Here’s an interesting map I saw on an environmental blog the other day that I can’t stop thinking about :

“Solar power systems installed in the areas defined by the dark disks could provide a little more than the world’s current total primary energy demand (assuming a conversion efficiency of 8%). That is, all energy currently consumed, including heat, electricity, fossil fuels, etc., would be produced in the form of electricity by solar cells.”

On the surface, this seems like one of those fun little activist infographics that makes it seem as if we’re one giant leap away from solving all of our troubles. Obviously this approach would have problems since these tiny dots are still hundreds of square miles in size, but considering the advancements in solar technology over the last few years and the fact that the area represented by these dots could be dispersed on roofs and other wasted space, I wonder how well an investment in solar energy would pay off. Would the costs (monetary and energy-wise) required to replace our energy needs with solar panels be worth it? Is the technology efficient enough yet to justify this sort of investment? What do you guys think?

This is funny. In an attempt to downplay anti-occupation protests throughout Iraq yesterday, conservative bloggers have been cherry-picking news about the protests to describe the turnout as “underwhelming” and “weak” while using this photo as proof that the demonstrations fell far short of their 3,000,000 person goal (via ThinkProgress):

To put this protest in perspective, however, let’s look at the same location four years and two days ago when the statue of Saddam Hussein was brought down :



President Bush once said of this photo-op :

“The toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad will be recorded, alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall, as one of the great moments in the history of liberty.”

That’s odd. From the photo it seems a little underwhelming to me.

So, first there was Project Runway, a show that was surprisingly good because it was actually a merit-based competition about talented (and entertaining) people designing clothes. It was entertaining, creative, and gave you a real appreciation for the art of clothing design. Then came Top Chef, which was for all practical purposes “Project Kitchen”. While not quite as successful as Runway, replacing designers with chefs was a formula that mostly worked.

Now there’s Top Design, a show that should be great – after all, it’s Project Runway meets HGTV – but is only remarkable for how unengaging it is. The show’s challenges have lacked the creativity from the previous shows, not that it would help considering that the first episode’s obvious kitsch-centric challenge went over the head of every contestant. Not that it really matters, though, since the designers haven’t really made themselves stick out as much as the contestants on Bravo’s other shows.

The worst part of the show by a mile is the camera presence of Todd Oldham, who seems to have learned everything he knows about hosting from Mr. Show’s “Blind House” sketch :

Also, it should be pointed out that there’s a special level in Hell for people who come up with catch phrases like Top Design’s “See ya later, decorator”.

So, with Top Design stumbling towards its finale, I can’t help but dread Bravo’s next attempt to cash in on the Project Runway formula, Shear Genius. Is there really an entire season’s worth of challenges to be made out of hair styling? Compared to the other three shows, it seems sorta limited.

If Bravo insists on beating the Project Runway formula to death, I hope they do a series set in the fine arts world next. I’d love to see painters struggle with a sculpture challenge. Or see some jerk-off insist that they don’t have to have any technique because their work is “conceptual”. Or a challenge that takes everyone to the Crayola factory. Or one in which they have to paint something that’s meaningful to them, only to find out the real challenge is to see who can sell the most t-shirts of their painting. Or a commercial illustration challenge in which the contestants have to redesign a corporate logo or redesign the packaging for some product they find abhorrent. Get a dozen pretentious assholes together like that and you know it’s gonna be a good show. The winner gets a gallery show and a feature in Juxtapoz magazine, the loser has to pack his brushes and go.

All of the hypocrisy swirling around the Don Imus “controversy” is driving me nuts. The media as a whole (especially CNN & Fox) have no place to criticize Imus for the offensive things he said. That’s why they hire loudmouths like Imus in the first place. We’ve seen this same cycle repeat itself ad infinitum and if it’s not Imus, it’s Glenn Beck, or Nancy Grace, or Howard Stern, or those pinheads at Fox News. When all of the forced apologizes have been doled out and the boycotts lose steam, everyone knows this is a net positive for the entertainment news industry because people are going to tune in just to see what the racist asshole in the cowboy hat says next.

Atrios is sooo right with his description of “The Compromise Shuffle”

Democrats loudly proclaim their willingness to negotiate and compromise, even after they’ve already compromised with themselves. The Bush administration loudly proclaims its unwillingness to do so. Broderesque columnists loudly wail about the fact that both sides are unwilling to sit down over tea and negotiate and compromise.

Republicans sneak in with what they call a “compromise” which, magically, will be exactly what Bush wants, and won’t involve actually compromising with the people who run Congress.

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is who gets results. When the Democrats are willing to compromise and get nothing, it just reinforces the notion that they’re a bunch of gutless weasels. “Sorry guys, we tried” isn’t the best message to send to voters. In an interview Salon, John Edwards gets it exactly right :

Are you confident that if the Democrats stood firm, Bush, who is certainly the most stubborn president of our lifetime, would back down? or would it just ratchet up into a confrontation?

Why should we presume that he won’t back down, and therefore we must back down? That’s not what we should do. We should be strong for the troops, for America and for the entire world. The Democrats need to be strong. That’s what we ought to do. That’s what I’d do.

Exactly. Even if the eventual plan is to strip out the withdrawal language and give the President the money he’s asking for don’t talk about it to the press. Are you people stupid?? Any power that the Democrats think they might have gained in getting a pro-withdrawal bill through Congress is negated when the dumbass leaders tell reporters “Yeah, we’re probably gonna back down”. Fools.

UPDATE : The President’s spokesperson shows the kind of guts that the Democrats seem to lack (via TPM):

“This is not a meeting in order to compromise” Heh, guess which side is gonna win this battle? If the Democrats wanted to be savvy, they’d say something like this :

We’ve tried to be conciliatory and work with the executive branch, but the President’s patronizing attitude is unacceptable. If you insist on talking to your colleagues like children, then let me make one thing clear to you.

You don’t get to write legislation. That’s our job. You’re not in charge. You don’t get a blank check. You asked for money and we’re providing it. Take it or leave it, Mr. President. If you veto this bill, then you’re the one blocking funding to our troops. If you want to stand between our military and the funding that we’ve given them, then that’s your choice.

At this point, we’re getting into Mr. Smith territory since the Democrats already signaled their intention to back down before the President has even had a chance to use his veto pen.

Forgive me for being a little premature, but I don’t see any scenario in which John McCain ends up winning in 2008. He’s done. His campaign donations were pitiful compared to his GOP and Democratic rivals. Of all the people in this race, McCain should be second only to Hillary in terms of an election machine ready to raise money and sell him to the undecideds. McCain has been chomping at the bit to be president ever since his BFF Dubya’s campaign started rumors that his daughter is the love child of a prostitute, yet with 6-7 years to get his plans together and the kind of media recognition that any other candidate would kill for, this early in the race, he should be the one kicking ass while the newcomers struggle to build up their campaigns, not the other way around.

Even worse for Maverick^TM is that his phoniness is on display more and more with each passing day. His whole persona was carefully crafted on the notion that he would use his “straight talk” to speak truth to power, that he alone is tired of the partisan games and the politics of personal destruction and any other cliches he can squeeze in there. But all the heartwarming rhetoric in the world couldn’t stop him from looking like a goon when he took his stroll through Baghdad last week. You can’t be an out-of-touch backer of an unpopular President and a modern-day Mr. Smith who can be counted on to rise above politics. Not only does it run against the script you’ve been writing, but it just makes you look pathetic.

McCain’s campaign seems convinced that it can’t win without kissing some conservative ass, yet each move is just alienating both sides further. Conservative voters have seen through McCain’s centrist act for years, which is why, despite his recent pandering to “the base”, he seems to have gotten so little support thus far in the primary season. And it’s just gonna get worse. The only question in my mind is whether he’ll be wise enough to pull the plug in the next 6 months of if he’ll have to suffer a humiliating defeat before realizing that he can’t be a partisan and a rebel at the same time.

Here’s a longer version of the Geraldo/O’Reilly shouting match that’s been making the rounds :

As my friend Tom pointed out, the most amazing thing about the whole exchange isn’t the spectacle of a couple of jerks who shout for a living doing what they do best (though it is entertaining), but that they’re able to turn their anger off so quickly and praise Fox News. It’s sorta creepy how quickly they drop the “righteous outrage” act.

I’ve begrudgingly become an Apple fan over the last few years, but the Apple TV is a piece of junk. Engadget’s review nails why :

Requirements – When purchasing the Apple TV, the Apple employees were very clear about the requirement for an HDTV.
. . .
The movies and TV shows from the iTunes music store are only VGA (not even DVD resolution), and certainly don’t sport Dolby Digital 5.1. They may look good on your laptop, but up on a massive screen is still just such a far cry from HD.
. . .
Another issue we ran into is the 4GB file limit and 5Mbps bitrate limit for the media it does support. Not even Apple’s own 720p HD trailers (8Mbps) have a low enough bitrate to play. Re-encoding is an option, but besides the perpetual desire not to have to do that, the results are often less than stellar, especially when this low bitrate video is blown up on a nice, big, high resolution HDTV. We kind of missed the point of watching movies in HD if you’ve got a screen full dancing pixels and artifacts. Simply put, if anyone is thinking about buying this to watch HD movies and videos: don’t.

Yet, the Apple TV requires an HDTV? I don’t get it. Why build a device for HD that plays back video at YouTube-levels of quality? Even the demo units at the Apple store have low quality clips from The Incredibles which look like a cheap bootleg. If you want low-quality video, the Wii can play YouTube videos, plus play games, and it’s $50 cheaper.

After posting with Wordpress over at TMW, I started really resenting how damn long it takes to publish or do anything in Movable Type. Now that this open source blogging platform has grown up enough to surpass its proprietary cousins, I’ve made the switch and taken the opportunity to upgrade the design a bit. There’s still some tweaking to do with the CSS (especially in comments and the contact page) and the “About” and “Misc” pages need to be overhauled, so consider this a live beta version of the site. If you notice anything weird or missing, or just want to gripe about the changes, tell me about it in comments.

I’m with John on this one…what the hell?!

Indeed, the big liberal blogs have a formal boycott against linking to TNR because they consider us the enemy on precisely those grounds.

Even if you grant Jonathan Chait’s point that there’s a “formal boycott” against TNR by the big liberal blogs (which, as John pointed out, is hogwash), then could you really blame us? This whole unsupported allegation of a “formal” boycott against TNR is business as usual for a publication that all but declared war on the liberal blogosphere with their made-up scandal from last year regarding the Advertising Liberally blogad group. Throughout the whole ordeal, TNR’s senior editor Jason Zengerle accused the liberal blogging community of a “a sheep-like obedience” to Markos Moulitsas and insisted that we all were “follow[ing] Kos’s orders to stay silent “. As a way of highlighting out his journalistic and ethical superiority to the spineless amateurs in the blog-world, Zengerle supported his claim, in part, through a fake email from a source he’s still protecting. (So, who’s the sheep again?) Considering TNR’s complete lack of respect for the bloggers they think should be linking to them, even if there was a formal policy of not linking to The New Republic (which there isn’t), they would have earned it.

Besides, the real reason I rarely link to The New Republic is because most of their content is locked behind a subscription wall. I’m not going to link to an article that my readers can’t see for themselves. I get emails from TNR all the time advertising articles that sound like they’d be interesting, but not enough to pull out my credit card for the privilege of reading what other sites give away for free. Sorry, TNR, but your writers aren’t that good. If I want to read some interesting political commentary, there’s always Salon, Slate, The American Prospect, The Nation, Mother Jones, newspaper editorial pages, various conservative publications and a million or so blogs.

Here are the two funniest videos I’ve seen lately :

McCain needs “100 Soldiers, 3 Blackhawks, 2 Apache Gunships” just to prove how safe Baghdad is? Wow, Maverick just crossed over into “Bush Sr. not recognizing a supermarket scanner” cluelessness. At least this ego-stoking waste of military resources makes a good photo op :