Random Thoughts From Marybeth

Loves Dogs

A British performance artist has eaten part of a corgi -- the breed of dog Queen Elizabeth II favors as pets -- to protest the alleged mistreatment of animals by the royal family.

Mark McGowan dined on corgi meatballs Tuesday at a table set up on a London street in hopes of drawing attention to media reports that Prince Philip, the queen's husband, had beaten a fox to death during a hunt. The event was broadcast over a live radio program.

I'm just not following the train of thought that went from suspected animal abuse to "I think I'll eat a dog."

Unbelievable

An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog that just may be the biggest pig ever found.

That's amazing but it's not what shocked me. I looked at the webpage they created. It has sections where they posted the positive and negative comments they have gotten. Some of the negative ones were the most hateful, irrational things I have read in a long time.

They told an eleven-year-old child that they wished the pig had killed him or that he would die in a variety of other ways. They talk about the boar as if he were cute, little Piglet instead of a 1,051 pound hog.

Not the Way to Win Customers

A group called CRAV is threatening terrorist attacks if Nicolas Sarkozy doesn't do something to support their industry (keep out foreign wine). They have already shot at trucks, blown up a railroad and attacked buildings.

CRAV stands for "Regional Committee for Viticultural Action" but it's fitting that it could also be an abbreviation for craven. Their behavior is nothing but cowardly.

As Exciting As...

watching cheese age.

From CNN:

Since www.cheddarvision.tv debuted in December, the Web site offering a live broadcast of a round slab of English cheddar cheese slowly maturing has had more than 1.2 million hits.

..."People from all over the world are e-mailing us about the cheese. Somebody has written lots of songs about. It has been invited to a wedding. We've had post cards sent to it," Calvar said.

It even has a MySpace page (with 1171 friends).

I Was Thinking...

I think I would enjoy yard work if I had a real lightsaber. I bet even the kids would volunteer to trim the bushes.

Car Talk

...drivers register their cellphone and license plate numbers with SameLane, which sends them bumper stickers identifying the drivers as part of the SameLane network. After spotting a member, drivers dial a company number, punch in the license plate number of the car they want to reach and wait for SameLane’s computers to connect the call.

More and more the message I want to send to other drivers is "hang up the phone and drive!". Calling to tell them that doesn't make much sense.

My Children Should Thank Me

House Dust May Protect Against Allergic Disease Early In Life

None of my children have ever been bothered by allergies other than the seasonal "Kentucky Crud" that's just a part of living in the Ohio Valley. I don't know whether house dust gets credit for this but I'm more than willing to believe!

I'm Super Serial

An article in the National Post (Canada) discusses how frequently students are shown the film "An Inconvenient Truth" in school. If this were presented as a lesson in critical thinking - watch the movie, research what is right and what is misleading in it - I would be all for students seeing it. If there is no research or discussion, or the discussion is one-sided, they might as well show another movie that the kids would enjoy for its entertainment value only.

The White House Calls Him Irrelevant

I would have said he is projecting.

Carter was quoted Saturday as saying "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history."

I would rank Carter's presidency as the worst during my lifetime. He's even worse (if that's possible) as an ex-president.

The Boy Is Back In Town

Conor has been busy traveling. First a band trip to St. Louis and then a trip with his 8th grade class to Washington D.C.

Generic Complaints

It's difficult to take accusations of psychological torture seriously when the list of "offenses" includes being provided with "cheap, branded, unscented soap".

Repeat Offender, Not Really Surprising

Last year Martin Phillip Jackson pleaded guilty to abducting a woman and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was freed on probation after three months.

But now Jackson faces charges that he posed as a cabdriver and again kidnapped a woman Saturday, punching and then choking her when she screamed.

"I don't think anyone foresaw a second incident," Kamenish (Jackson's lawyer) said. "I was very surprised."

Not anyone? The last victim, Heather Ridgley and her family asked Judge Martin McDonald and former Jefferson Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ricarda Rich not to let Jackson out early.

"We knew it was going to happen again," said Mary Ridgley, Heather's grandmother. "We knew it was just a matter of time."

With creeps like this getting out after three months it's no wonder Paris Hilton thinks that her 45 day sentence is too harsh.

Why There's a Mute Button

Kellogg's Smart Start - There's something about her voice that just annoys me. The inane drivel about whether raisins are smart doesn't help.

Cingular Commercial - STFU.

Travelers Insurance - Reattached rabbits feet...it's just creepy.

It's Theft, It's Inconsiderate, But Does It Violate The First Amendment?

Some Framingham State College students stole almost 1000 copies of the school newspaper. A photo of them was on the front page and some people thought that the young women looked too fat so a few of the people in the photo decided to collect as many copies as they could.

The college spokesman said that it was a childish thing to do and that the administrators were irritated by this. This is a reasonable and appropriate stand to take on it.

The newspaper's faculty advisor, an English professor, said, "the theft infringed on the First Amendment rights of the paper's staff and FSC students".

In 2003 some students who stole multiple copies of the newspaper were required to meet with this same professor and "discuss the First Amendment and its relation to newspaper theft".

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I'm no expert but the First Amendment seems to clearly state that it prevents the government, not individuals, from attempts to control speech. Perhaps it would be better to lecture them on how stealing newspapers is theft, inconsiderate to other students, and attracts the attention of millions via the Internet to something that would have only been seen by a few thousand. (3,772 undergraduates plus graduate students, faculty and staff)

It's Worked So Well For Sex, Swearing, and Violence

As a resident of a state where tobacco is an important part of the economy, I want to encourage the MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America) to go ahead and make any depiction of smoking earn a film an automatic "R" rating.

I can think of few things that anyone could do that would work as well to make a bad (and dangerous) habit cool again.

You Can't Line a Birdcage With a Blog

Did you know that if you blog it's because you desperately want to be a columnist? Me neither.

Thank goodness that real journalists don't bore people with "the tedious minutiae of their lives". Or their fantasy lives.

Ignorance of the Law is No Defense (Flagrant Disregard and/or Outright Stupidity Aren't Either)

For many people, a 45-day jail sentence would be a wakeup call to act more responsibly. (For alot of us, the first warning would have been enough.) For Paris Hilton it seems it's just another chance to shift the blame.

In her first public comments since she was handed a 45-day jail sentence for a driving related offense, celebrity heiress Paris Hilton has described her punishment as cruel and unwarranted.

She also fired her spokesman, veteran publicist Elliot Mintz, whom she blamed for getting her into the mess.

Whether or not he perjured himself by testifying that he gave her misinformation is between him and his conscience...I would have included Paris and her conscience too but I'm not sure she has one. She is the one who drove after drinking, she is the one who drove at night without headlights, she is the one who was driving without license plates on her car, and she is the one who failed to attend the court-ordered alcohol education program. She received a warning, signed it, and stuck it in her glove compartment. If she truly believed that her publicist was right (again, assuming their testimonies were truthful) that she was allowed limited driving and the police department was wrong, shouldn't the first thing she should have done was to call her lawyers and have them clear up the problem?

Ignoring the Difference That Defines Them

From a news story - Police: Soldier shoots burglar trying to steal guns

Johnson says the soldier grabbed his SKS rifle -- a weapon similar to an AK-47 assault rifle -- and called 911. Johnson said while on the phone with 911, Bollinger saw the suspect approaching his back door and fired at him three times.

The SKS and AK-47 are both military rifles of Soviet design but the SKS is not an assault rifle. An assault rifle can be fired in semi-automatic or automatic mode. An SKS is semi-auto only.

I didn't know this before but I looked it up because the mention of an AK-47 was unnecessary in the article and previous experience with news articles about guns has taught me that the media makes frequent mistakes. (If they are mistakes and not misinformation.)

The 133rd Kentucky Derby

And the winner is...Street Sense. Early in the race he was 19th in a field of 20 but jockey Calvin Borel brought him in along the rail and stayed there, passing the other horses, until the final stretch. He moved to the outside to pass Hard Spun who had been leading throughout the race and then back to the rail to finish.

Correction: He moved away from the rail when he was two horses back.

The Multi-Million Dollar Experiment

Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops

There's been several problems with making laptops available for the students' personal use: they use it for activities other than school work, too much is being spent on repairs, teachers aren't always able to fit them into the lessons, and at one school "the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet" during study hall.

They hand out computers to try to make the students tech savvy but can't figure out how to keep the interweb tubes from getting clogged. If you know how many students you have and that they have study hall every other day, anticipating the use your network will have shouldn't be very difficult.

The most important reason that some schools are discontinuing laptop leasing, or deciding against beginning it, is that there was "no evidence it had any impact on student achievement".

The article does mention a few benefits from the computers but none that couldn't also be done with desktop computers in the classroom or computer lab.

It's 255 Days Until the Iowa Caucus*

Some of the comments people have made to this say that if Fred Thompson hasn't announced an intention to run for president by now, he shouldn't run at all.

Fred Thompson isn't late, people, the others are too early.

* January 14th, 2008

Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer Rules

Paris Hilton was sentenced to 45 days in county jail. Her defense attorney said, "I think she's singled out because of who she is." I think he has that backwards. She was given an appropriate sentence regardless of who she is.

Related Post: Ignorance of the Law is No Defense (Flagrant Disregard and/or Outright Stupidity Aren't Either)

Save the Honeybee, Save the World!

Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

I'm almost beginning to find this amusing. It's not that I don't like honeybees, I do. It's that most of the time when people are talking about non-native species they are discussing how to get rid of them.

The honeybee was imported from Europe. It is a useful pollinator because it will visit a wide variety of plants and, since it is a social insect, can be more easily managed than most other types of bees. It also works well with the large number of non-native crops that we're growing here.

But...

There were food crops in the Americas long before the Europeans came and those plants were pollinated by native bees that had evolved along with those plants.

One problem these native bees have is that they need areas of natural growth near the farmed crop areas. (It provides them with a nesting area and a food source when the crops aren't in bloom.) This means they can work well on farms with hedgerows, small woods, or areas of natural growth along streams but can't handle the huge megafarms. Devoting small areas of wild growth for native bees to use as nesting areas may not be a solution but it would be a reasonable step to take while scientists are trying to find out what's wrong with the honeybees.

Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.

"This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.

Except that we have another imported bee - the alfalfa leafcutter bee - that is better at pollinating these plants than the honeybee. Another import, the Japanese Hornfaced bee is better at pollinating orchards and has been used to pollinate apples in Japan for decades.

If you're interested in encouraging native bee species, the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service has information about how to provide nesting areas and suggests types of plants for them.

Colgate University

I'll agree that looks is an important consideration when hiring a professor when the fashion industry begins hiring models based on IQ.

Diversity in appearance makes for interesting photos, specialization in subject areas makes for interesting classes.

KY Governor's Race

I like to think that I base my voting decisions on the issues rather than political ads but this ad for Billy Harper (R) has made me want to vote for anyone but him. (It's the woman singing - about 14 seconds into the ad - that has me clicking the mute button.)

Neither Good Grammar Nor Good Taste

A Chicago high school honors senior wrote an essay that described a dream where he shot people and then had sex with their dead bodies. He added that it was a joke but the school must not have seen the humor, they had him arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct.

He had planned on joining the Marines, but after the arrest, they no longer want him. I don't blame them. No matter how the student tries to explain what he wrote, it still shows a lack of maturity if he thought this was appropriate for a high school essay. The men and women who would have been serving with him don't need to deal with that.