Posts from — February 2004

Police fine speeding motorist £116,000 [Ananova: Quirkies]

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I personally think that this is the way fines should work.

somehow google has tmttlt as the #1 hit for teaching as a subversive activity. Now most of you know that I'm not really that subversive:), but nonetheless i suggest reading postman's book on the subject and if not that, then see xplana which is a far better resource.

'Out of Gas': They're Not Making More. World oil production will peak within this decade, or, in the bestÉcase scenarios, sometime in the next decade, according to the author of a new book, The End of the Age of Oil. He reviews existing alternative fuels but argues that ''the best, most conservative bet for ameliorating the coming fuel crisis is the gradual improvement of existing technologies''. [Gyre.org]

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when it's gone…. it's gone. i hope i'll get a few years out of my truck, but i also know that the truck can be converted to natural gas. or refited with a veggie diesel engine….

FBI Subpoenas National Lawyers Guild Records. In another first for a low blow to civil liberties and our right to peaceful assembly, the FBI has subpoenaed… [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

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why can't the fbi learn that strong-arm tactics against its own citizens who were protesting within their rights, is not a crime, even if they pass a law saying it is. they have to learn what's right.

Thou shalt mind thy own business. Christian group to ask judicial candidates about faith The “League of Christian Voters” — a bunch of religious fanatics with… [War Liberal]

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or perhaps you would go and see what SOMEONE said on the sermon on the mount.

The history of the Linux's Penguin logo.. The history of the Linux's penguin logo. Linus: So when you think “penguin”, you should be imagining a slighly overweight penguin, sitting down after having gorged itself, and having just burped. It's sitting there with a beatific smile – the world is a good place to be when you have just eaten a few gallons of raw fish and you can feel another “burp” coming. Tux gallery here. [MetaFilter]

The Lie Factory [InfoWar Monitor]

Cornell launches OA university press for books.

Open Access News notes today that Cornell University has launched Internet-First University Press which will make digital texts available online and offer fee-based print-on-demand services. From the press release:

Just when the recording, music and publishing industries are going all-out to stop people from making their products available on the Internet, a new publishing venture at Cornell University is challenging traditional scholarly publishing by taking the opposite approach: Make the full text of a new book freely available on the Internet, and give readers the option to buy the printed book. The new “open access” publisher, known as Internet-First University Press, launched recently with a catalog announcing four original manuscripts and several titles that have been out of print. Soon to be added are monographs, Cornell graduate student theses and, eventually, an online scholarly journal. The project also is publishing multimedia materials, including videos and collections of photographs.

[Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy]

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1998 we were supposed to do this, 2000, i have a letter authorizing money for it, money never was appropriated, and 2003, well, someone else has started to do it. our model will be released in august, but it seems sort of moot.

More on “Torn Document”. Calpudit has new theories on the “Torn Document” at the heart of the did-GW-show-up mystery. Some of the commentators in that thread are sceptical, and I’m just confused. Meanwhile, one has to wonder, if he did show up somewhere during the missing months, why isn’t there a single witness to the event willing to come forward?… [Discourse.net]

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well we knew the news would not be good for the president… i wonder how long it will take for this to break in a media outlet…..

you are somewhat left-hemisphere dominant and show a preference for visual learning, although not extreme in either characteristic. You probably tend to do most things in moderation, but not always.

Your left-hemisphere dominance implies that your learning style is organized and structured, detail oriented and logical. Your visual preference, though, has you seeking stimulation and multiple data. Such an outlook can overwhelm structure and logic and create an almost continuous state of uncertainty and agitation. You may well suffer a feeling of continually trying to “catch up” with yourself.

Your tendency to be organized and logical and attend to details is reasonably well-established which should afford you success regardless of your chosen field of endeavor. You can “size up” situations and take in information rapidly. However, you must then subject that data to being classified and organized which causes you to “lose touch” with the immediacy of the problem.

Your logical and methodical nature hamper you in this regard though in the long run it may work to your advantage since you “learn from experience” and can go through the process more rapidly on subsequent occasions.

You remain predominantly functional in your orientation and practical. Abstraction and theory are secondary to application. In keeping with this, you focus on details until they manifest themselves in a unique pattern and only then work with the “larger whole.”

With regards to your career choices, you have a mentality that would be good as a scientist, coach, athlete, design consultant, or an engineering technician. You can “see where you want to go” and even be able to “tell yourself,” but find that you are “fighting yourself” at the darndest times.

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dunno how true this is. i tend to be somewhat this way, though i'm sure some people would agree and disagree.