It's Stifling in Here!

Photo by David Shankbone

Said Fox News chief Roger Ailes of the reasons behind Glenn Beck's departure: "Advertisers who get weak-kneed because some idiot on a blog site writes to them and says we need to stifle speech, I get a little frustrated by that."

I spent a little time wondering what he meant by "stifling speech". It's obviously not about Beck's ability to speak. That's unchanged. And he can do it in public, too. Then there are the books that he publishes. He's losing his TV show at Fox, but I haven't heard that his radio show is over. Oh, and he has a website.

So what does stifling speech mean to Roger Ailes? I guess it means that nobody is willing to pay Beck millions of dollars to speak on TV. With that it mind...

Stop stifling my speech!

Speak Easy

In my dim recollection of school, I was one of the people who sat at the back of the class and I only tried to communicate with the person directly in front of me. The one exception was Physics, but that was because Mr. Harp was awesome. He looked precisely like every man in every Herman comic strip and was easily a billion times funnier. I wanted to sit close enough to hear everything he mumbled.

Anyways, there were times that I knew the answer to the question the teacher was asking ("Anyone? Bueller?"), but I almost never spoke up. I never really understood why teachers would ask the students. Weren't we supposed to be learning from them? Surely they knew the answer. And they were getting paid to make sure that knowledge was passed on to us. Waiting for some smarty-pants to blurt something out - right or wrong - was a waste of time. And I don't recall that it achieved any kind of class unity or even competition. Did the less knowledgeable students want to become more like the brown-nosers? I doubt it. And it certainly didn't make the ones with the answers more popular.

The Tenacity of the Nerd

Years ago, for whatever reason, there was a job position for a resident nerd on ships that traveled around the world. I don't know why it existed - and I don't know if it still does - but I do know that one particular British nerd became famous as a result of it. He was a young man who was aiming to be a doctor until - like me - he discovered there wasn't much good he could do for people while he was puking or passed out on the floor. What to do? Become a clergyman, I suppose... Nah. Jump on a boat and be the resident nerd!

So one day, while strolling on a beach in Chile (the life of a resident nerd is tough), he picked up a rock. Upon nerdy close examination, he found a mysterious creature inside it. It looked a lot like a barnacle, except it was missing the main feature of a barnacle: the barnacle-y shell. Everyone knows barnacles secrete a shell. That's what makes them barnacles! Apparently what everyone knows isn't exactly true. Mr. Resident Nerd had found himself a barnacle that avoids the whole secretion thing and simply burrows into a rock.

Now, I know what you're thinking. If you're not a nerd you're thinking, "I'm surprised I've gotten this far in the story. Where did I see those chairs I really liked...?" If you're a nerd, however, you're wondering if Mr. Resident Nerd is haunted by the discrepancy for 35 years and devotes every waking hour for 8 of those years to nothing but studying every living and fossilized barnacle known to humankind in the hopes of figuring out what really defines a barnacle. Let me help both of you out. Non-nerds, you saw them at INspiration Interiors, but they were kinda pricey. Nerds: yes.

Quote of the Day

From a comment on Anthony Watts' delightful blog, "Watts Up With Dunning-Kruger?" comes this gem from Dr. Dave (I can only assume that's his real, full name):

We have many fine spokesmen on the side of realism; Anthony Watts, Christopher Horner, Patrick Michaels, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer, etc. Lord Monckton is unique. He is an eloquent, gifted orator.

Why list all those ineloquent, un-gifted orators? Isn't it enough to simply say that Monckton is unique in that he is eloquent and gifted? Isn't that enough of an insult without having to specifically name all those without talent? And the first one is the host of the blog! Normally, Watts comes down hard on anyone who uses a pseudonym while not kissing his ass...

Anthony Watts

Verses Versus Choruses

I can still remember that moment when a little bit of my youthful optimism died. It was Hall & Oats who did it. In particular it was their song, Private Eyes.

Seriously, Rosemary?

At the start of 2010, a company that makes music software (Image-Line) announced a new product that they would soon be selling: Drumatrix. It combined a physically modeled drum set and an internal step sequencer. And you could name your own price. And they would donate some of the money to Haiti. How cool is that? Very.

It wasn't long, however, until they were sent notice that "drumatrix" was a term already in use by someone else; somebody named Rosemary Schonfeld, who has written a book on "a different approach to drumming" called Drumatrix. I should point out here that I don't know the exact order of events. It may be that Image-Line started work on their project, noticed the name after doing a search, sent an inquiry and then received a negative reply.

Photoshop Follies - Refusing to Open

Here's an odd one, and I figured I should post it in case it happens to someone else and they want to know how to fix the problem. I know it will happen to others because I've read about it elsewhere. Can't hurt to make sure there's another place with the info, though.

I opened up Photoshop CS3 today and tried to open a file to edit. No go. Not through the browser, not via drag and drop. It also wouldn't create a new file. Not just odd, but annoying; scary if you're on a tight deadline, I'm sure.

The fix is to change your default printer to a local one and/or make sure your printer is attached and on. (A reboot may also be necessary.) You read that right. Doesn't matter if it was never a problem before. Doesn't matter that it makes no sense whatsoever.

Photoshop doesn't open or create files? Blame the printer settings.

Hmm... now I have that file open and I forget what I was going to do with it!