Yet one more Bush failure (another in a continuing series)

While Rome burned, Nero fiddled. While America falls ever further behind the rest of the world in technology, Bush does nothing. This New York Times article, A Broadband Beat-Down, makes the indictment:

From the 1960's until the day President Bush took office, the United States led the world in Internet development.

No longer. The Bush administration's policies, or lack thereof, have since allowed Asia - Japan in particular - to not only catch up in the development and expansion of broadband and mobile phone technology, but to roundly pound us into the dirt.

Japan instituted an industrial policy, which provided incentives for expanding broadband and wireless technology to the masses. The United States, meanwhile, has done essentially nothing. Japan is now well ahead of us in the percentage of homes with broadband. And their broadband on average is about half the price and 16 times the speed of ours. Japan is even further ahead in mobile telephony.

Meanwhile, Japan, South Korea and other Asian countries are poised to leap ahead of the United States in any number of areas: teleconferencing, telecommuting, remote medical services, distance education, multimedia entertainment.

The economy as a whole is at risk because of broadband shortcomings, says Charles H. Ferguson of the Brookings Institution (brookings.edu). Last year, he asserted in a book, 'The Broadband Problem,' that the United States might lose up to $1 trillion because of constraints on broadband deployment."

Despite all their "We're! Number! One!" bluster, Bush and his Republicans are too blind, too greedy, too foolish, and too irresponsible to do the work that will actually enhance our country's strength. They and their cronies have spent all their time in office looting America's wealth, and sowing the seeds of our downfall. Instead of making this nation stronger, they try to distract us with a needless war, and rally their faithful around a brain-dead living corpse, all the time screeching at true patriots who object to their idiotic actions, "Shut up! Shut up!"

From an economic standpoint, the rest of the world are not only our partners, but also our competitors and sometimes even enemies. George Bush and his administration have, through their inaction, surrendered without firing a shot.

Shindell/Kaplansky

Paul Hoffman over at Lookit writes about Cry, Cry, Cry, a trio that contained two of Tom's all-time faves:

This wonderful trio only lasted for one album together, but they certainly continue to do fine on their own: Richard Shindell, Dar Williams, and Lucy Kaplansky. I re-discovered an old concert of theirs from 1/8/99 in Cedar Rapids, IA. Fall On Me is the REM song with a different set of plaintive harmonies, and The Ballad of Mary Magdalen is an incredibly sweet song of love and pain.

Richard and Lucy are appearing together in Sebastopol on November 4^th. Tom has seen them individually more than I have, but I've seen them together once and he hasn't, so it'll be fun for both of us. The only thing that would make it even better is if Nina Gerber crashes the party.

I'm now taking bets on how often Richard winces at Lucy's guitar tuning for being less than perfect.

Around we go again

I love that there's a renewed interest in in JavaScript. Really, I do. And when I see stuff like the JavaScript calculator bookmarklet my first thought is, "Wow, why didn't I think of that years ago?"

My second thought is, "Oh wait, I did — four years ago, to be exact."

To be honest, there are two big differences between our implementations: first, theirs looks cooler. And second, theirs doesn't work in IE, Opera, or Safari, and I believe that mine works in all of those and more. Which do you think matters more?

Friday Cat Blogging

Disturbed from sleep for this stupid picture edition.

Blogging for dollars

From Steve Rubel's blog, Microsoft Recruiting Paid Bloggers:

MSN recently put out a call to hire paid bloggers to write and edit Web sites about five broad topics: fashion/food/style, music, sports, technology, and television, MediaPost reports. The marketing news site says MSN recruiting ads began appearing on various journalism career sites such as Mediabistro.com and JournalismJobs.com late last week. I have confirmed the report. The ads sought editors to write and produce between 5 and 10 blog posts a day; review user submissions; and monitor comments and feedback.

Getting paid to write? In particular, getting paid to write blog posts? Somehow, I think that's something we could do.

You can't distract us from your failures, Karl

Not a normal family

I'm sitting at the dining room table geeking out with Tom's kitchen PowerBook, and Tom and Sean are watching Swan Lake on TV. I've already come to the conclusion that they'll watch darn near anything so long as it's in HD, and this is just further proof.

Tom says, "You see, Sean, what they're doing here is not just dancing; they're also acting. They're trying to express the story through their dance."

Sean asks, "So what's the difference between ballet and mime?" Tom yells for me to look it up on Wikipedia. The verdict? Based on this article on mime artists, there really is no difference. Who'd have thought it?

Before that, they were watching a documentary on soap making in Nebraska. Now, they're watching team rhythmic gymnastics. I think it's time for them to stop making my point for me.

These are a few of my favorite things

I think that I've mentioned before that I'm involved with the local public access television channel, Access Healdsburg. I'm on the group's board, and I helped build our television studio. Like I always say, it's lots of fun to spend $300K of other people's money.

Here's a great story from the SF Chronicle about a public access show I wish we had on our station: Fantasy Bedtime Hour. It's two women, apparently nude in bed, discussing Stephen Donaldson's fantasy novel, Lord Foul's Bane. They shoot on DV, edit their shows on a Mac with iMovie, and then go to air.

So let's see. Science fiction, Macintoshes, public access television, and naked women in bed. What’s not to like?

Your Corporate Network And The Forces Of Darkness

A little over a year ago, I blogged about an article entitled Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. The author of that, Lucy Snyder, found my link recently and dropped me a line to tell me that she's got a new piece: Your Corporate Network And The Forces Of Darkness.

"Is it a big deal? Absolutely," says Mindy Axedame, a top human resources specialist who consults for many Fortune 500 firms. "These technologies enable communication with the dead. That's huge. If a key employee drops dead from a heart attack, now you can ask him questions that would normally be lost to the grave," Axedame says.

"But it goes way beyond conference room Ouija—you can keep the dead employee on the job! Or truck in cadavers to raise for menial labor. One network tech can monitor and control up to twenty undead taking customer support calls—that's incredibly cost effective."

And no, this post has no relationship whatsoever to the previous post.

Jobs? What jobs?

Compare and contrast: Programming Jobs Losing Luster in US and Women's share of IT jobs plunges.

Why is it that nobody ever says, "The reason girls aren't choosing programming careers is that programming as a career means that you'll have a crappy job (particularly for women) in a declining field. And why would anyone smart want to do that?" Instead, it's always, "Give us more money so we can convince girls that they should go into a shrinking industry!"

Bonus link: Shelley is applying for a job as a check out clerk at her local market.

BTW, I was told that my last rant on this topic generated a lot of discussion on a private mailing list. If you want to discuss this, do it here in the comments, please? I prefer to be able to defend my opinions, and I can't do that when you're having a conversation behind my back.

Bite me, Dick

Today, I got an email solicitation of funds from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. No big deal; I'm not planning to make any political contributions until later this year. But what annoyed me about this particular email was its author, Senator Dick Durbin, the Minority Whip. It prompted me to write this reply:

Gee, Dick,

I might have been interested in donating at this time, except that you just demonstrated that some Democrats are simply not worthy of my financial support. Yes, I’m talking about you, Senator Durbin, because of your craven apology on the Senate floor. You apologized even though you were 100% in the right with your original comments against torture in Gitmo. You allowed Republican thugs on the Hill and in the media to browbeat you into playing on their terms. You reinforced the stereotype of the spineless Democrat who lies down and lets the right-wing noise machine beat his brains out, without fighting back. You have helped the pro-torture wingnuts continue their shameful cover-up of a practice that sullies the honor of every American.

You don’t deserve my money, Senator. Since you don’t have the courage to stand up for your convictions, I suggest you lay low for a while, and don’t insult good Democrats by asking them for money. We don’t want more of the likes of you in the Senate. You should consider stepping down as Minority Whip (if not the Senate itself) and making room for a Democrat who will actually fight for the American values Democrats hold dear.

Tom Negrino

One of the things I like about Howard Dean's tenure as DNC head is that he hasn't apologized for the things he says, even when the wingnuts and the media attack him for it. When he was baited into responding to a smear by Cheney on Fox News, he said, "My view is Fox News is a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party and I don't comment on Fox News." That's the kind of leadership I want from the Democrats.

Palin's Travels: Himalaya

Michael Palin has been traveling around the world for almost twenty years, and I've been catching his TV shows documenting his trips whenever I can find them. The current one is Himalaya, the first episode of which (of six) played tonight on The Travel Channel.

Don't bother trying to find anything via that last link, though, as it appears that the Travel Channel doesn't know that they're playing it. Instead, you can get at least some of the episode information at Palin's own site. Check it out.

Side silliness: we asked Sean if he knew who Michael Palin was. Sean asked for a hint, and we said, "We've spent many hours watching him on television." His guess: Palin was a Beatle. We gave him partial points, as Palin was in the movie about The Rutles, and we'd just finished watching The Daily Show guest starring Ringo. OTOH, Sean obsessively watches Monty Python episodes on DVD, so when he found out who Palin actually was, he was even more interested in Himalaya.

Full-bodied, with a long finish and a lovely glow

Here's a problem we don't have in the wine country where we live: Chernobyl fallout levels can date wine. By measuring levels of Cesium-137 left over from Russian atmospheric nuclear tests and the Chernobyl accident, the wine's vintage can be accurately dated. This helps with cases involving fraud of French wines (and no, the wine doesn't really glow). Interestingly, the test can be done without opening the bottle, which is a big help.

Via Paul Music.