So I started using LiveSearch last year due to the awesome background pictures that they put up every day. As I use it though, i’m pleasantly surprised by what I get back.

Today’s example: “Calories in a cherry”

Bing’s response:

and Google’s:

In this case, Bing’s response was better as it gave me the answer I was looking for right off the bat, not just pages to go through. The pages listed for both result sets do look like they’d have the right answer though.

I always wondered about the phrasing JFK used and why I heard it as “We choose to go to the moon and disdicate and do the other thing”…

Happily, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum has the audio and transcript.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

This is a great speech and I need to read Bush 43′s speech about going to Mars but doubt it will compare.

After Pandora announced that they will be charging 99 cents for users listening to more than 40 hours/month and a running into a review of Spotify’s streaming service in Slate, I had some thoughts on the “freemium” business model and paying for service and time savings.

Happily, I also ran into this essay instead of having to write it all down myself!

Let’s go back to the donut analogy. Many opponents of the economy of free say: if you give donuts for free, and the guy next to you tries to sell them at any price, he will inevitably lose because no one will buy them. But this criticism doesn’t take into account the number of steps required to retrieve the donut (which is a very important part of every online experience.) So, the real analogy would be this: if you offer donuts for free, but anyone who wants them has to run three circles around the nearby building to get one, many people will simply pay, for example, $1 for the donut if it means they can just take it immediately.

via You Think ‘Free’ is About the Price? It’s not..

As tax season comes upon us, and my head starts to hurt from thinking about the tax implications of “married – filing jointly” and “married – filing separately” as well as the estimated taxes that self employed folks need to file and the impact of being self-employed for only part of the year, the question begs to be asked:

If the United States Secretary of the Treasury, the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services and the nominee for Chief Performance Officer work in the government and can’t get their taxes right, how in the world and I supposed to?

Dear members of the press,

I’ll get right to the point: Can you please stop telling me what Sarah Palin has to say? She isn’t making news, she’s just babbling and you’re enabling her by passing it on to me, the daily news watcher!

There are a great deal of very important things going on in the country and the world and Sarah Palin is not one of them.

Thanks,

J. Abad

At first, i read the headline Gu Gu strikes again! Panda attacks zoo visitor and thought “Gee, they should probably secure Gu Gu a little better…” but then I read the story and apparently, the guy climbed into the habitat in order to retrieve a toy that his son dropped. Same with the guy who was previously attacked by the bear! Climbed in for some stupid reason.

I’m sorry, but what do they put in the water there that these guys think “oh, i’ll just climb into this wild bear enclosure and i’ll be ok!”

I’m kind of amused that the first guy fought back by biting the panda’s back. Like that’s not going to piss it off even more!

So it appears that I’ve stumbled onto a workable flow for my internet findings, just in time for the holidays!

1. Read many feeds in Feeddemon, use its “Share” feature to generate an RSS feed.
2. Open up that feed with Google Reader, in order to use its “Share with Notes” feature and add commentary or rewrite the items, then generate a different RSS feed.
3. Use the FeedWordPress plugin to read the gReader feed and post it to my blog. The plugin automagically checks the feed, then assigns categories to the posts as publishes into WordPress.

The FeedWordPress plugin gives the option to put the new posts in draft state instead of publishing them right away, so I may decide that the Google Reader step is too much and just do the final editing and publishing from the WordPress interface as the Google Reader notes is kind of limiting.

The double standard from the republican party talking heads is quite awesome to see side by side, thankfully, The DS did the hard work for us. To quote Jon Stewart, "I think I’ve got some clips you should see!"

I’m always curious, do these people believe this crap that they’re saying? Are people swayed? Does someone really take Karl Rove or O’Reilly’s ramblings and accept them as fact without looking things up at Factcheck, Politifact or even their local library?

Oh well, here as your moment of zen, a dramatic reenactment of the phone call where McCain asked Palin to be his running mate.

Wow, so this weekend has been amazingly hilarious in my goal to watch politics and be generally amused.

Palin is an odd choice in my opinion and I think that the shock has gotten everyone to take notice and ask lots of questions. The RNC line is that she has a lot of experience and that this kind of questioning wouldn’t be happening if the nominee was a man but the simple truth is that the questions are coming because she is an unknown quantity on the national level, not because she’s Tina Fey’s older sister from Fargo.

That said, I agree with comments that the Palin nomination has woken up the so-called-mainstream media and gotten them to try to get grounded answers to real questions.

Here is an excerpt from Dave Winer’s post on the subject:

The first sign things were crumbling was an interview Monday on CNN with McCain aide Tucker Bounds and reporter Campbell Brown who asked Bounds what international experience Palin has. He kept trying to change the subject to Obama, which I’ve seen work with these reporters for years. It’s a very typical Republican tactic.

As a result, McCain pulled out of Larry King that night, but CNN stood its ground.

Then Wolf Blitzer of all people pressed Rudy Giuiani on the same subject and wouldn’t let up. Rudy is the best skater out there, but Wolf cornered him. Lovin it!!

I just saw former Republican governor of NY George Pataki try to bullshit Nora O’Donnell on MSNBC and she (smiling all the way) wasn’t having any of it.

I don’t know what happened to give these reporters a backbone, finally — but whatever it is — don’t let it go! This is how you do it. Let’s push these guys until they start talking sense. Let’s get our national conversation grounded, at least a little, in reality.

The CNN interview of Tucker Bounds by Campbell Brown really is something to see though because she’s tenacious and all she wants to know is one example of a decision she’s had to make with/for the Alaska National Guard that counts as "foreign policy experience".

In case you were curious, like me, Major General Campbell of the Alaska National Guard did answer such a question to the AP:

"But, in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, he said he and Palin play no role in national defense activities, even when they involve the Alaska National Guard. The entire operation is under federal control, and the governor is not briefed on situations."

Finally, some political information type links:

• ObamaTaxCut.com: This calculator will estimate the impact of an Obama tax plan on your return. The McCain/RNC line is that Obama will raise your taxes, while in reality, the Tax Policy Center has determined that Obama will cut taxes for 95% for Americans.
• ScienceDebate 2008 has sent a 14 question survey to Obama and McCain in order to get their thinking on topics ranging from innovation, education, genetic research, ocean health, scientific integrity and basic research. Obama’s answers have been posted and they are awaiting for McCain’s response.
• Finally, for William and without comment: John McCain is a Cylon.

This may just have to be a new feature… when I can find good ones that is.

Governor Paterson from New York state gets the burn of the day with this remark:

“If [McCain is] the answer, then the question must be ridiculous.”

Oh Snap!

Via Time’s The Page