What I’m Reading Instead of Working

I’ve got a mongrel PC that mostly works, existing largely of parts scavenged from my primary and backup PCs, both of which have serious problems. Is it possible that this is the storm I was worried about? Nah. This is a minor annoyance. But if we have to reinstall Windows AGAIN maybe I’ll feel differently. So this is slow, buggy, and I sincerely dread the audio and video editing that I must clear from my work queue today. Meantime, it’s not even 9am so I can read my favorite blogs, guilt-free!

At Confederate Yankee – ABC has been caught lying again. Possibly a good career option for Hillary after she loses.

And while I’m bashing the media, a heads-up for Chris Matthews: It’s okay to not like a black person, as long as it’s due to the content of their character* and not to the color of their skin. (*which includes beliefs, personal history and current actions or lack of.)

The Baltimore teenager who led the beating against an unarmed, non-threatening woman apparently has made a habit of leading these events. Student government isn’t what it used to be. She’s going to a secure juvenile jail until the judge releases her. Since she’s 15, probably not very long. I went overboard in my defense of the Jena 6 – if early reports had been accurate I would have been correct in my outrage, but I should have been far more skeptical of the left and ended up needing to apologize. Consequently I haven’t said anything about this case, which is also an outrage. I’m glad she’s not being tried as an adult, but I still feel we need to create a middle ground justice system for people who are 13 – 17. No matter how vile the crimes are, they’re not adults, they don’t have the capability of reasoning like adults or understanding consequences the way adults do. But they do know right from wrong. So while I can’t see letting them off the hook for serious felonies at 21 and expunging their records, I also can’t see trying them as adults and keeping them in until they’re 40. Why can’t we have a middle ground?

Somebody’s setting up an insanity defense for the peace thugs. (I wouldn’t have hit you, baby, but you burned the dinner again! So it’s really all your fault.) As for me, I still question their patriotism.

I wonder if Al Gore sees articles like this and wishes he’d thought of it first? And the real downside of Rush’s Operation Chaos is that we’re being set up for another contested election. After all, how could all those people who switched to the DNC have voted in McCain?

Just as predicted, the new scare will be an ice age. Who could possibly have guessed that the sun affects the temperature? But the debate is effectively over when you do a PR spot for your opponent.

Some terrorists are more equal than others. Like this one:

The FACTS behind Mr. Hussein’s detention, as originally reported and never contradicted (to the best of my knowledge), were this:
* He was arrested in his own home after coalition forces discovered bomb-making materials there, and bomb residue on his person.
* He was arrested in the company of a known Al Qaeda leader.
* He was held for some time, unidentified, until one of his guards recognized him from a picture posted on The Jawa Report.
* At no point did he identify himself as an award-winning AP photographer, choosing instead to remain an “unidentified suspected insurgent.”
* He was released under an amnesty law that granted absolution to people who had taken part or supported the insurgency, but had not directly been involved in killings.

And this terror supporter.

More on the “shield law” that gives journalists Free Speech 2.0. It’s a bug, not a feature.

There is a false argument raging on the Internet about whether bloggers are “journalists” and whether they should be accorded the same rights and privileges. This is idiocy. The rights and privileges belong to every American citizen, whether they work for a newspaper or whether they even have a blog. For it to be any other way the government would have to be able to define what constitutes journalism. Any takers?

So now it’s time to quit slacking as it’s quarter to ten. However, I haven’t just been fooling around blogging. I’ve walked two miles while I wrote this post. I was so intrigued by the idea of a walkstation (as opposed to a workstation) that we made our own treadputer. It was fairly easy and quite cheap. One treadmill, flat screen monitor, dual-monitor video card, wireless keyboard and mouse, some of which we already owned, a few screws and brackets to attach the monitor and I was good to go. I can type accurately at up to two miles an hour. A week into it and I’ve lost six pounds. I’ll post photos of the walkstation as soon as I get these computer issues worked out.