Friday, April 08, 2005

Michelle Malkin is a…

I’ve wondered before about the rough and tumble I’ve seen in other blog’s comments.

For a case on point, we have Michelle Malkin using commenters responding to this Schiavo memo update to slam Kevin Drum. “Does respected Monthly editor Charles Peters condone this rhetoric?” she asks.

Majikthise, who’s had her own problems with commenters from Malkin’s side of the issue, has a wonderfully definitive response.

I don’t want comments like that on my blog (my mother reads my blog) but if Malkin really wanted to keep the rhetoric on a higher plain, she would have otherwise illustrated her point.

Congratulations Ana Marie

John was sick, but watching:

Wow. She blew me away. The woman totally kicked his $200 an hour ass. It was incredible theatre. I’m a truly truly truly impressed. For all the shit folks give Ana (aka Wonkette), and she gets shit, she did us proud today. Not to rehash the entire saga, but there’s been some concern among liberal political bloggers that the the mainstream media always picks Wonkette to represent serious political blogging at panel discussions, etc., when she’s not a serious political blogger, rather she’s a raunchy political humorist. A very, VERY funny raunchy political humorist, but still, if you’re a serious political commentator, it’s understandable that you’d get tired of people always having you represented by a comedienne, even a very funny one.

Anyway, she kicked GG’s ass today. Relentless. I think he ticked her off when he started defending Armstrong Williams by saying the administration had to pay him because none of the mainstream media would report fairly on No Child Left Behind. I get the feeling that while she plays one on the Web, this is a woman who tolerates no fools.

Crooks and Liars has video and more. And over at Wonkette:

Most popular question for Gannon from an off-camera audience member after the panel ended. “DID YOU EVER SLEEP WITH SCOTT McCLELLAN? JEFF, DID YOU EVER SLEEP WITH SCOTT McCLELLAN! DID YOU EVER SLEEP WITH ANYONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE, JEFF? DID YOU EVER SLEEP WITH ANYONE ON THE WHITE HOUSE STAFF PRIOR TO GETTING YOUR PASS?” ANA, ASK HIM IF HE EVER SLEPT WITH SCOTT McCLELLAN?”

Stale peeps

A guilty pleasure from childhood is marshmallow peeps. Now the thing is, I like them stale. All stiff and chewy, not soft and gooey. I let them sit out for weeks, on top of the refrigerator, open and unwrapped, waiting for them to get stale.

But guess what? They don’t get stale anymore. So I wondered, what’s in those peeps?

The woman who answered the phone was friendly and helpful. She listed off the ingredients:  Sugar, Corn Syrup, Gelatin, Contains Less than 0.5 percent of the Following Ingredients:  Potassium Sorbate (a Preservative) Artificial Flavors, Artificial Colors, Carnauba Wax.

I went to the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Potassium Sorbate gets a green check. Safe. But still, I’m left with soft peeps that never get stale! I can only hope the people who make Kroger Crunchy Cheese Curls don’t learn about this.

TiVo today, Windows Media Center tomorrow?

Endgadget, home of the TiVo Deathwatch, has a post by Stephen Speicher reviewing his 6 years of DVR use. In it, he says this about buying a TiVo now:

While I’ve been hesitant to recommend any one technology/product, I will say this: whether TiVo is dying or TiVo is living, TiVo isn’t going away. I’m not Joe Namath, and I’m not guaranteeing anything. With that said - chances are a brand new TiVo will be useful for quite some time. The TiVo service will certainly live on.

And between TiVo and Replay? “TiVo is still the sexier pick.” But, he goes on:

So, which do I use? Neither. I’m a Windows Media Center Edition user. Had you told me that I would be able to live without TiVo three years ago I would have called you a liar. But now it’s true. My TiVo has been replaced and I have Media Center Extenders to thank for that. Before Media Center Extenders it was hard to justify the additional cost of a full-blown computer to do the duties of a set-top box. However, after repurposing some long-in-the-tooth Xboxes with $65 additions, I now have a complete household system: 4 Televisions all with the same pool of content. What’s more - there are no monthly fees and there are no additional prices for the privilege of sharing content from box to box.

If TiVo keeps this up, I’ll be a Windows Media Center user too.

Via Thomas Hawk.

RFID

EFF and the ACLU see big problems; it’s death by passport. Yet another acronym I was unfamiliar with, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). From Salon:

Today, civil libertarians are up in arms over the State Department’s intention to use RFID in U.S. passports, beginning this year. “It is the government and the private sector joining together as usual to create and deploy surveillance technologies,” says Lee Tien, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, sent copious comments to the State Department critiquing the plan to use the technology for passports. “It’s all one big happy family as far as they’re concerned. Unfortunately for everyone else concerned, it is just one great big surveillance industrial complex.”

The ACLU says its concerns (skimming, cloning, eavesdropping, chip failure, and cost among them) can be addressed through the “use of a contact chip, one that can only be read through contact between the passport and the reader.”

Read the rest of "RFID" in the extended entry.