links for 2010-11-03
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While I'm not nearly the level of Star Trek fan as I am with Star Wars, these are intriguing. I like the "Boldly Go" one best.
Running out of the tunnel at Tiger Stadium
Since LSU had a bye week this weekend, here's a sight not many get to see:
The video was shot with a HD helmet cam attached to Seth Mannon, at the start of the game against West Virginia earlier this season.
Life - The Type
As a closet typography nerd, it's always fun to learn about a new typeface. Or, in this case, a new-to-me typeface. I'm enjoying the trend that's shown up in book publishing the last few years where the reader is informed what type the book is set in. Yesterday I finished Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel, Worth Dying For, and at the end we're introduced to the type of Life:
"The text of this book was set in Life, a typeface designed by W. Bilz, and jointly developed by Ludwig & Mayer and Francesco Simoncini 1965. This contemporary design is in the transitional style of the eighteenth century. Life is a versatile text face and is a registered trademark of Simoncini S.A." Here is how it looks in the book:
A version of Life can be can be purchased from Veer.
links for 2010-10-21
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"In God's hands, your mistakes are not open cuts, they are healed scars that tell stories of great hope. They are not wounds to lie about, they are words other people need to hear. They are warning signs on roads your friends and family and neighbors are on. They are lighthouses in the midst of stormy weather. They are neon signs he uses to point the way toward repentance."
links for 2010-10-03
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"Start your own online academy, completely free."
Interesting...
links for 2010-09-29
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Inc. Magazine interviews Alden Mills, whose main product, Perfect Pushup, you may have seen on television.
No worse tyranny
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." --American writer Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)
links for 2010-09-17
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But they're *just* comic books, right?
links for 2010-09-16
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The universal Church is pretty good at conversion, but lousy at discipleship.
An evil evil
It was JFK who signed an executive order giving public sector unions the right to collective bargaining. We need a president with the guts to revoke that order. Unions – a necessary evil in private life – are just an evil evil in the public sector. Nothing necessary about them at all.
Willfully doing damage, or completely incompetent?
It's not as bad as it could've been. That, as the Labor Day weekend began, was the cold comfort that many in the media took from the still-dismal August jobs report. Can't we expect something a little better?
True enough, 68,000 new private-sector jobs were created last month, showing that private businesses, though gasping for breath, aren't dead yet.
But overall, 54,000 jobs disappeared, raising the toll during the "Recovery Summer" Vice President Joe Biden ridiculously hailed two months ago to 238,000. Nor was the uptick in the unemployment rate to 9.6% from 9.5% what you expect in a "recovery."
This is not "better than expected"; it's worse than expected. This can be gauged not by market expectations for modest job creation, but by long-term experience watching how jobs are created in a normal recovery. By that gauge, we're in the worst jobs slump since World War II.
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If it wasn't clear to everyone by now, it should be: All the actions this government has taken — the $700 billion TARP program, the $862 billion "stimulus," the health care takeover, financial reform — haven't "saved or created" 3.8 million jobs, as claimed. Instead, they've destroyed millions of jobs — and with them, the hopes and dreams of those who've lost the jobs.
But the administration remains clueless, hinting that it may seek another "stimulus" costing billions. This bunch is either willfully doing damage to the U.S. economy, or completely incompetent. [Emphasis added. --R]
True then, true now
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow, 1824 Amen!
Callin' Baton Rouge
I know the Tigers aren't opening the season at home, but this time of year is when I miss the city I grew up in the most.
ATPM 16.09
The September issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure. Shhhhhhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. Mark is hunting dwagons. He then ponders who's really using less paper, us or them. (Them being corporations, not dwagons. Er, dragons.) Yours truly had the pleasure of interviewing a friend: Heather Sitarzewski. Heather's a very creative gal; the things she comes up with never fails to surprise me. ATPM staffer Wes Meltzer has had to travel quite a bit of late for his other employer (the one that actually pays him). With finances being tight enough that a MacBook Air wasn't in the cards, and needing something lighter than a 13-inch MacBook, Wes decided to try living with an EeePC netbook running Ubuntu Linux on the road. Rob regales us with his tale of iPad purchasing, noting that our favorite fruit company's tablet is an earnings and revenue monster. If you like flowers, you'll love this month's desktop pictures selection. ATPM reader Sterling Garwood shares some photos he took in North Carolina. Calling out the hazmat team, too much caffeine, avoiding FBI warnings on DVDs, old-fashioned copy editing, menopause, multi-level marketing, outsourcing the boss, and recycling: all in the line of duty in Out at Five. Ed boldly goes where most of us fear to tread: into the realm of accounting. With his look at Acclivity's AccountEdge and FirstEdge, things appear to be heading into the black. Finally, Eric puts his baby in then hands of Griffin's Loop, a tabletop stand for the iPad. As always, this issue of About This Particular Macintosh is available in a wide variety of formats for your enjoyment:
Thanks for reading, ATPM!
American youth, never forget
"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence." -- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)
links for 2010-08-21
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Ten rules for respect, desperately needed in our culture today.
links for 2010-08-19
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"Adoptees must attempt to make sense of a complex, deep matrix of circumstances, emotions and thoughts. It's not easy, not only because it's not easy, but also because most folks don't realize that it's not easy."
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"Lucky? Lucky. Lucky to have been born on a continent terrorized by war, corruption and greed? Lucky to have been born in a country where 25,000 women and girls die each year due to pregnancy-related complications? Lucky to have been born in a country where more than half the population has ZERO access to basic medical care? Lucky to have been born in a region reliant upon rainfall and devastated by drought? [...] Lucky to have been in a room with at least eight other needy babies at any given time? Lucky to have been taken outside for "fresh air" once a day (week?) into a concrete courtyard? Lucky to have been held for feedings... and sometimes only for feedings? Lucky to have been in a Bumbo chair instead of a mother's arms? Lucky to have been taken by complete strangers to another continent 7000 miles away? Lucky to have been physically removed from his people, culture, history, language, customs?"
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"Sometimes as the parent of an adopted child you get a lot of comments that are spoken innocently but come from a place of ignorance. Education is part of our job, but sometimes it gets a little frustrating.
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"The rescue and lucky mentality people have with orphans so easily overlooks the very real pain and trauma inherent in it all. It engenders a need for gratefulness and payback among the children that’s just unhealthy. It turns a blind eye to the reality of their situation and turns adoptive parents into superheros that we’re definitely not."
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"Adoption is not lucky. ... It’s a very sticky point in adoption but it’s an important one for people to remember. Our children came to our family because there was a need. There is grief, loss, and sadness in their lives."
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"[C]hildren playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why."
Failing to learn from history
"But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity." --James Madison, Federalist No. 46 I wonder what our fourth president, a strict constitutional constructionist, would think of us now.