Thursday Morning Quarterback

Football Outsiders: Easterbrook writes, “Numerous readers contributed items written in my style, which Football Outsiders assembled into a Tuesday Morning Quarterback column that was almost too good — spooky-good, actually. Please don’t tell me Tuesday Morning Quarterback could be outsourced offshore to a couple of guys watching NFL tapes in Bangalore, India!”

The Justice Dept’s Attorney Workforce Diversity Study–Uncensored

From The Memory Hole — “The Memory Hole has posted a version with no redactions; instead, those sections are highlighted in yellow, so you can easily zoom in on the parts originally deemed too embarassing for us to see.”

Calpundit provides some background:

A couple of weeks ago the Justice Department, after finally acceding to a Freedom of Information request, posted a study on “workforce diversity.” However, it was heavily redacted: nearly half of the report was blacked out.

But in yet another example of utter cluelessness about how computers work, the report was posted on the web in PDF format. More specifically, it was posted in a PDF format called Image+Text, so while the viewable image was redacted, the underlying text (which allows you to search the document) was still there, buried in the innards of the file.

Not buried for long, of course. The good folks at the Memory Hole helpfully restored the text, and even highlighted the redacted parts so we can all see what it was that DOJ wanted to hide. Both versions are here for your viewing pleasure.

You know, I sure hope the guys working on terrorism are a little more clueful about computer protocols and file formats than these guys. This is pitiful.

See also Critical Study Minus Criticism of Justice Dept.

Dogs are not fur children

The Bleat on Jasper:

Dogs are not fur-children. Dogs are dogs. They’re happier if you know this. And you’re happier, too, because you won’t mistake your dog for your child. The day Gnat came home was the day I began to really understand my dog. It’s not that I had overestimated him; he’s incredibly smart. I had given him some human attributes, yes, but you can’t help it – there is some overlap, given all the time humans and dogs have spent together. I am not exaggerating when I say that he cried when we brought Gnat home. He had never made that sound before and he’s never made it since, for which I’m grateful: it was painful. He got it. He knew.

The narrative continues. Made NewMexiKen wish I had a dog…for a millesecond.

Bitter Beanie Babies

Last Saturday NewMexiKen posted an item about Beanie Babies for sale on eBay. More details thanks to OpinionJournal from The Wall Street Journal.

Last month a man calling himself “thedrunkensailor,” from West Palm Beach, Fla., put a “collection of 26 Beanie Babies from ex-wife” up for auction on eBay. Beanie Babies apparently are small stuffed animals that people collect, some of which are rare and valuable.

“I DO NOT KNOW crap about these things,” thedrunkensailor explained (all quotes are verbatim). “Whatever money I make from them will be spent at the local Home Depot on tools and other cool stuff. . . . I understand from a friends wife that people are afraid to get fakes. FAKES? Fake plush toys? I was amazed. I thought people forged money, not childrens toys.” He added the following “Final Notice and Disclaimer”:

I know nothing about these stuffed Beanie Babies. I offer no proof of anything. It is a stuffed animal, get over it! I don’t think my ex-wife was in the Black Market Beanie Trade..but then again, I didn’t know she was having an affair either! Thus no gauruntees!

Thedrunken sailor later added two more comments. The first explained how “a very kind Ebayer” wrote him to say which of his Beanie Babies were valuable. But he added:

I make no claims on value, and to be honest. I am amazed anyine pays more then a dollar a piece for these things. What happened to collecting STAMPS? Pay what you want for them! IT ALL GOES TO HOMEDEPOT !!!!!! and BEER!

But then he heard from someone else:

Okay all you people with nothing better to do! ENOUGH WITH THE EMAILS! I thought I was clear with all that. Here is an Email that I just got from some lady who felt she will try to save my sould or something! Read Below:

Very clever listing; however it is very likely you have some fakes (counterfeits) among the listing and I suggest you pull them from the auctions until you have them authenticated. Humphrey the camel is an example. It is a requirement of eBay as well as unde the provisions of the U.S. Criminal Cpode that a seller know the authenticity of a trademarked item s/he is selling. Also, an authenticated rare beanie will bring lots of money on the auctions. I’ll let you know the others that are likely fakes, and further it is very unlikely your ex would have left behind these rare ones. If she had 1000 beanies, she knew what she had and their value. To sell counterfeits of a trademarked item wold make you a common criminal. Are you being honest? If so, cancel the auction, relist the common beanies, and send the rest for authentication. It would be well worth it financially and would make you honest.
Taisha

WELL TAISHA! I don’t CARE! I told everyone in the begining everything I know and don’t know about these STUPID animals! I ahve an idea for all people that are so worried about this…..DON’t BID! I dont care! I am so upset that this clown of a woman figured out my SUPER PLAN TO SCAM MILLIONS FROM THE UNKNOWING BEANIE WORLD! I FIGURED I WOULD RETIRE FROM THIS RUSE! What a dolt she is! I have blocked her from my bidder list, that way she can cry about it. Some people are UNREAL! GET A LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The bidding ended Sept. 22, with one “glorybeeto” paying $860 for the lot. We certainly hope thedrunkensailor is enjoying his tools and his beer.

iTunes redux

Jill carefully excepts people close to her but otherwise says, “I don’t know if anything has ever made me as happy as the new iTunes store for Windows.”

[Update October 20, 2005: This may be what you’re looking for:

MyTunes Redux. No endorsement implied.]

iTunes

NewMexiKen took a step further into the digital revolution today buying New York City the album by Norah Jones & The Peter Malick Group from Apple iTunes for $6.93 plus tax. (Convinced he needed it by hearing one of the tracks over the closing credits of The Runaway Jury the other evening.)

Download went quickly despite foolishly starting it with a wireless connection (what with all those solar flares and all).

I can now listen to the album on my PC (as I am at the moment), copy it to my iPod to take with me wherever and/or copy it to a CD.

The album is $10.99 at Amazon.com. There are only seven tracks or about 30 minutes of music on this particular album.

Enchanted undead

From 1868 to 1975, The Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency (FVZA) was responsible for controlling the nation’s vampire and zombie populations while overseeing scientific research into the undead. This site is a tribute to the men and women who served in the FVZA, especially the over 4000 Agents who lost their lives fighting to keep our country safe. In addition to paying tribute to the FVZA, this site hopes to call attention to dangerous research being done at the Santa Rosa Institute in New Mexico: research that runs the risk of bringing back a scourge of vampires worse than any before.

Passive-Aggessive Robbery

From David Pogue of The New York Times

Until a few years ago, my wife was a plastic surgeon. She quit for a lot of reasons, but one was the frustration of getting reimbursement from the H.M.O.’s.

As I understand it, after sewing up, say, a car-accident victim, she would submit the proper forms for payment to the H.M.O. After a couple of months, she’d get back — nothing. As we learned later, H.M.O.’s have figured out that a certain percentage of doctors never follow up; for the HMO, that’s pure profit.

So she’d submit the paperwork a second time. This time, she’d get a check for, say, 60 percent of the billed amount — because the H.M.O.’s knew that a certain number of doctors don’t have the time or energy to fight over every nickel and dime.

And on it would go, until her career felt as though it were half surgery, and half paperwork.

From my outsider’s perspective, it looked like she had stumbled onto a new American business model: passive-aggressive robbery.

Puppet Or Chief?

“[The decision to send more troops to Iraq] is a decision by John Abizaid. General Abizaid makes the decision as to whether or not he needs more troops.”
– President George W. Bush, 10/28/03

Fact:
“The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”
– U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 2

From TOMPAINE.com

Metrosexual? Dean?

“I KNOW METROSEXUALS. METROSEXUALS ARE FRIENDS OF MINE. AND GOVERNOR, YOU ARE NO METROSEXUAL. He may attract “Queer Eye for the Dean Guy” signs at rallies and boast that a gay man has called him “handsome,” but Howard Dean is no “metrosexual,” as he claimed to be at a breakfast meeting in Colorado yesterday. For the record, no man who “has been known to stuff pretzels into his pockets,” goes anywhere with “shaving nicks on his neck, uneven fingernails and wrinkles from a hanger creasing his suit at the knees” (as has been documented in The Washington Post) and still wears a 20-year-old suit he bought for $125 at J.C. Penny’s (as Dean claimed on The Tonight Show that he does) can call himself a metrosexual.”

From TAPPED

Is it the same?

“Imagine if during Prohibition, Calvin Coolidge had prevailed upon the prime minister of France to burn that country’s vineyards. Today at TAP Online, Christopher Hayes says that’s more or less analogous to what we asked of Bolivia’s president in recent years by demanding that he cooperate in our coca eradication efforts. So it’s not surprising that popular outrage forced him from office this week.”

From TAPPED