I’m not surprised a GOP candidate would do this. I’m surprised it’s taken this long.

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A Maine Republican running for State Senate is attacking her opponent for playing World of Warcrat, and includes in the attacks in-game quotes taken out of context, forum posts, and weird accusations based on her in-game class and role.

Oh, Republicans. I keep thinking you’re done, and you keep finding even more impressive ways to be stupid.

Fortunately, the Democratic candidate responded very, very well:

I think it’s weird that I’m being targeted for playing online games. Apparently I’m in good company since there are 183 million other Americans who also enjoy online games. What’s next? Will I be ostracized for playing Angry Birds or Words with Friends? If so, guilty as charged!

What’s really weird is that the Republicans are going after my hobbies instead of talking about their record while they’ve been running Augusta for the last two years. Instead of talking about what they’re doing for Maine people, they’re making fun of me for playing video games. Did you know that more people over the age of 50 play video games than under the age of 18? As a gamer, I’m in good company with folks like Jodie Foster, Vin Diesel, Mike Myers, and Robin Williams. Maybe it’s the Republican Party that is out of touch.

Updated: 2nd link fixed.

HEADZ.

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In accordance with tradition, the additional header graphics have the following names:

  • “Smaller balls than on the real ones”
  • “Three”
  • “Etched ‘Cause You Caint Brand Glass”
  • “Mmmmm”
  • “Two”
  • “One”
  • “No Children Were Harmed With These Fireworks”
  • “Again?”
  • “QB1 with Shoes”
  • “Senator Wigginsworth”
  • “AFP”
  • “Pretty much all the nieces take pretty good pics”
  • “Dinner”

The old set are still in the mix, too. Variety is the spice of life, after all.

Oh, Windows. Will you never stop being stupid and weird?

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I just realized something kind of breathtaking in its awesome boneheadedness.

The “Desktop” folder in Windows has always been a troublespot for them, conceptually. They do their level best to convince you that the Desktop is actually the “top” of your whole computing tree, but that’s materially not true; actually, the “desktop” is just a folder in your user directory. Drill far into down, and you’ll find that the “desktop” Windows Explorer shows you at the top will contain, inside a nest of other folders, itself.

Yeah, turtles all the way down. I’m sure that’s NEVER confused anyone.

Well anyway, I work off the desktop, mostly, in my Windows VM. I drop working files there, so I interact with it quite often. I keep little in the VM long-term, so I don’t want things getting filed away in My Documents or whatever where out of sight becomes out of mind.

It turns out that if you drill down to the desktop normally — usually, by choosing “Computer” and then “C:” and then “users”, then your username, and then “desktop” — you see pretty much the correct contents:

Screen Shot 2012 10 04 at 6 06 56 PM

But if you make the Desktop folder a favorite by dragging it to the navigation bar in Windows Explorer, it apparently becomes the MAGIC DESKTOP, and Microsoft helpfully adds a bunch of other clutter:

Screen Shot 2012 10 04 at 6 07 14 PM

Look! Extra shit in one view that’s missing in the other — in what should be exactly the same view. Nice.

There does not, by the way, appear to be a way to:

a. Remove these stupid extra links; or
b. Create a “favorite” link to my desktop folder that doesn’t include them.

And they wonder why people hate Windows.

There’s a thing in computing called “the principle of least surprise.” It’s the idea that, when you’re building a system, you don’t want to shock the user with unexpected behavior. This is an excellent example of a violation of that rule, and of the kind of bullshit that happens when you design by committee.

Dept. of Pictures That Should Make You Smile

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This one:

Screen Shot 2012 10 04 at 5 03 04 PM

from here.

For the record, ages then and now, from left to right:

  • Cary Elwes: 49 now, 24 then
  • Robin Wright: 46 now, 21 then
  • Mandy Patinkin: 59 now, 35 then
  • Chris Sarandon: 70 now, 45 then
  • Wallace Shawn: 68 now, 43 then
  • Carol Kane: 60 now, 35 then
  • Billy Crystal: 64 now, 39 then

Not pictured:

  • Chris Guest: 64 now, 39 then. Now’s as good a time as any to remind you that Guest is a hereditary peer known more completely as Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden Guest.
  • Fred Savage: 36 now, 11 then.

Two others are, of course, dead. Peter Falk died last June at 83. He was 59 when the film was made. Andre Roussimoff died 19 years ago at 46, only a few years after the film was made.

In the “somewhat distressing” category: of the main cast, only Sarandon and Shawn were older than I am now.

Related: I wondered if Chris Sarandon and Eric Roberts should team up in some kind of “creepy (ex)relative of awesome leading lady” project, but it turns out they did do a movie together in 2000. It appears, however, to have garnered only mixed reviews despite the presence of Cary Elwes.

The problem is that many Americans will dismiss this because Sanders is a quasi-socialist

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This country does in fact have a serious deficit problem. But the reality is that the deficit was caused by two wars – unpaid for. It was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. It was caused by a recession as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit, I will be damned if we’re going to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That’s wrong.

Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator (I-VT), Senate Budget Committee, Nov. 18, 2011.

Inside the Romney Office

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This is pretty flabbergasting. Seriously.

“What’s killing us is all these entitlements, we’ve got to get rid of all of them. All this welfare, food stamps, Medicare, and then big government health care on top of it, it’s all just too much! When do we say enough is enough?”

What do you mean, exactly, I ask him. You say people are suffering under Obama, don’t they need some help?

“No. No more help, enough is enough. People have to pick themselves up, take some responsibility. Why should we be paying for people’s mistakes and bad choices? All these illegitimate families just adding to the population, making all these bad decisions, then asking us to pay for it? It’s time to cut them off.”

I ask for some clarification: what do you mean, just starve them out? What if people can’t find work? Let them starve?

“Look, there’s always something you can do. You telling me people can’t make a choice for a better life? We have to help all of them? No. I’ll tell you what really need to do with these illegitimate families on welfare—give all the kids up for adoption and execute the parents.”

Attention: Dudes My Age

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The nearly-exhaustive Bionic Wiki might well eat your afternoon if you ever had one of these or one of these. The level of attention to detail — plot summaries! discussions of contradictions! chronologies! — is astonishing.

Incidentally, the list of toys hilariously confirms my recent recollection of the fundamentally sexist divide between Six Million Dollar Man toys and counterparts created for The Bionic Woman. In lieu of the Command Center, for example, Ms Sommers had to make do with a Bionic Beauty Salon.

Via this excellent Mefi post.

Dept. of Shocking Disappointments, or, Olympus Hates You

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This new camera I picked up has made me pretty happy. I’m sure I’m leaving a little on the table vs. a DSLR, but the size more than makes up for it.

But that doesn’t mean I’m entirely pleased, and here’s why: Every piece of documentation for the Olympus refers to it as having a USB port. It ships with a cable that looks like USB, too, and sports two ports that look, at first glance, like one is probably micro- or mini-USB.

I happened to use the supplied cable the first couple times I downloaded pix, so I didn’t actually notice that there was anything weird until this weekend.

When I was out of town.

I hadn’t bothered to take the actual Olympus cable with me because, as a pretty seasoned traveller, I keep a couple spares in my “travel kit” that live in my bag all the time.

It wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that I realized I had a problem. The ports on the Olympus may technically be a variant of USB and not just some goofball “fuck you port” from Olympus, but the end result is the same: you can’t buy a cable for this camera at Best Buy or Target. You have to use the fancy CB-USB6 cable.

This sin is compounded by the fact that Oly seriously downplays the incompatibility of the supplied faux-USB cable; it’s just called a “USB cable” in all documentation, and sports a normal USB tip on the computer end. Only DEEP in the manual (supplied only on PDF) does it state that users should only use the supplied cable. Cute.

Here’s the news, Olympus: People in 2012 have an expectation of easy connectivity. Pretty much everything has a normal USB port on it now. That’s how shit should work. The era of needing to keep up with dozens of different cables for one’s devices is past, and thank God for it. Using this connector today is complete bullshit, and represents a giant fucking step backwards. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

It also makes me a whole lot less excited about my new camera. I feel a little duped, to be honest. So, you know, fuck you for that, too.

Posted in Pix

And now, complete delight.

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As it happens, our President wrote a couple books.

One of them, a personal memoir called Dreams from my Father, includes a number of anecdotes from Obama’s youth.

There is an audiobook of this book. And the President does the reading. And so…:

The main draw of the audiobook is that it’s actually narrated by Obama. It’s interesting to hear him imitate the voices of some of the people that have been important in his life. Like Ray, for example.

Ray, a former high school classmate, was savvy and streetwise, with a new take on black culture and white America. Best of all, Ray had an extremely colorful manner of self-expression. In other words, he cursed. A lot.

That means the President curses. A lot.

In fact you’re about to hear the POTUS swear like a motherfucker.

Follow the links, and you, too, can download a few choice MP3s. Heh. Get your own damn fries.

Our President spoke at the UN today

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He did pretty well, speaking about Arab Spring, about Chris Stevens, about violence and tolerance, about democracy and values, and about America in the world.

Here’s a bit, but I think you should make time to read the whole thing. It won’t take long. The President does a pretty fine job of encapsulating what I think of as the best of American ideals, the backbone of who we’d like to be. It isn’t who we always are — America is an aspirational state — but it is our goal, and we are our best selves when we work toward it.

Anyway, a sample:

That is what we saw play out in the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. Now, I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well – for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion – we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.

I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. The answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech. Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. As president of our country, and commander-in-chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so. Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views – even views that we profoundly disagree with.

We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views, and practice their own faith, may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities. We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech – the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.

I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech – we recognize that. But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete. The question, then, is how do we respond. And on this we must agree: there is no speech that justifies mindless violence.

There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There is no video that justifies an attack on an Embassy. There is no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis, or cause death and destruction in Pakistan. In this modern world, with modern technologies, for us to respond in that way to hateful speech empowers any individual who engages in such speech to create chaos around the world. We empower the worst of us, if that’s how we respond.

Things to Delight Us

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Today, I am extremely pleased to have heard this sentence in conversation with my friend Igor: “A friend of mine met her years ago in the jungles of the Yucatan.”

(And yes, it’s a statement of literal truth.)

Strange things afoot in the music world

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Make of these what you will:

Point the First Amanda Palmer’s record entered the Billboard charts at #10. A crowdsourced, Kickstarter record, completely free of label support. Or a label at all, really.

If you are a record label, my guess is that this scares the shit out of you.

Good.

Point the Second Running errands at lunch, I flipped over from NPR to a local pop radio station. It was playing Gangnam Style.

It’s 1981 somewhere

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Specifically, here, where you can see shockingly high quality footage of a very, very young U2 playing “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” in a Berlin nightclub.

Presumably, West Berlin. Kids, ask your parents.

h/t to (@groovehouse](http://twitter.com/groovehouse).

HOWTO: Tell if a company sucks

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If attempts to contact a local rep are routed without exception to a call center somewhere else, they hate you. Take your business elsewhere if you can’t get past the call center “customer deflection shield.”

A little bit more from the Palmer show

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This is mostly a camera experiment.

In the years since I bought my old camera, the game changed a bit. The Rebel didn’t shoot video at all, but now basically every reasonable camera system shoots HD video really, really well — entire movies and TV shows have been shot with the now obsolete Canon 5D Mk II, for example.

Now, to do video at a professional level, you need to control lots of other factors (chief among them sound and lighting), but the core ingredients are there, which is pretty rad.

As an experiment, I shot this clip (1:10) of one of Amanda Palmer’s opening acts, a sax duo called Ronald Reagan who bill themselves as “Boston’s Premier 80’s Pop Saxophone Duo”. The focus drifts a little (operator error), but overall I’m totally shocked by the clarity. I was standing in a scrum of people on the floor at Fitz, holding the camera over my head to get a better angle. I mean, seriously, this is amazing.

Anyway, here it is.

I also grabbed a couple other clips, but this was the best of the lot. One is plagued much more by the focus drift issue, and the other was during an all-hands-on-deck finale of “Careless Whisper,” which was played at eleven, so the mic got a bit overloaded. But this one’s a good example of what this little camera can do.

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Pix: Amanda Fucking Palmer

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I took the new tiny camera with me to the Amanda Palmer show last night at Fitzgerald’s. I took a few pix.

The little Oly did VERY well, though I need to learn a bit more about keeping the focus constant when shooting video. It also appears I’m gonna need that battery grip (or just another battery), because I only got to about 450 shots before it was done for the night. I got super spoiled with the Rebel, which would shoot for days, but if this is the main drawback I encounter, I’ll be TOTALLY cool with it.

All shots with the Olympus M.Zuiko 45/1.8, which turns out to be a GREAT lens. It’s not the equal of the Leica 25/1.4, but for things like this it’s perfect.

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Gangnam Style: Explained

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Because the Internet is magic, I’m able to point you to this excellent thread at Reddit where a South Korean explains the cultural context of the now-iconic song and video.

Here’s a few bits that may not be clear:

  • Psy is not a one-hit wonder. He’s had a long and varied career despite having it interrupted twice by conscription.
  • While obviously somewhat goofy in presentation, he’s taken seriously from a musical and cultural commentary standpoint.
  • Even the phrase “Oppa Gangnam Style” is pretty loaded with meaning in Korean.

Go read both of juyunkim89’s posts there; this kind of cross-cultural perspective is what we all hoped would happen way more often with a global Internet. It’s pretty damn cool even if it’s just discussing a pop song.

ZOMG MUSLIM RAGE!

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Gawker (yes, Gawker) puts things in perspective in the wake of Newsweek‘s frankly irresponsible and ridiculous cover story.

Don’t miss this quote:

Indeed, as everyone knows, Muslims, and especially Arab Muslims, have no lives, feelings or thoughts external to constant, violent rage, directed at old white people living in the Midwest (due to their freedoms).