April Ramblin’

Fun Interpretation of the Google Books Settlement

What I love about my Bible study: we talk a LOT about current affairs. Part of the conversation recently, in reading the 23rd Psalm, was “What IS evil?’ One of the examples I thought of was the deliberate misrepresentation of the truth with the intent to incite.

We also were distressed about the new Arizona immigration law Two thoughts on that. Remember the Sun City (video) album from the 1980s? Sun City was the resort town in South Africa, which, during apartheid came to symbolize the difference in conditions for blacks and whites. On that album was the song, Let Me See Your ID (video).

The other thing is that famous quote by theologian Martin Niemöller
“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
Having been profiled one or twice (yeah, right), this really disturbs me.
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MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: FOX News, GOP further ‘the un-mooring of politics from fact’ (video)
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Gunn High School Sings Away Kansas Hate Group known as the Westboro Baptist Church (video).
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The vengeance of Bernie Goldberg on the Daily Show (Link to video). I don’t recall Goldberg being quite so wack when he was on CBS.
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Plaque in honor of activist William Moore unveiled. He was a civil rights activist from around my hometown of Binghamton, NY, who was murdered in Alabama in 1963. The local branch of the Congress of Racial Equality, with which my father worked, was named after him. It even rhymed: The William L. Moore chapter of CORE.
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Very soon, you can listen to the sounds of the cosmos yourself. All of the data from the SETI program will soon be available at setiQuest.org to download or play.
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New national park quarters unveiled: U.S. Mint debuts designs for the first five coins in its America the Beautiful Quarters Program, which will honor 56 national parks. The rest will be released through 2021. I probably WON’T collect them; still haven’t found most of the 2009 quarters.
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MAD Artist Jack Davis’ Illustrations of NBC’s 1965-66 Season for TV Guide is really cool, especially if you remember the shows, which I do.
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Angelina Jolie is in the summer movie I can’t wait to see, Salt, which was filmed in part in Albany, NY. The filming caused massive traffic delays for days.
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Siren’s Crush Receives Rave Reviews from NAMM (short video). This is my niece’s group; Rebecca is the brunette female.
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My friend Deborah, who I met in 1977 in Manhattan, and who’s been living in France for the past quarter century, recently bought a beautiful old stone house in Brittany with a plan of partly financing the loan by renting it out as a holiday home.

The Kan ar Vouac’h website and its listing on VRBO are finally done, and she’s hoping to be putting the final touches on buying the final necessaries over the month of May.

I’m told it’s a lovely and reasonable place to stay in Brittany.
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Retiree Bathtub Test

During a visit to my doctor, I asked him, “How do you determine whether or not a retiree should be put in an old age home?”

“Well,” he said, “we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the retiree and ask him or her to empty the bathtub”

“Oh, I understand,” I said. “A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup.”

“No” he said. “A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?”

ROG

Roger needs

Google your name and the word “needs” in quotes (“Roger needs”) and see what you get. List the first 7 entries. In my case, several were the same and one I kinda edited to make it a sentence. But the point is the fun, right?

Roger needs a new JBoat.
Roger needs Rafa.
Roger needs help!!! some would agree with that.
Roger needs a coach.
Roger needs to be with a family who has a large yard.
Roger Needs Facebook.
Roger needs to finally realize, although he knows how to get a woman’s attention, he needs lessons from his own nephew.

Lots of references to Roger Rabbit, someone called Roger Needs, the movie Roger Dodger, and especially Roger Federer.
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What Kind of Information Technology User are You?
I’m a Connector
The Connectors’ collection of information technology is used for a mix of one-to-one and one-to-many communication. They very much like how ICTs keep them in touch with family and friends and they like how ICTs let them work in community groups to which they belong. They are participants in cyberspace – many blog or have their own web pages – but not at the rate of Omnivores. They are not as sure-footed in their dealings with ICTs as Omnivores. Connectors suspect their gadgets could do more for them, and some need help in getting new technology to function properly.
[The last part is DEFINITELY true.]

ROG

French military victories in the Arabian Gulf

You may recall that Google was, for a time, “fooled”, when typing in miserable failure, into linking to George W. Bush’s biography; now it links to the controversy over that Google bomb.

I have learned recently that the first site that loads on Google when you plug in the term French military victories is a faked Google page offering a “did you mean?” option. Searching for Arabian gulf gives you a site similar to the defused “cannot find weapons of mass destruction” fake IE error page. (Thanks, Amanda from Charleston.)
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Wonder Woman shows that fighting crime is not always easy.

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I went into a comic book store last week and actually bought two items: the Overstreet Price Guide (do people still call it the Overpriced Street Guide?), because my boss has started asking me about prices of old comics; and the magazine Alter Ego (July 2007), featuring a long interview with ’70s Marvel editor, and Alter Ego founder, Roy Thomas. His ascent to editor pretty much corresponded to the time I first started looking at comics again after a large gap when I had “outgrown” them; big-time nostalgia for me, I was surprised to discover.
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There’s a new reality show being developed and I know all about it.
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Numbers lie: I’m loving the Wall Street Journal blog, The Numbers Guy, which I write about here.
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My monthly plug about the Underground Railroad conference here.

Yeah, I’m repositioning my own pieces from my other blogs for this post. Hey, it’s Labor Day weekend; cut me some slack!
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Instead of watching Pedro Martinez’s pitching debut for his beloved Mets, what Fred Hembeck will be viewing (September 2). I’ll be alternating between the Mets and the U.S. Open (tennis), bumped from the local our CBS affiliate by what Fred is watching, but showing up on our CW affiliate.

ROG

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