Iggy and Ziggy on the Dinah Shore TV show

Iggy and David Bowie perform and talk with Dinah. I think that's Rosemary Clooney to Dinah's right. Yes, George's aunt, the big band singer.

"But you cut yourself with a bottle." -Dinah to Iggy

"Iggy invented punk rock." -Dinah to Rosemary Clooney.

Gimme Danger - Iggy Pop and the Stooges

Thank You Local Representatives

"Oregon's Democratic Representatives Earl Blumenauer (3rd District),
David Wu (1st District) and Peter DeFazio (4th District) opposed the
plan in Monday's floor vote...

"It was, at the core, not the best bill," Blumenauer said in a
prepared statement. "I am convinced that it would have passed if it
were paid for with a fee on the finance industry to pay for its own
bailout, and if homeowners were given the same bankruptcy protections
as rich people's third and fourth home, and business properties."...

The Portland Tribune/Fox 12 News poll showed Democrats in the
tri-county area are evenly split over the bailout, while Republicans
are solidly against it. Independents registered the most skepticism,
though, with 33 percent supporting the bailout and 63 percent opposed.

Partisan differences about the bailout dovetail with anxieties about
the economy, the poll showed.

Among Democrats, 93 percent said they were somewhat or very worried
about the national economy, compared to 75 percent of Republicans.
Democrats tend to have lower incomes than Republicans, on average, in
the tri-county area."

http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=122274756905171200

"Gotcha! Journalism"

I love the talking point being used to protect and defend the hapless Republican VP candidate. I heard Palin use the phrase a week or so ago. And now, following the link below, McCain and Palin use it more than once in this interview. McCain says...

"I understand this 'gotcha! journalism'..."

As if it is not legitimate to question a candidate's ability to think
and speak clearly about the responsibilities of the desired office.

Gotcha!!

http://timrileylive.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/718/

LinuxCon - Portland - September 2009

From th Silicon Forest blog...

"The Linux Foundation plans to announce Tuesday that it will launch a
big, new annual conference in Portland next September....

Linux Foundation director Jim Zemlin told me this afternoon that the
conference aims to link up Linux users and developers and to focus on
providing resources for them all to use Linux more efficiently for
whatever it is they need.

"We're going to have tracks, or little mini-conferences, at the
event," he said. Some will focus on mobile computing, some on embedded
systems, some on desktop Linux, etc. The Linux Plumbers Conference,
which brought 300 to Portland this month, will be held concurrently
with the new LinuxCon next year.

What you won't see: "All the big booths and the marketing pitches,"
Zemlin told me."

http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2008/09/linuxcon_the_antioscon.html

September is a great month to be in Portland. Usually.

Mark Watson: "Sometimes our system works"

What he said. Thank you, congress.

http://markwatson.com/blog/2008/09/sometimes-our-system-works-house.html

Mobile WiMax Arrives - But Still Not In Portland

Dang.

"Baltimore got the first taste of commercial WiMAX today, when Sprint
launched service there...

At one time, Portland had been slated to be the first city to get
mobile WiMAX. Intel and Clearwire have been testing WiMAX here for
many months, but for unexplained reasons service has never arrived.
The company continues plugging away, though, and says it'll launch
here sometime by year's end."

http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2008/09/mobile_wimax_finally_arrives_b.html

lightbot

Avi Bryant just twittered (tweeted?) this game... it's great...

http://games.wegame.com/puzzle/lightbot/

http://twitter.com/avibryant/statuses/938769774

Pier CMS, well "next generation wiki" really

Pier is a "next generation wiki" really. It's called a CMS. The
presentation on the home page briefly shows a number of good looking
sites built with Pier.

http://www.piercms.com/

Built on Seaside in Smalltalk. Now with more documentation, supporting
videos, etc.

Any Seaside component is a component that can plug right into Pier.

And it's far easier to build a component in Seaside than any other web
framework.

I tinkered with Seaside a while back, but recently tried it again.
There is a lot more documentation now. Whole books and tutorials on
the web.

From iTunes' genius playlist

iTunes' genius play list just dished up for me...

Tower of Power	"You're Still A Young Man"
Al Green	"Take Me To The River"
The Temptations	"How Deep Is Your Love"
Al Green and Lyle Lovett	"Ain't It Funny How Time Just Slips Away"
Timmy Thomas	"Why Can't We Live Together"

The one from Green and Lovett is from "Live on Letterman" - there've been great
performances on Letterman for decades going back to NBC.

Yes, that's The Temptations covering the Bee Gees. I actually have a
handful of good covers of that song. Another good one is by Adeaze,
with great harmonies, but also with a great acoustic guitar
arrangement.

I have fond memories of "Saturday Night Fever".

Absolutely Fabulous

This Wii commercial shakes out into the youtube page. Wow...

http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii

via James Robertson...

http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Cool_Ad&entry=3399882592

JVM Language Summit

Ted Leung has a good write-up of the recent JVM Language Summit...

http://www.sauria.com/blog/2008/09/27/the-first-annual-jvm-language-summit/

oops

"Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending
to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the
financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday."

http://www.dekorte.com/blog/blog.cgi?do=item&id=3602

Mark Watson's Book

Mark Watson has a draft available for the 3rd edition of his Java AI
book. The book is and will continue to be freely available. I've
enjoyed enough of it so far to know I will happily pay my good money
for it.

http://markwatson.com/blog/2008/09/looking-for-reviewers-for-my-book.html

Very pragmatic and educational.

People not interested in "AI" per se could still be interested in
several chapters. One is on the semantic web, RDF, etc.

Another chapter on rule systems has a good section on Drools. There've
been a couple projects in our office here that had a good experience
with Drools.

Defazio - An Oregon Congressman to be proud of

Rep. Peter Defazio, (D) Oregon, on the bailout...

I've always appreciated Defazio from down in the valley. Now more than ever.

"We should not be rolled by our Wall Street exec who's masquerading as Secretary of the Treasury." -Defazio

The Legislative Language of Thieves

Legislators are pointing out the new bailout compromise withholds
"golden parachutes" from companies bought out with taxpayers' money.

However most companies will not be bought outright. They will have their
bad debts purchased.

For these companies who get to sell their bad debts to us, well, their
executives will have some less severe restrictions on their
parachutes. But forget parachutes for the moment, what about all the
bonuses and so on they've been paid over the last few years while
driving the economy and their own companies into the ground?

If you're not yet thinking this is a great scam, what do you think of it?

"All of this was done in a way to insulate Main Street and everyday
Americans from the crisis on Wall Street," Ms. Pelosi said at the news
conference.

Uh-huh.

Secretary Paulson, preeminent "socialist". When and how it suits him and his buddies.

Can we talk about the problem with *their* sense of entitlement?

Scary Bad

Via http://timrileylive.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/715/...

A Space Black Out

"When NASA's last scheduled Space Shuttle mission lands in June of
2010, the United States will not have the capability to get astronauts
into space again until the scheduled launch of the new Orion
spacecraft in 2015. Over those five years, the U.S. manned space
program will be relying heavily on Russia and its Baikonur Cosmodrome
facility in Kazakhstan."

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/the_baikonur_cosmodrome.html

Really? Wow.

The Ties That Bind

"Nancy Pfotenhauer, a senior economic adviser to McCain, has been all
over the airwaves in recent days touting McCain's decision to
"suspend" his campaign over the bailout. But her husband, Kurt
Pfotenhauer, worked until late last year as the top lobbyist for the
Mortgage Bankers Association, a trade group that in recent years
downplayed fears of a housing bubble, only to be proved spectacularly
wrong."

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/mccain_advisers_husband_heads.php

You Said How Much?