 1951. Only one of these films, The Lucky Dog,is currently out of copyright.But for the CTEA,films made after 1923 would have begun entering the public domain. Because Agee controls the exclusive rights for these popular films, he makes a great deal of money. According to one estimate, “Roach has sold about 60,000 videocassettes and 50,000 DVDs of the duo’s silent films.”
Yet Agee opposed the CTEA. His reasons demonstrate a rare virtue in this culture: selflessness. He argued in a brief before the Supreme Court that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act will, if left standing, destroy a whole generation of American film.

His argument is straightforward. A tiny fraction of this work has any continuing commercial value.The rest—to the extent it survives at all—sits in vaults gathering dust. It may be that some of this work not now commercially valuable will be deemed to be valuable by the owners of the vaults. For this to occur, however, the commercial benefit from the work must exceed the costs of making the work available for distribution.
We can’t know the benefits,but we do know a lot about the costs. For most of the history of film, the costs of restoring film were very high; digital technology has lowered these costs substantially. While it cost more than $10,000 to restore a ninety-minute black-and-white film in 1993,it can now cost as little as $100 to digitize one hour of 8 mm film.
Restoration technology is not the only cost, nor the most important. Lawyers,too,are a cost,and increasingly,a very important one. In addition to preserving the film,a distributor needs to secure the rights. And to secure the rights for a film that is under copyright,you need to locate the copyright owner.
Or more accurately,owners. As we’ve seen, there isn’t only a single copyright associated with a film; there are many. There isn’t a single person whom you can contact about those copyrights; there are as many as can hold the rights,which turns out to be an extremely large number. Thus the costs of clearing the rights to these films is exceptionally high.
“But can’t you just restore the film, distribute it, and then pay the copyright owner when she shows up?” Sure, if you want to commit a felony. And even if you’re not worried about committing a felony, when she does show up, she’ll have the right to sue you for all the profits you have made. So,if you’re successful, you can be fairly confident you’ll be getting a call from someone’s lawyer. And if you’re not successful,you won’t make enough to cover the costs of your own lawyer. Either way, you have to talk to a lawyer. And as is too often the case, saying you have to talk to a lawyer is the same as saying you won’t make any money.
For some films, the benefit of releasing the film may well exceed these costs. But for the vast majority of them, there is no way the benefit would outweigh the legal costs. Thus, for the vast majority of old films, Agee argued, the film will not be restored and distributed until the copyright expires.
But by the time the copyright for these films expires, the film will have expired.These films were produced on nitrate-based stock, and nitrate stock dissolves over time. They will be gone,and the metal canisters in which they are now stored will be filled with nothing more than dust.

Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. For that tiny fraction, the copyright creates incentives to produce and distribute the creative work. For that tiny fraction, the copyright acts as an “engine of free expression.”
But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative work has a commercial life is extremely short. As I’ve indicated,most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends.

Yet that doesn’t mean the life of the creative work ends. We don’t keep libraries of books in order to compete with Barnes & Noble,and we don’t have archives of films because we expect people to choose between spending Friday night watching new movies and spending Friday night watching a 1930 news documentary. The noncommercial life of culture is important and valuable—for entertainment but also, and more importantly, for knowledge. To understand who we are, and where we came from, and how we have made the mistakes that we have, we need to have access to this history.

Speaking of science fiction movies and copyrights, cute little Wall-E is a copyright criminal.

This ought to make some people happy.

2008-07-03T15:15:38Z

Not necessarily my cup of tea, but it's rumored that Rock Band 2 will include...

"Peace Sells" - Megadeth
"Aqualung" - Jethro Tull

I'm more happy about the idea of some Billy Idol and Journey. Finally! From the song selection screen that got leaked, the full game may have as many as 80 songs, so there should be something for everyone. Not to mention that they're all going to be originals. Bands are fighting over the opportunity now.

I just found out that my local Tilted Kilt is starting Rock Band nights on Mondays. Have to try that out.

"That is not the mortgage payment I knew."

2008-07-02T22:15:32Z

In 3... 2... 1...

Obama Got Discount on Home Loan

Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois. This Story
The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo." Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.
Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the rate was adjusted to account for a competing offer from another lender and other factors. "The Obamas have since had as much as $3 million invested through Northern Trust," he said in a statement.
Modest adjustments in mortgage rates are common among financial institutions as they compete for business or develop relationships with wealthy families. But amid a national housing crisis, news of discounts offered to Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the banking committee, and Kent Conrad (D-N.D) by another lender, Countrywide Financial, has brought new scrutiny to the practice and has resulted in a preliminary Senate ethics committee inquiry into the Dodd and Conrad loans.
Within Obama's presidential campaign organization, former Fannie Mae chief executive James A. Johnson resigned abruptly as head of the vice presidential search committee after his favorable Countrywide loan became public.
Driving the recent debate is concern that public officials, knowingly or unknowingly, may receive special treatment from lenders and that the discounts could constitute gifts that are prohibited by law.
"The real question is: Were congressmen getting unique treatment that others weren't getting?" associate law professor Adam J. Levitin, a credit specialist at Georgetown University Law Center, said about the Countrywide loans. "Do they do business like that for people who are not congressmen? If they don't, that's a problem."

There's a big list of the Obama Christ's ~~waffles~~, er, ~~pancakes~~, er, "not exactly" moments going around. I prefer Steve Sailer's point-by-point deconstruction of his Country I Love commercial.

I even give ikilled007 a certain amount of shit for never having experienced much of America before deciding to head off for Italy. But he's not running for the highest office in the land, and his parents at least gifted him with the knowledge of Austrian economics while raising him in New Orleans. Obama didn't even have that. He was raised by communists outside the mainstream of American life, he spent most of his adult life in the political machine of one of the few cities that's as bad as New Orleans, in a church that proudly preaches racial separatism. He continually shows that he doesn't understand or empathize with middle Americans, and now he's outright lying to them on video, trying to convince them he's one of them, all the while ~~taking bribes~~ collecting tribute like an entitled member of the ruling class.

Evil.

2008-06-30T15:31:10Z

When stachybotrys's parents were looking for a house, their selection was a lot narrower than they first thought. Many of the homes on the market are foreclosures and short sales. The foreclosures were trashed, and the short sales were impossible to get approved.

All that stuff we hear from mortgage companies about how they're working with borrowers? How it costs them so much to foreclose that they'd rather minimize their losses by renegotiating the terms of the loan or accepting a short sale? Lies.

They want to foreclose.

Even in this market. And now I've got some more confirmation.

Lenders create a bankruptcy monster

Consumer bankruptcy filings are on track to exceed 1 million this year, laying waste to the idea that bankruptcy reform changed anything fundamental about how Americans go broke.

Furthermore, lenders, not consumers, are the ones that seem to be abusing the system these days. According to U.S. Senate testimony, bankruptcy trustees are seeing "systemic problems" with mortgage servicers that:

Tack on exorbitant fees.
Miscalculate how much is owed.
Refuse to communicate with borrowers or the court.
Force homeowners into foreclosure without authority to do so, usually because the servicers can't figure out or prove who actually owns a mortgage, which has typically been chopped up and sold to investors.

In some cases, servicers have tried to push through foreclosures when the borrower wasn't even behind on payments, Indiana bankruptcy trustee Debra Miller told a Senate subcommittee last month. The servicers used the borrowers' bankruptcy filings, which were intended to erase other debt, as an excuse to try to take away their homes.

I'm not sure what the motivation for this behavior is. It's not money. They are going to lose more than they would have otherwise.

It might be stability. A home sitting on the market unoccupied is a known quantity. Maybe it's a necessary part of untangling those loan instruments. I'd be willing to bet that foreclosure severs a lot of the obligations to investors. "Oops, so sorry, they defaulted, you get nothing. Meanwhile, we have a house. Much reduced in value, but at least we own it, without any obligation to you. Suckers."

And I wouldn't be surprised if they're not trying to depress the credit of consumers on the whole, to justify more fees and avoid more bad loans in the future. Of course they couldn't be bothered to do their homework before, but now that it's coming back to bite them they have an opportunity for their bad decision making to be reflected in the credit scores of consumers. In the one simplistic measurement that they like to pay attention to.

Edit: confirmation both for the stability argument and the credit score argument.

Steve Hawks, owner of RE/MAX Platinum real estate agency in Henderson, Nev., says he has been flooded with calls from people interested in "buying and bailing"—that is, buying an additional house while their credit is still good, then walking away from the old one unless they can cut a favorable deal with the lender. So far the number of people who have done so appears to be small. But Hawks says banks are receptive to lending for such purchases because they figure the buyer will be able to afford the new, cheaper place. Also, says Hawks, they know that, since the buyer's credit will become damaged, he or she won't pull the same trick on them, at least for a few years.

Later in the same article, subtitled "Conflicts but no compromise"...

As creditors, they are so-called second-lien holders and stand in line behind the holders of the first loans, who themselves won't be repaid in full. The second-lien holders often refuse to sign off on restructurings that would formally erase their claims. Without the second-lien holders' approval, many homeowners who might have been able to stay in their homes with new loans are being forced out of them.

That would explain why my in-laws' agent had so many short sales fall through.

How did I miss this?

2008-06-30T14:26:14Z

It's one of my pet peeves. After spending years detailing their every dream, sexual fantasy, political opinion, and like and dislike online in gory detail, someone will bust out with, "You don't know me! You can't know me!" Sorry, snowflake, you're not that deep.

(And yes, I am peevish! Bravo to you, Captain Obvious! Also, I'm sarcastic.)

Do YouJustGetMe? Do I Even Get Myself?

Are people getting to know each other via social media? Are they at least seeing others as the others see themselves? Under what conditions?

In short, "Yes!"

That page also mentioned a couple of personality profiles I don't think I've done yet. One if them STOMP. My result, which tells me I'm liberal and conservative, which would make me discount it except for the fact that I end up in the middle on political tests.

Great news.

2008-06-30T02:25:52Z

Blizzard is going to start offering two-factor authentication in Europe. For a mere 6 euros. I don't even play World of Warcraft, but anything that gets the idea out to the public is a good thing.

Eee!

2008-06-28T19:11:16Z

Asus Eee PC 901 and 1000 Coming to USA on July 8

I'm excited, but I'm also kinda' wondering if it wouldn't be worthwhile to wait until the end of summer and check out some of the alternatives from Dell and so forth. It's the Atom chipset that's really important for a solar netbook, and there will be a lot of Atom powered PCs on the market before long. Of course, it's also got to fit my Maxpedition bag. The 10" screen models won't, and even some of the 9" are too big. In any case, I know the 901 will work for me, and since they created the market with the 701, it will have a ton of software and accessory support. I can always fall back on that choice and be perfectly satisfied.

In the meantime, I really am experiencing The Paradox of Choice. But there's also entertainment value in trying to make up your mind in the face of too many options. It's the fun of being on the bleeding edge. Googling for new reviews every day, tracking release dates and rumors of release dates, worrying about what's going to obsolete it a week later. It would be insane for every computer buyer to go through all that—I didn't when I bought my MacBook, it was pretty much an impulse buy. But if you view it as a form of entertainment, it beats game shows. To the extent that he can distill it down and offer quick recommendations to those who don't want or need to obsess on the topic, your local computer geek can provide a service as well as entertain himself.

That's what I'm hoping to do eventually, put together a quick guide to assembling an off-road computing package.

Lust!

2008-06-28T16:56:09Z

1903 Colt Hammerless, as new, in its box. $1,650. Only problem is, I don't want to own a gun I couldn't shoot, and it would be a crime to shoot this one. Somebody just needs to start making these again. Then again, 1908 Colt Hammerless for $900. Already has some wear, that'd be shootable.

I know, I know, you can get much smaller, lighter .32s and .380s these days. A stainless Kahr 9mm for the same weight. But nothing feels quite like a Browning.

Whee!

2008-06-28T05:10:10Z

My first video blog! Lighting sucks, sound sucks, oh well. Gives me something to shoot for (ha!) next time. (Hmm, wonder if my Xbox USB mic works with my Mac?)

Anybody else remember...

2008-06-28T03:46:00Z

The movie The Right of the People? B-movie, total anti-gun screed, starring Billy Dee Williams. I caught it on late-night cable years ago, and I wouldn't mind seeing it again, just for laughs. Looks like it's not even on DVD yet, and may eventually be totally forgotten. On the one hand, falling into obscurity is a well-deserved fate for such propaganda, on the other hand, maybe it's worth preserving just so we don't forget how wrong the anti-gun predictions were.

Kicking and screaming.

2008-06-28T02:08:58Z

The powers that be are not responding gracefully to Heller, but we knew they wouldn't.

Even though they're now trying to ban semi-autos, I certainly wouldn't feel too bad with an 8-shot .357 by the bedside. It's a stupendous improvement over nothing. A city of people so armed would be far from helpless in the face of crime and oppression.

I can't wait to see how gun makers respond. I would love to see S&W put out a commemorative engraved model named "The Columbia". The Second Amendment engraved on the right side of the barrel, "DC v. Heller, June 6, 2008" on the left, cherry blossoms, cherry grips, and the names of the majority justices filled with gold over each chamber! "This one's from Scalia, scumbag! What? Not enough? Let's hear from Roberts!"

Yeah, not changing my opinion...

2008-06-26T22:00:41Z

...on whether or not to return fire when someone in paramilitary garb kicks in the door.

Police documents show that at least one of the suspects involved in a home invasion and homicide were active members of the Mexican Army.

A top member of a Phoenix police union is standing by reports that at least one of the men involved in a Monday morning home invasion and homicide was an active member in the Mexican Army.

"Even if you put aside the Mexican military, you have illegals in the country...they're protected with tactical gear using tactical strategies in police uniforms willing to ambush police officers. I think that's bad enough," said Mark Spencer, President of the Phoenix Police Enforcement Association.
While on the J.D. Hayworth show Tuesday, Mark Spencer announced that the suspects were hired by drug cartels to perform home invasions and murders.
The incident at 8329 W. Cypress St. resulted in the death of the homeowner. Between 50 and 100 rounds were fired at the house.
Spencer said a police officer told him that one of the men captured said they were completely prepared to ambush Phoenix police, but ran out of ammunition.
He added that all were all dressed in military tactical gear and were armed with AR-15 assault rifles. Three other men involved in the invasion escaped.

Now, maybe in Texas, where the cops are total incompetents who kick the wrong door all the time (or so whip_lash would have you believe) it's more likely to be the cops. But here in the great state of Arizona where we have semi-competent police, we have to import door-kickers-of-rank from other countries. Even if you're heavily outnumbered, fighting back at least gets them to use up ammo so that our cops don't get ambushed when they respond.

The situation is still pretty fucked up, but at least we can rely on the home team.

Obama Christ throws himself under the bus.

2008-06-26T16:12:16Z

"Don't you dare call me articulate!"

Don't politicians usually wait until after the election to start going back on their campaign statements? Change indeed.

My heart hasn't slowed down.

2008-06-26T16:04:57Z

5-4.

My god, so close.

"... what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct."

Except... it is debatable. It was debated. And strong minority came out for doing precisely that. If Gore had won, if Kerry had won, I'd be taking a big old Sharpie to every copy of the Bill of Rights in my house today. Somebody at the National Archives would be popping the original out of its argon-filled case to do the same.

"Amendment 2 REDACTED."

This is what you're talking about when you're taking about voting Democratic. Not merely a few bad policies which might eventually be reversed. Not merely a few violations of the Constitution. Which undoubtedly Republicans are guilty of as well. Fundamental changes to founding principles of this nation, a fundamental desire to deny the rights of every American.

I am happy with this result. I will have to go shooting today to celebrate. But I'm afraid I might not be all that accurate. My hands will probably be shaking too much. In fear and rage at just how close we came. And how close we may still come.

Bill G.

2008-06-25T16:09:58Z

Bill Gates tries to use his own product. (Not a joke!)

I love this comment...

The Steve Jobs version:

"If the MovieMaker download site isn't working by tomorrow at 6 am I will come down there at 6:01 am and choke the living ___ out of all of you."

Which may explain why I can plug my USB sound card into my Mac and It Just Works™.

I guess this is Bill's last day on the job, which is kind of frightening, because his plans for education could be even more disastrous than his software.

...this woman is trying to do serious harm to children, to prevent many decent kids from graduating from high school just because they aren't smart enough for the University of California. You may think she's just wasting her husbands ill-gotten profits, but the Gates Foundation is actively up to no good. The Gates Foundation was the main driver behind the Los Angeles school district, the nation's second largest, outsourcing its high school graduation requirements planning to the elite University of California, which only allows in high students who have passed its rigorous "A-G" curriculum of required courses.

A 2005 press release from the Gates Foundation trumpeted:

"In June, the LAUSD board approved a plan requiring all high school students beginning with the class of 2008 to complete a 15-course series, known as the A-G Curriculum, in order to graduate. This is the same requirement for admission to the University of California and California State University systems."
The new A-G Curriculum requirement will mandate two years of foreign language (i.e., Spanish, as instruction in other languages are being phased out in LA). </p>
Obviously, this is intended as a gift to Hispanic immigrants. But it will be another cross to bear for African-Americans, who have never shown much enthusiasm for learning Spanish.
Worse, every public high school student in LA will have to pass not just Algebra I and Geometry to graduate, but also Algebra II.

As Sailer also notes, Bill himself is a college dropout, as are many of his peers. (And me!)

I think James Randi owes this guy $1,000,000.

2008-06-25T15:12:48Z

Witchcraft clearly works.

WANNA GROW! UP TO BE! BE A DEBASER!

2008-06-24T21:06:05Z

100% on hard. Taking a break from drums this afternoon to try some singing.

Results: 15/15 on hard vocals. Failed "Silver" once and barely squeaked by on the second try. That falsetto is hard for me to find an octave lower. Otherwise all over the map from 3-5 stars. Lots of talky/screamy parts, some of them easy, some of them "WTF why didn't I nail that?" I'm going to be hoarse tomorrow.

Born Dropped Out: The Hippie Kid Stories

2008-06-24T20:59:21Z

"I have a friend, you know, from that time, who said the best thing he could do for his kids is read to them a lot and be poor because they'll get into the best schools with a free ride. And there's some truth to that. I, uh, would like maybe not to do that exactly. But I'm tangibly aware of money. I guess I was with the other kids with used clothes..."

I've always known that hippies and Mennonites had a whole lot in common. The whole pacifism and anti-war thing, the whole back-to-the-land thing, a fair amount of communal living or at least volunteerism. Except the Mennonites weren't dropping out, they'd never been in. Being outsiders was part of it from the beginning. A lot of Mennonite kids even had parents who'd run off to other countries - to be missionaries, but it was still pretty bohemian. With the exception of the woman who needed more structure as a kid, I feel like the people in these videos are my siblings, or at least my cousins.

One of my co-workers not so long ago said that he was surprised when he met stachybotrys at the Christmas party. He'd expected me to be married to someone much more crunchy granola. And that sort of surprised me, because I don't try to hide my technology-loving, gun-toting side, and I don't think I would get along well with a true hippy chick, but I guess all the solar power, bike-shopping, grass-fed-beef stuff comes through too.

That and all the home-made granola I ate as a kid. (And still love.)