Since the young squire is a budding mechanical engineer, he will be particularly interested in this highly imaginative prank. I must agree with TigerHawk that the school administrators of today would lack a sense of humor about something like this.
Over the years I have been steadily increasing my geographical independence from "the office". Five months ago I was issued a top of the line BlackBerry with unlimited minutes which has enabled me to "slip the surly bonds" of the office completely. And since I can tether the BlackBerry to my laptop I can connect to the Internet and work anywhere. With gas prices soaring to new record highs there is no time like the present to telecommute - being there virtually is, in many ways, better than being there.
From Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld:
"Evolutionary biology teaches us that evolution happens not by constant, steady change, but in sudden leaps and mutations. Likewise the evolution toward being able to work from anywhere. A recent tectonic shift -- in this case, high gas prices -- is making the world safer for extreme telecommuting.
A Reuters report today highlights organizations that are cutting back the number of days employees are required to physically show up at work because of soaring gas prices. Even employees who are required to be on-site in order to work, such as janitors, are being cut down to four-day workweeks to save gas. White collar workers, of course, are being allowed, encouraged or forced to stay home once a week or more often and telecommute.
One thing leads to another. High gas prices prompt employers (including the federal government) to allow employees to work from home once a week. Once that's accepted culturally, an elephant appears in the boardroom: If it's OK once a week, why isn't it OK five times a week? (This is what happened with "casual Friday" -- its once-a-week acceptance lead to the current trend of casual wear every day.) Once telecommuting is accepted, "extreme telecommuting" -- working from the Bahamas or Paris or an internet-connected shack on the Australian Outback -- becomes acceptable, too. After all, once you're out of the office and connecting to the company over the Internet, it doesn't really matter where you are, does it?
The last remaining barrier to the general acceptance of "extreme telecommuting" is purely cultural -- it's our irrational clinging to obsolete rules for how we work. As the cultural barriers fall, more of us will be freed to work from wherever we please, something which mobile technology and Internet communication already enables.
To me, that's the silver lining in high gas prices. "
From Reuters:
"Lightning bolts appear above and around the Chaiten volcano as seen from Chana, some 30 kms (19 miles) north of the volcano, as it began its first eruption in thousands of years, in southern Chile May 2, 2008. Cases of electrical storms breaking out directly above erupting volcanos are well documented, although scientists differ on what causes them. Picture taken May 2, 2008."
This morning we awoke to -14 wind chills. James Lileks observes:
"(W)hen it’s five below at one in the morning and the wind makes worried moans, it’s good to be inside with a fire and a toddy and similar boons of civilization. But let’s say you do step outside. The dog has to go, and you might as well share the pain, if only to file away this moment for the day six months hence when you complain about the heat. You look up: no clouds. Three hardy stars. A moon as hard and bright as a spotlit polished pearl. It’s beautiful.
Then the dog barks, angry, as if you should be able to do something about this. Blame the moon, dog. Do you just as much good."
CWCID: Instapundit
I have to admit that I had never heard of Godwin's Law until it was referenced during Glenn Reynold's recent interview with Jonah Goldberg. Courtesy of Wikipedia:
"Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Godwin's law is often cited in online discussions as a caution against the use of inflammatory rhetoric or exaggerated comparisons, and is often conflated with fallacious arguments of the reductio ad Hitlerum form.
The rule does not make any statement whether any particular reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that one arising is increasingly probable. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact. Although in one of its early forms Godwin's law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions, the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and more recently blog comment threads and wiki talk pages."
Gizmodo, The Gadget Guide: "A UK newspaper reminds us that cellphones are just downright disgusting, and are even dirtier than toilets. That's because they're exposed to much more bodily bacteria than any toilet seat. A combination of being near your mouth with all that spit and stuff, and those cellphone electronics keeping the bacteria warm all day turns that handset into a teeming metropolis of creepy-crawley microbes"
I heard not one but two offers on the radio today for free Apple iPods. Get an iPod for signing up for classes at some business school no one has ever heard of and get a Nano for setting up a new checking account (?). Cool.
While there has been a great swirl of interest in Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic rant while being arrested for DUI, most of it prurient, I think his apology should be just as widely circulated.
ABC News: Mel Gibson's Statement: "There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge.
I am a public person, and when I say something, either articulated and thought out, or blurted out in a moment of insanity, my words carry weight in the public arena. As a result, I must assume personal responsibility for my words and apologize directly to those who have been hurt and offended by those words.
The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. Every human being is God's child, and if I wish to honor my God I have to honor his children. But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.
I'm not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one on one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.
I have begun an ongoing program of recovery and what I am now realizing is that I cannot do it alone. I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display, and I am asking the Jewish community, whom I have personally offended, to help me on my journey through recovery. Again, I am reaching out to the Jewish community for its help. I know there will be many in that community who will want nothing to do with me, and that would be understandable. But I pray that that door is not forever closed.
This is not about a film. Nor is it about artistic license. This is about real life and recognizing the consequences hurtful words can have. Its about existing in harmony in a world that seems to have gone mad."
Mel has accepted complete responsibility for his comments and their implications. I think his apology comes from a true sense of remorse, not from some financial or otherwise ulterior motive. Now we will have an opportunity to watch him make amends with actions not just words and then we can truly gauge his sincerity.
Whatever the outcome of this incident to Mel Gibson, personally and/or professionally, it will be interesting also to watch how the people that vilified him apply the same standards to others such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Or not.
Try your luck at this on-line quiz about current events.
BillOReilly.com: O'Quiz
And it looks as if there is no relief in sight - 91 today and 94 tomorrow with heat indexes as high as 104. At least we have air conditioning and James Lileks to help keep it in perspective.
LILEKS (James) :: the bleat: "Welcome to the humidor. These are the days of which we dream in deep January, but once they are upon us we curse them. Some do, anyway. I never complain about hot weather, partly because it's useless, and mostly because it's boring. It could be worse; I could be living 80 years ago, in which case I'd probably be wearing canvas underwear and a thick wool coat, my Wicking Hat and "Care-Free" neck cinch, which could only be relaxed after sundown when the ladies had retired. I would have no air conditioning; I would have one underpowered fan that shoved humid air in my face like a damp towel; I would have a damp towel, on my neck; I would have exhausted the ice allotment long ago, and would be sitting in the dark room with the radio off, because the tubes heated up the house. Sundown would be met by weary cheers from the porches adjacent. Every hour or so, you'd hear the dull thud of a horse passing out. No, I don't complain about the heat."
My children were often dismayed when I told them that the main resonsibility their mother and I took on when we had them was to raise responsible citizens for the Republic.
The Corner on National Review Online: "I think Hanna Arendt was right when she said that Western Civilization is invaded every generation by barbarians - we call them children. I would add that parents are the first, best, line of defense against the invaders.
There are no citizen factories. The State cannot create citizens on a mass scale (history is full of bloody failed attempts to demonstrate otherwise). In a successful society, citizens must be made by small artisans working on a case-by-case basis. We call these artisans "parents." I have no doubt that in a world of bad parents some children would still become good citizens. But not enough, not nearly enough.
A civilization that forgets this has signed its death warrant. Parents matter - a lot. "
This car has it all - style, speed (0-60 in 4 seconds), great mileage (135 mpg) and its eco-friendly (100% electric).
Now all they have to do is make it affordable.
Tesla Motors
While I agree with Tigerhawk and John Derbyshire to a certain degree, I think the biggest difference between my childhood and my children's was that mine was less structured than theirs. But on the flip side, my children got to do and experience things I could only dream about.
TigerHawk: "John Derbyshire today wrote a paragraph that speaks precisely to my greatest regret as a father, that my children are not growing up with the freedom that I did:
I've been aware for some time, and reading that made me freshly aware, of my own great good fortune in having been in the last (actually, I think, about last but one, or last but a half) generation of Western children to have a real childhood: roaming over fields and through woods, falling out of trees and into ponds, experienced with firecrackers, roller-skates, airguns, and slingshots, being bullied and occasionally beaten up by older boys, playing 'British Bulldog' in the schoolyard, sailing model boats and flying model planes, playing complicated street games handed down intact from ancient Rome-and all with never an adult in sight! How lucky we were! How miserable our children must be!"
