I wanted to find a particularly galling story I heard on American Public Media's Marketplace business radio program and was pleased to find a very good-looking and functional web site that just happens to be built on Drupal.

I still like the simplicity of the stories page better than the home page. Marketplace is all about the stories that appear on the air, and quick, simple, "here they are" access is what I want to see (and do).

The beginning of the stories page is on top of this entry. Here's more of the stories page so you can see how each item appears in the rundown. I really like the simplicity and uniformity (click on either image for a full-sized view):

So what was the particularly galling story about? Well, this small-business owner couldn't decide whether to vote for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, and on her second appearance on Marketplace she wouldn't reveal her vote. What she did want from President Obama in a second term was "compromise" on his pledge to keep taxes the same for those making ,000 and below. She thought he should bend a little and pledge not to raise taxes for those making ,000 and below. Her strong implication was that a family dragging in HALF A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR is still "middle class."

Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal replied, "But that makes you part of the 1 percent ..." He didn't pursue it further. I can't blame him.

But I will spell it out. I don't think ,000/year makes you part of the middle class. If anything, you're "upper middle class." However, if you make ,000 a year, YOU ARE RICH. You are fucking rich, so shut the fuck up.

Due to my slower home connection, I didn't update my Debian Wheezy laptop over the weekend, and today I have 103 packages about to flow onto this system.

Aside from a new kernel, new Chromium web browser, new LibreOffice and new Java/OpenJDK/IcedTea, there are plenty of other packages coming along for the ride from GNOME, new ffmpeg and libav, cups and more.

Why so many packages at once? Could it mean the release of Wheezy as Debian's Stable distribution is closer than not? I have no answers yet.

All I do know is if you're running Debian Wheezy right now, be prepared for a whole lot of updates.

steven@lenovo:~$ sudo aptitude upgrade
Resolving dependencies...                
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-3.2.0-4-amd64{a} linux-headers-3.2.0-4-common{a} 
  linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64{a} 
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  linux-headers-3.2.0-3-amd64{u} linux-headers-3.2.0-3-common{u} 
The following packages will be upgraded:
  chromium chromium-browser-inspector chromium-inspector cups cups-bsd 
  cups-client cups-common cups-ppdc evolution-data-server 
  evolution-data-server-common ffmpeg fonts-opensymbol gdm3 
  gir1.2-panelapplet-4.0 gnome-terminal gnome-terminal-data 
  google-talkplugin icedtea-6-jre-cacao icedtea-6-jre-jamvm kdelibs-bin 
  kdelibs5-data kdelibs5-plugins kdoctools libav-tools libavcodec53 
  libavdevice-extra-53 libavdevice53 libavfilter-extra-2 libavfilter2 
  libavformat-extra-53 libavformat53 libavutil51 libcamel-1.2-33 libcups2 
  libcupscgi1 libcupsdriver1 libcupsimage2 libcupsmime1 libcupsppdc1 
  libebackend-1.2-2 libebook-1.2-13 libecal-1.2-11 libedata-book-1.2-13 
  libedata-cal-1.2-15 libedataserver-1.2-16 libedataserverui-3.0-1 
  libglib2.0-data libgtkhtml-4.0-0 libgtkhtml-4.0-common 
  libgtkhtml-editor-4.0-0 libkcmutils4 libkde3support4 libkdeclarative5 
  libkdecore5 libkdesu5 libkdeui5 libkdewebkit5 libkdnssd4 libkemoticons4 
  libkfile4 libkhtml5 libkidletime4 libkio5 libkjsapi4 libkjsembed4 
  libkmediaplayer4 libknewstuff2-4 libknewstuff3-4 libknotifyconfig4 
  libkntlm4 libkparts4 libkprintutils4 libkpty4 libkrosscore4 libkrossui4 
  libktexteditor4 libkutils4 libmozjs185-1.0 libnepomuk4 libnepomukquery4a 
  libnepomukutils4 libpanel-applet-4-0 libplasma3 libpostproc52 
  libraptor2-0 libreoffice-common libreoffice-filter-mobiledev 
  libreoffice-help-en-us libreoffice-java-common libreoffice-pdfimport 
  libreoffice-report-builder-bin libreoffice-style-galaxy 
  libreoffice-style-tango libsolid4 libswscale2 libthreadweaver4 
  libxenstore3.0 linux-headers-amd64 linux-image-amd64 linux-libc-dev 
  openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib 
103 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 177 MB of archives. After unpacking 112 MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]