Steve

Friday Ark #126

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

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….?

Do link to the Ark every week!

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.

Cats

Birds

Dogs

Invertebrates

Other Vertebrates

In Memoriam

  • x

Didn’t Make It

  • x

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

  • x

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 151st edition, 2/11, is up at When Cats Attack. The 152nd edition will be hosted at Pet’s Garden Blog on 2/18. There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 2/17-18 by TBD. 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 42nd edition is up and hosted by Neurophilosophy. The 43rd edition will be hosted on 2/22 by Earth, Wind & Water.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 17th edition is up at The Voltage Gate. The 18th edition will be hosted at the end of February by Pharyngula.

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users:

Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.

Note for Typepad Users:

Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.

NYT Speaks on Main Stream Journalism

This entry was posted in Journalism on by

The New York Times today explains the nature of establishment journalists :

Even as they exploit the newest technologies, the Libby trial bloggers are a throwback to a journalistic style of decades ago, when many reporters made no pretense of political neutrality. Compared with the sober, neutral drudges of the establishment press, the bloggers are class clowns and crusaders, satirists and scolds. (Ed: Emphasis added.)

Are they really neutral or just pretending to be? At least with the left/right bloggers we have a decent idea what filters they are using when they write their material. All too often the MSM pretense of neutrality or being fair and balanced makes us work that much harder to understand what has been left out or added into their stories.

Feed People or Feed Their Cars?

This entry was posted in Ecology on by

Ethanol production is not a free lunch on the way to reducing oil consumption.
In fact, it is just the opposite. A much more costly lunch:

The jump in corn prices is already affecting the cost of food. The most notable example: in Mexico, which gets much of its corn from the United States, the price of corn tortillas has doubled in the past year,…
Poultry feed is about two-thirds corn; as a result, the cost to produce poultry–both meat and eggs–has already risen about 15 percent due to corn prices, says Tyner. Also expect corn syrup–used in soft drinks–to get more expensive,…

Any food that utilizes corn is going to get more expensive.

How many of you remember any of the glory be to ethanol stories mentioning this juicy morsel or including the increased cost of food in the cost of ethanol?

Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)

This entry was posted in Microsoft on by

Yea, I stole the restrictions word from Kurt’s comment to this Bruce Schneir post.
DRM is another good reason to stay away from Windows Vista:

Unfortunately, we users are caught in the crossfire. We are not only stuck with DRM systems that interfere with our legitimate fair-use rights for the content we buy, we’re stuck with DRM systems that interfere with all of our computer use–even the uses that have nothing to do with copyright.
I don’t see the market righting this wrong, because Microsoft’s monopoly position gives it much more power than we consumers can hope to have. … Some researchers think that this is the final straw that will drive Windows users to the competition, but I think the courts are necessary.
In the meantime, the only advice I can offer you is to not upgrade to Vista. It will be hard. Microsoft’s bundling deals with computer manufacturers mean that it will be increasingly hard not to get the new operating system with new computers. And Microsoft has some pretty deep pockets and can wait us all out if it wants to. Yes, some people will shift to Macintosh and some fewer number to Linux, but most of us are stuck on Windows. Still, if enough customers say no to Vista, the company might actually listen.

Now would be a perfectly good time for Apple to release a version of its operating system that runs on any Intel platform. This is their next step, isn’t it?
Via

Update: Coyote Blog agrees and has more.