Yes, there will be Oscar blogging

For those who loved last year's Oscar Blogging, yes, I plan to do it again. Tune in Sunday evening for lots o' snarkyness. This time with comments!

Thoughts on the war

There's an excellent interview with Paul Berman over at Salon, entitled Bush is an idiot, but he was right about Saddam. There's too much good stuff to quote, but here's one snippet:

One of the scandals is that we've had millions of people marching through the streets calling for no war in Iraq, but we haven't had millions of people marching in the streets calling for freedom in Iraq. Nobody's marching in the streets on behalf of Kurdish liberties. The interests of the liberal dissidents of Iraq and the Kurdish democrats are in fact also our interests. The more those people prosper, the safer we are. This is a moment in which what should be our ideals—the ideals of liberal democracy and social solidarity—are also materially in our interest. Bush has failed to articulate this, and a large part of the left has failed to see this entirely.

It's all good, so go read it.

Seeking Vista Broadband info

If you, or anyone you know, has any info about Vista Broadband (pro or con), could you please contact me? I'm trying to find out simple things like what plans they offer and what rates they have for residential use, and their Web site is pretty much useless.

Someone hire us, please!

Doc Searls said today (referring to Jeff Carlson and Glenn Fleishman's decision to make their book Real World GoLive 6 available for free PDF download)

Since books on software have such a short shelf life, how about if publishers (or manufacturers like Adobe) pay guys like Glenn and Jeff to maintain blogs on the subject?

In fact, how about blog-enabling tech support in general? Seems to me that's a better way to leverage the writing knowhow and passions of textbook authors, and to improve other aspects of the whole tech support process at the same time.

Oh please, oh please! I wish someone would pay us to maintain this site, this site, or even this site.

Gore joins Board

Former Vice President Al Gore Joins Apple's Board of Directors.

Diplomacy - Compare and Contrast

In Turkey Shoot - How Bush made enemies of our allies, the author compares the Bush approach to foreign policy with Clinton's. The problem with Bush's go-it-alone approach, and bungling of diplomacy, is instructive. The long-term effects are unknown, but are likely to last beyond Shrub's presidency, even if he's a one-termer (as I fervently hope). Make sure to read the last paragraph of the article.

Another way of eating

Dori and I have done pretty well over the past eight weeks of the Atkins diet (I'm down 23 pounds), but there are other ways to do the job. This article from the UK shows perhaps one of the easiest and most common-sense ways to lose the excess poundage. Via Paul Music.

Excerpts vs. full posts, continued

As I mentioned yesterday, I've received feedback that some of the readers of this blog would like me to put full posts into our RSS feed, so I asked for people to tell me what the benefits were to me of doing so. End result, based on the (so far) 18 comments: there aren't any. There are plenty of benefits to others, but none to me.

Being the contrary sort, I decided to enable full posts anyhow. So, if you have any trouble with our RSS feed now, let me know.

And remember, those of you who said so, y'all promised to comment at least as much as you do now, and I'll be holding you to that.

Swimwear not for swimming

Between my trip to visit friends last week and our upcoming trip to Hawaii, it was obviously time for me to buy a new swimsuit or two. After a few searches on Google (particularly Google catalogs), I ended up at Venus Swimwear where I bought two suits.

I got the suits, wore one for about 20-30 minutes in a hot tub last week, and gaaah! the color completely faded out of it. I called the company up today to complain and was told that (wait for it) their suits are not appropriate for wearing into pools or hot tubs, as that may cause colors to run or fade.

So, while I think that their colors and styles are great, I figure that, as a public service to Internet users worldwide, it's worth pointing out to anyone searching for "Venus Swimwear" online that these suits are not appropriate for anything more strenuous than sunbathing. Consider yourself warned.

Excerpt vs. full posts

If you're reading this blog via a newsreader, please click through to voice your opinion on this post! (and if you don't know what that means, don't worry about it).

Christine of Big Pink Cookie would like us to give full posts (not just the current excerpts) in our RSS feed. I've resisted doing it up till now because:

1. Newsreaders already take up a huge percentage of our bandwidth, and I believe that they'd take up even more if we offered full posts vs. the current first 20 words. Many (if not most) newsreader reads of this site are not associated with a person actually reading this site. Instead (based on our logs) newsreaders are checking this page every ten minutes or so, and a human being may only be checking their newsreader once or twice a day. This is really a problem with newsreaders (they shouldn't read this site unless something's changed), but it's our bandwidth that's being affected.
2. I like it when there's a conversation going in the comments. Comments are one of the main reasons that we moved to MT, and I strongly suspect (although I'm willing to be convinced otherwise) that full posts in the RSS would mean fewer comments here. After all, which is more likely: you'll respond if you only have to click once (hit that comments link) or that you'll respond if you have to click twice (load this page, and then comment).

So basically, it comes down to: what's the advantage to us if we do full posts? I can see two strong disadvantages, so what's the benefit? If you use a newsreader and have an opinion on this, please respond in the comments—thanks!

Naderite idiots

I saw a particularly silly response to the Salon post Dori linked to below, at onegoodmove. I posted this in his comments:

Nader Voters. Still idiots, after all these years. And still just as clueless and defensive as ever. They are responsible for Bush's election; the Bush margin in several states was less than the number of votes Nader got in those states. Had those votes not been wasted on Nader, they would have either meant nothing or would have gone to Gore (confirmed by exit polls), as the only reasonable alternative to Bush. The argument that "Some would have voted for other candidates some may even have voted for Bush, and still others might not have voted at all" is bullshit. If you were loopy enough to fall for Ralph's crap, there's no way you would have voted for Bush. You might not have voted, in which case you would not have voted for the guy who beat Gore, would you? Perhaps you would have voted for a candidate even stupider than Nader, but that's not the point here, is it?

You Naderites got us into this mess. Deal with it, and take some fucking responsibility for a change. War with Iraq? YOUR FAULT. Environmental catastrophe? YOUR FAULT. Less reproductive choice for women? YOUR FAULT. Screwed up economy? YOUR FAULT.

Oh, and it's time to wake up from the fantasy world, kids. Here in this country, we do not use "approval voting," "instant runoff voting," or whatever other scheme that you whine about. I know that's what you want. But it's not gonna happen.

Official Dean weblog

Is this a first for this election cycle? Howard Dean's campaign has launched an official weblog: Howard Dean 2004 Call to Action Weblog. Not much there yet, but the fact that it exists at all is what I find interesting. I'm planning to give Dean money this month, ahead of the 3/31 FEC filing deadline. Not only will the money be matched by the feds, but money raised at this point will add to Dean's momentum, which is key at this point.

Arrogant Empire

Read The Arrogant Empire, from the new Newsweek. Highly recommended, and clearly shows how inept and incompetent the Bush Administration has been at foreign policy, undoing in just two years more than 50 years of America's work at international relations. Here's a quote:

Donald Rumsfeld often quotes a line from Al Capone: “You will get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.” But should the guiding philosophy of the world’s leading democracy really be the tough talk of a Chicago mobster? In terms of effectiveness, this strategy has been a disaster. It has alienated friends and delighted enemies. Having traveled around the world and met with senior government officials in dozens of countries over the past year, I can report that with the exception of Britain and Israel, every country the administration has dealt with feels humiliated by it.