kieranchapman.net

So rain on the 13th and (barely) 14th was blamed for a Bush fall on the 22nd. As everything else, it wasn't Bush's fault. Nothing is Bush's fault.

Labels: politics

Foreign stops will expose Bush to the prospect of antiwar protests, as well as possible policy gains. If protests are large, many Americans might be surprised, says Steven Kull, director of the program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. A March poll taken by his group found that only 41 percent of respondents knew that majority opinion in most other countries is against the US presence in Iraq.

Labels: politics

Labels: humor, video

Can't Live Without TiVo

Interactive Program Guide

• is not intuitive. I originally thought this was due to my lack of familiarity with Comcast's iTV guide, but after using it for a week Jill and I still make all kinds of mistakes while trying to do the simplest things. You'd think after 7 days we should be able to successfully use it, since we were successfully using TiVo after about 10 minutes


• lag time with no feedback. I press a button and nothing seems to happen. So I press another button, not realizing that the first command (the one I originally wanted) was being executed. So I end up pressing the same button a bunch of times to do one thing. At least with TiVo, if something is taking a while to happen, I know it because it (a) provided an audio feedback that it received the command, and (b) often says "Working, please wait" on the screen.


• is cluttered with ads. Let me find out what's on TV. Don't turn the program guide into an ugly-looking ad-filled web page.


• doesn't work the way you'd expect. Countless times I press "OK" thinking I'll be taken to the channel I want, only to get show info. Or I click to get the program guide and it starts from channel 1 rather than the channel I'm watching. Or I click "Last" and it doesn't always take me to the previous screen. Or...

Remote Control

• is poorly laid out. Every time I use it, I have to have to search for the button I want...and it's not easy. I don't think there was any real logic for button placement, other than where they could cram them on the remote. Short of adjusting the volume, I have to look down at the remote to do almost everything.


• causes constant mistakes. Both of us end up pressing the wrong button on a daily basis, partly because of the layout, partly because of the too-small button sizes.


• has hard-to-reach buttons. Some often-used buttons are hard to reach using a single hand: I have to bend my thumb so much that it actually hurts from using it. (Perhaps this is a two-handed remote?)


• has horrible power button control. You're able to control the cable box, TV, and auxiliary device (VCR) with the Comcast remote. To do this, you press the button of what you want to control -- TV, cable or aux -- then press the power button. If you don't remember the last button you pressed, the next time you press "power" you might turn on the TV, or turn off the cable, or turn on the VCR. And since you pressed "power" and nothing seemed to happen (or at least not what you expected), you keep pressing buttons, getting more confused each time ("Why isn't the TV turning on? Is the cable box off? Are the batteries dead?"). There's a simple solution to this: use a switch to control what device is being controlled. Putting it on the side is out of the way, plus you know what you'll be powering just by looking at it.

The war is over, for now at least
Just because they lost it don't mean it's peace
It's a long way home, it's a lot to think about
Whole generation, left in doubt
Innocent families killed in the midst
It'll be more dead people after this

...

'Cause it ain't no way I'm going back to war
when I don't know who or what I'm fighting for
So I wait for terrorists to attack
Every time a truck backfires I fire back
I look for shelter when a plane is over me
Remember Pearl Harbor? New York could be over, G
Kamikaze, strapped with bombs
No peace in the East, they want revenge for Saddam

Labels: music

Labels: music

[Michael Moore's] incendiary "Fahrenheit 9/11" riled and disturbed audiences with a relentless critique of the Bush administration in the post-Sept. 11 world.

At its official screening in the Cannes competition yesterday, the documentary drew an enthusiastic standing ovation -- onlookers placed it at 15-20 minutes -- punctuated by cries of "Bravo."

Labels: politics

Labels: amelia, photos

We the people have absolutely no say in whatever [the President and his cohorts] choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you'll be asked to repay.

Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.

If America's record is better than that of most countries -- and it is -- it's because of our system: our tradition of openness, and checks and balances.

Yet Mr. Bush, despite all his talk of good and evil, doesn't believe in that system. From the day his administration took office, its slogan has been "just trust us." No administration since Nixon has been so insistent that it has the right to operate without oversight or accountability, and no administration since Nixon has shown itself to be so little deserving of that trust.

Labels: politics

Labels: baseball, redsox

Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. ...

A second, more damning aspect of Bush's mind-set is that he doesn't want to know anything in detail, however important. Since college, he has spilled with contempt for knowledge, equating learning with snobbery and making a joke of his own anti-intellectualism.

Labels: politics

Labels: humor, tv