This is a crass advertisement disguised as a blog post. But I figure that’s okay because there is plenty of drivel out there disguised as political discourse. If you’re like me, you cannot even stand to watch the talking heads on cable TV anymore — the token left-winger screaming at the token right-winger is supposed to make us all believe that some serious discussion is taking place, but in reality its just noise aimed at improving ratings. We face some serious issues in this country right now, but no one is talking about them in the media. Or if they are, I certainly couldn’t find them, so I had to create my own source for these discussions.

This month marks 236 years since Thomas Paine published his pamphlet Common Sense, which went on to become the most widely circulated book in American history. In a country that had become severely divided over the biggest issues of the day, including whether or not to seek our independence from Great Britain, Paine’s eloquent but approachable writing style tipped the scales in favor of revolution, and changed the history of the world. It did what other media of the day failed to do: cut through the noise and address the issues head-on, in words that every individual could understand and appreciate.

Amidst all of our modern technology today, a medium that speaks to only one person at a time might seem quaint. But where the pamphlet triumphed in the 18th Century, being cheap and easy to produce, simple to consume, and even simpler to pass along to someone else, the modern day equivalent of the pamphlet, the podcast, is also triumphing over more traditional forms of broadcast media. A podcast represents an intimate discussion between the author and the listener, about topics of interest to both parties, free from the undue influences of advertisers and others with private agendas to promote. In its purest form, a podcast is a discussion about ideas. And as we all know from the humble pamphlet, ideas can change the world. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be podcasted.

Thomas Paine was not the first person to publish a pamphlet, and I am not the first person to embrace the podcast as a way to promote ideas that I believe are valuable. But myself and a couple of fellow political junkies have grown tired of what passes for political discourse in this country. We are tired of being told that there are only two sides to every issue. So we started our own podcast to provide our own perspectives on the issues. We call it The Midwest Peace Process, and between the three of us, we offer a unique mix of opinions from the left, right, and beyond. So, if you’re tired of the TV pundits shouting at each other (and at you), why not take the opportunity to give us a listen? We promise we won’t shout.

I’m glad to see my scolding four years ago had some effect, but come on, New Hampshire! Twenty-three percent is all you could manage? It’s a damn sight better than the measly nine percent you gave the man last time, but it’s still pitiful. I repeat, you’re a fraud, New Hampshire. You don’t care about freedom. Your actions betray your claims to stand for liberty. You should be ashamed.

Noah’s first visit to see the St. Louis Symphony was, appropriately, to hear the music of John Williams, complete with characters from Star Wars in the lobby of Powell Hall. We’ve been talking about the instruments of the symphony in his music class, but he really enjoyed seeing them in real life. And I enjoyed watching his reaction.

I also enjoyed hearing some of my favorite John Williams pieces, like the themes from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park, as well as Duel of the Fates from The Phantom Menace which they recreated perfectly with help from the St. Louis Symphony Choir — it’s enough to give you goosebumps.

Six years running, here is our annual Pipes family christmas card. Best holiday wishes to all of our friends and family!

After searching for help on this problem, and not finding any, I thought I’d post this for the benefit of others. I recently started having trouble streaming some content to my Roku, primarily live feeds from CNN and Al Jazeera. When launching the feed, the Roku would start to buffer the video and then just hang. I would have to power it off and back on to regain control. I never did find the source of the problem, but I was able to fix it by performing a factory reset. I hope this helps anyone else out there who might be having the same problem.

Earlier this year I wrote about the nascent Arab Spring and how I was hopeful that this movement, and this desire for freedom, would continue to spread. Stories like this one today continue to fuel my hope that this is true. The tangled web of government (in every country) has become so heavy, so onerous, that it has become impossible for people to continue ignoring it in the normal conduct of their daily lives. A ever-growing number are emerging from this miasma and asking (I hope), “Does it really need to be this way? Can we not find a better way of living on this planet?”

I refuse to believe this tsunami of anti-government rage is a simple coincidence of overindulgent editors around the globe looking for flashy stories because it has been a slow news year. This is the news. This is what is happening right now. This is a worldwide movement. Only a fool could deny it at this point. Further, it seems virtually no country on earth has been left untouched by it, and there are also no signs of it slowing down. Certainly, it has been exacerbated by the global economic troubles of the past few years, but that should not be allowed to overshadow the deeper philosophical meaning.

The people who are rioting in the streets, who are toppling their current regimes, are not motivated by unemployment, or the depreciation of their property values. This is not about money. It is about recognizing the basic human rights to life and liberty. It is about living one’s life with a sense of dignity, without being told how by an oppressive government. Surely, this is something to which we can all relate.

It has certainly taken longer than I had planned, and it is still a ways from being complete, but I wanted to offer an update on the basement bar project. A big thank you to my wonderful wife who has allowed me the time to work on it. You can see the progression in my album, but here’s the latest shot. I still have a lot of trim to cut, some staining left to do, and then granite tile for the top, but I can conceivably be done with all of that before winter. Maybe.

Although many people are unaware of it, St. Louis County boasts a world-class wolf sanctuary. Originally founded by Marlin Perkins, the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka houses several species of endangered wolves and foxes from around the world. We spent the final day of our staycation on a tour of the facility. I guess we had pretty good luck because we saw quite a few wolves and some of them were active despite the heat. I’m including a short video below of our wolf-watching adventure. We followed it up with a fantastic seafood lunch at Gulf Shores in Creve Coeur.

Frequent readers of this blog know that I do not shy away from political topics. Quite the contrary, I am something of a political junkie. But when the traditional sources for a junkie to get his fix (newspapers, cable TV, etc.) now have to be avoided like a contaminated needle, what is a junkie to do? Become a dealer of course!

Myself and a couple of fellow addicts have grown tired of what passes for political discourse in this country. We’re tired of being told that there are only two sides to each issue. So we’ve started our own podcast to provide our own perspective on the issues, while still helping others get their fix. We’re calling it The Midwest Peace Process, and between the three of us, we offer a unique mix of opinions from the left, right, and beyond. So, if you’re tired of the TV pundits shouting at each other (and at you), why not take the opportunity to give us a listen? We promise we won’t shout. Be sure to like us on Facebook too!

I’ve had an Asus Eee PC netbook for a few years. I was initially impressed with its speed and the Xandros linux load that came pre-installed. After about a year, however, I concluded that a 7″ screen is just a bit too small for me, and I discovered that the unionfs file system that Xandros used ran out of file handles every few months requiring some major maintenance before it would even boot. So, I upgraded to a larger Eee PC 900A that I found on Craigslist for $100, and I installed Eeebuntu. This satisfied me for a while, but over the past year I’ve noticed the UI starting to become sluggish (particularly in Firefox), with mouse clicks sometimes taking 5-10 seconds to register. And about a month ago, the sound driver apparently became corrupted because the speakers stopped working. So it was time, once again, for some maintenance.

I’ve written before about my travails with Linux, but I’m happy to report that things have improved dramatically — at least within the niche market of Linux flavors suitable for netbooks. In particular, I’m impressed with Leeenux, which so far has performed flawlessly on my 900A. Installing the Ubuntu version of Opera directly from the web was a snap, and because Leeenux (v4.01) has Flash bundled, I was able to avoid the painful tweaking that was necessary in the past to get Flash video working properly in Opera. Everything just worked. And you know what? That’s the way computers are supposed to work.

Abiword has supplanted OpenOffice as the word processor of choice. I’ve never used Abiword before, but it is noticeably faster than OpenOffice in opening the few test documents I tried. The other application that I use often is Remote Desktop Viewer (to maintain a headless media server) which did not come pre-installed, but the Ubuntu Software Center made it painless to add.

Installation

1. Download the .iso file
2. Format a 2GB thumb drive using FAT 16
3. Use Unetbootin to transfer the image and make the thumb drive bootable
4. Boot the drive by pressing escape at the Eee PC’s flash screen and selecting the USB device
5. Login with username ‘eee’ and no password
6. Complete installation and enjoy!