August 2004

Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth

Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth claims George W. Bush is misrepresenting his "reckless" and "irresponsible" days of hard drinking. The truth according to Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth is he had a low tolerance for alcohol.

Technology doesn't make it better

Sarah is signed up for a class that uses a student response unit from eInstruction. I'll be interested to see how well it works, but so far I'm skeptical. First of all there is a $3.75 purchase for the "unit". There is a note that it can be "sold back" to the bookstore (at 50%) at the end of the term... Once you have the unit you simply log in and pay $15.00 to register for your class. So hundreds or thousands of students, having paid tuition to the state, purchased their books form the bookstore, and paid their technology fees to the university they are attending are now asked to pay an additional $15 to a third party so their instructor.

So what do you get for this extra $20 per class? Well, you get the ability to answer questions using a keypad... Answer all the multiple choice questions that someone can throw at you. So you don't have to really learn anything but how to spit back the right choice on a multiple choice quiz or test.

But what else happens? Students are required to give their private information, including credit card information to a third party, not the school, not a store where the student has any choice. Make it easy for the professor to take roll and require that a student give personal information to someone who has no interest in protecting the student's rights.

Close but no cigar....

Lakewood studios has a product iList Studio that looks really cool. In a few minutes of working with it however, it falls short. It is missing some critical features. The instructions tell users to use MySQL 4.0, what I didn't see is that this is a requirement because it can't authenticate with later versions of MySQL. Second I can't tell that it deals with relationships which takes away the real power of using a relational database.

It appears to be worth keeping an eye on though. Just not worth the steep price tag yet.

The latest Halliburton discovery

60 Minutes tonight ran a piece (it was a repeat but new to me) on Halliburton explaining how the company used the pensions of New York City fire fighters to fund terrorist regimes. In order to comply with US law the company must have a "completely independent" subsidiary in another country. In Halliburton's case the "independent" subsidiary is a mail forwarding service in the Cayman Islands. They have a grand total of zero employees in their "independent" subsidiary's office. So our own country's very own Vice President Dick Cheney is responsible for helping to support the very same sponsors of terrorism who the Bush administration claims to be at war with.

Perhaps this explains better why, in the middle of prosecuting an important war on terror, the Bush administration was so desperate to mislead our country into a war against a different company that had nothing to do with the terrorists attacks against our country. It has become clear that the current administration could not possibly be reelected without the fear mongering to keep Americans living in terror.

Seasons

The start of the high school football season is one of the markers of the beginning of a new school year. Dusk comes noticeably earlier now and the long days of summer wain at an ever faster pace.

At the law school the term is underway. Orientation sessions complete, a new group of students are on their way to earning JD degrees. A handful of intense IT projects are underway and the days are never boring.

Why Hamm should keep the Gold

The International Gymnastic Federation is trying to get Paul Hamm to be the scapegoat for their officials mistakes. Several commentators have taken positions and explained why he should keep it. (They are all correct for different reasons). Surprisingly what hasn't been brought up is what NBC showed during the individual competition. Had the South Korean performance been re-evaluated it should have not only started .1 higher in value but had an additional .2 deduction for having too many strength elements. So while it's true that we can't go back and can't figure out what would have happened if we could have a do-over, we do know that the South Korean score would have gone down if it was re-evaluated.

What the plan is...

Redstate.org has an aritcle Sun Tzu At Work? which begins to reveal what is likely behind the half truths of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. It reveals that much more than truth the group is after orchestrating a political attack. There is nothing new or surprising about that, as much as it is interesting to see RNC bloggers admitting what the plan is.

What is interesting is that yesterday one of the news shows had a bunch of people from Missouri talking about the election and who they were going to vote for. One in particular stood out as they said that President George W. Bush would get their vote because of his "honesty and integrity".

How long will it be unsafe?

Over a month ago I contacted one of the folks at UNLV who deals with fire extinguishers. My intent was to bring to their attention that for at least two months many of the boxes labeled for fire extinguishers in the parking structure have been empty. I listened patiently as I was told that they are frequently stolen and it takes a while to replace them. I said that I understood completely but couldn't we cover the signs up so that while we are waiting for them to be replaced some unfortunate person does not run to several boxes while a fire burns and find each empty. The reply was a solid no. You see it's mandated by fire authorities that we have these boxes so we can't cover up the labels.

So it's better that someone burn while looking for a fire extinguisher than know ahead of time where to find one that is actually there.

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