Have I ever mentioned that I like the Market Street Bridge? I have? Oh, sorry …
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So, I’ve been thinking about picking up some noise cancelling headphones since I work from time to time in coffee shops and other places that aren’t necessarily too quiet. I decided to look at some reviews of some of the less-expensive models to see if they were at all effective.
I found the following statement in a review of one particular model:
… there was absolutely no ambiant noise reduction at all if the NC was in “off” mode.
Hmmm … you think?
No wonder the bulk of our nation votes Republican or Democrat.
I mean … is the person in question so mind-numblingly stupid that they would make statements like the following?
… my TV won’t show any channel at all, cable or broadcast, if I have the power turned off!!!
My car won’t move with the ignition off!!!
I tried to bake a cake with my oven off to save energy, and even after 48 hours it still wasn’t done!!!
When I close my eyes I can’t see any more!!!
I hope not, but expecting the headphones to cancel noise with the noise cancellation circuitry turned off … well, it boggles the mind.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
– from George Washington’s Farewell Address (emphasis mine)
When Ron Paul makes a statement like the bolded bit above, he gets called an isolationist, dangerous, etc. Anybody care to level that accusation against George Washington too?
I’ll be waiting. Don’t be shy.
Tonight, while talking to my buddy Will Adair online, I came up a new idea for a political party, and I’m actually halfway serious about this.
If you’ve read my political rants over the past few months, you know that I think that the two-party system in the US is fundamentally broken and only serves to preserve the status quo of government that gradually increases in size, scope, and power … and that I believe that breaking the stranglehold of the Democratic and Republican parties and having a system with 4-5+ political parties would be preferable.
The problem, of course, is launching a party that has a clearly-defined platform that can attract enough people to be a serious challenge to the two parties we have today. The Libertarians, who are arguably the most successful third party in the last fifty years, haven’t even been able to do it. The problem is that a system with, say, five political parties ends up with each of the parties having an average of maybe 15% or so of the population, with the remaining folks being independent or perhaps in smaller minor parties.
Of course, any party that broadens their platform enough to seriously challenge the Democrats and Republicans ends up in the same position that they are in right now … they have a party that doesn’t really stand for anything but vagaries and reassuring platitudes about change, hope, and all that B.S.
So, I present to you my idea .. the “None of the Above” Party.
The NotA party will have one plank in its platform … that voters ought to be able to vote AGAINST all candidates in a particular race by voting for “None of the Above” … thus signaling to the establishment “we don’t like any of the bums you’ve sanctioned as candidates.”
Each candidate for the NotA party will simply say that he stands for a vote against the other candidates. He or she would promise that, upon election, he or she would either step down in such a way as to force a special election to replace him or work to disrupt the political process until such an election were held.
I feel relatively certain that the platform of the NotA party would be attractive enough to a large enough portion of the population that it could gain ballot access.
The NotA party would have no problem running candidates who had publicly affiliated themselves with other parties. In fact, the idea would be that the NotA party would disband when we had a multi-party system, and, upon disbanding, it would encourage anybody associated with it to seek out an existing party or form a new one.
Somebody out there is bound to complain that if in an election … let’s say the general presidential election this year … the NotA candidate gets elected, then it would mean that we essentially have elected a candidate that doesn’t intend to actually serve as president, and that if such a scenario were repeated all over the nation, the government would fail to function. Well … I say let’s go for it! If the government were unable to function normally because the major parties weren’t willing to let third parties in on their little ball game, or nominate people that were acceptable to the general population … then that’s exactly what we need. Besides … the last time the Federal Government shut down because it didn’t have a budget … do you remember missing it? I seem to have gotten along OK without it.
Note: My tongue is planted firmly in cheek here, if it’s not obvious.
I’ve lived in Chattanooga for around one year and nine months now. Not long, but long enough that I can see that Ron Littlefield doesn’t know what he’s doing as far as managing the weather goes.
This is my second winter here, and we’ve had no accumulation of snow and very little snowfall at all, at least down here in the valley. What kind of winter is that? Come on, Ron, give us some snow! I didn’t move from Raleigh, NC toward the mountains for nothin’! Back in Asheville, where I lived before Chattanooga, they’ve gotten over 12 inches in the last 24 hours! We’re a bigger city than them, with more resources … surely we can do better! Plus, think of all the people who are out of jobs … folks who make snowplows, folks who sell the salt and sand they scatter on the roadways when we have freezing weather. Think of the children, man!
As if that wasn’t bad enough, last summer we had a drought. We did fine down here by the river, but folks in the general area who weren’t so close ended up running out of water. Obviously Ron didn’t think of the welfare of everybody around and provide us with enough rain. Those Republicans never do think about the welfare of people who aren’t as well-off as they are.
One particular weather mis-management choice Mr. Littlefield has made that has affected me personally is that he hasn’t scheduled enough thunderstorms. I like ‘em. I like to sit on the porch and watch the lightning and hope it doesn’t strike something close enough to my house to make me jump out of the porch swing and bang my head on the roof. Any mayor worth his salt could give us more thunderstorms, and do it without the nasty stuff like high winds, hail, tornados, and direct lightning strikes that destroy property.
Most recently, anybody watching the weather who is honest would have to agree that it looks like Mr. Littlefield doesn’t know what the heck he’s doing as far as managing the temperature goes. Monday I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and then yesterday night it was below 30 and snowing (but not enough for any accumulation down here; shame on you, Ron!). Isn’t he a competent enough mayor to keep the temperature somewhat consistent from day to day? Can we have some gradual changes here, please?
Those are just a few examples that come to mind that demonstrate that Ron Littlefield has destroyed our local weather while in office. I fully expect that he won’t do enough to prevent a drought this coming summer either, which will probably mean that Georgia will invade and annex all of Nickajack Lake plus St. Elmo. If they do that, Atlanta will drain the entire Tennessee River dry within a week! To not do anything to prevent a drought now, like pre-scheduling enough rainfall for the summer, and giving us a wet spring, will certainly invite disaster!
So, we need somebody to run for mayor against Littlefield … somebody who can provide Hope ™ and offer real Change ™, especially in the weather.
P.S. I figure if folks blame the president for the economy, I can blame the mayor for the weather. Right?
P.P.S. Actually I think the mayor has more control over the weather than the president has over the economy …
The Republican Party is sending subtle and not-so-subtle messages to Mike Huckabee to pack his bags and go back to Arkansas (”Huckabee ignoring GOP’s hints to quit presidential race“). In the last week, McCain has picked up endorsements from both Romney and George H.W. Bush (huh?).
Huckabee, to his credit, is refusing to withdraw. You won’t find me defending or praising Huckabee too often, but in this case, the man is right. This is the primary, for cryin’ out loud. As I’ve stated before, I believe that every candidate should stay in the race during the primary for as long as is possible.
The votes that each candidate gets (so long as voters aren’t brain-dead morons who vote for the person they think will win instead of who they like) are a valuable barometer for the party as to where the party’s voters’ sympathies lie. For instance … I’m a Ron Paul supporter. Ron Paul seems to average about 5% of the vote from state to state. As a result, we know that the majority of rank-and-file Republicans don’t like Paul’s ideas, except for the drooling idiots who voted for somebody else even though they like Paul … but I doubt there are too many in that category.
Mitt Romney should take his cue from Huckabee and un-suspend his campaign. Too bad he’s already decided to endorse McCain.
Look, if having the votes split up leads to a brokered convention, so be it. Seriously, though, the chances of that happening now are slim, even if Romney was still in the race. What are you guys afraid of? Obama-Clinton ‘08? I’ve got news for you … even if McCain gets 99% of the votes at the convention, it’s still going to be ugly. So, Republicans, get a clue and encourage your candidates to stay in the primaries until the last ballot is cast.
I’ve now had my new Macbook Pro for a little over a week. This is my first experience with a) an Intel Mac and b) OS X 10.5 (Leopard), so I thought I’d share some things I think really rock with my new setup:
- Spaces (OS X’s virtual desktops implementation) - I tried a few third-party virtual desktop programs in the past, but they generally were buggy … and none of them are as slick as Apple’s implementation. I’ve gotten really comfortable with the setup in the last few days.
- Time Machine (OS X’s new backup utility) - I plugged in my Western Digital MyBook 500gb drive and it immediately asked if I wanted to use it to back stuff up on. Well, now that you mention it … sure! And, it does this automatically when the drive is set up. I’d like the ability to tell it when not to do backups since a little extra disk usage during the day when I’m chugging away at the drive with other processes isn’t welcome, but other than that it’s slick.
- Unity Mode in VMware Fusion - It’s creepy to see a Vista window on my OS X desktop, but it’s much nicer than running the OS in a window. Being able to switch back and forth between OS X and Windows apps rocks. Yeah, I know Parallels does it too, but I’m declaring my allegiance to Fusion since it runs the virtual machines I’ve made in VMware Server and Workstation. That’s just way too valuable.
- iCal - Looks much better than it used to look. That is all.
- System Preferences - Whoa! They made the network preferences logical! Yeah, I was confused the first time I went looking for Internet Connect to connect to my office VPN, but once I figured out where it was, I was happy. Oh, and the new icon is sexy too!
Now … when I can come up with the spare cash to upgrade to Adobe CS3 in the next month or so, I think all the apps I depend on for most of my work will be Universal Binaries. That reminds me … I have to give some props to Apple for handling the PowerPC => Intel transition so well. Yeah, there were some hiccups with the early machines (which I studiously avoided by being a cheapskate and sticking with my Powerbook for nearly four years) but overall it went really well.
Title translation (for those of you who haven’t spent time reading Flannery O’Connor and ain’t familiar with the way we folks from the South speak): “That There 123 Book Meme That’s Making the Rounds.” Yes, that’s right, where I come from, the word “what” can be substituted for “that” from time to time. It drives my wife crazy. 
So, I’ve been tagged by Scott @ Transformatum. The rules are:
- Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
- Turn to page 123.
- Find the first 5 [full] sentences.
- Post the next 3 sentences.
- Tag 5 people.
So, here we go …
The senses are not to be discarded, but they should be expanded to their widest capacity. We see Christ rightly only when we say with Thomas: “My Lord and my God!” We have just established that the icon has a trinitarian scope, and now we must come to terms with its ontological proportions. [...]
The passage above was taken from The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).
I’ll confess that Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide was technically closer, but I decided to spare y’all a dry excerpt about accessor methods in Ruby objects. Besides, I’d only pulled it out for reference purposes earlier today, while I’ve actively been reading the liturgy book.
Brian, Chad, David, Philip and Will: the torch has been passed to you. You’re it!
My days of being largely inactive politically are over as of tonight. I’ve been voted chair of the Hamilton County Libertarian Party. In a few days (when I get a chance to catch my breath) the information there will be updated.
With the support of the Libertarian Party of Tennessee, we’ve set up a Meetup group to provide a point of contact with persons who are interested in Libertarian ideals. Meetup groups have worked well for the Ron Paul campaign, and we believe that we can effectively use them to grow the Libertarian Party as well.
My next goals as chair are to find persons willing to serve in the remaining open positions on the Executive Committee of the party, and to investigate ways we can promote the party locally.
It is my firm belief, as I have written before, that growing strong, viable parties to challenge the Democrats and Republicans is critical to effecting lasting change in our nation. The labels “Democrat” and “Republican” have become so generalized as to be ultimately useless in determining the overall political positions of any particular candidate. If you don’t believe me, think about the differences between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel on the Democratic side and Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Alan Keyes, Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, and Ron Paul on the Republican side. Sure, there is a common thread that joins many of the candidates in both sides, but a detailed survey of their positions would reveal more differences than similarities in many cases.
For political parties to be useful, they must represent a relatively narrow portion of the political spectrum. Then and only then will elections be most able to demonstrate the direction the citizens wish the government to move in.
My desire as chair is to raise the visibility of the LP locally, grow its membership, and elect Libertarians to office locally without compromising the key principles which differentiate the LP from other parties. We cannot afford to broaden our tent at the expense of maintaining a clear, consistent platform, or we will have started down a path that will ultimately see us in the same position that the Republicans and Democrats find themselves today.
If you suspect that you may be Libertarian, I encourage you to take the Nolan Chart quiz. If you are Libertarian, I encourage you to join us in our quest to change the face of government in Hamilton County, TN. Our next location will be Tuesday, March 11 at 7:00 p.m. The location will be announced at a later date. When a location is chosen, it will be posted on our Meetup Group’s page.
Notice anything unusual about the amount of memory Java is supposedly using according to Activity Monitor? Here’s a hint … my disk drive is only 160 gigs …
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