He kind of looks like Hal Holbrook

via New Media Musings: "The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was 'Deep Throat,' the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon."

As someone who, as a teenager, watched the hearings and followed Watergate fairly closely, this is huge.

Mao, Hitler, Kinsey and Betty Friedan went into a bar....

Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries: "HUMAN EVENTS asked a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders to help us compile a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Each panelist nominated a number of titles and then voted on a ballot including all books nominated. A title received a score of 10 points for being listed No. 1 by one of our panelists, 9 points for being listed No. 2, etc. Appropriately, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, earned the highest aggregate score and the No. 1 listing."

That's right kids. Hitler and the guy who designed the foundations of the modern public school system are in the same category.

Uncle Sam Needs You.

Roger Ebert takes a few questions:
Q. I greatly enjoy your reviews and the thoughtful observations they contain. However, I get a little worried about the strength of your argument in your review of "Unleashed," when you make the case for women being able to stir a man's humanity by using Ann Coulter as your example. That is the same person who claimed women should bear arms but not be able to vote. - C. Perla, Miami

A. Wouldn't you sleep more soundly at night knowing Ann Coulter was in the Army and not in a voting booth?

What the...?!: Woman drove 70 miles with kids locked in trunk

Obscure Store and Reading Room::

"A cop stopped a Toyota compact and found Laverne Dunlap, 35, in the car and a passenger in the front seat with a 10-year-old boy on her lap and four children, ages 5 to 17, wedged in the backseat, none of them wearing seat belts. 'When the officer asked to look in the trunk, [Dunlap] said, 'absolutely,' and sure enough there were two kids in the trunk,' says an officer. (Los Angeles Times)"

My birthday is coming up....

Marketing problems, Part II

WSJ.com: "Pressed about security by (Wall Street Journal reporter) Mr. Mossberg, (Intel CEO) Mr. Otellini had a startling confession: He spends an hour a weekend removing spyware from his daughter's computer. And when further pressed about whether a mainstream computer user in search of immediate safety from security woes ought to buy Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh instead of a Wintel PC, he said, 'If you want to fix it tomorrow, maybe you should buy something else.'"

Huston, we have a Marketing Issue here...

Apple have* recently released Mac OS X 10.4/Tiger. The two biggest selling points are Spotlight and Dashboard.

Apparently the implementation isn't all that some must have hoped for, because there's now a utility designed to disable those two features:
DisableTigerFeatures 1.0.2 -

* We would like references to support the policy of referring to a company in the plural.

It's not a happy six miles.

World's most expensive cab ride.
MR. RUSSERT: There is a road, a highway from the airport to downtown Baghdad that's called the Road of Death by many. I understand there's a taxi service on that road to take someone from downtown to the airport.

MR. FILKINS: Yeah. There's actually a company in Baghdad that does nothing except offer rides to the airport and back. They've got an armored cars and some guards. And they charge $35,000 for...

MR. RUSSERT: Thirty-five thousand dollars?

MR. FILKINS: ...for a ride to the airport. And I think you know, if you miss your plane and you have to come back, it's another $35,000. But...

MR. RUSSERT: How long--is it six miles?

MR. FILKINS: I think it's about six miles, yeah. It's not a happy six miles. So, you know, they earn their money.

Link from nucular.net.

Damn Liberals

So, I get a link today to a column written by yet another ex liberal. His main beef is that he couldn't find any liberals who celebrated the Iraqi elections. He just didn't try very hard.

Actually, I'm sympathetic to this guy's position. It's basically the same reason I left the church. At some point you are just too embarrassed to be in the same room with these people.

(You thought I was going to take a cheap shot, didn't you. he he.)

Smug Liberals

Thank you Al Gore.

This is why we have the internet: Crying, while eating

Geek Post, II - Getting at Widgets easier

Windows users may resume sleep mode.

The Dashboard interface quicly becomes unusable if you add many widgets to your system. Scrolling through multiple dashboard pages to get to Yahoo Traffic is a pain in the mouse finger.

My solution is to drag the ~/Library/Widgets folder to the dock; then you are one click away from your widget. And since you're a geek, you'll copy the widget icon to the folder so that image appears in the dock.

Windows users can now wake up.

Geek Post

Lessons learned from Revenge of the Sith: "For some reason, robots talk to each other in English, instead of using wifi or bluetooth or something."

Google searches for everything on Earth

"And Google Earth, coming in the next few weeks, will let users zoom in on detailed satellite images of almost any place in the world and move around them. Co-founder Sergey Brin demonstrated how he could navigate through the Grand Canyon, almost like buzzing low in a helicopter.
'I've never been there,' Brin said. 'Now I don't have to go.'"

Boy oh boy, I bet that comment comes back to bite Google.

I've never been to the Grand Canyon and hope to stop by some day. Techno-geek that I am, I don't think a web page can do it justice.

MacDevCenter.com: 20 Cool Tiger Features You Might Not Have Heard About

17. iChat Fast Switch: "17. iChat Fast Switch
Do you have more than one iChat account--maybe .Mac and AIM? If so, you can use the handy iChat -> Switch To menu to swiftly log out of one account and into another."

Not Yoda!

The New Yorker review of the new Star Wars film is hilarious. He hates it. And he slams Yoda, whom I thought was universally loved.

The New Yorker: The Critics: The Current Cinema: "Also, while we'rere here, what's with the screwy syntax? Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. "I hope right you are." Break me a fucking give."

Slate's guide to Episode III for non-geeks

What's a Droid?.: "...And why does Artoo manifest new and wondrous powers throughout the prequel trilogy (he can fly!), when in Episode V, he can barely wrestle a candy bar out of Yoda's hands? Umm... you don't want to know the answers to those questions. This glossary is satisfying your curiosity. Move along."

George Galloway Comes To Washington

A British anti-war critic who refused to get on the war bandwagon, and as a result was kicked out of the Labour party in England, is accused of profiting from the oil-for-food program for Iraq.

So, Mr. Galloway comes to Washington to clear his name, and by most accounts, does a credible job.

What's interesting about all this is that Galloway positions the food-for-oil inquiry as a smoke-screen to obscure all the misunderstandings mistakes lies that led to the war.

Google News Search
The most scathing summary is here.

Satire is dead, reason #4,123

HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 29 - Napoleon Dynamite, production : " WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote 'Nay' on this concurrent resolution are 'FREAKIN' IDIOTS!' and run the risk of having the 'Worst Day of Their Lives!'"

IBM backs Firefox in-house

"IBM is encouraging its employees to use Firefox, "
As a web developer I think this is a good thing. FireFox is way cool. IE sucks.

W & G

Wallace and Gromit come to the big screen.

Firmly Supervised

Voinovich said today that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured him that Bolton would be firmly supervised in his new job. Voinovich wondered, "Why in the world would you want to send somebody up to the U.N. that has to be supervised?"

From Slate.

Today is Absolutely Today

Steve moves to blogger. I'd like to point out that the name of this blog, Right Here, Right Now means the same thing as the name of Steve's blog. Specifically:

Today is absolutely today.
Today is not yesterday. Today is not tomorrow.

However, Steve quotes a zen master while I quote a pop song.

KCRW Rare On Air (Series)

The perfect soundtrack for a Sunday morning. I highly recommend KCRW's Rare On Air series. The famous, not so famous and soon to be famous play live in the studio. Go ahead and click the link, see for yourself. The music is mostly acoustic and there are some great performances (notably, for me, Jackson Browne's Late For The Sky - a top XX song.) But more interesting are the ones from people I'd never heard of. Joe Bob sez check it out.

This is a test, it is only a test

This post comes from a OS X Tiger Widget.

Happy Cinco De Mayo

Richard Kadrey says: Confiscating sombreros will be bad news for internationally-known performance artist and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, Guillermo Gomez Pena. Ever since 9/11 he's been stopped repeatedly at airports for being suspiciously brown-skinned. His solution is to wear a sombrero to chill out jittery jet crews and nervous passengers alike.

You wouldn't get it if I had to explain it.

Mail oui, je suis seul.

When a party of one isn't alone - megnut.com:
"'You are alone?' He asked me.

'Yes,' I said. And then the maître d' jumped in.

'No! You are not alone! Now you are here, dining with us!' he said, smiling, and with a gesture of his hand indicated the restaurant."

Laura Bush's speech at the White House Correspondent's Dinner

Jackson's Junction: Video: First Lady Laura Bush steals the spotlight at WHCD

May Day - Happy Anniversary.

May 1, 1983 was a Sunday also - oh the coincidence. The Hinde family tradition for birthdays and anniversarys is to give the celebrant(s) a check for their age or duration. Today's check, had we made it, would be for $22.00. Mom, winning the droll award, proposed giving us each a check for $11.

This week has been particularly sad. Today is the worst. Poor me.

Before we become too maudlin, I would like to point out that May Day has changed for others as well.