And the winner of my almost twenty bucks is…

Last night, my Movable Type installation decided it wanted to keep me from further posting on any of my blogs. This wasn’t simply an authentication error with my login and password. Something in MT’s lib directory wasn’t playing nice, and I kept getting this error:
MT/App/CMS.pm did not return a true value at /www/retrophisch/public/movabletype/mt.cgi line 21.
Now I had been considering upgrading to Transmit 3, since as a registered user of version 2.x, I could do so for $17.95. Or I could, as a registered user of version 4.x, upgrade to Interarchy 7 for $19.
This really wasn’t a fair contest, as I was using Interarchy 7.3.1 and the last 2.x version of Transmit, 2.6.2, not the new version 3. For whatever reason, whenever I SFTPed in to my domain with Transmit, the transfer mode always turned to Auto, with no way to turn this off so I could transfer in ASCII, or Text, mode. Interarchy saved the day. It reuploaded MT’s lib directory from the local installation copy I had, preserving permissions, etc. And while they’re so similiar, I’m not sure there’s much of a differece, but I like Interarchy’s “Edit in BBEdit” implementation better than Transmit 2’s.
Transmit’s a great app, don’t get me wrong, but this time around, my money went to Interarchy.

“But the police will protect you, you don’t need a gun…”

Tell that to Barbara Gesell and her daughter Theresa, who used her .45-caliber handgun to subdue the purse snatcher who attacked the elder Gesell, 83, in her garage as she arrived home.

“A man has attacked us in our house, and we are fighting him in the yard,” Theresa Gesell said to the 911 dispatcher.

As the struggle moved down the street, a neighbor — whom Theresa Gesell identified as “Hershall” — stopped to help. Theresa then grabbed her .45-caliber pistol and continued running after Campbell — despite the dispatcher’s plea for her to drop the handgun.

“I am going to go get my .45 … you all are too slow,” she said.

As the call continues, the dispatcher asks Theresa to get rid of the weapon. However, after the suspect tried to escape along a creek bed, Theresa and Hershall used the pistol to make sure he didn’t leave.

“You can go put that gun up now,” the dispatcher said.

“No sir,” Theresa replied. “We have the gun pointed at him … he must have been a city fellow because he didn’t know anything about the woods.”

Seconds later, police arrived and arrested Campbell. With Hershall’s help, the Gesells retrieved Barbara’s purse.
So let’s do the math: 1 purse snatcher attacking an 83 year-old woman + 1 daughter with firearm = subdued criminal who would have escaped before police could arrive on scene. Now imagine that the criminal in question was after more than a purse, and you can see why firearms save more lives each year than they take. You just don’t hear about all of those live-saving events on the nightly news.
[Emphasis added. –R]

Free speech, private versus public

Ann Coulter:

Tenure was supposed to create an atmosphere of open debate and inquiry, but instead has created havens for talentless cowards who want to be insulated from life. Rather than fostering a climate of open inquiry, college campuses have become fascist colonies of anti-American hate speech, hypersensitivity, speech codes, banned words and prohibited scientific inquiry.

Even liberals don’t try to defend Churchill on grounds that he is Galileo pursuing an abstract search for the truth. They simply invoke “free speech,” like a deus ex machina to end all discussion. Like the words “diverse” and “tolerance,” “free speech” means nothing but: “Shut up, we win.” It’s free speech (for liberals), diversity (of liberals) and tolerance (toward liberals).

Ironically, it is precisely because Churchill is paid by the taxpayers that “free speech” is implicated at all. The Constitution has nothing to say about the private sector firing employees for their speech. That’s why you don’t see Bill Maher on ABC anymore. Other well-known people who have been punished by their employers for their “free speech” include Al Campanis, Jimmy Breslin, Rush Limbaugh, Jimmy the Greek and Andy Rooney.
I have seen confusion regarding one’s free speech rights regarding one’s employer on more than one occasion on various e-mail lists. In this country, you have the right to political free speech, but this does not necessarily translate to a right to said speech while on your employer’s dime. Your right to said speech also does not translate in to a right in having it heard or accepted by those who disagree.

“We are what we say we are not.”

George Neumayr:

Whenever a Democrat tells the public what his party “is not” he’s revealing to them what it is. John Kerry fell into this habit often, saying the Democratic Party “was not” weak on national defense which only succeeded in reminding voters of the party’s historic uselessness on security issues.

On Meet the Press last Sunday, Howard Dean returned to this poisoned well, protesting a little too much at what the “party was not.” He said, “We’re not the party of abortion,” and “We’re not the party of gay marriage.” An appropriate response from moderator Tim Russert would have been a loud and sustained chuckle.

Who declared it President’s Day?

Today we celebrate Washington’s Birthday. Yet on every calendar I own, today is noted as President’s Day, where we supposedly honor both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the latter of whom’s birthday was the 12th. (Another notable President, Ronald Reagan, would have been 94 on the 6th.)
Per Matthew Spaulding, a Heritage Foundation scholar, in today’s Federalist Brief (No. 05-08):

“Although it was celebrated as early as 1778, and by the early 19th Century was second only to the Fourth of July as a patriotic holiday, Congress did not officially recognize Washington’s Birthday as a national holiday until 1870. The Monday Holiday Law in 1968–applied to executive branch departments and agencies by Richard Nixon’s Executive Order 11582 in 1971–moved the holiday from February 22 to the third Monday in February. Section 6103 of Title 5, United States Code, currently designates that legal federal holiday as ‘Washington’s Birthday.’ Contrary to popular opinion, no action by Congress or order by any President has changed ‘Washington’s Birthday’ to ‘President’s Day’.”
So how did this come to be known popularly as “President’s Day”?

Summer hockey?

Should there ever be another NHL season, Darryl Reaugh, color man for the Dallas Stars, may have hit a motherload of an idea on moving the time of the season, with the help of Tony Fireoved, Stars Executive V.P. of Corporate Sales:

Envision this.

It’s June 19th, there’s a little less than a month remaining in the regular season. The Sharks are in town. The temperature is 85 at game time. Outside of American Airlines Center, fans have been enjoying the festival atmosphere complete with bbq grilling and a live band. Inside, first place in the West is on the line.

Crazy?
The gist of the the column is that NHL seasons would be contained with a single calendar year, starting some time after the Super Bowl and ending in August. No NFL to compete with, only half of the year is spent competing with the NBA (not only for eyeballs and fans’ wallets, but for space in venues), and by the time the NHL season ends, MLB still has half a season to go. I’m intrigued.
Too bad Gary Bettman continues to show his inability to vault the NHL higher in the collective minds’ eye of sports fans in the U.S. He’s allowed ESPN/ABC to slide on their television contracts (at least Fox was willing to put NHL games on the same weekend as NFL games). He’s shown an inability to get the trade dispute resolved, and was forced to cancel the 2004-05 season. There’s no way he would ever consider something like what Reaugh and Fireoved propose.

The usurping judiciary

It truly is quite amazing how prescient our Founding Fathers were:

“It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression…that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary;…working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped.” –Thomas Jefferson

Congratulations to the NHL and NHLPA

The Stanley Cup is the oldest professional sports trophy in North America, a fact proudly touted in the sports world by the NHL. Now professional hockey can lay claim to another famous first in North American professional sports: it is the first to cancel an entire season.
I was raised on LSU football, and later, during the Dale Brown glory years, LSU basketball. When I was a student at LSU, the Tigers began their dominance of the College World Series in the 1990s. Growing up in Baton Rouge, we had no professional sports teams, only the New Orleans Saints, an hour’s drive away. Doesn’t sound like much, but that hour’s drive may as well have been an ocean. I didn’t pay attention to the Saints until I was a resident of the New Orleans metroplex, and while I attended a few games, most were at someone else’s expense.
I got in to hockey my last year in college, when I had my own place and cable television. ESPN’s National Hockey Night brought me at least a game a week, and I grew addicted. Maybe it was all the attention Pavel Bure received, but I found myself following the Vancouver Canucks, and thrilled to their Stanley Cup bid in 1994. Taking the Rangers to seven games, it was probably the greatest Stanley Cup series I’ve watched since I began to love the game.
My first NHL game was in 1996, when my spouse and I ventured from New Orleans to Dallas to see the Stars play the Canucks. It was a memorable weekend for several reasons: it was my first time in Dallas; Dallas saw a big snow storm the night of our arrival, leaving us “trapped” in our hotel most of the next day; we saw our some friends we hadn’t seen in three years; and the Canucks walloped the Stars.
My wife was recruited by a Dallas law firm, and in July 1998, we made the move from New Orleans. I was at the first home game of the 1998-99 season for the Stars, and I watched or listened to every game that year. I stayed up all night long to see Brett Hull score the third-overtime goal (and sorry, Buffalo, it was a goal) to deliver the Stars franchise its first-ever Stanley Cup.
I’ve been to a few games each year since then, mostly thanks to recruiting and client development efforts on the part of my wife’s now-former firm. But I’ve also paid my own way on more than one occasion to see the Stars play. I’ve rooted for Mo, and Eddie the Eagle, Turk and Nieuwey.
And now the players of the NHLPA have thrown away all of the good will they have built up over the years, not only with myself, but with millions of other hockey fans.
Yes, I lay the bulk of the blame for this cancellation at the feet of the players and their union. If they were willing to concede to a salary cap at the eleventh hour, why were they not willing to do so earlier in the lost season, when there was still a season to be salvaged? Why are they letting this season go away because of 6.5 million dollars per team. That’s right. That is the difference in the total salary-cap figures the teams want to impose, and the players are willing to accept. Six-point-five million. That’s about a couple hundred thousand per player on each team. That’s pathetic.
As I’ve noted before, these guys get paid to play a game. They get to do as their profession in life something millions of people wish they could do as well for just one afternoon. We made you. Sure, you have great talent and skill. No one denies that. But where would you be without hockey fans? Playing pick-up games on the town’s frozen pond in between gutting fish or delivering packages? Professional sports run on fans. Professional sports gain television contracts to reach more fans because advertisers are willing to spend money to reach those fans in an attempt to sell products. No fans means no professional sport.
I’m not saying the team owners and the league get a pass, please don’t misunderstand. I’m a good little capitalist, and believe both the owners and the players should try to make as much money as possible. But everyone negotiates their salary; first, when you gain employment, then thereafter based on your performance and later experience. It’s the same whether you’re working at McDonald’s, coding for a Fortune 100 company, or playing a professional sport. And sometimes, the business just doesn’t have enough money in the bag to pay you what you want–and believe you deserve–to get paid.
Maybe the answer isn’t a salary cap. Maybe some of these smaller market teams in the NHL should be allowed to shrivel and die, even in the birthplace of hockey, O Canada. That would be good capitalism. It would also mean a smaller marketplace in the NHL for players, so maybe the players and their union should think twice before embarking on a course of action which would lead to that outcome, as fewer of them would be employed.
When the Stars began play in Dallas in 1993, many people thought they’d never see the NHL below the Mason-Dixon line. Today, you have five NHL teams in the old South: Dallas, the Florida Panthers, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Nashville Predators, and the Carolina Hurricanes. Two of those teams have won the Stanley Cup. Those people who thought “What is hockey doing in Texas?” must be out of their minds wondering “What is hockey doing in Tampa Bay?” Never mind the fact that the Lightning now have their name on the Cup.
Three years ago, however, Tampa Bay would have been a poster child for the NHL chopping block. The Ottawa Senators have always been so (in my mind, at least). After a wildly successful inaugural season, attendance has been disappointing at Nashville games. I’m not hearing much from the Columbus Blue Jackets, and I can’t imagine that market supporting a NHL team in the long run, unless they can consistently begin making long playoff runs. Maybe some of these teams should never have been allowed to be. Maybe some of them should be allowed to fold.
None of that really matters now. There will be no 2004-05 season for the National Hockey League. A suitable compromise could not be reached by the two sides. Both sides have gotten rich at the expense of the one thing they cannot afford to lose: fans. It will take years for the NHL/NHLPA to win back the fans it is going to lose with this utter nonsense.
I don’t particularly care for basketball, other than to actually play it. The NBA holds no appeal to me, even less so now that I’ve actually attended a NBA game. While I’ll watch the NFL, I don’t follow a specific team, and I much prefer the college game. I think Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones are both incredible egomaniacs, and could care less about the Mavericks or Cowboys while either is running his respective show.
That leaves me with hockey and baseball. My winter, as far as sports are concerned, is shot. I think MLB (talk about a league needing a salary cap) spring season starts next month…

What’s so del.icio.us about it?

Am I the only one who doesn’t get the whole del.icio.us craze?

iScrolling

I just installed the temporary version of Daniel Becker’s iScroll2 on my 12-inch PowerBook G4 1 GHz. I’m loving it. Provided it proves stable, I’ll load the permanent version. It’s certainly worth checking out for pre-2005 PowerBook owners.