Recently in General Category

An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.

This is a bit of a nostalgia piece for me. Oh, to be back in those halcyon days of the early 90s, when the War on (some) Drugs was one of my top civil liberties concerns. I guess it's sort of like looking back from a "South Park" reality, to a time when the world thought "Beevis and Butthead" was the height of offensive television. Almost cute, really.

Ah,the joys of upgrading the home stereo system. Been down a major rabbit hole for the past week, trying to get my new surround speakers working. ARRRGGGH.

I had a brief moment of triumph three days ago, when I hooked the two front speakers, the center channel and the subwoofer and rocked some Metallica - heh heh, heh heh ... bass is cool.

Then came the laugh a minute recabling of the TV, Tivo, amp, DVD player and VCR to take full advantage of the amp. Well, the good news is that picture and sound are happening. The bad news is, no center channel sound. *sigh*

Then came the realization that I'd never be able to configure the amp's surround functions without the remote, which has been AWOL since I lived in San Diego (that's two years-plus for you folks new to Lori Land). Where has it been, you ask? At first, I thought it was just lost in the move somewhere. Then, when I moved into my current place, I heard a little rattling in the couch when my sweet and burly buddies set it in the living room. I'd always "meant to" go hunting for the remote in the couch, but found I could make do without it.

Then the upgrade. So, tonight, I had to flip the couch on it's back, take the bottom liner clean off (and, ultimately, slit it open so I could reach into the weird, wooden frame neverland that the remote had found its way into), sew the liner back up after retrieving the remote, a compact, and a really cool lighter, and then enter into the futile attempt to get the surround setup correctly.

Ah well. These things are always, at their most uplifting, an exercise in logic and patience. I WILL BE VICTORIOUS!!!!

So I find that recent socio-political events have called me back to more idealistic and subversive pursuits and ideas. One of these it a desire to re-read Atlas Shrugged.

So tonight I went to the shelf and pulled out my copy, and discovered that at some point in the past, I had affixed sticky note annotations on various pages, highlighting sections that presented quintessential representations of each major character. Interesting...

Giving Africa's HIV-positive children a cheap antibiotic could nearly halve the death rate, research shows.

So cool. Somewhere in the world, smart people are using their intellect and desire to do good to perform miracles. There's hope.

Ouch! Talk about obvious. Just love to see the Evil Empire crash and burn so magnificently.

How swiftly thought evolves in the wonderful world of Ballmer! First, iPods are full of "stolen" music, next he forgets what he said, but suggests that it might be anything that isn't a Windows Media Player that's full of stolen music, and now iPod owners turn out to be the most law-abiding people in the world.

Although, the apology was part commercial, part backhanded dis of iPod users, but oh well.

Steve Ballmer, MSFT CEO/Monkey Boy, asserts that most songs on iPods are 'stolen."

Hey, Steve! As an iPod owner, I take umbrage with that remark. Thanks to Apple's excellent iTunes software and my incredibly easy to use iBook, I have scanned in my entire, legally-obtained song library to the tune of 6+ gigs and loaded it onto my little darling. When I was enslaved to the Borg Empire, I seem to remember being innundated with any number of Wintel-oriented P2P tools (Napster, Grokster, Streamcast, Aimster, Kazaa), all of which are in no way inhibited by Windows' supposed DRM capabilities. Plenty of those still plugged into the Redmond Matrix are doing more file sharing than ever.

Loser.

Been down the OH rabbit hole for the past week-plus, but can finally sense the existence of the end...beautiful friend....{sorry; Doors digression}.

Any-hoo, have been coming home and collapsing past couple of nights, periodically catching bits of the DNC in Boston. Heard Obama on NPR coming home earlier this week; caught Ron Jr. and Teresa; and just emerged from the Edwards thrall. Jottings during the latter:

One for the "wish I'd thought of it - duh!" books from Kos:

Newspaper logins
by kos
Mon Jul 19th, 2004 at 00:32:02 EDT

But if you run across a site that doesn't have a "dailykos" account setup, do us all the favor of setting up such an account. It'll make our web surfing efforts much more efficient and enjoyable.

Been mobile over the holiday weekend, and will be for the next week. Connection speed here in the Morgue is sloooooow, so posting will likely be sparse.

Managed to get into a firey political altercation with my mom last night. She can't believe us young people want to create a socialist country. I could go on and on, but I think I'll devote my energy while I'm here to avoiding any more discussions about whose candidate is ruining the country. *sigh*