existence trainer

It turns a little odd in the middle.

O'Reilly's Map Pollster's Map

Well done, Olbermann.

"And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need" - Acts 2:44-45 "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" - Karl Marx

Conservatism has become more and more divisive, ideological, and narrow over the last decade. At least it has in its popular expositions exhibited in present political discourse. Conservatives, if they want to save their movement, need to take it back out of the hold of the self-proclaimed conservative exponents and pundits like Limbaugh, Hannity, and - in fact - the entire right-wing radio talk-show circus that only appeal to non-intellectual gut reactions of listeners who are either easly swayed by incendiary remarks or want to affirm some loose and vague notions like small government and/or social values. Both todays conservatives and liberals are part of grand western democratic liberal tradition that they have forgotten about and that they need to re-appropriate in their thinking. Conservatives in particular need to be careful not to claim that only they have the monopoly the views of America's founding fathers (which are a significant part of this tradition) and they need to

Brilliant!

He's put the case as straightforwardly and eloquently as I've heard from anyone:

I'm sad McCain's campaign soured me on him a little bit. This is the charming, good natured man that I really admire.

He writes : A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore. But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there

It has gotten a lot easier to discover the artist of a song you hear on the radio or in a movie nowadays. Most of the times its sufficient to take down some of the lyrics and do a google search on them. But sometimes it is not so simple - think about electronica or other music without lyrics. I have a couple of clips on my computer which include samples of music that I would love to know the artist of. How, then can I find out? Here is one way that I've found (if there are better ways, please let me know by leaving a comment). First, you need to extract the audio from the video file. For avi, mpg, or flv files you can do either: ffmpeg -i my_video_file.avi extracted_audio.mp3 or mplayer -dumpaudio my_video_file.avi -dumpfile extracted_audio.mp3 You may need to extract the part that you want using Audacity. Now the question is: How do we go about identifying the extracted audio? The method I used was to install MusicBrainz Picard . which can use audio fingerprinting to identify the

This link seems to work in VLC, but I'm having problems getting it to work in mplayer and Amarok. http://citadelcc-wls-am.wm.llnwd.net/citadelcc_WLS_AM EDIT: The following works in Amarok: mms://68.142.72.86:80/citadelcc_WLS_AM?MSWMExt=.asf

Its painful to watch, yet I can't look away How to Rap, according to Mr. T

Hannity gets his ass handed to him. That is what happens when you base your entire shtick on a tactic which is a classical instance of poor reasoning. Bravo Gibbs! And Colmes, whose admirable instinct was to defend his co-host from the charge of antisemitism should have also driven home the point that it shows the inanity of this entire line of reasoning.

Neil Boortz does offer an interesting perspective on last night's debate. Check out the "Just So Frustrating" and "The Rich Should Pay Their Fair Share!" parts of today's post .

Factchecking, otherwise known as due-diligence, is very important in evaluating the credibility of the candidates. Are one or both of the candidates willing to state straight-out falsehoods in order to win some cheap votes? For example, McCain has consistently misrepresented Obama as someone who wants to raise taxes across the board, esp. on the middle class. The fantasitic site FactCheck.org has this to say about such a claim: It's a pretty standard Republican theme: "Democrat X favors higher taxes and wasteful spending." But the McCain-Palin campaign has repeatedly pushed this line far beyond what the facts will support. Among the whoppers: that Sen. Barack Obama has voted to raise taxes on families earning as little as $32,000 per year, that Obama wants to tax your electricity and your heating oil, that he has voted for "higher" taxes 94 times, and that he will raise taxes for 23 million small-business owners. Each of these claims is false. ... As for Obama

Two sites you should check out for extensive coverage on the truths, half-truths, and outright lies that are circulating about the presidential candidates are Politifact and FactCheck . A list of the most egregious lies can be found here . These include:

It is 13 years to this day that he was acquitted of murder. No doubt he is sure to appeal.

Spoiler: False .

Appearance - Light yellow. Looks like ginger-ale with extra carbonation and fizz. Smell - Corn, more corn, and sweet metal. Taste - Corn and water, with the added flavor of the can (mmm... can). Nothing too offensive, but very boring and bland. Quintessential shit beer (they should win a prize for this). Mouthfeel - Beer flavored seltzer water. Drinkability - Why? I mean seriously. At least upgrade to Natural Light. Could be good for cooking (I think that's what I'm going to do with the rest). F/1

Appearance - Pours a light hazy amber with a large frothy white head that holds fairly well and leaves only a slight lacing. Lots of carbonation. Smell - A somewhat sweet aroma, with apple notes and a little cirtrus hops. . Taste - A little sweet/malty, a little spicy, and ends on a sour note, though not as flavorful as the smell might portend. The most prominent flavor is that of sour apple. Mouthfeel - Medium-bodied. Smooth, crisp, and even somewhat creamy. A little excessive on the carbonation. Drinkability - Although somewhat muted on flavor, it's an easy and drinkable beer. I probably wouldn't drink more than two in a row, though, because the sourness gets to me B+/7

A fascinating trek through history (also don't forget to look at the election facts at the bottom).

It is only been in the past year and a half that I have come to realize that America does have some great breweries and produces some fantastic beers. Before this, I bought into the meme that almost all American beer is shit. And the fact is that like 50% of American beer sales (by vol) is from the Anheuser-Busch company alone (though is it still an American company ?) - which absolutely does produce LOTS of shit: Budweiser and its derivatives (drinkable, but not really anything good about it), Michelob, Rolling Rock, Natural Light (bad beer flavored water), and Busch varieties (we're getting into the real shit). Unfortunately, this is what a lot of Americans like. Maybe they've bought into the advertising campaign, maybe they just haven't experienced great beer, maybe they only drink beer to get drunk, or maybe they've dulled their taste-buds to the waterry sorta-beer-flavored macro varieties. You know that someone hasn't really learned to appreciate good beer when

Cardinology is due out Oct 29. If you want a sneak peak of what it will sound like, then there is a compilation of live versions of the songs here . Check it out! First impressions: I agree with one of the commentators that it might be too jam bandy (as it was in a concert I saw him in about a year ago) and a bit more mellow than I might prefer. But even so I'm definitely looking forward to it. Technorati Tags: music , ryan.adams

Even though he does parody other radio talk show hosts in certain respects (e.g., silly criticisms of Obama), he does have an independent streak in the way he looks at things. (Also, he is not boring, repetitive, or a propagantist hack for the right a la Hannity). I may not agree with what he says in today's Nealz Nuze , but at least it is a voice of fresh air in the conservative dominated radio talk shows: JUST KEEP THE HATE MAIL COMING! (BY THE WAY, I'M NOT A REPUBLICAN) Subject: Immaturity of American Voter Name: Corbett It's always some excuse with you Republicans. You present us with John McCain as your candidate & then call the American voters immature because they want nothing to do with the author of McCain-Feingold, the man who voted against tax cuts & the man who sabotaged the nomination of conservative judges. When will you people grow up? Grown up people take responsibility for their mistakes. They don't blame others and they don't call people n

Producing a shinny new updated Windows XP disk is easy if you have (or at least know about) the right tools. Assuming you have a XP service pack 2 installation cd (or iso), you can do any of the following if you like: slipstream sp3 into it incorporate hotfikes incorporate, say, SATA drivers - if you want to be able to install in on many (if not most) new computers. incorporate programs like: Firefox, VLC, WP11, IE7, etc. If you want to integrate Windows Media Player 11, do this before following the instructions below. If you want to integrate drivers from DriverPacks , again, do this before using nLite. First, make sure you have Net Framework 2.0 installed, and then get a copy of nLite and install it. Then copy the entire content of your WinXP CD in some local folder (e.g., C:\XP). Note: nLite will do copy it for you if you point it to the CD. If you want to slipstream sp3 into the disk, download it from here . Get all the programs you want to include in your new XP disc. You can

When Hardy first came out, I was somewhat disappointed. I was experiencing a large number of bugs and unusual system instability. I even listed some of my main complaints here and here . I've continued to use Hardy, but I've had my eye on the next version of Ubuntu, code-named "Intrepid Ibex", which comes out at the end of the month (October). Rather than wait until it is entirely ready, two nights ago I decided to go ahead and update my entire system to Intrepid and file bug reports when needed. (Although it is not recommended on production machines, the process of updating to the next version is really easy. It can be done running the following command: sudo update-manager -d ) So far, I've been pleased with my experience. There is nothing revolutionary about Intrepid, but it does feel a lot more stable than Hardy (ironically, even in its present alpha stage). In all honesty, it is the experience I was hoping for with Hardy. Better late than never, I guess.