That's politics folks

I've spent far too much of this evening shirking work and indulging my history fetish by watching old convention acceptance speeches on CSPAN2.

If you get a chance, do check it out this week - they're playing them every night.

The end of Reagan's speech is brilliant:

I have thought of something that's not a part of my speech and worried over whether I should do it. Can we doubt that only a Divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe free? Jews and Christians enduring persecution behind the Iron Curtain; the boat people of Southeast Asia, Cuba, and of Haiti; the victims of drought and famine in Africa, the freedom fighters of Afghanistan, and our own countrymen held in savage captivity.

I'll confess that I've been a little afraid to suggest what I'm going to suggest. I'm more afraid not to. Can we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer?

10 seconds of complete silence through the convention hall, with the cameras panning over the entire hall, ending with a closeup of Reagan breaking the silence with:

God bless America.

Transformers Movie?

You heard it on TF first: Tomorrow Paramount & Dreamworks will announce plans to release a TRANSFORMERS movie Summer 2006, with Steven "4 act" Spielberg producing. Link goes nowhere but there'll be plenty of them tomorrow..

Well, I think diepunyhumans posted first, but still, Damn.

Remember when Transformers and GI Joe came on weekly afternoons back to back?

The big question of course is who plays Optimus Prime?

Remember that Vin Diesel has already had a robot role...

Hasselhoff Heaven

The ultimate David Hasselhoff video is just one click away.


from [AndrewSullivan]

sillly hasselhoff.

Apollo 11 +35

Tomorrow is the 35th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon.

Check out this QTVR created from pictures that Amstrong took.

In the year surrounding this anniversary, we will have had both privately funded human spaceflight, the first landing on another moon (Titan), and Ray Bradbury testifying about the future of human spaceflight before a congressional committee.

.-.
The evening so far:
Work,meet Yulia,train,cheap eats @ Gray's papaya,Airport Express (less cheap),train,picking up work stuff left at Yulia & Jeanne's + feeding treats to/playing with cat,train,train,Jerry Maguire (+ work. honest)

Adventures in Harvard Square

Day two of the Great Boston Adventure continued unabated today.

Breakfast at the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, searching for half price tix to shows at Bostix, back to Harvard Square to find canoes to travel the Charles River, dinner in Harvard Square, a show in Harvard Square, a (fruitful!) search for ice cream in Harvard Square at 11pm, a halting trip back to the hotel (my fault), to receive an email from Mr. Dobosz, saying hey nice to see you're in town, I am too. Let's do lunch tomorrow, btw, Jill lives down the street, and have you been to Harvard Square?

Mebbe. A bit.

The canoing might more appropriately be called canoodling on my part. I'm pretty pitiful waterborne. I think my only talent was consistently getting Yulia drenched by the misapplication of my paddle, despite constant threats of forcible defenestration through the earliest window of opportunity into the river.

Oh, and Leonia bought Jeanne a mango after she started demanding sliced mango - the consumption of which seemingly consumed a good portion of the morning. Leonia - you dog you.

;)

Not to be outdone by the spectacle of three people watching Jeanne eat a mango, the day threw a modern adaptation of Moliere's Miser at us, liked by some, despised by some. Then there were the others who were just amused that the lead bore a striking resemblance to Gene Wilder in his Willy Wonka days.

Also, there's nothing wrong with ordering Dominos at 1 in the morning, to the hotel room, so that one can eat and enjoy Six Feet Under on a full stomach.

I must off to bed. Brunch tomorrow with Leonia Jeanne & Chris. Maybe.

This is Renal Tap

Hotel provided free Wifi at the DoubleTree in Downtown Boston, a good thing.

The Chinatown bus to Boston:

just $10, good.
crappy seat backs, bad.

What's the point of getting food at the Excellent Dumpling House in NYC's Chinatown, getting it packed because you wanted to get to the bus on time, and then ending up in Boston's Chinatown almost five hours later, with cold dumplings, that you can't store in the hotel mini-fridge anyways since it is packed with food tied to exorbitant incidental fees?

Eric P was in town this week. I unfortunately did not get a chance to see his new early eighties Porsche, but did get a chance to hang out with the boy while he was in town. There was as expected much reminiscing, and I was lucky enough to have recounted the singing of the song "Knock knock knocking on Minnies' door" sung to the tune of, well, you know.

Also, Matlock is still cool.

Edwards, lawyer like Matlock.

Conclusion: Theme music to the DNC, especially when Edwards comes out, should be, not some shitty tune like Macarena, but the Matlock Theme.

Finally, the BBC interviewed me one early morning in Bryant Park this week. They are doing some documentary on Macs and Apple products like the iPod. I was busy, and had the chutzpah to tell them that I only had two minutes. The saving grace of the interview, which was brusque, was, as usual, my dashing good looks.

;)

Osbourne w/o Osbourne

So when did the Sharon Osbourne show pick up a co-host who talks more than Sharon?

Arrgh.

Thank God it is Kerry.

I'm already salivating at the prospect of a Edwards - Cheney Debate.

One's a former trial lawyer, and here's a hint, it isn't Cheney.

The fafbloggers?

Ten minutes of lazy googling investigative reporting might bring you the fafbloggers:

Chris Mastrangelo, Mike Fried and John Leen

Chris is/was a member of "Tech House" at Brown.

Then again, I could be wrong.

Michael Moore abandoned independent movie theaters -- the only ones to give him a chance in the beginning. It's like when Metallica sued bootleggers -- the same people who made them famous. On the other hand, I don't really care and if I were Michael Moore I'd be raking in the cash too (ya know...like a guy who makes money pointing out the failures of others.....) Regardless, check out this 3-minute documentary by a buddy of mine, Finding Fahrenheit 9/11, and make up your own mind.


When: 7/1/2004

Company: Michael Moore

Severity: 5

Points: 105
[Newcum's FuckedCompany Feed]

I'm willing to give Moore a lot of leeway. But nobody is immune from criticism.

Jurisprudent Fusion, or Throwing Laffer a Curve

The presumption of innocence is a hallmark of the American court system.

What would happen if this were reversed in the particular case of American tax law?

Would tax evasion go down?

gmail bindings in browsers

I hadn't realized how hooked to gmail I was until I was reading the NYT site and I hit "u". I think we need to have a firefox extension that allows gmail key bindings. The most useful would be a "g+i" combination to go up to the root url, say if I was reading a NYT story, I could go up to nytimes.com.

The other key that would be useful is "u" - which would just take me up in the hierarchy by going up one in the URL. So if I was in nytimes/news/candybars, "u" would take me up to nytimes/news/.

There already exists an extension for firefox that handles going up in the hierarchy. I want a combined plugin.

And one more thing. It should autodetect that we're at gmail.com and disable itself.

mmmm.

satMac meet kryptonite

The satMac needs a new titanium case. Apparently, it cracks very easily.

:(

set WWDC2004 = Crap;

The Apple WorldWide Developers Conference was the most dissapointing Apple Event in years.

No new systems, a preview of an OS that won't come out until 1st Half 2005 (read as late as June 2005), and a score of "advancements" that have been available independently of Apple.

• Metadata file system like the one BeOS had working, on Apple hardware, six years ago


• System wide searching similar to that already implemented in Quiksilver


• Desktop Widgets a dead ringer for those of Konfabulator


• RSS Feeds in Safari Repeat after me: The browser is not the place for added non browsing functionality. Rather than go the route of a suite in the manner of the netscape suite, have the dignity to buy out NetNewsWire or PulpFiction in the same way you bought out SoundJam to make iTunes.

There were other announcements, but they are barely worth mentioning.

• An updated SMB file system driver. To keep up with "Everybody Else"


• BSD utilities that handle resource forks out of the box. This in a .4 point release?


• New Displays - in Aluminum! yawn.

I'm leaning stronger and stronger towards believing that we need a GPLed Carbon environment.

Give me a linux system running on Apple Hardware, running apps meant for Apple's operating system, but better.

What is it they used to say?

Think Different.

Dale a Flaming Liberal?

The Full Monty was on this afternoon as I hooked up my TV to the cable (with the new splitter I bought today at Lowes.)

Not realizing the movie had ended and Fox had segued to NASCAR, you gllorious reader will understand my surprise as I heard the words "Fahrenheit 9/11" come out of the speakers.

It seems that the NASCAR commentators were referring to Dale Earnheardt talking about going to see Michael Moore's new movie as a potential bonding experience.

Dale!

The Fog of War

brilliant

mcnamara comes off as a tragic figure, despite the millions of lives that he was instrumental in eliminating

i have also discovered

that all with dubious places in history

should come with a philip glass soundtrack

bunnies

my cable modem arrived today

it is pretty

i will call it george

I miss STNG.

Riker: How did you like command?
Worf: Comfortable chair.

Bush or Death?

I think I've caught on to the signature of the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign.

gmail explosion

Three invites last night, and now five more today

Sounds good, I think, aside from the capacity problems gmail seems to be having today.