Wow! Do I feel stupid. Ten years after the killings at Columbine and I didn’t have a clue about what went on that terrible day until I read this book. Dave Cullen painstakingly researched and expertly crafted this compelling story of two teens, one a psychopath the other suicidal, who opened fire on their friends and neighbors, killing thirteen. The story shocked a nation and forever changed how we perceived school shooters. Unfortunately, the story was wrong. Dave Cullen presents the facts you may not have heard, and worse for Americans, those that were there all along but we chose to ignore.
Goths? No. Trench Coat Mafia? No. Loners? Losers? Outsiders? No, no, no. These boys were smart and popular, but determined to end their lives in front of the national media in the most horrific way possible. They planted four large explosives, consisting of gasoline jugs and two propane tanks each. Two they cavalierly planted in the middle of the cafeteria, against the support columns, timed to explode during the busiest rush of the day. Two others they left in their cars in the parking lot to kill any emergency responders and survivors who would have assembled there. A fifth explosive was set in a field timed to lure police away from the high school and delay their response. All five bombs fizzled! Only the one in the field ignited at all, but it caused only a small brush fire and actually served to ready police in the key moments before the 911 calls started coming in.
Cullen also details a sheriff’s office that hid the facts and delayed the release of key evidence and reports. And the media who opted to write their own story in the absence of the truth. Dave Cullen shows that in addition to the tragedy of fifteen deaths that day, is the tragedy of how readily the public accepted the archetypical explanation of what happened.
I found this read to be fair and sympathetic to those who were affected by the killings and those who were powerless to prevent it. Even the infamous Sheriff John Stone is balanced by the expertise and professionalism of Agent Dwayne Fuselier. Each page kept me hungering for more and the writing was vivid and approachable. I highly recommend it!!
I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
If you have a Rubik’s Cube that you haven’t been able to solve and want to “clean it up,” you should check out the free online application at Wrongway.org. Wrongway is a blog run by Eric Dietz out of Minneapolis and includes some very helpful links, including those to solve the standard 3x3 Rubik’s Cube, the more advanced 4x4 Cube, and some general advice on solving the cube on your own. With the simple interface, you color the cube to match your exact configuration, click solve, and a page will be displayed with the step-by-step instructions to solve your cube. It’s quick, simple, free, and effective; all the hallmarks of good software.
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Videojug is a fun site for learning how to do something through video examples. Their “How To” and “Ask the Expert” videos guide you, step-by-step, through a wide range of topics from coin tricks to do-it-yourself projects. The videos are professionally filmed, performed by experts, and rated by viewers. Each video lists everything required and is full of expert tips from the pros. They even have videos on how to fold a dress shirt or in 2-seconds, a t-shirt.
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OpenSecrets.org is a little scary due to the detail of content freely available. However, it’s always true that in politics, the more you know, the better off we all are. Funded by the nonpartisan and independent Center for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets.org tracks “the influence of money on U.S. politics.” The site is a clearinghouse of information about the money going into political campaigns.
Looking for information on what independent groups known as 527s have raised and spent on the 2008 election? Or how about who’s giving the most? OpenSecrets.org has the info. Want to know who in your area is contributing to which Presidential candidate? OpenSecrets.org has that, too. Want to how much the biggest fundraisers in Conress have in their war chests and from whom? Or who spends the most on travel? See OpenSecrets.org.
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There’s also a database of fruits, vegetables, and nuts that has helpful information such as choosing the right produce and storing it once you get it home. For example, avocados are actually fruit and should be stored at room temperature in a paper bag until ripe. They’re sodium free, cholesterol free, and low in saturated fat. Strawberries, on the other hand should be stored in the refrigerator, but shouldn’t be washed until they’re ready to be eaten. Although Strawberries won’t last more than a few days in the refrigerator, almonds can last up to a year, if still in the shell.
I should point out that the site is run by a non-profit organization, PBH, comprised of “growers, shippers, packers, merchandisers, commodity boards, trade associations, food industry organizations, health insurers, health professionals, and retailers,” so its mission is a little self-serving. Not that this is a secret, though. I found this information after only a few clicks on the site. Nor should there be any belief that it matters to me a lick. Quite the opposite. I see this as an example of capatalism working. If society puts a value on something, people will find a way to make a profit. Fortunately, with proper growth and fair practices, each will learn that the best way to make profit is to invest improve and improve the field. In short, if society puts value in healthy living, corporations will setup helpful sites like Fruits..Matters.org. Likewise, if society puts value in vice, corporations will do likewise. For examples, check out the technology behind an online poker site or any of the web cam sites.
Already we’ve reached a point where children don’t want to be doctors when they grow up - they want to be famous. Because we put such value on fame we’ve created a system where fame is traded like a commodity to be bought and sold. Where millions are made and spent on improving the technologies behind capturing a long-distance photo of a celeb bringing their clothes in to be dry cleaned. Where people are made famous for simply being famous, a la Paris Hilton, and they earn fortunes for it. They certainly earn much more than your General Practitioner who is probably still paying back his student loans.
No, if you want health care to improve, you need to put controlled money into the system. You make infrastructure changes. You streamline. You organize. You invest and improve. You find new ways to provide better care. You further science and improve the technology so that problems can be detected and diagnosed earlier. You attract the best and the brightest and you reward them for their efforts. If you put more value into health care, people will find ways to improve it. It’s in their own self-interest to do so.
"You won’t learn much about capitalism at a university. How could you? Capitalism is a matter of risks and rewards, and a tenured professor doesn’t have much to do with either.”
Jerry Pournelle
I mean, when I subscribed to Rolling Stone, I expected a magazine about music. If they had book and movie reviews (which they do), then great, but primarily music. I definitely didn’t expect it to have so much political content. During this year’s 40th anniversary celebration, they’ve even dedicated whole issues to politics. And what a liberal rag it is! I guess I’m not surprised that a bunch of aging hippies would reminisce about the days of congregating on the Washington Mall, united, chanting slogans like “Make love, not war!” and “Ban the Bomb!” or tripping for days at week-long concerts where they knew they were making a difference, starting a revolution, and were never going to be like their parents. It’s just not what I paid to read from a music magazine.
Another I also subscribed to, fortunately, did talk about music. Unfortunately, it went out of print and my subscription had to be transferred to something else. That’s how I ended up with Entertainment Weekly, fortunately a very good magazine, an easy bathroom read. That’s also one of the negatives with ordering a bunch of magazine subscriptions at once online. Some of the offerings don’t last very long and the companies I’ve used don’t have very good customer service. I could never for certain know what was going on when a subscription would suddenly start or stop. Worse still, all the mail in our neighborhood gets spread around the block. It’s a regular occurrence to see the streets filled with people redelivering the mail about twenty minutes after the mail carrier has been through. I never know if a subscription has ended, been cancelled, or if it’s sitting at a neighbor’s house. I kid you not, one day two of my magazines were delivered to the fire station! Joe down the street said he’d drop them by but I never saw them.
It could be worse though. Maggie subscribed to People and it never even arrived. The subscriptions start in like 6-8 weeks, so it was months before she realized there was something wrong and called. It turned out that particular company didn’t offer People any more, so she had to transfer her subscription to another magazine. All she wanted was People and it was so expensive that she now has like a fourteen year subscription to something she didn’t even want. I wonder what she’ll get next when that magazine goes under in the next decade.
One magazine, Angels on Earth, came every two months and was a short subscription. It ended too soon and I would have renewed if I had known but it just stopped showing up without any kind of renewal option. Angels on Earth details stories from amateur contributors about how they feel blessed or thankful or connected to something bigger. I’ll have to find it online and subscribe again.
Heroic Stories is a lot like Angels on Earth. It, too, wants to “make the world a better place” through positive, uplifting stories, but it’s nonsectarian. Angels on Earth can be a little too religious or literal when it comes to angels. HeroicStories.com is inspiring in its simplicity. The stories they share often pertain to our every day lives and offer ways to make a difference without much effort. A recent story line and related discussion centered around the idea of keeping a few extra, cheap umbrellas in your car to give to a stranger in need. I know I’ve passed people in the pouring rain and felt like I wanted to help, but stopped short of offering a ride to a stranger in the middle of nowhere. With a little foresight and thanks to Heroic Stories, I can be ready to at least offer them some comfort.
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Top 10 List of recent iTunes purchases from listening to Pandora:
- Dear Head on the Wall by Alejandro Escovedo
- Thanksgiving by Jason Anderson
- By Your Side by Coco Rosie
- The Search by Dolorean
- Another Lonely Day by Ben Harper
- All Will Be Well by The Gabe Dixon Band
- The Truth Comes Out by Corb Lund
- Hoquiam by Damien Jurado
- Sinnerman by Nina Simone
- It’s Good to Be in Love by Frou Frou
The American Film Institute got its start in 1975 on the recommendation of the National Endowment for Arts and Humanities and legislation signed by then President, Lyndon Johnson. With funding from the NEA, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Ford Foundation (a non-profit organization created in 1936 by Edsel Ford, son of Ford Motors founder, Henry Ford), the AFI enlisted leading actors, filmmakers, and educators of the day to train new filmmakers in the art. Today, AFI maintains a world-renowned Conservatory, an Education Center, and an extensive catalog of Feature Films.
The AFI also maintains standing Top 10 and Top 100 lists of the Greatest Films of All Time. The most recent entry into the Top 10 list was from 1993, Schindler’s List, but I’m hoping 2007’s Superbad is going to crack the list in this year’s voting. The top 100 includes 2001’s Lord of the Rings (#50). The list are voted on yearly and the nomination list is already available for 2008. AFI site membership is free, but full Institute membership begins at $50 and includes access to databases, a commemorative booklet, a magazine, and tickets to the film festivals. Larger contributions will net tickets to the annual AFI Life Achievement Award Tribute Gala.
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I completed my project to convert all my CDs to MP3s that I mentioned a while back. I’ve also been downloading from iTunes and listening to a lot of new artists that I’ve found by way of Pandora. A couple times when I couldn’t download a song I liked (like Ryan Auffenberg’s Things You Say, But You Don’t Mean) I’ve bought the CD through Amazon.com‘s sellers market. I like Amazon’s partnerships with small dealers because it benefits both the mom-and-pop corner book or music store as well as internet businesses run out of someone’s basement and give the consumer more avenues to make a safe, online purchase of used, rare, or obscure items. I’ve also been using the Mac alot more lately. I built a dozen Macmail stationery templates for Maggie to use. I’m thinking of putting together a package and selling them, but for now she has the exclusive. I have been keeping track of different topics, sites, etc. to post and will start going through my list and posting a lot more frequently to catch up.
Netdisaster.com is goofy site that bills itself as an “absolutely useless” site that “simulates the destruction of the target-site by a disaster.” The methods of “disaster” range from spilled coffee to worm infestation, and even paintball gun attacks. Just enter the URL of the site to view, select the method of distruction and have at it. If you select the auto mode, you can still click on the hyperlinks on the displayed site and enable the method of attack on command by pointing to it. Any options including the URL can be changed in the filter frame at the top of the web page at any time and the help sections are detailed and well written. Note that blog engines use the same kind of filter frame and will most likely conflict and disable Netdisaster, but there is an alternate viewing method that will work in some instances (use the Alt button or read the FAQ information specifically about this kind of problem).
We Are Marshall was on HBO again tonight. I had seen it only for the first time about a week ago, also on HBO, and was left feeling like it was lacking something. At a recent family birthday party, I asked my father if he had seen it. He had and he liked it. On certain genres of movies, our tastes don’t always agree while on others we see eye-to-eye. In general, he tends to overlook a movie’s shortcomings if it pulls on the heartstrings where I lend less weight to the sentiments if I don’t understand the logic of the decisions.
For example, I’ll never understand Serendipity. It just didn’t make sense to me. I just couldn’t swallow that two people who hit it off so well and felt so strongly for one another would act so ridiculously. 
Kate Beckinsale, who has wow factor, stars as Sara who meets Jonathan, played by a harmless John Cusack, while out Christmas shopping in New York. The two hit it off immediately, seem to fall in love, and then for reasons that aren’t clear to me, throw up their hands and turn it over to “fate.” They write their phone numbers down but instead of exchanging them, they just throw them away. Ok, well maybe they didn’t actually throw them away, but they may as well have. She writes hers in a book and gives it away, and he writes his on a $5 bill that she spends on some candy. Oh, come on! Who does that? I might be willing to concede that somewhere, sometime there were two people who could have been this flighty, but if there were, I’m sure they didn’t act as pithy and seemingly together as the two characters that had been introduced in the beginning of this movie.
To me, the movie plays out like the old joke about the sailor whose boat is sinking so he prays to God for help. When a boat comes by to offer the man a lift, he refuses and instead insists that God will save him. The boat leaves but the sailor continues to sink. Another boat comes by to offer the man a lift, and he again refuses insisting that God will answer his prayers and save him. However, the boat leaves and the craft takes on more water until a third boat comes by and offers to take the sailor aboard but he again refuses. Finally, the boat sinks and the sailor dies only to find himself standing in heaven before the Almighty. The sailor drops to his knees and begs the Lord to know what he had done to forsaken Him and why He let him drown. God pauses a moment and then asks, “What about the three boats I sent?”
Even in the frame of the movie, this “serendipitous” decision to let fate decide if the two are meant to be is shown to be an absurd move. Although the phone numbers eventually work themselves into each other’s hands, so much time has gone by in the interim, including marriages to other people, that it can hardly be viewed as a raging success. I don’t know if he does or not, but I’d be willing to bet my dad liked Serendipity.
None of this is to say that I thought We Are Marshall was as poor as I thought Serendipity was, but I thought they missed the boat with a lot of things. The story is of the true Marshall University football team who was nearly wiped out along with all its coaching staff in a horrific 1970 plane crash. In the film version of events, the real attention grabber was coach Jack Lengyel, played by a cartoonish Matthew McConaughey who evokes a faint glimpse into how he must have looked to the police the night of his infamous bongo playing arrest in October of 1999. Lengyel is a great coach and humanitarian who helped rebuild the Marshall University football team but he was only one player in a story rich with notable characters.
William “Red” Dawson, who was a recruiting coach for the team and had not been aboard the plane while out on a recruiting trip, is viewed as an important figure in both real life and in the film version by being given to the able Matthew Fox from Lost. However, there are just too few scenes or lines of dialog for Red to come across as anything more than a periphery character. Likewise for Marshall University President Donald Dedmon, who had successfully petitioning the NCAA to allow the Marshall frehsman players to take the field. Dedmon is well played by brilliantly by David Strathairn. Although Strathairn has more film to work with than Fox, he isn’t given the dialog he deserves and the film misses a perfect opportunity for his character to plead his case to the NCAA, which would succinctly underline the whole moral of the story and why it was important for the team to take the field to pay respect to their deceased teammates, friends, family, and neighbors.
I think opportunities were also missed by not better profiling more of the returning football players who were suddenly expected to, for lack of a less obvious term, pick up the ball and run with it. After the crash, the team’s surviving kicker, Tom Bogdan, hung up his cleats and never played football again, too overcome with guilt for not having been with the team on the trip. In the film, Bogdan is played by Brian Geraghty, who looks like Wes Bentley from American Beauty with about 25 pounds on his frame - something about the eyes, but the portrayal feels hollow with only scenes of Geraghty brooding and none of him appearing to cope with real emotion.
Reggie Oliver was a Marshall University freshman quarterback who was suddenly one of the teams veterans and the new starting quarterback. It was Oliver who orchestrated the team’s first win of the season on a pass to Terry Gardner. After Marshall, Oliver went on to play professional football in the WFL before going on to coaching. However, although Arlen Escarpeta appears to get more screen time as Oliver than even Fox does as Red, I somehow never felt connected to him either or that he had any struggles fitting into his new position both on and off the field.
Blake Smith‘s sport was soccer and basketball before finding himself in the position as the new kicker for the football team. Even Kathy Ireland was given more to work with during her portrayal of a soccer-player-turned-kicker in the comedy Unnecessary Roughness than was affored to Smith in We Are Marshall. Smith’s life is reduced to only a brief clip in which he gets his shot on the team after a coach sees him kick a ball out of the soccer field. The actor who portays Smith is Billy Bennett who, according to IMDB, doesn’t have any other credited roles as of yet.
It’s not just the portrayals of the team and administration that I thought were lacking, but those of the rest of the community as well. 
I never really believed that this was a community that was dealing with a loss, much less one as tragic as this. Ian McShane, who may be most known for playing Swearengen in HBO’s Deadwood, plays Paul Griffen, a composite of the grieving parents. McShane is a master at expressing deep emotion through intonationg and expression, but even he comes through as a two-dimensional character stuck on the third stage of loss, anger.
Maybe in a strange way it could be considered fitting that a movie about the calamity that struck Marshall University on November 14, 1970 ended as it did, full of promise, much of it left unrealized. I just can’t help wonder if the community that lost so much didn’t deserve a better shot at getting something back this time around.
"I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”
Christopher Reeve
CPRInstructor.com is dedicated to the instruction of CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and those who are trained to practice and train others. The site offers videos, software, access to training courses, and lesson plans. They also feature a very nice database of Good Samaritan laws in each state. Good Samaritan laws are named for the New Testament parable wherein a man, of the despised Samaritans, stops to aid a man who has been beaten, robbed, and left by the side of the road. The Gospel of Luke teaches that the Samaritan deserves honor and respect above those who had done nothing to aid the poor victim. These Good Samaritan laws are designed to do the same and protect someone who uses CPR to aid a person in distress. It’s unfortunate we live in a world that would require such commonsense laws, but personal injury case history shows that people will often forego this commonsense time and time again. Some times even the lack of commonsense goes in both directions it goes both ways.
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It’s great to be an American. It can never be denied that our government provides well for us. Each election we debate which areas need improvement, which areas should be left alone, and hopefully elect candidates who will achieve that agenda. And if not, well, we’ll get ‘em next election. There’ll always be critics and cynics, but even they would have to admit to more good things about our government than I could ever hope to list here, from the mundane (garbage, sewage, waste treatment) to the critical (food, clean water, health, safety, financial assistance) to the spectacular (snow removal, public television, air traffic control).
I’ve always loved how towns and cities build and maintain parks for no gain other than to give the citizenry space to relax or play a game. I’ll always support the construction of skate parks. I would never argue against the creation of more parks even if the last time I set foot on a skateboard, it was narrow and made of hard plastic with rubber wheels that would catch on every pebble or patch of sand. You shouldn’t have to be a boarder to get behind the idea of a park for kids to entertain themselves with physical activity. I also love that if you don’t like the particular parks in your town, you can just go over to a neighboring city and hang out in one of their parks instead.
In most areas of the country there’s even plenty of subsidized transportation to get you there. I just read somewhere that Boston was ranked #2 in the top list of cities that are accessible by foot. The Massachusetts Bay Transit system, the T, is a great example of what a government project should achieve. There are 5 different subway and streetcar lines (red, orange, green, blue, and silver), plus the commuter rail, buses (diesel, electric, or LNG), wheelchair vans, cars for the handicapped or elderly, and even boats.
Or if you prefer, there’s a massive, regulated hansom industry in Boston. That’s one thing I miss about living out here in the sticks: taxi availability. We can get on the commuter rail and be in Boston in about 30 minutes, but we can’t get a taxi cab to take us down the road to a St. Patrick’s Day party. But, I digress.
The government has been providing for us in many areas for a very long time. Unfortunately, it feels like all the big ideas, all the revolutionary government projects, all the greatest things about this country, were undertaken far too long ago. In simpler terms, what have you done for me lately?
I don’t mean to be glib, because it’s not something I take lightly, but where’s our space race? Where’s our Hoover Dam, Statue of Liberty, or Mount Rushmore? Where’s our Chicago’s World Fair? Where are the bold projects that lead the way? Particularly lacking is the government’s involvement in technology.
In the past thirty years, computers have gone from obscure thinking machines for mathematical functions to penetrating most aspect of our daily lives. A computer was probably involved somewhere along the way in the construction or delivery of everything we buy, wear, eat, use, or consume. My alarm clock has a computer in it.
With all this heavy reliance on computers for banking, commerce, communication, management, construction, or entertainment, I find it a little disturbing at how hands off the government has been. Instead of action and leadership, we get regulations and bureaucracy. Of course, the concept and implementation of the internet itself was the results of a government project through DARPA, but since that was over forty years ago, it can’t be considered recent. Where are the great new projects that show that the government recognizes it’s a digital world and some things need fixing?
A clear example of this lack of leadership is the continued presence of spam. Why isn’t anything being done about spam? The government has tried to deal with spam by passing nearly meaningless laws. Even when ledislators “get tough” on spam enforcement, it means that they’ve enacted measures to allow their constituents to do all the heavy lifting and sue some spammers for deceptive advertising or for not providing an opt-out. These laws are based on the ability of the citizens to track down the spammers, serve them with papers, get them to appear in civil court, and prove the case. Have these laws had any effect? Has your inbox noticed the difference? Mine sure hasn’t. I still get spam at work and home and that’s after the emails have passed through about 4 different spam and anti-virus filters.
Spam is nearly impossible to fight from the receiving end. And even if you do stop it from eventually getting to your inbox, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t sent. There could have been hundreds or thousands of routers, switches, and computers which had to carry the message all the way there only to be refused and then bounce the message back, most likely involving a different path than the way it came, involving even more equipment. Rejecting spam can take up twice as much bandwidth as having received it.
The worst part about spam is it never, ever stops. When I first setup the email server at work in about 1995, I got in the habit of reading the email logs. I remember right from the get-go, we regularly got email addressed to two usernames that didn’t exist at our company. Our company name is similar to those of many other companies that operate around the country, and clearly two people from one of these other companies with a different, but similar, URL got onto some kind of mailing list. Every year, these same two names appeared as the target of thousands of emails, even though a single message has never, ever been read - every single one was bounced or rejected. A few years ago we outsourced our email server and I don’t bother reading the logs, but I’m sure that if I did, I’d see the same two email addresses today.
Spammers don’t care if they ever hit their target. They’re just throwing crap at the wall and hoping something sticks. They’re just playing the percentages and since it doesn’t cost them anything to send the emails, those percentages can be pretty low and still equate to a fortune. Why isn’t the government making any real effort to stop it other than enacting regulatory laws that put the burden on the citizen? Can you imagine the outcry if every night there was a knock at every American’s front door with someone pitching a bottle of snake oil or a peek at some dirty pictures? Yet that’s exactly what happens to us regularly through email and its left up to every individual, company, or ISP to police the situation ourselves.
The U. S. Postal Service seems to me to be a prime governmental body to be involved in advancing the cause of email. With the competition that has sprung up in the way of package handling and the reduced volume due to online invoicing and bill paying, an excellent stream of revenue for the U. S. Postal Service would be to charge money to deliver an email in the same way that it charges to deliver a letter. In exchange for this fee, they could provide services like confidentiality, security, authentication, a confirmed receipt, and tracking information.
Another advantage with using the USPS is that tampering with the mail is a federal crime. So is using the mail for the commission of a crime. The same could be made true of USPS email. If some shyster spammer passed an email through the USPS, the weight of the federal government should come down on him. In the movie, Tom Cruise was only able to take down The Firm after he had gathered evidence of billing fraud and brought down the mighty hammer of the government due to the realization that the fraudulent invoices were sent through the US mail.
Chances are most spam would drop anyway even without the threat of felony prosecution. If a spammer had to pay money for every email sent, it could change the percentage game enough that spamming wouldn’t be such a lucrative business after all. At the very minimum, it would get spammers to care more about whether their emails were reaching an audience at all, let alone an interested one, and thus stop knocking at doors that weren’t being opened.
The USPS would also resolve another problem with email: the difficulty in changing email addresses or managing multiple addresses. You can now keep the same phone number when you change cell phone carriers, but if you change ISP’s, you’re SOL. I wouldn’t know where to begin if I ever left my job or cancelled my Verizon DSL. I’d have to plan for at least a month to hope to get half of my subscriptions, correspondence, newsletters, and registrations switched over to a new address, if it’s even possible at all.
There could be other advantages of having a central clearing house for email. Virus disinfection could be handled on a higher level than it is currently being handled through the “go-out-and-buy-whatever-package-you-think-will-work-update-it-regularly-never-open-any-attachments-and-pray-for-the-best” approach that stands now. It would also help if the virus could be traced back to the first registered citizen that released it to the internet so it could be stopped at the source.
Email is only one of the problems that I see as affecting us on the technological front. There are also serious problems with the patent office, the copyright system, open document standards, internet commerce, and allowing some very powerful corporations to have the power to dictate terms for the regular use of the systems on which our country’s computers are based. These are only the things I can pick off the top of my head, but each is ripe with problems, misguided intentions, and example of a laissez-faire attitude toward technological innovation. I don’t expect these or any of the other problems facing the industry to be corrected with the wave of a wand, but shouldn’t we expect that at least something be seriously attempted? Let’s build today’s equivalent of the NASA space program and stop pushing the burden onto the citizen.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Bernard Shaw
Excepting only a few recent album purchases, I’ve kept up with ripping all my CD’s and have every song encoded as an MP3 with artist, album, track, title information. Now recently, since using iTunes, I’ve been adding album art to all my MP3s. The album art displays on the iPhone when a song is played and appears in the album view display on both the phone and the desktop version of iTunes. 
I think sliding through the album covers and selecting one to play is the most impressive example of the advantage of the touch navigation and the iPhone’s beautifully rendered graphics. The Mac makes it easy to add the art because you can simply use a search engine’s, like AllTheWeb, image search function and drag the source image right to the album. It’s also great that if the source image has since been removed and is no longer available, you can just drag the thumnail representation right off the search engine’s results page. Oddly enough, sometimes these thumbnails even look better than the source image for rare songs where few alternatives available.
I’ve always manually defined the artist’s name on compilation albums because I want the songs to appear when I sort by artist and not just when I search for an artist’s name. For example, I would want Sweet Jane to appear if I were browsing through the Cowboy Junkies, and not have it be sorted with the V’s under “Various Artists” just because it happens to be from the 
Natural Born Killers soundtrack. Storing the albums this way never seems to occur to programmers who write MP3 software and result in somewhat of a mess. For example, in any album view or sort, iTunes treats each song like its own album and separates it from the rest of the tracks. For these, I click select each of the songs on the album, use the Mac’s command-I function, and assign the album art to all the songs at once through the properties window that pops up. You can also assign multiple art files to your songs, but I haven’t seen a need for that yet and have only assigned one per.
I found a nice widget that automatically looks up whatever song is playing if it doesn’t already have art and finds an image from one of several defined sites (e.g. Amazon). It’s a good tool because it’s very simple and does exactly what it sets out to do, but I found that I could usually find much better, clearer images on my own. I also found that it doesn’t like the way I name tracks from compilation albums any better than iTunes, and results in locating the art for the album on which the artist originally released the song and assigns it to the whole album, which is a nuisance. Another album art tool I’m using is a screen saver that wallpapers the screen with rows and rows of artwork, then randomly flips each one and replaces it with a different album. I don’t know if it’s new with OS X Leopard or had existed in Tiger too, but I’ve only just noticed it recently.
I also experimented with the iTunes’ store’s custom ringtones, but wasn’t satisfied with the results. To create a ringtone, you need to have purchased the song through the store, so I had to buy a single I already owned, then buy the ringtone made from the track. I got to pick and adjust the sample of the song that I wanted to rip to a ringtone, but that was more of a curse than a blessing. What I thought sounded great on the Mac is a muted, delayed mess on the iPhone. I left so much of a pause at the beginning that I might as well have selected dead air. Now, whenever Maggie calls, the iPhone stops playing music and I hear absolutely nothing and realize it’s her before a note has played, which is not what I was looking for in a ringtone, at least not for $5. I’m going to start checking out some make-your-own ringtone tools and some of the free sites out there and report back what I find. Once I get some that I like, I’ll write how to load them on the iPhone.
"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.”
Frank Zappa
Sometimes all you need is a little spark, just a simple change. So, here’s a few ideas of things you can change in your life that might kick-start some more important revisions.
1. Change cologne/perfume
Everytime I’ve switched to a new cologne, I’ve felt like a new man. I remember in Junior High School when I smartly splashed too much Polo over my Izod with the tucked-in-collar. Then there was the Drakkar Noir club-hopping summer. I recently switched to Nautica when I started back at the gym.
2. Change hairstyle/haircut
This is probably pretty good advice anyway. Hairstyles change each year, although some years the styles are so similiar it’s not easy to notice the subtle differences. But, there’s nothing worse than seeing someone with a hairstyle from two decades ago. 
3. Change clothing/wardrobe
This is important whether you’re just updating an out-of-date wardrobe or getting clothes that fit. Of course when people lose weight, they go out and get new clothes to show off how much wieght they’ve lost, but they should also have fitting clothes when they gain weight. And don’t make the mistake of getting baggy, schlumpy clothes to hide yourself. Why add to the feelings of bulk?
4. Rearrange a room
After living in a room; bedroom, livingroom, bathroom, whatever, for a while you’ll usually discover that some things just aren’t right - like you keep banging your shin on the coffee table, or the sun is in your eyes in the morning. Or, you’ll just want a fresh room by moving the furniture, changing the curtains, or buying new bedding. Sheets don’t keep their crisp, cool feel after too many washes, bouncing around with jeans and sweatshirts. You should move the livingroom furnite at least every two years and the bedroom furniture every five.
5. Hang some new photos
A good idea is to change your desktop wallpaper with pictures of old friends, different times of your life, or the things you find the most important. It’s great to have new pictures of your kids to remind you of the reasons for all your hard work, and all the things you’ll continue to strive for. You can also move the photos around on your walls which can completely transform a room and call attention to important photographs that may have been overlooked for far too long.
"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”
by William James