Fiorina’s new“Barbara Boxer’s worried about the weather” ad reminds me of something… Oh right—we weren’t supposed to take John Kerry seriously because he thought terrorism was just a nuisance Clearly, only Republicans are qualified to tell us which global problems are serious and which are not.
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If you don’t like the weather
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- Politics
June 4 2010, 7:30pm | Comments »
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Maybe the Tea Party needs a community organizer
The University of Washington has a new poll of Tea Party members that breaks response data from core, highly dedicated adherents out from the responses from the more general category of sympathizers. It’s hardly surprising that the two groups are rather divergent in their views. Bruce Bartlett comments: A new University of Washington poll sheds light on these observations by separating TPM agnostics, who may somewhat approve or disapprove of the TPM, from those that strongly approve of it. Released on Tuesday, it sampled 1,695 Washington State voters—a large sample—and asked them to define themselves as strong TPM supporters (19% of the sample), those that somewhat approve or disapprove of it (26% of the sample), and those that strongly disapprove (27% of the sample; not included below). What I think this poll shows is that taxes and spending are not by any means the only issues that define TPM members; they are largely united in being unsympathetic to African Americans, militant in their hostility toward illegal immigrants, and very conservative socially. At a minimum, these data throw cold water on the view that the TPM is essentially libertarian. Based on these data, I would say that TPM members have much more in common with social conservatives that welcome government intervention as long as it’s in support of their agenda. What is happening is that the term “Tea Party” is being expanded to include a bunch of different groups who don’t tend to have much in common. The charitable way of viewing it is that the primary commonality is an opposition to government intervention, “intervention” here being rather loosely defined. The Venn diagram I’m imagining has a few circles: traditional libertarians, the “black helicopters are coming to take my guns” bunch, social conservatives opposed to Obama and Democratic control of Congress, corporate-types who are looking for a more business-friendly market environment, Republicans looking for a political opportunity, etc. There’s a relatively small area where all these circles overlap, and it’s marked “Opposed to government intervention.” A somewhat less charitable way of viewing the situation is that the area of overlap among all the various circles is instead marked “Don’t like where they see the country going.” Either way, around all those circles is a dotted line marked “Tea Party”. It’s convenient for the media to characterize the movement in this way, because it simplifies their narrative. It is also convenient for most (if not all) of the groups involved, as it gives each group the appearance of being a popular movement that is more widespread than if it were considered on its own.
The downside is that the umbrella label papers over very real differences between the different constituencies. While Christian social conservatives may be opposed to this particular federal government, they tend to enthusiastically support social activism by the federal government when its beliefs match their own. It is hard to see how they form a meaningful coalition with traditional “government out of our bedrooms” libertarians.June 4 2010, 5:01pm | Comments »
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How To Destroy Angels – ST
In case you missed it, Trent Reznor’s new band How To Destroy Angels is offering their debut EP as a free download via their website. I picked up a copy earlier this week, and have given it a few listens. My initial reaction is that this album would have been really good in 1998. As it is, it’s decent stuff, but nothing to write home about. It would fit in perfectly alongside the Delerium albums of the late 1990s, when they started bringing in Kristy Thirsk, Sarah McLachlan, and other breathy female vocalists. Which brings me to my second reaction. I’m rather confused as to why Reznor went to the trouble of announcing that Nine Inch Nails was breaking up/being retired/whatever, instead of just saying “Hey guys, my wife is in the band now!” The six tracks on the EP are not fundamentally different from any of the Nine Inch Nails material that has come out over the course of the last five years, other than the addition of the aforementioned breathy female vocals. Generally speaking, if you liked that stuff, you’ll probably like this EP. Still, I have yet to find anything on this record that makes for particularly compelling listening.
June 4 2010, 1:29pm | Comments »
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Know your fallacies
Tyler Cowan: If Keynesian economic theory is so great, how come more people aren’t doing it or supporting it? Jonathan Chait: Because the public doesn’t understand it, and politicians are too nervous to push for it. I happen to agree with Chait, but I think there’s another issue that deserves to be called out. Cowan’s complaint, as I read it, is basically an upside-down argumentum ad populum, a.k.a., an appeal to popularity. The standard example is “My idea is valid/true/correct because many people believe in it.” They may very well believe in it, but people believe all sorts of crazy stuff for all sorts of crazy reasons, and that has no bearing on the validity of the idea itself. Cowan takes the opposite approach—”Your idea is no good because no one supports it.” As Chait points out, there are some fairly obvious explanations for the current unpopularity of Keynesian theories. However, even absent those explanations, Cowan’s argument is bogus.
June 3 2010, 8:42pm | Comments »
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More on The Walking Dead
Via Slice of SciFi, a promotional video for The Walking Dead:
They’re still in pre-production, so no actual footage—just some brief interview snippets from writer/producer Frank Darabont and Gail Anne Hurd, the executive producer.
Choice quote: “We hope to do for zombies what Mad Men has done for advertising.” In case you hadn’t noticed, I am pretty goddamn excited about this show. It’s going to be a long wait until October.- Tags:
- TV
- horror
- the walking dead
- zombies
June 3 2010, 6:38pm | Comments »
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Clementine’s Windows port is a pretty good music player
Clementine is a music player app that is mainly developed for Linux. Since it’s a KDE app, and I have used the Gnome desktop environment pretty exclusively of the last few years, I hadn’t really run across it before. Unbeknownst to me until relatively recently, they’ve also got a Windows version:
I’ve been using Clementine on my work laptop for a few days now, and so far, it almost exactly fits a need I’ve had a for a long time: a simple, low-overhead music player that runs on Windows, has a clean interface, and still supports a media library. These sorts of apps seem to be a dime a dozen on the Linux side of the fence. For Windows, not so much, and the few that are out there tend to be fairly ancient and crusty. I say “almost” because Clementine does have one glaring ommission—any sort of support of mobile devices. There is no synching and no playing of tracks from a smartphone or iPod connected via USB. At home, that’s not a big deal, as all my music is stored on a NAS and accessible via Samba. Sadly, when I’m at the office and behind the corporate firewall, it means I’m still stuck with MediaMonkey to play the iPod through my laptop. Maybe Banshee will get their Windows version working someday…
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- Technology
- Music
June 3 2010, 3:31pm | Comments »
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The easy criticism generally isn’t the best one
Steve Benen posted on Tuesday regarding Republican deficit-hawks in the House voting pretty much en masse for a huge ($726 billion) defense appropriation bill: It’s a reminder that when Republicans block domestic spending on areas like extended unemployment insurance, what we’re seeing is a reflection of priorities — the already-enormous Pentagon budget is important (even if it means funding programs the Defense Department doesn’t want) and struggling families aren’t. It’s also a reminder that Republican talk about fiscal responsibility is a shallow scam. It’s generally safe to bet on the ever increasing mendacity and hypocrisy of Congressional Republicans. There’s a fair amount of that on the Democratic side of the aisle as well, although I think there’s a strong argument to be made that the Republicans have far more to answer for than Democrats. However, I’m aware part of that may be my own political biases. All that being said, chalking this stuff up completely to hypocrisy misses the mark slightly. Part of it is priorities, but there is also the issue of fundamental differences of opinion regarding the role of the federal government. If you think that the federal government should be responsible for national defense, but has no business engaging in social welfare, then supporting spending on the former but not the latter doesn’t fall into the category of hypocrisy. Personally, I think that the government does have a role to play in helping its citizens weather economic crises. What I’d like to hear from Congressional Republicans is a reasoned argument in defense of their votes.
June 3 2010, 1:02pm | Comments »
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Good luck, Chuck
Ah, Chuck Schumer. My former Senator has, unsurprisingly, found yet another excuse for some grandstanding. According to the Washington Independent: To discourage businesses from outsourcing their operator services, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is proposing legislation to tax businesses that set up help lines overseas. The levy, under Schumer’s bill, would be a quarter-cent per call. Generally speaking, I find it difficult to take seriously much of anything that issues from Schumer’s mouth, press office, or his multitude of press conferences. He picks obvious, easy targets, and then chases them with pointless legislation that usually doesn’t go anywhere. In this case, I find myself even more skeptical than usual. Schumer’s got a real twofer here: everybody loves to bitch and moan about call centers (they’re like the Postal Service in this regard), and hey, who doesn’t hate out-sourcing? Trouble is, making it more expensive for companies to use overseas call centers isn’t going to make those companies open call centers in the U.S. It’s going to make them even more enthusiastic than they already are to phase out human interaction altogether.
Instead of using your offensively fake Indian accent (HILARIOUS!) to complain about the customer rep you talked to, now you’ll get to complain about having to navigate an endlessly branching automated phone system.- Tags:
- Politics
- Technology
- Economics
June 2 2010, 6:34pm | Comments »
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Yes, I’m still using PlayOn. Sort of.
Ars Technica has a pretty decent write-up of PlayOn: PlayOn is a Windows-based application that allows you to watch online video content—from providers like Hulu, Amazon VOD, Comedy Central, and YouTube, to name a few—on your television via your PS3, Wii, or 360, as well as a few other supported devices. The process is fairly quick and painless, and I was able to get the service running on my PS3 in less than five minutes. The software will run you $39.99 for your first year, and $19.99 for each subsequent year. All you need is a networked PC and console. I bought a PlayOn license a year or two ago, and have used it on and off to mostly watch Hulu content via my Popcorn Hour box. While it generally does the trick, the problem is that it has never been particularly reliable. Hulu has worked most of the time, Netflix worked a few times, and Amazon VOD has never really worked. None of these services is a primary source of video for me, and the license was cheap when I bought it, so these issues have never really bothered me all that much. Their user forums, however, tend to be filled with lots of very unhappy people complaining about how Service X has suddenly stopped working. It’s hard to really blame the PlayOn guys for any of these problems. They seem to be trying to make a good product, and their support team has been very helpful and responsive when I have contacted them about issues. The problem is that they have an impossible task before them—they’re trying to keep hitting a constantly moving target, with, so far as I can tell, little to no support from the services to which they’re connecting. In the case of Hulu, they have an actively uncooperative “partner”. Good intentions and technical ingenuity only get them so far, though. My experience has largely been that when I am able to watch stuff via their app, and I don’t end up having to reboot both my computer and my media box at least once each, it’s a pleasant surprise. Maybe it’s just my setup, but that doesn’t make for a reliable solution. I can’t really see paying a yearly fee for their updated version.
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- TV
- Technology
June 2 2010, 3:14pm | Comments »