In an earlier post I wrote:

A bunch of people in Colorado want their neighbour to take down a Christmas peace sign wreath…

Fortunately, it turns out that the “bunch” is mostly the [now ex] board members of the housing association. New York Times has more:

Last week, a couple were threatened with fines of $25 a day by their homeowners’ association unless they removed a four-foot wreath shaped like a peace symbol from the front of their house.

The fines have been dropped, and the three-member board of the association has resigned, according to an e-mail message sent to residents on Monday.

[…]

In any case, there are now more peace symbols in Pagosa Springs, a town of 1,700 people 200 miles southwest of Denver, than probably ever in its history.

On Tuesday morning, 20 people marched through the center carrying peace signs and then stomped a giant peace sign in the snow perhaps 300 feet across on a soccer field, where it could be seen from about just everywhere by just about everyone.

[…]

A former president of the Loma Linda community, where Mr. Trimarco lives, said Tuesday that he had stepped in to help form an interim homeowners’ association.

The former president, Farrell C. Trask, described himself in a telephone interview as a military veteran who would fight for anyone’s right to free speech, peace symbols included.

Town Manager Mark Garcia said Pagosa Springs was building its own peace wreath, too. Mr. Garcia said it would be finished by late Tuesday and installed on a bell tower in the center of town.

Goes to show that there is more to people than the simplifications and stereotypes offered and furthered by TV talking heads.

A bunch of people in Colorado want their neighbour to take down a Christmas peace sign wreath, because — no I am not making this up — it is considered to be “divisive” i.e., it is anti-war. So, there you have it: war is what brings us together and peace is what divides us.

ABC News: Colo. Subdivision Bans Wreath Peace Sign

A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

[…]

[ Link ]

In the wake of their “thumping”, GOP and conservative talking heads, apart from wringing hands and pointing fingers, have been outdoing each other on the preposterous nature of their explanations. For instance, there was Michael Savage on talk radio with the mind-numbing analysis that George Bush, the liberal, intentionally threw the GOP under the bus in 2006 (I presume by invading Iraq and botching it).

Now we have Ramesh Ponnuru (who was left spluttering on the Jon Stewart show), a later entrant to the brown-noser hall of fame (home to such luminaries as Dinesh D’Souza, Bobby Jindal), with this beauty in the New York Times:

The real message of the last few elections is that, for the most part, social issues help the Republicans and economic ones the Democrats.

To understand what Ponnuru means by economic issues (during an election cycle where the GOP, among the usual techniques of hate-mongering and so on, ran on the economy) you have to read through the dicing and slicing of 2006 election results data that he offers in the article.

A look at the issues polls, exit polls and the election results suggests the voters chose, in essence, a reality-based world, in opposition to GOP and Bush policies and activities. While the numbers (and the pronouncements by the pundits) are rosy on the economy, the public voted (mostly) for reality on minimum wage (and a Nov 9 Newsweek poll finds increasing minimum wage a top priority for 68% of the population — more on the findings of this poll in a separate post) and health care. Abortion and stem cell? Only about 5% and 3% respectively considered this the most important issue that contributed to their choice. This despite polls (Time, Nov 1) showing that voters favour Republicans on “moral values”.

Distracting and rallying the public using fear and social issues as tactics help the Republicans and a return to reality helps the Democrats.

(Which is not to say that the Democrats are a great hope for mankind!)

If you have been beset by deep philosophical misgivings on the meaning of the abstract concept that we label ‘freedom’, a piece of good news for you. A definition has been found! Here is Andrew Sullivan on PBS’ NOW:

I believe in a free country people can spend money as they want on advancing their own point of view. That’s what freedom means.

Freedom is the ability to advance your point of view by spending your money. But I bet you already knew the converse of that!

You cannot make this shit up:

BBC | China’s full-time computer gamers

China is exploiting a new industry - and it exists in the shadowy world of fantasy monsters and virtual treasure.

This is the online computer game economy where people assume characters and play to win virtual ‘gold’ which they can then spend in their game.

But to build up this credit can take hours, or even days - so around the world, some gamers are paying others to do the hard work for them.

[ Link ]

A quote from the NYT:

Rape Accusation Has Ruined Lives, Students Say

[…]

Mr. Evans, the team captain, told “60 Minutes” that he regretted his decision to give a party with alcohol and hire strippers.

“I was naïve, I was young, I was sheltered,” he said. […]

[ Link ]

A most unscientific blog comparison!

The All Important Notes

The other day, I decided to see how compliant my blog is, and found this useful site: UITest. It collects a bunch of tests together in one page. Well I fared quite poorly (see below). If I am going down, I am bloody well taking the rest of you down with me! And so, I decided to test out some of the popular blogs. Please do not take this as a serious evaluation! It is highly unscientific and utterly silly

There are things I would have liked to measure, such as how blog reader friendly a blog is, but that would require actual effort!

Test environment: Firefox 1.5, screen 1024×768, 12pt Helvetica (default font)

The Blogs and Ranks

• HuffPo = The Huffington Post
• dKos = Daily Kos
• C&L = Crooks and Liars
• TProg = Think Progress
• Malkin = Michelle Malkin
• PwrLine = PowerLine

The rank is based on Technorati ranking of blogs as of Oct 10,
2006 or thereabouts. The URLs used for testing where the ones
listed in the Technorati listing. Some of these blogs/bloggers
have more than one blog (HuffPo, Malkin), in which case I
chose the higher ranked one. Also, I wanted a partisan blog
shootout and had to make judgement calls: I did not include
InstaPundit and Little Green Footballs. You may disagree!

Times are in seconds.

Validity

• W3C XHTML is XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• W3C HTML is HTML 4.01 Transitional
• If a site passed XHTML 1.0 no need to test HTML 4.01
• Truwex is a report of a range of issues
• Spelling was filtered for names, nicknames, acronyms, popular word corruptions, etc.
• Special kudos to C&L for getting the spelling of dialogue right, and Michelle Malkin for getting neighbour right!

Accessibility

• Frankly, I do not know a lot about these guidelines and tests.
• The ATRC test reports known, likely and potential problems: I have listed the known and included the total in brackets.
• The UIUC FAE test lists 5 main categories and provides % of failures for each: I have crudely added all the %s together.
• WebXACT results are broken down by 3 priorities and lists errors and warnings: I have added up the error incidents.

Subjective

• One thing I hate more than all else is the single-window assumption: anything larger than 750-800 pixels should be banished back to the times before windowing and multi-tasking!
• Design… well, that's really subjective isn't it? Along with aesthetics, I look for consistency of UI, use of colour, contrast, spacing, use of markup, and so on. Malkin for example uses "***" as markup… surely better options are available? Malkin and ThinkProgress (and to a lesser extent PowerLine) have an uncluttered and well-structured interface.
• Many folks read blogs through a blog reader that may list only post headings: are these clear enough to tell me what the post is about?
• And what about the post contents? Don't you hate cryptic one-liners which serve as a link to an external page with the real info? ThinkProgress, C&L, and Malkin (to a lesser extent) seem to enjoy this sport.
• What's a blog without a feed? How clear and prominent is/are the feed link(s)? If your feed link says "XML" you get a negative point! If it uses the new standardised feed icon, you get a positive.
• How cluttered and crazy is the sidebar? Are tags or categories offered for readers to focus on their area of interest?
• To give you an idea of spelling errors I found:
  Kos: whever, TProg: prescise, Malkin: afor.

A look at the Glass House

How did Plato's Beard fare?

• Spell: 0 errors! How would I know?
• Seomoz page strength: cannot even fetch the page
• MS Adcenter says: neutral (0.5) under 18 years (24.17%)
• Truwex Page check: 22 issues
• Size/speed: 201kB, 40.17s (56K), 1.26s (T1)
• ATRC: 14 known, 0 likely, 286 potential
• UIUC: 201
• W3C: XHTML 1.0 Trans: 84 errors, HTML 4.01 Trans: 53 errors
• Width: 700px
• Headings: B
• Feed Link(s): A
• Content(s): zero ;-)

BBC writes about Edmund Phelps’ being awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics (pedants, please auto-correct):

BBC | US scoops Nobel economics prize

American Edmund S Phelps has won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on inflation and unemployment.

He is the sixth American to win a Nobel Prize this year, with only the literature and peace prizes remaining.

Since when did the Nobel prize become an international competition or sport? US scoops Nobel? You have to be kidding me!

[ Link ]

The city of Chicago, in a moment of surprising enlightenment, passed a law banning the sale of foie gras. The response? Civil disobedience from restaurateurs and a indignation from the already overfed population. Curtailment of civil rights? No problem. Illegal and immoral war? Who cares. Lesser cruelty towards animals? NO WAY, dude!

What is pathetic about this is the lack of a meaningful response in terms of the ethical issues raised. Instead naive individual choice arguments are offered to justify personal opinion. Some counts offer the staggering number of six billion animals killed each year for human consumption (the number perhaps is approximate and is intentionally coincidental with the current human population). At least the Germans just stood by while horror was committed around them.

How do you get from the image of the most advanced and successful fighting force in the world to a pathetic joke, in the period of one month?

Israel holds Nasrallah
Publication time: Today at 12:26 Djokhar time

Unfortunately for the embarrassed Israelis, he was the local green grocer - not the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah group.
Leah Tzemel, the Israeli lawyer who obtained their release on Monday, said Israel had snatched the four Nasrallahs and their neighbour on August 1 in a commando raid in the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek in northeastern Lebanon.

It would all be hilarious if the IDF silliness did not involve the death of others (15 people in this case).