Nice Day for a Ride  It was a nice ride. I met Bob at 9:00 a.m. at Ashland Coffee & Tea, then left around 9:45 (after coffee & cigarettes—Bob had a smoke, that is). Then we took 54 to Hanover CH to 614 east to 30 to 360 east to 14 east to 17 south to Yorktown. Lunch at the pub. Then down the Colonial Parkway & up Route 5. Got to the Dairy Queen at 295 & Rte. 5 around 4 p.m. Not a bad ride. I was pushing it a leetle—about 5-8 mph above posted limits, except on the parkway (I stay pretty much at the 45 mph limit, maybe pushing it to 48).

Ah, yes...January in Virginia. How sweet it is!

Obfuscatio  So I ran across this sentence on a list I subscribe to:

In general, feminist theorists seek renewed social status
for non-analytical ways of knowing which, it is has been
argued, most eurowestern projects of modernity reject.

Is it just me, or is this a Macbethian sentence (full of sound and fury, signifying nothing)? At least it is, to my thinking, a further example of what's wrong with academ.

2 Charged as Monsters  So two guys have been arrested in connection with the destruction of two families: the Harveys & the Tucker/Baskervilles. Seven people brutally murdered in seven days...and the details seem to be out of a movie like Seven. Let us hope for justice--but not for mercy.

Annus horribilis already   Horrible way to begin the year. And he was an acquaintance/friend from the 80s. So mind-numbingly sad.

Ein gute Rutsch!   A Happy New Year to all—may it be full of peace and happiness.

Quam diu redux  Here's what Bush's illegal wiretapping comes down to: "..[T]here is only black and white when it comes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a 1978 law that specifically requires warrants for any NSA wiretapping of U.S. citizens. "If you want to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens, you go to court. If you don't, you go to jail," Bamford says. "If you want to change the law, you go to Congress."
O tempora, o mores indeed.

Bitter Arrogance  "The president acted in clear contravention of a criminal law enacted by Congress, and a Supreme Court precedent, both directly on point."

Happy Holidays  Christina and Tom the Dancing Bug weigh in on this nonissue.

Ugh...  America's shame. Not defendable other than under the First Amendment. They have the right to hate....

When Help Doesn't  Sometimes software ships with online help that doesn't help the user at all. Either the prose is turgid or it belabors the obvious...or it doesn't answer critical questions. Apparently the new ThinkPad has problems For example, "Teaching the laptop what your fingerprint looks like requires a good bit of effort, no thanks to the colorless prose of the online help screens" indicates that not only is the hardware design flawed, but the help doesn't. Too bad. I bet that when Lenovo bought the ThinkPad line, they didn't hire IBM's writers.

New Version of Windows  Now we're getting new windows for the house! O Frabjous day! Calooh! Callay! They are Milgard windows that Best Windows of Mechanicsville, Virginia, installed. Best is a local firm that has a good rep. I like the fact that we're helping out the local economy...not just paying some conglomerate to do it. The windows themselves come from Fredericksburg. Pictures soon....but right now, it's cold cold cold, what with no front windows & all.
Indeed, these are the only Windows I'll pay for ;)

Tagging  No, it has nothing to do with graffiti. It also doesn't have anything to do with marking animals in the wild...at least not in the context I'm interested in. Instead, it's about adding markers to pieces of content to make them easier to retrieve.
Flickr probably does it best. Not only do they have an extraordinarily great user experience design, they enable individuals to create their own sense of meaning through tags to each photo. The approach is gaining acceptance and notice: Even Cnet has found out.
One key effect is that users don't have to depend on an info priesthood to dictate what terms and thesauri are available.

Marketers Just Don't Get It  Joe Lamantia describes a particularly aweful experience he had online. Seems the marketing heads just went waaaay too far.

Deutschland War Sau-Geil!  Still getting back into the swing of things after 10 days in Germany. First it was Hamburg, then Wiesbaden, and finally Königstein im Taunus and Bad Homburg. So good to see folks there.
Too, the conference went well. More later on that.

History, of a Sort  If you're curious or nostalgic about the past 10 years, check out Salon's retrospective. Well-written like all their stuff, it does encapsulate a lot of the past 10 years' business history.

More on Motorcycling  Well, I went on another trip this weekend. Ostensibly I was going to visit my brother in Lawrenceville, GA...but as it turns out, he was out hunting (a very Gawja thing to do thse days). Instead, I ended up riding around in the South Carolina Highlands. Next day I rode up through Highlands, NC to the Dragon...Deal's Gap. Instead of riding the Gap, though, I hung around a little, watched the packs of bikes come & go, and then rode to Cherokee, NC. I rode the first part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, but I had to jump off it before Waynesville to make tracks to get to Boone, NC. Seems I had sorta screwed up by making a nonrefundable reservation there.
So I got to Boone just before twilight. Next day it was 33 degrees...and I had to drive. I wanted to get home before the rain...but it was not to be. Instead, I ended up running into rain around Oxford, NC, and rode in it till Richmond. Ugh! But the bike worked well for the most part, despite its lighter size. The wind certainly pushed it around.
So, mostly, I love the bike. Still, the Griso or the Breva 1100 might, just might be in my future...next year.

I'm Back  From Italy, of a sort. Plus, I did a two-day motorcycling school this past weekend. More later about that.

One more time....  Media Matters points out yet again why the right-wing punditocracy is full of crap. For example, they write:

• O'Reilly was wrong about Pew Poll: On the September 16 broadcast of his radio show, O'Reilly falsely claimed that a new Pew Research Center poll found that 46 percent of Americans plan to vote for a Democratic candidate in next year's congressional elections, while 43 percent plan to vote for a Republican candidate. The poll actually found that 52 percent of Americans would vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress, while only 40 percent would vote for the Republican. O'Reilly also claimed that the "new" Pew poll found that only 9 percent of Americans think that "[a] year from now the economy will be worse." In fact, that result is more than a year old; the most recent Pew poll found that 37 percent of Americans think the economy will be worse in a year.
  
• O'Reilly was wrong about Bush and Clinton economic records: Following his grossly misleading comparison of poverty statistics under presidents Clinton and Bush, O'Reilly made a series of false claims about the two presidents' broader economic records. O'Reilly claimed, "Under President Clinton, the tax rate climbed higher than at any time in history except in World War II." It didn't. O'Reilly asserted that, as a result of Bush's tax cuts, "Federal tax revenues will be more this year than at any time during the Clinton administration." That isn't true, if revenues are adjusted for inflation. O'Reilly claimed that Clinton "raised taxes every year." Also not true.
  
• O'Reilly was wrong about the judiciary: O'Reilly claimed on his radio show that "Republicans don't have control of the judicial branch. All right? They don't have control of that." But, as Media Matters noted, "Republican presidents have appointed a majority of the currently active federal judges, including six of the eight current Supreme Court justices and majorities on 10 of the 13 federal courts of appeals."
  O'Reilly was wrong about his own television show: O'Reilly claimed that Jeremy Glick, a 2003 guest on O'Reilly's television program whose father was killed in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, "accused the president of the United States of orchestrating 9-11" during his O'Reilly Factor appearance. Glick did nothing of the kind.
  
• O'Reilly was wrong -- again -- about how independents voted in 2004: O'Reilly claimed that Bush won the 2004 election because of support from independent voters: "Bush won by three million votes. And they were independent voters." That's false: Bush lost among independents.
  
• O'Reilly was wrong about Media Matters: In response to Media Matters' item about O'Reilly's statement that he wished Hurricane Katrina had hit the United Nations, O'Reilly claimed "this ridiculous incident just points out how desperate and dishonest the far left is." In fact, Media Matters simply quoted O'Reilly verbatim.

I love the last one&emdash;O'Reilly simply lies to his followers, they'll believe him, even though the transcript is readily available.

Enough  So I've not blogged for awhile. Becky asks, "What? No screed against Bush's speech?" Well, I'll let smart folks comment here and here for good stuff on the disaster. Suffice it to say that I'm so utterly amazed at how fast Karl Rove has been rehabilitated.
So I'm hoping to shift my blogging to the user experience world, starting soon with stuff about Lou's seminar Stay tuned, kids.

Who Did What When  As the selective amnesia mounts, let's remember what happened when:

Friday, Aug. 26: Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency in Louisiana and requests troop assistance.

Saturday, Aug. 27: Gov. Blanco asks for federal state of emergency. A federal emergency is declared giving federal officials the authority to get involved.

Sunday, Aug. 28: Mayor Ray Nagin orders mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. President Bush warned of Levee failure by National Hurricane Center. National Weather Service predicts area will be "uninhabitable" after Hurricane arrives. First reports of water toppling over the levee appear in local paper.

Monday, Aug. 29: Levee breaches and New Orleans begins to fill with water, Bush travels to Arizona and California to discuss Medicare. FEMA chief finally responds to federal emergency, dispatching employees but giving them two days to arrive on site.

Tuesday, Aug. 30: Mass looting reported, security shortage cited in New Orleans. Pentagon says that local authorities have adequate National Guard units to handle hurricane needs despite governor's earlier request. Bush returns to Crawford for final day of vacation. TV coverage is around-the-clock Hurricane news.

Wednesday, Aug. 31: Tens of thousands trapped in New Orleans including at Convention Center and Superdome in "medieval" conditions. President Bush finally returns to Washington to establish a task force to coordinate federal response. Local authorities run out of food and water supplies.

Thursday, Sept. 1: New Orleans descends into anarchy. New Orleans Mayor issues a "Desperate SOS" to federal government. Bush claims nobody predicted the breach of the levees despite multiple warnings and his earlier briefing.

Friday, Sept. 2: Karl Rove begins Bush administration campaign to blame state and local officials—despite their repeated requests for help. Bush stages a photo-op—diverting Coast Guard helicopters and crew to act as backdrop for cameras. Levee repair work orchestrated for president's visit and White House press corps.

Saturday, Sept. 3: Bush blames state and local officials. Senior administration official (possibly Rove) caught in a lie claiming Gov. Blanco had not declared a state of emergency or asked for help.

Monday, Sept. 5: New Orleans officials begin to collect their dead.

(Adapted from: Katrina Timeline