You See, I Told You

This week's Memphis Flyer editorial (not online yet, for some reason) echoes pretty much all I had to say about District Five City Councillor Carol Chumney, except in politer newspaper-speak. Me? Not so polite and days sooner. Either way, she needs to alter her behavior before she's marginalised into ineffectiveness.

Advantage: blogosphere!

Today's Time-wasters

A couple of fun links for you!

The Safety Sign Generator will construct an OSHA-approved warning sign of your design, with proper graphics and your choice of colors and text! Let your inner Bart Simpson have some fun. I made a bunch of these a while back but can't find them. When I rediscover 'em, I'll post 'em.

And, via Wil Wheaton Dot Net, comes the button maker from Kalsey Consulting Group. Make your own little "stickers" for your blog or website. Go to WWDN for examples.

Have fun!

Wave Of The Future

Mark over at Conservative Zone has a post on RFID tags and what that means for the future. RFID (radio frequency idenitification) tags are "smart" product tags that can be read by any scanner within distance. Mark illustrates some of the possibilities for mischief.

It's Not Fair

Some folks just get all the luck. Take Jon Sparks, for example. He got to go to the Playboy event and got his picture taken with Miram Gonzalez! Miriam freakin' Gonzalez!! (That's worth two exclamation marks.) He was within drool distance of a goddess.

I gotta get out more often. No question....

A Prank Gone Horribly Wrong

Some radio station did one of those prank calls, calling a woman to tell her that her husband had just been fired from his job. It didn't go as planned. Listen to her very last comment.

(The link goes to the MP3 file; 640Kb. Just right-click and save. Hat tip to ZGeek for this.)

Thought For Today

I just caught a caller to Rush Limbaugh who made a good point. If Richard Clarke really means his apology to the families of 9/11 for his failures and those of the administrations he's served, will he then be donating the profits from his book to a 9/11 fund? Or will he keep them? Why?

Shoo!

Why are you in front of your computer on such a spectacularly beautiful day? Log off and go outside. Right now. Go! Git.

I Am Sooooooo Evil

I worked up a really, really nasty graphic tonight, a really cheap shot at John Kerry. The two campaign posters I did were pretty sophisticated and subversive. I think the jokes may be a bit too obscure because they are pretty subtle. One hints at environmental terrorism as it implies Kerry is more worried about the world's opinion than he is about America; the other was my homage to 19th century campaign slogans. Though they are pretty funny.

This new one is very plain, very clear and very stark. A real cheap shot. Agit-prop of the worst variety. I'm quite proud of it!

I'll have it up, with some other graphics I've done recently, later on Thursday.

INSTANT UPDATE Already up! Go to this page.

Thought For Today

I read this in Ann Landers when I was in my early teens, more than three decades ago. It has stuck with me ever since and I've tried to live by it.

Intelligent people discuss ideas and concepts.
Average people discuss current events.
Ignorant people discuss each other.

The Second Amendment, Rights and Liberty

Say Uncle has a co-blogger now, a guy named Thibodeaux. He wrote to his (Democratic) Senator, asking him to vote against the Assault Weapons Ban in Congress. The Senator wrote back and Thibodeaux does a pretty good fisking of the letter.

There was one point I think he missed, though. The Senator writes:

I believe that the Second Amendment gives law-abiding citizens the right to own a gun.

It does no such thing. People today have a bass-ackwards view of what the Constitution is and how it works. Rights are things granted by governments. They are the province of kings, despots and dictators. America was conceived in liberty, in the idea that all power is in the People and is given by them in limited doses to their government. People who talk about rights are slaves; a free people talks of liberty.

The Second Amendment doesn't give anything. The Framers presupposed that all rights remain with the People unless otherwise delegated. The Constitution was intended to delegate some powers from the People and some from the States. The Second Amendment specifically intends to warn future generations of legislators that gun ownership -- for whatever reason-- is a right retained by the People. It doesn't give, it takes: from government the power to take our guns.

It seems a simple point, and it always surprises me how many folks get it backwards, forget that the Constitution isn't a license for the Federal government to do what it pleases unless the People stop it. It was always intended to spell out the only powers the Federal government could have. It was a limiting document.

Remember: When you are born in America, you are an individual with full and complete liberty. You can do as you wish. You agree to give up some of that liberty to the Federal government in exchange for it doing some jobs you could never do by yourself. Same for the State constitution and your City or County charters. You only give up certain, specific liberties in exchange for certain specific protections. Everything else stays with you.

Somewhere in the early 19th century that got turned around, just as the Founding Fathers feared it would. Government developed the arrogance of believing it could do anything it wanted to, if the Constitutions at various levels didn't prohibit it from doing them. It's a natural process, as the Founders knew, which the Constitution and all their writings spelled out. It finally happened to us, and has progressed ever since.

A great American once said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." He wasn't kidding. This is why you need to know your history. So as to prevent the abuses of those who would take your birthright from you for their own enrichment and security.

Naifeh Hasn't Changed

There's a story in the Tennessean about House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh's latest bullying tactic. Seems that votes in the House are almost always done by voice vote. The problem has been that, as even the Tennessean admits, many votes are called one way when it was obvious to all that it had gone the other. Efforts to get recorded votes have usually been ignored or derided. That has allowed all kinds of shenanigans, as folks who followed the Income Tax Wars can attest.

Now, Naifeh is requiring a recorded vote on every bit of business. It has brought the speed of business to a snail's crawl. He's doing it to punish those who want a record of who voted what for campaign purposes and to keep his own crooked control over the House. It's all punitive and petty; just another way to remind folks of who's the thug boss.

I'm just glad that he'll be turned out next election. It was close last time. Even though he had his district gerrymandered to bring in the strongly Democratic voters in the county next door to overcome the increasing Republican tilt of his own Tipton County, he still had to put up a fight against a last minute, write-in Republican candidate. That guy came much closer than anyone expected. Now, another candidate -- who actually started his campaign for the next election during the previous one -- is doing all the ground work to build up the voter base he'll need to beat Naifeh. It's looking good, too.

That candidate is Dr. Jesse Cannon. You can read more about him and the battle against Naifeh at Frank Cagle's site; choose the article titled "Naifeh losing his grip back home in the district."

The delicious irony of an upstart black Republican running against the old-school white Democrat isn't lost on anyone. We came real close last time. This time will be the one.

Audience

One of the many blogs I read is Rhetorica, by Dr. Andy Cline, a professor at Park University in Missouri. As he puts it: "The Rhetorica Network offers analysis and commentary about the rhetoric, propaganda, and spin of journalism and politics, including analysis of presidential speeches and election campaigns." He always has good reading there.

He had a post recently talking about audience, and how journalists need to ask themselves who their audience is when they write (or broadcast). It reminded me of something from the Commercial Appeal.

Not long after Chris Peck took over, the CA began a series of efforts to discover who their audience was and what that audience wanted. But I'm still amused at one particular tactic. The paper announced, in its pages, that it would be holding meetings around various communities in Memphis, open to the public. They were soliciting their opinions on what they wanted from the CA.

It struck me as odd then, and Rhetorica's post reminded of it, that if you face a shrinking audience, then you go to the ones who don't read you, either now or ever, and find out why, to find out what they want so you can get them back. They are the ones you want. The folks still reading your paper are either stuck or like what you're doing. No need to worry about them. Asking them is pointless, in terms of increasing circulation. Or so it seems to me.

But the CA didn't do that, so far as I know. They didn't advertise on television or radio, put up billboards, go to churches and community groups, etc. They didn't go outside their own pool, but stayed within. It's like preaching to the choir.

I've always found that funny.

Fear The Penguin

No, this isn't about some Internet Flash game, but news that Hewlett-Packard will begin putting Novell's SuSE Linux distribution on their home PC models. The move is being pushed as a way for corporate employees who work with HP servers (which run Linux) to work at home seamlessly.

Either way, this is good news. I haven't made the jump to Linux yet, but when I buy a new computer, I will. It's just all-around better than Windows.

Mucho Blogo Advico

A trio of helpful posts today on blogging.

1. Following on from her post of yeterday, about mid-list authors and blogging, Jemima Pereira now offers a follow-up on mid-list reading and price points. It makes me wish we had a Books-A-Million or Buck-A-Book store here in Memphis. OK, this one isn't really about blogging, but still....

2. From the Politburo Diktat comes really good advice for bloggers wanting to get lots of hits, become famous and rise high in the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem.

3. Over at Say Uncle, we then get some follow-up that offers more good tips. I learned that Unc is getting more hits than me by an order of magnitude! (ie. a factor of ten) Follow both of them and you can't go wrong.

Star Trek Stuff

There's a website, called Bring Back Kirk that offers a fan-made short (9 minutes) film bringing together the casts of all the Star Trek series in one slam-bang adventure, using fan-created CGI. Their premise is one that quite a few ST fans agree with: Captain Kirk should never have died the death he suffered in Generations. The trailer is available in a variety of formats and download options, but as the smallest is still 10Mb I haven't had a chance to look at them yet. But the graphics on the website are very impressive.

On a different front, the Ain't It Cool News website is reporting a bizarre Star Trek rumor. They claim that Berman and Braga are out as producers and someone from Disney (responsible for Snow Dogs and some other crap) will be coming in. Their intent is to produce a trilogy of "prequels" (to what?). It all sounds very, very wrong on nearly every level, which is why I'm not linking, but merely reporting. If this turns real, then I'll post again.

Where's Mah Money?

Whew! Another busy day at Half-Bakered. I post, you decide.

I know I won't keep up this pace because a lot of this is old bookmarks being burned off. Hey, if you haven't read it, it's still news to you, right? Right. Besides, no one pays me for this (Yet. I need to do the Bill Hobbs shameless capitalist thing and start profiteering.), so you can't complain.

Not that anyone does. Heck, I got more comments announcing I was on hiatus than I have blogging up a storm. (Is that a message? I choose not to think so.) Say something. Even if it's just "this sux, d00d."

Anyway, lots of bloggity goodness below. Read, enjoy.

And yet another reminder, because I'm still not seeing my work around the blogosphere. I made up a couple of faux Kerry campaign posters and posted them here. I really like the Kerry/UN one. It almost looks real. Feel free to hype 'em or use 'em. Please. Just give me credit. And make me famous.

So I can start charging for this.

Exposing The Lies: Priceless

The Indepundit was a soldier who saw active duty in Iraq and blogged his experiences while he was there as Lt. Smash. He's been deactivated now and has settled back into his old life. During the weekend's anti-Iraq War protests, he went out to watch one up close. His observations are drily funny but pointed. Here's his report.

You should read this (it's not long) because he made sure to tape and then transcribe one woman speaker at the protest. She's hilariously clueless, except when she actually advocates that American soldiers be killed in order to drive them out. That's traitorous.

You'd expect Indepundit to grow furious and do something. He did. He sought the woman out and interviewed her.

Take a few minutes, go, and Read The Whole Thing.

Fun With Environmentalists

Next time your low impact, vegan, think globally act locally, anti-globalisation, protesting, Gaian, be nice to your mother environmentalist irritates you, find out if they use a computer. If they do, hit 'em with this:

According to the study, the manufacturing of one desktop computer and 17-inch CRT (cathode ray tube) monitor requires at least 240 kilograms of fossil fuels, 22 kilograms of chemicals and 1,500 kilograms of water. In terms of weight, the total amount of materials used is about equal to that of a mid-size car....

Users should think carefully about whether they really need a new computer, if upgrading their existing computer could serve the same purpose, he said. Actions such as delaying replacement and upgrading the memory or storage space or, if the machine is replaced, donating the old computer so that it may continue to be used offer potential energy savings of between five and 20 times those gained by recycling.

This is because so much of the energy required to manufacture a personal computer is used to make high-tech components like semiconductors and those components are destroyed in the recycling process to collect a small amount of raw materials. In an earlier study published in late 2002, Williams concluded that 1.7 kilograms of fossil fuels and chemicals and 32 kilograms of water are used to produce a single 2-gram 32M-byte DRAM (dynamic RAM) memory chip.

Make sure they writhe in guilt.

Great Minds Thinking Alike?

This week's Memphis Flyer cover story, about sex in the South, plays up "passion parties," the Tupperware and Mary Kay of the 21st century. While doing reading on another story below, I noticed that another alt-weekly, this one in Spokane, Washington, had a "passion parties" cover story as well! What a coincidence, huh?

Well...no. This is much more common than you think. If one newspaper gets an idea that plays out really well, it will always get picked up by other papers equally eager to retain or build circulation. I'm not gonna search for links, but there are national organisations for different kinds of newspapers and they all have sections which highlight just these kinds of successful story ideas.

It's also the basis for the blogosphere. When someone makes a great post, or uncovers something really interesting, then other bloggers instantly pick it up. Soon, it's all over the place. It becomes a "meme" in blogosphere terminology.

Just ask Instapundit's many readers.

Mid-List Blogging

A great post today from Jemima Pereira, of Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt blog. (That's a Star Trek joke, BTW.) She looks at publishing's shrinking mid-list and makes some comparisons to blogging. It's a short read, but thought-provoking.

As for Half-Bakered, I've never labored under the illusion of being "mid-list." In publishing terms, I'm a quirky boutique small press: not well known but treasured by the few that read it.