Amway, Amway, Amway, Amway, Amway, Amway

Ah, Dick DeVos.

"I've never been about division," [Dick DeVos] said. "I've been about bringing people together."

(Let's give the Detroit Free Press props for alluding to the Amway/Dick DeVos connection. I think that in a truly liberal media, every article about DeVos should include the following sentence: "Dick DeVos made his vast fortune by exploiting the American underclass in a scheme called Amway Quixtar.")

What is your power move?

Zefrank's The Show has the greatest entertainment-to-time ratio I've seen in a long time.

[Thanks Daring Fireball!]

Temporal echo

Hairdresser, to me, today:

Do you use pomade or gel to get it up?

Do you use Viagra or Levitra to get it up?

Got a good thing going baby

Before I switched to mathematics, I was a music technology major. However, my first year at Wayne State coincided with the 2000 election, and the subsequent tanking of the economy. So I switched to mathematics, worrying that I wouldn't be able to find a job after graduation.

Looks like I'm a freakin' genius:

Interviewer: Why did this album have to be produced in your house?

Matthew Sweet: That just how they’re doing it now. There’s been this big shift and it’s been terrible for big studios. My very favorite studio in LA, which most recently was called Cello used to be the western side of United Western Studios. That’s where they made all these classic recordings like Beach Boys and Sinatra records. One of my favorite, if not my favorite engineer in the whole world, Jim Scott, worked only in those rooms and that studio is gone. They couldn’t keep it alive because of the advent of home recordings. The quality of which has gone up to where you can do a really good recording at home. For us it meant not having the pressure of a big budget.

Cut to the heart

This one graph explains so much in such little space.

(It also makes tons of "political wisdom" completely irrelevant.)

As compared to slutty programming

Daniel Jalkut's essay "Easy Programming" is superb, and far more helpful than the methodology-du-jour.

The more you know

Song recommendation of the day: You'll Pay for Your Day At Pleasure Island by Michael Leviton.

Buyer alert! After listening to this song, or even "Summer's the Worst", you may be tempted to purchase Michael Leviton's entire album. Do not do so; you will likely be disappointed.

Self-taught Cocoa lessons, vol. 1

A Universal deployment-configuration build of the Omni Frameworks takes up 500 MB of hard drive space.

Yowza!

Maintenance of social order

Scott Adams:

Mockery is an important social tool for squelching stupidity. At least that’s what I tell people after I mock them.

Because the fucking bastards are cold-blooded

Maciej Ceglowski wrote a nifty travel guide called "Argentina On Two Steaks A Day."

If you follow his advice, does that count as steaks on a plain?

The Five Dysfunctions of a Republican Administration

Some good stuff from one of Andrew Sullivan's substitute bloggers:

A few readers have pointed out (and many more are thinking), that the Domino Effect or Domino Theory that so excited folks back in the days of Vietnam is not identical to the Tipping Point notion that influenced the planners of the Iraq campaign. But I lumped them together for a reason. The Domino Theory was a fear that that once Vietnam fell to the communists, the rest of Asia would go on falling, while the Tipping Point idea was a hope that once Iraq jumped up to welcome democracy, the rest of the Middle East would go on rising. The ying-and-yang of military psuedo-science drawn from frothy management books.

I wonder if they 'firewalk' at the Pentagon? Or if Cheney has ever let himself fall backwards into Rumsfeld's arms as a team-building, trust-enhancing exercize? They could all do it, right on back to McNamara. All the clever former CEOs.

I liked General Patton's ideas much better, the bloody old coot. They arose from what he'd seen and suffered through, not from books he'd skimmed on airplanes. Or had his assistants skim on airplanes...

Corner-jump the shark

Roger Clegg, The Corner, National Review Online, April 13, 2006:

Frequently liberals will argue to us, "If you were truly conservative, you would" (fill in the blank: oppose tax cuts since they unbalance the budget, oppose reform of this or that entitlement program because doing so is too "radical," oppose this or that foreign intervention, oppose the Patriot Act because it fosters Big Government, support gay rights against an intrusive government, etc.). Now, my point here is not to discuss whether or not there is anything to such claims; usually there is not. Rather, it seems to me interesting that liberals use this ploy against conservatives, but conservatives rarely use it against liberals. Why is this so?

A liberal response might be that conservatives are much more inconsistent and hypocritical than liberals, but I don't buy that. A more plausible explanation is that liberalism today is so incoherent and lacking in true principles that it is impossible to say that any position is inconsistent with it. It's more evidence, in other words, that all the intellectual rigor is on the Right. [emphasis Geekable's]

A couple of readers to this effect: "Aren't you a bit embarrassed to be laying in to illegal immigrants, having confessed that you yourself were once an illegal immigrant?"

No. I look on it as being sort of like the reformed drunk at a temperance meeting.

Besides, there's INSIDE and OUTSIDE. I can recall thinking, as an [illegal immigrant], that Americans were kind of naive about immigration. Since the naivety was to my personal advantage, I didn't complain. AS AN AMERICAN, and having jumped through all the darn immigration hoops at last (seven years to Green Card, nine more to citizenship), I'm entitled to another point of view...

I love mushrooms

For your consideration -- thoughts on public support for nuking Iran.

I agree with Billmon in this case... if people aren't angry over the past 5 years of the Bush administration, they probably won't get angry if we nuke a country without provocation.

Where do your profits come from?

In case you didn't know, the Republican candidate for the governor of Michigan is the Amway Quixtar Alticor heir, Dick DeVos. As if it wasn't bad enough that Alticor is one of the biggest corporate donors to politicians, now they actually want to run for office.

DeVos's television ads focus on the poor state of Michigan's economy, and claim that Dick has a better economic plan. However, I don't believe that he's actually laid out the details of that plan yet. I would be highly amused if I saw a television ad such as:

Michigan has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. It's a shame that people who are ready and willing to work cannot find a job. However, I have a plan to supercharge Michigan's economy. Anyone who can't find a job should become an Independent Business Owner! Be your own businessman or businesswoman, and you'll be living the American dream in no time.

Right?

MacBook Pro AirPort issue

So my MacBook Pro got delivered today, and I'm already having problems.

Out of the box, with the standard 10.4.5 install, the AirPort works fine. But when I upgrade to 10.4.6, the AirPort can connect to the router, but not obtain an IP address.

I dug around on Apple discussions, and found a solution. But I'm still not happy that the thing has problems the first day.

What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff

So, yeah, Boot Camp.

Beyond the initial "Holy fucking shit" response, let's look at this technically. From all the reports, it sounds like the actual Boot Camp software package isn't that complicated. It's mostly just a clever partitioning utility and an Intel Mac driver pack for Windows XP SP2. (Though, it is exciting that there are native video drivers. Hello Windows gaming!)

Where the real magic lies is the firmware updates. Again, the reports make it sound like Apple has finally exposed the legacy BIOS compatibility layer that Intel always promised was possible for EFI. Thus, you should be able to run any x86 operating system, including the latest Windows Vista CTP builds. (Ah, the subtle pleasures of being an MSDN Professional subscriber!)

Unlikely advice

MacFixit:

"Solution: Choose Detroit."

UPDATE: This article, found on Reddit, is tangentially related.

UPDATE 2: As is this.