[1] 40° outside today. More of the same on tap for tomorrow. As a result, all that white crap that’s been falling for the last couple of weeks, that I posted the pictures of, is now melting and ending up as water in my basement. OK, so it’s warming up and I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Still, what a drag. (Pic courtesy of Dr Fun, a personal Favorite… Ya quit too soon, David…) (click for full view)
- I see Joyner posting a poll [2], which says :
- 57% believe “The Iraq War is a key part of the global war on terrorism.”
- 57% “support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for its people.
- 50% want our troops should stay and “do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country” while only 17% favor immediate withdrawal
- 56% believe “Even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.”
- 53% believe “The Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw the troops from Iraq.”
All of this, to my mind is a fair explanation for why the democrats refused to outright vote to cut the funds for the troops, instead following that coward John Murtha. I suspect and suppose that the democrats have opened a Pandora’s box on this one, but they’re not going to be able to close, nor will they be able to live with it easily, and come November, 2008, will be paying the price for it. The Democrats did manage to pick up the finger in the wind from Bill Clinton.. and must know this too. It’s going to be a very interesting election season if for no other reason than watching the Democrats roasting on the spit they’ve collectively made for themselves.
- “everything Louder than everything else?” [3]Wasn’t that a Meatloaf tune? Anyway, Loudness wars are something that I understand from the inside, from my broadcast years. Indeed; audio processing is something I did fairly well; made beer money with it for awhile. And, yes, I’ve blown out a few modulation transformers in the process, particularly on older transmitters not designed for the kind of modulation density I hit ’em with. But the fact of the matter is, that if these folks have that much problem with it for the analogy to be correct, they’re not doing it anywhere near right. And I’m not even going to make much of the MP3 comments. What the hell kind of a bitstream they’re using to raise that kind of a ruckus over the quality, I don’t even wanna think about. It’s also kind of ironic that you should use Deep Purple in your quote; Machine Head was one of the first albums that I’m aware of that used multi-band processing to get a high average level going. They were running it tight enough, that I have for years been amazed that they didn’t get more outside – the- trailer noise when the limiters came up to fill. I’ve always supposed it to be a testament to the audio design of the Stones’ trailer.In any event, I will warrant a guess that more music is being listened to by people carrying and using MP3 players or listening to the selfsame format by means of satellite radio than are listening to it in the more “pure” fashions that these people would propose we do. They’d best be getting used to the idea pretty quick or they’re going to be maladjusted for the remainder of their overly-pompous lives.
- BitsBox is going in for service in the morning. The right front wheel bearing is gone out. To make matters even more entertaining, the wheel bearings on both sides of the front end of my wife’s escape went out on the same day. She got hers fixed this morning. Two vastly different designs, same problem, same day, same family. What do you suppose the odds are?
- It appears [4] that Hillary Clinton is continuing to get negative feedback after asking us all to become involved with a “national conversation “. I have said it often enough around here, that one of the worst things that you can possibly do for a democrat, is give them precisely what they ask for. Here’s another such case.