Pombo Time - New York Times

So glad he's not my Rep. anymore. My condolences to family and friends in Manteca...

Richard Pombo has had a hard time keeping himself out of the news lately. In late September, a watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Mr. Pombo, a seven-term House member from California, one of the 13 most corrupt politicians in Congress. Three weeks later the Center for Public Integrity accused him of taking junkets paid for by the International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources - the kind of organization, heavy with corporate donors, in which the word 'conservation' is a wink to the wise. And last week the League of Conservation Voters accused him of selling out to a long list of corporate interests.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Chomsky is voted world's top public intellectual

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Chomsky is voted world's top public intellectual: "'I don't pay a lot of attention to them,' said Chomsky of the poll last night. 'It was probably padded by some friends of mine.'"

Free Bluegrass!

My landlord owns the Rubber Room recording studio, in Chapel Hill which specializes in acoustic music (ok, I admit it, I worded that in order to help him with the Google searches...). He just got a website.

I didn't design it, but I helped him change the photo page and added a music section where you can get free mp3's of songs he's recorded for some of the best artists in the business. Right now there are two, but we'll have at least four. The Grass Cats "Bluegrass Man" was the #1 bluegrass song in 2004. So, take advantage of free, high quality music. You heard it here first! I'll add him to the sidebar under "music" by the time this post is no longer on the top page.

New iPod

I got the email about the model I bought (the first in color, and the first 20 GB able to display photos) on July 15, 2005 and bought it in early Sept. I figured it'd be a while before a newer model came out. Boy was I wrong.

This one adds is 30 GB instead of 20, has longer battery life, is smaller, and plays videos--all for the same price. Technology moves so quickly. If I'd known it was coming I would have waited, but I'm sure they'll have come out with one that plays holograms in a few months... When I thought about it, though, I realized that the iPod I have is plenty small and portable, has plenty of battery life, 20 GB is far more than I really need, and I have no real desire to watch videos on the thing when I have a TV and iBook... It's an example of how capital can create "needs" we don't really have. It's also funny how you spend decades perfectly happy without something (like a cell phone) but once you get it you can't imagine living without it... A rachet effect.

Biscuit Burners - Fiery Mountain Music

It was my friend Allison's birthday yesterday, so we took her to see them play. They were pretty rock'n'. I don't know how they can play so fast.

This blog is getting less attention now that I've launched the new one, but I'll still post updates and such...

Rulablog -- Russell's Latin America Politics Blog

After reading Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes I decided to launch a new blog for my posts about Latin America, which I plan to post more often.

Went to see John Edwards Speak Yesterday

He exceeded my expectations by a lot. He's on tour promoting a new college anti-poverty group called Opportunity Rocks. UNC was the first stop since he works here.

Found It!

(The Smurf video I mentioned a few days ago). Scroll down for a link to a newstory in WMP or QT that includes the video. More like a slide show. I'm sure there are better quality versions out there, but it's not too easy to find because unicef isn't posting it to make it harder for children to see it.

Active Timer

An app (for OS X) that keeps track of how much time I spend using each program. I saw it mentioned in MacWorld. I just installed it, but do I really want to know?

Washington Bullets

In September I bought myself The Clash's double album Sandinista! for my birthday. For a good month I was obsessed with the song "Washington Bullets." In October 2003 Eric Alterman wrote:

While never mega-successful commercially, The Clash remain an unanswerable rebuke to those who demand a wall between art and politics. The angrier their songs about imperialism, inequality and institutionalized violence, the higher they soared musically. And while Clash lyrics necessarily simplified issues--they were not, after all, writing essays for The Nation--rarely did they oversimplify. On Sandinista!, for instance, 'Washington Bullets' is actually a backhanded compliment to Jimmy Carter for refusing to intervene to save Nicaragua's Somoza.

Southern Living

I used to joke about subscribing to the magazine. I just had a daddy longlegs wander across the front of my iBook. I used a plastic container to throw it outside. I often do that, because it's really less trouble then killing them--no mess. Plus it's good to show compassion. Roaches must die, though (I've "only" seen three--and they're the kind that live outside instead of breeding in the walls, but I try to keep the kitchen very clean).

So, when people ask me how many roommates I have I should really say that depends how many camel crickets happen to have wandered in lately. At least it's usually pretty to evict them (or kill them if I'm lacking patience). Haven't seen any more snakes, though (knock on wood).

The other part of southern living is trying to remember to run the de-humidifier when I'm gone (because it's loud). The AC serves the same function, but now that it's cooled off I try to run it to keep things less musty. It's amazing how many gallons of water it can take out of the air! The weather has been awesome lately, so that's good.

Angeli in DC: A Little Thank-You to Russell

I would like to take a moment to thank my former LVC roommate Russell for catching the typo in my last entry (No, don't look there now. I've corrected it.). If you don't know me personally, maybe you'll wonder why I've wasted time worrying about it. And if you do know me personally, you're probably rolling your eyes or shaking your head or sighing...

If I thanked people for finding typos in Russell's Ramblings it'd be: post, post thanking my mom for finding typo, post, post thanking Annie for finding typo, post thanking my mom for finding typo in post thanking Annie for finding typo...

So, thanks to everyone who finds my typos!

And check out Angeli's blog. She was (and I'm sure still is) a cool person to live with.

Stephan Smith has a song about Katrina called "When The Storm Came Rushing In" set to the tune of "When The Saints Go Marching In," which you can download for free. It's quite good and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to link to it.

1) I can't believe I'm linking to the Washington Times (though they got it from the London Daily Telegraph).

2) I saw a link to this on Wonkette, which I recently added to my feed subsriptions.

3) I may try to track down a video clip. If I do find one I'll link to it.

UNICEF ad drops bomb on Smurfs�:

"The short film pulls no punches.
It opens with the Smurfs dancing, hand in hand, around a campfire and singing the Smurf song. Bluebirds flutter past and rabbits gambol around their familiar village of mushroom-shaped houses until, without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky.
The Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs.
The final frame bears the message: 'Don't let war affect the lives of children.'
It is intended as part of a fundraising drive by UNICEF's Belgian arm to raise more than $100,000 for the rehabilitation of former child soldiers in Burundi. "

Quick note: my Yahoo mail no longer forwards to UNC (to cut down on spam), and I only check the Yahoo account once or twice a week. So, please write me at the UNC address. Annie sent me three emails at Yahoo this week and I just now read them...

Does God have it out for poor people this fall or something?

Flooded Central America Hit by Quake: "A moderate earthquake rocked Central America on Friday, causing the collapse of a rain-damaged highway bridge in Guatemala and sending thousands of frightened Salvadoran residents into the streets."

Guatemalan village buried in mud, 1,400 feared dead

Just talked to my friend Ethan in Japan for free on Skype. I find that very cool. If you know me and are using it, my user name is "RussellBither-Terry." It'll send me a note and I'll have to approve you to let you call me. If you don't know me but are randomly reading my blog, first of all welcome, and secondly if you want to contact me please send me an email. I won't approve Skype requests from people I don't know.

Just got my first crank call over Skype. This must be some sort of landmark. A guy saying "This is Pizza Express. You ordered a pizza?" I said "no" and then hung up. I change my privacy settings so only people I've given permission can call me.

Sometimes I miss the days of getting physical copies of reserves from the circulation desk and copying them. Sometimes I think electronic reserve takes almost as long. Today I told something to print but I was printing from the browers instead of the Acrobat plug-in, so it didn't work. Then IE crashed like a good Microsoft product. The lab computers have Mozilla, which seems to work better, but it's taken me a good while to print the articles I need for next week. A couple of the ones for scopes wouldn't open because they were the wrong format or something, so once that gets fixed I'll have to come back to print them, when it'll probably be busier and take longer. Of course the plus side is that it's free to print, where as back in the late 90's at Willamette I had to pay for each copy when I copied the reserves... So life is good, but technology can try my patience.

Bush to visit Latin America in November: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, who many Latin Americans criticize for being out of touch with the region's woes, will attend in November a summit of the hemisphere's leaders in Argentina before going to Brazil and Panama."

That he's be meeting with Kirchner (Argentina) and Lula (Brazil) indicates to me that they're concerned with, and take seriously, the independent/leftist turn the region is taking.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Are Great Artists Right-Wing?

No.

(The example used to make the argument was Dylan).

Going to take my Scopes and Methods mid-term in 30 minutes. I feel pretty prepared. We're just going to have to define key terms.

Sent my iBook to Apple to get the monitor fixed while it's still under warranty. It was a minor problem (a thin line that didn't display some colors), but I was afraid of it spreading. May decide to purchase the Apple Care plan. It's weird not having internet at home. Makes things quieter and calmer and I've been playing more guitar. Hard to generalize since I only sent it in yesterday...

Went to a talk by Jimmy Wales, the guy who started Wikipedia (a free open source encyclopedia) that was quite good. Got a better sense of how the community operates and have more confidence in the work they do.

Skype is free Internet telephony that just works: "What we've got is a simple bit of software we want to give you. It'll let you make free calls to your friends all over the world. And we don’t want any money for it. It’s free."

Downloaded and installed it today. Wow, it's awesome. Jan and I used it to talk locally and the quality was better than my cell, so it can be good for local calls, too... Will use it to talk to my friend Ethan in Japan when we can arrange a time (13 hour time difference). It's free to call someone else who has it (computer to computer), and you can call normal phone numbers for a very low rate. Pretty cool, huh?