Author: Dan G.

Obligatory geek post

So I finally got around to getting my mp3 library largely sorted – I say “largely” because I still have a folder full of songs that don’t seem to fit anywhere and I can’t recall the source of half the time – and proceeded to tackle the album art issue I mentioned a few posts back regarding my iPod. I was unable to get anything working in Songbird, but my long-time media player Winamp ended up giving me just what I needed. I feel like I should apologize to it; going on ten years of use and I leave it for Songbird, only to come back like a junkie to his dealer.

Fortunately it is a forgiving mistress and using the magnificent plugin ml_ipod I was able to get my iPod fully loaded with album art and most of the rest of my music. There’s something oddly satisfying about seeing the album art in Cover Flow. It’s almost cathartic.

So how’s that for geeky? I relieve stress by flipping through my iPod music library. Yes, I’m a dork.

Also, I find that PJTV will not allow me to register using an email address containing a plus sign. For those using Gmail (or Gmail for your domain), plus signs are used to create email aliases, which are then in turn used to help fight spam and organize your email easily. Now, this isn’t unique to Gmail, many other providers offer this service as well, although I’d wager Gmail is the largest of such providers. Use of certain ASCII characters such as the plus sign is totally acceptable according to RFC 5322, and so there is no reason that a website should disallow their use unless they want to annoy potential subscribers (like me!) for attempting to sign up with something that doesn’t fit Hotmail’s arbitrary standards. Me being me, I probably will not subscribe to this service on a matter of principle until they get that fixed.

Lastly, this is hilarious. Burger King’s marketing department is full of geniuses.

More on Gaza – and our lovely media

Goodies from LGF and the LA Times, today. Via LGF comes a followup story from the mother of an Israeli soldier about the school being used as a launch point, and what impact that would have on the people living and working there. Here are some choice excerpts:

Yesterday, mortars were fired FROM the school In Jebalya. This was a direct and intentional attack on Israel, on Israel’s soldiers and population. Mortars are explosions. They are loud. You can’t pretend you didn’t hear them…

Everyone in that building yesterday KNEW that the school was being used as a launching ground…and yet, apparently not one of those thought it would be a smart thing to leave. That seems strange to me, unnatural. I was once in Jerusalem, walking with my two daughters when something “exploded” ahead of me. Everyone around me stopped, as I did. It was a bus hitting something that went flying in the air and crashed loudly into something else. People began to move and yet I stood there, unsure what to do. It should be both human instinct and parental instinct to move away from danger…

I heard a father mourning the death of his son. He blames the Israeli government, and I blame him. “Are you insane?” I want to ask him. “How could you allow your son to be near mortars being fired? What did you think Israel was going to do?” Why didn’t you take your son? Why didn’t you behave responsibly?

Hard questions, but valid ones. And as our media seems totally unwilling to look at these, as well as the implications of why the UN never raised a finger in protest to Hamas using their schools as launching grounds for terrorism, we get this lovely piece from everyone’s favorite sham of a newspaper, the LA Times: “Hamas speaks: A Hamas official insists that a ‘legacy of suffering’ under Israel is what fuels Palestinian resistance.”

Yes, you read that right. They published an op-ed from a Hamas official. Namely Mousa Abu Marzook, who was deported from the United States in 1997 and is legally recognized as a terrorist, thus being blocked from entering the country. Apparently the LA Times has no issue with this, and has no problem letting him vomit his lies and hate on the pages of its once-reputable newspaper. Well, I have no issue with the LA Times going under, so I’d suggest passing the word along that they’re officially supporting known terrorists now and see if we can’t dent their subscriber base a bit. Barring that, there’s always the good old fashioned vitriolic letter to the editor.

But that’s just one newspaper, right? No way the broadcast media would touch this, right? Well, sort of. They didn’t invite Hamas to speak on the topic of Gaza, but a few of them invited a lunatic named Mads Gilbert on for a word or two. When I say “a few,” I mean the BBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, the Independent, Sky News, and the New York Times, among others. Who is Mads Gilbert? He’s a doctor from Norway and a member of a radical Marxist party who is on record as supporting the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. No, I’m not kidding. Here’s the quote, courtesy of LGF:

In an interview with the Norwegian daily, Dagbladet, shortly after the attacks, Gilbert stated:

“The attack on New York was not surprising, after the policy that has led the West in recent decades. I am upset over the terrorist attack, but am equally upset over the suffering which the United States has created. It is in this context that the 5000 dead people must be seen. If the U.S. government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, then there is also a moral right to attack the United States with the weapons they had to create. Dead civilians are the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis.”

When asked by Dagbladet if he supported the terrorist attack on the U.S., he replied:

“Terror is a bad weapon, but the answer is yes, within the context I have mentioned.”

This is why I don’t watch TV anymore.

Taking Chance

Via Blackfive comes news of an HBO special that might be worth seeing.

This is based on Marine Lieutenant Colonel Strobl’s true story originally related to us by Blackfive of escorting the remains of Lance Corporal Chance Phelps home for burial. It’s a great story, and I really hope HBO honors the story and the people involved by not turning it into some sort of leftist propaganda machine they’re so fond of. If, however, it turns out to be as good as hoped, this will be on my DVD shelf.

More courageous Hamas soldiers… oh, wait

More from Gaza:

At least thirty people were reportedly killed and 53 wounded in an explosion in a UN-run school in the town of Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Palestinians. The IDF issued a statement saying the school grounds were used by terrorists to fire mortar shells at the troops.

The infantrymen returned mortar shell fire into the school grounds, the army said. Defense officials told The Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in the school triggered the secondary explosions which killed scores of Palestinians on the site.

Notice that the source of the casualties was the booby traps set by Hamas, not the Israeli shells. LGF has video showing Hamas launching mortal attacks from the school. The school’s headmaster was also a notorious rocket-builder.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, May 5 (Reuters) – By day, Awad al-Qiq was a respected science teacher and headmaster at a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip. By night, Palestinian militants say, he built rockets for Islamic Jihad.

The cowards stage their attacks from schools and hospitals in order to win a propaganda war, hoping that the media will ignore the fact that they were attacking from the schools first. And the media eats it right up. We hear comparisons of Israel to Germany under Hitler, but they ignore the fact that Hamas’ official charter calls for the death of all Jews everywhere! What a strange, sick world we live in.