Remembering Mississippi
A friend wondered via IM this evening why New Orleans is getting all the press, post-Katrina. My response was because it's New Orleans. Gulfport, Biloxi, Pass Christian: they're not famous for anything, whereas the Crescent City is famous for food, music, and floozies. (And not necessarily in that order.) Also, the water came in to Gulfport, et al, then left. When you have a metropolis that's below sea level, the water comes in and it stays, aka, the "bowl effect." What is doubly unfortunate for Mississippi residents is their state's decision to put all of its eggs in the basket of the casinos, some of which are now in the middle of highways and further inland. These were previously floating casinos, mind you. Personally, I saw little in terms of results with regard to the casino revenue bootstrapping the state up from the bottom of every good list and off the top of every bad list things are measured by. Perhaps the silver lining for Mississippi will be the forcing of the state and local governments to look at alternative forms of revenue, etc., instead of relying on gambling, which, let's be honest, annually took in more money from its own residents than it did tourists. This was especially true once Louisiana legalized gambling, and goes back to the point of being famous mentioned above. Why go to Gulfport or Biloxi to gamble when you can do it in New Orleans? So in the hope of showing at least a sliver of the Internet-using population why Mississippi is as deserving of your donations as the Big Easy, I'll point you to photos of the devastation courtesy of the Florida Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.
iPod <i>Nano</i>?
I realize with a new, slimmer design, Apple would want a new moniker to grace its smallest-iPod-with-a-screen, but who came up with Nano? That word should imply something very small, as in smaller than the Shuffle, which the Nano is not. Better they had kept the Mini name for this range of iPods, or possibly gone with Micro.
Stein berates, well, everyone over Bush blame
Ben Stein rips in to the media and Angry Left over the Katrina-is-Bush's-fault blame game. You know it must be bad if it's raising Ben's ire.
Mail to affected areas, post-Katrina
The USPS has a page up showing the zip codes that are either closed for now, or are in limited operation, in the Katrina-affected areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. We had planned to mail the latest portraits of our two year-old to my grandmother, who lives slightly west of Meridian, MS, and to my father-in-law, who is north of Lake Pontchartrain. Neither will be receiving mail for the forseeable future. I thought I would post the Postal Service's service link in case anyone else was wondering about mail to the affected areas.
Passive-Agressive Liberalism
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman actually manages to take his rage over Katrina beyond the usual Angry Left argument of blaming the devil Bush. He also blames the devil Reagan:
The federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?
The obvious objection is that Krugman has a cartoonish view of conservatism, which is anything but uniformly antigovernment (the Brooks/Kristol piece cited in the previous item elaborates this point). And while it's true that Reagan described government as the problem, not the solution, 25 years ago, those words would be shockingly out of character if George W. Bush were to utter them.
The more interesting point is that Krugman's implicit view of liberalism is about 35 years out of date. To put it bluntly, American liberals no longer believes in activist government. Oh, they believe in big government, but that's a matter of feeding existing bureaucracies and interest groups. But suggest doing things differently--welfare reform, Social Security reform, the Patriot Act--and they have nothing to offer but fear, anger and hate.
Among the first complaints we heard when Katrina struck was that the government failed to respond because of (a) Iraq and (b) tax cuts. This is passive-aggressive politics, not activist government. Lyndon B. Johnson cut taxes and waged war both in Vietnam and on poverty. To be sure, LBJ's administration was far from an unqualified success, but the point is that in those days liberals were confident--arguably overconfident--in the power of activist government.
To illustrate the point, consider some of the dour and whiny Democratic campaign slogans of the past two presidential campaigns: Lockbox. Risky scheme. Miserable failure. Two Americas. Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time. Let America be America again. This is the problem with the modern Democratic Party: they are out of ideas. It would be one thing to have debates over Social Security reform if there was a comprehensive plan from the Democrats being offered as an alternative. It would be one thing if the Democrats could offer a clear blueprint for waging the war against the Islamofascist terrorists who wish us ill. They are doing neither, choosing instead to whine and complain about the administration and political party that is doing something. Conservatives, when they are being honest, want the Left to bring something to the debate other than empty rhetoric. The current state of affairs isn't good for anyone, as it will lead to complacency and stagnation in the realm of ideas. Persons within the Democratic Party need to have the fortitude to cast off the pockets of the Angry Left which have attached themselves like leeches to a formerly grounded organization. Until that happens, and they begin to offer reasonable alternatives instead of mouth-foaming hot air, they will continue to lose elections.
It's raining again, hallelujah, it's raining again...
Since you won't hear about it any where else, Arthur Chrenkoff has the latest good news from Afghanistan. It is amazing how much is happening in this now-free nation in such a short amount of time. It truly shows the bias and if-it-bleeds-it-leads mentality of the mainstream press that these stories are not getting more coverage. We wrought this, America, through the service and sacrifice of our sons and daughters in the armed services. They should be proud. We all should be.
A unique opportunity in the Big Easy
Brendan Miniter has a piece on OpinionJournal today on the opportunity New Orleans has with rebuilding its educational system, one of the worst in the nation. I can personally testify to how bad things are in some of the schools there; I spent a few days at a single elementary school, troubleshooting some classroom Macintosh-printer set-ups. The school's HVAC system was offline, and had been for weeks. The teachers were mulling along as best they can, keeping the windows cracked so the rooms wouldn't get stuffy, and running fans. You can imagine, however, trying to teach a bunch of third-graders with three or four box fans going at once. Lack of funds was the reason for a less-timely repair of the system. I was there as an independent contactor, called out by the principal, because there was no one on the district's IT staff with any Macintosh knowledge. One aspect of rebuilding the New Orleans public school system that Miniter brings up is something I have long been in favor of: break the back of the teachers' union. The myriad "education" unions in this country have only served to hinder the success of our children in public schools, and that is evident in New Orleans, and most of Louisiana. No, the teachers' union is not the only problem with the school system, but if it is not providing a solution, it's proving a hindrance. As Miniter says, there is a unique opportunity in New Orleans now, and that is to build an educational system from the ground up. The Crescent City has a chance to be a beacon for the rest of the nation. We pray they seize it.
The mattress scam
The time has come. We made the decision to transition our two year-old to a "big boy bed." Not an actual bed with a frame and headboard, mind you; we're just throwing the mattress on top of the box springs on the floor. Parental common sense: it's fewer inches they will fall when they roll themselves off the edge. Parental common sense, part deux: it's shoved in to the corner, cutting the number of edges available for rolling off in half. So we took advantage of the Labor Day sales this holiday weekend and went mattress shopping. I thought I would pass along some helpful hints, should you find yourself in this situation. (Which you will, eventually, unless you enjoy self-induced spine curvature because you're still sleeping on the mattress you took to college with you nearly twenty years ago.) Forget comparison shopping. Mattress stores will sell the same brands, but it will be impossible for you to compare models. Why? Because the mattress manufacturers and retailers are sadists, that's why. Manufacturer X has a nice medium-range mattress, which is in demand by three different retailers. So Manufacturer X has three separate tags identifying this mattress for Retailers 1, 2, and 3. Therefore, when you are in Retailer 2, and looking at Mattress X2, you have no idea it's the exact same mattress as the X1 you saw at Retailer 1. And so on. So forget comparison shopping. Throw the price guarantee back in their face. All three of the retailers whose doors we darkened offered some form of a price guarantee: matching, 110% of the difference, etc. It's totally laughable, because of the lack of comparison-shopping ability consumers have when it comes to mattresses. They know you're not going to find the Sealy Posturepedic X95J Super Sleeper any where else, because it's not called the X95J Super Sleeper any where else. It will be called the F4 Dream Cushion, have a different fabric covering it, and you'll be none the wiser. So when the sales person mentions the price guarantee while you're browsing, you can laugh and tell him he is full of it. Hire a babysitter. I'm sure a neighbor would've been happy to watch our son for a couple of hours, but I didn't think about this until after the fact. Consumer Reports recommends lying on a mattress in the store for 15 minutes to get a definitive feel for its comfort. Obviously the anal-retentives at CR have never gone mattress shopping with their Thomas the Tank Engine-obsessed two year-old in tow. One is unable to lie on a mattress for 15 seconds as the aforementioned two year-old tears up and down the aisles, running his Thomas and Percy trains over the mattresses as he goes. In the end, buying a mattress is still a gut call. We didn't want to go cheap, but we didn't want to spend a grand on a set, either. We were looking for something in the middle, that would get him to his teenage years. Hopefully, we have succeeded.
Accepting the blame
Apparently, it's all Rich Galen's fault. Oh, and some is Terry Ebbert's. (Sorry, couldn't resist the last. I'll go back to sorting baby clothes now.)
<i>Of course</i> they made <i>Jarhead</i> in to a movie
Anthony Swofford's book Jarhead, which I will not link to, was a sad account of a mentally disturbed--which Swofford admits to--man's time in the Marine Corps and his deployment to the first Gulf War. Panned by myriad current and former Marines as riddled with half-truths, the book became a minor cause célèbre for the mouth-foamers on the angry Left. Anything that is anti-military, especially when it's written by someone who was in the military, is always accepted as gospel by the radicals. Brad Torgersen has a good summation. So of course the book was optioned for a motion picture, which debuts in November. Looking over the cast of characters, and knowing their politics, I'm not the least bit surprised to see who signed on. Non-mouth-foamers are advised to pass.
William H. Rehnquist, 1924-2005
A beacon of conservatism and common sense has been dimmed, with the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist tonight. Further words fail me at this time.
How do you reply in e-mail?
Erik and I are of like mind when it comes to e-mail replies. Unless my reply is one sentence or less, I never top-post. After all, it is common sense to reply within the relevant portions of an e-mail, especially if the e-mail is long and/or covering multiple topics. So if it's common sense, it only stands to reason that millions of Internet users have been trained by Microsoft and other software vendors in to top-posting. Grrrrr....
ATPM 11.09
The September issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available. Wes had a great idea for the cover, and we like how the art turned out. We're just sorry we couldn't have run it last month, but that's the way it is some times. Speaking of Mr. Meltzer, in this month's Bloggable, Wes covers the latest Mac-on-Intel musings from the Mac blogosphere, as well as blips on the Mighty Mouse, browsers, and Apple rumors. David Ozab shares a moving tribute to Robert Moog, the man responsible for popularizing the modern synthesizer, which many a Macintosh has played in concert with. Sylvester shares his digital music experiences in this month's Pod People. Regarding the Pod People column, we seem to have run through the staffers interested in contributing, and we are seeking future columns from our readership. If you would like to share your iPod experiences, please [drop us a line](mailto:editor@atpm.com?subject=Pod People). Chuck Ross's critically-acclaimed FileMaking series continues with a look at Fields and Calculations. (I kid not; reader feedback on Chuck's articles has been incredibly positive. Congrats, Chuck! It's our pleasure to offer your work to our readers.) Our own Matthew Glidden shares some photo textures from Louisville, Kentucky, and New Orleans, taken in August of last year, in this month's desktop pictures section. My good friend Francisco also has a contribution, a picture of what the night sky in Manhattan may have looked like, starting in 1998... Cortland decodes corporate buzzwords while missing a golden opportunity. Meanwhile, the plan of the evil geniuses is temporarily foiled due to their inability to read a map. Once again, I wrote the blurb (ahem, Lee), so I'm using it here. It took me long enough to come up with that; why reinvent the wheel? Frisky Freeware notes the Nvu web authoring system. It's free, and cross-platform to boot, and looks fairly nice. If I wasn't such a text editor nerd-wannabe, I would probably look in to it more, but most of my web design and development is done inside BBEdit. David Blumenstein puts the ABSmini one-touch storage system through its paces, while Tom Bridge does the same with Apple's new Mighty Mouse. (I'm still trying to scrape together funds for a Kensington trackball.) The Dean, Frank Wu, examines the NeoCase from RadTech. I had many a neoprene case for my old PowerBooks, and it's cool in a retro way to see them still around. Andrew Kator works over the PhoneValet 3.0, while Marcus Albers logs in to Tron 2.0. Light-bike races are still my favorite. Finally, Lee reviews You Control: Desktops, which, for the special price You Software is offering ATPM readers, is worthy of consideration for your multiple desktop needs. We have some staff vacancies, as you can see on our cover page, we need Pod People authors, as I stated earlier, and we always need cover art each month. If you'd like to contribute to ATPM in any way, please let us know.
The thrill is gone
So it looks like a week is all it took. Looking at my Contacts list in Adium, only three people are still bothering with Google Talk. Everyone's back to AIM or .Mac on iChat.
Iosis
No, not oasis, Iosis. And it's from, of all companies, Ford. With the exception of the neo-retro Mustang, this is probably the best concept to come out of the Blue Oval in quite a while.
My wife finds the positive
My wife grew up in Kenner, in Jefferson Parish. For you geographical neophytes, Jefferson is due west of Orleans Parish. If you've ever driven in to New Orleans from the west, or flown in to New Orleans International Airport, you've driven through Kenner and Jefferson Parish. My wife's childhood home is certainly under a good bit of water at this point. Though we have no word from him yet, her father is north of Lake Pontchartrain, at his horse farm in Franklinton, so hopefully, we have no family worries, post-Katrina. She has been very distressed, however. This was where she grew up. We lived in the area for six years. I grew up sixty-odd miles away in the Baton Rouge area. We have ties. We have friends. We feel despondent. I confessed to Tom earlier today that my heart aches. My wife comes in to the study a few moments ago, to browse online news, and says:
"The only positive thing about all of this is that we haven't heard Cindy Sheehan's name in the past three days." Crap.
Promotion
Congratulations to Michael Hyatt, who is going to have to change the graphic on his blog after his promotion yesterday. (What Mr. Hyatt doesn't know, is that when I finally get around to writing my Christian-worldview technothriller, I will relentlessly harass him to publish it. So keep that between us, okay?) Seriously, though, Mr. Hyatt has big shoes to fill, and we wish him the best and will keep him in our prayers. Sure, all businesses exist to make money, but my view is that Christian businesses, and notably in this case, a publishing house, exist for a higher purpose as well.