“I’d be willing to bet that it’s the dumbest people among us who are least likely to vote too, and that’s fine with me. I don’t want anyone dumber than I am voting.”
– Andy Rooney
A9 is A-1.
I haven’t needed to save browser “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” much since Google came along. But I have a few. And a few more on my Thinkpad. And a few more on my home PC. And it’s too much trouble to try to keep them all sync’d up. But a new service from Amazon has made the problem go away. It’s called A9 (I have no idea) and it’s pretty slick.
“A9.com is a search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, movies results from IMDb, and more. A9.com remembers your information so you dont have to. You can keep your own notes about any web page and search them; it is a new way to store and organize your bookmarks.” [More]
Any links I save in the future will be on my A9 page. My thumb is up on A9.
What are the choices again?
A new study for the Online Publishers Association asked: If you could choose only two media, what would they be? The Internet ranked No. 1, chosen as first (45.6 percent) or second (32.1 percent) by 77.7 percent of those surveyed. Television ranked No. 2, with 52.4 percent making it a first or second choice, trailed by books (18.5) and radio (12.9). Only 9.2 percent would choose newspapers in that media mix, and only 3.2 percent made newspapers a first choice.[E-Media Tidbits]
Try to remember
The annual Fall Festival Parade will kick off the Delta Fair on Monday. The parade is a rich part of the history of my family. In 1951 my father rode through the streets of Kennett in a wheelbarrow, pushed by a man wearing a skunk costume.
I can claim no such honor but on several occasions I co-anchored broadcasts of the parade. Gigantic, expensive farm implements. The Adelphian Club float. The Hayti Marching Band. The Poplar Bluff Shriners on their tiny motorcycles. It taxed my humble talents to even begin to describe the spectacle.
I broadcast many parades during my dozen years at KBOA. The Senath Christmas Parade. The Hornversville Watermelon Festival Parade. I was there for them all, droning on… mustering up more excitement than these sad little caravans deserved. You’d have thought I was in prime-time at the Rose Parade. My first Delta Fair Parade was in 1972 and I interviewed Jack McDaniel and Bill Walsh, the two Kennett businessmen responsible for organizing the event. I called my friend John last night and he said Jack and Bill are still in charge of the parade. Sweet Jesus, is there anything I care about that much?
The freedom to choose
“If I got pregnant and could not have another child, it would be my choice and my partner’s choice, nobody else’s, to decide what to do. My business, not someone else’s. Just as it’s not my choice to tell someone who is against abortion that they shouldn’t be against abortion. It’s none of my business. That’s why we live here. That’s why we can jump in the car and go see Plymouth Rock today. We can just go there. Nobody can tell us not to go there.”
Crow for Harkin
Iowa Senator Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry featured Sheryl Crow and comedian Tom Arnold. Crow performed for over half an hour, playing hits like “A Change Will Do You Good.” Between songs, Crow told the crowd she “feels like four more years of Bush is dangerous.” [Audio of performance 47 min]
World Peace Conference
A Hollywood director with a reputation for making violent, bizarre films is headlining what’s billed as a world peace conference in southeast Iowa this weekend. Known for movies like “Mulholland Drive,” “Blue Velvet” and the T-V series “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch is also on the board of directors at Maharishi University in Fairfield. He says perpetual world peace will result by assembling eight-thousand people to continuously practice transcendental meditation. Lynch says “It brings peace, real peace, and peace is not just the absence of war. This real peace, being enlivened, drives negativity away like light drives darkness away.”
The Rule of Four
This novel by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason is not a gripping story but I like the characters and the way the speak.
- A son is the promise that time makes to a man, the guarantee every father receives that whatever he holds dear will someday be considered foolish, and that the person he loves best in the world will misunderstand him. [Prologue]
- To count a hundred million stars, at the rate of one per second, sounds like a job that no one could possisbly complete in a lifetime. In reality, it would take only three years. The key is focus, a willingness not to be distracted. [Pg 7]
- We made a friendship out of nothing, because nothing was the the heart of what we shared. [Pg 48]
- The generational clock ground out another revolution, and time turned friends to strangers. [Pg 71]
- The only things people can ever know about you are the ones you let them see. [Pg 97]
- My mind is a flock of pigeons, fluttering away. All my thoughts are shit and feathers. [Pg 130]
Most Tivo’d
for the week ending 09/19/04:
1. The Apprentice [No]
2. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [Yes]
3. The Sopranos [Yes]
4. Joey [No]
5. Survivor: Vanuatu, Islands of Fire [No]
6. The West Wing [No]
7. Six Feet Under [Yes]
8. ER [No]
9. CSI: Miami [Yes]
10. Will & Grace [No]
Five ass-related words (5ives)
Merlin thinks he uses “ass” a lot:
1. metric assload (n.) – a lot
2. asshat (n.) – willfully ignorant person
3. assy (adj.) – unacceptably low-quality
4. big-ass (adj.) – large
5. asstacular (adj.) – really bad