Right Here, Right Now 3.0

I got a MacBook about six weeks ago or so. I was slightly anxious buying anything that major that close to Macworld. The last computer lasted about 3 years, and if Apple hadn't made the Intel switch I'd still be using it, so I don't upgrade often. (But the Intel Macs are soooo much faster.)

On yesterday's road trip I listened to this episode of FreshAir.  It's an interview with the author of Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).

To summarize, Corporations get more from the tax payers than that Cadillac driving welfare mother ever did.

The most interesting discussion was around GW's ownership of a Texas baseball team. The sale of the team is the primary source of Bush's wealth and the total profit from the sale of the team was less than the government subsidy of the team's stadium. Which leaves us with two points. 1) Bush squandered the subsidy, i.e, he lost money, and 2) he owes his wealth to a taxpayer subsidy.

Dave Winer suggests we should watch this every so often:

The last of my Amazon orders have arrived. This is how I spent Mom's Amazon gift card (ok, and a bit of my cash.)
The first group covers professional development. I've been a one-trick-pony for a long time. On one hand, if you need that trick, I'm your pony. On the other hand, if you don't, I'm not. This is to expand my horizons.

• MySQL, Second Edition
• MySQL Cookbook
• The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right

And because I might find myself working on corprate America again.

• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

These are for personal devleopment.

• Pillar of Fire : America in the King Years 1963-65
• Walking with the Wind

Because I wanted the DVD I bought the real version instead of just downloading it.

• One Man Band

RON PAUL: Well I've been elected as a Republican for ten times. And Republicans have a platform, and had a better platform in the past. They expressed these views. Matter of fact, George Bush, if you remember ran on a foreign policy not too far from what I'm talking about. So, it's not like I'm completely a stranger to the Republican ideas of-- you know, they talk about balanced budgets and they're strict Constitutionalists.

And I think the ones who are in charge right now have left the Republican Party and the platform, which makes it more difficult, because people in the party, the hard core base, which unfortunately for the Republicans is getting smaller. But they stick their loyal to the leader. And they're loyal to maintaining power. They're not loyal to a principle or the Constitution and saying doing what is right, you know. They can't reverse their trend, you know. If we're in a bad situation in Iraq, "No. We can't be disloyal." And so they're not objective enough. So-- but I think I can be a good Republican and fight for these ideals, because they have been in the Republican Party in the past. And the question is, is will these ideas be revived once again in the Republican Party? Will people like myself be excluded? There's indeed a lot of people would like to exclude me from the Republican Party. But the party is awful small. Why would they want to exclude is, if we want to work within the Republican Party?

Now, I'm a yellow-dog Democrat, so, I'd be the same way were it the other way, but still.
Bill Moyer had Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich on his show. Highly recommended, as always.

I was wondering how Mike Huckabee's class warfare comment went over. He said (and god save me, I'm relying on Peggy Noonan for this quote):

"People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off."

Wasn't hard to find out.

It's not news that eating better means living better and perhaps longer.

This TED talk, however, makes an interesting point. Dr. Dean Ormish says, about 1:54 into the talk, that they've significantly reduced the progression of Prostate cancer by making changes in patient's diet. Sadly, he doesn't go into details in the talk.

Doing some googling, I found this. Pomegranates, Benjamin. There must be more. But I'm throwing this out there for what it's worth.

Here's more.

(Dad had two surgeries to tame his prostate gland. I'm interesting in avoiding the same, if I can.)

NYT reports that Fox's Business Network is attracting an average of 6,300 viewers a day. About what a community access cable show might reach. As a comparison, CNBC averaged 283,000 viewers a day from 10/15 to 12/15/2007.

I've got a few contracts that end on 12/31 that I should be wrapping up. And, I'm led to believe Christmas is next week and I've got a bit (ahem) more to do for that.

So, what do I do? I investigate what's using the most space on my hard drive.

The biggest file, in the upper left corner is my VMWare Windows image. The greenish bar to its right is Ubuntu.

The middle section in the top are client database files.

The right most corner is media (i.e., music and movies). Only three movies, can you guess which file blocks?

The green bar running horizontally about half way down is the photo library - presented as a single 'file' in Leopard.

The purplish file in the lower right is the sleepimage.

Please keep shiny objects away from me. I apparently have a hard time focusing.