Rick's blog

Mitch Mitchell: 1947 - 2008

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:02:05 -0800

Mary Hudetz | Portland, OR | November 12

AP - Mitch Mitchell, drummer for the legendary Jimi Hendrix Experience of the 1960s and the group's last surviving member, was found dead in his hotel room early Wednesday. He was 61.

GOP needs Night of the Long Knives

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:01:56 -0800

Schadenfreude - it's what's for breakfast - Rick

Deroy Murdock | New York | November 6

Scripps Howard - Congratulations to Barack Obama, the incoming 44th President of the United States. He soon will fill America's highest office after a nearly flawless, first-time White House bid. He demonstrates that education, eloquence, and elegance trump lingering racial bias. His staunchly left-liberal ideas aside, he inspires in many ways. May he govern justly and make every American proud.

Now, what about those who Obama and his supporters vanquished? What the Republican Party badly needs is a Night of the Long Knives.

The GOP has been laid low, thanks to politicians who swapped their principles for power and lost both. As the chief electoral vehicle for conservative and free-market ideas, the Republican Party cannot regain America's confidence, nor should it, until the guilty have been catapulted into the nearest volcano.

Comrade George W. Bush has spearheaded the most aggressive federal expansion since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a delivery system for socialism, he has been the most effective Trojan Horse since that pine steed rolled into Troy.

more at the link...

Jukebox Saturday: the Soul Men

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:26:37 -0800

The North Coast airwaves of 1965 to 1971 featured genre-free wall-to-wall Top 40 hits spun by AM powerhouses CKLW (Windsor, Ontario) and WIXY 1260 (Cleveland). They were the stations of choice at the city pool and, when we were old enough to drive our girlfriends, blankets and radios there, at the beach.

Along with the British Invasion groups and the Folk Rockers, these were the singers that grabbed my soul and gonads when I was a hopelessly romantic – and terminally horny – adolescent:

Marvin Gaye

Whaddya got?

Newsweek series: Secrets of the 2008 Campaign

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:35:36 -0800

Newsweek is running a seven-part series - presently on Chapter 6 - from a team given extensive access to both campaigns with the agreement that none of the material would be published until after the election. A must-read for political junkies. I highly recommend you download the pages and read them at your leisure.

Secrets of the 2008 Campaign

Friday Cat Slagging

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:30:00 -0800

Supreme Cat Decisions"

A tribute to this week's Get Fuzzy thread:

Lawyerly Stuff: we at The Agonist gather the main images displayed here at random from teh internets and host them as reproductions to avoid siphoning bandwidth from the sites which contain them. If you are the creator of any original image and do not wish it shown here, please contact us and we will promptly remove it.

Previous Entries:

October 31   "Hallow Kitty"
October 24   "So Cute..."
Sept 12   "Post-Convention Bounce"
Sept 5   "Speechifyin'"
August 29   "Bathing Beauties"
August 8   "Almost too tired to yawn..."
July 25   "I was in SUCH a good mood this morning..."
July 11   "EVERYBODY must get stoned"
June 20   "...and the livin' is easy"
June 13   "We are Siamese, if you please"
June 6   "Everybody into the pool!"
May 30   "Alley Cats"
May 16   "Pissed-off Democats"
May 9   "Sportin' Cats"
May 2   "Belling the Cat"
April 25   "Spring! When a young tomcat's fancy....."
April 18   "A Face Only a Mother Could Bear"
April 11   "Mad Cat Disease"
April 4   "Eat Drink Cat Dog"
March 28   "Danger Cat"
March 21   "Toilet water - it's not just for dogs anymore"
March 14   "Cat Naps"
March 7   "Stuck"
February 29   "Leap Day Republicats"
February 22   "The dog may be wonderful prose, but only the cat is poetry." - French Proverb
February 15   "A cat determined not to be found can fold itself up like a pocket handkerchief if it wants to." - Louis J. Camuti, D.V.M.
February 8   "One cat just leads to another." - Ernest Hemingway
February 1   Cruel, but composed and bland / Dumb, inscrutable and grand / So Tiberius might have sat / Had Tiberius been a cat. - Matthew Arnold
January 25   "I think my favorite thing in the house has to be the cat... mainly because she's just like a big piece of noisy Velcro when you toss her at the sofa." - Michelle Argabrite
January 18   "Cats are the ultimate narcissists. You can tell this by all the time they spend on personal grooming. Dogs aren't like this. A dog's idea of personal grooming is to roll in a dead fish." - James Gorman
January 11   "In the middle of a world that had always been a bit mad, the cat walks with confidence." - Rosanne Amberson
January 4   "Maybe I fed the cat. Maybe I didn't." - overheard at the Schroedinger household
December 28   "Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow." - Jeff Valdez

Krugman: "The Republican Rump"

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:10:53 -0800

November 3

NYT - Most of the post-election discussion will presumably be about what the Democrats should and will do with their mandate. But let me ask a different question that will also be important for the nation’s future: What will defeat do to the Republicans?

You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Read on. Mr. Krugman nails it, for me. The political dialogue for the next four years and in the campaign of 2012 is going to be very, very weird.

Hallowe'en Fun

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:24:40 -0700

Ignore the ghastly page design and enjoy the content...

The Real Origins of Halloween -
There appear to have been four major holy days celebrated by the Paleopagan Druids, possibly throughout the Celtic territories: Samhain, Oimelc, Beltane & Lughnasadh (in one set of Irish-based modern spellings). Four additional holy (or “High”) days (Winter Solstice or “Midwinter,” Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice or “Midsummer,” and Fall Equinox), which are based on Germanic or other Indo-European cultures, are also celebrated in the Neopagan Druid calendar, along with others based on mainstream holidays (visit the linked essay for details).

The most common practice for the calculation of Samhain, Oimelc, Beltane and Lughnasadh has been, for the last several centuries, to use the civil calendar days or eves of November 1st, February 1st, May 1st and August 1st, respectively. Since we have conflicting evidence on how the Paleopagan Druids calculated these dates, modern Neopagans just use whichever method is most convenient. This means, of course, that we aren’t all doing anything uniformly on any given night, which fits perfectly with the Neopagan saying that, “organizing Pagans is like herding cats.” It doesn’t match the Evil Conspiracy theories — which have us all marching to a strict drumbeat in perfect Satanic unison — at all.

Sign at a Palin rally in Pittsburgh

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:50:34 -0700

...photo taken by my daughter:

Presidential Debate I: Post-Mortem open thread

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:33:11 -0700

Those of you who watched tonight's debate: what were your expectations for the session? Did the "new format" enhance the discussion? Do you think your candidate did well, did poorly, or merely treaded water? In which specific areas? Speculate the different turns the debate might have taken Palin been facing Obama, Biden facing McCain, or Palin facing Biden.

If you did not watch the debate, did the White Sox or Twins or Mets or Phillies or Brewers win?

Dewey Wins!

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:34:28 -0700

background here

One Month with Windows Vista

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:16:04 -0700

Jason Perlow | September 23

ZDnet - One month ago, I pledged that I would try Windows Vista on my new PC for a month before deciding whether I would keep it or revert back to Windows XP as my primary desktop OS.

The verdict? I’m sticking with Vista, begrudgingly.

Now the question begs, do I intend to upgrade any of my other PCs to Vista? No, at least not until I need to get new desktop PCs.

more at the link...

Jukebox Saturday Night: the country in rock

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:25:53 -0700

Rock and Roll music was spawned from the blues and also from country/western (where that genre came from is the subject for another day, but let it be said that the African-American seed took root there, too).

Growing up in Northeast Ohio, I wasn't exposed to country music at a tender age. But I heard hits by Little Richard. the Everly Brothers, Carl Perkins, and Elvis that didn't sound like the doo-wop and ponytail stuff that competed for airplay in the latter part of the fifties. When I got a little older and started playing music with guys who had grown up with other music playing in their homes, I learned how much country music was a presence in rock 'n' roll. In the late sixties, a number of artists went back to the pure sweet sounds of country for inspiration, electrified the rhythm section, and launched a hybrid that got labeled (as all music must be labeled - by non-musicians) as "country/rock".

"Country/Rock" is sort of redundant, as is "Blues/Rock". But let's leave that alone for now, and instead offer up some sides by the first artists who were driven to create popular music different from the prevailing teen pop, smooth soul and acid rock (nothing wrong with any of these!) and mix in some of the folkier lyrical, vocal and instrumental styles they heard growing up.

The song list is below the fold. Pile on your favorites.

Gene Clark: Train Leaves Here This Morning

International Submarine Band: Knee Deep in the Blues

The Band: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

The Byrds: You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

Flying Burrito Brothers: Christine's Tune

Poco: Just For Me and You

New Riders of the Purple Sage: Hello Mary Lou

Support Live Music

Running From Reality

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:10:56 -0700

Bob Herbert | September 6

NYT - If there was one pre-eminent characteristic of the Republican convention this week, it was the quality of deception. Words completely lost their meaning. Reality was turned upside down.

From the faux populist gibberish mouthed by speaker after speaker, you would never have known that the Republicans have been in power over the past several years and used that titanic power to lead the country to its present sorry state.

The populists’ garb hangs awkwardly on the frame of John McCain. Everyman he ain’t.

plenty more red meat at the link!

Internet Usage Is Exploding, But So Is Capacity

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:20:54 -0700

W. David Gardner | September 4

Information Week - The sky isn't falling and the Internet isn't running out of capacity either.

In a report that should placate the Chicken Littles who believe the Internet is heading for a monstrous traffic jam, Internet monitor TeleGeography Research said international Internet traffic grew more than 53%, but Internet capacity grew even faster.

In a report released Wednesday, TeleGeography said Internet traffic grew 53% between mid-2007 and mid-2008, a drop from 61% in the preceding year. Internet capacity, however, grew faster than the total Internet traffic, which resulted in lower utilization levels on many Internet backbones.

"Broadband subscriber growth has been slowing since 2001, but the volume of traffic generated by each user [has] grown," Alan Mauldin, the market research firm's director of research, said in a statement. "Traffic growth is fueled by consumer demand for video, delivered via Web browsers, peer-to-peer services, or streaming protocols."

Traffic in the mature U.S. market rose a modest 47%, but in the new market between the United States and Latin America, traffic growth took off, surging 112% for the period.

The TeleGeography findings could be meaningful input in the ongoing debate involving U.S. service providers and consumers concerning the imposition of downloading restrictions on heavy users. Some service providers maintain they will have to impose limits on some users who use too much Internet capacity.

more at the source

Typosquatting the presidential election web sites

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:12:00 -0700

Dean Takahashi | August 7

VentureBeat - Bad hackers haven’t caused much damage this year during the online-heavy presidential campaign. But the potential is there. Consider “typosquatting.”

There are about 160 different ways to type in the wrong web site for barackobama.com. Oliver Friedrichs, former director of research at Symantec, knows this because he did a study of the sites that typo squat, or exploit users’ misspellings of web site names to siphon off traffic from the official candidate’s web site for a variety of commercial or corrupt purposes.

At Black Hat [conference August 7], Friedrichs described the typosquatting study as part of a broader talk offering a warning about how any big election could be threatened by a variety of different cyber attacks. The talk is partially chronicled in a chapter that he wrote for Crimeware, a new book published by Symantec Press. Typosquatting, while interesting, is one of the smaller cyber threats. Some of the more serious ones could actually undermine confidence of voters and skew election results. Fortunately, Friedrichs said, there hasn’t been a lot of use of the worst tactics yet in the current U.S. presidential campaign.

more at the source