| |
 |
Tuesday, January 28, 2003 |
Bush's Twin Challenges [New York Times: International News]
He reminded Europeans, especially, that throughout the 20th century, "the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism and communism were defeated by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances and by the might of the United States of America."
"Hitlerism" is a new one on me, but I see from a Google search it's not that rare, though dictionary.com doesn't really distinguish it from Nazism. Wonder why he didn't say that? Just curious. But anyway, nice ending to the Times story:
... "Most Americans know instinctively why we are in the gulf. They know we had to stop Saddam now, not later. They know this brutal dictator will do anything, will use any weapon, will commit any outrage, no matter how many innocents must suffer."
That was Mr. Bush's father, in his State of the Union address 12 years ago Wednesday.
10:28:19 PM Permalink
|
|
IBM Updates That Red Pointer Thing Forbes
[Google Technology News ]
It's called TrackPoint, and it's a soft, red, pencil eraser-sized joystick that functions as a mouse on the keyboard. For more than a decade, that little red thing has been one of the signature design traits of IBM's popular ThinkPad line, and played a large part in making IBM a major player in the notebook PC market. Since its 1992 introduction, the TrackPoint has changed little.
I love that red pointer thing. I call it the nipple. It's so easy to use, makes the laptop smaller, and requires no movement of the hand from the keyboard to use. I really wish Apple would license it and put it on an iBook; I'd probably buy one right away.
10:21:24 PM Permalink
|
|
Thousands Enslaved by Ireland's Catholic Church. ABCNEWS.com Stripped of their identities, the girls were given numbers instead of names. They were forbidden to speak, except to pray. If they broke any rule or tried to escape, the nuns beat them over the head with heavy iron keys, put them into solitary confinement or shipped them off to a mental hospital.... [Moon Farmer]
Girls who had become pregnant, even from rape, girls who were illegitimate, or orphaned, or just plain simple-minded, girls who were too pretty and therefore in "moral danger" all ran the risk of being locked up and put to work, without pay, in profit-making, convent laundries, to "wash away their sins."
This isn't two or three hundred years ago we're talking about. These "Magdalene laundries" lasted until the last part of the 20th century. Is there any other word for this than barbaric? Is there anything left in the Catholic church that's worth saving?
12:10:35 PM Permalink
|
|
121 Access to MySQL Tutorial [PHPkitchen]
Very interesting. Not really a general tutorial, but a tutorial based on using a single product -- with a very odd name, 121 Wam! Client. Still the product looks very useful, and later I'll have to download a demo and look at it. I've been meaning to write up a sort of guide to front ends and utilites for mySQL, but just haven't gotten it together yet.
9:58:03 AM Permalink
|
|
Weighting Game. "A careful survey of medical literature reveals that the conventional wisdom about the health risks of fat is a grotesque distortion of a far more complicated story. Indeed, subject to exceptions for the most extreme cases, it's not at all clear that being overweight is an independent health risk of any kind, let alone something that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. While having a sedentary lifestyle or a lousy diet--both factors, of course, that can contribute to being overweight--do pose health risks, there's virtually no evidence that being fat, in and of itself, is at all bad for you." — Paul Campos, the New Republic [How much do you guess Paul Campos weighs? — FmH] [Follow Me Here...]
Should be an interesting read. But I was thinking something the other day, to help me continue to motivate myself, and it seems apropos: How many old fat people do you see? Not many.
8:28:44 AM Permalink
|
|
© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
|
|
|
|
|
