Categories
Audio Visual Politics

Why We Fight

Why We Fight (2005). 98 minutes, Sony Pictures Classics. Directed by Eugene Jarecki.

This is a Great Film. I don’t mean that in a “wow, this is cool!” kind of way. Nor do I mean it has great acting, or is likely to win an academy award, or anything like that. I mean “Great Film” in that this is what a documentary is supposed to be like. This is a riveting, 98 minute tour through history, democracy, and war. Although if you need awards to help convince you, well, it did win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.

I bought this movie on DVD without having seen it before, or really even knowing what it’s about. I had read some snippets here and there, and I had gathered that it was some sort of historical piece about Dwight Eisenhower. I remember that Eisenhower had warned about the military industrial complex, and I knew this movie was more or less about that.

Why We Fight is indeed about that, but it’s also about much more. The film begins and ends with Eisenhower’s farewell address, presented a week before he left office, on January 17, 1961. It is a powerful speech, and presented on-camera by a man who obviously speaks from the heart about what he knows. If I’m not mistaken, Eisenhower was the last career military man to serve as President of the United States – it has been 45 years now that we have had a civilian commander-in-chief.

Here is the key part of Eisenhower’s speech, where he coined the phrase “military industrial complex”:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The rest of the speech is just as good. I highly recommend reading the speech in its entirety.

Why We Fight then goes back and forth in history, using “talking heads” from the military, the CIA, students of history, and everyday people. The premise is relatively simple: For each of the various wars (or engagements, or police actions, etc) that we have fought since World War II – why did we fight? What was the reason? What did we win or lose? Were we in the right, the wrong, or unknown?

Each expert has a slightly different answer, but surprisingly, they all equate to the same thing: We fight because it is part of our culture. It is The American Way. We don’t negotiate, we don’t see subtleties, and most of all, we don’t worry about what will happen in the future because of our actions today.

In fact, as testimony from CIA officials and military students both confirm, every single engagement we’ve been involved in since 1945 – including Iraq – has been of our own making. We created Iran, by deposing its democratically elected leader in the 1950’s and replacing him with the despotic Shah. We created Iraq, by backing Saddam Hussein and supply him with money and weapons to fight Iran. Each time, we have ignored the “blowback” that will be caused in the future by our actions today.

We fight because it’s business. Money. Huge corporations like Boeing, Halliburton, and KBR exist almost solely to supply the government. They have business involvement in each and every one of the 50 states. Jobs depend on it, lots of jobs. Although the film never comes out and says so, I think it’s very interesting that this whole scheme – put in place to fight communism – is the closest thing we’ve got to actual communism today. After all, what is communism? State-sponsored, state-subsidized business. And just what are Halliburton and all the other military contractors? They exist, and they employ thousands of people, solely based on taxpayer money. We pay our taxes to the government, the government uses that money to pay the contractors, and the contractors pay their employees who pay the taxes… and around it goes.

I’ve seen some comments around the internet that liken this film to Fahrenheit 9/11. I don’t see it myself. I thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was just shrill anti-war propaganda, pure and simple. (As a side note, I also think Michael Moore is an A #1 asshole… but that’s a different point, I suppose). Whereas Fahrenheit 9/11 is smug, sarcastic, and snide, Why We Fight is engrossing, human, and intelligent. Both films make a point – but Moore’s film is a crudely disguised campaign commercial, and Jarecki’s is a masterpiece of documentary filmmaking.

Buy, rent, or watch this film. It’s very, very good. The stories intertwine in a seamless, almost organic fashion. If for nothing else, watch the story of retired firefighter Wilton Sekser, whose son died in one of the Twin Towers on 9/11, and how his support for the “war on terror” eroded as the lies and corruption behind it were exposed.

The film ends with a statement from Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (retired). Col. Kwiatkowski resigned from the Army, and left her post as an analyst at the Pentagon, because she could no longer stomach supporting the intelligence lies that were necessary to sell the war in Iraq to the Amercian people:

I think we fight because basically not enough people are standing up saying, “I’m not doing this anymore.

Let’s all stand up and say… we’re not doing this anymore. There are better ways to make a living. And there are better ways to live.

Categories
Technology

Back to the Mac Part II: The MacBook

Apple 13″ White MacBook 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo, 60 GB Hard Drive

In Part 1, I detailed how the lure of a Mac Mini led me to purchase my first Macintosh in almost a decade. That was in March of this year. And now I’ll detail how I have faired in changing my portable environment to the machine I’m writing this on, a MacBook.

The Mac Mini was (and is) a fantastic little computer. But in its chosen use in my home – as a living room media hub – it was not very convenient for me to use as an actual working computer. Unless I was in the living room, keyboard on my lap, wireless mouse balanced on the arm of the sofa, I really didn’t use it as a “computer” very often. After the initial setup and installation of some basics, I pretty much used it through the Front Row interface for listening to music or watching videos.

I wanted a Mac that I could actually sit and type at. I almost ordered a second Mac Mini, but I knew that sooner or later, Apple would come out with an Intel desktop machine to replace their aging G5 tower – and I would, of course want one of those as well (that will be detailed in the upcoming Part III, The Mac Pro).

So, when Apple announced the MacBook, that seemed perfect. The MacBook Pro didn’t really thrill me much, mainly because I have always favored small (some would say “tiny”) laptops. To me, if a laptop is going to have a 15″ or a 17″ screen… what’s the point? That’s a desktop machine in my book. A “laptop” to me means literally that: a computer that I can place on my lap, while sitting in a chair or lying in bed, and use comfortably. I have never owned a laptop with a screen larger than 12″ for this very reason. As an example, one of my favorite laptops was the original Sony Vaio X505, which had a 10″ screen.

My current laptop was a Dell Inspiron 700m, a nice widescreen 12.1″ portable that weighs just under 4 pounds. Now, I still wished Apple had dropped the size a bit more, but after they announced that this was it – the Mac Book was the smallest laptop they were going to ship, at least anytime in the near future – I decided to take a look at one in person and see if I could live with it. So, one evening after work, I headed up to Boca Raton to the Apple Store to get my hands on one.

A side note about Apple Stores: These places are completely inconsistent! This past June I was in NYC for a weekend of broadway shows (“Wicked” and “Avenue Q”), and stopped by the new Apple Store on 5th Avenue. If you have a chance, definitely visit this store, even if you have no need for anything in it. It’s that cool. A glass cube with glass stairs and a glass elevator, the interior of the store is row after row of cool hardware, with dozens of computers all up and running. Just about every software application that can run on a Mac is installed somewhere on those machines, and helpful staff members circulate through the crowd, answering any and all questions. Light filters down from the giant glass cube above… Neat!

Me outside the Apple Store in New York City
June 2, 2006		 Me outside the New York Public Library
June 2, 2006

On the other hand… the Boca Raton Apple Store (a closer drive for me than the Miami store) is a very run-of-the-mill mall store. It occupies a space that could have been a beauty parlor or a book store in years past. It’s a nice clean store, don’t get me wrong, and the people there are just as helpful as the staff in the NYC store. But the space itself? *yawn*. I guess my visit to the NYC store led me to expect that every Apple Store would have some coolness to it, and this one just don’t have it.

End of side note. So, architectural observations notwithstanding, the Boca Raton Apple Store did indeed have eight new MacBooks out on counters for hands-on playtime, both in white and black. It took about 10 seconds before I turned to nearest salesperson and said, “OK, I want one. Gimme”. Five minutes later, I was walking out to my car with another white and blue box under my arm.

Within a few days, I packed up the Dell and got ready to sell it. Within a few weeks, I started hooking up the Mac Book directly to a monitor and keyboard and using it as my primary computer, awaiting the release of a new Mac desktop. After a month, I had a second power supply so I could have one in a permanent location and another in my backpack. And, I ordered all three varieties of monitor connections.

Based on a tip from a friend, I bought my MacBook with only 512MB of RAM in it, and then order 2GB myself from Newegg. It’s quite easy to put in memory yourself, and a heck of a lot cheaper than paying Apple’s price for memory. I’m using Kingston memory in mine, and it works like a champ.

There are lots of reviews of the MacBook out there, so I want to concentrate here on some aspects that I think are only appreciated after using the machine for for a while, and also in comparison to the many other laptops I have used in my life. The short answer is that the MacBook is my favorite, hands down. The only thing I can complain about is that it’s a little bit too big and a little bit too heavy. If only it could loose an inch in width and height, and a pound in weight, then it would truly be perfect.

So what’s so great?

The Screen

Although the same resolution (1280 x 800) as my Dell Inspiron 700m, the MacBook looks a lot sharper. I don’t know who makes the screen for Apple, but it’s a damn good one. The slightly larger size make text and graphics more readable. (I realize this contradicts my criticism about this computer being too large. Life is full of contradictions. Get used to it). Some people dislike the glossy, almost reflective, quality of the screen – I am not one of those people. In low light, it’s fantastic. In bright light, it’s annoying. However, I am much more likely to use my laptop in low light than in bright sunlight. If you’re outside in the bright sun using your computer, please put it aside and go enjoy the weather. A nice sunny day should be treasured.

The Keyboard

Since their first PowerBook (the venerable old PowerBook 100), Apple has almost always made good keyboards. The keyboard on the MacBook is a little unusual; to save space, the keys do not protrude nearly as much as most other laptop keys do. Instead, they ‘sink in’ more. Personally, I really like the feel of the keyboard. This is actually what sold me on this computer when I test-drove it in the Apple store. I’m a fast touch typist, and for me, a properly responsive keyboard is very important. This one feels great.

The Trackpad

The trackpad itself is nothing special, other than being aesthetically pleasing. What is special is the controls using by the OS. My favorites are the gestures such as touching two fingers on the trackpad at a time to initiate a “right-click” (very important when running Windows in Parallels), and dragging two fingers to emulate the scroll wheel on a regular mouse. I got used to these gestures so quickly, that whenever I use a different laptop at work, I keep trying them before I remember that they only work on a MacBook. I predict that these two gestures will become widely adopted by every laptop maker over the next year or so.

The Case

The case itself is completely smooth, very much like an iPod. The monitor, USB, and FireWire ports are all recessed neatly. The screen latches shut magnetically, so there are no buttons or levers to push or press; you just lift up the screen. There are no little doors covering up various ports that can break off. There are no dongles to plug in (well, except for when connecting to an external monitor). There are no external switches. When I put the MacBook next to my Dell 700m, it was like putting a steam engine next to a Ferrari. And the case is not just pleasing to the eye, it’s pleasing to the touch. The smooth curves and cool, glossy plastic mean there are no hard edges when carrying it. Even moving the laptop around with one hand is much easier, since absolutely nothing protrudes or pokes out anywhere. It’s so simple, I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before.

The Power Supply

This has always been a sore spot in every laptop I’ve owned. You have a nice, thin laptop… and then you have to lug around a giant black brick to run it or charge it. Apple has made two innovations that really help this. The first, and the most important, is that the power supply is small and light. It also comes with two snap-on plug adapters: One lets you plug it directly in to a two-prong outlet, very much the same as the iPod charger, and the other lets you plug it into a three-prong outlet via a longer cord.

The second innovation is the magnetic latch. Rather than plugging the charger into a jack, it adheres to a magnetic jack. That way, the cord just drops away if you jerk or pull on either the laptop or the power supply. In addition, it makes it a lot easier to plug in the charger; you don’t have to even look at the jack, just aim the plug in the general vicinity. The magnetic pull takes care of the exact location and fit. This is another thing I predict will be adopted by every other laptop maker over the next few years.

The WiFi

It just plain works. It even works on the very secured, LEAP-only wireless network at my office. Tip for Parallels/Windows users: Use the MacBook to connect to your secured wireless network, then just let Windows connect generically to the host OS.

The Monitor Adapters

The MacBook has a DVI monitor out – but it’s a “mini-DVI” plug that won’t work with anything else out in the wild. You have to purchase adapters (currently only Apple makes them) to connect the MacBook to any kind of monitor, even an Apple monitor. They sell 3 adapters: VGA, DVI, and S-Video. I bought the VGA and DVI ones. The DVI one is best; it picks up the resolution of whatever monitor you plug in, and works instantly. The VGA one is good, but really shines when you’re running Windows in a conference room.

Parallels

OK, this last one’s a cheat. This is a separate, $79 software application that lets you run a VM (Virtual Machine) of Windows. If you’re not familiar with VMs, basically they are software emulators that let you run another OS in a window. For those of you who are familiar, Parallels is basically a clone of VMWare Workstation running on a mac. One very cool feature of Parallels is that you can switch to fullscreen mode, and Windows XP automatically switches to the 1280 x 800 resolution of the MacBook display. This is very cool to watch, and even cooler to use. You really, truly get 2 OSes running at the same time, and you can flip back and forth between both. If you have any need (as most of us in the corporate world do) to run Windows, this is the way to do it. I’ve used this in meetings at work, connecting my MacBook to the conference room projector, and no one has any idea I’m actually using a Macintosh.

If it’s not apparent, I really like this machine. If you have the means and the need, go get one. I’ll wait.

Categories
Books

The Ruins

The Ruins (2006) by Scott Smith. Knopf, 336 pages.

Are you looking for a good scary thriller? Have you been missing the feeling of reading a new Stephen King book? Do you enjoy staying up all night long, the hair on the back of your neck slowly prickling as you read? Isn’t it fun when you mutter “no… no… don’t go in there….” under your breath as you turn the page? If so, then here’s a great book for you.

Smith’s only other book to date was A Simple Plan (1993), which I’ve read twice (as well as watched the movie version twice). The Ruins is completely different as far as subject matter goes, and yet manages to evoke the same sense of building terror. Unlike A Simple Plan, however, The Ruins is an honest-to-god horror novel, complete with supernatural elements and a group of people trapped in a no-win situation. Without giving anything away, I will say that this follows the general “who’s going to die next and who will survive in the end” formula that many successful spooky thrillers follow.

The story builds very well, as a group of four Americans on a long vacation in Cancun decide to help a German man find his missing brother. The German has a map, leading to an archeological site deep in the jungle, where his brother is believed to be assisting one of the scientists. They all embark on a lark, taking along a Greek tourist with whom none of them can converse with. Ignoring gentle (and not so gentle) warnings to stay away, they blithely head towards… The Ruins.

And that’s as much as I’ll say, except that I, for one, have no desire to go on a Mexican vacation anytime in the near future.

I love good scary books, just absolutely love them. The scariest movie ever made cannot even come close to a decent scary book. I fondly remember reading Salem’s Lot when I was fourteen years old, and how I kept looking out my bedroom window, imagining a dead schoolmate floating in the air, white blood-drained face staring at me in the darkness, tapping on the windows and begging to be invited in. I remember Carrie, and Ghost Story, and the Books of Blood by Clive Barker.

So, as a final testament, I finished The Ruins at about 1:30 AM this morning, and it took me another hour to fall asleep. I thought I heard rustling in the dark, and I kept picturing myself there in the ruins, with those green vines growing all around me, and the whispered mimic of laughter echoing down the hill…

Categories
Politics

Radicals, Dude!

I find the Joe Lieberman primary loss this past Tuesday very interesting. Not being a Connecticut resident, I really have no say (or even an opinion) on whether or not Ned Lamont will make a better Senator for his constituents than Lieberman was. However, as a lifelong political junkie, I do have an opinion of Joe Lieberman as a United States Senator in general…

Lieberman has been, up until the last few years, a fine conservative Democrat. Until about 2002 or so, there was nothing wrong with that. But the makeup of congress in general is changing, and there is simply no more room – at least at this time in history – for a conservative Democrat. ivermectin to patients with Why do I think this?

Basically, my reasoning is as follows: The best results for the country as a whole occur when congress governs right down the middle (witness the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years, which had little to do with Clinton himself and a lot to do with a split congress). Unfortunately, with the radical far-right theocrats in control of the Republican party, this is not currently possible. Therefore, in order to get things back in the middle, the only solution is to elect far-left liberals to the Democratic side to balance things out. That way, the resulting compromised legislation will be pretty much down the middle.

Therefore, in this 2006 craziness I will extend my support to candidates who lean a lot more left than I am comfortable with – just to make sure that there is a balance to the far right lean on the other side of the aisle. When this period of radicalization is over in a decade or so, we can go back to having moderate “middle of the road” politicians. ivermectin cost for onchocerciasis This is bad timing for Lieberman, but that’s life in the big city. ivermectina dosis para los piojos

If I’m correct, then moderate politicians such as Lieberman are worse than useless right now – for both parties. There is no point in having a Senator whose idea of “reaching out to the other side” means voting the way they want, and supporting their president. A Senator’s job is supposed to be to work on carefully crafted compromise legislation that is not what either side actually wants, but is what they can agree on. That also helps to ensure that congress in general doesn’t pass too many pointless or onerous laws (like, for example, the bordering-on-fascist “Patriot Act”).

But most importantly, a Senator’s constitutional duty is to oversee, overrule, and check and balance the Executive branch. In this role Lieberman has failed utterly and completely. His support of the disgusting Terry Schiavo legislation, and his continuing unwavering support for engaging in whatever war King George wants – in whatever country he wants to have it – are just the most egregious examples.

I sure wish someone had run against my democratic Senator, Bill Nelson, this year. He is almost as bad as Lieberman, and is one of the few democrats in the Senate who regularly votes the Bush line. I will hold my nose and vote for him this fall (since the alternative is the unctuous Katherine Harris) but this is the last time for him in my book.

So if you’ve got a choice, vote for the most extreme liberal Democrat you can find. That’s the only way to balance congress back to the middle. When you think about it, this radical idea seems downright… conservative.

Categories
Technology

Making the Mac: A Software Checklist

A friend of mine called me today and told me he’d bought his first Macintosh, a new MacBook – based partly on my recommendation. He said his girlfriend was delighted with it; she couldn’t believe how easy it was to use. It certainly warms the cockles of my heart (wherever those are located) to think that in some small part, I have helped to spread technological joy to someone new.

In the course of our conversation, my friend asked what software he should get for his new machine, since he was really only familiar with Windows software. Although the Mac comes with more productivity apps than most Windows machines, there are still a lot of applications out there that you’ll need in short order. I started to ramble off my top 5… well, 7… well… and then he said “Could you maybe write those down and email them to me?”

And so, for my friend with the new Macbook – and for all you other friends out there that I don’t know I have yet – here is Jonathan’s Macintosh Application Checklist. Oh sure, there are others out there, and I’m sure Digg, BoingBoing, Gizmodo, and Engadget have links to many of them. But this is mine.

All of these are programs that I currently use on either my Mac Mini, my Mac Book, or both. All are available for download over the internet. Some are free, some cost a nominal fee. Nothing listed here costs more than $39 or so, and many are just plain free. Anything that costs money has a free trial version available. I have no financial stake in any of these products or companies, nor do any of them even know I exist. These are just good applications that I personally like to use.

Web Browser: Camino

Based on the Mozilla/Gecko engine (the same that Firefox is based on), Camino is the most Mac-like and downright elegant browser out there. It’s the only one that has gotten tabbed browsing almost exactly right. Unlike the Mac version of Firefox, Camino looks and acts like it was designed from the ground up to be a Macintosh application. Everything works the way you would expect, and it interacts with the system as well as any Apple product itself would. It’s leaps and bounds better than Safari, and also includes built-in ad blocking. If only Camino could somehow support Firefox extensions, it would be truly perfect. Camino is a universal binary, so you don’t need to worry about choosing between a PowerPC or Intel version. FREE

Web Browsing and Video Plug-In: Flip4Mac

Flip4Mac 2.1 (finally available for Intel macs!) is an absolute must. This handy utility lets Mac user view any video saved, stored, or streamed in any Windows format – like .AVI or .WMV files, or anything based off of Windows Streaming Media. A great example of this are the news videos on CNN. Without Flip4Mac installed, you’ll just get a plug in warning whenever you tried to watch a video off of CNN’s site – even IF you have Windows Media Player for Macintosh installed. Don’t waste time on the Microsoft version, it doesnt’ work with more than half of the web sites I tried – and Microsoft isn’t going to create any new versions anymore, anyway. Flip4Mac, on the other hands, just plain works. Which is what computing should be all about anyway. $29.00; free trial available

Blogging Client: Ecto

Now this is really neat. My blog (this very web site you’re reading right now) runs on a Linux server, and is powered by Movable Type 3.2. However, since finding Ecto, I only use the Movable Type interface when I need to make system changes of some sort. Ecto lets me manage all my blogging needs from a handy client – and, I can work on my blog off-line, saving, editing, previewing, etc. I only upload a post when I’m all done with it and ready for the world (well, the two or three people who read this, anyway) to see. And Wil Wheaton uses it – what more endorsement could you want? $17.95; free trial available

Office Application – Word Processing and Spreadsheets: NeoOffice

If you’ve got the cash, Microsoft Office for Mac OS X is great. However, at $400, we’re talking serious cash – way over the limit I set for this artticle. Even though I own a copy of Microsoft Office for Mac, I don’t use it: I move around between different computers (and re-image my machines) way too much to put up with all that “CD Key” and “activation” nonsense they put you through.

A close second, however, is NeoOffice. In the same way that Camino is a cousin of Firefox, NeoOffice is a cousin of OpenOffice. However, in this case, the match is much, much closer. NeoOffice is based directly on the same codebase as OpenOffice , and the NeoOffice group appears to make great efforts to keep the code in sync. But unlike the Mac build of OpenOffice, NeoOffice does not require any additional emulators or libraries. And, better still, it looks and acts like a true Macintosh application, whereas OpenOffice does not.

I have been using the Alpha 4 build of NeoOffice 2.0 for several weeks, and haven’t had any problems – no crashes, no lost data, nothing. My only complaint with NeoOffice is that it’s pretty slow. It may be that this Alpha build hasn’t been optimized yet. Be sure to choose the Intel version if you have a new Mac. FREE

Instant Messaging (IM): Adium

Not just the best IM client for the Mac, Adium (aka “The Duck”) is the best IM application I’ve every used, period. Adium allows you to use any IM account you’ve got – MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo, iChat, plus a number of others. You just enter your account info, and you’re up and running. My favorite feature is the tabbed messaging window. All your chats are shown in a single window, with tabs along the bottom for each person you’re chatting with. You can drag the tabs away to separate them into their own windows…. or drag and drop them back to see them as tabs again. In addition, Adium has lots of different skins to choose from, so you can have your chat sessions look however you like them. My favorite them is “Plastic” with the “Blue vs. Green” color variant, for example.

If you do any IM’ ing at all, you have to use this app. Unlike the others out there, Adium isn’t a service in and of itself; instead, it’s a great application for using those services. Seriously, if you’re not using this, you’ve got to try it out. I feel sorry for users of other systems that Adium isn’t available for them. FREE

Remote Desktop Access to Windows: Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection for Mac

At my job, I use the Windows RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) client all the time. Happily, Microsoft was clever enough to make a Macintosh client for RDP users. Now, using my MacBook, I can RDP to any of my Windows machines without having to run Parallels or reboot into Windows using Boot Camp. This is a perfect port of the RDP client to the Mac OS, and works like a charm. To me, this is a greatly overlooked third way to get “Windows on a Mac”. It is my method of choice, since I have currently 6 other computers running either Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 at home, and about a jillion or so at work. If you work in a mixed computer environment and need remote access to desktops, you need this. FREE

Remote Desktop Access to Macintoshes or Linux: Chicken of the VNC

Oddly, while Microsoft gives you remote desktop access for free, Apple makes you pay $499 for it. However, you don’t need that. Just use Chicken of the VNC instead. You can also use this to access Linux desktops running the VNC service from your Mac. Remember that this is just a client – you’ll still have to set up remote desktop access yourself on whatever Mac you’re trying to get to. This is another open source project, that appears to be linked to TightVNC, which is itself a great VNC client for Windows. Incidentally, you can use TightVNC on Windows to remotely access your Macintosh desktops as well! Although there are some other VNC clients out there, Chicken of the VNC is the most elegant and most Mac-like of all that I tried. FREE

FTP Utility: Transmit 3

I’m really surprised that Apple didn’t build in an FTP client directly, and I still think I must be missing something. After all, FTP is free and built in to every Windows machine – it must be on the Mac and I just haven’t figured it out yet. But since I haven’t found anything built-in, and since I often need to FTP files to my Linux web server to and from my Mac, I use Transmit 3. I’ve also tried Fetch, and while it’s a close second, I prefer Transmit as being a bit more Mac-like and for a slightly better implementation of Favorites. $29.95; free trial available

HTML Editing: Taco HTML Edit

I’m going to be in the minority on this one. Unlike most of the world out there, I prefer to edit HTML “by hand” – that is, as source code. I guess after years of working in software development, and years more as the director of a large web group, I just don’t trust anything I put out on the web unless I see exactly how it’s built. In addition, I know HTML by heart, so I find it easier to just type it in rather than hunt around some UI trying to find the button for “table”. My favorite HTML editor on Windows was (and is, to this day) HomeSite, which currently seems to only be available bundled with Dreamweaver. After checking out over half a dozen Mac-based HTML editing products, I settled on the poorly-named Taco HTML Edit as my program of choice. It’s not perfect, but if you’re like me and you have to see your HTML to believe it, this is the best I’ve found. Fair Warning: This is NOT a “design” type package; for that use iWeb or one of the Adobe or Macromedia applications. This is for serious HTML junkies only. FREE

CD and DVD Disc Label Printing: discLabel

How can you print out snazzy CD or DVD labels for all of your fair use, non-DRM’d home projects? Your HP, Epson, or Canon printer probably came bundled with some crappy thing that would get the job done, but if you want to do it right, use discLabel. It’s overpriced, seeing as how it’s basically just a fancy layout utility, but it does do a nice job. In addition, the templates are quite well designed and there are a ton of choices. Oh, and their tech support is excellent, too. Hmmm… I guess that price is pretty reasonable after all! $29.95; free trial available

Checkbook and Personal Finance: iBank

I found this program after I wasted $69.96 on Quicken for Macintosh – which, being an obvious Windows “port over”, sucks big time. iBank is much simpler, and to the point. No, it will not do your taxes, set up your own personal corporation, track your stock options or prepare multi-part asset and liability documents. What is does do – and does it very well – is keep track of your personal savings, checking, and credit card accounts. I love this program, because it’s clean and straightforward on the surface – just like a checkbook register – but there is a lot under the surface. It’s Mac-like in all the ways that Quicken is not. $39.99; free trail available

Library Inventory: Delicious Library

This last one is a little odd, and probably only of interest to a few people. However, it sure is cool, and if you have need for what it does, it is well worth the price. Now, I have about 800 DVD’s, about 1000 CDs, and over 4,000 books. So, I’ve always been looking for something that can help me manage my media and book libraries. Over the years, however, I honestly never found anything that was much of an improvement over just a simple spreadsheet. Until I saw Delicious Library…

Delicious Library creates a visual database of your books, DVDs, CDs and video games. You can either type them in directly, or you can scan the UPC codes on the products – and Delicious Library will look them up for you, and insert the cover image, description, etc. And – now this is really cool – it can use the iSight camera on your MacBook as a crude bar code scanner! This led to a very humorous walk-by at work, when I was adding my various computer books to my inventory. A colleague walked by and said “Uh… Jonathan? Why are you holding a book up to your laptop?” I guess he thought I though the laptop would read the book or something.

If you’re going to scan a bunch of stuff – like me! – I’d recommend getting an honest-to-god real bar code scanner. But for a few things, the iSight scanner does a great job. Anyway, check out Delicious Library. Even if you don’t have a lot of media, you’ll get a kick out of showing a CD to your MacBook and then having it pop in the cover and description. $40; free trial available

Whew! That’s Enough!

Well, I could go on, but I’d be getting more and more esoteric. The list above is, in my opinion, what you need to become a fully functional cross-platform geek on any of the new Intel-based Macintoshes. And please, search the web yourself before you take my suggestions, and read what others have to say. Just because I happen to love an application doesn’t necessarily mean you will. And, of course, I reserve the right to change my mind about any and all of these applications the second something new comes along.

Categories
Books Politics

The Madness of King George

I am currently re-reading “The Federalist” (in a delightful and beautiful leather-bound edition from the Easton Press). As I started through the book, I was struck by this passage from The Federalist #4 by John Jay:

Absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for purposes and objects merely personal, such as a thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.

John Jay has accurately described the war and occupation in Iraq, and the motives of the George W. Bush administration, more than two hundred years before they occurred. جيلي بين It is true: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Let’s compare Jay’s four possible reasons that an “absolute monarch” might go to war, and see how they line up with what we have witnessed over the past six years… جيمس بوند لعبة

A thirst for military glory: Bush failed in his military service, never served in combat, and left the National Guard under at best suspicious circumstances. As President, I have no doubt that he wanted to prove he’s quite the military genius. I also imagine he’s a bit jealous of his father, who was a genuine World War II hero.

Revenge for personal affronts: I know I’m not the only one who thinks that a large part of the reason for Bush’s invasion of Iraq may have been a subconscious (and I’m being generous there) desire to “get back” at Saddam for trying to kill his Daddy. Even if that’s not true, certainly Saddam goaded Bush both in public and private, all but daring him to attack. A wise man lets such affronts roll off his back; a foolish man accepts the schoolyard dare.

Ambition: Bush, a devotee of the Project for a New American Century, certainly wanted to prove that he was a brilliant student, and wanted to go down in history as The Man Who Solved The Middle East Oil Problem. So much so that he ignored all other advice to the contrary.

Private compacts to… support their particular families or partisans: Wow. Let’s see, now what business is the Bush family engaged in again? Oh, that’s right! Oil! And the Vice President, I believe he was the CEO of a certain company, Halliburton? So the war in Iraq was the bring “freedom and democracy” to a country that just happens to have the majority of the world’s untapped oil fields. And Halliburton is now the #1 government contractor, and their stock has increased in value by 600% since September of 2001.

So, if anyone wonders if George W. Bush considers himself an absolute monarch, don’t bother reading anything in today’s news. لعبة كزنو Just turn back 200 years and read what John Jay had to say in The Federalist. I don’t think anyone today has said it better.

Categories
Thoughts and Comments

Meet the New Ferret

A few weeks ago, our ferret Freddie (that’s Miss Freddie – she’s a girl, despite the name) seemed like she was getting lonely. She was getting more neurotic, hiding her toys and checking on them repeatedly. As Frank says, she was getting even more OCD… And then she stared climbing up onto the chairs, getting on the side tables, and breaking coasters. Something had to be done.

Since we love our little girl, we decided she needed some company. ivermectin horse paste for guinea pigs So, we began looking around, and on July 8th, we found little Miss Sally in our local Pet Supermarket. Little Sally was just 9 weeks old when we got her, and cute as a button. gotas simpiox para que sirven She has a black nose, which makes her look sort of like a little teddie bear to us. It also makes her distinctly different from Freddie, who, being a Sable Mitt ferret, has a pink nose and white paws (in addition to a blaze of white on her chest).

Miss Freddie Spaghetti Miss Sally O’Mally

Sally came home in a cardboard box, furiously scratching for the entire drive, and as soon as we got home we introduced her to Freddie. As ferrets are wont to do, they hit it off right away. Two weeks later, and we’ve purchased a new ferret cage – a Ferret Nation cage two-story deal – plus tons of new toys. And we’ve decided to get into some more elaborate ferret photography as well, so you may see more pictures of our little girls here.

And before someone posts a comment – yes, I realize very well that they are surrogates for children – so what’s wrong with that? We’re two guys in our mid-forties, and I see no problem indulging in some harmless fun with our little furries. They need a loving home, and we need an outlet for our parental emotions. Freddie needed someone to mother, and Sally needed a mother. Everyone’s happy.

I must say that I think ferrets are wonderful pets. They’re cute, they’re clean, and they’re always entertaining. They’re not as cuddly as a dog, but they’re also not aloof like a cat. We get hours of enjoyment watching the two of them wrestle around on the floor, or chase each other around the living room, or play elaborate games of hide and seek.

Freddie, having just broken a coaster,
tries to look innocent		 Two pretty girls in a hammock

Ferrets tax your brain as well, since they are incredibly curious critters, and will try to get into everything. They are not a pet for the fainthearted or the easily frustrated. But they’re perfect for us, and we love our girls. ivermectina ribeirao preto You can take a peek at them (assuming they’re in their cage at the moment) by clicking on the web cam link “Ferret Cam” to the right of this article. Any time of the day, stop in and say Hi to Miss Freddie Spaghetti and her sidekick, Miss Sally O’Mally.

They’ll be hosting a tea party soon, I’m sure.

Categories
Technology

Back to the Mac Part I: Mac Mini in the Living Room

I’ve been using computers for over 25 years now. The first computer I ever had any involvement with was a DEC PDP-8 in the Tech Institute at Northwestern University in 1980. Ah, using front panel toggle switches to input a program register by register… how happy I am that those days are long gone. The first word processor that I used was an IBM DisplayWriter, then later a Wang terminal. The first PC that I ever used was an IBM PC XT, with a 5MB hard disk. And the first computer that I purchased for my own personal use was an Atari 520ST in 1986.

In 1987, I was working as a project manager on “Harvard Graphics for Macintosh” (which never saw the light of day) and my office computer was a Macintosh II. That was the first personal computer I ever used that I was actually truly impressed with. In 1988, I bought a Macintosh SE, which I used for the next 5 years. The 90’s saw two more Macs, augmented by PC after PC. In 1996, I sold my last Mac – a Centris 610 – and switched full time to using PCs. The last Mac OS I used was, I think, 8.0.

So, about a year and a half ago, I bought an HP Media Center z545 PC for the living room. I had recently converted all our music to MP3s, and wanted a centralized place to play all our music from. I also wanted a video-capable PC in the living room for surfing the net, etc. I’ll leave my critique of Media Center for another day, but let’s just say I’m very glad I didn’t get rid of my Tivo. I sold off the HP after about six months of trying all kinds of ways to get to work at least somewhat seamlessly with my Panasonic plasma HDTV (don’t ever bother), and decided that was that for a while.

Until I saw a Intel-based Mac Mini running Front Row. Now that was impressive! That’s what I was looking for. And this new Mac could even run Windows if I needed it to. I figured even if Front Row didn’t work out, at least I would have a nice small computer for the living room that didn’t make any noise. I ordered a Mac Mini directly from Apple, maxing it out with a Core Duo and 2 gigs of RAM. At the same time, I ordered the Apple Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse.

The first amazing thing was the setup. There wasn’t any. I plugged it into the wall, plugged the DVI cable from my plasma display into the back, and turned it on. From booth to able to click on something…. took less than 30 seconds. And after filling out my user info, etc. my boot time is more like 15 seconds. Astonishing.

No anti virus software to install, since the Mac is immune to them (so far… knock on wood). No settings to copy over… everything just worked. This is exactly the way a computer should be. It seemed that almost every decision that I thought I would make, the machine already made the same decision. It found all my music, imported it off my PC drive, and organized it. Connected to the Internet. Played DVD’s without forcing me to switch the resolution on the monitor (a major DRM pain on Windows).

After two days, I decided to give up syncing my iPod to my PC, and switch it to syncing on the Mac. Suddenly a bunch of new features made themselves available! The iPod automagically recognized all my photos in iPhoto and asked if I wanted to copy them to the iPod as well. Did I want contacts and appointments from ICal?

Another week, and I was using Camino, the very nice Mozilla-based internet browser optimized specifically for the Mac OS X. All (well, almost – no plug-ins) of my favorite Firefox features in an even friendlier and Mac-looking package, with tabs done exactly right.

This is a fantastic computer, just the best. I can’t recommend this enough. But, there are two areas that Apple – or some enterprising 3rd party – really need to deal with. Those two areas are digital television support, and a proper “laptop friendly” keyboard/pointer device of some sort.

Needed: Digital Television and HDTV Support

This is, without a doubt, the (nearly) perfect living room computer. The Big Hole is, of course… no TV programming. For me, this wasn’t too much of a problem, since I used my HD DirecTivo for both HDTV and DVR purposes. Yes, I wish there were a proper Mac solution, but there is, in fact, absolutely no all-in-one TV solution available yet. There are some USB gadgets that will record some analog TV, others that record over-the-air digital but not cable, some that will record some open cable analog but not digital, and none that will record any type of satellite digital or HD. In short, for the moment, if you want your digital and HDTV, and you want to be able to time-shift and store it, your only choices are either a cable company’s DVR or DirecTV’s HD Tivo machine.

I did try the myTV.PVR from Eskape. Short story, It won’t work for me. I only have DVI and RGB composite video cables running through the wall to my plasma display. If it’s not an HDTV or a digital signal, there’s no way for me to get it there. And the myTV device only supports S-VHS and component video, so I couldn’t even get it to connect to my display. In addition, I have to say this was a pretty cheesy device overall.

Needed: An All-In-One Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Device

The other area where there is a serious need for help is the keyboard and mouse. Why doesn’t someone, somewhere, make a proper wireless keyboard and pointing device combination? If I’m going to be sitting on the couch driving the computer, I need an all-in-one solution. Basically, the keyboard portion of a laptop, separated and working over Bluetooth. The HP Media Center came with a pretty good one, but there is no such device available anywhere for the Mac – believe me, I’ve looked! I even found a pretty decent Microsoft wireless media center keyboard – but it will only work with PCs. Apple, Logitech, or somebody needs to get on the ball here and produce such a device. Balancing a keyboard on your lap while trying to use a mouse on the arm of a sofa is extremely difficult. It’s especially annoying seeing as how laptops have solved this problem for over a decade now: a track-pad right below the keyboard. Why isn’t there one single device out there that just copies this simple, tried and true solution?

The Mac for Everything?

I began to seriously consider using the Mac as my prime computer platform. I almost ordered another Mac Mini, but then decided I’d rather wait until Apple came out with a proper desktop machine in the new Intel format. But then the MacBook came out… and I found myself at the Apple store in West Palm Beach the day after they shipped.

In the second part of this article, I’ll cover my purchase of the 13″ MacBook, installing Windows and Boot Camp on the Mac, and the delights of Macintosh software in general.

To Be Continued in Back to the Mac Part 2: The MacBook

Categories
Books

The Poe Shadow

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. Random House, 384 pages.

And so tonight I have finished reading Matthew Pearl’s new book, “The Poe Shadow“. An enjoyable read, very much the same in tone and flavor as his previous (and first) novel, “The Dante Club“. For those who are not familiar, Pearl writes historical fiction set in the world of great literary figures. The Dante Club was a terrific serial murder mystery set in 1865 Boston. The sleuths involved were poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, and poet James Russell Lowell – plus a host of other characters, both real and imagined, pulled from the same time and location. The Dante Club was a favorite of mine in 2004, and I was looking forward to Pearl’s next endeavor.

This time out, Pearl has written a novel about a young lawyer trying to discover how his literary hero and sometimes-pen-pal Edgar Allen Poe met his end. The story begins in 1849 Baltimore, at the sparsely-attended funeral of Poe, and takes place over the following two years. This one definitely grew on me the further into it I got. For the first 100 or so pages, I was mostly just annoyed with the protagonist, Quentin Clark. In The Dante Club, all of the principal characters are pretty much geniuses. In this one, I felt that Clark was pretty much a moron.

As the novel progresses, my feelings about him changed somewhat, and I began to look upon poor Clark as sort of a Dr. Watson figure. After all, what is Holmes without Watson? And Clark’s naive nature does make him a natural target for exposition, so necessary in a pastiche novel of this sort. Unlike Watson, however, Clark is just not a very sympathetic character. As the novel concludes with a (sort of) fight for Clark’s (financial) life, I was actually hoping he’d lose. I didn’t feel he deserved either the money or the girl. What a twit. I don’t know if this characterization was intentional on Pearl’s part or not, but through most of the book, I kept saying to myself, “Well, if I was there, I would’ve done such-and-such instead of what this idiot is doing”, etc.

However, as in the previous novel, characterization is not Pearl’s strong suit. Pearl’s real talents, in my opinion, lie in creating a believable fictional world around real-life famous events and people. In that, he succeeds brilliantly. His two novels to date remind me a great deal of Caleb Carr‘s first two novels (although Carr is much better at characterization). However, unlike Carr, Pearl seems to have broken out of the one-trick pony mode while still remaining true to his strengths. While I feel The Dante Club was a better work overall, The Poe Shadow is a fun read for those who like period pieces. If you’re a fan of Edgar Allen Poe (or of Sherlock Holmes), you’ll enjoy this novel.

Categories
Books Politics

How Would a Patriot Act?

How Would a Patriot Act? by Glenn Greenwald. Working Assets Publishing, 146 pages.

I have just finished reading a remarkable book, “How Would a Patriot Act?” by Glenn Greenwald. What I found so remarkable – and so refreshing – about this book is that it presents a clear, concise, and non-partisan analysis of the way that George Bush has chosen to wield the power of the executive office.

Greenwald is a constituational lawyer, and an avid scholar of the Constitution both as a document as well as its history. He presents a clear and cogent analysis using the Constitution and the Federalist Papers as his main source material, with some additional references from other writings of the founding fathers and a few supreme court decisions. I am a staunch believer in the Constitution of the United States, and I often consult my copy of The Federalist Papers whenever I have a question about how a particular law or action of the government ought to be judged. So Greenwald’s methodology strikes a resonant chord with me.

This book is not just an excellent analysis – it’s also a great read. Like only a handful of lawyers (John Grisham and Vincent Bugliosi come to mind) he has the gift of prose. I could not put this book down, and found myself reading almost the entire 125 page book in a single sitting. How Would a Patriot Act is a true page-turner. It harkens back to good old investigative journalism, the type we haven’t seen since the days of Watergate. And yet… every single item in the book can easily be found on the Internet. There are no secrets here, just plain talk.

Here’s a quote from the concluding pages of the book that sums up the premise neatly:

We now have a president who is claiming the power to break our laws and to act without any checks of any kind from the Congress, the courts, or the citizens. He and his administration have said this repeatedly and expressly; and they are not just mouthing words; they have acted on them repeatedly. They have broken our laws and exercised against American citizens precisely the powers our Constitution is designed, at its core, to prevent.

Another element that Greenwald writes clearly about is the use of fear and terror by the Bush administration to govern. This has always been the aspect of the Bush presidency that has angered me the most: preying upon our natural fears and desire for safety in order to cement his power.

Let me take this opportunity to state something clearly: I am not afraid of terrorists. I am angry at them. I can not and will not live my life in fear. What angers me the most about George W. Bush is that he gave the terrorists exactly what they wanted: our freedom. “Give me liberty or give me death“, Patrick Henry famously said. And Benjamin Franklin later wrote “Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither”. Those quotes sum up my views succinctly. King George is ruling by using terror as a weapon, as a justification, and as a way of life.

Read this book. How Would a Patriot Act? by Glenn Greenwald. It’s an absolute must, one of the best books I have read in a long while. And if, like me, you find this book compelling, educational, and though-provoking, check out Glenn Greenwald’s always-excellent blog Unclaimed Territory.