Brad Barrish

I finally used some of the extra free time I've found myself with to import archives from the past couple of years (with comments). I seem to only have archives dating back to December 2001, which either means the others are lost forever or I put them somewhere that I don't remember. In any event, you now have an extra large amount of archives for your reading enjoyment. I'm going to try and get the rest of the live photos up as well.

I love Maureen Dowd.

That this is going on in small pockets doesn't matter as much as the fact that it's going on at all. What's more, people are getting away with it, which means that pharmacists who are considering not filling a birth control prescription are getting more support. This is incredible:

[P]harmacists should not be forced to choose between their consciences and their livelihoods," says Matt Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin. "They should not be compelled to become parties to abortion."

How about consumers should not have to be concerned about whether their pharmacist is pro-life or not?

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."

Hows about you stick with singing, Mr. Ashcroft.

The oh-so-compassionate Bush adminstration would like it known that they will not stand for anyone dying with an ounce of dignity. If I'm on my death bed, someone is gonna give me something to go peacefully.

JE$U$!

If you are using any other browser, you're an idiot. Firefox rules.

Note: If you have trouble with the Mozilla site, here's a link to the 1.0 directory on their FTP site.

I don't think they are related (perhaps someone in-the-know can chime in), but two fairly new (and delicious) technologies have made my life a little easier as of late. del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It's somewhat difficult to explain, but essentially it keeps track of your bookmarks and displays information about who else bookmarks the same things, which you may or may not care about. You can tag each bookmark with keywords as you make them, which comes in really handy when you are looking for something. You can also share them with other people. I have so many bookmarks, that I had to do something different. Out of all the bookmarks I keep within Firefox, I only visit a handful of them on a regular basis. I don't see much of a reason to keep bookmarks the way that most web browsers do it, especially since I have so many. If I ever want to find something, it's really difficult. del.icio.us allows me to keep everything on a web site, which is accessible no matter where I am (assuming I have internet connectivity).

Delicious Library is a new program for Mac OS X. I had read about it a while ago, but this afternoon I saw reviews on O'Grady's PowerPage and Ars Technica. In short, the program allows you to catalog your music, movies, video games and books. You can use your iSight as a barcode scanner to scan the barcodes on the back of your favorite media. It pulls information from Amazon and allows you to fill in the blanks with you own information as well. In a matter of 10 minutes I decided to purchase the program and in about 40 minutes I had scanned in over 200 CDs. I have been wanting to catalog my CDs for a while, and it looks like I will be working on that.

Lisa posted some clips from The Daily Show's post-election coverage. As usual, good stuff.

While I’m glad the election is over, I’m crushed by the results. I’m scared of what four more years of Bush will do, not only to our tremendously divided country, but to the world. While I was watching the returns and chatting with Michael over IM, he said something to the effect of, ’this country will get what’s coming to it.’ It sounded like a threat and it sounded as if it was a bit hateful, but I see it from a different perspective now. I don’t think Americans really thought through exactly what it will mean to have Bush in office for another four years. And if I’m wrong, which I most certainly could be, then we are in a lot worse shape than I thought.

There is so much at stake over the next four years, especially now that the Republicans have even more more power in Congress. I suspect that lines will blur even more with regards to church and state, women’s rights will be trampled under foot, our nation’s debt will spin out of control and environmental policy will be virtually non-existent. All of this leaves me with a feeling of defeat. The thing that gets me the most is the reality that we live in a truly conservative country. The fact that “morality” played such a huge roll in people’s decision-making disgusts me, to say the least. Yet, what was probably the most disappointing aspect that came out of this process was the realization that Democrats have such a hard time uniting under a clear message. Kerry was weak in this area, and it reflected his party. Republicans came together, they had impressive voter turnout and they won.

When I went to bed last night, I hoped that I would not wake up to the news that Bush was re-elected, but I also promised myself that either way I would become more politically active. I will spend more time speaking out, fighting and working for what I believe in. I will cause change and I will have a positive impact.