Ballmer cheers Apple's iPod with Monkey Boy Dance. Get on your feet! [The Register]

Dance, Monkeyboy, Dance. Pt. II

11:24:06 PM     leave/read comments []

Here on the West coast, the US government this week announced a $46-million plan to buy out as much as half the trawler fleet and permanently retire the boats from fishing. The move is intended to help ailing fishermen who have been hurt over the years by ever-stricter quotas placed on catches.

Simultaneously but separately, a regional advisory board took a major step in trying to curb overfishing in the once-fecund waters off New England. Under pressure from a court order, it adopted a plan that would restrict fishing of depleted species, but allow fishermen to divert their nets toward more plentiful stocks. The two initiatives, though different in intent and approach, will affect the livelihood and traditions of a centuries-old industry rooted in dozens of communities along the both coasts.

11:12:07 PM    

Good.

One day after Howard Dean scrambled to stanch a controversy over his remarks about the Confederate flag, he secured a critical endorsement from the most diverse labor group in the country, the 1.6-million-member Service Employees International Union.

Dr. Dean, the Democratic former governor of Vermont, also learned on Thursday that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, was likely to endorse him next week.

11:03:17 PM    

Read this piece.

Don't mention the dead. Can Bush's efforts to hide body bags quell public disquiet over the death toll in Iraq? Gary Younge reports. [Guardian Unlimited]

For years political orthodoxy had it that America would no longer know days like these. Not because it was shy about going to war, but because after Vietnam it was determined not to incur large numbers of casualties in doing so. The US military would bomb from a great height or use proxies to enforce its will. Public opinion would endorse the country's involvement in most military conflicts, so long as the nation did not have to endure the sight of its young men and women coming home in body bags. As Henry Shelton, the chairman of the joint chiefs-of-staff, said in 1999, a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test" - public reaction to bodies arriving at the country's only military mortuary in Dover, Delaware......

........."We're now encountering deaths at rates we haven't seen since Vietnam," says David Gergen, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton administrations, "and I think it's important for the country to hear from the president at times like these and for the families to know. I think the weight is on the side of clear expression," he told the New York Times......

........ For the first time since war in the television era, the sight of flag-covered caskets arriving to the salute of military colleagues and the tears of mourning relatives are no longer part of the national narrative. Bush has not attended the funeral of a single soldier slain in the war and refers to the casualties only in general terms. Without Dover, there can be no Dover test.

11:00:11 PM    

Again, not news to readers of this here blog.

The nasty hard-drive-eating bug in Panther has been resolved, according to Apple Computer. But some experts say poppycock -- upgrading to the latest version of Mac OS X is like playing Russian roulette with your data.

As previously reported, there's a glitch in the Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) installer that renders some -- but not all -- external FireWire drives inoperable.

Also, Escape Velocity Nova does not run in 10.3, giving me nasty withdrawal symptoms.

12:38:58 PM     leave/read comments []