Security

It struck me today, as I was contemplating yesterday's entry about abortion, that the Bush administration has left our nation's vaginas more secure than our nation's ports.

Agree? Disagree?

Abandon ship before she sinks

In case you weren't convinced that Atom was a good idea back in February, here's another opportunity to see the light.

(Scoble, I hope you're listening.)

Delicious irony

For years, the anti-choice brigade has been trying to overturn Roe v. Wade bit-by-bit. Recently, Bush signed a bill outlawing so-called "partial-birth abortions". And the department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation that allows states to classify fetuses as "unborn children", which would make them eligible for health care coverage (but not the mothers). This is a slick trick -- attempting to make more people think abortion is murder. Well, I'm glad to say that this appears to be backfiring on the right.

Myrna Dick went to renew her papers with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service last month, and she wound up in custody. Officials accused her of lying to border patrol officers in 1998 and said it was grounds for deportation to Mexico.

But Dick, who is married to an American citizen, is pregnant with her husband's child. Judge Scott Wright wants to know if the fetus is a U.S. citizen, and if so, whether it can be deported. The judge asked attorneys for both sides to search for relevant precedents before he would rule.

"Clearly, that isn't an issue either side had contemplated," Dick's attorney said.

Checkmate!

(Via No More Mister Nice Blog)

For me to poop on

I'm making tonight the playa' haters' ball! Slate has an article (which is also uncalled for) criticizing celebrities' taste in music on iTunes Music Store Celebrity Playlists. Share the hate! :)

Edgy and controversial

I'm sick, and in a pissy mood, so I feel it's time to attack someone for no reason. Here goes.

You may notice that this weblog does not offer much original content. In fact, most of my blog posts simply link to another website and then say something snarky. For that, I apologize. In fact, I feel so bad about it, I'm willing to refund the full amount you paid to read it. :)

But it does not take much effort (or many resources) to read a bunch of feeds in NetNewsWire and link to the interesting stuff. I pay $5 a month to host Geekable.com. It's not really breaking the bank, and thus I don't have any Google ads or a tipjar. A website dedicated to someone's own vanity should be paid for by the vain motherfucker who created it. If I posted a lot of original content, and had enormous bandwidth costs, that's when I would start to beg.

But Mac Net Journal has some of the same issues as my blog, yet contains Google ads and tipjars. This is especially strange when you read through the archives and look at the ratio of original content to links. Here's how Mac Net Journal reads to me. (Note: This was written by me. It is not an actual quotation.)

Cult of Mac had an interesting entry about blah blah blah today. They argue that blah blah blah blah.

People are talking about the Think Secret article that discusses rumored blah blah blah at Apple. It really has me excited, and it also has John Gruber excited!

While I was working today, Microsoft Word 2004 crashed on me. What experiences have you had with Office 2004? [comments]

(Before you attack me, yes, I realize this blog post was uncalled for. It's rude, whiny, and not classy. That's the blogosphere, baby!)

I'm a rebel

Today at Taco Bell, I was supposed to get $2.04 in change, but they gave me $2.20. Mwa-ha-ha!!! I really stuck it to the man!

I can read book! Write word on page!

Though regular readers of this blog may not believe it, I passed Wayne State's English Proficiency Exam.

Watch his hands

What? You say that Bush gave another lackluster speech about the war last night? And the economic news isn't very good either? Well, we'd better find something with which to misdirect the negative attention!

(CNN) -- Several U.S. officials said Tuesday that unnamed terrorists, possibly al Qaeda operatives, are in the United States and planning a major attack on U.S. soil this summer.

Officials said the attacks might take place before the November presidential election in an attempt to affect the outcome, similar to how the Madrid train bombings influenced Spanish elections.

Looking for travel tips

I am planning a personal trip to Chicago during the second weekend of June, so I can get away from my humdrum life and have a little fun. I already know I'm stopping by the Apple Store, and returning to Volare, but I'm not sure what else I'm going to do. Do you have any hotel recommendations? Can you tell me the best place to go hear some live music? My contact information is on the right.

Energy methadone

Finally, I get an opportunity to discuss nuclear fusion!

If you ever get in a discussion with me about energy, I'm likely to bring up nuclear fusion, and then get angry that the United States isn't funding fusion research more. It's immediately clear to anyone with a basic science background that fossil fuels are non-renewable -- thus, oil and coal are in finite supply, and could theoretically run out in the next fifty years. Nuclear fission, a popular form of energy generation, creates harmful radioactive waste that will remain deadly for thousands of years. Wind, solar photovoltaics, and hydroelectricity are cool, but they create a big eyesore and little energy. Hydrogen cells are three-card-monty -- you spend a lot of energy creating the hydrogen in the first place! There's only one real viable long-term solution, which is nuclear fusion.

There are two big reasons why fusion power isn't lighting your home yet: public opinion, and lack of research money. After the 'cold fusion' fiasco, public opinion about nuclear fusion has remained very low. (If you do a word-association test, 'cold fusion' is sure to be associated with 'hoax'.) But just because we haven't created a self-sustaining fusion reaction here on earth yet does NOT mean that fusion doesn't exist! Just look at the sun -- stars are definitive proof that nuclear fusion can occur. In that sense, nuclear fusion is the most natural form of energy, since it occurs within every star in the universe. :) Humans have also created fusion reactions; just look at a hydrogen bomb! (From a safe distance, preferably.) The only real barrier to fusion power is making the reaction self-sustaining, or in other words, making the reaction last longer than a few seconds so we create more energy than we spend starting the fusion.

So we know that fusion can happen, and we've got a nation full of American ingenuity. Why are we still burning oil? If you're a conspiracy theorist, then you believe that Dick Cheney has any promising fusion scientist murdered during their dissertation defense. If you're Kurt Vonnegut, then you believe that the world is physically addicted to fossil fuels (I will admit that gas fumes do smell good). But the answer's simple -- the U.S. doesn't support fusion research very well. It's mind-boggling, considering that if the U.S. and other nations eliminated their dependence on foreign oil, OPEC would be obsolete, Arab nations would lose a significant portion of their revenue, and terrorist organizations would lose a lot of funding. Thus we could sneakily force a dozen regime changes, as Arab cultures would discover they need to shed the backward, theocratic governments that have been holding them back from prosperity.

But then again, I'm a crazy liberal, so don't listen to me. :)

A few rotten apples

I don't need to add anything else to this entry from No More Mister Nice Blog, except that you need to read it right now.

How to argue like a conservative

Who cares if the Bush administration provided classified intelligence and material support to Ahmed Chalabi, who then funneled the classified data to Iranian intelligence? It's not as bad as the stuff Saddam used to do, so therefore it's ok, and not treasonous!

Concentrate hard

Where's Waldo?

Open your eyes, people

This just in: 15 percent of CNN.com readers are either dangerously ignorant or shamelessly dishonest:

Does President Bush have a clear exit strategy for Iraq?

Yes 15%
No 85%

QUESTION: ... And, Mr. President, who will you be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?

THE PRESIDENT: We will find that out soon. That's what [UN Special Adviser to the Secretary-General] Mr. Brahimi is doing; he's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over.

You need a power tool

To Mr. Safier on Macintouch: Word 2004 is the wrong software program for you. If you find yourself copying a lot of EPS graphics out of Mathematica and trying to use them in papers, I suggest you bite the bullet and learn LaTeX.

Ludacris

Which came first: the kitchen appliance, or the album?

SVD

This article was exciting to me, as I'm both a Macintosh geek and a mathematics/computer science enthusiast. O'Reilly discusses how Apple incorporates latent semantic indexing and the singular value decomposition into their junk mail filter. Considering I just wrote a paper all about modern applications of the SVD, I was intrigued. :) Too bad the paper has long since been turned in.

(If you'd like to read this paper, contact me -- I don't think the paper is good enough to share with the entire world, but I can make exceptions.)

The return of liberal thought

Here's a good sign: the Gadflyer has published a couple of articles designed to teach you how to tear apart your conservative friends' arguments. This is desperately needed, as the conservative movement has spent a lot of money trying to make bad ideas sound really good. The Gadflyer's Ammo Dump breaks the issues down, and teaches you to spin the debate in a more favorable direction. I hope this is just the start of a liberal resurgence!

Fully responsible

So how culpable is the Bush administration in the Abu Ghraib scandal? You decide.

Repertoire

I've been out of practice on the piano and guitar for too long. So this summer, I'm forcing myself to rebuild a repertoire! Here are some of the songs I'm considering:

Piano:
Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai
Somebody to Love by Queen
Someone to Watch Over Me by George Gershwin

Guitar:
Bangs by They Might Be Giants
Walkin' My Baby Back Home by R. Turk/F. Ahlert
Honor and Harmony by G. Love and Special Sauce

New logo

Just wondering... what do you think of the new Geekable.com logo?

Codec snobs

This guy is a complete doofus:

There are vast numbers of audiophiles out there who have not participated in the MP3 (or AAC) revolution because the audio quality simply is poor.

To me, listening to music recorded at 128 kps is like listening to an old AM transistor radio from the 1960-70's. I simply can't tolerate it. I can barely tolerate 320 kps on my computer system, but still can't tolerate it on my home or car system.

While I can't tell you how many people out there feel as I do, I'm sure it's not an insignificant number. After all, there's enough of us that we are driving a new market for high quality music recording....SACD's and DVD Audio.

I would bet good money that this guy would fail a double-blind test.

Ballmer's ultimatum

Rick Schaut equates being a Mac guy at Microsoft with being a Who shouting at Horton, then tells this funny story:

I’ll point out that this does not mean that Mac BU is going away any time soon. Anyone familiar with the business that we do and the contribution we make to Microsoft’s bottom line is very happy that we’re here. We’re one of the more profitable business units in Microsoft. They just have a habit of forgetting that we’re here.

A few years back, Steve Ballmer sent out a company-wide memo stating the policy that no product can ship unless it first runs on Windows NT. He was pretty good-natured about it when we pointed out that this policy would have a seriously negative impact on our ability to ship Mac Office 2001 on time...

Fat rhymes

If you've never heard of MC Paul Barman, he's a white Jewish rapper from New Jersey. Educated at Brown, he builds some of the funniest, most complex rhymes you'll likely hear. Here are some of my favorites:

I'm a lonely male who'll settle for any phony in a ponytail.

I was eating food when a dude pseudo-suitable said, "My rap talk's the backdrop from laptop to blacktop. You certainly appear to be mightily stacked-up."

So-called experts can't see how the text works, so they comb through the textures of italicized excerpts.

Can I chime in? I'll still be rhymin' when I'm in your hymen!

I'm a hunter-gatherer, a cunter-latherer -- my dandy voice makes the most anti-choice granny's panties moist.

You make my karma puke! You who refuse to disarm a nuke! And keeping printing Marmaduke! (Anger -- like Margaret Sanger sitting on a bloody coat hanger!)

Placing the blame where it belongs

Sometimes satire is the only way to break through the bullshit D.C. rhetoric and get to the heart of an issue:

U.S. To Court-Martial Disposable Camera
Kodak Fun Saver 35 Snapped Abuse Pictures

A disposable camera that allegedly took humiliating photos at Abu Ghraib prison will be court-martialed in Baghdad next week, the Pentagon confirmed today.

“The camera that took these humiliating photos must be brought to justice,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters. “If, in fact, it is determined that the Kodak Fun Saver 35 did this heinous deed, then it must pay the ultimate price.”

By putting the camera on trial in Baghdad and broadcasting the proceedings around the globe, the White House hopes to show the Arab world that the U.S. is serious about bringing the Abu Ghraib wrongdoers to justice.

But in the tiny hamlet of Patoutville, Louisiana where the camera was first purchased, residents expressed shock and disbelief that the Kodak Fun Saver 35 could be responsible for such abhorrent photos.

Frank Toolin, a lifelong Patoutville resident who recalls seeing the Kodak Fun Saver 35 in the local 7-Eleven, told reporters, “The camera I knew was not capable of taking those pictures.”

Mr. Toolin said he fears that the Pentagon is turning the Fun Saver into a scapegoat, adding, “They should be court-martialing the film, not the poor camera.”

How convenient and efficient

This database is full of people I won't date.

How's that for narrowing the field?

Movable Type stole my money!

Six Apart's e-commerce system needs work. I paid them $50, got no receipt, and no copy of the software. Here's what happened:

1) I got linked to secure.sixapart.com, selected the $69.95 option, entered my donor key for a $20 discount, entered my billing information, and paid.

2) It then invited me to download a copy of Movable Type, but first I needed to get a TypeKey account. Unfortunately, it refused to register me because it said I entered the wrong number from the graphic. (I tried several times.)

3) I closed the browser window in frustration and later succesfully registered for TypeKey. But now I am not able to get back to the "Download Movable Type" invitation. TypeKey insists I haven't purchased anything. If I try to repurchase, it says my donor key is no longer valid.

Please, someone help! I emailed Mie Kennedy at Six Apart but haven't heard a response yet.

UPDATE: Mie Kennedy responded, and said the engineers are looking into it. Hopefully that means I'll be able to upgrade soon.

Big Brother in action

Why is the Patriot Act un-American? Here's an example:

When a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the American Civil Liberties Union could finally reveal the existence of a lawsuit challenging the USA Patriot Act, the group issued a news release."When a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the American Civil Liberties Union could finally reveal the existence of a lawsuit challenging the USA Patriot Act, the group issued a news release.

But the next day, according to new documents released yesterday, the ACLU was forced to remove two paragraphs from the release posted on its Web site, after the Justice Department complained that the group had violated court secrecy rules.

One paragraph described the type of information that FBI agents could request under the law, while another merely listed the briefing schedule in the case, according to court documents and the original news release.

The dispute set off a furious round of court filings in a case that serves as both a challenge to, and an illustration of, the far-reaching power of the Patriot Act. Approved by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law gives the government greater latitude and secrecy in counterterrorism investigations and includes a provision allowing the FBI to secretly demand customer records from Internet providers and other businesses without a court order.

Napoleon of the stump

For any They Might Be Giants fans out there: not only must you read this entry on Matthew Yglesias' site, but it is imperative you read the associated comment from "phil".

If the label sticks

Alicublog brings up a great point that I forgot to blog about this weekend:

I thought liberals were the ones that were all into moral relativism and shit.

However, so many conservatives have been using the dishonest argument "Saddam was worse" to justify the Abu Ghraib atrocities that we'll have to give conservatives the "moral relativism" label from now on.

Prison cells have no Windows

It's official: use Microsoft Windows, go to prison!

Google-bombing Rumsfeld

Obviously, the allegations of war crimes are very serious. We cannot stand by and let war crimes be committed; it is counterproductive to our goals in Iraq. So let's make sure we prosecute those responsible for war crimes so that we can help prevent future instances of war crimes.

How will the free-market solve this?

Libertarians, please explain to me how removing regulations will solve problems like these, where uneducated immigrants trying to eke out a living are subjected to deadly working conditions.

Unicode posting test

La lutte n'est pas une carrière noble.

¿Dónde está la cervecería?

Bitte benutzen Sie nicht Ihre Zähne!

英語は26 の手紙しか必要としないので日本語より優秀である。

Unicode migration

This blog may be unreadable for the rest of the evening, as I will be editing my Movable Type configuration in order to use Unicode. I am hoping that I won't run into any issues, and geekable.com will stay operational through the transition. Just a heads up.

This is only a test:
Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn

Update: I believe the migration is complete, but I still need to skim through old entries and make sure there aren't any problems.

Twenty-minute road trip

Via Motor City Rocks, here's an article from a New York magazine telling you how to go on a Detroit vacation in order to meet rock stars.

Somebody please think of the toaster

Fafblog astutely points out:

So the FDA has decided that the mornin after pill is not gonna be sold over the counter. This is yknow a huge step backwards for women's health and for contraception and the prevention of abortions. But it is a huge step forward for what we at Fafblog like to call the "rights of the unconceived," which is just a few short steps from what we are really lookin forward to which is the rights of the inanimate.

I have personally spent hours an hours talkin to cans, waffle irons, boxes, printer cartridges and forks and they all dream of one thing: no longer bein treated as second-class citizens in the United States. Why is it we can casually throw out a burger wrapper as if its non-life life didnt matter? Why are staplers used against their will?

No excuse this time

Why can't we learn the lessons of history?

Too hard for a network admin

Macmove.com posted a little anecdote about life with Windows:

Shortly after lunch today my daughter, age 4, declared that she wanted to go to noggin.com to play some of the games there. "And I want to do it on the computer in the family room" she declared.

Her "usual" computer is a grape tray loading iMac. It is not connected to the network at home as there is no cat5 run to her room, nor do the tray loading iMacs have AirPort card capability. The computer in the family room is a Windows XP machine running on some left over P3 600 hardware and an ATI All-In-Wonder card for doing some DVR duties. It is connected to the home network with a SMC PCI wireless 802.11b card.

It doesn't get much use other than a bit of recording, playing an occasional MP3, and a few Windows only games for my daughter. It had been at least two months since it had seen any use.

Since its last use I had upgraded to an Airport Extreme base station and was using WPA encryption. On boot-up the Windows machine could not log into the Novell network because it was unable to negotiate WPA, or so I thought. After some futzing with switching WPA to WEP on the base station, then ultimately turing off encryption all together, I realized that the problem was that the SMC card was not updating its settings when I clicked the "Apply" button. For about 15 minutes I would change a setting, reboot, see if it worked... all to no avail. I then went to my personal XP machine and downloaded the newest drivers from SMC, removed the existing driver and installing the new one. Even that didn't go right. The installer kept looking for a file called C10.drv, which I could not find anywhere in the driver's installer directories. Eventually I resorted to doing a "find file" on the computer and found a version of C10 in /windows/system32/drivers/. The installer seemed to like it and I was able to get the computer on-line so my daughter could get to noggin.com. Total expired time, 45 minutes.... AND I'M A NETWORK ADMINISTRATOR. How the average Joe puts up with all of this and manages to get any work done is really quite beyond my comprehension....

So that's where they get it from

Thanks to Google and Livejournal, I found the blogs of some students affiliated with the Wayne Review. The editor-in-chief, Joe Koss, is located here. You can witness the grammar trainwreck for yourself. Make sure you check out this entry, which I reprint here without permission. It's entitled "Death March", and is preceded by his current mood, "annoyed".

so this weekend was the "WOMENS RIGHT MARCH"

Pretty much a death march... ie... Keep the right to kill babies...

The thing that bugs me is not that they have the march... its America... the cool things is, along with good speech and good marches are bad ones, and its good because without debate and discourse we would never find progress....

The bad thing is when people over exaggerate things...

Liberal source...
This one is the Wash Post which is liberal..
This one has a higher estimate..but not near a mil...
Super liberal Det Freep....
CNN = Communist News Network = 500k-800k
Do lesbians count as 2 people?
EVEN NPR = National Poop Radion says event in "thousands..."

So yeah... so with all these LIBERAL media outlets.. I didnt even use like the Detroit news, or WND, or Fox or any of those... I linked traditionally liberal sources... and they all quote the 500k-800k... thats still a lot of people.... but... what im saying has a few points:

1) That many people support killing babies
2) Lets give a mean number tween 500k & 1.15m ~ still around 775k
3) If 2) is true... then MORE people come to Detroit each year to listen to TECHNO..... not trance or radio-techno... but REAL DETROIT techno... which most people have never heard..... i mean detroit over dc? and MANY groups had free rides to DC.....
4) KILLING babies.... really?

Anyways... like I said, the rally, thats great, hundreds of thousands... even better.... But dont inflate the numbers... I mean thats what we have ENRON and TYCO for......

[Due to threat of legal action on October 10, 2004, one paragraph has been removed from this post.]

Also for your reading pleasure, staff writer Gregory Wright. Actually, I can't complain too much about Mr. Wright -- he writes well, I thought his article about "The M.A.T.R.I.X. Revolution" was good, etc. The only problem I have is that he whines more about love and relationships than I do!

Of course, you can always go to the nexus of conservative thinkers on campus, Wayne State's Conservative Union.

Household vocabulary, vol. 2

dial down the center (di'el doun the sen'ter) v. to select the answer 'C' for every single question on a multiple-choice Scantron test [c.2004, brother Greg]

Gah! There's no stopping them!

Check this out, before the patent office fixes it: Microsoft has patented Apple.

Oh Newton, where art thou?

Are you tired of smug physicists trying to accurately model natural phenomena using mathematics? Are you itching to use your dusty knowledge of high-school algebra? Well, let The Poor Man link you to a writer who thinks like you!

Please shut up about "democracy-building"

There is no excuse for twenty-five deaths of Iraqi prisoners. Did you read that? TWENTY-FIVE. Even if only 50 percent of those cases turn out to be America's fault, that's still twelve prisoners we killed! And the worst part is, if it turns out a private contractor was responsible, they may just walk off scot-free!

Whatever little shred of support we had in the Arab community for this "liberation" effort is now completely gone.

The most beautiful split in the world

In bowling, a split is usually considered a bad thing. But this article in Salon about a growing split in the religious-conservative movement has me really excited:

Alabama's renegade Chief Justice Roy Moore was already the darling of the far right when he rallied cheering supporters on the steps of the state courthouse last August. Nationally known as the "Ten Commandments Judge," Moore had installed a 5,280-pound granite sculpture of an open book inscribed with the commandments shortly after he was elected in 2001, and then defied a federal court order to remove it. Observers couldn't help being reminded of Gov. George Wallace's infamous stand in the schoolhouse door, rallying Alabama segregationists in defiance of a federal court order to integrate the University of Alabama.

Now, almost everywhere Moore goes, people ask him to do something else Wallace did: run for president.

The possibility that Roy Moore could challenge President Bush in November may not be costing Karl Rove any sleep -- yet. But the chance that the popular conservative judge could do to Bush what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore in 2000 -- split his ideological base, and cost him the presidency -- has analysts crunching numbers and weighing Moore's chances. Moore and his spokeswoman did not return telephone and e-mail messages from Salon, but Moore's public statements have been consistent in recent months. He is keeping his options open, he says, and he will decide if he will run when he has exhausted his court appeals in the Ten Commandments case.

And you complain about Ted Rall?

ANDREW SULLIVAN AWARD NOMINEE: "It's inevitable. Across the world, after the hideous pictures of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, headlines will announce that the U.S. is as bad, if not worse than Saddam. Finally, the far left will concede the evil of Saddam, but only so they can declare the U.S. worse." --Andrew Sullivan, May 3, 2004

Symptomatic

"I believe a vote for Bush is a character flaw." --Janeane Garofalo, on the Daily Show

Selective reading of Paul

This is a good article about conservatives selecting portions of the Bible they like, and discarding the portions that disagree with their political views:

The apostle Paul has been quoted frequently by conservative Christians lately for what he wrote about homosexuality, but I haven’t read or heard much about what he told the Corinthians about paying a worker fair wages. As the famed evangelist was complaining that the Christians in Corinth had not sent any money to support his efforts, Paul makes a broader point about a worker’s expectations:

For it is written in the law of Moses, "You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain." Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Or does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was indeed written for our sake, for whoever plows should plow in hope and whoever threshes should thresh in hope of a share in the crop.

Paul’s midrash on the commandment found in Deuteronomy that instructs an ox’s owner to allow it to eat some of the grain it treads out reminds us that there are ethical considerations involved in setting employees’ wages. Those engaged in honest labor should be able to do so in hope of a fair share of the fruits of their work.

Knife scams

If you're interested in a shitty-ass summer job where you pay a company hundreds of dollars for the privilege of selling knives door-to-door, then head over to Vector! (This is about as good a job as selling Amway.)

Today, I received yet another letter from Vector, citing "continued growth and expansion", and inviting me to apply for a position. No thanks -- I was stupid enough to attend a Vector informational meeting back in the summer of 2000.

Actually, I was so stupid as to think it was a great opportunity -- thank you Mom and Dad for not allowing me to waste my money.

Office on Mac

Microsoft seems to be continuing its long tradition of great Office software for Macintosh:

Because of their meager ranks (currently about 3% of the personal-computing universe), Macintosh users have long been given second-class status in the software world. Sure, Apple has created some nice products, such as iTunes, for its computers. But most third-party programs are written for Windows PCs and then adapted, sometimes poorly and often months later, for Apple machines. A notable exception arrives later this month when Microsoft releases the latest version of its ubiquitous Microsoft Office package for the Mac. My verdict: Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac is clearly superior to its PC counterpart for most users. Last fall Microsoft put out a bloated update of Office for Windows that focused more on collaborating with other users than on making it easier for you to get your own work done. The streamlined Office for Mac puts individuals first.

Oblivious

I was actually at Somerset when this happened, yet I didn't hear or see anything! (I was having dinner with my brother, who was celebrating his birthday.)

Get Lost, indeed

Salon seriously needs to replace Thomas Bartlett, who pretends to be a music writer. His latest article, all about Stephin Merritt, mostly complains about how Merritt had the gall to call Bartlett on all of his pretentious-ass bullshit throughout their interview. Here's an example:

But it's Merritt's intolerance for questions or statements he finds stupid that makes him so intimidating. The interview got off to a shaky start when I asked him if his new record's title "i" was derived from the fact that all but one of the songs on his new record were written in the first person.

"No," he replied, in the tone of someone explaining the obvious to a particularly slow child, "On '69 Love Songs' most of the songs are in first person as well. Actually, most of everybody's songs are in the first person." And, in a nicely poetic afterthought, "If they're not invitations to dance, they're first person."

Later we were talking about Björk, and I mentioned how innovative I thought she was. Merritt looked a little incredulous and asked me what I was talking about. This should have been easy for me: first of all, the idea that Björk is an innovative force in popular music is widely accepted; secondly, I'd written about it already. But feeling tongue-tied, I stammered for a moment, and then said something about the way she used non-rhyming lyrics, and strange, twisted phrase structures that were rare in popular music. This unleashed a minor tirade, albeit in the same monotone voice, with just an extra touch of pedantry.

"Non-rhymed lyrics have been around since Milton. Most of the blues, much of folk music, especially outside Britain, half of Madonna. But what makes you think that non-rhyming is interesting or revolutionary? And as for her unusual phrase structures, it's actually just rambling, and because of her rambling, I don't tend to remember her songs. There's a reason for repetition, which is that it's an aid to memory." Then adding what could be the opening of a Stephin Merritt manifesto on music, "I think formlessness is not the way to go in popular music. More form, I think, is the answer."

Suitably chastened, I moved onto the safe and completely non-Björk-related topic of drummers, I received this spectacular run-on: "One of my favorite drummers is Mick Fleetwood, who keeps incredible time, but is always doing interesting variations on the beat, and in the most repetitive songs, he never seems to play exactly the same thing twice, and yet he sounds very simple, so I think he's a genius, which brings me to demolishing your Björk thesis with Stevie Nicks, and the song 'Dreams' off of Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumors,' which rhymes, if at all, only every 30 seconds."

Merritt starts humming to himself to double-check how often it rhymes, then adds, "Maybe when she feels like it, there's a rhyme tossed in. It's a very rambling melody, yet quite beautiful, over a simple two-chord progression." Then, with deep sarcasm and great pleasure, "I would say that Stevie Nicks is an important precursor to Björk, perhaps surpassing her in artistry."

Can Salon try to find a music writer who will simply tell us if a record is good or bad, and justify it? I doubt that "desperately try to make indie pop artists like you" was part of Salon's job description.