Todd Stadler's blog

[untitled #454]

William Safire on his prediction (registration required) that the majorities will reverse in both the House and Senate: "The creative gridlock wouldn't be so bad for the country."

Indeed. I'm all for gridlock, as it's the best way to keep the fools on the Capitol Hill from doing anything stupid.

Whoops, cat's out of the bag! I'm voting Democrat, even if I did just read a William Safire column.

[untitled #453]

In reading an article on XML today, I was reminded of the term "sneakernet". For some reason, that makes me smile every time I read it. Clever computer dorks and their jargon.

head straight, don't turn

Of course, what I'd like even more than equally-biased sources is for the media to report the truth.

This is, of course, a difficult thing to ask for, when one's knowledge of the truth is shaped by the same media that appears to be distorting it.

But if it's all the same to everyone else, could we please keep the rah-rah for the blam-blam in Iraq to a nice, intelligent level?

For instance, when a large number of people gather to protest the impending war on Iraq in several cities around the world, can we report it as well as we would a pro-war rally, and not massage or falsify, say the number of people present at the event. This, of course, goes for the protestors as well, who often like to inflate their numbers.

But more importantly, can we at least check the stupid archives before we start revising history, lest we (by which I mean they) contradict the facts reported in the same news source four years ago?

Honestly, what's a boy to think about mass media?

hang a richard

I've recently decided that I have been too left-leaning in recent days and months.

I'm not sure what triggered this realization, exactly. Maybe it was when I read Andrew Sullivan's blog and found myself full of unexplained bile ? the nerve of that guy!

While it's quite likely that I'll never agree with all of Mr. Sullivan's ideas, it was more the realization that I wasn't even considering them fully that bothered me. Why the knee-jerk reaction?

I blame this all, of course, on Mr. Bush. That, after all, is what good liberals do. The problem is that I don't want to be a good liberal.

See, back when Clinton was in power, things were good. My natural tendency towards the left was kept in check by a deep mistrust of government at the upper levels ? anyone who can get himself elected president of the United States is not a man I'll be sending money to.

So the Republicans would level their accusations at Clinton, and I'd think, "what a creep!", and the Democrats would fire back and I'd think, "yeah, I don't like them, either!".

Then I'd go off and vote for some nutty third party ? maybe a Socialist, maybe a Libertarian ? or whomever I felt like, secure in the knowledge that I was disenfranchised from the whole process, which suited me fine.

Fast forward to today, with Republicans in power all over the place (save for that one precious glimmer of gridlock in the Senate; oh, how the forthcoming elections make me tremble). My tendency to distrust the government only sends me further into the clutches of the left-wingers, and the supposed party of the Left, the Democrats.

And while being a rabid, unthinking liberal is terminally trendy right now among young, urban folks like myself, I'd like to think it doesn't look any better on me than those hip men's shoes with the thin flat toe that remind me of duck bills.

After all, I don't really like the Democrats. They're every bit as snivelly, money- and power-grubbing as the Republicans (and, I suspect as any other party would be, given such power; you know the Anti-Masonic Party would be lording it over us now if they had survived).

So I decided to seek out new sources of information in my life ? sources that would counter the overwhelmingly liberal tone found in some of my favorite news sources, such as the New York Times, Tom Tomorrow, and others.

Maybe it's just that I'm a bit out of the right-wing loop. I'm no longer on the GOP tip. But I haven't found too many sites of the conservative and intelligent persuasions.

Sure, there are the columnists I've always enjoyed, such as Michael Kelly and Charles Krauthammer.

And, begrudgingly, there is crotchety old George Will, who has his moments, such as his recent mockery of France. And I am slowly coming to admit that Andrew Sullivan has his moments.

Of course, magazines associated with the aforementioned Mssrs. Kelly and Sullivan ? The Atlantic and The New Republic are both excellent, although not so much consistently right-wing as intelligent, which is, of course, fine.

But that's pretty much all I've got. For now, it's good enough to keep my mind in check. But I welcome any further suggestions in the comments area.

[untitled #452]

Reading through CNN today, the theme was "sex":

• E-mail greeting card hides porn. Surprise, part of the blame lies with Microsoft's shoddy security involving ActiveX controls. Who would have guessed such direct access to a computer could be abused? Perhaps they should call it ActiveXXX.
• A sexually charged Christina Aguilera. Indeed. My favorite quote from this article: "She's standing up for what she believes, and she's become more of an individual," says Bob Jamieson, chairman of RCA Music Group. She believes that sex sells music better than music does. Yes, how unique. I still think she looks like Dee Snider.

It's like reading Cosmo for the USAToday set.

[untitled #451]

Okay, so can anyone tell me why there is a picture of a choo-choo train in this article on third-generation mobile phone networks? Am I missing something? It's having a profoundly surreal effect on my day.

not-so-humble pi

You know, a few years ago, I memorized the first one hundred twenty (120) digits of pi.

I first started memorizing ? meditating on, even ? this most famous of the transcendental numbers in a high school algebra class, over a decade ago.

At the time, it was a way to pass the time. But soon, it became a way to impress people by not so much impressing them as making them wonder if I was right in the head.

It's not every day, after all, that one meets a person who has memorized the first {mumble} digits of pi.

Or so I thought. Then I met the internet, a computer network so vast that it had no trouble pointing to hundreds, if not thousands, of people who had memorized far more seemingly-random digits than I could ever be bothered to. Yes, the internet, Where Free Time Goes to Die.

Well, you can imagine how cheesed-off I was the day I opened up my web browser and became decidedly less unique in the world of human digit sequencers.

I mean, what's the point of being ? perhaps ? the best pi-memorizer on my block by fifty digits, when some bloke two IP addresses over has memorized two-hundred digits more? I mean, really.

So I gave up.

Oh, sure, I still retained the original fifty or sixty first digits or so ? one doesn't easily forget that when one is working on stretching beyond the hundredth digit, after all ? but I gave up trying to be more impressive.

I still rattle them off when the party conversation has become sufficiently desperate to merit several minutes of more-or-less-unverifiable mathematical memorization magic.

But that's all old hat now. I have a new plan to be take the digital retention world by storm.

I'm going to be the first person to memorize pi ... backwards!

[untitled #450]

According to this CNN article, there is a hit song sweeping the world: "The Ketchup Song".

It appears to incorporate Spanglish versions of "Rapper's Delight" with pure gibberish, set to a Spanish pop beat. Right.

I just want to thank CNN for doing their part in ensuring that I never hear this song.

True, it would be difficult for me to hear much pop these days, as I tend to listen to the radio only when in my car, and I'm trying not to drive much these days. But pop music has its insidious ways.

Nonetheless, the fact that CNN has written an article about it practically assures that the trend is dead, even before it's had a chance to reach me.

As if to further obliterate any chances the song has of making it big in my world, they even compared it to the Macarena. If there is a surer death knell, I don't know what it is (the "Electric Slide", maybe?).

Thank you, CNN.

solicitor-b-gone

One of the easier phone solicitations I've ever dealt with happened yesterday:

Phone Solicitor: Is Todd Stadler there?
Me: May I ask who's calling?
PS: This is [some name] from [some company], and I'm calling to [begins to launch into some spiel about some offer] ...
Me: I'm not interested.
PS: Well, sir, how do you know?
Me: [thinks for a while] Because there are more important things in life than anything you could possibly be calling to tell me about.
PS: Okay, you're right. You got me there. Goodbye.

I'll have to see if this works on the rest of them.

[untitled #449]

According to this CNN article, when informed that North Korea may have nuclear weapons, "Bush found the news ... 'sobering'."

I just want to know when he started drinking again. I'm guessing it was sometime before he decided to attack Iraq.

free! dumb!

I'm back from Italy, and completely inable to summarize how nice it all was, so instead I jotted down the following screed.

As a famous philosopher once said, "I like to be in America ... everything free in America."

Indeed. On the way to my free train ride to work this morning, I passed a free water fountain and stopped to read a free newspaper.

Now we just need to work on installing free tissue dispensers so I can get over this free cold I picked up in Italy.

Fine, Italy actually has lots of free newspapers. And there is no shortage of free drinkable water, in Rome, at least ? the city's many fountains are all acqua potabile. Of course, drinking water with your meal will still cost you a pretty euro (and I mean that ? they really are pretty).

But there are no free train rides to be found in Italy, except for the unscrupulous. And honestly, people, what's the point of having a socialist movement if you can't have free train rides? I ask you.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, not everything is free in America, as having my vacation photos developed has now proven quite dramatically.

So allow me to amend my original statement to say, "I like to be in America, Mexican food in America."

Good enough. I'm glad to be back.

[untitled #448]

Having fun in Firenze stop

One week already spent around Italy and less than one week left stop

Saw the Pope in Rome he says hi stop

Swam in the bluest of waters off of Capri stop

Saw ridiculous number of famous old things left scattered around stop

Still find old telegram motif of curt communication funny stop

Cannot stop stop

Please help me stop stop