A great column from Jonah Goldberg from a week ago, but it just ran in my print newspaper today.

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200512231243.asp

Among the proud recipients of Time magazine’s fluffy end-of-year “People Who Mattered” feature is Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here’s how his blurb begins: “He is an unlikely firebrand: the soft-spoken son of a blacksmith who still sometimes drives a 30-year-old Peugeot. But Iran’s new President doesn’t shrink from controversy. After winning a disputed election, he said . . .” Now, before I finish that sentence, let’s at least note that so far Time is using the same tone it might use to talk about John McCain, Joe Wilson, George Clooney, or some other “soft-spoken” “unlikely firebrand” beloved by the media. (Time has referred to both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sen. Joe Lieberman as “unlikely firebrands”as well. To date neither has proposed genocide.)

So, does Ahmadinejad have a wacky blog? Did he admit on Larry King Live that he voted for Ralph Nader in 2000? What makes him such a charming rogue?

Let’s pick up that sentence where we left off and see: “After winning a disputed election,” Time reports, “he said he would continue Iran’s nuclear program, called the Holocaust a ‘myth’ and pledged to destroy Israel. Even some of the nation’s ruling clerics are nervous about what he will do next.” So even some of Iran’s terrorism-supporting theocratic dictators are “nervous” about this guy.

What, one wonders, would it take for the editors to get really rough? Perhaps if Ahmadinejad offered a deeply negative review of Brokeback Mountain?

Time describes Pope Benedict XVI as perhaps “too polarizing a conservative.” But for Ahmadinejad, who declared that a member nation of the U.N. should be “wiped off the map” and that the touchstone moral horror of modernity was nothing but a “myth” . . . well, let’s make sure to bring up that he drives an old Peugeot. That’s a crucial fact. If only we could find out what kind of tree he would be if he could be a tree. Maybe next year.

I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t a jab at liberal media bias — though we can have that argument if you like. Rather, this points to something deeper: the resurgence of American isolationism.

Few issues are more shrouded in myth and misunderstanding than isolationism. Even as the “come home, America” chorus grows louder on the left, we’re still told that isolationism is a right-wing phenomenon. This myth starts with the Republican party’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, which didn’t really have much to do with isolationism. The Republican party — the party of Teddy Roosevelt, after all — was full of interventionists and hawks. And the Democratic party had plenty of isolationists and doves.

In the 1930s, isolationism was respectable across the ideological spectrum. Norman Thomas — the president of the American Socialist party — was an isolationist. Oswald Garrison Villard (former editor of the Nation), Charles Beard, John Dewey, Bernard Baruch, and countless other liberal luminaries were isolationists of varying intensity.

John F. Kennedy sent the isolationist America First Committee $100 while he was at Harvard with the note, “what you are doing is vital.” But that was the same JFK who wrote Why England Slept — his senior thesis-cum-bestseller on why Britain was unready for war. Kennedy’s explanation: The British people were unwilling to face reality. The same was true of the United States in the 1930s. The memory of the horror and stupidity of World War I was fresh enough in Americans’ minds — as was the ongoing Depression — that the idea of going to war or even engaging in world affairs just seemed unthinkable. So, we didn’t think about it. We used language that made things seem okay.

But the problem, as Kennedy learned, is that evil men and dangerous forces don’t take a timeout until we’re ready to pay attention. And that’s where Iran comes in. Seriously challenging Iran just strikes a lot of people as too much to fit on the American plate right now, so we prefer to call Ahmadinejad an “unlikely firebrand” instead of a murderous fanatic.

But whatever we call him, it won’t change the fact that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and that Ahmadinejad is a particularly kooky religious fanatic (possibly a member of the Hojjatieh, which seeks to foment global chaos in order to hasten the arrival of the messianic 12th imam).

In response to Ahmadinejad’s comments, the world has responded with only slightly more outrage than it would if he’d called for trade barriers on pistachios. It’s time to wake up.

— (c) 2005 Tribune Media Services

A great column from Jonah Goldberg from a week ago, but it just ran in my print newspaper today.

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200512231243.asp

Among the proud recipients of Time magazine’s fluffy end-of-year “People Who Mattered” feature is Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here’s how his blurb begins: “He is an unlikely firebrand: the soft-spoken son of a blacksmith who still sometimes drives a 30-year-old Peugeot. But Iran’s new President doesn’t shrink from controversy. After winning a disputed election, he said . . .” Now, before I finish that sentence, let’s at least note that so far Time is using the same tone it might use to talk about John McCain, Joe Wilson, George Clooney, or some other “soft-spoken” “unlikely firebrand” beloved by the media. (Time has referred to both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sen. Joe Lieberman as “unlikely firebrands”as well. To date neither has proposed genocide.)

So, does Ahmadinejad have a wacky blog? Did he admit on Larry King Live that he voted for Ralph Nader in 2000? What makes him such a charming rogue?

Let’s pick up that sentence where we left off and see: “After winning a disputed election,” Time reports, “he said he would continue Iran’s nuclear program, called the Holocaust a ‘myth’ and pledged to destroy Israel. Even some of the nation’s ruling clerics are nervous about what he will do next.” So even some of Iran’s terrorism-supporting theocratic dictators are “nervous” about this guy.

What, one wonders, would it take for the editors to get really rough? Perhaps if Ahmadinejad offered a deeply negative review of Brokeback Mountain?

Time describes Pope Benedict XVI as perhaps “too polarizing a conservative.” But for Ahmadinejad, who declared that a member nation of the U.N. should be “wiped off the map” and that the touchstone moral horror of modernity was nothing but a “myth” . . . well, let’s make sure to bring up that he drives an old Peugeot. That’s a crucial fact. If only we could find out what kind of tree he would be if he could be a tree. Maybe next year.

I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t a jab at liberal media bias — though we can have that argument if you like. Rather, this points to something deeper: the resurgence of American isolationism.

Few issues are more shrouded in myth and misunderstanding than isolationism. Even as the “come home, America” chorus grows louder on the left, we’re still told that isolationism is a right-wing phenomenon. This myth starts with the Republican party’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, which didn’t really have much to do with isolationism. The Republican party — the party of Teddy Roosevelt, after all — was full of interventionists and hawks. And the Democratic party had plenty of isolationists and doves.

In the 1930s, isolationism was respectable across the ideological spectrum. Norman Thomas — the president of the American Socialist party — was an isolationist. Oswald Garrison Villard (former editor of the Nation), Charles Beard, John Dewey, Bernard Baruch, and countless other liberal luminaries were isolationists of varying intensity.

John F. Kennedy sent the isolationist America First Committee $100 while he was at Harvard with the note, “what you are doing is vital.” But that was the same JFK who wrote Why England Slept — his senior thesis-cum-bestseller on why Britain was unready for war. Kennedy’s explanation: The British people were unwilling to face reality. The same was true of the United States in the 1930s. The memory of the horror and stupidity of World War I was fresh enough in Americans’ minds — as was the ongoing Depression — that the idea of going to war or even engaging in world affairs just seemed unthinkable. So, we didn’t think about it. We used language that made things seem okay.

But the problem, as Kennedy learned, is that evil men and dangerous forces don’t take a timeout until we’re ready to pay attention. And that’s where Iran comes in. Seriously challenging Iran just strikes a lot of people as too much to fit on the American plate right now, so we prefer to call Ahmadinejad an “unlikely firebrand” instead of a murderous fanatic.

But whatever we call him, it won’t change the fact that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and that Ahmadinejad is a particularly kooky religious fanatic (possibly a member of the Hojjatieh, which seeks to foment global chaos in order to hasten the arrival of the messianic 12th imam).

In response to Ahmadinejad’s comments, the world has responded with only slightly more outrage than it would if he’d called for trade barriers on pistachios. It’s time to wake up.

— (c) 2005 Tribune Media Services

A great column from Jonah Goldberg from a week ago, but it just ran in my print newspaper today.

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200512231243.asp

Among the proud recipients of Time magazine’s fluffy end-of-year “People Who Mattered” feature is Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here’s how his blurb begins: “He is an unlikely firebrand: the soft-spoken son of a blacksmith who still sometimes drives a 30-year-old Peugeot. But Iran’s new President doesn’t shrink from controversy. After winning a disputed election, he said . . .” Now, before I finish that sentence, let’s at least note that so far Time is using the same tone it might use to talk about John McCain, Joe Wilson, George Clooney, or some other “soft-spoken” “unlikely firebrand” beloved by the media. (Time has referred to both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sen. Joe Lieberman as “unlikely firebrands”as well. To date neither has proposed genocide.)

So, does Ahmadinejad have a wacky blog? Did he admit on Larry King Live that he voted for Ralph Nader in 2000? What makes him such a charming rogue?

Let’s pick up that sentence where we left off and see: “After winning a disputed election,” Time reports, “he said he would continue Iran’s nuclear program, called the Holocaust a ‘myth’ and pledged to destroy Israel. Even some of the nation’s ruling clerics are nervous about what he will do next.” So even some of Iran’s terrorism-supporting theocratic dictators are “nervous” about this guy.

What, one wonders, would it take for the editors to get really rough? Perhaps if Ahmadinejad offered a deeply negative review of Brokeback Mountain?

Time describes Pope Benedict XVI as perhaps “too polarizing a conservative.” But for Ahmadinejad, who declared that a member nation of the U.N. should be “wiped off the map” and that the touchstone moral horror of modernity was nothing but a “myth” . . . well, let’s make sure to bring up that he drives an old Peugeot. That’s a crucial fact. If only we could find out what kind of tree he would be if he could be a tree. Maybe next year.

I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t a jab at liberal media bias — though we can have that argument if you like. Rather, this points to something deeper: the resurgence of American isolationism.

Few issues are more shrouded in myth and misunderstanding than isolationism. Even as the “come home, America” chorus grows louder on the left, we’re still told that isolationism is a right-wing phenomenon. This myth starts with the Republican party’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, which didn’t really have much to do with isolationism. The Republican party — the party of Teddy Roosevelt, after all — was full of interventionists and hawks. And the Democratic party had plenty of isolationists and doves.

In the 1930s, isolationism was respectable across the ideological spectrum. Norman Thomas — the president of the American Socialist party — was an isolationist. Oswald Garrison Villard (former editor of the Nation), Charles Beard, John Dewey, Bernard Baruch, and countless other liberal luminaries were isolationists of varying intensity.

John F. Kennedy sent the isolationist America First Committee $100 while he was at Harvard with the note, “what you are doing is vital.” But that was the same JFK who wrote Why England Slept — his senior thesis-cum-bestseller on why Britain was unready for war. Kennedy’s explanation: The British people were unwilling to face reality. The same was true of the United States in the 1930s. The memory of the horror and stupidity of World War I was fresh enough in Americans’ minds — as was the ongoing Depression — that the idea of going to war or even engaging in world affairs just seemed unthinkable. So, we didn’t think about it. We used language that made things seem okay.

But the problem, as Kennedy learned, is that evil men and dangerous forces don’t take a timeout until we’re ready to pay attention. And that’s where Iran comes in. Seriously challenging Iran just strikes a lot of people as too much to fit on the American plate right now, so we prefer to call Ahmadinejad an “unlikely firebrand” instead of a murderous fanatic.

But whatever we call him, it won’t change the fact that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and that Ahmadinejad is a particularly kooky religious fanatic (possibly a member of the Hojjatieh, which seeks to foment global chaos in order to hasten the arrival of the messianic 12th imam).

In response to Ahmadinejad’s comments, the world has responded with only slightly more outrage than it would if he’d called for trade barriers on pistachios. It’s time to wake up.

— (c) 2005 Tribune Media Services

OK, so when we bought our 40-hour Tivo, it was small-ish for storage space, but it worked. Now that we’ve got subscriptions going for kids programming like Sesame Street and Zooboomafoo, I’ve been wishing for some more storage space. Having been assured by Mark that the upgrade was fairly easy, I decided to take it on myself.

Step 1 was to get a larger hard drive. I didn’t want to spend a lot, but I wanted a lot of space. A Christmas gift card to Best Buy (thanks Ryan!) was a good starting point. Then I found a good deal on a Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 160 GB hard drive. It started at $119.99, but has $80 worth of mail-in rebates. So I picked it up today and got started.

There are good instructions out on the web for upgrading to a bigger Tivo hard drive. The most detailed and useful was www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/index9.html. It has very specific step-by-step instructions.

Step 2 was to crack open the Tivo and backup its hard drive onto the new hard drive. Most of the time here was spent just opening cases and swapping in and out hard drives. Per the instructions I had created a bootable CD running some specialized Linux, and that allowed me to do all of the fun backups and restores.

The whole copying process (including all of the programs I currently have recorded) took about 2 hours to complete.

Step 3: put everything back together and check out the system status page.  The results: 40 or so hours of recording space in “Best” mode, up to 183 hours in “Basic” mode.  I think I’ll stick in “High” mode, which’ll give me 83 hours of recording time.

Note: depending on the type of Tivo, you may not be able to use all the hard drive space; older Tivos software limits you to addressing about 137 GB. However, my Series 2 Tivo model TVD540040 is able to address larger amounts, so I was able to use all 160 GB. Woohoo!

I’ll echo Mark’s comments here on Tivo upgrades; I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was. If you’re comfortable swapping hard drives in and out and setting the master/slave jumpers, you can do this. No problemo.

I’ve just finished upgrading all of the thehubbs.net blogs to Wordpress 2.0. It all seemed to go smoothly. Now we just have to use it for a while to gain some familiarity. I will say that this WYSIWYG editing seems pretty slick so far.

OK, so Christmas was actually two days ago. Now the family has all left for their respective homes and our house is quiet. It was a very nice Christmas. Laura is old enough this year to understand about opening presents and to really enjoy the toys she got. She could’ve just stopped with the first one… after 7 or 8 she was overwhelmed. We ended up leaving the last few of hers for her to open later.

I received many thoughtful gifts this year. In no particular order…

• Jamie Cullum’s new CD, Chasing Tales
• Duke Ellington’s 70th Birthday CD
• A cool t-shirt from Target - a spoof of the famous “Dogs at Cards”, but with Snoopy and his pals playing poker. Actually, I got two of these.
• Two Family Christian Stores gift cards - the first will buy me Derek Webb’s Mockingbird, dunno what I’ll get with the rest.
• Lemstone bookstore gift certificate
• Best Buy gift card
• Burger King gift card…. mmmmmm…. Whoppers.
• Some gift fundage from Becky’s folks… I’m using this to buy the Adobe Photoshop Elements/Premiere Elements bundle pack I’ve had my eye on for a while.
• A bunch of misc sundries

I think that’s it. My apologies to anybody if I forgot their gift.

Now I have the rest of the week off from work, so I’ll have to find some projects to work on. Somehow I think I’d go crazy if I did nothing but sit and play on the computer all week. It wouldn’t score many points with Becky, either. So, I’m off now. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

My brother Aaron wanted to get a blog set up… so we got it put together yesterday and I am now pleased to be able to refer you to Casa de Aaron. Hopefully he’ll be a consistent blogger; I’ll be interested in reading about his experiences in Panama.

Happy blogging Aaron!

I just finished up my latest recreational read last night: Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer. I have been a fan of Mr. Connelly’s Harry Bosch series for a while now, so I thought this was a safe bet.

The Lincoln Lawyer ended up being a little less complex and thrilling than I had thought it might be. Lawyer with personal problems (but not too many personal problems) defends client who ends up being a really, really bad person. It was a nice change from the norm to have a hero who actually has a decent relationship with his ex-wife (we’re actually left with a chance of them getting back together), and that doesn’t have to solve the whole thing on his own; the police seem to do a reasonable job, and actually are one step ahead of the hero at the end of the book.

Oh the whole: a reasonable read, but nothing earthshattering or new and novel here. Well, OK, it is novel… a novel, that is.

“Strong people of faith are not defined by what they do for a living but, rather, how they live what they do.” — Len Pasquarelli, describing Tony Dungy

A remarkable observation. Sympathies and prayers to the Dungy family on the loss of their son.

…but that’s only because today is my last day of work until January 3. Thank you Uncle Rocky! Not that my week-and-a-half off will be slow… but it’ll be different. Christmas break is wonderful.

That being said, there should be a rule against reporting bad issues at work on the last day before break. But there’s not. So this morning I get a call telling me that my project’s software is crashing under a certain condition. Grrrr… It’s just gonna have to wait until after Christmas.