A new trailer is out for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Looking good — fun and spooky. Though — boy, are those “kids” beginning to look not-very-kidlike any…
A new trailer is out for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Looking good — fun and spooky. Though — boy, are those “kids” beginning to look not-very-kidlike any more …
Still, something more to look forward to.
I do like logos. And here’s a chance to select one you like. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is looking for a Denver logo for imagery and branding and revitalizing the…
I do like logos. And here’s a chance to select one you like.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is looking for a Denver logo for imagery and branding and revitalizing the city’s image. The choices were developed by a local marketnig firm (with no tax dollars) and are:
 |  |  | A | B | C |
| Reinforces Denver as a livable city. | Conveys that the city is vibrant and moving up. | Illustrates Denver’s sunny climate. |
“A” isn’t bad, but isn’t all that interesting. A building, a tree, ho-hum.
“B” looks like something that a hi-tech firm would use — which may give a busniness tie to Denver, but isn’t really all that emblematic of the city as a whole.
“C” has a building, the mountains, the sun — and it’s a giant letter, besides that. It gets my vote.
Offer your vote here. Results TBA 19 April.
… that Colorado is not always at the foremost fringe on some political issues, the Musgrave Amendment, a US constitutional amendment banning gay marriage introduced by a Colorado Representative, is…
… that Colorado is not always at the foremost fringe on some political issues, the Musgrave Amendment, a US constitutional amendment banning gay marriage introduced by a Colorado Representative, is DOA in the Colorado statehouse.
Granted, we do have a state constitutional provision defining marriage as one-man-one-woman. But at least they don’t want to enshrine it in the US Constitution.
Yeah, this is about what I’m afraid of. And Susan Calvin, the super-sexy sizzling cybernetics expert with hot pouty lips … Kill me now ……
Yeah, this is about what I’m afraid of.
And Susan Calvin, the super-sexy sizzling cybernetics expert with hot pouty lips …
Kill me now …
Folks who are arguing that the words “Under God” should remain in the Pledge of Allegiance try to have it both ways: “It’s religion, and thus teaches our kids to…
Folks who are arguing that the words “Under God” should remain in the Pledge of Allegiance try to have it both ways:
That these two seem to be in contradiction to each other doesn’t faze them. If it’s truly a religious assertion, then it’s certainly unconstitutional for the state to be promoting (let alone mandating) it. If it’s merely ceremonial and traditional (a long tradition dating back all of half a century), then why the hue and cry over its removal?
Les provides a fine essay in TNR over how the attempt to have it both ways — to slip religion past the Constitution by saying it’s meaningless verbiage — actually does a disservice to religion.
There is no greater insult to religion than to expel strictness of thought from it. Yet such an expulsion is one of the traits of contemporary American religion, as the discussion at the Supreme Court demonstrated. Religion in America is more and more relaxed and “customized,” a jolly affair of hallowed self-affirmation, a religion of a holy whatever. Speaking about God is prized over thinking about God. Say “under God” even if you don’t mean under God. And if you mean under God, don’t be tricked into giving an account of what you mean by it. Before too long you have arrived at a sacralized cynicism: In his intervention at the Court, Justice Stevens recalled a devastating point from the fascinating brief submitted in support of Newdow by 32 Christian and Jewish clergy, which asserted that “if the briefs of the school district and the United States are to be taken seriously,” that is, if the words in the Pledge do not allude to God, “then every day they ask schoolchildren to violate [the] commandment” that “Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord in vain.” Remember, those are not the Ten Suggestions. It is a very strange creed indeed that asks its votaries not to reflect too much about itself.
Good reading.
Starbucks unveils aggressive growth plan. The long-term plan is to have about 25,000 stores worldwide — more than triple the nearly 8,000 stores the coffee retailer has right now. And…
Starbucks unveils aggressive growth plan.
The long-term plan is to have about 25,000 stores worldwide — more than triple the nearly 8,000 stores the coffee retailer has right now. And even that amount seems a little “light,” according to Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz.
Doyce has further insight into their master plan.
Wow. On first blush, this one’s outrageous, then it gets a bit tricky, then, maybe, it will end by being outrageous at the end. The students in a high school…
Wow. On first blush, this one’s outrageous, then it gets a bit tricky, then, maybe, it will end by being outrageous at the end.
The students in a high school broadcasting class in Washington are responsible for reciting the Pledge of Allegience over the PA, while the monitors in various rooms show the pledge text and a fluttering American flag in the background.
(Doesn’t that seem a little goofy? I mean, given the controversy, making the pledge be part of a class assignment, removing it from the venue of “voluntary,” seems unwise. In fact, since the Supremes have said that nobody can be compelled to say the Pledge, it seems illegal.)
Anyway, one of the students decided that the “under God” bit was wrong, so he recited the pledge without it, and altered the text on the screen to omit the offending words. And now faces punishment.
Hess, an avowed atheist since sixth grade, thinks he’s forced to listen to a religious statement when he hears the pledge. Last week, his world current events class debated Newdow’s case. After one student said, “Christians are forcing us to listen to this,” Hess vowed that he could make students not listen to the words. The phrase “under God” was added to the pledge by congressional vote in 1954, during the Cold War.
“I took it out to prove we don’t have to hear it,” Hess said.
On Wednesday, school officials told Hess he would be permitted only to read books during his broadcasting class. Hess, 18, plans a career in broadcasting and wants to finish his assignments. “I want my privileges back,” he said. “It’s not right to take them away.”
[…] Administrators said Hess’ actions put the school out of sync with state law, though lawyers note that there is no criminal or civil penalty for not saying the pledge. State law allows students to remain silent during the pledge.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that “under God” is unconstitutional. But that ruling is on hold while the the U.S. Supreme Court considers the matter.
“Our interpretation as a school district is that the law says we say the pledge,” said Greg Eisnaugle, Spanaway Lake principal. “‘Under God’ is still in it. If the court says it comes out, that’s what we’ll do.”
On the one hand, it sounds like oppression of free speech and imposition of religious duties. But, then, there’s this:
The student, Kenny Hess, removed the words “under God” from the pledge, which is shown with an American flag background on classroom TV throughout the school. Hess also declined to recite the phrase and, instead read, “one nation … indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
School officials said they’ve punished Hess for misusing school equipment to deliver a personal message.
[…] School officials said Hess should have chosen to write an article for the school paper or produce an opinion piece for the school newscast.
Was that an option? If Hess wanted to dissent from the offending phrase, was there a way he could do that without losing class credit or having his grade affected?
See, the problem here isn’t so much that Hess dissents from the Pledge as currently constituted, but that he altered it, in text and speech, during an assignment. What he was supposed to say on the school-owned equipment during a school-organized period, wasn’t what he actually said.
If Hess had, for example, decided to leave out other words, or change some around, or change the picture on the monitor to a picture of Kurt Cobain, or add in his own editorial comment (“with liberty and justice for all, except for the prisoners down in Gitmo, locked away by the fascist Bush Administration!”), nobody would argue that he had a free speech right to express his opinion — but it would be more clearly (if still analogously) an act that the school could censure for not being what was assigned.
Again, this isn’t the Free Speech moment, or a political rally. It’s a school assignment, on school equipment, being piped around to classrooms. That the school believes it has a statutory requirement to do this adds to the case, even if there’s some question as to the accuracy of taht interpretation.
If Hess had the opportunity to decline the assignment without adversely affecting his grade, then his actions were improper. If there were no such opportunity, then the assignment would, indeed, be illegal (though certainly broadcast students should learn that broadcasters sometimes have to cover material in a way that may not match their personal convictions).
The situation still makes me a little uncomfortable, but I’m inclined to back the school on it, with the above proviso.
(via Les)
You are Nicholas D. Kristof! You enjoy travelling, going as far as China, Africa, Alaska, and Central America for a good story. You use a lot of quotes and…
I can live with that. Here’s a list of his NY Times op-eds.
(via Scott)
Via Doyce, posts on 20×20 about the GoO/ADRPG deal, and the Unspeakable Horror That Is a D20 Amber Monstrosity. Jeez, guys, give it a rest. The level of D20 animus…
Via Doyce, posts on 20×20 about the GoO/ADRPG deal, and the Unspeakable Horror That Is a D20 Amber Monstrosity.
Jeez, guys, give it a rest. The level of D20 animus out there is way out of proportion.
So D20 is not the be-all and end-all of RPGs. I accept that, and, in fact, agree with it. But when I read the comments of a bunch of folks basically saying “D20 sux! ADRPG roolz! And never the twain shall meet!” the contrarian in me gets a bit irked.
As GURPS has demonstrated, you can make a rules-heavy dense-mechanics system work with just about anything. And D20 is a lot less crunchy than GURPS. You may lose in D20 the carefree flexibility that seems to work so well with ADRPG — but that’s a flavor question, not a realm-of-possibility question (and is not necessarily less canonical to the books than ADRPG).
D20 is not the Antichrist. It’s not the End Times. It’s not a plot by the Elder Gods. It’s a game system. A commercially successful and fairly flexible and playable game system. Getting all religious about D20 strikes me akin to debates about Windows vs Mac vs Linux. Find what you enjoy, and be happy, but don’t turn it into the central ideology of your life, or part of some Great Manichaean Struggle. GoO issuing a D20 Amber version (particularly in parallel to a new edition of ADRPG) is a commercial judgment, just like the decision to publish a particular game for Windows (or the Mac); the Amber Police aren’t going to pry your worn copies of the original rules out of your fingers to throw on a bonfire somewhere, and if it juices up interest in the setting or the game itself, that’s only a good thing, right?
I don’t mind reasoned arguments as to the suitability or flavor of different systems and how they would support a given setting or set of tales (Doyce’s suggestion of using Trollbabe is an interesting one). But knee-jerk universal judgments about these sorts of things strike me as — well, silly.
You are a GRAMMAR GOD! If your mission in life is not already topreserve the English tongue, it should be. Congratulations, and thank you! How grammatically sound are you?…
I only regret they don’t include the “right” answers.
(via ASV)
FRIDAY Long Friday for me, saving up hours for Good Friday next weekend. Still, got home in time for Margie to head over to sundry doctors’ offices to be told,…
FRIDAY
Long Friday for me, saving up hours for Good Friday next weekend. Still, got home in time for Margie to head over to sundry doctors’ offices to be told, among other things, that her arm is looking great. Which it is.
She beat me to the punch, by the way, by going out and trimming the grasses in the pots, so that I didn’t have to. She rocks. Still have some ground-planted ones that need trimming, but the weather (and schedule) did not permit.
Margie was off to D&D in the evening. Kitten and I went downtown to an art gallery near the bit REI HQ. An old college friend of mine, Keith Howard, was having an opening there, and it had been a few years since we’d gotten together with him. He’s currently still doing much house painting, but clearly selling enough of the “real” art to have shows and such. Lots of big, pretty abstract oil paintings, bright primary colors, etc.
Keith was seriously jazzed to meet Katherine, and the two of them got into a laughing contest, which I wish I’d had a video camera to record.
That got us home pretty late — especially since the heavens opened up with rain, which is not the best of conditions to drive the ever-under-construction I-25 in. Not that I was complaining — we are heartily in need of precipitation. It was probably 9:30 or so before Kitten got to bed, and she went down pretty quickly, and I …
… well, I finished sorting stuff on the breakfast table. It’s not clean yet, but it’s a lot more clear, and better organized. Now I need to do something about it.
Not the most footloose and fancy-free of bachelor evenings, but better than some, certainly.
SATURDAY
Up earlyish to deal with Kitten needs and haul her off to dance class. Good fun, watching flocking behavior by little girls in dance outfits, running about the dance instructor like larks on the wing.
The afternoon was a playtest of a new Pulp module. Good fun around the table. Due to the Very Occasional actual play of Pulp, I’ve never really gotten into my character, Burt Richards, but not a bad way to spend the afternoon.
The evening, in turn, was taken up going to see Hellboy. Which I probably need to do again.
SUNDAY
We were extra-diligent the night before to set our bedside clocks ahead an hour. Which was about the cleverest thing that we did.
Palm Sunday, and time for the annual Passion-reading-as-script rendition. Margie got tapped as the narrator, which meant she had the most lines by far, much to her delight (not). She did quite well.
I got to do Jesus, who always has the oddest selection of written part. There’s always pressure in that particular role, as one might imagine. Inflection becomes critical. You don’t want to be melodramatic, but you don’t want to drone the lines out, either. Plus you can imagine everyone in the congregation hanging on the particular performance, ready to critique a particular way you say things. Well, I can, at least.
The church expansion continues apace. We had paved parking lot, but no parking in it (that will be for next Sunday, weather permitting).The walled areas around the parish hall and narthex are finally taking shape. Things are progressing well.
After church, it was off to brunch, thence to errands. As we headed over to Costco, we saw signs for the Lord & Taylor at Park Meadows closing, everything 40% off, so we took a side jaunt there.
Well, at 40% off, it’s still a not-unpricey store, but I found a couple of good deals — some short-sleeved dress shirts, a tie bar or two — and Margie found some stuff, and a couple of cute outfits for Kitten, and a Mothers Day gift from her for Mommy. Then over to Costco …
… where we got a call from Jackie on my cell. Margie took it, and it sounded like a query about the timing for my Spycraft game that afternoon. Ah, I thought. Someone thought it was at 1 again, but it’s clearly on the Game Calendar as 2. And at the moment, it’s just 1:20 …
Well, um, no. See, we’d done a decent job of changing most of the clocks in the house … except my wristwatch. Clever. So it was really 2:20, and everyone was at the house, except us.
Which made the rest of the trip — and the unpacking, and pre-game prep — a bit more hectic than usual.
As it was, the module finished unfolding, the players manage to converge when and where they needed to, and if the boat chase took place later than planned, and with our not being familiar yet with the chase rules, that was compensated for by a well-placed auto-fire salvo that sunk the fleeing Zodiac.
By the time folks had left, though, and Kitten was down, it was going on 9:30. And we needed some unwinding time, so it was about 11:30 by the time we were lights out.
Which is probably not the way to wrap a hectic week ahead — the wrap-up of 40 Days tonight (thank heavens), another meeting for me Wednesday night, our anniversary on Thursday (huzzah!), and the whole Easter Weekend after that. But at least it’s dark again when I’m driving into the office.
Told you. But I would have liked to have been proven wrong. Not that I’m personally torn up by it — having watched but one episode, I was intrigued by…
But I would have liked to have been proven wrong.
Not that I’m personally torn up by it — having watched but one episode, I was intrigued by Wonderfalls, but not yet fully hooked. But I know plenty of other people who consider the cancellation yet another reason to chuck the idiot box out the window.
Obligatory “Release it on DVD” petition here.
As Randy put it, “It’s the best movie they could possibly do with the material.” I’m more than inclined to agree. The mods to the story line (the FBI guy,…
As Randy put it, “It’s the best movie they could possibly do with the material.” I’m more than inclined to agree. The mods to the story line (the FBI guy, the love triangle, the death of a major character) are far outweighed by the utterly remaining true to the spirit and imagery of the Hellboy source material. The prolog/”origin” stuff is, in particular, practically grabs Mignola’s panels and throws them up on the screen.
The acting is solid, the HB makeup is a lot better than I thought it would be, and I think anyone who likes the comics will almost certainly like the movie. Two stony thumbs up!
(Major thanks to Jackie for watching Kitten while we went off and watched HB. They ended up going to Home on the Range, which Jackie seemed less than enthused about afterwards; it’s not yet clear what Kitten thought of it, as she crashed pretty quickly upon our getting home.)
Some interesting snippets from a Church Times editorial on Is no one able to stop Israel, asks Ateek – 7360″ href=”http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/templates/NewsTemplate_3.asp?recid=2488&table=news&bimage=news&issue=7359&count=1″>the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahamad Yassin: The assassination…
Sounds pretty condescending to the “handicapable” to me.
(via Volokh)
It’s a hugely sensitive topic, of course, the outsourcing, or offshoring, of US jobs, particuarlly now that more white collar positions are being thrown into the mix. But it may…
It’s a hugely sensitive topic, of course, the outsourcing, or offshoring, of US jobs, particuarlly now that more white collar positions are being thrown into the mix.
But it may be not only that the problem has been overblown, but that actually it’s been stated backwards.
“Any way you slice it, the world is creating or transferring more jobs to the U.S. than we are doing to the rest of the world,” said Daniel T. Griswold, a trade specialist at the Cato Institute, a research organization in Washington.
India’s Essel Propack Ltd., Taiwan’s Teco Electric & Machinery Co. and Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems A/S all have built plants in the United States in the last year and a half.
Other non-U.S. companies announced plans to increase hiring in the United States last year including Japan’s Nissan Motor Co., with 3,350 jobs in Canton, Miss.; DaimlerChrysler AG of Germany, with 2,000 at a new Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala.; German appliance distributor BSH Bosch and Siemens Hausergate GmbH, with 1,300 in New Bern, N.C.; and Magna International Inc. of Canada, with as many as 800 in Bowling Green, Ky.
The movement of U.S. jobs abroad “has been blown out of proportion” mainly because domestic companies in the United States have been slow to increase hiring, said Martin Baily, chairman of former President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. “There was lots of offshoring going on in the 1990s, but job growth was so strong in the U.S. that nobody really took much notice.”
While reliable figures aren’t available for the last two years, the Commerce Department estimated on March 18 that the number of Americans employed by U.S. affiliates of majority non-U.S. companies grew by 4.7 million from 1997 through 2001. In the same period, the number of non-Americans working at affiliates of majority-U.S. companies abroad rose by 2.8 million.
If we don’t want to be encouraging through tax policy (assuming we are) the transfer of US jobs overseas, we also want to be sure we don’t set up barriers that prevent the importation of jobs to the US.
Another article, here, notes:
The first mistake of many politicians, argues Matthew Slaughter, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, is to assume that a job created overseas is one not created in the US. “An overseas worker is sometimes a substitute for a US worker but very often they are a complement for a US worker,” he says. “Expanding an overseas network frequently means you have to hire more workers in the US too.”
Even if much low-end production takes place outside the US, the management, logistics, research and development and international IT remains in the US. “As the international network expands, so does the the US network managing it,” Mr Slaughter says.
Which was, after all, one of the arguments behind the Clinton-era NAFTA legislation. But that’s a difficult argument to make, in a period of economic uncertainty.
Okay, not holding out much hope here, but in case one of my Many Readers is, in fact, an expert in this area … I’m part of a pilot Windows…
Okay, not holding out much hope here, but in case one of my Many Readers is, in fact, an expert in this area …
I’m part of a pilot Windows Messenger (IM via Exchange) group in my company, and, after about a year of the service working just fine for me, I came to realize that my WM was not working correctly.
Testing on another person’s machine demonstrated it wasn’t my account configuration; I can sign in elsewhere with nary a problem.
On my machine, though, it appears that the WM client polls the Exchange server up front just fine, to get the current contact status. After that, though, it never polls the server. I can send IMs just fine, but nobody can send them back to me (sometimes they get an error saying I’m not signed in, sometimes not), and my contact list never gets its status updated.
At our internal IT folks’ behest, I’ve uninstalled WM as much as possible — it’s a Windows component, so the most you can theoretically do is uncheck the box to keep it from starting; I’ve also found an uninstall script (running rundll32 against the original inf package for the previous version, which I’ve run), and I’ve zapped the directory and the Registry keys I recognize for it, and downloaded the latest-greatest (5.0). That version, though, still thinks the system is there; it gives me just a Repair option.
At any rate, still no go.
I am not using a proxy, I am not behind a firewall, and everything should be right as rain. The alternatives I’m being given are either (a) rebuild the machine from scratch, or (b) don’t use WM. If it comes to that, I’ll go with (b), but if anyone has additional ideas, I’m open to them.
UPDATE: I’m pinging the folks on this MS support board, so we’ll see if they have any answers.
As of this a.m., I’ve lost 15 lbs. since the start of my Geek Diet (as Margie calls it) a month ago (3/1), dropping from 238 to 223. W00T!…
As of this a.m., I’ve lost 15 lbs. since the start of my Geek Diet (as Margie calls it) a month ago (3/1), dropping from 238 to 223. W00T!
Working for an international company, I know all about time zones. Mostly, I know how difficult it is to schedule a phonecon that includes folks both in the UK (GMT)…
Working for an international company, I know all about time zones. Mostly, I know how difficult it is to schedule a phonecon that includes folks both in the UK (GMT) and California (GMT-8), since I have folks who reside in both. That usually means setting the call at 9a Mountain Time (where I am) — that makes it 8a in California and (9+7=16, -12=) 4p in the UK.
Except this week.
See, the Europeans “celebrate” Summer Time — their version of Daylight Savings Time — a week earlier than we do (the last Sunday of March, rather than the first Sunday of April). We all change back at the same time, but for a week there, they’re one hour further away from us than we’re expecting. Which means that a 9a MST phonecon takes place there at 5p GMT+1.
Which is why my folks missed a phonecon I had yesterday, dagnabbit. Next week we’re back to (relative) normal, but it screwed me up this week.
Other countries — those that observe it, which many do not — have their own timing. And, of course, places like Arizona and a big chunk o’ Indiana (and the province of Saskatchewan to the north) don’t observe it, either.
The irony in having this pointed out to me is that it’s not the first time. When Margie and I visited the UK back in the late 90s, it was in late March, and the time change occurred earlier than we were expecting, leading to an unexpected opportunity to go to Palm Sunday services at Westminster Abbey, and an unexpected lack of opportunity to see the rest of the British Museum.
Time marches on …
Because, no matter how crappy a day you’re having, it’s unlikely you’d ever quite chew scenery like this … (via GoaF)…
Not. Good. News. UPDATE: “The message is grim.”…
UPDATE: “The message is grim.”