Jeff takes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s (“Intelligencer”? Granted, I know it’s a real word, but come one. Couldn’t you have just said “Reporter”?) Thomas Shapley—hereafter referred to as “Tom”—to task for the latter’s confusing of the Valerie Plame non-event and the recent leak on NSA surveillance:
How peculiar indeed that the President and his administration should respond differently to these two situations. How very odd that when something right out of the pages of a movie of the week crops up and administration opponents do their level best to capitalize on it in order to harm the President and obstruct his second-term agenda, that the administration should respond one way, but when a loose-lipped grudge-bearer calls up a reporter and blows the lid on an operation that saves American lives, the administration does something else entirely.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say the White House is doing its job, Tom.
From the level-headed responses I’ve read regarding the NSA’s web cookie whoopsie, Captain Ed has to have the best analysis:
In the great spectrum of Internet privacy dangers, “persistent cookies” sits on the weakest end. Spyware from free downloads cause more security problems than cookies, and even the ones used by the NSA can be blocked by any browser on the market. The AP uses the mistake to make cookies sound vaguely sinister when they’re almost as ubiquitous on the Internet as pop-up ads, if not more so. The Guardian gets even more hysterical, in all senses of the word, when it says that the “[e]xposure adds to pressure over White House powers”.
The silliest part of the story is that no one can understand why the cookies would present any danger to visitors to the NSA website. Both versions of the story call the risk to surfers “uncertain”, but a more accurate description would be “irrelevant”. Even if the NSA used it to track where casual visitors to its site surfed afterwards, it would discover nothing that any casual surfer wouldn’t already be able to access on their own with Google or a quick check on Free Republic. Now imagine who stops to check on the NSA website and try very hard to come up with any good reason to spend precious resources on scouring the web preferences of bloggers and privacy groups instead of focusing on real signal intelligence, which already comes in such volume that the agency has trouble keeping up with their primary task.
[Emphasis in the original.]
My wife found this dump soup recipe somewhere online, and neither of us can remember where nor find the bookmark for it. As the name implies, it’s a soup made up of whatever you dump in the pot. Here’s what we had for lunch:
1 can, Campbell’s Healthy Request Minestrone
1 can, pinto beans (15 oz)
1 can, Ro-Tel Original diced tomatoes and green chilies (10 oz)
1 can, whole kernel corn (15 oz)
1 can, cut green beans, no salt added (14.5 oz)
In the past, we’ve also added a can of red beans, and a can of black beans to the mix, each of those a 15-ounce can like the pinto beans listed above. You’ll need a good-sized pot to heat it on the stovetop with, and some Tupperware™ or other storage of your choice for the leftovers. Because there will be plenty of leftovers. It’s very hearty, especially if you go with all three types of beans.Today’s fixing fed both of us for lunch, and will give us at least one more meal, possibly two, depending upon how many bowls each of us has.
If you’re on Weight Watchers™, this soup is extremely low in points; two to three per bowl.
Thanks to the Ro-Tel, I should have skipped taking some decongestant earlier. The green chilies cleared out my sinuses just fine.
The most common eye injury in France is damage done by flying champagne corks. (It’s true.) Apparently they don’t retreat fast enough when it comes to avoiding bubble propelled projectiles.
Razor says, ‘Let’s be careful out there, and wear a visor.’
And this is from a guy with French ancestry.
Unlike the Tigers, the other SEC team that played yesterday apparently didn’t show up to play the whole game. South Carolina put up 21 unanswered points, then it was nearly all-Missouri the rest of the way. The Gamecocks managed to wake up in the fourth quarter, and tied the game at 31 aside before succumbing to Mizzou.
Steve Spurrier becomes the first SEC coach to lose at the Independence Bowl in thirteen straight appearances, ending the conference’s streak. As if we needed another reason to dislike Spurrier.
A new head coach. A devastating hurricane. Opening season games rescheduled. A heartbreaking overtime loss in what became the home opener, played on a Monday night rather than the traditional Saturday night due to another hurricane.
Then ten straight weeks of games. Ten straight wins. Then the eleventh game, in the eleventh week. For the conference championship. For a trip to the Sugar Bowl. For a chance to contend for the BCS National Championship crown, should one of the other favorites stumble.
But the hurricanes and the eleven weeks of practice, preparation, and playing take their toll, and the worst loss of the season is suffered. Adding injury to insult, the star quarterback is lost.
Cast down, sentenced to the next rung below the hallowed Bowl Championship Series.
Ranked number ten, facing number nine. The second-team quarterback is at the helm, in his first college career start. All of the pundits pick the number nine opponent. The fans pick the number nine opponent. On the same turf as the crushing loss three weeks before…
Oh, there were a few souls outside of Louisiana who picked the Tigers to beat Miami. Lou Holtz, God bless him, appears to be the only soul inside the USC-crazed ESPN crew without Trojan-emblazoned blinders on; he picks LSU as the winner of the 2005 Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl. By the end of the night, Lou is vindicated.
Things went great for the Miami Hurricanes.
For about five minutes.
On their first possession, they drove solidly down the field. The LSU defense, which collapsed against Georgia in the SEC Championship, held the Hurricanes to a field goal. It would be the only points Miami would score for the entire game.
It would be a game of few penalties, and fewer turnovers. Only one, an interception by the LSU defense against Miami’s freshman quarterback, put in the last four minutes of the game. It would be a game where many different words would be used to describe the play of the Fighting Tigers, of what happened to Miami, but it all keeps coming back to one word in particular.
Domination.
LSU dominated the line of scrimmage, on both sides, from their first offensive series onward. The Tigers would score on eight straight possessions, beginning with the series that tied the game at three apiece.
Miami managed a mere 153 yards of total offense. Three of those yards was their total for the second half. The number-one pass defense in the country would give up 196 airborne yards and two touchdowns, without netting a single interception. The third-ranked overall Miami defense would give up a total of 468 yards, the most it has given up all season. The Miami offense would manage only six first downs. None of those were in the second half. The 37-point loss would be their worst bowl loss in school history.
This was the LSU team many expected to see this season. The team was disciplined, poised. The team was supportive of their new quarterback, and bent over backwards to take as much burden off of him as possible. The team was confident with Matt Flynn at the helm.
JaMarcus Russell is an incredible athlete. His play this year has been light-years better than last season. Yet Coach Les Miles may have to take a serious look at the position in the off-season. The better man for the job may have just led his team to a 40-3 victory over the last Hurricanes of the year.
I find it amusing the producers of Syriana are touting the fact of their whopping two Golden Globe nominations. The movie cost $50 million, and has only made $33.6 million after being in theaters a month, a third of that made on its opening weekend. Then there are all of those marketing costs, such as commercials touting your two Golden Globe nominations.
[Figures courtesy of Box Office Mojo.]
Mary Katharine Ham notes a Boston Globe piece on how, just under three years away from the next presidential election, the Democratic Party is already seeking dirt on a potential Republican contender.
This is yet further proof that the Democrats are out of ideas. Their only platform continues to be “We’re everything the Republicans aren’t.” That may work with the lunatic fringe of the Left, but in mainstream America, voters like to hear about plans and ideas for moving the country forward.
Speaking of college football, I have the Music City Bowl on in the background, and I noticed a few moments ago a commercial on behalf of the Football Bowl Association. Clearly, this is an opening salvo to maintain the status quo and not allow a playoff system for NCAA Division I-A football, the only level of any major college sport to not have a playoff system.
Jonathan Chait weighs in on why USC is overrated, noting how ESPN is leading the sports media in a frothing charge to bestow on the Trojans their—ahem—“third-straight” national championship.
[Thanks to my sweet for the Slate link.]
By now, most people have heard John Kerry’s slanderous comments about our servicemen terrorizing women and children in Iraq. James Taranto turns the table on the man who would be President, noting a CNN story about what a handful of our servicemen are really up to: doing everything possible, with help from folks stateside, to see that a little Iraqi girl doesn’t die from spina bifida.
Like Merlin, I have longed for the ability in iCal to have alarms automatically created for new events. Now, thanks to Robert Blum gives us iCalFix, which does exactly that. Robert notes version 0.2 will be out some time in January, but I’ve been using today with no issues. (Note: iCalFix requires the installation of SIMBL.)
So the gang at 37signals have launched an affiliate program for Backpack, and, of course, I’ve signed up. You will note the link graphic in the side bar, under the “Support” heading.
37signals is doing something a bit differently with the Backpack affiliate program: you don’t actually receive cash, but rather credit toward your own Backpack account. Theoretically, your own Backpack usage could be completely free if enough people sign up for a paid plan through your referral link.
You can use this link to sign up for and use the Backpack web service. The default plan is free, so it doesn’t cost you a thing to try the service out. Backpack affiliates don’t make a dime unless you upgrade from the free plan to one of the paid plans, which start at a mere five dollars a month. (This is the plan I am currently on.) Continued use of Backpack is one more reason I will likely not renew my .Mac subscription next year.
I just wish the affiliate program had been up and running last month, when I upgraded. Then Tom, who got me hooked on Backpack to begin with, could have earned some coin.
Backpack won’t be for everyone, just as with any other tool, but as with any other tool, you won’t know if you’ll like it unless you try it.
Do not leave your Gmail In box open in your browser window, as it inevitably will consume mass amounts of real and virtual memory. Get in, do what you have to do, and get out.
Adam Engst details the plan for retiring the Info-Mac Network, noting that it has outlived its usefulness given the Internet’s current climate.
The retirement will not be immediate, though the ceasing of new software acceptance will be. The Info-Mac server will remain online for a few months, as mirror sites make the necessary decisions regarding supporting the now-frozen archive. If you want your very own mirror of the Info-Mac archives, you’ll need a mere seven gigabytes of storage and a simple Unix command.
You have to love the ode to Douglas Adams on Tim Berners-Lee’s new blog. (Hint: bottom of the page.)
[A wave of the phin to John.]
Given this news, John Gruber makes an excellent point:
This puts Macworld in an awkward spot if they ever again want to review or compare RSS aggregators. If they say NetNewsWire is the best (which it currently is) they’re wide open to accusations of bias; if they say it’s not the best, then they’re stuck admitting that their readers who use the bundled version of NNW are getting something less than the best.
Does anyone else remember when the press, in general, was not burdened by corporate ownership? I just turned 35, and I can recall it being a near-industry standard not that long ago, in my lifetime, where press bodies operated independently.
John is dead-on in his analysis: how are we ever to take seriously any review Macworld conducts of any news reader from this point forward? The fact notwithstanding that a large amount of the Macintosh news reader community, this author included, agrees that NetNewsWire is, in fact, the best news reader out there, on any platform, and, the fact notwithstanding that said Macintosh news reader community likely applauds Macworld’s decision to go with NetNewsWire, given that same would likely ridicule Macworld for choosing what it would perceive to be a lesser application if something other than NetNewsWire was chosen, one has to wonder what the thinking is amongst the editorial staff of Macworld to essentially paint themselves in to a corner when it comes to an ever-increasingly important segment of the software arena.
Jeff does an outstanding job of showing the flip side of the coin the press doesn’t want to admit:
Yes, the President is responsible for making the decision to go to war based in part on intelligence that turned out to be incomplete. But the President is also responsible for acting with swift resolve to unseat a brutal dictator, terrorist and friend to terrorists. He’s also responsible for having the sheer guts to go it alone when a great many of the West’s liberal democracies shirked their responsibility both as leaders of the world and as members of the Security Council of the United Nations. He’s also responsible for bringing Saddam Hussein to justice, for capturing or killing his cohorts in crime, for cutting off a huge source of funding to Palestinian murder gangs, for shattering Ansar al-Islam, and for freeing the Shiite people of Iraq from decades of illegitimate rule by a Stalinist political party. And in many ways, President Bush is personally responsible for bringing liberty to Iraq for the first time ever, and for changing the history of the Middle East, and the Arab and Muslim worlds.
The Democratic Party’s national leadership has plumbed a record depth in its search to score points against the Republicans. In the past week and a half, both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have called for the United States to surrender in Iraq. Not since George McGovern in 1972 has one party called for the United States military to surrender to an enemy during wartime.
Some will object to the word, “surrender,” but there is no other word to describe the immediate withdrawal of troops from the war zone in Iraq. The simple fact is that two of the nation’s three highest-ranking Democrats are advocating an enemy victory over U.S. forces in a foreign land. That not only is appalling in its contempt for the troops who have died to liberate Iraq, it is astonishing in its brazen disregard for the lives and well-being of the Iraqi people.
[Via Political Diary.]
Now that Yahoo! has absorbed another social-software site, maybe del.icio.us’s import feature will get fixed. I’m hesitant to really dive in to the service, or Furl, until one of them can import all of the bookmarks I have loaded in my browser.
While testing a new product for review, you set your iPod on shuffle, and hear Hootie & the Blowfish, dc Talk, King James (old Christian metal group), Petra (the Aerosmith of Christian rock), and then VeggieTales. Just kind of throws that whole rhythm off to have Junior pop in to the middle of the mix with “Come over to my house and play!”
During the Christmas season, one sees Angel Trees nearly everywhere: at work, in the malls, at church; you can hardly go anywhere without running in to an Angel Tree. Between church and work, we’ve already picked a few angels ourselves, and I’m sure many of you have, too.
There is a group of children that are often overlooked this time of year, and those are the children of prison inmates. Prison Fellowship started its Angel Tree ministry in 1982, and has been going strong ever since. It’s not these kids’ fault their parents are behind bars, and they deserve to get something for Christmas as much as any other child.
This year, a generous donor is matching all Angel Tree contributions up to $100,000, which means a normal donation that would give one child a gift will now serve two kids.
So please consider making a donation that can turn what is often a lonely time for these kids into one of joy.
Last night, for my birthday, my wife and I went to see the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.
Wow.
In my opinion, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon nailed Johnny Cash and June Carter. No wonder the latter hand-picked the former to play them.
My wife, who isn’t familiar with Cash’s music beyond “Ring of Fire” (written by June Carter, in case you didn’t know, which my wife did not), thoroughly enjoyed the picture. She discovered she likes Cash’s music, too. I’ll have to load some up for her on her iPod Shuffle.
Sidebar: My wife told me that Rosanne Cash, Johnny’s oldest child from his first marriage, was not thrilled with the portrayal of her mother, Viv, to the point of having walked out of the screening she attended. My wife and I agree that Rosanne has nothing to worry about. I don’t think Viv came off as hysterical or unhinged at all. I think she came off perfectly as what she was: a woman who realized that she was not her husband’s true love; a woman who knew her husband was unfaithful, and that her life was not the least bit what she had expected it to be. Given that, I don’t think Viv’s actions, as portrayed in the film, are the least bit out of line.
I thought the movie was great, even if they had to gloss over some more intriguing parts of Cash’s life due to the time constraints of a major motion picture. This was not only a story of a man’s dream to record and perform his music, it was the love story of Johnny and June.
Days before we saw the film, I signed up for an account with eMusic. If you sign up now, you get 50 free downloads. Unlike the iTunes Music Store, the MP3s you download from eMusic have no DRM attached. You can burn them to a CD, load them to a music player, pretty much do whatever you want to with them, just as if you had ripped them from a CD of your very own. I used a little over half of my free downloads to get Cash’s The Complete Sun Singles. This was very timely, given the material is heavily featured in the film. (Consequently, after using my 50 free downloads, I’ve since cancelled my eMusic account; they don’t have anything else I want.)
What’s sad is that, at 35, my wife and I were the youngest people in the theater, and that’s a real shame. Walk the Line is highly recommended, even if you’re not a fan of Cash’s music, and especially so if you know little about the man or his career.
Apparently, all common sense has left NCAA Divison I-A football rankings. Like we didn’t know that already.
Let me see if I get this straight: LSU begins the year with a new head coach; overcomes the fallout of Hurricane Katrina; has its season opener rescheduled to an off-week later in the season; has its second game, originally scheduled as a home game, played on the road, with a spectacular fourth-down play to win the game as time expires; has its third scheduled game of the year, now the first actual home game of the season, moved from Saturday night to Monday night, thanks to Hurricane Rita; loses said game to Tennessee in overtime, sloppily giving up a 21-point lead and allowing the Volunteers to tie the game; then wins every single game for the rest of the season, including beating Auburn, Alabama, and Florida, to clinch the SEC West.
The Tigers lose—and rightfully so, given the way they played—to Georgia in the SEC title game. So going in, LSU is the #3 or #4 team in the country, the #1 team in the SEC, but fails to clinch the championship. So this means a drop in the rankings for the Tigers, and they become the #2 team in the SEC, with the same record as Georgia, right?
That would be a no.
Not only did LSU fall out of the Top 10, to the likes of Notre Dame, Oregon, and Miami, because the loss—in the championship game—to Georgia gives them two conference losses, somehow Auburn—you remember Auburn, the team LSU defeated earlier in the season?—becomes the #2 team in the SEC and gets the bid for the Capital One Bowl. LSU goes to the Peach Bowl instead.
Not that I have anything against the Peach Bowl, seeing as how it’s sponsored by my favorite fast food chain. But it’s no Capital One Bowl. (NCAA football trivia: give the name of the Capital One Bowl before it was co-opted by corporate interests.)
So the trend continues. The Tigers got little respect, if any, in 2003 when they won the national championship, and given all they have been through this season, they get none at the end of the season either. Michael, Eric, my empathy with you deepens every year.
I don’t often link to The New York Times, but when the publication I work on gets a mention, well, I have to throw the Times some link love.
James Fallows notes the plethora of Macintosh thought-organization applications (free registration required), and About This Particular Macintosh gets a mention in the last paragraph.
This is due to the incredible work of Ted Goranson, and his About This Particular Outliner series. Thanks, Ted, for all of your hard work!
[From Michael via e-mail.]
Let’s see: renewing the Patriot Act, the Senate needing to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees, as well as a Supreme Court nominee, et cetera, et cetera.
So what do they turn their attention to? Why, the Bowl Championship Series, of course.
Pay attention, because this is likely one of the few political issues Lawson and I will agree on: Representative Barton, you’re wasting your time, your colleagues’ time, the time of BCS board members, and taxpayer dollars. Congress has no business sticking its nose in to the BCS mess.
I wouldn’t go as far as Barton in saying the BCS is “deeply flawed,” though it has made some whoppers in the past few years: picking Oklahoma over USC to face LSU in 2003, and picking Oklahoma over Auburn to face USC in 2004 immediately spring to mind.
The solution to the problems of the BCS is not a Congressional investigation. Rather, the football bigwigs at the NCAA need to get together with the various bowl organizers and sponsors and develop a playoff system for Division I-A football where the championship game will be rotated among the bigger bowls. As the ESPN article notes, there’s a lot of money in the bowl games, particularly the BCS bowls, and a playoff system would theoretically kill off some of those dollars. I don’t believe that would happen; look at March Madness with NCAA Division I-A basketball.
Nevertheless, the overriding issue is money. If it wasn’t, then the cadets and midshipmen wouldn’t be crammed into the corners of the stadium for the annual Army-Navy game, but would be seated, out of respect, directly behind their teams’ benches. (We wouldn’t see that awful swoosh logo on those classically minimalist uniforms, either.)
Until the NCAA and the bowls figure out a way to not lose money, we won’t see the much-needed playoff system—for the only sport in Division I-A without a playoff system—for college football, and we will continue to have controversy over whom should play for the championship, and which team is truly number one.
This morning, we took the little phisch to downtown Dallas for the annual Neiman Marcus Adolphus Christmas Parade. He had a gas, and I hope to have photos up soon.
Before the parade began, I was 34. By the time the parade was over, I was 35. My wife—who, for the record, is six months older than I—has found it fun today to refer to me as “old,” and to remind me that it’s “all downhill from here.”
Actually, looking at average age statistics for non-smoking males in the United States, I believe I have another two to three years before I reach the top of the slope and began the descent.
Tonight we’re going out to see Walk the Line, and once again, the Tigers are playing for the SEC Championship on my birthday. (Thank God for TiVo.)
Hugh notes Kevin McCullough’s campaign to send Christmas cards to the ACLU.
Ever since the little phisch was born, the Christmas cards we’ve sent out have been the kind where a photo of the youngun was part of the card. So we have a few boxes of Christmas cards that will likely never be used. Kevin’s campaign sounds fun, and I have the materials.
So the ACLU can expect a Christmas card from me this year. Probably two. Maybe three.
Alright, four.
Let’s just say, when I get tired of signing them and filling out the address info on the envelopes, okay?
The December issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading and downloading pleasure.
Our continued thanks to Bare Bones for their sponsorship of the publication. ATPM is an all-volunteer effort, and any monies made from sponsorships or ads go to support the ever-growing hosting costs for our eleven years’ worth of issues. If you are a hardware or software developer for the Macintosh community, and you would like to become an ATPM sponsor, please contact the editors.
Rob reminds us of December issues past, present, and takes a peek at the future. Ellyn notes how the gadgets of Star Trek are slowly appearing today. As usual, you can depend on Paul for an eclectic mix of sites to explore: tractors, Mac browsers, sudoku, Lowe’s library, and a porcelain throne in a pear tree.
Ted wraps up some loose ends in this month’s ATPO, and puts the call out to the outlining community for users to help out with future ATPO columns, as well as proposing something of a formal gathering of the outlining community: an e-mail list, forum, or web site. If you’re a hard-core outliner, and any of Ted’s proposal strikes you, drop him a note.
Johann delivers a column on how a formerly-derided technology is now changing the way he interacts with his PowerBook and mobile phone. Tom provides a quick how-to on Apple’s PhotoBooth, and Sylvester offers part deux of his music server series.
Tom weighs in on Docktopus, which I’m still trying to figure out if I like or not. Lee convinces me the iFM, in its current state, isn’t for me given my listening habits. Eric reviews a book I will have to take a serious look at, as well as the tome Rob read for this month’s issue. Andrew delivers a double-shot of trackball reviews, with the X-Arcade, and my trackball of choice, the Logitech Trackman Wheel. (I have the corded version.) I’m not a gamer (and if I were, I’d probably use a console), so Andrew’s concerns on using the Logitech for games is moot for me.
Yours truly contributes some shots from the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park, taken this past June on a family vacation, for this month’s desktop pictures section. In this month’s Cortland, the Lisa turns on her creators, while Cortland is rewarded for his forward-thinking when it comes to backups. Frisky talks about one of my favorite media apps, VLC, which I’ve been using to watch those episodes of Joey I’ve missed and had to download from the ‘net, because the TiVo is recording someone else’s shows during that time slot.
As usual, you can download the latest issue in one of three flavors. Just don’t spill the egg nog.