Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

In the wake of the Newtown shootings, people are struggling to come up with ways to prevent future tragedies involving mass murders by gun-toting crazies. Some are calling for renewing the ban on military-type assault weapons and high capacity ammo magazines of the type used to gun down the victims at Sandy Hook elementary school. The previous ban was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994, and expired in 2004. Previous efforts to renew the ban have never gotten out of committee. Others have suggested that instead of banning weapons, a hefty tax be placed on certain types of ammunition. After all, without bullets, a gun is about as useful as a length of pipe in a fight. Back in 1994, Daniel Patrick Moynihan introduced a bill to impose a 10,000% tax on hollow point ammo, saying, " Guns don't kill people, bullets do. " Earlier in the year, Chicago discussed imposing a 5 cent per bullet "violence tax," which ended up going nowhere. Still others hav...

Now that the initial wave of shock and horror over the shootings at Sandy Hook has worn off, the national debate has again started about gun control, and to a less degree, mental health issues. Discussions about both are long overdue. After every recent shooting, the first reaction of the gun-lovers is...to buy more guns, because they fear "the government" is going to make it impossible to get guns. Am I the only one who sees this as closely related to the behavior pattern of people who are hoarders ? I'm tired of hearing some say that this happened because of some amorphous  "Evil" in the world that humankind is powerless to overcome. If there's Evil afoot, it's what Hannah Arendt, writing about the Nazis, call the banality of evil :  "normalizing the unthinkable." Such as accepting the idea that the man or woman on the street needs to own military-style semi-automatic assault weapons with huge magazines of ammo. There have been quite ...

The other day I awoke to the news that pianist Dave Brubeck had passed away at age 91, one day short of his birthday, December 6. To say he was a jazz giant is only to illustrate the weakness of the written word, compared to his chosen language, music. I first got turned onto him as a twenty-something who had grown bored with his dorm roon collection of rock and roll. KERA (local public radio station) at the time played classical during the day, and jazz at night. My first purchase was a double LP called The Dave Brubeck Quartet at Carnegie Hall . To say it knocked my socks off is to further illustrate the weakness of the written word. He was born in the San Francisco Bay area. After graduating from the College of the Pacific (where his inability to read music created a bit of a scandal), he was drafted and served in George Patton's Third Army. While in the army he formed one of the army's first multi-racial bands. It was then that he first met his long-time collaborato...

Thanksgiving 2012 is remarkable for a number of reasons. Officially it falls on the 4th Thursday of November, which is usually the last Thursday as well, but because of how the calendar played out this year, we have another Thursday in November which falls after Thanksgiving. If you use Black Friday as the start of the Christmas Shopping, it means an extra week of Ho-Ho-Holiday sales for merchants, for which they are surely thankful this year. Speaking of Black Friday, I'll leave that again to the more intrepid - I have no desire to go out and mix it up with bargain-crazed shoppers. It used to be this annual Orgasm of Consumerism started at 5 AM or so, Friday morning, but it has steadily crept forward, first to Midnight, and now, in some cases to 8 PM Thanksgiving day. To which I say, shame on you Merchants. And shame on you, Shoppers, since without your enthusiastic support, this inexcusable practice would not happening. This year is also notable for the fact that Thank...

I confess, I'm ready to be done with the 2012 election. I'd feel this way regardless of the outcome. Unfortunately, conservatives can't quite let go. The recriminations and finger-pointing are in full swing - amusing but eventually tiresome. Latest members of the Sore Loser Club are restauranteurs John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John's Pizza, and Zane Tankel, who owns 40 or so Applebee's Restaurants in the metro New York City area. Both are incensed that Mitt Romney's loss means ObamaCare is no longer going to be dismantled. Tankel has announced he'll start firing employees and stop building restaurants. Of course, he's a franchisee, so it remains to be seen if parent company Applebee's will fill the gap with other franchise holders. Applebee's International president, Mike Archer, said Tankel's remarks, "were not the views or opinions of either Applebee's or other franchisees, although we respect his right to speak freely as an ...

Well, I certainly can't fault him for preparing this in the first place. Leaving it where someone can use it to ridicule and generally add insult to injury - now that's a different matter. I am, of course, referring to the premature (by several lifetimes) launch of Team Romney's Transition Website, screen-captured in all its glory by Taegan Goddard and shared on his Political Wire website. See more pages on Political Wire , including a jobs page (you too can join Team Romney!), and Mitt's plans for his inauguration. Taegan Goddard says, "The site was quickly taken down but I saved screenshots ."   I can't thank Taegan enough, no to mention the low level web tech who forgot to take down the site right after Mitt conceded. As a web pro, I don't fault him for creating a site - things like this don't happen overnight. What I do object to is the pompous, arrogant tone, which screams, "You people have had your fun - the grownups are here...

Tired of hearing relatives and old high school acquaintances that tracked you down now bitching, pissing and moaning on Facebook about the outcome this week's election? Things like " We're doomed," and " R.I.P. America, you just died," and " Another 4 years of O and the 1st Hoe with her big Ass." I don't know about you, but I'm freaking sick of it. However good Unfriending your cousin's father-in-law in a fit of righteous indignation may feel right now, it could make for awkward conversation at the next family reunion after memories of the election fade away. Take heart - there's another way to keep from having to listen to Uncle Fred's FoxNews-fueled rants on Facebook.  Just Unsubscribe. The advantage of Unsubscribing vs. Unfriending is that he'll never know you've chosen to silence him. He'll still see your posts and be able to comment, but you'll never see another of his postings about Obama's Ke...

Back when I was in college, a couple of my hippie friends decided they'd vote in the Republican primary, with the intention of boosting the prospects of the Republican candidate they felt would be least electable in the general election. They pulled the lever for former California governor Ronald Reagan. Whoops. In the 2000 election, a number of "progressive" voters (my dear wife among them) turned up their collective noses at Al Gore and voted for Ralph Nader. Enough of them did in Florida to usher in 8 years of George W Bush. Whoops. Despite years of voting primarily for Democrats (with a few notable exceptions ) I found Gary Johnson, Libertarian presidential candidate intriguing - fiscal conservative, socially progressive, and to all appearances, not a bad sort. I reasoned that since Obama had a snowball's chance in hell of carrying Texas, it didn't really matter if I abandoned him to vote for Johnson. Besides, I found myself somewhat incensed at seve...

Okay - Apple's Tim Cook is in the process of announcing shiny new consumer goods. The Applenistas have been waiting for this for some time now. Finally - the iPad Mini (yes, that's what Apple is calling  it, apparently). Specs: dual-core A5 chip, Facetime HD camera, 5MP iSight camera on the back. Lightning connector (of course). Screen resolution is 1024 x 768,  7.9 inches (diagonal measure). Cost: $329 for a 16 GB model. Not that you or I care, but they also announced some new iMac / notebook models as well. Okay, time to move on; nothing more to see here.

I've been following, on and off, the efforts to surpass Joe Kittinger's 52 year record for highest balloon ascent / highest parachute jump by Austrian Felix Baumgartner . After a delayed launch for wind, today Baumgartner did it: jumped out of a capsule lifted by balloon to 128,000 feet (that's around 24 miles) and plunging earthward, broke the sound barrier (and quite a few records) without benefit of aircraft. During his freefall he achieved speeds of Mach 1.24. The ride up took about 2 1/2 hours; the trip down, 11 minutes. The whole thing reminded me a little of watching the NASA launches of Mercury back in the early 1960's. Here's the trip down. Incidently, the gentleman talking is Joe Kittinger , the previous record holder, who acted as Baumgartner's mentor and was part of the team who pulled this feat off. You can read more about this on Wikipedia ; this was done with the corporate sponsorship of Red Bull energy drink. It was a stunt, but that...

Okay, not long after my rant about Amazon dropping support for Linux in their MP3 market place, I cooled down and did a second look. I'd rather fix my problem than bitch - here's what I figured out. In case you missed it, here's what prompted my outrage: to download albums from Amazon, you download an AMZ file, which is essentially an encoded list of URLs to the MP3s in the album. After supporting this functionality for Linux for a number of years, they suddenly dropped it. If you are a Linux user, they now inform you that you will need to download your MP3s from their Cloud Player, one file at a time . Click, download, click, download (repeat ad nauseum). If you purchase much music, this is a completely unacceptable solution. First rule of computer troubleshooting: no matter how outlandish or obscure the problem, somebody has experienced it before you. I did what any self-respecting geek did: I Googled. Breaking this down, there are actually 2 problems to solve. O...

[UPDATED AFTER MY INITIAL TANTRUM] Updated on 6-29-2014 - I looked over this post which I wrote a couple of years ago and felt like it needed an update now that I can look back on things more calmly.  For quite some time now I've bought all my tunes from Amazon. One of the reasons is that my primary desktop in my  home office is a Linux box and they provided a native downloader for album purchase (so you wouldn't need to download each song one at a time). I buy a lot of collections ("The Best 99 Songs to Clean your Bathtub, etc), and downloading the files one at a time is strictly a non-starter. I've been doing this for some time now...at least 3 or 4 years. Not long ago, they started their "Cloud Music Player" where you stored your purchases on their cloud service, where you could play them or download them. Today I went to download an album I bought a couple of weeks ago and no longer saw "Download this Album" as one of the options. Aft...

I ran a demonstration project using Amazon Web Services (AWS) about a year and a half ago, and we continue to use AWS for one-off projects and sites. It's a useful tool.  That being said, I've learned (usually the hard way) a few non-obvious tricks and techniques that may be of interest to my fellow web geeks. If you've been using AWS for any length of time, you have probably learned all of these already. If not, allow me to offer them for your consideration now. Disclaimer - I've not used all of the services available from AWS, so I'll only mention the ones I've actually used myself. First - a short glossary of terms (this will make the discussion a little easier): AWS - Amazon Web Services. This is the umbrella under which all of the services described below live. EC2 - Elastic Cloud Computing; this is the virtual cloud based servers. Use this for webhosting. Once you kill an instance, everything vanishes in a puff of smoke (unless you take some addition...

Suppose that when it was first built, the Interstate Highway System had companies built the roads (paying the companies large amounts of money to built them to their specifications) and then leased the roads from the companies. Toll roads, right? Remember - the official title for the Interstate Highway System is the  Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways .  The justification for building the Interstate system (replacing the patchwork of numbered US highways that were then in place) was national defense - how to move troops and equipment quickly in times of national emergency. Although this network of "Superhighways" had been under discussion since the 1920's, it took the Cold War to finally get this in place. The government pays large amounts of money to the  Super Toll Road  providers. The government paid for all the research on how best construct the roads, paid the cost of construction, and then pays to use...

My friend and debating partner the Whited Sepulchre helpfully offered a list of the top 12 things Libertarians wished everybody knew . In the spirit of love I figured I'd return the favor by offering up a list of the top 10 things non-Libertarians wished Libertarians knew. 1. History didn't begin ten minutes after you were born. The reason a lot of things are the way they are is to address historic issues you either never heard of or don't consider have anything to do with you. Get some context for a change. 2. Saying things like "Taxes are theft" sounds like crazy-talk to most people. Most people try and avoid people who crazy-talk. 3. You need to choose your political allies more carefully; your biggest political liability are some of your "friends." I'm thinking of Tea Party folks, gun fanatics, Birthers, Climate Change deniers. 4. One rarely wins converts by insulting people. Lecturing people or suggesting they are stupid if they disa...

I confess - even though I have an iPad, I've really been wanting a 7 inch Android tablet. And I'm sort of a cheapskate. So when earlier this spring I read about the upcoming Google tablet, I was consumed by gadget lust. Alas, when it was finally rolled out I did a double take and then said, "No thanks." I had the same experience earlier in the year when Amazon introduced their Fire tablet. The Google device has a lot going for it - fairly decently powered CPU, good screen resolution, access to lots of apps (not like the bastardized Nook Color and Nook Tablet), good battery life; even had a front facing camera. It kicks the Amazon Fire's ass, and the Fire is not too shabby a product either. The deal breaker for both? Only 8 GB of internal storage (a 16 GB Google model is now on the market) and no expansion capacity. Google and Amazon want you to use the cloud - more specifically, their clouds - to store everything. Buy music, buy movies, buy books, and ins...

"Cloud computing" has been getting a lot of buzz the last couple of years. Quite a few companies have jumped in and started offering various cloud-based services to consumers. These have included applications ( Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365) , collaboration ( Zoho ), storage/file-sharing ( Dropbox , Box and SugarSync ), music streaming ( Amazon Cloud Player and Google Play ), and video streaming (NetFlix and Blockbuster). On paper, these are great products. You can access your documents, photos, or music from anywhere, you can share stuff between devices and other people -- anywhere where you have a internet connection. Use your computer, use your smartphone: it's all the same. There's just one sticking point: your internet provider. The problem:  bandwidth capping. Once upon a time, we were told that broadband was the future - we'd all be connected, all the time. That was back in the day when your internet service provider sold you unlimited us...

By now you've surely read that Andy Griffith died yesterday at the age of 86. As a sure sign we are turning into a nation of ill-informed, culturally bankrupt morons, Salon Magazine ran a story the other day entitled " Dumb Tweets of the Day ," about people tweeting "who the heck is Andy Griffith?" when news of his death broke. Who the heck is Andy Griffith indeed? Maybe it's an age thing. While certainly best known for playing Sheriff Andy Taylor in the fictitious hamlet of Mayberry, in the Andy Griffith Show , (1960 to 1968) , my introduction to him came a little earlier. Griffith had first achieved fame in the 1950's as a monologist, and my father had a copy of his recording, What It Was, Was Football . I listened to that thing endlessly as a child. I think it must be a Southern thing. He also starred in the service comedy (this was only a decade past the end of WW II) named " No Time For Sergeants, " in which he was first teamed w...

I've been on the road (more on that later) and haven't had a chance to note the passing of a couple of giants. Author Ray Bradbury passed away on June 5 at the age of 91, and Doc Watson, guitar legend, died on May 29 at age 89. The first book by Ray Bradbury I read was a second hand copy of The October Country I bought at a thrift store. It was a collection of short stories more gothic horror than sci fi, and deliciously creepy. I tended to prefer the short stories over the novels - they were little polished jewels of language and poetic imagery. The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man both followed the same format, in that they were a collection of short stories bound thematically into a pseudo-novel. His actual novels were not so much to my taste - the artfully constructed language of the shorter pieces (to me) seemed to bog down the narrative energy of the longer works. I re-read one of his most praised novels,   Something Wicked This Way Comes , a few years...

Two weeks ago I started a poll to let my readers (you know who you are) decide on which of my on-line representations to use: the Classic (old) Dr Ralph, or the New and not so improved Dr Ralph. Assuming you care, you can read about it elsewhere ; I see no point in boring people again. The voting is over, and the Classic Dr Ralph is the winner by a 7 to 1 margin. Which is to say there were 8 votes: 7 for Classic Ralph, 1 for New Ralph. I have to say, I'm glad we had one contrarian who went for New Ralph. As someone who spent the first third of his professional life in advertising, I'm not all that surprised. Anyone remember New Coke and the subsequent  resurrection of Old Coke (which was quickly dubbed "Coke Classic") in the wake of public outcry? It happened over 25 years ago but is still an instructive object lesson to any one involved in marketing. There are many this primary season who would have benefited from reviewing this case study. I  part...

If (as they say) a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll leave it to you to do the math at the Iconic Photos blog. The tag line for the site is "Famous, Infamous and Iconic Photos. The format is simple: presentation of a photo or photos, along with some background information to provide a little context. I spent about ten minutes just flipping through pages and saw any number of images I recognized or recalled: the balcony in Memphis the moments after Martin Luther King's assassination , the young JFK, jr, solemnly saluting his father's coffin , and the moments before the second aircraft slammed into the World Trade center on September 11, 2001 . One of my favorites is Nelson Rockefeller flipping the bird to a heckler . The look of utter glee is too good to be missed. They don't make Republicans like him any more - or at least they don't nominate them. Hit the " Random Post " link on the right sidebar for something you didn't expect. Be...

Small disclaimer: my youngest son, formerly a student at George Mason University, has shaken the dust off his sandals and transferred to Texas State University , in San Marcos. Frankly I'm glad, though I was enthusiastic about his attending when he applied. There are any number of reasons I'm glad he's back in Texas, not the least of which is that tuition costs will be about a third of what they were at GMU. Though Mason has an exemplary technology and computer science program, they are also Ground Zero for various academic apologists for the whole Libertarian movement. The Cato Institute , bankrolled by Princes of Fucking Darkness David and Charles Koch , is housed there, and the Economics department is awash with Libertarian shills for the Kochs such as Don Boudreaux and Russell Roberts. A recent dustup has arisen over at  GMU over Professor T. Mills Kelly's class, "Lying about the Past," which had as part of the coursework, assignments to go out and ...

Now's your chance to vote on which profile picture I should use. Classic (old) Dr Ralph New Dr Ralph A little background, for those of you who actually give a shit about any of this. I switched out my old profile picture for the new one, as part of a little experiment a little while back. I occasionally comment on the blog of my good friend, the Whited Sepulchre, and his Libertarian co-religionists usually point to my profile picture as proof of my supposed Socialist leanings. I'm actually the embodiment of moderation, at least in my mind. So, whose visage would most appeal to those of the Libertarian persuasion? Why, George Mason economics professor and paid Koch brothers shill Don Bourdreaux! I performed my Photoshop magic and - no more Commie Ralph! Now I was part of the tribe. I was amazed at how the WS's commentators now found me (occasionally) a reasonable person.  Others who remembered the old picture found the new one just...creepy. A little back...

This caught my eye: Forbes claims our Government writes crappy code . Specifically web code. Of course this was based on an analysis the security company Versacode did, so I'm not convinced how unbiased their judgement is. Still, it isn't all that hard to believe, since in my professional experience, there is an awful lot of insecure web code, out there. Most of this comes from sites with some sort of database backend (dynamic sites) rather than static sites.  In my experience, this is because when projects get behind schedule (have you ever known a project *not* to get behind schedule?), testing and security concerns are the first two things to be tossed out the window.  Okay - this little post ought to please all my Libertarian friends. But let me point out (since I have no ax to grind, unlike Versacode) that this sort of thing  is *not* the exclusive failing of government.  Boo-yah.

I went to a Libertarian gathering the other day (it was in the neighborhood). The Libertarian crowd talks a good game. They seem to be, for the most part, fairly intelligent people,committed to their cause. While I don't always agree with them (and on quite a few issues I *do* agree with them), they make interesting arguments for their side. That being said, I've come to realize they are as full of hokum as the political types for whom they display their sneering superiority. They make much of their supposed political purity, espousing opinions that fall outside the mainstream on social and personal freedom issues, as well as small (and no) government stances on other issues. The truth of the matter - other than the Republican-friendly small government stuff, the rest appears to be all window dressing. During the 2010 election, Tea Party Libertarian, Rand " yes my dad's name is Ron " Paul, stated on his website in 2009 that " life begins at concepti...

I downloaded the Windows 8 Consumer Preview today and just spent the last several hours playing around with it. It's ....interesting. Now, granted, Microsoft has taken pains to emphasize this is a Beta release (they have a cute lil' "Beta" fish on the start up screen to remind us), and also is careful to point out much could change between now and whenever they end up releasing this thing.  And having messed about with it, I'd bet money they will, since its current iteration will not win it many fans. It's ....interesting. And "interesting" is not the same as good. If you don't believe me, next time your significant other makes dinner and asks how you like it, say, "It's ....interesting." You'll find it scores you no points. For whatever reason, Microsoft has decided to drag out it's clunky, horsey-looking Windows Mobile interface (now apparently re-name "Metro") and attempt yet again to sell it to the ...

Here's a magic trick. I can guess how many movies you own, without even knowing you. Ready? The answer: you don't "own" any. But, I can hear you saying, I've got shelves full of movies. DVDs, Blu rays, even couple of boxes of old VHS tapes sitting in the garage. Oh yeah? Well the next time you sit down to watch that old tape of Rocky Horror Picture Show, sit all the way through past the credits until the copyright notice comes up. It will read something like this: COPYRIGHT NOTICE : The copyright proprietors have licensed the material contained in this video-cassette for private and domestic use only and any other use or reproduction in whole or in part including the making of copies of the material or causing it to be transmitted to subscribers to a diffusion service or selling, letting or hire or other-wise dealing with it in whole or in part is strictly prohibited. Seems you don't "own" it - you've been granted a license . What's the d...

Perhaps you went to look up something on Wikipedia today, or Google, or any of a number of other sites, only to find them dark. "What the hell is SOPA?" you may be asking. What the hell indeed. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act (HR3261); PIPA is its lesser known bastard sibling: Protect Intellectual Property Act. Both were drafted at the behest of the Big Media cartels who own the rights to most movies, audio recordings, television shows, and print media. Note I did not say they created these things: they merely own the "rights" to them (whatever that means). Because their business model is broken, they've decided to break the Internet. In it's original form, SOPA criminalizes certain web technologies, whether there are legitimate uses or not. It allow the Justice Department to order the takedown of websites, without any type of due process, and make sites criminally liable for user-created content. A Big Company, irked by a website criti...