And that's a wrap - ish.
Dec. 20th, 2006 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptAfter 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.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-12-20 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 01:11 pm (UTC)What's a new college grad to do? Live in the sticks and commute in the snow with a rusty old car for the rest of our lives?
no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 04:44 pm (UTC)And then if you want kids before you're middle-aged, you can only add to the financial woes of debts upon debts. It's ridiculous.
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Date: 2006-12-20 04:54 pm (UTC)Really, what are we supposed to do?
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Date: 2006-12-20 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 04:41 pm (UTC)*Gives the congressman back his brain* Please re-think your answer and try again. A more reasonable answer would have been that he did not want to disrespect that religion by putting something on his wall he did not believe in. But no..he has to completely insult Muslims.
What if a Jewish person being sworn in wants to be sworn in on the Torah? Or, is that Okay since the Torah is the Old Testament of his Bible?
When you're sworn into office, it makes sense to be sworn in over whatever religious work you believe in, because the whole idea of being sworn over the religious work is that you are making an oath before your god. If you get sworn in over a religious work you do NOT believe in, then you have no real liability to keep your oath, since you have made it to a god you do not believe in.
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I think the $100 laptop is an awesome thing. If Massachusetts does go through with giving these laptops to all children, perhaps other states will follow...heck colleges can offer them to the students who come to college without a computer. much more economical than trying to figure out a way to build a $1200 machine into your college budget!
The person spoke of how it would have been easier to type on it if he had had smaller fingers, but I think it's that way for most laptops - I mean, didn't you even have problems with my small keyboard? So, perhaps marketing it to collegiates might not fly, but offering it to children is definitely a step in the right direction.
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On Economic Challenges...I think nearly all of us fall into that category. college grads, barely able to make payments on college loans, let alone have the kind of money needed to afford a place to live. *sigh* I don't see things getting any better for us, either. Granted, some people do land amazing jobs that will pay off their debt, but that's definitely not the norm.
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I really wish there would be more information on the woman asked to return her medal. I want to know what in the world even got them to say "gender test".
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*dies in a fit of giggles over the last customers suck call logged. hehehehe. And this is why you make separate accounts on your computer if your mommy has to use it, and you password your account.
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If there's a shortage of kilts, does that mean that they will have to go naked? how in the world can soldiers share a kilt if they all have to be i the same ceremonial garb at the same time?
no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 04:55 pm (UTC)I do have problems on laptop keyboards. They make my hands sit next to each other. Still, the $100 laptop being widely available would be a grand thing, assuming that it can hold a reasonable amount of word processing and other student functions on it, with space for their data.
The debt thing is something I'm really worried about when I get out of university. The best way I can see of making ends meet is to live as if I were a college student for the ten years it takes for me to pay off my loans. And by then, I might have managed to amass enough to make ends meet in somewhere that I wouldn't need four roomies just to make the rest reasonable. If I have kids, of course, I'm probably going to need to resign myself to not having a room to myself until I'm at the retirement home.
Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but the times are such that it may not be an exaggeration soon.
See above, at
As for kilts, it's probably more likely that the amount of soldiers that can be fielded for formal occasions is lower than what it could be.
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Date: 2006-12-20 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-12-20 05:08 pm (UTC)Funny that you have problems on laptop keyboards, and I have problems with standard keyboards. Make fun of me all you want, but regular keyboards are too big for my hands. (Of course, this is where we point out that if we line my hand up with yours we're lucky if the ends of my fingers reach your first finger joint, which may explain things a bit better).
I don't blame you for worrying about the debt thing, and I agree that even for me, when I do move again, it's going to have to be with roommates. There's just no way to make it work. Heck, I have married friends with roommates just because they can't make ends meet otherwise. I'm not sure I understand the having kids = not having your own room, because well, if you have kids, I'm going to assume you're sharing your room with your wife/children's mother. I would hope you wouldn't have to share your room with your child beyond their first few months of life....IMO that's a really bad idea. One o fmy freinds growing up had to share a room with her parents because her parents couldn't possibly make her two brothers share and they only had three bedrooms, and she wound up sleeping on the couch most nights to not sleep in the same room as her parents. (Oh, and when her oldest bro went off to college (MSU, actually), she still wasn't allowed to move into his room, because what if he wanted to come back home to visit?)
I read the comment, but I'm still confused over it. The information I was reading last night seemed to show that no matter what, if you have a Y chromosome in you, you're going to somewhat develop male genitalia. Granted, the article didn't say what kind of genitalia the athlete had, so perhaps she does. Even so, I still think it's unfair. This person obviously identifies herself as a woman and ought to be able to compete as such.
I suppose you're right on the kilts. still, that's a bit creepy, isn't it? (sharing a kilt, i mean)
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Date: 2006-12-20 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-12-20 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 05:24 pm (UTC)Of course, I'm a bad person to try to understand any of this, because I'm a believer in being the gender you want to be, regardless of what you're born with. If she wanted to be a female, then she's female.
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Date: 2006-12-20 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-12-20 06:46 pm (UTC)i am increasingly alarmed by the response of people to an obvious harmless prank like this in the light of crimes against blacks, muslims, gays and other "anti-socials". why should there be so much shock when a statue of the virgin mary is hanged, but not even so much as a raised eyebrow when people like maher arar are kidnapped and tortured for a few years?
every time i try bugmenot to gain access to the new york times, the passwords don't work. bugmenot's passwords work okay elsewhere, but the NYT seems to have gotten better than bugmenot...
bill gates? you mean the "64k should be enough for anybody" and the "spam will not be a problem in two years" guy?
i'll start believing what bill gates says when the computer on my desk is happy with 64k of RAM...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 07:09 pm (UTC)The NYT may be getting zealous in its attempts to curb BugMeNot access - since I suspect a lot of people use those logins and passwords to get in, the NYT probably has something set up to disable those accounts after a certain amount of people use them in a short period of time. I suspect that if BugMeNot users spread their load across several (hundred?) logins, they'd all work properly. Maybe BugMeNot can implement a feature to check and see whether a particular combination is being used, and then serve up one that's not instead of the one in use.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-20 09:15 pm (UTC)And then I'll have to have someone else build it for me.
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Date: 2006-12-21 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 05:59 pm (UTC)