The Blog with No Name

Penny Arcade demonstrates what my parents feared I would become: a indoor dwelling hermit.

Fallout from Kelo already.

With Thursday’s Supreme Court decision, Freeport officials instructed attorneys to begin preparing legal documents to seize three pieces of waterfront property along the Old Brazos River from two seafood companies for construction of an $8 million private boat marina.

The court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that cities may bulldoze people’s homes or businesses to make way for shopping malls or other private development. The decision gives local governments broad power to seize private property to generate tax revenue.

Better watch what land you buy . . . the city might want it.

(via the Volokh Conspiracy)

Really, what is better than bacon in the morning? Not much, I’d say. If I had to live off of one breakfast food for the rest of my life, I’d pick bacon. Why? Because it’s awesome. It’s meat. It’s salty. It’s bacony. It sizzles. It has a wonderful smell. It even gives my arteries a good work out. An ideal breakfast food to be sure. Though, I am pretty partial to french toast. However, you can’t just have french toast. You have to have french toast plus something else. For example, french toast and maple syrup or french toast and strawberries. Naked french toast is like eating bagels with no cream cheese, which is something I only do when I’m desperate, which is quite often these days. With bacon, all you need is the bacon. Well, maybe bacon and more bacon. In fact, I’m so excited about bacon right now, I even made a poll about it.

I just wish I had some OJ now.

My buddy Dan has a post pointing to the page to design your own Converse low-tops. Pretty sweet! They’re $60, so a little expensive, but you can finally have your own color scheme!

Here’s the ones I made:

UPDATE: Okay I made some new ones that won’t get dirty so easy:

Cruise has gone to the Dark Side. You, like your humor, are now mine.

Netflix now sells used DVDs. Netflix is trying to make my dire financial situation even more dire. Look they have The Incredibles for a mere $9.99! I realize those links won’t work for those without Netflix accounts, so you’ll have to trust me on this.

I’ve been extolling the virtues of Netflix since I started using it sometime late last year. If you like watching movies, and have about $15 a month to spare (a pittance if you consider the cost of theaters and Blockbuster rentals), then Netflix is for you.

Greg has a quick post covering a recent bill proposed in the DC city council. The councilwoman proposed a ban on public alcohol consumption using the same lines of reasoning as public smoking bans. Greg picked out a couple of good quotes:

Councilwoman Carol Schwartz, R-At Large, introduced her bill in response to a proposed ban on smoking in those same establishments. Her proposal imitates the arguments for a smoking ban, citing health concerns, worker safety and the nuisance of drinkers.

“I never thought I could ban drinking just because I didn’t like it, but now I know I can,” Schwartz said. “The impending smoking ban has empowered me.”

Several hours later, Schwartz pulled the bill, saying she had made her point. She hoped the incident would serve as a “wake-up call that once you start toying with people’s liberties, you never know where it might end.” …

“Let’s be honest, people are dying,” Schwartz said, mocking arguments from other council members on the smoking ban. “Pure and simple, drinking kills.”

Fellow council members Kathy Patterson and Jim Graham rolled their eyes and shook their heads.

and

“People are still free to drink at home - for now,” Schwartz said. But she said beverages at bars and restaurants should be limited to “tea, sodas and milk.

“And if the drinkers insist on drinking alcohol - and they will - they can just step outside on sidewalks with their flasks and drink.”

As I have mentioned before, I’m not a fan of the public smoking bans for a variety of reasons, but as long as it’s just states and and cities doing it I’m not going to get my boxers too much in a bunch over it.

I got a call from my friend Brock, who normally resides in that strange place called Wisconsin and subjects himself to the tortures of medical school, telling me that he was in Oregon with my other good buddy Jason, who normally resides in Seaside, Oregon. They wanted to hang out with me of all people, so I suggested we go camping on the Oregon coast since I had never done that and it seemed like an appropriately macho thing to do. I took some pictures too, so click on through to see the pictures and read a few words.

(more…)

Not too long ago I had a rather controversial post (”controversial” in steevak.com terms) about the French and how most of their fellow Europeans didn’t have a very high opinion of them. A recent poll (via Drudge) shows that the Europeans aren’t alone in their dislike of the French. Americans don’t like them much either, but that’s not the point I want to make here. Let’s start with this:

Trust between the French and Americans has slumped to its lowest level in 17 years, more than two years after a bitter feud over the Iraq war, an opinion poll showed on Friday.

The TNS-Sofres survey of 1,000 people in each country showed only 31 percent of French people have any “sympathy” for Americans, down from 39 percent in 2002.

Only 35 percent of Americans like the French, a drop from 50 percent in 2002, according to the poll, published in the Le Monde newspaper.

In 2002, only 39% of the French had any “sympathy” for us. Now keep in mind what was going on in 2002. We hadn’t invaded Iraq yet and 9/11 had only been a year ago, yet still barely over a third of the French had “sympathy” for us. Now compare that to American sentiment towards the French at the time: 50% of Americans liked the French. And keep this in mind too: you can have sympathy for somebody you don’t like, but it’s hard not to have sympathy for somebody you like. So even though “having sympathy” and “liking” aren’t exactly the same, I think we can draw a pretty firm conclusion that much less than 50% — and most likely less than 39%! — of the French actually “liked” Americans in 2002. Currently, only 31% of the French have sympathy for us and only 35% of Americans like the French. Still, Americans as a whole are warmer towards the French than the French are towards Americans.

And there’s more evidence that the French dislike us more than we dislike them:

The survey showed an overwhelming 70 percent of French people believe the United States is not a loyal ally. Fifty-six percent of Americans said France was not a reliable partner.

French people with left-wing views are most likely to be hostile to Americans, the survey found. Left-wing French voters drove France’s rejection last month of the EU constitution. Many who voted ‘No’ said they feared the charter would impose U.S.-style free-market economics on Europe.

Well, I’ll give the French some credit here. We aren’t loyal allies . . . when our allies want to take kick-backs from heinous, murdering tyrants and keep those same monsters in power.

With all this being said, the animosity between our two countries is not a good thing, and I wish it would be better. However, we have a long way to go . . . but the French have an even longer way to go.

Earlier this year Dean pronounced, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization.” Then a month or so later he claimed, “This is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.” Last week Dean described the GOP as ” a pretty monolithic party . . . it’s pretty much a white, Christian party.” Let’s do a little bit of logical arithmetic here. The GOP, a party Dean hates everything it stand for, is evil and is pretty much just white Christian folks.

Superb!

Michael Jackson got acquitted on all 10 felony charges today. I’m so glad that another stupid showboat celebrity trial is done. However, I think this acquittal once again underscores the deep racism inherent in our social structure. It’s obvious he was acquitted only because he is white.

There are some celebrities that it’s hard for me not to feel sorry for. Michael Jackson is one of them. Britney Spears, the Olsen Twins, Ashlee Simpson, Hayden Christiansen, all of the guys in Friends, and Ben Affleck are also on the list. Most of these people suck, but I think I’d feel better if everybody would stop saying they do. I guess that would include me.

Now that Apple has announced to start transitioning to Intel’s x86-64 chips over the next two years many people are trying to figure out what exactly this means for Apple’s future. Personally, I’m cautiously optimistic. My friend Soini is very happy. I think he peed his pants when he heard the news. He’s been saying for years that he’d switch to OS X in a heartbeat if it ran on PC hardware. For a long time, Apple has been struggling to try to stay an even level with PC hardware. The G5 does even the playing field for some tasks but not for others (like video games), but IBM’s inability to make a low heat G5 chip that could be used in laptops significantly hampered the progress of Apple’s otherwise outstanding laptop lineup. This switch to Intel hardware will definitely eliminate much of the hardware deficiency that Apple was suffering. My loyalty to Apple lies not really with the hardware but with the OS. I really don’t care what’s in the box, but I do care about the software that allows me to interact with that box.

The other thing that makes me optimistic is the possibility that porting games from the PC to the Mac will probably be easier. I’m an avid video gamer — but not a l33t one! — so I’m keenly aware of the “lack” of games available for the Mac platform. Now, with the new Intel chips coming, we should see a lot more games get ported and get ported quicker. We might even see the Holy Grail of Mac gaming: Half-life 1, 2, or 3. Inside Mac Games has a feature article containing the reactions of several top game coders/developers/porters in the Mac world that is pretty interesting. The reactions vary from “this is totally sweet” (a rough paraphrase) to “this is the death of the platform” (not a paraphrase). Apparently some game developers are going to lose out and some are going to benefit. Fortunately, the guy who is largely responsible for bringing the best game franchise ever (Unreal Tournament) to OS X likes the switch. Also, Blizzard, the best game company ever, seems positive about the switch too. So, as a gamer, I think this move will do nothing but good.

Macrumors also has some nice tidbits about the switch too. It points to some benchmarks of the Pentium 4 3.6 Ghz running Rosetta, the emulation environment that allows PPC programs to run without any changes. They aren’t too great, running at about at fifth of the performance of the current top of the line G5 system. Of course, they have a long ways to go to optimize Rosetta and get the kinks worked out, but it’d be nicer if those benchmarks were higher. Also Macrumors has a few other tidbits about the switch that might be interesting to some.

If I were to indulge in a bit of business philosophizing, I think this switch also reflects Apple’s shift to the commodization of its products and away from the high-end niche market it has so long had. With the roaring success of the iPod, the iTunes Music Store, and the Mac mini, Steve Jobs has tasted the tempting Apple of making more affordable products that everybody wants. Of course, this is assuming that the IntellliMacs will be cheaper than the current systems . . . they better be.

Hey, so Bush and Kerry had almost identical grades in Yale. Kerry is finally getting around to releasing his military and school records (months after promising to do so), and now we all know Kerry isn’t as smart as so many people thought he was.

In 1999, The New Yorker published a transcript indicating that Bush had received a cumulative score of 77 for his first three years at Yale and a roughly similar average under a non-numerical rating system during his senior year.

Kerry, who graduated two years before Bush, got a cumulative 76 for his four years, according to a transcript that Kerry sent to the Navy when he was applying for officer training school. He received four D’s in his freshman year out of 10 courses, but improved his average in later years.

. . .

The transcript shows that Kerry’s freshman-year average was 71. He scored a 61 in geology, a 63 and 68 in two history classes, and a 69 in political science. His top score was a 79, in another political science course. Another of his strongest efforts, a 77, came in French class.

Under Yale’s grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade. In addition to Kerry’s four D’s in his freshman year, he received one D in his sophomore year. He did not fail any courses

Of course, we already had a hint at this a while ago. Apart from the obvious fodder this will give Republicans, I think it’s interesting that both of these men, sometimes below average students, have accomplished so much and achieved such a high degree of power. I guess it goes to show you grades aren’t everything. Maybe I shouldn’t have worked so hard in undergrad . . .

Oh man, and check out these pictures:

For some reason Kerry reminds me of Quasimodo, and Bush, well, he does kinda look like a monkey. What’s with that unibrow?!

Sound Politics is reporting the judge ruled against the plaintiffs today and will not throw out last year’s election for Washington’s governor. Sensible reaction by at least the original poster at Sound Politics. There will be lots of elections to come.

Just confirmed in my IRC channel. Apple is switching to Intel’s x86-64 platform.

It’s kinda funny how the channel has just exploded in disgust and woe. I’m a pretty skilled reader of scrolling text and following multiple lines of conversation, but even this is too much for me.

A new poll is up to test for the real scoop on what The People think!