Race, apologies, and reparations

Remember Fred from Fred on Everything? He's the one who wrote the What's Wrong With Our System article we discussed recently. He trends to sling arrows in a lot of directions and one hit the topic of reparations for slavery:

On the Web I find that Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, is demanding that whites pay reparations to blacks. It's because of slavery, see. He is joined in this endeavor by a gaggle of other professional blacks. I guess he'll send me a bill, huh?

I feel like saying, 'Let me get this straight, Hank. I'm slow. Be patient. You want free money because of slavery, right? I don't blame you.' I'd like free money too.

Tell you what. I believe in justice. I'll give you a million dollars for every slave I own, and another million for every year you were a slave. Fair enough? But tell me, how many slaves do you suppose I have? In round numbers, I mean...Say to the nearest dozen.

And how long were you a slave?

Oh.

Fred has a lot of interesting articles on his site. Keep in mind that you may find some material offensive to you and Fred describes himself as "looney as tune."

Link to Fred on Everything

More of the same

These clips should tell you a LOT about why we need to get rid of the dead weight in Washington, D.C. this November!

Questions for Sen. Obama

Radley Balko, who had a few questions for Sen. McCain, has a few questions for Sen. Obama. Some of his great questions:

In February, you said you might support vouchers and charter schools if empirical data showed that they improve education (some studies show that they do). Admirably, your position was, "I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn." After pressure from the teachers unions, you quickly backed off from that position, stating that your campaign doesn't support vouchers "in any shape or form." What prompted that change? And if it's important that we not "throw up our hands" and "walk away from the public schools," why do you send your own kids to private schools?

You not only supported the latest federal farm bill, you commended it, stating that it "will provide America's hard-working farmers and ranchers with more support and more predictability." Critics have called that $307 billion monstrosity an orgy of earmarks, corporate welfare, and protectionism. It actually increases subsidies to huge agribusinesses in an era of record grain prices — subsidies that are already crushing farmers in the developing world. The New York Times called it "disgraceful." The Wall Street Journal called it a "scam." How does the "change" candidate justify supporting a bill larded with sweetheart deals for big agribusiness when just about everyone not getting a check from the bill opposed it?

You continue to support ethanol subsidies despite the fact that corn-based ethanol is inefficient, environmentally unfriendly, and part of the cause of rising food prices. Even liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls ethanol "[b]ad for the economy, bad for consumers, bad for the planet." Perhaps your support stems from you representing a corn producing state. But is supporting a wasteful policy to win votes "change we can believe in," or is it a good sign that you're just another politician?

Link to A Few Questions for Sen. Obama (via FoxNews.com)

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Replace Adobe Acrobat with Foxit Reader

Do you enjoy the running bloated software that takes forever to load a PDF file? If so, skip this week's Tech Tip. Catch up on older tips instead.

For everyone else, start using the free Foxit Reader instead of Adobe Acrobat. Foxit Reader is a light-weight and fast substitute for Adobe Acrobat.

I like to install Adobe Acrobat and then Foxit Reader, so Foxit Reader is my default PDF viewer. This means I have Acrobat on my system for the (unlikely) event that I have to use it for something, but everything defaults to Foxit Reader.

Did I mention the word free?

Link to Foxit Reader

Who is an American?

NPR's Weekend Edition asked people "Who is an American?" in Philadelphia. It's a great story idea and thought-provoking which dovetails nicely with us here. From the story that accompanies the audio:

Independence Park Ranger Tom Degnen concedes that the United States doesn't always live up to its own ideals. But he says an American is someone who keeps trying anyway.

"It's someone who takes to heart the language in our founding documents," Degnen says. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The nation is founded on those principles. We had a hard time living up to them fully. But there has been that effort, and I think an American in the best sense is conscious of that."

So what do you think? Who is an American?

Link to Who is an American? (via NPR.org, audio link on page)

The Second Coming? Obama 's Trip!

I just found a funny piece of satire from Gerard Baker, the United States editor of the London Times, to be an "enlightening" look at the Obama campaign trip abroad. Here's how it starts out:

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

Link to read the whole thing (via the Times Online)

My first Revolution game

I saw my first York Revolution game last night and it was fantastic. I had a great seat, but honestly, I don't think there's a bad seat in the stadium.

Now would be a good time to remind readers of Jeff Johnson's great Revolution Rumblings blog. It's packed with Revolution news, game run-downs and pictures. Revolution fans should have his blog bookmarked.

Regular listeners of Gary's show might've recognized last night's announcer -- Gary's producer, Stu. They kept calling him "Stupendous," which I dislike. I prefer Stutastic, as in "It's Stutastic!"

Link to Revolution Rumblings

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Prepare for your PC's melt-down

What happens when you PC throws a rod, melts down or won't start up? Let's prepare for that.

First, of all let's figure out what's doin'. Does your PC have power? Do you see the BIOS screen or manufacturer logo and then it grinds away without starting?

If the answer is "no," then we probably have a power problem. Replacing your power supply is pretty easy, but we aren't going to mess with that right now.

If the answer is "yes," we've got some other problem. It could be overheated, bad RAM, crashed hard drive or corrupted Windows kernel. Or some other horrible problem. Let's prepare for that day.

1. Back up your stuff.

Back up your important stuff. You do this already, right? Right? Okay, start backing up your important stuff. An easy way to do this is to purchase an external hard drive and use something like Microsoft's free SyncToy to periodically back up important stuff. I can provide more information and advice on this if you need it.

2. Make lists.

Make a list of all the software you use. If your PC blows up you can use this list as a checklist to set up your new PC.

Also, make a list of all your logins and passwords. Web mail, your instant messenger, various websites, everything.

Put both of these lists in a safe place.

3. Download and burn the Ultimate Boot CD. Download and burn Ubuntu Desktop Edition.

Remember to burn each CD image properly. Your burning software will help you with this. Test them both out: Put the Ultimate Boot CD in your CD drive, turn off your PC and start it again. It should boot to the Ultimate Boot CD. Check the Ubuntu disc the same way.

Now, if your PC has power but won't boot, you pop in your Ultimate Boot CD, go to Memtest86+ and run it. It will tell you whether you have a RAM problem.

Do you suspect a virus problem? Run F-Prot Antivirus for DOS off of your Ultimate Boot CD.

There are tons of programs that can help identify and even fix the various problems that might've caused you PC's meltdown.

Now, suppose everything seems fine. It's just Windows that won't work. You can restore Windows, but you haven't backed up your stuff (naughty!). You have work to do and can't deal with this problem for a couple days.

What to do? Pop in your Ubuntu LiveCD. It will boot up, self-configure, mount your hard drive and wait for your imperious command. Need to open a Word document and work on it? Go for it. Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice, an open-source mimic of Microsoft Office. Just remember to save your document as a Word file when you're done. Because of Ubuntu's design, it will be easiest to save that file to a thumbdrive (that's because Ubuntu is set up not to mess with anything permanent unless you install it to your hard drive).

Go ahead and surf the web, play games, etc. All that stuff you see in the menus are compressed and live on the LiveCD. Everything is happening in RAM, which means that it will leave no fingerprints on your Windows hard drive when you turn it off.

Neat, eh? Especially because if Windows is somehow corrupted, you can fire up Ubuntu, access your files and copy them to an external hard drive to save them.

When you see how awesome -- and awesomely customizable -- Ubuntu is, you may wonder whether it's time to switch your computer's OS to Ubuntu. I already did it to two of my computers (one desktop and one laptop) and am seriously considering it for my main home desktop.

And remember: Electronics run on smoke. If you let the smoke out they won't work anymore.

Not running to Harrisburg -- staying on Main Street

I didn't mean to be cryptic or evasive lately and no, Trenton, I have only played a little golf, but I wanted to give a quick update on why I have not posted anything for some time.

When Bev Mackereth decided to step down from the 196th legislative seat effective December 10th, I decided in a very small window of time to make an effort to run for the seat. My only desire was to try and serve as a voice for people in a system that I think is very broken; nothing more.

During the past two weeks, I visited homes of those who would elect the candidate and learned a great deal. One of the things I learned is that there are a lot of people who listen to this show. I also learned that a lot of people count on the show as a an opportunity to voice their thoughts. That's gratifying and shows the importance of people having a voice.

Also during the last couple weeks, I was presented with a difficult choice. With any candidate after the nomination process (at the moment there is one), I would have to get a waiver signed by them to be allowed to remain on the air.

This is because of the public trust and nature of my job. If write-in candidates or candidates signed such a form, I could remain on the air. Even so, I still would not be permitted to discuss any issues on the state level that I might face as an elected official. Not only is that quite limiting, it changes the nature of the show by removing the the freedom to take on all subjects.

If an opponent or opponents decided not to sign the waiver, I would be off the air until at least November -- and probably as late as January. In other words, while everyone else could work at their jobs and run for office, I could not. I would have to find other ways to make money and pay for those pesky little things like health insurance and gas. This choice helped put everything in perspective for me.

These considerations are pretty serious on their own, but I also realized how much I love the privilege of contributing to our community on the air. I believe our conversation on air is stimulating and useful.

So with that in mind, I'm returning to my opportunity and privilege -- never a job -- rejuvenated and bristling with new ideas. I always thought that the biggest part of a person's vocation is to truly enjoy and prize it every day. I can honestly say that after having gone through the process of the past two weeks, I know where I belong, and it is right here. Thank you for your patience and for being a part of this community I love. GS

Questions for Sen. McCain

Radley Balko has a few questions for John McCain. Here's one:

In your January primary debate, you referred to "greedy" Wall Street stockbrokers, and in contrasting your career to the business career of Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, you said, "I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy. And I did it out of patriotism, not for profit."

Do you think a career in public service is inherently more noble and virtuous than a career in the private sector? Are people who spend their lives on the taxpayer dole as politicians and government employees simply better people than those who create wealth and jobs through private enterprise?

Here's another:

In 1989, your wife Cindy became addicted to the prescription drugs Percocet and Vicodin. Eventually, she began stealing medication from the non-profit medical charity she ran to assist the victims of war and disaster areas. You and your wife were able to negotiate a settlement with the Justice Department that let her off with restitution and admission to a rehabilitation center, but no fines, jail time or even public disclosure.

Certainly no one could fault you for trying to save your spouse from criminal sanction. But you're consistently one of the most strident drug warriors in Congress. You've voted to strengthen penalties against those who use and traffic in both illicit drugs and who divert prescription drugs. You've supported mandatory minimums and harsher penalties for first-time offenders. Why shouldn't average people without powerful connections who make the same mistakes your wife made be shown the same leniency and mercy the criminal justice system showed her?

His next column will pose questions to presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

Straight Talk: A few questions for John McCain (via Reason Magazine)

You cool with tech tips?

EDIT: Could you folks do me a favor? When you see a tech tip you like or helps you in some way, post a comment to that tip so I know what you like.

Every Tuesday I post a tech tip (you can see all of them by clicking on the "tips" label below). Okay, most Tuesday's I post a tech tip.

Anyway, my question is: Are you cool with them? Handy? Not handy? What kinds of tech material would you like to see covered?

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Fooling around with Google

Lifehacker.com highlighted some pretty neat Google tricks. Oh, like what you say? Check dis out:

1. Type what time is it in Norway into your Google search bar. Bam! Instant local time and an easy way to see if it's night-time in Norway. Or wherever. Me, I want to know what's doing in Norway. Who knows what Olav is up to.

2. Convert currency (type "what's 7 US dollars in euros" as an example). Heck, convert any units. Try what's 3 cups in quarts as another example.

I'll stop here. Fact is, lifehacker already did a nice job, so just go over there and check out their article.

Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks (via Lifehacker.com)

BONUS TECH TIP

Firefox 3 users -- stop squinting at your screen for those hard-to-read sites. Font too small? Hit CTRL + and CTRL - to increase and decrease magnification on the fly.

The value of classical learning

I got a chunk of "old-school" curriculum in my high school. Greeks, Romans, Shakespeare, European history and the like. We were required to learn a language and demonstrate competency in it in order to graduate. I firmly believe that such an education is timeless in the way it prepares young minds for adulthood.

That changed when I got to college. Euro-centric anything was out (dead white males, you know?). The language requirement was a breeze. Now, I know that the traditional curriculum at my high school was unusual. So it's a shame that colleges and universities moved away from that kind of curriculum, denying most students that kind of education.

Writer Victor Davis Hanson laments this decline in the article The New Learning That Failed. He writes:

The triumph of the therapeutic and the eclipse of the tragic ensured that students’ expectations soared even as their intellectual and mental abilities to handle inevitable setbacks eroded.

The result was a weird marriage in both today’s student and professor of arrogance and ignorance — assurance that bad things either won’t happen or can be easily addressed by identifying the right -ism or -ology, but utter confusion when that never seems quite to be the case.

The article is a bit esoteric and the tone seems a little, well, defeated. After twenty years of this silliness, I get the impression that Hanson isn't certain whether a classical or more traditional approach to learning can rise from the ashes of the "new" learning.

What's wrong with our system?

Fred On Everything gives us his nine-point breakdown of what's wrong with our system in an essay that originally appeared in The American Conservative. Fred calls himself America's leading expatriate curmudgeon. A choice bit from his essay:

First, we have two identical parties which, when elected, do very much the same things. Thus the election determines not policy but only the division of spoils. Nothing really changes. The Democrats will never seriously reduce military spending, nor the Republicans, entitlements.

Not a lot of feel-good stuff here:

Just as trial lawyers don’t want intelligent jurors, as they are harder to manipulate, so political parties don’t want educated voters. The existence of a puzzled mass gawping at Oprah reduces elections to popularity contests modulated by the state of the economy. [emphasis mine]

Maybe I'm feeling grumpy today, but I'm having a tough time disagreeing substantively with most of his points.

Link to the article

You can't have it both ways....or can you?

Candidate Obama on language.

Court quashes dad's grounding of daughter

A Quebec court quashed a dad's grounding of his 12-year-old daughter:

Initially, the father forbade his daughter from going online after the Grade 6 student posted photos on a dating site ... .

The girl's parents are divorced, and after she had an alleged row with her stepmother, her father barred her from going on a school trip to mark the class's graduation from elementary school, the newspaper reported.

"When he said, 'OK, it's final. You're not going,' she smacked the door, left and went to live with her mother," the father's lawyer, Kim Beaudoin, told CBC News.

Two days later, the judge ruled the punishment was too severe because the girl had already been sufficiently disciplined, Beaudoin said.

Court quashes dad's grounding of 12-year-old daughter (via cbc.ca)

To go or not to go (to China)? That is the question.

Earlier this year, when she was running for president of the United States, Senator Hillary Clinton implored President Bush not to attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in China.

Others who were Congressmen, Senators, and human rights activists totally agreed with Mrs. Clinton. The President responded by saying that to not attend would be a "slap in the face" to China, and that he could do much more good by dealing with Chinese leaders behind the scenes.

I know that it is not in vogue to agree with President Bush on anything, but on this, I think he is absolutely right. How hypocritical would it appear or be if the president didn’t go, but our athletes did? What kind of protest is that? Add to that the fact that we deal with China economically, and in every other way today, and it just seems like hollow symbolism. Should we stop fighting for better human rights where they are abused? Absolutely not, but this is not a human rights, or governmental event. At least, it’s not supposed to be.

In ancient times, these athletic contests in Greece were so important that the various city-states, even if they were fighting, stopped to compete peacefully in the Olympics. That is what the Olympics are, athletic games, where people are competing hard, but peacefully, and shutting out government, at least for two weeks. We should celebrate these games, and the president should be there in that moment.

To do otherwise is a hypocritical insult, not just to the Chinese, but to that spirit that shows us that in at least one place, athletics, we can all get along -- even if just for a moment. I’m Gary Sutton.

Tuesday's Tech Tip: Optimizing Firefox 3

Well, now that all the cool kids are using Firefox 3, I guess it's time to share some tips and tricks.

1. Adblock Plus

I'm a fan of Adblock Plus. Who wants to look at ads anyway? ABP zaps the majority of them from your browsing experience. Go to your menu and click on Tools --> Add-ons. A little window pops up, showing you your installed add-ons. Click on Get Add-ons and type Adblock Plus into the search field. Then click the Add to Firefox button.

It will be installed the next time you load Firefox. Take the time to tell it what "list" to use when blocking ads. I use "EasyList (USA)". I think it asks you what you want to use when you install it. If not, you can click the down arrow on your new ABP icon (looks like a stop sign to the right of your search bar) and tell it what you want.

If you want to see the ads on a particular site, just click the down arrow next to the ABP icon and say "Disable on this site."

2. Full-screen mode

Firefox has a nice full-screen mode that hides all the extra junk (called chrome) and maximizes your screen's real estate. Hit your F11 key to toggle full-screen mode on and off. What I like about it is that not only does it hide all the chrome, but it auto-hides -- and reveals -- your open tabs whenever you hover your mouse near the top of the screen.

3. Robots

Type about:robots into your address bar and hit enter.

Yip yip yip yip

Man, I loved these guys. A lot of people tell me that the yip yip guys scared the hell out of them as children, but there you have it. I like them.

What makes a superhero?

So, we had some talk about superheroes lately and some disagreement on what makes a superhero.

Is it superpowers? Can't be -- everyone knows that Batman is a superhero, but he doesn't have any superpowers.

How about a cool costume? Nope, because then the Pope and Bootsy Collins (see left) would qualify.

Maybe a secret identity? Nah. See, then Tony Stark (everyone knows he's Iron Man) and Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig would qualify.

What Makes a Superhero from the Escapist has a pretty good definition:

A superhero is a symbol that represents the ideal. He is our hopes and aspirations, those qualities we admire in ourselves and in others all writ large, given a face to stare down evil and hands to shape the world for the better. The enemies he stands against, too, are symbols: They are the daily fears which weigh on us ...

The superhero is not perfect; he is burdened with greater troubles than ours, and is time and again defeated by the evil he sets himself against. Yet it is because of this, not in spite of it, that he is truly a hero; not because he is strong, but because he does not surrender.

So now we have a definition. A superhero is a character that exists to remind us of our potential, to show us what we should be. Superheroes are ourselves, courageous.

I can live with that.

America the Beautiful

Happy Fourth of July!

Check out America the Beautiful, performed by one of my favorite guitarists, Zakk Wylde from Black Label Society (he's also Ozzy's guitarist). This is from their album 1919 Eternal.



Check it out for the song; it isn't a proper video -- someone just set it to a generic slideshow.

New poll: Do you care about a foreign company buying Anheuser-Busch?

There's a new poll up. It seems that a Brazilian-Belgian company wants to buy Anheuser-Busch. Do you care?

Poll results: Who's the greatest superhero?

Well, well, well. The people have spoken.

Superman	6 (28%)
Batman	3 (14%)
Captain America	2 (9%)
Spider-Man	1 (4%)
Iron Man	1 (4%)
Wonder Woman	1 (4%)
Jay	7 (33%)

I'll be taking applications for sidekicks soon. Applicants, please have your CV, gimmick and costume ready for the try-outs. No capes or weirdos, please.

Fair warning

57%

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

This is according to a test I took from this page. I also learned that:

19

Created by OnePlusYou

What was that Supreme Court Ruling really all about on handguns?

So what was the Supreme Court decision on allowing handguns really about last week and who did it most affect? First of all it was another chapter written in the book called “Can Americans be trusted with responsible choices or not?”

Five of the judges stated clearly, yes to that question on Thursday as they viewed the right to own a handgun responsibly with respect.

As usual, four of the justices did not and decided that responsible American citizens should be treated the same as irresponsible ones who are committing crimes in this country.

Many have said that it is the number of guns causing problems in the country. I would side with those who would say that it is the intentions behind those guns that provide the problem.

This brings me to the answer to that second question; can Americans be trusted with responsible choices or not.

The answer is Absolutely.

They’ve been doing it since the founding of this country using, by the way, ideas and guns. If the ruling had gone against individual rights of gun ownership last week, who would have been most affected? Responsible American citizens would continue do the same things they’ve always done; respect law and make choices with it as part of their civic duty to the country , whether guns would have been taken away or not. We could trust their choices to be the same; responsible.

For criminals, we could also trust their’s to be the same no matter what the ruling; irresponsible and unlawful. The only difference now is that their prey may be armed, which could be a deterrent for them.

So,when they decide to invade a man’s home and castle, they would do well to remember Jesse Ventura’s famous plaque over his door: Forget the dog , beware of owner. “ The responsible owners of this country have rights, too. One ruling for them was cast last week! I’m Gary Sutton.