September 2009 Archives

Today religious mania has infected the political bloodstream and America has become corrosively isolationist, he says. "Ask an American what they know about Sweden and they'd say 'They live well but they're all alcoholics'. In fact a Scandinavian system could have benefited us many times over." Instead, America has "no intellectual class" and is "rotting away at a funereal pace. We'll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn't realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush."

Source: Gore Vidal predicts US Military Dictatorship // Current

I have the basic news apps on my iPhone: AP, the New York Times, NPR, even the Wall Street Journal. I've had the CNN site bookmarked on my phone until today. I deleted it after purchasing CNN's new mobile app for the iPhone. It's the best news site application I've seen to date--complete awesomeness!

The app only costs $1.99. As a friend of mine pointed out, however, you still have to suffer with advertisements on the paid application. Sad. But at least I don't find it nearly as intrusive as CNN.com's video ads before every video. [By the way, I've found a way around that!] On the iPhone app you only get a still image ad while the video loads. And I'm delighted you can watch live newscasts and video over WiFi, 3G, and Edge! (It's about time, AT&T!)

Turning the phone horizontally gives a very nice coverflow slideshow for news events and videos all based on category. Touch the picture to flip the image and reveal the barebones basics of the story with a link to watch or read if you desire.

My CNN provides immediate access to news, weather, and traffic based on your physical location and on any locations you setup to monitor. The news stories link to local media.

iReport, shown at the bottom of this post, is probably my favorite, not because of the content, but because of the concept. In this section you can view featured iReport articles or video. But what is really impressive: Submit. The user can submit photos or video right from the iPhone. So if you find yourself in the middle of a news-worthy event, you can shoot it and upload it to iReport on the spot. Very slick! CNN even offers some suggested assignments for iReporters.

Other nifty little features remain undiscussed. I like the new CNN app, a lot. The designers did a great and thoughtful job.

Well, with the earthquake in the Pacific, I guess I shouldn't ride my bike along the coast as we're at a heightened alert for a possible tsunami. I frequently ride down by the ocean through an area that is labeled as a Tsunami Evacuation Area.

While unlikely, the Tsunami Emergency Information being distributed indicates that an earthquake in Alaska could cause serious tsunami damage in LA within a mere hour! But we have only had 13 tsunami events in California in the past 75 years. The only one to affect Los Angeles bay area was in 1930 when the maximum level of water run-up was almost 20 feet.

A 20 foot run-up would absolutely affect the area in which I ride.

The music is a bit much, but... This is better than America's Funniest Videos.

Some nifty Photoshop CS4 little known tools!

Other programs in the series can be found at AdobeTV

I've been loyal to Transmit 3, by Panic Software, for many, many year. It has been my only desktop FTP client. It has some really wonderful features I've grown to love and now simply expect in an FTP client, tabbed server connections and elegant bookmarking being among my favorites.

But, we may be breaking up. At least, we're separating for a while until I can sort through our relationship.

You see, Transmit now has huge reliability and performance issues. It frequently drops the ftp connection. Which, with the way I almost always use the software with other file editors, causes me to lose my current edits in those editors (that provide their own ftp clients--hmmm... ).

Panic identified that if one of the drawers is open, which I love and use all of the time, file transfers will now get "hung up." Just keeping the drawers closed is painful as I use them so frequently.

Yesterday I went to do several drag and drop file transfers, another thing I do frequently, and the transfer of those large files was instant. The files transferred were then 0 kb. What's with that?! Each time the transfers worked on the second try. What's with that?!

Also, unless I select a file and drag it exactly sideways to the right, I keep highlighting other files when I go to drag instead of actually dragging the file or files. This has become crazy annoying.

And I've discovered other ftp clients have some nice features not included in Transmit, like QuickLook technology, even for video.

All in all, using Transmit has become such an aggravation, and Panic doesn't seem to be much interest in addressing the issues as I've dealt with them for a good while now.

So, for now anyway, I'm going to explore other options. Maybe one day soon, before I get a divorce, Panic will address these concerns and fix the issues I've been having with my favorite ftp client.

And apparently also rather small: a single "dose" of Campari Soda in every bottle

Source: 37signals

Silly capitalists! Looks like those pesky, truly leftist governments will clean the Right's clock. I mean, the economies of the socialist nations of Europe, our friends to our north, and communist China long ago recovered from the financial debacle we capitalists caused. Let's just go ahead and nuke 'em now! Whuduhyah say! Hmmm???

“The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency,” the World Bank president, Robert B. Zoellick, said in a speech at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. “Looking forward, there will increasingly be other options to the dollar.”

link: Robert Zoellick of World Bank Sees Dollar’s Role Diminishing - NYTimes.com

Great. So I'll get to live longer to suffer the buffoonery of Dubyuh! I'm elated.

New findings show that the Great Depression was actually good for U.S. health. Annual death rates declined during years of downturn and increased in years of expansion.

The findings could offer a silver lining to today's financial crisis.

The results reinforce earlier research showing recessions reduce mortality, but researchers didn't know whether the effect would hold through a full blown economic meltdown like the Great Depression.

link: Are recessions good for our health? // Current

Years ago I had an old VW Rabbit diesel that got 50 mpg. My previous cars all had a low fuel warning light. Not this little critter. And before she even hit the "E" that baby stopped on me twice! And when it ran out of gas, it just quit. Dead. No warning.

For this mess, we had plenty of warnings. But government didn't care. The wealthy were making big money off of a big gamble.

Oops! The toilet bowl flushed.

The budget situation today looks hugely worse than it did two years ago. The reason for the deterioration is not that the country has suddenly embarked on a massive new round of social spending, undertaken another major military adventure or even emptied the coffers through tax breaks. The reason that the deficit situation looks hugely worse than it did two years ago is that the $8 trillion housing bubble that had been driving the economy finally collapsed and threw the country into the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

link: Dean Baker: Progressives and the Budget Deficit

Apple has some really great ideas in their Aperture software. I really like several of the implementations of the tools--very intuitive and natural. But when Apple's own software can not run on Apple's own state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line hardware without constant, serious, and totally annoying issues, it's no good.

I've posted before that I've abandoned Apple's Aperture myself. For years now, Apple has failed to make any significant feature enhancements or fix the bugs that plague the software. No wonder people are dropping it. Pity, too. Adobe's Lightroom, while having significantly fewer performance issues, lacks the finesses of Aperture and will lack the competition from Apple to address this sooner rather than later.

I still use Aperture to print books and such, but that's about all.

Among photographic pros using the Mac,

• In 2007 Lightroom was nearly twice as popular as Aperture
• In 2008 it was nearly three times as popular
• In 2009 it's approaching four times as popular

By the numbers:

	2007	2008	2009
Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in	66.5%	62.2%	57.9%
Lightroom	23.6%	35.9%	37.0%
Aperture	5.5%	7.5%	6.3%
On the Mac platform only:
Lightroom	26.6%	40.4%	44.4%
Aperture	14.3%	14.6%	12.5%

link: John Nack on Adobe: Lightroom pulls further ahead of Aperture

I think it's time advertisers understood something: if you have an educated demographic as your targeted sales group, you need to stop inundating it with advertising!

As an intelligent human being living in the 21st century, I am fully capable of searching out the information I want and need when I am ready to make a purchase. When advertisements come to me and interrupt my pursuit at any given moment in time, I not only tune them out, I ban their products. Do you hear me????

Why? Because I resent the hell out of all of the distraction! Distraction has reached a feverish pitch, has become abundantly annoying, and has now filled every nook and cranny around my day-to-day living space.

People stick at least 2 advertisements in my front door every day. TiVo, which I bought to skip the ads on TV, has now started placing ads on my TV screen. I've already written a rant about CNN and the New York Times online. The LA Times printed edition frequently encloses the front page section in a 3/4ths of a sheet page of advertisements. Planes fly over the Pacific ocean pulling giant banners. And, speaking of planes, US Air has now placed advertisements on the little pull down table tops in front of the seats as well as on their napkins!

I can't be the only human in this country that feels this way.

Listen up marketing departments. I've had enough!

I love many things about fall: the shorter days, the nip in the air, the angle of the sunlight, and the fact that the beach returns to the locals after Labor Day weekend.

This afternoon featured a gorgeous sunset with a heavy fog layer down by Santa Monica and Malibu. (You can't really make out the fog in this picture as it was further to the right.) The number of people at the beach and walking along the Strand was reduced by 75%.

Add to all of this a wonderful dinner at an authentic French restaurant. Ahhh. Life doesn't get much better than this.

To his credit, he apologized. But SC Republican Representative Joe Wilson should be humiliated by his typically Republican behavior. The President, while presenting his case for health care reform, showed remarkable restraint.

Rachel Maddow, my new heroine, sums it up nicely in the video below.

Well, as little as I watched it, I shouldn't have a dawg in this fight, oh... that's Randy Jackson's line: "Yo, Dawg, now listen up." But I hated to see Paula Abdul not return to the show. Even though she appeared to be "heavily medicated" at times, for her back pain, I'm sure, she was nice to the contestants--unlike Simon Fuller, whose remarks could be a bit caustic, if not always on the mark.

I will miss classic lines from Paula, like: "I really liked your second performance tonight so much better than your first.", when none of the contestants had sung a second number yet.

But, even with all of her issues, I still liked Paula. In fact, I'm with a friend of mine: I want Paula on my Death Panel.

But Ellen DeGeneres will be a nice replacement for Paula. She's pretty and comes across as kind and sensible. Perhaps she also takes less "medication."

I turned red just listening to it! I think I'll start eating kittens for breakfast.

I set this up and love it. Just in case I forget how I did it, I'm posting this 10.6 hint here. My shortcut is [Shift] + [Option] + [Command] + L.

When I step away from my Mac at work, I want a quick way to lock the screen, and hitting a hot-corner with the mouse is problematic for me. This hint details how to lock the screen from the keyboard by using Automator to build a Service in Snow Leopard.

First, check the General tab on the Security System Preferences panel to ensure that the Require password [some period] after sleep or screen saver begins box is checked.

Then, open Automator in the Applications folder, and select Service from the screen that appears. At the top of the new Service's actions, in the Service receives drop-down, select no input from the options. Make sure that any application is selected in the second drop-down.

Add the Start Screensaver action (in the Utilities group of actions) to the Service by dragging it to the right. Save the Service (Automator does not ask you where to save it, just to name it). Next, open System Preferences and select the Keyboard preference pane. Select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab at the top, then the Services group on the left. The service you created should be near the bottom of the list of Services under the General disclosure triangle.

Double-click on the right side of the entry for the Service you created and assign a keyboard shortcut. This was a bit unintuitive, because the shortcut column is not distinctly visible, so it is not obvious that you can double-click in the assigned shortcut column to add a shortcut.

I had difficulty picking a keyboard shortcut that would work in 10.6.0. Command-L did not work for me, because it is assigned the Show All Preferences menu item in System Preferences. Control-L also did not work for me. Command-Shift-L did work once I reassigned the Search with Google Service a different shortcut.

Exit the keyboard preference pane to give it a try.

If you find yourself holding down the keyboard shortcut until the screen saver appears, and it disappears when you release the keys, you may want to decrease the time Snow Leopard waits before requiring a password in the Security system preference to immediately (or release the keys before the screen saver appears).

link: macosxhints.com - 10.6: Lock the screen via a keyboard shortcut

We live in an interesting time, a time where imaginary images, pixels of light that dance on the screen but for a moment accompanied by surround sound have actually replaced the real thing. Marshal was right: the medium today is absolutely the message. Our images are simply hollow, empty icons that stand in for a vacuous reality that only exists in our minds and hearts. These images conjure up warm feelings for an often fabled past America and regrettably do nothing to inform our behavior in the present America. But that's OK because these images and sounds make us feel better in the moment.

For the better part of a decade, we have had our souls choked and throttled with fear, with threat, with terror. We have had our damaged psyches comforted with the images of faith and patriotism. This constant back and forth has shaped a nation now addicted to and made ineffectual by anger.

Our words and our icons have become devoid of meaning in the present, disconnected from any reality lived here and now. Adequate are merely the good feelings the words and the nostalgic images bring us. Needless and discarded is the disciplined reality these now empty containers of once precious value we only pretend to cherish demanded of previous, principled generations who framed their contributions through character, hard work, deep thought, public discourse, and actually living the fullness of their values.

God forbid that our values actually demand anything of significance of us, require we conduct ourselves in a principled way. Living what we claim to value would be much more difficult than just screaming ludicrous soundbites at town hall meetings, keeping our kids out of school when the President speaks to them, toting AK47s in public.

The author of the quotation below should also have included in his list "governors who flirt with secession."

... for people whose Christianity has nothing to do with the bible; whose compassion has nothing to do with those less fortunate; whose fight for "life" has nothing to do with the already living, breathing and walking whatsoever. No, for these people, it is the map of the country they defend, not the actual country. It is the flag they defend, not the Constitution. It is pointless, costly wars that they defend, but not the soldiers who return from them.

I think it is clear that people who continue to defend and protect those involved in torture, kidnappings, and indefinite detention should be called out for what they are on a regular basis: collaborators. They need to be labeled openly and shamed often.

link: at-Largely: Bush/Cheney knew it was a crime when they kidnapped and held detainees ....

Pressing Option-Space pulls up the full-screen Quick Look view in Finder under Snow Leopard

link: macosxhints.com - 10.6: View full screen Quick Look via the keyboard

California's Real Death Panels: Insurers Deny 21% of Claims PacifiCare's Denials 40%, Cigna's 33% in First Half of 2009

More than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient's physician, are rejected by California's largest private insurers, amounting to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation's biggest state, according to data released today by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.

link: California Nurses Association

Your enormous plan to redistribute the wealth in this country, back to the already wealthy, seems to have been a resounding success.

2 out of 5 Californians are out of work right now thanks to you. Source: California Budget Project Press Release PDF

The average person in the US is mad as hell. They are powerless to affect change so they vent their anger any time and on anything they can: killing rampages, Tea Parties, pulling kids from schools because of the Nazi presidential speech, shouting and screaming over rational discussion in town hall meetings, blubbering about make-believe death panels, praying the president will die...

They're angry because they can't afford to live here any longer and there's nothing they can do about it. We're on our way to becoming the largest 3rd world nation on earth.

Why? Because millions of people are dropping out of the middle class every month and have to displace their sense of betrayal and distrust of corrupt, ineffectual government incapable of change because the greedy corporate talons run very, very deep.

Thanks Dubyuh. I'm not sure our nation will ever recover from the damage you and your administration did!

The puppeteers of the wacko, extremist conservatives that get trotted out in the media every time they want to brainwash Americans don't really fear Obama.

They fear education. They fear enlightenment. They fear a citizenry that is more difficult to manipulate for profiteering because, well... they think critically.

Yes, their favorite word is "fear!" It's what they do best.

Image Source: The Times Tribune

I'm so glad I had the opportunity to visit Norway in the summer of 2006--just over 3 years ago now. That country has such a pastoral serenity during the summer months. I reflected on my visit because I stumbled upon these two marvelous panos from one of my favorite sites, 360 Cities.

Here are a few of my pictures presented below. You can also visit my Norway gallery if you wish for more of this breath-taking 2006 trip. This post ends with the two panos from Norway that prompted this journey down memory lane. When viewed in fullscreen on a huge monitor, these panos are stupendous!

Click any image below for a larger view.

Solestrand

Loen

Balestrand, Norway

Balestrand, Norway

Balestrand, Norway

Hardangervidda, Norway

Borgund Stave Church, Borgund, Laerdal, Norway in Norway

Ferry Cruise Hellesylt - Geiranger, Geiranger Fjord, Norway in Norway

I was shocked a few weeks ago to learn that Blackwater, a company with a DOD contract, has more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than the US military has--a lot more, actually! And these troops, unlike our Department of Defense soldiers, have salaries in the 6 digits! These troops are not counted in any death toll of US soldiers because, well, they are not US soldier. In fact, I wonder who, if anyone, has any level of oversight over what this contracted company is really doing. My gut tells me that neither the Congress nor the President do.

I'm increasingly worried that our representative government is broken beyond repair, is bought and sold at the whim of national and transglobal corporations. "We the people?"

The fact is our all volunteer military has long since departed from the citizen soldier military our founders had in mind and is now professional force that is close to becoming a permanent class of mercenaries set apart in virtually gated communities rather than citizen soldiers. And with today's contractors we've taken the fateful next step: America now fields a truly imperial mercenary force. ...

Fighting wars without national mobilization is a sign of decadence. It means that sacrifice is denied and ignored by most while a few pay the price for a system that depends on an out-of-sight-and-out-of-mind military. This is also part of a crazy anti-government right wing nuttiness, wherein "privatizing" everything, now even our military, is seen as "good." Everything must turn a profit, right? Everything is about choice. right? ...

The United States needs to face the truth: If we don't have the stomach to reintroduce the draft and have a military large enough to do the military's job we should stop fighting wars around the globe. We should also stop lying to ourselves. If the American public doesn't support our wars to the extent that they will tolerate a draft and much higher taxes then our wars are bogus.

[From Frank Schaeffer: Military Contractors and Our Buck-Stops-Nowhere "Wars"]

The corporate influence is certainly the worst--that whole greed thing, win at all costs. Take what you demand. Add to this mix the religious extremists that accept whatever their religious leaders tell them without any question or soul searching--one of whom, Anderson in AZ, is publicly espousing praying that Obama will die of brain cancer and the righteous need to kill gay people. Now, push the NRA's demand for the freedom to tote your AK47 to political rallies, with Anderson's encouragement. Get people worked up and then send them to yell words, like "Nazi" and "socialist," designed to incite fear and panic at "town hall" meetings. Have some prominently featured political leaders, like the governor of Texas, trot out the "secede from the union" phrase a time or two. But, I think the corporate dominance is the most insidious.

The Republican fear machinery is working a new angle: make Americans fear the physical violence of America's baddest bullies.

The main difference between left and right wing extremism is that corporate interests ally with the right. Right wing extremists might be crazy, but the corporate interests are not, and they know how to manipulate the crazies on the right.

So the idea that what we're seeing now isn't as bad as what we saw in the sixties and seventies on the left might be true on one level, but it's not on another. Left-wing extremists were always fringe and never accomplished much of anythiing; right-wing extremists might be fringe in their psychology, but they are not fringe politically, and they have been fairly effective in getting their agenda recognized and implemented. The left never had a major cable news station, and it never had major funding. You don't have to be a majority to dominate in the political and economic spheres. You just need to have a lot of money and most of the power and an effective media megaphone.

[From After the Future: Whither America?]

The simple truth of the matter is this: We can no longer afford to be the police force for the world. The amount of money we have wasted in military spending for the past 8+ years has accomplished nothing but the bankrupting of the nation.

Once we can take care of our own people's basic human needs for housing, food, and medical care, then we can think about beating up on little nations like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our priorities are totally screwed up, and too many people are being duped into the corporate mind games that will continue to enslave us as a nation purported to be of the people, by the people, and for the people.

I'm sick of the lunatic, radical, narrow minded, AK47 toting, extremists in this nation! Just sick to death of them. If I had said I didn't want my school child to here the buffoon of all the ages when he was in the White House trotting off to read to kids in FL while the nation was under attack because of the incompetence of his administration, I would have been smeared a pinko, red, communist, anit-American, god-hating liberal--and anything else that would strike terror in the hearts of the holy.

Let these fools rot in their ignorance and hatred, let them spew their lunacy into the media limelight so we can all look and see the face of the simpleton that worships dogma rather than rational thinking and honest discourse.

I would find delicious enjoyment in their children becoming open-minded, liberals because they rebelled against the stupidity of the narrow-minded partisan ideology of their parents.

President Obama's plan to deliver a speech to public school students on Tuesday has sparked a revolt among conservative parents, who have accused the president of trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas and are asking school officials to excuse the children from listening.

link: Some Parents Oppose Obama Speech to Students - NYTimes.com

We will see about the "best possible user experience."

We've been working for the past several months to prepare our systems and network to ensure the best possible experience with MMS when it launches - and that launch date is: September 25 for iPhone 3G and 3GS customers. MMS will be enabled through a software update on that day.

[From An Update on iPhone MMS for our Mobility Customers]

Even though this pano has some serious stitching issues, it's just too beautiful not to share!

Bar le Tapecul in France

Apparently so! What? They can charge iPhone users an outrageous premium for their cell data plans, ludicrous amounts for their text messaging service, provide us with a crappy network, and then claim that had no idea iPhone users would want a network that worked with all of the features the iPhone affords?

This is as ridiculous as Delta Airlines making me sit on a plane for 90 minutes while they fuel it up. They had no idea planes need fuel before they checked it out of the hanger and allowed passengers to board it?

How typical of corporate America. Lying, greedy thugs with management that is rotten to the core! Yet another reason for Apple to make the iPhone available on other networks!

As part of a larger New York Times article discussing the problems some iPhone users are having with AT&T's network, AT&T CTO John Donovan said the company has had a hard time keeping up with data demand. "It's been a challenging year for us," said Donovan. "Overnight we're seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones," he said. "There's just no parallel for the demand." The report states that the company has delayed its rollout of MMS multimedia messaging for the iPhone, and has postponed computer-to-iPhone tethering as well, although it's unclear whether the delays will last past the end of summer, as previously announced for MMS. Finally, AT&T states that the majority of the roughly $18 billion it will spend this year on its networks will go towards upgrades and expansions to help meet the demands placed on the 3G network.

[From AT&T seeing 'radical shift' in cellphone usage | iLounge News]

Rock Church - Helsinki, Finland in Helsinki