I am mostly in favor of my home state’s restrictive gun laws, but this one has always annoyed me. There’s little reason for it– under this law, a bad actor is going to just carry extra mags. The 10-round law is arbitrary and serves no purpose, and finally the courts agree with me.
Category Archives: Rants
Just what the U-T needed
My local paper’s website has started allowing users to comment anonymously on stories. Yeah, that’s just the clever, edgy thing to improve their flagging circulation. As evidence I give you today’s story on the grocery workers’ contract talks. The story itself is fine, but scroll down to the comments.
Hey, U-T! get a clue: I don’t read the paper to get silly, bigoted comments from mouth-breathers who think the way to add emphasis to their words is to add a whole bunch of exclamation points!!1!11!!!!! Yeah, nothing says “rational discourse” like run-on sentences in all caps saying that what we need is more and bigger Wal-Marts. I’d accuse them of being poorly thought out, but thinking is obviously a skill they haven’t learned.
I remember…
… when CNN used to actually investigate and report real news. Nowadays they just seem to parrot whatever the Republicans say is this weeks talking point. Case in point: the CNN.com headline right at the moment is Iran role suspected in brazen Iraq attack.
The Pentagon is investigating whether an attack on a military compound in Karbala, Iraq, was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives, two officials from U.S. government agencies said. Five U.S. soldiers died in the sophisticated attack by men wearing U.S.-style uniforms, according to military reports. One official told CNN: “This was beyond what we have seen militias or foreign fighters do.”
Well, forgive me here, you nameless CNN reporter, but this is a little too convenient for the Republican agenda. Perhaps you’d care to identify those two “officials” (maybe Rove and Gates?) And it must be the Iranians, because no Iraqi could possible learn new and better tactics or steal uniforms during our four year occupation of their country. No, it must be Iranians; they’re tricky enough to sneak into Iraq, infiltrate Karbala, and attack a military compound, just to kill five more American soldiers. Yeah, that’s an effective use of resources.
New CDs
I got a couple of new CDs this week.
Dixie Chicks – Taking the Long Way
I’m a Dixie Chicks fan from way back. I mean WAY back; back to their first incarnation as a festival band in Dallas, circa 1990 or so. This is the fourth studio CD from the current incarnation of the Chicks, and it expands on their complex pop-country style. Probably anyone who cares has heard the “Not Ready to Make Nice” track, which refers to the ongoing political controversy. (Which wouldn’t be a controversy anywhere but in the country music world…. somewhere along the way, the country music business in general and a few artists in particular– yes, Toady, err, Toby, I mean you– have lost track of what “free speech” means.) But I digress. Along the more interesting songwriting credits are pop rocker Sheryl Crow on “Favorite Year” and blues artist Keb’Mo’ on “I Hope.” Of particular note is “Lubbock or Leave It” a complex country-rock track that deserves to be a hit in its own right. For somebody who can see (that wouldn’t be me) this is a pretty nice sing-along album. All in all, I’d give it three and a half out of four stars. No DRM.
Bruce Springsteen – The Seeger Sessions
Oh, Bruce, Bruce, what have you done?!?
After nearly forty years in the music business, Springsteen has explored pretty much every musical genre. Most of it has been well done; much of it spectacular. The Seeger Sessions are no exception. It’s basically a selection of traditional American folk songs (despite the title, not all Pete Seeger songs) arranged by Springsteen & Co. Fair warning: fans of Springsteen’s rock style will hate it; much like “Tom Joad,” this sure ain’t that.
I originally heard this on one of the full-album Sirius stations, and knew I had to have a copy. Off to Amazon, and two days later I have it in my hand. But what showed up is a miserable piece of DRM-ridden crap that won’t play on my stereo. It isn’t recognized by my computer, either Windows or Linux. It won’t let me make a backup copy or rip it to MP3, as is my legal right. This is a deal-breaker. I listen to music mostly in my car, but as a matter of policy, I don’t keep my original CDs in my car. Not even for Bruce Springsteen.
This is in something called “Dualdisc” technology, which has a “DVD” on one side and an “audio CD” on the other side. (I put “CD” in quotes, because it isn’t a CD. There’s a lovely note inside the packaging that says “The audio side of this disc does not conform to CD specifications and therefore will not play on some CD and DVD players.” The Amazon web site mentions the Dualdisc technology, but not a word about the crippled DRM. The disc packaging itself only says it in four point type in yellow text on a brown background. I literally had to find a magnifying glass and a bright light to read it.)
So anyway, I gave it a listen on my DVD player (for some reason, the audio plays on my DVD player but the DVD side doesn’t. More DRM? Who cares?) Even with the crappy audio on my DVD player, I can tell this would be an impressive album if I could listen to it better.
Just for my own amusment, I set up my old $20 Walkman-CD with a cable to the line input on my computer’s sound card and recorded the whole thing into Audacity. A little cut ‘n’ paste, and guess what? It worked fine. So much for stupid anti-piracy schemes.
Alas, much as I might like the music, this one is going back to Amazon because of the DRM. (And yes, I deleted the analog copy.)
I’ll give this one star out of four possible. And that one is only for the pure irony of locking up the music of that old socialist Pete Seeger, behind stupid and useless restrictions that prevent music fans from listening to it, while doing nothing that actually prevents someone who really wants to steal this from doing so.
Bruce, you should be ashamed of yourself.
HGTV
You know what annoys me? HGTV — that’s Home and Garden TV– seems to have given up the “G” part of their name. They’ve cut back drastically on the gardening shows. Even the idiot savant, that geek of gardening, Paul James, has had his show cut back from four episodes a week to one. (Paul is wildly popular, and has a substantial following, but I ain’t one of his fans.)
Instead, HGTV seems to be focusing on instant remodels that no human could do and “flipping” houses (a REALLY good way to lose your shirt and probably some body parts in the current real estate market.) And there’s no shortage of “reality” makeover shows featuring otherwise unemployable “designers.”
As an example, today’s HGTV menu has sixteen shows with “design” in the name, and zero that have anything to do with gardening!
Unclear on the Concept, part MCLXVI
Yet another foaming idiot, one Dennis Prager, has an editorial on something called townhall.com in which he opines that
Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.
He should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.
Whew. Sure sounds like American hostility to the Quran to me.
You know, it strikes me that generally these right-wing wackos claim to believe in the Constitution. Perhaps he should read the part that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof […]” Guess what? That doesn’t just mean the various cults of Jesus are the foundation of American democracy.
Content-free Web Sites
Here’s a fine example of one: Santee Trolley Square. All I want to know is: 1) is there a Target there; 2) what men’s apparel stores might be there. Do you think you can find that out from their web site? It appears not.
CSS Design Tips from an “Expert”
This is one of the things I just hate about the web: design tips from an alleged expert who has an absolutely horrible web design. What’s wrong with this? Let me count the things:
- Useless, complex background image under text, which makes the text hard to read.
- Weird mixed fonts, again making it hard to read.
- It doesn’t degrade gracefully; if you turn off images, it looks like garbage, and the alt tags show up in weird places.
- Comment field with “cute” saying.
- One of my personal favorites: the context only takes up half the browser window. Hello? If I want to look at skinny little columns, I’ll decide how wide to make my browser window.
Perhaps he ought to read some of those books and sites he touts on the bottom of the page.
Ho Ho Ho UPS
I note that once again (for the fourth year in a row) the UPS delivery tracking web site melts down from overload the week before Christmas. These folks are allegedly technically savvy. Wouldn’t you think they’d get a clue? I know where you can find a programmer with experience in dealing with massive, high-volume, high-reliability databases….
Uh-oh
Apparently there are still travelers on this planet who don’t know that you shouldn’t put your exposed film in your checked baggage. Toothbrush, okay. Heart medication? Maybe. Your youngest child? Sure. (In fact, I’d prefer that you do so.) But not your exposed film.
For what it’s worth, I agree with the author about the quality of the airline under discussion here. Despite the fact that my father worked for them for thirty-plus years. They are no longer the airline that he was so proud of.