apple juice

given how much this blog was originally about apple stuff, it is funny how little I post about all things Mac these days.

but, I wanted to give a little shout-out to iTunes, which received a major version upgrade last week. i would certainly recommended updating to this version when you have the chance.

the genius feature, while not new with version 9, is easily my favorite new function from the past few versions of iTunes. I think it gets a bad rap as it tends to repeat stuff if your library isn’t that large, and it doesn’t always stay within the same mood.

but on the whole, it makes interesting playlists quickly. i think through some serious manipulation of the smart playlists, you can make some pretty nice “radio-style” playlists… but it’s really not worth the effort when you can click the genius buttton and start listening.

i actually sent in an enhancement request to apple, something I’ve never done before with iTunes. I can’t imagine how much thousands of hours I’ve used iTunes, and this never occurred to me before.

what if you had the option to get “relative dates” when you shrink the last played or date added fields? Then, instead of seeing a whole list of dates and times, you would see last played as “Last month” or “Last week”.

A few months later, I don’t really care about the specific time of day, and I’d just like a quick visual for how long it has been since the last play.

(on a related note, I’ve long felt that instead of simply storing play count and last played date, storing every plays timestamp could lead to some interesting smart playlists, show me things that i’ve listened to 10 times in the past week, for example. as it currently stands, you can only pick things that have, for example, play counts greater than 10, and that the last play is in the last week)

Anyway, upgrade when you get the chance!

“Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wilson’s outburst was ‘totally disrespectful — [there’s] no place for it in that setting or any other and he should apologize immediately.'”

(Via Huffington Post.)

Thank you, John McCain

the republicans reached new lows this evening during the President’s speech:

The most recent Thomas Friedman op-ed is excellent:

The G.O.P. used to be the party of business. Well, to compete and win in a globalized world, no one needs the burden of health insurance shifted from business to government more than American business. No one needs immigration reform — so the world’s best brainpower can come here without restrictions — more than American business. No one needs a push for clean-tech — the world’s next great global manufacturing industry — more than American business. Yet the G.O.P. today resists national health care, immigration reform and wants to just drill, baby, drill.

‘Globalization has neutered the Republican Party, leaving it to represent not the have-nots of the recession but the have-nots of globalized America, the people who have been left behind either in reality or in their fears,’ said Edward Goldberg, a global trade consultant who teaches at Baruch College. ‘The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.’

(Via The New York Times.)

with their myfaces and their spacebooks.

the juice-ette says that perhaps I over-reached a bit with my UnitedHealth — death panels comment.

Maybe so.

I do think it’s preposterous that a private company could theoretically hold in its hands an essential life-saving vaccine and then decide whether or not they were going to offer it to people that have their “health insurance”.

just another reason, in my mind, that health care is a right, not a privilege of the rich, and that decisions such as this should be in the hands of our “by the people, of the people and for the people” government, and NOT some private corporation.

“UnitedHealth Group announced Thursday afternoon that it’s going to cover the administration of H1N1 flu vaccines for all its members, regardless of whether their health plan covers immunizations.”

(Via MinnPost.)

Sounds like there was a death panel meeting at UnitedHealth to determine whether or not people they insure should be allowed to live.