February 2004

The title of this article is great
The Black Commentator – The Awesome Destructive Power of the Corporate Power Media – Issue 75:

This commentary, however, is not about the merits of Howard Dean. If a mildly progressive, Internet-driven, young white middle class-centered, movement-like campaign such as Dean’s – flush with money derived from unconventional sources, backed by significant sections of labor, reinforced by big name endorsements and surging with upward momentum – can be derailed in a matter of weeks at the whim of corporate media, then all of us are in deep trouble. The Dean beat-down should signal an intense reassessment of media’s role in the American power structure. The African American historical experience has much to offer in that regard, since the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements were born in a wrestling match with an essentially hostile corporate (white) media. However, there can be no meaningful discussion of the options available to progressive forces in the United States unless it is first recognized that the corporate media in the current era is the enemy, and must be treated that way.

I’ve been pretty disgusted by the manner of the de-annointing of Dean by Corporate Media. He does unprecedented things with financing (NO HUGE CORPORATE DONORS) and for this, he gets media punishment. But some of us aren’t buying this nonsense. I’m remembering this lesson about the media very well. The media cannot be trusted anymore than they can be thrown.

RSS Complexities
from diveintomark.org: The myth of RSS compatibility:

There are 9 versions of RSS, all of which are incompatible with various other versions. RSS 0.90 is incompatible with Netscapes RSS 0.91, Netscapes RSS 0.91 is incompatible with Userlands RSS 0.91, Netscapes RSS 0.91 is incompatible with RSS 1.0, Userlands RSS 0.91 is incompatible with RSS 0.92, RSS 0.92 is incompatible with RSS 0.93, RSS 0.93 is incompatible with RSS 0.94, RSS 0.94 is incompatible with RSS 2.0, and RSS 2.0 is incompatible with itself.

George W. Bush, Plato & Aristotle
YouCan Make It With Plato – Bush’s difficult relationship with reality. By William Saletan:

This big-picture notion of reality, existence, and the world as it is dates back 2,400 years to the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato believed that what’s real isn’t the things you can touch and see: your computer, your desk, those empty barrels in Iraq that Bush thought were full of chemical weapons. What’s real is the general idea of these things. The idea of a computer. The idea of a desk. The idea of an Iraqi threat to the United States. Whether you actually have a computer or a desk, or whether Saddam Hussein actually had chemical weapons, is less important than the larger truth. The abstraction is the reality.

Plato’s successor, Aristotle, took a different view. He thought reality was measured by what you could touch and see. That’s the definition of reality on which modern science was founded. It’s the definition Colin Powell used when he told the world Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. It’s the definition David Kay used when he set out to find the weapons. Kay and Powell are dismayed by our inability to see and touch the weapons. But Bush isn’t. He isn’t going to let Aristotle’s reality distract him from Plato’s.

2 Weeks Ago @ Influx
I was able to enjoy good coffee, internet access, and good conversation (not necessarily in that order) via Golden Hill Free Web, available at the coffeehouse. I dug it.

(Can you tell that today I’m doing “spring cleaning” on stuff I meant to blog before?)

What I Learned About SQL on August 7, 2004
(File under: Posts that were meant to be but never were)

1. COALESCE – the ANSI standard
2. ISNULL – the Microsoft T-SQL standard (only takes two values)
3. IFNULL – the MySQL standard (only takes two values)
4. NVL – Oracle / Informix PL/SQL standard (only takes two values)

Got that from a message board.

Basically it takes a query result, and in order of the parameters, if the first is NULL, then it uses the second parameter (often a string or N/A or whatever.

SQL Server: Coalesce()

SQL Server: Isnull()

Kind of useful when you want to munge strings because anything + NULL is always null, you can avoid that by doing

COALESCE+ ‘anything

Media Interests are not interested in Dean
Unmaking of the President – 2004:

According to CPI, the three largest fundraisers in the presidential campaign at this time are Howard Dean with more than $25 million; John Kerry with more than $20 million; and, of course, President George W. Bush with $85.2 million (as of Sept. 30, 2003).

As has been reported, Bush plans to build a war chest of some $200 million for the election. His top major donors include financial firms Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse First Boston, UBS Paine Webber, and Goldman Sachs Group. The President’s top career donor is the scandal-ridden Enron Corp.

Kerry’s top donors include Fleet Boston Financial Corp., Time Warner, and a variety of major law firms. Time Warner, as we know, is the world’s largest media conglomerate. Among a variety of media outlets, it also owns Internet giant America On Line and CNN - a virtual cheerleader for Kerry.

The research Center does not cite any major donors for Dean. As we know, the majority of his contributors are ordinary citizens who donate an average of $77 dollars. Dean’s ‘special interest group’ is the American people.

Hm. George Bush: The Enron President?

Cool Stuff in my Hood
Socal Free Net is doing some great work to provide free wireless in my neighborhood.

Ha
Java: Failure or Crime?: “Only one fate can be ignominious enough to expiate Java’s wrongs. Java must be consigned to use as an undergraduate teaching language.”

San Diego, #2 Web Design Meetup City
Web Design Meetup San Diego, California—only NYC beats us.

School Transport
Today I walked to school. Not bad, and much better than what I did this week, which was drive and park.

City College stinks for parking. Why I didn’t walk before I don’t know is that I thought it would be easier, and I was lazy. It’s less than a mile from here to there. Not too bad. But being able to drive gives me the ability to come and go from campus however I wish.