Tuesday morning Barack Obama delivered a powerful speech in Philadelphia about the need to talk openly and honestly about America’s racial troubles, and the need of all Americans to unite and focus on real issues and not get caught up in the usual crud of divisive politics.
The gist of it is that America started with a serious problem: slavery, and America has been moving away from that problem for a long time, but problems of racism and the legacies of inequality have left scars that one can still feel today. Sometimes black folk express anger and frustration at injustices and the slow pace of progress, and sometimes white people express frustration and offense at the idea that they should have to work to repair the damage wrought by generations past, when they have plenty of their own difficulties to focus on.
And all too often, politicians exploit these frustrations to set Americans against each other and distract them from working together on the real challenges that we collectively face. If we want change, we can not pretend that these divisions do not exist: we must acknowledge them, openly and honestly. We must remember that they can be a distraction from important work. We must reach out to one another and work together on the more important common concerns that unite us: education, health, defense, climate instability.
Here’s a link to a high-quality video from the campaign without the CNN ticker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrp-v2tHaDo&fmt=18
Budget 40 minutes. Or you can read the text.
America is fortunate this year: in Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain we have a diversity of candidates whom we actually admire. I’m supporting Barack Obama.
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Overheard on Taraval, in front of the Safeway at 17th Ave:
“I’m literally serious: I coughed up my lungs.”
Poor girl.
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I spent Christmas, 2002 in Hat Yai, Thailand. Most nights I was at The Post, where a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band jammed. This sketch reminds me of those days.
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I had a rough go of it until I found BlackNight’s post, and now my Canon i250 printer works with Ubuntu like a charm. I thought I would recap here for those who, like me, at first Googled in vain. If you paste these command into Ubuntu 7.10 (Feisty) things ought to work:
First, enter your sudo password:
sudo echo
Now, this paste just might set up everything you need:
sudo apt-get install libpng3 libtiff4 cupsys alien
cd /tmp
wget http://download.canon.com.au/bj/i250linux/bjfilteri250-2.3-0.i386.rpm
wget http://download.canon.com.au/bj/i250linux/bjfiltercups-2.3-0.i386.rpm
sudo alien --scripts bjfilteri250-2.3-0.i386.rpm
sudo alien --scripts bjfiltercups-2.3-0.i386.rpm
sudo dpkg -i bjfiltercups_2.3-1_i386.deb bjfilteri250_2.3-1_i386.deb
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libtiff.so.4 /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libpng.so.3 /usr/lib/libpng.so.2
sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
Then, go set up your printer in the GUI, and specify this PPD file:
/usr/share/cups/model/canoni250.ppd
(Or, in retrospect, since it has a GNU license on it, you could just download the PPD directly off my web site.)
If things turn out less-than-straightforward, definitely review BlackNight’s page for details, and if this does work out for you drop him a thank you note in the comments!
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The other day I was filling out a form that required my phone number. I thought for a moment and provided a phone number. Unfortunately, not everyone is in on the joke, as I just received this inquiry via e-mail:
“I called xxx.867.5309 and received a voicemail system for Kevin. If there was a transposition in numbers, please let me know, and I’ll give you a call on the correct contact number. I look forward to hearing from you!”
I’m sorry, Kevin. Though I can only imagine that Kevin knows what he is doing.
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It is fun to see how people change over time, and how they stay the same. A decade ago I wrote a “Computer Literacy Narrative” for an English class:
The Internet continues to play a very big part in my life. My web site grows slowly every week. I keep my diary on-line for others to read. I write CGI applications. I’m a hard-core Unix geek, administering two of my own systems, writing my HTML and perl scripts in vi, wowwing friends with afterstep. I work for the networking group at NCSA, for the CSIL as a labsitter, and worked last summer at an ISP in Chicago called EnterAct, where I may very well return this summer.
I now use only Unix, and my old Amiga systems from time to time out of nostalgia and respect for history. I own two Unix boxen, four Amiga systems, and the old Commodore 64. While most of these are antiques, I still lend some systems out to others from time to time to facilitate their computing needs.
My fanatical Unix snobbery does mean that I know very little about Windows 95 or Mac. Because I have good computer karma, I still tend to negotiate such systems better than the average Joe, but I’m by no means a wiz. Instead I enjoy spending my time tinkering with completely open systems like FreeBSD. I am proud and inspired by the idea that there are now several very competent Operating Systems available even for normal users that are built and maintained entirely by volunteer effort. It is my goal to continue to learn and ultimately contribute to this effort as I can.
“Wow.”
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In 2002, I spent five days in Jordan between Europe and Thailand. I was there during Ramadan, which made the experience more alien. I had spent two months in Europe but this was the first time I could not read the alphabet.
Amman is a city built on several hills. A lot of the housing is small, concrete, and beige. This is the sort of drawing I’d make as a kid, and here you see small buildings climbing up the hills, traffic, bazaars, and shops.
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I see that I sent in the rent check a day early.
Like the American electorate, my trusty little watch is wrong every fourth year.
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I just scanned a series of 23 sketches that I made while traveling in 2002. Some I really like, others are just somewhat interesting. I am thinking to present these, one per week, on Thursdays. For lack of imagination, I’ll take it in alphabetical order.
This one I call “Alien Lady” and it was probably sketched in Hat Yai, Thailand. There was a gal around who had a neat forehead decoration.
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Walking down the hall at work, I hear an engineer lament.
“Click to focus? Arr!!”
And of course, I shout:
“Focus follows mouse!!”
I hear, beyond cubicle walls, a chorus of agreement.
Back at my desk, which I have recently switched from XP to Ubuntu, I note that I’m clicking to focus. Fortunately, I spent the morning tweaking mutt, which I started using again, after many years, because it deletes e-mail faster than Thunderbird does.
I like this place.
I hear muffled discussions of multiple desktops. I think I’ll figure out how to FocusFollowsMouse in this Gnome stuff real quick before I return my attention to work-work.
ObSolution: In Ubuntu / Gnome, go to System > Preferences > Windows and enable “Select windows when the mouse moves over them”
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Much buzz about Microsoft’s offer to buy Yahoo!
I am a big fan of Google and their myriad products, but sometimes they get on my nerves. I like having Yahoo! as an alternative. I love Flickr. I would hate to see Yahoo! swallowed up my Microsoft, leaving the biggest players on the Internet being a choice between the Google and the Microsoft.
I prefer an online world that isn’t simply black and white, but which also has a weird shade of purple to it.
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I have been less the NPR / Politics junkie than I have in the past. And in the February 5 primary, it doesn’t take much thought for a Democrat from Chicago to prefer Barack Obama. I have already had the privilege of voting for him twice to get him in to the Senate. I just really like the guy: he is eloquent and he seems like and honest, good-hearted, hard-working guy who can pull things off.
But I don’t know much for him on the substance, so I have kept kind of quiet on the matter.
But, well, the XKCD guy, who is really bright, endorses Obama. He gives as good an explanation as any:
I want, for once, someone I can vote for not because I dislike the other candidate, but because I’m proud of mine. Obama is the real thing.
Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy. Lessig was impressed by Obama’s commitment to open systems — for example, his support of machine-readable government information standards that allow citizens’ groups to monitor what our government is up to. Right now, the only group that can effectively police the government is the government itself, and as a result, it’s corrupt to the core. Through these excellent and long-overdue measures, Obama is working to fight this corruption.
Obama stands against bad governing not only in his support of specific practices like open data standards and basic network neutrality, but in his work against corruption from day one. He’s sponsored legislation to restrict gifts to Congress by industry representatives (which also carried a whole slew of anti-corruption measures that were a breath of fresh air). He’s fought against vote fraud. He’s been pushing for election and lobbying reform from the start, and in his campaign he’s refused to take lobbyist money.
[…]
The Democratic party has a long, painful history of nominating unlikable, uncharismatic ‘default’ establishment candidates who are eventually swatted aside by the voters. Nominating Clinton would be continuing that tradition at the very time when we have a chance to do so much better. Let’s not let that chance slip by.
I like Hillary Clinton, as well. Don’t know much about her, but the thing is we have had “Clinton” or “Bush” in the White House for two decades now, and it is time to do something different. I liked the Clinton years, but they could have been . . . more inspired.
I can’t say that the system won’t grind Barack down in his first year in office, but you gotta dream, right? And Barack Obama is the candidate who inspires me most.
Update: Lessig has a compelling 20-minute video as to why he supports Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton.
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