A little bit about the uproar in Arizona

There are some people who are up in arms about having to "show your papers" in Arizona. All drivers are already required to have their "papers" on them. It's called a driver's license.

Constitutional Amendment

There should be a United States constitutional amendment that makes corporations non-persons.

New Castle Indiana Sirens

In New Castle, Indiana, sirens go off Friday at noon.

Google Chrome

So I've been using the Google Chrome browser and have found some odd faults.
1. Behaves odd with Hotmail. If, after logging in, you go back to the login screen and hit refresh the main logged in page shows up.
2. Tabs that have spilled off to the side are unreachable with the mouse.
3. The minimize/restore/close buttons get covered by tabs and don't work even when they aren't covered.
4. After clicking the back button it doesn't always go to the place in the page you were on.

Version: 4.0.249.78 (36714)

Stupid

Just because you did something stupid doesn't mean you have to tell everyone.

Nail

When what you got is a nail, everything is a hammer.

How XML is designed for use

I've been looking at the i4i vs. Microsoft case and I'm thinking "Isn't that the whole point of XML

Overpopulation

In Henry County, Indiana, there is rezoning from agriculture to commercial and residential zones. Until we find ourselves living in towers or underground to maximize agriculture we aren't having overpopulation.

Rationing health care

Asking if there will be rationing under the proposed health care plan is pointless. Of course there will be. It's being rationed already and yet isn't much noticed. The whole point of any economy is to ration.

Just be Americans

Why can't the Democrat and Republican parties just be Americans? They'd like to, but the other Party just keeps getting in the way.

Cap and trade problem

It seems to me that the cap and trade tax leaves companies without the money necessary to upgrade.

The RIAA and its supporters say that not paying for someone else's work is unusual and wrong. You use someone else's work for free everytime you walk through a building. You don't pay the architect or the contractor anything. Yet that is what the RIAA wants for its goods

Obama says:

"But while I'm there mopping the floor I don't want somebody standing there saying, 'you're not mopping fast enough.' Or, 'you're not holding the mop the right way.'"

How about "What you have there isn't a mop"?

Digg link for previous blog post

Banning Laptops in Class: It's Academic, Silly

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Banning laptops in the classroom

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060530-6941.html talks about banning laptops in the classroom. The laptop is blamed for causing the mind to wander. If my mind is going to wander, it will wander whether the laptop is there or not, although without the laptop to provide something "out there" to wander to, my mind usually wanders internally. I have a whole lifetime to wander to, and awareness isn't an all or nothing game. The trick is to arrange it so that when I need to put more resources towards what the teacher is doing, I do so.

It doesn't seem reasonable to be thrown out of a lecture just because every single momen


In http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/174096756/m/553002839731/r/767002839731#767002839731 fil says that the teacher has to have a reasonable degree of control over the environment, and then proceeds to make an assumption about what that reasonable degree of control is. Shurik after him points out, I believe correctly, the fact that a student is distracting himself with his laptop is not a problem. However, he jumps to the conclusion that the student is not willing to learn. I have received A's in classes where I was using the internet for non-classwork, during a lecture, and occaisonally could either track the lecture enough to participate a little or just ask the lecturer to repeat the question, at which point I could usually answer the question correctly.

Acclaim's Game Titles Auctioned

Trying the Digg Blog feature:
It'd be really good if some could get together and buy this with the intent to open source the code.


The IP rights to some of the best video games in the world are being sold today (May 11, 2006) as part of Acclaim Entertainment's Chapter 7. More than 150 titles, includes Myst and Riven, Alien, Alias, multiple Double Dragon titles, numerous MLB and NBA and NFL titles, multiple Ferrari titles; the list goes on and on.


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Jesus and the fig tree

Mt 21:18 Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry.
Mt 21:19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.

The so-called Christians that I've interacted with would have told Jesus to calm down and tried to explain to him calmly that figs weren't in season.

Open Letter to the Aliance for Marriage

You sent me an e-mail that presumes that you were given permission to e-mail me. You used my mother's name. You are more interested in legally defining marriage than you are actually protecting marriage. Care to define what you think the government's role in marriage is? Mind helping me find a girlfriend first? How about teaching people how to be good husbands and wives? But no, you want to whack people's heads with the law, rather than educate the ones who are in danger of never getting together, or those having gotten together, in danger of falling apart. Losers!

Then don't do that!`

Alright, the joke is that the patient says "Doctor, it hurts when I do this" and the doctor says, "Well then, don't do that!" but the thing is people do stop doing things when they hurt, or to be specific, limit their range of motion rather than working out the painful area. This results in a cycle of pain increasing and range limitation.

Yes there are things like broken bones where it is good to limit motion for a time, but the thing is that there are many instances where this is not the case and the above scenario is happening.

Recently there was a situation of Sysinternals suing Best Buy for using unlicensed copies of their software. I feel like siding with Sysinternals but this feeling prompts me, providing new fodder with which to examine, to bring into focus, my values in this area on the basis of the fact that I don't really believe in intellectual property.
It's not a matter of whether or not it's illegal, but a matter of who we want to come ahead in the war of ideas and where we want to be. The law has fallen from a statement of ethical principals to become no more than a tool in which to fight this war. When you don't know the whole truth, sometimes it is necessary to perpetuate a smaller lie in order to freeze out a larger one.