Watch this.

It’s from the animated film Allegro Non Troppo by Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto.

One could call Allegro a parody of Disney’s Fantasia at first glance, but I see it more as another attempt at doing what Fantasia attempted to do; create beautiful animated works to go along with classical pieces of music.

This section from Allegro is based off the piece Valse Triste (Sad Waltz) from the play Kuolema.

(Just like Fantasia, there are live-action interludes, but I’d argue that Allegro’s interludes are more comedic on purpose, as it seeks to poke fun at Fantasia).

OFFICIAL TIM AND ERIC AWESOME SHOW, GREAT JOB! SEASON CINCO PROMO! “CINCO” from Tim and Eric on Vimeo.

AT&T has obviously been wounded by Verizon’s “Map” commercials.  They’ve been firing back with some speed claims that I’m sure most people didn’t take seriously.

But now there’s some evidence to back up the claim.  PCWorld has released it’s second round of speed test data taken between December 2009 and January 2010 in 13 cities, and the title of the story sums it up: “AT&T Roars Back in PCWorld’s Second 3G Wireless Performance Test.”

They also tested network/smartphone pairs, and AT&T/iPhone was the best performer.  PCWorld had this to say about the Verizon/Droid pair:

Our smartphone-based tests revealed some significant performance limitations of the Verizon network when we connected to it with a Motorola Droid. [...]

Overall, the Droid delivered an average upload speed of just 116 kbps, the lowest average of any carrier/phone combo in our smartphone tests. And in numerous tests using the Droid, we recorded upload speeds of less than 75 kbps–painfully slow if you’re trying to send data of any size up through the network.

We also had trouble establishing a reliable connection between the Verizon network and the Droid during our tests. Verizon delivered an uninterrupted signal at reasonable speed in only 76 percent of our tests–far below the success rates of the 90+ percent that the other three carriers achieved.

Download speeds to the Droid, on the other hand, were quite good, at an average of 1075 kbps; that’s not far from the upper end of the speed range that Verizon promised its customers, and ranks as the second-highest average download speed in our smartphone-based tests–behind only AT&T.

Now I may be an Apple fanboy, but I am definitely not an AT&T fanboy.  Their regular phone service has always been lackluster for me (just try calling me in my kitchen; I dare you), but this bit of news is kind of refreshing to see.

In a previous rant after the Massachusetts special election, I ranted about Scott Brown and how any vote for a Republican at this point is a vote for partisanship and evil etc. etc. To be vein and quote myself:

He is a senator, and is going to disappear to Washington and represent his constituents by voting with his party on every issue.

I have been anxiously awaiting his term so that I could flaunt how right I was. Well, I am here to say that, at least so far in this one instance, Scott Brown has acted in a respectable way by voting with what he feels is right and not just with his party. Nate Silver covers this well in his post, where he defends Brown as an “authentically moderate Republican.”

I still will likely not support Brown on several issues of policy. I am very happy, however, to see someone vote not with their party but with what they feel is right for their state and, hopefully, the country. With the majority of Republicans clearly “Not Embarrassed”, as the Rachel Maddow title says, it is refreshing to see a senator do their job, even if they are not in my party.

This just blew my mind:

I love curling.

No, I’m not joking.  I genuinely love curling.  I think it’s awesome.  But for some reason, whenever I try to tell people how awesome curling is they smile at me waiting for me to say that I’m kidding.

What is it that is so hard for people to believe?

My money’s on the brooms:

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From here:

Google is planning to launch an experiment that we hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. We plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We’ll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

From now until March 26th, we’re asking interested municipalities to provide us with information about their communities through a Request for information (RFI), which we’ll use to determine where to build our network.

You know what would make for a perfect test community?

Hung up on after: 1:06:13

I called Western Digital to request an RMA for a device i got that was defective when I opened it. Their robotic service directed me quickly to a representative who is to help me get my RMA supposedly.

We have not yet even addressed what is wrong with the device. He asked for my name and the serial number on the device. After I gave him my serial number, he told me that he had to put me on hold. It has been about 50 minutes since he put me on hold so I thought I would live blog the action. I wonder how long it is going to take after he comes back and I actually tell him what is wrong with the device. Also, with the information I gave him, what in the world could take him so long? All he should need to do is look up my device, right? I think he went to lunch.

12:49 PM (54:40 call time) – Still on hold.

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I haven’t posted in quite some time about the small garden I planted about a two months ago, so I thought I’d throw up an update.

Things are going pretty well.  My first set of lettuce looks pretty mature, and I’m thinking about harvesting quite a bit of it for some salads tomorrow.  Ditto with the spinach.  I’m not quite sure what to do with the chard, since there’s not really enough to cook, but maybe I’ll throw some into the salad and see how that tastes.

I’ve also started a couple plants for spring/summer inside.  I have a basil plant and a jalapeno plant that are starting very nicely.

Some things I’ve learned:

• I should have planted a whole square at once.  When you’re thinking about how much you’ll have at harvest time, 4 lettuce plants sounds like a lot but it’s really not that much.
• Leafy plants need some extra nitrogen along the way.  I noticed that some of my growth was going a little slow.  Jackie got me a great gardening book for my birthday, and it recommended fish emulsion, which is an organic fertilizer.  My growth has picked up significantly after applying some.
• Loose-leaf lettuce sounds nice, but will never yield as much as head-type lettuce.  I think I will go for some romaine varieties next season.

My compost is also moving along pretty nicely.  The bin is about 2/3 full at this point, and I can actually feel a little bit of heat emanating from the bin when I turn it.  I think sometime around mid-summer I’ll have a full bin of rich black gold.

I’m still pretty excited about my crazy ambition for the summer: corn.  Will it be my bane, or my sweet victory?

We’ll see.

I still hate the Oscars, but fuck yeah.

Delivered.

Intitial first reactions:

• I was surprised at how he captured the audience at the end.  You could hear a pin drop in those last paragraphs.
• I loved the smack down on the Senate:

I know it’s an election year. And after last week, it is clear that campaign fever has come even earlier than usual. But we still need to govern. To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions. So let’s show the American people that we can do it together. This week, I’ll be addressing a meeting of the House Republicans. And I would like to begin monthly meetings with both the Democratic and Republican leadership. I know you can’t wait.

• I loved how he gave credit to the House for passing so many bills. It subtly highlighted how the Senate is responsible for so much gridlock
• I would have liked a more detailed explanation of what is in the health care bill. It seemed like a great opportunity to clear up some confusion.
• I was surprised when the Republicans didn’t stand for a lot of things in this speach. Reducing deficits? Tax cuts? Enforcing immigration laws? Really? You don’t like that?

I’d call it a success.

Now go check out Nate Silver’s list of House Democrats at risk of voting no on the Senate version of the health care bill. If you see your Representative, make a phone call.

Reading liberal blogs these days is a lot like reading advice columns:  Obama shouldn’t have done that.  Obama should do this. I can’t believe Obama did that!  FIGHT, BARACK, FIGHT!!

One thing that I’ve learned about Barack Obama, though, is that he never punches when you want him to.  He sits back, takes punches, amasses criticism, and right when you can’t take it any longer, right at that exact moment when you feel like the whole world is coming down around him…POW!!  He smokes you right in the jaw.

Remember Hillary Clinton?  Jeremiah Wright?  John McCain?  Those health care town hall meetings?

Yeah.

It’s the rope-a-dope writ large.  Let your opponent creep on in, take up all the oxygen, and then right when they think they got you, you hit back and you hit hard.

Bottom line?  Hold your judgment until after the SOTU.  We’ll see where we stand then.

We are going to be featured in the Democrat and Chronicle this Sunday. Here is a “teaser-trailer” for our article. Watch at your own risk. I will be sure to link the article when it comes out on Sunday.

Watch the video here

Nate Silver:

The FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecasting Model, which correctly predicted the outcome of all 35 Senate races in 2008, now regards Republican Scott Brown as a 74 percent favorite to win the Senate seat in Massachusetts on the basis of new polling from ARG, Research 2000 and InsiderAdvantage which show worsening numbers for Brown’s opponent, Martha Coakley.

Andrew Sullivan despairs:

Democrats can stop hoping at this point.

I can see no alternative scenario but a huge – staggeringly huge – victory for the FNC/RNC machine tomorrow. They crafted a strategy of total oppositionism to anything Obama proposed a year ago. Remember they gave him zero votes on even the stimulus in his first weeks. They saw health insurance reform as Obama’s Waterloo, and, thanks in part to the dithering Democrats, they beat him on that hill. They have successfully channeled all the rage at the massive debt and recession the president inherited on Obama after just one year. If they can do that already, against the massive evidence against them, they have the power to wield populism to destroy any attempt by government to address any actual problems.

This is a nihilist moment, built from a nihilist strategy in order to regain power … to do nothing but wage war against enemies at home and abroad.

What comes next will be a real test for Obama. I suspect serious health insurance reform is over for yet another generation.

This is bad.  Real bad.

There’s still a chance that Coakley will win, but it will have to be a perfect storm of response bias and a big GOTV push tomorrow, which at this point seems unlikely.

I hope people in Massachusetts know what they’re doing.