Charles Krauthammer explains clearly why Cindy Sheehan is such a poor voice for the American anti-war movement.

My friend Derek writes in a song on his upcoming album: “I will protest the sword / if it’s used unwittingly.” There are things to protest here, but one should properly frame one’s rhetoric if one is to be the voice of a mainstream movement.

[Comments are off because I'm going out of town and won't want to throw my keyboard out the window when I get back. You can write about it on your own and TrackBack me if you choose.]

It always kills me when some song you’re listening to sounds like another song.

For example, the opening acoustic guitar riff to “Life Worth Livin’ ” from Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression sounds like the acoustic guitar that drives “You Never Get What You Want” from Patty Griffin’s Living With Ghosts. Another example from my music collection is how the opening bass line and drum kitting from Guster’s “Diane” off of Keep It Together sounds like the opening lines to The Eagles’ “Heartache Tonight”.

You have any examples of this that you’d like to share?

I am now officially Alex’s bitch: not only do I personally use Tasks and FeedLounge, but I have a TasksPro install for [rocksmyfaceoff.net] and, as of yesterday, a UseTasks install for the UAH SGA House Rules Committee.

All this because of WordPress. WordPress is the marijuana of the personal productivity software marketplace.

Unlike my WordPress.com invite, which I’m holding for someone I know to want, I’ll gladly give a Gawker Media [Gizmodo, Lifehacker] comments invitation to anyone who wants it. First person to comment here with a valid email gets it.

I’m heading back out of town again tomorrow, up to visit my folks for a night for my birthday. Dunno why, but they like seeing me this time of year … and I like seeing them, too.

Poor Mom … the stuff I’m studying in school right now is all the stuff Dad loves the most. She always goes slightly nuts listening to us babble about engineering stuff, and now … now, I’m finally in Dad’s area of expertise.

So, the UAH College Democrats came to us asking to help block HR 609. So, I decided I’d do some digging…

• HR 609 on Thomas.LOC.gov. Typical, it’s hard to discern anything from the actual text [since it's modifying existing laws, which you'd have to find.
• Congressional Budget Office analysis of HR 609.
• American Federation of Teachers memorandum to Rep. McKeon. They do bring up some concerns, specifically the academic freedoms bit and the static cap on Pell grants.
• National Association of College and Universities Business Officers report on HR 609. NACUBO notes that spiraling costs are an issue and that institutions whose costs are spiraling out of control will be audited, which is a great thing.
• States' Public Interests Research Groups concerns re: HR 609.

The CBO linkage tells me that the student loans stuff is unchanged---the law does make amendments, but they're to the status quo. Consolidated loans are taken from interest rates that are the weighted average of the loans consolidated and takes it to the same kind of tied-to-T-Bills rate that normal student loans see. Lender insurance is decreased, but defaulted loans are the responsibility of the lenders, not the borrowers. Loan limits increase. Honestly, it looks like moderate market solutions being done with interest rates, which is fine ... if interest rates spike, lenders may simply choose not to lend to students.

The ATF folks make some points, especially with respect to Pell grants. Pell grants go to the poorest students, who are less likely to be able to re-pay upon graduation. [Why? They're probably trying to support their families with the jobs they get out of education, families without medical insurance or steady work. It's easy to underestimate this burden.]

I’m personally of the opinion that this is a political matter into which our SGA shouldn’t step. Some will disagree, though.

As bad as I know it is to wake up at different times of day during the course of the week … an alarm clock with seven independent day-of-the-week alarms is just bad-ass.

It’d be more bad-ass with 1) atomic clock settings 2) a CD player and/or 3) an iPod dock.

Hey, a guy can dream.

Truly, I have an overdeveloped martyr complex and an overinflated sense of self-importance.

However, they’re both buttressed by situations like last night’s SGA meeting, where, while bored by the head of the UAH College Democrats talking about decrying legislation to increase the maximum interest rates of Federally-subsidized loans and caps placed on the amount of individual financial aid as “a bipartisan issue” but then saying that “these cuts shouldn’t come in response to a desire to give wealthy fat-cats a tax cut”—come on, man; be above it or not, but don’t be a hack and say you’re not—when I noticed, suddenly, that the SGA Assembly had never seen a budget for FY06.

See, when your birthday is 1 October, you’re keenly aware of things like fiscal years, especially when it comes to government.

So, I mentioned it, and … the reaction was a bit brusque. That set off my hackles, and in thinking about it all on the way home, I was awful self-congratulatory. “Who else but you would have noticed?!” :sigh:

In addition to Toad’s Fear, I’ve also got the following:

• Uncle Tupelo: No Depression
• Uncle Tupelo: Still Feel Gone
• Uncle Tupelo: March 16-20, 1992
• Uncle Tupelo: Anodyne
• Disclaimer: The Airbag’s Lipstick Kiss
• Derek Webb: Mockingbird (well, the mixes)

It’s almost too much to handle! [And yes, that whole music-begets-music thing is what's kicking my ass with the Uncle Tupelo: it's the band Jeff Tweedy was in before Wilco, and Wilco has been kicking my ass hard for the last month now.]

And no … no amount of begging from any of you who want the Webb will do you any good. This is a perk I don’t share!

I got my first birthday present of the Year 27 Celebration Season today, Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Fear. [I have plenty of friends who are Toad fans. I fear that this will lead to a TtWS CD-buying spree. ;)] This reminds me that I have not done my annual whoring of myself posting of my Amazon wishlist.

I broke it up this year into two lists: one for the music I’d like to have, and one for everything else. As always, there’s no requirement to buy me a thing: your love is more important than anything on either list.

If you’re needing my address or phone number for birthday-related purposes:

158 Stone Meadow Ln
Madison, AL 35758
(256) 527-8152

Much of what Alex Bosworth wants in an aggregator, FeedLounge either already does, is planning on releasing soon, or could conceivably do in a future release.

[Please note that I am not an official part of the FL team, and any conceivable points I make on this score should not be considered to be official FL code direction.]

The eight days of awesome are complete, and I am now home.

The craziest part of the trip had to be last night, driving from Charlotte back to Greensboro. I stopped at truck stop, parked the car, flipped on WWL-AM 870 out of New Orleans, slept for 30-45 minutes, woke up, drove some more, stopped at the rest area south of Greensboro, parked the car … lather, rinse, repeat. After the second nap, it was 0500 and time for me to consult SkyGuide and see when the first flight out of GSO to IAD was. Seeing that it was just 75 minutes hence, and I was 30 from the airport, the shock of adrenaline was enough to keep me going all the way through.

If I’d stayed on my original flight plan, I’d just now be leaving Greensboro. Instead, I’m in my office at home, about to take a shower and then sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Phew. I laid down at 0100, having finally gotten enough done that I could go to sleep. When the alarm went off at 0400, it was like I’d just closed my eyes.

Very definitely will be sleeping on the plane. :yawn: I’m really wishing that there would have been a slightly later flight to Dulles today … this 0700 crap sucks, but the next flight out of here doesn’t get to Dulles until mid-afternoon, which is just too late.

Sleep is for the weak. [Right now, my body's all, "HEY! We're pretty weak over here!"]

… I’d call Rick’s right now to wish him a Happy Birthday.

I mean, Jess is usually awake at this hour, but Rick? He’s been asleep for two hours.

I think I’ll refrain, though. He could beat me up. [I remember when he was so skinny that this wasn't an issue.]

Happy birthday, buddy. See you at dinner tonight.

Earlier today, I decided to stress-test my nano: backlight on at all times, continuous play of VBR-encoded MP3s. [LAME 3.96.1 --alt-preset-standard, of course.] Ran for almost three hours [okay, 2:57] before conking out.

I just activated my invitation to WordPress.com: Geof’s Relentless Kvetching About WordPress. If WP-related entries have been noise for you, then good; if everything else here has been noise for you, then good as well.

If you think this whole place is noise, well … I’m not making you read it, am I?

I’ve had to temporarily disable Bad Behavior; something about 1.2.1 didn’t like a number of my users. Now, it’s quite likely that the issues do fall on their end, but in the meantime, I’d rather field more comment spam and not inconvenience my users. Generally, I go for the solutions that inconvenience me less, but frankly, it’s more convenient for me to handle comment spam than it is for my users to be unable to reach their own Weblogs.

I’m sure something will work out soon and I’ll be back to being a happy BB user.

NASA has announced its plans to develop craft to return to the moon and then go on to Mars.

This journey begins soon, with development of a new spaceship. Building on the best of Apollo and shuttle technology, NASA’s creating a 21st century exploration system that will be affordable, reliable, versatile, and safe.

The centerpiece of this system is a new spacecraft designed to carry four astronauts to and from the moon, support up to six crewmembers on future missions to Mars, and deliver crew and supplies to the International Space Station.

The new crew vehicle will be shaped like an Apollo capsule, but it will be three times larger, allowing four astronauts to travel to the moon at a time.

The new spacecraft has solar panels to provide power, and both the capsule and the lunar lander use liquid methane in their engines. Why methane? NASA is thinking ahead, planning for a day when future astronauts can convert Martian atmospheric resources into methane fuel.

Bring on the work!

Blocked power strip outlets unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Neat product, and it’s UL listed. [HT to Lifehacker.]

43Folders has another kick-ass entry, this time on writing sensible email messages. This ought to be required reading here at the office. It would save so much effort! I just try to follow the spirit of this in every email I send, and slowly, I’m reforming my peers …

A couple of thoughts just occurred to me, so I’ll publish them while I’m thinking of them. They’re related.

• Right now, most every WordPress install has a meta element in the head area that echoes the version of WordPress. Now, as a recovering phpBB administrator, I’m reminded of something phpBB did after 2.0.13 or so: they removed making the version public. Now, doing that provides security by obscurity, but there’s value to it—hackers can Google for possibly exploitable versions of software where lazy adminstrators haven’t kept up with the upgrade process. Why make it easy for them? I think this should be gone.
• In place of this meta element, it would be wonderful for the WP guys to set up Ping-O-Matic to handle such things in pings, which could then be forwarded to some server at WordPress World Headquarters. I mean, WP is Matt [and Ryan], and POM is Dougal [and Matt], so … synergy, people! If you want the stats, come up with a less obtrusive way to get it. [Plus, far fewer people will go to hack this out of their pings than are likely to remove the meta statement.
• Lastly, to help the lazy amongst us WP admins, we should have a blaringly obvious content block---in yellow or red, depending on the severity---that does a quick lookup of the latest WordPress revision from wordpress.org and spits out a short statement, with links to the Codex with instructions on upgrading. This is also something that phpBB did inside the Administrator Control Panel.

With WordPress's fine support for technology that pulls and pushes data around the messy web, seems like all these are things easily done. Why do I suggest them? Well, in many cases, folks running things like WordPress and phpBB are doing so only after other people have installed them. They're either unfamiliar with, afraid of, or incompetent at installing server scripts. Scaring Supplying them with warnings will have them look up the people who did the support for them in the first place, and that'll be a good thing in the long run, I believe.

[A good thing for everyone but the poor saps who do the script installs. However, I'm one of those guys...]

Maciej Ceglowski recently paddled the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, and something he said at the end struck me:

I have been puzzled since moving here by the strange relationship New Yorkers have with their waterfront. You would hardly think this is an island city. For every enjoyable stretch of coastline like Pelham Bay, Coney Island, or the East Village, there are a dozen miles of waterfront that are fenced off and abandoned (Greenpoint), blocked by highways (much of Manhattan and Brooklyn) or gratuitously kept out of reach by landscaping that ignores the water altogether (Red Hook, Battery Park City). It would be one thing if the waterfront were packed with high-end developed properties - at least then the inaccessibility would make some kind of evil sense. But most of the Brooklyn riverfront consists of rusty, fenced-off industrial space, left over from an earlier era and never reclaimed.

It’s something that surprised me when I first visited Manhattan. Only when I was in Battery Park did I feel like I was on an island. [Mind you, I wasn't in the City for long.] But as I think about NYC in contrast to the A1A route down Florida’s Space Coast, it’s a bit staggering.

Nerd, Geek, or Dork?, as I saw first with John’s results and then Jonathan’s results:

78 % Nerd, 43% Geek, 39% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the “dork.” No-longer. Being smart isn’t as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

You may now kiss my feet.

I would like to see more folks, especially WordPress, support OpenID.

This is not a trust system. Trust requires identity first.

Exactly.

My nano is here!

I’ve wanted an iPod for a while, but I could never justify it to myself because of the size considerations. I am not a belt-mount geek; I prefer to have stuff actually in my pockets. [This comes from the day when I knocked my belt-mounted Motorola flip phone out of its cradle, where it then fell 15 feet down to the concrete floor in manufacturing. It worked just fine after that---for years after that---but it just confirmed that I hated belt mounting.] But the nano is way small [as you know if you've read anything about it], and as such, it can fit happily in my pockets next to my chunky Treo 600.

I am a happy geek right now. Photos soon …