Lake Solon

iChat Event Handling (Error 1708)

2009-03-14T21:48:00.003-05:00

If you google for 1708 you'll find a bazillion pages with people complaining about Error 1708 in connection mostly with AppleScript, and especially with iChat. The gist of the error is "I sent an AppleEvent (how AppleScript makes applications do stuff) and it wasn't handled".

When an application like iChat runs an AppleScript it can trigger specific code by passing it an event, instead of just running the whole script which would force you divide all of your code into tiny little scripts based on which event triggers them (which most people do, but the 'advanced' option is nice to have). Sometimes the script in question doesn't have a 'handler' for the that type of event, like in our case "On Login Finished". Normally this is handled gracefully, the script as a whole runs, and the user never notices. But in the recent builds of iChat it instead presents a fairly nasty error message to the user.

There's a workaround used in a few applescripts dealing with iChat (but googling for this workaround with 1708 is obscured by all the other posts), here's one. You have to explicitly handle the event iChat sends you when it runs your script, and instead of using a "tell" you just "use terms from" and all actions implicitly apply to the calling application (iChat).

Someone might find this interesting, and someone might find this in google when they have the same problem. Here's my script (.scpt file) for setting location based on Wifi SSID.

The Price of Oil

2009-02-04T21:46:00.002-06:00

There's a great deal of oil, but there's even more money.

At the peak of oil prices every barrel of oil, on average, was traded 27 times before it was delivered. I predict two possible outcomes: [the threat of] new regulations on the commodities markets will stabilize things, or oil prices will continue to be volatile.

In Defense of the Bailout

2009-01-15T08:45:00.003-06:00

There are anti-bailout people, but there aren't really any pro-bailout people. The day before it passed Krugman was on the news networks saying things like, "Just hold your breath and vote for it". Its execution has left a lot to be desired, the one-off mini-bailouts of individual firms has added rather than alleviated uncertainty. But the core of the bailout, the first $125B to the 9 big banks, and second $125B to other banks on an opt-in basis seems to be doing its job.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of informed discourse about the progress of the bailout. The anti-bailout folks-- I'm looking at you Keith-- aren't being very coherent. Even Rachel Maddow has been demonstrating her ignorance when she makes a big deal out of what seems a simple question: "What is the money being spent on?" The closest thing there is to an answer is simply, "Nothing". It's there to add weight to a particular column in the bank's balance sheet. It's all about Ratios.

But, don't take my word for it. The Washington Post published a column by a duo with far better credentials than mine: Let The Bank Bailout Work

Martin Neil Baily and Charles L. Schultze are senior fellows at the Brookings Institution.

Baily chaired the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration.
Schultze chaired the Council of Economic Advisers in the Carter administration.

It's short so I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here's an excerpt:

In short, for every $1 million of losses on bad loans, a bank must reduce its portfolio of loans by around $10 million, unless it can obtain new capital to offset the losses. Unchecked, this "deleveraging" process poses a serious threat to the economy.

The IMF has estimated that, without large infusions of government funds, U.S. and European banks over the period 2008-13 would be selling assets and failing to renew existing loans to the tune of $10 trillion, equivalent to a whopping 14.5 percent of their loan portfolios. More than half of this lending contraction would occur among U.S. banks. At this stage, therefore, TARP's success has to be judged not in terms of how many new loans it produces but what problems it has prevented -- fire sales of assets and the cutting off of credit lines.

The Clock of History, Without Context

2009-01-10T05:09:00.002-06:00

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statue nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Robert Heinlein, Life-line, 1939

I am posting this quote without context, as it is my experience that most people seem to easily find a context in which apply it without any assistance or interference on my part.

Section 382

2008-11-12T08:25:00.003-06:00

There's the typical over-sensational headline and train wreck of a discussion over at reddit. I gave a brief reply there and perhaps I'll make a more full post here later but I wanted to fill in a few blanks on a current news item.

The precise headline should be "Treasury/IRS waives section 382 for bank mergers/acquisitions", but of course nobody knows what that means so it gets translated into "$140Bn give away to banks" which really doesn't describe the situation very well.

The provision keeps you from being able to buy a bankrupt company 'shell' and use its past losses to offset your future (and past) tax liability.

One of the angles the Treasury is pursuing is to encourage successful and sound banks to acquire failing ones. Waiving this limitation is one measure they took to do that. So while you might disagree with the fairness of it there is at the least a defensible logic to it.

My understanding of the "is it illegal?" question is whether or not the Treasury has the authority to do this on its own, or if it requires an act of Congress.

Like many news stories; if you listen really closely you can actually pick out all of these elements from Maddow's description of the situation. But they're subtle and easy to miss if you're not ALREADY familiar with the subject matter. Here's some much more in-depth coverage at The Washington Post.

Barack Roasting Rahm from 2005

2008-11-11T00:47:00.003-06:00

A clip from 2005 (recently re-aired on C-SPAN) of Barack Obama roasting his White House Chief of Staff. Via DailyKos. It's short and pretty funny even if you don't know Rahm Emanuel.

CTO of the Federal Government

2008-11-07T02:02:00.003-06:00

So one of the Obama pledges was to create a Chief Technology Officer position in the Federal Government. There was a recent discussion on slashdot proffering Bill Joy. My own comment was:

It surprises me no one has suggested him in this discussion, and perhaps there's a reason I'm unaware of that he wouldn't fit the position, and who know's if he'd take the job, but I can't think of anyone more suited than EFF Co-Founder Mitch Kapor.

Mitchell David Kapor (born November 1, 1950) is the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer application" often credited with making the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980s. He is known as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist.

Progressive Progressivism?

2008-11-06T16:50:00.003-06:00

There's something very telling about the consistent climb of this blue line in contrast to the peaks and valleys of the red one. I'm just not entirely sure what.

Adversaries

2008-02-17T16:07:00.000-06:00

The goal is not to bring your adversaries to their knees but to their senses.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, HR 5353

2008-02-14T23:29:00.002-06:00

You can follow the progress of the bill at opencongress.org.

The full text is actually very short so I encourage you to read its entirety.

It has three main points:

First to amend the 1934 Communications Act to include some policies which state that "to maintain the freedom to use for lawful purposes broadband telecommunications networks, including the Internet, without unreasonable interference from or discrimination by network operators" is a good thing. And similar statements.

Second to require the FCC to assess various things such as how harmful the restrictions providers apply to a user's network connection are. F'ex Comcast forging 'reset' packets to break BitTorrent.

Third to require the FCC to hold multiple summits on the topic, include a wide range of input (including on the internet as well as live events), and report the results to congress.

I actually think it's a reasonable conservative step forward on what is an extremely complicated issue. I'm for it.

Early Numbers, 08 Presidential Primary

2008-02-06T02:01:00.000-06:00

With about 80% of the precincts reporting I pulled some numbers off of the Secretary of State's website.

Statewide DFL turnout is currently 202k dividing into 135k for Obama, and 64k for Clinton.
Statewide Republican turnout is currently 60k.

Which means second place Clinton got more votes than all of the Republican candidates combined.

Focusing on the 6th District the trend continues, though not quite as extreme. Where as the state wide ratio was 3:1, in the 6th it was 'merely' 2:1. Here's a graph of the results of the 6th district comparing apples alongside the oranges (a vote is a vote, after all).

On Government

2007-09-08T03:09:00.000-05:00

Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." - George Washington

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." - James Madison

"When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master!" - Thomas Jefferson

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money." - Alexis de Tocqueville

A small collection of quotes pulled from this slashdot post.

Bill Clinton on Fox

2006-09-28T10:04:00.000-05:00

Jon Stewart explained his confrontational appearance on crossfire as him being rather dehydrated. Apparently Bill Clinton didn't have enough to drink before he taped his interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Or perhaps he's simply running out of patience with the B.S. and didn't concern himself with how it'd play in the soundbites the next day.

The interview is, as usual, up on YouTube: part 1, part 2, part 3.

It's definitely worth watching in its entirety, at around a total of 22 minutes. He says some good stuff, and though it could have been said better he (unsurprisingly) did a good job considering it was an unplanned question, Wallace's efforts to derail him, and probably most significantly the emotional response that must come with what is essentially being accused of letting 9/11 happen. Especially, as he points out, having it come from the people critical of his efforts at the time.

The book he mentions, Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke is a very good read and though the administration would desperately like to do so it has gone pretty well un-refuted, with the only significant response being attempted character assassination. Obligatory Amazon Link.

And one final wikipedia link, this time to the Bill Clinton subsection regarding this event.

Diagnostic Information

2006-09-13T04:40:00.000-05:00

I came across an insightful slashdot post with an analogy describing the usefulness of most diagnostic information.

56 bulbs
24 horizontal grill bars
72 vertical ridges on 1600 sq ft of 1/4" steel
20% full gas tank
209,000 miles driven
3 tread patterns
5 axles
18 wheels

Is what one might expect to see when hit by a truck.

Possibility

2006-07-31T11:07:00.000-05:00

Decide what is possible. Then do it. Even if you were wrong.

Bush and Blair with an Open Mic

2006-07-29T04:23:00.000-05:00

The full video clip from the CNN feed of Blair and Bush is hosted by our good friend YouTube, as usual. Presumably you've already heard about it, a quote was used in the TIME verbatim section this week, but I'm posting it here more for reference than anything.

Watching it myself, I get impression Blair is 'handling' Bush, rather than taking part in a discussion of peers.

Hans Rosling Lecture

2006-07-18T09:47:00.000-05:00

I actually came across the Al Gore video below because someone linked me to this lecture by Hans Rosling at the same conference. Hans Rosling (hmm, that page looks familiar somehow) is the "Professor of International Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden since 1998".

The talk is a bit broader than Rosling's title (his personal title, as opposed to the title he gave the lecture) would suggest. It uses world health as subject matter but the presentation is more about information representation and availability. There, that's my stab at trying to describe the lecture in a nutshell. In any case it's far more substantive and truly interesting than the Al Gore talk (which was linked more for amusement).

Renaissance of Al Gore

2006-07-18T09:38:00.000-05:00

For those of you following Al Gore's recent revival (if you haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, hurry up already) you might want to see a bit more of his stand up routine he did a while back at TED before the release of the film.

It was hosted at the TED site but that's offline at the moment. Quality is about the same (but a larger display) watching the Google Video version.

Relaxation

2006-07-10T07:12:00.000-05:00

I don't imagine there are many things more relaxing than sailing a remote control boat on a cool dawn breeze.

Perhaps morphine.

Travel

2006-06-30T23:19:00.000-05:00

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

- Mark Twain

NSA FOIA Requests

2006-06-03T11:23:00.000-05:00

When the USA Today Article revealed the NSA's call database some people had the good sense to immediately file either Freedom of Information Act or Privacy Act Requests to the NSA (instructions on the NSA Website).

I find this particularly interesting as we can be reasonably sure that any given individual is included in the database if they have made a phone call to, from, or making use of an AT&T, Verizon or BellSouth operated network.

The requests (first, second, more?) have of course been denied. There's alot of boilerplate but the meaningful chunk is (emphasis mine):

As you may be aware, the President of the United States :authorized the National Security Agency [(NSA)], consistent with the U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations." The President also noted that, "[t]his is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security."

Rest assured that safeguards are in place to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. However, because of the highly classified nature of the program, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records responsive to your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter in accordance with Executive Order 12958, as amended. Thus, your request is denied pursuant to the first exemption of the FOIA, which provides that the Foia does not apply to matters that are specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign relations and are properly classified pursuant to such Executive Order.

The executive order referenced was one by Clinton, which apparently 'led to an unprecedented effort to declassify millions of pages from the U.S. diplomatic and national security history'. The amendment they refer to is by GWB, which didn't.

The super condensed ultra executive first class traveling section (I think I need a Lear Jet) version is: We don't have to tell you because Bush said so.

Swedish Torrent Site Shut Down

2006-06-02T23:35:00.000-05:00

If you are not already familiar with how BitTorrent works I suggest having a look at the BitTorrent Primer previously posted.

ThePirateBay.org has been shut down by the Swedish Police. The most extensive English language coverage of the events is being assembled in the comments of Slashdot.org articles (ThePirateBay.org Raided and Shut Down, ThePirateBay Will Rise Again?, and referenced in a multi-part article), so be aware of the (limited) verifability of my information. That and my only vague familiarity with Swedish Law.

A torrent site being taken down is not exactly an uncommon occurance, I generally wouldn't be posting about it here. Especially as this is all taking place in another country. But I came across this post summarizing an article (in swedish) from svt.se (think PBS or BBC). Slyck.com (which posted the original story that slashdot covered) has a their own article in english.

The allegation is that the *AA pressured the US Government (which specific subset of it has not been made clear) into pressuring the Swedish Minister of Justice into pressuring Swedish Police into shutting down ThePirateBay.org, even though there is no evidence Swedish Law has been broken (as admitted by the police themselves). Especially pertinent is that it is apparently illegal for The Minister of Justice (Thomas Bodstrom) to direct the Police to take specific action. Apparently the The Ombudsman of Justice is launching an investigation into the raid.

Hopefully the investigation will get plenty of english language coverage and it will come to light exactly who in the US Gov't that's such a stooge of US Corporate Interests they're pressuring foreign governments into acts illegal in their own countries.

Update: TheLocal.se (an english language swedish news site) has further coverage with quotes from officials, and Reuters has their own piece on the Gov't Influence angle. I won't post every article on the topic. You can use this link to search Google News for the latest.

BitTorrent Primer

2006-06-02T21:31:00.000-05:00

There is a great deal of developing activity on the subject of Copyright Infringement right now, but before I post on current events I thought it would be useful to cover some background in layman's terms. This is extremely condensed and I suggest following any of the provided links for more detailed information.

The most popular method of filesharing today (not that other Napster-esque methods have lost much popularity) is using the BitTorrent protocol. Though the protocol's original author, Bram Cohen, was only focusing on the technical aspects of the file sharing system and not any of the legal aspects. What has come about, however, is an interesting situation legally.

.torrent file - This is a (very) small file which contains basic meta information about the actual data of interest. Its size, signature, and so on. Most importantly it contains the address of the tracker. It does not contain any of the actual data.

tracker - This is the single, centralized server which coordinates the swarm of peers (clients). It shares the addresses of all of the peers among those peers. It also does not possess any of the actual data. There is very little load placed on the tracker, as all of the actual content data is exchanged between peers.

peer - This is you, me, or anyone else interested in downloading the data. It may possess anywhere from none to all of the data. The idea is to trade pieces of the file you already have for pieces that other peers have but you lack. A peer that has all of the data is called a seed.

aggregator - More commonly referred to as a "Torrent Site", this is a website that organizes many of the .torrent files. It's just a website. There is nothing defined in the Bit Torrent specifications, you use a normal web browser to view it. There are very many of them.

The way a user goes about getting some data of interest is to visit a Torrent Site and download the .torrent file which corresponds with that particular data. A BitTorrent Client (of which there are many examples) is then used to open the file and contact the specified tracker. The tracker provides the addresses of any other active peers. It is at this point that user starts to receive the actual data of interest from other peers.

The key point here is that only the peers ever possess any of the (potentially) copyrighted data. The centralized components, the tracker and the aggregator website, only contain information on how to get the copyrighted data. This presents somewhat of a grey area as, for example, so does Google. This distinction has not prevented the MPAA/RIAA/etc from getting many aggregator sites hosted in the US shut down, but the Swedish Gov't has been much more conservative in its interpretation of its own laws and so ThePirateBay.org (hosted in Sweden) has remained defiantly active.

Sweden has maintained a great deal more common sense with regard to copyright. In fact When the MPAA/RIAA/etc (to heck with it, hereinafter referred to as: The *AA) started a Swedish lobby group called the antipiratbyrån, or Anti-Piracy Bureau, concerned citizens started the Piratbyrån, or Piracy Bureau, to advocate Intellectual Property reform (from what I've gathered I think their views are pretty close to the mark and not at all extremist).

Drums of War

2006-06-01T06:12:00.000-05:00

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done, and I am Caesar."

According to Wikiquote Julius Caesar didn't really say this. We don't know who did, but the earliest reference Snopes could find was late 2001.

Subject: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

Interviewer: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

Subject: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

More on the the same theme. This time the author is known. It was Hermann Göring, interviewed in his jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946). I find the response by the interviewer (Gustave Gilbert), about Congress being vested with the sole authority to declare war, particularly interesting given... 'recent events'.

Copyright Infringement Penalties

2006-05-19T16:40:00.000-05:00

Here's a blog posting with a colorful take on just how wild the penalties for copyright infringement are.

Executive Summary: One month of downloads from one particular torrent site would incur penalties equal to one quarter of the Annual World GDP (thought: Is it still Gross Domestic Product when we're talking about the entire world?).

Two in a row, HR 5318

2006-05-13T10:03:00.000-05:00

Many states (28, so far) have recently been passing laws requiring any company that loses (in the mail, security breach, etc) personal information of citizens of that state to disclose (at the cost of said company) the loss to each person whose records have been lost. This is a good thing.

There's an ArsTechnica article up right now about HR 5318 (also still not yet up on Thomas, but the ArsTechnica story links a PDF of the bill which is actually a deep link from the Washington Post) which, at first glance, is very similar and just brings the recent movement to the national level. Well, not quite.

It does require that anyone that knows of any breach of security that would present a significant risk of 'identity theft' report that breach to the FBI and/or Secret Service. It presents some fairly hefty penalties for failure to comply, including jail time. So far so good. But then we see this:

if the United States Secret Service or Federal Bureau of Investigation determines that any notice required to be made to consumers under State or Federal law would impede or compromise a criminal investigation or national security, the United States Secret Service or Federal Bureau of Investigation shall direct in writing within 7 days that such notice shall be delayed for 30 days, or until the United States Secret Service or Federal Bureau of Investigation determines that such notice will not impede or compromise a criminal investigation or national security

This is a bad thing. The FBI or the Secret Service just needs to send a letter to the company that lost the records saying that release of information will impede a criminal investigation or compromise national security and that company is let off the hook indefinitely. In direct defiance of State Law, or even potential future Federal law.

The disclosure laws already passed impose a public image penalty for those companies that are careless with our personal information. This new bill would take away that penalty, and provide no additional penalties for actually losing the data. There will always be people out there trying to get into information they shouldn't have. Without the requirement of public disclosure there is no incentive for the companies who hold this information to keep it safe.

HR 5319

2006-05-13T06:40:00.000-05:00

A bill introduced in the House last Tuesday, HR 5319, intends to restrict what sites can be accessed legally on Library and School computers. Presumably (hopefully) it won't go anywhere. I thought it worth posting as an example of some of the nonsense legislation that shows up regularly.

The text of the bill isn't in Thomas yet, but the Business Week Article has, "The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) defines the restricted areas as those that allow 'users to create Web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to other users' and offer 'a mechanism of communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, e-mail, or instant messenger.'"

That's a ridiculously broad definition. In fact it even includes this very blog. Like I said: Total Nonsense. The people who wrote this either have no understanding of what they're talking about, or only really care about the 'Deleting Online Predators' part of the title and looking like they support 'protecting our children'. More than likely both.

Phone Poll Validity

2006-05-12T09:56:00.000-05:00

It recently occurred to me that I virtually never answer the phone unless I recognize the caller ID entry.

This factor alone is not necessarily sufficient to rule out the usefulness of phone polling but given the variety of issues (another favorite is the illegality, in the US, of making an unsolicited call to a cell phone) it's the straw that breaks this camel's back. There is information in the results of a phone poll, but I no longer trust that it is a reasonable approximation of what it purports to be.

AdSense

2006-05-08T12:21:00.000-05:00

Just out of novelty I thought I'd try out Google's AdSense program. They own Blogger too so it's nicely integrated. Just a few clicks for the signup, select a prefab format that matches the format of the blog, and there it is.

I don't even know what the rates are per 'click through'. Apparently they'll send me a check every month that my accrued earnings is over 100 USD, or when I cancel the contract if the earnings are over 10 USD. ~~Though they didn't even ask me for an address. I guess the idea is that so many people never break 100 bucks there's little point in asking for more details until you need them.~~ They sent a verification e-mail which brings you to a form where you supply your name, address, phone number, and a password for the account.

Mostly, it will be interesting to see what Google associates with this page. Every so often there's a joke going around about what comes up when you do a Google search for something in particular. One of the more famous is the search for Failure which returns the whitehouse.gov bio' of GWB. This particular instance is a case of 'google bombing' which consists, roughly, of a whole bunch of bloggers linking to that page like this: Failure. There. Now I've done my little part in convincing the Google Search Engine that GWB is a Failure.

Google vs The Spammers

2006-05-08T06:22:00.000-05:00

An insightful observation by some random guy on slashdot, 'If google and the spammers have an arms race then eventually the spam sites will actually contain the information you were looking for.' credit

Computer / Car Analogy

2006-05-02T18:18:00.000-05:00

In the living room we have an Apple Flat Panel iMac. It is subject to regular use and abuse. The usual web browsing, email, and C-SPAN videos of Stephen Colbert. It occured to me that Apple has apparently succeeded in producing a genuinely friendly consumer computer sans the stereotypical hassles when I realized the Audi gets its oil changed more often than the iMac gets rebooted. As of this writing it reports 86 days, 18 Hours, and 57 minutes of 'uptime'.

Colbert in DC

2006-05-02T07:01:00.000-05:00

You're probably familiar with Stephen Colbert. Well for some inexplicable reason he was asked to Keynote the White House Correspondents [Association] Dinner. This is an annual dinner which the sitting President has attended for, well, basically ever. In addition to the usual DC-elite all sorts show up. This year had Valerie Plame to Lawrence Fishburne, for example.

First let me preface, in case you're are not familiar with Stephen Colbert, that he plays a character. He developed this character on The Daily Show and maintains it in all the public appearances I'm aware of. The character is an idiot. Stephen Colbert is brilliant.

The video is available from a variety of sources but the easiest to view, if not the highest quality, is at 'You Tube'.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three: Pre-Recorded Video

Update: YouTube pulled the videos. The torrent appears to be alive and well however.

Don't read further until you've watched.

I mean it, no further. Ok now that you've seen it: Holy Shit. Now here's the particularly interesting part. This took place last Saturday night. It's usually widely covered in the press, even if few people read much about it. Sunday morning the news was about a mediocre skit where GWB played at misspeaking along with a look-a-like GWB actor (this took place before the linked video and is also available online). The New York Times article about the dinner carries the same "ain't he a lovable guy" sentiment about GWB, but doesn't even mention the main presenter's name anywhere (go ahead, search the article yourself).

There are very few opportunities offered to penetrate GWB's bubble. Colbert took it and ran. For this he earns the same respect I have for Jon Stewart and Al Franken. This is more than just making jokes like the usual late-night crew (Conan, Leno, Letterman). It's a shame that it has fallen to the comedians to raise the level of dignity in our political discourse.

Locality

2006-05-02T06:04:00.000-05:00

So I was up in Virginia with my Dad the other day to see the guys who are reupholstering the boat (my first time out of town in the A8, cross country driving in that is extremely pleasant) and a Bob Dylan song (~~which one in particular escapes me at the moment~~ Things Have Changed) came on the radio and got stuck in my head. We stopped for food shortly there after near the Target in Virginia, and I got the idea (having noted that the pure-CDs sounded better than the Mp3s or AACs ripped to CDs on the A8's stereo) that I'd pick up a Bob Dylan CD.

They didn't have any.

For Reference:
Bob Dylan on Wikipedia
Hibbing, MN on Wikipedia
Driving Directions between Hibbing and Virginia, MN