I have noticed that Safari 2 likes to launch and not remember where its last window position was. I like my application windows to “stick” to the bottom of the menu bar, and Safari was launching with it quite a few pixels south. Damien and I discussed the issue via instant messages, as he was noting the same issue. Turns out the problem is with Safari’s plist preference file, and the good Mr. Barrett has the gory details.
Month: May 2005
I’ll have to look in to the Constitution Party, or something, because it’s official: the Republicans have no spine.
There is bias in news reporting and there always will be. That’s hardly the problem. The problem is forcing people to pay for the bias and propaganda with which they disagree. As Jefferson once wrote, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.”
This sort of tyranny has become a fixation on the left. Leftist artists cannot seem to enjoy their craft without the controversy that comes from forcing people who are offended by it to pay the bill. Leftists also want public financing of political campaigns, so that Americans are forced to pay to promote political views they oppose. Of course, this could just be a pragmatic decision based on the realization that they cannot raise funds voluntarily.
In his column Jacob notes a poll conducted by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which finances PBS and NPR. Only 8 percent of Americans watch PBS. Eight percent. Yet the argument is that PBS has shows that are important to the culture, or that no one else will carry. Maybe the reason no one else will carry them is because no one else is willing to pay for them. And I hardly think Antiques Roadshow qualifies as a important historical documentary series.
We do watch PBS in our home. Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder. Two highly successful childrens’ programs which would do fine on any of the pay-for networks we get through our satellite service. I’ve found of the other shows typically shown on PBS that I would find an interest in, I can find the same or similar type shows on Discovery or the History Channel.
It’s time to fully privatize the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to cut the taxpayer-funding cord. Let PBS and NPR sink or swim in the free market. Ninety-two percent of Americans can’t be wrong.
Because that so-and-so Tom publicly foisted this meme upon me, and Michael tagged me, too, here goes:
Total size of music files on my computer: Tunaphisch is loaded with 25.72 GB of music, exactly 5,000 songs at the moment. Only one of those is a purchase from the iTunes Music Store, and “purchase” may be stretching it, since I redeemed a Pepsi cap to get the song.
Last CD I Bought: Where Angels Fear to Tread by Matt Redman. Most people know Matt’s work from the worship hit “Blessed Be Your Name,” and this is the album it’s on.
Song playing in iTunes: “Come Down
” from the Vineyard Music album Just Like Heaven, the second-to-last CD I bought.
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me: There are a lot of songs that I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me, so here’s what you could call the current batch of such songs, and since I couldn’t decide which one to give up, you get six.
“Callin’ Baton Rouge” by Garth Brooks – it’s not often a song contains the name of your hometown, and it was while at LSU I met my wife.
“Love of a Lifetime
” by Firehouse – the song we danced to at our wedding. I wish the slower acoustic version had been available then.
“May Your Wonders Never Cease
” by Third Day – this song became incredibly important to me when our son was born, nine weeks early, and he spent the first seven weeks of his life in the hospital. Today, you would never know our toddler was a preemie, and God’s wonders do indeed never cease.
“Barely Stay Inside of My Own Skin” by Ceili Rain – like the song says, “Can’t believe the life I get to live.” Despite being unemployed, despite all of the other bad things that have happened to my family over the past two years, I still have a really great life. This is a great pick-me-up song.
“Be Unto Your Name
” by Robin Mark – this is one of my favorite worship songs, and I come back to it again and again.
“A Living Prayer
” by Alison Krauss & Union Station – I saw them perform this on Leno during the Christmas 2004 season, and Ms. Krauss’ vocals cut right to the bone.
The five victims I’m cursing with this meme:
Since Michael stole the bulk of the ATPM bloggers, and most of the other bloggers with whom I am friends have already gone through this torture, here’s my hit list.
Wes Meltzer, because he needs to blog about something other than interning at Popular Mechanics.
Jim Riggs, because he always has something I like, but may not know about.
Brian Borden, because the SuperToad needs to blog about something other than politics.
Tiffany Baxendell, because Tom foisted it on me, babe, so you get to suffer, too. (And I like what Tiff has previously recommended.)
Damien Barrett, because while we don’t always agree on things, he’s a good guy to hang out with, and he gave me my Newton 2100.
Two new Dashboard widgets in service tonight:
Courtesy of Erik, the Gun Self Defense Counter, which uses a formula developed by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz of Northwestern University to show how many times in a calendar year firearms are used to save lives.
The other Michael I call friend IM’ed me about the SysStat widget, which is now in use, replacing MemoryStick. If the developers at iSlayer are feeling adventurous, I’d love a field that would show the front-most application’s (sans Dashboard) memory usage, a la MemoryCell.
Well, we might as well go for the trifecta:
Yesterday we wondered what David French’s “brilliant answer” was when a Cornell Law School job interviewer asked him, how, in light of his evangelical background, “is it possible for you to effectively teach gay students?” French e-mailed us with the answer:
I was surprised and pleased to see that you quoted from my talk to the American Enterprise Institute regarding intellectual diversity (or the lack thereof) and censorship on campus. I noted that you want to know my “absolutely brilliant answer” to the improper interview question. Before I tell you, I just want to make clear that the “absolutely brilliant” comment was made tongue-in-cheek in the speech and was played for laughs. I’m not really quite so full of myself. The truth is that I was fortunate to get the job perhaps in spite of my answer. I responded to the interviewer with the following statement:
“I believe that all human beings are created in the image of God and should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of whether I agree with their personal conduct or beliefs. I will treat all my students well, but I can’t guarantee that they will treat me well when they learn that I’m a dreaded ‘Christian conservative.'”
She responded with a long silence and then said, “I never thought of things from that perspective.”
There are lot of perspectives from which those who run our institutions of higher learning have never thought of things.
I’m sorry for another post from Best of the Web, but Taranto and company are simply on today:
Still, by way of comparison, recall that three years ago Palestinian Arab terrorists occupied the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Priests reported that “gunmen tore up Bibles for toilet paper,” according to the Daily Camera of Boulder, Colo. The Chicago Tribune noted after the siege that “altars had been turned into cooking and eating tables, a sacrilege to the religious faithful.”
Christians in the U.S. responded by declining to riot and refraining from killing anyone. They had the same response 15 or so years ago when the National Endowment for the Arts was subsidizing the scatological desecration of a crucifix and other Christian symbols. This should also put to rest the oft-heard calumny that America’s “religious right” is somehow a Christian equivalent of our jihadi enemies.
This goes hand-in-hand with what Jeff has been saying.
Today’s Best of the Web has what is quite possibly the best explanation of what has gone wrong with the mainstream media over the past forty years.
It’s not just that the media are biased against conservatives and Republicans, though they certainly are. It is that they see every war as another Vietnam and every supposed scandal as another Watergate–at least when Republicans are in the White House, which they usually are.
The obsession with Vietnam and Watergate is central to the alienation between the press and the people. After all, these were triumphs for the crusading press but tragedies for America. And the press’s quest for more such triumphs–futile, so far, after more than 30 years–is what is behind the scandals at both Newsweek and CBS.
[…]
The problem in all three cases is that news organizations were so zealous in their pursuit of the next quagmire or scandal that they forgot their first obligation, which is to tell the truth. Until those in the mainstream media are willing to acknowledge that it is this crusading impulse that has led them astray, we are unlikely to see the end of such journalistic scandals.
In yesterday’s Political Diary, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. reminds us that the recent pension ills at United Airlines are, well, the fault of its employee owners.
Pundits on the weekend talk shows lamented Corporate America’s “breaking of faith” with workers at United Airlines, whose pension plans were gutted in a bankruptcy proceeding last week. Expect more of the same from politicians, and not just Democrats, as Big Labor exploits the issue to promote its opposition to private Social Security accounts and its support for national health care. The political reaction, like yesterday’s pundit reaction, can also be expected to betray perfect and pristine ignorance of what actually occurred at United.
United represents not so much a corporate failure as a labor failure. No industry is as strongly controlled by its workers as the airline business is, and United was the ultimate case in point. The company was 55% owned by its unions; the union bosses controlled three seats on the board and effectively hired and fired the CEO. Labor was sitting on both sides of the table in the 1990s, in short, when workers decided to boost their compensation with unfunded, and unfundable, pension promises while also extracting maximum dollar in current wages and benefits. The same “employee-owners,” in other words, who looted the company by awarding themselves the richest pay deal in the industry also effectively voted to loot the federal government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which they knew would be the ultimate guarantor of United unfunded pension bennies.
Keep all this in mind as the labor campaign gears up, especially when angry, red-faced pilots go on TV to blame their troubles on Corporate America and fatcat CEOs.
American Airlines is headquartered in Fort Worth, and Southwest Airlines in Dallas, so the airline industry is closely monitored here in the DFW metroplex. What amazes me is the amount of whining that comes from the majority of the airline industry, when in the face of all of the economic woes the airlines have been subject to of late, Southwest is still turning a profit.
The reasons for this are many: they offer outstanding customer service, they only service short routes, they do not have a union influence. Southwest employees are enthusiastic, sometimes annoyingly so. However, I’d rather be annoyed by someone’s cheeriness than by someone’s grumpiness (hello, American?).
I am, for the most part, anti-union these days. There was a time and place in our history when workers’ unions were needed, and needed badly. Many perks and benefits workers enjoy in today’s workplace came about as a result of union influence.
But the time of the union sticking up for the little man is over with. More often than not these days, my perception is the unions are harming their members, and the companies which employ those members, more than they are helping them, and only the union bosses have anything to show for it. United’s employees only have themselves to blame.
[Emphasis added in quoted text.]
Radical Left falls over itself volunteering packing help. Soros confirms he will cover all moving expenses. Bill Maher “despondent.” News at 11.