2012 archive
Mayan Madness 0
Too stupid for words.
“Sadly, many tourists climbed Temple II and caused damage,” said Osvaldo Gomez, a technical adviser at the site, which is located some 550 kilometers (340 miles) north of Guatemala City.
Ones, Zeros, and Magickal Thinking 2
The San Jose Mercury-News investigates why the Republican Party has lost Silicon Valley. It seems to be another manifestation of Stephen Colbert’s observation that reality has a liberal bias.
A nugget:
Boehner’s Plan B: “A Random Conservative Wish List” 0
Rachel Maddow explains:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Via Raw Story. If the embed doesn’t work, follow that link.
A Suit of Clothing 0
The teacher was disciplined and apologized, but that wasn’t enough.
The lawyers are now involved.
Filed in federal court in Philadelphia, the suit says the district ignored Samantha Pawlucy’s right to free speech, let other students threaten and harass her and subjected her “to emotional distress, simply because she exercised her First Amendment rights.”
Cultural Life 4
A story about the Sandy Hook shootings quotes a local resident on the shooter’s mother (for some reason, that sentence below was in the print edition of my local rag, but omitted from the online version):
Indeed.
Spam Alert, Android Dept. 0
I’ve not seen this one, but from time to time–maybe once a quarter–I get texts telling me I’ve won something or other at Best Buy. Since I loathe Best Buy, they do not interest me.
I follow my carrier’s instructions and forward such messages to their spam-reporting address (7726 or “spam”).
The article goes on to state the obvious–don’t follow links in texts from unknown sources and don’t download programs from third-party app repositories.
In other words, think before you click.
They Can’t Handle the Truth 0
More properly, they fear the truth shall set us free–from them.
Bloomberg considers the NRA’s coverup tactics. A nugget:
The list goes on. The NRA-backed Tiahrt Amendment requires the Justice Department to destroy records after gun-purchase background checks, making it harder to identify and catch straw buyers who work for criminals. As part of its war on information, the gun lobby has blocked efforts to put sales records into an integrated database, making the data more difficult for law enforcement officers to retrieve and organize, and complicating efforts to analyze gun trafficking patterns.
The list does indeed go on. Follow the link for the rest.
Men Are Pigs 0
So much for taking responsibility for one’s own actions.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
There has been another outbreak of politeness, this one in Pennsylvania.
Three state troopers were injured while tracking the suspect, but they have all been treated and released from a hospital.
It was perfectly timed to illustrate the cravenness of the NRA’s positions on everything.
Apocalyse Then 0
Fat Chance 0
Talk about wasting the taxpayers’ money.
According to a news release from the ABC, Tech will receive $8,900 from the state’s “Operation Undergrad” grant program to boost the campus police bicycle patrol and social media outreach program “Hokies for Party Positive.”
Substitute almost any college in the story, the effort would still be futile.
Some things never change.
Meta: Embeds 0
The new version of WordPress seems to have issues.
When I embed a video in a post, test the post, schedule it to post at a future time (you didn’t actually think I sit here all day, did you? Heck, Wednesday I went to Williamsburg for a meeting and my Christmas posts are already lined up), then test the post, the embed works. That is, it displays and plays. Then, when the post posts, the embedded video is gone.
This started when I installed latest WordPress version.
I try to fix it when I notice the void; once the post is published, the embedded videos seem to stick around.
In the mean time, I will include a link to the source of the video in the post. If I feel truly energetic, I might even file a bug report.
Be assured that any video I choose to embed in a post is Deathless Art and Must-See viewing.
If nothing else, it’s got to be better than Honey Boo-Boo or the Six O’Clock News.
