A pound of butter
Three cups of sugar
24 ounces of *good* chocolate - Ghirardelli at minimum. If you use Nestle or Hershey crap on this recipe, you will be wasting your time.
A bag of walnuts
Cut a piece of the butter off and use it to grease a cake pan or cookie sheet - something with walls high enough to hold the toffee. An 18x11 inch pan is a good size.
Melt the butter in a heavy pan. When it has melted, as it starts browning, add the sugar, stirring to mix. Continue gently stirring over medium to medium-high heat until the toffee has cooked to a dark brown. If there is a puddle of butter on the top, use a paper towel to soak as much of it as possible up. Pour the toffee into the cake pan. Sometimes at this point I add the walnuts so the walnuts help hold the chocolate and toffee together, sometimes I just add it to the chocolate.
Wait for the toffee to cool and harden, then rub the top with paper towels until any excess oil from the butter is gone. (If you added enough sugar in the above steps, there won't be any to mop up.) Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (or in the microwave, but be careful not to burn it). Spread over the top of the toffee. Cool until the chocolate hardens. It may have to be refrigerated.
10 December 2007
Awesome Toffee
I thought I'd share my awesome toffee recipe in time to make it for the holidays. My mom's ex taught it to me about 20 years ago, but since she had to email me recently to get a copy of it (and I didn't even get a 'thanks for taking the time to write it down for me') and I have made it so many times that I can now make it from memory, I'll call it my own.
01 December 2007
Chicken or the egg?
On the front page of Fox News. Unsurprisingly, CNN is not leading with this either.
The question is, does this mean that insanity leads a person to liberalism, or does liberalism lead to mental illness?
From my personal experience, my mental health improved greatly when I started taking personal responsibility in my life - sure, bad things had happened to me, but that didn't mean it had to continue to affect me and my behavior. With that realization came a movement toward conservative thought, i.e. the government wasn't responsible for taking care of me and the government wasn't responsible for legislating my behavior. Those two principles go hand in hand more than I think most libs realize; if one expects the government to not tell them what to do, one must show that one is responsible enough to not be told what to do. I think most people learn this in their teenage years, I'll admit it took me a few years longer.
A roundup of Gallup health polls over the past four years finds that Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to report having excellent mental health.
The survey found that 58 percent of Republicans polled reported having excellent mental health. Only 38 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Independents reported the same.
The question is, does this mean that insanity leads a person to liberalism, or does liberalism lead to mental illness?
From my personal experience, my mental health improved greatly when I started taking personal responsibility in my life - sure, bad things had happened to me, but that didn't mean it had to continue to affect me and my behavior. With that realization came a movement toward conservative thought, i.e. the government wasn't responsible for taking care of me and the government wasn't responsible for legislating my behavior. Those two principles go hand in hand more than I think most libs realize; if one expects the government to not tell them what to do, one must show that one is responsible enough to not be told what to do. I think most people learn this in their teenage years, I'll admit it took me a few years longer.
Can we please invade Venezuela now?
From CNN, I don't know why this isn't the lead story:
If the economy is so vital to our security, and Hugo Chavez is threatening our economy, wouldn't it just make sense to get rid of Chavez now? It's certainly more politically correct than invading Brazil for its new-found oilfields, not to mention Venezuela is closer and smaller.
President Hugo Chavez on Friday wrapped up his campaign to push through broad constitutional changes with a broadside attack against adversaries at home and abroad -- including a threat to cut off oil exports to the United States.
If the economy is so vital to our security, and Hugo Chavez is threatening our economy, wouldn't it just make sense to get rid of Chavez now? It's certainly more politically correct than invading Brazil for its new-found oilfields, not to mention Venezuela is closer and smaller.
18 November 2007
Plants in the Democratic Debate
No one's coming up smelling like roses here.
Jenny Bea has done an amazing job rounding up the identities of some of the questioners at the Democratic debate earlier this week. This one's a must-read.
Doug Ross also has a very interesting write-up. Including the fact that one of the 'undecided Democratic voters' may not even be a U.S. citizen, and therefore would be INELIGIBLE TO VOTE. Yep, that's me screaming there.
(h/t AoSHQ, where both of these stories were linked.)
Jenny Bea has done an amazing job rounding up the identities of some of the questioners at the Democratic debate earlier this week. This one's a must-read.
Doug Ross also has a very interesting write-up. Including the fact that one of the 'undecided Democratic voters' may not even be a U.S. citizen, and therefore would be INELIGIBLE TO VOTE. Yep, that's me screaming there.
(h/t AoSHQ, where both of these stories were linked.)
The Font Thing
The Font Thing is a piece of software that doesn't suck. Really, it's pretty indispensable. The Font Thing is a tool for viewing fonts, and runs on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP. No word on whether it will be updated for Vista, or even whether it needs updated - it appears the developer (Sue Fisher) hasn't updated her website in several years.
I end up using this just about any time I need to choose a font for a project. It's got a fairly easy to understand interface, and allows viewing of multiple fonts with whatever sample text you choose, so if I'm trying to match a font on a graphic a client has provided and the graphic is too trashed to actually used, I can easily scroll through all the fonts on my system to choose the closest match.
The font info is also accessible through the app, so I can get information ranging from who owns the copyright on the font to the metrics, such as the smallest readable size and the average character width.
And the absolute bestest part of it? It's FREE. Not shareware or spyware or adware, it's FREE. And there's not even anyplace on the developer's website to indicate where to throw a few bucks in gratitude. Really odd.
I end up using this just about any time I need to choose a font for a project. It's got a fairly easy to understand interface, and allows viewing of multiple fonts with whatever sample text you choose, so if I'm trying to match a font on a graphic a client has provided and the graphic is too trashed to actually used, I can easily scroll through all the fonts on my system to choose the closest match.
The font info is also accessible through the app, so I can get information ranging from who owns the copyright on the font to the metrics, such as the smallest readable size and the average character width.
And the absolute bestest part of it? It's FREE. Not shareware or spyware or adware, it's FREE. And there's not even anyplace on the developer's website to indicate where to throw a few bucks in gratitude. Really odd.
15 November 2007
Non-sarcastic PSA
Bonfils Blood Center is teaming up with the Food Bank of the Rockies and Community Food Share to help save lives multiple ways at once.
Bonfils is waiving the fee to register with the National Marrow Donor Program for bone marrow donation (normally $30) if you bring in a can of food when you come in to donate. The food banks will be helping families in need through the holidays with the canned food, and I'm sure all two of my regular readers have been eagerly waiting for the opportunity to donate bone marrow. A list of Bonfils donation locations are here. Most, if not all, of the donation centers have evening and/or weekend hours, and the staff has always been fantastically super-nice and very competent - I've only had one painful needle stick in three gallons of donation with Bonfils.
Bone marrow transplant is an essential part of treatment for lymphoma, leukemia, and other blood and bone marrow cancers. Only about 30 percent of patients needing a marrow transplant can find a suitable donor within their family; the other 70 percent are left to the whims of who has registered with the NMDP. Since a match will most likely be found in someone with the same genetic background as the patient, it can be especially hard for minorities to find a suitable donor. This is why it's especially crucial for as many people as possible to register.
Bonfils is waiving the fee to register with the National Marrow Donor Program for bone marrow donation (normally $30) if you bring in a can of food when you come in to donate. The food banks will be helping families in need through the holidays with the canned food, and I'm sure all two of my regular readers have been eagerly waiting for the opportunity to donate bone marrow. A list of Bonfils donation locations are here. Most, if not all, of the donation centers have evening and/or weekend hours, and the staff has always been fantastically super-nice and very competent - I've only had one painful needle stick in three gallons of donation with Bonfils.
Bone marrow transplant is an essential part of treatment for lymphoma, leukemia, and other blood and bone marrow cancers. Only about 30 percent of patients needing a marrow transplant can find a suitable donor within their family; the other 70 percent are left to the whims of who has registered with the NMDP. Since a match will most likely be found in someone with the same genetic background as the patient, it can be especially hard for minorities to find a suitable donor. This is why it's especially crucial for as many people as possible to register.
14 November 2007
Time to invade Venezuela
Hugo Chavez is apparently still smarting from being told to shut up by King Juan Carlos of Spain. He's now threatening to nationalize Spanish banks in Venezuela.
I hope he goes through with it, and I hope Spain invades as a result. And I hope the US is asked to participate. I think we're long overdue a war for oil, and it would be really nice if I could fill up my gas-guzzling SUV, with its 16 mpg in the city and 19 on the highway, for less than $60.
So please, Hugo Chavez, keep rattling sabers. You think you can call our president the devil with no repercussions, but can nationalize another country's banks for being told to shut up? We'll be smiling when businesses no longer invest in Venezuela due to your threats.
(h/t AoSHQ)
I hope he goes through with it, and I hope Spain invades as a result. And I hope the US is asked to participate. I think we're long overdue a war for oil, and it would be really nice if I could fill up my gas-guzzling SUV, with its 16 mpg in the city and 19 on the highway, for less than $60.
So please, Hugo Chavez, keep rattling sabers. You think you can call our president the devil with no repercussions, but can nationalize another country's banks for being told to shut up? We'll be smiling when businesses no longer invest in Venezuela due to your threats.
(h/t AoSHQ)
12 November 2007
Lefties don't have a sense of what's appropriate
There are appropriate times and situations to express your views, and there are times that are not.
It is not appropriate to use your children to further your political point of view. Brainwashing your child that the President and the troops and America are evil is not teaching your child to be a free thinker. Teaching your child to be deceitful to further a political point is not teaching your child to be moral and honest. Using your child as a pity story to increase your free government handout teaches your child that he/she is a tool, not a person that you as a parent cherish and protect.
There's a corollary to this - it's not appropriate to drag someone's kid into an unrelated debate. It's especially not appropriate to make sexual comments about someone's kid. It amazes me that I repeatedly see supposedly educated, smart moonbats targeting a kid with sexual comments, and then trying to blow it off as a joke. It's creepy and weird.
Parades and services to honor someone or a group of people are not times to express your political opinion. Specifically, acting out at a Veterans Day parade is inappropriate. Yes, we understand that you are veterans too. This does not give you the right to disrespect other veterans, or our country, during a parade to honor veterans. You got outraged when the Westboro Baptist Church picketed funerals of gays, you should understand that there's a corollary here.
So next time, lefty, before you go screaming your political views in whatever forum you can find, using whatever mercenary means you can dream up, ask yourself: is this really someplace where I'm being asked to air my ideas, or is my lack of judgment by spouting off wherever I feel like it going to turn people away from my ideas, whether they're valid or not? Are my children going to hate me later in life when they realize that I used them instead of protecting them? Am I creating hate for my political position by inserting my ideas at a time when I shouldn't be in people's faces?
It is not appropriate to use your children to further your political point of view. Brainwashing your child that the President and the troops and America are evil is not teaching your child to be a free thinker. Teaching your child to be deceitful to further a political point is not teaching your child to be moral and honest. Using your child as a pity story to increase your free government handout teaches your child that he/she is a tool, not a person that you as a parent cherish and protect.
There's a corollary to this - it's not appropriate to drag someone's kid into an unrelated debate. It's especially not appropriate to make sexual comments about someone's kid. It amazes me that I repeatedly see supposedly educated, smart moonbats targeting a kid with sexual comments, and then trying to blow it off as a joke. It's creepy and weird.
Parades and services to honor someone or a group of people are not times to express your political opinion. Specifically, acting out at a Veterans Day parade is inappropriate. Yes, we understand that you are veterans too. This does not give you the right to disrespect other veterans, or our country, during a parade to honor veterans. You got outraged when the Westboro Baptist Church picketed funerals of gays, you should understand that there's a corollary here.
So next time, lefty, before you go screaming your political views in whatever forum you can find, using whatever mercenary means you can dream up, ask yourself: is this really someplace where I'm being asked to air my ideas, or is my lack of judgment by spouting off wherever I feel like it going to turn people away from my ideas, whether they're valid or not? Are my children going to hate me later in life when they realize that I used them instead of protecting them? Am I creating hate for my political position by inserting my ideas at a time when I shouldn't be in people's faces?
08 November 2007
Twelve becomes eleven
If you haven't heard about the Aqua Dots recall, get out of your cave.
The Aqua Dots Super Studio was named one of the twelve best toys of 2007 by Toy Wishes magazine in their holiday issue. More information about the recall can be found at the official Aqua Dots Recall website.
Part of me is wondering if there's any profit to be made by getting a list of all toys made in China, buying "xxxxxtoyrecall.com", and offering to sell it to the toy distributor so they'll have it ready for when their toy faces a recall. Yes, when, not if. Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that China's doing at least some of this stuff on purpose? How often can accidental injuries occur before someone starts recognizing the pattern?
Millions of Chinese-made toys have been pulled from shelves in North America and Australia after scientists found they contain a chemical that converts into a powerful date rape drug when ingested. Two children in the United States and three in Australia were hospitalized after swallowing the beads.
The Aqua Dots Super Studio was named one of the twelve best toys of 2007 by Toy Wishes magazine in their holiday issue. More information about the recall can be found at the official Aqua Dots Recall website.
Part of me is wondering if there's any profit to be made by getting a list of all toys made in China, buying "xxxxxtoyrecall.com", and offering to sell it to the toy distributor so they'll have it ready for when their toy faces a recall. Yes, when, not if. Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that China's doing at least some of this stuff on purpose? How often can accidental injuries occur before someone starts recognizing the pattern?
Boycott Lego (?)
I never thought those words would be coming out of my keyboard. Lego is a staple in our house, and has been since before the kids were born.
From NRO's The Corner:
I hate to quote someone's post in entirety, but there's no succincter way to put it than how James Robbins did. There is some question as to whether Brett Kimberlin's claims to have sold marijuana to Dan Quayle were true or just an attempt by Kimberlin to harm Dan Quayle's political career. And just how much do we want to reward someone who put a bomb in a high school parking lot? Of course, Lego is too cowardly to outright admit that they hate our president and our soldiers - they couch their anti-USA sentiment thusly:
They're too cowardly to even mention the full title in their press release. Frankly, after having skimmed through the video, I don't see any indication that a child had much of anything to do with the production of it. It looks to me like the entire video is a vehicle for giving the Speedway Bomber recognition and money.
(h/t Discarded Lies)
Update Nov 12: Lego sent me an email claiming they had no idea of the content of the video. Apparently they decided that they were going to judge the essays as a standalone effort, and "made the decision to not regard, consider or otherwise evaluate any ancillary materials, including pictures, collages, paintings, songs or online videos". Whether this decision was made prior to someone at Lego seeing the video is unclear, but they claim they had no knowledge of the video.
Leave it to someone on the left, and a terrorist to boot, to exploit their child and deceive or collaborate, depending on how involved you believe Lego is, for personal gain and to push a message on to a toy company that now claims they take no political positions.
Full text of the two emails below. I forwarded the first one to James Robbins, but did not receive a reply, although he posted the text of the email on NRO. I'm still waiting to hear if Lego has provided kits for therapy for the soldiers at Walter Reed. (Which is NOT a political move, leftwing moonbats - keep in mind that claiming you support the troops but oppose the war actually means supporting the troops, whether you agree with their ideology or how they ended up in Walter Reed.)
From NRO's The Corner:
A few days ago I posted a bleg asking for ways to reach out to Lego Systems, Inc. to see if they would donate Lego sets to wounded warriors at Walter Reed who use the sets for therapy. Quick response from Lego — forget it. Now we learn that Lego has awarded $5000.00 to eight year old Kelsie Kimberlin, as part of their first annual Creativity Awards. Her entry — a 5 minute anti-Bush video set to an altered John Lennon tune ("Happy Springtime/Bush is Over").
Problem: the video was actually produced by her father, Brett, who runs Justice Through Music, a civic engagement nonprofit. Brett is also noteworthy for being a convicted bomber (aka terrorist), and for having claimed to have sold pot to Dan Quayle in 1988. Just the kind of person you want associated with your child's favorite toy. Some free advice to Lego — want to fix this PR nightmare? Do the right thing and help the wounded warriors already.
I hate to quote someone's post in entirety, but there's no succincter way to put it than how James Robbins did. There is some question as to whether Brett Kimberlin's claims to have sold marijuana to Dan Quayle were true or just an attempt by Kimberlin to harm Dan Quayle's political career. And just how much do we want to reward someone who put a bomb in a high school parking lot? Of course, Lego is too cowardly to outright admit that they hate our president and our soldiers - they couch their anti-USA sentiment thusly:
Kelsie encourages other kids to sing about peace and her choir sang a re-make of John Lennon's song, 'Happy Xmas, War is Over.' The video of 'Happy Springtime' has been viewed on YouTube almost 50,000 times and the song has played on MySpace almost 200,000 times.
They're too cowardly to even mention the full title in their press release. Frankly, after having skimmed through the video, I don't see any indication that a child had much of anything to do with the production of it. It looks to me like the entire video is a vehicle for giving the Speedway Bomber recognition and money.
(h/t Discarded Lies)
Update Nov 12: Lego sent me an email claiming they had no idea of the content of the video. Apparently they decided that they were going to judge the essays as a standalone effort, and "made the decision to not regard, consider or otherwise evaluate any ancillary materials, including pictures, collages, paintings, songs or online videos". Whether this decision was made prior to someone at Lego seeing the video is unclear, but they claim they had no knowledge of the video.
Leave it to someone on the left, and a terrorist to boot, to exploit their child and deceive or collaborate, depending on how involved you believe Lego is, for personal gain and to push a message on to a toy company that now claims they take no political positions.
Full text of the two emails below. I forwarded the first one to James Robbins, but did not receive a reply, although he posted the text of the email on NRO. I'm still waiting to hear if Lego has provided kits for therapy for the soldiers at Walter Reed. (Which is NOT a political move, leftwing moonbats - keep in mind that claiming you support the troops but oppose the war actually means supporting the troops, whether you agree with their ideology or how they ended up in Walter Reed.)
Thank you for your interest in LEGO® brand toys. We are always delighted to hear from a loyal LEGO enthusiast.
A blogger at the National Review incorrectly wrote that LEGO Systems had denied a donation request from Walter Reed Hospital to support troops and their families. The company’s community relations department responded favorably to the request via voicemail, and details have yet to be finalized on that donation request; however, it was not denied. In fact, the company has historically contributed to several organizations that support the families of men and women who serve the country, and continues to do so. For many years, LEGO Systems has taken great pride in making contributions to such programs as the United States Marine Corp’s Toys for Tots program and Operation Gratitude, which sends care packages to U.S Troops.
LEGO Systems does not endorse one political perspective over another. In its November 8, 2007 issue, The Washington Post ran a story implicating LEGO Systems’ recognition of an 8-year old girl’s creativity through an essay contest as endorsement of a political agenda.
LEGO Systems sponsored a contest to identify and honor 10 children’s creativity. One of the winning entries told of a girl’s endeavors to “sing for peace” by rallying her choral group to sing a peace song. She indicated she would use the money to “spread the word of peace and music and get more kids involved in saving the planet,” which the company finds compelling and commendable. Because the contest was essay-based, LEGO Systems did not regard, consider or otherwise evaluate any ancillary materials, including pictures, collages, paintings and online videos, and as such, was not aware of the specific content of the song.
While LEGO Systems does not ever endorse any extreme messages, it does always endeavor to encourage creativity among children. The intent of the contest was to highlight and celebrate children’s creativity, and LEGO Systems regrets any confusion the Washington Post article causes.
Alice, thank you again for contacting us. We wish your family many happy hours of creative building with LEGO brand toys in the years to come.
Thank you for your follow up email.
The girl mentioned in her entry that her song was shared on MySpace and YouTube, which supports her claim that the prize money would be used to “spread the word of peace and music and get more kids involved in saving the planet.” As previously mentioned, because the contest was essay-based, LEGO Systems made the decision to not regard, consider or otherwise evaluate any ancillary materials, including pictures, collages, paintings, songs or online videos, and as such, we were not aware of the specific content of the song or the video. That decision, intended to promote equity among all entrants, some of whom had not submitted ancillary materials, is being re-evaluated for future programs.
As a toy company, LEGO Systems does not take political positions. We are disappointed and deeply regret that our good intentions of rewarding children’s creativity has been used by others for political purpose. This certainly was not the intention of the contest, nor should this situation be perceived as a corporate position on politics. LEGO Systems does not endorse any political or extreme messages. It does always endeavor to encourage creativity among children. The intent of the contest was to highlight and celebrate children’s creativity, and LEGO Systems regrets any confusion or unintended sentiment that this situation causes.
Please do not hesitate to contact us again if we can be of additional assistance to you.
07 November 2007
Please help Weber Elementary
This slipped under my radar until a fundraiser at my son's school this week.
I kited this pic from the school's website, but I'm hoping they won't mind.
Weber Elementary School in Arvada, CO sustained an estimated $3 million in damage due to an arsonist last June. Most of the damage was in the library. I have been told by a Scholastic Books representative that their library has no books. Parents were being asked to donate a dollar at my son's school's book fair to help purchase books for Weber.
I know how much I enjoyed the library at my elementary school growing up, and how much I hated it when we moved to a school that had a poor library. And I've seen how much MadLibs loves checking out and bringing home books from the library at his school. It almost makes me want to cry to think there's an entire school of kids that are missing that opportunity this year.
So if you've got some spare pocket change, or some gently used books that are lying around, please help Weber rebuild their library.
The mailing address for the school is:
Weber Elementary
8725 West 81st Place
Arvada, CO 80005
I kited this pic from the school's website, but I'm hoping they won't mind.
Weber Elementary School in Arvada, CO sustained an estimated $3 million in damage due to an arsonist last June. Most of the damage was in the library. I have been told by a Scholastic Books representative that their library has no books. Parents were being asked to donate a dollar at my son's school's book fair to help purchase books for Weber.
I know how much I enjoyed the library at my elementary school growing up, and how much I hated it when we moved to a school that had a poor library. And I've seen how much MadLibs loves checking out and bringing home books from the library at his school. It almost makes me want to cry to think there's an entire school of kids that are missing that opportunity this year.
So if you've got some spare pocket change, or some gently used books that are lying around, please help Weber rebuild their library.
The mailing address for the school is:
Weber Elementary
8725 West 81st Place
Arvada, CO 80005
Flippity flippity flop flop flop...
...kinda like a dying fish.
I think John Edwards has just removed himself from Hillary's VP list. This video is from the Edwards campaign. It may be the ballsiest thing John Edwards has ever done.
(h/t AoSHQ)
I think John Edwards has just removed himself from Hillary's VP list. This video is from the Edwards campaign. It may be the ballsiest thing John Edwards has ever done.
(h/t AoSHQ)
02 November 2007
How to solve the China problem
Why doesn't America just make it a rule that we only import things from China that should actually contain lead? It seems like they have a surplus of it, since it's ending up in everything else. For instance, we could make sure we have plenty of kryptonite shielding. And bullets. I'm certain China could make some bullets that contain lead.
31 October 2007
Hillary's the scariest
But I'm going to bet most of the twelve regular readers here knew that already.
An AP Survey revealed that Hillary Clinton is the strong front-runner for scariest political Halloween costume. She beats the next politician, Rudy Giuliani, by two and a half fold.
Yesterday, I almost bought the mask they show in the link for Halloween, but MadLibs told me it was too scary to wear to his school. No joke. He thinks my flaming skull mask is less scary. I'm truly amazed at what a smart kid he is.
28 October 2007
It's like he could see the future
Two years ago, Bill Whittle wrote an excellent essay called Tribes, part of which discussed the events that happened at the Superdome in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I'm sure some people read his essay and were enraged; after all, how in the world could anyone predict what would happen if ten thousand people were shoved into a situation like that?
Well, it's happened again. Ten thousand people were shoved into Qualcomm Stadium as refugees from the fires in southern California. Sure, it's not quite the same situation - there's a road in and out, so people can bring supplies, but from the sound of it Qualcomm Stadium has turned into a place of hope, caring, and mutual support, while the Superdome was described as hell.
As much as I like to slam California, I'll be surprised if we hear reports of residents shooting at police officers or Guardsmen who come to keep order in the aftermath of the fires. And I'll be surprised if we hear too many reports of people using their aid money for strip clubs and tattoos, and I'm guessing that people who double-dip by claiming their house burned twice, or accepting payments for rentals while they're living in free housing, will be the widely-publicized exception to the rule rather than what seems to be the norm in Louisiana. But what do I know, I can't tell the future. Maybe we should ask Bill Whittle, he seems to have a good handle on it.
Well, it's happened again. Ten thousand people were shoved into Qualcomm Stadium as refugees from the fires in southern California. Sure, it's not quite the same situation - there's a road in and out, so people can bring supplies, but from the sound of it Qualcomm Stadium has turned into a place of hope, caring, and mutual support, while the Superdome was described as hell.
As much as I like to slam California, I'll be surprised if we hear reports of residents shooting at police officers or Guardsmen who come to keep order in the aftermath of the fires. And I'll be surprised if we hear too many reports of people using their aid money for strip clubs and tattoos, and I'm guessing that people who double-dip by claiming their house burned twice, or accepting payments for rentals while they're living in free housing, will be the widely-publicized exception to the rule rather than what seems to be the norm in Louisiana. But what do I know, I can't tell the future. Maybe we should ask Bill Whittle, he seems to have a good handle on it.
23 October 2007
Go Fred Go!
Fred's plans for border security and illegal immigration reform have been posted at Fred08.com.
Mark Krikorian does a great job of penning the Cliff's Notes for it, if you're not inclined to read the whole thing. I agree with Krikorian, Fred's going to do a bang-up job of attrition through enforcement if he sticks with this plan.
I was hoping something like this would be coming out of Fred's campaign. And I'm hoping this prompts some of the people who un-registered as Republicans to re-register so they can vote in the primaries, because it'd be a shame to have a candidate who's got any less than Fred's plan for immigration reform running as the Republican candidate.
(h/t Ace of Spades - I hadn't gotten around to reading my the weekly update in my email yet, and didn't realize this had been posted. I'll be hopping on those things in the future.
Mark Krikorian does a great job of penning the Cliff's Notes for it, if you're not inclined to read the whole thing. I agree with Krikorian, Fred's going to do a bang-up job of attrition through enforcement if he sticks with this plan.
I was hoping something like this would be coming out of Fred's campaign. And I'm hoping this prompts some of the people who un-registered as Republicans to re-register so they can vote in the primaries, because it'd be a shame to have a candidate who's got any less than Fred's plan for immigration reform running as the Republican candidate.
(h/t Ace of Spades - I hadn't gotten around to reading my the weekly update in my email yet, and didn't realize this had been posted. I'll be hopping on those things in the future.
Another reason Giuliani is not my favorite...
Giuliani is rooting for the Red Sox over the Rockies. Not that baseball's really my thing, to be honest, I wasn't even sure who was playing the Rockies. But this is just unforgivable.
I question this definition of romance...
Hillary told Essence mag that Bill is romantic because he brings her gifts when he's away.
Funny, I always thought a big part of romance was keeping pants zipped in the face of temptation, because you'd never ever want to hurt the person you're in love with. And Hillary, we already knew Bill was a gift giver, since he gave several gifts to Monica Lewinsky during their affair. The fact that Bill gives gifts is not something unique and special to your marriage.
I'm not sure the message the African American community needs is that romance is about what you get materially from a relationship rather than what you get from a stable, faithful relationship.
Funny, I always thought a big part of romance was keeping pants zipped in the face of temptation, because you'd never ever want to hurt the person you're in love with. And Hillary, we already knew Bill was a gift giver, since he gave several gifts to Monica Lewinsky during their affair. The fact that Bill gives gifts is not something unique and special to your marriage.
I'm not sure the message the African American community needs is that romance is about what you get materially from a relationship rather than what you get from a stable, faithful relationship.
22 October 2007
A moment of wild speculation
Does the fact that many Malibu residents are ignoring evacuation orders, instead expecting firefighters to somehow mysteriously bring the fires under control, and barring that, expecting the firefighters to rescue them despite the fact that it puts firefighters at risk and keeps the firefighters from spending their time fighting fires have anything to do with Malibu's overwhelmingly liberal population?
Blending Chuck Norris
In honor of/Despite Chuck Norris's recent endorsement of Mike Huckabee (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I like Mike Huckabee, but he's not Fred Thompson), I feel the need to post the Will It Blend video featuring Chuck.
Oh, and if anyone feels so inclined, I'd definitely take a BlendTec blender mysteriously showing up on my doorstep.
Oh, and if anyone feels so inclined, I'd definitely take a BlendTec blender mysteriously showing up on my doorstep.
21 October 2007
So nurturing
Hillary hates little fuzzy kittens. I'd be willing to bet she had a hand in poor Buddy's death too.
UPDATE: Harvey does it much better (as usual) over at IMAO.
UPDATE: Harvey does it much better (as usual) over at IMAO.
Geiger's febrile seizure
Now that I'm all up in arms about nationalized health care, I might as well share our final experiences with Kaiser Permanente.
Dr. Michelle Glasgow, after agreeing to continue to treat my hypothyroidism to the levels where I was losing weight, did an about-face when it came time to actually up my medication dosage. She would never answer my question about why she said previously that she would, only stating that I was within the TSH levels that Kaiser considered normal, despite the fact that those levels do not reflect the current guidelines from the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. I'm not sure what her reasoning was for refusing to raise my dosage, other than playing God - Kaiser wasn't paying for my medication so it's not like they were out any cash.
We had already decided to find other health care (and had taken the steps to purchase it through our LLC, at half the cost of what the school district was charging for Pacificare insurance) when the incident happened that completely sealed our decision to leave Kaiser.
(You're going to be wondering what we did with MadLibs during all this - fortunately my father-in-law was visiting, and so we just shouted into his room for him to watch MadLibs, got a "Huh? I need to watch MadLibs?", and ran out the door.)
In late June, 16-month-old Geiger started running a fever. She was teething, and despite what some doctors say, MadLibs had run crazy high fevers when he was teething, so we just assumed it was due to teething, gave her some Tylenol, and put her to bed at 9 pm. Although we keep a baby monitor running, it hadn't been necessary to actively listen for a while - Geiger is pretty good about hollering when she's ready to get out of bed. About an hour after we put Geiger to bed, my husband (R) happened to walk by one of the monitors and heard what sounded like rhythmic sighing, and brought the monitor to me. We joked that she must be singing herself to sleep, and listened for probably a minute or two before R. decided to go check on her - we usually have a policy of not going into the kids' rooms after they go to bed, but if she was having that much trouble falling asleep maybe she just needed some playtime). R walked into Geiger's room and immediately shouted for me to come up.
Geiger was having a seizure, and was burning up with fever. I took her out of R's arms and told him to go call the pediatrician, because I really wasn't sure what to do other than to try to get her fever down. I ran into the bathroom and started pouring cold water on her. R couldn't decipher the phone system to reach anyone (our previous pediatrician's phone system just had you press 0 to reach someone, and in my opinion any phone system you might call in an emergency should work this way) and we decided we could get Geiger to a hospital faster than an ambulance could get to our house and get her there, so we loaded her up in the Jeep and drove as fast as we could to Good Samaritan, which obviously was not my first choice, but it was closest, and there's a toll highway that runs practically from our house to the hospital so we wouldn't have to worry about the traffic of going into downtown Denver. It took fifteen minutes from the time we realized she was having a seizure to arriving at the hospital. Geiger was still seizing.
(Note: if your child ever has a seizure, call 911. We weren't sure if a seizure was considered enough of an emergency to call 911, and didn't take into account that your urge is to drive like a maniac to get your child to the hospital. Plus they can stabilize your child in the ambulance - if Geiger had stopped breathing on the way to the hospital there would have been nothing we could have done.)
R dropped Geiger and me off at the door to the ER and went to park the car. I ran in and told the receptionist, "My daughter is having a seizure, we need help NOW!" The receptionist just sat there slack-jawed for what felt like an eternity but was probably only a couple of seconds before a nurse came out and took us to three different rooms before finally deciding where we needed to be. It took almost twenty minutes and two doses of Ativan to make the seizure stop. Geiger's temperature was 103.5 degrees, which is actually low for a febrile seizure and is lower than what MadLibs' temperature runs when he gets sick.
Once we were actually in the right room and the staff had figured out what to do with us, the care was excellent. They got the seizure stopped and had a nurse pretty constantly with us. They even gave us some socks with treads on the bottom (I didn't even know they made those for adults) since we had made it out the door with no shoes or socks, just pajamas. They did seem a little incredulous that she had a seizure with a temperature so low.
Good Samaritan didn't have a pediatrician on duty past 2 am, so R and Geiger rode in an ambulance downtown to Children's Hospital while I drove home to grab a cell phone, let my father-in-law know what was happening, and grab some real clothes, blankie, binky, bunny, etc. Geiger was still unconscious from the Ativan, and she needed to be observed until she regained consciousness.
The staff at Children's was also wonderful. R and I took turns staying awake and fielding phone calls (R had called my mother-in-law from Good Samaritan and asked her to call my mother for some affirmative prayer, so word was getting out). The resident at Children's sat me down while R was asleep and discussed in depth what had happened, what we needed to watch out for, and told us that despite the long duration of the seizure it was unlikely that there was any damage. We were instructed to give Geiger alternating Tylenol and Motrin to try to keep her temperature down. We were told to follow up with a pediatrician at Kaiser at the end of the day (it was now very early Friday morning) so she wouldn't go all weekend without a followup.
At about 7 am, Geiger regained consciousness. Her first word waking up, of course, was "Daddeeeee!" (Mommy's pretty ubiquitous, and I'm OK with that.) She was still very groggy and unable to walk and focus, but they let us take her home. We called Kaiser to find out that Dr. Merrill was on vacation, so we would have to see Dr. Bruce Doenecke, who had scoffed at me for being overconcerned and not knowing to just apply some hydrocortisone when I brought MadLibs in for a rash a few months before - a similar rash a year before had been strep. We got an appointment for 4:45, so as to get us as close to the weekend as possible.
At about 2:30, Geiger started screaming like her bones were being ground into glass. Nothing calmed her down. We called Kaiser and were told to wait for our appointment at 4:45 (which I understand; they probably wouldn't have been able to get us in any earlier anyway and by the time we got there we would have only saved a half hour). Dr. Donecke really didn't know what to do with us or about us - I had assumed a pediatrician would have at least a rudimentary knowledge of febrile seizures, but he honestly seemed clueless. He at least had the good sense to call Children's to talk to a neurologist, who said that it could be a reaction to coming off the Ativan or it could be post-ictal nastiness, but we would have to wait another 24 hours before another evaluation would be necessary. We could try Benadryl, but since she had never taken it before it was possible it would wire her even more.
The real kicker was when we asked Dr. Donecke what to do in the future, especially if we were up on a mountain or at my mom's, which is miles from the nearest paved road and at least 30 minutes to the nearest hospital, if an ambulance can even find the place (FedEx sure can't!). His profound, reassuring answer? "I don't know." Dr. Donecke didn't even offer to try to find out what our alternatives were. I don't know if it's just that we weren't his regular patients, or that he's really that unconcerned with the wellbeing of his charges and their parents' peace of mind. Even after we asked him if he expected us to never be out of reach of a phone and hospital, we received no answer.
Ten days later, we had left Kaiser Permanente for good and were back with our old pediatrician. Here's the plan our pediatrician laid out for handling this in the future:
Second seizures don't require a trip to the emergency room unless the seizure lasts for more than five minutes. We were told we don't need to call 911 until after the five minutes had passed, but I think we will probably call right away.
If Geiger starts running a fever, we immediately begin alternating doses of Tylenol and Motrin every three hours. There's some debate on whether this actually prevents a seizure, but if we can keep the fever down we're hoping that will help.
We carry a thermometer and Motrin with us at all times. The Motrin has the current dosage written on it so we don't have to think.
Geiger's pediatrician wrote a prescription for rectal diazepam (diastat), which we immediately filled. A few notes on this - talk to your pharmacy about what dosages they are able to get before you get your prescription written - the dosage the diazepam came in required that we purchase the refill at the same time (two to a package) so we ended up having to pay full price for the refill, and the whole prescription cost us $200 with insurance. Your pharmacy probably doesn't stock this, so be sure to bring in your prescription a few days before you will need it. When we hike, fly, go to mom's, etc., essentially whenever we go someplace where we might be out of reach of a hospital or doctor or a phone, we carry the diazepam and some rectal acetaminophen (marketed as Fever-All, ask your pharmacy for this too) to handle the seizure and bring down the fever long enough for us to get back to civilization.
It's amazing what a pediatrician who's actually interested in helping a parent maintain their kids' active lifestyle and who is actually concerned about her patients can do. The odds are good that Geiger will have another febrile seizure, since she has three of the risk factors for a repeat - she was under 18 months old, her fever was relatively low, and her seizure lasted more than fifteen minutes. With the current plan we've developed with our pediatrician, we can rest assured if we go someplace that is out of reach of phone and hospital, we can handle a seizure.
(And in case you're wondering, as if anyone read this far, Geiger is fine. She oddly lost her attachment to her bunny lovie for a while, but that either came back or redeveloped, I'm not sure which. She's still beating all the curves for learning and development, and her head is still way too big for her body.)
Dr. Michelle Glasgow, after agreeing to continue to treat my hypothyroidism to the levels where I was losing weight, did an about-face when it came time to actually up my medication dosage. She would never answer my question about why she said previously that she would, only stating that I was within the TSH levels that Kaiser considered normal, despite the fact that those levels do not reflect the current guidelines from the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. I'm not sure what her reasoning was for refusing to raise my dosage, other than playing God - Kaiser wasn't paying for my medication so it's not like they were out any cash.
We had already decided to find other health care (and had taken the steps to purchase it through our LLC, at half the cost of what the school district was charging for Pacificare insurance) when the incident happened that completely sealed our decision to leave Kaiser.
(You're going to be wondering what we did with MadLibs during all this - fortunately my father-in-law was visiting, and so we just shouted into his room for him to watch MadLibs, got a "Huh? I need to watch MadLibs?", and ran out the door.)
In late June, 16-month-old Geiger started running a fever. She was teething, and despite what some doctors say, MadLibs had run crazy high fevers when he was teething, so we just assumed it was due to teething, gave her some Tylenol, and put her to bed at 9 pm. Although we keep a baby monitor running, it hadn't been necessary to actively listen for a while - Geiger is pretty good about hollering when she's ready to get out of bed. About an hour after we put Geiger to bed, my husband (R) happened to walk by one of the monitors and heard what sounded like rhythmic sighing, and brought the monitor to me. We joked that she must be singing herself to sleep, and listened for probably a minute or two before R. decided to go check on her - we usually have a policy of not going into the kids' rooms after they go to bed, but if she was having that much trouble falling asleep maybe she just needed some playtime). R walked into Geiger's room and immediately shouted for me to come up.
Geiger was having a seizure, and was burning up with fever. I took her out of R's arms and told him to go call the pediatrician, because I really wasn't sure what to do other than to try to get her fever down. I ran into the bathroom and started pouring cold water on her. R couldn't decipher the phone system to reach anyone (our previous pediatrician's phone system just had you press 0 to reach someone, and in my opinion any phone system you might call in an emergency should work this way) and we decided we could get Geiger to a hospital faster than an ambulance could get to our house and get her there, so we loaded her up in the Jeep and drove as fast as we could to Good Samaritan, which obviously was not my first choice, but it was closest, and there's a toll highway that runs practically from our house to the hospital so we wouldn't have to worry about the traffic of going into downtown Denver. It took fifteen minutes from the time we realized she was having a seizure to arriving at the hospital. Geiger was still seizing.
(Note: if your child ever has a seizure, call 911. We weren't sure if a seizure was considered enough of an emergency to call 911, and didn't take into account that your urge is to drive like a maniac to get your child to the hospital. Plus they can stabilize your child in the ambulance - if Geiger had stopped breathing on the way to the hospital there would have been nothing we could have done.)
R dropped Geiger and me off at the door to the ER and went to park the car. I ran in and told the receptionist, "My daughter is having a seizure, we need help NOW!" The receptionist just sat there slack-jawed for what felt like an eternity but was probably only a couple of seconds before a nurse came out and took us to three different rooms before finally deciding where we needed to be. It took almost twenty minutes and two doses of Ativan to make the seizure stop. Geiger's temperature was 103.5 degrees, which is actually low for a febrile seizure and is lower than what MadLibs' temperature runs when he gets sick.
Once we were actually in the right room and the staff had figured out what to do with us, the care was excellent. They got the seizure stopped and had a nurse pretty constantly with us. They even gave us some socks with treads on the bottom (I didn't even know they made those for adults) since we had made it out the door with no shoes or socks, just pajamas. They did seem a little incredulous that she had a seizure with a temperature so low.
Good Samaritan didn't have a pediatrician on duty past 2 am, so R and Geiger rode in an ambulance downtown to Children's Hospital while I drove home to grab a cell phone, let my father-in-law know what was happening, and grab some real clothes, blankie, binky, bunny, etc. Geiger was still unconscious from the Ativan, and she needed to be observed until she regained consciousness.
The staff at Children's was also wonderful. R and I took turns staying awake and fielding phone calls (R had called my mother-in-law from Good Samaritan and asked her to call my mother for some affirmative prayer, so word was getting out). The resident at Children's sat me down while R was asleep and discussed in depth what had happened, what we needed to watch out for, and told us that despite the long duration of the seizure it was unlikely that there was any damage. We were instructed to give Geiger alternating Tylenol and Motrin to try to keep her temperature down. We were told to follow up with a pediatrician at Kaiser at the end of the day (it was now very early Friday morning) so she wouldn't go all weekend without a followup.
At about 7 am, Geiger regained consciousness. Her first word waking up, of course, was "Daddeeeee!" (Mommy's pretty ubiquitous, and I'm OK with that.) She was still very groggy and unable to walk and focus, but they let us take her home. We called Kaiser to find out that Dr. Merrill was on vacation, so we would have to see Dr. Bruce Doenecke, who had scoffed at me for being overconcerned and not knowing to just apply some hydrocortisone when I brought MadLibs in for a rash a few months before - a similar rash a year before had been strep. We got an appointment for 4:45, so as to get us as close to the weekend as possible.
At about 2:30, Geiger started screaming like her bones were being ground into glass. Nothing calmed her down. We called Kaiser and were told to wait for our appointment at 4:45 (which I understand; they probably wouldn't have been able to get us in any earlier anyway and by the time we got there we would have only saved a half hour). Dr. Donecke really didn't know what to do with us or about us - I had assumed a pediatrician would have at least a rudimentary knowledge of febrile seizures, but he honestly seemed clueless. He at least had the good sense to call Children's to talk to a neurologist, who said that it could be a reaction to coming off the Ativan or it could be post-ictal nastiness, but we would have to wait another 24 hours before another evaluation would be necessary. We could try Benadryl, but since she had never taken it before it was possible it would wire her even more.
The real kicker was when we asked Dr. Donecke what to do in the future, especially if we were up on a mountain or at my mom's, which is miles from the nearest paved road and at least 30 minutes to the nearest hospital, if an ambulance can even find the place (FedEx sure can't!). His profound, reassuring answer? "I don't know." Dr. Donecke didn't even offer to try to find out what our alternatives were. I don't know if it's just that we weren't his regular patients, or that he's really that unconcerned with the wellbeing of his charges and their parents' peace of mind. Even after we asked him if he expected us to never be out of reach of a phone and hospital, we received no answer.
Ten days later, we had left Kaiser Permanente for good and were back with our old pediatrician. Here's the plan our pediatrician laid out for handling this in the future:
Second seizures don't require a trip to the emergency room unless the seizure lasts for more than five minutes. We were told we don't need to call 911 until after the five minutes had passed, but I think we will probably call right away.
If Geiger starts running a fever, we immediately begin alternating doses of Tylenol and Motrin every three hours. There's some debate on whether this actually prevents a seizure, but if we can keep the fever down we're hoping that will help.
We carry a thermometer and Motrin with us at all times. The Motrin has the current dosage written on it so we don't have to think.
Geiger's pediatrician wrote a prescription for rectal diazepam (diastat), which we immediately filled. A few notes on this - talk to your pharmacy about what dosages they are able to get before you get your prescription written - the dosage the diazepam came in required that we purchase the refill at the same time (two to a package) so we ended up having to pay full price for the refill, and the whole prescription cost us $200 with insurance. Your pharmacy probably doesn't stock this, so be sure to bring in your prescription a few days before you will need it. When we hike, fly, go to mom's, etc., essentially whenever we go someplace where we might be out of reach of a hospital or doctor or a phone, we carry the diazepam and some rectal acetaminophen (marketed as Fever-All, ask your pharmacy for this too) to handle the seizure and bring down the fever long enough for us to get back to civilization.
It's amazing what a pediatrician who's actually interested in helping a parent maintain their kids' active lifestyle and who is actually concerned about her patients can do. The odds are good that Geiger will have another febrile seizure, since she has three of the risk factors for a repeat - she was under 18 months old, her fever was relatively low, and her seizure lasted more than fifteen minutes. With the current plan we've developed with our pediatrician, we can rest assured if we go someplace that is out of reach of phone and hospital, we can handle a seizure.
(And in case you're wondering, as if anyone read this far, Geiger is fine. She oddly lost her attachment to her bunny lovie for a while, but that either came back or redeveloped, I'm not sure which. She's still beating all the curves for learning and development, and her head is still way too big for her body.)
I wish I could draw like this
Darleen Click has a comic that sums the Democratic congress and the S-CHIP snafu up nicely.
I've almost come to the conclusion that some people really are too stupid to spend their own money. This is why they are OK with the government taking their money and spending it however the government feels is best. I wonder how they'll feel when they don't have the money for fancy cars and dinners out and fancy clothes because instead of being taxed at their current rate, their tax rate jumps up to 40 or 50 percent? But they'll have health insurance! Demanding nationalized healthcare for everyone is no different from saying, "I can't manage my budget and provide for my family, and everyone else is just as personally incompetent as I am." Yes, that's YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Frost.
One only has to look at the disaster that is Kaiser Permanente (and more on that later, we finally managed to shake free of Kaiser but I haven't had time to write up all the fun) and the rampant Medicare abuses, both on the part of doctors and patients, to know what a catastrophe nationalized healthcare would be.
I've almost come to the conclusion that some people really are too stupid to spend their own money. This is why they are OK with the government taking their money and spending it however the government feels is best. I wonder how they'll feel when they don't have the money for fancy cars and dinners out and fancy clothes because instead of being taxed at their current rate, their tax rate jumps up to 40 or 50 percent? But they'll have health insurance! Demanding nationalized healthcare for everyone is no different from saying, "I can't manage my budget and provide for my family, and everyone else is just as personally incompetent as I am." Yes, that's YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Frost.
One only has to look at the disaster that is Kaiser Permanente (and more on that later, we finally managed to shake free of Kaiser but I haven't had time to write up all the fun) and the rampant Medicare abuses, both on the part of doctors and patients, to know what a catastrophe nationalized healthcare would be.
19 October 2007
Hillary gets it
Hillary Clinton totally understands that offering universal health care means the government can tell you how to live your life.
Too bad she's got this fantastic understanding of the implications of government-provided health care, and she's still in favor of it. Oh, yeah, I forgot - she's insanely power-hungry. And thinks she can run each of our lives better than we could possibly do it ourselves. That explains it.
I can't imagine that the families perpetually dependent on welfare who don't think anyone should tell them they have to go get a job are going to look kindly on being told they have to shave a few pounds.
As for ways to reduce pressure on the overburdened health care system, she said she could envision using "carrots and maybe a few sticks" to motivate people to lose weight and make other behavioral changes that could help...She didn't directly address questions of whether smokers or obese people should pay more for health care but said as president she would use the "bully pulpit" to encourage healthy lifestyle choices, particularly among young people.
Too bad she's got this fantastic understanding of the implications of government-provided health care, and she's still in favor of it. Oh, yeah, I forgot - she's insanely power-hungry. And thinks she can run each of our lives better than we could possibly do it ourselves. That explains it.
I can't imagine that the families perpetually dependent on welfare who don't think anyone should tell them they have to go get a job are going to look kindly on being told they have to shave a few pounds.
Snowball attack
Possible two-year prison term for throwing a snowball at a coworker.
The DA is calling it an 'iceball' to try to make it sound like he's not a complete idiot.
When (Michelle) Oehlert reported the incident to deputies the following day, she said Thistleton and two friends were "taunting her" just before she was hit with the snowball. She complained that the snowball "caused her pain due to a prior injury" — a car accident several years earlier.
The DA is calling it an 'iceball' to try to make it sound like he's not a complete idiot.
18 October 2007
Schools prescribing birth control?
A middle school in Maine has made the decision to prescribe birth control pills to its female students without requiring parental consent.
The school in question is one of the few schools in the district to have an on-site clinic, apparently because of the high percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunches. I discussed the ramifications of the nanny state in the school and the slippery slope of allowing the government to offer additional, non-education-related services to students a few days ago. This is quite clearly another case.
I went to middle school and high school in an urban area - the high school I attended was over 60% African-American, and was gang-infested. I understand the problems many kids have coping with that environment, the tremendous amount of peer pressure, and goodness knows I made quite a few stupid choices myself during my middle school and high school years. Many of the students are not going to have two positive parental role models, and many of the students will be lucky to even have one. And sure, an eleven-year-old is not emotionally mature to make choices about sex and birth control, although she's probably going to be already making some choices about sex at that age. But putting the schools in the position of providing birth control to students is opening too many cans of worms.
First, there are the implications of having the school step in as an authority that may be circumventing parental wishes. I think it's likely that at least a few parents who don't want their child receiving birth control will refuse to sign the parental consent form allowing their child access to the clinic. This will decrease the student population that is served by the clinic. For instance, if Catholic students attend King Middle School, it's possible their parents will no longer allow them to seek health care from the school clinic. I'm pretty 'liberal' when it comes to birth control, but I think I'd be furious if my child went to her school clinic and was offered birth control. Offering a kid birth control is going to lead at least a few kids to think they need to use it, maybe earlier than they would have if it wasn't shoved in their faces.
Second, does the school really not have educational needs to spend their money on?
And third, can the school afford the financial and political ramifications if a student has medical problems due to taking birth control pills the school has prescribed? I don't think that when my daughter is eleven I will have discussed the medical reasons I had to stop taking the very birth control pills the CNN article uses as a graphic, or how taking the pill made both me and my mother so hormonally insane that it almost ruined our lives before we each clued in (at about the same time - my mother was on the pill as a hormone replacement late in life) that we were poisoning ourselves with birth control pills.
I know that denying a young girl birth control probably won't stop her from having sex - if anything, it's likely to make her act out even more. But schools have to stop trying to take over every aspect of parental responsibilities. If the Portland School District feels so strongly about having birth control available to students, maybe they should ask Planned Parenthood about putting offices near existing schools. This would allow the school district to continue to provide health services to in-need students without parents having to worry about whether birth control is being offered to their children against parental wishes, the school won't be opening themselves up for a lawsuit when a girl drops dead of a blood clot or starts acting out because the pill made her crazy.
The school in question is one of the few schools in the district to have an on-site clinic, apparently because of the high percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunches. I discussed the ramifications of the nanny state in the school and the slippery slope of allowing the government to offer additional, non-education-related services to students a few days ago. This is quite clearly another case.
I went to middle school and high school in an urban area - the high school I attended was over 60% African-American, and was gang-infested. I understand the problems many kids have coping with that environment, the tremendous amount of peer pressure, and goodness knows I made quite a few stupid choices myself during my middle school and high school years. Many of the students are not going to have two positive parental role models, and many of the students will be lucky to even have one. And sure, an eleven-year-old is not emotionally mature to make choices about sex and birth control, although she's probably going to be already making some choices about sex at that age. But putting the schools in the position of providing birth control to students is opening too many cans of worms.
First, there are the implications of having the school step in as an authority that may be circumventing parental wishes. I think it's likely that at least a few parents who don't want their child receiving birth control will refuse to sign the parental consent form allowing their child access to the clinic. This will decrease the student population that is served by the clinic. For instance, if Catholic students attend King Middle School, it's possible their parents will no longer allow them to seek health care from the school clinic. I'm pretty 'liberal' when it comes to birth control, but I think I'd be furious if my child went to her school clinic and was offered birth control. Offering a kid birth control is going to lead at least a few kids to think they need to use it, maybe earlier than they would have if it wasn't shoved in their faces.
Second, does the school really not have educational needs to spend their money on?
And third, can the school afford the financial and political ramifications if a student has medical problems due to taking birth control pills the school has prescribed? I don't think that when my daughter is eleven I will have discussed the medical reasons I had to stop taking the very birth control pills the CNN article uses as a graphic, or how taking the pill made both me and my mother so hormonally insane that it almost ruined our lives before we each clued in (at about the same time - my mother was on the pill as a hormone replacement late in life) that we were poisoning ourselves with birth control pills.
I know that denying a young girl birth control probably won't stop her from having sex - if anything, it's likely to make her act out even more. But schools have to stop trying to take over every aspect of parental responsibilities. If the Portland School District feels so strongly about having birth control available to students, maybe they should ask Planned Parenthood about putting offices near existing schools. This would allow the school district to continue to provide health services to in-need students without parents having to worry about whether birth control is being offered to their children against parental wishes, the school won't be opening themselves up for a lawsuit when a girl drops dead of a blood clot or starts acting out because the pill made her crazy.
16 October 2007
How disturbing is this?
Got this letter from MadLibs's school today.
Way to put parents' minds at ease!
Dear SchoolName parents:
Today about 12:30 PM today (sic) there was a safety concern in the area around the school.
The office staff was in constant communication with district security and the CityName police. Every precaution was taken to ensure the safety of all students at SchoolName.
Thank you for your support of the safety and security of SchoolName students.
Sincerely,
PrincipalName
Way to put parents' minds at ease!
Let him die, already!
CNN reports that the ACLU is sticking its nose in where it's not wanted again. They've filed to have all executions in Nevada halted until the Supreme Court decided on the 'cruel and unusual punishment' status of lethal injection.
The lucky guy who had his life saved beat a little old lady to death with a tire iron. What's more, he hasn't filed any appeals. He's ready to go. I wonder if he's grateful to the ACLU?
The lucky guy who had his life saved beat a little old lady to death with a tire iron. What's more, he hasn't filed any appeals. He's ready to go. I wonder if he's grateful to the ACLU?
Opt out of having your info shared by Verizon
PeenieWallie has an important public service announcement if you're a Verizon customer and you place any value whatsoever on your privacy.
And they wonder why the district thinks they can send these out...
Denver Public Schools recently got itself into some hot water by sending a sealed letter home with a student informing the student's mother that the student was overweight. Of course, the child opened it and supposedly became distressed - perhaps she wasn't aware she had a weight problem?
I've seen comments on some blogs asking why in the world Denver Public Schools thinks they can engage in this sort of personal life interference. I'm guessing some of the same people who are up in arms over this are also up in arms in favor of the proposed expansion of the S-CHIP program.
70.7% of Centennial K-8's students were eligible (PDF warning) for free or reduced lunches in the 2005-2006 school year. To be eligible for free or reduced lunches, a student's family must be at or below 130% of poverty level. To qualify for the state CBHP health plan (PDF warning again), the student must be at or below 200% of poverty level.
What this means is that well over 70% of the students in Centennial K-8 qualify for state-funded health care.
With the government providing lunches and health insurance to a large portion of these kids, is it any wonder that the government feels a well-meaning obligation to do what they can to reduce those insurance costs?
Years ago, I did volunteer work at an HIV-testing clinic that also provided services to disabled people who needed mental health, physical health or housing services. My work there was a big part of what turned me from a bleeding heart into a conservative - seeing people use food stamps to buy pork rinds and candy bars and then asking for more more more because their food stamps were gone by was disenheartening. Even more disenheartening was taking a poor mom who had no food for her kids grocery shopping a few years ago and having her get mad and yelling at me in the grocery store because I wasn't willing to add twelve-packs of soda to the grocery bill.
I understand that there are many families out there who use their state and federal provided funds as wisely as they can. But parents who don't spoil it for everyone and make the government act as a nanny state to reduce the poor use of government funds. If we keep expanding government-funded health care, don't be surprised if we start seeing more and more cases where Big Brother is telling us how to raise our kids.
I've seen comments on some blogs asking why in the world Denver Public Schools thinks they can engage in this sort of personal life interference. I'm guessing some of the same people who are up in arms over this are also up in arms in favor of the proposed expansion of the S-CHIP program.
70.7% of Centennial K-8's students were eligible (PDF warning) for free or reduced lunches in the 2005-2006 school year. To be eligible for free or reduced lunches, a student's family must be at or below 130% of poverty level. To qualify for the state CBHP health plan (PDF warning again), the student must be at or below 200% of poverty level.
What this means is that well over 70% of the students in Centennial K-8 qualify for state-funded health care.
With the government providing lunches and health insurance to a large portion of these kids, is it any wonder that the government feels a well-meaning obligation to do what they can to reduce those insurance costs?
Years ago, I did volunteer work at an HIV-testing clinic that also provided services to disabled people who needed mental health, physical health or housing services. My work there was a big part of what turned me from a bleeding heart into a conservative - seeing people use food stamps to buy pork rinds and candy bars and then asking for more more more because their food stamps were gone by was disenheartening. Even more disenheartening was taking a poor mom who had no food for her kids grocery shopping a few years ago and having her get mad and yelling at me in the grocery store because I wasn't willing to add twelve-packs of soda to the grocery bill.
I understand that there are many families out there who use their state and federal provided funds as wisely as they can. But parents who don't spoil it for everyone and make the government act as a nanny state to reduce the poor use of government funds. If we keep expanding government-funded health care, don't be surprised if we start seeing more and more cases where Big Brother is telling us how to raise our kids.
10 October 2007
Fun with databases
The Washington Post has a website where you can look up congressional votes since 1991.
But wait, there's more!
You can see votes sorted by several categories.
Surely some statistics geek out there can run some numbers on whether we should be voting for Scorpios or Aquariuses...
But wait, there's more!
You can see votes sorted by several categories.
- Political party
- State/territory
- Region
- Boomer status
- Gender
- Astrological sign
Surely some statistics geek out there can run some numbers on whether we should be voting for Scorpios or Aquariuses...
08 October 2007
Nothing good can come of this
John H. Lee, a Korean director with only two films to his credit, is planning a remake of one of my favorite films ever, John Woo's The Killer. From what I can glean from the article, the remake is apparently being done with Woo's production company's blessing.
I understand that John Woo feels an enormous debt to those who mentored him in his early career, and has carried on that tradition by acting as advisor or executive producer on many young directors' projects, but a remake of The Killer seems to be a setup for failure. Either John H Lee will try to follow closely in John Woo's footsteps, and will fail because he doesn't have Chow Yun-Fat in the leading role, and can't recreate the incredible interpersonal dynamics and the amazing battle sequences, or he will try to make the film his own, in which case it will have to depart significantly enough from the original film that it shouldn't be called a remake.
And in a worst-case scenario, Hollywood will insist on a happy ending for the film, which will completely ruin it.
I understand that John Woo feels an enormous debt to those who mentored him in his early career, and has carried on that tradition by acting as advisor or executive producer on many young directors' projects, but a remake of The Killer seems to be a setup for failure. Either John H Lee will try to follow closely in John Woo's footsteps, and will fail because he doesn't have Chow Yun-Fat in the leading role, and can't recreate the incredible interpersonal dynamics and the amazing battle sequences, or he will try to make the film his own, in which case it will have to depart significantly enough from the original film that it shouldn't be called a remake.
And in a worst-case scenario, Hollywood will insist on a happy ending for the film, which will completely ruin it.
07 October 2007
Colorado Friends of Fred
The Colorado Friends of Fred Thompson website is up at www.colorado4fred.com.
One hundred million hits
PostSecret is quite likely going to reach one hundred million hits this week. That's about fifty thousand *times* more hits than this itty bitty blog has gotten. Way to go Frank! Both for the PostSecret project and your bang-up job raising awareness of Hopeline (1-800-SUICIDE).
The Truth Laid Bear managed to pick up on the fact that PostSecret was down for about a day a few weeks ago, but has not yet picked up that it's active again. I'm disappointed.
The Truth Laid Bear managed to pick up on the fact that PostSecret was down for about a day a few weeks ago, but has not yet picked up that it's active again. I'm disappointed.
Nuance is everything
This is not a post about Fred Thompson, this is a post about CNN.
In a story on CNN today:
'Right-to-whatever' carries the implied meaning that the whatever is being applied to whoever is exercising that right. In this case, it seems to imply that Terri Schiavo was exercising her right to die, rather than the actual facts of the case: her 'husband', who was shacked up and had produced two offspring with another woman, pulled the plug on Terri Schiavo despite the protests of people who obviously cared more about her well-being. Can anyone really argue that a man engaged in a long-standing adulterous affair has the best interests of his wife at heart? But CNN refers to this as a 'right-to-die' case, implying that Terri Schiavo herself expressed the wish that she wanted to die and exercised that 'right'. No documentation exists that Terri Schiavo said that she didn't want heroic measures to save her life implemented, and Michael Schiavo didn't bring up that she might not have wanted heroic measures taken until seven years later, after he had won lawsuits due to her condition totaling well over a million dollars. He waited until everyone had been bled dry.
This should be more accurately termed a 'right-to-kill-so-I-can-marry-my-concubine' case. Or if one wants to be more sensitive to a cheating husband, a 'right-to-kill' case. But in no way is Terri Schiavo's death a 'right-to-die' case.
In a story on CNN today:
Still, most say that despite a few gaffes -- such as his statement during a Florida trip that he didn't "remember the details" of the 2005 Terri Schiavo right-to-die case -- Thompson is still a favorite to win over the values voters that dominate the primary.
'Right-to-whatever' carries the implied meaning that the whatever is being applied to whoever is exercising that right. In this case, it seems to imply that Terri Schiavo was exercising her right to die, rather than the actual facts of the case: her 'husband', who was shacked up and had produced two offspring with another woman, pulled the plug on Terri Schiavo despite the protests of people who obviously cared more about her well-being. Can anyone really argue that a man engaged in a long-standing adulterous affair has the best interests of his wife at heart? But CNN refers to this as a 'right-to-die' case, implying that Terri Schiavo herself expressed the wish that she wanted to die and exercised that 'right'. No documentation exists that Terri Schiavo said that she didn't want heroic measures to save her life implemented, and Michael Schiavo didn't bring up that she might not have wanted heroic measures taken until seven years later, after he had won lawsuits due to her condition totaling well over a million dollars. He waited until everyone had been bled dry.
This should be more accurately termed a 'right-to-kill-so-I-can-marry-my-concubine' case. Or if one wants to be more sensitive to a cheating husband, a 'right-to-kill' case. But in no way is Terri Schiavo's death a 'right-to-die' case.
02 October 2007
Woman doesn't understand fanboy tax
"A New York woman is so angry at Apple Inc. for lopping $200 off the price of the iPhone that she's filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages."
The gal is also suing AT&T, saying that the two-year contract is unfair. Waaah. Someone held a gun to this woman's head and made her buy the iPhone and sign the service contract. Oh wait, they didn't?
The gal is also suing AT&T, saying that the two-year contract is unfair. Waaah. Someone held a gun to this woman's head and made her buy the iPhone and sign the service contract. Oh wait, they didn't?
01 October 2007
More Network Solutions fun
Network Solutions still hasn't told us the IP address and the date when our client's site was hacked. They essentially said that the server logs were too big and there was too much traffic on the ftp server for them to track down the info we needed. I pointed out that it was a two-week window that we were looking at, and ALL traffic logging in to our client's ftp during that period of time should be regarded as suspicious since the only people with access were us and the client, and neither of us logged in during that time. I was told I would get a call back within 24 hours.
That was Thursday. No call back yet. I've got to assume at this point that their servers are compromised, otherwise why would they be so gosh-darned reluctant to hand over the info?
That was Thursday. No call back yet. I've got to assume at this point that their servers are compromised, otherwise why would they be so gosh-darned reluctant to hand over the info?
Google's Custom Search is spam
I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
If it hadn't been a Google-owned blog, I wonder how long it would have taken to wrest control back from the spammer?
If it hadn't been a Google-owned blog, I wonder how long it would have taken to wrest control back from the spammer?
19 September 2007
Who's sponsoring the DREAM Act?
The DREAM Act is the latest attempt by Congress to give illegal immigrants a pass, by giving in-state tuition to illegal immigrants and awarding legal status to any immigrant who claims to have been in the country before the age of 16, no matter what their age. Then illegal immigrants who receive amnesty under the DREAM Act can petition to have the rest of their family receive amnesty too. This is receiving quite a bit of press on conservative blogs, but I'm not seeing anything about it on major news sources.
What interests me a lot about this is the list of sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, which doesn't seem to be getting ANY attention outside of Durbin's sponsorship. Here's the list of co-sponsors:
Hagel
Lugar
Leahy
Obama
Lieberman
Feinstein
Kerry
Feingold
Clinton
Bayh
Menendez
Murray
Boxer
Cantwell
Salazar
Dodd
Lieberman is the disappointing one to me in this list. The rest of these I expect to see trying to self-destruct the country. I don't understand why no press is being given to the fact that two Democratic presidential candidates are trying to spend federal money to educate illegal immigrants, providing money to them that citizens can't receive if they are a resident of another state.
Hannity is having Lieberman on in about fifteen minutes. I wonder if he's going to ask him about why he co-sponsored the DREAM Act? Unfortunately, I've got to go get MadLibs from kindergarten, so I can't continue to listen.
What interests me a lot about this is the list of sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, which doesn't seem to be getting ANY attention outside of Durbin's sponsorship. Here's the list of co-sponsors:
Hagel
Lugar
Leahy
Obama
Lieberman
Feinstein
Kerry
Feingold
Clinton
Bayh
Menendez
Murray
Boxer
Cantwell
Salazar
Dodd
Lieberman is the disappointing one to me in this list. The rest of these I expect to see trying to self-destruct the country. I don't understand why no press is being given to the fact that two Democratic presidential candidates are trying to spend federal money to educate illegal immigrants, providing money to them that citizens can't receive if they are a resident of another state.
Hannity is having Lieberman on in about fifteen minutes. I wonder if he's going to ask him about why he co-sponsored the DREAM Act? Unfortunately, I've got to go get MadLibs from kindergarten, so I can't continue to listen.
16 September 2007
WTF happened to PostSecret?
In case you're not familiar with PostSecret, which seems pretty hard to fathom, the wikipedia entry is here. It seems unlikely that PostSecret just went away, since Frank Warren (the guy who takes the time sift through hundreds of postcards each week and post them) has several speaking engagements coming up, and hasn't shown any indications of stopping.
If you're interested in any of the books that Frank Warren has compiled of postcard secrets, here are some links:
the original PostSecret book
The Secret Lives of Men and Women
My Secret
A Lifetime of Secrets
Part of the proceeds from the books (Frank doesn't say how much, but it's been enough to keep Hopeline afloat) go to support Hopeline, a national suicide hotline with the phone number 1-800-SUICIDE that has taken over 2 million calls. Frank has also done several fundraisers for Hopeline.
I really really hope that whoever 'nicole' is, she tried to visit PostSecret, discovered that for some reason there was nothing there, and parked it until Frank can reclaim it. It was up last night - I usually visit it on Sunday mornings because that's when the new secrets are posted, and Saturday afternoon/evening to read peoples' responses to it. It's a handy place to visit if I've been spending too much time comparing my insides to other people's outsides, too.
UPDATE:
Just got an email back from Frank. Blogger apparently took down his site, which has been around since 2005, because they decided it was a spam site. Frank is asking people to email Blogger to allow him to put PostSecret back up. I don't have an email address yet, but as soon as I hunt one down I will post it.
AND A BIT OF SNARK:
Is this part of Google's "Don't Be Evil" campaign?
ANOTHER UPDATE:
Blogger has taken down the blog that 'nicole' posted. Hopefully this is on the way to getting PostSecret back up.
Google should think about making a hefty donation to Hopeline as part of fixing this aggregious mistake.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE:
Google/Blogger has unlocked PostSecret enough to let Frank make one post, with the following message:
(Blogger sent me the following message late last night. Please email them to unlock the PostSecret Blog ASAP. PostSecret has not been fully unlocked by Blogger yet. Sorry, I know this is frustrating for you - it is frustrating for me too.)
Your blog is disabled
Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.
We received your unlock request on September 16, 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.
posted by postsecret at 11:57 AM
I'm wondering how in the world Blogger/Google thought that a blog with over 95 million hits (yes, that's right, 95 MILLION) was a spam blog. And what does Blogger/Google have in place to make sure that once a blog is determined to be Not Spam, this doesn't happen again?
ANOTHER UPDATE:
WOOHOO!!!! Looks like it's back up. Big donation for Hopeline, Google. Clean up your reputation!
15 September 2007
Network Solutions doesn't care about security
We took over maintenance and development of a website for a client we've done software for for several years. Network Solutions hosts their website. Today I discovered that sometime between the last time I visited her site (about two weeks ago) and this afternoon at 4 pm, someone hacked her site and put malicious code in a hidden iframe on three of her pages. I called her, left a message, and fixed the webpages. By the time I fixed the pages, she called back, said she was out of town and didn't have her account information for her website with her and she needed to get back to her group. I told her I'd call Network Solutions and ask them to at least lock the site down so that no one, including me, could make changes to her website until she contacted them to change her FTP password.
After several phone calls, including:
By 9:15, I STILL hadn't heard back from Network Solutions, so I called back to be told a supervisor would call me back within an hour. The supervisor finally called me back at 10:05 pm, to tell me that they wouldn't lock down the website. So my client's site is still hanging wide open, waiting for these guys to come back and hack it again. I asked for the supervisor's supervisor to call me back and was told it would be within an hour; I'm still waiting.
Hubby said he's tempted to call them up and tell them he's going to hack our client's website and see if they'd lock it down then, but we're worried about criminal repercussions. You'd think Network Solutions would be worried about the repercussions about having one of their customers' websites compromised and serving pages that could result in the loss of the customer's client base, but it's pretty obvious that they don't. Worst case if they locked the site down is that the person on the phone isn't really supposed to have access to it, and so they've protected their customer from a malicious attack and as soon as the customer notices it they'll call in. Instead, they'd rather contribute to the insecurity of the internet. I wonder if there's some service package they're going to try to pitch when our client calls in to try to secure her site.
After several phone calls, including:
- calling and speaking to someone who didn't speak English well enough to understand what I was trying to explain;
- calling back to be told that their support system was down and I'd have to call back in two hours to have the site locked down;
- being routed multiple times through their phone system to enter a password to retrieve voice mail for an account I obviously shouldn't have had access to;
- finally reaching someone who spoke some English, explaining the situation, and being disconnected when I was put on hold;
- finally reaching someone who spoke English and knew the difference between hold and disconnect, only to be told that they couldn't help us after all. At this point I asked to speak to a supervisor, and was told one would call me back within an hour. By this point it's 6:15 pm.
By 9:15, I STILL hadn't heard back from Network Solutions, so I called back to be told a supervisor would call me back within an hour. The supervisor finally called me back at 10:05 pm, to tell me that they wouldn't lock down the website. So my client's site is still hanging wide open, waiting for these guys to come back and hack it again. I asked for the supervisor's supervisor to call me back and was told it would be within an hour; I'm still waiting.
Hubby said he's tempted to call them up and tell them he's going to hack our client's website and see if they'd lock it down then, but we're worried about criminal repercussions. You'd think Network Solutions would be worried about the repercussions about having one of their customers' websites compromised and serving pages that could result in the loss of the customer's client base, but it's pretty obvious that they don't. Worst case if they locked the site down is that the person on the phone isn't really supposed to have access to it, and so they've protected their customer from a malicious attack and as soon as the customer notices it they'll call in. Instead, they'd rather contribute to the insecurity of the internet. I wonder if there's some service package they're going to try to pitch when our client calls in to try to secure her site.
14 September 2007
The Denver Post needs a new proofreader
The Denver Post throws the kids to the lions. Mountain lions, that is. Fortunately, they recommend taking better care of yourself and your pets.
Maybe they are counting on the kiddos keeping the mountain lions sated enough that they won't eat the rest of us. Since, after all, you don't have to be able to outrun a mountain lion, you only have to be able to outrun the slowest person in your group.
11 September 2007
06 September 2007
When a design team can't handle the truth...
The fellers over at Design Vitality posted an article about logo design, stating:
I made the observation in the comments that their logo actually says "VD". Not that anyone really uses that abbreviation much anymore, it seems to have been replaced by STD. But if they want to be known as the design group you don't want to get too close to for fear of something rotting off, that's their prerogative. Funny, though, the comment disappeared, along with another comment I made inquiring as to where my previous comment went. The only comments that show up on the site now are unabashed praise.
I wonder what working with a design group like this would be like? IMO, the worst developers to work with are the ones that can't stand any sort of criticism, or who flip out and try to silence you when you point out their mistakes. Makes for unhappy coworkers and unhappy clients.
Your logo is the most important factor in your brand’s identity and it has a huge impact on how users perceive your website, or company.
I made the observation in the comments that their logo actually says "VD". Not that anyone really uses that abbreviation much anymore, it seems to have been replaced by STD. But if they want to be known as the design group you don't want to get too close to for fear of something rotting off, that's their prerogative. Funny, though, the comment disappeared, along with another comment I made inquiring as to where my previous comment went. The only comments that show up on the site now are unabashed praise.
I wonder what working with a design group like this would be like? IMO, the worst developers to work with are the ones that can't stand any sort of criticism, or who flip out and try to silence you when you point out their mistakes. Makes for unhappy coworkers and unhappy clients.
14 August 2007
Non-tech people shouldn't write tech stories
I feel bad for this girl, I really do. She posted a picture of herself online, a porn company hijacked it for the cover of one of their DVDs and then even had the nerve to blame her picture for poor sales. I think the porn company should be busted for using a pic of someone underage even though she's not nekkid in the picture.
What I find irritating, though, is this:
By posting a picture online, aren't you not only giving permission to download it, but in a way requiring it of just about everyone who visits your website? Aren't reporters supposed to be wordsmiths of a sort, conveying ideas through the precise use of language?
What I find irritating, though, is this:
By posting a picture online, aren't you not only giving permission to download it, but in a way requiring it of just about everyone who visits your website? Aren't reporters supposed to be wordsmiths of a sort, conveying ideas through the precise use of language?
Holy 5h!7!!!
Now THIS is why we live in America. Because you don't hear stories about getting fined for wearing offensive t-shirts here, unlike in the UK.
T-shirt Hell must be running scared.
T-shirt Hell must be running scared.
08 August 2007
03 August 2007
Wal-Mart promotes the sexualization of babies
In a hurry today, I picked up a ten-pack of girl-oriented bibs at Wal-Mart. I should have flipped through them before I bought them, because this was in the middle of the pack:
Does ANY conscientious parent think it's a good idea to advertise their baby daughter as a prostitot? Who in the marketing department at Baby Connection (the baby department for Wal-Mart, and the brand name under which these bibs are sold) thought it would be a good idea to associate the clearly sexual term 'hottie' with a bib sold in their baby department and obviously made for infants and toddlers? Did they really think that parents would want to buy this, and if they did, how do they feel about turning babies into sex objects? Do they think that even joking about a baby being a sexual being is funny?
Does ANY conscientious parent think it's a good idea to advertise their baby daughter as a prostitot? Who in the marketing department at Baby Connection (the baby department for Wal-Mart, and the brand name under which these bibs are sold) thought it would be a good idea to associate the clearly sexual term 'hottie' with a bib sold in their baby department and obviously made for infants and toddlers? Did they really think that parents would want to buy this, and if they did, how do they feel about turning babies into sex objects? Do they think that even joking about a baby being a sexual being is funny?
30 July 2007
Iraq wins Asian Cup championship
27 July 2007
I shouldn't be laughing about this...
By now I'm sure you've heard about Oscar the Cat, who lives in a nursing home and buddies up to dying patients. Yeah, that's not funny, it's touching and warm and fuzzy.
THIS is funny, although my finding it funny just shows how bad my taste is.
THIS is funny, although my finding it funny just shows how bad my taste is.
25 July 2007
24 July 2007
Flattop/Hallett Hike
These pictures are from hiking Flattop Mountain and Hallett Peak on July 15. Click on the thumbnail for larger photos.
Morning sun on Hallett Peak
This is the sign at the Dream Lake viewpoint, about a third of the way up.
This is Dream Lake.
Long's Peak from the Dream Lake viewpoint
This is either Chiefshead or Thatchtop Mountain from the Dream Lake viewpoint
Stepping back a little from the sign at the Dream Lake viewpoint
McHenry's Notch from the Dream Lake viewpoint
It's amazing to me what lengths trees will go to to grow...especially at altitude.
This is not the top of Flattop...but by this point I was kinda wishing it was.
Longs Peak from about halfway up the Flattop trail.
About halfway up the Flattop Trail, you can see the parking lot. It was very encouraging to see how far I'd come. Unfortunately, the second half of the hike took about twice as long as the first half.
They really don't want you to miss this cairn. It's about four feet tall.
Do not descend, huh?
Like I'm gonna try descending to THAT. From the Emerald Lake viewpoint, you can see from Longs Peak to Emerald Lake in one sweeping view.
Suddenly, Hallett Peak appears over the top of Flattop.
The top of Flattop Mountain is uneventful. I wasn't even certain I was at the top, other than a 'go back' sign that said, "Bear Lake 4.4 mi".
The other sign attached to the 'go back' signpost.
Tyndall Glacier is the big snowpatch on the side of Hallett Peak.
It's the Howdy Marmot!
Cairns mark the top of Hallett Peak.
Longs Peak from the top of Hallett Peak
God glued a rock back together.
Morning sun on Hallett Peak
This is the sign at the Dream Lake viewpoint, about a third of the way up.
This is Dream Lake.
Long's Peak from the Dream Lake viewpoint
This is either Chiefshead or Thatchtop Mountain from the Dream Lake viewpoint
Stepping back a little from the sign at the Dream Lake viewpoint
McHenry's Notch from the Dream Lake viewpoint
It's amazing to me what lengths trees will go to to grow...especially at altitude.
This is not the top of Flattop...but by this point I was kinda wishing it was.
Longs Peak from about halfway up the Flattop trail.
About halfway up the Flattop Trail, you can see the parking lot. It was very encouraging to see how far I'd come. Unfortunately, the second half of the hike took about twice as long as the first half.
They really don't want you to miss this cairn. It's about four feet tall.
Do not descend, huh?
Like I'm gonna try descending to THAT. From the Emerald Lake viewpoint, you can see from Longs Peak to Emerald Lake in one sweeping view.
Suddenly, Hallett Peak appears over the top of Flattop.
The top of Flattop Mountain is uneventful. I wasn't even certain I was at the top, other than a 'go back' sign that said, "Bear Lake 4.4 mi".
The other sign attached to the 'go back' signpost.
Tyndall Glacier is the big snowpatch on the side of Hallett Peak.
It's the Howdy Marmot!
Cairns mark the top of Hallett Peak.
Longs Peak from the top of Hallett Peak
God glued a rock back together.
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