Louis Gray was interviewed in Sociosophy, and something that he said caught my eye:
I would like to find a way to...make it easier to find older content that is relevant. I know that 95% or more of my posts from 3 months ago and before get very little visibility now, even if they are still extremely relevant.
I was musing on this as I was getting my hair cut (hey, you gotta do something), and I figured out three ways in which older content can be highlighted again:
Last night I was at a college night, during which various college/university representatives spoke about their institutions.
One of the speakers was Peter Osgood, Director of Admission at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Osgood was not merely there to represent Harvey Mudd; he was charged to represent ALL private colleges and universities. (Other speakers spoke about the UC system, the Cal State system, community colleges, and the like.)
While Osgood noted that the median size of a private school is smaller than the median size of a public school, there is still great diversity in private schools. He cited the University of Southern California as an example of a very large private school, and then asked if anyone knew what the smallest private college in California was.
Out of the crowd of a couple of hundred people, yours truly ventured to guess, "Deep Springs College?"
And yours truly is now the proud owner of a Harvey Mudd banner for getting the answer right.
I didn't get a chance to talk to Osgood afterwards, so I couldn't tell him how I came across this bit of trivia. (Hmm...another case in which a post could have gone into another of my blogs. But I don't see this as an NTN Buzztime question.)
So anyways, back in the dark ages of the 1970s, when Robert Plant was all the rage and the Pittsburgh Steelers dominated football - wait a minute, THE FIRST TIME when Robert Plant was - let me start again.
So anyways, back in the dark ages of the 1970s, when there were only three commercial television networks, I was back in Virginia, getting a lot of mail from colleges and universities. I forget whether I got this in the mail or read about it somewhere, but one of the colleges that I heard of was Deep Springs. My impression at the time was that the college was an interesting place, to say the least. Located in one state with an address in another state, the students (all male, I believe) read the classics for two years, when they weren't working on the ranch at which the college was located. I decided that was a little too far out for me, so I went to Reed College instead, where I read the classics for four years and worked on the Reed College Quest. (Any educator who reads this post is probably smirking right now.)
Well, Deep Springs is still around today. Still two-year, still all-male. But, unlike the 1970s, you can read about the college on its website:
Deep Springs is an all-male liberal arts college located on a cattle-ranch and alfalfa farm in California's High Desert. Electrical pioneer L.L. Nunn founded the school in 1917 on the three pillars of academics, labor, and self-governance in order to help young men prepare themselves for lives of service to humanity. The school's 26 students, along with its staff and faculty, form a close community engaged in this intense project.
Deep Springs operates on the belief that manual labor and political deliberation are integral parts of a comprehensive liberal arts education.
Each student attends for two years and receives a full scholarship valued at over $50,000 per year. Afterwards, most complete their degrees at the world's most prestigious four year institutions.
View Larger Map
But not everyone has the most positive experience at Deep Springs:
n 1975-76, I attended Deep Springs College, arguably the strangest college in the world. It was an interesting place; the academics were actually much tougher and more challenging than anything I had to do in graduate school....
I hated my time at Deep Springs, actually. The year I was there I was the only vegetarian, and the cooks were hostile, cooking even corn in pork fat. As a result, I ended up with some serious nutrition-related medical problems and a bad attitude, and I ended up leaving early. Nonetheless, you can't go to Deep Springs without having it shape you in some significant way.
I could say more about very small schools...but I won't.
But small private schools, as well as large private schools, have similar challenges in some ways. Osgood noted one obvious difference between private and public schools: namely, that private schools are much more dependent upon non-government sources of funding. And fund-raising issues hit Deep Springs also, as this January 2008 article shows:
Louis Fantasia — an acclaimed Shakespeare scholar and theatrical director — has been ousted as president of Deep Springs College after only six months in the position.
Fantasia’s sudden departure, announced with little detail on New Year’s Day, stunned many alumni and others who have since learned of it. Fantasia would not comment, and board members released only a vague statement indicating a “divergence of visions” for the college by Fantasia and the board.
Sources familiar with the conflict at Deep Springs say that the difference of opinion had to do in part with fund raising....
According to those who are sympathetic to what the board did, Fantasia did not understand the unique nature of Deep Springs governance (although he had taught there several times) or of the role of its president, and was too focused on fund raising....
Critics of Fantasia said that his interest in fund raising risked setting up a situation where donors’ views might take precedence over those of students, potentially endangering the self-governance of which alumni are so proud.
Supporters of Fantasia talk about similar issues, but with a different take. They argue that he has correctly identified a need to significantly increase the college’s endowment (currently about $15 million) and to make the institution more visible. By keeping fund raising ambitions more modest, these supporters say, the current board leaders are placing a higher priority on preserving the status quo than on improving the college.
The whole thing is odd when you consider the state of education today. I could be wrong, but it's possible that Deep Springs is the only private educational institution in which the board has criticized the president for doing TOO MUCH fund-raising.
Pass the alfalfa sprouts - the branded alfalfa sprouts, please.
Hmm...maybe this belonged in my business blog...
So anyways, on Thursday afternoon I was paying a visit to a Flavia machine when I ran into one of my co-workers, who commented that she couldn't drink coffee that late in the afternoon or she'd be up all night.
I remarked that sometimes coffee actually relaxes me and puts me to sleep.
She then remarked that she knew people with ADD/ADHD who took coffee instead of Ritalin. "Not that I'm saying that you have ADHD," she added.
Well, I'll refrain from self-diagnosing myself at the moment...but I will read newideas.net:
Caffeine is a mild CNS stimulant that can be used with ADHD children, teens, and adults, if used purposefully and in moderation. All stimulants are vaso-dilators, meaning that they allow the blood vessels to increase in size and increase the blood flow in the brain. One of the primary physiological problems causing ADHD seems to be a lack of blood flow to certain regions of the brain, and stimulants help to improve blood flow and reduce symptoms caused by this problem, at least temporarily.
It is estimated that 100 mg of caffeine is equivalent to 5 mg of Ritalin, which is the lowest therapeutic dose, and the usual starting dose for children. It is similar to Ritalin in that caffeine is absorbed and begins working in about 45 minutes, and the benefits wear off after about three to four hours. And, of course, caffeine can have the same kinds of side effects as other stimulants.
I did find a dissenting view:
[I]t is supposed to help if you drink caffeine an hour or so before an important test, but in the long run it is harmful. In the long-run it makes you dependent and makes the ADHD worse. It does the same with Asperger's. You should limit your caffeine intake to the times you absolutely need a boost rather than have it regularly. Ritalin and Adderall are different kinds of stimulants than caffeine and that's why they work better for ADHD. Adderall too is prescribed if you have both Asperger's and ADHD.
Then again, the same anonymous person then went on to post the following:
Nicotine in cigarettes it is not addictive. It is not addictive! You smokers don't believe me, do you? (laughter) You non-smokers don't want to believe me (more laughter). It is not addictive. Nicotine by itself has an incredible hypnotic effect. Anything that it is applied to, it tends to exaggerate. So, if somebody says nicotine in cigarettes is dangerous, it intensifies that, and it makes them dangerous. Nicotine is one of the most responsive substances on Earth. It fulfills your belief systems. It is wonderful.
Wait - it gets better:
The government helps to regulate the hypnotic effects of foods, of activities, of money, of morals. The government creates this incredible hypnotic effect. Now, you can particularly feel it when you go to any center of government, whether it is your city government, whether it is your national government. Go to the capital of your country, and just hang there for a while. You're going to feel its hypnotic effect. You are going to feel yourself buying into it. You are going to feel the intensity of the duality all around that your government is exaggerating duality in every way.
Now, isn't it interesting that the churches and the government are sometimes the same, even when they say they're not? Even when they pretend there is a separation, they work together. Again, this is not a conspiracy. It is just simply something that happens.
I'll grant that this is an unscientific survey, but I think I trust the first opinion a little more than I trust the last.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm tired of writing this and want to do something else.
Several years ago I threw away all of my cassette tapes.
That's probably a good thing, because I not only threw away a vast music collection (including the first tape I ever purchased, John Lennon's Walls and Bridges), but also several tapes that I made during my years at Reed College, either on my own or with various college roommates.
For some unknown reason, my mind flashed upon one song from one of those tapes a few minutes ago. It was made with a roommate who shall remain nameless, primarily because he now has a PhD and is presumably pictured as a pillar of the scientific community. We borrowed some musical instruments from a third college roommate and slapped a few songs together. My favorite was our musical arrangement of "Kill Bond Now!" I also hold a warm spot for our Tri-Met (at the time, a bus system in Portland) version of "A Day in the Life" - my roommate contributed the line "He didn't notice that the fare had changed."
Ironically, I was reading Barry Miles' book on Paul McCartney a few minutes ago when a song from that cassette flashed through my mind - not our Beatles parody, but our Devo parody. If I remember correctly, I was the one who came up with the new lyrics for "Mongoloid." Two things require explanation:
This is a semi-amusing little postscript to a story that started several months ago. In fact, it began precisely on Friday, August 22, 2008.
That morning I was sitting in a presentation at a conference in Louisville, Kentucky, performing some free association on a notepad. Specifically, I was thinking about presentations that our company could give at the 2009 conference.
But then I began thinking about a presentation that I could give at the Oracle OpenWorld 2008 Unconference. The idea was that I could give the presentation at Oracle OpenWorld, then adapt it for presentation in 2009. (I'm green, so I believe that recycling presentations is good.)
As readers of this blog know, I eventually came up with a presentation idea for the Oracle OpenWorld 2008 unconference. After that I worked on the associated last.fm playlist, found Overlook 3A, went to the overlook, and gave my presentation.
That was 2008. This is 2009...and it's time to figure out how to revamp this presentation for an entirely different audience. As far as I'm concerned, there are two differences between the Oracle OpenWorld Unconference audience and the other audience:
On Saturday, January 24, I wrote a post entitled Talk to me - barriers to communication affect everybody. As part of that post, I reproduced some of the jargon that I spout every day:
BCA needs ESB support, and since we know this now, we don't need to CCB it in. We can start with FEC and write the appropriate STRQs and MRs to get us to M-11. Of course, we'll follow P_RGP in the SPP to do all this. And of course BCA will need all the ANSI/NIST and EFTS stuff we do - you know, WSQ and all that. But the ADS handles that with no problem, as does the DES, of course.
Now that was probably cruel of me to spout all that stuff and not explain a word of it. Following Elvis Google's mandate of "Don't be cruel," I'm going to be a little less cruel about it. I'm not going to explain every one of those acronyms, many of which are only meaningful in a particular office building in Orange County, but I'm going to take a few minutes to explain the acronym EFTS, and why you should never use it again.
You see, the EFTS is the Electronic Fingerprint Transmission Specification, which has since been superseded by the EBTS, the Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification. Both of these specifications were written by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and (to simplify things) dictate how the FBI's criminal system will receive and transmit biometric data that is used in solving crimes, and for other purposes.
And there's a definite need to receive and transmit biometric data. You see, the FBI isn't the only police unit in the United States. There are state organizations, county organizations, city organizations, and various other kinds of organizations that are all occupied in taking fingerprints, palmprints, facial images, and other types of biometric data. And all of these organizations, or many of them, take all of this biometric data and store it in a biometric system (the common term used is AFIS, or Automated Fingerprint Identification System, although many of the systems store more than fingerprints).
And guess what? There are multiple manufacturers of AFIS (I work for one of them), and the FBI system (currently called IAFIS, or Integrated AFIS) is manufactured by another company.
Let's say that my home city of Ontario, California gets some fingerprints at a crime scene, searches its AFIS (which includes fingerprints from previously arrested criminals), and can't match the crime scene prints to any person's prints. The regular procedure is that Ontario will then submit the prints to the state of California, so that California can search its AFIS. If California can't match the prints, they'll go on to the FBI's system. Well, those three systems are manufactured by three different vendors, and the FBI needed to set some rules to make sure that the systems can communicate with the FBI system, and send the right data in the right format to the FBI system.
Hence we have the standard now known as the Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification, which is available for your reading pleasure at http://www.fbibiospecs.org/. But this web site doesn't only have the EBTS, but also has a lot of related standards from a lot of related agencies. If you want to know how to format XML for fingerprint transmissions, then this is the place to go.
Oh yeah...XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. But that's a whole other topic...
I just ran across a podcast, available on Eddie Awad's blog, that was the first part of a discussion between Awad, Bob Rhubart of the Oracle Architect Community, and Jeff Davies, a Senior Principal Product Manager for Oracle. Rhubart moderated the discussion, which focused somewhat on communication between developers and architects. While I can't really comment on that part of the discussion, part of the discussion was more general, and concerned barriers to communication.
Jeff Davies cited an example that he previously blogged about in October 2008:
Last week at Oracle Open World I had the opportunity to meet a number of folks interested in Oracle products in general and SOA in particular. One gentleman that I spoke with was very technical, but asked me to explain what I meant by, “point-to-point integration”. At first, the question surprised me. Then I realized that I use terms like “point-to-point” and, ‘EAI” so often that I’ve simply come to assume that everyone knew what they meant. This is a hazard of specialization in any field: you assume that everyone you speak with not only recognizes your particular jargon, but also that they have the same definition for those terms that you do.
Eddie Awad went farther back, taking an example from 2006 when he had to start a new project and had to learn service-oriented architecture - not just the technical sections, but also the language that was spoken. This proved to be a challenge, even to someone like Awad with extensive technical experience (Awad has been recognized by Oracle as an "ACE Director," or an expert in Oracle technologies):
I have found the tutorial to be very useful and essential to getting started with SOA and especially BPEL and ESB....
Notice that in the short paragraph above, I used three acronyms: SOA, BPEL and ESB. Well, if you want to dive into SOA, you will be swimming in a sea of acronyms.
Both of them used their blogs to communicate some of the terms and acronyms that they had encountered. Hopefully their blog posts have helped others who are faced with the same situation.
Well, I'm not an Oracle developer or architect, but I certainly run across enough acronyms and special terms in my line of business - some from the industry in which our products compete, and some from our internal processes. For example, the following phrase is extremely meaningful to me:
BCA needs ESB support, and since we know this now, we don't need to CCB it in. We can start with FEC and write the appropriate STRQs and MRs to get us to M-11. Of course, we'll follow P_RGP in the SPP to do all this. And of course BCA will need all the ANSI/NIST and EFTS stuff we do - you know, WSQ and all that. But the ADS handles that with no problem, as does the DES, of course.
Of course.
Of the billions of people in the world, there are at most a few dozen people who understand all of the acronyms that I cited. Several of them are industry standard acronyms (I assume more of my more technical readers know that ESB = Enterprise Service Bus), but some of them are very specific to the building in which I work.
And you can't assume anything. I work for a Fortune 500 company that produces many, many products. My particular group writes software, but some of our software runs on other products that the Fortune 500 company produces. One of these products - let's call it the 57CM - was recently featured in the media, and one of our marcom people let everyone know that the 57CM would be featured. He received e-mails from three people, including people with extensive experience in our products and industry, who had never heard of the 57CM. All of us who work with the 57CM just assumed that everyone in our building knew what it was...
...just like I recently assumed that all of you reading this blog post are aware that "marcom" is shorthand for "marketing communications."
When we're writing for others, we need to remember to look at the communication from their eyes and make sure that it's comprehensible.
I'm trying to follow the results of the ladies' events in the European Figure Skating championships in Helsinki, but some of the first reports that I saw were in Finnish. I can't read Finnish text, but I can read Finnish numbers.
Taitoluistelun EM-kilpailut, naiset, tilanne lyhytohjelman jälkeen:
1) Laura Lepistö Suomi 56,62
2) Susanna Pöykiö Suomi 56,06
3) Carolina Kostner Italia 51,36
4) Jenna McCorkell Britannia 50,00
5) Katarina Gerboldt Venäjä 48,62
6) Ivana Reitmayerova Slovakia 48,00
7) Kiira Korpi Suomi 47,60
8) Irina Movtshan Ukraina 46,48
9) Tugba Karademir Turkki 46,26
10) Nella Simaova Tshekki 45,24
Since Laura Lepistö is my second favorite Finnish figure skater (you don't know my favorite Finnish figure skater), I'm naturally pleased with the results.
And I was even more pleased when I found an English language account of the short program.
Until I actually read it.
Once you start looking at the account, it's obvious that the account was actually written in another language, then translated to English via automatic translation software. It's pretty obvious that no human reviewed the translation, especially after seeing phrases like this:
HELSINKI, Finland: Laura Lepisto and Susanna Poykio of Finland gave the hometown fans a 1-2 finish Friday in the pointed program, in which case Carolina Kostner indispensably to make a good use of to bring over a third straight denominate at the European outline skating championships....
Later Friday, Russia'session Jana Khokhlova and Sergei Novitski possibility of good to gain over their earliest inscription in ice-cream dandle....
Kostner was heavily favored to make it three European titles in a riot, something that hasn'cheek by jowl been granted since France'session Surya Bonaly won five upright from 1991-95....
Poykio's literary work was a scrap of redemption. Runner-up at the 2005 Europeans, the 26-year-old didn'familiarily on a level contribute the Finnish lot ultimate year. But she looked relaxed and cocksure, and is 4 minutes from some other European medal.
And yes, we laugh at things like this, but it does point out a serious flaw in my eventual plan for world domination (which will occur after I secure the vacant U.S. Senate seat from Illinois). I am reputed to be able to speak English, and I have some very small ability to read Spanish and German, but there are (give or take) 6,912 living languages in the world today. And, as the example above proves, we aren't even able to master a greatly reduced subset of these languages, such as the 34 languages supported by Google Translate.
The ideal solution in the past (and present) has been for everyone to adopt a common, universal language when communicating with people from other parts of the world. As Omniglot notes, previous and current candidates for a universal (or semi-universal) language have included Greek, Latin, French, English, and Chinese. And the Omniglot article didn't even mention everyone's favorite universal language. But even this language has its drawbacks:
Desperanto
(with apologies to The Eagles)
Esperanto, why don't you come to your senses,
Your simplified tenses aren't enough anyhow,
Oh you're a hard one, but I know that you've got your reasons,
The cases that were pleasin' you, accuse you now
Don't you call the queen reg^ino boy, she'll king you if she's able
You know what kind of queen wants a name that ends in -o
Now it seems to me extreme things have been set out in that table,
You should corral your silly schemes, you know
Esperanto, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger,
You age and you hunger, and you're all but unknown,
And English, oh English, well that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walking through this world all alone
Don't your circumflex now circumscribe
The speed we type and the speed we write,
It's hard to circumcise it either way,
And you're writin' X or H or gripes,
Ain't it ASCII you were plannin' for, I say?
Esperanto, why don't you come to your senses,
Stop manning those fences- open the gate
You may be failing, but there's ways to rearrange you
You'd better let somebody change you,
Let somebody change you
You'd better let somebody change you,
Before it's too late...
Taquito to the person who wrote that song parody.
Apparently it's 80's Photos Weekend on FriendFeed. There are already contributions from Queen of Spain (who was presumably Princess of Spain back in those days), Pete D, The Bohemian Penguin, The Amber, Mattie Kenny, and Adriana.
So, against my better judgement, I dug up my college photo album.
No, not the one that served as Reed College's 1983 yearbook, which included a picture of a naked guy, a picture of someone being crucified with the word "Aerbo" over his head (people who were at Reed circa 1981 will understand completely), and a picture of an economics student, in jacket and tie in the pool hall, busily reading his first year economics book from several years previous.
No, these are the photos that my friends and I took, and yes, there's a nude one in there too. Actually, it's a moon. No, it's not of me. And no, I'm not going to scan it.
But this picture is probably embarrassing enough.
A little explanation is in order. As you can see, this picture was taken in approximately April 1981, which would have been toward the end of my sophomore year. The picture was taken in Prexy, Reed College's music building. No, I wasn't taking any music courses, but I'd sneak in there at times and mess around on the pianos a bit. (Until I threw out all my old cassettes, I had preserved a number of tapes that I made in Prexy, including one with my version of Talking Heads' "Drugs.")
This is not the way that I normally dressed at Reed; it's actually somewhat fancier than my usual attire. The psychedelic top was something that I had gotten from a friend in Virginia, but rarely wore. The shades were my shades (these days I just use clip-ons when the future's so bright).
Actually, I'm looking at some of the other pictures now. This one's relatively tame.
I'm a Lutheran, and years ago a Lutheran school put on a play about Martin Luther. If you were to sum up Luther's life in one sentence, I guess you could say that Luther left the Roman Catholic Church and (along with others) started the Protestant movement, a movement which has affected Europe and the rest of the world ever since. So anyways, this school play required one of the young actresses to deliver this line:
After I read a Steven Hodson Inquisitr post on the first dot.com domains, I was moved to assemble information on my initial experiences on Usenet.
This got me into a Reed College reminiscing mood, so I ended up editing Richard Crandall's Wikipedia page to document his musical accomplishments.
I then ended up checking out the economics faculty.
It could have been worse. I could have tried to research that whole subway construction thingie. (That's my contribution to Reed lore. And you thought I just sat in the computer room and read Paddy O'Furniture jokes.)
P.S. For an explanation of the title of this post, read this John Sheehy article. An excerpt:
Given the labeling of [Reed] [C]ollege as a haven for “communism, atheism, free love” by hostile Portlanders, [the board of trustees] had their work cut out for them.
Reed was not the only liberal arts college branded with this or similar derogatory slurs after the Red Scare that followed World War I. However, it appears to be the only institution to which the brand stuck for the next century.
Be sure to go to page 8 to straighten out the differences between William T. Foster and William Z. Foster, and between Simeon Reed and John Reed. And this quote from Ruth Wetterborg Sandvik:
And then free love. I always enjoyed saying, "I didn't get any."
WELCOME TO THE WATERFORD, CONNECTICUT BEST BUY. MY NAME IS JOE FROM THE GEEK SQUAD. HOW CAN I HELP YOU?
I need you to check my computer. It's been acting slow lately.
OK, I JUST NEED TO GET SOME INFORMATION FROM YOU AS I START UP THE COMPUTER. LAST NAME?
Regan. R-e-g-a-n.
GOT IT. FIRST NAME?
Michael.
OK, MICHAEL REGAN - AHH, HERE YOU ARE.
I'm in your system? But I've never visited Best Buy before.
WELL, IT LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE A RECORD FOR YOU.
Uh...you do?
YES. IT SAYS HERE THAT YOU'RE THE STATE'S ATTORNEY FOR THE JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF NEW LONDON.
Yes, that's me.
AND IT SAYS HERE THAT YOU WERE INVOLVED IN THE PROSECUTION AND CONVICTION OF JULIE AMERO.
Um, yes. But she was not convicted of felony charges, just a misdemeanor.
OH, YES. I READ RICK GREEN'S ARTICLE IN THE COURANT ABOUT THAT. LET'S SEE...
[L]ocal officials, police and state prosecutors were unwilling to admit that a mistake may have been made -- even after computer experts from around the country demonstrated that Amero's computer had been infected by "spyware."
New London County State's Attorney Michael Regan told me late Friday the state remained convinced Amero was guilty and was prepared to again go to trial.
"I have no regrets. Things took a course that was unplanned. Unfortunately the computer wasn't examined properly by the Norwich police," Regan said.
"For some reason this case caught the media's attention,'' Regan said.
SO, MR. REGAN, DID YOU SAY YOUR COMPUTER WAS RUNNING SLOWLY? PERHAPS WE'D BETTER TAKE A LOOK AND SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING.
Um, sure. You know, it's an old computer.
WHAT OPERATING SYSTEM ARE YOU RUNNING?
Microsoft.
BOY, THIS *IS* AN OLD COMPUTER. WHEN DID YOU BUY IT?
Oh, around 1998 or so.
HMM, I SEE. MICHAEL, I'M GOING TO ASK YOU A PERSONAL QUESTION. DO YOU USE PROTECTION?
Um-
ON YOUR COMPUTER?
Um, protection?
YEAH, SOME TYPE OF PROTECTION SOFTWARE, LIKE...UM...CHEYENNE OR SOMETHING?
Protection? But I don't need protection. As long as I stay away from porn sites, nothing can happen to this computer. Um, right?
OK, LET'S SEE. WELL, WE'LL START UP INTERNET EXPL...WHOOPS, I MEAN NETSCAPE. AH...UM HMMM....
What?
UH HUH....
What - what's wrong?
I SEE....
See what?
LET ME USE THE INTERCOM FOR A MOMENT - RICK, COULD YOU CALL THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY? THERE'S SOME FELONIOUS ACTIVITY ON THIS COMPUTER.
Felonious?
MR. REGAN, THERE IS FELONIOUS ACTIVITY HERE. I CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH THE SOURCE CODE SHOWING ALL THE HTM AND JAVASCRIPTING FOR EACH WEB PAGE, IMAGES FROM THOSE PAGES, DATE AND TIME OF CREATION.
But I didn't do any felony!
MR. REGAN, THE EVIDENCE IS RIGHT HERE. SEE HOW THOSE LINKS ARE COLORED? WHEN YOU LINK ON A LINK, AGAIN, LINKS ARE JAVASCRIPTED. YOU CLICK ON A LINK, IT CHANGES COLOR.
Links are javascripted? But I don't even drink coffee!
TELL IT TO THE JUDGE.
As I've previously mentioned, I'm preparing to appear as part of the ensemble (as a teacher) in a stage production of "High School Musical."
Our group is not the first one to have done this. And we haven't won an award for our production. Of course, our first performance is next Thursday, so it would be kinda hard to win anything.
USA Today has presented an award, however:
Since it exploded onto the scene two years ago, Disney's "High School Musical" quickly became one of the most widely produced shows in -- where else? -- America's high schools.
This year, USA WEEKEND created a special Showstopper award to recognize the best among those productions, in partnership with Disney Theatrical Productions.
The honor goes to Pickerington High School North in Pickerington, Ohio.
North, not East?
Among the show's attributes were a two-level stage set, a seven-piece live band, crisp choreography and dynamic ensemble performances.
But take a look for yourself:
I didn't want to depress people by writing about hospital incompetence or some such, so I figured I'd seek out some good news.
And I found some:
You can add genetically engineered, purple tomatoes to the list of cancer-fighting foods.
British researchers engineered the fruit to contain nutrients more commonly seen in dark berries, which have been shown to lower the risk of cancer, heart disease and some neurological diseases....
Physorg has more:
Researchers from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, Great Britain, in collaboration with other European centres participating to the FLORA project, have obtained genetically modified tomatoes rich in anthocyanins, a category of antioxidants belonging to the class of flavonoids. These tomatoes, added to the diet of cancer-prone mice, showed a significant protective effect by extending the mice lifespan. The research has been published in the 26 October issue of Nature Biotechnology....
In order to obtain fruit particularly rich in anthocyanins, that has conferred a peculiar purple colour to the tomatoes, the British team has used two genes from the snapdragon flower: Delila and Rosea1.
Well, this is good to know, and presumably the mice were willing to eat it, but how do snapdragon tomatoes taste? The John Innes Centre press release does not address this minor detail, but it does emphatically note:
Seeds are not available for sale
P.S. If you are an online subscriber to Nature Biotechnology, you can read the full article here.
I'm at a computer for a few minutes, and have found the latest from USA Today as of 12:10 pm PDT:
"What we believe we have is an altercation between a group of individuals," WKU spokeswoman Robbin Taylor tells CNN. "It began in one area of the campus, moved to another area of the campus."
Deborah Wilkins, another school official, tells Fox News that students, staffers and visitors are being asked to stay inside until an "all-clear siren alert goes out later."
Wilkins says they haven't found any witnesses or evidence to suggest weapons were associated with a "fistfight" that took place today on the school's satellite and main campuses.
And here is the full text of the statement that I cited earlier. As of 12:35 pm, this is the statement on the wku.edu home page:
Police are investigating.
The South Campus building on Nashville Road was evacuated earlier following reports that one or more persons were observed in the building with weapons. WKU Police, Bowling Green Police and State Police have conducted an extensive search of the building and the premises. At this time, the police have been unable to find any witnesses or evidence to support earlier reports that weapons were present.
Following this, WKU PD received an unconfirmed report of shots fired in the vicinity of Pearce Ford Tower on the WKU main campus.
Police have confirmed that there was a physical altercation not involving weapons between individuals that occurred in or near PFT, but the police are interviewing witnesses on the scene to determine if weapons were or are present, or if shots were fired.
At this time, the campus emergency warning system has been activated. Students and employees have been advised to remain indoors, in secure areas, until an "all clear" is issued.
We will provide additional information as it becomes available.
As I write, things are muddled. I heard that shots were fired, and I heard that it was just a physical altercation. I heard that 4 suspects were in custody, and I heard that one person was being questioned. All I know is that "police are investigating"; see http://wku.edu/
[12:38 PM UPDATE]
Carmi Levy was interviewed by Melissa A. Bartell for All Things Girl. Here's a portion of what he said in the interview.
I think the reason I’ve made it onto so many journalists’ lists is because I call them back promptly and I give them what they need. I also treat them with the respect they deserve. It’s simple, really, but so many others in my field have apparently forgotten the lessons we all learned in kindergarten.
But it's not just that. Levy can (if I may use a Brian "Bex" Huff word) empathize.
When I was working in radio, one of my responsibilities was booking interviews for our noontime news and public affairs show. From the moment I came in at 8 a.m., I had, maybe, a couple of hours to convince total strangers to drive across town and sit in a studio where either I or one of our anchors would relentlessly grill them. Oh, and they wouldn’t get paid, either. As glamorous as that sounds, it still bothered me that so many people didn’t want to talk to me. They either wouldn’t call back, they wouldn’t show at the appointed time, or they’d lie to my face and hope I went away. For a while, I took it personally. Then an amazing thing happened: I got to know a small group of people who really wanted to help me out, who were willing to invest a little time to help me fill that very big hour of radio. I came to rely on my Top 20, and I knew I could call any one of them, any time, any day, and they’d always come through for me.
Fast-forward a few years and I’m now on the other side. I get called by people facing tremendous deadline pressure and bosses who may or may not “get” what they’re trying to do. The right thing to do is quickly give them what they need so they can produce a report, an article, a message that resonates with their audience. I’ve been in their shoes.
P.S. For more on kindergarten, see this Google Books entry. For more on exploding laptops, see this Written Inc. post.
Over the last several days, I've attended two meetings. At each meeting, a man was selling something. One was selling a three-week summer foreign exchange program for teenagers. The other was selling a a major U.S. university. For purposes of this post, it's not important to explicitly note who they were, what they were selling, and (in the material below) which was which.
Before I touch on the differences between the two men, I'll touch on their similarities.
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