Skip Gates, please sit down

Skip has fallen victim to the Ivy League Effect. Check out his articles -- you can definitely go to the Root -- the Web site he is editor in chief of -- if you want to see a repository for the whole masturbatory display. He all but says, “Do I look like that type of (black) person? I was wearing a blazer and a polo shirt!” Gates is Ivy League pissed with a dash of black anger. Not the other way around. Is this to say the police weren’t in the wrong? Hardly. As a person who is familiar with the Cambridge/Boston P.D., I can say that the prospect of some procedural malfeasance on their part is entirely believable, if not an abject certainty.

But I’m also sure the good doctor was talking some shit. The Ivy League Effect, when it’s potent, wouldn’t allow otherwise. It made Gates forget that, no matter what, even when you’re right, you don’t talk shit to the police....

link: Skip Gates, please sit down | Salon

-Noted by Paul Knue

NYT: Cops ‘don’t get paid to be abused’ - The New York Times- msnbc.com

NYT:
Cops ‘don’t get paid to be abused’ - The New York Times- msnbc.com: "Police
departments issue their officers Kevlar vests to stop bullets, and thick helmets
and even shields to protect them from bottles and bricks. But there is nothing
in the equipment room to give an officer thicker skin."

Wait! What? IE8 has some kind of Blogger "accelerator" thingie you can add (did I say add-on?) and I'm just trying it out.

It's a little weird. But it might work.

"Welcome to Vista service pack 2"

Oh! Imagine the joy! And no of course I don't mind if it might take an hour or more to install, it's not a bug it's a feature, I can't wait to get started.

I figure I can read a book a month just sitting around waiting for Vista to patch itself.

On a related note, there's a new free iPhone app (the app is free, not the iPhone, duh) called "Shakespeare" that contains the full text of all Shakespeare's plays. There are 40 of them, if memory serves, so that's two, maybe three years of Windows updates right there.

BTW, Ubuntu is beginning to look like the Linux distro of choice for those netbook things. I saw a HP netbook the other day - $350, I think it was, kind of pricy for a netbook, but it had a semi-realistic keyboard on it and so, with a decent OS, it just might work. And a mouse. The trackpad on those things looks downright painful.

No, no, it's not done updating yet. Are you kidding me? I might take a nap. That's another thing Windows updates are good for.

Oh come on, tell us what you really think about Fox News

If all we were witnessing was the emergence of a mainstream conservative network that aspired to advance Republican themes and policies, there would not be much of note here. Most of the conventional media was already center-right before there was a Fox News. But Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). So while most Americans have never heard of actual Republican party bosses like House Majority Leader John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, posers like Joe the Plumber and Carrie Prejean have become household names....

link: Daily Kos: FOX NEWS Is Killing The Republican Party

A little highway hugging from treehugger

Roads are teeming with possibilities for clean energy generation--they could be lined with small wind turbines, accompanied by solar arrays, even generate energy from speed bumps. And as this potential is growing in recognition, a number of states have jumped on board with some fascinating projects designed to harvest clean energy from their roadways....

link: US States to Harvest Clean Energy From Highways : TreeHugger

Not all the ideas, it turns out, are realistic (RTFA) but hey, ideas are the idea.

Formerly hot news from Providence

Get these monkeyfighting snakes off my monday to friday street: TV

Boogieing down the aisle

Jillian Peterson says she grew up dancing so boogieing down a church aisle with their wedding party last month in St. Paul, Minn., was a no-brainer.

To the delight of a surprised crowd in the church, she choreographed the procession, featuring fiance Kevin Heinz, seven bridesmaids, five groomsmen and four ushers, to the Chris Brown song "Forever."...

Take a look...at their home movie, which has drawn almost 1.5 million viewings on YouTube.

link: Couple boogieing down the aisle is a YouTube hit - On Deadline - USATODAY.com

-Noted by Paul Knue

Today's Best Sign

Photo: Phil Compton

This guy is a big disappointment

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama's administration began holding private meetings with health industry executives at the White House a few weeks after he took office, a visitor list released Wednesday night by the White House shows. Lobbyists were among those there to talk health care....

So far, the Obama administration is following a Bush administration policy of refusing to release the logs, which are maintained by the Secret Service.

link: Obama was meeting with health execs in February - Boston.com

I was never hoping for very much. But this is worse.

I don't know why, really, I get so exercised about this health care thing. I have single payer health care. And a government doctor to boot. As long as you don't screw that up, I don't really care what you do.

Cheap thrills from the Boston Globe

21 cheap summer thrills around Boston - Boston.com

Phooey

JIC you missed it, there are advisories from CERT and from Adobe regarding Adobe Reader, Acrobat, and Flash Player. They're munged; Adobe has promised fixes by the end of next week (by July 31). I don't use Reader or Acrobat but I do - everybody, more or less does - use Flash. So I took the Flash plug-in out of my web browsers and now just about every web page I look at puts up a warning that my browser has no Flash. It's a real PIA. We might have to give Adobe some kind of award for its contributions to work avoidance.

Speaking of which, on this page, the only Flash item is the world clock at the bottom of the sidebar. In all the rest of the empire there is no Flash used at all. So, if you decide to dump your Flash plug-in too, you can still hang around YAME and avoid more work than ever in the week to come.

The saddest words

Overheard at a McDonald's in the morning, a woman talking to a little girl:

No toys for breakfast.

And another thing

See, this is just plain weird.

I order two gizmos from Apple. Power supplies, to be specific. I like to have spare power adapters for absolutely critical stuff. (My phone and my computer. To be specific.) I keep the spares in the messenger bag I grab when I go somewhere so they go with.

One of these gizmos comes from China, the other from somewhere in Pennsylvania. Both ship the same day, the 20th, according to the tracking pages. The one from China gets plopped on my front porch this morning, before noon, by Federal Express. The one from Pennsylvania gets picked up - in Pennsylvania - by somebody called "DHL Global Mail" and gets trucked (I guess that's the global part) to New Jersey, where it gets put in the mail (mail). Rutherford, New Jersey. To be specific. Its tracking page says it will be delivered on the 28th.

So how come it takes two days to get here (Massachusetts) from China, and eight from Pennsylvania? If you tell me there is some kind of strange otherworld timewarp in New Jersey I will believe you but why don't they just drive around it, is what I want to know.

Compact? No kidding!

-Lynn C.

Reflection

Photo: Lynn C.

Why I am always so confused here

I go to the store to buy a needle so I can sew a button on my pants. I have no idea where in the store to look for needles but because I am in a hurry, which I'm usually not, I ask, which I usually don't, a girl in a Walgreen's shirt. She looks at me like I am speaking in tongues.

Eventually, however, after some considerable pantomime, I convey my meaning and she leads me down a certain aisle and points to a package hanging from a little hook on the wall and in the package are 25 needles. Twenty freaking five! I ask myself, why would anybody ever need 25 needles unless they are running some kind of sweatshop and then I notice right next to that package is another one with 45. Needles. Really. Both packages have the same brand name on them, and the one with 45 costs less.

OK, something pretty weird is going on here, right?

But I notice that one needle all the way over on the end of the card with 45 has an enormously huge hole on one end of it, the end where you put the thread, and that's the needle I've been looking for, right there.

So I buy that one and the other 44 I don't need, and come home and sew the button on my pants and on a shirt as well. Not the same button. One on the pants, another one on the shirt. The one on the shirt is the wrong color but nobody will notice. Anyway, it's only a little wrong.

But why can't you just get one needle when one is all you need? And more to the point (ouch), who could possibly need 45?

Up, Over, and Down

Photo: Phil Compton

How it all works

Republicans have actually come out against doing research into which procedures improve health. Blue Dog Democrats oppose wasteful spending but until recently have not been specific. Liberals rely on the wishful idea — yet to be supported by evidence — that more preventive care will reduce spending. The American Medical Association, not surprisingly, endorses this notion of doing more care in the name of less care.

Mr. Obama says many of the right things. Yet the White House has not yet shown that it’s willing to fight the necessary fights. Remember: the $6,500 tax benefits someone. And that someone has a lobbyist. The lobbyist even has an argument about how he is acting in your interest.

link: Economic Scene - Support for Health Reform Requires Facing Facts on Costs - NYTimes.com

I'm so sorry

I was joking around with a guy at work yesterday about how it looked as though the sun had finally arrived to stay and after a record-breakingly wet June we might be looking forward to a little nice weather for a change. Then just now I checked the forecast and it shows rain as far as the eye can see, which is into next week sometime, damn.

Most of the days are marked with a thunderstorm icon which might mean they will be some sunny, and only some raining like a sumbitch. But still. I jinxed the weather. I know I did. It's all my fault.

They would do a thing like that?

Is Goldman Screwing Taxpayers in TARP Negotiations?

link: Matt Taibbi - Taibblog - Is Goldman Screwing Taxpayers in TARP Negotiations? - True/Slant

Sex and power inside "the C Street House"

"Really scary stuff," notes Midwest Bureau Cub Reporter Paul Knue.

Indeed.

"Stimulus": Getting a round tuit

As of July 10, almost 2,000 of the 5,600 road projects approved by Washington had been assigned contractors and given the green light to start construction. Yet six of the 10 largest projects have yet to be given the go-ahead, and bottlenecks are appearing from coast to coast.

"What we're seeing is a significant level of bidding activity," said Anne Lloyd, chief financial officer at Martin Marietta Materials, a nationwide supplier of stone, asphalt and other construction supplies. "But the big thing we're not seeing is work on the ground."

link: Stimulus projects in slow lane -- chicagotribune.com

If you haven't been screwed enough already, hey, we'll just screw you a little more, say banks

Joseph Schilling, associate director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech and an expert on abandoned property, said the issue of bank walkaways is increasing. Lenders may decide that given low prices and their mounting inventory of foreclosed property, it makes sense to walk away.

"But as a result, it leaves the property in this type of legal limbo and it leaves the community and local government really holding the bag," Schilling said.

link: Bank 'walkaways' from foreclosed homes are a growing, troubling trend - cleveland.com

Management training is not what it used to be

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, still clinging to office after admitting to an extramarital affair, wrote in an opinion piece released Sunday that God will change him so he can emerge from the scandal a more humble and effective leader.

link: Cheating SC gov says God will make him better - Yahoo! News

Seven

-- Post From My iPhone