Categories
Weather

Wettest year ever

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Congratulations, St. Louis.

With this afternoon’s rain, frozen rain, sleet, and hail, we set a new record for wettest year. From the Weather Underground:

Statement as of 2:40 PM CST on December 23, 2008

... Record yearly maximum precipitation set at St. Louis MO...

A record yearly maimum precipitation of 55.00 inches was set at
St. Louis today. This breaks the old record of 54.97 inches set
in 1982.

We managed to flood every river, stream, creek, and dry bed this year. Though none of the floods beat any records, the number of floods was extraordinary, as was the fact that every flood came perilously close to beating records. However, at least we haven’t been getting the snow other areas are getting. Knock on soggy wood.

 

Categories
Stuff

Roku rolls out HD, new content in 2009

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Roku started its rollout of HD content to Netflix Box owners beginning today. I’ve been a latecomer beta tester, and am generally happy with the quality of the stream I’m getting.

Only about 100 movies are HD at this time. Many of the shows provided by CBS, including Star Trek the first season, are being rolled out as HD quality. The Star Trek shows are exceptionally nice—crisp, campy, and colorful.

I have a 720p television, connected via HDMI. The stream sizes I’m seeing are 2.6 for HD, and 1.5mpbs for SD quality. The SD quality shows are actually using less bandwidth with the new profile.

There are some hiccups, including shows that end abruptly, some audio/video sync issues, but these are issues that Netflix is aware of, and working to resolve.

No new content for Roku box owners, at least not until 2009. There is now a screen option in the Roku box that will provide access to the new content when it does release. No hints, either, about what the new content will be. Most folks are still hoping for Hulu.

All in all, after a few bumps along the way, the Roku box, with a subscription to Netflix, has turned out to be the best video value this year. Costwise, the combination costs a fraction of what cable costs.

Categories
Political

I’m a lefty and what Obama’s Warren pick means to me

In an article for NPR, David Weinberger tells his fellow liberals to “chill out”. That Obama’s pick of Rick Warren to participate in the inauguration is actually a good thing; a case of bridge-building promised by President-elect Obama during his campaign.

My first impulse was to disagree, vehemently, both with David and with Obama’s pick. Kathryn Kolbert at CNN best explains why this is so

Warren has worked hard to cultivate a moderate public personality but his views are very similar to those of traditional Religious Right leaders.In an email sent before the 2004 election he wrote a Falwell-esque message proclaiming that, for Christian voters, the issues of abortion, marriage for same-sex couples, stem cell research, cloning and euthanasia were “non-negotiable.” In fact, he said, they are “not even debatable because God’s word is clear on these issues.”

Warren is adamantly against reproductive rights for women; against gays, for all of his talk of serving gay people water and donuts. He is worse, in many ways, than someone like Falwell, because he pretends to be open-minded, when he is anything but. There is no bridge-building with a man who coldly and unequivocally rejects equality for gays, reproductive rights for women, and, frankly, religious freedom for everyone.

Warren is a man who will sit at one end of whatever bridge is being built, and demand that it meet him, rather than make any movement to build any part of the bridge, himself. His choice leaves me to wonder: why are we progressives always asked to give? To sacrifice our beliefs, our rights, our hopes and dreams for true equality in this country? In particular, why should women and gay rights be the pillars on which this new “bridge-building” occurs?

Obama’s choice is a painful one, given how this country has suffered under a religious fundamentalist-backed president for eight years. And especially painful, following the passing of the constitutionally authorized bigotry that was Proposition 8 in California.

As I wrote earlier, my first impulse was to disagree with Obama’s choice, but now, I’m beginning to think it may be an excellent choice in the long run—and not because of any absurd statements about “bridge-building”. The left is coming perilously close to deifying President-elect Obama, and that’s not a healthy state for us to be in. We needed something to shake us up, and it would seem that Warren’s pick is it.

In the last few months, we’ve built up such a faith in Obama that to criticize anything he does, even mildly, brings down “wrath of the progressives” upon our heads. Obama can do no wrong, and though he has made, to me, and others, some questionable choices for his Cabinet, the most that happens is a sage, head-nodding among his loyal supports, as we admire his bridge-building skills. When we do have concerns, we whisper them rather than speak out loudly. We’ve become fearful that any criticism will lose the floods of Republican conservatism and all hope will be lost.

The real danger in our country isn’t so much that we’re parties at odds with each other. There is no such thing as a country by consensus, and every politician knows the unobtainability of this dream. No, the real problem isn’t that we question those ranged against us, but that we don’t question those on our own side.

During the Presidential campaign, John Scalzi published a post titled, Reminder: There’s No Actual Office for “President of the Left”. In it, he wrote, Obama’s probably also aware that he’s got the left in the tank.

he’s got the left in the tank…

Obama has made a choice for his inauguration that, to all intents and purposes, betrays the very progressives whose base he relies on. Rather than “chill out”, we should be shouting our anger out, loud and clear, not only to remind ourselves what being a progressive really means, but also to remind Obama that, contrary to expectations, he does not have a lock on us.

Obama cannot assume we will look upon him, forever a day, with the indulgence a parent gives a favored child; that he can make decisions like this with impunity, based on an assumption that we “lefties”, as David calls us, will grumble and growl but ultimately stand behind him as our dear leader. No matter what. Such an assumption emasculates the left, doing little more than reducing us to sycophants and bobbing heads. Blind belief in one’s chosen leader may be acceptable to the fundamentalists, but it ill suits progressives. We needed a reminder of this, and now we have it.

Choosing a man (Warren) who symbolizes exclusion (and then hides such, when caught), as a way of symbolizing inclusion, just does not compute to this progressive. Mr. President-elect Obama, sir, you blew it with this one.

Categories
Social Media

Finding our brave faces

I agree with Jeffrey Zeldman in that I’m also surprised that George Oates was laid off from Yahoo and her work with Flickr. I also thought that George’s recounting of how she found out she was laid off was telling, and sad.

Once upon a time, Yahoo was the bright and shiny future. Once upon a time, Flickr was one of the most dazzling of the new breed of startups. The success of both was based less on equipment and technology, and more on the people who helped create both companies. How Yahoo treats the people it has let go, is a measure of what the company thinks of itself. Evidently, those still in management in Yahoo, and at Flickr, don’t have a high opinion of themselves.

(An earlier interview with GeorgeMore on the layoffs.)

Categories
History JavaScript

Battle of the Bulge

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

On this anniversary of the World War II Battle of the Bulge, Jules Crittenden provides a comprehensive summary of the battle, as well as a book and other references, and photos.

The photos are especially compelling, as they lack of romanticism of so many WWII photos in books and in other publications. The following photo is of members of the the 82nd Airborne, my Dad’s division, following the 340th Tank Battalion. The photo is from the Life Magazine collection hosted by Google.

82 Airborne following tank

My Dad’s war history has been on my mind quite a bit recently, since reading Norman Costa’s story of his father and his experiences during D-Day. My father was also in the same battle, and in the same regiment. Unfortunately, my father, unlike his, was not comfortable telling his daughter about some of the more difficult moments during the war. As I told Costa in an email, Dad was less reticent with my ex-husband.

Dad…grew up in a time when one shielded “unpleasant” stories from the womenfolk, which means he did not tell me stories of especially difficult times. He did, however, share them with my ex-husband, who passed them on to me.

Dad was, at one time, trapped by sniper fire, and thought he was a goner, until other soldiers managed to kill the sniper. His worst time, though, was leading a small group of men towards a farm with a house designated as a “spotter” house, which should mean the house was safe. However, Dad didn’t know if the house was safe or not, so ordered his men to stay behind, under cover, while he checked the place out. The house was safe, but unfortunately the men took cover in a shell blast “crater”, which got hit by another shell. Dad returned, only to find all of the men dead.

Most of Dad’s war memorabilia was lost during a move years ago, but he gave me the handgun, an M1911, he carried during the war. Dad paid a German POW a package of cigarettes to engrave his name on the barrel, and attached his paratrooper wings and the 82nd Airborne badge to the handle on one side, a photo of my uncle, who was in the Navy during WWII, on the other.