19 years Ago
UserPlane
Published on in Design
Nice, clean, professional single-product web site. Icons are simple, consistent and single color; uses one other color for the word “Free”. (UserPlane Home Page)
There’s Pie in the Lunchroom
Published on in Design
This site is quite nice, using the four colored boxes motif to make their sidebars and articles distinct. Especially nice is the gradient shading at the bottom-left hand corner to separate the text blocks from each other and to draw attention to the details for each block.
I kind of like the little stipple-pattern used as a separator too. (Pie Home Page)
Witchcraft
Published on in Quotes
“You can kill a flock of sheep with witchcraft, provided you also feed them arsenic.”
Elite Intellectuals
Published on in Quotes
“[The attitude towards Haiti] is a depressing illustration of how a highly disciplined intellectual class can reframe even the most depraved actions as yet another opportunity for self-adulation.”
Nickname for Bush
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The people of New Orleans should put their heads together and come up with something in their patois.
“President Bush once spoke to a major gathering of the American Indian Nation in Arizona. He went on for almost an hour about plans to increase every Native American’s standard of living. He referred to his career as Governor of Texas, where he had signed “YES” 1,237 times — once for every Indian issue that came across his desk.
“Although vague on the details, he seemed most enthusiastic to... [More]”
Impeachment Avenue via Downing Street
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Impeachment is a word that’s going to turn up almost no hits on a Lexis Nexis search. The word gets kicked around whenever a president does stuff he shouldn’t. The last time it was used was with Clinton, who actually was impeached, but was not forced to leave office. As with everything else in American politics, impeachment is too complicated for a mortal mind to grasp. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, Clinton was impeached not for adultery (though there are many in the Puritanical... [More]
World War II Myths
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
It is generous to say that the U.S. education system doesn’t place much of an emphasis on learning history. Knowing history breeds learning about current policy (before it becomes history), discussing it (politics for the layman? absurd) and, worst of all, questioning it. The typical American history education during the 70s and 80s included years of repetition of the same 75 years during the founding of the U.S., coverage of the Civil War, some stuff about the Arch Duke Ferdinand and WWI,... [More]
The Foreign Aid Myth
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The End of Poverty by Onnesha Roychoudhuri (AlterNet) is an interview with Jeffrey Sachs, head of a panel of “over 250 development experts to lay out practical strategies for promoting rapid development”. The biggest hurdle, as far as he’s concerned is the “lack of appropriate effort” on the part of “rich countries”. The main problems faced by poor countries today are malnutrition and diseases like AIDS and malaria; these could be “controlled quite dramatically and easily if we just put in the effort”. Opponents have criticized his... [More]
Opting in to the Iraq War
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Opting for ‘Opt-In’ by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor (AlterNet) shows how schools are dealing with increasingly predatory military recruiters in their schools. As the military misses more and more recruiting deadlines, they demand more and more access to the records for younger potential recruits: kids in high school. The military has access to a student’s personal records by default, unless the school district or the parents deny it.
“But federal officials are warning that any open defiance by school districts to the military... [More]”
Glaciers advancing … run for your lives
Published on in Miscellaneous
The Real Junk Science by George Monbiot (AlterNet) covers a recent letter by a pillar of the scientific community (no, really, he apparently is … or was) in which he claims that most glaciers in Europe are, in fact, growing. Global warming naysayers have naturally taken this as “proof” that global warming is a sham dreamt up by fruity eco-socialists who want to ruin it for everybody.
Monbiot’s look into the validity of the claim takes him on a twisty path a myriad of citations, each building on the last without adding... [More]
U.S. Policies − At Home and Abroad
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
What follows are some tales from recent U.S. domestic and foreign policy — tales of a government increasingly concerned neither with the will of its people nor the welfare of humans in general. A government that prefers to shortsightedly amass power unto itself, ignoring long-term realities that make such power fleeting at best.
Taking action in Darfur
Ring Them Bells by Chris Floyd (CounterPunch) sounds the alarm that the sweet-faced young up-and-comer, the United States, is poised to pop its self-interest cherry by... [More]
The Poisonwood Bible − History Repeats Itself
Published on in Miscellaneous
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Amazon) is a work of fiction about a baptist family from the American South who embark on a mission to the Congo in 1959. It tells the tale from the viewpoint of the minister’s four daughters with intermezzos told by the mother. The clash of cultures on social, political and military levels is exquisitely woven from these individual strands of experience. The political context is remarkably similar to that in which an amnesiac America has placed itself today, lending ever more... [More]
Google Maps: Web Applications done right
Published on in Programming
Mapping Google is an in-depth examination of Google Maps, a new web application that searches the US graphically. There are follow-up articles in Making the Back Button dance and Still more Fun with Maps. The series of articles covers the techniques Google used to bring a full-fledged, usable application to a web browser.
What’s so special about it? It feels like a desktop application:
- Drag the image and it scrolls
- Click a pushpin and get more information
- Objects throw shadows for a “real”... [More]
How to buy an LCD
Published on in Technology
Budget LCD Roundup April 2005 (Firing Squad) is a perfect guide for people looking to buy an LCD. Let me rephrase that to anyone looking for a computer, because CRTs barely even exist anymore. In fact,
“For those of you who still have a CRT monitor on your desk right now, know that it will likely be the last CRT you will ever own. … Your vintage high-end CRT is better than many CRTs being produced today.*”
*That’s me. I’ve got two vintage 19" Viewsonics, both 5 years old.
Pixel Speed
So, LCD it is, then.... [More]
Galloway 1 − U.S. Senate 0
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
A little while ago, the United States Senate invited British Parliamentarian George Galloway over the pond for a bit of a chat. They wanted to hear what he had to say about the accusations they’d made that he profited from the Oil for Food program in Iraq during sanctions. The U.S. media had naturally already weighed in and found him guilty supported by marginal circumstantial evidence. (He knew a guy who knew a guy … what more do you need?) Galloway is by no means an angel, but after... [More]
Double Whammy for US Citizens
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Two bills signed into law this year will have major effects on the average American citizen’s life in the coming years. First, the Congress and the President gleefully passed the written-by-credit-card-companies bankruptcy bill. Soon after, RealID slipped through on the coattails of the appropriations bill for the next whack of change for Iraq.
Bankruptcy is Obsolete
Debt Slavery by David Swanson (Common Dreams) provides some background on the recently passed bankruptcy bill.
The bankruptcy bill was sold to us by our media... [More]
Teaching Science in America
Published on in Miscellaneous
Having Fun With Intelligent Design by David Morris (AlterNet) offers some good advice to teachers charged with spending time on alternative theories to evolution. The crux of the matter is that in two states so far, Pennsylvania and Kansas (big surprise there), teachers must address a theory of the world known as intelligent design. This is not religion; it is a pseudo-scientific justification for a God-like being.
“Intelligent design is not creationism per se. It holds that higher forms of life are so complex they must... [More]”
Deep Throat comes out of the closet
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
As Winston Smith noted long ago, keeping history up to date is a full-time job. It’s good that we in America are blessed with a vigilant media that takes care of the job. When W. Mark Felt recently came forward to name himself as the erstwhile informant in the Watergate scandal, the right-wing loonies seized the opportunity to rewrite the history of the Vietnam War in today’s context.
Deep Throat and Genocide by Ben Stein provides a truly stunning summary of Nixon and the Vietnam War, claiming that Nixon... [More]
Fighting Corporations on their own Turf
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
One of the most important points to remember about democracy in America is how strongly controlled it is by large corporations. What exactly is a corporation, anyway? How did we get to the point where there is no way of fighting a bad corporation or even realistically boycotting one? (you usually end up putting money in their coffers through subsidiaries) State and Corp. by Noam Chomsky (ZNet) offers a description of corporations that is grounded in U.S. law and is both accurate and chilling:
“And [they] were granted... [More]”
Bob Novak’s Ground Rules
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
It’s been a while since a blatantly government-beholden article has graced earthli News, so here’s Cooperation falls apart in Senate by Robert Novak (Chicago Sun Times). I did
“The lavishly acclaimed new era of good feelings in the Senate lasted less than four days. Senators, anxious to begin another long recess, reverted to mean and brutish behavior a little after 7 p.m. Thursday when Democrats blocked an up-or-down vote on John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. So much for supposed congeniality wrought by the... [More]”
Censor yourself
Published on in Miscellaneous
According to Your Handy Home Censorship Kit (AlterNet), there is now in America a purification device for the wicked emissions coming from Hollywood in the form of “[a] new device [that] allows consumers to cleanse their DVDs of sex, profanity and violence.”
Whoop-dee-doo. It’s called network television or basic cable; we’ve had it for decades. This brilliant technology is now also available for the home in the form of a ClearPlay DVD player:
“ that are designed to mute or skip over foul language, nudity,... [More]”
Being anti-war
Published on in Quotes
“Just because you’re against a war, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re for the other side.”
Mac OS X Tiger − a Promising Future
Published on in Technology
Now that Mac OS X Tiger has been out for about a month, the next wave of more in-depth reviews are coming out. These provide a more hands-on critique than the initial wave of sycophantic “reviews” that were mostly created by copy/pasting Apple’s press releases. Some of the latest reviews sing Tiger’s praises, offering workarounds for weaknesses and others are harsher critiques that take Apple to task for breaking their own UI guidelines.
Mac OS X 10.4 − more bling than bang? by Andrew Orlowski (The Register) mentions right off... [More]
Newsweek and other tales of a cowed media
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Judging from the humming on the old Internet(s) lately, Newsweek is in a fair amount of trouble. It seems that this young upstart of a magazine, instead of being happy with its lot sitting in Time’s shadow, seems instead intent on bringing life as we know it to an end! (emphasis added by the White House). With their publication of an article documenting specific prisoner abuses in U.S. detainment facilities (known as dungeons in any other context), they incensed an administration known to be... [More]