Author: swanksalot

Some additional reading August 24th from 16:31 to 23:00:

• BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Marley statue unveiled in Serbia – “A statue of late reggae legend Bob Marley has been unveiled in a small Serbian village during a rock festival as a token of peace in the Balkans.” There should be statues of Bob Marley in every city: I’ll wager there are fans of his music in every city. Rather see a Marley statue than some war lord/general on a horse.

• 

• History of Political Economy: A New Course I Am Not Going to Teach This Year–or the Year After – Pretty good list of books to read. I’ve read some, have purchased some that are on the unread pile, but some new to me.
• High Mercury Levels are Found in Tuna Sushi – Duh! – A blast from the past, a past that still is with us… “No government agency regularly tests seafood for mercury.”
• The Felonious American Dream – “Cindy’s father, who barely finished high school, went off and distinguished himself in World War II in a B-17 and came back with practically nothing and realized the American dream, and I am proud and grateful for that, and I think he is a role model to many young Americans who serve in the military and come back and succeed. I didn’t realize the American Dream included being a mobbed-up convicted felon. [http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/content/printVersion/167059 ]

  But seriously, usually it’s the Democrats who are mobbed-up. Most Republicans have the money to engage in organized crime so high level that it’s called “foreign policy.”

• Germaine Greer on Condoleezza Rice and her power pearls | – I edited out the “pearl necklace” obscenity, you can imagine it yourself.

  ” Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in Europe, wouldn’t be seen dead in the full-on row of pearls. I suspect that Helen Clark, prime minister of New Zealand, doesn’t have a pearl to her name. Pearls are tears; Diana Spencer wore her jewelled ligatures as signifiers of subjection. Condie Rice is George Bush’s creature, and when he steps down he will take her with him. The consensus is that she will not find another job in politics. Hillary has taken to wearing pearls in defeat, which leaves only Michelle.”

• Netroots and Housing Gaffe – and wouldn’t this be hysterically funny? Use 2004 talking points from conservatives against them.
  “Glenn Greenwald has a list of the quotes from 2004 calling Kerry a gigolo. As a commenter has suggested, it should be possible to splice the audio quotes into a radio commercial or video. It would probably be quite inappropriate as an Obama campaign ad, but Brave New Films, some other group, or even the SaysMe route or a viral video, might work better.
  Suggested framing:

  Here are a group of people slandering a good man who has served his country honourably.
  – actual voices of limbaugh, coulter etc., edited to leave in the content but leave out the name of the person slandered –

  Shouldn’t political campaigns be about real issues than such character assassination?

  The name of McCain never needs to be mentioned. It would both make the point about McCain and about right-wing hate.”

• democracyarsenal.org: Biden People – “But what has impressed me most, for years, is his staff. He knows how to pick ‘em, and that’s no small thing. Brilliant people come and go in DC, but rarely do they also have the ability to pick quality staff the way Biden does. His folks always are among the brightest from a policy standpoint, but also possess a sophisticated political acumen. It’s a rare but valuable combination. … I’ve always gotten the sense that their boss respected them for their abilities and listened to their ideas rather then them simply having to implement his. They were encouraged to push hard and dig deep on issues. …
  As a result of having a staff that is so good, Biden is almost never behind the curve of policy developments. He’s proactive, not reactive.That’s a huge strategic advantage, and as a result, becoming a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is a badge of validation among foreign policy folks. “

Some additional reading August 24th from 10:49 to 14:57:

• Farmer's Almanac predicts below-average temperatures for most of the US this winter — chicagotribune.com – Excellent, hope there is record snow this winter.
  " People worried about the high cost of keeping warm this winter will draw little comfort from the Farmers' Almanac, which predicts below-average temperatures for most of the U.S.
  "Numb's the word," says the 192-year-old publication, which claims an accuracy rate of 80 to 85 percent for its forecasts that are prepared two years in advance. The almanac's 2009 edition, which goes on sale Tuesday, says at least two-thirds of the country can expect colder-than-average temperatures this winter, with only the Far West and Southeast in line for near-normal readings."
• They Never Said It – "In my 'Odds and Ends' folder on my computer I've got a file called "They Never Said It." In it I put every example I come across of a famous line of dialogue that was never said by the fictional character it's attributed to. It's a fairly short list so far (a list of misquoted real-life people would be much longer),"

Some additional reading August 23rd from 20:00 to 20:55:

• Lyle Lovett Never Made a Dime on Record Sales – "Lyle Lovett has sold 4.6 million albums in the United States since 1991, but
  “I’ve never made a dime from a record sale in the history of my record deal. I’ve been very happy with my sales, and certainly my audience has been very supportive. I make a living going out and playing shows.”
  “Records are very powerful promotional tools to go out and be able to play on the road, but you do have to think about it as a way of sustaining itself at some point. I’m very excited about being able to do some of that on my own, maybe.”
  Crazy. Lyle Lovett is high profile enough, where does all the cash go? Wheat grass smoothies?
• Confessions of a blogger – Roger Ebert's Journal – Ebert gets a little mea, and misty-eyed, about the blogosphere.
  "Now I know I was wrong. I started this blog in May, and it has enriched my life. I have been astonished by the high quality of the comments received. I have also been educated, amused, moved, corrected, encouraged. I personally read all the comments that are submitted, and after four months I have received not one obscene message, not one illiterate message, not one hostile message. Those few comments I have not published were not dumb or offensive, but simply things like well-wishes that I didn't think most readers would be interested in."

Some additional reading August 22nd from 11:50 to 16:47:

• The right and men who live off their second wives' inherited wealth – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com – "there are only two options for Democrats in response: (1) purport to "rise above it" and thus ensure that they get slaughtered in a one-sided, one-way War of Personality Demonization which renders issues irrelevant (hence: the all-American Everyman War Hero versus the rich, out-of-touch, effete elitist), or (2) attack the GOP candidate using the same lowly character themes in order to neutralize the attacks and prevent the election from being decided on these grounds."
• Temper, Temper Lil Johnnie – "By the day's end, the Democratic National Committee was threatening to escalate the fight further by highlighting McCain's connections to the "Keating Five" savings and loan scandal, in which the senator ended up before the Senate ethics committee.
  "They go Rezko, we go Keating," said a Democratic strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity to divulge potential campaign strategy. "If they want to escalate, bring it on."

A few interesting links for August 21st through August 22nd:

• Anne Trubek on Why We Should no’t Still Be Learning Catcher in the Rye – "If Salinger needed to acknowledge Dickens in 1951, today any new adolescent coming-of-age tale must go through “all that Holden Caulfield crap.” In the 19th century, a bildungsroman showed the growing maturity and self-awareness of a young person. That remains more or less true, but now the equation for the modern bildungsroman is more like, as a friend puts it: “Horny plus bored minus transportation divided by the whole of one’s interior life, multiplied by an inverse ratio of miles to a city or a place where there is anything at all to do.”"
• Hacker: Gymnast He is 14, not 16 – Salon Olympics Daily – Salon – Close readers of our blog already saw this story, but now national press has sniffed something is not right in IOC-land.
  "Stryde found some Excel spreadsheets hosted on Chinese government Web sites that contain He's name and the birth date 1-1-94. During the two-day process, these spreadsheets have had a habit of disappearing as fast as Stryde can find them, but readers are downloading and saving the files as fast as they can."
• PKD's Obscure 18th Century Philosophical Allusion of the Day – After finding a mysterious strip of paper that reads SOFT-DRINK STAND instead of an actual Soft-Drink Stand in one of Dick's most amazing scenes ever, Time Out of Joint's protagonist Ragle Gumm expresses an interest in studying philosophy, saying to his brother-in-law Vic, "I've read some [philosophy], in my time. I was thinking of Bishop Berkeley. The Idealist. For instance -"…
  Bishop George Berkeley was a 18th century philosopher/metaphysic who developed a very complex notion of subjective reality, dubbed by him as 'immaterialism' and later termed by others subjective idealism, which contends, in part, that no object exists without someone perceiving it. In other words when a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, it doesn't make a sound [although that's a simplification since the tree falling in the woods riddle is basically a vocabulary problem that depends on the definition of the word 'sound'].

Some additional reading August 21st from 20:41 to 20:49:

• Roseanne Cash spanks the hippie bashers – "You have to sympathize with the McCain campaign for this move. After all, they got rejected by ABBA, and after something like that, you start to consider expanding past the living for a musician to support your cause. But Johnny Cash is quite the overreach. Then again, these are the people that have the audacity to claim the Martin Luther King would have sided with them, so it’s not like shame puts any kind of constraint on their behavior. "
• Paul Jackson and the iPhone’s Camera – Scan to the right for some funky results. I'm trying it

Some additional reading August 20th from 13:17 to 20:48:

• Debunking two anti-Obama e-mails | Salon News – Luckily, we haven't seen too many of these fake emails. In case you have been, bookmark this page for later.
• The Happy Hour of Aquarius – Awesome, vintage advertising.
  "Are you having trouble getting drunk? Are your mixed drinks not having the proper effect, fast enough, or perhaps engendering too large a hangover? Does your choice of drink preclude picking up the partner you truly desire and deserve at your local bar?"
• What Makes for a Good Blog? | 43 Folders – "As I think about the blogs I’ve returned to over the years — and the increasingly few new ones that really grab my attention — I want to start with, ironically enough, a list. Here’s what I think helps make for a good blog."
  I doubt B12 would fit into anyone's definition of a 'good blog', but I'm not paid by the word like some of the more popular blog plantations, and what ends up on a page reflect my current obsessions. A little of this and that, the same things I would tell you about if you sat in the cubicle next to me. I like if you read me every day, but if you don't, I won't cry, much.
• Tell Zell – Sam Zell is not popular with Tribune employees (journalists, and others), especially not with the ones he has fired.
• Sonic Youth Silver Session for Jason Knuth – Discovered my copy of this CD stuck in between some other CDs. There was a typo in the suicide prevention hotline phone number, ooops!
  "a note on the music: silver sessions were taken from an evening when sy had to do vocal overdubs for 'a thousand leaves' — the band upstairs was hammering out some funky metal overdrive and we couldn't "sing" properly (?!) — we decided to fight fire with molten lava and turned every amp we owned on to 10+ and leaned as many guitars and basses we could plug in against them and they roared/HOWLED like airplanes burning over the pacific — we could only enter the playing room with hands pressed hard against our ears and even then it was physically stunning — we ran a sick outmoded beatbox through the p.a. and it blew out horrendous distorted pulsations. Of course we recorded the whole thing and a few months later we mixed it down into sections, ultra-processing it to a wholly other "piece"
• Stryde Hax: Hack the Olympics! – "There's been some widely publicized controversy regarding the competition age of the Chinese women's gymnastics team recently. Rather than be too CNN, I decided to take a page from my friend Johnny and investigate on my own. I have an Internet connection, that means I should be able to verify the age of the gymnasts in question with primary state-issued documents and find out for myself if someone's cheating, right? Right. Let's go to work."
• TSA security theater | MetaFilter – "Two commercial pilots find themselves on the no-fly list. One pilot sues after having his flight privileges revoked, while the second pilot (and a five-year old sharing his name) note they can bypass the watchlist by checking in using their initials instead of their full names. TSA has also found themselves in the news this week for disrupting 40 flights and damaging 9 planes during an overzealous security check. "

Some additional reading August 20th from 09:49 to 11:47:

• DVDpedia – Do you know where your DVDs are? – I wonder if this application works with Netflix? Viewing is nearly the same as owning (I rarely watch a film twice)
• TidBITS Home Macs: Wine with Bento – "Setting up a database manager requires a great deal of expertise and planning but setting up a list manager does not. All you need do is figure out how you want to be able to sort your list – by whether a wine is red or white, by price, etc. – and set out this information in separate fields. The remaining information you can divide into whatever chunks you find convenient."
• Tankboy – Jumping on the Mosaic Bandwagon – Note to self: do this! Even though some of the questions are rhetorical, or worse, unanswerable, answer them anyway.

  "Type your answer to the questions into flickr search
  -Using only the first page, pick an image
  -Copy and paste each of the urls in the Mosaic Maker

  1. What is your first name?
  2. What is your favorite food?
  3.What high school did you go to?
  4.What is your favorite color?
  5.Who is your celebrity crush?
  6.What is your favorite drink?
  7.What is your dream vacation?
  8.What is your favorite dessert?
  9.What do you want to do when you grow up?
  10.Who/ what do you love most in life?
  11.Choose one word that describes you?
  12.What is your Flickr name?"

• ENDPAPER: HOW TO; Solve The New York Times Crossword Puzzle – New York Times – "Mental flexibility is a great asset in solving crosswords. Let your mind wander. The clue ''Present time'' might suggest nowadays, but in a different sense it might lead to the answer yuletide. Similarly, ''Life sentences'' could be obit, ''Inside shot'' is x-ray and my all-time favorite clue, ''It turns into a different story'' (15 letters), results in the phrase SPIRAL STAIRCASE."

  I wish I had enough not-already scheduled leisure time to work on the crossword every day.

Some additional reading August 19th from 12:57 to 21:17:

• Orcinus – Right Wing Violence and Mental Illness – "characterizing the assassination of the Arkansas Democratic Party chairman as "starting increasingly to look like yet another case in which an unhinged wingnut decided to 'take out' more liberals."…"But, after gathering more info, including my own sources, I decided the case was looking increasingly like a political killing.

  There was also, in fact, what we knew publicly about Johnson, particularly that he had a large stash of guns, and these were not collector items. Such a collection is typically not indicative of a left-wing bent, but rather a right-wing one. There was also a note found in his home indicating he had selected Gwatney as his victim in advance."

• Top 100 Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork – Good stuff here, most already on your rotation, but maybe a few that aren't… Can quibble about any list, especially top 100 music lists, why bother? Just incorporate all the suggestions, laugh at the omissions, and scoff at a few weirdos (Duran Duran, really?)
• Bushisms for WordPress – Oh why not!
  [bushism]

  This is a WordPress plugin called "Bushism". It will display a silly quote from our Commander-In-Chief whenever your blog is loaded.

• Swerve Left: The dirty dozen – "The Environmental Working Group has ranked veggies and fruits by the amount of pesticide residue each contains.

  The group's "dirty dozen" are peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, grapes (imported), pears, spinach, and potatoes."

• Jared Leto Hits Back, Slams Virgin/EMI Lawsuit | Listening Post from Wired.com – Hate his music, but sympathetic to his plight. "If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren't they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier. That the next record we make will be used to pay off that old supposed debt just makes you start wondering what is going on. Shouldn't a record company be able to turn a profit from selling that many records?"
• Burning Spear Beats Down Babylon, Takes Back Copyrights – Excellent. "However, after experiencing firsthand the brutality of some recording contracts there, Burning Spear and his wife/manager Sonia Rodney learned the importance of hanging onto his copyrights. Now, the couple either owns or has acquired the entire Burning Spear back catalog with the exception of a few songs, for which EMI says it cannot find the contracts, according to a spokeswoman. They plan on getting those back as well."
• Electronic Voting Machines At Center Of Ohio Lawsuits — E-Voting — InformationWeek – Nice. "On May 30, Premier sued the Ohio secretary of state and the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and requested the court to state that it had complied with all of its obligations under contracts and warranties for the voting systems. In April, the Butler County Board of Elections notified Brunner of potential equipment malfunctions. Brunner's IT staff and boards of elections staff launched a statewide investigation and concluded that similar problems occurred in 11 Ohio counties that used Premier's machines.

  Brunner continues to investigate the malfunctions and test Premier's explanation that the problem was caused by the antivirus software. The state is developing mitigation plans to identify the potential for dropped votes and to fix the problem."

• Are Macs More Expensive? Lets Do the Math Once and For All – “Actually, a MacBook is in the same ballpark as a roughly similar Dell or HP, and less than a Sony. If you’re tempted by a MacBook and can afford its pricetag, go ahead and buy one–it’s a decent deal.”
  yeah, but with a Mac you get a decent operating system…
• ROSANNE CASH : Blog : Regarding the Use of My Father’s Name To Further Political Agendas: – "It is appalling to me that people still want to invoke my father’s name, five years after his death, to ascribe beliefs, ideals, values and loyalites to him that cannot possibly be determined, and to try to further their own agendas by doing so. I knew my father pretty well, at least better than some of those who entitle themselves to his legacy and his supposed ideals, and even I would not presume to say publicly what I ‘know’ he thought or felt. This is especially dangerous in the case of political affiliation."
  I use a Johnny Cash quote in my email signature, does that count?
• Gapers Block: Rearview – Tuesday, August 19 2008
  by Seth Anderson