In one of the more truly bizarre stories I have come across lately, Rev Sun Myung Moon (as in "the <em>Mooneys</em>") apparently duped senators and prominent folks into Moon's own <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1245929,00.html?=rss">crowning ceremony in the Senate!</a> Talk about influence: the guy owns the Washington Times paper.
I have been using LaunchBar and like it so much I recently prepared to purchase it. But the thing with software is, something better <em>always</em> comes along. It is only a matter of time. In this case, I waited exactly two days after I nearly bought it and found this helpful <a href="http://www.atmasphere.net/mt/index.rdf">blog</a> leading me to <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22549">Quicksilver</a>.
Quicksilver works as good and better than Launchbar. Here is an <a href="http://vjarmy.com/archives/2004/03/quicksilver_a_better_os_x_in_just_10_minutes.php">excellent page</a> to help you get started.
I am without an excellent English library here (let me loudly complain) but it forces me to be resourceful in other ways. The internet is so damn primitive in its present form. There is little citable information on-line. Lots of opinions and "fuzzy" academic stuff. But nothing compared to a decent English library reference section.
I am waiting for when the entire Library of Congress is on-line. I believe it was Al Gore who promoted a method of calculating computer storage "space" in terms of LOC–where 1 LOC is the equivalent of one entire Library of Congress collection. How many megabytes/gigabytes/terabytes is that again? Who cares. Giga means nothing; LOC, on the other hand, tells me a lot.
In the same vein, here is a <a href="http://www.dylangreene.com/blog.asp?blogID=363">top ten list of reasons why RSS is also primitive in its present form.</a> Excellent criticisms, in my opinion.
Bare-bones breakdown on the ones I like (check his page for more details/explanations).
1) RSS feeds do not have a history. When you get back from your vacation, you only get the most recent.
3) Reading RSS requires too much work. [not really, but the next point is good:]
How subscribing should work: In my RSS Reader I type "dylangreene.com" and I see a list of feeds that I can subscribe to. Each feed has a one-sentence description, and I can preview what I'm going to get by subscribing.
7) Many RSS Feeds show only an abridged version of the content.
8) Comments are not integrated with RSS feeds.
10) RSS is Insecure. Lets say a site wants to charge for access to their RSS feed. RSS has no standard way for inputing a User Name and Password.
I must be a conservative in liberal's clothing: I find conservative articles intelligent and observing more than liberal ones. But –and this is a big but–I have to close my eyes at all the condescension, patronization, and just plain pig-headedness that is conservatism.
Take <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200406140811.asp">this article</a> for instance.
Ostensibly, it critiques Western oversight in handling the Al Qaeda threat. But, being the conservative bias-bastion that the writer is, actually makes the moral equation between 9/11 and Abu Ghraib: 3,000 murdered in a time of peace are the same as some prisoners abused by renegade soldiers in a time of war.
Bah. Horse pucky.
But he makes other good, very observant points. So here's what I've done: I snipped the bits that I like from the bits I simply cannot stomach. What remains is my own filtered version of red-blue politics (Canadian terms for Tory and Grit, aka Conservative and Liberal but here hyphenated and joined as one).
From the article:
Much has been written about our problems with this postmodern war and why we find it so difficult to fully mobilize our formidable military and economic clout to crush the terrorists and their patrons. Of course, we have no identifiable conventional enemy such as Hitler's Panzers; we are not battling a fearsome nation that defiantly declared war on us, such as Tojo's Japan; and we are no longer a depression-era, disarmed, impoverished United States at risk for our very survival. But then, neither Hitler nor Mussolini nor Tojo nor Stalin ever reached Manhattan and Washington.
So al Qaeda is both worse and not worse than the German Nazis: It is hardly the identifiable threat of Hitler's Wehrmacht, but in this age of technology and weapons of mass destruction it is more able to kill more Americans inside the United States.
I think Islamofascism is brilliant in its reading of the postmodern West and precisely for that reason it is dangerous beyond all description ’Äî in the manner that a blood-sucking, stealthy, and nocturnal Dracula was always spookier than a massive, clunky Frankenstein.
Like Hitler, bin Ladenism has an agenda: the end of the liberal West.
This time we are to lose not through blood and iron, but through terror and intimidation: televised beheadings, mass murders, occasional bombings, the disruption of commerce, travel, and the oil supply.
If after four years of careful planning, al Qaedists hit the Olympics in August, the terrorists know better than we do that most Europeans will do nothing ’Äî but quickly point to the U.S. and scream "Iraq!" And they know that the upscale crowds in Athens are far more likely to boo a democratic America than they are a fascist Syria or theocratic Iran. Just watch.
How America is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the British: Seen "Lawrence of Arabia"? Now we have part 2: Lawrence of Iraq.
From an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/arts/18RICH.html?ex=1087444800&en=ba85c1b85b4748af&ei=5070&position=&adxnnl=1&pagewa%0Anted=print&adxnnlx=1082525967-wLcmfFHlLn13AGw7kRVNlw">NYT Arts article:</a>
"President Bush's promise to Iraqis of "a peaceful and representative government" in place of Saddam's brutal regime was an uncanny, if unconscious, replay of what the British commander who occupied Baghdad in 1917 told the people of what was then still Mesopotamia. "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators," Gen. F. S. Maude said back then, expressing the desire that his forces would help the populace build their own governmental institutions."