John Moltz

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You'll just have to find other ways to amuse yourself.

Boggles the mind

The death toll in Asia is approaching 60,000.

My brother and I agreed to exchange charitable donations this year instead of buying Christmas presents and, what with everything going on chez me, I still hadn't gotten to it. Now I know where to give.

What's up with Johnny?

I promised some programming notes and, as I've posted the mildly humorous CARS version, here's the real skinny for those of you in the know.

On Thursday, my wife and I are winging our way to China where we will spend a few days sight seeing in Beijing and Xi'an before we got to Chengdu to meet our son.

Yep, after 15 months of processing, we're adopting a boy from China who turns one tomorrow. We didn't try to have kids on our own (although we practice a lot) - we just decided that we wanted to do it this way. I'm not going to blog the whole thing, but I think there are some aspects that you might find interesting.

Like, what does one wear to meet one's son for the first time?

Um...

I don't know, actually. I was hoping one of you would know. Khakis and a shirt are always nice. Is that good? See, I don't know what he'll be wearing so I don't want to look too dressed up. I don't want him to feel bad.

What to pack is becoming something of a dilemma. Beijing will creep up into the mid-30s while we're there, but Guangzhou, where we leave from, will be in the mid-70s.

I'm currently prepping my travel laptop, a 12-inch G3 900 MHz iBook, with all the essentials, including some old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. My regular iron is a 1 GHz G4 Titanium PowerBook, but it's dicey trying to use it in coach and the iBook is lighter and more durable.

If Internet access is good, I'll provide some updates and maybe even some pictures, but I'm planning on turning comments off tomorrow as I don't care to be knee-deep in comment spam when I get back.

Wish us luck!

Indeedily-oh, blogarinos!

Jesse Taylor notices how conservative blogs are more of a, well, circle jerk than liberal blogs. In general, I think liberal blogs try to actually add something to the commentary if they link to a post on another blog - either by way of support or contradiction. Glenn Reynolds can spend the whole day "Indeed"-ing his way through ten or twenty posts. Reynolds also does not offer comments on his site, so if anyone wants to comment they have to do so on their site, driving up links to him and, conveniently, making sure there are no uncomfortable facts or critiques that run counter to his thesis ("Indeed.") right there below the post.

The circle jerk reaches full frenzy when Glenn then links to Little Green Footballs which had linked to his post and "Indeeds" their "Indeed" of his original "Indeed."

Finally, they all lie back and enjoy a nice smoke.

Conservative blogging - link with full release.

(And this is not just an "Indeed" of the Pandagon post. See, I added that bit about comments and a disgusting sexual metaphor that is guaranteed to stick with you for the rest of the day.)

AAAAGH!!! MY EYES!!!

Here to ruin your Christmas, via Tom Tomorrow, it's the Holy Grail of crap, the Star Wars Holiday Special.

But what shocked me the most about it is that the most horrible holiday special ever contains what must be the genesis of Apple's highly successful iPod ad campaign!

Check it out...

And it's quite possible that the whole thing was in turn inspired by gay porn because... dude... that microphone...

Merry Christmas

Personally, I'm celebrating Christmas by using an entire bison, much like the native Americans celebrated Christmas.

Um...

Actually, I'm not using a whole bison, but I do have a bison pot roast marinating in red wine, onion, garlic, and olive oil and my wife got me some shoes made out of bison leather.

Frankly, while I like the idea of using the whole animal, I'm glad I'm not sitting around on Christmas day trying to figure out what to do with the ears or the anus. That would be weird.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'll have some programming notes in the coming days. It's a big year ahead of us chez Moltz.

I hope this morning finds you all happy, healthy and in the company of those you love.

What did you do in the great Social Security War, grampa?

Bush plans to spend hordes of taxpayer money next year trying to convince taxpayers that they should gamble with their futures.

But this is winnable as long as you don't play his game. Here's how this can play out:

BUSH: Social Security is in crisis! Your only hope is to put all your money on red and let the big wheel spin! Quickly! You may not get a second chance!

DEMOCRATS: President Bush is looking to kill Social Security. He doesn't care if your last days are spent coughing up blood in a homeless shelter somewhere, he wants to get rid of your safety net. Instead of spending money to fund a big party for Wall Street brokers, let's just fund the system.

Republicans even fear they're vulnerable on this.

The ball is in the Democrats' court. Josh Marshall has been keeping track of which ones are likely to sell out the American people.

This is unequivocal. Democrats cannot support the destruction of Social Security.

$&#^$%#^&#&#!!!!

Good news: my copy of The Return of the King Extended Edition arrived today from Amazon.

Bad news: it had TWO "Part 1" disks and no "Part 2" disks.

Gaaaaaaahhhhhh.....

Baseball? In December?

A day after throwing too much money and too many years at Richie Sexson, the Mariners reportedly have signed Adrian Beltre to a great deal.

Meanwhile, looks like the Nationals' deal with D.C. is on the rocks.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

Josh Marshall tells Democrats what they must do in order to have a chance at thwarting Bush's desire to destroy social security in the coming years.

It's a good read and pardon me if I fear our current crop of elected Democrats isn't up to the task.

Get your post-election war on

The first Get Your War On since the election (despite the post dates, I've been checking and there hasn't been anything at this link anyway).

No excuses

Here's a great answer to those who, like the Stork in Animal House, would ask "Well, what the hell are we supposed ta do, ya mor-on?"

The money shot from Digby: when health care reform was shot down with the help from the Harry and Louise ad...

... the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate and the Presidency...

Can we put that to rest now?

Anybody still think the Democratic Party needs to move to the center?

Amazing

You know, it kind of damages your point about how blogs are not responsible when you change the online version of your story without posting a correction.

This is something I find fascinating about big media on the Internet. They know that if a mistake was made, they have to issue a correction for a story that appeared in print or on TV, but it's as if when they discovered the Internet they decided that rule didn't apply there. Hey, we can just change it! Forget about all those people that have already read it! It's no big deal! No harm, no foul!

They do this all the time.

Blogging etiquette dictates that when you change a post, you note what was changed. All of the good blogs do this. How is it the professionals feel self-righteous enough to criticize bloggers when their standards are more lax than ours?

He's got my vote - again

I don't pretend to know a lot about the deep machinations that make successful political campaigns, but it sure doesn't seem like the people currently in charge of the Democratic party know a heck of a lot more than I do.

I like what I see of this Dean guy.

I think it's time for some new ideas.

Ooh, it's Mr. Big Shot Writer

Yep. I'm happy to announce that I've got a paying gig writing for Macworld magazine.

Yay, me.

How to fight and why we must.

I had started a lengthy post keyed off this Tom Tomorrow cartoon. I was trying to talk about how we can fight back without losing our self respect, but it was going nowhere. Then I read this post on Hullabaloo, linked to by Ezra Klein at Pandagon.

Digby was succintly able to get to the point I was trying to make:

Go for the gut, not the head.

Joseph Campbell talked about the need for ceremony, the need to belong. As progressives and "free thinkers" we value open dialog, questioning authority and challenging the status quo. Those are admirable qualities, but so are the spirit of kinship, loyalty and conviction in your beliefs. We need to re-learn how to talk in those terms.

To wrap up, read this post on the Left Coaster, to remind yourself what we're fighting. It's disturbing and important.