June 2005 Archives

I saw Batman Begins last night, and while it certainly was better than the last two, a few plot problems jumped right out at me. Warning: Spoilers ahead...

An open letter to the Kansas School Board:

I am writing you with much concern after I read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design to be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

Amy's working on her first case involving Seattle courts. She mentioned to me today that, in the transcripts, every time the judge calls a break he announces things like "it's time for more coffee," "time to fill up your coffee cups," or "I need more coffee." At one point, he even says he's sending the bailiff out for more coffee.

The sterotype of Seattleites and their love of coffee is so very true.

I've been "doodling" around a bit lately with web services, and I wrote my first client/server program. It's not much, but it serves as proof-of-concept at least, and you can try it out here.

A thread on one of Amy's parenting forums discussed some recent anti-public-breastfeeding comments reportedly made by Star Jones and Barbara Walters on "The View" (which, I admit, I've never seen). There is a "nurse-in" protest scheduled for Monday, June 6, on the show.

What frosted me about the whole thing, though, was the backlash on this discussion forum $mdash; people writing in that the protesters were overreacting because the comments by Jones and Walters were "just their opinions." One even observed that the show is called "The View," which underscores the point that it's just about the hosts' opinions. [Of course, the comment's author fails to note the very polemical use of the definite article in the title. This is not a view, but the view!]

It is unfortunate that it is such a common practice for people to render an unbreachable ontological separation between statements of "fact" and "opinion," and for people to believe that anyone expressing anything short of a "fact" should remain unchallenged and be above debate.

My tablet PC is busted (won't power on) and I couldn't get an old laptop we found in the office set up in time for today, so I spent the morning in my dismal office dealing with a student assistant (not mine!) who posted hundreds of student records, including names, phone numbers, email addresses, ethnicities, genders, etc. on the web in a nice searchable database with no protection.... Good thing he emailed me to ask if he needed to "worry about security or anything" before linking to it from anywhere. Uh, yeah, I'd say so. How fast can you get it OFF-LINE?! (For the record, 5 minutes).

According to an article in The Stranger the Victrola coffee shop in Capitol Hill is shutting down its free WiFi service on weekends.

Victrola co-owner Jen Strongin says the decision to cut off the coffee shop's free wi-fi on weekends was "about preserving the cafe's culture...."

Ray woke up at 5:15 this morning and didn't go back to sleep (which makes it more of an awful day for Amy and him, but whatever). Since I was up, I decided I'd get into work early since I have a boat-load of stuff to do and a lot of meetings today. I skipped breakfast and headed for the bus stop.

I missed my bus by about 30 seconds. When I arrived to the bus stop, I was greeted by a huge pool of fresh vomit on the ground in front of the bench. Already, things were not pleasant, but they were to get worse.