Blogging on and off since 2003
I’m off to England this evening for a week: AA108, BOS-LHR, 777-200. Here’s a nice image from Airliners.net.
(I think this is the first time I’ve included third-party Javascript in a blog entry – I wonder how the RSS aggregators will handle it. UPDATE: It doesn’t validate properly according to the W3C tools.)
Not content with preserving the racist language in their state constitution, those wacky Alabamians are at it again. State Representative Gerald Allen is proposing to burn (OK, ban from libraries) all books that include homosexual characters. Neil Gaiman has blogged about it, as has Sully. So much for Tennessee Williams’ southern classic “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof”, Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited”. (And Dave Thompson’s book on “Last Tango in Paris” would also be excluded: the proposed ban would also cover books containing heterosexual “actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws of Alabama”.)
Another photo from Monday. Yes, I know that the closest blossoms are out of focus: I turned on macro and thrust the camera deep into the bush….
Quite a few of my friends and colleagues are running Linux on their laptops, but it seems that each of them reports that something doesn’t work quite right – WiFi, or sleep mode, or power management. (And the Web seems to be filled with horror stories, hacks, and half-baked solutions.) I’m curious if this is a universal truth, or whether someone has managed to achieve The Perfect Linux Laptop configuration. I’m thinking of things like:
I can’t believe it’s really that hard – is it? (And does the Tecra M2 on CAMS fit the bill?)
The Guardian reports that a ballot initiative in Alabama has failed (despite a recount), which means that the state constitution will still contain language such as: “Separate schools shall be provided for white and coloured children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race.” Since this racist claptrap has already been declared unconstitutional, why would Alabamians want to retain it? The mind boggles. But when I saw that former Alabama Chief Justice Roy “Ten Commandments” Moore was involved….
(Via Salon.)
The Guardian reports that an incident in which soldiers forced a violinist to play at a roadblock is causing an uproar within Israel. Recent IDF abuses such as the shooting of a young girl and the mutilation of corpses generated less angst than this: “If we allow Jewish soldiers to put an Arab violinist at a roadblock and laugh at him, we have succeeded in arriving at the lowest moral point possible. Our entire existence in this Arab region was justified, and is still justified, by our suffering; by Jewish violinists in the camps.”
(Via Juan Cole.)
Monday morning, just after dawn, click for 1600×1200 version.
Thanks to Kate and Hannah, here’s a link to a detailed (and perhaps more than usually accurate) survey of religious belief in the US. The detailed tables are fascinating. One example: with respect to educational attainment, broad belief in God went from 82% for “High school or less” to 73% for “Post graduate”. However absolute certainty about God went from 72% to 53%. (Of course as Flanagan points out, many believers don’t actually care very much about whether their belief is well grounded, or strongly held, or even if it’s true….)
It’s just after dawn here in Carmel Valley, CA. A cold night (around 30F), and a beautiful clear morning. Since Merry’s parents have sold the house and are moving soon, this will be my final Carmel Valley morning. We’re heading up to Santa Cruz (where Chris went to school at UCSC), then over 17 to San Jose to get a flight back to Boston. And (sigh) it looks as if the plane (AA 757) is going to be 100% full….
I was hunting through the bazillion tracks on my iPod looking for something, and I stumbled on Magic Bus by The Who. One thing led to another… I found myself with a long drive through holiday traffic, and I had a new iTrip which allowed me to listen to the iPod though the car radio, so I cued up the incomparable deluxe edition of Live at Leeds and let it rip.
I bought the original, single LP version of the album many moons ago when I was still a student. Of course the new version includes a complete live performance of Tommy, as well as several additional classic Who tracks. Definitely one of the great live albums, right up there with Live/Dead, disc 1 of Umma-Gumma, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, and Wheels of Fire.