Not only will Al be doing his show, he’ll be a special correspondent for The Majority Report each evening. If you weren’t satisfied with Rush Limbaugh’s coverage of the 2000 Democratic Convention, you’re in luck: this year, there’s an alternative. We promise that our take on things will be different from his.
That’s right, he’ll be on MR nightly, with Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder. Should make for some fun conversations if the convention coverage on the major networks starts to drag.
At a recent conference, there’s mention that the new version of MT coming out will have dynamic templates – this is a good thing. However, will have to figure out if I’ll still be able to use MT-Amazon in entries – this may not be possible or prudent with the new version. Need to find out more, as I’m in the habit of doing Amazon tags on the fly, rather than in static content.
About breaking plugins, they’ve chosen this route because for some plugins it is ridiculous to expect them to work in dynamic templates. He gave me the example of MT-Amazon – a plugin that queries Amazon depending on variables passed in the template. If you put that into a dynamic template it would be the equivalent of performing a DoS attack on Amazon – it would be querying Amazon on a per-page basis ! So plugins like that would be used still in static publishing, which you can still use, again on a per-template basis. a separate template could build to physical, static files and then you could include that using a MTInclude tag in the dynamic template.
You’re driving along, you’ve got cameras in the car, when suddenly you spot something that begs a second look. You go back, take photos, avoid another car that also went back to look again, and pantomime shrugging and “I don’t know either” as you drive past them. You’ve had a “what the hell is that?” moment.
We had one today. David and I drove aimlessly, more or less with the object of getting to a beach or park along the shore of Lake Michigan, so we meandered along northwards along Sheridan Road, which is one of those historic byways that has a rather colorful past and a sketchy present. It goes by some gorgeous
North Shore houses, and through some pretty dicey areas south of the old Fort Sheridan Army post, which is now partly overflow housing for Great Lakes Naval Training Station, and partly tony new homes made from historic old buildings.
We eventually got to Illinois Beach State Park, and walked up the shoreline pathway to within a few hundred yards of the nuclear power plant, then came back.
It was a perfect day – warm, breezy, not hot, and there weren’t that many people. Just a few idiots on jetskis and scattered groups of people enjoying the day without feeling it necessary to play boom boxes and annoy everyone else. Like I said, perfect day, and very relaxing.
On our way back, we improvised a different return route and wound up headed south on Dilley’s Road, a mile or two north of Grand Avenue and the access to I-94. And there it was by the side of the road – an iron-fenced compound, with two Egyptian papyrus-stalk stone columns and a stone statue of a pharaonic sarcophagus. I made David turn around and go back to see “what the hell IS that.”
The front gate consists of decorative iron fencing that has been further decorated with gold paint and some rather cack-handed looking Egyptian bas-reliefs stuck on the fence on metal shields. The gates are reinforced with diagonal rods that coincidentally form a perfect pyramid shape. You can see the tall statue (which at the time sported a flock of birds perched on the head, and peeping up over the medallion or cartouche thing, the top of the pyramid.
There’s a concrete fence with faux Egyptian designs painted all along the front and sides. All the fence posts have busts of a Tut-like pharaoh. There’s a very big statue that resembles the ones of Rameses, standing all alone in the middle of what appears to be a concrete-block supply company. There’s a side temple near the front that’s built out of 5-foot blocks – the kind used for temporary construction alongside road-building projects. Farther in the compound, there was another mound that looked like a temple buried under tons of gravel. And all the way at the back of the otherwise big empty graveled lot, there was a modern pyramid with windows set into it, and an ordinary car parked to the side.
The hell?? What?? Is it?? It looks like a concrete supply yard owned by a guy with a King Tut fetish… and a lot of time on his hands.
I couldn’t find anything on the web to explain it.
And tours are available. Sheesh. From the road, it looks like a gravel pit in King Tut drag.
Ther’s a Thai kickboxing movie out called Ong Bak! – the trailer is in Japanese with fantabulous stunts, including Flaming Feets of Whoopass and an exploding tuk-tuk. At one point in the breathless Japanese commentary, you can hear the words “Akushon speedo! (Action Speed!)”
I think this is my new favorite phrase. And though I likely won’t see this film, it also plays like a particularly violent episode of Amazing Race – on steroids, crack, and Sterno. There are more links and background information here.
Via BoingBoing.
The third Star Wars title was announced at Comic-Con (AAAAHHH!): Revenge of the Sith. Yep, and the movie comes out May 2005, the month after Firefly. Next year is going to be big for SF movie fans.
A fan quoted in the article expressed satisfaction with the title, noting the similarity of the title and logo to “Return of the Jedi,” the concluding film in the original trilogy. From what I recall, that film was originally titled “Revenge of the Jedi,” but Lucas toned it down, since he was then in the throes of being a namby-pamby parental wimp, who wished to make a movie his young children could watch without having to explain to them the concept of revenge.
They’re grown now… hope he doesn’t cut back on the good stuff just so his grandkids won’t question why the good guy turns bad after getting horribly, horribly mutilated.
And as for the stormtrooper in the photo, I can just imagine him saying:
“I conquer the galaxy for the Emperor and all I get is this lousy T-shirt? Bite my shiny plastic ass!”
Yep, we went to see it: The Bourne Supremacy
We saw the first film, and I watched it recently on cable, so my memories of the earlier film (and liking for it) were fresh in my mind.
As a sequel, the Bourne Supremacy works really well, and it built plot points on foundations only hinted at in the earlier film. However, there was one part of the story that irked me; David said it was essential to set up Bourne’s motivation, but I thought it was the same old Hollywood hackery that happens to action heroes in the first reel. Grr. You’ll know what I mean if you see the movie. However, I have to admit that it had a great deal of impact.
Speaking of impacts, I had no idea that Russian taxis were so crashworthy (repeatedly).
And hey! It was fun spotting a Two Towers/Return of the King alum.
Clear Channel Communications, Inc., has signed a deal to broadcast Air America Radio on its Miami outlet, WINZ-AM, RadioInk reported Friday.
Oh, delicious irony – citing both the popularity of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and AAR’s great ratings make it irresistable to a network that supposedly has strong corporate ties to the Bush League.
And CC execs are also aware that putting a liberal radio show in South Florida, aka Electoral Ground Zero, can’t hurt ratings in a presidential election year.
Yeah, well, I’ve been hankering after a 3 column layout for a while now, and this one works in both IE6 and Firefox. My old 2 column layout does not play well in Firefox: probably something icky to do with either divs, or it doesn’t understand the width expressed as a percentage.
It only took all day. However, part of yesterday and much of today were spent chasing after a 3 column solution that simply would not work; I found a much more workable one that was easier to adapt at the Moveable Type support forum.
For the record, the “holy grail” layout, though very nice, doesn’t adapt easily to MT if you’re a relative noob such as myself. It combines the CSS style elements with the HTML that goes in the index file; it was hard to flip back and forth adjusting my own stylesheet to get all the scattered style elements to play nice, and not infringe on each other’s personal freedoms.
MEDFORD, Ore. – A nylon necklace strung with condoms has sparked outrage at the county fair.
Strangely enough, the necklace kits were very, very popular with older teens, the target group for a Planned Parenthood promotion aimed at making contraceptive use normal and less embarassing.
However, due to the obligatory “numerous complaints” from parents whose kids were not among those making the condom leis, Planned Parenthood agreed after meeting with fair officials to stop the promotion. It wasn’t difficult for them to come to this agreement, because they ran out of supplies for making the condom leis, which consisted of brightly colored packets, colored nylon mesh, and pipe cleaners.
However, a bowl of freebies remained on the table at their booth; this was a stipulation of Planned Parenthood’s contract with the fair. Only older teens were allowed to take free condoms.
So maybe the older teens will learn a little responsibility, and not make unwanted babies or contract unwanted diseases. And yet this is somehow bad and wrong and immoral. Sheesh.
Just in time to make the major news organizations “hot” sheets for tomorow… the weekend before the DNC takes over Boston.
Timing is everything, and both sides play the game.
The Pentagon had said that the payroll records for that time period had been inadvertently destroyed.
“Previous attempts to locate the missing records at the Federal Records Center had been unsuccessful due to the incorrect records accession numbers provided,” the Pentagon’s Office of Freedom of Information chief C.Y. Talbott said in a letter Friday to The Associated Press.
“The correct numbers were obtained … and the records were found.”
Talbott wrote that the Defense Department “regrets this inadvertent oversight during the initial search and the delay it caused in your receipt of these materials.”
On the other hand, how easy it is to significantly delay the inevitable with a simple clerical error.
