I am pleased to roll out the (beta) version of my new wordpress theme. Built from scratch… custom design/css and a few extra functions make this a rather bold first attempt at theme design.
bear with me as I make tweaks here and there over the next few days.
Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician and member of the Dutch Freedom party has just released a documentary CRITICAL of radical Islamists called FITNA. As expected, muslims around the world have condemned Wilders for releasing the film–threatening Wilders personally as well as the lives of any internet site complicit in its broadcast. LiveLeak.com, a site famous for airing controversial footage was forced to remove the clip from their servers citing “very serious threats“.
If this were not distressing enough, WESTERN leaders also joined with the exreemists in condemning the film. The EU’s Slovenian presidency said the film only “inflaming hatred”. The U.N. Secretary-General, Mr. Ban, “condemned” the film “in the strongest terms”. He also said that, ”The right of free expression is not at stake here… Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility.” Even the Dutch Prime Minister Mr. Balkenende said the film ”serves no purpose other than to offend”.
Mr. Wilders has just proven himself to be one of the gutsiest men alive. The threats directed at him and at the free press outlets of the world only reinforce and validate his criticisms. Mr. Ban just doesn’t get it: Because those exercising free speech are being threatened with violence, free speech is VERY MUCH at stake here. The basic message of the film film-that radical islamic terrorists are a very real threat-is what terrorists are affirming at every turn and what European leaders are in denial about. As Eric Cartman so poignantly pointed out, using fear to get people to do what you want isn’t like terrorism, “it IS terrorism”. I applaud Mr. Wilders for standing up for these principles… not many people do anymore.
I’m a pretty avid itunes user, but lately I have been noticing there are fundamental design issues that cripple the itunes interface. As I have been adding more and more movies to my itunes library, It has become quite clear that this portion of the application needs a facelift.
The Movie Preview Page
I must admit, this page baffles me.. on any number of levels. The thumbnail view is completely lacking in design and usability. Not only is its jet black background fundamentally out of place in the Itunes white/grey design scheme… but with your typical widescreen movie, you are limited to a preview image approximately 100 pixels long — hardly enough information to make out a face, much less serve any preview purpose.
To make matters worse, itunes insists on providing you unnecessary metadata for what is essentially a visual preview mode… without providing room to display most of the data it insists upon. If you look a the example screen-capture, you will see that most titles more then 20 characters long get cut off. This is especially true with the Stanford university video where nearly every piece of information in each content area.
What bothers me about these problems is that there is more then ample space in this view to display twice the information, with a much larger preview, but instead we get huge gaps of black background. Let’s do some quick math… with an average size window (800w x 600h)… you have an area of 480,000 square pixels. If each preview image is 100w x 50h (average approximation for DVD movies), and you only put 15 previews in this area (3 across, 5 down) , you end up using only 15% of the total useable space for preview purposes! (75000 [100*50*15] / 480,000). And this is IN PREVIEW MODE!
I would love to see a movie preview page that did movie previews well. In fact, I would prefer navigating my video library visually instead of textually but alas, Apple’s implementation just isn’t worth using. Apple, you can do better.
I have my issues with coverflow as well; but perhaps that is better saved for another post.
The Spitzer sex scandal has received alot of press coverage the past week; After all, what self-respecting reporter when offered the scoop of a 32 22 yr. old bombshell babe servicing a powerful, married Political figure would even dream of exercising restraint.
Ya… I couldn’t think of any either.
In all seriousness, I did have a few thoughts to share on the issue. First, Alan Dershowitz (a harvard law professor of whom I have previously referenced on this blog) came out in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal and very nearly defended Spitzer.
Generally, wise and intelligent prosecutors use their discretion properly–to target organized crime, terrorism, financial predation, exploitation of children and the like. But the very existence of these selectively enforced statutes poses grave dangers of abuse. They lie around like loaded guns waiting to be used against the enemies of politically motivated investigators, prosecutors and politicians.
If this is what “wise and intelligent” prosecutors do… one can only think what Dershowitz thinks about the prosecutors in this case. He certainly has a valid point: overly-broad criminal statutes can be used for ill by partisan political figures. This isn’t to say that Spitzer shouldn’t have been held to the same standards as anyone else, or that he is above the law–but it is never right to selectively apply criminal statutes… these should be applied equally to all people.
One other person who came to mind as I reflected on this story was Jean Baudrillard, a french philosopher about whom I have written extensively about. In his book, America, he examines the media fascination and the cultural response Americans have to such events. I’ve re-read the book in its entirety and cannot find the exact quote I wanted… but here are a few relevant portions:
The fact is that a certain banality, a certain vulgarity which seem unacceptable to us in Europe seem more than acceptable — even fascinating — to us here. All our modern governments owe a kind of political meta-stability to the regulation of public opinion by advertising. Mistkes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crutial think is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction.
No one keeps count of the mistakes made by the world’s political leaders any more, mistakes which, in days gone by, would have brought about their downfall… The people no longer take pride in their leaders and the leaders no longer pride themselves on their decisions….
Everything has to be made public: what are you worth, what you earn, how you live – there is no place here for interplay of a subtler nature.
What I couldn’t find was Baudrillard’s amazement with the American media’s fascination with scandals (particularly of the sexual nature). He notices that while Americans insist on absolute transparency; the French handle scandals very differently… hiding events under layers of Bourgeois norms and phony appearances. One wonders which is the better alternative.
P.S. – turns out you can become a “fan” of Ashley Dupré on Facebook. Who knew?!
P.S.2 – check out her solo music debut on her myspace page. Not really my style… but… it’s a start.
American Thinker just posted an interesting article documenting many instances where the mainstream media has intentionally misled or willfully ignored relevant facts in order to run a story. I have been particularly disappointed with the media’s reporting of the Iraq war… whether it is running stories about fake atrocities or journalists drawing maps in the sand of the location of U.S. soldiers for the any enemy to see. I have edited the list to display only the relevant stories relating to the Iraq war.
4. AFP/Yahoo News (2007). Fell for hoax/lie. Ran a picture with the caption “An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.” But the picture was of unfired cartridges, which could only have “hit her house” if they were thrown at it.
8. Peter Arnett, CNN, NBC, National Geographic (1999-2003). Lying, bias, treasonous behavior. CNN fired him in 1999 for his reporting the Operation Tailwind story (see below). NBC and National Geographic fired him in March 2003 for being interviewed on Iraqi TV during war, in which he stated that the U.S. war plan had failed. “It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war,” said NBC. Continue reading
The recent events surrounding Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” comment have caught my particular attention this week. For those of you who are unaware, Rush Limbaugh recently said two words, “phony soldiers”, in passing, to a caller in response to a discussion about soldiers who lie about their service for either personal or partisan advantage. He immediately followed up the phone call about on particular phony soldier, Jessie MacBeth, who’s lies about American atrocities in Iraq have been damaging our reputation in the middle east. However you choose to classify this short comment… a segway or a generalization about lying soldiers… whatever you want to call it… it certainly NOT what some have chosen to describe as an attack on all soldiers who disagree with the war. It was at most an accurate description of soldiers who lie about atrocities they never saw … while claiming to be soldiers they never were. If there is a more accurate label to describe this kind of a person, I am not aware of it.
Within days, MediaMatters.org , a liberal, media-watchgroup funded by Hillary Clinton, picked up on those words and picked up this statement and ran with it, claiming that he “called service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq phony soldiers.” — an obvious misrepresentation.
Within days, (and without bothering to check his facts) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went before the floor of the Senate and called on Limbaugh to apologize for his 2 words.
REID: That’s why Rush Limbaugh’s recent characterization of troops who oppose the war as “phony soldiers” is an outrage. Our troops are fighting and dying to bring to others the freedoms that many take for granted. It is unconscionable that Mr. Limbaugh would criticize them for exercising the fundamental American right to free speech. We call on you to publicly repudiate these comments that call into question their service and sacrifice and ask Mr. Limbaugh to apologize for his comments.
Mr. Reid, who daily makes it is mission to undermine the success of our troops is trying to use the power of his elected office to silence via intimidation a public media figure by selectively pulling two words of a much larger conversation out of context and imposing his own interpretation on them. He is claiming that Mr. Limbaugh (a host who expresses deep gratitude to every military figure who calls in to his show) is now being unsupportive of the troops because he called soldiers who lie “phony”. How ironic; the man who threatens anyone who challenged his patriotism is now challenging Mr. Limbaugh’s…. patriotism. Quite the double-standard.
And if this were not enough, Mr. Reid sent a letter to the CEO of Clear Channel Communications which calls on him to “publicly repudiate these comments that call into question their service and sacrifice and ask Mr. Limbaugh to apologize for his comments.” I’m sorry, but if this is not Government surpression of free speech, I don’t know what is. He is trying to use political force to frighten a private entity from expressing opinions (which he has to fabricate) that he disagrees with. It is clear that Mr. Reid is reverting to personal attacks on his political opponents in order to divert attention from his shameful record as leader of the Senate. His incredibly low approval rating and his failure to end the Iraq war…despite his own promises that it would end under his leadership… amount to nothing more than a record of incompetence.
Allow me to ask my liberal friends a question. Is this the kind of people you want running our country? Politicians who will slander private citizens for personal interests; politicians who use their coercive power to silence speech they disagree with; politicians on whom facts have so little impact? I hope not. Can you imagine the outrage if BUSH tried to attack Democrats for not supporting the troops? Can you imagine the hell that would ensue? How is it that such acts are acceptable… if coming from the mouths of Democrats and not Republicans? Is this not a horrible double-standard?
hey! I’ll be honest. I’m just seeing if I can up readership by linking to other blogs. Feel free to take a look around… I have no idea how else I could get exposure… so I’m giving everything a shot.
After Foley, the Page Program Thrives | TIME
kids are smart… they now know where all the (cough) action is.¬† If you think the application numbers are increasing for any other reason… then you’re on crack.