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Archives
Guns, Germs, and Steel
I just finished reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, which is an absolutely fascinating book. It’s one of those books that makes you look like 20 IQ points smarter just by carrying it. The basic idea is why have some societies progressed to become so much more advanced [...]
The Paradox of American Savings
Here’s an interesting read on America’s savings rate (or lack thereof) and perspectives on how it should be handled. But today we face a paradox of non-thrift: Crazy Americans saved back in 1950, when male life expectancy was 66 years and China was walled off by Mao, but they don’t save now even though life [...]
A Reminder of the Evil in the World
Wonder when UNICEF will start an advertising campaign on how the world deals with monsters such as these: Indonesian police have increased patrols in the violence-plagued Poso area of Sulawesi island after assailants in black beheaded three teenage Christian girls at the weekend. At the Vatican, Pope Benedict offered his deepest sympathies to the families [...]
Wall Street Journal on the McCain Anti-Torture Amendment
The WSJ has an op-ed today against McCain’s amendment. Here’s my counter argument to the piece. Bad things happen when a U.S. President has to fight a war while he’s down in the polls–just ask the “South” Vietnamese who recall Watergate. And take a look at the current Washington debate over prisoner interrogation, where President [...]
Best Christian Video Clip Ever
The past decade, some churches seem to be doing a much better job using multimedia than I can ever remember in the past (e.g., PowerPoint, video clips, MP3s of sermons). They’ve actually progressed past cheesy to stuff that’s actually pretty entertaining. Some examples are Urbana Assembly of God (our current church), New Spring in Anderson [...]
UIUC’s Recruiting Violation Woes
If the Illini are going to have recruiting violations, shouldn’t they at least be able to field bowl-eligible teams? The NCAA placed Illinois on probation for one year Thursday because a booster improperly provided payments and other benefits to a football prospect. The offenses were a major violation of NCAA rules and occurred between April [...]
Taking a Mulligan
Looks like some balance has been restored to the political universe as President Bush opted for a “do over” on the Supreme Court nomination by having Harriet Miers withdraw (Yea, I know that technically she withdrew on her own accord, but I think it’s pretty certain that the White House had a hand in the [...]
Bureaucracy At Its Best
So the other day I got an email requiring me to take an ethics test since I’m a state employee by virtue of having an assistantship. Obviously, it’s a well-known fact that grad students are tempted to commit ethics violations on a daily basis…coding eight hours a day and meeting with your adviser once a [...]
Flickr-like Video Service
I saw this site mentioned on Boing Boing: Revver, which claims to be like Flickr, but for videos. Though, it seems to be heavily dominated by viral videos rather than regular people uploading stuff they’ve shot. Anyway, it has one of my all-time favorite clips: the kung-fu dude trying a backflip. He’s definitely not a [...]
Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater
A principal has told students that they face suspension unless they delete their blogs to “protect them from sexual predators”: Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told. … The primary [...]
From the “Screw Posterity” Department
Connie Mack, former Republican Senator from Florida, and member of President Bush’s panel studying tax reform is evidently a Dire Straits fan since he seems to adhere to a “Money for Nothing” philosophy: Well, the U.S. government has to get money from somewhere. As a two-term former Republican senator from Florida, where do you suggest [...]
My First Relative in the Blogosphere
My cousin, Jon Terrell, started a blog, making him the first of my relatives (to my knowledge) to venture into this realm. Of course, Leigh Ann’s brother, Jared, has a blog on the other side of the family, though it seems to be collecting dust at the present moment .
That Didn’t Hurt, Did It?
That wasn’t too bad, President Bush, appointing an extremely well-qualified person to an important position, was it? At the risk of being elitist and sexist, in nominating Ben Bernanke (a male with impeccable academic credentials) to succeed Alan Greenspan, Bush seems to have hit a home run. That seems to be a much better strategy [...]
Old School Anti-Piracy
I don’t know why, but this struck me as rather interesting. Evidently, dictionary companies occasionally put several made-up words in their dictionary so that they can tell if someone copies their definitions. Turn to page 1,850 of the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia and you’ll find an entry for Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a [...]
An Incredibly Useful Site
I’ve seen TinyURL links before, but never really knew what they were all about until today. Have you ever emailed someone a link that has a rather long URL and their reader breaks the link over multiple lines? Then, you have to go through the whole process of trying to help them fix it so [...]
Yet Another Form of Piracy For the RIAA To Stop
I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the RIAA tells taxpayers that they’re not entitled to make digital copies of the CDs which were paid for by their tax money at the local library. Until then, author Neil Gaiman has no problem with the practice as long as you use discretion. Neil, Last [...]
Yet Another Evil-Doer For the Bush Administration To Catch
Evidently, the Bush administration is now using its resources to stop the evil-doers at The Onion from abusing the presidential seal. You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. [...]
Pics From My Family’s Visit
My parents visited CU this weekend. The pics are now up: Evidently, the weekend was dominated by bocce and me doing funny things with my face.
New Blog Name
So, after a couple months of using the rather boring and unoriginal “mattandleighann.com” for the title of our blog and “Still waiting for a catchy tagline” as our tagline, we were finally inspired to change the name of our blog to something a little more original. We now present “The World Needs More Ninjas” with [...]
Random College Football Thoughts
I never got around to writing something last week, so I guess that I’ll try to give thoughts on the previous two weeks. The Michigan State-Ohio State game seemed to be more a case of the Spartans snatching defeat from the jaws of victory rather than the Buckeyes playing well. Though, ironically, the Spartans weren’t [...]