Sunday, January 31, 2010

Jimmy's Place















I have had persistent USB problems.

They are no longer persistent, it is simply that I only have one node, or whatever you wish to call it...

Which means I must look at these shots from today and post them only by dragging this laptop memory down. Which makes things even more sloooooooooooooooowwwwww....

Oh well...

Fair enough.

Photography Blog

via Samizdata I was fortunate enough to find David Thompson's blog which is rich in gorgeous photography, such as this spider's eyes:

Shahan

Also this video of nuclear explosions was on the front page when I was there:



MIT Tech TV here.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Elk

I'm thinking that these are the same two dozen Elk who have found a tunnel back to the other side of the road.

They are just doing that to screw with traffic.

Elk are known for their mischievous humor.

I can see right through this one though...

via FreemarketFT

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Treacher

His live SOTU blogging wins.

Twitter

Christopher Moore.

I like his books.

Maybe this would be a neat thing.

If you know of some offbeat twitter account of some interest, let me know and I can post a roster of them for fun and reference.

Journalism and the Future

This video is so rich...rich and layered.

Crittenden
has also just "drunk-blogged" the SOTU. His comments are apt and he used Rolling Rock in moderation.

I thoroughly enjoy his blog.

I thought the address the President just finished giving was more fodder for suckers.

A year along and he promises and promises and blames and blames.

Then he had to throw some folks under the bus so he used the Supreme Court, among others.

Is there, other than simply class and decorum, some level of threat from the Chicago style machine which would concern those who hold the separation of powers dear?

(Just checked Instapundit. No doubt Althouse will have some notions on this as well...and here it is and she does. She has the video already as well, it is below. The President can say what he wishes. So can I and all of us fortunate enough to reside in the great republic. There are more pressing matters. I hope this does not become the circus distracting everyone and providing cover for politicians from more difficult questions.---just watched it again. Oh Lord, is that Holder who stands up? A corrupt bigot Holder is, no link here. There is so much out there on that toadie. It turns out that Eric Holder Traitor has a better return than Eric Holder Toadie.)




Wow do I feel it embarrassing seeing the whole corrupt and shameless menagerie together, the Dem and Repugly alike, applauding their horrific failures and sellouts on their feet, and promising to do more, more, more.

We know that the journalistic class will support it all...

I had the discouraging task of reading the freshest Newsweek in which Meacham says that Obama is so post partisan and centered that he can't adjust for any failure, we will just have to come to our senses and be blinded by his greatness.

Meacham
, ugh.

So, back to the truly compelling video which did indeed cover, and well, the future of newspapers and computers regarding technology. This is fascinating:



For the record I was long ago anticipating having a subscription to the now failed New York Sun if they had made it this far for delivery, and looked forward to it. It was tiny but showed potential.

A modest fee for a news organisation's delivered product would be a delight if they had some of the better content of the NYTimes and the WSJ and some SCOOPS!!

The journalists are in bed with the politicians and it's making everyone sick and selling no papers or magazines. They won't investigate or report on corruption or scandals of liberals.

Here is a snippet of transcript from Meacham on Charlie Rose.

It is a restatement of his sentiments from his little pamphlet this week.

(formerly a widely distributed but never intellectual magazine, shallow and cheap even, which he retooled to limit readership but entice and retain the truly brilliant--oops, wealthy--- readers and thinkers, how's that going?)

Do yourself a favor and don't buy it, save some trees, Meacham would want that no doubt.

Poke around at the older barber shops and you can, no doubt, find one that has half of the chairs full and an unstoppable lifetime subscription which they wrote off as an expense years and years ago.

A couple of buzzcuts and touchups between you and the Sweeny seat will be enough to read it thoroughly.

It's unbelievable. The foreign coverage at the beginning entices a piss-shiver of sympathetic humiliation for those involved in the magazine's production.

Here is a piece on the Malay situation involving Christians using the term "Allah" for God...Actually I will just copy and paste the entire article.

It's fairly involved, the ethnic and religious backstory and the complicated political and economic realities which must be outlined to describe Muslims torching 10 Christian churches because they use a word those Peace loving Muslims don't like, no?

Newsweek just culled their idiot cheap herd so they can support more involved analysis provided to readers who are knowledgible and up to the erudite rigors, no?

Here is the entire article from the online Newsweek, I believe there is more here than in the pamphlet I read earlier today:

"The Fight Over ‘Allah’

Malaysia's delicate balance is at risk.

Published Jan 22, 2010

From the magazine issue dated Feb 1, 2010

The interethnic chaos Malaysia has long feared moved closer to reality this month when 10 churches were at-tacked around the country. The attacks followed a civil-court ruling on New Year's Eve declaring that a law prohibiting non-Muslims from using the word "Allah" to describe their God was unconstitutional. Strangely, though, Christians have been using "Allah" for "God" in East Malaysia since the 1920s without much controversy. So why the sudden spate of violence in a nation long viewed as a model of tolerance in the Muslim world?

The answer is that beneath Malaysia's outward glow of progressive moderation, racial and religious consciousness has risen steadily among Muslim Malays, who make up 60 percent of the population. That creeping conservatism has been fanned by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), seeking to revive support that is slipping amid rampant corruption and other forms of misrule. Rather than trying to quell misgivings among Malays who felt that the use of "Allah" to describe the Christian God would sow confusion, the government appealed the decision, saying that Muslim sensitivities must be respected to protect the fragile ethnic balance. Then UMNO leaders, including Prime Minister Najib Razak, said the government could not stop planned protests against the ruling, though he has often opposed the exercise of free speech in the past. Critics charge the government with institutionalizing racism and emboldening Muslim hardliners. Whatever the case, the church attacks are the clearest sign yet that Malaysia's racial-religious compact is unraveling.

During the 1980s and 1990s Malaysia transformed itself from an agrarian-based economy to a manufacturing one. More recently it has struggled to shed its low-value-added, low-wage structure. Private investment, now at 11 percent of GDP, is down more than two thirds since the late 1990s at least in part because of investor concern about the social tension. Efforts to create a high-tech innovation economy have been set back by the flight of talent: opposition leader Lim Kit Siang says 300,000 "top brains" have fled to Singapore since the last general election. Now Malaysia's reputation for stability is under threat, and investors are jittery amid reports that Malaysia saw the biggest foreign-exchange outflows in Asia last year. Though some an-alysts give Najib high marks as a liberalizing economic reformer, sectarian unrest won't help, and could well thwart the country's aim of becoming a fully developed nation by 2020.

The church attacks also threaten regional stability. Indonesia's Muslim leaders have cautioned Muslims there not to take their cue from Malaysia. The U.S. government issued a travel advisory warning that the court ruling could trigger criminal or terrorist attacks on foreigners in Malaysia's eastern Sabah province, which borders the southern Philippines, home to the Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf. And so it is that in a few short weeks Malaysia has gone from pointing the way for Muslims in neighboring countries to joining the list of regional hot spots.

Last week the government took a step to undo the damage, saying Christians may use "Allah" in the states of Penang, Sarawak, and Sabah, and in the Federal Territory, which includes Kuala Lumpur. That, along with Malaysians' tendency to avoid racial confrontation, may stave off wider violence. But it hardly addresses the festering racial resentments that precipitated the attacks.

Almost 40 years ago the government introduced a policy of positive discrimination for Malays, a move that helped reduce income disparities between the Malay majority and the big Chinese and Indian minorities. But it also heightened communal identification, restricted educational and economic opportunities for non-Malays, and bred dependency among the Malays. Until now, all that was hidden by political sloganeering, tightly controlled media, and billions spent on eye-catching infrastructure projects in-tended to make Malaysia appear both modern and progressive. But the at-tacks have blown the cover off the myth of racial harmony. Now Malaysia must get down to the nitty-gritty of building a truly pluralistic society. As the church bombings make clear, it can't afford not to.

Gatsiounis is a Malaysia-based journalist and author, most recently, of Velvet & Cinder Blocks, a story collection detailing a planned attack on a Christian landmark in Malaysia."



I certainly gain the sense that the author was under space restrictions, and I also get the sense that he was edited even further.

What's left is worth a Fisking.

Newsweek is all that is wrong with journalism, elitism, politics...and on...and on...

but so tiny!

Which brings us back to the technology.

Newsweek has shrunk and distilled it's self important garbage, now that's improvement!

Take a look if you get a chance, but don't buy...

Monday, January 25, 2010

"Puppy Rapist"?

Eeiw...

From the amusing first comment regarding Hendrik Herzberg, whom I cannot stand.

Hendrik Hertzberg is unstandable!!:/

He's a pathetic arrogant douche without the intellectual capital and honesty to back up his embarrassing self esteem.

This is delightful:



that is from this Politico post.

Here is a portion of his response to the episode on his blog:

"I was not at my most intellectually acute. Two youngish guys dressed in slacker clothes—one with a microphone, the other with a camera—accosted me on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building. The guy with the microphone stuck it in my face and started badgering me with questions about why I had called Newt Gingrich a bigot.
If you aren't certain he is a sad hack simply note how highly regarded he is by JournoLister Jackass Ezra Klein.

This Iowahawk take on the JournoList matter remains one of the funniest things I've had the pleasure of enjoying, ever.

Update: "Two youngish guys dressed in slacker clothes..."? I just replayed that...Wow is Hertzberg a consummate ass!

Two punks dressed like shit? Is that his contention?

Blue button down collar and overcoat?

He looks more nicely dressed than Hendrik, though likely that hypocrite is swaddled
in shahtoosh.

There is a screen capture of him on the program in question which he dismisses as a result of a body surfing jaw injury.

Oh well. I love parts of the New Yorker, though it is not anything like it was so many years ago.

The parts I loath, including Herzberg, have had me lapse my subscription some years ago.

The politics and arrogance have amplified at the cost of the literary and timeless content which they inherited and ought to have stewarded with honor.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Earworm

Ugh.

I don't know how it happened but it's somehow in my head.

Grizzly Bear's "Veckatimest"



I'd sooner have Fleet Foxes in the noodle.



Actually I like Mykonos, I will cop to that:

"At Hope" Children

Dear God.

Make it stop...make them all stop with the P.C.

All children are colored with hope, no?

Quote of the Day

"Africa is God's country...and He can have it!"----Groucho Marx

I think Spaulding's economics have been adopted by our HopenChangenChief:

"Well, I'll go further than that. I'll get off at the depot. The nickel today is not what it was fifteen years ago. Do you know what this country needs today?...A seven-cent nickel. Yessiree, we've been using the five-cent nickel in this country since 1492. Now that's pretty near a hundred years' daylight saving. Now, why not give the seven-cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we could have an eight-cent nickel. Think what that would mean. You could go to a newsstand, buy a three-cent newspaper and get the same nickel back again. One nickel carefully used would last a family a lifetime!"

I am having difficulty locating a script for a Burns and Allen program on tax season in which Gracie suggests we shut down the Federal mint and have China print our money. She makes reference to how cheap their currency is and how far it would go and the savings in printing...

Insert agonized groan here. The more I consider all of that the less point there seems to further comment.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Regarding Mr. Brown

I pray he doesn't screw up or succumb to the typical process of the Washington journey, but confidence in that would be foolish.

Other than that I will merely state that the tea parties and the town hall pressure are more important now...

much more important.

This was a sort of Doolittle raid.

Certainly by that I mean in no way to diminish the actual heroism of those men by mentioning them in the context of our current idiotic wrestle with a suicidal abandonment of a life of "negative rights" through a seppuku by a liberal fascist drive towards a "second bill of rights".

A Touch More Shore












Wind Blown Shore





Free

Free Old Time Radio Shows


They have quite a bunch of them. Very cool.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

France

I kinda wanna learn some more French...

Nothing wrong with that...

France

and it's notions of control...

Rose has a nice song,
and she would have more traffic with embedding, all jokes aside.

Michael Yon

Let's face it, you're an idiot if you don't bookmark the man's site.

His photography is exquisite and his insights are invaluable.

Here is his post "Spitting Cobra" with images of American artillery in Afghanistan.

"American artillery can destroy a parked car with the first shot from twenty miles away. No sniper has ever lived who can shoot so well."

I was unaware that we were so accurate--I should rephrase that, I was unaware our fine troops were so stunningly accurate----, but Mr. Yon's credibility sways me.

Update: I wish for everyone to go over and view Mr. Yon's site, but there is this near peace sign in this photo and the irony compels me to control "v" it:

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Maine

Well, I did touch the archives:







Liberals

'See, “moral” issues are only for beating up on Republicans. That’s all there is to it.'

Apt and True.

SHOT Show

Up this week...

http://www.shotshow.org/en/2010-Exhibitor-List-/

This Blog is Hip

(Oh...these aren't necessarily safe for work. Unless you work for folks who aren't quakers.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsrN3qxX2Yw&feature=channel

Non?

This one has dinosaur goodness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoY37T_nv5U&feature=channel

I'm a Yelle fan from way back...like I'm going maybe minutes ago even...

Don't get me going on Fatal Bazooka...

Yelle twittered this video, and, strangely, if you turn off the sound it mirrors my day to a disturbing exactness...

Chilly Race

Up there in beanopolis...

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=video&video-id=2962

No More Goddamnits

It's not helpful and perhaps provable that when I invoke the term "Goddamnit" I do more harm than good.

Just a thought and an attempt to strive toward a more successful and less frustrating "Goddamnit"-free world...

godangit...

When's Lent?

Friday, January 15, 2010

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Bport Photo

Well I am gonna republish a photo.

It is from last summer? and looks nice from a space heater perspective right about now:




Uh oh...

that opened the door:





This Couldn't Be Real

So what.

It's got "truthiness" and it's funny.

http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=MzQwZGZkZTEyMGE5MzgxN2Y2ZGM4OGRjZGIzMGM5OTQ=

Wheel




That was a rough replacement.

Arctic Beast





Apologies for the gratuitous rectum. Some dogs have cat flaws, it's enough to give one paws.

(I had wanted to crop but the highly regarded Photoscape has rendered that notion moot. Iwill figure it out anon.)

New Camera








I am fascinated by New Camera.

I will post a few photos which may look no different and maybe even not as nice as some past photos, but there is a new process afoot.

I am enjoying it immensely.