Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Warner Bros. has probably issued many a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice against people's web sites. This time they may have screwed up: they did it against Lawrence Lessig .

I regularly go off on how great I think Google's application suite is. The centerpiece of all this goodness is Gmail . PCMag.com has a good great article on getting the most out of this first class (and free) service, from managing your mail most effectively, to using the many options and add-ons. Enjoy.

Clifford May , President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies , attempts to defend the Bush White House torture policies on the Daily Show. God bless Jon Stewart. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Cliff May thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days The above is the televised excerpt; the complete un-edited interview is available on the Daily Show website. Excellent stuff. As always.

The spousal unit is doing her best to support every nursery and plant seller in Tarrant County. This after years of ignoring the outside. I no longer ask how much this is all costing me. The backyard is her canvas. "Wait until it's finished," says she. I nod and agree. I have claimed the sideyard and the deck outside the bedroom as my playground. We've hit the following: Mike's Gardenland - just off South James, south of I-20. Big place, lots of stuff. I was a little overwhelmed. Mike's has been around forever, and has several locations around the Metroplex. Tim's Landscape - I've seen only ladies working the joint and it's slightly more laid back than Mikes, with a slight hippy vibe. On your right on Vickery, just past Southwest Parkway. Callaway's - your basic chain nursery, slighty upscale. I found a nice selection of marked down pots. Not without its charms. Myeon's - on James, just south of Seminary, across the street from the st...

Arlen Specter , formerly Pennsylvania's oldest Republican Senator, is now Pennsylvania's newest Democratic Senator. A Democrat in his youth, he joined the Republicans in 1966, back when the phrase "moderate Republican" didn't seem like an oxymoron. At his press conference today, he stated he was, "at odds with the Republican philosophy," and declared himself a Democrat. Alas, as the GOP continues its slow slide towards foaming-at-the-mouth insanity, it has no use for moderates. In his last primary run, the Pennsylvania Republican establishment fielded a conservative opponent to run against Specter, claiming he wasn't conservative enough. This despite the fact he is held in high regard by the Pennsylvania voting population as a whole. Get ready for the flood of sneering, pontificating and general character assassination soon to be heading your way by Fox News and their appointed thugs.

The latest Linux Ubuntu release from Canonical, 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) , is now loosed on the internets. I'm running Kubuntu (KDE) 8.04 (Hardy Heron) right now on my main desktop computer and love it. I'm trying to decide: upgrade? The Jackalope promises faster boot times, a new package management system, an updated kernel, and KDE 4. The upgrade will probably take an hour and be relatively painless, unlike the agony soon to be experienced by all those poor chumps out there waiting to upgrade Windows 7 beta to the Release Candidate. Decisions, decisions. If none of this makes a lick of sense, don't worry: tomorrow I'll be writing about my garden.

The White House military office thought it would be a good idea to buzz the Statue of Liberty with Air Force 1 and an F-16for a few official photos. Seems no one bothered to tell Mayor Bloomberg. The flyover, near the World Trade Center site, sent New Yorkers in a panic this morning. Not to put too fine a point on it, but what asshole thought this was a good idea ? Inquiring minds want to know. The director of operations for the Office of Citywide Event Coordination and Management, Marc Marc Mugnos, had been notified by the Department of Defense, but must have forgotten to mention it to anyone in the Mayor's office. Methinks there are resumes being updated this evening.

According to OSNews ( your source for all the latest operating system news ) Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions will come with what Microsoft is calling XP Mode, which promises to give you absolute compatibility with Windows XP for any applications that don't play nice with Windows 7. This will be accomplished by making available a fully integrated and licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 in a VirtualPC-based environment. Currently, VirtualPC is a free download from Microsoft -- what's new here is the inclusion of a legal copy of XP. This sounds like an interesting approach to the thorny issue Microsoft faces every time they introduce some major changes to underlying operating system architecture -- how to support the old stuff out there without grunging up the new OS? One concern I'd have about this approach is this: how much overhead will running XP in a virtualized environment generate? I've played with running XP this way and face it, your poor c...

We are almost finished with all the paperwork associated with getting Youngest Son off to George Mason University in the fall: we've put down our enrollment deposit and dorm deposit, mailed our the combined scholarship applications (after standing over him while he wrote his personal statement), and mailed our acceptance of financial aid. Now all we need to do is apply for a dorm. The letter about financial aid came about 2 weeks ago -- one of those fat letters. With regards to colleges, it is generally better to get fat letters, since skinny letters usually say "Sorry, whatever it was you were wanting, you aren't getting." "What's the letter say?" both me and his mother ask. "They gave me some loans," he says. "and work study." Long pause. "Work study -- is that like where you have to work?" "Duh...yeah," I reply, fighting the urge to slap him senseless, "That's why they call it work study."

All across America, spontaneous grassroot " Tea Parties " are springing up, protesting government spending! Woo hoo! Fox News has been flogging these for weeks now. How spontaneous is that? As for "grassroots," they have been largely organized and promoted by several big conservative think tanks/lobbying organizations: well-staffed and well-financed. Think Progress reports how these shadowy presences have been coordinating groups, producing "how-to" guides, writing press releases and registering internet domains. One of these is Freedom Works , a Washington-based "think tank," founded by Texas Republican Dick Armey, that's had a history of astroturfing . Aiding and abetting is Americans for Prosperity , a section 501(c)(4) organization funded largely by wealthy foundations affiliated with conservative and oil/gas interests (remember when gas hit $4 a gallon?). The Oligarchs may have lost power in the last election but they aren't givin...

Finally! A decision on the Node 3 naming contest. Astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams appeared as a guest on the Colbert Report tonight and announced NASA's decision. Cut to the chase: they are not naming Node 3 after him. (Surprised? If so, why?) The new Node 3 name will be...drumroll... Tranquility . Colbert affected mock surprise and outrage. "You promised you'd put my name in space!" he protested. Referring to notes written on her hand, Suni revealed that in August, NASA would be launching the "Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill" (a.k.a. the C.O.L.B.E.R.T). The treadmill will include the patch (see above). Suni said when astronauts need to work out, they'll say, "Time for me to jump on COLBERT." The thought obviously pleased Stephen. On the NASA page , Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations, explained further, "Apollo 11 landed on the moon at the Sea of Tranquility 40 year...

Update! The NASA " Name the Node 3 Page " states they will announce the new Node 3 name on the Colbert Report on April 14! Can they dare call it anything besides Colbert? By choosing this venue to unveil the new name they are practically guaranteeing they've decided to name some part of the Node (if not the Node itself) after Stephen -- a toilet or urine processing unit at the very least. From the press release: NASA TO ANNOUNCE NEW SPACE STATION MODULE NAME APRIL 14 WASHINGTON -- NASA's newest module for the International Space Station will get a new name on April 14. The agency plans to make the announcement with the help of Expedition 14 and 15 astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." The program will air at 11:30 p.m. EDT. The name, which will not be publicly released until the program airs, was selected from thousands of unique suggestions submitted on NASA's Internet site, www.nasa.gov . The ...

I was out shopping for plants today with my wife and while wandering the aisles of Mike's Gardenland, chanced upon a couple of shelves of collectible figurines. You know - the sort of kitschy shit that fills yard sale tables as soon as the weather warms up. Adorable children, sad clowns, blonde Nordic-looking angels. Then I saw this: Jesus with a haircut. Gone is that old hippie look and all the peace and love shit that goes with it. Now he's got a nice razor cut with a shampoo and blow-dry thrown in for good measure. His beard got a trim, too -- not so scruffy. The look suggests he gave up on being a trouble-maker and decided to concentrate on the carpentry business -- maybe even expand into general contracting. I bet he'd be driving a pickup if he could. All he needs to do now is lose those sandals and get a pair of cowboy boots.

Gmail is now five years old. This has to be one of the longest and most stable "betas" around. I remember when you had to get an invitation to get a Gmail account. If you wanted an account, you had to badger all your geek friends until one of them agreed to send you one of their invites. One only had a limited number of these chits and they were jealously guarded. Matt T (thanks, TDawg!) generously shared one of his with me. My "welcome" email from the GMail team is dated 10/21/04. Gmail was actually announced on March 31, 2004 with an unheard of 1 GB of storage. At the time, Yahoo mail gave users with free accounts a measly 30 MB. The amount of storage was seen as so large, many people assumed it was yet another of Google's April Fool jokes. Early concerns over privacy, based on the fact that advertising keyed off words in the body of the current message, were eventually forgotten. Features were constantly being added; some cool, some (in the opinion of some) r...

Quick update on the Colbert/NASA naming battle. On tonight's Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert put it to NASA: two weeks and no announcement even thought he's the clear winner in NASA's online vote to name Node 3. Despite NASA's tight-lipped reaction to his victory, official support is beginning to surge. Traffic to posts on this site about the vote outcome has included more than a few hits from within NASA, indicating interest is running high within the agency itself. Congressman Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania has come out in support of Colbert, saying, "The people have spoken and Stephen Colbert won it fair and square. We insist on democracy in orbit." NASA, feeling the pressure, has implied its willingness to name Node 3's toilet after Colbert. No word yet on when America can expect an answer. The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Space Module: Colbert - Urine Recycling Room comedycentral.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Na...

Went on the Ft Worth AIDS Outreach Walk today. It was a beautiful, breezy spring day, perfect for a nice stroll in support of something important. We gathered in the Cultural District at the Community Art Center. The crowd was diverse - young, old, male, female, gay, straight, button-down, flamboyant. A celebratory, festive mood predominated. The actual walk kicked off at 2:30. We strolled down Lancaster, turned right on University Drive and south to the Botanical Garden. As we walked, my better half and I struck up a conversation with someone we heard mention lived in our neighborhood; in talking we realized the three of us had met a couple of months ago at a movie theater with her aunt and uncle--old friends of ours. The walk was not long -- about an hour. We circled through the Botanical Gardens and wandered back north to the Community Art Center. United for the moment, we then departed. A day in Fort Worth.

Salon (always good for an interesting read) has an opinion piece called The French are right (again) which points out the irony of the free-market deregulating US bellyaching at the welfare state Europeans to spend more to stimulate the economy. My Libertarian sparring partners will probably not care for the article. I would encourage them to read it before they begin whining.

Though my wife, the librarian, turns up her researchers nose at it, I love Wikipedia . Which is why I thought the following parody version of it of it was hilarious. Go to and check random facts -- someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make up all this nonesense. Wait -- you mean this was meant to be serious ? Holy shit.