Update to my post last week, titled “Super February? Giga Tuesday?“:

Florida wants to outdo California. While the Golden State moved its primary to February 5th, as about 15-20 states were considering doing, Florida upstaged them and has set its primary date at January 29th. That would put it with South Carolina as the 4th and 5th states to vote for party candidates. DailyKos has the story, and a rundown of the first month of voting for Democrats:

January 14, 2008 – Iowa (39)
January 19, 2008 – Nevada (22)
January 22, 2008 – New Hampshire (19)
January 29, 2008 – South Carolina (39), Florida (161)
February 5, 2008 – Alabama (45), Arizona (49), Arkansas (30), California (322),
     Delaware (13), Missouri (63), New Mexico (23), New York (202), New Jersey (93),
     North Carolina (79), Texas (168), Utah (20)
February 12, 2008 – District of Columbia (13), Tennessee (59), Virginia (72)
February 19, 2008 – Wisconsin (64)

So, who’s going to be next to try to upstage the others? Pennsylvania? That state and others have yet to finalize their schedule.

My question: is there some legal boundary for these things? Is it possible for a state to not be able to have a primary before a certain date? Because the way things are going, if there is no boundary, then in a few election cycles we’ll be having most of our primaries a full year before the main election.

The Apple TV is shipping, and we know most there is to know about the iPhone, which should ship in mid-June. Aside from new releases of Mac systems (including 8-core Mac Pros and perhaps-redesigned iMacs), the only big mystery expected from Apple is Leopard, OS X 10.5. The mystery contains two elements: when will it be released, and what are those “top secret” parts of the OS that Steve Jobs teased about last year?

Unless Apple is going to seriously undermine everyone’s confidence in them by announcing a delay in the release of Leopard, especially this late in the game, Leopard will come out no later than June 20th. Apple is still now promising a “Spring” release of the OS, and has given no indication that it will miss that range. Speculation is rife over when the release will be, and all bets are off on Apple following established patterns because this OS has a very different paradigm–those aforementioned “secret” features.

Some are saying that a release is imminent because Apple just released OS X version 10.4.9, and in the past two versions of the OS, the big upgrade came within six weeks of the last incremental upgrade.

Others, however, point to the fact the developer’s releases of OS X (the versions that software makers get so they can prepare their applications to work with the new OS as soon as possible after its release) are still way too buggy, and that these problems could not possibly be ironed out before June. Some have even suggested that Apple will miss spring altogether and won’t release until July or later.

But the “secret” features throw a wrench into this speculation. Apple is definitely keeping this very hush-hush, and there is almost certainly something significant going on that we haven’t heard about yet. Apple proved they could keep stuff quiet with the iPhone–no one predicted that one correctly before Jobs unveiled it–and if Jobs was exaggerating and the “secret” features are just a minor bell and whistle here and there, there will be massive disappointment.

So assume that there are fairly substantial features about Leopard yet to be revealed, secrets Apple wants to keep as quiet as they kept the iPhone before January. That means they could not send these features out in the standard developer’s builds. Despite NDAs (non-disclosure agreements), anything that comes out in developer’s builds almost instantly gets leaked to rumor sites.

What does that mean? It means that Apple is building the OS along two lines: the secret-feature-free standard developer’s builds, and the internal build at Apple which has all the secret features built into it. This is not a new idea; after all, Apple had Intel-compatible builds of OS X running for years and developers never got wind of those.

Such an internal build would explain why developer’s builds are still so buggy: as the secret features become more and more integrated into the final version of the OS, the developers get less and less of that part of the OS, leaving them with outdated chunks of the OS which will still be buggy. So buggy developer releases don’t reflect the status of the actual OS, and Apple could still release Leopard at any time.

Some have argued that this is not possible because Apple would get pummeled with criticism if they suddenly released the OS in such a different form that it would ‘break’ current versions of developers’ applications. However, that doesn’t have to be the case. After all, most new OS releases will work fine with past software; while many programs do need to be updated with new OS releases, Apple’s secret features do not need to be program-breakers. Apple is, hopefully, releasing enough in the developer’s builds to allow software makers to make their apps work with Leopard.

Of course, like everything else, the above is pure speculation. Apple will release Leopard when it will release Leopard. We just have to wait, is all.

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One note: Ars Technica reports that Leopard will not allow “InputManager plugins” anymore. What are those? For me, the main significance is that they’re the things which allow browser plugins such as PithHelmet and SafariStand to work. Why is Apple (maybe) doing this? Security. Apparently, those InputManager plugins are how many of the attempted security breaches are exploited.

If this is true, that will be a major disappointment for me. Yes, the new Safari features will be cool, and I’ll want them… but the price will be high: PithHelmet blocks ads and Flash animations in Safari, something I have become very enamored of; SafariStand brings back all the windows you had open when Safari last quit or crashed, and though I’ve had that for only a short time, I will miss it very much. The new Safari will be cool, but it will also be ad-ridden and annoyingly animated. Argh.

Hopefully, these mods will be redesigned so they can still do the same thing in some other way, but even if that happens, it may take a long time for that to come.

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Update: New rumor says that Leopard will be delayed until October. The source has been known to get some rumors right, but this one sounds so utterly fake that one would have to be the most naive person on the planet to accept it. Why? Because the stated reason is:

Apple is expected to launch its next generation Leopard operating system (OS) in April, but according to industry sources, the release of the new OS will be postponed to October to allow Apple to make Leopard support Windows Vista through an integrated version of its Boot Camp software.

And that’s got to be the dumbest rumor I’ve ever heard. Apple holding up its latest and greatest OS, the OS that will support the iPhone and multiple other apps and hardware, push all of them back at least four months… just so 1% of the user base can install Vista on their Macs? Please.

I usually don’t comment on the stupidity that gushes from the mouths of shock pundits like Limbaugh and Coulter, but one chestnut that Limbaugh spouted recently touches on a strange obsession by conservatives: that Barack Obama is only considered special because he’s black. Even the mainstream media has picked up on this and gone to weird places, claiming that Obama “isn’t black enough” and putting way too much focus on color and ethnicity. The conservative slant is, Obama is running and Democrats like him because he’s black; that somehow, this is what everybody’s excited about.

Which is just plain stupid. I’m sure it’s what people like Limbaugh would love people to believe, that color is all there is to Obama, or that Democrats are so dumb and shallow that they’ll go wild whenever a black person declares their candidacy for president. The finer point is that Obama is close enough to white that he’s comfortable enough to white voters–in essence, so they can vote for a black man without having to actually vote for a black man. Which is just as stupid. As great as it would be to have the color boundary broken in the presidency, it’s far from being a reason to go nuts over a candidate like people are going nuts over Obama. Anyone who believes that color plays more than a tiny part in his widespread appeal is blind to everything but color.

Obama’s a big thing simply because he’s appealing. Color has nothing to do with it. This does. Watch his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, and you’ll get a clear idea why he’s so popular. He has the charisma and likability that make for a powerful candidate. He appeals to a broad range of people, and comes across as the fresh, new type of candidate that people have been yearning for. He could be white, and the reaction would be the same.

Simply put, Obama is the new Bill Clinton, without the extramarital affairs and all the other baggage. He’s a very good communicator, able to stir people and get them excited. The Republican equivalent would be the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan–a great communicator who appeals to a broad range of people. Clinton was popular in part because he could appeal to anyone no matter what their color, which spurred some to call him the “first black president.” Not because of his color, but despite it. Obama has the same universal appeal, despite his color (and his name, for that matter). The fact that he’s black is irrelevant–it is only being played up by the media, and even more so by the far right wing. Which brings us to Limbaugh’s latest attempt to stir the racial pot.

So how did the whole Limbaugh-racist epithet thing begin? An L.A. Times Hollywood-and-politics columnist, David Ehrenstein, wrote a column which compared Obama to a Hollywood archetype sometimes referred to as the “Magic Negro,” a black character who serves the white establishment or helps the white protagonist, often providing a kind of affirmation of the white protagonist’s racial credentials. Ehrenstein explains the archetype with several movie examples (not all of which I find valid–I mean, Morgan Freeman in “Se7en”? Please) and then puts forth the claim that many white voters see Obama as their validation–that people like him because he’s not really black, but is “black enough” to let them believe they aren’t racists. Frankly, I’m amazed that this theory has gotten as much attention as it has; it is, to be blunt, the need for some to create a rationalization for an effect that isn’t there. It’s made up by people who cannot accept the idea that a man of color could get to be so popular without some convoluted white-guilt thing being in play. Heaven forbid that Obama is popular because he’s a great speaker with charisma. The assumption that it has to be because of his color is in itself racist, and that his followers only like Obama because they crave validation is demeaning.

In any case, Limbaugh read this article and apparently figured that since someone else used the term “Magic Negro,” he could then go to town with it. So, during his radio show, it was “Magic Negro” this, and “Magic Negro” that–Limbaugh used the term 27 times, and then even started singing a “Magic Negro” song to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon.” He also went to town on the whole idea that liberals are all flaming racists and Obama is their non-black black guy. But Limbaugh’s use of the term came across as more of a racist rant than a literary analogy, and Limbaugh himself wasn’t too coy about it; at one point, he crowed, “I’m going to keep referring to him as that because I want to make a bet that by the end of this week I will own that term.” Limbaugh is happy as a clam since he thinks he now has free license to use racist epithets without being called out for it.

Well, let Limbaugh babble away like a Tourette’s sufferer, so long as it’s understood that Limbaugh’s corner of right-wing fantasy is the only real place for that kind of pap.

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While I’m on Limbaugh for the moment: he accused Arnold Schwarzenegger of “selling out” because the California governor, chastised by voters for trying to push a right-wing and Republican-based agenda, started working on a more bipartisan course, one example being his support for raising the minimum wage. With Schwarzenegger as a guest on the show, Limbaugh chastised him, saying, “Why are you selling out instead of being the true conservative you are?”

This is rather interesting considering that Schwarzenegger sold himself from the very beginning as someone who had relatively liberal views on social issues, and besides, would serve the people instead of the party. So, one can only suppose that Limbaugh is now pissed that Arnold is, if belatedly, living up to his word and doing what the people want, what they elected him as, instead of trying to smash unions and rig the district lines and other stuff coming straight out of GOP Central. Limbaugh is fine if a Republican sells himself as bipartisan, but if he actually acts that way once elected, then he’s “selling out.”

Nice.

And, on a tangential note–what is with Republicans and “Puff the Magic Dragon”? Why do they seem to hate it so much? Remember during the Reagan-Bush years, they named a nuclear missile system “Puff” after the song? And when people protested a beloved children’s song used for a nuke program, conservatives tried to claim that the song about friendship, innocence, and loss was actually some conspiracy by hippies to indoctrinate kids into marijuana usage? (“Puff the Magic Drag-On,” they claimed.)

Sickos.

My sister-in-law has been following the madness over at the first Japanese branch of Krispy Kreme. They opened in mid-December last year and immediately there were 200 people in line to get donuts.

Ok, so there’s a hot new shop, and a lot of people want to try it out, so as a special thing, people wait in long, long lines. Nothing weird about that.

But the lines didn’t stop. Yes, they got shorter, but a few weeks passed, and still the lines were mammoth. Then a month passed. Two months. Three months. And still, my brother and his wife told me that the long lines persist. So I decided to check it out for myself the other day, and indeed, the lines are still there:

There’s an amusement-park-style maze-line right in front of the store with what must have been at least a hundred people in it, but it was not big enough; the tail end of the line continued around the corner, with a security guard feeding the store-front line with the people from the auxiliary line whenever enough space opened up.

Amazing. Truly amazing. (And yes, those people near the end of the line have a baby in a carriage.) And it’s not like people in line don’t know what they’re getting into; there’s a sign clearly notifying customers:

The sign says, “Current Wait Time: 1:00,” with a notice below about the tail end of the line starting around the corner.

Now, Krispy Kremes may be good, but they’re not that good. It’s utterly bizarre. My brother and his wife have asked their students for an explanation, but they’re puzzled as well. Maybe I should try approaching the people in line (“Hi, I’m a reporter from ‘The Blog from Another Dimension’….”) and asking them why they’ve decided to wait for a whole hour just to get donuts. Thousands of Tokyoites, every day, for months on end.

Is it a fad? Mass hysteria? A new cult religion? A huge Homer Simpson fan club?

For a very long time, there’s been this travel services company based in the Kinki region of Japan, called Kinki Nippon Tourist. I remember hearing about this organization way back to my early days in college, when my classmates and I would laugh at the name. “Kinki” is one of those Japanese words/names which was homonymous with an unfortunate English word, like the Japanese word for “poor” (“bimbo”) or “city” (borrowed from English, but pronounced “shiti”). The name “Kinki Nippon Tourist” was even more unfortunate in terms of the overall image from the whole name–especially since the company provides a lot of services to English-speaking travelers.

So you would think that, even if they decided not to change the name, they would be extra-cautious about making further unfortunate choices in names for themselves. You would think that, but apparently either they just haven’t learned the lesson, or are intentionally aiming to make English speakers laugh. Why? Because, as evidenced by the photo below of a train ad from Kinki Nippon Tourist (or from the top left of their web page), they have decided to use the initials from their company’s name as their logo.

That’s right: they decided to go with “KNT!” as their shorthand name. I mean, really. A company named “Kinki Nippon Tourist” should know better than that.

Or maybe they just never bothered to figure out what all the snickering foreigners were on about.

For nearly six years, Republicans all but shut down ethics reviews of their own misdeeds and congressional oversight of the executive branch. After all, they held all the power, so they would be committing most of the crimes. Apparently they knew from the beginning that they’d be naughty, and so turned off any possibility that they’d be caught. Until, that is, power switched hands. And now that the Democrats have switched the oversight back on, it’s finding that Republicans have been very naughty, indeed. One senior Democrat said, “We’ve only had subpoena power for the last six weeks and every tree that we’ve barked up so far has had a cat in it. Imagine where we’ll be after six months.”

Indeed, oversight of the fired US Attorney scandal has revealed small, little problems like the Attorney General lying outright to the Congress and the people, under oath, on matters completely unrelated to security. Thanks mostly to Josh Marshall, who pushed the story, this scandal is now in the spotlight and more and more administration officials are going to be called to testify.

At first, the White House tried to claim that the attorneys were fired for performance issues. When their performance ratings were reviewed and found to be positive, the White House switched stories and claimed that it was political, after all–but it was just because the attorneys didn’t perform as well as the administration wanted in certain matters–and besides, it was only Harriet Miers who wanted the purge, Rove and Gonzales were not involved and opposed the idea. When it became clear that the “immigration and drug” under-performance story was a lie as well, the administration started claiming that the attorneys served at the pleasure of the President, and so he didn’t need a reason, and that the firings were “entirely appropriate.”

But by this time, the lies had started to stack up–and now emails are emerging that Rove and Gonzales were in fact both at the center of this, and even worse, some if not most of the decisions to fire attorneys were based upon their political cases. Attorneys who refused to prosecute cases against Democrats in a political fashion (such as going after Democrats under bogus “election fraud” charges, or releasing damaging information on Democrats before elections), or attorneys who had cases running against Republicans dominated the group that was fired, and more and more details in the White House emails point to these as being the real, underlying reason for the switch. And that amounts to obstruction of justice.

The most incriminating evidence to be found so far was in an email from Gonzales’ chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to Deputy White House Counsel William Kelley, which in part stated, “the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires” [emphasis mine]. The email does not specify what the “real problem” is, but the wording suggests that there was a covert reason to fire Lam not connected to her performance as a prosecutor or her ability or willingness to take on specific issues. Instead, there is the very real possibility that the White House decided to fire Lam because that would disrupt the deepening probe Lam was running into Republican corruption; she had already sent Duke Cunningham to prison, and had her sights set on “Dusty” Foggo, Brent Wilkes, and others, including former and present Republican congressmen. In fact, the day after Carol Lam notified the Justice Department that she intended to execute search warrants to continue her investigation, a DoJ official sent a letter to the White House urging that she be fired.

This goes far, far beyond routine firings and even beyond the Attorney General lying under oath to Congress. This is obstruction of Justice on the scale of Watergate, and the trail is leading straight back to the highest levels of the White House. If senior officials in the White House were firing attorneys so as to disrupt criminal investigations, or so as to prompt politically motivated investigations, this will be far more serious politically and legally than anything so far. Which is ironic, as the Bush administration so far has fraudulently sent the nation to war, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, renounced the people’s right of habeas corpus, repeatedly and massively violated the Fourth Amendment in a number of ways, and a list of other high crimes and treasons almost too long to list… they got away with it all, and yet the thing that could bring them down is something as mundane and tawdry as local politics.

Of course, that depends on more surfacing in the emails and other evidence Congress is now calling for. And it may be that the Bush White House is getting smarter–instead of delivering documents that Congress has demanded on time as promised, they suddenly announced that they needed an extra week to “prepare” the documents. Nothing that a good shredding here or there couldn’t fix, eh?

And yet, this is only one of the many scandals to come up only recently. There were so many more in previous years that never got investigated because Republicans took care of their own and turned an intentional blind eye. And there are likely many more cats up in trees that could be just as serious. God only knows how many countless ways this administration has violated the law.

Here’s a great dumb-criminal story (we all love those, don’t we?) with a digital-age twist. A group of at least nine people, presumably stupid college kids, broke into a cabin in Travis County, Texas. They imbibed and stole $5,000 worth of alcohol.

So, what made them more dumb than the average criminal? They brought a digital camera along and took photos of the crime. And if that in itself is not quite dumb enough, they left the camera behind at the scene. Among the images from the camera:

The owner of the cabin was thinking of not even notifying the police because he figured that they wouldn’t be able and/or willing to do anything about it. But then he found the camera.

They haven’t identified the kids in the picture yet, but they undoubtedly will soon. Anyone want to take bets on what percentage of these bright beacons of hope for the future will actually learn something from this? Personally, I’d go for a low number.

The Japanese train system has always been very good. Anyone who lives here knows that Japan’s copious number of trains run on time (without quite so much fascism), so much so that you can practically set your watch by them. Even more, they stop on a dime, so you know exactly where the doors will be when the trains come.

There have been other changes as well, from the welcome (less smoking–for example, JR East’s bullet trains went completely no-smoking just today) to the annoying (as an “anti-terrorism” measure, trash cans–what few there were–were removed from the platforms on many lines). But one change that seems to be taking shape is better information for riders. This from the Yamanote Line, Tokyo’s main loop line:

Above these passengers’ heads, you can see a pair of LCD screens. The one on the left is for ads (and the occasional English mini-lesson from Berlitz), but the one on the right displays train information, and it does a good job. Here are some sample screens:

In addition to what stop you’re coming to, all stations are displayed along with how long it’ll take for you to get there. That’s a nice feature.

This one tells you what lines you can transfer to from the upcoming stop…

But here’s a nicer feature: a display of information about where the stairs, escalators, and elevators are located relative to the cars of the train, along with the transfer info. Note the number of your car is displayed at upper right. It even mentions which exits are best for certain transfers.

There’s also a more detailed display of what’s coming up…

And info on the status of other lines, should there be trouble.

What should be next is free WiFi on all lines (like they have on the Tsukuba Line now, though I don’t think it’s free), especially with a connection to the train line’s central data center so you can see the status of any and all train lines and get info on how to best get from point A to point B. This feature would bee especially useful as more and more handheld devices are getting WiFi. And if they can afford to install something like 16 LCD screens per car like they did here, why is free WiFi so out of the question?

Primaries (and the less-common caucuses) have always been a fickle thing. States move theirs around to curry advantages from candidates who desperately need early wins. This could be one reason why the presidential race is already in full swing more than a year and a half before election day–the primaries are so early in 2008 that if you don’t get started now, it may be too late.

Iowa and New Hampshire have hogged the process, you have to admit. Sure, small states should not be ignored, and many of them get a lot of attention because of the scheduling of primaries. They always have to be out in front. Whenever another state moves up to compete with them, Iowa and New Hampshire move even further forward, like greedy children who have to be first in the dinner line.

California, on the other hand, has held its primary in June (except for a dalliance with a March primary in 1996 & 2000), which means that by the time the race gets to them, the nominees are already long-decided. That often happens by March, when Super Tuesday comes around. That March date has been inching forward over the years, and now may get a huge shove forward, as California and perhaps 20 other states (including Florida, New York, Michigan, Texas, Missouri, and New Jersey) consider moving their primaries to February 5th.

This will not knock out Iowa and New Hampshire, who have their caucus/primary in January. But this will make a big difference in another respect: with so many big states voting so early, the party nominee may be able to wrap things up far earlier than ever before. Iowa will probably be mid-January, and New Hampshire late January–and then the very next week, “Giga Tuesday” (as the media is beginning to call it). Just two or three weeks from the first votes until the last that matter.

This will require not just more campaigning in the populous states that will move up to February, but also longer campaigning beforehand to make up for the telescoped voting schedule, and furious campaigning in the short stretch between Iowa and Giga Tuesday.

The stretch between the nominee being decided and the convention will still be a long one, only just a little longer than before. But it will still be, in itself, a complication, due to spending rules before and after the convention–not to mention the jockeying for position in convention dates. Democrats will hold theirs from August 25-28 in Denver, while the Republicans strategically mount their own a week later, so as to steal the news attention and the poll “bump” that comes from it.

In a way, all of this is messy, uncoordinated, and inconvenient (which I believe is part of the dictionary definition of “Democracy”). Who knows, if it gets even messier in the future, things might break down enough that the whole thing will get reorganized in some way. Or then again, maybe not–look at the electoral college. We’re still waiting for that particular long-dead horse carcass to be dragged away.

Wow. Business Week, not your run-of-the-mill pro-Mac publication, has a column on Vista which is pretty devastating. Just the title, Vista: Slow and Dangerous, is likely to put you off of upgrading. The article warns that Microsoft’s stated minimum RAM of 512 MB is not nearly enough, and even a gigabyte will leave Vista sluggish; 2 gigs of RAM is what the author recommends. He then goes on a riff about how the security dialogs become a major annoyance, prompting people to disable them–which then also turns off vital security measures in the OS.

Seriously, Microsoft has royally screwed the pooch with this new OS. Unless they come out with an “SP1” version fast (and it pretty damned well better be free and not make you jump through “verification” hoops), they’re going to see people going to Linux and Mac systems like no one has predicted so far. Already two different U.S. government agencies (the Department of Transportation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology) have banned their people from using Vista and Office 2007–and even IE 7 (which is actually less offensive, and could be called a major improvement over version 6).

Those two agencies are bad enough, but their reluctance is going to convince other businesses that they should not upgrade, either. New versions of Windows have always been slow to get started, but Vista is going to be the grandpa of all the slow starts. Funny how Microsoft is supposed to be well-known for making things backwards-compatible. Apple gets guff for having changed the whole shebang three times now (from CISC to RISC, from OS 9 to OS X, and from PPC to Intel), so people have to update to compatible software, adjust to new layouts, get new drivers, and so on (though the Intel switch is barely noticeable). However, new versions of Windows seem to have problems at least as troublesome at their release–while new Mac OS versions aside from the major paradigm shifts are smooth transitions and Mac users promptly snap them up.

Who knows, maybe the Zune wasn’t just an isolated incident; maybe it’s the New Microsoft.

After General Pace made a statement about homosexuality being immoral, Hillary has gotten hit with the question; when she was noncommittal, there was a huge flurry in the media.

My question: who’s paying attention to McCain & Giuliani? I see huge wave of stories about them, even though McCain was just as noncommittal as Hillary, and Giuliani’s tolerance of homosexuality is even more controversial among his core constituency. Where is the big news flurry about them? Did I miss it?

This Modern World is reporting that Rush Limbaugh is claiming that “There’s no question the left has been trying to destroy the family structure,” and points out that Limbaugh himself is three-times divorced. One should also consider that the three biggest names either in the family-values Republican race (McCain & Giuliani) or rumored to be entering (Gingrich) have been divorced eight times between them. The greatest icon of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, was also divorced and had a highly dysfunctional family.

We also see this pattern in military service; Republicans claim to be the warriors, the hawks, the macho heroes, the champions of the military. But while some have served, more Democrats are veterans than Republicans, and the Bush administration, like the conservative punditry, is chock-full of draft dodgers. Democrats do a far better job treating the troops well and taking care of veterans; Republicans talk big, but just use the military and then crap all over the soldiers and vets.

The same pattern arises in economics: Republicans are heralded as the financial whizzes, as being the ones who can bring in the bucks and turn around the economy. And yet, Republican administrations are more often than not disastrous to the economy while Democrats fare far better; certainly, as far as job creation goes, over the past 80 years, the worst-performing Democrat did better at getting Americans employed than the best Republican; Democrats monopolize the better top half of that list, while the cellar is filled with nothing but Republicans.

What this demonstrates is that in truth, the Republican politicians and conservative pundits excel at one thing more than anything else: Image Building. Advertising. Selling a lie. That’s their true talent and trade: the Whopper.

Right-wingers have been making a huge deal about the Democratic Party pulling out of the proposed Fox News-hosted debate in Nevada. They’re on a roll, claiming that the Democratic Party is “afraid of journalists,” “anti-free-press,” and are comparing Democrats to Communists and Nazis.

So Air America Radio has announced that they will host a debate between the Republican candidates for president.

If the Republicans decline, then we can safely assume that they are afraid of journalists, anti-free-press, Communists and Nazis.

Remember how the RIAA sued a 12-year-old honor student and a 71-year-old grandfather? Or the time they sued a grandma for using KaZaA to download rap music when she didn’t even own a PC? (She owned a Mac which could not use the software.)

Now they’re suing a half-paralyzed stroke victim who survives off of a disability check.

Nobody ever accused them of being sweethearts.

You can be pretty certain that the Pope does not believe in the separation of church and state, since he has just given marching orders to politicians who are Catholic. As Kerry discovered in the 2004 elections, the Vatican is getting a lot more active in trying to use its religious authority to boss around lawmakers and leaders around the world:

“Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce laws inspired by values grounded in human nature.”

In short, if you’re a Catholic politician and you do not strictly oppose abortion, euthanasia, and gay marriage, then you are going straight to hell. Never mind that a politician in a Democracy is supposed to be a representative carrying out the wishes and will of the people, and not a representative of the Vatican carrying out their own religious agenda.

If the Pope wants to spell out his own principles and beliefs, that’s one thing, even if it influences lawmakers in other countries. But to directly order politicians worldwide to follow his orders is clearly stepping over a line.

Message to Pope: keep your ass out of my sovereign rights.

I am not all that certain about the source, but the claim is quite interesting: that online porn garnered $97 billion in revenue last year. Apparently, the United States is the leading producer, but is not the leading consumer: Asia supposedly accounts for the top three customers–China, South Korea, and Japan–buying $71.3 billion’s worth, or 75% of all porn bought online. America comes in a distant fourth, buying a paltry $13.3 billion. “Every second $3,075.64 is spent on pornography, 28,258 Internet users view pornography and 372 Internet users type adult search terms into search engines,” and the total revenue from porn is greater than that produced by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink combined.

I read about this on IMDB’s Studio Briefing, but am very dubious of the report. It comes as a press release from a commercial web site that reviews and sells products, and which promotes itself shamelessly in the press release. Undoubtedly they were counting on the outrageous nature of the report to get a lot of free publicity and links into their site (which is why I will not link to them or any site which does so). Ergo, one should treat the “facts” in the report with great suspicion.

In the meantime, maybe I should put that new video camera to good use… $97 billion, eh?

A student of mine bought a Mac Mini, and asked for my help installing Windows XP via Boot Camp. Glad to help a new Mac user, I agreed–and was surprised at how easy it was.

When I had heard that Boot Camp would need to partition the disk to allow space for XP, I naturally assumed that the entire hard drive would have to be wiped and that both the Mac and Windows OS would have to be installed from the start. This comes from my history of formatting disks, which (and perhaps I was in error in assuming this) I could swear required blanking the whole disk first. Apparently, hard disks can be repartitioned on the fly today; you don’t have to wipe the drive or re-install the Mac OS.

In fact, the entire process was painless, save of course for the tedium of the Windows installation. Not only does it take longer than a Mac OS install, but it requires intervention at various times in the process, so you have to stick around and watch the screen, else risk having it stay at 33-minutes-to-go while it waits for you to enter the registration code, while you are somewhere else believing that the process is ongoing. The Mac OS install, last time I checked, required no such intervention. Just let it go.

The process is pretty easy: create a CD with drivers for Windows; decide how much disk space to dedicate to XP; install XP; then install the Mac drivers from the CD you made. And you’re done.

Simple. Like most stuff with the Mac. It reminds me of conversations I’ve had with people about printers lately. By chance, I have had discussions with different people using Windows, and the difficulties they have had with their printers. A few can’t get their printers to work with Vista. One risks losing the ability to print every time she disconnects the USB cable. And so on.

A student who recently bought a Macbook came to me for their Mac starter lecture, and I wanted to show them how easy it would be to create a driver. In my experience, you had to open the Print system preference, click the “+” button, select the printer from the list, make sure the driver selection was right, and then click “Add.” At that, it’s dead easy.

But his Mac surprised me. All I had to do was plug in my Canon i560, and viola–it appeared in his printer list without his having to lift a finger. We didn’t even have to open the System Preferences–it was just there. Plug it in and it works. My student with the Mac Mini got the same thing. Easier than dead easy. The same kind of thing happened to me when I wanted to print using the school’s Fuji-Xerox color photocopier. I’m not talking about a standard printer, I’m talking about a full-fledged, honking-big office copy machine. Our guy in the office told me that I would need a special driver from the company; certainly a Windows machine would need that. But all I needed was to plug in my Mac, open the Print pref pane, look for the printer on the IP network, and seconds later I was printing in color.

I should probably take the opportunity here to mention a pitfall in my constant crooning about Macs: they do suffer from problems. I get the feeling that people who listen to me and switch to Macs (more and more people do so at my school) get the impression that there is never any difficulty, that you never encounter problems. Of course, that’s not the case.

But most of the time, it’s so damned easy to work with that it’s easy to forget that.

After years of election-year crimes under the Jeb Bush administration, the air finally seems to be clearing. The new governor, also a Republican, is talking like a Democrat. He’ll be addressing global climate change, lower property taxes, and better funding of education. But most importantly, he said that he’ll insist on a paper trail for ballots, and will restore voting rights to felons who have served their time, with exceptions for rapists, murderers, and major drug traffickers. Why that pattern? Because most “felons” are minorities who are made felons not by their actions, but by racist disparities in the law. Whites use powder cocaine more (just ask the president), while minorities more often use crack cociane, and:

Current policy generates a 100 to 1 penalty ratio for crack-related offenses. For instance, possession of only 5 grams of crack-cocaine yields a 5 year mandatory minimum sentence, however it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to prompt the same sentence. Moreover, crack-cocaine is the only drug for which the first offense of simple possession can trigger a federal mandatory minimum sentence. Yet “simple possession of any quantity of any other substance by a first time offender – including powder cocaine – is a misdemeanor offense punishable by a maximum of one year in prison.”

Which means that whites get to keep their right to vote while minorities get deprived of theirs, even if the whites get caught with far more drugs on them. That’s what the reversal of the felon’s voting rights issue really is all about–though you can positively expect that conservative pundits will paint this as a “Democrats love criminals” issue. The irony in that is palpable: the wingnuts want to block cocaine users from voting because of their politics and/or color, but on the pretense of their being “criminals” because they used cocaine–while they are more than happy to elect president someone who used a lot more cocaine.

Florida Republicans are not so enthusiastic about their new governor, however:

The result was an odd tableau in the packed House chamber as Democrats seated in the back recesses rose repeatedly to applaud Crist’s speech as front row Republicans slowly joined them.

“It’s great to have a Democratic governor,” said Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota. “You could see the standing ovations start in the back row and move forward. You could actually see some of the representatives in the front looking over their shoulders, feeling uncomfortable and then standing up.”

Yes, the return of honest vote-counting and letting minorities vote should be worrisome to Florida Republicans. Who knows, we might even have a major election in Florida where a bogus “felons list” will not be generated so as to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Democratic voters who never committed a crime. Wouldn’t that be something?

Of course, this all depends on Crist keeping to his word, and Florida Republicans not going full-throttle to block it. So, we’ll see.

Is there a chance to recover it? If not, OneCare will have done more damage than any virus in my 30 years of active computing.

This was the question asked by one user who found that his entire mailbox had been deleted by Microsoft’s anti-virus program because he had received an email virus. Microsoft’s security software has a long-standing bug where the user’s mailbox files and contacts, instead of just the suspect email, will be moved to quarantine or even deleted. This is not just a Vista problem, but would be particularly applicable to Vista users considering that many will now be using Microsoft’s OneCare software by default, just as they use Internet Explorer and Outlook Express by default (because Microsoft pre-installs it that way). Which could mean a lot of trouble for new adopters; Microsoft’s security system has been rated as the worst performing of the 15 available anti-virus programs, letting up to 20% of all malware through its filters.

The email bug prompted this comment as well:

This is the most unacceptable act Microsoft has ever committed. I run a small business, and I am screwed. I have no way to respond to e-mails because I made the mistake of trusting Microsoft … and all of my e-mails and contacts are gone.

Fortunately, Microsoft has an easy-as-pie solution:

• Close Outlook or Outlook Express
• Click change OneCare settings in the main OneCare user interface
• Click on the viruses and spyware tab
• Click on the quarantine button, and then select the pst or dbx file, and then click on restore.

To ensure that the problem does not continue until the next update, users should also do the following:

• Click change OneCare setting in the main user interface
• Click viruses and spyware tab
• Click on the exclusions button
• Click on the add folder button
• Navigate to the specific folder that contains the .dbx or .pst file to be excluded.
• Click OK.

Yes, that’s right, it’s as easy as A, B, C, D! … Er, … E, F, G, H, I, J!

That, of course, is assuming that the user knows where his or her .dbx and .pst files are. Do you? Neither do I. Nice of them to include that little tidbit of information in their suggested fix, isn’t it? This is also assuming that users will know about the bug before it hits them; otherwise, it’s a little like closing the barn door after the horses have bolted, isn’t it?

One professional user sums it up:

Software problems occur. Nothing is perfect. But companies I deal with normally are all over software updates to correct a problem. And we are talking about Outlook, a highly used software that holds critical data for most of us, especially business users…I almost get the feeling Microsoft does not really care about this product, that they came up with it just so they could enter this software market.

We’ve got this thing that so many military believe that Republican administrations are good for the military.  That is rarely the case.  And, we have to get a message through to every soldier, every family member, every friend of soldiers that the Republican party, the Republican dominated Congress has absolutely been the worst thing that’s happened to the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps.

–Major General Paul Eaton (retired)

There has long been a myth that Republicans are better on the military than Democrats, which is probably based upon the posturing that is done in Washington more than the actual constructive good. It is based on the idea that Republicans are more often hawks, and that they more often vote for “defense” bills. But being a hawk doesn’t mean that you are good for the military, and voting for defense bills often simply means that you are engaging in porkbarrel by getting a juicy contract for your district, or more likely benefitting some wealthy business that contributed to your campaign.

Additionally, the military has a history of pushing conservatism on the troops and establishing a generally right-wing atmosphere. Why is a good question. Although it may in part stem from a dislike for liberal ideology (soft-and-fuzzy touchy-feely take-care-of-people, peace-loving philosophy), that only explains why they would not try to incorporate liberalism into military culture, and does not explain why there is an active press to instill conservative values.

That can probably be explained by the idea of authoritarianism. A core principle in military training is to strip down the recruit’s standing identity as an individual and then rebuild that identity based upon their standing as a member of the military, with a strong emphasis on obedience, loyalty, and duty. The military is not a Democracy, it is an authoritarian organization–and the conservative ideology tends toward this structure. God knows that many conservatives would be ecstatic at the idea of changing the entire country to mirror the structure of the armed forces. And speaking of God, religion gets emphasized more in the military as well–another nod to authoritarianism.

As a result, the general political leaning of conservatism, including Republican issues, gets lumped together and infused in the military culture; as a single but highly visible example, you get the Armed Forces Radio Network playing Laura Schlessinger and Rush Limbaugh as well as other right-wing programming, with their “balance” provided by the occasional non-opinionated NPR news feed. You get automatic respect for Republican presidents and politicians even when their actions and policies harm the military, while Democratic leaders have to work hard to beat through the automatic suspicion and disrespect held for them.

But as the armed forces is discovering in a particularly painful fashion, Republican politicians are not necessarily the friends they are made out to be. Eaton is not alone in his opinion, and it is telling that the most vocal critics are the former generals, who had the best view of the right wing’s policy’s effects on the military. Whether this is filtering down to the troop level is a question I cannot answer, but it must be kept in mind that it is illegal for troops to criticize the current president, and criticizing the administration in general is severely frowned upon.

Whatever the troops’ views are, one thing is clear: the military, for its own sake and survival, must reorganize and fine-tune its self-identity more along lines that will serve it better. Its authoritarian roots will undoubtedly be preserved, but its blind allegiance to Republicans has to stop. In theory, the military must be apolitical, though in fact we know that can’t be realistically expected; the military is made up of people, and people are political. At the very least, it must focus not on generalities like political parties, it must not identify with anyone who lays claim to a similar ideology; rather, it must focus on policies and specific actions, supporting or criticizing those if they are not sound.

That might be difficult, however, as many of those weak-kneed pansies on the left actually do a better job than the hard-nosed hawks on the right, in terms of taking care of both the military establishment and the troops, including veterans no longer serving.

But if the military establishment can adopt that new paradigm, it will be far better off in the future, no longer giving automatic allegiance to people like today’s Republicans, who have decimated the military, crapped on the troops, and done even worse to the vets.

Hat tip to Crooks & Liars for the Eaton quote.