Now that the weather has turned colder and the Christmas lights are hung, my mind is wandering to some real bar-b-que ribs. It’s a royal pain to haul out my Black Diamond smoker for just one rack – and tending the fire is no fun when you can’t sit outside and pay attention to it for five or six hours. So I’m looking for something that will hold it’s own temperature better than the Black Diamond.

I know that in my bar-b-que core dump post I said that grills could work in a pinch to make real bar-b-que, but they wouldn’t work as well as a dedicated smoker. Well, I’m making an exception for my grill because it is able to both hold a low temperature and generate enough smoke to do a passable job as a smoker.

Back in early 2008 I bought a new grill. A Char-Broil RED four-burner grill. One of the things I like about this grill is its ability to hold a wide temperature range. When heated on high the grates will get to almost 800°F and can sear a steak as well as any restaurant. But it can also hold a low temperature, down to 225°F which is right in the range needed for bar-b-que. The grill also has a unique design that allows the addition of wood chips so real smoke can be added to the food and no silly smoker boxes or foil pouches are needed like on other grills.

So, here’s what I do for making ribs on my grill. [NOTE: I originally posted this on my favorite message board for bar-b-que and grilling: the BBQ-source board.]

Lessons Learned:

1. The In-hood Thermometer is pretty accurate — I added my remote grill thermometer on several occasions and they seem to agree. (Note that I cook the ribs on an ELEVATED rack so this is probably not true if you cook at grill level.)
2. Extra thermal mass is a huge help in controlling the temperature. I built my elevated rack using 4 6″x6″ concrete pavers and that reduced temperature fluctuations significantly.
3. Temperature control requires a combination of burners (the two outside burners in my case) and venting of the hood.
4. Raising the ribs is critical to get them into the smoke, but even so, the grill isn’t sealed well, so more smoke may be required than in a dedicated smoker.

Method:
I typically use a variation of the 3-2-1 method where ribs are smoked for 3 hours in the open, followed by 2 hours wrapped in foil to tenderize them, followed by 1 hour in the open again to finish them. All of this is done at 225 degrees. This method results in extremely tender ribs; too tender for many people, including me. So I adjust the timing to a 3-1-.5 method.

I start with a dry rub, roughly 3 parts brown sugar, 2 parts salt, 1 part paprika, and 1 part a mixture of various things including garlic powder, onion powder, and other spices. I usually let this set on the ribs for several hours to overnight. For this smoke I used an 8 lb rack of St. Louis cut ribs that the local supermarket had on sale. I removed the membrane from the back.

I set up the grill by stacking the middle 2 grates on top of the outside grates. On this I set 4 concrete pavers (6″ x 6″), 2 on each side. I placed an old leftover rack from an old grill on top of the two paver stacks. I also added small aluminum drip pans under the grate. See the picture below:

My Grill Setup and the Finished Product

I would have wrapped them in foil, but I was running low and I wanted to leave enough to wrap the ribs. So I put a small square of clean foil between the pavers and the rack (you can’t see it in this pic taken after the whole process was done and I had disturbed everything.)

I let the whole system heat up and found that I could hold 225 degrees by using the 2 outside burners on their lowest setting and propping the hood open about 2 inches.

I followed the 3-2-1 method and the results are delicious. And the best part is that I don’t have to tend the fire every 30 minutes. Here’s a close-up of the finished product.

Finished Ribs

OK you say. I don’t feel like cranking my Whirly Pop and making your ultimate popcorn, and I sure as hell won’t buy a big monstrosity of a theater style popcorn popper that you say is hard to clean. All I want is some quick popcorn so I can watch a movie … can’t I just make some in the microwave?

Image from Wikimedia Commons, courtesy: Fir0002 / flagstaffotos.com.au. Provided under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 (click image for details)

The answer is YES! And you don’t have to buy that crap with the goopy yellow faux-butter sludge in the bag either. There’s a way to make your own! (Popcorn … not goopy yellow faux-butter sludge.) I’ll credit Alton Brown for developing the basics of this recipe and assuring the world that our microwaves won’t catch on fire. Here’s what you need:

• 1/4 cup popcorn
• 2 -3 Tablespoons oil (canola, peanut, corn, etc.; Alton Brown uses olive oil, but that has a really strong flavor)
• 3/4 teaspoon popcorn salt (I use flava-col)
• Melted butter (optional)
• Brown paper lunch bag
• Stapler

And here’s what you do:

1. Dump popcorn, oil, salt in brown paper bag. Give it a quick shake.
2. Fold over about 1/2 inch of the bag and staple closed with one or two staples (no, they won’t spark in the microwave)
3. Put in the microwave for three to three and a half minutes (or use the built-in popcorn setting like I do)
4. When done, remove, butter (if you wish), and serve

It really doesn’t get easier than that.

In the 2005-2006 season the National Hockey League introduced the shootout as a way of ending regular season games tied at the end of regulation play.

And it’s ruining the game.

During the 2005-2006 season the NHL was recovering from the player lockout and a jaded fan base that wasn’t coming back to the arenas. So among other changes to the rules, the NHL instituted the shootout hoping that the “excitement” of the one-on-one competition would bring fans back to the game. Many fans however, believe that they made the change as they were shopping for a TV partner knowing that the shootout would help add excitement while putting a definite time bound on the end of the game. It didn’t help and the NHL ended up with Versus as a TV partner.

At any rate, the shootout is a travesty. At it’s best, hockey is a team sport, not an individual competition. To decide a game played for 65 minutes by two teams with an individual competition is simply disgusting. And a one-on-one faux-breakaway is ridiculous. A real breakaway might be exciting, but not an artificial one where a guy standing at center ice skates towards the goalie down a specially zambonied “runway” to take a single shot on a prepared goalie who need only make one save with no concern for the rebound.

A real breakaway is exciting because it happens so rarely. And because it’s unpredictable – will the defense catch up? Will the offense pick up a rebound and score? Or, as so often happens, will the breaking team over-commit and will the defending team break back the other way? During a real breakaway, the team aspect of hockey is important, because the goalie can’t concentrate 100% on the breaking player. He must remain aware of other trailing players and the possibilities of a pass. This is what gives a real fan heart palpitations. Not a bogus breakaway with no chance of something going wrong. Hell, a good odd-man rush is more exciting.

In fact, the NHL has recently tried to increase the goal scoring in hopes of adding excitement. But the shootout isn’t even providing scoring. According to the NHL’s own stats, the percentage of shootout attempts resulting in a goal averages between 31.5% and 33.7% since the 2005-2006 season. One out of three attempts resulting in a goal is hardly exciting in my book.

Nope, the shootout is a sham. It’s an insult to the game. And I hate it.

If the NHL is serious about continuing this perversion of the game, then here’s a suggestion to at least add some excitement to this mess and change up the skills required.

Hold a mini skills competition to break a tie.

Seriously. If the game remains tied at the end of the current five minute overtime, the referee should hold a little ceremony where he rolls a single die or spins a wheel to pick the skill to decide the game (or maybe the captains can play rock, paper, scissors to decide – it’s already a farce, why not go all out). The results of the draw pick one of the standard skills from the All-Star Superskills competition, or perhaps dictate sudden death overtime until a winner is chosen. Here are the options:

1. One-on-one shootout.
2. Shooting accuracy.
3. Fastest skater.
4. Hardest shot.
5. Relay race.
6. Sudden-death overtime.

At least it would allow different players from the teams to participate depending on the skill chosen.

Or, they could go back to an overtime period and if that doesn’t solve it – leave it a tie. What the hell is wrong with a tie anyway? The argument against simply having an overtime period is that the teams concluded that competing for the extra point awarded for an overtime win wasn’t worth the risk of letting the other team get the point, so both teams played a defensive game and a tie was rarely broken. But a shootout is a horrible way of fixing that problem. A better suggestion: use the game stats to determine the winner like a decision in boxing. For example, the league could reward the team with the most shots in the game with the extra point. At least that would encourage teams to play a more offensive game during regulation.

But please NHL, please get rid of the shootout.

One of the new ideas for hoovering money from my pockets that cash-starved governments are floating around is to tax soda and other sugary beverages (see this, this, or this for a sampling). Politicians are of course going out of their way to explain how this would be for my own good.This is normal when either a politician’s unending lust for my money is taking hold or they want to take away some of my rights. Whenever either of these is proposed, I can be sure that one of two reasons will be thrown out:

1. “It’s for your own good.”
2. “It’s for the children.”

That these are devoid of any real meaning and usually the final fallback argument of someone who has no real evidence or logic with which to work is besides the point. (Bonus points to Derrick Z. Jackson in the Boston Globe editorial [first link above] for working in both arguments. I especially loved the line, “This is now a wanton attack on the health of children” referring on Coke’s plans to grow sales.)

One argument for a soda tax is that the American obesity epidemic is in large part due to the consumption of soda. That’s bullshit. It’s based on the false correlation that soda consumption (per capita) has increased over the last 20 years and so has obesity. But correlation doesn’t imply causation, and even if it did, in this case, the data simply don’t support the argument.

In fact, based on industry consumption data [see second graph on page], and with billions of dollars at stake the beverage industry has much more incentive to get these trends right than public health agencies, carbonated soda consumption peaked in America in 1998 and has been declining for the last four years as bottled water eats into its market share. Yet obesity continues to rise.

Since the “increasing soda consumption causes people to get fat” argument doesn’t hold, people have started to go after the components of soda. It must be the high fructose corn syrup they argue. And I think they may be on to something – but not for the reasons they are proposing. High fructose corn syrup isn’t some magic fat juice. It’s a refined sugar that really isn’t that different from any other refined sugar. [Note: in the interest of disclosure, I found many of the following links on the High Fructose Corn Syrup trade association page at www.sweetsuprise.com, but that doesn't change the trustworthiness of the information. From what I can tell none of the cited research was in any way commissioned or funded by the corn syrup group.]

As registered dietician Becky Hand writes in a SparkPeople article (and she cites a bunch of sources as well):

Well, the body digests table sugar very rapidly. And both HFCS and table sugar (sucrose) enter the bloodstream as glucose and fructose—the metabolism of which is identical. There is no significant difference in the overall rate of absorption between table sugar and HFCS, which explains why these two sweeteners have the same effects on the body.

Want more? OK. The American Medical Association said in 2008:

After studying current research, the American Medical Association (AMA) today concluded that high fructose syrup does not appear to contribute more to obesity than other caloric sweeteners, but called for further independent research to be done on the health effects of high fructose syrup and other sweeteners.

And this cuts to the heart of the problem. High Fructose Corn Syrup isn’t more of a problem than other sugars. It’s the total consumption of sugar that is the issue. Americans eat too much. That’s why we’re fat.

And this is what really set me off on this debate. What really pisses me off is that Americans eat too much High Fructose Corn Syrup and too much fatty meat because the Government manipulates the market to make these things artificially cheap due to terrible import tariffs and ridiculous farm subsidies.

In their documentary film King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis graduate college and move to rural Iowa to grow an acre of corn. With no experience and no real knowledge they immediately qualify for $28 in Government subsidies for that acre. Startled by the implications of this they go exploring the large-scale food production chain in the US and see firsthand how the outrageous subsidies (ranging between $1.8 billion and $9.4 billion a year for corn alone; see this site for a breakdown through 2006) cause a glut of ultra-cheap corn on the US market and further subsidize the production of cheap beef and chicken and soda and a host of other processed and manufactured foods.

So on one hand the Government is taking my money to make cheap High Fructose Corn Syrup via farm subsidies and then on the other hand they’re telling me they have to tax my High Fructose Corn Syrup sweetened beverage because it’s bad for me. Talk about pissing on my head and then telling me it’s raining. How about they just stop paying giant factory corn farms billions of dollars a year and leave me alone. Take the $5 billion a year you’re doling out to corn farmers and put it towards health care. There — a budget neutral funding source.

Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote a great piece about this in early October. In it she concludes,

Rather than abolish corn subsidies and using that money to fund healthcare reform, Congress prefers to work at cross purposes with itself. The culture of logrolling (cob-rolling?) dictates that the farm-state senators get their subsidies and healthcare reformers get their tax. That way, everybody wins. Well, everybody except taxpayers, who get screwed coming and going.

She also wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post where she dispels five myths about soda taxes. It’s great stuff.

So that’s the real purpose of this rant and the thing that pisses me off the most. Many people I talk to have latched onto the idea that soda must be bad for you and that a “sin tax” on soda must be a good thing to protect the children and the fat people from themselves. But few have paid any attention at all to the farm policies that are the underlying cause. Double-taxing Americans on High Fructose Corn Syrup (once to subsidize the corn and artificially decrease the price, then again by taxing my soda to increase the price) isn’t the answer. Fixing the chronically broken farm policy in this country is.

And before people start writing nasty comments about how I must hate farmers, and how I must want them to be poor, I don’t. I grew up in a rural area of Pennsylvania and I knew a bunch of real family farmers. And most of them were broker than shit living in poverty. Why? Because the kind of small acreage farming done in Northeast Pennsylvania can’t compete with the highly subsidized thousand acre factory farms that can ship their cheap product into every regional market in the US. So, unable to compete on price with corn grown thousands of miles away most of the farmers I knew turned to small dairy operations which aren’t nearly as subsidized as corn farming is. And that’s yet another tragedy of our current farm policy. The subsidies have so distorted the market that only large, consolidated operations can thrive and the family farm has been destroyed along the way. One more in a long string of reasons to fix the farm policy.

In my seemingly never-ending quest to speed up this WordPress installation, I’ve killed another plugin; the post ratings plugin I had been using. In its place I’ve added a new one from a company called Outbrain. How does changing one plugin for another make the blog faster? Well, the Outbrain plugin keeps data on the Outbrain servers rather than keeping it locally. So much of the processing power is offloaded to Outbrain. In addition, the plugin code has been written to interfere with the site as little as possible. So I hope this will accomplish two goals — speed up the site and keep a mechanism for people to tell me what they like.

And no … I didn’t do this just because someone gave my Rudy Giuliani post 1 star.

Using BrowserMob

If you’ve ever run a WordPress blog, you know that one of the most powerful features are the plugins that enable a whole host of functions. Since WordPress is so popular, it’s usually a safe bet that someone else has wanted to do the same thing with their blog as you want to do and they have written a plugin to do it. I will admit that when I first set up this WordPress installation (which is running on my own domain hosting account at Dreamhost) I went hog wild with the plugins, not paying a lot of attention to the effect that they could all have on performance.

This blog has grown modestly since I started it last summer. Currently I average only about 30 unique visitors a day and about 30 to 40 page views — I’ve served 1150 unique visitors and 2000 page views in the last 30 days. But I noticed a sudden decrease in performance earlier this week and couldn’t understand why. I was having both resource issues on the server (PHP was consuming too much processor capacity and my host automatically killing the process occasionally) and an overall slowness on the pages. How would I track down what was going on?

I’ll spare you the details, but the ultimate troubleshooting tool came in the form of BrowserMob website monitoring which I had enabled for free about a month ago. To reduce the PHP resource load I first purged my site of all the plugins I had enabled that I didn’t really think I absolutely needed. I kept only the anti-SPAM plugins and a couple of light display plugins. (I also cleaned up some other PHP-heavy installations that were running on other parts of my domain.) That seems to have eliminated the PHP resource problem for now. But the site was still slow loading.

The free version of BrowserMob allows you to check the performance of a web page every two hours for free. I looked at the BrowserMob graph for my site for a couple of days and saw that several times it had timed out, meaning that it took more than 30 seconds to load completely. The error provides detail about which parts of the page are taking the longest to load. Here’s an example from before I optimized the PHP by removing plugins:

Blog Load Times

What these reports eventually lead me to was that reducing the base PHP load by removing unwanted plugins dramatically increased the speed that the page loaded, but there were still some 30 second time-outs and a few plugins that were slowing things down considerably, even after the base page loaded. My investigation lead me to my AddToAny plugin as the main culprit. It seems that their servers had slowed which was in turn dragging down my page load times. So I removed the plugin and the proof is in the following graph of average daily load times after :

The red circles indicate that on that day one or more of the 12 daily tests took more than 30 seconds to complete. Since removing the plugin everything has gone back to a relatively quick load.

I mostly wanted to throw this out there for people to see the power of free tools like BrowserMob. You should look at their site because they offer a very rich and configurable service for a decent price. If you’re willingto pay they have a scripting engine that can test your website as deeply as you’d like, with scripts simulating whatever user actions you’d like. Check them out if you run your own site.

As interest in home theaters has increased, so has the interest in movie or theater style popcorn machines. So in the last few years, many companies have begun to sell professional style (or even small professional) popcorn poppers for home use. A quick search on EBay will yield several different models of popcorn machines for sale at any time.

What makes a “theater-style” machine you ask? The classic theater popper has a “dumpable” kettle with a motorized stirrer. The kettle hangs inside a glass or polycarbonate box which also has heat or lights. Here’s a picture of the Waring Pro example I’m reviewing.

If you read my original popcorn post, you know that I said that no home electric poppers were worth using. Since I reserve the right to change my mind, I will exercise that right now. Commercial-style poppers can get hot enough to do a decent job. And the reason is really in the kettle and the surface area exposed to heat. For any given wattage, the commercial-style machines concentrate the heat in a smaller area than the typical home machine, so the kernels are exposed to higher temperatures in the commercial-style kettle. So these machines usually work reasonable well compared to typical counter-top electric poppers.

A Note About Sizes

Manufacturers of commercial-style machines typically describe the capacity one of two ways: either the capacity of unpopped kernels in the kettle or the capacity of popped corn in the tank after a typical load of corn is popped. Of the two, the capacity of the kettle is more standard and easier to compare across machines, since the volume of popped corn depends on the type of corn you are using. The standard kettle sizes are 4 ounce, 6 ounce, and 8 ounce (volume or fluid ounces, not weight ounces). For reference, 4 ounces of corn is 1/2 cup. This yields anywhere from 10 to 14 cups of popped corn.

The Waring Pro Machine

Waring sells the WPM40 popcorn machine in a couple of models. The WPM40 is sold at various retailers in a red color. Mine is a black model sold exclusively at BJ’s Wholesale Club. But the guts of the machine is the same. This is a typical 4 ounce kettle machine sold for between $100 and $160 depending on location and how steep the sales are at any given time.

The case is polycarbonate, the tray and drawers are aluminum, the body is steel, and the kettle is stainless steel. The machine has a bulb socket for a light bulb to act as a heater (real commercial machines use heat lamps). There are two control switches, one for the motor and one for the lamp. It’s a basic theater-style popper.

Construction

Rating:  

The popper is mostly solid. I gave it 3 out of 5 because although nothing was loose or hideously misaligned when I received it, the finish wasn’t great. The tray at the bottom and the other aluminum parts had some seriously rough (like cut your fingers rough) edges. And some of the sheet metal needed a little bending and flexing to get a proper fit. Also the door didn’t close when I received the popper and the magnet needed some adjustment. But at least the main mechanical parts worked.

Performance

Rating:  

The popper does what it’s supposed to do pretty well. It heats up relatively quickly and once the popping starts, the stirrer keeps things from burning. It pops kernels relatively quickly. The big drawback is the number of unpopped kernels that escape the kettle. This is mainly a function of the small size of the kettle; as the popcorn begins to pop, some kernels are blown out the top with the first popped kernels. This is the tradeoff for not having to stir the kettle manually.

Design

Rating:  

The popper has some decent features, though they’re not all well executed. For example, although there is room for a lamp inside the machine to warm the popcorn, the outlet isn’t rated to handle anything like a real heat lamp. And, the bottom tray has holes to allow the unpopped kernels (old maids) to fall through to a little drawer. But the holes are concentrated in such a small area that them miss many unpopped kernels. But overall it’s a decent design for the price.

Cleaning

Rating:  

This is where the popper runs into trouble. Not a single part of this thing with the exception of the bottom tray and old maid drawer (which can be put in the dishwasher) is easy to clean. In addition to all the sharp edges on the metal parts which will cut you at every chance, the poly carbonate panels are impossible to get free of greasy streaks, unpopped kernels find their way to the bottom and can’y be picked out by hand, and the kettle itself is simply impossible to clean. The kettle cannot be put in the dishwasher, so it must be wiped down and periodically thoroughly cleaned. What a pain.

Overall

Rating:  

Overall, this is a decent theater-style popper if that’s what you want. Although it has shortcomings, the low price can make those more bearable. It certainly does its primary job well enough. It gets hot, and pops corn without you having to stir it. For the price, I recommend it.

I occasionally turn on Boston talk radio station WTKK on my 3 mile drive home in the evening. So I usually only get to listen to a few minutes of  Michele McPhee’s nighttime rants. This Friday (November 13th) I was driving a different route, so I caught a longer bit of her show.

I normally hear a lot of misleading stuff on talk radio … but true ignorance is thankfully a little more rare. Except for this Friday. Sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 PM McPhee was ranting about the Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement of the trial of 9/11 conspirators in New York. I’m not really sure what her point was, other than this was “outrageous” and that Barack Obama is a coward, and that the conspirators shouldn’t be tried at all but should be left to rot in Guantanemo Bay. But at one point, talking with a caller, she paraphrased Rudy Giuliani and claimed that he said that we would not have tried the people who bombed Pearl Harbor (See this … figures he would have uttered this crap on Fox). And McPhee was using this point to contrast how weak the United States is behaving now versus how tough we used to be. [Edit: 11/15/09. In fairness to Rudy, by today someone has given him a history lesson and he has backed off the 'no trials for war criminals' shtick. And while his current stance that having the trial in New York is a security risk has some merit, his original statement is still a crock ...]

I can forgive most talk radio amplification of esoteric or improbable events. But complete ignorance of modern history is inexcusable. For those who don’t realize it, the United States did in fact place over 5000 Japanese on trial for Class A, Class B, and Class C war crimes. Although officially a military tribunal, since we were occupying Japan at the time and civilian government wasn’t fully functional, the tribunal was presided over by a largely civilian panel. Much information is available at Wikipedia’s entry for the Military Tribunal for the Far East.

I think some perspective is in order for Mr. Giuliani, Ms. McPhee, and the rest of the outraged right wing regarding the trial of the 9/11 conspirators. There is ample precedent for trying truly horrible people for crimes committed while engaged in war. In addition to the Military Tribunal for the Far East, we have of course the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. Let’s think on this for a moment. After winning the total and utter surrender of Germany, the Allies, lead by Josef Stalin (not known for his restraint or for being a softie) and Harry Truman (who had the balls to drop not just one, but two nuclear bombs on Japan) accepted a trial as an appropriate forum for deciding the punishment of people who were accused of slaughtering in cold blood 12.5 million civilians and POWs. I’ll say that again in ways that even talk radio hosts can understand:

They killed 12.5 million fucking civilians. And we put them on trial in a court.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 conspirators killed 3000 Americans, if you stretch to include many residual casualties. So I think that a trial is also a reasonable forum for a civilized society to use in this case.

At best Giuliani’s statement is ignorant. Ignorant of the modern history that any American high school student should be expected to know. At worst, it, and McPhee’s parroting of it is intentionally playing to the worst emotional instincts of other ignorant Americans and is representative of everything wrong with the right wing of the Republican party in America today. They should be ashamed. Quite simply this one statement diminishes what respect I had for Rudy and reduces him almost to “Bluto” Blutarski from Animal House railing about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor …

So, let me end this by pointing out how America and other civilized societies have dealt with similar situations:

So let’s not even start to think that there isn’t precedent for murderous a-holes being put in trial for their crimes. It’s what civilized people do. Apparently Rudy Giuliani and Michele McPhee don’t fit in that group.

I have a 4.8 year-old daughter (when you’re less than 10 the .8 matters … she’s almost 5 don’t you know). And I am amazed at how many familiar, adult songs are suddenly making their way into modern childrens’ music. And more amazing is my daughter’s reaction when one of these songs comes on the satellite radio and I know the words. She’s amazed at my ability to know “her” songs before she does.

Some examples which she and I have heard on the radio with in the last few months:

• On his 2006 childrens’ album Five Cent Piece, singer Randy Kaplan included a cover of the 1969 Rolling Stones hit “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
• Singer Matt Nathanson has his cover of Prince’s “Starfish and Coffee” played on Sirius-XM’s Kids’ Place Live channel frequently.
• Kidz Bop (which covers a lot of songs) released a version of Warren Zevon’s “Warewolves of London” on the 2004 Kids Bop Halloween album.

I think part of this phenomenon is that the growth of satellite radio has given childrens’ musicians a decent market for their songs, so they have proliferated in recent years. More and more adult artists seem to be performing childrens’ songs. Both Randy Kaplan and Matt Nathanson are examples of this.

For me the fun comes when my daughter hears one of these songs and I get to play the original for her … I love the chance to different kinds of music.

Several weeks ago I wrote about Fox blowhard Glenn Beck and his use of an international tribunal to try and take the First Amendment rights away from someone poking fun at him on the domain http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/. Basically, the domain owner took Beck to task for his childish rhetorical style of proposing outlandish claims and then inviting speculation about why the victim doesn’t refute them. The domain owner gave a home to the internet meme circulating at the time comparing Beck’s silly style with that of comedian Gilbert Gottfried, when he asked during the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget why Mr. Saget doesn’t deny the rumors that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. (Video linked to original post.)

The domain owner retained a lawyer who wrote a savage critique of Glenn Beck in his brief for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), who would rule on whether or not the domain owner had infringed on Glenn Beck’s IP rights.

Well, today the WIPO ruled against Glenn Beck! And in a stunning display of gentlemanliness (I may have just invented that word) the domain owner turned the domain over to Glenn Beck anyway. After moving all the content to a new home at http://www.gb1990.com of course . Everything you wanted to know about this controversy is there.

As a further critique of Glenn Beck’s style, Jon Stewart did an absolutely brilliant parody of Beck on the Daily Show: