April 18, 2010 archive

Apr 18 2010

Shad Roe

Actually this is not about food so much as it is about writing.

From 1934 to 1975 Rex Stout chronicled the adventures of Archie Goodwin (fictional detective) and Nero Wolfe.

If you have not yet made Archie’s acquaintence yet you really should.  He’s a fun guy.  Dances 2 or 3 nights a week, heiress girlfriend with interesting connections that can usually scare up a buck or two.  Often deployed by his boss as a sympathetic face for women to cry on the shoulder of (Wolfe hates that and almost always leaves the room in disgust).

Still, among your other exciting duties are the cataloging of the orchid hybrids and book keeping.

Apr 18 2010

Weekend News Digest

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Poland buries president as world leaders cancel

by Mary Sibierski, AFP

1 hr 33 mins ago

KRAKOW, Poland (AFP) – Around 150,000 grieving Poles thronged Krakow Sunday as President Lech Kaczynski and his wife were buried beside ancient kings, but Europe’s air travel chaos kept many world leaders away.

US President Barack Obama and dozens of other dignitaries failed to come to the elaborate state funeral because of a cloud of volcanic ash covering the region but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived to show solidarity.

Medvedev called for the two nations, at loggerheads for decades, to unite in sorrow after the April 10 plane crash in Russia that killed the couple and 94 others, most of them figures from Poland’s military and political elite.

Apr 18 2010

For Earth Day: Make Television a Tool of Progress Today

Cross-posted at DailyKos and was at Progressive Blue.

PBS will be celebrating Earth Day with a special edition of American Experience called “Earth Days” that tracks the American ecological movement and also by showing “Food Inc” on April 21th.

On most PBS stations at 8 PM tonight “Nature” will show “The Thin Green Line” for a second time. It is an indictment of the human race, the fact that we are wiping out the frogs and amphibians and the we will also be sure to follow, has to be the most motivating hour of television I’ve ever seen.

I’ll update my original review below the fold but it would be wonderful if we can get others to watch the devastation so more people will take action. Perhaps you’ve already seen this “greatest mass extinction since the dinosaurs.” and you know that discussing the nature photography alone will get friends to watch. Whatever it takes, people need to get involved and tonight’s PBS line up can make a difference.

Apr 18 2010

(updated)Lower Merion School Webcam SnooperGate, PA-06, Welcome to TerraWar, Kids!

(ARC note: Multiple edits were made to this because the Lower Merion Township, PA School District website, where this correspondence was posted publicly, did not allow the text to be cut and pasted successfully into this format, so I retyped all of it and did not hyperlink. )

(Update Mon April 19, 2010, 8:25 pm see end of story)

(PA-06. It’s not the Onion.  It’s my in- law’s congressional district.  I live in CA. That way they can’t visit easily. )

Feb 18, 2010  Lower Merion School District Initial Response to Invasion of Privacy Allegation (yes, it says that right on their School’s webpage at www.lmsd.org  )  


Dear LMSD Community,

Last year, our school district became one of the first school systems in the United States to provide laptop computers to all high school students. This initiative has been well received and has provided educational benefits to our students. The District is dedicated to protecting and promoting student privacy.  The laptops do contain a security feature  intended to track lost, stolen, and missing laptops. This feature has been deactivated effective today.

/snip

We regret if this situation has caused any concern or inconvenience among our students and families. We are reviewing the matter and will provide an additional update as soon as information becomes available.

Sincerely,  

Dr. Christopher McGinley,

Superintendent

Apr 18 2010

85% in Kandahar Call Taliban “Our Afghan Brothers”

758px-Rembrandt-Belsazar

An opinion survey of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as “our Afghan brothers”.

The survey, conducted by a private U.S. contractor last December, covered Kandahar City and other districts in the province into which Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is planning to introduce more troops in the biggest operation of the entire war.

“Our Afghan brothers!”

This is the end of the line for the United States in Afghanistan, and if anyone was waiting for handwriting on the wall to announce it, there it is.

Apr 18 2010

4/18 Test Draft To Find Effing Script Error

Test #1 first half.  Well, fancy that. The bleeps at Lower Merion have this so I can’t cut and paste

Test 2

(PA-06. It’s not the Onion.  It’s my in- law’s congressional district.  I live in CA. That way they can’t visit easily. )

Feb 18, 2010  Lower Merion School District Initial Response to Invasion of Privacy Allegation (yes, it says that right on their School’s webpage at www.lmsd.org


Dear LMSD Community,

Last year, our school district became one of the first school systems in the United States to provide laptop computers to all high school students. This initiative has been well received and has provided educational benefits to our students. The District is dedicated to protecting and promoting student privacy.  The laptops do contain a security feature  intended to track lost, stolen, and missing laptops. This feature has been deactivated effective today.

/snip

We regret if this situation has caused any concern or inconvenience among our students and families. We are reviewing the matter and will provide an additional update as soon as information becomes available.

Sincerely,  

Dr. Christopher McGinley,

Superintendent

Apr 18 2010

Open Beauty

Photobucket

Apr 18 2010

Tale of 2 Countries: Small Business, Growth, and Green Jobs

The USA:

Jobs: Small Business Loans Are The Mountain Blocking Economic Recovery

Phillip Williams — Apr 17, 2010

Why Small Business Loans Are Important

The economy has lost 8.4 million jobs since the start of the recession. Small businesses employ the majority of the American workforce, although the largest single employer is still the federal government.

When the economy starts to recover small businesses rely on loans to bring up their inventory levels. Large banks and smaller institutions have been reluctant to introduce new loans after the failure of a large number banking institutions.

Small banks do not have the resources to start lending again, and the number of new loans have gone down since the start of the recession.

Banks that received funds from the Troubled Asset Relief program. The larger banks that were branded as too big to fail have also reduced the number of new loans they make to small businesses. They have reinvested the funds in lower-return, lower-risk treasury bonds instead.

Apr 18 2010

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Just cuz…. sigh.

Apr 18 2010

Collateral Integrity: A Letter To The Iraqi People

I’ll let this stand for itself. Read it, please.

Press release above the fold, and Letter To Iraq after the fold.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 15th, 2010

Contact:
Laura Taylor: 202-510-3711
[email protected]

VETERANS OF “WIKILEAKS” INCIDENT ANNOUNCE “LETTER OF RECONCILIATION” TO IRAQIS INJURED IN ATTACK

Two former soldiers from the Army unit responsible for the Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” incident have written an open-letter of “Reconciliation and Responsibility” to those injured in the July 2007 attack,  in which U.S. forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees.

Ethan McCord and Josh Stieber deployed to Baghdad with Bravo Company 2-16 in 2007. Ethan was on the ground at the scene of the shooting, and is seen on the video rushing one of the injured children to a U.S. Vehicle; “When I saw those kids, all I could picture was my kids back home”. Ethan applied for mental health support following this incident and was denied by his commanding officer.

Josh Stieber was not at the scene of the shooting but says similar incidents happened throughout his 14-month tour; “The acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war.” Josh states that these casualties demonstrate the impact of U.S. military policy on both the civilians and the soldiers on the ground.

Apr 18 2010

Who Will The ‘teabbagers’ Defend?

On this Sunday morning, 3.18.10, oughta be interesting, maybe I should visit the “Tea Party Patriot” site again,

Apr 18 2010

Beyond Sixty

Sixty Seconds or Sixty Minutes it’s all just driving the dogma.

How many clocks are in your house?  How many clocks are in your life?  Does time rule you or do you rule it.

Time and an honest evaluation of history are keys to becoming “Third Veil”.

The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world’s economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.

 

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