Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Reading Backwards City every day will make you a millionaire and a better person. Or at least make you laugh and think. Warning: this is smart Greensboro blog could lead you to subscribe to the eponymous literary review, which I really must do. 8:51:57 PM    comment []

Cable went out Sunday evening -- just in time for us to miss the end of the Kentucky-Kansas game, as it happened -- and after it came back, Internet connectivity chez Cone was slowed to a crawl. After waiting 48 hours for the system to heal itself, I embarked on a sophisticated repair program which involved temporarily disrupting the alternating current that powers the cable input device -- a task that involved manipulating a high-voltage conduit with my bare hands and following a carefully-timed program in hopes of resetting the control mechanisms. Yeah, I unplugged the cable box, counted to 15, and plugged it back in. And it worked. 8:30:41 PM    comment []

John Derbyshire, a religious man, on "Intelligent Design" (via Glenn Reynolds): ID theory posits that certain features of the natural world CAN ONLY be explained by the active intervention of a designing intelligence. Since the entire history of science displays innumerable instances of hitherto inexplicable phenomena yielding to natural explanations (and, in fact, innumerable instances of "intelligent design" notions to explain natural phenomena being scrapped when more obvious natural explanations were worked out), the whole ID outlook has very little appeal to well-informed scientists. 3:18:07 PM    comment []

Bloggers help derail a Virginia bill seen as punitive to women who have miscarriages. "I've never been blogged before," John A. Cosgrove, a Republican delegate from Chesapeake, to the Virginian-Pilot. The paper reports that he "was shaken by the speed and volume of the response as word of his bill traveled across the country via the Internet." The blog Democracy for Virginia played a key role in bringing pressure to bear on Cosgrove. 2:56:26 PM    comment []

Diary of a Soldier: "I told him that I felt good about being near him because to me, after hitting an IED and being in a firefight and coming out physically unscathed -- his luck seemed pretty good." 10:48:49 AM    comment []

Patrick Eakes has a first-hand report of the fighting in Iraq he described yesterday. "This was a new breed of enemy, one we haven't seen here until the other day when this happened." 10:46:15 AM    comment []

Greensboro 101 has a new front page and a broader mission: "As part of the effort to make Greensboro101 a true citizens' media, we are recruiting an editorial board. Editors will take a 'hands-on' role in determining what articles become featured content and will help make other decisions about the content and function of Greensboro101. If you are interested in volunteering, please send an e-mail to admin (at) greensboro101.com It's still running those annoying news-service posts in its blog aggregator, though. 10:41:07 AM    comment []

City Council member Tom Phillips uses his weblog to tell us what he's thinking about a controversial price-hike for public transportation for the disabled in advance of next week's Council meeting. 10:33:42 AM    comment []

Accomplished blogger David Wharton launches a new site for his students: "This is the weblog for CCI 325 The Age of Augustus at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, in the spring semester of 2005. "This blog is intended as a place for civil and informed communication about the readings, lectures, and discussions in the class. Students should feel free to write questions, reactions, commentaries, analyses, and interconnections between what we do in the course and the world at large." 10:29:51 AM    comment []

Instapundit notes that some bloggers who were quick to jump on the Armstrong Williams story are much slower to comment on the Rather memo. But Atrios later delivers a fine rant about CBS, the NYT, and media bias. 10:25:05 AM    comment []

Why hasn't the N&R posted the Hebrew Academy story at its website? Margaret Bank's article was front-page news this morning, as it should have been. What an odd lapse. UPDATE: It's up, as of 12:30 or so. "No one will say how much money the boarding school or Maurice 'Chico' Sabbah of Greensboro paid to end the two-year legal fight. Lawyers for the Japanese companies had claimed Sabbah gave millions to the academy that was rightfully theirs...As of June 2003, the school had assets of $127 million. Officials haven't disclosed the amount in the endowment." 10:15:54 AM    comment []