UPDATE: Why Isn't Anyone Talking About the iTunes v7 Debacle?

I did some searching around and did manage to find some reports on Apple's problems with iTunes v7 and the putative fix. However, these stories are not appearing in major publications. So, the point is still relevant: folks have spent big bucks for songs on iTunes and hundreds of dollars for iPods. So, it would be nice if Apple could take this problem seriously.

Here is a story on the problem from at least one major paper, the Sydney Morning Herald:

Apple slips out iTunes fix

Louisa Hearn

September 28, 2006 - 2:23PM

Apple quietly rolled out an upgrade to the iTunes 7 music store software overnight to address a wide range of performance issues widely cited by iPod users since its release in mid September.

The latest release of iTunes was originally described by Apple as "the most significant enhancement ... since it debuted in 2001", but the company's own discussion forums have since been plagued with user complaints about poor sound quality, skipping tracks and navigation issues.

Apple says on its website that version 7.0.1 will address "stability and performance issues with Cover Flow, CD importing, iPod syncing, and more".

Hundreds of individual threads on Apple's forums have documented a broad range of technical issues with the original version of iTunes 7, some of which the company has attempted to address in the troubleshooting section of its website.

In the hours following the release of version 7.0.1, users have been busy posting their responses to the upgrade on Apple's threads.

One of the most recent discussions that posed the question: "Does 7.0.1 update solve your problem?" received mixed replies.

"No! I installed it. I then went ahead and played a song in the party shuffle mode. It played one song and then crashed. I've been a loyal Apple customer for over 25 years. This really is more than frustrating," wrote one iPod user.

"I'd continue to hold off on 7.0.1. Ever after repairing permissions I still get very static laden playback from iTunes and random crashes," said another.

Another user, frustrated with the inability to display the iPod Shuffle's playlist, conceded that, otherwise, things were working well.

"Everything was working for me in 7.0 and it all continues to work in 7.0.1 ... maybe a bit better when it comes to smoothness in CoverFlow displays and stepping between different modules in iTunes," he said.

The new iTunes download is available from apple.com.au.

Why Isn't Anyone Talking About the iTunes v7 Debacle?

There must be millions of people running Apple's iTunes on their pc's. So, why isn't there any coverage (at least to my knowledge) of the total mess Apple has made with the new version of iTunes?

I downloaded the new v7 and immediately had problems synching my iPod. After a couple of days, I went on Apple's iTunes forum and saw that there were beaucoup posts on problems with v7. However, despite so much hate and discontent, some media outlets would have picked up on the commotion. If they did, it escaped my attention.

Today, when I opened iTunes, I got the message that a new version of iTunes was available (v7.0.1). This time I did not download it, but instead checked the iTunes forum to see what folks were saying (and boy do I wish I had checked those forums before installing v7).

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

There were lots more posts slamming v7.1 as either doing nothing or making problems worse:

"I had terrible playback problems with 7.0, got it working pretty much OK. Now I have 7.0.1 and the problem is baaaack!"

"I didn't experience this problem until I updated to the latest version. "

I think I'll just sit tight and wait this one out.

Two Jabs for the Price of One

Here is an interesting piece from the New York Sun's blog, 'It Shines for All'. (I like how they manage to mention the anti-Semitism of the U.N. and the surrender monkey nature of the French in the same post!)

Israeli and U.N. Tanks in Face-Off

"UN and Israeli tanks have been involved in a brief face-off on a road in southern Lebanon where the Israeli army has been setting up checkpoints," Reuters reports (via littlegreenfootballs.com).

Four French Leclerc tanks with UN peacekeepers moved up the hill to stand 500 meters (yards) from the entrance to the border village of Marwaheen, as two Israeli Merkava tanks operated nearby on Lebanese soil.

Standing some 50 meters from each other, the tanks were locked in a 20-minute face-off, the first between the Israeli army and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which has been boosted to oversee the current truce.

The French tanks then withdrew from the area, as observers of the UN Truce Supervision Organisation deployed in the area.

Just this morning we noted the news that the U.N. was failing to disarm Hezbollah. We wrote:

What a surprise, U.N. peacekeepers fail in their mission. At least they're not openly aiding Hezbollah ... yet.

Well now they are. Only this time the (French) U.N. soldiers retreated.

More on the Clinton Fox News "Smackdown"

I went on the Democratic Underground*this evening to see what they had to say about Bubba's Fox News performance. Boy, is that a weird site -- folks there definitely in liberal mootbat land. Anyway, here's the most recent post re the Clinton interview. (*far left (as in lunatic fringe) liberal blog)

DeepModem Mom (1000+ posts)

Mon Sep-25-06 08:01 PM Original message

CLINTON MAY HAVE FREAKED ON FOX, BUT HE KILLED ON YOUTUBE!

Edited on Mon Sep-25-06 08:17 PM by DeepModem Mom NYT "Screens" blog, by Virginia Heffernan September 25, 2006, 1:06 pm Clinton Cleans FOX’s Clock . . . on YouTube! While Howie Kurtz and Drudge get all OMG and eye-rolling, and tell us that Bill Clinton was some kind of American Idol flop on FOX yesterday, they totally miss the point. Clinton may have freaked out on FOX, but on YouTube, he killed. He cleaned the FOX clock. (UPDATE: YouTube removed the video. Here’s another link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=902612071699997... ) It was a perfect three-minute aria of fury: Gore-like (heh) in its understanding of the third screen, the insta-fury, the clip fit, the sheen of spontaneity and socking it to the cable prigs live. Drudge called Clinton “purple-faced,” because he wasn’t cool in a cool medium — television. But YouTube isn’t a cool medium. In fact, YouTube uploaders, who started and ended the clip their own way, had their own names for the performance: “Bill Clinton Smacks Down Fox News,” “President Clinton Fights Back” and “Bill Clinton Kicks the Crap Out of Fox News.” Hey, politicians: on YouTube, where an interview isn’t buffered by 24 hours of FOX spin and right-wing talking points, ideological saturation is no longer the goal. An explosion of emotion is what online video is all about....Clinton has somehow mastered the bright, short words and menacing, iconic lurches that work as bursts of flavor on YouTube. He also knows how to curse without cursing. Check it out: “a bunch of bull . . . move your bones . . . wag the dog . . . battle plans . . . a Muslim warlord . . . not a living soul . . . nice little conservative hit job.”...And he said he tried to get bin Laden, tried to kill-kill kill bin Laden, and read Dick Clarke’s book and you’ll see what he did, and FOX and all the double-standard right-wing smirkers can just kiss his grits.... http://screens.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=81#more-81

Refresh | 9 Recommendations

I'm still trying to figure out how Bubba was a "flop" on Fox, but somehow "killed" Fox and "cleaned their clock" on YouTube. Um, excuse me 'DeepModem Mom', how could that be? -- it was the same interview. You see, people Tivo'd the interview from Fox and uploaded it to YouTube. So, apart from editing the video, whether you saw the interview on Fox or YouTube, you were seeing the same thing. So, unless you're taking some powerful anti-psychotic meds (or maybe failing to take those meds!) it's not really possible to "lose" in one forum and "win" when a tape of the loss is played in another forum. (Just an fyi).

Oh, and what's with the upside down American flag icon? I guess that's your way of "speaking truth to power". I bet you've got a cool T-shirt like that too -- do you wear it when your Che Guevara T-shirt's in the wash?

'Nuff Said

"His inner Gollum was visible beneath a roiling rage"

Good article on Real Clear Politics by Kathleen Parker re the different takes on Bubba's Fox News interview. I was a little surprised when I looked up the interview on YouTube because a number of the hits had descriptions like "Bill Clinton Smacks Down Fox News" or "Bill Clinton exposed [Fox News] for their obvious right-wing slant". Amazing, I thought. When I first saw the interview, my take was that Clinton had a meltdown because he was not used to being asked tough questions; he was used to slobbering softball questions from an adoring media.

On YouTube and the blogosphere, however, they were gleeful. They saw the interview as Clinton giving a poke in the eye to the "despicable" and "biased" Fox News network. Kathleen Parker does a good job of dissecting the truth from the spin (and self-delusion). Here's an excerpt, but check out the whole article here:

Clinton, we are constantly told, is immensely charming and charismatic. Narcissists usually are. Their social and political success is owing to their ability to project what people want to see. Friends and foe agree that few are better at this than Clinton.

But narcissists also become enraged when things don't go their way, when the attention they covet is diverted. Experience tells us, too, that manipulators are always contemptuous of those they manipulate.

Tagged by MK

I was checking the blogs of various family and friends today and noted that I had been "tagged" by MK. (BTW, MK is a wonderful young lady and a terrific artist -- check out her blog, Echoes of Creation, here)

Here goes:

1. A Place You've Visited and Your Favorite Thing there

It's a toss-up between some good options, but since I have to make a decision, I'd have to say Yosemite. When we went there, I had heard so much about it that I was expecting a let down. Nope. Advance hype is still insufficient to dampen the Wow factor when you enter the park and get that view into Yosemite Valley.

2. A Country You'd Like to Visit and Why
Ephesus, Turkey. I'd love to visit the house near Ephesus where the Blessed Virgin lived after she left Jerusalem.









3. A Place From History You'd Like to Visit and Why
The Holy Land while Christ delivered the Sermon on the Mount. What a powerful experience it must have been -- the Lord was abolishing the old Law and establishing the New.



4. A Place You Know a Lot About
Chicago. In it's own way, it can be a pretty interesting place.

(BTW, my office is the white building on the middle left side of this picture.)










5. A Place You'd Like to Learn More About
Virginia. So much of our country's history took place there. I was driving near (I think) Staunton, VA once and saw a historical marker for a battleground. I said to my coworker, who was a native Virginian, "there's a Civil War battlefied near here". "No", he said, that's a battlefield from the Revolutionary War.





6. A Fictional Place You'd Like to Visit
I think Edoras in the land of Rohan would be a pretty cool place to visit

The Sewer that is our Culture

There are many folks who've written about the depravity of our culture much more eloquently and intellectually than I'm able to -- but I have to throw in my 2 cents here.

I was on the train home today and passed a billboard advertising the new DVD version of the Little Mermaid movie. OK, no big deal. The Little Mermaid is just another in the long line of wholesome, family-friendly movies Disney has made for decades -- right?

Wrong.

Somewhere along the way, Disney, like so many of our cultural institutions, went wrong. Instead of providing wholesome family entertainment, they started promoting the hyper-sexualized, virtually pornographic, images that so permeate our culture. This is what I mean.

I don't think of myself as a prude, but is it really necessary for the viewers of this movie -- young boys and girls -- to have the main character so "figuratively" endowed (if you get my drift) and to have that figure displayed so prominently?

I started thinking of this change in Disney characters and did a little browsing this evening. The difference between recent Disney characters and the classic Disney characters is pretty striking. Here is another recent character, "Jasmine".

Compare these two buxom characters -- with their skimpy bikini tops -- to three of the classic Disney characters, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty below.

Do we really need to be exposing innocent young children to these kind of sexualized images?

Joking Lawyers (not Lawyer Jokes)

I know this may come as a bit of a surprise, but lawyers actually have great senses of humor (look at me -- I'm a lawyer and I think my jokes are hilarious :-)

In my office, they have a legal newsletter with a regular feature introducing new members of the legal team. They have a number of standard questions, one of which is:

"What's the one thing you wish all lawyers knew?"

Here's a great answer from one of our new lawyers:

How to abstain from sesquipedalian tendencies, such that they circumlocute the deployment of protracted, polysyllabic, ponderous, latinate and iterative phraseology, thereby curtailing and abating the exigency for endeavor, travail and application on the part of the recipient to determine the import and intimation intended by the purveyor of the advisement. (Keep it short and sweet!)

Clinton's "Spin" Out of Control

Here is a great op-ed from, of all places, the LA Times on Clinton's temper tantrum on Fox News last Sunday. This piece is so good, I'm going to post it in its entirety.

Clinton Doth Protest Too Much

The ex-president's tirade on Fox News reveals a politician insisting on a legacy he doesn't deserve.

By Andrew Klavan
Novelist ANDREW KLAVAN's latest book is "Damnation Street." He can be reached at andrewklavan.com.

September 26, 2006

THERE'S NO LIMIT to what a man can do," President Reagan used to say, " … if he doesn't care who gets the credit."

Former President Clinton's motto seems to be a little different: "There's no limit to how much credit a man can get, if he doesn't care what he's actually done."

Reagan came to office after the Jimmy Carter catastrophe. He pulled the American economy out of a graveyard spin, restored the country's military and its confidence and helped bring one of the most oppressive empires on Earth to the brink of collapse. But in those days, my children, there was no Internet, no Fox News, no Rush Limbaugh — the media was almost all Colmes and precious little Hannity — and if you got your news from the New York Times, say, or CBS, you would've thought the country was being run by a miserly, warmongering idiot instead of the greatest president of the century's second half.

And yet even after his two terms were over, when left-wing news sources sourly continued to portray his administration solely in terms of its faults, as nothing but a big deficit and the Iran-Contra scandal, I cannot remember Reagan ever "defending his legacy" with anything more than a quip and a smile.

Compare and contrast Clinton. Questioned mildly on his anti-terrorism record by Fox's Chris Wallace on Sunday, President Me went absolutely medieval on the newsman, leaning forward threateningly, rapping his fingers against Wallace's notes and proceeding to, well, lie — and in a very angry voice too!

"And you got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever," Clinton told Wallace, sounding for all the world like a 6-year-old girl scolding her playground rival. He then proceeded to try to rewrite his coulda-woulda-shoulda presidency by claiming to have had a much more focused and hard-lined approach to terrorism than any reading of his administration can support. Even Clinton counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke's book — which Clinton cited repeatedly during his tantrum — shows the president as too weak to order Osama bin Laden's death. Other accounts are much less favorable.

But let the political observers fight that one out. My beat is human psychology and the nature of reality and fiction. It's in those realms that at least one key difference between Reagan and Clinton can be found — a difference that sits at the heart of our current divisions.

Reagan was a man who believed in truth. Not your truth or my truth but "the truth," the one that is out there whether you happen to believe in it or not.

"I never thought of myself as a great man," he said, "just a man committed to great ideas." Those ideas — our founders' ideas — were great because they recognized a central truth: the good of individual liberty. And they guaranteed human beings those rights endowed in them by the "big truth" — their creator.

Clinton, on the other hand, is a narcissist who finds it difficult to grasp in any real sense that there is a place where his "inner man" ends and the rest of the world begins. Clinton's stock phrase, "I feel your pain," is really the insistence of a man who does not truly feel anyone else's pain, does not truly understand that there are other inner realities as urgent as his own.

Take Clinton's misuse of women. One way to understand it is as a symptom of his inability to come to terms with anything that would not conform to his own desire, imagination and grandiose sense of himself.

To put it in his own terms, Clinton has never understood what the meaning of "is" is, the fact that some things happened and others didn't, that some things are true and others simply are not. He believes that his legacy will be created in the spin cycle of history rather than in the fitful but persistent human search for history's truth.

Of course he panics and rages like a child when the spin goes the wrong way, when he is given his portion of the blame for encouraging Bin Laden through his military retreat from Somalia or for allowing the terrorist to escape by refusing to put a kill order on him.

He thinks reality itself is being wrestled away from him, that he can wrestle it back and mold it into the shape he wants it to have.

But he's wrong. That's just "is" being is. That's just "truth" bearing away the victory.

McSweeney and Bean Necking

Oops, I mean neck and neck -- as in the poll for the Houses seat for the Illinois 8th on Real Clear Politics shows Bean at 48% and McSweeney at 45%, with 7% undecided.

This race is of particular interest to me as I live in the 8th district. However, this race is also being closely watched nationally as it has traditionally been a "safe" conservative district. That was, until 2004, when long-time incumbent Phil Crane took Bean for granted and lost it.

In fact, this race was also the highlight of a front-page story in a Wall Street Journal last week where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is covering their bets and funneling campaign contributions to Democrats -- including $700k to Bean.

Well Said

I thoroughly enjoyed the commotion Bubba caused with his tirade on Fox News. I've been checking blogs and news sites for comment on it and found this piece from Powerline to be the best summary of the situation.

Quite a defense

Byron York exposes the pathetic nature of former president Clinton's defense of his failure to take out Osama bin Laden. Clinton rests his defense on Richard Clarke's book: "All I’m asking is if anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book." But even in Clarke's pro-Clinton account, the former president comes across as hopelessly unserious. Here's how Clarke sums things up:

Because of the intensity of the political opposition that Clinton engendered, he had been heavily criticized for bombing al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, for engaging in ‘Wag the Dog’ tactics to divert attention from a scandal about his personal life. For similar reasons, he could not fire the recalcitrant FBI Director who had failed to fix the Bureau or to uncover terrorists in the United States. He had given the CIA unprecedented authority to go after bin Laden personally and al Qaeda, but had not taken steps when they did little or nothing. Because Clinton was criticized as a Vietnam War opponent without a military record, he was limited in his ability to direct the military to engage in anti-terrorist commando operations they did not want to conduct. He had tried that in Somalia, and the military had made mistakes and blamed him. In the absence of a bigger provocation from al Qaeda to silence his critics, Clinton thought he could do no more.

So Clinton, who was quite popular by 1996 and remained popular even through the impeachment process, was unwilling to use his political capital to murder a man who was already responsible for killing Americans and who was known to be plotting to kill many more. Sure, presidents are expected to take tough and unpopular action from time to time, but pushing the bureucracy to kill the world's leading terrorist was asking too much from Clinton.

The pro-Clinton Richard Clarke has managed to capture in a paragraph why Clinton, despite his enormous gifts, was unfit for high office, and why President Bush deserves credit for being willing to push the bureaucracy, ignore partisan criticism, and make the tough calls.

"We Still Need Him Here"

A Paragon Rising above the Madness

by Rick Reilly for Sports Illustrated
March 14, 2000

On Tuesday the best man I know will do what he always does on the 21st of the month. He'll sit down and pen a love letter to his best girl. He'll say how much he misses her and loves her and can't wait to see her again. Then he'll fold it once, slide it in a little envelope and walk into his bedroom. He'll go to the stack of love letters sitting there on her pillow, untie the yellow ribbon, place the new one on top and tie the ribbon again.

The stack will be 180 letters high then, because Tuesday is 15 years to the day since Nellie, his beloved wife of 53 years, died. In her memory, he sleeps only on his half of the bed, only on his pillow, only on top of the sheets, never between, with just the old bedspread they shared to keep him warm.

There's never been a finer man in American sports than John Wooden, or a finer coach. He won 10 NCAA basketball championships at UCLA, the last in 1975. Nobody has ever come within six of him. He won 88 straight games between Jan. 30, 1971, and Jan. 17, 1974. Nobody has come within 42 since.

So, sometimes, when the Madness of March gets to be too much -- too many players trying to make SportsCenter, too few players trying to make assists, too many coaches trying to be homeys, too few coaches willing to be mentors, too many freshmen with out-of-wedlock kids, too few freshmen who will stay in school long enough to become men -- I like to go see Coach Wooden. I visit him in his little condo in Encino, 20 minutes northwest of L.A., and hear him say things like "Gracious sakes alive!" and tell stories about teaching "Lewis" the hook shot. Lewis Alcindor, that is. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

There has never been another coach like Wooden, quiet as an April snow and square as a game of checkers; loyal to one woman, one school, one way; walking around campus in his sensible shoes and Jimmy Stewart morals. He'd spend a half hour the first day of practice teaching his men how to put on a sock. "Wrinkles can lead to blisters," he'd warn. These huge players would sneak looks at one another and roll their eyes. Eventually, they'd do it right. "Good," he'd say. "And now for the other foot."

Of the 180 players who played for him, Wooden knows the whereabouts of 172. Of course, it's not hard when most of them call, checking on his health, secretly hoping to hear some of his simple life lessons so that they can write them on the lunch bags of their kids, who will roll their eyes. "Discipline yourself, and others won't need to," Coach would say. "Never lie, never cheat, never steal," Coach would say. "Earn the right to be proud and confident."

You played for him, you played by his rules: Never score without acknowledging a teammate. One word of profanity, and you're done for the day. Treat your opponent with respect.

He believed in hopelessly out-of-date stuff that never did anything but win championships. No dribbling behind the back or through the legs. "There's no need," he'd say. No UCLA basketball number was retired under his watch. "What about the fellows who wore that number before? Didn't they contribute to the team?" he'd say. No long hair, no facial hair. "They take too long to dry, and you could catch cold leaving the gym," he'd say.

That one drove his players bonkers. One day, All-America center Bill Walton showed up with a full beard. "It's my right," he insisted. Wooden asked if he believed that strongly. Walton said he did. "That's good, Bill," Coach said. "I admire people who have strong beliefs and stick by them, I really do. We're going to miss you." Walton shaved it right then and there. Now Walton calls once a week to tell Coach he loves him.

It's always too soon when you have to leave the condo and go back out into the real world, where the rules are so much grayer and the teams so much worse. As Wooden shows you to the door, you take one last look around. The framed report cards of the great-grandkids. The boxes of jelly beans peeking out from under the favorite wooden chair. The dozens of pictures of Nellie.

He's almost 90 now, you think. A little more hunched over than last time. Steps a little smaller. You hope it's not the last time you see him. He smiles. "I'm not afraid to die," he says. "Death is my only chance to be with her again."

Problem is, we still need him here.

Health Tip: Coffee May Be a Healthy Way to Start Your Day
Rich in antioxidants that can protect against heart disease

(HealthDay News) -- Your morning cup of java may be one of the healthiest beverages in your diet, as more studies show the health benefits of coffee.

Two cups a day of coffee may promote heart health, decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, and reduce leg pain related to exercise in many people, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Researchers have also been investigating the possibility that coffee could protect against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The beverage is one of the richest sources of antioxidants in the American diet.

The USDA says the levels and benefits of antioxidants seem to be equal in both caffeinated and non-caffeinated coffees. However, watch your intake of cream and sugar, as well as mixed coffee drinks that may be high in calories and sugar.

-- Diana Kohnle

Arrr, Ya Scurvy Dog ...

Ye forgot yesterday was Talk Like a Pirate Day.

It'll be the same day next year matey -- so, don't be forgettin'!

Here's how the whole mess started. Hardy, har har.

Arrrrr! Talk like a pirate -- or prepare to be boarded
Dave Barry

Every now and then, some visionary individuals come along with a concept that is so original and so revolutionary that your immediate reaction is: "Those individuals should be on medication.''

Today I want to tell you about two such people, John Baur and Mark Summers, who have come up with a concept that is going to make you kick yourself for not thinking of it first: Talk Like a Pirate Day. As the name suggests, this is a day on which everybody would talk like a pirate. Is that a great idea, or what? There are so many practical benefits that I can't even begin to list them all.

Baur and Summers came up with this idea a few years ago. They were playing racquetball, and, as so often happens, they began talking like pirates. And then it struck them: Why not have a day when EVERYBODY talks like a pirate? They decided that the logical day would be Sept. 19, because that -- as you are no doubt aware -- is Summers' ex-wife's birthday.

Since then, Baur and Summers have made a near-superhuman effort to promote Talk Like a Pirate Day. As Baur puts it: "We've talked like pirates, and encouraged our several friends to, every Sept. 19, except for a couple where we forgot.''

And yet, incredibly, despite this well-orchestrated campaign, the nation has turned a deaf shoulder to Talk Like a Pirate Day. In desperation, Baur and Summers turned to me for help. As an influential newspaper columnist, I have the power to ''make or break'' a national day. You may recall that almost nobody celebrated Thanksgiving until I began writing about it in the 1970s.

I have given Baur's and Summers' idea serious thought, looking for ways to improve it. One variation I considered was Talk Like a Member of the Lollipop Guild Day, on which everybody would talk like the three Munchkins in the film version of The Wizard of Oz who welcome Dorothy to Munchkin Land by singing with one corner of their mouths drooping down, as though they have large invisible dental suction devices hanging from their lips. But I realized that would be stupid.

So I have decided to throw my full support behind Talk Like a Pirate Day, to be observed this Sept. 19. To help promote this important cause, I have decided to seek the endorsement of famous celebrities, and I am pleased to report that, as of today, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Britney Spears, Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, the Osbournes, Tiger Woods, Ted Koppel, the Sopranos, Puff Doody and the late Elvis Presley are all people who I hope will read this column and become big supporters. I see no need to recruit President Bush, because he already talks like a pirate, as we can see from this transcript of a recent White House press conference:

REPORTER: Could you please explain either your foreign or your domestic policy?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Arrrrr.

To prepare for Talk Like a Pirate Day, you should practice incorporating pirate terminology into your everyday speech. For example, let's consider a typical conversation between two co-workers in a business office:

BOB: Hi. Mary.

MARY: Hi, Bob. Have you had a chance to look at the Fennerman contract?

BOB: Yes, and I have some suggestions.

MARY: OK, I'll review them.

Now let's see how this same conversation would sound on Talk Like a Pirate Day:

BOB: Avast, me beauty.

MARY: Avast, Bob. Is that a yardarm in your doubloons, or are you just glad to see me?

BOB: You are giving me the desire to haul some keel.

MARY: Arrrrr.

As you can see, talking like a pirate will infuse your everyday conversations with romance and danger. So join the movement! On Sept. 19, do not answer the phone with ''hello.'' Answer the phone with ''Ahoy me hearty!'' If the caller objects that he is not a hearty, inform him that he is a scurvy dog (or, if the caller is female, a scurvy female dog) who will be walking the plank off the poop deck and winding up in Davy Jones' locker, sleeping with the fishes. No, wait, that would be Talk Like a Pirate in The Godfather Day, which is another variation I considered ("I'm gonna make him an offer that will shiver his timbers'').

But the point is, this is a great idea, and you, me bucko, should be part of it. Join us on Sept. 19. You HAVE the buckles, darn it: Don't be afraid to swash them! Let's make this into a grass-roots movement that sweeps the nation, like campaign-finance reform, or Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I truly think this idea could bring us, as a nation, closer together.

But not TOO much closer. Some of us will have swords.

Good Point

Ralph Peters, via the Patriot Post:

“The biggest story since 9/11 is that there hasn’t been an other 9/11. According to our hysterical media culture, everything’s always going wrong. The truth is that we’ve gotten the big things right... Does that mean everything’s perfect? Of course not... [S]ome terrorists will manage to hit us again. But if attempt No. 500 succeeds, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth stopping the other 499. Yet, after the next attack, we’ll hear no end of trash-talk about how the War on Terror ‘failed’.” —Ralph Peters

Proving the Point

This picture is so full of irony that I suspect that it may be faked. Even if it is, however, it does succinctly capture the point: Muslims are outraged that someone may have criticized their faith as being violent. How do they respond? With protests, riots, and threats of murder and violence. Hmm.


Follow-up: I did some checking and the photo is indeed fake (see below). It was an authentic picture, but has been "photoshopped" to revise the text of the poster. That being said, the picture does accurately portray the inherent irony and hypocricy of these Islamic facists. As Dan Rather would say, the picture is "fake, but accurate".

A man was stopped by a game warden in Northern Minnesota recently with two buckets of fish leaving a lake well known for its fishing. The game warden asked the man, “Do you have a license to catch those fish?”

The man replied, “No, sir. These are my pet fish.”

“Pet fish?!” the warden said.

“Yes, sir. Every night I take these fish down to the lake and let them swim around for a while. I whistle and they jump back into their buckets, and I take em home.”

“That’s a bunch of hooey! Fish can’t do that!”

The man looked at the game warden for a moment, and then said, “Here, I’ll show you. It really works.”

“O.K. I’ve GOT to see this!” the game warden replied.

The man poured the fish into the water and stood and waited. After several minutes, the game warden turned to the man and said, “Well?”

“Well, what?” the man asked.

“When are you going to call them back?” the game warden prompted.

“Call who back?” the man asked.

“The FISH.”

“What fish?” the man asked.

The Pope Should Apologize ...

... right after Muslim leaders come out and condemn and apologize for encouraging and inciting all the violence, murder and other atrocities that have been committed against non-Muslims and even against Muslims.

I Know this Guy ... Doesn't He Play for the Saints?

Reunion of Good Friends

Saw this picture the other day and wondered what their reunion in Heaven must've been like.

Never Forget

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.
And may perpetual light shine upon them.
May the souls of the faithfully departed
through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Amen.

Rush on CBS

Interesting Comparisons between Muslims and Israelis

Got this in my e-mail today.

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000, or 20% of the world population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1990 - Elias James Corey
1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics:
(none)

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

**************************************************************

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000, or about 0.02% of the world population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charle s Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
199o - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abra ham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewi

The Jews are not promoting brain washing the children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims.

The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.

If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.

Fond Memories