Brian pointed me to this political quiz, established in 1994 by Democratic consultant Victor Kamber and his Republican counterpart, Bradley S. O’Leary.
I’m a Bob Dole conservative, with a score of 35 out of 40.
Big surprise.
Take the test and leave your score in the comments.
Ann skewers the leftists once again over the U.S. victory in Iraq:
They said chemical weapons would be used against our troops. That didn’t happen. They predicted huge civilian casualties. That didn’t happen. They said Americans would turn against the war as our troops came home in body bags. That didn’t happen. They warned of a mammoth terrorist attack in America if we invaded Iraq. That didn’t happen. Just two weeks ago, they claimed American troops were caught in another Vietnam quagmire. That didn’t happen.
Now the biggest mishap liberals can seize on is that some figurines from an Iraqi museum were broken–a relief to college students everywhere who have ever been forced to gaze upon Mesopotamian pottery. We’re not talking about Rodins here. So the Iraqis looted. Oh well. Wars are messy. Liberalism is part of a religious disorder that demands a belief that life is controllable.
My lovely bride pointed me to this Fortune article on the new iTunes Music Service. Obviously written for publication before the service was officially announced, it provides a great look at Jobs’ vision behind the service, and the inadequacy of the music industry in its previous and current efforts at online distribution.
A few items I’d like to address:
One thing’s for sure: If ever there was an industry in need of transformation, it’s the music business. U.S. music sales plunged 8.2% last year, largely because songs are being distributed free on the Internet through illicit file-sharing destinations like KaZaA.
I take issue with this statement, since it’s impossible to prove that illegal file sharing has had this much impact on the U.S. music biz. There is a ton of physical piracy (blanket CD copying) going on overseas, especially in Asia, that eats in to the music industry more than a bunch of geeks swapping songs online.
I have downloaded a lot of music from peer-to-peer networks, as well as some centralized sites I have access to. Some of it was digital copies of CDs and cassettes I already own. The rest was stuff I wanted to listen to before I went out and bought it. A lot of that got trashed when I realized it wasn’t for me.
I know I’m not the only one who probably spent more on music (albeit looking for sales and good prices online) because I was pulling music off the net.
Second, it seems as though hardly anyone in the music business thinks that the problem with falling sales may be attributed to the product itself. Elsewhere in the article:
For years they have been able to get away with releasing albums with two or three potential hits bundled with ho-hum filler cuts. That has been wonderful for the industry, but it has made a generation of consumers who pay $18.99 for CDs very cynical. “People are sick and tired of that,” says singer-songwriter Seal. “That’s why people are stealing music.”
Amen. That’s it right there. And we see further evidence of the music industry’s slow-to-catch-on attitude:
But MusicNet users still can’t download songs onto portable players. “These devices haven’t caught on yet,” insists MusicNet CEO Alan McGlade. Never mind that U.S. sales of portable MP3 players soared from 724,000 in 2001 to 1.6 million last year.
Hmmm. I would think a better-than-two-times annual growth, in a year, in any segment of the tech economy would be cause for consideration of said segment.
As for the service itself, I think it’s great. I haven’t actually bought and downloaded any music yet, but that’ll change any day. I’ve spent quite a bit of time searching through it and listening to samples. It’s going to change the way I buy music. It’s going to change the music business.
Lee notes David Pogue’s column on the individual song pricing structures at Apple’s new online music store. Good points all around.
There is a story from the NY Times talking about a growing segment of the American population doing exactly that. Of note:
“People use the unemployment rate as some kind of gauge of the health of the economy,” said Robert H. Topel, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. But because of the number of people now outside of the labor force, he said, “the unemployment rate does not give you the same kind of information it did in the 1970’s or 1960’s.”
(A little disappointed in the Times–you do not put an apostrophe-s after a year to state a decade; just put the s after the year, as in, 1970s.)
The real gem, though, has to be this:
“I’ve been trying to find a conventional job for two years,” Ms. Leftridge said. “Finally, I’m thinking about doing a home-based business. I don’t see it as giving up. I see it as expanding my search. I ought to be able to make some money this way, and start building back my savings, in a situation where I’m not hostage to any company’s budget, to any budget.”
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking if I get laid off. Better to be the hostage-taker than the hostage. Or something like that.
“The London Guardian found documents showing Paris fed intelligence to Baghdad before the war. Iraq got diplomatic secrets and military guidance from France. Who else could have taught the Iraqis how to lose their entire country in two weeks?” —Argus Hamilton
So after three crashes in a row today, I’ve decided to dump Safari as my main browser. Despite this being v73, aka, Public Beta 2, and fairly rock solid, and despite disabling the cache, known cause of myriad problems, it’s still not stable enough for my liking.
Granted, Safari doesn’t crash every day for me normally. More like once a week or so. It’s just that it chooses to crash at the most inopportune times!
So I downloaded Safari Bookmark Exporter, and got my Safari bookmarks into Camino. I’ve noticed that Camino consumes less RAM than Safari, and doesn’t seem to get bogged down as usage is extended day after day after day. We’ll see where this goes, and wait for Safari 1.0.
Another trailer, this time for the Sam Jackson-Colin Farrell-LL Cool J-Michelle Rodriguez vehicle, S.W.A.T. Loosely based on the 1970s television show of the same name (apparently the only similarity is an updated theme song), it looks pretty good. This was one of my favorite shows when I was about four or five years old.
For the uninitiated, S.W.A.T. stands for Special Weapons And Tactics. The first S.W.A.T. team in the United States was fielded by the Los Angeles Police Department, and next to the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), they are considered the elite such force in the nation. (Of non-military units, that is. The Army’s Delta Force and SEAL Team Six are also antiterrorist units, but are used for overseas operations.)
All of the above units are modeled on the antiterrorist division of the British SAS (Special Air Service), which remained secret until Operation Nimrod, the 1980 Iranian Embassy hostage siege in London, which was broadcast worldwide.
The notorious Bill Maher admitted on his April 25th show that he was incorrect in his belief that there is a right to privacy in the Constitution. Yes, that’s right, you constitutionally-ignorant plebeians on the Left: there is no guaranteed right to privacy in the Constitution of the United States of America. Yes, that means that despite what the Supreme Court says, Roe v Wade is constitutionally invalid.
Not that U.S. citizens shouldn’t expect a reasonable degree of privacy in some matters. But the fact is that the government already mandates what we can or cannot do with our bodies on many levels.
We are told we cannot put illegal drugs into our bodies. We are told we cannot put alcohol above a certain level in to our bodies, then get behind the wheel of an automobile. We are told that if our vision is not up to par, we cannot get behind that same wheel. Some states insist that those riding motorcycles wear helmets (since some are obviously too stupid to wear one without being told to do so). In many locales, it is illegal to commit suicide (though you can only be prosecuted if you fail). Legally, you cannot smoke until the age of 18, or drink until the age of 21. You have to wear a seat belt while driving in an automobile in every state in the Union (if there is one where you don’t, I am simply ignorant of that fact, and, unlike most in the Left, am welcome to enlightenment).
The fact of the matter is that the “right to privacy” was made up by the Supreme Court, beginning in 1965, and cemented in 1973 with Roe v Wade. And for those of you who may bally-hoo me on this issue, if the federal government was in its Constitutionally-limited role in the first place, we wouldn’t have to worry about it encroaching on our individual privacy.
(Thanks to Brian for the link.)