"Stop hurting America"

I've been kicking myself about missing Crossfire today (with guest Jon Stewart) after the reports I've read on blogs. If you missed it too, go read the transcript. Now.

Bonus link: go read With Trembling Fingers also.

Am I polarized? I've never been a registered Democrat, I'm sick of this two-party straitacket, I wish to God it didn't take Yale and a major American fortune to create a presidential candidate. The only current Democratic leaders who show me any courage are Nancy Pelosi and old Bob Byrd — Hillary Clinton has been especially cagy and gutless on this war — and John Kerry himself may leave a lot to be desired. He deserves your vote not because of anything he ever did or promises to do, but simply because he did not make this sick mess in Iraq and owes no allegiance to the sinister characters who designed it. And because his own "place in history," so important to the kind of men who run for president, would now rest entirely on his success in getting us out of it.

Kerry made a courageous choice at least once in his life, when he came home with his ribbons and demonstrated against the war in Vietnam. But Sen. Kerry could turn out to be a stiff, a punk, an alcoholic, and he'd still be a colossal improvement over the man who turned Paul Wolfowitz loose in the Middle East. The myth that there was no real difference between Democrats and Republicans, which I once considered seriously and which Ralph Nader rode to national disaster four years ago, was shattered forever the day George Bush announced his cabinet and his appointments for the Department of Defense.

Via John Moltz. You owe it to yourself to read both of these.

More Tiger sales

A follow-up to Monday's post about Tiger books that Amazon already has listed: Lisa pointed out that Amazon's got Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger itself listed as for sale, with a release date of March 31.

There's also a couple more books listed there now (or at least I missed them last time):

• March, Pearson: Mac OS X Tiger in a Snap
• June, Wiley: The Mac OS X Tiger Book

Predictions, please?

Last night at dinner, we were discussing what Scaled Composites was going to do now that they've won the X-Prize. Here's the story: Beyond the X Prize.

Which leads to the meta version of our dinner conversation: what field would you encourage a smart teenager to major in in college? Assume that he's almost completely without preferences, and that he's got plenty of evidence of math and science chops. Bioinformatics? Aerospace Engineering? Tell us in the comments what your crystal ball says.

Blogger get-together

Along with Damien, we're co-hosting a blogger get-together at the O'Reilly OS X Conference. Go read Damien's post for the details. And no, you don't have to be attending the conference; if you're going to be anywhere near Santa Clara that night and have in interest in blogs, you're welcome. See you there!

Still not dead, but kind of old

I noticed that I hadn't posted here for a while; as usual, that's because I've been nose-to-the grindstone. I'm working on Managing Your Personal Finances with Quicken: Visual QuickProject Guide, and I'm trying to get a chapter done before I take off for the weekend. I'll be driving down to Orange County for my 30th high school reunion, then spending a couple of days with my dad before heading back home. Email, thanks to Starbucks WiFi, will work as always.

Local Apple Store opening

It's official: the grand opening of the Apple Store in Santa Rosa Plaza is Saturday, October 16 from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. The first 500 people to visit the store receive a free Apple commemorative t-shirt.

Can you guess what Sean and I will be doing this Saturday?

Negrino speaks!

If you're in Sonoma County tonight, c'mon out to the Sonoma County Web Developers SIG and hear Tom (among others) talk about Content Management Systems. He's primarily going there to flog his recent Macromedia Contribute 3 for Windows & Macintosh: Visual Quick Start Guide, but I bet if you ask him the right questions he'll talk a bit about blogs.

Hot shopping deal

It's a little early for holiday gift shopping, but this might be an excuse to start anyway: Amazon's having a sale on Fox Season One DVDs — only $14.99 each. Buffy, Angel, 24, Futurama, The Simpsons, and more. That's a savings of 75% for some of those puppies, so you'll look like a big spender for not a lot of cash.

I don't know how long this sale will last, so grab 'em while you can. If you've never seen any of these shows, I can promise you that you can't go wrong with Buffy or Angel.

When is Tiger shipping?

So far as I know, all Apple's said about when Tiger (aka Mac OS X 10.4) is shipping is "the first half of 2005," which most people read as "the second quarter of 2005." Is there any chance that some publishers know more than that? According to Amazon, there's already of bunch of Tiger books in the pipeline:

• December, Wiley: Mac OS X Tiger: Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks (and yes, I'll bet serious cash against this one shipping on time!)
• January, Wiley: Mac OS X Bible Tiger Edition and Teach Yourself Visually Mac OS X Tiger
• February, Pearson: Easy Mac OS X Tiger
• February, Wiley: Mac OS X Tiger Timesaving Techniques For Dummies
• March, Pearson: Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Tiger, Mac OS X Tiger All in One, Mac OS X Tiger Killer Tips, and MacAddict Guide to Mac OS X Tiger
• March, Wiley: Mac OS X Tiger For Dummies
• April, Pearson: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Visual QuickStart Guide
• April, Wiley: Mac OS X Tiger All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies

Of course, there's more to come, as some publishers (such as O'Reilly) haven't released their titles to Amazon as yet. But I found it interesting that nobody is, as yet, suggesting a date in May or June.

And I should probably mention that so far, there appears to be only one book on Dashboard, which is due out in March. I guess I'd better get back to work!

An agonizing choice

It's fascinating reading some of the analysis and agonizing on the right as the conservatives realize what they've got themselves into. Example A is this article, "An agonizing choice: Conservatives have plenty of cause to abandon Bush" by Bob Barr. Yeah, that Bob Barr.

When people like that are writing public pieces about why conservatives shouldn't vote for Bush, you know there's trouble with the base that simply kow-towing to the Christian right won't solve.