dangerousmeta > Archives

thu 05 jul 01 :: discuss :: permalink :: lastmod = pst

duelling in antebellum america. pdf. forget the death penalty for a moment; is duelling murder? if so, we've had murderers at the helm of the united states ... including abraham lincoln.

sad statistic: 96% of american children recognize ronald mcdonald. what a wasted opportunity ...

venus is the only planet in the solar system that turns clockwise ...

oak trees don't begin to bear acorns for 25 or more years ... remember that. gives folks a new view of clearcuts.

very strange ... 'ask captain jack.' for the lovelorn?

the book of the courtier, sir thomas hoby, 1561.

beautiful rapiers ...

buy a suit of armor ...

bust.com ... "for women with something to get off their chest." classic. biggest welts i got as a kid in the playground were from teasing a girl with grommets on her handbag.

nytimes magazine: extreme gardening. becoming mulch i can deal with, but nude gardening won't go *anywhere* here. no-see-ums leave scars ...

columbia journalism review looks at 'the aol effect' ... a series of articles ...

reuters: exploding lasagne. another candidate for a darwin award.

reuters: miniskirts in new zealand. but, but ... they film 'xena' here, don't they?

cnn: self-employment, paradise? a decided no, unless you enjoy accounting and marketing, on top of your 'normal' talents. it's damned hard work to build a business. you live or die by each thing you do. my personal motto: "if you're not 'on,' you're gone."

a grouch today, i can see from my postings. it's the car. the engine light came on before and cost me $500 bucks. gotta get rid of it ...

santa fe new mexican: and, in case you wondered, the wild west is still alive and well in santa fe. here you go: a family feud/land squabble, settled by pistols. only difference between now and the 1800's? trucks and semiautomatics.

santa fe new mexican: a new trail opens on the ridge above santa fe. unfortunately, they're allowing dogs. the atalaya trail here in town is lined in petrified dog poop for the first mile (it gets baked in our desert sun and takes a loooong time to decompose). when it rains, it can get quite ... well ... fragrant, and the flies become bothersome. coming from back east, i find it quite impolite to not 'scoop' ... esp. in such beautiful wilderness areas. but in santa fe, dogs are considered children, and therefore you must 'suffer' them, at all costs ... even the aesthetic. on top of that, folks don't keep their pooches leashed, as they're supposed to. i like to walk, bike ... without getting chased, sniffed, my shoes chewed holes in ... and without having some person yell "s/he's friendly!", following up with "come here, ----" shattering the peace of the forest. i've had expensive pants perforated by 'friendly' mutts. "oh, they do that all the time at home ..." i don't care. you just cost me $75 bucks! in other words, i'll walk the trail *once* just to see it. then escape to non-canine trails.

books online.uk: ddt and the mosquito. banning ddt 'hurts' developing nations? hydrochloric acid kills mosquitoes too. why not use it? because it kills many other things. what's the difference? in both cases, neither substance is without secondary effects [and beyond]. i agree lives are precious, but at what expense? where do you place the balance?

egypt revealed: rising water threatens ancient egyptian temples. since the building of the aswan dam, this was bound to happen. question is, how to ameliorate the effects.

ars technica: comparison of the p4 and the g4e.

ibm developerworks: advanced linux filesystems.

mac: i still like a-dock, and it's updated to 2.3.3.

xml.com: an xml schema for metadata encoding and transmission.

linux orbit: a howto for samba, for first time users.

ugeek: athlon best chip for photoshop work? been wondering about this, now that my 8500's getting longer in the tooth ...

zope developers guide 2.4 released.

enough of that rant. i could go on for pages.

i would give all i am, all i own for a chance at being a fluid speaker for just *one day.* and my impediment is relatively minor (most don't notice it). you would never appreciate the efforts i go to in order to be fluid. i'm not looking for sympathy, but i would recommend empathy. i am a walking thesaurus (as most stutterers are), with alternate words for all my 'blockage' words, pre-created phrases that work in most situations. there is always the *wild card*, the situation where a certain consonant will just not pass, sticking in the throat like trying to swallow a 3" metal letter. i calmly stop, then redirect after a relaxing breath. i have to be aware of this *each* time i open my mouth to speak. there is no rest, there is no 'zen state' where it'll stop. if you walk up to me and fake a stutter, i believe: a, you're denigrating me, and b, trying to do me harm. i will not waste my time with you, because obviously you consider *me* a waste of time ...

metafilter thread on stuttering. teasing or pointing out a speech impediment makes the stutterer more self-conscious, and *causes* stuttering. the post was crass. much as i enjoyed 'a fish called wanda', michael palin did a *superb* job of mimicry ... but i still couldn't speak fluently for a day or so afterwards. how many of you would see a cripple, and walk up limping with a grin on your face to deliver a news bulletin about a handicapped convention? over the years, we've had our tongues branded with hot irons, pieces snipped off, locked in rooms to repeat endless tongue twisters, been segregated as being 'contagious' ... as if the isolation of stuttering wasn't enough. unless you've been a stutterer, you cannot, and will *never* understand. *never.* either make the time to understand us, or leave us alone. it's better that way for all of us. we've had that kind of crap for years; it's not original, and it wasn't funny then, either.

threes. things happen in threes. what's next? zope went down, engine light came on in the car ... what's the third? then again, maybe i already know ...

been having some zope issues over the last day and a half. hopefully i'm back up again for good.