Archive for the ‘current events’ Category
Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin is dead from a sting ray attack. I’ve seen reports of his death before, but this one looks legit. I never watched his show much, but I always enjoyed his enthusiasm and love for nature. More details here.
Looks like Sen. Stevens isn’t the only one who had a secret hold a bill to create a government database of spending. Sen. Byrd had a hold on it too. What was his reasoning? Byrd merely wanted more time to evaluate the legislation that would create a new database of some $2.5 trillion in federal [...]
In light of Iran’s ignoring of UN pleas to stop uranium enrichment, this article seems especially timely. The author surveys some of the current right-wing and left-wing drawing of analogies between Iran and previous world conflicts, and concludes both are misguided in some way. His conclusion: What these commentators are picking up is not an [...]
Alaska’s great Senator Ted Stevens, the deserving target of much ridicule recently, has been outted as the senator who placed a secret hold on government earmarking legislation. (via Slashdot and Instapundit) What happened: Until now, it was a political whodunnit as to who quietly blocked legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, [...]
Text messaging and ringtones hot stuff amongst Iraqi youth. Seeing as my job is all about text messaging and ringtones, this article is pretty interesting for me. Here in the US you can order ringtones via text messages. In Iraq, they’re bought on special CDs. Here’s a some snippets: In a city bereft of entertainment, [...]
I didn’t even find out about this until many hours later. Typical religious-extremist Muslim activity: target and kill unarmed civilians. The synopsis: A woman was dead and five others were hospitalized this afternoon after a shooting at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building in downtown Seattle by a man who declared he was “angry [...]
A longish legal analysis of the gay marriage ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court, which ruled against gay marriage yesterday. The short of the analysis is this: gays may not have a legal right to marriage, but the legislature better pick up the ball when it comes to partner benefits in civil unions or [...]
Eugene Volokh has an article giving a good run down on Constitutional limits on picketing. Here’s the short of it: It turns out that the government (a) can ban loud picketing outside funerals, and (b) can probably ban all picketing immediately outside the funeral, but (c) must allow picketing or marching relatively near to funerals. [...]
Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes. The Wesboro Baptist Church, known for their “God hates fags” picket signs, and the ACLU, known for frequently championing “far left” causes in court, have joined forces to battle a law that limits picketing around funerals. The law itself seems pretty sensible to me, though I’d rather not have [...]
I sit in a cubicle 8+ hours a day M-F. That’s my job. I sit there and work with amazingly cool spreadsheets and interesting emails and fascinating web sites and high-tech cellphones. However, some others aren’t so lucky as me. Some others do something so boring as row across the Atlantic Ocean. Think about it, [...]
