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Friday, November 05, 2004 |
Business Week . Mark Weisbrot agrees with...
Business Week . Mark Weisbrot agrees with...: "Business Week. Mark Weisbrot agrees with me as he makes the case that the US cannot sustain superpower spending for much longer. A combination of a high current debt levels (67.5% of GDP), a high annual deficit of $639 billion (this is less the sleight of hand with the trust funds), rising interest rates (inflation is again on the march with a rate of 4.9% over the last six months and the fed is on its case) that will balloon debt payments, and a potential pullout of foreign investors (as the dollar begins its inevitable long slide to balance our ballooning trade deficit) will sink us if we continue to spend like we do. "
(Via John Robb's Weblog.)
8:33:26 PM Permalink
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Tivo's New Patch
Tivo's New Patch: "
(via PVRBlog) Wired carries an interview with Tivo's lawyer, Matthew Zinn. Sometime in the next few months, your machine will quietly download a patch that makes it respond to a new copy protection scheme from software maker Macrovision. The app puts restrictions on how long your DVR can save certain kinds of shows - so far, just pay-per-view and video-on-demand programs. It's the first time your TiVo won't let you watch whatever you want, whenever you want. Slashdot covers the story as well.
-Chris
(Via Koozie Notes.)
8:28:13 PM Permalink
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Autoruns: Find Those Pesky Startup Programs
Autoruns: Find Those Pesky Startup Programs: "
The Nov '04 issue of Windows IT Pro contains an article by Mark Russinovich covering Sysinternals' tool, Autoruns. This utility shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. I downloaded the zip archive and double clicked Autoruns.exe. The program was up and running without a software install to endure. In under two minutes, I had banned AOL's AIM instant messenger from running when my computers restarts. This was a bit too easy, thanks Mark and Bryce.
-Chris
(Via Koozie Notes.)
8:23:20 PM Permalink
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Did Gay Marriage Win It?
Here's a good piece in Slate making a sensible argument that the gay marriage issue wasn't what rally swung it to Bush.
It's true that states with bans on the ballot voted for Bush at higher rates than other states. His vote share averaged 7 points higher in gay-marriage-banning states than in other states (57.9 vs. 50.9). But four years ago, when same-sex marriage was but a twinkle in the eye of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Bush's vote share was 7.3 points higher in these same states than in other states. In other words, by a statistically insignificant margin, putting gay marriage on the ballot actually reduced the degree to which Bush's vote share in the affected states exceeded his vote share elsewhere.
Why did states with gay-marriage ballot measures vote so heavily for Bush? Because such measures don't appear on state ballots randomly. Opponents of gay marriage concentrate their efforts in states that are most hospitable to a ban and are most likely to vote for Bush even without such a ballot measure. A state's history of voting for Bush is more likely to lead to an anti-gay-marriage measure on that state's ballot than the other way around.
This whole issue maybe should be shot down quick: part of the insidiousness of gay-marriage-as-losing-issue thing is that it supports and legitimizes that as a battle. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
4:16:18 PM Permalink
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17 reasons not to slit your writsts
No permalink that I can find, but here's a nice little piece from Michael Moore on why we shouldn't slit our wrists. Not the least of which is that, as he states, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed "The #1 Liberal in the Senate." Of course, with the media complicity in branding Kerry that way, and the obvious media bias that hasn't asked Dubya hard question in four years, it's easy to see how the spin is falling: anyone to left of Bush is going to be marginalized out of existence.
9:29:40 AM Permalink
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From Chronicles
Thanks to Poor_Howard for transcribing this little chunk from Dylan's Chronicles, p. 84-86:
I couldn't exactly put in words what I was looking for, but I began searching in principle for it, over at the New York Public Library ... I started reading articles in newspapers on microfilm from 1855 to about 1865 to see what daily life was like ... It wasn't like it was another world, but the same one only with more urgency ... there were news items about reform movements, antigambling leagues, rising crime, child labor, temperance, slave-wage factories, loyalty oaths and religious revivals. You get the feeling that the newspapers themselves could explode and lightning will burn and everybody will perish. Every body uses the same God, quotes the same Bible and law and literature ... In the Northern cities, there's a lot of discontent and debt is piled high and seems out of control. The plantation aristocracy run their plantations like city-states ... Christian piety and weird mind philosophies turned on their heads ... you wonder how people so united by geography and religious ideals could become such bitter enemies. After a while you become aware of nothing but a culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being getting thrown off course ... The suffering is endless, and the punishment is going to be forever. It's all so unrealistic, grandiose and sanctimonious at the same time ... It all makes you feel creepy. The age that I was living in didn't resemble this age, but yet it did in some mysterious and traditional way. Not just a little bit, but a lot. There was a broad spectrum and commonwealth that I was living upon, and the basic psychology of that life was every bit a part of it. If you turned the light towards it, you could see the full complexity of human nature. Back there, America was put on the cross, died and was resurrected. There was nothing synthetic about it. The godawful truth of that would be the all-encompassing template behind everything that I would write.
A fascinating passage, for several reasons. It's a good example of one of the many styles Bob uses in the book, and very reminiscent of the cadences he uses in his songwriting. I love word choices such as "in principle," "in some mysterious and traditional way," and they are emblematic of Bob's style in all his writing. The subject matter is pretty fascinating, too. It's always, or well for the past 15 years or so, been evident in Dylan's writing how much he associates himself with American history, how embedded it is in his songwriting. Greil Marcus tried to explore this, but failed, in his The Old Weird America. Bob captures it all and a lot more in this passage. The point Poor_Howard makes on his Dylantree post is that this war is still with is us, and it's not clear in many ways after 11/4, who won.
8:40:50 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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