Kevin Drum has a new law (a la Godwin):
If you’re forced to rely on random blog commenters to make a point about the prevalence of some form or another of disagreeable behavior, you’ve pretty much made exactly the opposite point.
On The Lamont / Lieberman Primary Results
On a private web board I belong to, one of the members said about the Lieberman / Lamont primary results tonight:
“i’m undecided on whether this is a great example of being a sore loser.
surely three viable choices is better than two? question, not a statement.”
It’s an interesting question. But ultimately, I think the answer is yes, this IS a good example of someone being a sore loser.
If an incumbent officeholder is defeated in his/her primary by a challenger, it sends a strong message that the members of that party do not want said person to hold that office anymore. The question then becomes, does that mean the incumbent should not have any opportunity to represent the entire electorate, based on the decision of the members of one party?
Of course not.
But that’s not what’s happening in Connecticut. Lieberman is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He wants the privileges of being an incumbent Democrat, with the attendant seniority and benefits that confers on him, but he also wants the freedom to blow off the will of the members of the Democratic party when it suits him.
That pisses me off.
The way I see it, if you’re a Democrat, then you should accept the judgment of Democratic voters. If you’re not a Democrat, then say so, and accept the consequences (no financial support from the party, no endorsements from high-profile Democrats, no access to other Democrats’ fund-raising lists, etc). But to reject the will of Democratic voters while simultaneously expecting to be treated like any other Democrat is arrogant, gutless, and just plain wrong.
I Need To Think Less
No, really. It might help my blogging.
I wrote three different blog entries in my head today while doing various things, but since I wasn’t in front of my computer at the time, none of them made it onto my blog. And now, as I sit in the living room watching CSPAN and waiting for the Lieberman / Lamont primary results to come in, I can’t really summon the enthusiasm to type out the posts I’d composed in my head.
Choosing and Learning a Photo Editing Application
Apropos of my comments on the last photo I posted, I need to find a good graphics editing application. I already have at least three of them on my hard drive (not including whatever graphics apps came as part of Windows XP or MS Office): Photoshop 7, ImageReady and Picasa. And of those three, none quite meets my needs.
Photoshop, is, of course, the gold standard when it comes to graphics manipulation applications. It can be made to do just about anything, if you know how to do it (and can stand waiting for the program to load — it takes forever, and I have a pretty good system here). And really, that’s the problem. Even after a number of years, I have no clue how to use 80% of what Photoshop has to offer. There are a lot of books and classes out there for Photoshop, so it’s not like I can’t fill in the gap. And I may end up doing that if I can’t find a better alternative. But still, using Photoshop for my personal photo editing feels like I’m using a Formula 1 race car to go buy the groceries. It’s nice to have all that power, but I’d really prefer to have a daily driver for just puttering around town.
I also have Adobe’s ImageReady program. It’s more or less a junior version of Photoshop, with some of the high-powered editing taken out and some new features added to make resizing photos for the Web easier. And you’d think that would be exactly what I was looking for, given my complaints about Photoshop? Well, it is, but it’s not. I hate the selection of filters that come in ImageReady. Adobe left all the cutesy filters — like the ones that will make your image look like a charcoal drawing or a mosaic — and took out the few Photoshop filters I actually knew how to use and liked using. I can crop and resize photos with ease, but editing them is still a hassle.
Finally, I have Picasa. And I don’t like it either. It’s reasonably intuitive to use, and does about 90% of what I need it to as far as photo editing goes, but unfortunately it also doubes as a photo management system. I’ve been keeping photos on my hard drive for a long time. I have a system in place for organizing them, and I really do not need Picasa trying to impose its own methodology onto my system. Even more annoying is the fact that you have to go through a series of steps and export photos into a new folder if you want to actually view the changes you have made to your photos in any application other than Picasa. More than anything else, this is a dealbreaker. It’s a huge pain in the butt. If I open a photo for editing, I want to keep the edits! I don’t want to have to export the editied photo to a new directory to have an edited version of my original photo. Finally, since Google owns Picasa, the interface is geared towards Gmail and Blogger, with no interface at all for Flickr.
On the OSS side of the house, I tried The Gimp on my Mac at work. Meh. It’s powerful but the UI was kind of a pain.
There are probably hundreds of alternative applications out there. Scott has already suggested a couple for me to try, and try them I shall. But I’d like to hear from you, too. What’s your favorite photo editor? If it’s Photoshop, how did you learn to get the most out of it?
Friday Cat Blogging
Tommy grooming Bear as they hang out on top of the office couch. I did a quick pass at cleaning the shot up but I probably need to do a full workup in Photoshop to really bring Bear’s face out.
Unfortunately, I know jack about Photoshop beyond resizing and other basics. Maybe I ought to learn.
2008 Is Not That Far Away
It’s not an issue I’m very vocal about, but I definitely think that the presidential primary system needs some serious reworking. Shakes today has a pointer to some interesting facts on this issue and how the current system may be skewing the results in unexpected ways; it’s definitely worth a read.
I hate it that we have to start thinking about this stuff 2+ years before the next presidential elections, but I suppose we need to.
Oh, and if you’re talking about things that skew the system, you cannot ignore the fact that running for President is a multi-year enterprise costing hundreds of millions of dollars. I’d really love to see public financing of elections, but nobody in power would ever vote for that particular change; it’s too threatening to the status quo.