Dean for DNC Chair

We here at Backup Brain don't get a vote, but we'd like to say anyway that we support Howard Dean for Chair of the DNC.

Tom and I have different opinions as to why, but here's mine: I want a party that's socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Those are my personal beliefs, and I've seen no reason to change them. I think that the Democratic party is currently searching for a plan, and if the voting members choose Dean, that means that they agree with where I want the party to go. If they don't, well, it's not like I've been registered as a Democrat that long that I'll have a problem with looking elsewhere.

Resources for Dashboard Widgets

New over at my site: a list of Dashboard Widgets resources. If you know of any I've missed, let me know.

We will never forget

It seems to us that the Bush Administration is being ill-served by the commentators and columnists that it is surreptitiously paying to promote its agenda. Take Maggie Gallagher, for instance. Her story is told in this WaPo article: Writer Backing Bush Plan Had Gotten Federal Contract. Maggie was paid $41,500 to shill for Bush's $300 million initiative to promote marriage (really, I had no idea that people were refusing to get married! Thank goodness that our president is on the job, desperately trying to convince these folks that marriage is a good thing, unless you're gay, in which case it's bad, but I digress). But Maggie just plumb forgot about her payoff!

Later in the day, Gallagher filed a column in which she said that "I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it."

This is shameful. I assure you, if Dori or I had been paid $40,000 for writing a few columns, we would certainly have taken notice of it. And considering that $21,500 of the total was for one 3,000 word article Gallagher wrote that appeared under someone else's name, we absolutely would have remembered that. In fact, it would have been difficult to stifle our giggling as we made the deal.

Full details about Maggie's mischief here.

So here is our pledge to any member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy that wants to hire us to shill for conservative causes:

1. We will happily take your money, and we'll cash the check promptly.
2. We'll perform adequately, if not with enthusiasm.
3. We will never forget you. In fact, we promise to ask you for more money.

Hey, we've got a kid to put through college. So bring on the payola, and we promise to remember you in the morning!

School Hunting

Yes, it's that time: we're looking at campus tours to try to help Sean figure out where to go to college. Your job, should you choose to accept it: help us get through this trying time without killing each other, and come out at the other end reasonably knowledgeable about colleges and universities. We want to make some good decisions here, and speaking from my own past experience, randomly throwing a dart at a wall isn't the way to go.

Here's our current schedule (starting on Feb. 14):

• Monday am: UCLA (tour page)
• Monday lunch with LS?
• Monday pm: Harvey Mudd College (tour page)
• Monday dinner with SK?
  
  
• Tuesday: drive to San Luis Obispo
  
  
• Wednesday day: Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (tour page)
• Wednesday afternoon: drive to Santa Cruz
• Wednesday dinner with WS?
  
  
• Thursday: UC Santa Cruz (tour page) (our current #1 pick, btw)
• Thursday night: drive home

[Note: if we discussed getting together during this trip at some point in the past, and you see your initials above followed by a question mark, that means that we're hoping to see you, so let's set something up, okay? (although if it's on Feb. 14, and you have better plans for V-day than seeing us, enjoy!) Or if we're driving right by you, and your initials aren't on here and you want to get together, let us know that, too.]

Here's our questions:

• What should we be looking for at schools?
  
  
• What questions should we be asking when we're there?
  
  
• Are there appropriate schools we're missing that we should be checking out while we're in the area? (for some very loose definition of "in the area")
  
  
• Are there any colleges on this list we should skip? (and why?)
  
  
• Extra credit: How on earth are we going to pay for his education? (she says, shaking her head sadly…)

It might help to know that Sean doesn't have his heart set on any particular major, but he knows he wants to go into something science/math-oriented. Your opinions on choosing a major would be appreciated, also.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Torture is wrong. So is Gonzales as Attorney General.

Over at Daily Kos today, they have an excellent statement in opposition to the egregious nominee for Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales. Rather than being a nominee of whom all Americans can be proud, Gonzales arrives at this juncture covered with shame, his hands drenched with the blood of the people that he allowed to be tortured by US soldiers. And his shame has smeared all Americans.

This fawning, boot-licking apparatchik provided legal "advice" to the President that directly led to electrodes being attached to the genitals of helpless prisoners. That led to men being stripped naked and dragged around on a leash by dumbshit crackers who laughed and jeered and proudly took photographs as they befouled and shamed our entire nation with their pustulent sport. Though the Bush Administration is famously the No Accountability Government, it sickens us that we have come to this: the United States of America is about to reward the man responsible for these horrific crimes. We oppose Alberto Gonzales' confirmation as Attorney General, and we urge our Senators, and indeed all Senators with a shred of conscience, to vote against him.

Mac mini comparisons, part 2

I wasn't clear about yesterday's Mac mini vs. Acrobat question based on the feedback I received in the comments. So, here's another way of looking at the same question:

• A one year subscription to BrowserCam: $479
  
  
• The Mac mini, list price: $499

Does that make it a little clearer as to what I'm comparing?

MT 3.15 released

If you can read this, it means that I've successfully upgraded to Movable Type 3.15. If you're on MT, you should too. And if you're running into any trouble with this site that might be upgrade related, let me know in the comments to this post, and thanks!

Want to make PDFs?

This question just came up on a mailing list I'm on: you're on Windows and you want to make PDFs. You have two options:

• Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional, list price: $449.
  
  
• The Mac mini, list price: $499.

For $50 more, I have to recommend the latter option. Yes, I'm biased.

And I should end this post by pointing to Scott Knaster's birthday present for the Mac, 21 years old today. Go have a drink in celebration!

Wonderful World of Widgets

One of my big disappointments at the recent Macworld Expo was that I wasn't able to talk about Dashboard Widgets with anyone from Apple. I did run into a guy who said he was the Dashboard Evangelist, but he didn't have any business cards (on day one?) and was considerably more interested in talking with a fellow Apple employee about his recent ski trip than in talking to someone writing an "Apple-authorized" book on his field. Sigh.

Despite the schizophrenic attitude from Apple, folks in the field seem to be getting more and more excited. Along with The Dashboarder, there are now two more sites about Widgets: MyWidgets.Net and MyMacWidgets.com. Thumbs up to the former for having an RSS feed (yay!). Thumbs-down to the latter for having a nearly-impossible-to-stop video auto-playing when you load that page, but I have to say that the concept of selling widgets for 99 cents apiece is an interesting one. I'll be keeping an eye on all these sites.

Am I missing any? Let me know.

You know you'd want to

Spam I received today that I'm just not going to open, because I know it's not going to answer any of my questions:

From: "Dragged I. Bates"
Subj: bi-girl looking for more linux

National healthcare: cheaper and better care

Here's a thought to bring conservatives up short: The US Government already runs a socialized medicine system, and that system provides medical care that is better than people get at any private institution in America. Yep, you heard me right. Turns out that it's called the Veterans Administration. Paul Glastris on Political Animal has the goods. You should absolutely read this (and the linked article), if for no other reason than to challenge your preconceived notions of what the VA system is like. But here's a provocative snippet:

Conservatives are forever shutting down progressive health care reform ideas by saying that the more government gets involved the worse things will be. But in the VA, you have a totally government-run healthcare system that is besting the private sector on both cost and quality.

New baby!

Happy birthday to Ronan Julius Eaton. Welcome to this world!

So wrong. On so many levels.

Hostess Twinkies Sushi. On the other hand, this one is kind of cute. Via Paul Music.