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iPod Syncs Suck

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Today I went to sync my ipod touch. Songs I had on my previous 3 or 4 ipods cannot sync to this one. even with useless conversion. When one of these cannot sync, it stops syncing the other GBs of songs that I want on my ipod. Somehow, this also means the 20+ GBs of songs on my ipod should disappear. That’s not a sync, that’s an overwrite. Sync is one thing that has not really improved and responds in a way you wouldn’t expect to errors having to do with a single file.

Not too much blogging lately

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Been slacking lately for a few reasons:
1. Work has been busy but challenging in a good way
2. NFL is back which means Fantasy Football is back
3. As I have said before, August seems to be the month that Democrats check out and Republicans crank up so there isn’t much to say except, let’s see what happens.
4. Not watching the speech tonight due to the stupid scheduling. I would like to, but in a sports bar waiting for friends and a political speech is not being put on before the season opener. (Chief Of Staff Daley needs to get his sh*t together).

Side Gig: Nude Figure Model

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Men’s Health Senior Editor Eric Adams’ spouse picked up a second job: nude figure model. Adams had to swallow his own doubt to support her.

On one hand, why not? She looks great naked. Not Hollywood perfect, mind you, but perfectly shapely and sexy. On the other hand, what isn’t she telling me? Why is she, a 38-year-old mom with a meaningful career in social work and an already full schedule, having this urge? Not getting enough of the good stuff at home? I’m not a machine!

I didn’t think it wise to press her on her motivations this soon. So I simply asked if she really thought she had the raw nerve to pull it off—to actually show up, climb onto the platform, and let her robe slip to the floor.

In the end, she did and she blogs about it:

But the paycheck itself is something, too. My name. The name of the school. And… the word “Model”, on the subject line. That implies someone pretty and shapely, and it’s referring to me. Am I those things? My parents think I’m pretty. My husband thinks I’m pretty. My brother says I’m ugly, but that’s his job. Other than that, I would describe myself as generally okay but also trying to not let it matter too much; thankfully, by age nearly-forty, I look the way I look and basically that is that.

via The Yellow Robe | A Figure Model’s Thoughts from the Platform.

“The Next Episode”, Nate Dogg dead at 41

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From my teen years through my 20’s Nate Dogg was supplying hooks for the biggest hip-hop hits and underground anthems. “The Next Episode” by Dr. Dre ft. Snoop Dogg, Kurupt, Nate Dogg, was a song that especially framed some great memories in my life including social times during my last year of university (1999-2000) and some great years after graduation. It also touched off the best most fun, perfect, ridiculous club nights I could have ever and did ever have almost a decade after it’s original release in 2000.

Hopefully if I’m ever old, and still have family and friends that’ll have me at a BBQ, and it’s spring or summer Holiday I plan to be a foolish old dude, turning up some G-Funk track with Nate Dogg and telling some young person who doesn’t care that they just can’t understand it like I do. Hope I’m wrong.

Nathaniel “Nate Dogg” Hale died of complications from two strokes and is survived by his children.

Challenger

Challenger Flight 51 Crew
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Challenger Flight 51 Crew

Challenger Flight 51 Crew

3rd grade.

TVs had been rolled into every classroom so we could all see the school teacher we had learned all about throughout the fall blast off into space right alongside NASA’s finest. I was still of the age where you still loved your teachers, recess was the thrill of the day and astronauts were in the pantheon of mythical “what do you want to be when you grow up?” professions. It was the first time I personally felt the United States of America fail.

Pass on “Friend of Keith”

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I am not a “Friend of Keith” just like i was not “with CoCo”. I am a fan of their work, but they don’t need me to stand in passive asynchronous social media solidarity with them.

Like Conan, Olbermann’s rich, male, Ivy league educated, white and famous. As far as I know he has his health. He has been a wildly successful broadcaster for sports and news for over 20 years. Even if some Philly street tuffs collared KO and threatened to Comcastrate him if he didn’t leave MSNBC, which didn’t happen, he’ll be ok, and the MSNBC evening lineup is still more than sufficiently liberal as Olbermann’s understudies have been able to launch successful shows.

Like Conan’s ouster from NBC’s Tonight Show we should take the ousted at their word: they’ll be ok and in the end it’s not that big of a deal. Other folks need friends a lot more.

Attn: Zodiac Crybabies

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Wait for a starry night. Pick some stars. Make your own Signs (Any from 1 to as high as you can count). Pick Your own sign. Problem Solved.

Then please stop bitching.

Be a Santa

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Flagged on the DCist:

Cesar, 7, wrote for himself and his baby sister.

“This year my moom don’t have much money to spend on Christmas gifts so I’m writing to you,” Cesar told Santa. “It would make us very happy if you and your elves would bring us toys and clothes.”

There are more letters from unemployed parents asking for kids’ gifts they can’t afford, says Darlene Reid of New York City’s main post office.

One mom sent a turn-off notice from the electric company, Fontana says. A single mother of a girl, 8, and a boy, 2, wrote that she recently lost her job. “I am unable to buy my children toys and clothes,” she said. “Santa may you help me with my family?”

via Kids write Santa this year for basic needs instead of toys – USATODAY.com.

If you’ve got some, give some by Dec 18th.

Sanchez’s non-apology apology for anyone else

Former CNN news anchor Rick Sanchez
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Former CNN news anchor Rick Sanchez

Former CNN news anchor Rick Sanchez

TNC thought Jon Stewart piled on a Rick Sanchez a little too much with his “Hurty Sanchez” segment on Monday’s episode of the Daily Show. The 9 minute Sanchez focused segment was after Stewart had already used Sanchez as a punchline while presenting at Comedy Central’s “Night of Too Many Stars” Autism fundraiser over the weekend. I disagreed with TNC Tuesday morning (especially considering Stewart’s fair approximation of Sanchez probably being a better guy than his statements on October 1st and that CNN may have overreacted). I agree even more after Rick Sanchez issued this statement:

On October 4th, I had a very good conversation with Jon Stewart, and I had the opportunity to apologize for my inartful comments from last week. I sincerely extend this apology to anyone else whom I may have offended.

via Rick Sanchez Releases Statement Saying he has ‘Nothing but Highest Regard’ for CNN – FishbowlDC.

Sanchez’s non-apology apology to “anyone else” makes me think that Jon Stewart was gracious enough. That being said Sanchez is no Mel Gibson or Don Imus even. Regarding Sanchez himself, Latoya Patterson at Racialicious decries Sanchez’s “Oppression Olympics” that obscured valid points he made regarding race and society:

I particularly like where Sanchez stops Dominick in his example to point out that racism isn’t always as overt as someone being compressed into an existing stereotype. Often, particularly in media, minorities face racism because they do not fit a certain mold. That’s something that always frustrates me when talking to well-meaning folks about racism. It’s very easy for them to identify really egregious examples – much harder for them to acknowledge some biases are quiet, yet devastating. After all, we aren’t hearing broadcasts from Ricardo León Sánchez de Reinaldo

[…]

But even more than that, the outburst allowed all the truth in his statement to become buried by the weight of one prejudicial statement. And it allowed for those who are truly in power to laugh, check the ratings, and continue on with the status quo.

via On Rick Sanchez, Jon Stewart, and Why We All Lose Playing the Oppression Olympics | Racialicious – the intersection of race and pop culture.

Why does this seem so familiar?

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Doesn’t this “The Secret” crap just seem like Byrne wants to get in on her own Scientology type organization at ground zero?

Remember that book The Secret from a few years back? It was a “think positive thoughts and everything will turn out alright” self-help/spirituality manuals that Oprah promoted. Its Peter Pan philosophy also made it highly controversial.) Well, today the book’s author, Rhonda Byrne, released her follow up to The Secret called The Power.

via THE POWER – VBS STAFF | VBS.TV Blog.

JetBlue Tantrum

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I am not one who would take time to celebrate the AWOL Jet Blue Flight Attendant being celebrated today…

An American flight attendant has been released on bail after after deploying an emergency chute to leave his aircraft following a row with a passenger.

via BBC News – ‘Reckless’ air steward released on bail.

An emergency chute isn’t a play toy, if you deploy it without warning someone can get hurt. He then reportedly grabbed a couple brews and went speeding home. You have to pull it together.

On top of that, I am sure the other passengers who followed the rules and behaved respectably ended up being delayed. I’m sure the passenger that set him off was a jerk, but his tantrum made him one too.

UPDATE: A much better way to quit.

Ants in your pants

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Not even kidding: Tom Junod recounts what it was like to have an ant colony take over his family’s home.

And yet the numbers aren’t the worst part. The worst part is the intelligence of the numbers. A few years ago, I interviewed the great biologist E. O. Wilson right before he and his colleague Bert Hölldobler published their magnum opus, The Superorganism. The book, a study of ant societies, was an exploration of the notion that ants are such organized organisms that they almost don’t count as individual organisms at all but rather as cells of the colony they serve. The colony is the superorganism, and as Wilson told me, “an ant colony is far more intelligent than an ant.” I’ll say. An ant by itself is an inoffensive creature, at worst a crunchy annoyance, smidgeny and obsessively clean and, above all, dumb, with a pindot of a brain. An ant by itself is not going to get any ideas… the problem being that it’s rarely by itself, that it’s representative of something, and that what it represents not only has ideas — it has designs. Wilson’s book proposes that what an ant colony possesses is a kind of accumulated intelligence, the result of individual ants carrying out specialized tasks and giving one another constant feedback about what they find as they do so. Well, once they start accumulating in your house in sufficient numbers, you get a chance to see that accumulated intelligence at work. You get a chance to find out what it wants. And what you find out — what the accumulated intelligence of the colony eventually tells you — is that it wants what you want. You find out that you, an organism, are competing for your house with a superorganism that knows how to do nothing but compete. You are not only competing in the most basic evolutionary sense; you are competing with a purely adaptive intelligence, and so you are competing with the force of evolution itself.

And the worst part about that — the worst part about discovering that the ants in your house are actually emissaries of the enormous teeming brain in your backyard — is that it worsens the other worst parts, of which there are many. For example, I have found ants in my underwear. Lots of them, which I didn’t find until I put the underwear on. As a person who has had ants in his underwear, however, I have to say that what makes their presence particularly irksome is not the momentary discomfort but rather the knowledge of why they’re there. They’re not just passing through, you see, on their way to somewhere else. They’re not in your underwear by accident. They’re nation-building. They’re extending the range of their civilization, and they’re doing it in your drawers.

via Print – Invasion – Esquire.

People of Color and the Fear of Water

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My friend Jonathan Carroll over at Class is in Session is an educator, swim coach, tri-athlete, father and husband. The preventable and tragic drowning deaths of the 6 Louisiana teens in the Red River has everyone thinking about water safety and Jon, posting from press row at the 2010 USA Swimming National Championships, is no exception:

Data from a study done by the University of Memphis in partnership with USA Swimming indicates that FEAR is one of the biggest factors keeping parents from involving their kids in swim lessons. While I understand the initial hesitation, I would humbly direct those parents to the example of my mother, who doesn’t know how to swim, but was adamant that all three of her chidren (and now her grandson) learn how to swim. The fear of watching your little ones go through lessons is nothing compared to the lifetime anxiety you’ll feel every time you’re near a pool or open water with the knowledge that your loved ones can’t swim. For the ethnic families that worry about the damage that chlorine does to relaxed hair, go with braids for a summer, or au natural until the kids are water safe. The sad reality is that cities large and small will continue to cut pool time from their recreation budgets as long as the public does not make use of facilities. Swimming has been too good to me for me to look at it as a sport that is killing members of my community.

via Class Is In Session: Getting Over Fear of the Water.

Jonathan and his wife Nkechi also recently interviewed USA Olympic Gold Medalist Cullen Jones for the upcoming 2nd season of their talk show A Breathe of Fresh Air With John and Nkechi. Click here to support USA Swimming and Jones’ Make a Splash safety initiative. You can sponsor or donate a swim lesson and also support parental water safety education.