Why you can't comment

Some time ago, I disabled comments on this blog. Last time I checked the comments they were 99% spam, and while I know Geeklog has a spam-killer add-in, I didn't have time to figure out how to install and configure it. Since I often go many weeks between posts, I rarely responded to comments anyway, so disabling them seemed like the simplest thing to do. If you want to comment on a story, you can email me directly at jknapka at (this site).

The other day I was in the local goodwill-esque store, and found a 3/4 size classical guitar sitting on the shelf for $39. It was pretty beat up, and badly needed a new set of strings, but it sounded pretty decent, and so I took it home a put a new set of strings on it. My daughter wants to learn guitar, but she's 11 and has small hands, so I thought this would be a nice cheap practice instrument for her.

I must say, I got a great deal on this thing. After Cliff at Mesa Music fixed my lame re-stringing job (this was the first classical I've ever restrung), it tuned up nicely. It has a nice action, good resonance, and flat out just sounds great for a $39 instrument. I've been playing it exclusively since I bought it, in fact, in preference to my steel-string acoustic and my two electrics, one of which is a Schecter C1.

The maker's label inside the case reads: "La Primera Model # L12N". If you happen to spot one of these for cheap, it's probably worth the price.

The Mesa Music Myspace page is here: http://www.myspace.com/mesamusictx. Cliff, the proprietor, has never failed to make me happy with any guitar I brought to him for setup, even my totally crappy Korean solid-body (which is now pretty much my fave guitar).

The coolness of my new Centro just keeps kicking me in the ass. Just now I needed to make a vet appointment for my cat. So I googled the vet clinic using the Centro's browser, and noticed that the clinic phone number was a link. With my old phone, I'd have to write it down, add it to my address book, then call it. But just for the hell of it, I clicked the link -- and the Centro not only dialed the number, but added it to the contact list with all the clinic info filled out correctly. That. Fucking. Rocks.

Ok, I'm easily impressed. But this is what technology is supposed to be all about, and seeing so much LAME tech in the world often gets me down. The Centro is... refreshing.

I'm a little annoyed that there's no way to lock both the touchscreen and the keyboard while on a call; but I'm treating that (very minor) issue as an opportunity to learn PalmOS programming.

I also wish I could justify the $40/month cost of the "Phone as Modem" feature, so I could connect to the internet from any old place. But I'd only use that, like, three times a year, so probably not cost-effective. Though it occurs to me that if I could establish an IP connection to the phone from my laptop, writing a little PalmOS app to tunnel connections through the phone (basically using it as a NAT router) might be easy.

I got a new Palm Centro yesterday, to replace my old trusty cellphone, which I sort of dropped [*] while talking to Sprint Customer Support, and cracked the display. The Centro is the first modern PDA I've owned, and it's a pretty sweet little machine. PalmOS, lots of PIM functionality, expandable up to 4GB with a MicroSD card, USB connectivity, BlueTeeth, etc.

HOW-ever. I depended on my trusty old cell to wake me up at 6:30 every morning so I could begin the process of prying my 11-year-old out of bed for school. So after getting the Centro, I spent probably half an hour trying to do this extremely simple thing: set a repeating alarm for 6:30 every weekday morning. Finally I resorted to Google, where I found this post with a bunch of supporting comments basically saying, "oops sorry you can't do that".

It turns out you can set repeating alarms of this sort, and I describe how over the fold.

[*] Dropped kind of, uh, horizontally across the room, when after ten minutes of trying to validate my account information, the Sprint service person tried to tell me that I didn't know the name of my first elementary school. Stupid security questions...

OMG, I cannot believe what a *TOOL* Fox is!

You have to understand, it's extremely unusual for me to turn on the TV. Sometimes I'll watch SNL, or the Daily Show, or Colbert, but in general I ignore the box. I've seen some of MoveOn's "Fox Attacks" spots, which lampoon Fox News, but I didn't really "get it" until recently.

A few days ago, I stopped at my bank to make a deposit over lunch time, and of course there was a line. Also, Fox News was on the 50-inch flatscreen in the lobby, and I had no choice but to take it in. And boy, what a hoot! They were running a story about congress's refusal to grant immunity to the major telecoms for participating in the Bush administration's domestic spying program. I swear, the anchor lady had trouble enunciating clearly because her tongue was so far up Dubya's ass. "If congress refuses to renew this legislation, it will be putting ordinary Americans -- that means YOU and ME -- in danger!" Jeez, play the Scare America card, why dontcha? (Oh wait, I forgot -- the Right's deck doesn't actually *have* any other cards.)

It shocks me that some people not only can take this crap seriously, but actually buy the whole "Fair and Balanced" BS. It is as if everyone has forgotten that we *do* have a right to our privacy (since the Constitution specifically reserves to The People all rights that it does not explicitly grant to a branch of the Federal government or to the states), as well as an explicitly enumerated Constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search.

And you don't get much more unreasonable than the domestic wiretap program. It is as if people think that there is some practical use for the data obtained by wiretapping literally every voice and data stream in the US (the telecoms have already admitted that they tap everything, not just "international calls to known terrorists", as the nice Fox anchor asserted). Who the fuck is going to analyze all this data? How do you know they're not making illicit use of it? Wouldn't it be a lot more efficient use of resources to actually, y'know, keep track of the activities of actual known terrorists? It is as if people think that these BS "anti-terror" provisions have ever actually accomplished anything other than to keep the US population scared and compliant (not to mention dumping billions of dollars into the coffers of the corporations chosen to implement these boondoggles).

War is Peace.
Love is Hate.

Meh.

Over the holidays, I discussed with some atheist friends the question: what would it take to make a believer out of me? What experience could I have that would convince me that some sort of divine presence inhabited the world? More specifically, what could convince me that the Biblical God exists?

Read on for the surprise ending!

Willam Rivers Pitt says this on Truthout:

"Libby was part of a White House plot to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose early criticism of the administration's Iraq claims were deemed a grave threat to the policy. The White House attacked Wilson by exposing his wife, Valerie Plame, as a deep-cover CIA operative. This exposure destroyed the intelligence network she had created to track any person, nation or group that might give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Libby lied under oath and obstructed justice to cover up these White House activities, and to protect Vice President Dick Cheney from scrutiny and censure for his direct role in the plot." (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070307R.shtml)

He's not the only one. Many sources are saying, in so many words, that the Bush administration and its lackeys have _broken the law_. Many are saying they've undermined the Constitution of the US, _which they are sworn to defend_. (The VP isn't part of the Executive branch? Come ON, people! Pull the other one, it's got bells on.)

I don't see _anyone_ defending any of them. I don't even see them defending themselves. Why might that be? Seems to me, if these nincompoops weren't guilty of what they're being accused, slander suits would be flying all over creation. They can't sue anyone, of course, because that would require them to present actual evidence that they're innocent.

This is a reaction to Michael Yon's latest dispatch from Iraq, here: http://michaelyon-online.com/wp/bless-the-beasts-and-children.htm

I am no longer quite so certain about cause and effect, when it comes to Muslim (or Christian) fundamentalism and terrorism. I'm an atheist, and a fan of Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. But I'm beginning to think that faith itself is not a cause of such lunacy as Yon describes, but rather an enabler. A faith that sorts the world into black-and-white categories, and sanctions the most horrible acts in defense of the white, must powerfully attract psychotic personalities. Which doesn't mean religion doesn't contribute to much of the world's nastiness. It's probably a wash, amplifying both positive and negative tendencies in different individuals.

Still, a worldview that denies the evidence of one's own senses and valorizes fairy tales probably contributes more craziness than reason to the world, on the whole.

I think a copy of Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation ought to be available, for free, to anyone who wants one; but especially to children. We probably can't do much to change the ideas of millions of religious adults, but we certainly ought to expose as many children as possible to the idea that their parents might just possibly be delusional lunatics when it comes to the idea of "god". Planting that idea in the minds of as many kids as possible is the one thing that I think might avert a future religious-ideology-driven apocalypse.

I just wanted to mention that my absolute favorite record of all time, without any real competition other than a couple of other albums in the same artist's ouvre, is The Dreaming, by Kate Bush.

Apparently a lot of people, even Kate's fans, don't particularly like that record. I'll admit that on first listen, it was a bit off-putting, but having heard it several hundred times now, it would definitely be the record I'd choose to take with me to a desert island, if I could only choose one.

On another day, I might choose Kate's Hounds of Love or Aerial as my favorite record, but today (and most days) it's The Dreaming.