Bob Cesca on Glenn Beck

Not literally, of course.

I have never watched Glenn Beck, although I’ve seen clips of his tearful, logically incoherent rantings enough times on shows I do watch that I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what he’s all about. (I’ve also seen a few clips on YouTube of Shepard Smith — probably the only person on Fox News who doesn’t bring me to the bring of nausea — jabbing Glenn Beck for his antics.)

Perhaps seeing Glenn Beck’s insanity concentrated down to a highlight reel gives me a misguided impression of just how crazy he is, but… well, based on what I’ve seen I’m unlikely to give him a chance to prove me wrong.

Now, it’s all well and good for me to try to sound clever with my little rips on Glenn Beck in this insignificant little blog of mine, but there’s a genuine concern that the things he’s saying may be inciting the crazier element of his audience to go out and do terrible things. That’s no joke. And it’s worth paying attention to. To that end, I’d like to direct you over to Bob Cesca’s commentary on the Huffington Post.

(T)he most dangerous aspect of Beck’s show isn’t necessarily what he says, it’s that he appears to be inclined to say anything while enouraging his viewers to believe anything “even if it’s wrong.” Fine, if he’s going that far out on a limb, then he needs to seriously consider taking responsibility for his nonsensical, inflammatory statements. And perhaps once he accepts the potential consequences of his words, he’ll reconsider some of the more incendiary ones.

Quick Mac tip: unresponsive built-in iSight camera

MacBookI was dismayed yesterday to discover that the built-in iSight camera on my new MacBook was apparently dead. Photo Booth couldn’t find it, and neither could the Flash-based profile picture taker (whatever it’s called) in Facebook.

I figured it was just dead. Disappointing, but it’s not uncommon given the cost-cutting measures just about every modern high-tech company, including Apple, undertakes these days. At least it was just the iSight camera, probably the feature of this computer I use least (other than the video-out port). If it really was dead, I’d probably just live with that instead of the much greater inconvenience of a couple of weeks without my computer.

But before I gave up on it, I decided to do some research and it turns out that resetting the SMC (the new MacBook’s equivalent of the PowerBook’s PMU) should do the trick.

Here’s what you do:

  1. Shut down the computer.
  2. Unplug the power and remove the battery. (That last part is important.)
  3. Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
  4. Reinsert the battery, plug the MacBook back in (if you want), and restart.

It did the trick… my camera is working again! (Not that I really care enough to warrant that exclamation point, but… well… at least I don’t have a month-old computer with a defective component. That’s worth celebrating, no matter how irrelevant the part is.)