Author: swanksalot

Always good to have a second user look at things

Bookmarks for November 16th

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Some additional reading November 16th from 00:31 to 01:37:

  • The Center-Right Nation Exits Stage Left – "Rove says, Obama was running to the center. But can anybody make a serious case that people were mistaking him for a center-right politician? Or even a "New Democrat" such as former president Bill Clinton? The McCain campaign was not shy about letting voters know about the elements of Obama's record that marked him as a man of the left. Perhaps voters simply didn't believe a word of it, but a better explanation is that a majority of them heard McCain's warnings and just didn't mind. Center-left nation, anyone?"
  • Other People: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac – "
    As many people have noted, it’s not just 200 pages worth of blog posts bound and printed. It is a lucid and thoughtful reinterpretation of the NBA that will be relevant for years to come. I am not sure their “manifesto” actually has the potential to replace traditional forms of basketball fandom, but it certainly has inspired me to move beyond my purely partisan sensibilities. Before FD, I was a Spurs fan. Since I began reading their writing several years ago, I have blossomed into a lover of the entire Association. I still balance my allegiance to the silver and black with my more liberated side (my only serious criticism of the book would be the idea that they do not give the potential for this balance sufficient consideration), but without a doubt their writing has changed the way I think about the game.

    Although the Spurs are the epitome of being “anti-FD,” the Spurs lovers out there will be pleasantly surprised to find an entire chapter dedicated to Tim Duncan."

  • iTunes 8 – "SoundJam was able to RECORD directly. That G3 Mac has a native cluster of RCA input output jacks in addition to S-video jacks I/O.…When Apple bought SoundJam from Casady and Greene (the best third party software developer for the Mac ever!), they disabled the Record functions. iTunes became a player and CD ripper only. And a virtual strip mall retail storefront , but don't get me going on that aspect. For instance, Digital Rights Management never came into play with SoundJam , coming or going, back in those halcyon days. But the simple fact that you can rip a CD to your personal iTunes 7-8 library means the code base for recording from nearly any audio source should still be fundamental to the current releases of iTunes.…Apple's iTunes windows and stylishness are reminiscent of Soviet-centralized architecture… blocky grey concrete and dull metal; a blocky onscreen warehouse"

    Ahh, SoundJam Pro was cool.

  • Forty years on, McCartney wants the world to hear lost Beatles epic – "For Beatles fans across the world it has gained near mythical status. The 14-minute improvised track called 'Carnival of Light' was recorded in 1967 and played just once in public. It was never released because three of the Fab Four thought it too adventurous.

    The track, a jumble of shrieks and psychedelic effects, is said to be as far from the melodic ballads that made Sir Paul McCartney famous as it is possible to imagine. "

    Probably sucks, but still want to hear it

Bookmarks for November 15th

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Some additional reading November 15th from 19:24 to 23:17:

  • 48 Minutes of Hell: The Next New Model – "Last June, the Spurs made the move to become the first wind-powered franchise in the league. Since that time, the Spurs have been 100% powered by Windricity, a wind turbine product of CPS energy. Back then Holt said,
    "We are exploring recycling and water conservation ideas as well," Holt said in a press release. "We really want to be a model for arenas across the country regarding sensitivity to the environment."
    Jerry Needham is reporting that Holt's exploration has led to another paradigm-shifting implementation: The Spurs are now conserving 13.2 million gallons of water per year through a variety of eco-friendly adjustments to the AT&T Center."
  • The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla – Dick Cavett Blog – NYTimes.com – "What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the syntax-serial-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”

    My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

    And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

    It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any."

Bookmarks for November 15th

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Some additional reading November 15th from 00:59 to 01:03:

  • Swerve Left: 1 day = 1 year – "Wagoner, the CEO of the mostly poorly-run company in the country, made nearly 40 grand every day (including weekends) last year. It's hard to imagine. In a single Saturday at the golf course, he makes what I get in an entire year"
  • The Federalist Papers (118 of 209) – "Were the precaution taken of excluding from the assemblies elected by the people, to revise the preceding administration of the government, all persons who should have been concerned with the government within the given period, the difficulties would not be obviated. The important task would probably devolve on men, who, with inferior capacities, would in other respects be little better qualified. Although they might not have been personally concerned in the administration, and therefore not immediately agents in the measures to be examined, they would probably have been involved in the parties connected with these measures, and have been elected under their auspices."
  • Etsy :: michaeluna :: Beep-it – "Beep-it is an optical theremin synthesizer. It outputs a square wave signal whose pitch is modified by the amount of light detected. The sound resembles that of early 8-bit video games.

    These are hand-built and assembled by me, signed and individually numbered."

Bookmarks for November 11th through November 14th

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A few interesting links for November 11th through November 14th:

  • Betalogue » Blog Archive » Adobe CS4: Yet another lousy Adobe installer – pretty much my experience too. Also, whenever I view a PDF in Safari now, am asked for my administrative password. I never comply, but PDF loads anyway.
  • Firedoglake » Uh, Sarah….You Sure You Want To Go There? – "Sarah Palin seems to have a special place in her heart for bloggers:

    Ms. Palin directed most of her media criticism at liberal bloggers, whom she twice called, “those bloggers in their parents’ basement just talkin’ garbage.”

    Of course, most of the highest visibility liberal bloggers don't live in their parent's basement, and have more credentials than Ms Wasilla does. I'm not in that discussion of course, but I don't even have a basement.

Joe Lieberman is no Progressive

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Lieberman has stopped being a Progressive long ago, if he ever was.

“I’m a Democrat with a 35-year record of fighting for progressive causes, for the middle class, for civil rights, for women’s rights, for human rights and a lot more. I voted with my Senate Democratic colleagues 90 percent of the time.” — Joe Lieberman, 7/6/06

“I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008.” — Joe Lieberman, 7/7/06

While Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has fought for progressive policies in the past — such as protecting the environment and expanding civil rights — his recent record demonstrates that he’s a progressive no more. As this report documents, Lieberman has embraced the right wing on far more than foreign policy. In fact, he has betrayed progressive principles on a variety of domestic issues. As he has lurched to the right, Lieberman has actively worked to undermine the progressive agenda

[From Think Progress » Joe Lieberman: The Progressive Who Lost His Way ]

Click the link to see a long list of Lieberman siding with the Republicans.

Jane Hamsher has more reasons why Lieberman should be removed forcibly from the Democratic caucus1

Where to begin? Well, let’s start in 2000, when Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic candidate for vice president—in response to pressure from the Bush campaign and without checking with his own—conceded hundreds of fraudulent overseas ballots supposedly from military voters that cost Al Gore the election, the notorious “Thanksgiving Stuffing.”

Let’s skip lightly over Lieberman’s part in the culture wars, his sanctimonious rebuke of President Clinton on the floor of the Senate at the start of the impeachment charade, and his critical role as part of the so-called “Gang of 14” breaking Democratic resistance to putting Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court. Let’s jump straight to Lieberman’s December 6, 2005 speech where he rebuked his party:

It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be Commander-in-Chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.

While Lieberman was quick to denounce Clinton for a private matter he leaped to the defense of Bush as even Republicans realized his strategy in the Iraq War was disastrous. Criticize George W. Bush and his conduct of the war and you’re a traitor.

Lieberman subsequently told the New Haven Register that he opposed legislation that would have required all publicly funded hospitals to provide Plan B contraception to rape victims, saying “it shouldn’t take more than a short ride to get to another hospital” (for which he earned himself the sobriquet “Short Ride.”)

[From Firedoglake » The Case Against Lieberman ]

Joe needs to go

Ms. Hamsher continues:

But it was with the 2008 presidential election that his bitterness became his rocket fuel. Lieberman was unbound. In addition to acting as McCain’s sidekick and protector, he stumped for Republican senator, campaigning for Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota against their Democratic opponents.

Lieberman promised Reid privately that he would not attack Obama directly and personally. But when prevailed upon by the McCain operatives, Lieberman could not help himself. He played the paragon of decency even as he gleefully accepted the role of snarling attack dog:

He said that “Obama has not always put country first.”

He thought it was a “good question” to inquire whether Obama is a Marxist.

He misleadingly accused Obama of having “voted to cut off funding for our troops.”

He repeated the claim that “Hamas endorsed Obama” and said it “suggests the difference between these two candidates.”

He sent out an email for McCain, referring to the “Democrat” Party, the derogatory term of art preferred by the most partisan Republicans.

Lieberman went on to deride Obama in a speech before the Republican National Convention (after promising Reid he would not do so), saying he was an “an eloquent young man” who lacked the experience to be President. Reid’s office said that Lieberman’s seniority within the Democratic caucus, and his Chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee might be in jeopardy. Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs went on CNN to declare that Lieberman engaged in “flat out lies.” But Lieberman would not let up against Obama.

Footnotes:
  1. including a link to a petition calling for the same [↩]