What’s Up With RSS?

I thought RSS would be complicated. Turns out it’s simple. It stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it’s true. So, some three months after starting the blog I finally added the RSS links. Actually, I restored them. Originally, I commented them out, thinking I was going to have to learn XML and figure out what Blogdex was and how to ping a register that alerts everybody there’s a new article. Well, I guess bloggers that are really into their “blogrolls” do all that pinging and blogdexing and whatnot, but it’s certainly not necessary. And it turns out that WordPress automatically creates the XML for the RSS feeds for articles as well as comments.

RSS may become the main way people surf the www before too long. In a way, it’s like bookmarks. But, instead of opening up the web page, the RSS aggregator shows a list of, say, the 10 most recent items on a web page or site, with a short summary or sometimes the first sentence or two. If it looks interesting you can click the title and get the whole thing in your browser. In other words, it’s a quick way to scan what’s new and pick what’s of interest. Check out dozens of websites without actually having to visit and browse through them. It’s especially useful for news websites, financial websites and, of course, blogs.

I’m still new to it. The aggregator I use is a free extension to Mozilla Firefox, called Sage. By the way, everybody should use Firefox; although, as I was paying credit cards online earlier today one of the websites wouldn’t work with Firefox. This is pretty rare. I mostly only use IE when I want to open myself up to risky surfing. There are many available aggregators, some free, some cost, some standalone, some browser add-ons. If anybody has a list of websites they regularly check, I recommend checking out RSS. If anybody has a list of blogs they regularly check, it’s the only way to go.

New Lows

Now that it’s officially summer we’ve been having record low temperatures for several days. I think they’re talking about it finally getting into the 80’s later in the week. Let’s see, yeah, should be able to arrange for stupid hot by around July 9. Heh-heh!

Listening to my favorite radio station on the way to work the other day. The hosts are some guy and girl and they talk sex a lot. The guy has no hesitation, for example, describing in detail what sort of nipples he likes. :nuts:

Anyhow, they were talking about some performer and he referred to her as stupid hot. And then I realized that in today’s lingo, apparently, “stupid” means “extremely”. So I finally understood “stupid hot” as applied to Kansas weather. Y’know, even when you’re inherently hip, it’s difficult for old folks to keep up with everything!

p>. :propeller:

A Good Cappuccino and Other Thoughts

Becky had to work all weekend. Both days. It’s inventory time at the KU Bookstores. She’s exhausted. Nevertheless, she found the energy to buy me a cappuccino maker after work today. She had wanted to get me one for Father’s Day, but didn’t get around to it. I thought my Father’s Day was plenty satisfactory with calls from the kids and new shirts and ties. Anyhow, with some trepidation I fired up the machine after supper and made a terrific “cap” first try! I was amazed. I mean, we’re talking Mr. Coffee and a two month old bag of ground Starbucks decaf house blend.

Sunday night after work we went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I’d say there were maybe 80 people there. I actually enjoyed myself. Naturally, despite the nearly deserted theater, long legged people decided to sit directly behind me. But, surprise of surprises, they managed to only kick my seat about a half dozen times. I didn’t even have to take any xanax!

Years ago I was already concerned about the loss of liberties in this country. I think I was still a prosecutor when the government came up with this neat idea about using property forfeiture in drug cases. On the one hand, who could argue against depriving drug traffickers of the yachts, fast cars and mansions purchased with dirty money? On the other hand, these laws permit the government to take your property away from you even if you’re found not guilty of any drug crimes. You see, in property forfeiture proceedings, that little technicality called “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” does not apply. All they need to do is convince a judge that some item of property was more likely than not used for something associated with illegal drugs. Better yet, it doesn’t even matter whether the owner knew about it. Anyway, as I said, it was several years ago I began to wonder if it was time to flee the country. Then came September 11 and the Patriot Act. This enabled the government to pick you up and detain you indefinitely with no right to counsel or open court, and without ever filing charges. I found this pretty amazing. Of course, we all know that our law enforcement officials wouldn’t do such a thing without darn good reasons. As we all know, truly innocent people don’t get arrested. Even if they’re not guilty of what the police nabbed them for, they’re probably guilty of something else. Yeah. And now we have the Bybee Memo that’s at least getting a certain amount of press coverage. Canada, anyone? It doesn’t look to me like there’s any chance in hell any of this will get rolled back. I was thinking the other day about the things “they” used to tell us about life in the Communist Soviet Union. It seems to me we’re getting a chance to experience it first hand. Except for one thing. When Dubya looks you in the eye and says, “Sure, I could do that stuff but, trust me, I wouldn’t”, well, gosh, you just gotta believe him, don’t you? :no:

Okay, so I’ve been looking at some other blogs and noticing that some people actually talk about socially relevant stuff.

Honestly, it was really good! The milk frothed up and everything!

p>. :jesors1: