January 2012
1 post
"No" to SOPA & PIPA
(Sent to Senators Gillibrand & Schumer, and Rep. Hayworth.)
I am taking this opportunity to urge you to vote against SOPA and PIPA, as well as any similar initiatives. I think we agree that protecting copyright is important, but laws like these are not the way to go about it. Punishing sites like Google, Wikipedia, WordPress, and other content hosts is a blunt instrument that will hurt...
December 2011
2 posts
Hooray for customer service!
I was changing strings on my guitar last night when the tuner for the low E-string broke. I emailed Stewart-MacDonald, the luthier supply I bought the pegs from, this morning.
Here’s their reply:
Mario,
Thank you for contacting. We are sorry to hear that the mounting pin on your low E-string tuner broke, but we are happy to send you a replacement tuner today at no additional cost to you....
Calling all grammar wonks
I had a history professor in college who used to lament the decline of grammar and proofreading skills among editors of print media. He complained that he found mistakes in the New York Times often enough, and — and this troubled him most of all — occasionally in the New Yorker. Well, I think I just found one.
The piece is on page 29 of the December 5 issue. It appears in the Talk of...
November 2011
2 posts
“When I was a boy […] all the people of all the nations which had fought in...”
– Kurt Vonnegut Breakfast of Champions (1973)
October 2011
1 post
Lies the teacher told you
During my brief stint teaching high school, I assigned my students the task of preparing and delivering presentations. I remember telling them, repeatedly, that the skill required to make an effective presentation was something they would have to have to succeed in the business world. It’s the teacher’s pat answer to the constant question: Why do we have to do this?
...
September 2011
1 post
August 2011
2 posts
He's just wild about "Leezza"
Moammar Gadhafi’s ruined hideaway was raided, whereupon his personal scrapbook containing picture after picture of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was found. It seems the presumably now former “Colonel” carries a torch for this particular American girl. From a 2007 interview:
I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders...
July 2011
2 posts
The wedding season, forevermore
New York passed its recent law regarding gay marriage, and I think that’s great. No force on earth ought to stand in the way of two people in love. Nevertheless, I saw today a photo from a recent ceremony benefitting from the new law, and it made me think.
I wish the new couple all the happiness in the world. But, having worked at one time in catering for a period of 5 years, I cannot...
Is this a moral quandry? →
The guy who caught the ball from Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit returned it to Jeter. MSNBC is asking if readers if they would have kept the ball and put it up for sale for the estimated couple of hundred thousand dollars it would likely get.
Yes. That’s my answer. Yes without a doubt. Jeter could have bid for it and bought it at auction, though I’d likely let him make an offer...
June 2011
4 posts
“The press, in its historic connotation, comprehends every sort of publication...”
– LOVELL V. CITY OF GRIFFIN, 303 U. S. 444 (1938)
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
by David Simon My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This softcover, printed in paperback size type, comes in at 622 pages (not counting the afterward), and though I enjoyed just about every page of the book, towards the end I was looking forward to finishing it and getting onto something else. Still, it’s a year long account from a reporter embedded with the...
The wild life of suburbia
When the weekend rolls around, I like to spend my Saturday or Sunday mornings sipping coffee and catching up on my magazine subscriptions. As I was enjoying that little bit of relaxation this morning on the couch in the living room, I kept hearing a strange sound coming through the window that I had left open for some fresh air. It sounded like a large animal. At first I heard some low-pitched...
How rude!
I went to Barnes & Noble today during my lunch break and found garbage in the parking lot. There were at least two or three separate instances. What I saw weren’t bags of trash thrown randomly. These were half drunk bottles of orange juice or cups of soda, covered with their lids, and placed carefully on the white lines between parking spots.
My guess is that some people don’t...
May 2011
1 post
March 2011
1 post
Lessons from Japan
An article in Reason illustrates why wealthier societies are better able to weather natural disasters. Worth noting is the fact that the difference rests primarily on the society itself rather than on its government bureaucrats.
February 2011
5 posts
The Mind of a Police Dog
This is an article in Reason from Libertarian writer and dog-lover Radley Balko on the limits and problems of relying on police dogs as authorities on the Fourth Amendment.
It boils down to the “Clever Hans Effect.”
A teacher goes "postal"
If you’re a qualified English teacher and would like to work in Pennsylvania, send your résumé to the Central Bucks School District. They very likely should have an opening. It seems one of their teachers, a Ms. Natalie Munroe, blogged about her dissatisfaction with some of the students in her class. She didn’t mention any names, but she used plenty of choice adjectives. She’s...
January 2011
5 posts
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless...
“I can’t die. It would ruin my image.”
– Jack LaLanne, 1914-2011
“Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is...”
– Ted Koppel, Washington Post, 11/14/10
December 2010
7 posts
“‘Freedom of the press’ does not mean the freedom of those...”
– Is Julian Assange a Journalist?
Reader comment in USA Today
“Poll: Most want easier way to fire bad teachers.” That’s an article running in USA Today. There’s a comment from a reader, calling himself “TxTeacher,” that I’d like to share:
Should doctors be blamed when their patients don’t improve, even when the patients ignore the doctor’s advice or have family history of certain illnesses?
Should...
“Cuba banned Michael Moore’s 2007 documentary, Sicko, because it painted...”
– 12/17/2010 guardian.co.uk
Scanners and pat-downs are a sham
The truth is that exactly two things have made air travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing cockpit doors and convincing passengers they need to fight back. The TSA should continue to screen checked luggage. They should start screening airport workers. And then they should return airport security to pre-9/11 levels and let the rest of their budget be used for better purposes.
Bruce...
“Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people...”
– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Google says: Being bad no longer pays!
In response to the publicity from the recent NY Times article on the benefit of bad online reviews, the article I linked to in my previous post, Google now assures us that they’ve changed their algorithm to stymie people like Mr. Borker.
You can read the release here.
November 2010
3 posts
Caveat emptor!
The NY Times published a story on Black Friday about an online merchant and marketing genius from Bizarro World.
The proprietor, a Mr. Vitaly Borker, a Russian-born businessman living in Brooklyn, sells eyeglasses online. He has hit on a method that just about guarantees his company will be among the highest ranked sites in a Google search for designer eyeglasses: namely, bad publicity from...
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
GAS!...
Keeping your picks clean...
I don’t know if running guitar picks through the washing machine is the preferred method, but it certainly seems to be the default method. (I really ought to check my pockets more carefully!)
October 2010
3 posts
Season of terrorism
I realize that the term “terrorism” is being grossly overused by all sorts of people with either an axe to grind or a career to advance, but I’d like to add one more crime to that designation, as a public service.
Is it possible that Homeland Security could classify the automated political solicitations ringing my phone off the fucking hook, day and night, as a terroristic...
A treehouse sits in Manhattan
A woman in Greenwich Village put up a treehouse for her daughters, only the neighbors weren’t too happy.
Score 1 for childhood and sanity, 0 for prissy busybodies.
Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College?
This article ran the other day in the Chronicle for Higher Education.
Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000parking lot attendants. […] [T]here are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees.
I say, it’s a bubble in...
September 2010
4 posts
Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes
The Maryland police and a state attorney charged a motorcycle rider with a strained interpretation of the state’s wiretapping law for video taping a traffic stop with a helmet cam. The judge, today, dismissed the charges. His comment speaks volumes on the issue:
Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When...
“The court said that a person ‘who knows all of another’s travels can...”
– Feds: Privacy Does Not Exist in ‘Public Places’
Past somebody's bedtime
I’m playing guitar in a band, “Blues In A Bottle.” We had our third gig this Friday night at the River Station in Poughkeepsie. I got out of there just before 1 AM and stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way home to pick up a muffin.
As I was walking up to the counter, I thought I recognized a young lady sitting by herself at one of the tables. She had her hair dyed black...
August 2010
3 posts
“No technology in history has had the kind of rapid cost/performance gains that...”
– Fred Brooks, Aug 2010 interview in Wired.
July 2010
2 posts
June 2010
6 posts
