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Apr29
News from the Wine Front
So far Spring Barrel Tasting is going quite well.  6 wineries yesterday (we got started late) with no appreciable hangover this morning, although I did get sunburnt.  80 degrees!

I was revisiting wine-related entries made by A-Listers and found this one at Lifehacker about an audio Sonoma wine tour by David Hyde Pierce that is downloadable to an iPod.  They charge $30 for it.  Maybe I should do one for Yakima Valley wineries.



Apr29
National Anthem: Which Language?
Lots of bloggers, including Michelle Malkin, are up in arms about the Star Spangled Banner being sung in Spanish instead of English.Does it really matter as long as the sentiment is there?  As long as the flag is still there?Sure,... Continue Reading
Apr28
News Floozy: Wine, Washington Post Tizzy, Fab Insults and Harvard Plagiarizer
Today through Sunday is Spring Barrel Tasting in the Yakima Valley.  80-odd wineries open their doors with tasting of last year's vintage as well as their bottled wine.  Guess where I will be?  I'll post updates all weekend, along with... Continue Reading
Yoo Hoo, Mr. Government Agent!
I've just found out that the CIA may be reading my blog!  OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin told The Washington Times, "A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich... Continue Reading
Apr27
BlogCritics: Elizabeth Taylor Near Death
BlogCritics reports the London Daily Mail asserting that the infamous actress is rapidly failing due to heart failure.I loved her as Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin roof; that flash in those violet eyes when she argues... Continue Reading
Best of the Rest: Xiaxue, Poynter Online, MyDD
Here's where I take the opportunity to highlight some of the A-List blogs that I don't usually cover.  Xiaxue:  I don't usually read this blog because A) I finding is childish and irritating and B) I can't find an RSS... Continue Reading
Althouse and Hyena Sex
Ann Althouse has conjured an image which is painful and horrifying, especially for men.  Image men having to give birth through their...uh...male anatomy.  That is how it is for Alpha female hyenas.  I would love to see Tom Cruise try... Continue Reading
Cardboard Bed - Great for Bedwetters
Boing Boing covered this cardboard bed.  The first thing I thought of when I saw the child sitting there is - what about bedwetters?  Won't this thing just dissolve into mush? ... Continue Reading
News Floozy: Bush Not a Leader, Punishing Journalists, Character, $4 Gas
Totally brain dead this morning.  I just realized that I was clicking through my RSS feeds without actually reading them.  And there is some pretty good stuff in there too:Daily Kos:  "Handed the greatest opportunity for leadership since Pearl Harbor,... Continue Reading
Apr26
Liberal Blog-Readers Aren't Rabid Teenage Activists After All
Who reads liberal political-type blogs?  The profile of the average reader is: 46 years old (40%) College or Post-Graduate schooling (80%) Median annual income of $80,200 66% male, 34% female Politically active: Signed a petition: 83% Contributed to a cause/campaign:... Continue Reading
News Floozy: Whining Republicans, Winer, Where's Doc?, Hang 'Em High
I'm up at 5 am this morning, reporting on the A-List news just for you.  Somebody's got to do it and I'm throwing my body on the fire of the..... ok, whoa.  Too much hyperbole.  Let's just get to the... Continue Reading
Apr25
Scotty Couldn't Match This Snow Job
Ack!  What a horribly, pun-ny title.  I'm truly sorry.  It's out of my system now, I promise.Via Huffington Post:Fox News commentator Tony Snow has decided to accept the White House press secretary's job after top officials assured him that he... Continue Reading
Only Those Who Pay Rent On Time, Have a Job or Work Should Get Housing
SusanG at Daily Kos talks about U.S. Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson's declaration that "only the best residents" should be allowed back into public housing in New Orleans.  How does he define "best resident"?  Those who paid rent on time, those... Continue Reading
News Floozy: Iran, McCarthy, Tony Snow and the Vatican
Character is what you do when no one is watching. ~ Anon. Last night my husband and I are walking our new Brittney Spaniel named Roxy.  Since we've only had her 24 hours at this point, we are not yet... Continue Reading
Pre-Op Transgendered Inmate
Where do you put a pre-op transgendered female inmate?  The comments over at Althouse pretty much agree:  if you still got the package, you go to male jail.  But all is not lost.  The jail has administrative lockdown, where inmates... Continue Reading
How to Plagiarize and Still Make a Bundle
Kaavya Viswanathan wrote an apparently fabulous book and was signed to a $500,000 two book deal.  The Harvard sophmore wrote How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life (currently #32 on the NY Times Bestseller list and... Continue Reading
Apr24
No Photographs in Supermarkets
Seth Godin talks about being told he couldn't take pictures inside of a grocery store without corporate approval.  This is strange on a couple of levels.First, as Seth said, flickerizing your shopping experience for your friends is great publicity.  But... Continue Reading
Hole Swallows Man
I was always told that if I lied I'd be swallowed up by a hole in the ground (perhaps leading to my fears of basements).  This guy must have told a whopper!... Continue Reading
New Masthead
Wow!  I love it!  Thanks to our KMM designers.... Continue Reading
Raytheon CEO a Plagiarizer?
Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson has booklet called Unwritten Rules for management that was featured in a Business 2.0 article last year.  Now some people are saying his rules are plagiarized.If you read the rules you quickly realized that they are... Continue Reading
How Erica Jong Dealt With Bad Reviews
I am going to print this out and put it up above my desk, so that I can look at it every time I get flamed or receive a rejection slip.  The whole article is great as well.For most of... Continue Reading
Think "Book" not "Diary"
Dave Winer's comment about Guy Kawasaki's post had me going back to take a look.  Guy gives ten ways to evangelize a blog.  I agree with him, although I have some reservations about #1:1. Think “book” not “diary.” First, a... Continue Reading
Apr23
RIAA Sues Those Without Computers Who Share Music Via Computer
The title doesn't make sense, does it?  A Rockmart, GA family is being sued by the RIAA for sharing 8 songs.  The family is puzzled because they don't own a computer.  Cory Doctorow, however, applauds this new tactic and just... Continue Reading
Wake Up Bloggers: Be Controverisal and You'll Get Controversy
A Chicago high school teacher blogged about the problems he saw at his high school: He labeled his Chicago students "criminals," saying they stole from teachers, dealt drugs in the hallways, had sex in the stairwells, flaunted their pregnant bellies... Continue Reading
A-Listers Are Cat People?
We are expecting the delivery of a pureblood Brittney spaniel today named Roxy.  She comes from great bird hunting stock and has just been bred with another dog with equally great lines.  I'm anxious to see how our two cats,... Continue Reading
Naked Carpenter
Have you heard about the naked carpenter?  Apparently, a Berkeley prefers to work in the nude because  it gave him a better range of motion.  He also didn't want to get his clothes dirty when he had to crawl under... Continue Reading
Apr22
Intro to The Ruse
Reading all of the A-Listers means that get to know about different kinds of music and groups that I otherwise wouldn't know about.I found out about The Ruse through a Blogcritics review. They sound a bit like U2, when U2... Continue Reading
Cheney Loves Breakthrough Note Reader
You can actually read your notes with your eyes closed!  One delighted user, Dick Cheney, loved it so much he used it during Chinese President Hu Jintao's recent visit to the White House.  Says Cheney, "It is such a great... Continue Reading
Are We Blinded to the World?
Harry Shearer blogs on the Huffington Post about U.S. television news departments closing foreign bureaus and stopping the assignment of reporters to the State Department.  When we lived in Seattle we got a Canadian station and watched Canadian news every... Continue Reading
The Twinkie Defense
What if we lived in an alternate reality and Bush saw the errors of his ways?  Listen to these hilarious speeches written for Bush by children and read by an impersonator.  Melissa's is my favorite, hands down.Thanks Metafilter!... Continue Reading
Happy Earth Day!
It is a gorgeous one here in the eastern half of the Evergreen State, sunny, around 70.  My husband is celebrating by replacing a broken sewer pipe at his parent's house.  I'm going fishing, but first:BlogCritics would rather see kids... Continue Reading
Apr21
Organic Brews
Since it is Friday, let's get ready to party info from Cool Hunting - brewers and distillers are now creating organic alcoholic beverages.... Continue Reading
Stoner or Drunk - You Decide
As usual, the use of marijuana for medical use is under attack.  Representative Mark Souder of S. Dakota points out that legalizing medical marijuana is a front for people who want to legalize it for everyone.Davis Sweet, author of The... Continue Reading
Dual Monitors - I'm Drooling on my Keyboard
Lifehacker reports that using dual monitors can increase your efficiency 20 - 30%.  The commenters all agree.  A majority report that going back to a single monitor is like losing a limb.  Several talk about going to a triple configuration. ... Continue Reading
An "UnKeynote"? How Will That Work?
An unconference is a conference where the content of the meeting is driven and created by the participants rather than by a single organizer.  Never having been to one, I'm not really in a position to comment...but I will anyway. ... Continue Reading
News Floozy: New Trek Movie, Dixie Chicks and Hu
I had to run into Seattle yesterday for a networking event (2.5 hour drive each way) and by the time I got home I was too pooped to post.  So here are the A-List posts that caught my eye for... Continue Reading
Apr20
Dave Winer: Notorious Curmudgeon?
Dave reports that Fortune magazine calls his a notorious curmudgeon.  The entire quote was:On his influential blog, Dave Winer, one of software's top programming thinkers and a notorious curmudgeonThat's much better than being called a cranky old bastard, Dave!The article... Continue Reading
Apr19
Paul Graham Gets Me Thinking
Do bloggers blog because they think out loud?  Are we blogging because it stimulates our thought processes - a substitute for the community discussions around the pickle barrel, town square or whatever?  A way of examining our lives?Paul Graham wonders... Continue Reading
Stephen Colbert to Replace Scott McClellan?
Hugh Hewitt thinks that Stephen Colbert would make a fine Press Secretary.   It is true - let's look at his qualifications: He can present incredibly stupid things as if they were seriously true He retains a serious, professional demeanor even... Continue Reading
Lesson From Gizmodo: Check Your CD Backups
Gizmodo reports that some of their CD backups from 1999 have already degraded to the point of uselessness.  Kodak is now producing 24-karat gold discs, both CD and DVD.  The gold resists oxidation, so CDs may last up to 300... Continue Reading
News Floozy: Michael Jackson, Hookahs, Japanese Martha Stewart, Tacky Pro-American Art
I'm still two quarts low on coffee, so here's a roundup of news from the A-List:Coolfer:  Michael Jackson plans to have a new album out in 2007...  Fifty bucks says the record's horrible.  Why won't he just go away?Althouse:  "Hookah... Continue Reading
Apr18
Quote of the Day
I really tried to find something funny on the A-list for everyone - something to wash the icky taste out from the last two posts.  All I found was this.  I'm going to have a martini or three.... I watched... Continue Reading
More on the Malkin Controversy
Earlier I posted on Michelle Malkin vs. the students.  In following up with what everybody has been saying I'm really concerned at the level of emotion this issue has engendered.  Not just between Malkin's "teeth-gnashing orcs" and the "liberal moonbats",... Continue Reading
Michelle Malkin: World's Worst Person
You ask "how did she get such an honor?"  Well, pull up a seat and I'll tell you.A group from UC Santa Cruz called "Students Against War" published a press release with the full names and contact information of their... Continue Reading
Seth Godin: Flipping the Funnel
Marketing is a funnel. You put undifferentiated prospects into the top. Some of them hop out, unimpressed with what you have to offer. Others learn about you and your organization, hear from their peers, compare offerings, and eventually come out... Continue Reading
Kimberly Williamson Butler Continues to Astound Wonkette (and Me)
I've been following this one for several days, but now it has just gotten too weird not to share.Kimberly Williamson Butler is a mayoral candidate for the city of New Orleans.  Like most candidates, she has a website with a... Continue Reading
Apr17
Ultimate, Favorite Huffington Post Comment Today
Commented on this post, but originally seen here."Will Someone Please Give Bush a B--- J-- So We Can Impeach Him?"... Continue Reading
Huffington Post: 79 Reasons Bush Needs to Be Impeached
I'm reading some fab comments on nearly all the blogs I monitor.  This one is from the Huffington Post: Perhaps we are all upset because: 1. Memogate: The Senate Computer Theft 2. Doctor Detroit: The DOJ's Bungled Terrorism Case 3.... Continue Reading
Guy Kawasaki - Take Advantage of Your Competion
Guy features six ways that companies stymied their competition by thinking differently.  The best story, however, was supplied by a commenter:Here the game of cricket is huge, often leading to intense cola wars. When India hosted the World Cup, Coke... Continue Reading
Sifry's State of the Blogosphere
According to Dave, Technorati now tracks 36.5 million blogs and the blogosphere is doubles every six months.  Interesting facts: 3.9 million bloggers write at least weekly There are about 1.2 million posts a day ( or about 55,000 an hour)... Continue Reading
We Can't Stop Phishing - Or Crime
Mr. Scoble linked to an article which asks 'can we really stop phishing?'  It is Greg Hughes' opinion we really can't:  Stopping phishing and other online fraud is really just like everyday police work - It's not actually about ending crime,... Continue Reading
Scoble to Moderate Comments
Mr. Scoble is half-way through a two week blogging break and decided to blog about it, which I find amusing (sounds like something I'd do).He's been mulling over a lot of things, apparently, and one of the decisions he's come... Continue Reading
Apr16
Jumping the Shark
The phrase "jumping the shark" has been appearing over and over again in the past two weeks in many different contexts.  Craig Crawford at the Huffington Post provides a succinct explanation: If President Bush had starred in a television sitcom,... Continue Reading
Digg: How To Change People's Perception of You
This topic  on Digg was interesting enough, but take a look at the comments:"How to be fake basically, right? I don't like how business is all politics. Bunch of bullshit. I like who I am and I don't care what... Continue Reading
Retired Generals: Loud and Proud
Check out Daily Kos for his rundown of Sunday talk shows.  My favorite (facetious) quote:  "And his momma is so stupid she tried to put M&Ms in alphabetical order!    Hell, Barbara Bush is so stupid, she thought "Wu Tang"... Continue Reading
Newspapers Can Find the News Using Bloggers
Ellen Foley, editor of the Wisconsin State Journal, got sarcastic and completely missed the point during her interview with On The Media.  It was suggested that newspapers should allow reader to vote on stories that the paper isn't covering but... Continue Reading
Apr15
News Floozy: Falling Ice, Jethro Tull, Bird Flu, Iranian Hitler
Boing Boing talks about ice that falls from the sky in California: "Earlier this week, I posted about a huge chunk of clear ice that mysteriously fell in an Oakland park last weekend. Yesterday, another hunk, the size of a... Continue Reading
Blog-Cleaning (Or Keeping Your Husband Happy)
Blogging doesn't get you out of housework.  Well, it may get you out of housework, but it didn't fly with my husband.  He has an appointment this morning and as he left he informed me that we would be cleaning... Continue Reading
Apr14
Scott Adams: Weird, or Not Weird? You Decide
Anyone else think that Scott Adams (the Dilbert behind Dilbert) is really strange?  I remember being really puzzled after his second or third book because he seemed to be heading for that big space ship in the sky.   His blog... Continue Reading
Do A-List Blogs Provide a Experience Others Lack?
I've been getting all introspective today, thinking about blogging, why I blog, how I blog, how blogging is different from the articles and news stories I write. Chartreuse is responding to a commenter, but he could be responding to my... Continue Reading
Jesus Was a Radical NonViolent Revolutionary
Along with the plague, rodeos and low cut jeans, I try to avoid discussion of religion.  However, given the whole Passover/Holy Week/South Park/Mohammed Cartoon thing being debated, I will take a stand. Geeky ex-VH1 veejay -slash- America's Funniest Home Videos... Continue Reading
American Liar Beats All Reality TV Shows
Steve Young reports on the latest issue of 'American Liar' where Colin "Bucky" Powell was "voted off the show for slipping up and admitting that U.S. mistakes in the invasion of Iraq led to the current insurgency and sectarian fighting." ... Continue Reading
The Best Blogs are Three Dimensional
Chris Garrett points out that the most interesting blogs are "three dimensional": As an example, if you are a gadget blogger you might talk about not just the gadget you are reviewing or previewing but about what you might use... Continue Reading
Apr13
My Thoughts on the South Park Controversy
I've been thinking all day what to say about the whole controversy of Comedy Central censoring South Park by not allowing Mohammed to join the cast of characters.  This despite the fact he's been portrayed once before.Then Mary Katharine Ham... Continue Reading
Special Agent Bush: "What to do? What to do?"
Mark Fiore has done it again - another cartoon lampooning Plamegate and the whole leakage controversy.  Thanks to Crooks and Liars for pointing it out.And poor Rumseld isn't having the greatest day either.... Continue Reading
The Rest of The Best: Coolfer, GapingVoid, Stuff On My Cat
"The Rest of the Best" Continue Reading
Science Teacher Does Go Too Far
As a follow up to my post about the  teacher who showed an anti-Bush video in his classroom, it appears now the teacher is on leave.I think I've clarified my position on this whole issue in the comments to my... Continue Reading
Google Calendar: Been There, Done That
Everyone is buzzing this morning about the release of Google calendar.  I'm less than impressed, but let's see what the digital world has to say:Search Engine Watch:  Google Calendar launches today, and it's a strong release, with a number of... Continue Reading
Apr12
Scott McClellan: Bad Press, Bad, Bad Press
This is a tough one, so I am going to parse it out for you: Scott McClellan demands that the press apologize for reporting that Bush claimed US forces found mobile biological weapons labs when he knew that  claim was... Continue Reading
Drooling Over Engadget Stuff
I used to love the Sears toy catalog that came out in November every year. Engadget is my replacement for that icon.They reviewed the Matrox Triplehead2Go.  This little box allows you to put three screens together so they act like... Continue Reading
Cut to the Quick: When Domestic Accidents Happen
Wil Wheaton tells how he cut his thumb the other night on the lid of a tin can.  (Warning, his narration will make your hands hurt)His unfortunate domestic accident reminds me of the "Chicken Skewer Incident".  I volunteered to make... Continue Reading
Google Voice Text Search Ready for Prime Time?
Om Malik reports that Google has just filed  a patent for a voice-based search technology and is askingWhat are your thoughts on mobile search and which technology would you bet on in the mobile search domain? Will Google be the... Continue Reading
Bush Lied About Germ Trailers?
Washington Post: On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile... Continue Reading
Apr11
Giving Up Free Marketing to Force Visits to Website?
Chartreuse, whom I just discovered, but am in awe at his tastes in music, talks about pulling a band's video from YouTube: The video had 30000 views in 6 days. It was copied zero times. And you can't buy it... Continue Reading
News Floozie: Immigration, Bush's Ratings, War With Iran
Washington Post:  Former Iranian President Rafsanjani says "Iran has put into operation the first unit of 164 centrifuges, has injected [uranium] gas and has reached industrial production."  Just kind of slapping us in the face with it, aren't they?BreitBart.com via... Continue Reading
Techies ARE Weird and Kind of Rude