The Indian Government

The new Indian government has been reluctant to acknowledge the scope of destruction in India from the tsunami. There must be some political explanation, but I have trouble understanding what it is. These guys are just a little bit different. India is headed back for Communism after flirting with Capitalism for an all too brief period. Our buddies in the Congress Party. Just when we were worried about the possible impacts of a robust Indian economy on the US, we no longer have to worry. The Congress Party is in the process of leading the Indian economy down the tubes. Part of the Alice in Wonderland mindset is not acknowledging that they have problems caused by the tsunami.

The laser beam story

This is a story that has become so prominent that my wife mentioned it this morning. She was actually more up on the story than I had been at the time, as it had been on the 9pm and 10pm television news in Dallas. Charles Johnson has provided more information than I had seen before. Yes, this is not some kid with a laser pointer. This is a device that can lock onto and track an aircraft.

More Washington state politics

Ed Morissey says that Michelle Malkin and Stefan Scharansky are denting Christine Gregoire's armor. "Captain Ed" shows that he is still a major player in the blog world. He reads widely and I have found him a good source of information. He has led the rest of the world on several occasions in the last 6 monts (Swift Boat Vets and the 60 Minutes memos).

I continue to wrestle with Mozilla Firefox, while trying to blog and read Gmail

I am still almost completely using Mozilla Firefox as my browser. Only occasionally am I bringing up IE6. Usually, when I am using IE6, it is because that is still the binding for HTML pages on my Windows 2000 "Thick pad" computer at work (a COMPAQ Armada). Again, this morning, I have struggled with trying to copy URL's and text from Gmail and web pages, to use in blogging (with Blogger). The interaction of all of those is generally bad and frustrating. I have had to go with multiple tabs, because Gmail and Blogger, in particular, are incompatible. If you use Blogger, Gmail is permanently broken in that tab in Firefox.

A sneering tone: NPR, All Things Considered

I have hypothesized that the sneering tone heard from Robert Siegel was just a regional characteristic. The current cast (Michele Norris, Robert Siegel, and Melissa Block) provide the usual biased view of the world. I find that investigative reporting particualarly offensive. I often inadvertently tune in at 5:45pm, while I am on my 40 mile drive home, and catch wind of something, about which they are currently outraged. They generally are looking for instances where the President and the current government have offended their sensibilities. Barring that, they look for cases where local officials (say in New Jersey, a blue state), have stepped outside the bounds of propriety. Typically, the offenders are blue collar workers, people that the ATC crew might otherwise be championing. Barring all else, they will bemoan the plight of women in rural India (or you name the 3rd World country). I increasingly find the schtick tiresome, and even less frequently click to the local NPR station. Sadly, I support them with $25/month, as I have for the last 4 years. My wife comforts me that the television arm provides services that she uses in her Special Education class at school.

Something odd is happening at the Volokh Conspiracy

Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, had referenced a posting at the Volokh Conspiracy about statutory rape and the age of consent. The whole topic is politically explosive, from both the left and the right. What I understood is that in the progressive trend in the 1970's would have been to lower the age of consent to as low as 12 years. One group in favor of it were male homosexuals, with paedophile tendencies. There is an organization out there promoting such a thing, if not a younger age. A darling of the left, Larry Flynt, in the early 1970's had run pictures of a girl no older than 15 years old. That drew a lot of fire at the time, although it was legal until the end of the 70's. At that point, a different "progressive crowd" prevailed and we had an age of consent of 18 and had prohibited child pornography, pretty much worldwide (at least Europe and North America). This is the sort of topic that could well be revisited, but the Christian right and the wacko left (primarily, so-called feminists) would stop any such revision. Given that context, I can imagine that any discussion would be controversial, to say the least, and would draw really bad comments, if not hate mail. In this case, the seeming disruption and broken link is due to the Volokh Conspiracy moving to Powerblogs. Note their new URL.

The tsunami

No other country in the world has the ability to respond the way that the United States can. The big complainers about the U.S., like France, donated 100K euros. The U.S. pledged $35 M initially, and have set up a base in Thailand to support the relief effort. The USAF is flying in planes with relief supplies. The U.S. relief effort may top $1 B before all is done. The Germans are not so niggardly as the French, but are still pikers at 1 M euros. Part of the world resentment comes from the knowledge that they are second or third rate players on the world stage. During the Cold War, the Europeans could strut and pretend to be major players, but after the bankruptcy and collapse of the Soviet Union, the charade was over. Not that we don't like the Europeans. We are all Europhiles. We by BMW's and Mercedes (but not French cars in any numbers). We like the find French wines, the cuisine, and the atmospherics. That is mainly what they have left, sadly.

Questionable material

One of the sites that was referenced by what I found from Glenn Reynold's blog was a Dutch blog, "Kladblog". It has a whole range of material. I showed my wife a Japanese adveritisement for copy paper, where the copier changed into a robot and came after the woman who was abusing the copier: "Copier Strikes Back". I don't seem to be able to link to the article directly, but I can at least link to the blog.

The web has become a wide-open place (i.e., your children are likely to be exposed to about anything)

I had not realized what had happened since the U.S. law about pornography on the internet was struck down. There is all sorts of material no openly available. A well-known blogger, Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) had pointed out a blog that has links to a great deal of material, and the branching goes out from there. He had mentioned this one blog as an example of how content filtering failed to exclude much material that it meant to stop.

The war in Iraq

In the run up to the elections in Iraq, the Baathists and Zarqawi's forces are doing everything they can to disrupt or stop the election. If the elections happen, and are believable, the Baathists and Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda franchise will be on their way out. As long as the Iraqi people fear that the Baathists and/or Zarqawi might win, then our fight is just that much harder. The Andrew Sullivans and the Nation crowd all essentially want us to lose. Andrew Sullivan might dispute my characterization of his position, but he is at least helping to beat the drum, saying we are losing and that we are doing the wrong thing. The Nation crowd are also naturally hostile to anything that President Bush might try to do. They have all but said that they are on the same side as our enemy, as oddly enough, the Associated Press is, as well.

The Gubernatorial Election in Washington State continues to be a Farce

Ed Morrissey has some comments about Christine Gregroire's hypocracy in the vote counting process. David Horsey continues to be pretty even-handed in his treatment of the electoral process. David Horsey is an ultra-Liberal, but he is a great cartoonist, and he seems to be pretty intellectually honest. I highly recommend him.

the Gubernatorial election in Washington state

I like the way that the Democrats handled the Washington governor's race. They "found" enough ballots that allowed their candidate to "win" the election. These ballots appeared like mannah from heaven, when the Democrats looked to have lost the election. Even the Seattle Post-Intelligencer cartoonist, David Horsey, figured they had lost, and made a joke about the people who voted for the Republican.

Java Programming: Java 5.0 (JDK 1.5) and Eclipse

The latest version of the Eclipse IDE (3.1M4) finally implements "autoboxing and unboxing". The issue exists because of the existence of things like "int" and "Integer". The latter is a "box" class, while the former is a primitive type. With Java 5.0 (JDK 1.5), you no longer have to hassle with manual boxing and unboxing. The compiler now handles it for you (by generating the necessary code to box or unbox).

Our leftist buddies need to get over Christianity

I can confidently say that the majority of Americans can care less what other people believe or dont' believe. The exception may be people like the witches, who want to be prominently featured in the news. Otherwise, Atheists, Hindus, Muslims, Jewish people, Sikhs, Buddhists, and all the rest are free to believe and practice their religions as they please (unless they offend through practices which run afoul of the law). The percentage of people in the US who consider themselves Christians is quite high. I heard a figure in excess of 80% on the radio, yesterday. Christians need to be free to publicly practice their religion, as well, regardless of whether Leftist sensibilities are offended.

Tony Blair is a great man

When you read the transcript of Tony Blair's press conference in Iraq, you will first see how beastly the press are, especially the Brits, and what a great man that Tony Blair is. I am greatful that we have him as our ally in this great battle against a terrible enemy. Not only is our enemy radical Islam, but their Western allies on the radical left, especially in the Mainstream Media. Katrina van den Heuvel, of the Nation, is emblematic of those who are our foes. Laura Ingraham mentioned her statement about Michael Moore, this morning.

It turns out that Rumsfeld press conference questions were phony

We now learn that the unit in which the soldier who was being deployed to Iraq was in has a very high percentage of vehicles that are armored. This was a setup, trying to cause trouble, not a serious question. The reporter and his minions were doing us a disservice, not trying to help. The mainstream press has ignored this story, but it broke on the Free Republic web site last Friday.

President Bush: Time Magazine "Man of the Year"

I'm sure that ending up with President Bush as "Man of the Year" was galling for the Time Magazine people, but there was really no other option. In the face of constant daily attack, much of it from the mainstream media, President Bush persisted with his plans and was re-elected. The irrational and rabid nature of his opposition almost guaranteed his re-election, as John Kerry, the Democrats, and their allies, showed their increasing extremism. President Bush seemed to be the mainstream candidate who stood for values that were held by the majority of people.

Why I continue to like Susan Estrich

Susan Estrich is one of the sanest liberal commentators around. Because she is so sane, she is working at Fox News, rather than a CNN or CBS. Those of us, like Susan Estrich, who are in their fifties, know what she is talking about, when she writes of the bias for youth. She talks about the phases of life, as we now know them. Women in their thirties HAVE to have children. You just can't wait past that point. Plenty of women tried, but now know that it was a mistake. Men and women in their thirties are hard chargers. They are trying to make a place for themselves, and to gain early success. By your forties, you hope to consolidate your success. Except after the last economic downturn, there may not be anything to consolidate. A lot more of use are cautious about decision making than we were prior to 2001.

The great divide

There still is a great divide between the culturally liberal and the social conservatives. Michael J. Totten naturally falls into the liberal group. He was raised a Democrat and grew up and still lives in Oregon. He seems unable or unwilling to understand why the culturally conservative people from the South East and Texas are unable to embrace gay marriage, abortion, and the whole list of leftist causes. They are the people who want their children to be able to pray in school, to say a benediction at a high school football game, and to have the ten commandments posted in the classroom, as well as in the courthouse.

William Kristol isn't a conservative

In Howard Kurtz's blog, he says that Secretary Rumsfeld has lost the "conservative base", if William Kristol is critical of him. WRONG. All you have to do is read that William Kristol's friend is "John McCain", and you know that William Kristol is not a conservative. He has long shown that he is one of these odd creatures that pretend to be Conservative (like John McCain) but exhibit all the behavior of someone who is somewhere between "Centrist" and "Liberal". We can easily name them: John McCain, Chuck Hagel, and William Kristol. A while ago, you could have included Ariana Huffington in the list, but now she is an avowed liberal. As I have previously written, I knew where William Kristol really stood when he praised how unbiased that NPR correspondent Elizabeth Arnold was in 1996. I was not impressed, as I had spent the previous year yelling at my radio when Elizabeth Arnold was committing some verbal atrocity against Republicans and Conservatives in particular.

John Conyers

At one point, I had heard that John Conyers was a former Tuskegee airman, but I found out that wasn't true. He has built a career based on race-baiting. That has served him well in the last 40 years. Now, he is one of those trying to make Ohio into another Florida 2000. Mr. Conyers, who has long served in the House of Representatives (Ed Morrissey gave him a field promotion to Senator). The present crop of Democrats, like Mr. Conyers, are miffed at having lost the election, and since they won't assume any responsibility in the matter, they have to blame someone else.

Juan Cole has rubbed some people the wrong way

Professor Juan Cole, at the University of Michigan (home of the Voice Political party, SDS, and the misnamed SNCC, back in the 1960's), has raised his profile to the point that people are seeing how offensive his like of reasoning is. Michael J. Totten, who I really like, has taken a personal dislike for Professor Cole.

President Clinton is the ultimate sleazeball

When we find out that Marc Rich was involved with the oil-for-food scandle involving Saddam and the UN, you can be sure that the reason that Marc Rich was pardoned was not because of money. This was a sex-for-pardon operation, despite there being money involved, as well. Clinton took an interest in Denise Rich, and that was it took.

Bernard Kerik should never have been announced for Homeland Security

At least in the New York-based media, Bernard Kerik had a reputation that was unsavory. Given what was in the public domain before the weekend, there was enough to have shown that he was unsuitable. Since then, even more has come out. For whatever reason, the Whitehouse's vetting process failed in this case. Mark Halperin (ABC News guy) speculated with Gary MacNamara (on WBAP radio) about the reasons for the failure. We wondered if Rudy Giuliani might have been a factor in Kerik not being sufficiently vetted.

The FBI's past

For an outsider, there is little information, aside from news stories, to tell us what was happening within the FBI in the latter 1980's and early 1990's. The most visible incidents were Ruby Ridge and the attack on the Branch Davidians in Waco. There was also the intelligence failure that ended with the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Ruby Ridge and Waco were typical of the operations carried out by the FBI in the 1980's. They were targeting wacko right wing groups, almost regardless of the threat they posed. They had gone from conducting surveillance and arrests against the 1970's radical leftist groups to setting up wacko right wing groups and hoping to be able to massacre them. Ruby Ridge and Waco are prime examples. Getting rid of Louis Freeh and Janet Reno are steps in the right direction. The question is if the FBI is back to doing the work that they used to do, or are they still pursuing some weird political agenda?

I get the sense that the Democrats are at the point of self-destructing

The kind of rhetoric that we are hearing from the Democratic base makes me think that they will self-destruct as a party (thanks to Captain's Quarters and Shot in the Dark). I think that the Democrats may well rebrand themselves. We actually could see at least two parties form from the wreckage (the DLC crowd and the Nation people).

The copying business with Firefox seems to be a (rather doubtful) feature

One of the suggestions that I see is to install a plugin to allow you to copy and paste text. That's just great! If I use IE6, I can do that "out of the box". The issue has to do with Firefox trying to maintain formatting, and having that affect the ability to copy and paste.

I am back to using Firefox because the alternatives are worse

I tried the latest version of Opera. Opera is really fast and handles multiple pages nicely. The main problem is that it doesn't support all the features needed for Gmail and Blogger (namely, ActiveX controls). I need to do some more research, but I could not see how to fix the problem. IE6 is still so flakey on this machine, that the only alternative is to suffer along with Firefox.

I'm trying Opera as my browser, after giving up on Firefox

The obvious candidate to try for a web browser is Opera. I have an idea that there are "issues". Blogger only "sort of works" with Opera. I'm not surprised, but am disappointed. For example, there are no tabs on the Blogger editor and there is no icon for making links. I had to code my own link (not too much of a hardship, but still a bother).

I just officially gave up on Mozilla Firefox

I don't see IE6 as being a reasonable replacement for Mozilla Firefox, but it will have to do, until I can find something better. I just looked at the date on the download, and I see that lasted two weeks (since November 24, 2004). My gripe is that I should be able to touch type and the browser shouldn't do anything unexpected. I also ought to be able to freely copy to the clipboard and paste, and there should be no doubt about what happens. I tried to copy "Fast Times at Ridgemount High" from an HTML page, and Firefox didn't put it on the clipboard. That was the tipping point for me. After that, when I started to type this in Firefox, I typed an apostrophe, and the "Find" field opened at the lower left corner and took focus.

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor was a defining moment for my parents. My Dad had worked for a year to be able to attend the University of Michigan, and my Mom had just started, as well. She is a year younger. My parents were radio people, and they may have shaped my life along those lines, as well. I grew up listening to the radio, which was constantly on, before we had television. We lived in a trailer (temporary housing for veterans) when I was very small. I can remember hearing the radio, that a P-51 had been shot down over Korea (that's what I rememeber, at least). In any case, my parents heard the news about Pearl Harbor on the radio. My dad enlisted in the navy the next day. My mom attended school for a while longer, but it was stressful for her. She finally worked as a draftsman at Willow Run, working on radio-related work on the B-24 built there by Ford. Being a veteran, my Dad was able to finish college and almost finish a Master's degree, at Government expense (GI Bill). My Mom and Dad were both better prepared for life by the experiences they had during the war. And it was not only them, but a whole generation who had this common experience. Everywhere my Dad would go, he would meet another veteran. There was the PT boat sailor, and there was the P-51 pilot. My Uncle Chet was wounded at Guadalcanal, as a Marine. My Uncle Joe was a Tech Sargeant, whose weapon was a typewriter.

Tavis Smiley is leaving NPR

I was actually sorry to read that Tavis Smiley was leaving NPR. I must admit that I like his usual guest host better than I like him. One problem with NPR is that they look like the Kerry campaign: Northeast leftist white people. Tavis Smiley and our friend Juan Williams are some of the few exceptions.

I may yet be reduced to blogging with IE6

I keep having strange things happen with Mozilla Firefox. The lastest was that the text editor form had not data, when there was obviously text there that I had entered. (I notice that User Friendly has stopped touting Mozilla, in recent months).

Discounts on medical care and prescriptions for people without health insurance

In the Dallas area, PrimaCare and a network of pharmacies (largely grocery-store related) are giving discounted medical care and prescriptions to people without health insurance. I would be shocked if this is not a wide-spread phenomenon. There are too many people caught by the economic downturn and left, for a period, without health insurance. This is a way for health care providers to get their business. It is a practice that they can tout, and it helps people who are in need.

Peter Beinart on the Democrat problem

Peter Beinart is one of the liberal Democrats who is generally worth reading. There was a period of time during the campaign (in fact, until after the election), that he had become tiresome, reciting the campaign talking points. Since then, he has gone back to thinking and speaking on his own, to his benefit. He has his critique in the Sunday New York Post. My expectation is that the Democrats will not pay any attention to this argument. The conventional wisdom was that they were not loud and shrill enough to be heard, so they lost. At most, they might blame the loss on the evil Carl Rove playing the "values" card against them.

Mozilla Firefox and Favorites Icons

I found another minor issue with Mozilla Firefox. For "Favorites Icons" that are 32x32 pixels, you only see the upper left corner in the bookmarks manager. You do get to see the entire icon in the upper URL field, for some reason. Part of the issue is that the bookmarks manager and the browser are two separate applications. On the other hand, IE6, up to the latest updates and SP2 isn't showing 32x32 icons, so I guess I shouldn't complain. Examples are Tim's Toys and Scribbling.net.

Being sick is a waste of time

The worst thing about being sick is that it is a poor use of time. For example, on a day where I would be able to work 8 hours, I am home sick, instead. I would much rather be earning 8 hours pay. The culprit is bronchitis. My wife brought the bug home from school. She must have built up some resistance, through long-term exposure, as she is not really sick. I have not been living at home for most of the last three years, so I had not built up any resistance. In the face of a bad IT job market in Dallas, I had been off working in Minneapolis.

Once we had made the decision that I would only take a job in the Dallas area, then I waited 5 months until I found a position with a small software company (about 40 miles from home). The Dallas area is radically different from Minneapolis. I had a 14 mile commute on three different contracts in that time. In the Dallas area, the shortest commute that I have had in the last 16 years was 16 miles. That didn't last very long. After that, I was typically driving 25 miles each way. To do anything in the Dallas area, you can very quickly run up 20 miles. Fortunately, in the last 4 years, they have finally done the road work to improve the situation. Back in the early 1990's, a 37 mile drive to work was a nightmare. With the "High Five" project, they have radically improved a key choke point.

I find Ann Althouse's being nominated as the best conservative blog pretty ironic

I like Ann Althouse, and I visit her blog multiple times a day. She is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, and she has voted Democratic in the past. Her sons reportedly voted Democratic in the last election. For her to be nominated as the best conservative blog seems strange, as she is more like the other law professors (Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh, to name a few), who in may ways are more libertarian and socially liberal than the normal conservative. When I read her stories about Madison and the goofy happenings there before the election, I could see that she had moved to the right.

Software geeks: Java 5.0 autoboxing and unboxing

Yesterday afternoon, I tried my hand at some of the simple autoboxing and unboxing examples with JDK 1.5 (a.k.a. Java 5.0). Java has base types and then the boxed equivalent: for example, float and Float. In JDK 1.5, you should be able to write: Float x = 2.5; and it should automatically do the "new Float(2.5)" behind the scenes. If you do something like float x = new Float(2.5);, it should do the (new Float(2.5)).floatValue() behind the scenes. This is a nonsensical example, but it illustrates the point. I am using JDK 1.5.0 and the Eclipse 3.1m3 IDE. When I tried the simple autoboxing and unboxing, they failed. I'm running on a Windows 2000 machine. So the natural question is: "what's wrong?".

More Mozilla Firefox irritants

When I am replying to a Yahoo mail message, and type a "/", Firefox opens the "Find" field in the lower left corner and gives it focus. I have to hit the red "X" to close the field. When I try to type a URL, Firefox then opens the field, which is a bother, as I frequently type URL's. I had thought that the problem I had been seeing was unique to Gmail, but that is not the case. On the other hand, where I am working, they picked up a nasty virus/spyware from IE that Norton didn't catch and anti-spyware software couldn't clean up (that indicates to me that this was probably a virus). Certainly, anti-spyware software will not know about all the lastest bad things, especially if you aren't frequently updating. I guess I will stay with Firefox.