April 30, 2006

The Spineless, The Kitties and Catching Up

The 8th Circus of the Spineless is up at Get Busy Livin', or Get Busy Bloggin' and includes amongst its many treats these awesome spider eyes.

Furry Paws
has posted the 110th Carnival of the Cats. This week's 66 submissions for once (so far) outnumber those on the Friday Ark (admittedly a weakened edition).

Yes, we will try to catch up with all the missed boarders for last Friday's sailing but not until tomorrow.

Posted by Steve on April 30, 2006

April 28, 2006

Friday Ark #84

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

Alert: The Ark crew is traveling and expects to have limited net accesss for the next four days. Boardings will be slow....

Alert 2 - 4/28 : The Ark's hosting site and others has been under DOS attack for some time. If you see this alert message you know that it resolved before staff left for today's field trips. There may be few or no updates until tonight.

Alert 3 - 4/28 2:00 PM EDT: The good news: our hosting site appears to have recovered. The bad news: the boarders you see are the ones we have. If you submitted or tried to trackback and don't see your boarder listed please resubmit. We apologize for the inconvenience. Back tonight....

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post (Don't panic if you get back an "internal server error" message. Haven't been able to figure out why this is happening but comments still seem to post.). Also note that all comments are now moderated,
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Use the Blog Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web

Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about. Time permitting we will continue boardings until the Carnival of the Cats goes up on Sunday.

Do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (57 shouts as of 04/27) BTW, the slideshow of the pics folks included is pretty nifty!

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 110th edition will be hosted this week by Furry Paws. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants. Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 22nd edition is up and hosted by Home Bird Notes.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The seventh edition is at Research at a Snail's Pace. The 8th edition will be up Sunday April 30 hosted by Get Busy Livin', or Get Busy Bloggin'.

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Cats

DogsInvertebratesBirdsOther VertebratesIn MemoriamDidn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)
For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....

Posted by Steve on April 28, 2006 | Comments (5)

April 27, 2006

Away Message

The Modulator staff will spend the next 4 days on a field trip to a remote area near some beautiful rain forests and wilderness areas.

There won't be much net access, perhaps some dial up and 1 wireless hotspot in the area (if operational).

The Friday Ark is set to go up automatically at about 3:15 AM EDT if lack of access impedes manual posting.

I do expect net access issues to impede updates to the Ark throughout the weekend so regular boarders please be patient.

Posted by Steve on April 27, 2006

Birding the World With Bloggers

I and the Bird #22 is up at Home Bird Notes.

Go feed with the birds and learn a bit about the geography of the birds and the bird bloggers.

Posted by Steve on April 27, 2006

April 25, 2006

Get Ready For Snow Jobs

Apparently tony snow will be bush's new mouthpiece. Those of you who have listened to him know he is fully dosed with kool-aid and will be a much smoother purveyor of propaganda than scotty.

Via Talkleft.

Posted by Steve on April 25, 2006

What Keeps Kids Off Playgrounds

A recently published study argues that for at least 25% of overweight kids bullying keeps them off their school playgrounds:

Overweight kids can be bullied or taunted right off the playgrounds or ball fields, potentially making their struggles with excess pounds even worse, researchers here said.

One quarter of overweight children ages eight to 18 reported significant problems with bullying, and such problems correlated strongly with self-reported depression, loneliness, anxiety, and curtailed physical activity...

First, let's all agree that bullying is bad behaviour and should not be condoned. Second, I'll go so far as to say that bullies, any one who threatens to or actually initiates physical violence against another student, should be removed from the school and face appropriate criminal charges.

Now, what really keeps kids off playgrounds and also forces them into an environment where they have to deal with bullies on the playground? Well, our school systems. That right.

The school system herds large numbers of students together into large buildings for a significant part of there day. During that day these young, energetic people spend most of their time crammed into small rooms, sitting in rows of chairs, sometimes behind desks. Five-six hours a day like this and we wonder why many don't get enough exercise. Then during the day elementary* school kids may be released with 100's of their schoolmates into a large caged yard, one that is not unlike a prison yard. Hmmmm, energy, 100s of kids, some of whom are jerks and bullies, in a large caged area. Just what kind of behavior do you expect?

Yes, damn the bullies. But also damn the institutions that force all these people into this overcrowded environment. Unless, that is, you really want to train our children for a life in prison or sweatshops.

*Note that by junior high and high school recess is a thing of the past and the bullies do most of their preying in the hallways, at lunch time or after school.

Posted by Steve on April 25, 2006 | Comments (1)

April 24, 2006

test test

test test

Posted by Steve on April 24, 2006

Hotel Room: Only $7600/Night

It is a nice looking hotel room and if you have lots of your own money to waste then blow out the $7600/night.

If it is the public's money then you damn well better scale back even if some of your predecessors have stayed there.

Via Pharyngula.

Posted by Steve on April 24, 2006 | Comments (2)

Kitty Movie Monday

You might think that you already have plenty of cat time: Carnival of the Cats, Weekend Cat Blogging, Friday Cat Blogging and the Friday Ark. You, of course, would be wrong.

Thanks to Laurence, founder of the Carnival of the Cats, you now have Kitty Movie Monday.

Join in!

Posted by Steve on April 24, 2006 | Comments (1)

Moderation On

Due to the recent ultra heavy runs of comment spam I've turned on moderation of all comments. It has been too much hassle deleting comments that the sorely lacking spam tools built into MT 3.2 fail to junk. Compounding the problem are the many Internal Server Errors that started occurring a few weeks ago (I had not made any changes to my MT installation).

If I can get something like Scode working I'll consider turning moderation off. I'll also take another look at migrating to Wordpress....when time permits.

Posted by Steve on April 24, 2006 | Comments (3)

April 21, 2006

Friday Ark #83

p>We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post (Don't panic if you get back an "internal server error" message. Haven't been able to figure out why this is happening but comments still seem to post.),
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Use the Blog Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web

Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about. Time permitting we will continue boardings until the Carnival of the Cats goes up on Sunday.

Do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (56 shouts as of 04/20) BTW, the slideshow of the pics folks included is pretty nifty!

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 109th edition will be hosted this week by My Animal Family. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants. Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 21st edition is up and hosted by the Cup O'Books.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The seventh edition is up at Research at a Snail's Pace. The 8th edition will be hosted at the end of April by Get Busy Livin', or Get Busy Bloggin'.

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Cats

DogsInvertebratesBirdsOther VertebratesIn MemoriamDidn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....Update (4/7/06): Haloscan has beome much worse. Last week I was able to get TBs through to only a few sites before it stopped accepting them even after long intervals.

Posted by Steve on April 21, 2006 | Comments (10)

April 20, 2006

Replacing the Faithful Scotty

bush and bolton have made their selection. The press conferences should improve!

Posted by Steve on April 20, 2006 | Comments (1)

Iran Talks?

Apparently Iran has been trying for some time to initiate talks with the bush administration and the bushies won't talk.

Kevin Drum has some backgound material and the question:

If the talks fail, then they fail. But what possible reason can there be to refuse to even discuss things with Iran — unless you're trying to leave no alternative to war?

Which, given this administrations history, is probably an accurate assessment.

Posted by Steve on April 20, 2006

Yahoo...Chinese Agent

Do you really want to use Yahoo email?

Yahoo has again turned over information to the Chinese government that lead to a user being jailed, a human rights group says, for the third time. What makes this case a little different from earlier cases of Yahoo acceding to the Chinese is that Yahoo turned over a draft email to the authorities, not one that had been sent or received.
Yahoo may not be the only one bowing to government force but they are certainly getting some play.

We really shouldn't expect these corporations to do any different. They are creatures of governments and in turn expect governments to not only protect them but also to assist them when adequate grease is applied.

If you want to see different behavior then you will need to ensure that governments do not interfere with the voluntary exchange of goods and services between individuals. Government and the corps will fight you just a bit on this one.

Posted by Steve on April 20, 2006

April 19, 2006

bush Makes More Changes

A surprise replacement for key bushies!

Via the Alternate Brain.

Posted by Steve on April 19, 2006

What ahmadinejad and bush have in common

Neither one knows much about anything. Bryan reports on a piece from BBC World Today:

...about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, essentially saying that the office of President actually is not that powerful, and there is no reason to believe that Ahmadinejad actually knows what he is talking about when it comes to the nuclear program. Mr. Ahmadinejad has no scientific training and was the mayor of Tehran until his election.

In other words, don't pay any more attention to ahmadinejad than you would to the former Texas governor who also has no scientific training.

Posted by Steve on April 19, 2006

April 18, 2006

Male Fertility Advice

PZ cuts to the chase:

  • Ditch the cell phone!
  • Drink coffee;it makes you more manly.
  • Don't look at porn too often, since you can habituate.
  • When you do look at porn, the more explicit, the better.
  • Here's the awkward one: the more studly guys lounging about in your porn, the more anxious your gonads will be, and the better their production.
Go read the PZ's post for data and the always entertaining discussion.

Could it be that the fed's war on pornography is all about minimizing fertility outside their favored demographics?

Posted by Steve on April 18, 2006

w's Economic Miracle

Here it is:

The nationwide average for regular unleaded is now $2.78 per gallon, or 55 cents higher than last year, according to the Energy Department.

You judge who is benefitting.

Posted by Steve on April 18, 2006

April 17, 2006

Tax Day

Closing out theft tax day with this thought:

Sometimes taxation with representation isn't all that hot either.
Posted by Steve on April 17, 2006

Frivolous Laws

Judges in Wisconsin can deal handily with frivolous law suits:

Doyle said in a veto message the frivolous claims bill would strip judges of their discretion in dealing with such lawsuits. Current law already allows judges to sanction people who bring frivolous cases, including making them pay expenses and attorney fees, Doyle said.
So just why didn't Governor Doyle veto the apparently unnecessary law banning people from suing restaurants for making them fat? Such suits are easily classified as frivolous and it seems that plaintiffs and attorneys should quickly learn their lesson without the need for another law on the books.
"He thinks it's certainly reasonable to have a law that you just can't sue a restaurant because you're overweight," Leistikow said. "He doesn't think we should have those kinds of lawsuits here."

The bill creates an exemption for the food industry from civil claims related to weight gain, obesity or health conditions caused by eating food.

Nope, no apparent reason not to veto. As noted in the opening Wisconsin judges have the tools to deal with frivoloous suits. This is simply another unnecessary law, a type of law that legislatures should not be in the habit of passing because the next time they just might make some big governement entity or corporate crony immune from lawsuits that are not at all frivolous.

Posted by Steve on April 17, 2006

April 16, 2006

Meow

Pushkin and Orloff, the wonkitties, host the 108th Carnival of the Cats at Begin Each Day As If It Were on Purpose.

That seems like a good idea!

Posted by Steve on April 16, 2006 | Comments (1)

April 15, 2006

You Are The Net

In a few years it may well seem that the boundary between human and net has desolved:

“One expects there to be much more organic connection between people and technology,” says Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, who is widely known as one of the “fathers” of the Internet for his role in co-designing the TCP/IP protocol and the Internet’s architecture.

Crossing the Line

If Mr. Cerf and about two dozen other pundits Red Herring interviewed about the future of the Internet are right, in 10 years’ time the barriers between our bodies and the Internet will blur as will those between the real world and virtual reality.

If you want to see a future where the promise of the net is magnified beyond the wildest imagination of most living today, one where innovation drives new applications on a daily basis, then you need to work to assure that no government and no business (like the phone companies or the incumbent network providors) sets any rules for the internet beyond an open net where anyone can provide content and no carrier can censor the content or data streams that you want to access.

Posted by Steve on April 15, 2006

April 14, 2006

Friday Ark #82

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

  • Leave a comment or trackback to this post (Don't panic if you get back an "internal server error" message. Haven't been able to figure out why this is happening but comments still seem to post.),
  • Use the Carnival Submission Form,
  • Use the Blog Carnival Submission Form,
  • Email Modulator or
  • Our extensive staff finds it during our weekly search of the web

Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about. Time permitting we will continue boardings until the Carnival of the Cats goes up on Sunday.

Do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (55 shouts as of 04/13) BTW, the slideshow of the pics folks included is pretty nifty!

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 108th edition will be hosted this week by Begin Each Day As If It Were On Purpose. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants. Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 21st edition is up and hosted by the Cup O'Books.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The seventh edition is up at Research at a Snail's Pace. The 8th edition will be hosted at the end of April by Get Busy Livin', or Get Busy Bloggin'.

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Alert: Updates may be slow today between 10:30 and 4:30 EDT.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn Memoriam
Didn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)
For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....Update (4/7/06): Haloscan has beome much worse. Last week I was able to get TBs through to only a few sites before it stopped accepting them even after long intervals.

Posted by Steve on April 14, 2006 | Comments (10)

April 13, 2006

Birds and Books

Lots of them at I and the Bird #21 hosted by Cup O'Books!

Posted by Steve on April 13, 2006

Take A Break, Rube!

I'll have to watch the full 13 minute video of these Japanese Rube Goldberg machines later at home. They are novel enough to make the return visit well worth it!

Does anyone know what the theme song's commercial message is?

Via the Leisure Guy.

Posted by Steve on April 13, 2006

Truth or Humor?

Well there is often a bit of truth in humor and this is about right though I'm somewhat surprised that google still gives this result. Hmmm, perhaps it has been this way for sometime.

Posted by Steve on April 13, 2006

It May Be the Longest,....

....but it has to be one of the , well, silliest commutes:

Mariposa resident Dave Givens makes a 186-mile drive -- each way -- five days a week to his job in San Jose.

The electrical engineer has been doing that commute since 1989, spending seven hours every day getting to and from work at Cisco Systems Inc.

Surely this waste should not be rewarded:
Givens out-drove thousands of other entrants to take home $10,000 in gas money and a range of maintenance services and products.
Givens says:
"I have a great job and my family loves the ranch where we live," Givens said. "So this is the only solution."

Albeit, what appears to be a pretty wasteful and broken solution.

Posted by Steve on April 13, 2006

April 12, 2006

A Tangled Tour of Seattle

Sandra Porter is your host as Tangled Bank #51 tours Seattle.

It is a nifty tour to follow if you visit Seattle and in this version you'll learn a bunch of cool science stuff while doing your sightseeing.

Posted by Steve on April 12, 2006

How Old Are You?

Well, this can be a complex question:

Joey is twelve. No, wait, fifteen. His face is twelve. His neck, scarred from pepper spray, is a bitter eighteen. His abdomen, with a line from a stab wound, is a harsh twenty-five. I guess it averages out. Okay then, fifteen it is.
Over My Med Body has the rest of this sad story.

Oh yea, there is plenty more at Grand Rounds Vol. 2, No. 29.

Posted by Steve on April 12, 2006

April 11, 2006

Rogue State?

Billmon ponders:

I've been trying to picture what the world might look like the day after a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran, but I'm essentially drawing a blank. There simply isn't a precedent for the world's dominant superpower turning into a rogue state -- much less a rogue state willing to wage nuclear war against potential, even hypothetical, security threats. At that point, we’d truly be through the looking glass.
This shouldn't be so hard to visualize because it is not a nuclear strike against Iran that is the turning point. That turning point was reached several years ago. The world's dominant superpower has already turned into a rogue state and we are already on the other side of the looking glass as exemplified by the fact that this discussion is even happening.

There is still some small possibility of getting back to the sane side. Don't expect your congress critters to lead the way anytime soon.

Posted by Steve on April 11, 2006 | Comments (1)

Oaths and Pledges

Is the oath that newly elected officials are supposed to recite in Tequesta, FL unconstitutional?

A newly elected village council member is suing the municipality to have the oath of office declared unconstitutional because it supports the federal government, something he says he does not do.

Basil E. Dalack, 76, an appellate lawyer, also wants the words ''and government'' removed from the section that reads, ''I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, protect and defend the Constitution and government of the United States and of the state of Florida.'' The lawsuit was filed last week in federal court.

The oath violates the Constitution by placing a restraint on Dalack's right to free speech and denies him, without due process, occupancy of his elective office, the lawsuit states.

Well, it may or may not be constitutuional but this question obscures what should be the real issue.

These electected officials are supposed to be public servants, i.e., they serve the citizens of their jurisdiction. It is these citizens to whom they should be swearing oaths of fealty and their oaths should be similar to a proper pledge of allegiance; something like:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the people of [name your jurisdiction], protect their lives, help them maintain their liberty and assist them in their pursuit of happiness.
To the extent that the Constitution and government of Florida and the US match this then, well, they are supportable.

Posted by Steve on April 11, 2006

April 10, 2006

A Blogger's Blog Entry

As a number of others have noted Henley's great post and the ensuing comment thread which will undoubtably be discussed at length in future histories of the blogosphere.

Posted by Steve on April 10, 2006

April 7, 2006

Friday Ark #81

We'll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and....?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about. Time permitting we will continue boardings until the Carnival of the Cats goes up on Sunday.

Do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (54 shouts as of 04/06) BTW, the slideshow of the pics folks included is pretty nifty!

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey's Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 107th edition will be hosted this week by The Scratching Post. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff's Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants. Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 20th edition is up and hosted by the Bootstrap Analysis.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The seventh edition is up at Research at a Snail's Pace. The 8th edition will be hosted at the end of April by Get Busy Livin', or Get Busy Bloggin'.

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.

Alert: Updates may be slow today between 10:30 and 4:30 EDT.

Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn MemoriamDidn't Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat's Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted "too rapidly" by the same host. I don't know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I'm sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh....Update (4/7/06): Haloscan has beome much worse. Last week I was able to get TBs through to only a few sites before it stopped accepting them even after long intervals.

Posted by Steve on April 7, 2006 | Comments (13)

April 6, 2006

Oink! Oink!

Do congressional pig ears and pork chops make you nauseous? To emphasize the feeling Citizens against Government Waste has released the 2006 edition of the Congressional Pig Book:

The 2006 Pig Book identified 9,963 projects in the 11 appropriations bills that constitute the discretionary portion of the federal budget for fiscal 2006, costing taxpayers $29 billion. A "pork" project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition.
Go find a few to hammer your congress critters about!

Via Stateline.org.

Posted by Steve on April 6, 2006

Can Shareware Make Money?

The answer is yes. Of course the product must have some specialized functionality that consumers want and that hasn't been preempted by Microbloat $ware.

Take, for example, Winzip: in 2004 the company had $15.5 million profits on an income of $24.9 million. Pretty damn good!

Thomas Warfield has more here and here.

Posted by Steve on April 6, 2006

April 5, 2006

Hmm, Back to a MAC?!

Looks like I will rejoin the Apple family when it is time to replace my current laptop:

Once you’ve completed Boot Camp, simply hold down the option key at startup to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. (That’s the “alt” key for you longtime Windows users.) After starting up, your Mac runs Windows completely natively. Simply restart to come back to Mac.
Via Resurrection Song.

Update (4/6): Alex Tabarrok notes that Apple wasn't first to the finish line in providing this functionality.

Posted by Steve on April 5, 2006

A Day in the Life...

...of Bill Gates:

Days are often filled with meetings. It's a nice luxury to get some time to go write up my thoughts or follow up on meetings during the day. But sometimes that doesn't happen. So then it's great after the kids go to bed to be able to just sit at home and go through whatever e-mail I didn't get to. If the entire week is very busy, it's the weekend when I'll send the long, thoughtful pieces of e-mail. When people come in Monday morning, they'll see that I've been quite busy— they'll have a lot of e-mail.
The rest of the article has some interesting comments on managing email, maintaining focus, communication and enhancing productivity.

Via Rex who thinks Bill deserves a day or two off.

Posted by Steve on April 5, 2006

Do You Have...

...an Ed in your head?

Posted by Steve on April 5, 2006 | Comments (1)

April 4, 2006

A Short Respite

Mia Culpa leads the way into the Fairy Berry forest. (Quicktime)

Posted by Steve on April 4, 2006

Your Blog: Between Covers

Does your blog have a consistent theme? Do you write well? Do you think your blog has the makings of a book?

If you answered yes to one or more of the above then a publisher may be looking for you:

Publishing types have continued toiling away in the industry’s underground laboratory, feverishly trying to alchemize blogging, hoping to prove that the common base metal of user-generated-content that the kids seem to enjoy so much (you know, those “web logs”) can be turned into the gold of bestsellerdom (you know, real books, sold in large numbers).
Michael Schaub, writing at BookSlut, puts a bit of perspective on this:
Basically, if you have a moderately uncrappy LiveJournal page, and are capable of writing a book proposal even slightly more elegant than "I am a blogger, and I want to write a book based on my blog, and blogs are great blog blog blog blog BLOGBLOGBLOG," you need to find a way to get on board this gravy train before it crashes with tragicomic results.
What might be a big seller? Well so far adventures in the kitchen (54,000 copies) sell much better than adventures in Washington, DC bedrooms (14,000 copies).

No illusions here at Modulator...based on posts to date such publication wouold fall under the vanity, all is vanity category.

Posted by Steve on April 4, 2006 | Comments (1)

Understanding Politician Speak #1

From Professor Bainbridge:

My take on these issues is that when a politician starts talking about "our kids," they're usually coming after either our wallets or our liberties. Or both.

And the ones talking the loudest are probably getting the most K street grease.

Posted by Steve on April 4, 2006

April 3, 2006

Caption Opportunities

This puppy forgot its uniform.

Posted by Steve on April 3, 2006

Toolbar Overload

I don't think I want to get inside the head of anyone who uses even a fraction of the stuff loaded in this browser window. On the other hand, it's great to know that if you want to do it the tool probably exisits.

Via Google Blogoscoped.

Posted by Steve on April 3, 2006

April 2, 2006

If You Like Tacos...

... and especially if you live in or are visiting Los Angeles then head right over to The Great Taco Hunt as recommended by Walter:

The photography just makes me hungry.

Some of these do look a lot better than the run of the mill stuff I see in my neck of the woods.

Posted by Steve on April 2, 2006 | Comments (1)

A Long Strange Flush

If it is toilets that help me pick up the posting pace, well, so be it.

This just generates way too many unwanted images:

The long, strange trip continues for Jerry Garcia's toilet. Police say the Grateful Dead leader's commode was stolen recently from a driveway along with three other toilets and a bidet, The Press Democrat newspaper reported Saturday.

Garcia's salmon-colored toilet was the subject of a legal battle before it was finally moved to Sonoma, to await shipment to a Canadian casino.

It's unclear if the toilet was swiped by a wayward Deadhead or a thief remodeling a bathroom. Police have no suspects or leads.

Henry Koltys bought Garcia's Marin County home for $1.39 million in 1997 and removed the toilet and other items he planned to sell to raise money for a charity.

Rick L, over on the GDHour mailing list, says:
Of anything ever owned by Garcia I might like to have, this would, ahem, rank near the, ahem, bottom.

Yep!

Posted by Steve on April 2, 2006

Do you need more air because...

...there is a fire in your highrise?

Include the Toilet Snorkel in your security kit and don't forget to stock up on duct tape.

Posted by Steve on April 2, 2006