Monthly Archive for May, 2006Page 2 of 2

Zack Exley on how Dems should approach domestic spying

Published
by
John
on 5/13/2006
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. 0 Comments

My buddy Zack Exley just wrote a great article on The Huffington Post, Dems: Get the Spying Issue Right This Time! He makes the point that the Democrats need to stick to these two points, and not back down, or clutter the issue with technicalities about FISA or warrants:

  1. “Bush ALREADY HAD the freedom to spy on anyone he wanted - he just had to tell a secret intelligence judge AFTERWARDS, a judge who was sworn to secrecy. So what was he trying to hide from that judge?”
  2. “WHO WERE THEY SPYING ON? We need to see a list.”

This is an interesting case where it’s clear what the effective rhetoric would be for the Dems, now we just have to see if they use it.

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Stories in America

Published
by
John
on 5/12/2006
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. 0 Comments

One of my favorite blogs, and one of the very few political blogs I read, is Stories in America. A very reasonable, no-compromise, well written look at the really important issues facing our nation, with lots of sources and information. Give it a try for a few days, you’ll like it. (If you catch it on a bad day or week it might seem like just another Bush-bashing Liberal blog, but it’s not).

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DVD sniffing dogs

Published
by
John
on 5/11/2006
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. 0 Comments

from the onion becoming reality department:

As part of a project promoted by the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA), FACT instigated the training of two black Labradors named Lucky and Flo by one of the world’s leading experts in the field whose other clients include police, fire and rescue service. The dogs were trained over an eight month period to identify DVDs that may be located in boxes, envelopes or other packaging, as well as discs concealed amongst other goods which could be sold illegally in the UK.

link

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Google Trends

Published
by
John
on 5/11/2006
in general
. 3 Comments

Endless fun.

Awesome: full moon

Could be awesome: full moon, werewolves it would be nice if google crunched the statistics for us to see if there were any correlation. as is, we don’t have the resolution to eyeball it

Inverse!: summer, winter

terminology: autumn, fall. Check out the “Regions” stats on this one, UK vs. US

From the “I wish the stats went back 10 years” department: clinton, blowjob seems uneventful at first… but wait! forget about clinton– what’s up with the blowjob spike around New Year’s 2006??? let’s zoom in: blowjob @ dec 2005 blowjob @ feb 2006

Remember this fiasco?: sony rootkit

Katrina hits New Orleans, Houston offers help: katrina, houston

Hmm, looks interesting: flu, fear. check out some of the individual months. in some of them, the two terms have a distinct inverse relationship. flu, fear @ dec 2005 totally baffling.

It’s official, Web 2.0 is bad for innovation: web 2.0, innovation

Sigh: hiv, darfur, ringtones, iraq war, hiv, darfur, healthcare, football

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Fred gives a talk at Google

Published
by
John
on 5/9/2006
in general
. 1 Comment

Fred recently did a west coast tour, where he gave a talk at Google about Facebook. I’ve seen Fred present his findings before, but still found the presentation and Q&A to be quite interesting. You can watch the video here.

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LinkedIn

Published
by
John
on 5/9/2006
in general
. 2 Comments

If anyone out there who at least tangentially knows me uses LinkedIn, let’s link up!

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Original versions of Star Wars to be released on DVD

Published
by
John
on 5/4/2006
in general
. 1 Comment

YES!

The original, unaltered, unedited versions of episodes 4, 5, and 6. I thought we’d never see this day, or at least not for another 20 years when the Criterion Collection would dig it up.

One confusing thing:

In response to overwhelming demand, [we] will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you’ll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.

What is “the 2004 digitally remastered version”? I’m pretty sure this is the version with all the absurd edits. To just refer to the as “digitally remastered” is silly, and a little insulting. Furthermore… I want the “theatrical editions” to be digitally remastered too… I just don’t want the content to be changed. Hopefully the “theatrical editions” have been rescanned and processed like the 2004 version was. I can’t imagine that this is not the case, it would in fact be cheaper for them to do that.

To add even more confusion:

Jim Ward, President of LucasArts and Senior Vice President of Lucasfilm Ltd:

We returned to the Lucasfilm Archives to search exhaustively for source material that could be presented on DVD.

This isn’t stated in the context of special features or anything… it seems like he is implying that delivering undedited versions of the same material used in the 2004 DVD required “exhaustive searching in the archives”. WTF?

Anyway, overall, very good news.

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Idealists, cynics, realists, visions, and tasks.

Published
by
John
on 5/3/2006
in general
. 0 Comments

An idealist believes that the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

–Sidney J. Harris

A vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vison and a task is the hope of the world.

–From a church in Sussex, England, ca. 1730

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