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People sometimes ask me, hey, you like to read, why you ain’t got no Kindle? Here’s Reason #1. Reason #2 is more complicated, so follow along and keep up.

Let’s pick some books at random, and see what the Kindle savings is like:

Book	Amazon Paperback Price	Amazon Kindle Price	Kindle savings
Oliver Twist	$3.50	$2.00	$1.50
Dave Barry’s Guide To Guys	$6.99	Unavailable	N/A
Networking for Dummies	$16.49	$14.84	$1.65
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House	$11.47	$9.99	$1.48
Drinking: A Love Story	$10.88	$9.99	$0.89
Bacon: A Love Story	$12.23 (hardcover)	$9.99	$2.24

Ignoring the book that’s not available, we get an average savings of $1.52. In order to make up the original $359, I’d have to buy approximately 231 books, if the average holds. I buy approximately 20 new books a year (I buy dozens of used ones), so no, I won’t be buying a Kindle, thanks anyway Amazon.

Someone told me not long ago that many European gentlemen “dress up.” I don’t mean that they put on their mother’s housedress and heels and dance to the Pet Shop Boys in front of a full-length mirror (though many do), but that they, well… You know how men at a tailor’s are asked “Do you dress right or left?” In case you aren’t aware, that’s code for “Do you tuck Junior down the left leg, or the right?” Apparently European dudes often point Mr. Splendiferous towards their navels. A Frenchman might put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us, but once his pants are on he can get pee in his nombril if he laughs too hard.

I don’t understand this at all. One of the 3 main purposes of The Deliverer is to protect the nards! When I was about ten, I was riding my bike around the neighborhood, looked down to see what gear I was in, and rode directly into the bumper of a car. I hit it so hard that instead of racking the yarbles on the horizontal bar, I actually slammed my package into the handlebar post, hard enough that I saw stars. I actually bruised my wang! That’s right: my dongle was black and blue. My sister can attest, as I later showed it to her, something that I’m sure causes nightmares to this day. I can only assume that, had Dr. Schrempf been pointed upwards, Sam and Dave would have been simply severed from my body.

The idea of habitually leaving Tweedledee and Halliburton unprotected makes my knees hurt. Has anyone else tried it?

Heh: ObamasPlanForGayRights.com

I’m frustrated with this Administration’s inaction on gay rights, but I haven’t yet run out of patience. Andrew has, for which I don’t blame him in the least; it’s a little more Real for him, since he may well be deported in a few years if the federal policy on HIV-positive immigration and civil marriage doesn’t change.

This president, however, is the shrewdest politician of my lifetime, and has the opportunity to be the greatest president in our country’s history. I cannot believe that he personally intends to screw gay people out of their rights; he is a Democrat, after all. He’s waiting for the right time. Why that right time isn’t now, with the right-wing elements reeling and incapable of resisting, I don’t know.

I’m not even convinced that he really believes that marriage should be “between a man and a woman.” Even if he does, I think he’ll come around on it, particularly as more Americans do the same.

As a father who is also a geek, I have a question for nurses, childcare professionals, physicists, etc. Can someone explain to me why I can’t warm breast milk in a microwave?

Sarah and I got into a small argument the other day, and I acceded to her wishes, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. When you heat a liquid in a microwave, it tends to heat unevenly. This is why anything you heat in a nuker usually have to be stirred halfway through. So when heating breast milk, you end up with small sections of the milk that still cold, and sections that are infant-searingly hot. Obviously this is bad. The recommended technique is that you heat up a bunch of water in the microwave, and then sit the bottle of milk in it for a few minutes to warm it.

I did that the other day, and left the bottle in for longer than anticipated; the outside got quite warm, while the inside was sort of tepid. So: I shook it up. This caused the colder milk in the middle to mix with the hotter milk on the outside, bringing the whole thing to just about body temperature.

Why can’t I do that when microwave heating? Throw the thing in the nuker for 5 seconds and then shake the bejebus out of it. I don’t stick it in Josephine’s mouth without testing it on my arm either way, so what’s the problem? Why can’t I do this? Why?

I’m watching the situation in Iran with absolute awe. I said earlier that I’ve never seen anything like this, and I supposed that’s not true; tearing down the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR are similar, but not even half as well communicated. Even in a country where the government is continually blocking access to websites, preventing people from reporting on the situation, news is getting out. People around the world are setting up proxy servers to enable Iranian bloggers to post pictures and videos, and as has been noted elsewhere, Twitter has finally made it clear what a spectacular application it can be.

Andrew Sullivan, it should be no surprise, has taken the lead on coverage, with links to the Twitterers on the scene, commentary on how the cable news networks have just about ignored the situation, and good snarky comments on how the Neo-Conservative movement appears to be supporting Ahmedinejad. He’s even redone his blog theme in green to show “solidarity,” a strange word to hear from a conservative blogger.

I’ve added a bunch of Iranian folks to my twitter feed and the stories they send out are insane. They’ve made it possible to find things out like Basij thugs firing AK-47s into crowds and university dormitories being assaulted by government troops. There is a downside, of course; the government is opening its own Twitter accounts to disseminate fake information. If you’re interested, look at @StopAhmadi and @change_for_iran, both of which are reportedly very real.

BTW: lest we all forget, this is why we have a Second Amendment. “But this could never happen here,” you say. You keep thinking that.

this story caused me both great mirth and a certain nostalgia for my teen years.

A Philadelphia school teacher is under investigation for allegedly throwing a stapler that struck a student in the head.

When I was in the 11th grade, I took “Honors Chemistry.” You would expect for someone who is, theoretically, very smart, I’d do well in that class, but I think I was barely making a B. (I was never what you would call “studious.”) Nevertheless, the teacher, Mr. Eshleman, and I got along well, despite the fact that Josh Lewis and I spent the entirety of each class period passing a notebook back and forth which contained our hand-written conversation, in outline form. It was the dork version of passing notes in class, except that since the pages were still attached to the metal spiral, it merely looked like we were sharing important chemistry-related information. (I oughta arrange to have some of the notebooks published after everyone described therein is dead. They were routinely hilarious, and contain detailed descriptions of girls we admired, particularly some of their softer portions.)

Anyway, one day Mr. Eshleman was discussing the difference between potential and kinetic energy. His technique was to take the piece of chalk in his hand and hold it in the air. “This,” he would say, “is potential energy. Raising the chalk in the air gives it the potential to fall, and release that energy. This is kinetic energy,” he would add, and throw the chalk as hard as he could against the wall in the back of the room. At least, that’s what he had done for 30+ years of teaching; on this particular occasion he threw the chalk directly into my eye.

I’m no stranger to having things thrown at my face, particularly now that I’m married to a woman who gets my attention by winging table lamps around the house. But I was completely unprepared for this; I don’t think I even ducked. I remember it hurt like the dickens. Mr. Eshleman was mortified, which actually made me feel a lot better; part of our daily ritual was to try and find ways to irritate him, because his pithy comebacks were amusing. I’m sure he thought he was about to be sued, but since I’m not a completely wuss, I rubbed the chalk fragments out of my eyelid and commenced with the wisecracking.

Our band teacher, Mr. Satcher, was also known to throw shoes at people who misbehaved. Probably doesn’t do that anymore. Those were the days.

Gene Weingarten, with his usual wit, explains the filibuster:

Okay, say the Yankees and the Orioles are tied in the bottom of the ninth inning, but the Yanks have the bases loaded with nobody out, and the count on the batter is three balls, no strikes. The O’s are facing imminent defeat, but their pitcher is a wily veteran. He just stands on the mound, fidgeting and spitting and scratching himself for 22 hours and 34 minutes, refusing to throw the ball, until the umpires call the game a draw.

On the other hand, forcing the Senate to require 60 votes to do anything does probably have the effect of keeping the Senate from doing anything. That’s a win, in my book.

One of the problems with podcasting (something I am VERY in favor of, in general) is that since it’s usually produced by amateurs with inexpensive equipment, the sound quality is frequently bad. It’s not something you notice a lot of the time because they’re talking, not making music, but if you are trying to listen in circumstances where fidelity is otherwise affected, you’ll pick up on it.

For example, I enjoy listening to podcasts when I mow the lawn. It makes the time fairly fly by, I really enjoy it. The podcast I’m most likely to listen to is “The BS Report,” by the inimitable Bill Simmons; he produces 2-4 of them a week, averaging 45 minutes, and since it takes me about 45 minutes to mow my lawn, it’s ideal. The problem is, I’m walking behind what is essentially an unmuffled internal combustion engine. It’s loud. Even with headphones on, I often have to turn the volume on the podcast all the way up. It’s probably not good for my ears, but I justify it by saying my eardrums have already stiffened to protect themselves from the noise of the lawnmower. (Didn’t know they did that, did you? They do. When faced with a barrage of noise, your ears will adjust to prevent damage. It’s why someone surprising you by yelling in your ear hurts, but someone yelling in your ear to be heard over top of a Justin Timberlake concert is fine.)

The problem comes in the fact that whoever is in charge of mixing Bill’s podcasts down sets the EQ such that sibilants, specifically S, are insanely loud. This is not something that’s difficult to fix, even if Bill is using a headset to record instead of, say, a quality microphone with a pop filter. Just pull down a specific frequency, and boom. Done.

Another of my favorite podcasts, “On The DL with Dan Levy,” suffers from a bizarre growl problem. Dan always sounds a bit like a chainsaw. The worst, however, is “Real Time with Bill Maher,” a podcast made from the regular HBO show. There, the problems aren’t EQ, but levels: Bill is always audible, but frequently his guests are not, and invariably the ambient mics they set up to get audience reactions are ear-blowing loud. Not just when I’ve the volume cranked to hear over my lawnmower, but also when I’m in my car, aka the most common place that people listen to podcasts. This is just laziness, really.

Excuses abound: Bill Maher’s techs are undoubtedly setting the fidelity for TV broadcast, not podcasting; the others are limited by the settings they use to try and get the size of the podcast under 10MB, the limit imposed by Apple and AT&T for downloading items over the 3G network.

Bull.

First of all, most of these podcasts aren’t under 10MB. Simmons has actually split some longer podcasts in two, supposedly to get under the limit, and they’re still 15MB chunks that I can’t enjoy until I go somewhere that has a wifi connection for my phone to access. The Bill Maher podcasts are routinely 15MB.

Second: somehow, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow‘s podcasts of their live MSNBC shows (each about 45 minutes long) somehow manage to get quality EQ and proper levelling of mics for hosts and guests, achieve a decent audio fidelity (no scratchiness), get the filesizes at around 9.8MB, and have them online by the morning after (unlike Bill Maher’s show, which is on 4 days later at the earliest, and often goes weeks without posting anything and then throws 3 or 4 shows up at once).

Sure, Maddow and Olbermann have quality recording equipment and professional engineers on staff to handle it, but I guarantee Maher does as well. And as a further counterpoint, James Lileks’s “Diner” podcasts always had fantastic sound, with what I assume to be a “prosumer”-level setup run by the journalist himself. (Lileks’s biggest problem at the moment is that, if he’s still doing diners [he may have stopped when he got busy being the all-media journalist for the Star-Tribune], they aren’t available on iTunes, and haven’t been for years.)

C’mon, guys, put a little effort into your podcasts. None of them need to be longer than 45 minutes, the perfect size to get a nicely adjusted recording under 10MB. Get on it.

Sigh.

A man who used a four-letter word to describe to his neighbors how their cat left feces in his yard was acquitted Tuesday of a disorderly conduct citation.

“A little piece of America died today when a jury of six says it’s OK to curse in front of a 13-year-old when asked not to,” Rainey said.

Really?

“It’s a sad day for morality, that this type of behavior is condoned,” Rainey said.

“We work hard to teach our children morals and teach them right from wrong.”

A little cursing is hurting the fabric of America? Given this fellows tenuous grasp of “morals,” one wonders what his opinion would be of Americans who order the torture of prisoners.

Andrew Sullivan is often my source for political analysis; I should probably look around for more pundits, but he tends to wrap up analysis from all over the spectrum, whether he agrees with it or not. I say this just to point out why, for roughly the 7,000th day in a row, I’m linking to him again, on the topic of this nifty gallup poll:

Andrew’s take:

If gays are really serious about marriage rights, they need to accelerate the process of coming out…

Yes, donate and campaign and blog. But for all of those of you out there who are gay and do none of this, one simple political act can do much more: let your family, friends and co-workers know who you are. If you don’t, please quit complaining about your lack of civil rights.

As a straight dude, I don’t quite have Andrew’s perspective. But he and I both live in parts of the country where homosexuality is more than tolerated; it is often embraced. I have dozens of gay friends; I like to say I was raised by a collection of gay “aunts.” If my son were to come out as gay, I’d be all for it. It’s not like that in every family on the east coast, but a gay man is certainly going to have an easier time coming out in New York or Philadelphia than, say, Patonga, Oklahoma. (I should point out that I know nothing about Patonga, Oklahoma; it might be the West Hollywood of Blaine County, for all I know. I literally went to Google Maps and found a random city in central Oklahoma.)

Any place where the majority of the population knows no homosexuals (either because they simply don’t live there, or are closeted) is a place where a gay man or woman is least likely to want to come out. So while Andrew’s solution, “Come out, dammit,” would probably do good things over the long-term, it carries with it a pretty high personal cost for the homosexual individuals themselves.