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Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat

Wed - January 11, 2006

Christian Charity

From Snopes.com:

It was a given that Madalyn Murray O'Hair would come to be associated with the "ban religious broadcasting" petition. It was largely through her efforts that in 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court barred organized prayer from the public schools, bringing her national infamy. (In 1964 LIFE magazine headlined her as "the most hated woman in America," a title she burnished as a badge of honor.)

Over the years she built up her cause, battling for the separation of Church and State and, according to rumor, lining her own pockets in the process.

For more than five years, she was the focus of a mystery. In August 1995, Madalyn (then 76), along with her son, Jon (40), and granddaughter, Robin (30), vanished from their home, reportedly with breakfast still cooking, and were never seen again. Tax returns filed by groups affiliated with American Atheists suggest that Jon took $629,500 of organization money with him, and there were further rumors of Madalyn having stashed millions in overseas accounts over the years. Had the threesome met with foul play? Had they absconded with ill-gotten proceeds?

In June 2000 a man named Gary Karr was convicted of conspiracy to commit extortion for his alleged participation in a plot to kidnap and kill Ms. O'Hair and her children for their money. As part of a plea bargain, in early 2001 David Waters led police to a burial site where the remains of three bodies were found, and in March 2001 two of the bodies were identified as those of O'Hair and her granddaughter. Waters is already serving a 60-year state prison term for bilking O'Hair's American Atheists organization out of $54,000. He now faces an additional 20-year for "conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery and extortion." Technically, no one will ever be charged with these murders, but the killers are behind bars on other charges.

Kill thy neighbor?

Posted by Colleen at 07:30 PM * *

Sat - December 10, 2005

I'm Alive!

. . . just thought I'd let you know.

It's not that I don't have the time to write here (although time is a precious commodity to a teacher). It's that I have a drought of inspiration. I haven't felt the urge to spill my soul for all to see in ages. Nor do I feel some burning desire to rant about the woeful state of the world. Sure, it sucks, but I've resigned myself to it; as long as I ignore it, I can get through each day in relative peace. In general, my creative energies have been sucked away into my job.

But maybe soon, with break upon me, I'll feel more wordy. See you then, and happy holidays.

Posted by Colleen at 11:00 AM * *

Sat - October 15, 2005

Pop In

Honestly, I was sure this would happen when I moved my entry-input method offline, as a good chunk of blogging comes from boredom at work or school, or simply spur of the moment while in the browser surfing.

A quick up-to-date on my life then: Since graduation, I've been terribly busy with all things Teach For America. I spent six weeks in the hell of Institute, with brief respites at Scott's parents' house on the weekends. How else to keep my sanity but to run away? True, it did little to improve my social connections within the corps, but my antisocial tendencies would have made that difficult in another way if not that one had I stayed, I'm sure. After Institute, I set up house in Las Vegas and did the whirlwind tour with the family. Then I spent days in school district trainings that continued the summer's trend of being taught to teach like a kindergartener is taught letters. After my hectic classroom set-up, I was thrown in with a bunch of third graders and started life as a teacher. The learning curve has been steep, and I don't yet feel near the top. At the moment, my biggest question is how to get kids to understand the things I'm supposed to be teaching them. After trying several attempts to explain something with no tangible results for some students, I just don't see how one-on-one tutoring would even help the situation. It's like I'm speaking French, and they don't even know how to ask, "Comment est-ce que tu dit que en anglais?"

Right now, I'm watching "Under the Tuscan Sun" and trying not to think about all the work I'll need to do tomorrow to catch up, in addition to all the laundry that needs doing. I'm wishing I could buy a villa in Tuscany and write all day. I haven't written in so long, I have begun to miss it, yet I wouldn't even know where to begin. Prewriting, thinking maps -- that's what we tell the kids, but I've never been one to use them myself. Maybe I need to learn.

What if I had only gotten into the writing program at Northwestern? What if I had gone in as an English major and forgotten about all this journalism crap, four years of my life spent learning a career I hated? Who knows. But at least I haven't had a bird defecate on my head as a sign.

Posted by Colleen at 11:56 PM * *

Mon - August 1, 2005

iBuy iMac

Yeah, I know, I'm hilarious.

But nevertheless, I am writing this on my spiffy new iMac G5. My iBook, by the way, is currently in for another logic board repair.

Posted by Colleen at 09:28 PM * *

Tue - June 14, 2005

A "Crow Sandwich"

What happens when you take away a talking head's raison d'être? Apparently, they don't take it so well:

Nancy Grace held up a "crow sandwich" to eat after Michael Jackson was declared not guilty of child molestation, then appeared near tears after talking about the case on CNN Headline News for an hour.

Some big TV names had a lot at stake in the verdict. Grace has built a successful cable show partly on her prosecutorial attacks on Jackson . . .

Grace, a former prosecutor who has fashioned herself as a crime victim's advocate since her fiance was murdered, made it clear she felt Jackson was guilty even though she was cast in a journalistic role on her prime-time CNN Headline News show . . .

"When you have so many little boys coming in and saying, `this happened to me,' you got a $20 million settlement to make one kid go away, a $2 million settlement to make another kid go away, you got a grown man sleeping with little boys," she said. "Hello!!"

[Paul] Rodriguez[, foreman of the Jackson jury] attempted a reply, but was cut off after two words.

"How do you explain this guy's sleeping with a 13-year-old boy 365 nights in their underwear?" she asked.

Rodriguez explained that the jury did not have enough evidence to convict Jackson beyond a reasonable doubt in the case before them . . .

"I was very stunned to hear a juror refuse to state what he thought Jackson does in bed with all of his line of little boys, say he didn't want to stick his neck out by telling what he believed," she said. "I mean, isn't that the point of the justice system, to do what you believe in, what you think is right, for Pete's sake?" . . .

On her CNN Headline News show, Grace did bring on a lawyer who represents Jackson's parents, although the visit was brief.

"This is the bitter pill you're going to have to swallow, Nancy," said attorney Debra Opri. "This is the reality, not the reality you have created for the last year. Michael Jackson is not guilty. Let him live his life in peace and stop trying to retry the case."

Responded Grace: "You know what? You're right. So I guess I don't need to hear from the defense, either, and that would be you!"

I've only seen commercials for Grace's show, but they were enough to convince me that the intended audience was not people seeking a calm, balanced debate but rather, those seeking yet another shrill shill-fest. She makes a point of coming off as blatantly biased in all the ads -- or, as the article puts it, as a "crime victim's advocate."

By the way, I don't think there's any inherent conflict in having sympathy and seeking rights for legitimate crime victims and supporting a vigorous defense system for those accused of crimes. It's innocent until proven guilty, after all, and sending the wrong person to jail is just creating another victim.

Anyway, I thought the article was a treasure for showing the utter implosion of part of the plague of talking heads. It's got to be the best part of the whole Jackson debacle. I do recommend reading the whole article, despite my having quoted most of the good parts. One underlying theme I left out was Geraldo Rivera cast as the voice of reason in the debate -- if that's not worth further study, what is?

Posted by Colleen at 04:06 PM * *

Sat - June 11, 2005

What To Buy?

Since Apple announced its decision to switch to Intel processors, the talk online has focused on how they're bound to lose business in the intervening year as people who were planning to upgrade put off buying a machine they know will be not only obsoleted by speed and feature increases but by a whole new infrastructure. I've read a few blog entries already in which people declare their intention to wait, Apple's claims of legacy processor support be damned.

I must point out that <i>any</i> hardware you buy will be obsolete soon after you take it out of the box. Many hardware purchases are obsolete <i>before</i> they come out of the box, let alone the factory -- look at the Windows world, where Dell can offer crummy PCs for $400 and have them sell like hotcakes.

Considering the popularity of low-cost hardware, I doubt that most consumers realize the they'd get a better computing experience by laying out more funds for a speedy P4 system; likely they believe all computers are as bad as theirs and so keep making a deal with the devil every time they upgrade.

If Apple knocks a hundred bucks or two off the price of its low-end systems for the next year, I'm sure there's plenty of people who'll bite. As it is, bloggers who are declaring their newborn scorn of PowerPC hardware are much more technologically savvy than the average computer buyer. If any sales will suffer greatly, it'll be of chiefly the high-end Power Mac line, which they've had problems moving out the door anyway.

It's a calculated decision they made, and had they gone the other way -- not announcing the move to Intel until a machine was ready to ship -- they probably would have garnered a lot more ill will when no applications beside the OS were ready for the shiny new machines and developers had either to scramble or to abandon ship.

But anyway, to my personal dilemma -- I know that once the Intel machines are released, they'll be loads faster than what the PowerPC can offer. I know I'll want to upgrade soon after the switch. Yet right now, I'm writing this on a G3 iBook that's more than two years old. It's slow, the hard drive is too small for my needs, the screen hinge or logic board may give out again at any time, and did I mention it was slow? They don't even offer G3s anymore.

I (and I'm sure there are others like me) really need an upgrade, and waiting a year (probably more than a year for a consumer-level Mac) is not an attractive option. I had been planning to upgrade to a G5 iMac this fall when my salary kicks in, but considering what I know of the future, it's started to occur to me that maybe I ought to be downgrading my purchase to save money.

An 1.8 GHz iMac with 512 MB RAM, 160 GB hard drive and included Bluetooth and wireless networking, with educational pricing, would run me $1,199. An eMac, with 1.42 GHz G4, 256 MB RAM and 80 GB hard drive costs $749. A Mac mini with the same stats runs at $579 with no monitor, mouse or keyboard. These last two would absolutely require a memory upgrade at an additional cost.

The choices aren't too great, all things considered, but I have to choose one.

Posted by Colleen at 09:59 AM * *

Fri - June 10, 2005

Best Spam Ever

"The mighty cucumber lives again!"

From the subject line of a junk mail message advertising a product to keep that cucumber firmer, longer. And we're not talking refrigerators here.

Posted by Colleen at 09:55 PM * *

The "Gigli Curse"

My World News Tonight e-mail sported this teaser this evening:

Does saturation coverage of rumored romances make for better box office receipts? While some say there's no such thing as bad publicity, others say it can lead to the "Gigli Curse" when massive media focus on co-stars' alleged affairs, precedes a movie. This weekend "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" opens with great anticipation. But will this be good or bad for the movie's bottom line? Dan Harris looks at some of the history of on- and off-screen romance.

If you want to argue that overexposure of the stars can be bad for the movie, fine. But don't use Gigli as your example! It seems like everyone has forgotten how rotten the reviews of that movie were in the wake of Brad-Angelina (Brangelina? Angelad?). It sure wasn't Bennifer that sunk that stinker.

Lest we forget, here's a selection from the New York Times' review:

The name rhymes with "really," as in really, really silly. . . . The picture — a drab, talky amalgam of "Rain Man," "Prizzi's Honor" and "Chasing Amy" — is mostly dull and shapeless. But the torpor is leavened by some howlingly awful sexual repartee, and by the brief appearances of Christopher Walken and Al Pacino, called in as designated over-actors, and who are at least bad on purpose.

Posted by Colleen at 06:05 PM * *

Thu - June 9, 2005

The Return of the Camera Phone!

Just this week I finally dug out the Bluetooth adapter for my computer so that I could download the photos from my phone. Why I waited until right before I have to repack everything . . . who knows.

Posted by Colleen at 12:09 PM * *

Mon - June 6, 2005

Poised to Pounce?

After a week of the most knowledgeable pundits dismissing the rumors of Intel chips making their way into Macs, the world has been turned upside down. I wonder if Intel will require Apple to put those "Intel Inside" stickers on their pristine cases?

It's understandable that they'd make this move. The PowerPC processor has seemed stalled for a long time now. Two years ago, Steve Jobs had promised 3 GHz chips in Macs by this time last year; it still hasn't happened. The PowerBook line lacks a significant power edge over the low-end iBooks since the G5 processor is still too hot for notebooks. The frustration finally must have boiled over.

Also, from Steve Jobs' comments at WWDC, it's clear that Apple has had this switch in the works for five years now. Every Mac OS X release for the last five years has had a counterpart that could run on Intel processors. Wow, what a secret. There are people who would have killed for a copy of that, I'm sure. I suppose that those years were devoted to developing methods for running PowerPC software on Intel processors (they're calling that technology Rosetta -- like the Rosetta Stone of Egypt, which had a message written in hieroglyphs, demotic and Greek, allowing for the first true translation of Ancient Egyptian -- get it?). It seems that the transition to Intel will be a lot more seamless than the jump to PowerPC or the wild dive to Mac OS X, thank goodness. I'm going to have to get a new computer soon, so I'm glad to hear that the PowerPC platform won't have to be abandoned entirely by software developers once Intel machines start arriving.

I have to wonder what this means as regards other Intel-based machines. Jobs demonstrated Mac OS X running on a P4 at the conference today. The machine wasn't shown, so there's no knowing whether it was a custom-built Intel-based Mac or if it was an off-the-shelf HP or Dell. The big question is, will the new Mac OS X for Intel processors be able to run on off-the-shelf or slightly modified PCs? Now that's something I really can't imagine, considering the profit margin on Mac hardware; it's hard to believe Apple would allow its monopoly on hardware to end after it blitzed the old Mac clone makers. On the other hand, with the heavy software lifting already done by Apple, it's also hard to believe there won't be geeks out there getting it to work on their self-built Intel machines.

In other news, Apple announced that the next version of its OS will be called Leopard and will be released at the end of 2006 or in early 2007 -- the target ship date for Microsoft's Longhorn. Come then, there will be a legitimate basis for comparison between the two OSes, unlike all the Tiger-Vaporhorn comparisons.

Posted by Colleen at 12:26 PM * *