Cuz We Said So

"Tiananmen? Never Happened!"

Brain Terminal:  “Here's what comes up in the standard Google image search for "Tiananmen Square Massacre", and here's the scrubbed version on Chinese Google.”

Flight 93

I think I’m going to pass on this one.  While some people seem to have let the events of 9/11 slip to the back of their minds, I have not, and I’m not ready to watch a movie about it.  Just watching half the trailer made me angry all over again.

Bernstein on Spielberg

David Bernstein: “I haven't seen [Munich] yet, but several reviews I've seen have accused Spielberg of using the movie to score political points against the Bush Administration. This interview should remove any doubt that these reviewers are right.”

Sheehan Considering Senate Run

Oh please, yes.  Just tell me where I can send a campaign contribution, and I’ll write the check.  The best part of her declaration is where she accuses Diane Feinstein of being “a Republican in Democrat’s clothing”.  Diane Feinstein!  Again, how far to the left do you have to be to mistake Feinstein for a Republican?  Any farther and Cindy is going to fall into orbit.

The Hollywood Left Speaks

Newsweek, via Dudge:

Spielberg: 'Filmmakers are much more proactive since second Bush administration'...

And in related news, America replies:

Huge box office decline in 2005

Adventures in Kitty Ownership: The Litter-Robot

My job requires that I travel almost every week, and I have two cats, facts that together make automatic litter boxes a subject of considerable interest to me.  After all, nothing says, “welcome home, how was your trip?” quite like four days of used cat litter.  The droid-looking little device you see here is a Litter-Robot, my latest experiment in high-tech kitty care.

I used a LitterMaid for many years, and found it better than nothing, but I was never entirely satisfied.  I found it hard to keep the litter at just the right level for the device to operate properly: put in too much litter and the rake was prone to jamming; put in too little, and the box would get messy, requiring that the entire thing be disassembled and washed.  And even the jumbo sized Mega Litter Maid used the same smallish receptacle used by the smaller model, a size that proved to be insufficient to contain more than three days of my cats’ best efforts.  This led to overflowing, more mess, and more jamming.  I eventually got two LitterMaids, but when one of my cats became diabetic, the polyuria (excessive urination) that is a symptom of the disease overwhelmed even my two box configuration, and I eventually surrendered, returning to low-tech standard litter boxes, emptied periodically in my absence by helpful family members.

I first ran across the Litter-Robot a while back, while scouring the Web for a LitterMaid alternatives, and at the time, I didn’t consider it very seriously.  I was scared away by the price (a bit north of $300) and the uncertainty of an untested device.  However, a couple of months ago, I was talking with a friend at work, and he mentioned that he and his wife had bought a Litter-Robot—and loved it.

And so, after thinking about it for a while, I too have taken the plunge: my Litter-Robot arrived late last week.  Now all that remains to be seen is whether my cats can be persuaded to play along.  I suspect Spot, the more skittish of my two cats, will be the harder sell.  His recent, frequent trips to the vet have heightened his dislike of his pet carrier, and I am concerned the Litter-Robot may remind him of it.  So far he has shown great reluctance to go near it.  Hopefully he’ll warm up to it, given time.  The Litter-Robot people offer a “if you or your cats are not completely satisfied, we’ll refund your money” guarantee, but obviously, I’d like not to have to use it.

Gateway Tablet No More

Yes, as of a few weeks ago, I no longer own a Gateway CX200X tablet PC.  I grew less happy with the machine the longer I had it, and after two months of sporadic use, I sold it on eBay to someone who will hopefully appreciate it more than I did.

The reasons for my dissatisfaction, ranked roughly in order of descending import, were 1) the absence of a variety of convenience features and supporting software that I had grown to depend on from my previous tablet, a Toshiba M200, 2) the Gateway’s heavy weight, and 3) a very unhappy experience with Gateway Support.  If I have time later in the week, I will elaborate.

In the meanwhile, I offer this caution:  for me, buying one of these machines sight-unseen was an expensive mistake.  If you are considering buying one yourself, I would strongly encourage you hunt down and experiment with the consumer version in a retail store before you spend the money.  Gateway allows returns only within 15 days of purchase, and even in that period they will charge you a 15 percent re-stocking fee if you decide you don’t like it.

"Ahabs Everywhere"

John Hindraker at Power Line: executes a take down of the WaPo, Newsweek, and the New York Times in a single post, in which he tosses out this lovely simile:

Democrats and their media allies are like an armada of Ahabs, cruising the seas in their obsessive pursuit of the white whale who defeats them time after time, never giving up the chase.

Ouch!  I’m not sure I buy this as a fair characterization of the average Democrat on the street, but watching the Dems in Washington, and reading the blogs of the Angry Left, it’s not that hard picture them hobbling around on peg legs and waving harpoons in the air with each new gambit to injure the president.  They have never gotten over their resentment over the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and their rage at the Gore loss in 2000, and their every public action appears directed at avenging one or both of those defeats.

"Be Careful What You Wish For"?

As KTRK's Chris Tritico pointed out on the radio yesterday, President Bush has made establishing democracy in the Middle East a central element of its foreign policy, so I think we'd have to wait long before critics of that policy were pointing to the election of Hamas by the Palestinians as if it were somehow a refutation.  Nor was I disappointed.  The lesson Tritico brought away from the elections was, "Be careful what you wish for," a talking point echoed by former Maine senator George Mitchell said on CNN: "Well, yeah, President Bush gotta be careful what he's looking for here. He wanted democracy, now we got democracy, and democracy has produced nothing different than what we had before the elections." 

Conservative pundits have observed for quite a while that liberal zeal to oppose all things Bush repeatedly drive them embrace all manner of defeatist and/or morally craven positions.  Is this the latest example?  I'm a little unclear, here... are we questioning whether the spread of democracy makes us safer, a debate over objective outcomes that's fair to take, or are we hinting that the Palestinians should have been denied the right to choose their leaders because we don't like the choice they appear to have made?  Because that would certainly be a contemptible position.

Advertising and Dating

“Getting a girl to desire your product isn't that different from getting a girl to desire you. So if it didn't work in your dating life, don't try it in your print ad.”  An interesting marketing insight from BusinessWeek (via AdJab).