Fleet Foxes - A Take Away Show
BY Joshua Hynes ON Wednesday, November 12, 2008 @ 2:47 pm
Fleet Foxes - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
Sprint has put together a pretty amazing microsite centered around their wireless internet USB card, Now. 0 Comments
Forever Photoshop CS3 was my bane when saving for web. Colors would shift and aggravation would ensue. Photoshop Color Management, I've finally bested you. 1 Comment
A Weekend In The Woods
BY Joshua Hynes ON Sunday, November 2, 2008 @ 6:12 pm
Growing up in Central Pennsylvania, inevitably you’ll come across signs notifying you of the fact that you’ve found The Appalachian Trail. Billed as “America’s First National Scenic Trail”, the 2,175 mile-long trail runs from Georgia all the way to Maine in one continuous, winding path. Finished in 1937, the trail hosts almost 4 million hikers every year and two-thirds of the American population is within a day’s drive of the trail. That’s pretty amazing.
Yet despite all of the very interesting and life-changing information, I’ve never spent a moment on the trail myself. Sure, I had run on other mountains and valleys throughout the Susquehanna Valley, but for some reason I never spent even a moment—let alone days—on the trail. So when a group of friends asked if I’d be interested in heading out for a weekend of camping and hiking on the trail, I decided that now was as good as any to give it a go.
There are a few things that I found it hard to realize when hiking the Appalachian Trail. First is that everything weighs something. That may seem like a moronic statement to make but try hauling around even 3 days worth of food and clothes and you realize how quickly a lot of really small things can add up to a lot. Second is that you’re basically climbing mountains for the majority of your time walking, and even when you’re heading downhill you’re not all that excited about it because you know that inevitably you’ll be climbing back up sooner or later. Third is that Pennsylvania is thought of as worst part of the Appalachian Trail, and for good reason. While I only completed about 20 miles this weekend with a bunch of friends, the entire stretch was littered with rocks and boulders every step along the way. I was very thankful that I had invested a bit for a good pair of shoes.
So here I sit Sunday evening, trying to relax after enjoying a hot shower and having slipped into some comfortable, clean clothes. Overall I enjoyed my time on the trail this weekend, though I’m a bit sore and stiff from having walked a distance that I’ve rarely walked within a few days. You see some amazing things while on the trail and you meet some interesting people. In the end though you get to spend a lot of time with some friends, teasing each other and sharing some great memories. I don’t think I’ll be running back onto the trail right away, but eventually I think I might find myself out there once again sometime in the near future.
The World Series, The Red Sox and the End of the 2008 Baseball Season
BY Joshua Hynes ON Wednesday, October 29, 2008 @ 11:09 pm
It only took 3 days to finally find out who was the winner of Game 5 of the World Series, but we’re finally done and Philadelphia, the obnoxious sports city that it is, finally has their first sports championship title since 1983 and their first baseball championship since 1980. It’s not a Boston 86-year or White Sox 88-year championship drought but the agony was no less in Philadelphia. After all it’s only the team’s second World Series title in its storied 126-year franchise history. Remember this is the same Philadelphia Phillies team set the all-sports record with their 10,000th lose just last July. They’ve been around for a while. Still congratulations to the Phillies. I shudder only at what living in Pennsylvania will be like for the next year.
As I look back on this year though, a few things come to mind:
- Baseball has a very, very long season. I realize that most owners would rather sell their first-born child than cut games from the baseball season, but in the wake of Game 5’s “Perfect Storm” debacle, the owners and commissioner have to really take a hard look at what’s best for the game. Peter Gammons, in the wake of Monday night, writes today that this Series is the “worst ever” because of the weather and baseball should consider cutting “162 to 148 games..., then the division series and League Championship Series could be played between Sept. 20 and Oct. 6, with the World Series theoretically completed by mid-October.” I can’t say I disagree with Peter. I love watching baseball, but with next year’s World Series already set to finish in November because of March’s World Baseball Classic, baseball has to worry about over-saturating it’s market. The lure of football is its finiteness. It starts in September and it has a new champion within 6 months. Baseball though starts in April and slogs through 6 months, with still another month of baseball to go in October (or November). It could be worse I guess. It could be NBA Finals.
- I really need to slow down on watching baseball games. I didn’t watch all 162 Boston Red Sox games this year, but I watched at least 75% of the games and I made the trek up to Fenway twice and to Baltimore once to see them in person. I had a Little-League coach who would drill into us that the game is 90% mental and 10% physical (and you could probably say the exact opposite is true of football), and I think that’s a big reason why I love the sport. Still there’s a point where something can dominate one’s life to much and I need to pull this ‘hobby’ back in line.
- If Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, Curt Schilling and David Ortiz had been healthy, the Red Sox would have World Champions again this year. You knew this was going to come back around to the Red Sox, but I really do think that if Beckett, Lowell and Ortiz had been even 90% healthy, the Red Sox would be celebrating tonight instead of the Phillies. That isn’t sour grapes talking, it’s a personal belief. That’s not to say the Phillies were lucky (they were) or undeserving (they aren’t), because any team who can make it through an entire season and post-season always deserves it — yes even the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals. And, yes, the Phillies were a little bit lucky. Maybe “fortunate” is the better word, but to have their closer pitch perfectly this year, find their offense stroke at just the right time and play the Tampa Bay Rays right after a tiring and draining American League Championship Series all were fortunate things. That’s not to say the Rays were the better team, because they weren’t. Things just broke the Phillies way. It happens. You move on. If the Red Sox hadn’t been hurt like they were, they probably would have repeated; but they weren’t healthy and they didn’t make it, and that’s the way it happens sometimes.
The immediate question that comes up is, will the Phillies repeat? No. Could they? Yeah, sure they could, but I don’t think it’ll happen. There are a number of reasons why I think so, but I really don’t have the time or energy to spell them out here right now. Besides the Phillies just won a title. They should enjoy it for a while (a few nights at least).
The question for Red Sox fans though is what the front-office will do to get back to October next year. The team is facing a number of questions surrounding Jason Varitek, Mike Lowell, David Ortiz, Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz, Coco Crisp and Jacoby Ellsbury. Will GM Theo go out and pick up the bat that this line-up so desperately needs? Will they sign Mark Teixeria or trade for Matt Holiday? Will Mike Lowell get traded or is that Julio Lugo‘s fate? What seemed like such a solid team returning in 2008 now is a roster of question marks in 2009. Injuries and age can do that to a team. I don’t know where the Red Sox will end up next fall, but I will say that you can expect them to be in hunt next September. I don’t know if you could say the same thing about the New York Yankees, but then again — that’s just the Yankee-hater in me talking.
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The History of the West (Bryson)
BY Joshua Hynes ON Tuesday, October 28, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
People in the West like to shoot things. When they first got to the West they shot buffalo. Once there were 70 million buffalo on the plains and then people of the West started blasting away at them. Buffalo are just cows with big heads. If you’ve ever looked a cow in the face and seen the unutterable depths of trust and stupidity that lie within, you will be able to guess how difficult it must have been for people in the West to track down buffalo and shoot them to pieces. By 1895, there were only 800 buffalo left, mostly in zoos and touring Wild West shows. With no buffalo left to kill, Westerners started shooting Indians. Between 1850 and 1890 they reduced the number of Indians in America from 2 million to 90,000.
Nowadays, thank goodness, both have made a recovery. Today there are 30,000 buffalo and 300,000 Indians, and of course you are not allowed to shoot either, so all the Westerners have left to shoot at are road signs and each other, both of which they do rather a lot. There you have a capsule history of the West.
Bill Bryson
The Lost Continent: Travels In Small-Town America (1989, pgs. 251-252)
The Internet Shapes The Way We Think (Carr)
BY Joshua Hynes ON Wednesday, October 8, 2008 @ 8:34 am
For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
Nicholas Carr
Is Google Making Us Stupid? (July/August 2008, The Atlantic, pg. 57)
Stalin Was One of The Great Mass Murderers of All Time (McCullough)
BY Joshua Hynes ON Tuesday, September 23, 2008 @ 9:45 pm
[T]he evil of [Joseph Stalin] was no secret in 1945. In a February issue, published just before Yalta, Time magazine had noted that Stalin and his regime had deliberately caused the deaths by starvation of at least 3 million peasants and liquidated another 1 million Communists who opposed his policies. Facts are stubborn things, said the article, borrowing a line from Lenin, and these were the facts. Actually the facts were more horrible. Probably 5 million peasants had died; probably 10 million had been sent to forced labor camps. “I was remembering my friends,” the composer Shostakovich once remarked, “and all I saw was corpses, mountains of corpses.”
Stalin himself had told [English Prime Minister Winston] Churchill in 1942 that “ten millions” of peasants had been “dealt with.” At one point in 1940, during the Hitler–Stalin Pact, he had had many thousands of Polish officers murdered, in what become known as the Katyn Forest Massacre. In truth, [Stalin] was one of the great mass murderers of all time, as much as Ivan the Terrible (his favorite czar), as much nearly as Adolf Hitler.
David McCullough
Truman (1993, pg. 419)
A Poor Banking Solution (Mallaby)
BY Joshua Hynes ON Tuesday, September 23, 2008 @ 7:31 am
The plan is being marketed under false pretenses. Supporters have invoked the shining success of the Resolution Trust Corporation as justification and precedent. But the RTC, which was created in 1989 to clean up the wreckage of the savings-and-loan crisis, bears little resemblance to what is being contemplated now. The RTC collected and eventually sold off loans made by thrifts that had gone bust. The administration proposes to buy up bad loans before the lenders go bust. This difference raises several questions.
The first is whether the bailout is necessary. In 1989, there was no choice. The federal government insured the thrifts, so when they failed, the feds were left holding their loans; the RTC’s job was simply to get rid of them. But in buying bad loans before banks fail, the Bush administration would be signing up for a financial war of choice. It would spend billions of dollars on the theory that preemption will avert the mass destruction of banks. There are cheaper ways to stabilize the system.
In the 1980s, the government did not need a strategy to decide which bad loans to take over; it dealt with anything that fell into its lap as a result of a thrift bankruptcy. But under the current proposal, the government would go out and shop for bad loans. These come in all shapes and sizes, so the government would have to judge what type of loans it wants. They are illiquid, so it’s hard to know how to value them. Bad loans are weighing down the financial system precisely because private-sector experts can’t determine their worth. The government would have no better handle on the problem.
In practice this means the government would make subjective choices about which bad loans to buy, and it would pay more than fair value. Billions in taxpayer money would be transferred to the shareholders and creditors of banks, and the banks from which the government bought most loans would be subsidized more than their rivals. If the government bought the most from the sickest institutions, it would be slowing the healthy process in which strong players buy up the weak, delaying an eventual recovery. The haggling over which banks got to unload the most would drag on for months. So the hope that this “systematic” plan can be a near-term substitute for ad hoc AIG-style bailouts is illusory.
Sebestian Mallaby
A Bad Bank Rescue in The Washington Post (September 21, 2008, B07)
Ricky Gervais to Steve Carell: “Give Me My Emmy!”
BY Joshua Hynes ON Monday, September 22, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
The Growing Bush “Police” State
BY Joshua Hynes ON Thursday, September 18, 2008 @ 10:23 pm
During the three and a half years he was in custody, [José] Padilla was made to endure various forms of torture. Kept in solitary confinement, Padilla was subjected to variations of sleep deprivation. Noxious fumes were introduced into his cell. His cell was made extremely cold for long periods of time. He was drugged, disoriented, and threatened with all manner of gruesome fates.
It it time for us to wake up. We have allowed the president to abduct an American citizen on American soil, declare him an “enemy combatant” (a charge the accused has no power to contest, which is rendered by the president in secret and is unreviewable), detain him indefinitely, deny him legal counsel, and subject him to inhumane treatment. How can we not be concerned about such a thing? Have we been so blinded by propaganda that we have forgotten basic American principles, and legal guarantees that extend back to our British forbears eight centuries ago? This is an outrageous offense against American and her Constitution. Claims that these powers will be exercised only against the bad guys are not worth listening to.
Ron Paul
The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008, pgs. 121-122)
What’s Your Wish For Today?
BY Joshua Hynes ON Thursday, September 18, 2008 @ 10:02 am
Fifty People, One Question: Restored from Benjamin Reece on Vimeo. (via)
What Does “Liberty” Really Mean?
BY Joshua Hynes ON Wednesday, September 17, 2008 @ 10:15 pm
When I say liberty I do not simply mean what is referred to as “free enterprise.” I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and to live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they want to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world; liberty of every local community to decide how its children shall be educated, how its local services shall be run, and who its local leaders shall be; liberty of a man to choose his own occupation; and liberty of a man to run his own business as he thinks it ought to be run, as long as he does not interfere with the right of other people to do the same thing.
Robert A. Taft
Ron Paul's The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008, pgs. 5-6)
Red Sox Sell Out For The 456th Time
BY Joshua Hynes ON Tuesday, September 9, 2008 @ 2:13 pm
It took only five and a half years, but the Red Sox last night sold out their 456th consecutive home game at Fenway Park. Today’s Boston Globe saw the Red Sox running a “thank-you” advertisement, listing off 456 reasons why they’re thankful. Concerning more infographics, here’s another interesting sidebar that ran as well in today’s Globe.
Find it hard to remember that Apple key combination for the ® symbol? (It's Option+R by the way). Or even find yourself as one of the many who can't do these keystroke combinations because you're on a Windows system? Well now there's CopyPasteCharacters.com. UPDATE: In case you wondered how you can do those keystroke combinations on a Mac, here's a great shortcut cheat sheet. It is noticeably missing the the registered symbol (Option + R), Laquo (Option + / ) and Raquo (Option + Shift + /). Overall though a pretty good list. 0 Comments
I'm sure it's a feature that most people play around with too much, but in case you ever wondered here's a great laymen's introduction to the iTunes equalizer. 0 Comments
Palin: A Rough Record
BY Joshua Hynes ON Wednesday, September 3, 2008 @ 8:57 am
[John] Stein says that as mayor, [Sarah] Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.
Nathan Thornburgh
Mayor Palin: A Rough Record (September 2, 2008, TIME)
Scenes from Williamsburg and Philadelphia
BY Joshua Hynes ON Monday, September 1, 2008 @ 4:58 pm
It took me a bit longer then I wanted or anticipated, but I finally uploaded some photos from a couple of the vacations that my wife and I took this summer to Williamsburg and Philadelphia. Below are two of my favorites.
Since We’re Talking About Money, Go See I.O.U.S.A.
BY Joshua Hynes ON Friday, August 29, 2008 @ 10:38 pm
As a continued thought to my last post, I do want say that a new documentary has recently been released to theaters this past month entitled I.O.U.S.A., which does much of what Maxed Out does — except it appears to go into greater detail with the national numbers, better production and has interviews from Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan and others. Below are a number of clips dealing with the movie. Be sure to at least check out the first one with David Walker, who the movie follows around as he criss-crosses the country asking people about this enormous problem. David appears on The Glenn Beck Show talking about the movie and its just mind-boggling.
Here’s are some clips I’ve found as well. While the information is very informative, I must say that a part wants to see this documentary based on the infographics alone. Wow, those are some amazing illustrations.
So now that you’re all scared crazy, go out and vote for someone who will do something about it.
Movie Review: Maxed Out
BY Joshua Hynes ON Friday, August 29, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
Last year I heard about a documentary entitled Maxed Out, a 2006 film which details the growing American debt — both personal and national — unlike any had before. I sounded interesting when I heard some people talking about it, but then I promptly forgot about the movie as soon as I had heard about it. It was unlikely that my local Blockbuster Video store would carry the independent film anyway, but it’s unfortunate I forgot about it nonetheless. After joining Netflix back in May, I was reminded of this film, found that Netflix carried it and I finally received it this week. And man, what an eye-opening film.
The documentary doesn’t try to paint a rosy view of the dire straits more and more Americans find themselves within, laying bear the facts of credit card companies, debt collectors, mixed alliances from “financial pundits” like Suzie Orman and the heartbreaking stories of everyday people who, admittedly, dug themselves a hole and then were handed a bigger shovel to dig with by credit card companies.
Personally my wife and I are very glad that we found Dave Ramsey when we did 2 years ago. We were in a hole much like some of the people we saw in this film. Lots of student debt, car loans and credit card payments. We had ambitions for a house, but how in the world could we afford that? We ran the numbers multiple times, and every time we did the numbers said we couldn’t afford a house. We could barely afford rent and utilities after we finished making all the minimum payments for all of our loans. Thankfully we finally realized we were wasting and going nowhere, so we started doing something about it. We got a written budget and started knocking down goals. It wasn’t overnight and it didn’t happen overnight, but 2 years later we’re debt-free, starting to finally put together money for the down payment on our first house.
Along the way we’ve had a number of people tell us we were pretty foolish doing what we’re doing, and others trying to offer “better advice” of how to turn a quick dollar. With a smile and a nod we’d say ‘thanks, but no thanks’ and continue on the plan we had. Some things come a bit slower for us, but we’re okay with that because we know once we get there, it’ll be ours and we won’t have to be anxious about making next month’s payment.
I would highly recommend this film to everyone, regardless of your financial situation. May it stir you to action. Below you’ll find a clip from the film. For more information about this movie, you can visit its website.
Lost In The Sound of Separation Drops Tuesday
BY Joshua Hynes ON Friday, August 29, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
Call me a “Johnny-come-lately” to this little piece of news, but heavy rockers Underoath will be dropping their new disc Lost In The Sound of Separation this coming Tuesday, September 2. And to top off my excitement the new artwork looks amazing as well. You can see the new cover below. You can pre-order your album today or wait until next Tuesday. Either way get excited about some new Underoath tracks.
New Chinese Luxury Hotel Being Built In A Quarry
BY Joshua Hynes ON Friday, August 29, 2008 @ 8:24 am
The Songjiang Hotel is a proposed luxury, chinese hotel to be built in the Songjiang district near Shanghai. The interesting feature about the hotel is that it’s to be built inside an old quarry. The eco-friendly concept boasts that because of the move, less land has to be excavated, the quarry helps control heat and provides a natural shelter from the elements. The project doesn’t change my opinion of China, but the project itself is rather innovative. China though isn’t the first to think of something like this as developers in Portland, Oregon had a similar idea back in 2005 for a local abandoned quarry. Either way, it’s great to see people reclaim past quarries instead of fencing them off and waiting to hear about someone running their ATV off into one.
For more information about this particular hotel, visit Re-Nest.
The Dark Knight… Sweded
BY Joshua Hynes ON Friday, August 29, 2008 @ 8:15 am
Not only did I enjoy (not love, mind you) Jack Black‘s and Mos Def‘s Be Kind Rewind film, but apparently people are now starting to “swede” movies more and more. Lucky for us, YouTube is here to capture it all for the whole world to enjoy.