What about making the recommend window sizeable (or, at least, bigger)?

We already have a bigger recommend window. I've stopped using the older, smaller one.

Keep up the good work.

-janelane

Thanks!

RE: MemeStreams Update: Death to bracket quotes!

IconoclasT wrote:
Just a thought but how about support for IMG tags?

I see a few problems with that. Tell me if you think I'm over reacting.

Most people don't have an image host, and will want one.
Image hosts will have various reliability/performance, resulting slow or unreliable MemeStreams page load times.
Linking images instead of rehosting them is considered impolite. Recently Arianna Huffington linked an image off of redstate on her blog, so they modified it with a nasty message for her about creaming them with traffic.
People may decide to link commercial images. Linked sites will obviously know their images are being used on MemeStreams based on their logs. This may result in a lawyer nastygram.

I think it would be better to host images here. I have a near term plan to do that.

RE: MemeStreams Update: Death to bracket quotes!

] I suspect Naftali would say that the recent thread about
] al Qaeda being a "scene" (more traditionally a
] "movement") is Right On Point. This goes a long way
] toward explaining the challenge.
]
] Suppose I wrote that "liberal democracies like the US are
] incapable of effectively stopping hacking." Would you
] disagree with that?

Jlm is in rare form here.

[[ MemeStreams ]] RE: Timothy Naftali to appear on Fox News

I had originally intended this to make it easy to use MemeStreams as a bookmark management system, but its not particularly well considered. It makes the UI inconsistent, and it shows you all the text of your memes, which isn't particularly helpful. I'm thinking of replacing this with a view of the MemeBox that only shows you links that you sent yourself. I thought I'd post on it to see if that would interfere with how anyone is using the site...

] We all know someone that's intelligent, but who
] occasionally defends obviously
] bad ideas. Why does this happen?

This is not a bad set of observations, but it avoids the fallacy I think is most common.

You're emotionally invested in a particular outcome, and you see the idea at hand as being related to that outcome, and so you are unwilling to sacrifice it because you feel that sacrificing it means sacrificing your ultimate objective.

Why smart people defend bad ideas - scottberkun.com

] Mr. Posadas Carriles is a terrorist who believes he
] fights for Cuban freedom. He is also an old friend of my
] parents.

I've posted several incredulous missives about the fact that the US let this guy and his buddies into the country with little more then a meep when we are supposedly engaged in a war on terror. This perspective perhaps sheds light on another side of the story. Ironically, this comes from a left wing website, but that makes it slightly more believable as its obviously not in the partisan interest of the radical left to promote the idea that Carriles is anything but a monster.

(Its worth clarifying both that DailyKos is not really radical left, and also that there were innocent people who died in that bombing.)

Daily Kos :: Luis Posada Carriles: Cuban Terrorist or Freedom Fighter?

] Yet long before the sentence was handed down many
] concerned Australians had elevated Corby to martyr
] status. But a martyr to what cause? There are 155
] Australians in foreign jails on drugs charges, two facing
] the death penalty.

This take on the Corby verdict is pretty harsh, but is some truth to it.

The drug laws in South East Asia are fucked up. The reason is that militaries in places like Myanmar fund themselves through drug trade in the region, as well as knowledge of the political history of the opium trade. However, those reasons are not reasonable justifications for the laws as they stand. Death sentances for pot are not just.

Austrailia has very liberal attitudes about pot. Its illegal there like is illegal in Holland. You can smell it wafting through the streets in the cities at night. Austrailians like to travel all over South East Asia for business or pleasure. They like to bring their pot with them. This is a bad combination. People end up getting executed.

However, it is absolutely clear that pot smugglers from Austrailia are not funding military juntas in Myanmar, and it is stupid for these countries to hold them to the same legal standard. This individual is a media darling because she is a pretty girl, but the outrage surrounding her is probably outrage that would have been justified for the hundreds of not so pretty Austrailians who've been the victims of this problem.

The Government of Austrailia is likely to negotiate treaties that allow its citizens to be extradicted back home to be tried for crimes committed in other countries. I think this is a good idea and I'd like to see more countries follow suit with this kind of contract.

Corby verdict the inevitable - Editorial - Opinion - smh.com.au

ibenez wrote:
] This is impossible. The Democrats firmly told me Bush was
] destroying the economy. How could this be? Others on this
] website (Memestreams) blame Bush for everything that goes
] wrong - if they were fair minded people I would expect to see
] a post praising Bush for our growing economy..... I mean, if
] you blame his Administration for everything that goes bad
] (Gitmo, Abu Gharib,etc) then you obviously need to give credit
] for everything that goes well right?

I'll bite. The administration is, in fact, responsible for the operation of Gitmo and Abu Gharib. The connect between events at Abu Gharib and Administration policy is weak at best. However, as they run the military they are the most obvious place to complain if there is a problem with how the military is running. They are responsible. Thats their job.

The primary concern about Gitmo is that it is not a pow camp, but existed, until a recent Supreme Court case (which imho Bush largely won, with some limit), in an unprecedented legal black hole in which there literally were no rules or checks and balances. This was intentionally done to avoid geneva convention rules on torture. The administration made the legal policy here. They are responsible for it. Several arguments have been advanced to defend this move, in the Gonzales Memo and the Administration's court filings, and they are all questionable.

1. The administration will eventually release or try these people: In the United States we have checks and balances. We don't blindly trust any division of government to simply do the right thing. We create a process that forces them to. Thats one key difference between a democracy and autocracy.

2. The geneva convention is "quaint:" I agree, but the right way to handle that is to update the standard rather then simply tossing it aside.

3. Terrorists don't follow the geneva convention: Should we be no better then them? The whole point of having things like the Geneva convention is to set an international standard for how soldiers ought to be treated when captured on a battle field. It is wise to uphold good standards even in the face of people who won't. Otherwise, the message you are sending is "do what thou wilt."

4. Other countries will treat our military with respect because of the reality of our actions with respect to treatment of POWs rather then the documented standards that we uphold. While there is some truth to this, other countries don't know how we treat our POW's unless there is a lot of light thrown on the matter. The controversy over Abu Gharib is exactly the reason that this is a bad idea. If you had an established policy for how you treat POWs and people, in general, understand what it is and trust you to uphold it, they are a hell of a lot less likely to be concerned that abuse stories might genuinly reflect how you are operating the prisons rather then just examples of bad ap... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

RE: March GDP revised upward from 3.1% to strong 3.5% / Officials attribute the upgrade mainly to slightly lower imports

] The measure approved Thursday would require store owners
] to determine which games are too violent or sexually
] explicit for anyone under 18. Anyone selling them to a
] minor could be fined.

Brilliant!

This is just golden:

] The sponsor, Sen. Deanna Demuzio, denied the measure
] would interfere with free speech rights.
]
] "Video games are not art or media," she said. "They are
] simulations, not all that different from the simulations
] used by the U.S. military in preparation for war."

But the saddest thing in this entire article is:

] "I'm going to vote for this bill, but I'm voting for it
] for one reason: because this is a political bill,"
] said Sen. Mike Jacobs. "If I vote against it, it will
] show up in a campaign mail piece

Senate OKs Video Game Restrictions

] For a certain segment of the population, Nascar's raid on
] American culture -- its logo festoons everything from
] cellphones to honey jars to post office walls to panties;
] race coverage, it can seem, has bumped everything else
] off television; and, most piercingly, Nascar dads now get
] to pick our presidents -- triggers the kind of fearful
] trembling the citizens of Gaul felt as the Huns came
] thundering over the hills. To these people, stock-car
] racing represents all that's unsavory about red-state
] America: fossil-fuel bingeing; lust for violence; racial
] segregation; run-away Republicanism; anti-intellectualism
] (how much brain matter is required to go fast and turn
] left, ad infinitum?); the corn-pone memes of God and guns
] and guts; crass corporatization; Toby Keith anthems; and,
] of course, exquisitely bad fashion sense. What's more,
] they simply don't get it.

Instapundit asks if you replaced the word "nascar" with the word "hiphop" in this article if it would have run in the Times. I agree, this is garbage journalism. What the hell does nascar have to do with racial segregation? If you ever wondered whether red staters are justified at feeling like blue america is really ugly and ignorant, you need look no further then this.

On the other hand, conservatives have little cause to feel smug or justified. When the "right" gets all ugly and ignorant about hollywood or hiphop they do things like declaring cultural wars and threatening to ban things. No one has ever threatened to ban nascar.

Zell Miller (who is clearly a cultural conservative) said on the Daily Show recently: "I don't think the first amendment applies to hiphop..." Thats not just ignorance. Thats an ignorant threat. The right wing can look for support from me on the day the left tries to ban nascar, at which point they'll find me their commited advocate. Presently, they are the ones making the rules and others are under the sword.

'Sunday Money' and 'Full Throttle': Nascar Nation - New York Times