Daily reading: Spitzer on Obama, the year in homicides

We don’t get the paper here in the morning, so most days I troll through the web haphazardly looking for a few pages of stuff to print out and read over breakfast.  So here we are.

Robots, Not Roads: The Obama stimulus package should be spent on transformative investments, not bridges and buildings.

By Eliot Spitzer.  [yes, that Eliot Spitzer]

The incoming Obama administration and Congress are planning a huge fiscal stimulus package. They hope that such a stimulus will catalyze an economic turnaround and be a cornerstone of a “New New Deal.” If the early reports are reliable, the stimulus will include a huge tax cut and will fund projects like road-building and bridge repair, laying the infrastructure foundation for the economy of the future.

Bad Timing: Gaza could have been a model of the future Palestinian state. Instead, it is a place of repression and aggression.

The deaths of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, and of Israelis (Muslim and Christian Arab, and Druse and Bedouin, as well as Jewish, don’t forget, in Ashdod and Sderot), are hardly ennobled by the sordid realization that the timing of the carnage has been determined by three sets of electoral calculation.

2008 kept Vancouver homicide investigators busy

Brazen gangland slayings on busy city streets. Bodies found submerged in rural ditches. Deadly domestic conflicts that shocked neighbours. Murders at both a Christmas party and New Year’s Eve bashes.

Ont. university workers’ union urges ban on Israeli academics

Ontario’s largest university workers union is proposing a ban on Israeli academics teaching in the province’s universities, a move that echoes previous attempts to boycott goods and services from the Jewish state.

The Village Voice is Written off

The last week of December poses a challenge for weekly magazines—that’s why there are so many “double” issues, although these days they’re more like “half” issues—since subscribers are inevitably occupied with the holidays and don’t do much reading. Nevertheless, it was quite curious to see Louis Menand’s flawed and perhaps unintentional obituary of The Village Voice in the Jan. 5 edition of The New Yorker, a publication that’s normally above larding its pages with such filler. Menand’s article, “It Took A Village: How the Voice Changed Journalism,” was, I suppose, a useful primer for people under the age of 35 who have no recollection of when the Voice was the country’s most storied weekly, but I doubt The New Yorker attracts many such readers.

Inbound hits for the month

I’ve read claims from a certain new media titan that just one of his sites gets about 5,000 hits a day.  But then I look at my stats and something seems, I don’t know, funny … I tried checking his site meter, but for some equally odd reason it’s numbers are ‘private’.  Hmm …

ezralevant.com	833
fivefeetoffury.com	342
smalldeadanimals.com	323
ezralevant.com/2009/01/top-25-politic…	298
canadiancynic.blogspot.com	128
ghostofaflea.com	123
google.com/reader/view	85
littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog	66
fivefeetoffury.com/:entry:fivefeet-20…	61
dustmybroom.com	55
steynian.wordpress.com	55
genx40.com	52
WordPress Dashboard	49
hallsofmacadamia.blogspot.com	32
wordpress.com	30
damianpenny.com	29
google.ca/reader/view	25
canadiancoalition.com/forum/messages/…	23
xanthippaschamberpot.wordpress.com	22
redtory.wordpress.com	21
westernstandard.blogs.com	21
michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3258/196	20
wernerpatels.com	19

Top 25 Political Blogs List Coming Tomorrow

In anticipation of the regular round of complaining I get each month if the list isn’t ready at 12:01 am on the 1st – the list will be ready tomorrow.  It’s partly done, a few new additions (e.g. the Hook), yours truly has dropped off the list (my own fault).

I fell on the ice yesterday and bonked my head so there’s no way I’m looking at numbers or computers today.  Did you know they have ‘black’ ice now?  Will wonders never …

So take this opportunity to complain about my horrible bias, bitch about how your blog is really number one but I can’t read numbers, whine about how … ok I forgot what I was going to type.  Head injury.  OK then.  List tomorrow.

Wow – the new WordPress.com kicks so much ass

A very random post, but I’ve discovered that the WordPress people actually read these, so thanks to them for the new dashboard design.  Not a single problem and it looks awesome.

Canada’s Top 25 Blogs coming tomorrow

I’m stupid busy putting together my company website, fleshing out the company blog, in an hour or so, I’ve got to head down to the business registry, etc… etc… etc…

I’ll do the Top 25 list tomorrow.  If you have suggestions for blogs that I should check out for the list, please let me know.

Thx.

Canada’s Top 25 Political Blogs October – Election Edition

Below you will find Canada’s Top 25 Political Blogs for October. These are ranked according to a combination of influence and web traffic. You can read the specifics of that here.

I have de-politicized the sidebar of my blog for a few days to allow people from other parties to link over without hesitation.  Huge changes on the list, especially with both Steyn and Levant on hiatus, and my dropping of a certain prominent single issue blog from the list.

If there’s something I left out – please let me know in the comments section below.

Current Rank Site Google Page Rank Alexa Traffic Rank September Rank

1. Western Standard Shotgun Blog | Google PR6 | Alexa 143475 | SR 6|
2. Small Dead Animals | Google PR6 | Alexa 155608 | SR 2 |
3. Ghost of a Flea | Google PR6 | Alexa 186545 | SR 8 |
4. Matthew Good| Google PR6 | Alexa 202928 | SR 3 |
5. Daimnation! | Google PR6 | Alexa 417858 | SR 5 |
6. Five Feet of Fury | Google PR5 | Alexa: 170082 | SR 7 |
7. Warren Kinsella | Google PR5 | Alexa: 193163 | SR 16 |
8. A Dime a Dozen etc… | Google PR5 | Alexa: 278832 | SR 14 |
9. Bow. James Bow | Google PR5 | Alexa: 332255 | SR 10 |
10. Garth Turner | Google PR5 | Alexa: 338235 | SR 11 |
11. David Akin | Google PR5 | Alexa: 342361 | SR 20 |
12. Dr. Dawg | Google PR5 | Alexa: 367099 | SR 18 |
13. Jason Cherniak | Google PR5 | Alexa: 372684 | SR 24 |
14. Blazing Cat Fur | Google PR5 | Alexa: 375281 | SR — |
15. Canadian Cynic | Google PR5 | Alexa: 378392 | SR 12 |
16. Marginalized Action Dinosaur | Google PR5 | Alexa: 389305 | SR — |
17. Stephen Taylor | Google PR5 | Alexa 411700 | SR — |
18. Abandoned Stuff | Google PR5 | Alexa: 434797 | SR 15 |
19. Steynian | Google PR5 | Alexa: 468083 | SR 19 |
20. Jay Currie | Google PR5 | Alexa: 476695 | SR 25 |
21. Galloping Beaver | Google PR6 | Alexa: 520409* | SR 22 |
22. GenXat40 | Google PR5 | Alexa: 533083 | SR 17 |
23. Right Girl | Google PR5 | Alexa: 560481 | SR –|
24. Steve Janke | Google PR5 | Alexa: 567055 | SR — |
25. Big City Lib | Google PR5 | Alexa: 636756 | SR 21 |

WEBMASTERS: Go ahead and steal any ‘Top 25′ graphics.

Before you ask, RedTory, StageLeft, CalgaryGrit, Scott Tribe finished 26-29 respectively.  Beyond that, I don’t remember.

Test driving WordPress for iphone

First off the requisite thank you to wordpress for the free application that they spent hours of expensive labour on and for which I paid nothing. So, thank you.

Now here’s what’s wrong with it:

Unstable – when I wrote the first draft of this I was not able to save it because the ’save’ button, vanished. The same thing happened when I went to add categories.

Limited ability to modify text. You can’t bold text or italicize it.

No media. iPhone’s don’t have square brackets so you can’t put in video or audio manually.

No HTML interface option. Some of us love writing in code, it’s fun.

No stats. Some of us are hardcore stats-addicts. The wordpress mobile site for blackberries has stats on it’s start page – this does not.

No links. You can’t put links in a post. Wait let me double check that – www.rjjago.wordpress.com -maybe it links urls automatically.

No spell check – I don’t know if that could even work on an iPhone and anyway the phone does it’s own spell check while you’re typing.

Here’s what it does have:

A full size user interface that isn’t cluttered. If you use safari to write posts, you get back all the features you lose out on with the stand alone app – but you also have to deal with a really cluttered writing environment.

Ability to edit old posts.

Ability to run multiple blogs – even if they’re from different accounts.  So I now have my personal blog and my company blog available without the pain of logging off and then on again.

A nice-looking icon.

You can insert photos and even take photos with the iPhone and have them go directly into your post.  For example, the view from my desk as I type this:

And a picture I took on the way home yesterday – from my iPhone library:

All the bitching asside, I like the app. It looks cool – which is why you buy one of these phones in the first place. I’d love to see a new version come out soon that took more advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities – or at the very least gave you a stats page

KINSELLA PUBLISHES DEATH THREAT

Here. Words fail. Does he now lack any self-control whatsoever? Seems like it.

If you are moved to comment about this Kinsella thing, exercise caution. I will not publish any comment that gets me, well not disbarred, I’m not a lawyer, but, that get’s me … some bad business-guy thing too. If you want to justify a criminal offence, go do it elsewhere.

Meanwhile, on my last Westjet flight I got the emergency exit row seat and thus two full rows to myself.

COMPLETELY UNRELATED

COMPLETELY-ER UNRELATED

POTENTIALLY RELATED

How far can comments go?

This was raised on Dawg’s Blog. He is in a lather over a comment that slipped and got approved on Ezra Levant’s blog.

If your blog has ever got more than 100 comments on a particular post, then I’m sure you know that a lot of crap slips through. You can try and take care of it in time, but there’s going to be some hateful garbage on there. Look through my blogs and you;ll find a handful of death threats agains me, a lot of hate speech against atheists and westerners, and some random dumb crap – the latter, I do take pains to censor, but the former I do not.

I belive in free speech, and I like the rubbish hateful comments on there. I think they are instructive. I can say some ideology or religion produces nut balls – but nothing can convince you of that better than those very same nut balls coming forward and incriminating themselves. So I want those comments to stay – but the questions is – can I keep them? I’d hate to face a law suit because I’m too tolerant.

In the comments to Dawg’s blog, Damian Penny said this:

On some of the more popular left-wing and right-wing blogs, the really offensive stuff is usually to be found in the comments section. I think Warman’s Statement of Claim refers to things posted about him on message boards and in blog comment sections as well.

When the smoke clears from this mess, I think you’ll see moderated comments – or no comments at all – on most Canadian blogs.

I would hate for this whole Warman business to shut down comments for good. It’ll be like banning ads from TV – it’d suck the life out of the Canadian blogosphere.

You know the difference between our advanced western countries and the backward dictatorships of the third world, is that our law provides us with some measure of clarity. It’s a good thing that I can take an action and know before hand if that action is illegal or not. If I know that, then I can make a free choice to accept the risk or not.

But thanks to Warman, I don’t know if I’m committing a crime until after I’ve committed it.

How far is too far? Where is the line and who decides?

• Can I (a la Cherniak) say that a certain former Liberal interim leader is gay? Can I repeat the published pederasty accusations against him?
• Is it ok to say that someone famous is a cross dresser?
• Can I repeat allegations made in a foreign blog like Captain’s Quarters?
• Can I say that I hate a Scientology? Islam? Catholicism?

And as someone who runs a blog – is it my job to make sure my commenters respect these un-written, unknown rules? What happens if I don’t?

There’s something really ‘third world’ about these HRCs and about their apologists. Oops, can I say ‘third world’?

Lucy? Little help. Does that pass your test?

Blogging yourself to death – Are you in danger?

Michelle Malkin is off about a New York Times scare piece on blogging:

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment…some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Protein Wisdom picks it up here:

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Scared yet? You should be. As I showed you last week, blogging can be hazardous to your physique, but now we see it can actually kill you! How can you figure out if you are one of those bloggers who is literally digg-ing his own grave?

In order to determine this I’ve made a questionnaire. Answer ‘yes’ to even half of these – and you are definitely a blogging addict and you’re probably in danger of deep vein thrombosis and/or fatal fat-assitude:

1. Have you postponed sex for blogging?
2. Do you quote your own blog to people at the office?
3. What excites you more: watching Battlestar Galactica or blogging about watching Battlestar Galactica?
4. Have you ever thought this: “First I get the blog, …then I get the money, …then I get the women”?
5. Do you make blog posts from your blackberry?
6. Have you developed you own language to describe other bloggers (i.e. “stoogeleft, kkkate etc…)?
7. Do you consider leaving comments on another blogger’s site a form of social interaction?
8. Have you ever chosen food because it’s easy to eat it while typing? (ie. best skip the pasta, it’ll drop on the keyboard – let’s go for microwave taquito)
9. Can you see your feet when you stand up? ['no' counts as 'yes' and 'yes' as 'no' for this one]
10. Do you check your blog stats more than twice a day?
11. Which puts you in a better mood: A link from LittleGreenFootballs (for the right wing) or the Daily Kos (for the left wing) – or – a pay rise at your day job?
12. Have you ever performed more poorly than you should have at work, because you were blogging instead of working?
13. Have you ever betrayed a secret on your blog?
14. When you’re arguing with your boyfriend or girlfriend are you thinking ‘this’ll make a great post’?
15. Which is easier: handcoding a youtube embed, or making a poached egg?

More questions are welcome in the comments.

Related:

HotAir

Blogoversary

To the point:

69,141 site visits last time I checked.  Ok for the first year.

For the new year, I’ve taken another blogger’s advice and I’ve decided that I won’t go out of my way to make nice with my opponents on-line.  No anonymous web-handle ever bought me a real pint, so screw them.

Left wing blog pisses on disabled people

More pissing on disabled people on Canada’s number one lefty hate blog – scroll down to the comments:

“That’s okay Robert, I’ll just make fun on autistic kids and recruiters…”

That’s in reaction to this post.

Recruiters, I powerfully don’t care. But autistic kids? Did I touch some kind of nerve with you boy? You lefties stand by that kind of talk?  You think it’s right to let it sit there unchallenged?

FYI: This pig thought it was really fun to pick on autistic kids because I have this on my blog’s front page.  It’s like Liberals have some kind of beef with the autistic.