Today's Cultural Warfare Update

* Today's primary Focus on the Family broadcast is about "judicial tyranny" again, but it's a good one - theme: the Supreme Court is destroying the country, not only must Senate rules be changed, but a Federal amendment is needed to change the balance of power; you not only get to hear them rail against Lawrence v. Texas and Roe v. Wade and Marlbury v. Madison (1803), but for bonus points: Griswald v. Connecticut, which legalised birth control in all states! Includes action items;

* Second FotF article about Levin and changing the Federal balance of powers via Constitutional amendment;

* Today's Family News in Focus;

* Attempt to file a formal Federal complaint against Judge Greer of Florida - by some random-ass businessman from Texas. Good luck getting standing to proceed there;

* Washington Post article on the drive to impeach Justice Kennedy of the US Supreme Court;

* St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on the filibuster/court-rebuilding/impeachment efforts building up;

* Families Northwest, an anti-marriage-rights group who also complains about "No-Fault Divorce experiment," has a fundraising drive going - someone gave them $150,000 in matching funds, too, so they've got some cash to slosh around.

( Article excerpts and transcriptions )

New parrot games

Okay, so, when I clean the front of the cage with a wet paper towel while she's still inside, she leaps at the towel and attacks it through the bars.

A new game is for me to wait until she's grabbed it, and then whip the towel over to the left really fast, while she's bit down really hard. This results in Instant Parrot Reorientation (tm), or, a cranky bird rotated 60 degrees to the left. (Or right, depending.)

She has no idea what has just happened. It's like teleportation.

Personally, I love this game. I'm not so sure about Zoe.

In other news, yesterday's birthday l00t roxx0red. Yay, l00t! ^_^ We watched Interstella 5555 last night, and tonight I'll play with my new iMic. Plus, soon: Squirrel-Go-Round! Yay! ^_^

( Quizzie! )

iMic: it so wonky! but...

Interesting issue one: the digital pre-preamp on the toy is very noisy. Do not use. That's okay, because i don't have to use it.

Interesting issue two: I already know I'm RF-active; I affect analogue radio receivers and some small electronics. It's occasionally annoying. It's less of a problem with digital receivers, so doesn't come up often. But I'm apparently also RF-active enough that I can be picked up by said digital pre-preamp.

It would be nice if I could faraday cage myself.

Interesting issue three: The editing software suffers badly from the "if you don't use it the way we use it, random things happen, because we have no test team" problem. However, it is possible to use it the way they use it; then it works. If you don't, then you may find slices of music moved around at random, and you may find yourself completely unable to remove the first part of a sample segment because they didn't think of that and it doesn't work, or they did, and it's a selection bug that was too hard to fix. Also, the waveform display may vanish completely. It's hard to say!

Still, it seems to have worked. So that's cool! Now I can make digital noises out of analogue sources. This is Good.

(Self ref: master db+10, standard input (no RIAA override), "Dual 1228" eq. scheme.)