My boss commented favorably on my tie. Ironically, it’s not one of my new “power ties,” but an old Jerry Garcia one. this post enabled by airblogging.com….
My boss commented favorably on my tie. Ironically, it’s not one of my new “power ties,” but an old Jerry Garcia one.
this post enabled by airblogging.com.
Child custody disputes are almost always contentious and painful — but when it involves different states that don’t even legally agree on what constitutes a family, it gets really nasty…
Child custody disputes are almost always contentious and painful — but when it involves different states that don’t even legally agree on what constitutes a family, it gets really nasty …
Judges in Vermont and Virginia have different ideas about what is best for Isabella Miller-Jenkins, 3, born to a woman who had a civil union with another woman in Vermont. The relationship ended two years ago. Now each woman says Isabella is her daughter, with one asserting exclusive motherhood.
The judge in Vermont ruled that the women should “be treated no differently than a husband and wife.” He established a visiting schedule and held the biological mother, Lisa Miller, in contempt of court when she failed to comply with it.
The judge in Virginia ruled that Ms. Miller had the sole right to decide who could see the child. He ruled that the former partner, Janet Miller-Jenkins, had no “parentage or visitation rights.”
[…] The cases involve the interaction of two sets of laws. At the state level, Vermont and Virginia have laws that say the first court to take jurisdiction of a custody case should make the final determination. That would seem to help Ms. Miller-Jenkins here.
In November 2003, it was Ms. Miller, the Virginian, who filed papers in Vermont to dissolve the union. In them, Ms. Miller acknowledged that Isabella was a child of the union and asked the court to allow her former partner to have contact with the girl. Her lawyers have since taken varying positions. Ms. Miller now says she was confused and did not mean to acknowledge any parental relationship between her former partner and Isabella.
A 2004 Virginia law, the Marriage Affirmation Act, makes same-sex unions from other states “void in all respects in Virginia.” Judge John R. Prosser, of Frederick County Circuit Court in Winchester, Va., relied on that law in October in granting sole custody of Isabella to Ms. Miller.
Two potentially conflicting federal laws add to the confusion. The Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act largely tracks the state custody laws and requires other states to defer to the first courts to hear such cases. But the federal Defense of Marriage Act says states need not give effect to same-sex unions.
Some worth-reading thoughts on security and where we tend to throw our money and effort — at “movie plots,” at highly-visible “do somethings,” and at low-level CYA — versus where…
Some worth-reading thoughts on security and where we tend to throw our money and effort — at “movie plots,” at highly-visible “do somethings,” and at low-level CYA — versus where we should — detecting and blocking terrorists (not guessing at their targets) and at being ready to respond to attacks that slip by.
For all of those who are concerned that George W. Bush is a radically conservative Christian, a Born Again theocrat, a Dominionist, etc., etc., etc., be not concerned: real fundamentalist…
For all of those who are concerned that George W. Bush is a radically conservative Christian, a Born Again theocrat, a Dominionist, etc., etc., etc., be not concerned: real fundamentalist Christians know that Bush is actually just faking it.
Among the proof: he supposedly was “born again” under the influence of Billy Graham, who everyone knows is paganist Mason and member of the Illuminati. And, of course, Bush supports those ecumenist apostates like Focus on the Family and Promise Keepers. And, of course, there’s his secret Black Magick association with Hitler …
No, really.
(via J-Walk)
Interesting (but anecdotal) article about how manual typewriters are making a comeback amongst the younger generations. Popular wisdom would hold that typewriters are a dying breed, replaced by ever-faster personal…
Interesting (but anecdotal) article about how manual typewriters are making a comeback amongst the younger generations.
Popular wisdom would hold that typewriters are a dying breed, replaced by ever-faster personal computers that do far more than type text. Retailers that once specialized in typewriters have dropped the word from their names, and only one company – Italy’s Olivetti – still makes manuals. Some shop owners lamented that the relics are all but gone.
Not so, said Peggy Tidwell, whose family has owned Los Altos Typewriter since 1967. While she hasn’t seen sales grow in the past five years, recent college graduates and others younger than 30 have bought most of the store’s refurbished typewriters.
“They have no feeling about their computer, but they like their charming little typewriter,” Tidwell said. “It’s got character, and it’s more alive than a computer is.”
For a generation raised with technologies that can be outdated within months, there’s something impressively permanent about a typewriter. And for those used to computers that operate often mysteriously and practically in silence, it’s refreshing to use a machine with visible working parts. It’s similar to teens and 20-somethings choosing the hiss and pop of vinyl records over the clarity of mp3s, said Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor and popular-culture expert.
“A lot of young people who only experienced in their early youth these types of digital, totally electronic experiences find the tactile, analog stuff very appealing,” said Thompson, noting that a couple of his students have submitted typed papers. Young people who choose typewriters “are very careful about what they do” when they write, he said. “It doesn’t seem as disposable and casual.”
There’s certainly something very “tactile” about a real typewriter, something permanent about it. On the other hand, having grown up with them (I didn’t use a computer to type a paper until, I believe, my senior year in college, and that was an exception), I have no plans on letting the romance of “click, clack, brrrrrrr-ching!” outweigh the ability to cut, paste, edit, spell-check, revise, format, print, e-mail, etc. the documents I work with today, any more than I want to exchange my cell phone for a quarter to use a pay phone on the corner.
(via GeekPress)
A Florida Appeals Court has upheld a 2003 ruling that Sultana Freeman cannot use a veiled photo for her drivers license. As the picture shows, it doesn’t serve as much…
A Florida Appeals Court has upheld a 2003 ruling that Sultana Freeman cannot use a veiled photo for her drivers license.
As the picture shows, it doesn’t serve as much of a photo ID.
(via J-Walk)
From my folks … I have just finished my new book on golf that I believe gives the reader valuable playing tips and insider information that I have gained through…
From my folks …
I have just finished my new book on golf that I believe gives the reader valuable playing tips and insider information that I have gained
through 50 years of experience. The cost is only $29.95. Cash only please
The following is the chapter listing to give you an overview. Don’t wait until they’re all gone!
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 – How to Properly Line Up Your Fourth Putt
Chapter 2 – How to Hit a Nike from the Rough When You Hit a Titleist from the Tee
Chapter 3 – How to Avoid the Water When You Lie 8 in a Bunker
Chapter 4 – How to Get More Distance Off the Shank
Chapter 5 – When to Give the Ranger the Finger
Chapter 6 – Using Your Shadow on the Greens to Maximize Earnings
Chapter 7 – When to Implement Handicap Management
Chapter 8 – Proper Excuses for Drinking Beer Before 9 a.m.
Chapter 9 – How to Rationalize a 6 Hour Round
Chapter 10 – How to Find That Ball That Everyone Else Saw Go in the Water
Chapter 11 – Why Your Spouse Doesn’t Care That You Birdied the 5th
Chapter 12 – How to Let a Foursome Play Through Your Twosome
Chapter 13 – How to Relax When You Are Hitting Three Off the Tee
Chapter 14 – When to Suggest Major Swing Corrections to Your Opponent
Chapter 15 – God and the Meaning of the Birdie-to-Bogey Three Putt
Chapter 16 – When to Regrip Your Ball Retriever
Chapter 17 – Can You Purchase a Better Golf Game?
Chapter 18 – Why Male Golfers Will Pay $5.00 a Beer From The Cart Girl and Give Her a $3 Tip, But Will Balk at $3.50 at the 19th Hole and Stiff the Bartender
I think I could use several of those …
Nice analogy by John Paulos here. Go into almost any drug store and you can find your favorite candy bar. Every supermarket has your brand of spaghetti sauce, or the…
Nice analogy by John Paulos here.
Go into almost any drug store and you can find your favorite candy bar. Every supermarket has your brand of spaghetti sauce, or the store down the block does. Your size and style of jeans are in every neighborhood.
And what’s true at the personal level is true at the industrial level. Somehow there are enough ball bearings and computer chips in just the right places in factories all over the country.
The physical infrastructure and communication networks are also marvels of integrated complexity. Oil and gas supplies are, by and large, where they’re needed. Your e-mail reaches you in Miami as well as in Milwaukee, not to mention Barcelona and Bangkok.
The natural question, discussed first by Adam Smith and later by Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper among others, is who designed this marvel of complexity? Which commissar decreed the number of packets of dental floss for each retail outlet?
The answer, of course, is that no economic god designed this system. It emerged and grew by itself, a stunningly obvious example of spontaneously evolving order. No one argues that all the components of the candy bar distribution system must have been put into place at once, or else there would be no Snickers at the corner store.
So far, so good. What is more than a bit odd, however, is that some of the most ardent opponents of Darwinian evolution — for example, many fundamentalist Christians — are among the most ardent supporters of the free market. These people accept the natural complexity of the market without qualm, yet they insist that the natural complexity of biological phenomena requires a designer.
They would reject the idea that there is or should be central planning in the economy. They would rightly point out that simple economic exchanges that are beneficial to people become entrenched and then gradually modified as they become part of larger systems of exchange, while those that are not beneficial die out. They accept that Adam Smith’s invisible hand brings about the spontaneous order of the modern economy. Yet, as noted, some of these same people refuse to believe that natural selection and “blind processes” can lead to similar biological order arising spontaneously.
These analogies prompt two final questions. What would you think of someone who studied economic entities and their interactions in a modern free market economy and insisted that they were, despite a perfectly reasonable and empirically supported account of their development, the consequence of some all-powerful, detail-obsessed economic law-giver? You might deem such a person a conspiracy theorist.
And what would you think of someone who studied biological processes and organisms and insisted that they were, despite a perfectly reasonable and empirically supported Darwinian account of their development, the consequence of some all-powerful, detail-obsessed biological law-giver?
(via GeekPress)
Taking a few extra minutes out of some meetings I’ve been in — an endless series of meetings, interspersed by hurried phonecons — pretty much all day since I got…
Taking a few extra minutes out of some meetings I’ve been in — an endless series of meetings, interspersed by hurried phonecons — pretty much all day since I got up this morning and headed to the airport.
What was to have been a one-day-turnaround trip has instead turned into a Wednesday morning to Friday afternoon trip. Rrg. Fortunately it fits with Margie’s schedule this week.
Intense set of meetings with Oracle doing global planning for a system — after HR invited them to do so without IT’s involvement. Then an intense meeting with Accounting, HR, and Payroll about presenting a plan for a system to the executive management — which meeting, two hours later, turned out to be partially, perhaps, obsoleted, or at least redirected, by some new strategic directions being examined by executive management.
Oh, and the CIO resigned from the company. Which I found out a day later than everyone else (probably because I was slated to come out here today), but not from my boss with whom, aside from that two hour meeting, I have exchanged a dozen words (but with whom I’ve slotted some time tomorrow morning).
There’s a bunch of IT folks out here for some product training, a bunch of IT folks here for the big meetings I’m in, and all of IT management is here to meet with the interim CIO.
Things be a wee bit hectic.
“Okay, so I’m going to be going on a business trip for a few days, Kitten.” “I know.” “And you know what the standing orders are, what you’re supposed to…
“Okay, so I’m going to be going on a business trip for a few days, Kitten.”
“I know.”
“And you know what the standing orders are, what you’re supposed to do most of all.”
“‘Be good for Mommy.'”
“Right!”
“Daddy … if I’m really good …”
“Yes?”
“… could you …”
“Yes?”
“… take me to Chuck E. Cheese?”
(Beat.) “If you are very, very good. If Mommy says you were perfect.”
“If I was fantastic? Marvelous?”
“Yup.”
“No. Just one.”
“No, both.”
“Okay.”
The Irish town of Dingle is changing its name to its historic Gaelic Irish version, An Daingean. Which is making Gaelic supporters in Dubliin’s government very happy, but kind of…
The Irish town of Dingle is changing its name to its historic Gaelic Irish version, An Daingean. Which is making Gaelic supporters in Dubliin’s government very happy, but kind of torquing off the folks who actually, oh, live there.
“It was thrown upon us with the stroke of a pen,” said Fergus O Flaithbheartaigh, working at his popular pub in the town. His name is often seen in its Anglicized form, O’Flaherty, and the Gaelic version – many letters longer – is pronounced much the same way.
Liam O’Neill, a painter who grew up outside Dingle, did not learn to speak English until he was 14. Commenting on the name change, he invoked the hated history of the British imposition of English on Ireland. “It was like the way Cromwell did it,” he said. “People have taken to the trenches about it now.”
Local business owners say that they have worked for decades to build up the impression of a place that mixes quirkiness with tradition in a beautiful natural setting, an impression that they say will be damaged by the switch to An Daingean, which does not have quite the same ring as Dingle.
“It absolutely is a brand,” said Susan Callery, owner of the Green Lane art gallery. “I’ve spent 15 years working on it.”
As someone of Irish lineage, I appreciate efforts by the Irish and their government to keep their heritage alive, especially after the way they were mistreated by the Brits. But pushing that too far — such that language becomes a barrier to trade and tourism — seems counter-productive, especially when it’s something being imposed by bureaucrats from the capitol rather than taken on voluntarily by the folks who actually have to live with it.
(via Kottke)
Not many people go from being one popular stereotyped character to another, but Bob Denver did, doing the segue from Maynard G. Krebs on Dobie Gillis to the ever-bumbling naif…
Not many people go from being one popular stereotyped character to another, but Bob Denver did, doing the segue from Maynard G. Krebs on Dobie Gillis to the ever-bumbling naif Gilligan. Now that he and the Skipper both have found their way “off the island,” they can take their updated Laurel and Hardy act on the road.
UPDATE: Snopes revisits the Mystery of Gilligan’s First Name.
Things Hagrid the Half-Giant Would Say if He Served Jesus Instead of Harry Potter: “Why, if a fellow wanted ta get away clean, Peter-me-lad, all they’d have ter do would…
Things Hagrid the Half-Giant Would Say if He Served Jesus Instead of Harry Potter:
“Why, if a fellow wanted ta get away clean, Peter-me-lad, all they’d have ter do would be ta deny they ever even knowed Jesus. Uh-oh. I shouldn’t eh told yeh that.”
Heh.
For those who shrug off the browser competition between IE and Firefox and Opera and Safari and the like as simply matters of taste, or overblown rhetoric in search of…
For those who shrug off the browser competition between IE and Firefox and Opera and Safari and the like as simply matters of taste, or overblown rhetoric in search of a real problem, or how the debate between Mac users and Windows users is all a bunch of silliness, or how arguments over browser standards are simply matters of the Ivory Tower … how about cases where it can actually mean the difference between disaster and recovery?
[Gary Mullins] My 90-year old mother sat out Katrina in her brother’s home next door in Diamondhead, MS, about eight miles from the Mississippi coast where the hurricane’s eye hit. They survived without injury but with massive destruction to their homes, and my mother has lost most of her possesions. I brought her to my home in California yesterday and this morning went to the FEMA website to register to start the assistance process.
To my dismay, our Federal emergency agency requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, and only IE 6, to use the website for disaster assistance. I don’t want to be political about this, but this smacks of a serious leadership failure that the use of the Internet is reserved for only the Windows community. I will reserve my opinion of the administration for the op-ed pages, but I want to vent my dismay about this to the rest of the Mac community. I hope other Mac users let their political reps, newspapers and other media know of this marginalization. […]
[Todd Del Priore] FEMA’s website for disaster registration requires:
In order to use this site, you must have JavaScript Enabled and Internet Explorer version 6. Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) to register.”
I tried the latest Safari, IE and Firefox, none work. Heaven help all the Mac users in the South… assuming they have power.
(from the 5-Sep-05 News at MacInTouch)
That’s just swell, guys. No, I don’t think it’s some vast governmental or Micro$oftian conspiracy, just a combo of M$’s eschewment of basic web standards and the laziness of the programmers who put together FEMA’s website.
There are Federal regulations requiring accessibility to government websites for folks with various disabilities. A pity adherence to W3C isn’t part of that. I don’t care if you’re running IE7 or Netscape 4 — the point of access to a government site is not how whiz-bang the graphics are or how spiffy-doodle the ActiveX tricks are you can put in, but how well the public, as a whole, can access it.
Oh, well … not like it’s for anything important, I guess.
(via BoingBoing, which notes some technical workarounds for those geeky enough to make use of them)
It’s forbidden, I tell you! Forbidden! Or so says the Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Question : Why is chess forbidden? Answer : It is not permissible, because it is a means…
It’s forbidden, I tell you! Forbidden! Or so says the Grand Ayatollah Sistani.
Question : Why is chess forbidden?
Answer : It is not permissible, because it is a means for Lahv (debauchery) and gambling. Many traditions have been reported from the Holy Prophet and the Imams (a.s.) that prohibit playing chess. Moreover, when we do not know the reason behind the forbiddenness of an act, we are bound to obey in absolute obedience. There is a reason for it, but we do not know it and when we do not know it, it does not mean that we should not abide by it.
Question : Is playing chess allowed?
Answer : It is absolutely unlawful.
Question : Chess is Halal or Haram?
Answer : Chess is absolutely forbidden.
I don’t even want to ask about D&D, or City of Heroes …
(via J-Walk)
Why “teaching the controversy” in science classes is a bad idea. Hint: it’s not because teaching controversy is wrong. Why, then, would two lifelong educators and passionate advocates of the…
Why “teaching the controversy” in science classes is a bad idea. Hint: it’s not because teaching controversy is wrong.
Why, then, would two lifelong educators and passionate advocates of the “both sides” style of teaching join with essentially all biologists in making an exception of the alleged controversy between creation and evolution? What is wrong with the apparently sweet reasonableness of “it is only fair to teach both sides”? The answer is simple. This is not a scientific controversy at all.
The article goes on to note that there are various genuine controversies within the field of evolutionary science, but that ID is, for a variety of reasons, simply not one of them.
Good stuff worth reading.
Amazon, eBay, and PayPal don’t publish their customer service phone numbers online. But that doesn’t mean you can’t call them….
Amazon, eBay, and PayPal don’t publish their customer service phone numbers online. But that doesn’t mean you can’t call them.
Certainly one thing Flickr has done is make it easier for folks to post up cool imagery on Net. In this case, a faboo collection of Howard Pyle pirate paintings….
Certainly one thing Flickr has done is make it easier for folks to post up cool imagery on Net. In this case, a faboo collection of Howard Pyle pirate paintings. I believe I have some of these in a Treasure Island book somewhere in the basement (right next to a Robin Hood with some of his pieces, too).
(via BoingBoing)
Crimeny. You’d think that not only have I not been in the office since Thursday, but that everyone in the corporation has been working full-time through the weekend. Nothing like…
Crimeny. You’d think that not only have I not been in the office since Thursday, but that everyone in the corporation has been working full-time through the weekend. Nothing like personnel conflicts, major deliverables, urgent requests for info from the boss, design meetings, and other fun stuff like that to make a Monday Tuesday morning a delight!
… but if anyone out there feels compelled to go find the so-called “Man of God” quoted below and break his knees with a baseball bat, I’m sure God will…
… but if anyone out there feels compelled to go find the so-called “Man of God” quoted below and break his knees with a baseball bat, I’m sure God will forgive such an act.
Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, also sees God’s mercy in the aftermath of Katrina — but in a different way. Shanks says the hurricane has wiped out much of the rampant sin common to the city.
The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as “Southern Decadence” — an annual six-day “gay pride” event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week — God’s judgment would be felt.
?New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”
Disgusting.
Rev. Shanks, by the way, fled New Orleans and is currently holed up in Jackson, Miss. No word on how he’s tending to those of his own flock who, presumably, were also the victims of the hurricane — excuse me, of God’s wrath. I suspect he might not return to town for a while, not if his own words become too publicly known.
(via DOF)