Archive for March, 2006
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006
Once upon a time--back in the early 80's--I taught English as a Second Language. A number of my students were Bahá'ís from Iran. I remember one student in particular who wasn't doing very well, and whom I had to ask to come to my office to discuss her academic situation. ...
Posted in Politics and News, Religion | Comments Off
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006
Based on something Samantha Cook wrote. Update: Samantha Cook linked to my drawing!
Posted in Whim | Comments Off
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
Good news
Posted in Politics and News | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
Brother Steve just called, and we talked about Scrabble, and my post about playing sorbetto. He reminded me that my Great Uncle Kennard and my Grandma used to play Scrabble every day until they got into an argument over whether "obit" was a legitimate play. They never played again.
According to ...
Posted in Language, Personal and family | Comments Off
Monday, March 20th, 2006
Iris DeMent: (via long sought home with mp3).
And I don't want to get adjusted to this world, to this world
I've got a home so much better
And I'm gonna go there sooner or later
And I don't want to get adjusted to this world, to this world
Posted in Music, Religion | 4 Comments »
Monday, March 20th, 2006
From Lewis Smedes, quoted by the Real Live Preacher:
Dear God, I am unsure of what is right because there are people I respect on both sides of this issue. But I cannot stand against my friends and remain emotionally healthy. It will kill me to stand against ...
Posted in Religion | 8 Comments »
Saturday, March 18th, 2006
"Here is an instance of the Arpanet, as it was recently configured," says Bob Kahn of BBN.
From The Heralds of Resource Sharing, a 1972 documentary on the creation of Arpanet.
Posted in Networks, Science and Tech | Comments Off
Saturday, March 18th, 2006
The word of the day is subreption.
I asked the following question on the Linguist List:
Words like 'to dial' and 'key' and 'album' take on a shifted meaning as the underlying technology changes. Wordnet, for example, still defines 'to dial' as something like 'to enter a telephone number using a dial.' ...
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Thursday, March 16th, 2006
We had parent-teacher conferences today. This is almost always a discouraging time.
Jane's teacher showed us a "persuasive essay" she wrote for her social studies class. The students were to take a stand of whether the US government should spy on people to prevent terrorism. Jane's first sentence went something like ...
Posted in Education, Personal and family | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 16th, 2006
Earlier this month, the annual Pauline Creel Birthday singing was held in Wayne , Michigan (in the Ann Arbor/Detroit area). "Miss Pauline" comes from one of the "singing families" in the Sacred Harp tradition--that is, one of the extended families in the South that kept (and continue to keep) Sacred ...
Posted in Music, Personal and family | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 16th, 2006
Who Can Name the Bigger Number?
Posted in Science and Tech | Comments Off
Thursday, March 16th, 2006
Many interesting stats, including: White evangelical Christians were solidly behind the president throughout his first term in office, but that support has waned over the past 15 months. Currently, just 54% of white evangelicals approve of the president's job in office, while 36% disapprove. Bush's support has also dropped among ...
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Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
Even though I work at a large government agency, my work life is remarkably free of bureaucracy. Even once in a while, though, bureaucracy brings a smile. I just had an expense report sent back to me because the mileage reimbursement amount on my form was incorrect; it was temporarily ...
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Tuesday, March 14th, 2006
Orange!
Orange is a component-based data mining software. It includes a range of preprocessing, modelling and data exploration techniques. It is based on C++ components, that are accessed either directly (not very common), through Python scripts (easier and better), or through GUI objects called Orange Widgets....Orange is distributed free under GPL.
Some ...
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Sunday, March 12th, 2006
Spring seems to be arriving. We drove across southern Michigan yesterday (to pick son Mark up from a weeklong internship with my Aunt Kathleen, who is a real estate agent), and then to mid-Michigan to take Mark back to university. We saw dozens of groupings of Canada geese arriving, as ...
Posted in Personal and family | Comments Off
Saturday, March 11th, 2006
The Light is before me, and in me, and surrounds me.
The Light soothes my fears and eases my tremblings.
I waited before the powerful.
I sought to stand in the way of great oppression,
Aware that brutality desires hidden corners and not Light.
Lesser oppressors came and surrounded me as well.
Surrounded my friends, and ...
Posted in Personal and family, Politics and News, Religion | Comments Off
Saturday, March 11th, 2006
Tom Fox is dead. Tom Fox, one of the Christian Peacemaker Team kidnapped in Iraq over 100 days ago, is dead. The other three members of the CPT team were shown alive in a video on February 28.
Tom Fox was, by all accounts, a brave man willing to risk his ...
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Friday, March 10th, 2006
I upgraded the Wordpress weblog software to the latest version. So, if you saw anything strange during that time, that was the reason. If you continue to see oddities, please contact me.
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Wednesday, March 8th, 2006
Baby Got Book--"and if you're Catholic, there's even more!"
Posted in Religion, Whim | Comments Off
Friday, March 3rd, 2006
This is really worth reading: Language Log: Freedom of speech: more famous than Bart Simpson . It's a discussion of how public survey data can be spun. Especially check out the "more than one" discussion.
I actually got caught on this, discussing a half-heard report of this on NPR with (wife) ...
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