Category Archives: Uncategorized

In the spirit of Congress, an omnibus post:

Re-activation of “Tea Party = Nazi” Meme

The media is scared again.  Have you noticed an uptick in references to Nazis when media people discuss the Tea Party in the last week?  I have.

You can tell what their current marching orders are by the little “core dumps” scattered in their meltdowns.  Most of them are useless flacks, you see, and many when pressed on issues will resort to dumping not only what they were instructed to say, but will reveal what their instructions actually are.

Now this sort of thing does not require actual rooms with leaders issuing directives on what to say, or online gatherings where the meme of the week is selected before being promoted as if … Continue reading →

Not just yet, but soon. I ran across a blog post which could use some correction. I do not see a way to comment at the blog, however, so I figured I would do so over here. But then I would need to bring over the graphic, which is no sweat–I’ll give attribution and link to the source, and if there is an objection, take it down. But I would also need to grab most or all of the text from that short post. At that point, with the graphic and the text, I am just re-publishing another person’s work, and while I am not courtroom-secure in my observation of copyrights, I do try to stay where I should in that phase space.

More on that later. Meanwhile, … Continue reading →

I cannot play audio worth listening to on my Ubuntu box.  All I want to do is play music from MP3s, video from YouTube, iTunes content, and so forth.   I can play all of these, but the audio crackles as if through extremely blown speakers.  Volume level, output hardware (speakers, headphones, front or rear audio jack) makes no difference–it’s all broken.

It turns out that the developers of a nasty little piece of work called PulseAudio are to blame.  Oh, they blame everybody else, but the fact is audio works on Ubuntu when you are allowed to use ALSA or OSS, and it does not when you are forced to use PulseAudio.  For more on the developers’ crappy attitude toward their willful continued breaking of millions of … Continue reading →

Wired Magazine published (online anyway) an infographic which is so very uninformative and poorly graphic that I gave it a blast in the comments.  Fearing that the comments could be deleted, I’ll reproduce comment and stunningly bad graph here.  To summarize, the whole point of an infographic is to show a pattern (or lack of a pattern), correlation, or difference which might otherwise be difficult to tease out of data or narrative.  Time-series are famous for being scant on meaningful content, and this is their king:

Who made this awful infographic? Pardon this rant; I won’t pretend to organize it, but then I’m not exactly being paid for this product.

The lurid and uninformative purple broken things and their cramped, decidedly non-logarithmic-scale-friendly background demand the bulk … Continue reading →

Experts doubt TEPCO’s honesty at least as much. “Tepco knows more than they’ve said about the amount of radiation leaking from the plant,” Jan van de Putte, a Dutch specialist in radiation safety, said on Thursday.

via TEPCO dishonest on toxic leaks info, experts believe.

Remember all the awful pictures of President Bush?  Even when the media was not being blatant, they would show him trying to look dignified on a blustery day or after an awkward question, and side by side or following was a picture of some democrat with a hale and hearty appearance, jaw set and brow stern.  If you pay attention to color balance, even without knowing the exact problem, you could see that there was a problem.  Republicans get cold, washed or peaked colors and balances, while democrats get warm, rich, even treatment.

The right thing for an embattled White House to do  is suffer the slings and arrows of the first amendment, roll with the punches or avoid them if necessary.  At least the Bush administration’s media … Continue reading →

The President has had an awful week-or-so.

He began by attempting to sandbag Israel so the Muslim middle east would let him onto the bandwagon, but he got schooled by both sides, whap-bap.

He lost phony “Doctor” Cornel West, a normally reliable lefty racist honorary “professor” who won his seat on the bandwagon by shellacking Clarence Thomas.  It’s okay though, the media is still covering Obama on this front.  West is an unperson and will be savaged.

David Mamet, the highly-respected playwright whose works are loved across the political spectrum has completed his conversion to the conservative side of things.  Standby for Mamet to be dismissed as a no-talent brainwashed jerk.

The OBL bump turned out to be a tumor after all.  Pakistan has accepted Chinese guarantees of … Continue reading →