thisiswhatyoushalldo

Give’m Hell, Al

He says he isn’t running for office, and is just a concerned citizen and the first worker unemployed as part of the Bush administration, but former Vice President Al Gore made news on Thursday with this speech criticizing the current administration’s focus and policies concerning foreign affairs, domestic affairs, the economy and the environment. Gore described the administration as running a White House that is “swept up in enthusiasms,” rather than a White House that is focused on the truth, fact gathering and “and a shared respect for the Rule of Reason as the best way to establish the truth.”
“I think it’s partly because they feel they already know the truth and aren’t very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it,” Gore said in a combative speech at New York University in which he criticized President Bush’s policies at home and in Iraq.”

If he ain’t running for office, he is sure making very focused speeches attacking very targeted issues. I expect a draft Gore movement to take place in the Democratic party very soon.

For Sage, Jenny and the Gang . . .

A collection of 40s and 50s pin up art. There’s some cool and very vintage stuff here. Poke around for a bit.

via Metafilter

A Look Back In Time In 3D

The Viewmaster was my mom’s instant babysitter. She always had a houseful of kids and needed some quick ways to keep the nest quiet and get everyone down for a nap after lunch. The Viewmaster, with its gadgety futuristic look, its cool pictures and stories and the ability to let us young ones relive our favorite cartoons, Disney movies or historical scenes, even vacation spots – all captured for viewing in ultra cool 3 D. I still have a Viewmaster in the closet somewhere, combined with a bunch of old Viewmaster Reels. But apparently there is still more to be had. A entire list of all things Viewmaster got me to thinking that certainly the good people of Ebay will have anything anyone needs to look at the world through 3 D eyes.

It Started Innocently Enough With Netscape 3.0

When I first started messing around with this “In-ter-web” thingy, I shared a computer with a roommate. It was his computer and I was merely a guest. So updating and customizing Internet Explorer would have been in poor form. So I downloaded and installed Netscape Navigator. And ever since I have had a warm spot for Netscape.
They say you never forget about your first time.
Well, IE 6.0 came out. It seemed so much more stable than iterations of the past. I had since bought my own box by then and wasn’t constrained by Guest status any longer. So I gave IE 6.0 a try.
And it was ok.
I guess.
And since most folks are MS inclined, I stuck, more or less, with IE. But after a spell I missed Netscape’s browser.
I tried Opera. If you think the talk of this being a fast, bug free browser are true, try it yourself. I found it slow and buggy and unable to load many IE-centric pages.
Then, a few months back I went to Mozilla. It is the open source version of Netscape and I liked. I liked it a lot. Although it was still a bit of a resource hog.
As time went on, I got accustomed once once again to the beauty of the Netscape web browser interface. And I kept getting emails and alerts about yet another security hole and security hack in IE.
So, Mozilla became the default browser.
A few months back, Mozilla introduced its cleaner, faster, crisper version of Mozilla of the future. Introducing Mozilla Firebird. Free, open source, extendable, and useable with 99 percent of every web page I visit (Including those generated from Redmond, WA.) With 1.6% of the global market. share based on guerilla marketing alone, it’s use is growing by about a half a percent in the last six months. There still is along way to go to beat Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, with 96% of the global market. But it is based on summer 2001 technology and no major news that they plan on updating it anytime soon. Why drive an Edsel, just because every one else is driving an Edsel.

Mozilla Firebird really is all they say. Easy to install. (scroll down to the setup.exe download) Very expandable with lots of extensions and skins and themes. Tabbed browsing (once you have used tabbed browsing, you frown at any old school browser supplied by a major software provider headquartered in the pacific northwest.) Mouse Gestures (once you have used mouse gestures, you frown at any old school browser supplied by a major software provider headquartered in the pacific northwest.) A very good pop up stopper. The ability to stop annoying flash animation banner ads. Automatically configured to search with Google.
And loads more.

And fast. Did I mention it seems to be much faster than IE?

Here are some reviews if you don’t believe me:

Mozilla pitch
Joel on software
DEVx Review
A collection of reviews
A Fighting Dragon

So, go forth, download and install Mozilla Firebird, pop over and download and install some extensions and get cruising along the web.

Mozilla Firebird extensions you must have!

Pick and install from the list. Installation is as easy as clicking the mouse. Mozilla does the rest.
trvial
mouse gestures
linky
xui msn messenger
smooth wheel
close other tabs
tab scroller
tab browser extensions
text links
(Total time to download, install and configure extensions and themes, about 25 minutes with a broadband connection.)

Cheap Labor Conservative

My pal Kevin passed this along. A simple phrase with a few backing arguments on how to deflect and defeat the standard Republican arguments. Refer to them simply as a “cheap labor conservatives” and then point out how nearly every Republican proposal fits neatly in a cheap labor conservative mode. Feel free to throw the argument about and deflate a few conservatives along the way.
I had promised several weeks back to give out some talking points and reasons not to vote for the current administration. This is also attemped here with the corresponding blog:
Conceptual Guerilla’s Talking Points.
With many of our non thinking Republican friends, it is important to have some facts and data to help steer them towards a more principled and people oriented government.
This is a start.

Where The Hell Did My Job Go?

This caught my eye. John got laid off last week from his super dooper high tech job and decided to use part of his time off to follow the Secretary of Treasury and Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of Labor on their bus tour of the midwest as they speak about the economy. John’s plan, to tell anyone who will listen that real truth of the economy – that it is rough out there. More at Metafilter

This Poem Is Not Making This Up

Dave Barry has been called to task for his little prank at Poetry.com As I posted below, he challenged his readers of his blog to post at the poetry site with poems by Freemont with the phrase “And the dog at mother’s shoes.” Well, always ready to make a buck the Poetry.com folks (their major claim to fame is they will sell you an annual poetry book with your poem in it) have complimented Dave and his readers and have offered up some Barry inspired merchandise. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I think part of my fascination with the internet began with The New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedias we had as kids. Over time, I think I read the entire set, plus anything else on the family’s bookshelf. In the middle 1980’s The Whole Earth Catalog was published. I devoured this as well. It was like the web before there was a web, full of all sorts of articles and reviews of “Hey, look at this cool thing!” Kevin Kelly was one of the early editors and contributors to the Whole Earth catalogs and has continued it to some degree with his cool tools blog Recomendo. This is some helpful, tightly written stuff on some odd things you never think you might need or need to know. I especially like the reviews of documentary films. It is a small site but looks like is it is aimed to grow.
Howard Rheingold does a similar thing as well. He was the editor of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog. Some say that Epinions and Amazon kind of fill the void of these books, however they aren’t nearly as well written and “Gee Whiz!” as TWECs were. And with the web, there really isn’t a need to publish the books anymore, but there still is a need for a place to go to get a distilled advice on tools and ideas that will make the world a better place.
Let’s keep looking.

Casting Call

I see no reason why all of us can’t at least try to get past the Republican Women’s Club luncheon and get cast in this montage of our boy king.