***Dave Does the Blog

The Still of the Morning

“I have to kill your mother,” Margie said to me. “Oh.” “Or your father. Or maybe both.” “Um … why?” “Guess what I woke up to this morning …?” My…

“I have to kill your mother,” Margie said to me.

“Oh.”

“Or your father. Or maybe both.”

“Um … why?”

“Guess what I woke up to this morning …?”

My folks went to Scotland late last year. One of the things they brought back with them was a stuffed teddy bear playing the bagpipes. Except that if you press on the bag, a little music chip with the same robust, full-bodied tones that you’d expect from a greeting card tinnily bleats out the tune to “Scotland the Brave.”

And day before yesterday we were unpacking from our trip, and I found the bear, and put it in Katherine’s room.

And we have a baby monitor in there.

And Katherine knows how to work the bear.

So, far too early this morning, guess what Margie woke up to?

Dee-dee-dih-deet-dee-dee-dee …

I think I’ll let Margie keep focusing her fury on my folks for this one, rather than me, thankyouverymuch.

Alignment

We keep hearing from the RIAA and others that copyright protection keeps needing to be extended longer, and longer, and longer so that we stay in alignment with foreign copyright…

We keep hearing from the RIAA and others that copyright protection keeps needing to be extended longer, and longer, and longer so that we stay in alignment with foreign copyright laws. After all, we don’t want the US to be thought of as paying less homage to ~~Big Media companies~~ creators than, say, Europe.

Except … oops! Turns out most of Europe has only a 50 year copyright on audio recordings. Which means that songs from the 50s are now entering into the public domain over there, even while they remain protected (and, no doubt, earning vitally needed ~~profit for Big Media~~ royalties for the impoverished estates of Elvis and Miles Davis) here in the US. And given the nature of the Internet, and P2P networking, that means that more of these songs are available for (illegal) download in the US, with no legal recourse against the dastardly villains doing so from, say, France.

So what do we have to do, you might ask the RIAA?

Well, the answer is obvious. We need alignment!

Alignment of US copyright laws to European standards, as has been argued for so long?

Don’t be absurd. Alignment of European copyright laws up to the higher US standard.

Yeah, I got your alignment right here … and it’s Lawful Evil, guys.

Today’s winning LotRy number

Okay, that was kind of a lame subject line. On the other hand, these scanned pics from next year’s LotR calendar (i.e., with pics from RotK) are, well, very cool….

Galadriel Okay, that was kind of a lame subject line.

On the other hand, these scanned pics from next year’s LotR calendar (i.e., with pics from RotK) are, well, very cool.

Gandalf swinging about Glamdring with abandon.

Frodo in Shelob’s lair (with the Vial of Galadriel?!).

Sam cradling Frodo.

Denethor looking too clever for his own good.

My only gripe: Eowyn in a dress, looking wistful. Unless showing her otherwise would be a spoiler …

And let me say this about one other pic, shown at the right. I know some folks have griped over Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, and it is true that she is not a classic beauty model like Liv Tyler. But, damn, I love her voice, and her wise/gentle/amused/knowing smile is just plain ol’ perfect. The Lady of the Golden Wood is certainly someone to both worship and fear …

Good casting, sez I.

(via Andrea)

Free money

Better yet, it’s from the music industry, as I’ve noted before. All you have to do is ask for it. What are you waiting for?! (via BoingBoing)…

Better yet, it’s from the music industry, as I’ve noted before.

All you have to do is ask for it.

What are you waiting for?!

(via BoingBoing)

Numbers game

Katherine can count to ten. This is something new in the last few weeks, but I’m not surprised. Every time either we visit the grandparents, or they visit us, Katherine…

Katherine can count to ten.

This is something new in the last few weeks, but I’m not surprised.

Every time either we visit the grandparents, or they visit us, Katherine makes big leaps. That is because, aside from the intrinsic magic that grandparents possess, they do something that Margie and I do not do enough of.

They pay attention to her.

They play with her.

They talk to her.

They force her to stretch her imagination, her verbal skills, her cognition. They engage with her.

We do it more, too, when we’re around them. We play with Katherine more. We include her in conversations (or she includes herself).

It’s not like Margie and I are neglectful parents. It’s not like our household is shrouded in silence when we’re alone with her. It’s not like we shunt her off into a closet whilst we busy ourselves with Important Grown-Up Stuff.

But …

But if she has something she wants to show either of us, or needs help with something she’s playing with, we do, sometimes, say, “Sorry, honey — I’m busy right now. I’ll look later.” Or, “Just a sec, pumpkin.” Or even, “Katherine, I’m trying to do this right now! Please get out of the way!”

And we probably say it more than we should, though I’m not sure we say it as much as some parents.

But I think that’s a goodly part of what makes the difference.

Katherine can count to ten now. What will she do next? And how will we help her with that?

Thanks a Lott

Gee, if I publically and wistfully express a desire for the segrationists to have won in 1948, and have to resign my Senate party leadership in disgrace, will I get…

Lott's riding on this. Gee, if I publically and wistfully express a desire for the segrationists to have won in 1948, and have to resign my Senate party leadership in disgrace, will I get to keep my car and driver, too?

Why, exactly, does this “blow” have to be “softened”?

Frankly, I think he should ride the bus. In the back.

Tuesday

It’s this week’s This-or-That:…

It’s this week’s This-or-That:

Continue reading “Tuesday”

Clubbed

So if Boulder Valley Schools allows at Monarch High a gay/straight alliance club and a multicultural club and an Amnesty International club, why does it forbid a Bible club? Well,…

So if Boulder Valley Schools allows at Monarch High a gay/straight alliance club and a multicultural club and an Amnesty International club, why does it forbid a Bible club?

Well, BVS points out, disctrict policy says clubs are allowed only if there is a direct relationship to the school’s classes.

The gay/straight club, for example, ties into health classes. The multicultural club ties into diversity classes.

The application for the Bible club noted that it would tie into classes at the school that address the Bible and religion, including a literature class on the Old Testament.

Well … um … er … request denied anyway.

Besides, the district notes, they like to have teachers be involved in school clubs, in a supervisory/advisory role — and having a teacher involved with a Bible club would be against school policy that that spiritual paths of students should be defined by parents, not staff.

Yeah. Right.

We’ll see what a courts say.

(via JillMatrix)

Makes sense

The Norwegian programmer who developed DeCSS code, then was arrested by Norwegian police after a complaint from the MPAA (!), has been acquitted in Norwegian court. The DeCSS code can…

The Norwegian programmer who developed DeCSS code, then was arrested by Norwegian police after a complaint from the MPAA (!), has been acquitted in Norwegian court.

The DeCSS code can be used to unlock the copy protection on DVDs. Jon Lech Johansen says he wrote and distributed the code to allow folks to be able to view DVDs they own on Linux computers, just as folks on Windows and Mac computers can.

The Norwegian court found that Johansen was entitled to use the DVD he owned, and therefore could break the encryption legally. The DeCSS code, it noted, could be used for legal or illegal purposes, just as many other things could, and therefore was not per se illegal.

Of course, that’s Norway. Here in the US, the DMCA laws make such activities explicitly illegal, regardless of the purpose.

(via InstaPundit)

UPDATE: There’s a better article here. A few choice excerpts:

Head judge Irene Sogn, in reading the verdict, said no one could be convicted of breaking into their own property, and that there was no proof that Johansen or others had used the program to access illegal pirate copies of films.
“The court finds that someone who buys a DVD film that has been legally produced has legal access the film. Something else would apply if the film had been an illegal … pirate copy,” the ruling said.
It found that consumers have rights to legally obtained DVD films “even if the films are played in a different way than the makers had foreseen.”

How refreshingly common-sensical. No response as yet from the MPAA.

Rolled

Well, poop. Blogrolling.com is either down or has suddenly been blocked from our network (understandably difficult for me to tell which) — the result of which is that most folks’…

Well, poop. Blogrolling.com is either down or has suddenly been blocked from our network (understandably difficult for me to tell which) — the result of which is that most folks’ link lists (my own included) have disappeared.

Annoyingly enough, I had just designed a button for a new site in my Gotta list.

*Sigh*

I suppose that means I should actually do some work now.

UPDATE (0911): Back up. Whew!

Stripped

I try to read my favorite funnies every day. Alas, the newspaper is not the best way to do this. Not only do the locals not carry everything I want,…

I try to read my favorite funnies every day.

Alas, the newspaper is not the best way to do this. Not only do the locals not carry everything I want, but the paper doesn’t always come before I leave for the office. Plus I can’t forward on the ones I like to my friends. Plus, of course, it costs money.

So I read my comic strips online. The two best sources for this are UComics and Comics.com.

UComics, from Universal Press Syndicate, lets you build your own funny page of the comics online, updated daily, etc. Through them I read The Boondocks, Doonesbury, For Better or For Worse, FoxTrot, Heart of the City, Mother Goose & Grimm, Non Sequitur, Real Life Adventures, Calvin and Hobbes (reprints), Liberty Meadows (reprints), Tom the Dancing Bug, Baldo, Compu-toon, Adam@Home, and Tom Toles (editorial).

The Comics.com is aligned with the United Media syndicate. It lets you have individual strips e-mailed to you on a daily basis. That’s a little less convenient, but it still works. Through them I read Rose is Rose, 9 Chickweed Lane, and Get Fuzzy.

Unfortunately (though understandably), distribution syndicate bounderies sometimes get in the way of all this convenience. A third big player is King Features Syndicate. They keep their comics online, too, including some of my favorites. Unfortunately, they have a two week time lag, i.e., the most recent strips as of today are for Tuesday, 24 December.

Feh.

I work around this with some King strips. Baby Blues I can read through the slow-loading but current pages of the Seattle Times. And Funky Winkerbean and Zits I can catch at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The San Francisco Chronicle also carries a number of comics on-line (though without archives).

(I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the “high tech” capitols of the US, Seattle and the Bay Area, carry such substantial on-line comic content. Most other newspapers simply have links to the syndicate pages.)

Alas, two of the comics I used to read via UComics — Bizarro and Crankshaft — are now no longer available there, sucked into King Features. Fortunately, the two Seattle papers carry them, so I’m okay, if a bit more inconvenienced.

There are also a few other comics I read on their own pages, including Dork Towers and The Norm.

Still, it would be nice if I could have it all, on one page, with no more price than the bandwidth and having to look past banner ads. Heck, I’d pay a subscription fee — a small one, at least — for that convenience.

Car Lots of Luck

Cool. I’ll be in the car-buying market come March or so, and I have two people doing all the research for me, with many of the same car attributes in…

Cool. I’ll be in the car-buying market come March or so, and I have two people doing all the research for me, with many of the same car attributes in mind.

Now all I need is to install a massively successful PayPal button, and I’m set.

Boneyard

So what does the US military do when it’s got too many, or obsolete, aircraft? It sends them to the Boneyard, a huge facility in the Arizona desert, where, preserved…

So what does the US military do when it’s got too many, or obsolete, aircraft?

It sends them to the Boneyard, a huge facility in the Arizona desert, where, preserved by the dry climate and various mothballing procedures, they can be later cut up for scrap, used for training purposes (either refurbed for drones or used for counter-terrorism exercises), or resold to other governments.

In addition to the article, someone’s found the satellite pictures of the facility, which resembles a strange, Escher-esque landscape. Cool.

(via BoingBoing)

Flags

With the economy “ailing,” the US facing terrorist threats and critical decisions on security versus liberty, and an impending war in Iraq (and beyond), what sorts of bills can you…

With the economy “ailing,” the US facing terrorist threats and critical decisions on security versus liberty, and an impending war in Iraq (and beyond), what sorts of bills can you expect to see in the 108th Congress?

Why yet another try at a anti-flag-burning amendment.

The Congress shall have the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the Flag of the United States.

Yup. The greatest danger we face — the one that demands we actually amend the Constitution — is protesters in the US burning the flag. (Can’t do anything about those folks elsewhere doing it, I suppose, except bomb ’em.)

Volokh has a fine LA Times op-ed he wrote demonstrating why this is a bad idea.

To which I’ll add that the Republic has withstood any number of threats, up to and including Civil War, and there has not been a perceived need to actually amend the First Amendment. Are things so dire now, are the internal enemies of the state so great, the feelings of our American public so fragile, that we really need to go through with this sort of thing?

Never mind the dangers of giving Congress carte blanche to define what constitutes the flag, or what constitutes “physical desecration.” Would publishing a political cartoon that has the US flag associated with a dubious activity be considered physical desecration? Would people burning pieces of paper with the letters “USA” in red, white, and blue be subject to fine and/or imprisonment?

Pardon me, while I go off into the corner to mutter annoyedly.

A kind word

As noted in the past, I eat pretty regularly at the Tokyo Joe’s across the street (sorry, Jackie). And, as noted then, I’m known there as The Guy Who Comes…

As noted in the past, I eat pretty regularly at the Tokyo Joe’s across the street (sorry, Jackie). And, as noted then, I’m known there as The Guy Who Comes in Every Day and Stands in Line Reading a Book the Whole Way.

When the New Boss came out, we stopped by there for lunch. Ditto the following week, when the New Boss and another fellow visited the office. Made up a bit for dinner. But the New Boss liked it, which was kind of nice.

The drink cups all have the Founder/President Larry Leith’s e-mail on them. So last month I sent Larry an e-mail, complimenting them on their food and on their good service and friendly staff. I’ve done the opposite in the past (sent nastygrams to places I had a beef with), so I thought I owed it to folks who were giving me what I wanted a kudo or two.

So today I go in, the first time in weeks (holidays etc. being what they are), and the gal at the register, who I recognize, asked me, “Did you send us an e-mail?”

I was startled for a second, then replied, “Well, I sent [refers to cup] Larry one.”

She smiled. “Yeah. He put it up on the board and thanked us for it. It was really cool. Thanks.”

Y’know, it feels good to make people happy. Especially when they deserve it.

Yeah, here’s a surprise

What cartoon dog are you? (via Random Ravings)…

What cartoon dog are you?

(via Random Ravings)

Squandered sympathy

I quoted below a bit of Lileks’ comments on the terrorist attacks in Israel yesterday — 18 dead (plus the two suicide bombers, of course), 100 wounded. What I find…

I quoted below a bit of Lileks’ comments on the terrorist attacks in Israel yesterday — 18 dead (plus the two suicide bombers, of course), 100 wounded.

What I find interesting is that his feelings about it — a barely-restrained fury — not only echo my own, but that I found just the same thing on SDB’s page:

But increasingly I’m finding myself feeling as if the world would be better off if someone went in and shot every damned one of them and piled the lot in an unmarked grave. After reading about yet another Palestinian atrocity, I find myself thinking, “Fuck it. Nuke Ramallah. Then nuke Nablus. And if that doesn’t help, bulldoze Gaza. And once that’s done, put all fifty surviving Palestinians on a freighter, tow it out to sea, and let them become someone else’s problem.”
I know that’s wrong. I know it could never happen, and that it will never happen, and that it should never happen, and I would never actually advocate anything like that. But what I’m finding is that every time I read about a Palestinian being killed by the Israelis, my first emotional reaction is, “Good riddance.” I’ve reached the point where I feel nothing at all when I read about them dying. I have reached the point where I don’t care at all, not even slightly, about their pain and hardship. They have ceased to be persons to me. I’m no longer even interested in hearing their side of the story.

I said interesting. I shoud have said scary.

At least scary to me. And, if there are any sane people among the Palestinians, to them, too.

Reference

I haven’t linked to a Lileks column recently. That’s become sort of passe in the blogosphere — it’s simply assumed that everyone pulls up Lileks’ Bleat column on a daily…

I haven’t linked to a Lileks column recently. That’s become sort of passe in the blogosphere — it’s simply assumed that everyone pulls up Lileks’ Bleat column on a daily basis, and chuckles at the same jokes and marvels at the same turns of phrase.

Another reason is because he writes about multiple subjects in each column. So he might write something uproariously amusing about his two-year-old, Gnat, but it will be sandwiched between a bit about terrorism and a passage about life in Minneapolis, and those are only mostly wonderful, so I don’t want to dilute things so I don’t cite it.

On the other hand, today has two gems out of three, even on those three topics, so I will.

First, on terrorism, in particular the suicide bombings that hit Israel again, yesterday:

Twenty dead I can imagine. I tote up 20 of my friends and relatives, and imagine them gone. Reaction? […] My wife was incandescent when they [got home] – a driver on France Ave. had merged with oblivious velocity, and had my wife not wrenched the car two lanes over the other vehicle would have smacked her car right where Gnat was sitting. The other driver was a young woman yammering on a phone, and I swear if I had the power I’d find out who she was and reprogram her phone so it delivered an electrical shock sufficient to set her hair on fire and blow off her shoes if she used it while driving more than 6 MPH. That’s how I feel about someone whose casual rote stupidity almost cost the life of my daughter.
Towards those who would do that intentionally I can imagine a wide variety of rejoinders. If I turned on the TV and I saw people celebrating the car wreck that killed my daughter, I think I would go mad. I think I would claw my eyes until everything was red. I would want to call down hell on their heads.

On Gnat (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Kitten):

Yes, Little Miss Sweetness and Light. Also Little Miss Capricious Tyrant. Such are the twos; the word NO is her answer to everything, and she’s caught on to the Bugs Bunny Mind Control Trick, too: when I say “No” to her “No,” she doesn’t say “Yes” anymore. She says NO, LOUDER. And we’re dealing with the appearance of new rules, drafted daily, none of which are announced in advance and each of which requires strict adherence. Two-year olds have the soul of a 19th century European bureaucrat. Ritual, routine, capricious application of power, devotion to process. Also naps. Today, for example, I learned that I had to stand on the right side when we walked up the stairs, not the left, because standing on the left would RUIN EVERYTHING in some inscrutable way, and provoke tears and lamentations not heard since the plagues of Egypt.

There’s a bit on life in Minneapolis, too, at the end, but that was only good enough to make me want to go back and reread all his previous comments on the subject, so I won’t quote it here.

So, take up and read, already.

Fellowship I

We finally cracked the plastic on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD set (the fancy one that didn’t include the Argonnath bookends). We ultimately realized that if we waited until…

We finally cracked the plastic on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD set (the fancy one that didn’t include the Argonnath bookends). We ultimately realized that if we waited until we could sit down and watch the whole movie — let alone the commentaries and features — we’d be about as old as Bilbo. So we’re willing to watch it in what dribs and drabs we can.

So, some thoughts from the first disc. Spoilers (from Two Towers, in some cases) below.

Continue reading “Fellowship I”

Days of the Year

It’s time for the grand Changing of the Calendars. I love calendars, and so end up each year getting far more than I actually need. For Margie’s office, a nice…

It’s time for the grand Changing of the Calendars. I love calendars, and so end up each year getting far more than I actually need.

For Margie’s office, a nice Maxfield Parrish one, plus a Zobmondo page-a-day for the amusement of her office-mates.

For the kitchen, a Boynton family calendar, dates down the left, columns for Margie and Katherine and myself across the top. It’s an experiment to see if it helps us better with our planning of stuff.

Two calendars are going up in the basement, home of our gaming sessions — Hellboy and Usagi Yojimbo.

In the office, I have a Colorado Then-and-Now wall calendar — very nice and business-like, and no mildly embarrassing “that’s not nudity, it’s art!” images on it.

Also at the office is the Host of Page-a-Day Calendars, this year featuring:

Dilbert

Foxtrot

Shakespeare quotations

Forgotten English

Dave Barry

New Yorker cartoons

Yes, I am insane. Why do you ask?