Why I love National Review

The Toga Makes a Comeback!

What other major news outlet today includes someone referring to Cato the Younger as a pretentious git?

For all you Southern types

I present, without comment:

http://www.redneckbank.com/

Things are looking up

not done, but up

More conferencing

Day 2 of the official show. Some decent presentations today, even the one I walked out of to call in to a conference call that never happened. So I went back in & heard the rest of what they had to say (for the record, it was about using online video for distance learning.)

I have to admit I'm both excited and depressed by what I learned. Excited because there are some really smart people out there doing really cool things with online media. Depressed because not only am I not doing it, but we're in many ways just barely keeping up.

Plus all of these people have jobs and titles that I would like to have. Whatever. It was a good conference, I actually talked to a lot of people (kind of unusual for me with people I don't know), and tomorrow it's back to reality.

Which includes a major overhaul to a system that happened today and does not seem to be working properly. But that's likely to be another blogpost.

Conferencing

Spent the last two days at Streaming Media East, a gathering of all the geeks media professionals smart enough to get their bosses to let them goof around in Manhattan for a few days.

Had a really good day yesterday with one of our vendors who had a half-day session with a bunch of customers. They previewed some new software that looks extremely promising and will likely cure some headaches for us. Now if they can only get it released on a convenient schedule...

Today was typical conference stuff - keynote speakers and product shills masquerading as educational sessions. I have to say Microsoft really has a tin ear sometimes. They're offering a new approach to multimedia delivery and it's awfully complicated and probably unnecessary. The poor guy sent to tout this thing took kind of a beating from some people looking at a very time consuming and costly effort to convert a ton of pre-existing content into this new method. I have to say Microsoft seems to be stumbling into a lot of new ideas without thinking them through terribly carefully. I got my own question answered - we can keep doing what we're doing now and they can go fiddle around with whatever stupidity they want.

More of the same tomorrow - it's a day out of the office and that's almost always a good thing.

Stupid ^&%$#@ people

should not be allowed near stupid ^&%$#@ computers.

Irony is lost on the Government

Government to condemn land for Flight 93 memorial

So a group of incredibly brave ordinary citizens give their lives for the freedom and safety of, minimally, hundreds of other ordinary citizens. And their government and ours proceeds with what I can only consider a thoroughly illegal and unconstitutional seizure of private property.

I don't know the whole story - maybe the owners are greedy, maybe the government has been fair as unlikely as that seems. But on the surface (and probably deep down as well) this is nothing more than the forcible removal of private property from American citizens. I don't honestly care if the property owners are greedy, miserable SOBs. The property is legally theirs, and no government that I am proud of has a right to take it away unilaterally.

Honestly - is 500 more acres (even if it is the actual crash site) going to make that much difference? Will visitors know they're on 2200 acres instead of 1700? I fail to see how this is anything more than bullying governmental fiat, and practically speaking does that make our government any better than the totalitarian regimes we routinely decry?