R.I.P. Melodie Wilson

I remember occasionally seeing Melodie Wilson back in the mid 1980s, when my family moved to the Milwaukee area, and I was still a wee little thing. I’m not sure if I remember her from being on TV, or a billboard, but either way, I do remember her from back then. (But not after that, as my family moved away from here in the late 80s.)

I have a hunch that if we had stayed in the area, Ms. Wilson might have gotten to know my mom, who devoted the later years of her life to fighting breast cancer. She was in a great position to do that from, at least once we moved back to Wisconsin. Though she did a lot of good work on the ground that helps women’s health, she’s best known in some circles for successfully treating former Wisconsin First Lady Sue Ann Thompson.

Anyhow. Ms. Wilson’s obituary is over here.

Capper gets love from Sykes

Aww, he really likes you, Capper!

What’s really amusing is to read the comments. They’re all from people that have never met Chris or have a clue what he’s actually about. But when something is chanelled through the filters of the hard right, especially the champion of women rights that is Charlie Sykes, it takes on whole new meanings in the eyes of the audience. Never mind that they’re wholly ficticious.

Thanks, Charlie. We appreciate the attention.

Capper: Look at illy t’s blog. See how he has those words in script just below the logo? (Currently, “Stimulating.”) You should put “Pure Liberal Hate” on your blog, just like that. You earned it!

Welcome back, Tarik!

Tarik (aka The Architect) has been a mainstay at Radio Milwaukee for much of the station’s history. For the past year or so, he had been deployed to Iraq with the Army Reserve. But, while coming home from Transfer tonight, I heard a familiar voice on 88.9, and practically shouted to myself, “Is that Tarik?!”

Sure enough, it is! The man is back, and he sounds really glad to be back from Iraq and spinning good music once again. It’s great to hear him on the air again.

Welcome back, Tarik!

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell

Here in America, we’ve sometimes been insulated by the walls of oceans and distance, and our strong military. When the U.S. became a true world power after World War II, the Cold War was a symbol of the way that security and separation was changing, especially with the U.S and U.S.S.R. having ICBMs capable of delivering nuclear payloads across the seas.

The Berlin Wall was perhaps the greatest symbol of the division of the Cold War. Many people probably don’t know why it was created. This paragraph tells an important part of why the Berlin Wall was created:

“East Germans, stirred by the [current] crisis, fled to West Berlin in increasing numbers… (All told it has been estimated that between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million East Germans had fled from East to West).  The stead loss of skilled workers, professionals and intellectuals threatened to destroy the economic viability of the East German state. Suddenly, on the night of 12-13 August 1961, the Soviets began to erect a wall (the Berliner Mauer) between the east and west sectors of Berlin, forcibly sealing off the inhabitants of East Germany.”

The U.S. government had a slightly more nuanced take on it:

“On August 13, [1961] East German authorities put into effect several measures regulating movement at the boundary of the western sectors and the Soviet sector of the city of Berlin. These measures have the effect of limiting, to a degree approaching complete prohibition, passage from the Soviet sector to the western sectors of the city. These measures were accompanied by the closing of the sector boundary by a sizable deployment of police forces and by military detachments brought into Berlin for this purpose.”

– United States Note To The USSR On Berlin, August 17, 1961

So it was now twenty years ago that the Wall fell. My mother and I were visiting family in Kansas City at the time, and I remember watching in amazement as people on either side of the wall climbed atop it and saw for the first time what was on the other side. That the police state of East Germany was doing nothing to stop it from happening seemed even more amazing. It was a sign that something huge had changed within the Warsaw Pact states, a sign that the Cold War was coming to an end.

The “Wall Stories” page from the American Overseas Schools Historical Society provides personal accounts of life around the wall and the impact of its fall. I particularly liked Joe Vandervest’s story about the reciprocal watching of border guards by binoculars:

“It was 1972. Armed with my dad’s binoculars I humped through the woods behind the army apts. in Dueppel. The woods gave way to a small clearing and then the wall. One of those observation platforms was there – not too far away from the guard tower. We kids used to play army (US vs. Soviets) in those woods and we knew our way around pretty well. We’d frequently go to the wall and peer over.

Anyway – so there I was on the tower. Already under observation from the guard tower. You know – you did it too – your binocs looking up at them, they looking back at you across the no man’s land of death.

So I’m peering up. The vopo and the russian were peering back at me through their binocs. We looked at each other for a bit and I flashed a peace sign up at them. (Hey – it was the 70’s!). What amazed me was first how they just looked back – expressionless. then the fun part..

The vopo got bored and looked away, putting his binocs down around his neck. The russian (amazing how military kids learn to tell uniforms)…kept watching. then he looked away to check on the vopo – and on the side of his body away from the vopo – he very quickly flashed a peace sign back at me.

As a young person, that was one of those human moments when I started to realize – hey – people are just like us…..it was a bold and risky thing for the soldier to do…but he totally made my day and gave me a memory to last a life time….

“Affordable Health Care for America Act” passed House of Reps

Historic? Maybe, but without the Senate passing something, it’s not much.

Of course it is more than any Congress or presidential administration in recent history has accomplished.

What’s it say? What’s it allow or create? What’s it undo or disallow? I have no idea! But it’s almost historic!

MacHeist nanoBundle makes great Mac software available for free

Mac users may be familiar with the great deals that have come from MacHeist. In this day of great software becoming available at insanely great prices, ranging from $0.00 to $40, rather than $400 to $1,000, the folks at MacHeist had the breakthrough idea of bundling a big bunch of great Mac titles, and making them all available at a greatly discounted price. Even me, the once and future free software advocate, has bought into that. And why not? You get as many as ten great programs for a small fraction of the price it would cost you to buy each one individually. Which you probably wouldn’t do anyway.

But now MacHeist has topped themselves. They’ve got six quality Mac titles, all available for free. (That’s free as in beer, not speech.) Five of the six titles are unlocked: ShoveBox (list $25), WriteRoom (list $25 — and I like this one!), Twitterific (list $15), TinyGrab (list $14) and Hordes of Orcs (list $25). The last, Mariner Write word processor, will be unlocked when they reach 500,000 registrants.

So if you’ve got a Mac running OS X, go for it! It’s a great way to get good software for cheap. What’s better than that?

Joe Stern: Wisconsin’s own Doug Hoffman?

Joe Stern, the former mayor of Niagara, Wisconsin announced on Monday that he is running for the Eighth Congressional District seat that is currently held by two-term incumbent Steve Kagen (D). Mr. Stern will be running as a “conservative independent” (same thing as an independent conservative?), and will be challenging both Rep. Kagen and which ever Republican enters the race. WildRiversNews.com has the story.

While I would hope the token Republican challenger is not going to be John Gard, who’s already lost to Kagen twice, it would be rather amusing to see him try again only to have his voters get scozzafavaed by Stern.

Niagara is very likely a lovely town in the northeast corner of Wisconsin. Surveying the area on Google Maps, we see that it is right on the Wisconsin-Michigan border, and located near the Spread Eagle Barrens State Natural Area. That area actually sounds like a pretty good place to visit. It’s also near the Ford Airport, all of which could make for a great reason to have a friend fly us up there some time. (Cuz we have the time…)

(h/t TPM.)

Quick with the Urban Dictionary!

Being “scozzafavaed” has been added to the Urban Dictionary.

Fort Hood

My heart goes out to everyone who was affected by the shootings at Fort Hood today.

Steve Jobs named “CEO of the Decade” by Fortune

Major magazines still convey a fair bit of weight, so Fortune Magazine naming Jobs as CEO of the Decade is significant. And warranted. Back in 1989, I read the book “West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer” by Frank Rose. It told the story of how Apple Computer, Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs inspired teams of people at Apple to create their “insanely great” products in the 80s, only to be kicked out of the company in 1985.

In 1992, I asked my friend asked Gary Davis of the Madison Macintosh Users Group, “Do you think Steve Jobs will ever come back?”

Five years later, Jobs was back, and transformed Apple and the computer industry. And the movie business. And the music business. And the telecom business.

With that in mind, I find the photo gallery of rare photos of Jobs quite interesting. The last picture is classic Jobs. I read about his poised-finger pose in “West of Eden” — and there it was again!