Feb 25, 2008

The New Red Moleskine

The New Red Moleskine
The New Red Moleskine,
originally uploaded by Lost in Scotland.
Have the red Moleskine - now, I must have this pen!

Feb 24, 2008

Gee, thanks...

Yes, thanks for taking our beautiful woods and farmlands and leaving us with the garbage-strewn, resource-wasting, now-empty monuments to your bloated egos.
clipped from www.nytimes.com
The result, he says, could be that low-density suburbs “may become what inner cities became in the 1960’s and 1970’s — slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.”
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Feb 19, 2008

Castro steps down

clipped from www.nytimes.com
Fidel Castro stepped down Tuesday morning as the president of Cuba after a long illness, ending one of the longest tenures as one of the most all-powerful communist heads of state in the world, according to Granma, the official publication of the Cuban Communist Party.
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Isn't it ironic?

clipped from www.nytimes.com
Only 51 percent of the region has access to broadband Internet — defined as more than 200 kilobits per second. In contrast, 65 percent of the households in Japan and 94 percent in South Korea are wired to at least that speed.
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Feb 16, 2008

No contact. None.

No different than calling on the phone. It's a direct contact. Person A uses whatever means to directly contact Person B, who they are not supposed to contact. What's so tough to figure out?

Judge says use of MySpace may violate a court order | CNET News.com
"While it is true," he also wrote, "that the person who receives the 'friend request' could simply deny the request to become 'friends,' that request was still a contact and 'no contact' was allowed by the order of the protection."

Bang, bang

Well, score another one for the NRA. Mental health issues, medications (of course, no one will say which) and the ability to easily buy more guns than one person needs to "protect" themselves. Still, we don't need any gun control in this country, do we? Nah, of course not.

Gunman, Active and Successful, Showed Few Hints of Trouble - New York Times

Feb 13, 2008

Mr. Profit Brain

Um, what?
clipped from www.nytimes.com
“I think a vehicle today has to be your most favorite room under your roof,” Mr. Nardelli said last October at a magazine publishers’ conference. “It has to bring you gratification; it has to be tranquil. It’s incidental that it gets you from Point A to Point B, right?”
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About time...

Now, what about some licensing issues so that there are some standards set about the kinds of photos that are taken, when, and where? Just because you have access to a camera doesn't mean you have the brains to use it wisely.

Media Law Prof Blog: Gossip Site Promises To Cut Back On Some Types of Celebrity Photos

Feb 11, 2008

No surprise here

Under the videoscope

While it can serve to give a clearer picture of where a candidate stands, it also makes for a lot of out-of-context moments that can take away from critical issues. Do we really need to know that a candidate posed with Hooters girls? Or do we need to know how (s)he feels about women's issues?

Putting Candidates Under the Videoscope - New York Times

Feb 10, 2008

I'm just sayin'...

It's time to take a good look at our long held prejudices against women leaders if we want to have a fair fight for the office - presidential or otherwise.
clipped from www.nytimes.com
A notable share of the great leaders in history have been women: Queen Hatshepsut and Cleopatra of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China, Isabella of Castile, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Granted, I’m neglecting the likes of Bloody Mary, but it’s still true that those women who climbed to power in monarchies had an astonishingly high success rate.
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Feb 9, 2008

Hidden Misogyny

If nothing else, this election should serve to point out the hidden misogynistic tendencies that still prevail in bastions of authority, like government, business, and the media. Incredible.

Clinton could pull out of MSNBC debates over anchor's comments - CNN.com


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Feb 8, 2008

Gun control mystery

The problems over gun control in this country mystify me. There are more and more tragic stories about people killing each other over unbelievable, or imagined, reasons.

You need a license to drive a car. You need insurance in case you hurt someone while driving that car. You need to take proper care of that car so it runs properly, doesn't cause accidents, and hurt people. A car is used for transportation, and only kills or injures someone if it's not properly cared for and used.

Now let's consider a gun. It's purpose is to damage something, or kill something. You don't have to know how to use one to purchase one. You don't have to maintain it to keep using one. The most you have to do is wait a few hours and not be a known criminal to get one.

Why is it so much easier to legislate and regulate the ownership and use of cars, which transport us from one place to another, than to legislate and regulate something that's designed to damage and kill.

What's the mystery?

Louisiana Tech
Missouri City

Feb 6, 2008

Success and pain

This may have been an "accident", but anyone who is at a point in their life where they need to take six different prescription medications to alleviate anxiety, panic attacks, and sleep problems needs a long vacation - or a different line of work.

Heath Ledgers Death Is Ruled an Accident - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

There's a deal around the corner

Ads customized by my preferences and my location? Now this I can support. Makes the interruption worthwhile if I can get a great price on something I want.

In CBS Test, Mobile Ads Find Users - New York Times
and
Companies Betting on Location Based Mobile Ads - ReadWriteWeb

Feb 4, 2008

Who's minding the classroom?

Well apparently, her character has changed. And somebody should have noticed, long before this.

Pa. teacher charged with terrorizing elementary school - USATODAY.com

Feb 3, 2008

Serendipitous moments

How inspiring a place this must be! More of what education needs.
There are those kids -- just like there are those teachers -- who will take to the idea of writing to an unknown audience and seeing what happens. But hoping and wishing for the serendipitous moment makes for bad teacher planning, and over the long haul I think it won't get the vast majority of our students publishing their voices to the world. If we want to see kids embrace the power of communication technologies like blogs and wikis and podcasts, we need to be good teacher-planners. We need to give them reasons to publish. We need to help them see their audience... whether it is using a blogging platform for and art classroom exhibition that other students will critique or bringing in a group of math majors from a college to work with our math students, kids need to understand why they should share their work with the world, and then -- once they do -- we allow for all the serendipitous moments that so many of us in the edu-blog world have benefitted from to occur.
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Feb 2, 2008

Breadcrumbs, please

In an effort to try out new things, and to try to consolidate the many places where I leave my footprint, I now find myself totally lost in the forest.