I'm no fan of Lou Dobbs, and this latest flap about President Obama's birth certificate is just more evidence that he's an idiot, but the dialog has highlighted what I think is an interesting political oddity. The Obama administration has chosen to ignore this tempest in a teapot. Okay. I don't disagree -- this claim is not legitimate, as far as anyone can tell. As Jon Stewart pointed out the other night on The Daily Show, unless Obama has a time machine, the birth announcements in the August 1961 Hawaiian newspapers are compelling evidence. However, how difficult would it be for the Administration to simply produce the birth certificate, and silence all of the critics? This may seem like caving into the demands of the lunatic fringe, but this is the same administration that held a do-over of Obama's swearing in, after Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed his lines, in a preemptive strike against anyone who would question the validity of the ceremony, all out of "an abundance of caution." Remember that? Where is that caution now?
Of course, the more interesting question in all of this (that I don't hear anyone talking about) is not was Obama born in Hawaii, but is Hawaii actually a state? This issue may enjoy the same level of respect as other internet conspiracies, like the Bohemian Grove and black helicopters, but there is little debate that Hawaii was illegally annexed by the United States, as evidenced most recently by President Clinton's 1993 apology to the State of Hawaii for overthrowing their kingdom. If Hawaii isn't really a state (legally), then Obama's birth certificate doesn't really matter much, does it?
It was time to retire my Palm PDA, but replacing it was something of a challenge since no one really makes PDAs anymore that aren't part of a smartphone. I'm still happy with my Virgin Mobile service, and you can't beat the price, so I didn't really want to upgrade to a new phone.
The best compromise I could find was, believe it or not, an MP3 player. But Apple's iPod series is really more than just an MP3 player, and the iPod Touch is really more than just an iPod. It's been called an iPhone without the phone, which is true, but what it is really is simply astonishing. I have a lot of gadgets, but this is the first time I can honestly say that I was astonished by a piece of technology. I ran the battery dead playing with it the first time, with my mouth literally agape. I could not believe that I was listening to my music while surfing the web on a device that is not much bigger or bulkier than a credit card.
I won't continue singing its praises here -- there are plenty of Apple fanboys on the internet to do that for me -- but I will mention a few warts that I've noticed. First, and foremost, I am not at all pleased that Apple chose to charge its Touch customers for the firmware upgrade to version 3.0. Especially since the upgrade has been available for months -- why aren't these products sold with the latest firmware? iPhone users get the upgrade for free, but iPod Touch users have to pay? That is a poor business decision, in my opinion.
Second, for all of the accolades that Apple receives for their unique and functional user interfaces, I have to say that the iTunes desktop interface is not terribly user-friendly. It was not immediately apparent to me, the first time I ran it, how I am supposed to manage my music and video library on my PC -- it is also a bit annoying that I can't remove songs and videos directly from the iPod Touch.
Third, the notes app that comes with the iPod Touch is lackluster at best. I would purchase an app with more functionality, but then it won't automatically sync with my desktop. This probably isn't an annoyance for those who bought the Touch primarily as an entertainment device, but for those who are trying to replace a PDA, having a functional notes app that performs easy and reliable backups is essential.
Lastly, for some inadequately explored reason, Apple saw fit to remove one piece of valuable functionality that all previous iPod devices had: you can't use the iPod Touch as a simple USB drive! If you are willing to install some third-party apps, you can do it, but why should the user have to bother with that? I view that as a serious misstep on Apple's part.
Of course, the iPod Touch (as well as the iPhone) are all about "apps" -- Apple makes it very easy to spend your money in their App Store. But they make it equally easy to find the free apps too. As I collect apps that I find useful, I will continue to update this post with links to them here.
Stanza
An ebook reader that is surprisingly well designed for a free app. Transfering ebooks from my PC proved to be more cumbersome that it probably should be, but once they are on the device, the reading experience is very good and intuitive.
Paper Toss
This is a pretty cool game -- it's exactly what it sounds like, a physics-based game of tossing a ball of paper into a trash can. More challenging than it sounds. It would take a lot of practice to get really good at it. The free version is definitely worth downloading.
Boxed In
A fascinating and highly addictive logic puzzle.
Urbanspoon
Can't decide where to eat? Let this app take the guesswork out of it, and add a little fun. Shake your device, and see suggestions appear slot-machine style.
Facebook
If you are a Facebook user, this app is indispensable. It makes navigating the site much easier and more efficient, with the added benefit of no advertising! You can see the interface in your web browser here. You might also be interested in the "lite" version of the Facebook interface.
The Weather Channel
Get your local weather fast and even view realtime video forecasts.
Free RSS
You will not find a better RSS reader that is free.
If you are a regular visitor to planet snewpy, you may never have been aware that you were simply in orbit around the planet, and that the planet's surface below was also buzzing with activity. An experiment in political philosophy has been ongoing for a couple of years, as the planet's residents have been busily solving the world's problems and discussing current events, and we are now ready to open up that experiment to the rest of the universe. If you enjoy talking politics in an intelligent and respectful manner, you are encouraged to board the shuttle to the planet's surface and join the debate. Everyone is invited, whether statist or anarchist, liberal or conservative, socialist or capitalist, and all ideas are welcome! Come join us, won't you?
A few recent stories in the news have caught my attention, so I wanted to comment on them. First, CNN ran an editorial on hate crimes. I already responded to it in the comments, but I wanted to address one other point the authors made. In the last paragraph, they make the claim (without a reference, I might add) that "over two-thirds of the American public favor hate crime laws." So? Over two-thirds of the American public are morons. I suspect that any survey you would conduct on this issue would go something like this. Hate is bad. Crime is bad. Therefore, hate crime is doubly bad. So any law making hate crimes illegal is doubly good. Sure I'll vote for that. It doesn't matter that it's meaningless. The term "hate crime" is like something right out of Orwell's newspeak. It's doubleplusungood. It is literally thoughtcrime brought to life, and the potential dangers of attempting to police people's thoughts are far greater than the danger of ignoring a perpetrator's motivation in committing a crime.
In other news, the First Amendment is under attack in Wisconsin, as an Iraq War veteran turned entrepreneur is being harrassed by the local constabulary for flying the US flag upside down as a sign of distress. His quote at the end of the story really says it all: "It is pretty bad when I go and fight a tyrannical government somewhere else, and then I come home to find it right here at my front door."
Lastly, I recently posed the question, is Atlas shrugging? Here is one more bit of affirmative evidence from the Wall Street Journal, documenting that previous attempts to "soak the rich" in various states have never achieved the stated goal. Raising taxes significantly on the rich only provides incentive for them to avoid the taxes, either by moving out of the oppressive state or working harder to shelter the income, thereby driving down the state's annual revenue. In Atlast Shrugged, the rich are encouraged to disappear to Galt's Gulch -- in real life, they are being encouraged to relocate to tax havens like Texas or Florida. Either way, the government's attempts at redistributing wealth are thwarted.
It's been almost two years since we last saw her at Touhill, and she's won a second Emmy since then for her show My Life on the D-List. This is my third time seeing her live, and I always walk out with my cheeks feeling sore from smiling for two hours straight.
She began her show this weekend at the Fabulous Fox by moonwalking onto the stage, in a tribute to Michael Jackson, and then proceeded to ask the audience, in a conspiratorial voice, if it was too soon to dish about the King of Pop. Of course the audience demanded that she continue, because that's what Kathy Griffin fans come to hear. She did not disappoint, and put on a very entertaining show. As her popularity continues to rise, I dare say she is in danger of being promoted off the D-list.
If you want to "go green" for environmental reasons, that's great. If you want to do it for financial reasons, that's great too, but what I've discovered is that it might be difficult to quantify exactly how much you are saving.
I've been waiting since last year to calculate the savings from our solar water heater. I put together a spreadsheet comparing electricity and natural gas usage over the 12-month period before the installation, and the the 12-month period after. What I can say is that our monthly electricity usage increased an average of 20% over that time, but our natural gas usage decreased by 31% -- almost a third!
Those numbers are encouraging, however, it is difficult to put actual dollar amounts on them, and determine the cost savings overall. Since utility rates fluctuate in general, and have changed dramatically in the last two years in particular, it is hard to say whether a change in our monthly bill (either up or down) is a result of the system's performance, or just arbitrary rate changes. The calculations are further complicated by the fact that we've chosen to lower our thermostat slightly from last summer so our air conditioner has been running more this year than last. So the "green vs green" challenge remains unsettled, but I will continue to monitor it and report whatever I find.
