Our children is learning... that candidacy and idiocy can go hand in hand

Got this golden nugget of goodness from Eschaton. Enjoy!

Report Shows Voting Machines Easy to Hack

As if we hadn't suspected that all along.

From BoingBoing's Gadget department: Link

Random Memage

I rarely do memes, but let's face it: I've been running on mental fumes lately, which means that I haven't been posting much. Since I don't want to just leave this space blank for the duration, here's a meme I got from a friend of mine. Enjoy. Or not.

1. My ex: Husband? Don't have one. Significant Other? Which one?
2. I talk: A lot. Some of it even makes sense.
3. I love: When a plan comes together.
4. I have: Lots of ideas.
5. I've lost: Probably a few of my marbles. Life will do that sometimes.
6. I hate it when: I screw up.
7. Marriage: Takes work, but is worth it. Also, is in my plans for 2008.
8. Somewhere, someone is thinking: Why won't people use their turn signals?
9. I'll always be: Trying.
10. I have a crush on: Rik Emmett or Jamie Fraser, depending on whether you were expecting me to pick a real or a fictitious person.
11. The last time I truly cried was: Out of frustration.
12. My cell phone is: Silver, with butterfly stickers.
13. When I wake up in the morning I: Make coffee, so that I can be at least somewhat functional and coherent.
14. Before I go to sleep at night I: Read, usually.
15. Right now I am thinking about: This meme.
16. Babies: Are adorable.
17. I get on Myspace: Only by accident these days.
18. Today I: Have more things I need to do than I have hours/energy to do them.
19. Tonight I will: Hopefully sleep MUCH better than I did last night.
20. Tomorrow I will: Win the lottery, I hope.
21. I really want to: Win the lottery. (Do you sense a pattern here?)
22. The person I love most is: D.

Garb Fabric Issue

I bought some linen (actually linen-rayon blend) fabric a while back to make garb. One length was apparently without sizing, or at least didn't have much. I washed it and threw it in a nice hot dryer, and it came out fairly soft. I then dyed it with RIT dye and the result is a beautifully soft fabric in a lovely medium greyish blue shade.

The other, much longer, length came from a bolt that must have had an enormous amount of sizing applied. I've washed it twice now, using hot water, detergent and a generous dose of fabric softener added to the rinse water, dried it in a hot dryer and it is STILL stiff and scratchy (although admittedly, somewhat less so than when I began). I was hoping to leave this fabric white and use it in chemises but there's no way I want it next to my skin the way it feels at present. Is there some way for me to soften it up, or am I going to have to break down and dye it for use in outer garments, in the hopes that the dyeing process will soften it up some? And before anyone suggests it, no, it's too stiff and scratchy for me to want to tough it out over a few/several wearings in the hope that it will soften up on its own. I'm sure it would be entertaining to watch me trying to discreetly scratch and squirm at an event, but I'm not planning to give everyone the pleasure.

Too Funny!

"The Blogofractal" Check it out, you'll love it.
http://xkcd.com/124

I Survived the Seventies

And if you did, too, you might get a kick out of reading this blog entry over at Johnny Virgil's "15 Minute Lunch", complete with photos and hilarious commentary. Heck, you might enjoy it even if you're too young to remember 1977, or hadn't been born yet.

Click the link. You know you want to. ;-)

Veteran Returns Home, Finds Nasty Surprise

Local soldier returns to find home ransacked and stripped of fixtures, pipes

CLEVELAND -- Sergeant Gertie Lynn was counting the days until she could return to the home she'd purchased last year in Cleveland's Lee-Harvard neighborhood.

Imagine her shock last week when she went home and found thieves had ransacked her possessions and stripped the house of piping, fixtures and building materials.

"I was very angry, very angry. What a wonderful Veterans Day," she said.

Lynn lost electronics, CD's, her daughter's athletic equipment, copper piping, a water heater, insulation and drywall.

She had dreamed of owning the house in the neighborhood she grew up in.

"It's so small and cute. I told my aunt I'd own that house one day," she said.

She has not totalled up the value of what was taken. And she fears her insurance may have lapsed because she hadn't received all her mail.

Her aunt, Margeree Pittman of Bedford Heights, was doing weekly security checks of the house. But she couldn't recently when she was hospitalized for a month.

"It's just horrible. It's just unforgivable that someone would do somebody like that," Pittman said.

Sgt. Lynn was serving with a medical unit in Germany, collecting blood needed for wounded fighting men and women in Iraq.

She will soon return to her job here as a nurses' aide in a psychiatric hospital.

She's presently staying with her aunt.

Councilwoman Nina Turner and the USO are exploring possible ways to help Sgt. Lynn through donations and help from businesses.

Sgt. Lynn says she's eager to return to duty, but only after she's settled in and made sure her home is protected.

There's video, too.

This sort of thing just makes me seethe. And it made the anchorwoman on our evening news so angry that she could barely speak after reading the story.

Stargate Ikea

Found this on another blog. Worth a look, as is much of the other material there.

Enjoy!

Cutting-edge 16th-century technology

Here's a neat gadget, ca. 1590, with an interesting combination of functions.

It's pretty, too.

Will Play For Food

Check this out:

FreeRice.com

This is a cool site for word lovers. You answer vocabulary questions which get progressively more difficult based on the number of correct answers you give, and for each correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program. Okay, so 10 grains of rice doesn't sound like much, but imagine many thousands of people playing this game every day and generating 10 grains for each correct answer. That adds up.

Besides, it's fun, and can add to your vocabulary. ;-)

(Thanks to Malthus who posted that link in a comment on Making Light, because that's where I found it.)

Take Back Your Time Day is October 24th

Here's something interesting I heard about on NPR yesterday. Did you know that the average American works 9 weeks more per year (that's 350 more hours) than the average European?

Productivity in many European countries is actually higher per hour than in the U.S. The U.S. merely leads productivity in annual numbers, and this is simply because we work so many hours a year. But we pay a heavy price for it. We suffer far more stress-related illnesses, and we pay higher medical costs than in other nations but have worse outcomes, largely because the typical American workstyle leaves little time for people to take care of their own health and well-being.

We are the only industrial society in the world that does not guarantee some sort of paid vacation to its workers. The average American gets 14 paid vacation days annually, but also gives back 4 days, simply by not taking them, for fear of being seen as "slackers" by their bosses, or because of a lack of support at work in the form of there being anyone to cover for them while vacationing. It's hard to enjoy time off when you know that you'll return to stacks of tasks undone and will probably have to work even harder for weeks after your vacation just to catch up.

25% of the workforce here gets no paid vacation. 37% of women earning under $40k get no paid vacation.

Vacation time is actually lower now than in the past. Only 14% of Americans will get a vacation of two weeks or longer this year. (The number is somewhat higher for Canadians, who generally get longer vacations and more paid family leave than Americans. But Canadians are working more now than a generation ago and feeling the pressure of time stress and hurried lifestyles.)

In the U.S. families take 1/3 fewer vacations now than in the 70's. Few people take blocks of time for vacation, such as the two-week family trip that some of us can still remember from our childhoods. Today, most of us fortunate enough to even have paid time off at all spread out our vacation days, opting for long weekends and "mini-vacations", which don't actually do much to reduce worker stress or to refuel the mind, body and spirit. Also, many parents wind up having to use vacation days to deal with sick children or their own illnesses. Some vacation, eh?

Take Back Your Time is a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment. October 24th Is Take Back Your Time Day.

From the Take Back Your Time website:

* We're putting in longer hours on the job now than we did in the 1950s, despite promises of a coming age of leisure before the year 2000.

* In fact, we're working more than medieval peasants did, and more than the citizens of any other industrial country.

* Mandatory overtime is at near record levels, in spite of a recession.

* On average, we work nearly nine full weeks (350 hours) LONGER per year than our peers in Western Europe do.

* Working Americans average a little over two weeks of vacation per year, while Europeans average five to six weeks. Many of us (including 37% of women earning less than $40,000 per year) get no paid vacation at all.

Contemporary Americans complain of unprecedented levels of busyness in everyday life. They worry about frenetic schedules, hurried children, couples with no time together, families who rarely eat meals together, and an onslaught of "hidden work" from proliferating emails, junk mail, and telemarketing calls. The Girl Scouts recently introduced a "Stress Free" merit badge for today's harried young girls.

CANADIANS FEEL THE PRESSURE TOO

While Canadians work somewhat less than Americans do, and enjoy longer vacations and paid family leave, they are also working more now than a generation ago and feeling the pressure of time stress and hurried lifestyles. Many have joined our campaign.

TIME STRESS HURTS ALL OF US IN DIFFERENT WAYS

* Time stress threatens our health. It leads to fatigue, accidents and injuries. It reduces time for exercise and encourages consumption of calorie-laden fast foods.

* Job stress and burnout costs the U.S. economy more than $300 billion a year.

* Time stress threatens our marriages, families and relationships as we find less time for each other, less time to care for our children and elders, less time to just hang out.

* It weakens our communities. We have less time to know our neighbors, supervise our young people, and volunteer.

* It reduces employment as fewer people are hired and then required to work longer hours, or are hired for poor part-time jobs without benefits.

* It leaves many of us with little time to vote, much less be informed, active citizens.

* It leaves us little time for ourselves, for self-development, or for spiritual growth.

* It leads to growing neglect and abuse of pets.

* It even contributes to the destruction of our environment. Studies show that lack of time encourages use of convenience and throwaway items and reduces recycling.

Check out the website and get involved in the movement to change the laws (and cultural expectations) so that we can all work for a living, instead of having to live for work.

Baseball season in Cleveland off to a rousing start… oh, wait

Holy whiteouts, Batman!

So… the Cleveland Indians’ home opener was Friday. Or was it? Originally scheduled for a 4:05 PM start, the game was pushed back to 5 PM due to heavy snowfall over Cleveland. (Jacobs Field has no roof; games are played in the open air.) When the game got underway, snowflakes the size of snowballs were still falling intermittently, while fans built miniature snowmen on the roof of the dugout. Three snow delays interrupted the game, and a fourth ended it - at the top of the fifth inning, with the Tribe up 4-0 over the Seattle Mariners and the game only one strike away from being official. Paul Byrd was on the mound pitching a no-hitter, the bases were loaded with two out and there was a 1-2 count on Jose Lopez at bat. Former Indians manager and current Mariners skipper Mike Hargrove, once referred to as the “Human Rain Delay” during his playing days for his constant fidgeting at the plate (he reportedly stretched at-bats to 15 minutes on more than one occasion) came onto the field and prevailed upon umpire crew chief Rick Reed to call a halt to the game. Indians manager Eric Wedge argued in favor of getting to a complete game, but in the end, the Tribe’s efforts were wiped out and the game rescheduled as part of a day-night doubleheader for Saturday. Upon official word of the snowout, the Mariners could be seen celebrating and high-fiving each other in their dugout while angry Tribe fans booed from the stands.

Saturday dawned even snowier than Friday, and it was the kind of snowfall that didn’t let up, forcing the postponement of the doubleheader to Sunday. As I write this, it’s still snowing outside and has done so for at least 28 of the past 30 hours. Something tells me there isn’t going to be a baseball game in Cleveland this weekend - at least not an officially-recorded one.

Of course, if the powers that be at MLB were paying attention, they’d know better than to schedule a ten-day home stand (consisting almost entirely of night games, no less) for the Tribe in early April. That’s right: next up after the Mariners, the LA Angels are due in town, followed by the White Sox. Between the snow and rain forecast for this week, I’m wondering how many of the scheduled games will actually be played. If anyone had been thinking, this Indians-Mariners series should have been switched with its counterpart scheduled for late September in Seattle. Late September ballgames in Cleveland can be chilly affairs, but they aren’t likely to be played in four inches of snow. As things stand, the two teams will be hard-pressed to make up this weekend’s games, since they only have two days off in common all season.

No matter how you slice it, we got hosed.

Of motes and logs, pots and kettles, and highly polished mirrors

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK) comes this headline: Conservapedia - the US religious right's answer to Wikipedia.

From the article:

Although entries on Wikipedia are open for anyone to edit, conservative campaigners say they are unable to make changes to articles on the site because of inherent bias by its global team of volunteer editors. Instead they have chosen to build a clone which they hope will promote Christian values."I've tried editing Wikipedia, and found that the biased editors who dominate it censor or change facts to suit their views," Andy Schlafly, the founder of Conservapedia, told the Guardian. "In one case my factual edits were removed within 60 seconds - so editing Wikipedia is no longer a viable approach."

Whereas no one is permitted to sign up to edit Conservapedia at all. I know; I've tried. Oh, and check out this comparison between some descriptions given at Wikipedia and their counterparts at Conservapedia (from the Guardian article):

Dinosaurs

Wikipedia: "Vertebrate animals that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for over 160m years, first appearing approximately 230m years ago."

Conservapedia: "They are mentioned in numerous places throughout the Good Book. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are almost certainly references to dinosaurs."

US Democratic party

Wikipedia: "The party advocates civil liberties, social freedoms, equal rights, equal opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and a free enterprise system tempered by government intervention."

Conservapedia: "The Democrat voting record reveals a true agenda of cowering to terrorism, treasonous anti-Americanism, and contempt for America's founding principles."

No, they're not biased at all, are they?



Just for the sake of interest, here are Wikipedia's entry about Conservapedia and Conservapedia's article about Wikipedia.

Religious Literacy

Test your religious literacy

I got an “A” - 100%. Though I will note that the quiz is top-heavy with references to the “Big Three” Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There were a couple of questions each about Buddhism and Hinduism, and nothing at all about any other religions. Still, it covered a decent bit of information that one might suppose, or hope, that the average American would know with regard to religion.

Take it, and tell me how you do.

Some people!

I post on a number of discussion forums online. It's a hobby, of sorts. I run into all sorts of people in the process, many of them decent folks. Some have even become good friends of mine over the years.

But it's the idiots that make me want to hurl my laptop out the nearest window.

What is it about online discussion that brings every shortsighted, one-note moron out of the woodwork? And why is it that they invariably pick me to try to foist their low-wattage viewpoints on? Anyone who knows me well, be it in "real" life or online, knows that I do not suffer fools gladly. Oh, I try to be nice, but after a while, I have to just tell them the truth: that they couldn't find their asses if you spotted them a map and both hands. Really, shouldn't the internet have something along the lines of those signs you see at amusement parks, showing the minimum height one must be to ride certain rides? You know, like, "Your IQ must be at least room temperature for an igloo in the Arctic Circle in January if you want to join in Discussion X." Seems to me that this would be kinder not only to those of us with the intelligence to engage in actual meaningful discussions, but also to those who would be spared having to be told a dozen times a day what morons they are.

At the very least, it would save them having to continually look up "ignoramus" in the dictionary to figure out if I was paying them a compliment or not.