I was going to write something about the whole NSA wire-tapping thing, but I don’t need to. Michelle Malkin wrote a little ditty about it and Lex Alexander takes her on here. I think Lex’s counter-argument piece offers as good an overview as you’re going to find.
The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission has a website that features a report they’ve published about the epononymous event (thanks to Ed Cone for the link). It is still exciting to me that I can get this kind of information without leaving the confines of my own office and the thought it sparked is how wonderful it must be for teachers in this day and age to have these resources available to them. My next thought wasn’t so pleasant: do teachers even use sites like this as a resource, or more accurately, given the atmosphere of "teaching to the test" that they work in today do they have the flexibility to incorporate this kind of resource into their curricula? Unfortunately I suspect the answer to the latter is a negative.
I know for a fact that my kids use the internet to do their own research (with a lot of guidance from their parents seeing as they might be tempted to quote Runescape as a historical reference), but I can’t think of any recent occurrences of a teacher pointing them to a web-based resource. Is it because the teachers don’t want to use the web in this way or is it because they can’t?
When we moved here to the North Carolina Piedmont we were warned to expect ice storms on a fairly regular basis. We lucked out last winter and didn’t get any, but this year we had our first bout of ice fun. Last week we lost power from Thursday afternoon through late Friday morning so by dawn on Friday morning we were living in a refrigerator, which meant we didn’t sleep particularly well and then at about 6 a.m. Celeste and I were shot out of bed by the sound of a large pine falling across our neighbors fence and squishing their kids’ plastic play set.
I couldn’t go back to sleep so I went outside and started snapping pics all around our property. Here’s a link to a photo gallery of some of those pics (I was bored so you can believe I took a bunch).
In a stunning outbreak of nuance the National Journal has an article that explores the ramifications of the impending "retirement" of the baby-boom generation. I’m not sure if I found the article interesting because of the subject matter or because it does a good job at looking at the issue from multiple angles, or to put it more succinctly, because the article is nuanced. Either way it’s fascinating and a good read.
Oh, and to be totally accurate I don’t think my parents technically qualify as boomers since they were born during WWII and not after. I just missed the boomer designation since I was born in 1966 and apparently the boom ended in 1964. Still, I’d rather blame them than myself for any impending doom as that’s truly the American way. Anyone know a good psychiatrist that can reaffirm that none of us are responsible for our own failures/inadequacies since it’s all our parents’ fault? Of course any success we have is due only to our own actions…but I digress.
There’s a site, commoncensus.org that tracks how people identify themselves geographically and where they live. For example you can look at a map and see how many people in North Carolina most identify themselves as Southern Americans or simply as Americans.
Even more interesting to me is the breakdown of sports team affiliations by geography that you can find at the CommonCensus Sports Map Project. Right now I can tell you that within a 50 mile radius of me there are 27 Carolina Panthers fans and 8 Washington Redskins fans (there are also 2 Cowboys fans who should be deported) who have contributed to the project. The project depends on people filling out the questionnaire on their website to build their data so I encourage all of you (except Cowboys fans) to go and participate. The same is true for the regular census page as well.
We Americans can be one silly bunch of wackos. Only in America could we make a greeting into a political discussion. This whole "Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday" thing is just absurd and if anyone believes that it came about for any reason other than someone making political hay has been living with their head up their rear for far too long.
This issue "jumped the shark" when some doofus who was debating the issue on CNN invoked the Nazis’ banned children from saying Merry Christmas as a viable comparison to what’s going on now. You can see the whole video here. (Thanks to Ed Cone for the lead.)
I have to say that anyone who feels oppressed or threatened and is a member of the kind of majority that the Christmas-celebrating-Christians represent in this country must have never felt the sting of true oppression. They should stop and think about people with real problems. You know people who:
So spare me the faux-angst of holiday greetings. There are people with real problems in this world and we need not be distracted by this idiocy. Just be happy you can shop at Wal-Mart or Target or anywhere you choose, no matter how they greet you.
Have a used car to sell? You should find the creator of this sign and hire him or her.
From the Entrepreneurial Mind.
There’s an interesting item from Reveries Magazine about
the JetBlue effect. Essentially it says that many small communities
are becoming vacation spots because of inexpensive airfares offered by
JetBlue, AirTran, Hooters, etal. One person interviewed decided to buy
a condo at Myrtle Beach instead of the Jersey Shore because the airfare
to Myrtle is so cheap and the property in Jersey so steep.
On the heels of the news that Piedmont Triad International Airport
is seeing a reduction in flights one has to wonder if the Triad is
missing an opportunity here. Granted the Triad isn’t a traditional
second-home kind of destination, but PTIA is the closest airport to the
mountains of NW North Carolina and it could be an important part of the
push to bring economic development to the western part of the state.
In fact the entire Triad could benefit from a push to be the gateway to
the beautiful, and pretty much undiscovered northwestern NC. That
would also work nicely with the burgeoning Yadkin Valley wine region.
Just a thought.
Cross posted on Winston-Salem Business.
The New York Times has a story about the head football coach at Texas
Tech University who is winning games with uncoventional strategy. You
can read the article, "Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep" here (registration may be required).
What I found most interesting about the guy is his seemingly insatiable curiosity about things other than football, pirates among them, and how he incorporates lessons he’s learned from those things into his avocation. He’s my kind of guy even though he seems to have a penchant for running up the score on his opponents, which is something I definitely don’t adhere to. Actually it might be his achilles heel; nothing inspires an opponent more than embarassing him so the coach better get used to people coming after his teams with added zeal.
No less a leading light than Tom Peters has been grokking this article which is written by Michael Lewis who is also the author of "Liar’s Poker."
Cross posted at Competitive Intelligence Marketplace.
To the left is a picture of a USB drive keychain designed to look like a Bible. You push a button on the back and the USB port pops out. There’s a copy of the King James bible saved on the drive with a search function. You can buy one here.
This is a great idea for publishers of any stripe. What a unique way to promote a book and to get a digital, searchable version out there in the public domain.
And guess where I found this beauty. At bookofjoe of course.
BTW, we could have used this at one of our Lewisville Zoning Board of Adjustment meetings where we couldn’t find a bible for swearing people in, so we ended up using the town attorney’s Palm Pilot Bible memory card instead.
