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Nightly Ramble: Blogging, Misidentifications And Their Purposes,Greenwald, the Victimhood of KSM,Hugo, TV And More.

  • James Joyner [1] notes the passage of another milestone… 24 million. He’s up to a million hits per month, now. I suppose this to be a good bench test for WordPress. Congrats from here, James.
  • With the new job, my posting is going to be a little off for a few days, until I find a timing groove. SOme major schedule changes at home because of this, and I’ve just gotta get used to the new schedule.
  • Over the weekend, I made some changes as to how this blog takes feeds from Centcom’s News Release site.  We’ll no longer be posting them on the main pages, but rather will be offering them off the new Centcom Press Room page, which in turn is a part of the BitsBlog Newsroom page.
  • Speaking of the Newsroom page, I’ve been working on that, as well.  The BitsBlog Newsroom is already big and will get downright huge before I’m done adding stuff to it. I’ve already added the White House feeds and the downright huge Voice of America feeds, feeds from the US Army, and there will be more to come. The idea, here is to offer you a large amount of news sources in one spot… sources you certainly won’t find as a part of the mainstream media. In the works are pages form the FBI, The State Dept, and more. All these sources will be updated automatically here as the sources I draw them from are.  Start at the BitsBlog Newsroom button, near the top of this page.
  • Oh… I repaired an error in the feed from McGehee’s blog and also, finally figured out how to get ATOM feeds working so I could get Bluto’s feed working as well. They’re available now. As before, all SwampStomper blogs have headline style feeds available here, as marked above. The idea is to get you to go read the fine articles these good folks write. Oh… and of course if yo’re interested in having your blog represented here as a Swamp Stomper Blog, by all means, drop me some feedback.
  • Speaking of the Stompers, McGehee asks a great question [2]… and the answer is it pushes him (And me with him) out of the mainstream… which is exactly what has always been the intent by those mislabeling Ron Paul as a ‘Libertarian” and John McCain as a “Conservative”.
  • The Jawa Report, by way of Bluto, has it right [3].  And why would that slug, Greenwald NOT be fighting for the bottom feeders?
  • A shout out to the Wall Street Journal: Why would it shock you to find our own left labeling that murderous bastard, KSM ‘a victim’? [4] You go with your strengths, I guess. Everyone they feel worth defending, their whole reason for existence, is ‘the victims’. IN this case, more clearly than in most cases, their loyalties are exposed, though. They’re not with America.
  • As regards, Crazy Uncle Hugo [5] and his plans to shut off oil exports from Venezuela to the United States in response to Exxon actually winning a court case based on fact, one wonders what the response of Venezuela would be if the United States were to ban exports from Venezuela to the United States.  It would be an amusing study in impotency at least. And just think; Drilling in ANWR would have allowed us that option.
  • Say what you will, Bruce, about government, and in specific how the Federal Communications Commission handled the HDTV switchover effective the end of this year and I will likely agree.  I’d most certainly agree that they could have handled it better.  Where we disagree, however, is their not handling it better, creates an impending disaster.Look, 85% of Americans are currently receiving their television via cable or satellite, and those systems aren’t going to be switching over to the new standard in 2009.  It’s going to be easier for them to convert from the new standard to the old, for bandwidth reasons on their systems. WHAM-TV, old main transmitter, installed in 1962 [6] Oh, and there’s no question that there is going to be some increased price on the consumer end, per unit.  Such always happens with new technologies. However, comparing the prices of HD equipped sets versus the old style is like comparing new CD prices to the prices of the CDs that you’re going to find the cutout rack.  The prices of the old-style sets have been artificially low for the last few years due to the new standards coming on.Look, folks. Technology is changing. It’s the nature of the beast.  I’m willing to bet that nobody reading this is using any version of DOS. Yet, look at this picture, (Courtesy of Scott Fybush and the NERW) [7] , of the standby transmitter at WHAM-TV13 here in Rochester. It’s a tube design, (A TT-11) originally built and installed by the RCA folks back in 1962.  (Here’s another picture [8] of a TT-11, as installed down at WFAA, down at DFW, Texas, and here’s some better perspective shots [9] of this model) Should we be mandating that broadcasters maintain old style transmissions into an indefinite future? We tried that with the telephone company, and look how crazy that got. Oh… and look at the analogue cell phones, which are also going dark very shortly.  Same reason; Technology moves on.From an old tech’s perspective, it’ll be a heartbreaker when they break the old girl up. To me, there has always been something magical about these powerful yet temperamental beasts. (The TT-11 ran 24kw, a huge sum for those frequencies back in the day) I know it’s a passion most folks don’t share. Anyway, at some point, technology has to be allowed to grow. And holding onto the old style stuff for a mere fraction of the people they were designed to serve, won’t cut it.  And anyway, in the end, 90% of the people won’t even notice the difference.
  • Bottled water is “immoral’? [10]

    Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser.”We have to make people think that it’s unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong,” said Tim Lang, the Government’s naural resources commissioner.

    Oh, please…. (Sigh) Well, three things here.

    First of all, no shock that what laughingly passes for the British government these days, socialist paradise it’s being made into, harbors such people as Mr. Lang.

    Darth Vader, or Large Helmet, depending on how much you like Mel Brooks [11]Secondly, no shock that the government should be attempting to use guilt, attached to ‘global warming’ to support it’s latest pet project. I suppose someone in government has to mount a defense for poorly run muni water systems, which tend to turn out water which would not even come close to passing the very same purity tests the same government inflicts on the bottled water makers.

    Want to limit sales of bottled water? Start cleaning up your own act. Meanwhile, I’ll take the explosion of sales of bottled water, to be the man on the street recognizing that the dollars he’s being forced by the government to spend on government run water systems is all going to waste… literally.

  • With a BBCT to the Jawas [12], I’ll leave you with a study of a Hot Air Baloon, in the shape of ‘Large Helmet”