Misty gave birth to my neice, Mirabelle Zander Soldwisch, yesterday around 4:30 am.  Mira is 8 ounces and 20 inches in length (height?).

She's very cute, making these little "eh eh eh" noises while sleeping.

Yesterday, the new Dave Matthews Band CD, "Stand Up", came out, so I picked it up at Best Buy.  Unfortunately, I don't think it's as good as the CDs of the past, but that's actually an aside to this entry.

I rarely use my CD player anymore - in fact, I typically buy a CD, rip it into iTunes to play on my PC and go on the iPod (which is wired into my car), and then store the CD in a box with others in case I ever need to use it again for some reason or other.  I've thought about just purchasing albums directly from Apple off of iTunes, but I don't like the thought of it being locked away from other future formats that a CD can be ripped to.

So I get the DMB CD, put it in the computer, and it asks me to approve a DRM (digital rights management) license, which I do.  I then try to rip the CD into iTunes, but the music keeps skipping when it's played through the iTunes program off the CD or ripped to MP3.

It turns out that the CD is locked against used in any way on a PC other than listening to the music as DRM-protected WMA (Windows Media) files.  And the iPod and iTunes don't recognize WMA, which essentially cuts off their usage.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand the importance of the music companies wanting to protect their rights in the use of their music, but any method that cuts off usage with the worlds most popular MP3 player is ridiculous, especially given what I found out next.

Being unable to put the music on to my iPod and iTunes left the CD pretty much unusable for my purposes, so I sent an email to their support group.  A little later I got the following response (which I am posting in full in case someone with the same problem happens upon this blog posting via a Google search (skip the italic text below if you don't care about the specific response):

Thank you for contacting us, Jason. We appreciate your purchase of the Dave Matthews Band CD and are happy to assist you.

Please follow the instructions below in order to move your content into iTunes and onto an iPod: 

If you have a Mac computer you can copy the songs using your iTunes Player as you would normally do.

If you have a PC place the CD into your computer and allow the CD to automatically start. If the CD does not automatically start, open your Windows Explorer, locate the drive letter for your CD drive and double-click on the LaunchCD.exe file located on your CD.

Once the application has been launched and the End User License Agreement has been accepted, you can click the Copy Songs button on the top menu.

Follow the instructions to copy the secure Windows Media Files (WMA) to your PC. Make a note of where you are copying the songs to, you will need to get to these secure Windows Media Files in the next steps.

Once the WMA files are on your PC you can open and listen to the songs with Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher. You may also play them in any compatible player that can play secure Windows Media files, such as MusicMatch, RealPlayer, and Winamp, but it will require that you obtain a license to do so. To obtain this license, from the Welcome Screen of the user interface, click on the link below the album art that says If your music does not play in your preferred player, click here. Follow the instructions to download the alternate license.

Using Windows Media Player only, you can then burn the songs to a CD.  Please note that in order to burn the files, you need to upgrade to or already have Windows Media Player 9 or greater.

Once the CD has been burned, place the copied CD back into your computer and open iTunes. iTunes can now rip the songs as you would a normal CD.

Please note an easier and more acceptable solution requires cooperation from Apple, who we have already reached out to in hopes of addressing this issue. To help speed this effort, we ask that you use the following link to contact Apple and ask them to provide a solution that would easily allow you to move content from protected CDs into iTunes or onto your iPod rather than having to go through the additional steps above.  http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

Thank you.

Rob, SunnComm Tech Support

So, essentially, they're saying that if I burn a CD from Windows Media Player (which pretty much every Windows XP machine has on it for free), it bypasses the DRM anyway, making the music accessible in any way.  What's more, I had trouble getting the Media Player instructions to work right, so I just burned an audio CD using the WMA files in Roxio Easy CD Creator, and then turned around and imported that newly-burned CD into iTunes, and it worked fine.

What really gets me is that they make it so difficult to use the music in a legitimate device, but then make it so the same protection that is supposedly in place to protect their rights can be bypassed by a simple CD burning.  What is the point?

Music companies - if you're going to insist on DRM to protect your investment, at least find a way to make it work on all music players.  Heck, you could probably even work out a deal with Apple to allow free download of their protected version of the album for iPod users.  But do something, otherwise you give us a reason beyond even the "free music" aspect to go look for the album online through less legitimate sources.

Bonnie's blog once again provides a link to a funny Star Wars-related site, this time Grocery Store Wars.

My favorite is Chewbroccoli!

Saw Hitchhiker's Guide this past weekend with Kim.  Several changes from the book, but I was fine with that as I thought the book was good but not great.  Funny movie, though, if you'll let yourself just go for the ride.

Click the above image to see the dolphin sing-along.

There was an art show in LA last week called "i am 8 bit" featuring tons of pop art, mainly centered around old video games.  You can see many examples of the art at IGN and FORT90 by clicking their respective names.  Some very cool stuff.

The official site for the show is at http://www.iam8bit.net/

My favorite piece, all of those cartoon villains of my youth hanging out.

Donkey Kong and Mario, sharing a drink after a hard day's work.

A cool Mario painting.

Dig Dug!

IGN Coverage

FORT90 Coverage

i am 8 bit Official Site

I was hoping to wait until I had a photo to go along with it, but decided I wanted my friends whose best form of contact is via the blog to know sooner rather than later.

Kim and I got engaged this past weekend while in New York! 

I took her to see the show "Avenue Q", then we had dinner at this fancy restaurant called Esca (which coincidentally had the show "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" playing across the street - which is what Kim and I went to on our first date), and then I surprised her with the proposal and ring on a late-night carriage ride through Central Park! 

Our families and local friends have been told, and now it is to you as well.  We have not set a date yet, but I will let people know when we do.  Also will post a pic of the ring when I get one.

Retro Junk - a site where you can see all sorts of old commercials from your youth.  Very funny.

The first Zelda commercial, featuring two rapping dorks. "The Nintendo Entertainment System - your parents help you hook it up!"

Mario Bros on Atari!

Whenever I think of a Zelda commercial, this is the one that comes to mind. "Leevers!"

The Nintendo Power Glove... I actually had one of these. For about a week. Then we took it back to Best Buy because it didn't work well with any game.

This Toys R Us commercial teaches us why we should be glad life isn't like a video game.

Transformers: The Movie: The Trailer

Connie Dvorak, mother to Jessica and Gordon, wife to Emil, sister to Mary, Charlie and Karen, human-mother to Bridgette and the late Murphy, feeder of Beauregarde and the late Miss Kitty, friend to all who knew her, passed on early this morning after a long battle with cancer.

I first got to know Connie when I was a senior at Indianola High School.  I was a science kid who mostly preferred the company of teachers to other students, so I would hang out in the science office before school and between nearby classes.  Connie was the science department assistant at that time, so she was usually in the office and we'd talk about things like what was going on around school or what Jessica was up to at Grinnell her freshman year (I had been in Academic Decathalon with Jess the two years prior).  When Ian, Phil and I went with some others TPing for Homecoming, we made sure and hit the Dvorak house - it was a sign of affection.

In the years since graduation, I have spent much time at the Dvorak house, as Jessica would come home often for holidays and breaks and weekends.  Connie was usually there, sometimes watching TV with us, playing pinochle (trying to enforce her "a card laid is a card played" rule), telling us to be sure and keep it down when walking past the neighbors' house late at night (as the sign said, "Shh! Baby sleeping!"), and putting up with our experiments in funnel cake making and the occasional batch of cookies or daquiris.  Over the years the Dvorak house has become very much a home-away-from-home for me and others.

Connie was always willing to open her family holidays up to others.  When my familys had nothing going on Christmas day, she would let me come over for the traditional turkey and dressing meal that both Jess and I love.  When I had nobody around on the 4th of July in 2003, she and Emil let me watch the fireworks with them from the front steps.  I can think of many Christmases (with the plastic light-up Santas), Easters (with the plastic light-up bunnies), and Thanksgivings (with the plastic light-up pilgrims and candy corns) with time spent at the Dvorak home.

In the Dvorak basement, where we would throw our friends' Christmases, Birthday get-togethers, Days of Our Lives watchathons and generally hang out when friends were in town, there was this Kleenex head of Connie's.  You can see one at http://www.grrl.com/sake.html as an example.  When new people were over, I would show them the head as a sort of welcome and initiation - it was just the sort of kitschy retro cool thing.  When I moved into my home last year, Connie got me a Moa statue head kleenex holder as a house-warming gift in tribute to my affection for the Kleenex head.  Kind of like when she got Ian the singing Henry VIII bust for his Simpson College graduation - she thought of the good funny gift for others.

Connie was the type of person who would tell you just to walk right in from then on if you had waited at the door the first few times visiting.  She was the type who would take her daughter's friends out for dinner with the family and refuse money if you offered up money because she wanted to do something nice for Jess' friends.  She's the type that would allow friends like me to go on family trips like the one to Pensacola last year.  She allowed friends to expand the family instead of standing apart separately.

The past couple years had been very hard for her, with so many ups and downs in her fight against cancer.  For such a strong-willed woman, it was an incredibly difficult past year of having to learn to rely on others for the sake of her own health, but she passed it with much humor and love for her family.  Seeing Gordon and Theresa get married last weekend meant the world to her, as I'm sure did having her sister Mary up from Pensacola for these last few weeks.

Connie was the best kind of person, caring and open to all who knew her.

She will live forever in the love of her family and many friends.

Her time was far too short, though undeniably well spent.

Behold Anakin Dynamite!

Thanks to Bonnie!

Idiots!

I presume this happened after Mr Potato Head fell into the fire in a battle against the Jolly Green Giant...

Zeromus Dies in Final Fantasy II

Ever wonder what the ending of that Super Nintendo game you played years ago and never finished was like?  Check out the SNES page of the VGA Museum to see several of them.

They have the endings for several other systems, too.  Beware of pop-ups though.

Thanks to Joystiq!

So this Japanese variety show Punk'd the members of Japanese Pop band (are there any types of bands in Japan besides Pop bands?) Masume while showing them Ringu - the Japanese version of The Ring.

You can see the video by clicking here.

Personally, I think it would have been better had they had a bunch of water stream out of the TV first, but it's still pretty funny.

Kawaii! ;)

Bburago Touareg model
(click picture to see larger size)

Got the following concept from Bonnie - who got it from someone else.

1. YOUR PORN STAR NAME:
(Name of first pet / First street you lived on):
Sparkie Unknown-to-me
...hmm...that doesn't sound quite right...

2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME:
(Name of your favorite snack food / Grandfather's first name):
Sesame Stick Boo
...sounds like one of those old-timey radio actors...

3. YOUR FASHION DESIGNER NAME:
(First word you see on your left / Favorite restaurant):
Norton Cosi
...getting better...

4. EXOTIC FOREIGNER ALIAS:
(Favorite Spice / Last Vacation Spot):
Oregano Vallarta
...sounds so international...but from WHERE?!...

5. "FLY GIRL/BOY" ALIAS (a la J. Lo):
(First Initial / First Two or Three Letters of your Last Name):
J. Cro
...isn't that a clothing store?...

7. ICON ALIAS:
(Something Sweet Within Sight / Any Liquid in Your Kitchen):
Tangerine Dish Soap
...what's an icon alias?...

8. DETECTIVE ALIAS:
(Favorite Baby Animal / Where You Went to High School):
Hatchling Indianola
...don't worry, Hatchling Indianola is on the case!...

9. BARFLY ALIAS:
(Last Snack Food You Ate / Your Favorite Alcoholic Drink):
Fudgesickle Guiness
...an unfortunate first name for the young Irish lad...

10. SOAP OPERA ALIAS:
(Middle Name / Street Where You Live):
Patrick 15
...sounds more like a Sci-Fi name...

11. ROCK STAR ALIAS:
(Favorite Candy / Last Name Of Favorite Musician):
Jelly Bean Matthews
...Dave's brother who specializes in children's songs...

12. YOUR STAR WARS NAME:
(First 2 letters of your first name and the first 3 Letters from your last name makes your first name. Take the first 2 letters of your mother's maiden name and the first 3 letters of the city you were born in):
Jacro Lajef
...well, at least that one kind of works...

So the lesson learned is that I'm not very good at fake names!

Kim and I went to see Movin' Out at the Civic Center last night.

One word: awesome.

I first heard of the musical two years ago on my flight back from Cozumel, and had been interested ever since.  When I heard last year that it was coming to Des Moines I asked my sister to get us tickets on pre-order day (she and her husband are Civic Center members, so they can order extra tickets before they go on public sale).

We lucked out with 3rd row seats, which gave us an excellent view of the show.  What surprised me was that the show's only dialogue (with one minor exception) are the Billy Joel songs, and that the rest of the plot relies mostly on the modern dance of the cast.  And the synopsis in the playbill helped, too.  It's basically the story of 5 friends, 3 guys and 2 girls, who are friends, and between one couple coming together and another breaking up, the boys go to Vietnam, one dies in part due to the actions of another, and the remaining four try to reconnect with their lives and each other.

It's really amazing how they managed to take so many of Billy Joel's classic songs and work them in such a way to weave a story that was never intended when they were written.  And it works very well.

Plus the guy who played Eddie in our performance looked just like Anthony Michael Hall, so I kept laughing about that.

If the chance to see the show comes your way, see it. 

The Cheat shows off some of his work.

Have you checked out NASA's World Wind software?  It's a free virtual globe program that uses your broadband connection to download increasingly detailed satellite photos from their database as you zoom in.  A very cool use of their database of photos, making for a really cool experience.

Go from this...

...to this!

NASA World Wind Site

I saw this in EGM this month and had to share. The site is 1st Church of Pac-Man (warning: not a religion; do not worship), and the image is perhaps the weirdest take on Pac-Man ever used in an "official" capacity.

Who knew that it was a castle Pac-Man was running through?

Laws of Cartoon Thermodynamics
by Trevor Paquette and Lt. Justin D. Baldwin

Cartoon Law I
=============
Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.

Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.

Cartoon Law II
==============
Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly. Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge's surcease.

Cartoon Law III
===============
Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter.

Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.

Cartoon Law IV
==============
The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.

Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful.

Cartoon Law V
=============
All principles of gravity are negated by fear.

Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.

Cartoon Law VI
==============
As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.

This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A `wacky' character has the option of self-replication only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.

Cartoon Law VII
===============
Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot.

This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science.

Cartoon Law VIII
================
Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.

Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.

Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.

Cartoon Law IX
==============
Everything falls faster than an anvil.

Cartoon Law X
=============
Guns, no matter how powerful, or no matter where aimed, will do nothing more than char flesh, blow away feathers, or rearrange beaks.

Cartoon Law XI
==============
Any given amount of explosives will propel a body miles away, but still in one piece, charred and extremely peeved.

I've also added a new wildcard search function.  On the right-hand side of the main blog page is a search box, which will do a partial match against the blog headings and bodies for the words entered.

I have finally completed both my new Blog system (which you may have noticed last week via several inexplicably updating RSS feeds and/or the series of test postings) as well as my new Photo Gallery system!

And with that, I have several new photo galleries posted, including some older ones as well.  You can see them in the left link boxes, as well as by clicking here.

Where'd you ever learn to scribby-scroll so fast?

It's some sort of cartoon wrestling guy reading his email, and it's very funny.

Check it out here.

Thanks, Jess!

On the way to Mexico, our flight attendant made an announcement that a new Travel Security Advisory limits the use of the front lavatories to the travelers in first class.

If a terrorist really planned to use the front lavatory for an attack of some sort - something nefarious that the back lavatories would not work for - would they really let the extra cost of the first class ticket stop them?

"Well you see, the jihad was put on hold because we booked coach."

Somehow I don't think so.

Returned from Puerto Vallarta late Monday night.  Some highlights:

• Great hotel, right on the beach in the middle of downtown;
• Saw a few humpback whales while on a catamaran;
• Rode a horse up to a waterfall and watched some locals cliff jump;
• Bought some huichal art - a beaded iguana and a yarn puma head, as well as some wood-carved turtles;
• Ate breakfast at a place named "best place in the world for breakfast" by International Living in mid-2003.  Had the peanut butter and banana pancakes;
• Also had some excellent cheese and ham-stuffed grilled shrimp wrapped in bacon.  Mmm...healthy;
• Did a treetop canopy tour, where we rode on zip lines suspended by a harness along 2 miles of cord crisscrossing a canyon.  The longest line was 1200 feet long and the highest was 450 feet above the ground;
• Parasailed over the bay;
• Did some haggling for souvenirs and gifts with the locals;
• Took over 700 photos, trying different techniques; and
• Returned home with Kim to discover her cat returned home after a week away.

I'm sure there's stuff I've forgotten, but for now I hope this gives you a glimpse at a great week away from home.

A local cliff-jumper.

Old Vallarta at Night

...Down Mexico Way...  That's where you'll find me, Kim, and the whole fam next week.  My second visit to Puerto Vallarta (pics from the trip 4 years ago here), Kim's first, Mom's 4th, Tom's second, and the Soldwish clan's first. As you can imagine, I will take lots of photos.

From Blog for America:

And now, the quote of the day - thanks to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article about a Republican suit to throw out the result of the Washington gubernatorial election:

"... Harry Korrell, the lawyer for the GOP, said: 'If you can't tell who won an election because of errors and mistakes, you have to rerun it.'"

Wait a sec - really?!!

A reader wrote:

I'd agree that ending this tradition is not in the people's interest- though I'm not convinved that the democrats method of permanently blocking all conservative nominee's is either.

Actually, the filibuster is a tactic not recent in use.  While it is true on the surface that some 31% of Bush's judicial candidates have been blocked (vs a still-high 24% under Clinton), nearly all Bush candidates have made it to hearings and/or votes, while nearly 60 Clinton noms were blocked from even getting that far (which don't count into that 24%).

So considering they blocked 1 out of every 4 Clinton noms - and Clinton was known for picking far more centrist judges than Bush - I don't see how the Repubs can claim it's a Democrat method.

The fact is that the filibuster was put in place to insure a level of power separation when both the congress and the president is controlled by a single party.  The Founding Fathers greatly disapproved of the idea of any one sect of the people running completely out of control over the entire country, so methods were put in place to make it more difficult to pass things via the Senate than having a simple majority.

Scary.  The very purpose of the Senate is to protect the rights of the minority (as in number of people, not race), which is why every state has 2 senators regardless of size and why 60% votes are required.  Its purpose in this isn't new - it was specifically set up as such at the creation of our country and has always been one of the reasons why our method of democracy was improved over those before.  That it could be tossed out so casually...it should sicken anyone, no matter the political party.

Will the GOP nuke the Constitution?Proposed ban on judicial filibusters is an assault on democracy
By Arianna Huffington

Right now, somewhere in the White House, administration strategists are hatching plans to go to war. Battle plans are being drawn. Timing and tactics are being finalized. A nuclear option is even being openly discussed.

The designated target? Iran? Syria? North Korea?

No, much closer to home: the United States Senate.

Salivating at the chance to radically remake the Supreme Court, the president and his loyal lapdogs in the World's Most Exclusive Club are plotting to obliterate over 200 years of Senate tradition by eliminating the use of filibusters against judicial nominees.

The Robert's Rules of Disorder scheme would involve -- who else? -- Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as presiding Senate officer, ruling that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional and Majority Leader Bill Frist squashing the Democrats' inevitable objection to such an edict by tabling the motion. As long as we're "spreading democracy" abroad, no reason to leave out the home front, right?

This is the so-called "nuclear option," embraced with a wink and a nudge by Frist in November when he told the conservative Federalist Society: "One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end."

Invoking this parliamentary dirty trick would eliminate unlimited debate on judicial nominations and lower the number of votes needed before a nominee can be confirmed from the 60 necessary to break a filibuster to a simple majority of 51, and would drive a stake through the heart of the Senate's longstanding commitment -- indeed one of its founding purposes -- to defending the rights of the minority.

This scorched-earth approach is entirely in keeping with what Time magazine lauds this week as President Bush's "ten-gallon-hat leadership" style -- a my-way-or-the-highway approach rooted in arrogance and laced with an intolerance of dissent that has already delivered him a rubber stamp Cabinet. Now he wants a rubber stamp Senate.

Over the course of his first term, 204 of Bush's judicial nominees received Senate approval; just 10 were blocked. This is the highest number of lower-court confirmations any president has had in his first term since 1980 -- including President Reagan. But, apparently, the highest is not enough. This president wants total approval of his every wish.

One small problem: That's not the way the Founding Fathers designed things. They had these funny notions about three separate but equal branches of government, free and open debate, and the value of checks and balances to ward off the overreaching for power by those in the majority. They built an entire system of government to counteract the abuse that inevitably goes with overreaching.

Yet that is precisely what the plan to do away with judicial filibusters is: an out-and-out power grab by the president and his Congressional accomplices. An underhanded scheme to kneecap the Constitution and take away the only weapon vanquished Democrats are left with to defend against Bush's "ten-gallon-hat" juggernaut.

It would be impossible to overstate the importance of this battle. It is nothing less than a fight for the soul of our democracy -- for what kind of country we want to live in.

"George W. Bush," Ralph Neas, President of People for the American Way, told me, "has made it clear, both through his public comments and through the judges he has nominated to appellate courts, that he is committed to advancing an ideological agenda that would roll back many of the social and legal gains of the last century."

According to Neas, who has been at the forefront of judicial battles since the fight against Robert Bork in 1987, this is not just about Roe vs. Wade -- it's also about turning the clock back to a time when states' rights and property rights trumped the protection of individual liberties and the ability of Congress to act in the common good on issues as far-ranging as civil rights enforcement, environmental protection, and worker health and safety.

This is not overheated partisan rhetoric but a realistic appraisal of the rulings handed down by the federal judges Bush has already appointed -- and of the written opinions of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justices the president has cited as his models for future nominees to the High Court. "Courting Disaster 2004," a study by People for the American Way Foundation, found that adding just one or two Scalia/Thomas clones to the Supreme Court would put at risk more than 100 precedents and the legal protections they safeguard.

We're talking about the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, worker protections, access to contraceptives and legal abortions, laws protecting our clean air and drinking water, and on and on.

Senate rules regarding filibusters are not something most Americans will find themselves discussing over a glass of eggnog during the holidays. But the impact these rules can have on our lives is staggering. And it must be made clear right now -- not when Chief Justice Rehnquist resigns and Cheney and Frist team up to push the nuclear button. By then it will be much too late, and all Harry Reid will be able to do is duck and cover. True leadership is being able to see not just the crisis staring you in the face -- but the one lurking just around the corner.

President Bush is pulling on his oversized Stetson and gearing up for battle. And here, unlike Iraq, he's making sure his political troops have all the armor they need. The Democrats need to pre-emptively launch an all-out campaign to educate the American people about what will be at stake during the coming assault on our democratic values.

If they succeed, they will have the public with them, even if it becomes necessary to resort to threats of Mutually Assured Legislative Destruction. Let's hope that's not what it will take to protect the Senate, the Constitution, and over 65 years of hard-won social victories from the GOP's looming nuclear winter.

Ian alerted me of this via a roundabout source - it turns out the 1954 PC is a hoax!

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp

Many a prognosticator who has tried to envision the future has been tripped up by a failure to correctly anticipate the direction of technological change. Those who would forecast the world of tomorrow have often made the mistaken of simply taking the technologies of their day and assuming that in the future those technologies would be bigger, faster, and more powerful - what escaped their vision was that science and society might come up with new and different ways of manufacturing and using those technologies.

One case in point is the computer. Predictions from several decades ago failed to foresee that computers would become much smaller and cheaper; that these changes would enable nearly every business and home to have its own computer to be used for a variety of applications, and that those machines would be linked together in a world-wide network. Instead, futurist scenarios frequently presented a world of very few, very expensive all-powerful computers the size of large buildings, used only for divining answers to complex problems beyond the ability of man to solve on his own.

Although the photograph displayed could represent what some people in the early 1950s contemplated a "home computer" might look like (based on the technology of the day), it isn't, as the accompanying text claims, a RAND Corporation illustration from 1954 of a prototype "home computer." The picture is actually an entry submitted to an image modification competition, taken from an original photo of a submarine maneuvering room console found on U.S. Navy web site, converted to grayscale, and modified to replace a modern display panel and TV screen with pictures of a decades-old teletype/printer and television.

Today Ian turns 27.  He checks the site often, even when I don't update.