Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

[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...

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 noticed where the recent production of "Atlas Shrugged, Part 1," will be released on DVD and Blu ray tomorrow. Get ready to relive the excitement of the first third of Ayn Rand's colossal door stop again and again. Since I never saw it, (nor plan to), I'm hardly qualified to offer up any meaningful criticism. I'll leave that to the good reviewers on Amazon's website . Not unsurprisingly, fans are once again using this a forum to accuse the professional critics who panned this epic of all sorts of dastardly liberal bias (imagine that). They've racked up the ratings to an average 4 stars (out of 5). Sample comment: "The movie is well made - the quality is actually quite good. Acting was generally good to excellent. Camera work was good; although the low budget resulted in a missing camera angle here and there. Special effects were consistently well done. The story, of course, is exceptional; and it is well-told in this movie." Hmm...if...

Tom Tomorrow (real name: Dan Perkins ), is the creator of the comic This Modern World . Read his recent strip, " What could possibly go wrong? " to understand why we now have millions of gallons of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. And bitch-slap some sense into the next person who acts like this is no big deal.