For reasons that I won't go in to, my job requires that I use several different Internet browsers. I have finally managed to bring the number down to three. Anyway, for those interested in broadening your browsing horizons, here are various browsers you may or may not be familiar with (in alphabetical order)

Avant Browser
I've started to use this one more recently. It's more of a skin for Internet Explorer than a separate browser, and that comes with its own plusses and minuses. Since it's a variation of IE, security is an issue. I don't have to worry about it at work because I use it almost exclusively for internal purposes. It has a nice interface and some handy features for work that may or may not be useful at home. You can set refresh rates for Windows, you have decent customization on how it starts up (previous windows, etc). You can only have one instance of the browser open at a time, which can be limiting (though I find it useful sometimes, as well). When opening multiple external files (such as PDFs) it opens up in a the same different tab so that if you want to open two PDFs from the same window and compare, you have to be more conscious of what you're doing. The tabbing interface is surprisingly good for such a light program. I have not experienced any resource spikes while using it, which is very nice. Not a single pop-up has ever gotten through. There is nothing I've found that Avant can't do that Slimbrowser can.

Flashpeak Slimbrowser
This one was introduced by a coworker and have used it pretty extensively for over a year now. Like Avant, it is more a skin for IE than a browser unto itself. Most of the time it's very light on resources, though spikes are not too uncommon. Sometimes it has a little difficulty shutting down. There are some interface distinctions that take a little getting used to, but become convenient once you do get used to them. For instance, double-clicking on a tab will close it. Typing a new URL (or simply hitting Enter with the existing address) will open up a new tab rather than take over the current one. It makes tab use much more fluid. You use a single tab until you don't have anything to click on and then you close it. It may seem a little limiting, but I find it actually leads to more efficient browsing on my part. Though it is light on resources, it does seem to slow down the connection just a little. I only notice on 28.8 dial-up connections. One definite plus of this browser is that it works on old and obsolete systems, dating back to Windows 98 and very little RAM. Only allows one window to be open at a time. Unlike the other browsers, you cannot drag and organize the tabs as you would like. Not a single pop-up has ever gotten through. Refreshing sites with POST data can be tricky, which for specific uses at work relegated it to second-tier status -- I only use it occasionally these days, preferring Avant.

Mozilla Firefox
Firefox is the standard by which I judge all others. It's an excellent power-browser's browser. It's extremely customizable with all sorts of plugins and trinkets you can download. There is so far nothing that I've found any other browser to do that Firefox cannot with the right plugins. Unfortunately, it requires customization and plugins to become a really good browser. This is in contrast to Opera, which does most of what you need it to do right after download. Though it is not IE compatible the same way that Slimbrowser and Avant are, you can download plugins to make it so. In fact, you can download plugins to make it do just about anything, it seems. As Firefox becomes more popular, pop-up ads are unfortunately becoming more common (you can customize these away with plugins and settings, but it requires more work). Unfortunately, the piecemail nature of the program can make repetitive upgrading and installation tedious. Its handling of external files is both really good (it opens each PDF either in the window you're using or a completely new one) and really obnoxious (If opening something in an external file, it opens up the external app and then skips back to a blank window in Firefox to tell you tha it's downloaded, serving no discernable purpose). But despite the minor annoyances, if I could only use one browser, it would be this one.

Netscape Browser 8.x
The recently relaunched Netscape is similar to its sibling Firefox. It comes with more built in to the browser, but is less customizable. It has some irksome limitations like the inability to move tabs and no easy way to turn off the little weather program (which is otherwise neat), which got me in some hot water at work. It can be somewhat resource-intensive. No pop-ups that I have seen yet, though I have not used this one as extensively as I've used the others. There honestly isn't a whole lot to recommend about this browser in comparison to Firefox except that security is easier to handle and it does more on the initial download.

Opera Web Browser
If you want to only download the browser and do nothing more, Opera may be your best bet. Efficient tabbing requires almost no customization. It does a better job with IE-only sites than Firefox, though it's not perfect and has no plugins to make it so. Because it's not as big as IE and Firefox, very few pop-up ads get through its filters. Right now it's not worth the trouble for malicious advertisers. You can only open up one Window at a time and it has more resource-spikes than any other browser. I've recently stopped using it at work in favor of beefing up Firefox, though I still do use it at home for select browsing.

It's fun to experiment between browsers, though it's worth noting that they very often do not play well together. Slimbrowser, Opera, and Firefox in particular don't play well with others, causing resource spikes and the like. By "resource spikes" I mean the browser or browsers will start taking up 100% of the resources and will not stop until all of them are closed. It gets pretty annoying. Avant seems to be a team player, however. Not sure about Netscape.

Update: I forgot a couple

Ghostzilla
This is sort of a novelty browser. It is ostensibly so that you can browse without being caught, though its own creators tell you not to do that cause you will get caught and (if it's at work) fired. I actually had a use for it briefly at work during this strange period where we could surf the Internet on break as long as we didn't look like we were surfing the Internet (that eventually got changed to "don't surf the Internet on break" which is why this blog has slowed down substantially). Anyway, there are some sites that don't want to load with it, but those are pretty rare. There's just something neat about a covert browser that finds a good place to hide in your window configuration.

Microsoft Internet Explorer
I haven't used Internet Explorer regularly in years. The only time I have used it has been on Camille's computer, which runs so slow that even Slimbrowser stalls. The other day I was asked a question about how to do something relatively simple, and I could not for the life of me recall. I cannot think of any circumstances in which it is advantageous to use this browser. The fact that it still remains so prevalent makes me skeptical that Microsoft can be toppled, no matter how bad a job it does. All that said, I have not used IE7 yet.

"England’s national fallacy is probably the argumentum ad temperantiam, which is the supposition that a moderate middle course must be the superior option. A distaste for extremism has ingrained in the English a preference for standing in the middle of every alternative, and thus reaching only halfway to accuracy and virtue. If you see someone in a pub claiming that two plus two equals four, against another who says they equal six, just walk over and suggest that five is probably about right. Every Englishman in the pub will nod sagely in agreement with your moderation. Nonetheless, sometimes one of the extremes may be correct; there is no link between moderation and accuracy." -Madsen Pirie

Yeah, two in a row. I'll try not to make it a habit.

However, this one was too juicy to pass up. Congresswoman Gwen Moore's son was amongst four Democrat operatives convicted in Milwaukee County today of deliberately slashing the tires of cars at GOP headquarters in Milwaukee, to try to hurt their get-out-the-vote campaign. (More comprehensive, if as usual highly democrat-biased, info from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinen)

Gwen Moore's response?

'"I love my son very much. I'm very proud of him," Moore said. ""He's accepted responsibility."'

I find it ironic. She's not disgusted by the behavior at all. Quite the reverse; her operatives (read: Democratic Party members) in the prosecutor's bench were trying to get her son let off with probation and a couple hours of community service.

Well then again, why should she be disgusted? The vandalism affected the outcome of the election in her own district.

Not that her opponent would have won otherwise. Moore's one of the "safe district" representatives, where she could probably get away with trying to get in a fistfight with congressional security and still be re-elected the usual platform (racism and kickbacks) for her district.

Still, it's something I wind up mulling over. I grew up in one of the most left-leaning areas of the nation, the City of Milwaukee. Where we had Frank Zeidler, the Commie Mayor from 1948 to 1960 and who remained a force in politics far later. Where kickbacks and corruption are the norm, and John Norquist survived scandal after scandal, only to finally end to a sex scandal.

Where, after numerous gang shootings and problems coming mostly from residents of Congresswoman Moore's district area, and years of problems with shootings and stabbings at JUST the one festival, the addition of metal detectors to African World Festival (as opposed to Irishfest, which never had more than a fistfight even when the beer flowed freely) was a cry of "racism" rather than dealing with our major gang problems and the fact that they were attracted, not by polkas or vietnamese cuisine or irish lager, but by rap music and 40-ouncers.

Am I surprised she's not embarassed that her son pulled this? No. Not at all. I am, however, embarassed to have grown up in Milwaukee, and I'm embarassed she is still allowed to "represent" us.

And I'm amazed that she gets away with it, too. You can bet that if it were Republican kids out slashing Democrat tires, the prosecutors and commentators would have been calling for heads to roll.

An interesting item over at CNN today, examining how President Bush's poll numbers presumably fall.

They also link the document, which is itself a very interesting read.

Of course, the CNN spin - and the spin the questions aim for - is that the public are disgusted with Bush, and therefore more likely to vote Democrat in the midterm elections.

However, I don't think that's the whole picture. Bush is a polarizing figure, even more so than Clinton was. For the vast majority of time as President (except for the time just after 9/11 pretty much), his ratings haven't been amazingly high, because no matter what he did, hard-core Democrats would oppose him.

So, how does he get that low? There are two possibilities. One, he can lose moderates. Two, he can lose conservatives. I put forth the option that it's the latter; due to (A) economic problems (outsourcing and his buddy-buddiness with Hu/what/where from China), (B) the immigration debate, and (C) various other minor quibbles, Bush is losing the Republican Party's base.

Does he have Moderates? Well, he's probably losing them too. But in order to drop over 20 points from your election number, you've got to be losing your base. He won with over 50% of the vote in 2004, and he's now down to a 32% approval rating, 60% disapprove, 8% undecided.

At the same time, the national dialogue hasn't much changed. And I've yet to see a good Democrat candidate coming forth to oppose whoever his successor might be (heck, I haven't really seen the Republicans putting forth a possible successor). Which means that when the 2006 elections run, it "might" be a referendum on Bush, or it might be local issues. And when 2008 comes, well, it's anyone's ballgame.

Dean Esmay compares incorrect preductions with incorrect timing:

Sometimes when people predict the future, and we think they're wrong, it turns out that they were only premature in their predictions. Heck, you could even argue that the entire "dot-com bubble" was predicated on only one fatal mistake: it wasn't a mistake based on the notion that the internet would become ubiquitous and ever more a part of people's everyday lives. They were just about 7-10 years premature in their expectations of what was reasonable.

It's quite a good point. We often expect things to happen a lot quicker than they do. We expect a somewhat gradual-but-consistent implementation when instead it will languish for a while and then the change will strike like lightening. It usually, though not always, requires the capitulation of whatever market-force opposes the change. For instance, record companies tried to deny the imminent digitization and computerization of music. They thought if they could shut down Napster, online music and the mp3 would go away. Napsterites, on the other hand, often thought that the change was right around the corner. Instead, nothing happened for quite a few years and then suddenly the dam burst and in the span of a year record companies offered legal ways to listen to music online and in non-media digital form.

The same may be true for Linux. I am a Linux-skeptic from a market standpoint. I believe that Microsoft will dominate desktops for many years to come. I partially believe this because of the Linux false-starts that I've seen. Linux boosters have constantly claimed "We're ready!" when they, in fact, are not. They're still not. At some point, though, I do believe that their software will be ready for the average user in time. But that won't be enough just like the technology for internet business or digital music was not enough. The market will have to come to terms with the notion of open-source software and figure out some way around MS Office's dominance in office software. It could be that they never will and fifty years from now Windows will still be, more or less, at the top.

One thing that could fit in to the greater scheme of things is web-based software, which is the subject of Esmay's piece:

Back in the 1990s the concept of the so-called "thin client" was all the rage. The idea was that every machine would be networked, and that there was just no need for most people to have their own fully functional computer; they should be able to draw most of the resources they needed over the network, and shouldn't need local hard drives or advanced processing power on their desktops. [...]

The advent of free webmail services which offer hundreds of megabytes of storage for free was the first thing that had me thinking that this can be taken seriously. Increasingly, there's no good reason to want to keep your email on your computer. Indeed, there's good reason not to keep it there, since you don't have to worry about backups, and it's nice to be able to get at your mail from any computer. I've been using computers since the late 1970s, and I never thought I'd give up having my own mail client, but for two years now I've been entirely using webmail--because I like to be able to get at my mail from any computer anywhere on the planet with an internet connection.

They said the same thing when I was in college and by the timeline they gave it should have happened by now. It took a little longer to get broadband to be as commonplace as it's becoming.

On the whole, though, I am not convinced that it is as imminent as some believe or that it will ever be as complete as they think it will. The first barrier they face is internet inconsistency. Last night, for instance, my high-speed internet fluctuated between being down and being really slow. It doesn't happen all that often, but often enough for it to be a real problem if when that happens I cannot do anything on my computer. We're still pretty early on in the broadbanding of the Internet so they will get a lot of this sorted out, but the piecemail way in which we're making it happens suggests to me that we won't have complete reliability (or near-complete, which we have for power and water and so on) for some to time come.

Beyond that, I'm not sure that it will ever completely make sense to have the applications run on some central server. Processing power is cheap and getting cheaper by the day. I'm not sure it will ever be cheaper to be moving these things back and forth across the Internet, even if it takes roughly the same amount of time. The same with hard-drive space -- no one is going to run out of harddrive space based on applications alone.

What I see happening is co-existence between local applications and webapps. Most office productivity suites will have both a software and web component. You use your installed MS Office when you're at home, but when you're on a computer that has a different version or different software package, you will use it on the web. Online music supplier Rhapsody already does this, to an extent. You can either download their application or you can listen to it on Rhapsody.com (though at last check their implementation of Rhapsody.com needed work).

While the reasons for software apps being located elsewhere on your machine are limited, having your files stored on a central server and accessible from anywhere is a different matter altogether. Being able to store one's entire music, movie, or book collection to be accessible from anywhere on any computer would truly be innovative. I see OSes moving towards making the integration and synchronization between local and central storage space more seemless.

To use Rhapsody as an example again, right now you can either listen to the music through streaming audio or you can download it for free and listen to it locally (though once you stop subscribing it will stop playing). Having everything available from a central server is great, but so is having it local so that it's not taking up large amounts of bandwidth.

One of Dean's commented brought up an interesting thing:

The companies delivering these services are looking for a way to make money and see the current model as unacceptable- THAT is the driving force behind this on the commercial side. Software cannot be pirated if it exists only on the server side and is accessible only through paid subscription services.

It's no secret that Microsoft would much prefer a subscription model for Office and that would provide quite the incentive for software vendors to discontinue local installations. I'm not convinced that they would be successful, though. Part of the glory of open source software - even when I don't use it - is that it keeps profit vendors from moving too far away from what consumers want. Microsoft, Apple, Corel, and Adobe could all start adopting the same marketing strategy (because it's the most profitable) and we still wouldn't have to go along. That's quite comforting.

Whatever comes of it all, it will be interesting.

I wrote this one a while back when I was feeling a bit down on the state of the blogosphere. It's not one of my nicer posts, but I was reminded today by a little gnat I shall call Number Four that I am on the fringe. Being a rabid partisan means that you don't have to be nice to anyone. And being a blogger means that I can be holier-than-thou with my fellow partisans.

Mr. Moderate Republican - I am a proud Republican and I stand by my President even though I spend over half of my columns burnishing my moderate credentials by bashing him and his supporters. I spend an inordinate amount of time talking about Intelligent Design and Stem Cell Research because I am demonstrating that I am quite clearly not a rabid righty like the President's supporters (except me, cause I support the president, post after post denigrating him aside).

Mr. Moderate Liberal - I am a moderate liberal, as evidenced by the fact that I don't call Shrub Chimpy McBushitler. I approvingly link to such incendiary blogs as Daily Kos and Eschaton and then complain, because they can make points that I can't because I'm so Moderate. I subtlely imply that Republicans are biased against minorities, quoting fringe right figures to make my case, but then complain ceaselessly when fringe lefty figures are used to suggest that I am unpatriotic. I haven't actually heard anyone reputable call me unpatriotic recently, but I find someone unreputable and then speak as though they represent my opponents as a whole, thus allowing me to say anything I want about how bad our foreign policy is and how malignant our government is while escaping the possibility that my view of the United States might, just might, be more skeptical than that of the average American.

Mr. Fairweather Libertarian - Like Mr. Moderate Republican, I am not like those Republicans that are captives of the religious right. Even after they've betrayed their principles, I believe in smaller government - except when I don't. For instance, even though I complain about Bush's deficits, I also complain that the federal government is not funding Stem Cell Research. I also support forcing pharmacies to carry out prescriptions they disagree with because I support government coersion when it makes my life more convenient. Like Mr. Moderate Moderate, I erroneously suggest that the Republicans are going to pay at the polls for their stance on gay marriage despite the popularity of that position. I can't vote Democrat, but I'm going to annoy the Republicans to death in exchange for my vote. Then I'll wonder why they don't listen to me when it comes to Supreme Court picks.

Mr. Moderate Democrat - I am a moderate in the true sense of the word. I may be pro-life or in favor of social security privitization. I was probably in favor of the War against Iraq before I was against it. I support moderate Democrats and oppose fringe ones within the party. The only problem is that this makes me not-a-team-player, so I compensate for this by being so rabidly partisan that my relatively moderate views on the issues are roughly worth the pile of monkey-spit our President upchucks on a daily basis. I twist logic to the point that I am arguing that the party that overwhelmingly voted against CAFTA is free trade because the president who pushed through CAFTA previously had steel teriffs for that he has since repealed. Or I argue that the party that wants to make abortion widely available is more pro-life than the party that wants to limit abortion because the latter opposes free day care for everybody. I am desperate to be important and included on these all-important conference calls, but since I don't actually believe in socialized medicine, an aggressive welfare state, and that abortion is morally neutral, they won't let me. :( No matter, I just turn up the volume until they have to let me.

Mr. Warhawk - I've never served in the military, though I own multiple guns and am capable of service. I nonetheless support them in every possible way that includes the Internet. I call President Bush names because he hasn't invaded Syria and Iran yet - hasn't he seen my map on how I would partition Saudi Arabia? I live up to every stereotype liberals make about hawks as I constantly try to prove my manhood by being more hawkish than the other super-warhawks. I may or may not have voted for Bush in 2004. It was a tough call because he's such a weenie with all his "Islam is not evil" babble. To avoid sounding too singular-minded, I'll throw in something about deficits even as I complain that he's not invading more countries by now.

Mr. Republican Loyalist - I never stop talking about how the Democrats don't stand for anything and yet I'm at a loss as to what we stand for anymore. Small government, what's that? We can't even take a stand against illegal immigration anymore, and while I may carp I'll find some way - any way - to convince myself that it's all for the best. I post all the time about how biased the media is, conveniently making it so that everything they say that backs up our worldview is made in spite of the bias and therefore more credible while anything they say that opposes our worldview is irrelevent when you consider the (biased! liberal!) source. At least once a week I find some overlooked fact and present it as Yet More Definitive Proof that the media is gently manipulating everything to make us look bad. We make no mistakes - only do things that require a good deal more effort to figure out why they're right.

Mr. Wacko Lefty - HALLIBURTON! The president is too stupid to live and yet cunning enough to manipulate everybody into following his anti-human, anti-earth agenda. Despite overwhelming evidence in the form of an object lesson last year about who has the deeper reserves when turnout is high, DIEBOLD! I believe that we can win by getting the base out to vote. I believe that we're turning into a fascist nation run by theocrats, and yet miraculously I have not chosen to leave the country. I explain at great length on the blog that the government doesn't really care that I have about how we really live in a police state. I live up to every unpatriotic, anti-American stereotype that the right throws at us and yet believe that the moderates are responsible for losing our elections - yet still get approving nods from moderate Democrats because I get all the links. I denegrate middle America at every opportunity and then wonder why they don't vote for my preferred candidate. I somehow believe that Bush stole the 2004 and yet consider myself part of the "reality-based community." HALLIBURTON!

Mr. Moderate Moderate - I am socially liberal and economically conservative. Despite a complete lack of evidence, I believe that my views are politically popular because the media keeps telling me so - until it comes time to act on that 'economically conservative' part. I used to be in favor of gun control until I found out that it's an unpopular view and I hate holding unpopular views because I stand for the Common Sense Center - whatever it is that the media tells me that they stand for. I am pro-choice because I believe that what happens in our bedrooms should stay in our bedrooms. I am against television regulation because I believe that sex should not actually stay in our bedrooms. I prove that I'm not a closet conservative by dedicating time and energy in opposition to the Religious Right. I also vaguely oppose the left. I show how reasonable and sensible I am by quoting only the most extreme members of each party. The partisans don't like me, but that's okay, because Mr. Moderate Republican and Mr. Maverick lust after my approval.

Mr. Maverick - I am a party member that opposes everything that my party stands for. I have additional credibility, though, because I am a member of the party that I am bashing. I pretend like they could easily win me back if they only ceased to stand for everything they've stood for for the past twenty years while I was, apparently, napping. I don't know why my party has left me by taking positions that oppose the positions that they never really held and yet I claim to have always believed. Basically, I disagree with whatever my party's opinion on the Iraq War is and can't come to terms with that, so instead of admitting that it is my views that are conflicted, I somehow twist logic on its head and come out of this believing that I am the one that is ideologically consistent.

Mr. Snarky - I am a blogger that's running out of steam so I write potentially incindiary things with a complete disregard for how it might come across. I go after those across the political spectrum because it gives me a chance to go out for those I disagree with most and vent my frustrations against those I agree with most. I've done the partisan blogging, the personal blogging, and the philosophical blogging, so what's left? I have beliefs, but I believe that even my beliefs are cliche. The irony wraps around itself to the point that I don't actually have to advocate anything, which is good cause I don't care - but I realize that that, too, is totally cliche. Man, life was a lot easier when all I cared about was Gilligan's Island.

A while back I noted an opinion piece that ludicrously suggested Rick Perry as a candidate for a Vice Presidential slot. Heaven help us, the Dallas Morning News nearly devoted an entire article on the subject:

Perry political adviser Dave Carney declined to talk about anything beyond the current Texas race. But as a measure of the effort to market Perry on the national stage, the governor and Carney met last year with a top Washington operative to discuss writing a book to showcase the governor's conservative bona fides.

Gov. Rick Perry has made a number of out-of-state appearances that have heightened his national profile. "There have been a lot of conservative leaders and politicians who have been successful as book authors, starting with Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich," said Craig Shirley, whose firm markets books for major political figures.

Shirley said he had lunch with the governor and Carney, where they discussed the process of writing, publishing and promoting a book.

"When they came to me, they already had the idea of writing the book," he said. "I offered some suggestions about topics and publishers and things like that."

He said Perry - who succeeded Gov. George W. Bush in 2000 when Bush became president - would have strong appeal among national conservatives because of his views on taxes and social issues.

Shirley added that it was clear Perry wanted to win re-election first before publicly expanding attention beyond Texas.

I suppose this solves the mystery of where the aforementioned opinion writer got the idea that Perry was a natural consideration for VP: From Perry's henchmen.

Rick Perry will likely be re-elected this fall because he is the luckiest politician I have ever seen and for little other reason. Four years ago he faced off against a fractured Democratic rainbow coalition that (surprise, surprise) didn't sell with moderate white voters. Two years before that he got the governorship cause the governor was promoted to president. He got the lieutenant governorship because he was a Republican and Republicans did not lose in 1998. He came the second closest to losing, though, right after Carole Keeton Rylander Strayhorn. Strayhorn, of course, is one of the three opponents Perry has this year in a four-way race, the other two being a one-term congressman and a Jewish country musician named Kinky. He may well get re-elected with under 40% of the vote.

I wouldn't even be mentioning all this. Last time I was pretty concise because I considered the whole thing too absurd to actually comment on.

Whatever one thinks of the competence of Bush as president and even if they didn't agree with a lot that he did in Austin, they should be able to agree that he was at least an effective governor. Whether you liked them or not, things got done. I would question whether or not Perry could lead a bunch of kindergardeners to the playground.

And even if Rick Perry were competent, he's a friggin' white, male Republican from Texas! If there is anything -- anything -- that he would actually add to a ticket, I would love to hear it. If the GOP presidential nominee is so weak that Perry would prove to be an electoral asset, stick a fork in it because the election is done.

[via Adrianne]

The anti-gun crowd reached the peak of influence in the 90's and has since lost ground as Democrats have come to realize that there are a lot of gun owners in swing states.

I was reading Ebert's review of anti-gun movie American gun and ran across these couple of sentences:

All three stories ask the same question: How do you lead a reasonable life in a world where a lot of your fellow citizens can and do walk around armed? There seem to be two possible answers: They should be disarmed, or you should be armed. A third answer, implied by some gun owners, is that they should be armed but many other categories of people should not be. They never include themselves in those categories.

I wonder if that's going to be the new line of the anti-gun crowd: moderate pro-gun folks are hypocrites.

It creates a wonderful catch-22. Either you believe that everyone up to a convicted killer ought to be able to have a gun in which case you're a nut, or you agree that there ought to be some limits in which case you're a hypocrite. The only way to come out of this without coming across as mentally or morally lacking is... ta-da... to support the position that nobody should be able to own a gun.

Or perhaps Ebert is saying that gun owners are implying that only suburban whites should be able to own guns and urban blacks, immigrants, and other people they hate (because conservatives hate people not like them) should not be able to. While a number of conservative views on race put me ill-at-ease, gun ownership is not one of them. I've been running in Republican circles for several years and I've got to say that I have never even heard the implication that race itself is a factor in their support of gun ownership. Laws like the Brady Bill and whatnot were proposed by liberals and generally accepted by conservatives (sometimes begrudgingly so) to placate those fears. Maybe it does "disproportionately affect minority groups," but you can't assign sinister motivations to a group that begrudgingly signed on to an idea after the political landscape made its implementation was all but certain.

Q: You ever get the feeling that everything that seems to pass as "media analysis" of the motivations of the workings of the Bush administration comes down to "Because Bush is a pooh-pooh-head and nobody likes him because he's a pooh-pooh-head!!!!!!!"

A: Yes

Q: You ever wonder if Bush - who claims to be pretty oblivious to media opinion - sometimes makes decisions out of some petulant attempt to spite the media or anyone else that tries to tell him what to do?

A: The thought does cross my mind from time to time.

When there isn't much to talk about, there's always the weather.

They said that it might snow. I can only give them half-credit because saying it may or may not snow is going to be right 100% of the time.

They said that if it did snow, that it would not accumulate.

Five inches of snow on my car this morning = no credit.

I was commenting at work that this may be my last Idaho snow. They said that I shouldn't bet on it. I clarified that I meant that it could be the last major dump. They said that I shouldn't bet on it.

I am officially in violation of Idaho law. The law states that if you have studded tires you have to take them off the road by April 15th. I meant to over the weekend but I forgot. Never have I been so rewarded for breaking the law. I think I might break the law a bit longer -- maybe until May.

One year ago today I arrived in Idaho, safe and sound. It was raining then, but not snowing.

Even the rain in April is a pretty big deal. We've had a whopping two inches of precipitation this month -- usually it's 2/3 or so. They're saying that the drought they've been having up here may finally be at an end.

Figures that it would be so as I plan to leave.

There's a lake in Blackfoot (halfway between hometown Pocatello and worktown Idaho Falls) that has a lake that they only fill with water a couple months of the year. It was about three months in 2004 but only six weeks or so last year. I'm really hoping they fill it soon.

Having lived in Houston for as long as I did, I never thought that rain and filled bodies of water would be such a big deal.

The following is a short story of sorts. I have a handful that explore different aspects of the premise that I may write if I feel so inclined.

"... and there it is. What do you think?" he concluded.

I look up, for a second, and watched the cieling fan at work. Around and around it goes. I glance out the window. A brunette is walking a young boy. I don't know where they're going, but they're going somewhere. They're also coming from somewhere that they will be back again at some point or another. I find myself looking everywhere except at the man that generously bought me this beer in a well-intentioned, if futile, effort to bring me back into the fold.

"Matt," I explained, "I appreciate all of the looking into this that you've done. I really do. I'm flattered that I came to mind for this... project."

For a second, I forget that there isn't anyone within hearing range. I don't know if I would have said anything indicative of the conversation at hand, but it's always best to cover your tracks so that they don't know who you are. Not that they'd care, but once upon a time they might have and the old habits die hard.

"Just think it over. That's all I'm asking."

"I don't need to think it over. Look, you don't need me. If you bring Hardwick on board, he might bring the liabilities down a little bit. He even has more experience than I do."

He pauses for a moment and even looks at the cieling fan behind me for a moment. "I don't need Hardwick. Yes, he's been at this a while, but he spent four years as an apprentice. With the exception of Muldrake, he's never hung out with the big boys."

Apprentice. I like that. I can't remember what I used to call them in public.

As we shake hands and part ways, I feel a little bit bad for Matt. He obviously went to a lot of trouble to ease my worries. The truth is that despite my mere thirty-two years on this planet, I'm too old for that. It's amazing how much older a wife and a child make you.

I walk down Curtis Street and wave at Jeffrey, who is collecting the tokens at the Curtis stop today. I have about fifteen or so more blocks to walk. It's funny how slow everything moves these days. Well, how slow I move. One foot in front of the other, then the other in front of the first. Repeat process. No leaping tall buildings on a single bound.

Despite complaining about how long the walk was taking a minute ago, I audibly complain that I'm there already the second that I reach the doorway to the bank. There was a time when I would have just spun around the block a few times just to give myself something to do. When my life moved faster, that is.

The security guard is busy flirting with a couple of attractive young ladies. He probably weighs in excess of three-hundred pounds. His face has some sort of lesion on the top of his left cheek. Yet the two attractive young ladies can't seem to get enough of it. Something isn't right about that. Noticing things that aren't right is an old habit. My wife calls it paranoia. I call it experience. Not useful experience anymore, I suppose.

As I might have figured, the bank is pretty busy. I should have gone before my meeting with Matt so that I could take care of my business here before everyone is getting off of work. I should have just mailed it in, but I know that as I get accustomed to my new life I need to get used to the little things like walking to the bank, one foot after the other.

The line almost goes to the end of the velvet rope, but I take my spot and wait. Waiting is another thing I've had to learn. I console myself with the thought that I don't really have anywhere that I need to be. Another adjustment.

The first sound I hear is the distinctive chink of a gun hitting the floor. The thud is unmistakably that of a man's head doing the same. Why didn't I hear the gun go off? Even with a silencer, I should have heard something. Almost everyone around me is thrown in to panic. I simply turn around to assess the situation. There are three of them. As they direct us all to the wall, I start watching them to gauge their strongest and weakest link. Without even having to scan the room I count the number of hostages: thirteen against the wall and six behind the register.

One by one, they start collecting whatever we have on us. There's truly no need for them to yell like they are. All that does is raise adrenalyn levels and increase the odds of something unfortunate happening. It's funny that given our experience I sometimes think that we would be more successful at their job than they are. As they collect from the person on the end, I notice that he doesn't look familiar to me. I'm almost certain that he was not here a minute ago. I count the hostages again and we're down to twelve. In my mind, I try to figure out who is missing. The girls. The girls talking to the security guard. Where did they go? They were in on it. I knew something was odd about that.

First I chastise myself for not following up on what I had noticed before on the guard and the two women. Then I chastise myself for chastising myself. All I saw was two overly flirtatious girls hitting on an ugly guard. There was no way for me to know what was going to happen. I can't be expected to do that anymore. I shouldn't even be counting hostages. Yet, if there were thirteen before and two are gone, then there must be a new one among us. I look again at the man that I didn't recognize before.

Sure enough, his tie is powder blue. Why does he do that? I kept telling him that it'll get him killed. He calls it his trademark, I call it a bullseye.

Knowing that Bradley has taken his place among the hostages, I'm not surprised in the least when the window shatters and the rest of them enter. The team's leader almost immediately goes after the strongest link. I look over and see Bradley scratching his head and most likely whispering into a microphone.

I'm not sure who any of them are. If they're anything like me, they've got newspaper clippings all over their wall. When I first started out, I didn't miss a single one. Sometimes I wonder how much of it was ego. None of them may have known who John Blake was, but they sure knew my alter ego. Yet here I am, out of the business only a year, and ironically the only one I recognize is the shape-shifter.

When the leader keeps looking at me, I realize that it's Hudson. His new black getup threw me off. A lot of them seemed to be going with black before my exodus. It helps bump up merchandising sales, I'm told. I look at the others and can't help but notice how young they all seem. Hudson's liability insurance rates must cost a fortune. Lucky for him, I guess, he has one.

I've never watched us from this angle - from the sidelines. From the broken window to the apprehension of the would-be robbers, it all seems to happen so fast. Even to me, it's fast. The costumes look a lot funnier from this vintage. The grandstanding is a tad more apparent.

Even though the bad guys are caught, the police take a statement from each and every one of us and request that we don't leave. Marie is going to be pissed that I'm even late getting home on my day off work. She probably thinks I'm still with Matt. While the police take their statements, I wait patiently and worry about Marie and little Drew.

"I half expected you to spring in to action."

"Oh, hey," I reply. For a moment I'm worried about the possible attention, but I realize that Bradley never gave himself up as a member of Hudson's new motley crew.

"How's the wife?" he asks.

"She's doing well. I actually came here from sharing a drink with Matt," I replied, changing the subject.

"Matt Mitchell?"

"Yeah."

"Glad we got here before they did. So what are you doing here?"

"Just cashing my measley paycheck and figuring out how I'm going to tell Marie I couldn't get the money to go shopping like I'd promised," I answer. I try to make it sound like small talk in case anyone can hear us.

"You know, if money is an issue for you right now, we should really talk."

"Not the kind of work I'm looking for, I'm afraid."

"Damn. We need some more experienced people. The liabilities are killing us right now."

"I'll bet."

"Damn insurance companies. Damn lawyers."

When I finally make my statement and they let me go, I try to think of how I'm going to explain to Marie that I couldn't cash the check to go grocery shopping like I'd promised. When I turn the corner and no one is watching, I look up the Chenevert Building beside me and ponder cheating. Just once. Just so I can look down on the city again from its tallest buildings. Instead, I continue walking home one foot after the other.

"I can't go back, Matt," I explained a couple of hours ago. "Even if I wanted to - and I don't - I sold my name and rights to that kid in California."

"Look John, I've already got a couple of graphic artists lined up for a new look. We can toss around new names. You didn't sign a non-disclosure agreement so you can just re-enter the scene and people will know who you used to be."

"I promised Marie. I have to be there for Drew."

"You can be there for your boy. We calk work all that out. I know that you're collecting tokens for bus fare. That's not a career, John. I've talked to our agent. He's sure that within months we can have action figures out on the market. Hell, the money you'll save us on liability alone gives us room to make you a guaranteed minimum of more than you're making now. Even if you can't use your old name, we can play up your history."

"That's just it, it's my history."

"Look, John. It comes down to this. We need you. This city needs you. You can help everyone including youself... and there it is, what do you think?"

Other than the paycheck thing, everything turned out alright. Hudson, Bradley, and the kids took care of it all without me. I'm sure Matt will find someone else to help train and supervise his bunch. As important as we think we are - as important as I thought I was - life goes on with me.

When I get back to our apartment, Marie runs up to me in tears. "Oh, thank God," she tells me as she buries her head in my shoulder. "I heard about the robbery. I was scared to death that something happened to you."

At the end of the evening, I walk in and look on our newborn baby. When he starts crying, I pick him up and hold him as we look out the window. We live on the eighth floor and from a certain slant I can see the street below. It's not the top of the Chenevert Building, but it'll do.

Up there, life goes on without me. Down here, it doesn't.

"Cultural standards change all the time. Still, I think we're crossing a pretty significant threshold with the [vaginal area] waxing phenomenon, which is now so mainstream that it shows up in approved-for-all-audiences movie trailers. As with breast implants, it's another instance of modern women taking their sexual cues from pornography, and from the male fantasy of what Tom Wolfe calls "a boy with breasts," but which might be more accurately described as a prepubescent girl with breasts. Jennifer Aniston isn't a bad icon for this shift: When she started out on Friends, she was fetchingly adorable, with curves and baby fat to spare. Fifteen years later, she's exercised, smoked and plastic surgerized herself into a weird, porn-like parody of a beautiful women - skinny, over-tanned, and all angles except for her still-pneumatic breasts. The waxing is just a small part of the pantomime, a final insult to the "natural" body she gave up on long ago." -Ross Douthat

Conservatives often argue that their celebrity ought not make what they have to say that much more important. "Shut up and act" and "shut up and sing" and all that. Odd, then, that they don't hold Bill Cosby to that standard.

I don't have all the official pictures yet, though here are a selection of other pictures: [Read More!]

The arrogance of Microsoft never seems to astound:

Microsoft has urged UK PC vendors not to give customers the opportunity to buy a PC without a pre-installed operating system.

Supplying base systems, or 'naked PCs', is a missed opportunity, according to Michala Alexander, Microsoft's head of anti-piracy.

Writing in Microsoft's Partner Update magazine, which is distributed to computer dealers, Alexander estimated that 5 percent of computers sold in the UK in 2006 would not include an operating system.

Alexander is keen to bring that number down, even though customers could want a base system because they want to install Linux, or because their firm already has a licensing agreement for an operating system such as Windows.

"We want to urge all system builders — indeed, all Partners — not to supply naked PCs. It is a risk to your customers and a risk to your business — with specifically 5 percent fewer opportunities to market software and services," wrote Alexander.

Linux vendors and free software supporters, though, believe these base systems can play an important role in supporting the open source market. Some are concerned that Microsoft may be attempting to use its powerful position in the market to hamper competition.

"May"?

Not sure about the rules in Britain, but it seems to me that Microsoft does have the right to check up on whether naked systems are having Windows sneaked on them at the last minute. They can do it the same way we do: by buying the PC and seeing if it's installed. Or getting an agreement. On the other hand, if they're simply hanging around the vendors like the chewing gum guy in Clerks, they ought to be able to be kicked off for trespassing.

But here's the thing that kind of surprises me: why are any computers sold without an OS? It seems to me that they should all come with some form or another of Linux (if they don't come with Windows, of course). Obviously different people have different Linux preferences, but anyone who has a "preferred" brand of Linux is obviously adept enough to install it themselves (which they would have to do anyway - and besides, most of them are likely to build their own anyway.

Is there something in Linux licensing that prohibits this?

A couple weeks ago, Glenn Reynolds commented:

I've generally favored open immigration, but I find myself feeling less and less that way in the face of mass rallies by illegal immigrants like this one. Illegal immigrants as individuals just trying to make a better life are sympathetic. Illegal immigrants as a mass movement making demands on the polity are considerably less so. [...] I think that these marches just made passage of strict immigration laws much more likely.

I have to agree. Immigration is one of the issues that I am more libertarian on, but the rallies made it a much more difficult position to support emotionally (though it does not affect my position intellectually).

I spent a year or so living in a heavily-immigrant apartment complex in west Houston and my views are probably unmovably set on the subject. My experiences and interactions with them was generally quite positive and I citizens or no, they are much better Americans than my non-immigrant neighbors at Thrifthaven were.

I have, however, become more concerned with the border recently from a national security standpoint. That makes it all the more important that we have an "honest" immigration policy. Unfortunately, as long as the left insists on American social (and workplace) protections for the immigrants and the right insists that we don't need them here, both sides are more-or-less content with a stalemate involving a rather big opening for bad people to get through (and I don't mean people looking for work).

I wrote the short review on TSN, but I've been waiting too long for this movie to come out not to share more in-depth thoughts. This post will contain spoilers, so I'll put it behind the Extended Wall. [Read More!]