Archive: May 14, 2009

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the Oaks run (yay Alex)

Thursday,  05/14/09  08:21 AM

This morning I completed "the Oaks Run", or I should say my daughter Alex did; she successfully drove to school :)  Actually she did a great job and I wasn't nervous at all.  (Well okay I was a little nervous...).   This will be our daily routine now, as she drives everywhere and I drive with her...  the joys of having a daughter with a learner's permit :)

 

Thursday,  05/14/09  08:54 PM

It was so nice to be home today, a beautiful day and I spent some of it in the backyard, thinking and talking, and enjoyed it through my office window.

Today is Reggie's seventh birthday.  Woo hoo!  Or as he would say, so? 

Last night I noted that Amazon is now letting anyone publish their blog for Kindle users.  So I did it.  I'm not sure anyone will pay $2/month to read my blog, but we'll see :)  I must say the implementation was clean. 

There does seem to be a teeny glitch, anyone can publish anyone else's blog.  So you could publish mine and make money from it.  Good luck with that, but seriously this is a bit of a hole in the system...

I'm pretty much a Malcolm Gladwell fan, but I do have to agree with this: Gladwell's generalizations.  Essentially makes the same point I made a little while ago in The Law of Significance.  Not everything is an amazing new general principle, sometimes it is just an isolated data point. 

Next week Angels & Demons will be released, yay! (the box office war against Star Trek is billed as "the Illuminati vs the Romulans).  I loved the book, and yes, I will see the movie.  Tom Hanks is not how I picture Robert Langdon, but Ayelet Zurer is exactly how I pictured Vittoria Vetra :) 

Where is it written that movies have to have such complicated websites?  They're well done and all, but so ponderous.  Hard to navigate and find stuff.  Same with car websites - they're always really complicated too - and also rock bands, which are not only complicated but often out-of-date and broken.

This looks like (and sounds like) something from a Dan Brown novel (or a movie): Deep Flight Super Falcon winged submarine readies deep sea exploration in San Francisco.  Despite the revolutionary angle to the story, wings are not new on submarines, so I don't get what all the fuss is about.  I guess I'll have to wait for the movie :) 

I find this hard to believe: "Cyber Millennials" Are Drinking, and Working Out, More Than You Are.  Really?  How many of them recently discovered Cuco, from Yecla, and how many of them completed the Kessel Run in under two hours? :)

 

 

Ole votes

Thursday,  05/14/09  11:44 PM

Want to know how I voted in the May 19 special election?

  • 1A - "Rainy day" stabilization fund: YES.  Seems like a good idea to save more in good years so you'll have more in bad years, although it probably won't matter that much.
  • 1B - Education funding payment plan: YES.  A stopgap to "borrow from the future", but we probably need it.  What we really need is to repeal Prop 13, but that's another subject.
  • 1C - Lottery modernization act: YES.  I'm a big fan of the lottery, especially since I never play :)  It raises money without raising taxes.  Good on 'em.
  • 1D - Children's services funding: NO.  I kind of didn't get this, seems like taking money out of one pocket and putting it in another, too confusing to be a good idea.
  • 1E - Mental health funding: NO.  Another "borrow from the future" proposal, but unlike education this doesn't seem as critical, and we can't do everything on a line item basis.  Tough call.
  • 1F - Prevent pay increases for elected officials in deficit years: YES.  I can't think of anything which would be better to assure a balanced budget :)

As always with every election, let me remind you, please don't vote.  Well, unless you take the time to read the initiatives and think about them, of course.  Hopefully you don't just read some blog post and then vote :)

 
 

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