Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

Interesting staking out of positions while position to the extreme facets. The president’s slipping in the World Criminal Court was telling, as was Kerry’s mention of the Kyoto Protocol. Hmm. Good clarification from Lehrer. Bilateral vs. multilateral. Interesting clarification leaving Kerry looking slightly foolish, with Bush’s correction about “enriched uranium” vs. “plutonium.” And here is [...]

The sum of the President’s point right now appears to be, “Don’t change horses in mid-stream. We won’t succeed if we send mixed signals to the world.” Hmm. A free Iraq and a free Afghanistan will send a powerful signal. Hard to get to that signal if we are losing ground there daily. Did Bush’s [...]

Homeland security. I think this could be the hidden strength of Kerry. This is the untold story of the Bush presidency—the strong emphasis on homeland security while adding no funding. Bush: “How are you going to pay for all those promises?” Hmm. Perhaps by not slashing taxes on the rich and the corporations. Bush sounds [...]

Watching on NBC, who are getting around the “no cutaway” rule by doing splitscreen reaction shots of the candidates. Meaning that Bush shared the screen with Kerry the whole time that Kerry was speaking, while Bush had the screen to himself during the response. But it looks like they’re keeping it fair by doing split [...]

I took the bus for the first time yesterday, going toward Kendall Square (via a change to the T at Harvard Square) to meet Lisa after work. She and I went to John Harvard’s for a quick burger and beer and to pick up a couple growlers of her favorite Pale Ale. On the way [...]

A federal judge has ruled that key parts of the PATRIOT Act, those provisions which grant extended surveillance powers to the FBI and impose gag orders on those who receive subpoenas to turn over records, are unconstitutional. Surprise, surprise, surprise. I’d just like to pause for a second, as tonight’s first Presidential debate looms, and [...]

It’s good to see that, after back to back hurricanes have dumped more water on Virginia than during almost any season in memory, the Bush Administration has decided to prevent ten environmental disasters waiting to happen by scrapping ten of the “Ghost Fleet” ships in the James River. In an article about the disposal contracts [...]

It looks like I have a little while longer before I have to make a decision about shifting photo publishing platforms. The storage limit on my .Mac account just increased from 100 MB (plus 5 for mail) to 250 MB partitioned between mail and disk. Incidentally, I have to say I’m not super impressed with [...]

Fark pointed out today that Jack Daniel’s has quietly lowered the proof of its flagship Black Label Tennessee Whiskey, from 86 to 80. I’ll be going out tomorrow to see if there are any of the big bottles left in our local liquor stores—at 86 proof. And I might even sign a petition… In the [...]

I had been meaning to cobble together a quick script to do automatic image resizing (occasionally the images that Amazon provides for album covers or book jackets are larger than the standard sizes I use on the site, and I always want to resize album covers to 65 pixels tall), but was scared off by [...]

A week or two ago, I was on my way up Salem Street to our favorite 24-hour bakery in the North End, Bova’s, when I noticed that traffic was even worse than usual in front of the door and there were some seriously bright lights. I went inside and asked the lady at the counter [...]

My brand new Airport Express is now happily parked downstairs next to my stereo, where it’s streaming tunes from my PowerBook into the receiver and out through my B&W speakers. And it’s interesting, because I can tell a definite difference with the digital tunes. I always play jazz for audio “firsts”—first time in a new [...]

I’ve often thought that the eternal struggle of Boston’s fans, their faithfulness in spite of the losses and the “curse” and the occasionally unbelievable stupidity of the management, was one of the best things about this town. The French may have invented existentialism, but this is the city where it’s practiced in its most refined [...]

I can’t believe I waited this long to buy a Ramones recording (yes, Johnny’s death prompted me. I’m a ghoul, I can’t help it), but Ramones Mania was worth it—30 tracks of pure rock goodness, with the longest track the caustic Reagan kiss-off “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” at a sprawling 3:53 and 25 other tracks [...]

Last Thursday I installed a programmable thermostat to replace the old mercury-filled dial-down model. This turned out to be a pretty simple project, though once again the age of the house complicates any project where we try to rely on advice from on-line sources and books. To wit: the new thermostat manual and all the [...]