Today's Reason to Vote Against Bush

As if you needed another, here's today's reason to vote against Bush and for Kerry: U.S. Campaigns for Treaty to Ban Use of Embryo Stem Cells. It's not enough that Bush has tried to suppress embryonic stem cell research here in the US. Now he wants a worldwide ban:

As California voters are being asked to decide whether the state should fund embryonic stem cell research, the Bush administration is spearheading a campaign at the United Nations for a global treaty banning such research and all forms of human cloning.

But intelligent people in other countries are resisting:

Nearly 130 nations, including close U.S. allies such as Britain, Japan and India, say that each nation should be allowed to decide for itself whether to regulate therapeutic cloning.

"No country has the right to seek to impose on the rest of the world a ban on therapeutic cloning, when its own legislature won't impose the ban nationally," said British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry.

This is yet another exercise in appeasing Bush's political base. Let's rid the US and the world of this ignorant, anti-science jerk and his know-nothing henchmen on November 2.

It's not too late for you to give money or volunteer your time to help usher Bush on his way back to Texas.

12" iBooks versus Powerbooks

A year ago today, I wrote up a comparison of Apple's then-current 12" laptops. It's time again to update it:

	12" iBook	12" AlBook (low-end)	12" AlBook (high-end)
Display	12.1-inch TFT Display, 1024x768 resolution
Processor	1.2 GHz PowerPC G4	1.33 GHz PowerPC G4
Level 2 Cache	512K
Memory	256 included, 1.25 GB max
Hard Drive	30 GB ATA/100	60 GB Ultra ATA/100
Optical Drive	Slot-loading Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)		SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
Graphics	ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 with 32MB of DDR SDRAM	NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 with 64MB of DDR SDRAM
Video outs	VGA (mirroring only)	Mini-DVI, DVI, VGA (supports multiple monitors)
Weight	4.9 Lbs.	4.6 Lbs.
Bluetooth	Optional	Included
Airport Extreme	Included
Ethernet	Built-in 10/100BASE-T
Firewire	One FireWire 400 port
USB	Two USB 2.0 ports
Price	$999	$1599	$1799

My conclusion last year:

Overall, the new iBook is pretty darn nice, and if you don't need dual (vs. mirrored) monitors, it'd be hard to pick the low-end AlBook over the iBook.

This year's conclusion: pretty much the same. Given that you can upgrade the iBook to the same hard drive for $75 and then add Bluetooth for $50, you're getting virtually the same machine for $1124 versus $1599. Unless you need the Superdrive (not available on the 12" iBook), there's just no good reason to pay the premium for the AlBook.

Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004 - Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004

Too many op-ed writers, especially on blogs, try to write like Hunter S. Thompson but fail. Read the real thing instead: Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004:

If Nixon were running for president today, he would be seen as a "liberal" candidate, and he would probably win. He was a crook and a bungler, but what the hell? Nixon was a barrel of laughs compared to this gang of thugs from the Halliburton petroleum organization who are running the White House today -- and who will be running it this time next year, if we (the once-proud, once-loved and widely respected "American people") don't rise up like wounded warriors and whack those lying petroleum pimps out of the White House on November 2nd."

Actually, it's all quotable, so go read it yourself. Extra bonus bit, and the quote of the day:

Some people say that George Bush should be run down and sacrificed to the Rat gods. But not me. No. I say it would be a lot easier to just vote the bastard out of office on November 2nd.

Works for us.

You're sorry for the inconvenience?

You're sorry for the inconvenience? Oh, well then, I feel so much better now.

Why don't applications ever put up dialogs that say something like, "Crap — you found a bug! You're screwed, because I'm about to crash and forget about everything that you were working on. Bye!" Or are the kind of programmers who write that sort of error message the ones who write more bug-free code?

In which Dori is easily amused

It's juvenile, but I just have to giggle every time I notice that this blog's ID # on Bloglines is 666. Or do they know something we don't?

Back From Nostalgia Tour 2004

I'm back from the 2004 Nostalgia Tour, in which I drove down to Orange County for my 30th high school reunion. It was a good experience this time around. I chose not to go to the 10th, but went to the 20th. The last one was fine, but still tinged with a bit of that high school clique-ism. It seemed that people mostly hung out with people they knew back then. Much less of that this time. As it turned out, many of the people I'd hoped to see there chose not to go, which was unfortunate. I made more of an attempt to talk with people I didn't know well, which was quite fun.

Thirty years on, people just aren't that invested in impressing others any more, and seemed mostly pretty happy with their lives. One woman said the next day, "There was a lot more hugging at this reunion." That was nice. There were some clouds, of course. One guy I've known since elementary school was clearly an alcoholic, and was working a subsistence-level job. Other people had suffered some pretty severe physical infirmities. There was a list of dead classmates, one of whom was a woman I had briefly dated in college. That was a little jolt. No one had any details as to what had happened to her, just confirmation that she was gone.

It was odd (but understandable) that most people remembered me as the kid who had the brace on his leg (I was born with spina bifida, and wore a metal brace on my right leg throughout childhood; I ditched it after high school). My self-identity hasn't included the brace for thirty years, and it was a little bemusing to be reminded of it.

Thoughtfulness, in fact, was a theme for me for this weekend. The day after the reunion, I had a long lunch with a longtime friend. Catching up with her, and the reunion, brought home to me how far I've come in the past thirty years, and how much I've changed. It underscored for me how life is good. I'm glad that I went.

Tiger Early Start Kit for Developers

Apple just announced the Tiger Early Start Kit for Developers. So far as I can tell, it's the same thing as the ADC Select Membership. What's the difference?

Reading the fine print, if you already had a Select membership, there's no difference. If you sign up for a Select membership now, it's just a "Hey, we want you to know that you're getting the same developer seed of Tiger as everyone else." Tsk tsk... bad job of naming and describing it, Apple.

ClickerScripts

I've mentioned Salling Clicker here gobs of times, but now there's a new site: ClickerScripts, a community for Clicker scripts and support. It even has an RSS feed, so you know it's gotta be cool.

MT 3 upgrade and first impressions

If you can read this, it means that I've sucessfully upgraded this blog from MT 2.21 to MT 3.11. Woof.

My first impressions all have to do with comments:

• It appears that after you make a comment, you're automatically thrown to an unreadable and inappropriate (for the context) page. This makes no damn sense, and I can't figure out why this is the case or if there's any way to work around this.
• The much-ballyhooed comment features appear to fall into three categories: impossible to implement for users (i.e., getting everyone who posts here onto TypeKey), impossible to implement for admins (i.e., having to manually approve every individual comment from every non-TypeKey user from now on), and non-existent (i.e., anyone can post anything). I was really hoping that there'd be something that was usable for us.
• The bit of good news is that it'll be easier to delete comment spam; unfortunately, there isn't any way to stop it before it happens without stopping virtually all of the comments we get now. Big sigh. I should think of this as the glass being half-full, I guess.

If anyone knows how to work around any of the above, please let me know, and thanks!

Later note: this is a test to see if I can edit a post with MarsEdit. So far, so good.

Really cheap Wi-Fi

Via Wi-Fi Networking News and a bunch of other sites comes the news that SBC Communications Announces $1.99 Monthly Wi-Fi Pricing for DSL users. I'm a SBC DSL user and I'm interested, so why can't I actually sign up? The only option they show me online is for $19.95/month, which isn't that great a deal—it's virtually identical to the one I've got now through T-Mobile.

I doubt "Without a Doubt"

There's been a lot of hoohah on blogs about the NY Times Magazine article by Ron Suskind, Without a Doubt. Most of it agrees with what we've said here previously, so I can't be objective about it, but I strongly disagree with the opening bit:

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

Nope. Not a chance. The only way that there's going to be "a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3" is if the Republicans lose, not if they win. These folks are not going to take a look around on the day after they win an election and say, "Who can we start to be better friends with? Who can we ally with, now that we've won everything we want?" Ain't gonna happen. If they lose, however, the part of the Republican party that I respect (the fiscally conservative libertarian wing) might have a chance at a comeback.

For more on why I'm right and Bruce Bartlett is wrong, go read this Louisville, KY Courier-Journal editorial by Ballard Morton, Bush 'goes against values I treasure' in which he explains why he, a long-time Republican from a family of Republicans, is voting for Kerry. Or read the piece by Bob Barr I blogged earlier this week. Or one by any number of what used to be called "Country Club Republicans" who are appalled at the "borrow and spend" gov't we've got now.

The neo-cons aren't going to welcome these folks back into the fold if Bush wins. They've only got a chance of changing things if Bush loses.

High Stakes 2004

A drawback of living in the boondocks is that there isn't likely to be a High Stakes 2004: Whedon Fans for John Kerry & John Edwards party anywhere near us. I'm thinking about throwing one here anyway (with Tom and I as the only attendees), just so I can listen in on the conference call.

When: Sunday, October 24, 2004, time TBA

Where: At parties nationwide.

What: The Kerry/Edwards campaign would like to invite everyone to host or attend parties across the nation to celebrate the genius of Joss Whedon and learn more about John Kerry and John Edwards. Mr. Whedon will calling to tell us about his latest exploits and why he is supporting John Kerry for President and John Edwards for Vice President. This is an official fundraiser for the Kerry/Edwards campaign. Donations start at $35.00 (hosts may choose higher minimum donations).

For more information, follow the link above. There's some interesting fan reaction (as would be expected) at Whedonesque. And I'm still trying to figure out what my question would be (if I happened to get to ask one), but the current contender is, "Am I the world's only Mal/Kaylee shipper?"

What passes for excitement here

As we said a few days ago, Tom's away, so Sean and I went to go check out the opening of the new local Apple Store. If I'd known a picture of me was going to end up on the 'net, I would have dressed a little nicer.