Unfortunately, it has finally happened

The death toll of American Soldiers has finally exceeded the death toll from 9/11. A few days ago we were within 1 and now we have exceeded. I think this poses a landmark in the war in Iraq. Hopefully everyone takes time to think about why we are in Iraq, the stated reasons and the unstated reasons. Then consider the costs of American Soldiers that we have lost and will continue to lose, and decide if staying in Iraq is something that is really beneficial to our country.

Cities with degree holders

Forbes currently has a story about the "smartest cities" in America. By smartest they mean the cities with the highest percentage of degree holders. Boulder, Colorado came in at number one and the Fort Collins - Loveland Area came in at number seven in the nation. So I would say that Colorado is doing quite well compared to the rest of the country for college graduates. I will in no way make the leap from city with the most degree holders to the smartest city. I leave that to others. If you want to read the Forbes story just click on the headline for the post.

Courts in New York

I disturbing account of what occurs in some of New York's lower courts. To avoid signing up you can go to bugmenot.com and obtain a login.

Comcast Cable Bill

Greetings
I came home this evening to find the internet in my apartment shutoff. To my dismay I remember that I was at least a month behind on paying the cable bill. I decided to play with a few things and had some interesting results. I was not able to surf to a webpage by using my browser, however I was able to play my playlist which consisted of streaming radio. So I decided to check on a few things. I found that I was not able to ping any websites using their url instead of their exact ip address.

Example
blogger.com
instead of: 66.102.15.100

A quick whois query will help you to determine an ip address of a webpage.
Comcast as far as I can tell denies you access to their DNS servers. I simply changed my TCP/IP settings to not use the default DNS servers and entered my own. I then released and renewed my ip address and everything is working again. I should also point out that comcast does a soft turnoff of your internet before they come and do a physical disconnect. After the physical disconnect is done then you are out of luck. So don't forget that you need to pay your bill just because the internet is still working. I thought this was an interesting little technology work-around, and maybe some fellow comcast customers will get some use out of this. I will be stopping by my local comcast location tomorrow to pay my bill.
Enjoy

Another Chat with Greeley Swat

This probably should have been posted on the Greeley Blog.

I recently took advantage of an opportunity to chat with two members of the Greeley Swat Team. Both gentlemen were gracious enough to answer my questions for about 15min while I assume, they were on their break. Thanks for taking the time guys.

My questions were in regard to carrying a gun concealed and how police officers will react to this. It is interesting to note that one of the officers admitted to being scared of guns. He said that he believed that guns killed people. I tried to probe and ask if he didn't mean that people kill people, thinking he just might have had his words switched around. He explained that if you look at most of the gang related murders in Greeley almost all of them were committed with some type of firearm. While this does not surprise me in the least, the attitude of the officer does concern me. At another point in the conversation the one that mentioned he thought guns killed people, explained that guns are just tools. I wonder if he understands how he contradicts himself. Guns are tools hence inadament objects, yet they are responsible for a human picking one up, aiming it at another human and pulling the trigger? There are some thing that I will never understand. Another interesting thing to point out is that the officers will admit that you can legally open carry without a permit. They also admit that you can expect to be talked to about it. Why am I getting taken aside and talked to about doing something that is legal? This conversation was just another affirmation of what I had previously thought. Previous thought: If you want to exercise your right to carry a gun you had better go through the trouble of obtaining a concealed carry permit and carry concealed. This way there will be a lot less attention drawn to you, and probably less problems.

I would like to point out that there are no quotations used in the above text. If I have misrepresented the comments by the two officers this was done unintentionally, as I was not taking notes during our conversation. Above are my thoughts about our conversation as I remember it.

Back to school gear

Well for those of us who are in pursuit of a college degree, the fight resumes in a couple weeks. I received an interesting e-mail from amazon.com recently. It contained a link to a page where I could purchase things useful for returning to school.
The page can be found here. The first three items pictured are: a long sleeve t-shirt, a pocket knife and a mountain bike. Why do we need a pocket knife to go back to school?

Judge says no to NSA spying!

Finally someone stepped up and took a stand about the NSA warrant-less wire tapping.
If you want to download the courts opinion click here.
This excites me to see a Judge stand up for the constitution. It seems almost rare these days, when others want to call the constitution a living document so they can interpret it however they please.
I will post more info about this issue later.

Currently you can go to these sites for more info:
ACLU
Yahoo News Article
CNN

Over my head

So why is it that I always have the urge to tackle reading things that are way over my head? I don't really have good answer for this. Perhaps all the interesting things are written by educated people. Anyways regardless of why, I was directed to a new article that is going to be an interesting read. If you subscribe to Adam Smith Esq. then you to would have been directed to read this paper as well. The article is an analysis of single versus multiple tier partnerships within the Am Law 200.

The Am Law 200, to the best of my understanding is the top 200 law firms in the US ranked by revenue. If you go to Law Catalog.com you can purchase a copy of the 2006 Am Law 200 for around $475. While this would be interesting to look through and see what some of these firms are making, I just don't have the money for that.

Adam Smith Esq. is a blog about issues covering issues from economics, business, law; and also the economics of law firms. I would recommend this site to anyone who is interested in reading the thoughts of someone who is actually educated in all of these fields. You can click on about Bruce on the right side of the blog to see his accomplishments. Something is going to have to be done about these overachievers. Anyways it is a blog worth reading and also there is a newsletter which contains exclusive content. Bruce would probably be surprised to know that he has readers like myself. Meaning readers with no college degree let alone 3 or 4 degrees. If by chance you do have a background in law, economics or business then his site might be of even more interest.

How to lose your offer...

I read an interesting article about 10 ways to lose your offer from a law firm. The article can be found here. If you do not wish to sign up for an account to simply read the article, I suggest that you click here. This might be useful for any law students out there who have an internship for the summer.

Bed Bugs

I was reading the news when I ran across this article.
Are you getting bitten at night? I know that I found some unusual markings on my legs a couple weeks ago. I admit this only after reading that bed bugs are not caused by an unclean enviroment. Before I figured that I just need to keep the apartment cleaner. For information on dealing with pests you can go to Pestworld.org for more information. If you are looking for more information on specifically bed bugs here is an article from Pestworld.

Internet Country Codes

Have you ever been browsing a forum, when you noticed that people were using quotes from the Quran as their tagline? I did recently I was wondering where exactly this forum was being hosted. It turns out that I guessed correctly. The .pk at the end of the URL did in fact stand for Pakistan. Here is a page that lists different country codes for websites.

Del.icio.us

Which I was informed is pronounced delicious! Who knew. Anyways this is a site that allows you to access your bookmarks even if you are not at the computer that you bookmarked them on. This is basically a web based bookmarking system. If you use more than one computer, you can probably find a use for this. Other uses besides just bookmarks is that you can create Categories for your blog. Just look at this article to learn how. Also del.icio.us is setup so that you can share your bookmarks with others. Here is a guide to get you started.
Enjoy

The fastest clip you'll ever see

Reloading a clip so fast you don't even see it go back into the gun. I usually try to update this blog with useful articles or reviews or links; things of that sort. However while browsing today I found this video. For those of you in law enforcement if you were able to change your clip that fast, this post may be of use to you. For the rest of us it is just fun to watch.

What would you do with an extra $690

According to the story the people of Kuwait are going to be receiving a grant for about $690.

Some 92 percent of Kuwait's 300,000-strong workforce are employed in government jobs, with high wages and minimal work pressure.

Good Times.

One quick side note about Kuwait. Apparently you have to be a citizen for 20 years before you are allowed to vote. This is taken directly from the CIA World Factbook:

Suffrage - adult males who are not in the military forces, and adult females (as of 16 May 2005); all voters must have been citizens for 20 years

The CIA World Factbook page for Kuwait can be found here.
By the way unlike the United States who consumes many more times oil than they produce, Kuwait actually had exports of 1.97 million bbl/day (2003). This puts Kuwait at number 8 on the list of countrys with the highest oil exports. With oil currently at $75 a barrel, Kuwait should enjoy the money while it lasts. Somebody needs to remind me to get my series 3 license so I can get involved with this.

Modern Journalism

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us

in touch with the ignorance of the community.

~Oscar Wilde~

If you need an example of this just read this article by Ruben Navarrette. You will find yourself reading enlightening thoughts such as:

Yet, it seems that McKeon wants to go further and discuss making it the "official" language, which could require that all government documents be printed in English only.

That may make McKeon popular with the culture warriors and the nativist fringe. But it won't do any good for the country or its people, who have seen this movie so many times they've memorized the dialogue.

I am now being called a culture warrior because I would like to see English be made the official language in the United States? If the United States chooses to make English the official language and then happens to offend those who are in my country illegally, tant piss(too bad)!

Well I would like to thank Mr. Navarrette for showing me a new word. I was not familiar with the term nativism until now. Thank you for helping me shed more of my own ignorance.

nativism - n.

1. A sociopolitical policy, especially in the United States in the 19th century, favoring the interests of established inhabitants over those of immigrants.
2. The reestablishment or perpetuation of native cultural traits, especially in opposition to acculturation.
3. Philosophy. The doctrine that the mind produces ideas that are not derived from external sources.
   

The American Heritage ® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2004, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

A policy favoring the interests of established or native people or the immigrants. Well I have to admit that does sound appealing to me. I would also like to point out that many of the so called immigrants that might be having 'assimilation problems' are illegal immigrants (read- criminals).

As part of its stab at immigration reform, the Senate already has voted to declare English the national language.

If you would like to read what the Senate actually voted for I would direct you to read this press release by ProEnglish.org. Declaring English the national language is different than declaring it the official language, even if they sound similar.

After browsing some another article of Mr. Navarrette, I think I can appreciate his point of view a little more. He is coming from the deep dark field of ignorance. While I thought he might be, it was confirmed after reading this article by him.
Apparently a reader sent in the question "Are you an American?"”. At least neither one of my readers have sent me a question like that, yet. If anyone cares to correct Mr. Navarrette on his numerous errors in thought, feel free to send him an e-mail at

ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com

Is it July 22nd yet?

If so and you are reading this, then you are reading something more than 36 hours after I posted it. Why is this of any relevance whatsoever? Good question. According to some statistical physicists:

The average half-life of a news item is just 36 hours, or one and a half days after it is released.

That is why it is important to check the date that you first read this article. In fact why don't all 3 of my readers make a comment to this posting about when they viewed it. I would be curious to look back in a couple months and see if this article proves true.

Insulin Fun

According to this article scientist have found a new way to make insulin that is usable in humans. This is good news for all the people out there with Type 1 diabetes. Those of you with Type 2 diabetes should really be kicking yourselves for not understanding how to eat properly all those years. A year or so ago I was talking with someone who use to rent at the same apartment complex as myself. (I should point out that my fellow renter was overweight by at least 40lbs + in my estimation.)

The Conversation went something like this:

Bob: Yeah, so the doctor diagnosed me with Type 2 diabetes.
Me:Oooh not good.
Bob: Yeah I have to start watching my diet now
Me: Yeah I can imagine
Bob: (who is still clueless about proper diet)
It's not so bad though I have already lost 10 lbs
(At this point Bob lights a cigarette up.)
Me: Well that's good
Bob: Yup, I use to go to 7-11 for breakfast and get a great big thing of orange juice and 2 bearclaws.
Me: You did what?!?
Bob: Yeah I can't do that anymore
Me: Probably for the best

I could continue but there is really no point. Let me explain something to those of you whose breakfast is currently similar. When you eat mass amounts of sugar your body releases insulin in order to balance out your blood sugar. When you continue day after day, year after year with bad eating habits it can eventually lead to insulin resistance. This is when you start developing Type 2 diabetes. This is preventable!

I think that one of the cause for there being an increased need for insulin would be Type 2 diabetics. While the article may disagrees with me over this, I think it may still be a factor.

Worldwide demand for insulin is forecast to soar to 16,000 kg by 2010, from an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 kg last year, because more people are developing the disease and are being diagnosed earlier in their lives, and because of the development of new products such has inhaled insulin, which requires five to 10 times the amount of injected insulin, Mr. Baum said.

Here is a book that you should read to get you started about understanding your weight and health problems. Hopefully this will help.

I would like to point out that I am not a
medical doctor but, I think my advice is probably
just as valid if not more so.

WOW - Must read book!

I would really advice everyone to take the time to figure out what this book is about and definitely read some of the reviews found on the bottom of the page.
Enjoy

Book Review- Black Like Me

I recently finished reading Black Like Me by John Howard Griffen. The story goes something like this.
A white writer in the 1950's wants to understand what it is like to be black. The writer goes to his doctor and is able to obtain a prescription for medication that darkens his skin. With enough medication and some sunlight his skin turns as dark as a black mans. He then starts his journey to try to understand what everyday life is like for a black man in the south.
What makes this so interesting is that this book is non-fiction. The discrimination was about as I had expected with the exceptions of a few stories. I would recommend this to anyone interested in studying the civil rights movement and why there was a need for this. I wanted to share an excerpt from the book with you.

Gandy bent down with laughter and outrage. He asked P.D. how the voting situation was in Mississippi and P.D. told the story of the Negro who went to register. The white man taking his application gave him the standard literacy test:
"What is the first line of the thirty-second paragraph of the United States Constitution?" he asked
The applicant answered perfectly.
"Name the eleventh President of the United States and his entire cabinet."
The applicant answered correctly
Finally, unable to trip him up, the white man asked, "Can you read and write?"
The applicant wrote his name and was then handed a newspaper in Chinese to test his reading. He studied it carefully for a time.
"Well can you read it?"
"I can read the headline, but I can't make out the body text."
Incredulous, the white man said:"You can read that headline?"
"Oh, yes, I've got the meaning all right."
"What's it say?"
"It says this is one Negro in Mississippi who's not going to get to vote this year."

Hopefully you enjoyed this passage as much as I did. Now go buy the book.
For the lowest prices check here.

Get Human

Are you tired of calling a company for customer service, only to deal with automated call systems that are of no use? Well I was until I found out about gethuman.com. They have a page with a list of different companies with their customer support numbers. Why is this useful? Well next to the phone numbers they have the proper numbers to dial so you can actually talk to a human about your problem. So next time that you try to call Verizon Wireless you will know to keep pressing 0 at each prompt until you get a human. This will help you navigate through the automated systems of many different companies. Also there are numbers listed for some companies that go directly to a representative. Hopefully you will find this as useful as I have.

Pro English

I found another website besides the US English Inc. that promotes making English the official language in the United States. I have to admit that I came across the ProEnglish page by reading a quotes page. I was reading some quotes about immigration and this one really caught my attention.

When people settle in a foreign country with little or no intention of abandoning their native culture, or, increasingly, no intention of abandoning their native language and native political allegiance, the correct word for the process isn't "reverse assimilation." And it isn't immigration. The correct word in the English language is "colonization." Because that's exactly what it is." - KC McAlpin, Executive Director,ProEnglish

This is one of the best quotes that I have run across lately. For those of you who don't understand, just pay attention next Cinco de Mayo and see how many Mexican flags you see in this country. The website with the quotes can be found here; and I would recommend that you stop by and see what you think. Anyways the author of the quote is the executive director for ProEnglish. ProEnglish is a site that supports English being made the official language in the United States.


For those of you who are living in Colorado; we are a state that is official English.
Here is the map that shows which states are officialial English and which are not.
The states in Blue are official English and the Red states are not. This image is taken from the ProEnglish website. The page where the map can be found is here; I would recommend you go there and see what your State's constitution says.
For those of you living in Colorado I have provided the text below.

COLORADO CONSTITUTION,
ARTICLE II, SECTION 30 (1988)
The English language is the official language of the State of Colorado.
This section is self-executing; however, the General Assembly may enact laws to implement this section.

Colorado allows referenda and voter initiatives to pass new statutes or to change the state's constitution. In 1988, this state passed an amendment to their state constitution making English the state's official language. 15.1 percent of this state's residents speak a language other than English. The most common of these languages are Spanish, German, French, and Korean. The number of Coloradoans who speak little or no English has more than triples since 1990.
In 2002, Colorado voters rejected an initiative to replace bilingual education with English immersion. Opponents spent more than $3 million on an ad campaign which they later acknowledged included false information.

Does anyone else think that the number of people not able to speak English in Colorado tripling might be a bad thing? I believe in supporting causes that I believe in. That is why I decided to join ProEnglish. For a donation of $20 you will be supporting a valid cause and also will receive a subscription to the ProEnglish Advocate; the quarterly newsletter put out by ProEnglish. I would suggest that if having English as an official language is of importance to you then show it by contributing. Personally, I get tired of sitting around talking about problems and yet not having a good solution to them. Even though I don't have a lot of money to contribute I was able to find $20. Even if you are not ready to donate, I would suggest browsing ProEnglish, as it has a wealth of information showing why Official English just makes sense.

Another article about the poor black man...

I am the only white person who feels oppressed by the media paying attention to only the (so called) minorities? Personally I am tired about hearing that the black men is not paid on par with the white man. I am also fed up with the support programs that we have in place that benefit almost everyone except a middle class white person. This post will mainly be in response to an article that I read on yahoo news. He is the first quote that I would like to address:

Black men's median wages are barely three-fourths those of whites; nearly 1 in 3 black men will spend time behind bars during his life; and, on average, black men die six years earlier than whites.

Well perhaps if black men would stop committing crimes they would stop spending time in jail. I know, I know, the black man is still being discriminated against in our country and I shouldn't say such mean things. Humbug!

So let's give all the black people in America the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps this is White America and we discriminate against the black man. To what extent does this supposed discrimination extend? Well unless it is an all out war on the black man, there has to be some reason for the differences in the prison statistics. I mean if you compare black men in jail with white men, it is not a small difference. Well don't take my word for it.

"At yearend 2004 there were 3,218 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,220 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 463 white male inmates per 100,000 white males."

The above quote is from The Bureau of Justice Statistics.

"Black mothers and fathers socialize their sons to not make waves, to not come up against the authorities, to speak even more politely not only when there are whites present but particularly if there are whites who have power," she said.

As far as black men acting respectful around the white man, I don't know where they get this. I will admit right now that I live in Greeley, Colorado where there are about 25 black people in the town of around 80,000 +. The main population is composed of white and Hispanic people. The black people that I have met either at the gym or playing basketball have not worried about making sure they were respectful, and why would they be!? They were not disrespectful or flattering to me. In fact they were just like everybody else I meet except, wait they had black skin! Sorry I almost forgot. I knew there was something that I was overlooking. As far as the gang banger tough guy image that all the rappers on MTV try to portrait, the black people that I have met have been reasonable people. So before you go off and call me racist and a few other nasty words that you have memorized to spit at people with a different view point than you, keep in mind that I don't have a problem with anyone because of the color of their skin or where they were born. Wow, I am really getting defensive on a blog article that only 5 people will probably every read.

As black boys become adolescents, the dangers escalate. Like most teenagers, they battle raging hormones and identity crises. Many rebel, trying to fit in by mimicking and sometimes becoming criminals.

"They are basically seen as public menaces," Lacewell said.

The above is another quote from the article. Do I really need to point out that all adolescents have a steady stream of hormones flowing out their ears. Now correct me if I am wrong but don't adolescents of other colors deal with this in other ways besides becoming criminals?

So let's get back to the original quote that caught my attention. I have already addressed the part about why I think the crime rates differ significantly between whites and blacks. So let us look at the issue of black mens wages being about 3/4 of a white mans wages.

So supposedly black men receive about 75% of a white mans wages. Well you should probably explain that to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

"New statistics from the Census Bureau confirm the powerful economic advantage that accrues to African Americans who hold a four-year college degree. Current figures for the year 2004 show that blacks with a college diploma now have a median income that is 95 percent of the median income of similarly educated whites. Blacks with a doctorate actually have higher incomes than similarly educated whites. These are extraordinary achievements that have been consistently overlooked by most commentators."

This study is where the above quote comes from. What is this about blacks with a doctorate degree having higher income than a white man with a doctorate? Where are they people attacking this issue? How come I don't read in the newspapers that a new group has been formed to give equal pay to white men with doctorate degrees? I think someone should definitely take up this cause.
So as far as I am concerned, most of the reality about discrimination against blacks compared to whites is media hype. Someone should ask- Why is the media trying to portray black people as the poor oppressed race? Now I want to clear one thing up before I end this article. Yes, I do realize the racism still exist. I see plenty of it in my town almost everyday. However as people begin to shed more and more of their ignorance this will decrease.

Excuse me?!

"I think I clean up pretty well- I dress well, I speak well- but all that goes out the window when I show up at a meeting full of white men," says Ferguson of New Jersey, who is 6-foot-4 and dark-skinned. "It's because they're afraid of me."

I could just not let this go. This is the last part of the horrible news story that I want to address.
This is a call to all scrawny white men who plan to enter the business world. Get your lazy ass in the gym and put some size on. Quit being timid pushovers! Perhaps you would not be so afraid if you actually had some size to speak of. I really try to keep this blog free of curse words but this is really trying my patience.

Are you a wordsmith?

Me, I am not a wordsmith, yet. I would however like to think of myself as an aspiring wordsmith, if you will. I enjoy increasing my vocabulary when possible. I recently came across a couple of sites recently that I wanted to share with you. The first one is Wordsmith.org. There are several useful things that this website provides. They have services that are available for free via e-mail. This page has a list of all of the commands that are accepted by the wordsmith server.

So if you need to know the definition of a word simply send an e-mail to the address wsmith@wordsmith.org with a subject line of "define XXXX" where XXXX is your word and make sure to remove the quotess. Also you can find an anagram in a similar way.

I decided to try out the anagram service and found that an anagram for the word "insolence" is "no silence". Who knows what else you will find by using this service. I have also subscribed to the word-a-day list that is offered. Hopefully this will help you, as it has me, on the never ending quest to be educated.

There is also a book put out by the author of wordsmith which can be purchased here.

Does anyone know what sextumvirate means? Well I had to look it up. Except that turned out to be more of a problem than I would have imagined. I tried my normal online dictionary.com which could not find a link for it. I then searched the Noah Webster's 1828 online dictionary to no avail. I then searched for the word in Google and was able to find a dictionary with my word.
I found a difficult word dictionary that was able to inform me of what my word meant.

sextumvirate

n. government by six men.

© From the Hutchinsonencyclopediaa.
Helicon Publishing LTD 2006.
All rights reserved.



Online Dictionaries
My Normal Dictionary
1828 Noah Webster's Dictionary
Difficult Word Dictionary

This page has quite a few links with refference resources on it

• Electronic Resources Index
  There is one more site that I wanted to share with you Today. Or more correctly one more book. The Wrong Word Dictionary is a book that can help you if you mix words up sometimes. This would have been useful when I tried using the word 'defecate' when I meant to use 'defenestrate'. Wow was that a fun conversation!
  
  

US English Foundation

Well I have added my affiliation with a new group called US English Foundation. I did this yesterday during my daily web browsing session. I will let the foundation explain what it's goals are. This is taken from their website:

The Foundation has several missions:

• To help improve the teaching of English to immigrants, to allow them to enjoy the economic opportunities available in this country.

• To study language policy and its effects around the world, so we can apply the lessons learned through the experiences of other countries to the United States.

• To raise public awareness through the media about the importance of our common language.

There is a required donation to join. The foundation would prefer a minimum of $10 however they have a box where you can enter any amount. I signed up with $1 and that seemed to work. I know what you're thinking, why didn't you enter $0 in the box? Well I did and no it doesn't work. If you think that there is not really a need for the United States to have a formally recognized official language, think again. According to this there are over 329 languages spoken in the United States. In my opinion there is definitely a need for a common language. However I am not going to take this time to argue my point of view. The arguments laid forth on the US English Foundations page, are going to be more in depth and more complete than my arguments, and I would encourage you to read them if you think this issue is not of importance.

For those of you who are living in Colorado as I am, you would probably like to know how your representatives voted on the latest bill concerning making English the official language in the United States. Well Salazar voted no and Allard voted yes. Well at least the measure was passed 63-34. I am glad that Salazar was not able to foul this up.

Apparently his dotage is growing on him. If you would like to send Mr. Salazar an e-mail expressing how you feel about him voting in opposition to this, the page for that can be found here

You can read all about this bill here.

While browsing there was a quote that I agreed with which I desired to share with you.

“A country has to have only one official language, if men are to

understand one another... It is eminently fair that a country's official

language should be the language of the majority.”

---Ayn Rand

Also I found this article at wikipedia useful for expanding my understanding of languages in the United States. According to the article English is the de facto language of the United States. Some states have adopted it as the official language for the state. There are also some states that are bilingual with one state being trilingual. Considering that wikipedia is always changing the date that I look at the following page was on 06/07/06.

So if the page has changed since then, well I can't really help that.

Wikipedia Article

Futuristic Water

Is normal looking water starting to bore you? Would you like your water to look futuristic? Well have no fear thinkgeek is here! For a mere $15 you are able to purchase an adapter for your water faucet. I know that if I happen to find $15 in my jacket pocket any time soon, I will be getting one of these.

Free books online

In case anyone was not aware of Project Gutenburg I wanted to bring it to your attention. Project Gutenburg is where you can find over 18,000 ebooks that are free to read. Any books that were written before 1923 have expired copyrights and are considered public domain, which means they are available for public use. So any classics that you have been considering buying can be previewed online for free; assuming that they have been added to the archives of Project Gutenburg. So lets say that you wanted to read something from Jonathan Swift's - Modest Proposal. Well you can go here and read it online. If you desired to download the book to your computer you could click here for the main page of this book.
This is a great way to preview classics before you buy them or perhaps you would just prefer to download the book instead of buying it. For anyone who has not had the pleasure of reading the above mentioned book I highly recommend it. Keep in mind that this is a satirical piece.
Enjoy

Dani California sound familiar?

If you have heard the new single from Red Hot Chili Peppers, it might sound familiar. The single called Dani California has a similar sound to Tom Petty & the Heartbreaker's song called "Mary Jane's Last Dance". If you happen to own legal copies of both of these songs I would really recommend comparing them and seeing what you think. I was listening to the radio this morning and was able to hear a comparison. They sound very close to the same chords with Dani California being played slightly faster. Plagiarism? I don't know. There is a wikipedia entry about this issue which can be found here.

Business Writing

I was browsing the web recently and found an interesting article on english grammar. The article can be found here.
With a quick peek at Business Writing, I was able to find other posts of interest. Maybe if I visit this site enough my blog will become easier to read.

Also while on the subject of grammar, (which I would still like to spell grammer!) another site I recently found is Grammar Hell.com.

Lets censor things

"School District to Monitor Student Blogs", that is the name of the article I just finished reading. This was released by the associated press and can be found here.

This article talks about how a schoolboard in Illinois has voted to:
require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

Some may say that this is uncalled for. To this the Associate Superintendent said :
The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron," he said. "It is called the World Wide Web."

I will be quick to agree that the schoolboard has every right to snoop through students myspace pages which are public. However requiring students to agree to be disciplined for things the schoolboard may find inappropriate is another thing. This is where I draw the line. So now we are limiting what High School students can post on their on webpage? How much longer before we start limiting what college students are allowed to post on their websites? I mean while we are at it should anyone be able to post on their website what someone else may find offensive? Probably not, thank goodness big brother is here to save us from ourselves. Whatever would we do??

My favorite bookstore and why

I like to buy books. I like to read books as well but, sometimes I find myself with more money than time. Regardless I try to shop around and find the best prices I can when I buy things. For books, the best way that I have found to get them at a lower than retail price involves Borders. A while back when at my local borders store I allowed the lady who was checking me out to sign me up for the Borders Reward Program. After that almost every Thursday I would receive an e-mail from Borders. This e-mail usually has things like new releases in books and music, it also includes a coupon. The coupons are usually between 20-30% off. From my experience Borders seems to sell most books for list or retail prices. Amazon.com has many books from 20-30% without the use of a coupon. However the shipping is what stops me from buying much from Amazon these days. Even if the price is the same for the book, I am going to have to pay at $3 in shipping and wait 3-5 days. For the impatient/impulse buyers out there, this time frame is not acceptable. Besides anything that my local Borders does not have in stock they will order for free. So when I decide on a new book there are a few steps I take.

1. Check amazon.com and read reviews to make sure that I really want book

2. Goto Isbn.nu and search for the book and find the lowest price possible, if it is only a couple dollars lower I usually choose to buy it local.

3. Goto Borderstores.com and search my local Borders to see if the book is available there or at a Borders in a close by city.

4. If the book that I want is in stock then I simply wait till Thursday to receive my coupon in my e-mail. I sometimes even reserve the book if I am worried about it being there in a day or two.

5. After that I purchase my new book for usually 20-30% less then suggested retail.

Also sometimes on the receipt from Borders there will be a coupon. I am planning on using this system for buying books for college in the fall.

"A room without books is like a body without a soul." - Cicero

Islamic Awareness Week

Tuesday a friend and I went to hear Jamaal Zarabozo lecture about Jihad. The lecture was put on by the Muslim Students' Association at CU Boulder. This was part of the Islamic awareness week the MSA was sponsoring. Jamaal talked about the different theories of war, and tried to relate Jihad to some western concepts that the audience would be familiar with. Overall there was not all that much that I disagreed with him about. He attacked some of the public statements made by people like Billy Graham. Unfortunately many arguments that are made by the mainstream so-called Christians are quite easily shown to lack substance. We sat through the lecture and then decided to leave when the question and answer session started. I would like to make the point that although I did not have large issues with the material that was presented, I think only part of the issue was covered. One can only expect someone to cover so much material in a little over an hour. However I am of the opinion that even if time was not limited that some things still would not be covered.

(Muslims are peaceful and Jihad is about doing good not causing violence) paraphrased

The few Muslims that I know personally aren't violent. However I would like to point out that we live in the USA and the Muslims do not rule here. I think that things would be quite different if they did and sharia law went into effect. Bringing good to the people is one of the phrases that stuck with me. Jamaal went on to point out that in a Muslims mind "bringing good to the people" would be converting or teaching those who do not know about Islam.
There are a few questions that I wouldn't have minded asking had we cared to wait. After listening to the first question, it was clear that there was going to be some tension in the Q and A session. We decided there was more interesting things to do, and left.

If anyone is interested in reading about Islam from a Christian perspective I would recommend reading the book Slavery, Terrorism and Islam written by Peter Hammond. I went to listen to Dr. Hammond speak in Longmont, Co a while back.

Nattering???

Well, I made my second appearance of the semester to French class on Thursday. Don't mind that we are in the third week of class, I don't. Anyways there is a girl in my class who used the word nattering in conversation. I called her on it, saying that you shouldn't just make up words. Anyways after further discussion I told her to go to
and make an entry for the word if there was not one. Well I went to wikipedia and sure enough there was an entry for natter.
Here is the definition given:
A word to describe talking without content (similar to 'yammer').
The girl in my class had said it was more like bird chatter except among humans. Anyways the situation was kinda amusing.