3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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I haven’t written about the tsunami, because, really, what can one say? ABC News says that as of this writing the Asia Toll Nears 77,000 As Aid Arrives. Expectations are that the number in Aceh province in Sumatra alone could be 80,000. The total will certainly exceed 100,000 and could approach the 131,000 killed in the 1991 Bangladesh supercyclone. Those kinds of numbers are almost impossible to put into perspective. Eighty thousand is five times more people than currently live in the suburb I grew up in. One hundred thousand is approximately everyone in Wyoming under age 18. It’s a staggering number, and will be one of the worst disasters in history. The 1700 killed on a single train will make it one of the worst rail disasters in history. Combine that with little fresh water, disease, lack of adequate medical facilities and the geography of the affected area, and it could get a lot worse. The most amazing statistic? I’ve heard it reported that Sumatra, a land mass the size of California, moved one hundred feet. The speed of rotation of the Earth changed. Earth’s orbit changed. Wow.
Donations to the American Red Cross via Amazon now exceed $2.2 million.
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3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Here’s a late Christmas present: in theory, this link will allow you to opt out from pre-screened credit and insurance offers, cutting down on the deluge of solicitations in the mailbox. Consumer Credit Reporting Industry Opt-Out Prescreen.
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3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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How much trivia has your grey matter retained? Check it out with the NYT’s Link: Week in Review Quiz: Pratfalls, Catcalls and Spitballs: A Year in Ephemera. I got more than half right, but won’t be more precise than that.
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3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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News reports suggest that Viktor Yushchenko has won election as Ukrainian President with a double-digit margin of victory over Russian-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. Despite Yanukovich’s threat to challenge the election at the Supreme Court (the same method used by Yushchenko to force a do-over of the previous farce of an election), this is a clear victory for freedom and liberty, as Reuters notes:
Yushchenko has promised to end rampant graft and reform the
ex-Soviet state’s damaged economy. He wants to align Ukraine
with the West, fanning concerns in Russia that it will lose
influence over a region where it has held sway for 300 years.
I don’t think Michael Ledeen overstates the case at all when he calls it a victory for democratic revolution:
It’s a dramatic and
important moment, and the winning forces of the "orange revolution" are
right to talk about democratic revolution. Here is yet another case
where the forces of repression seemed to have all the advantages,
including the reconstituted KGB and the full, cynical, support of a
nasty Russian tyrant. Yet freedom won.
Some Russians assert that the Orange Revolution was led and financed by the West to put a puppet in place to lead Ukraine away from Russia, but in reality the biggest gift we gave Yushchenko’s supporters was encouragement and an unwillingness to recognize an obviously fraudulent "election." There’s a core of democratic revolution in even the most oppressive society, and it is important that our beacon of freedom, which was, after all, founded by and based upon democratic revolution, stand with democratic revolutionaries when they arise.
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3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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As of this writing the number one book on the Amazon.com: Top Sellers list is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
. I’d make fun of all the people rushing to order a book not due to be published until the middle of July 2005, but I’ve already ordered two. We decided with the last book to avoid fighting over the tome by getting individual copies.
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3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Via Hit and Run, we see that all thirty one of New York’s electoral votes went to John L. Kerry. Counting the Minnesota elector who voted for John Edwards for both President and Vice President, the President’s electoral college margin keeps growing. Does he have a mandate yet?
Fill in your own punchline.
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3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Demonstrating that she was pandering to political opinion rather than standing up for fiscal responsibility, Linda Cropp reversed course and voted for the revised DC stadium bill last night. Amended Deal on Stadium Approved (washingtonpost.com). Don’t be fooled by the "concessions." If DC can’t build the stadium over the course of the next 40 months, she may have saved the District $15 million, but the metro region still gets to foot the bill for the $540 million edifice, which will be financed through "a gross receipts tax on large businesses and a utilities tax on businesses and federal offices." Costs will then of course be passed on by the businesses paying the tax, to be borne by many outside District lines.
Linda Cropp gets to be the one who stood up to big, bad baseball on behalf of the little people of DC. That won’t stop her from ransacking the public purse for loads of other unnecessary boondoggles if, as she expects, this carries her into the Mayor’s office. Now the Nationals PR push will be back on, but it’s clear that District residents aren’t sold on the idea, even if suburbanites like it. Who knows where this particular soap opera will go next?
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3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Watch it right now, you know you want to. 177 days until June 17, 2005. Meanwhile, read The Book.
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3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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More good news, I think, for those who think the BCS is a blight upon humanity: AP sends cease-and-desist letter to BCS:
The Associated Press ("AP") has become aware of your
unauthorized and unlawful use of AP’s college football poll results
(the "AP Poll") in preparing the Bowl Championship Series ("BCS")
rankings of college football teams. Due to the process by which the BCS
rankings are determined, your forced association of the AP Poll with
BCS has harmed AP’s reputation and has interfered with AP’s agreements
with the AP Poll voters some of whom have indicated that they may no
longer participate in the AP Poll due to BCS’s use of the AP Poll.
Similarly, BCS’s incorporation of the AP Poll into its rankings
violates AP’s copyright in the AP Poll, and misappropriates the effort
that AP expended in producing the AP Poll.
This was inevitable, of course, once papers started complaining about the role they were playing in deciding who played for the so-called championship. Now the BCS needs a new system, as they can’t continue to rely on the coaches’ poll, which allows schools to vote money directly into their own pockets by ensuring a school or two from their own conference plays in a BCS game, all while hiding behind anonymous votes (how many Big 12 coaches voted Texas up and Cal down in the last poll?). Indications are that the current system will be replaced by a basketball-style committee to determine who plays in the final game. That’s no better, and may in fact be worse - who will be on the committee? Will the committee be as biased as the polls toward the big schools and sschools highly regarded at the beginning of the season? The only answer remains the death of the BCS and a true playoff, as exists in every other NCAA sport, including the other three levels of football.
Oh, and the letter itself. Gotta love members of my esteemed profession - the AP "has become aware of your
unauthorized and unlawful use of AP’s college football poll results." That’s lawyer-speak for "we’ve known all along, and were willing not to do anything about it until it came back to bite us, and now that a piece of flesh is missing from our backside leaving a bloody mess, please quit already."
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3 years, 11 months ago,,
by Fred (,
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Via BoingBoing, here’s a link to a Squeezebox audio streamer installed in a hot tub gazebo. Digital audio streamed from a PC to a hot tub. Sounds good. Wish I had a hot tub. Also wish there was a way to send music purchased from the iTunes Music Store to a stereo in another room. Apple’s AirPort Express is OK, but it needs a remote and a display to be useful. Keyspan’s Express Remote solves the remote problem, but it still needs a display for useful navigation. None of the other devices work because Apple won’t release the specifications for its DRM security. I could burn the iTMS songs to disc and then rip to an unprotected format, but that’s a lot of work I don’t have time for.
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