Bush not welcome in Indonesia

Bush is going to Indonesia on November 20th, but they don't want him. Well a body of Islamic clerics doesn't want him.

Rush Admits He Lies

I try to just avoid Rush Limbaugh. Apparently he had things to say after the election including this ridiculous bit where he claims that he secretly cringed at Republican policies while lying to his listeners that he supported it. Why does anyone listen to this drug addict?

Roberts to Decide Munaf's Fate

In case you forgot about the story of Mohammad Munaf, the appeals process is now up to Chief Justice John Roberts to decide if the Supreme Court will get involved. "The case of Mohammed Munaf, now pending in the D.C. Circuit Court, raises basic issues about the right of a U.S. military detainee to challenge in U.S. courts his detention by the U.S. and allied coalition force in Iraq and his impending transfer overseas to another government."

Dems Have The Senate

It's official, just heard it on ABC.

Robert Gates

In the vein of "be careful what you ask for", this interview gives us some possible insight into what Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will be like. He sounds ok and certainly qualified. The interview suggests that the rift between defense and intelligence (pun kinda intended) should be healed, though I suspect they're underestimating Cheney. Wikipedia already has a fair amount about Gates.

Reduced to a Britney Post

Ok, I honestly don't care about Britney and K-Fed. I'm surprised it took so long and she has no one to blame but herself. But there are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to begin.

Gizomodo, a gadget site, has a post saying that Britney told Kevin about the divorse by SMS text message! And they have a video of him receiving it! "Watch this, Lis. You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half." (it's about 1:44 into it). And what does Gizmodo care about this? They wonder if his phone is a sidekick.

Is there anything about this that isn't horribly wrong?

Toy Review: iPod Shuffle

Last Friday I got a new toy. I still have my 40GB 4G iPod but I picked up a new 2G iPod Shuffle. I wanted something tiny for the gym. I really do like having ALL my music on the 4G iPod, but often I just listen to podcasts and for this the iPod Shuffle is perfect. It holds 1GB which is plenty and gets over 12 hours on a charge.

The wearable aspect is wonderful. I just clip it to my shirt. I basically just use the one center button for play/pause. In the car I use the tape adaptor and it's tiny sitting in the center console, and there's no distracting screen.

It's not perfect. There is an on/off button which I've been using, but I now appreciate Steve Job's insistence that the iPod not have an on/off switch. I'm not sure why the shuffle does. The one tiny LED is overloaded and I sometimes miss not knowing how much is remaining on a track.

They made it a little difficult to use with podcasts. When you connect it, iTunes does an autofill from music. If you change the popup to be a playlist of podcasts you'll find nothing is populated. It took some searching of the forums before I found that the shuffle won't autofill with podcasts. I was ready to return it but then found that I can just drag podcasts onto the shuffle and they transfer fine. Now if only this process didn't create duplicates.

I really do like my ER-6 headphones, but now I wish they had a shorter cord. Leave it to Apple to find new ways to make you want new accessories.

If you like really small, I think the shuffle is a great 2nd iPod. The Nano is certainly easier to use and still small and a better choice for your only iPod. The shuffle's size puts it in the category of jewelry and it makes a great 2nd iPod. Now I'll have to start going to the gym regularly again.

Today's Globe

I found the election coverage in today's Boston Globe both out of date and bloated, the web is better for the statistics and I found CNN et al better for the big stories. But I did find 3 interesting articles in today's Globe:

First on page A11 I learned that an Al Qaeda bomb suspect [was] sentenced to life in prison. This happened in London but amongst many other plots, he was plotting to blow up the World Bank in Washington DC and the NYSE. He'll probably be extradicted to the US for terrorism charges to add to the life sentence.

Then on page C5 there's a shorted version of a story I saw in last Sunday's New York Times called Supermarket chain's stars guide the way to nutritious eating. Hannford Brothers supermarket has rated all the products with 0-4 stars to rate "good nutritional value". Their system avoids what they call "the jelly bean rule, imposed to make sure that a food containing mostly sugar cannot gain stars simply by being beefed up with fiber or vitamins." Anything to try to teach Americans better eating habits.

I have to say, I agree with Matthew Gilberts Prescriptions for an ailing 'Anatomy'. I keep saying that this should is better than it has any right to be, and I hope it stays that way. It's good as a guilty pleasure, but it also has some very deep characterizations that's quite rare on TV.

Recounts

Ah yes, finding old quotes from politicians is always fun. DailyKos points out that Senators Allen (R-VA) and Burns (R-MT) didn't believe in recounts in 200.

The Agenda

I've already heard that Pelosi is bring out conservative Democrats, this DailyKos post disputes that.

And this DailyKos post talks about how only now is the media covering the Democratic agenda. In part that's probably ok. It wasn't going anywhere before yesterday, and since many Dems had different agendas, now it seems the Pelosi's is one with some weight.

Election Results

So the results look pretty good. The Democrats took the House by a good margin. The Senate is now down to Virgina to determine if it's 50-50 or 51-49. And the wonderful surprise is that Rumsfeld resigned and Bush accepted it (though in his press conference the president suggested he was lying last week about Rumsfeld staying). So let's see what the Dems can do. Bush said some nice things at his 1pm press conference about working with this Congress but I don't believe it. My guess is Bush's one practice veto will lead to more. The Dems should be able to reassert congressional oversight and I'm sure that will lead to more executive privilege issues.

In looking at the results this one thought struck me. Remember all the talk a couple of years ago about the Republicans successfully gerrymandering districts and that would mean the Democrats would never win again? I guess that wasn't true. It struck me as odd that the in spite of gerrymandering, Democrats won the House (where districts matter) and yet the Senate is close to 50-50 and that's just a popular vote.

I guess the right way to look at it is that only 33 Senate seats up for election. The media I've seen has been concentrating on number of seats changed and you see numbers like 5. If you look at it as 24-9 (Democrats won 21, Independents 2 in CT and VT, and Republicans only 9 with VA still undecided) that's pretty severe.

Economist Brad DeLong, who I normally like, wrote 32,100,000 vs. 24,524,000: "One way to look at last night's election is that the implicit gerrymandering of the Senate and the in-the-tank-ness of the press corps are keeping people from realizing how big the blowout was. Consider this: it looks like 32,100 thousand Americans voted for Democratic Senatorial candidates, and only 24,524 thousand Americans voted for Republican Senatorial candidates. That's a 13.4% margin of Democratic victory."

Ok, he meant million instead of thousand, but gerrymandering the Senate? Last I checked Senators were elected by popular votes of the states and that was mandated by the Constitution. If his numbers for the popular vote are right, that's pretty interesting.

So hopefully VA goes to Webb. In the mean time, the Supreme Court heard an abortion case today and Israel and Gaza are shooting rockets at each other and the military leader of Hamas is calling for strikes against the US.

I Voted

I voted (with an optically scanned paper ballot), did you? And some things to remember.

Math for Programmers

Here's an interesting post called Math for Programmers. It suggests an alternative math curriculum for students which is designed to be more relevant for programmers. Some of the comments are good too, obviously pointing out that some people won't become programmers and other branches of math will be more relevant to them. I do agree that there's lots you can learn on your own these days and students should be taught that math isn't scary and isn't that difficult and can be learned.

Republican Apologies Wanted

In response to Republicans demanding Kerry apologize to our troops, Steve Young lists 35 apologies Republicans should make.

Microsoft and Novell

I was traveling Thursday and missed this announcement. Microsoft and Novell came to some agreement involving Linux and patents. It's bizarre and I don't think anyone can quite figure out it's significance. Groklaw has the best analysis I saw. I didn't see anyone mention what Ray Ozzie's influence might have been.

Khalilzad Quiting as US Ambassador to Iraq

Kevin Drum writes about U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad Jumping Ship

Fox Reporter Undergoes Waterboarding, Calls it Torture

Fox Reporter Undergoes Waterboarding, Calls it Torture. Watch it.

Torture Secrets

The Bush administration must be afraid of torture evidence getting out. They are now trying to claim that their torture procedures are a state secret and not allowing victims to talk about what was done to them, even to their lawyers. Impeach these bastards.

Leaking Bad, Lying Ignored

Glenn Greenwald writes about The crime of exposing the truth about Iraq and I couldn't agree more. The New York TImes publishes proof that Cheney lied to the American people and the response is to go after leakers and not follow up on the lies. Why isn't this impeachable?

The Latest Poll

Very encouraging poll results.

State of Debate

The last debate between the candidates for MA governor is tonight. Here are the rules that the 4 participants agreed to. Candidates ask each other questions, they have 20 seconds to do so, a 1 minute answer, and a 20 second rebuttal. We can't even have two minutes to discuss an issue.

Art Lessons

As I've said before, John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren & Stimpy has a blog where's he's been giving free advise on how to draw cartoons.

I really liked a post from Sunday, Specific Acting-Scribner, Clampett, Blanc, Foster. Play the video clip towards the bottom.

Today he had a particularly good post in his series on Color Theory, neutral or natural colors. Though to get his dislike of pink of and purple, you'll probably have to look at older posts like Garish vs. Warm, Pee and Poo colors versus Colorful Greys, and look at the sky before you paint a sunset. He had two posts with examples of good color. The one on Yogi Bear I understood not problem, the one with some anime I had more problems with.

Miltary Says Iraq Near Chaos

"A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict." It also seems to completely justify Tufte's hatred of PowerPoint.

In Bed With Big Oil

It's because of crap like this that the Bush administration gets the reputation of being in bed with the oil companies. They drill on public lands and don't pay the rent. the government has less money to balance the budget or deal with our trade deficit.

Your Tax Dollars Pushing Abstinence For Adults

Tell me this is really what people want?