October 2003 Archives
He's gonna direct 'Where the Wild Things Are' $10 says it will be fantastic. Check it out.
This is an easy map to do a 'what if' for the general election, which is a little more than a year away. Check it out.
Since I am sick of the crap that Microsoft claims is an e-mail program (outlook express), I've decided to take my business elsewhere. I'm trying the Bat and Opera 7. Both e-mail programs are much better, but I have yet to decided which I like the best. I think the Bat has more features, but I'll see.
This is an issue that I have come across in several blogs that I've seen, and I'd like to think that others have had this problem too: a lot of news stories on news web sites are taken down weeks or even days after they work. I generally like to have sources when I present things as fact, and I'd like readers of my blog to read the stories that I read and form their own opinion as well, or be able to access these stories for research and whatnot. This is a problem if people are reading past entries and the links that I have are dead. So there are a few options: first is just put the links up as I find them, hoping they stay up long enough for those reading, but this is a bad plan for archives. Second is to archive them myself (as I have been doing lately), but there are copyright issues (namely me publishing their stories on my site, even if it is for educational purposes). Third I could to Lexis/Nexis searches that would get the article, but not many people have Lexis/Nexis available, or if they do, how to use it. I'll do a little research on what other bloggers do in these situations.
Once again Normy has flip-flopped on his campaign promises, which we can now add to the total of 3 flips in the past month. When Norm Coleman ran for Senate, he ran saying that he wouldn't push for school vouchers because people in Minnesota think vouchers are a bad idea. Now Normy's boss has decided that vouchers would be good in the Washington DC area, and guess who wins? I can tell you now it isn't the promise made to Minnesotans. When campaigning, Coleman often brought up the statistic that Wellstone (whom he ran against) had more votes against any legislation that G W Bush supported than any other Senator. That's an impressive fact. Normy said that he wouldn't be a rubber stamp because he disagreed with Bush on several other issues that I have covered here as well. For a free thinker, I cannot think of a single vote that has come up in the Senate where Norm hasn't voted exactly along Bush's lines. Not one single vote. Coleman ran on a position of bipartisanship, of reaching across the table, of bringing people together to get things done. That turned out to be the biggest load of horseshit this side of his "marriage." Now that Coleman and the other Republican drones have a majority in all 4 branches of the government (I count congress as two), he doesn't have to reach across the table for anything. All he needs to do is smile bright and say 'Of course I agree with you, Mr. President.' When Howard Dean wins in 2004, who will Norm turn to in order to suck up? He won't know how to vote because Bush won't be calling him up to give him orders. Coleman brings shame to the great state of Minnesota by bringing in the agenda of a corrupt leader from the least of all states, Texas.
That's about it for my partisan rants for today. I realize that my personal attack against Norm for his sham of a marriage detracts from my overall argument, but then again, who really reads this anyway?
Read the news story about the third flip here.
Too bad this story doesn't say what kinds of fines the GOP of Minnesota could face from taking campaign contributions from a corporation. They know they are guilty, there are letters to back this up, and that dink Eibensteiner says that it didn't happen. Come on, fess up, and if the DFL also accepted money, they should be let off with a verbal warning. Eibensteiner should go to jail. I only have a few double standards, this is one of them... Read the story here.
Talk about bad publicity... Check this out.
I hate to say this, but as cool as Bit Torrent is, it is a bigger bandwidth hog than Kazaa v 1.x. The worst thing is that I don't even get really fast rates, just pretty slow ones, actually, around 10-15 KBPS *and* it hogs my bandwidth. I don't know, my there are utilities that limit the bandwidth, it drives me crazy, and Aaron can't do anything when I run it because it steals his too! I say this because I am trying to do web editing (the creation of my new web site) and it takes forever to up and download from my FTP server...
Wired has a story in their next issue about how Amazon has a new technology that allows users to search the text of around 120,000 books that they already have in their database. This is really cool, one would hope that at some point in the near future a vast majority of all books would be in a searchable database. Project Gutenberg has digitized thousands of books in the public domain, but unless you are doing research on classic novels, it doesn't really help you. This could revolutionize research as we know it. There are some services like JSTOR that archive and allow users to search Political Science Journals that are more than 2 years old, but this is much more limited than the huge scale of Amazon's venture. You can read about this here.
Saw a page on Fark that had some funny tombstones, this is my favorite:
In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:
Anna Wallace
The children of Israel wanted bread And the Lord sent them manna, Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife, And the Devil sent him Anna
I want something funny like that on my head stone... Read more of them here.
So the 7th season is back on after 6 months without episodes, I happen to have the newest episode in Real Media here, if you care to watch. It would probably be better to download than stream, so just right-click and save-as. The episode is called South Park is Gay, and it is about the Metrosexualization of American straight men due to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Get it here.
"You're straight like a freeway!" Enjoy.
Huzzah! This is my second letter published, but this time about a real issue. Here is what they published here:
Another flip-flop
Sen. Norm Coleman has done it again. When he ran for Senate last year, he said he wasn't a rubber stamp for President Bush for two reasons: He was against ANWR drilling and he favored lifting the trade embargo against Cuba.
In the past month, Coleman has reversed his position on both. In an Oct. 20 Miami Herald opinion piece, Coleman said that he won't support trade with Cuba until human rights there are improved.
He now seems to completely agree with what the Bush administration believes. Coleman can't do what is best for Minnesota if all he is doing is what is best for George W. Bush.
Micah Clemens, Minneapolis.
My letter was close to that, but they edited down to what they should. Good to try and keep Normy in check.
iTunes makes my iPod even awesome-er, I can actually see myself paying to download a tune or two. Whole albums are $10, which is kinda steep since you can buy the real thing for close to that. Right now I am cleaning up my iPod playlists and ID3 tags before adding new songs, this could take a while. I eventually want to sell the 5 gig iPod and get a new 20 gig iPod because they are super slick and I'll want to have the extra space. That'll be a few months down the line.
That's right, Apple has released iTunes for Windows, and I'm betting it is a nice program, but we'll have to wait and see. It is like 17 megs big, which could be good or bad, we'll have to see. Will I start paying for music to download? We'll see. Get your copy here.
If you look below every post, there are a couple of bits of info, including the permanent link, who wrote the entry (me) and now there is a comments link, where you can leave feedback and whatnot.
Just got an e-mail from Ali, my Model UN prof, they are planning a trip to Cuba over Winterm. This would be wickid pissah if I could go.
I like to try and call Normy on the shit he pulls, so I decided instead of complaining to myself of others, I'd take it to Norm himself. For information about what I'm talking about, read the post right before this one. The following is what I sent him:
Senator Coleman,
I have mixed feelings about your letter to the Miami Herald on Monday, October 20th. I believe strongly, as you did while campaigning, that the embargo needs to end between the United States and Cuba, I think we could both agree that trade with Cuba would be beneficial for both economies. In the letter that you wrote, you said that you would not support trade with Cuba, unless their human rights records are improved. I completely agree with your stance on this, I think the United States has the economic might to punish states that violate human rights. I think that you should take these convictions a step farther, and demand that the United States stop trading with nation that are also human rights violators. What a strong message we would be sending to countries like Saudi Arabia. Tell them that we won't buy their oil until they treat women there like human beings. I'm glad that you are taking a stand for human rights, more Senators need to. Senator Coleman, I expect you to be consistent on the issue of human rights, I expect you to actively campaign to improve human rights around the world so that I know that this new position isn't just a partisan one. I'd like to thank you for taking the time to show that you care more about human rights than about trade.
Sincerely,
Micah Clemens
So when Normy was running for Senate last year, he claimed he wasn't a rubber stamp for Shrub for two reasons, the first being that he disagreed with ANWR drilling (which he now supports) and he also disagreed with Shrub about the trade and travel embargo against Cuba, which he now also falls in line with Shrub on. Bush wants to keep the embargo, Coleman campaigned on lifting it, now he says otherwise. Now Normy cares about human rights and doesn't want to trade with Cuba until they improve those conditions. I'm glad that now Norm is against trade with any nation that violates human rights. Perhaps I'll give him a call and thank him for calling an end to oil trade with Saudi Arabia until they treat women there like human beings (we all know that Norm loves the women). Oh wait, that's right, Norm doesn't give a shit about human rights, all he cares about is pretending that he isn't totally in line with the president's agenda when he actually is. The two things that Norm disagreed with Shrub about have now suddenly found their way back on the table for him. All I want to know is, does Shrub prefer jelly or syrup? Link to the Cuba op-ed piece here. Link to the ANWR backtrack here. Funny picture here.
Saw this beauty on Fark, its a list of slang for drugs that the government knows about, and I'm betting that a few of them were used just one time, a narc officer heard it, and it made the list. I say this because an overwhelming number of them are just for Heroin. I think my favorite is Matsakow, what's yours? Link here.
They seem to be missing one, 'Bushing it'. I belive that means coke-ing your ass off while AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard...
So everybody who is anybody knows what an IP address is, and its current limitations, but there is good news: there will be WAY more unique IP addresses before 2009! Yeah, this is kinda lame, but I think it is neat, it means we are leaning towards a much more wired world. Read the story here: http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5094070.html.
This is damn funny, the part is about half-way through the video, I hate real video and I don't even want to try to edit it. I got this from Fallonfey.com, a really snazzy site that really only deals with Weekend Updates. I hope this streaming thing works here. Or you can just download the whole file here (Right-click and Save As. ~12 Megs).
This is amazing, 1.1 terabytes of data was transfered from Switzerland to CA in 30 minutes! That's a DVD's worth of data in 7 seconds! If only Kazaa would download that fast, the world would be either a much better or much worse off place. Read about it here.
Damn that is fast.
I know, the fan is old news, but gimme a break, it wasn't game 7, the Cubs had a chance to come back, and didn't. It was one lost out, and they still gave up, like what, 8 runs? Let's face it, the Cubs didn't play well enough to get into the World Series, it wasn't this guy's fault. But now they're gonna make a damn movie out this poor schmuck story, this is TV at its worst. Read about it all here.
All these new changes could be bad, who knows?
I finally finished writing my Film Noir paper, I was up really late last nite and I finally finished it today, and it feels good. I want to go to sleep but I have to go into Sammy's after class, and I am not looking forward to that right now. T-Mobile sent me a replacement for my phone, which is a pretty slick deal seeing as how I got it from Best Buy over 3 years ago and have recently traded it with the PSP. I had to run down the mail man because he left a slip in the mail box, I guess they just don't know how to deliver, or, I don't know, ring up. I had to go to the post office to mail back the bad seed and waited in line for like a half an hour, the people in front of me were soooo sloooow. All I had to do was hand it to the guy, I should have just cut in line. Oh well, off to class...
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Fingers crossed on this rumor (CNN): Steve Martin could be the newest Inspector Clouseau.
Rush should become addicted to illegal drugs more often, he's off the air for 30 days while he goes into rehab. I'm sure a TV movie will be made about this whole thing. You can see him read a statement about this on his website. His lawyers wouldn't have him read it unless they knew that the police had a rock-solid case against him. I'm hoping to God that he doesn't just cop a deal and get off with community service (well, I suppose taking his show off the air would be a community service). See the video here. I have to admit, for such shabby on-air content, Rush does have a nice website with everything available. There was a great line on SNL's Weekend Update last week:
Rush: I do have one regret, uh.. the timing. ..If this drug thing.. sticks.. I could go to jail.. and I just pissed off a lot of black guys!
So now that my blog is back and better than ever, I will try to have more entries with 50% less fluff. I'm thinking of revamping this blog to talk of movies, politics and local news. 2003 has been a year of crappy movies, but things may be looking up. Just saw Lost in Translation, thats some quality filmmaking. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was also really good, along with Matchstick Men. Kill Bill is my next flick to see, I am very excited, but *someone* doesn't want to see it, so I'll have to wait a while to see it... Mystic River should be quality as well, but Eau Claire doesn't get good movies.
A new domain and a new start, hope I can keep up
