Ouch
YouTube – Bush booed at 2008 Nationals home opener
What’s the opposite of Schadenfreude? Is it weird that I can’t even take pleasure in this?
Blendor
it’s like hitting a piñata filled with exciting blog postsArchive for March, 2008
Obama’s Speech on the Economy
It’s like a brief history of US economics, a nice refresher course for those of us who have forgotten a lot since college. I do like that he opened with a quote from Alexander Hamilton and speaks in-depth with apparent subject knowledge, rather than superficially with sound bites (though he does throw in a few one-liners for good measure – he’s a politician, not a professor, after all). I feel I may be warming up to this Obama fellow; still, rhetoric is one thing, and policy decisions are another.
The great task before our founders was putting into practice the ideal that government could simultaneously serve liberty and advance the common good. For Alexander Hamilton, the young secretary of the treasury, that task was bound to the vigor of the American economy. Hamilton had a strong belief in the power of the market, but he balanced that belief with a conviction that human enterprise, and I quote, “may be beneficially stimulated by prudent aids and encouragements on the part of the government.” Government, he believed, had an important role to play in advancing our common prosperity. So he nationalized the state Revolutionary War debts, weaving together the economies of the states and creating an American system of credit and capital markets.
You can watch the video of the speech here, or read the transcript here.
Oklahoma Celebrities
This is what would happen if celebrities lived in Oklahoma. Ashlee Simpson, for example:
Adobe Photoshop Express
Adobe Photoshop Express seems pretty cool. I just signed up for it and tested it out. It gives you only a few basic editing options (similar to what you can do with Picasa), with the added benefit of doing your editing online. But probably the coolest thing about it is the nice Flash interface and the free 2GB of online photo storage. Photos that you choose to make public go into a slick slide show. I missed the feature at first, but they offer embeddable source code that lets you put your slide show anywhere. Since it’s in beta, they accept suggestions for improvement with their feedback form. You can take a look at the edit screen below:
My Lubitel
First of all, I want to send out a HUGE thank you to the friend who gave me this wonderful little twin-lens-reflex lomography camera (though I’m sure she doesn’t read this blog). Here’s a few shots from my very first roll (still learning how to use this camera):
My very own fail dog
Check it out!It’s a pic I took last Eeyore’s Birthday in Austin. Apparently dyeing your dog is a bit controversial. I’ll count this as a FAIL for the owner, I guess.
Bush’s War
PBS FRONTLINE has their new special available for viewing online in its entirety:
Veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk draws on one of the richest archives in broadcast journalism — more than 40 FRONTLINE reports on Iraq and the war on terror. Combined with fresh reporting and new interviews, Bush’s War will be the definitive documentary analysis of one of the most challenging periods in the nation’s history.
“Parts of this history have been told before,” Kirk says. “But no one has laid out the entire narrative to reveal in one epic story the scope and detail of how this war began and how it has been fought, both on the ground and deep inside the government.”
Frontline is pretty much the last bastion of serious news documentaries in America, so it’s probably worth a look.
The Great Tantra Challenge
I’d really like to watch this:
On 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik black magician to demonstrate his powers on him. That was the beginning of an unprecedented experiment. After all his chanting of mantra magic words and ceremonies of tantra failed, the tantrik decided to kill Sanal Edamaruku with the “ultimate destruction ceremony” on live TV. Sanal Edamaruku agreed and sat in the altar of the black magic ritual. India TV observed skyrocketing viewership rates.Everything started, when Uma Bharati former chief minister of the state of Madhya Pradesh accused her political opponents in a public statement of using tantrik powers to inflict damage upon her. In fact, within a few days, the unlucky lady had lost her favorite uncle, hit the door of her car against her head and found her legs covered with wounds and blisters.
India TV, one of India’s major Hindi channels with national outreach, invited Sanal Edamaruku for a discussion on “Tantrik power versus Science”. Pandit Surinder Sharma, who claims to be the tantrik of top politicians and is well known from his TV shows, represented the other side. During the discussion, the tantrik showed a small human shape of wheat flour dough, laid a thread around it like a noose and tightened it. He claimed that he was able to kill any person he wanted within three minutes by using black magic. Sanal challenged him to try and kill him.
Looks hilarious!
Lifehacker’s First Look at Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” Beta
While Hardy only got a touch-up paint job, each of its three software engines—the Linux kernel, the GNOME desktop environment, and the Xorg graphics handler—got an actual upgrade. The kernel chages include better power management for 64-bit processors and (supposedly) better performance in multitasking. Xorg, the not-fun-to-configure graphics manager, gets more monitor and video card compatibility, along with a GUI tool to change the resolution and rotation of an external monitor or projector on the fly.
Lifehacker did a nice job with the screenshots. Nothing revolutionary in this version, but especially with the way the installer looks, I love that Linux is getting more and more accessible to the average user. I dig the abstract heron design, too.