November 11, 2005 – 6:33 pm
From Media Matters:
Criticizing a ballot measure passed by 60 percent of San Francisco voters urging public high schools and colleges to prohibit on-campus military recruiting, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly declared on the November 8 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, “[I]f Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off-limits to you, except San Francisco.“
From the November 8 broadcast of Fox News’ The Radio Factor with Bill O’Reilly:
O’REILLY: Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I’m not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I’m the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, “Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you’re not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead.”
And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.
PS - Congratulations to the city of San Francisco for passing such a wise measure. It’s sick how they convince kids to basically sign away years of their lives for the promise of a college education that they otherwise may not be able to afford.
November 10, 2005 – 11:32 pm
Just in case you guys don’t keep up with the comments in Nathan’s blog, (and because it kind of ties in with my last post), I’m posting the comment I just made over there about how I wouldn’t care too much if filesharing does actually end up bankrupting the record industry as we know it.
I’d love for the financial motivation that churns out a lot of the crap that we get these days to dry up and to be left only with authentic musicians who aren’t doing what they do to be the next big whatever, but just because they have something to offer, and they’re going to do it whether there’s a chance of making a million bucks or whether it costs them out of their own pocket because they’re passionate about what they want to say/give. Sure, a lot of it wouldn’t be as “polished”, and there would still be a decent percentage of stuff that a lot of people won’t like, but at least more of it would be “real”, whatever that might mean.
Not only would it be great for the independents out there, but even the “big” bands could probably do a lot of stuff that they either can’t get away with on their current label, or at least aren’t willing to risk.
Especially with technology advancing like it has in the area of digital audio recording, I think that there is less and less of a need for help with stuff like studio time in a decent studio, so all the record labels really have to offer artists these days is marketing. I could certainly live in a world where the marketing was left to the fans sharing the music they like with their friends, in person or online.
Sure, this would put a bit of a crimp on the cash flow of the big artists currently, but they would always have live show & merchandise sales, as well as people (like you guys) who like the physical albums. It won’t make up the difference, but I’m pretty sure that any band or artist who would stop making music altogether if there wasn’t a possibility of a lucrative label contract is a band/artist that I can live without hearing.
November 7, 2005 – 3:20 pm
I just signed up for the “Keep the Change” plan on my BofA accounts. What it does is round up all your debit card purchases to the nearest dollar, and put the extra into your savings account for you automatically; plus they match it 100% for the first three months, and 5% after that, so it’s basically helping you to set a little money aside all the time, and giving you free money.
This is a good time to mention that I’ve been using BofA for 12 years, and I always hate those bank commercials that insinuate that the “big banks” (assuming they’re implying BofA in that category) always hit you with all kinds of extra fees, and the commercials talk about how you can get “free checking” and other free services with their banks, as if you don’t with the “big” ones. I must say that it’s a bit deceptive, since the entire time I’ve been with BofA I’ve never had to pay any fees and gotten every service I’ve heard them mentioning (online banking, bill pay, etc).
November 7, 2005 – 10:18 am
[Mercury News article]PASADENA, Calif. - One of the state’s largest and most liberal churches could lose its tax-exempt status because of an anti-war sermon that a former rector delivered two days before the 2004 presidential election, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
In his sermon, the Rev. George F. Regas did not urge parishioners at All Saints Episcopal Church to support either George Bush or his opponent, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. But he was sharply critical of the Iraq war and Bush’s tax cuts.
The IRS in a June 9 letter warned the church that its tax-exempt status was in jeopardy because the federal tax code prohibits such organizations from intervening in political campaigns and elections. The church’s current rector, J. Edwin Bacon, told his congregation about the problem on Sunday.
If this happens it will be ridiculous. It would honestly be difficult to count the number of pro-Bush Christian organizations that were very outspoken in the last election, but for some reason this one that was on the other side is being threatened. All you have to do is turn on the local Christian radio station any day of the week and you will probably hear a violation of this code within a few hours.
A long time ago I used to occasionally listen to a show by James Dobson’s organization; back then they called the show “Focus on the Family”, but I’m not sure what they changed the name to after they switched it to being a 30 minute session of telling their loyal followers to call their congress people and telling them what to say and how to vote.
In any event, I really hope that this particular church stands their ground, regardless of whether they keep their non-profit status. Although it would certainly be an unbalanced application of this law, it would be worth it to stand your ground and maintain your principles.
The most encouraging part of the article…
He said the IRS recently offered to drop the proceedings if the church admitted wrongdoing. The church declined the offer, he said.
November 5, 2005 – 12:47 am
Anyone else want to see this?
November 3, 2005 – 8:06 pm
Straight from the horse’s mouth (or developers, I should say).
One thing I forgot to mention in my last rant on tabbed browsing was that ALT+TAB is actually better than CTRL+TAB, since CTRL+TAB is only left to right (or right to left if you do SHIFT+CTRL+TAB), whereas you can use ALT+TAB to quickly switch between the two most recent windows, regardless of how many others are open; much more logical and useful.
November 3, 2005 – 6:59 pm
Interesting article / discussion on the Flock browser here, including some responses from the developers themselves.
Personally, I’ve seen a bit of the Flock browser now, and I think my summary of it is “cute”. One of the main things I kind of felt about Flock from the beginning is something that the author of this post alludes to as well - Flock aims to provide a whole bunch of “solutions” for use in the “new” web (don’t get me started on the “Web 2.0″ label), but solutions are only usually really good when there’s a problem that they’re actually solving.
I kind of see the Flock craze as a similar thing to the Ajax craze right now: mostly fluff. Ever since someone gave the asynchronous javascript with XML technique that’s been around for years a fancy name, Ajax has become the cool thing to do in web dev. And don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly cool for some things, and I’m sure it will be the basis of a lot of the cool stuff we’ll see on the web in the next couple years; BUT most people right now are using it to do stuff that adds no additional functionality or usefulness to their existing web systems; like posting blog comments and refreshing the list, for example.
Flock kind of strikes me the same way; there’s nothing that Flock does that I’ve been saying “I wish I could do X in Firefox”. I know I might feel differently if I used delicious (which I don’t - another thing I don’t see the point of, for my use). Sure it does some things differently, but for me it’s not worth the switch.