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And that's a wrap - ish.
Dec. 20th, 2006 02:03 amAfter the speediness of two of my grades in appearing, the last two have dragged. Well, I think they have until the Friday at the latest. Possibly the day after Christmas at most. I should know my grades before opening presents. At least, that’s what I hope.
Today was quite possibly one of my least productive days. Which is good in some ways, bad in others. When I get home, I need to be reminded to make my resume sparkle so that I can start sending it out and having people look at it in the job sense. So if I appear to be stressed in next semester, it’s probably not just the schooling getting to me.
Virgil Goode, a United States Representative from Virginina, is afraid of Muslims. So afraid that he wants to have immigration controls tightened to prevent more Muslims from being elected to public office. When presseed by a Muslim student why he doesn’t have materials from the Koran in addition to his Ten Commandments, his retort was “While I’m in this office, there will be no such thing on my walls.” Very informative, sir. If anyone doubted before, when it comes to people to be afraid of for no apparent reason, Muslim is the new black. (Whoops, there’s another of those cliches.)
I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a gender test for athletes, but apparently there is, and the second place finisher in the women 800m at the Asian games failed one. The article is less than clear on precisely what precipitated the test, nor what criteria are being used to determine a “failure”. There’s some mention of excessive Y chromosomes, but I’m not entirely sure how that is relevant. Someone with a genetics background, assistance, please?
Opera (the browser makers) got a protoype of the $100 laptop, and proceeded to play with it. They installed the Opera browser on its Linux flavor from static packages, as well as a few other things. Makes me think that this $100 laptop could be used in an effective way by people the entire world over, rich or poor, which, now that I think about it, is what it’s designed to do, isn’t it? In terms of proof of concept, it looks like those machines could have an effective, if somewhat cramped for space, system on the laptop that will take care of most of their needs.
With those behind the act perhaps expressing their distate for the whole War on Christmas idea, a statue of the Virgin Mary was hung outside a local church . Or perhaps it was a statement about the veering away of churches from the teachings they profess to follow. For whatever reason, it’s being treated as a crime with appropriate amounts of shock and outrage from the locals. Something that may be more worth their time to mull over is this New York Times article about a student who recorded his teacher's religious comments made during class. (Again, if you’re not registered, use BugMeNot to obtain access.) There are very few places to discuss the matter of religion in the classroom, and most of them should only bring up the subject when it deals with the curriculum in a relevant manner. Speaking one’s personal beliefs about religion is generally a no-no. The reaction is what I would expect, with some suspecting ulterior motives from the kid, whose father is a lawyer, others saying that the teacher did nothing wrong, and that most of the students appeared to side with the teacher’s actions, glaring at the student who taped and brought the matter to the administration. I wonder whether Matthew got told he was going to hell because he questioned what “everbody knew” or believed in that school. As usual, I crave more complete information than the article can give. Perhaps there will be some way of absorbing many-paged news stories once we have a medium better than text or a means for the brain to be augmented.
Living in the sprawling suburbs may mean a sprawling waistline. Because rather than walking everywhere, you drive everywhere. And if you dont’ get exercise in some way or another, through recreational sport, the training machines, or just walking about your big yard, then naturally there will be problems with weight gain. I suspect that’s why some architects are in the business of designing communities that encourage walking and exercise. Now all you have to do is convince the residents that the person they’re living next door to, or in the same neighborhood as, aren’t pedophiles or perverts or criminals or people below their own social class, and they shouldn’t be treated as such without strong proof.
The Lifehacker’s guidelines for blog commenters. A handy guide when you want to chime in and aren’t sure whether you should. Or when you want to flamebait, flame, or feed the trolls, all things you shouldn’t do.
Common Dreams points out something that I’m a little afraid of, myself. Summarizing some papers from Demos, America's Young Adults Face Serious Economic Challenges, it says, including higher amounts of student debt without any higher amounts of Pell Grants or other non-loan aid picking up the slack. So lots of people who probably should be in college furthering themselves aren’t, because they can’t afford it. There’s also no real increase in paycheck, along with the dropping of employer-sponsored health and retirement benefits, the credit card debt that some people have to rack up just to survive or get started on life, higher rents and downpayments for housing, and then the added costs of having kids (which are joys themselves, but do require a significant amount of income to raise) breaks the bank for most.
Bill Gates, in Scientific American, explains his vision for having a robot in every home, which may have been the catalyst behind the design and announcement of the common robotics tools that I linked to a little while back. With Robotic BASIC, or an equivalent thereof, and parts that are cheap and compatible, hobbyists might be able to finally work together in bringing their semi-proprietary designs (for one object set or another) into a more widespread use and acceptance. You could potentially get robot clubs finally being able to exchange code with each other to learn new bits of functionality and to display alternate ways of getting things done. And then an end-user like me will scout out the program that others have built and buy/download/run it on my own robots. If I actually have the time, I might be able to contribute back to the community, rather than just consuming all the code... like I am now.
In other science stuff, new fossils suggest New Zealand does have indigineous land mammals, after all . Which probably means that soon, students and schools the world around will be paying $500 a copy for the latest edition of their textbooks. All price-gouging aside, however, I wonder if this has greater significance to the history of the world outside of the Australia/New Zealand area. Additionally, specialized ink-jet printers may be able to dictate what stem cells grow into. I keep reading articles about this “printing” of material that somehow either turns into a biological object or controls it. Is there anyone who can help me puzzle out how it actually gets done?
Science in the service of making old films like new. I wonder what this house will be doing when all the “classic” films have been shot on digital.
Holmes Versus C'thulhu, coming soon to your PC. I can see Holmes deducing the existence of the Old Ones, and coming face to face with something like C’thulhu, and having to explain to a Watson that’s slowly going insane how he already knew there would be the tentacled horror beyond the door, and was thus ready for it.
New biography suggests significant parts of A Clockwork Orange may have been inspired by the author’s experiences with British intelligence and CIA experiments. If it turns out to be substantive, it would be another great example of hiding things in plain sight.
Seth Godin’s Blog gives us food for thought about the names that we allow to be on out clothes, computing our transactions, even playing music back to us. To him, brands can be mythologies. I’m inclined to agree, with what I’ve seen of the fanaticism that associates itself with certain brands. Or, I could point to the fashion sense of the high school “in” crowd. Flighty though it may be, where it alights, it is Godly, for as long as it lasts there.
To make you laugh, tonight - three tales of phone support, starring the clueless and the stupid.
The last link for tonight is as strange as it is somewhat funny - The Scottish Army has a shortage of kilts. Even though they’re only used in ceremonial uniforms, every solider should have his/her own kilt. Especially if they’re all worn the traditional way.
I started this entry at a little past midnight. I’m either going to have to trim more links out or start earlier if I want to get to bed on time. Wow. Anyway, enjoy, and good night.
Today was quite possibly one of my least productive days. Which is good in some ways, bad in others. When I get home, I need to be reminded to make my resume sparkle so that I can start sending it out and having people look at it in the job sense. So if I appear to be stressed in next semester, it’s probably not just the schooling getting to me.
Virgil Goode, a United States Representative from Virginina, is afraid of Muslims. So afraid that he wants to have immigration controls tightened to prevent more Muslims from being elected to public office. When presseed by a Muslim student why he doesn’t have materials from the Koran in addition to his Ten Commandments, his retort was “While I’m in this office, there will be no such thing on my walls.” Very informative, sir. If anyone doubted before, when it comes to people to be afraid of for no apparent reason, Muslim is the new black. (Whoops, there’s another of those cliches.)
I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a gender test for athletes, but apparently there is, and the second place finisher in the women 800m at the Asian games failed one. The article is less than clear on precisely what precipitated the test, nor what criteria are being used to determine a “failure”. There’s some mention of excessive Y chromosomes, but I’m not entirely sure how that is relevant. Someone with a genetics background, assistance, please?
Opera (the browser makers) got a protoype of the $100 laptop, and proceeded to play with it. They installed the Opera browser on its Linux flavor from static packages, as well as a few other things. Makes me think that this $100 laptop could be used in an effective way by people the entire world over, rich or poor, which, now that I think about it, is what it’s designed to do, isn’t it? In terms of proof of concept, it looks like those machines could have an effective, if somewhat cramped for space, system on the laptop that will take care of most of their needs.
With those behind the act perhaps expressing their distate for the whole War on Christmas idea, a statue of the Virgin Mary was hung outside a local church . Or perhaps it was a statement about the veering away of churches from the teachings they profess to follow. For whatever reason, it’s being treated as a crime with appropriate amounts of shock and outrage from the locals. Something that may be more worth their time to mull over is this New York Times article about a student who recorded his teacher's religious comments made during class. (Again, if you’re not registered, use BugMeNot to obtain access.) There are very few places to discuss the matter of religion in the classroom, and most of them should only bring up the subject when it deals with the curriculum in a relevant manner. Speaking one’s personal beliefs about religion is generally a no-no. The reaction is what I would expect, with some suspecting ulterior motives from the kid, whose father is a lawyer, others saying that the teacher did nothing wrong, and that most of the students appeared to side with the teacher’s actions, glaring at the student who taped and brought the matter to the administration. I wonder whether Matthew got told he was going to hell because he questioned what “everbody knew” or believed in that school. As usual, I crave more complete information than the article can give. Perhaps there will be some way of absorbing many-paged news stories once we have a medium better than text or a means for the brain to be augmented.
Living in the sprawling suburbs may mean a sprawling waistline. Because rather than walking everywhere, you drive everywhere. And if you dont’ get exercise in some way or another, through recreational sport, the training machines, or just walking about your big yard, then naturally there will be problems with weight gain. I suspect that’s why some architects are in the business of designing communities that encourage walking and exercise. Now all you have to do is convince the residents that the person they’re living next door to, or in the same neighborhood as, aren’t pedophiles or perverts or criminals or people below their own social class, and they shouldn’t be treated as such without strong proof.
The Lifehacker’s guidelines for blog commenters. A handy guide when you want to chime in and aren’t sure whether you should. Or when you want to flamebait, flame, or feed the trolls, all things you shouldn’t do.
Common Dreams points out something that I’m a little afraid of, myself. Summarizing some papers from Demos, America's Young Adults Face Serious Economic Challenges, it says, including higher amounts of student debt without any higher amounts of Pell Grants or other non-loan aid picking up the slack. So lots of people who probably should be in college furthering themselves aren’t, because they can’t afford it. There’s also no real increase in paycheck, along with the dropping of employer-sponsored health and retirement benefits, the credit card debt that some people have to rack up just to survive or get started on life, higher rents and downpayments for housing, and then the added costs of having kids (which are joys themselves, but do require a significant amount of income to raise) breaks the bank for most.
Bill Gates, in Scientific American, explains his vision for having a robot in every home, which may have been the catalyst behind the design and announcement of the common robotics tools that I linked to a little while back. With Robotic BASIC, or an equivalent thereof, and parts that are cheap and compatible, hobbyists might be able to finally work together in bringing their semi-proprietary designs (for one object set or another) into a more widespread use and acceptance. You could potentially get robot clubs finally being able to exchange code with each other to learn new bits of functionality and to display alternate ways of getting things done. And then an end-user like me will scout out the program that others have built and buy/download/run it on my own robots. If I actually have the time, I might be able to contribute back to the community, rather than just consuming all the code... like I am now.
In other science stuff, new fossils suggest New Zealand does have indigineous land mammals, after all . Which probably means that soon, students and schools the world around will be paying $500 a copy for the latest edition of their textbooks. All price-gouging aside, however, I wonder if this has greater significance to the history of the world outside of the Australia/New Zealand area. Additionally, specialized ink-jet printers may be able to dictate what stem cells grow into. I keep reading articles about this “printing” of material that somehow either turns into a biological object or controls it. Is there anyone who can help me puzzle out how it actually gets done?
Science in the service of making old films like new. I wonder what this house will be doing when all the “classic” films have been shot on digital.
Holmes Versus C'thulhu, coming soon to your PC. I can see Holmes deducing the existence of the Old Ones, and coming face to face with something like C’thulhu, and having to explain to a Watson that’s slowly going insane how he already knew there would be the tentacled horror beyond the door, and was thus ready for it.
New biography suggests significant parts of A Clockwork Orange may have been inspired by the author’s experiences with British intelligence and CIA experiments. If it turns out to be substantive, it would be another great example of hiding things in plain sight.
Seth Godin’s Blog gives us food for thought about the names that we allow to be on out clothes, computing our transactions, even playing music back to us. To him, brands can be mythologies. I’m inclined to agree, with what I’ve seen of the fanaticism that associates itself with certain brands. Or, I could point to the fashion sense of the high school “in” crowd. Flighty though it may be, where it alights, it is Godly, for as long as it lasts there.
To make you laugh, tonight - three tales of phone support, starring the clueless and the stupid.
The last link for tonight is as strange as it is somewhat funny - The Scottish Army has a shortage of kilts. Even though they’re only used in ceremonial uniforms, every solider should have his/her own kilt. Especially if they’re all worn the traditional way.
I started this entry at a little past midnight. I’m either going to have to trim more links out or start earlier if I want to get to bed on time. Wow. Anyway, enjoy, and good night.
