Word on the street is that Senator Larry Craig, republican from Idaho, will be quitting soon, in the aftermath of his Missouri bathroom gay solicitation scandal.

Of course, Craig is vehemently denying it happened, and appears to have done so from the very beginning. For some reason he pled guilty, which everyone is taking as an admission of guilt (duh), though now he’s trying to backpedal.

And everyone in the progressive left is having the hugest laugh since Ted Haggard’s gay sex scandal, which wasn’t all that long ago. But this seems a tricky reaction to have: the pro-gay left is persecuting a man for his being outed.

Here’s an idea. Instead of fighting the man, embrace him — and his gayness. Instead of laughing at the hypocrite, help him. Invite him into the pro-gay fold. Show him that he doesn’t need to keep his inner gay a secret, that it’s okay to be gay, and encourage him to accept it, and assure him that he will be accepted with it. Provide a sharp contrast to his current loyalties, which are unceremoniously dropping him like a rock.

If it works, he may even go Libertarian. Which I guess, for Idaho, is as good as it gets.

Not quite a bus story, but while sitting at the bus station this morning, I cracked open my laptop to check the bus schedules. After a couple minutes, this guy walks over and sits next to me on the bench. He cranes his neck for a second to look at my screen, which has already annoyed me. After a couple beats, he addresses me.

“Excuse me, very sorry, I need to check my email.”

I emphatically shake my head.

He pauses a couple more beats, and then produces a cheezy looking ID card. “I’m student.” He starts to tell a story about how he’s about to get on a bus to Ellensburg (which there is no bus to AFAIK), very far away, but he only needs to go if some guy sent him an email. “If he didn’t send me email, there is no need for me to go.”

“Sorry,” I said, trying to give him a “no fucking way” expression that didn’t also say “are you fucking nuts”, even though I was thinking it. That, and, “this guy’s got some fucking balls.”

I glanced up at a bus pulling in and packed up my laptop as if it was my bus, but he had already walked down the platform.

By branding the fiercest arm of the Iranian military as a terrorist group, the US government has made the first obvious and deliberate step towards confrontation with Iran.

Ever since I first bought an Emprex MP1003 (blogged here), I’ve gone through and assessed a couple of players. (Doesn’t help that I’ve lost one or two.) Here’s a rundown.

• Emprex MP1003
• Pros: Small, cheap
• Cons: Boxy, no track display
• Buy: $20 at Fry’s Outpost

The Emprex was my first model. On sale for $15, it performs the SD MP3 task very simply and cheaply. The only major downside to this unit is the display. Aside from some fixed indicators, the display shows a 3-digit track number and 4-digit time elapsed. Navigation is very difficult when you can’t tell where you are; you have to keep stopping to hear what song you’re on, and hope you remember what order your tracks are in.

• PQI Joytone U801
• Pros: Hand-hold shape, tactile-identifiable buttons
• Cons: Modest display, strange misadvertisement.
• Buy: $23 at Supermediastore

Unlike the other units in this list, the Joytone has a lozenge-type shape, which is more satisfying to hold in the hand than the other more boxy units. The button arrangement is easy to remember and once you remember it, it’s easy to tell whether you’re hitting volume down or track advance. The display on the Joytone is better than the Emprex, as it has a 12-character matrix display which can show track name. However, the display scrolls very slowly, and track number and time elapsed are mixed into the scroll line. Navigation is theoretically improved by this, but not really; with the slow speed of the scroll, you can’t usually tell what track it is right away.

One really strange thing about the Joytone is PQI’s apparent change of heart as to what exactly it is: either a $30 SD MP3 player with 1GB SD card included, or just a $30 1GB MP3 player. The packaging clearly shows a spot where the SD card is displayed, however, new releases of the unit have the SD card already inserted, and a sticker saying “WARRANTY VOID IF REMOVED” over it — not very well, either, since the SD card isn’t quite flush with the side of the unit.

Now, mine worked fine with swapping in and out various cards, and the instructions I had even explained what cards to use and when to swap them. Apparently PQI has decided this is not what they want the Joytone to do anymore. I think this is dumb; if you’re going to create an SD MP3 player, don’t suddenly decide to cripple it with bad policy.

• RCA M2001A
• Pros: 1GB internal memory, great display
• Cons: Boxy, non-textile buttons, poor button response
• Buy: $43 at Zerenox

The RCA M2001 series, apparently the grandchild of the aged Lyra line, blows the other SD MP3s away by coming with 1GB already inside (preloaded with a dozen or so sample songs). The display is a low-power, high-res OLED matrix display that shows track number, time elapsed and remaining, and plenty of track name text all at once. The SD slot doesn’t have a satisfying, secure click-and-spring like the other two (and most SD card slots) have, but the fit is snug enough to secure the card. Just be sure you have some fingernail available if you plan to do lots of card-swapping.

To avoid mixing personal with global, I’ve started a new blog dedicated to Federal Way posts, adding to the small club of Federal Way blogs. So no more ranting about small obscure Seattle area suburb politics mixed in with national politics, philosophy, or technology here; it will now be at FederalWayan.com.

Thanks to, uh… some blog in my Google Reader subs TechCrunch, I got me an invite to MeeMix, a new Pandora clone music recommendation system. The interface is slick, but a bit heavy, like Pandora meets Myspace. Of course, that does seem to be close to the general idea there, mixing the player/rater concept of Pandora with the social networking aspect of MySpace. It’s a little early to make much of it, but so far it does a good job of presenting songs that relate well to the ones you indicate you like. Instead of Pandora’s thumbs up/down system, MeeMix allows you to rate along a moving scale. Whether or not this makes much difference will need time to determine.

I’m sure before long someone will do a side-by-side comparison of the music recommendations of Pandora vs. Meemix. Which provides better results — matching on shared characteristics determined by expert analysts, or matching on common popularity determined by the community of users?

Some young girl walked up to the bus stop and stood by the sign. When the ST Express bus came, she cut into the line that had already formed. Got up to the fare box, ran her card through, and the driver stopped her. “You’re 17?” he asked. “No,” she said, and waved her bus pass, which was a $1.25. As the fare is $2.50, a brief stalemate ensued between her and the driver (holding up the line, dammit), ending in her cutely asking, “So, like, I can’t just swipe it twice?”.