Like almost everyone I know, I’ve spent the week battling a cold. I’m so ready for it to be over. Work is heating up and I’ve got meetings and other responsibilities looming on the horizon. I’m so looking forward to the upcoming holiday break where I can simply relax in the evenings.
N&O mistakenly says Raleigh out of Google Fiber hunt
There was a small story in the political section of the News and Observer last month, noting that Raleigh City Councilor Bonner Gaylord’s twins weren’t named after Google’s founders as he had jokingly pledged to do if Raleigh was chosen as the site for their 1Gb Internet Google Fiber project.
Twins weren’t Googled
Raleigh City Councilman Bonner Gaylord is now the proud father of twin boys, who were born early this week. But no, they aren’t named after Google’s founders Larry and Sergey as Gaylord had previously promised – without consulting his wife – if she had boys and Google wired Raleigh with high-speed Internet. Google passed on the City of Oaks, so instead of Larry and Sergey, Gaylord’s sons are named Demetri and Mont. Overall, it’s bad for Raleigh, good for Gaylord’s marriage.
The problem is that Google hasn’t passed on the City of Oaks. It hasn’t passed on anybody, actually. The company has yet to make its selection.
A few days ago I left word on the N&O website, pointing out this error but the paper has not yet responded. Hopefully a correction will be printed, lest Google think the City of Oaks has written them off.
Election Night
Well, that was interesting. Election Day was yesterday and, nationwide, Democrats took a drubbing. The U.S. House is in Republican hands again. The Senate remains in Democratic hands. Can’t say results on the national level surprise me.
I found the local races more interesting. GOP took control of the General Assembly for the first time in over 125 years. The Republicans face tough decisions with a looming $5 billion state budget deficit. Cutting taxes won’t solve that problem, so now Republicans will have to govern rather than whine.
For all the “throw the bums out” talk, nearly all North Carolina Congressional incumbents were reelected. At this time Bob Etheridge is calling for a recount against political newcomer Renee Ellmers. At this point it looks like Etheridge is done. If so, he’ll become the only congressional incumbent to lose this election.
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Cheap Thoughts: democracy and the Constitution
On my morning walk today my groggy mind became fascinated by the curious tension between “majority rules” and “minority rights.” It’s not like I’ve never considered this contrast before, but it never seemed as absurd to me before as it did to me this morning.
We have democracy, where if a majority of Americans agree on something it can become law. Then we have the Constitution, which protects the rights of the minorities. If a majority of voters decided that only beer drinkers could be citizens, the Constitution would protect non-beer-drinkers. At least, they’d be protected until said majority changed the Constitution to explicitly deny citizenship to non-beer-drinkers.
l suppose this is what captured my attention this morning: how one’s rights last only as long as the Constitution does before the majority strips it away. That huge gap between the two must be how some once conveniently considered black people and women to be non-citizens, and how other minorities are still in danger of the same treatment.
Winston Churchill said “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.” I can see the man’s point.
Tennis turnaround
Travis’s first tennis lesson was this morning. We headed to nearby Lions Park and arrived in time. I walked up to a young man sitting at a portable table and proudly announced that we were here for the class.
“Uhh, class? Hold on a second,” he said, pulling out his cellphone. After a few minutes of concerned talk, he looked up.
“I’m sorry but there’s no class here,” he said.
I looked over his shoulder at the courts. Every one was being used for singles games. There is almost never a soul on these courts and here they were, full. I glanced at the paper in front of the man: it was a tournament bracket.
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“Chinglish” and Internet wholesalers
I was doing some Internet searches to come up to speed on some satellite TV technology when I came upon this amusing Chinglish description for an amazing set-top box. It combines many of my interests: amusing, over-the-top Chinglish; Linux; and DVB-S satellite set-top boxes.
DreamBox DM7025 is one of the latest in the serials of wares from Dream Multimedia System. It is highly advanced and scientifically ongoing digital satellite catcher which is obtainable at exceedingly low-cost and sound monetary values from the cyberspace. The device has the fullest and greatest capabilities than some other electronic device from the very same make. Continue reading
Small head injuries damage brain too
Sports Illustrated’s latest issue brings news that head injuries don’t have to rise to the concussive level to cause brain damage. Purdue researchers have shown that the smaller, more frequent hits can actually do more damage than a concussion.
The mounting evidence suggests that some people—perhaps a lot—simply cannot play these games without being damaged, concussion or no concussion. “You can break something by hitting it hard once,” says Katie Morigaki, a Purdue graduate assistant athletic trainer who worked on the study, “or you can break it by hitting it softer many times.”
If the test scores were accurate, the researchers had inadvertently documented, in real time, a new classification of high school athlete: a player who was never concussed, was not verbally impaired and was asymptomatic even as far as his parents could tell, but whose visual memory was more impaired than his amnesic, headachy, light-sensitive, concussed teammates.
After reading this last night I woke up worried about how doomed I am with all the hits my head has taken, not from football but from falling out of bed as a kid, banging my head against the wall (also as a kid), and other misadventures. I’m not letting my kids play football, that’s for sure. The fewer brain-damaged members of the family, the better!
“Repeat Robber” was good handyman
I laughed this morning when a neighbor retracted her recommendation of a handyman she had been using for years. It turns out the handyman, Lee Pope from Precision Plumbing and Cooling, had switched from handyman work to robbing banks, becoming known to the FBI as the “Repeat Robber.” Pope was arrested Monday on suspicion of robbing over a dozen banks in the Triangle. It’s sad when a good guy turns bad. Perhaps the handyman trade wasn’t working out for him.
Before his arrest Pope drew praise for his handyman work. Said one customer:
We have been using Lee’s company for years now. He has replaced our furnace, AC, fixed pipes and we are getting ready to have him redo all the plumbing in our house. He is excellent and reasonable.
Once news broke of his arrest, the customer changed her tune:
I would like to retract this recommendation. For the past 6 years he did close to $10K worth of work for us and was always here when it was icy or 110 degrees and something was broken that needed fixed, fixed our friend’s AC for free, etc., I guess he hit bad times and went rogue.
I wonder if Pope had anything to do with the rash of copper thefts from AC units in the area. Hopefully police are following up on this, too.
The Miracle Worker
The kids were reading about Helen Keller in school so I decided to put The Miracle Worker on our Netflix list. The kids finished it a week ago but I just found the time to finish it. Wow, what a powerful story.
I may bitch and moan about some things not going my way, but nothing I will ever do will be as absolutely miraculous as what Helen and her teacher Anne Sullivan accomplished. And Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft exhibit great acting in the film.
Randall for Congress breaks the law?
A neighbor got a political robocall on behalf of Randall for Congress yesterday. While that’s not unusual, what IS unusual is that the company calling on behalf of Randall spoofed the CallerID on the call, pointing it to a disconnected number in the 919 area code. This is in apparent violation of NCGS § 75-100, North Carolina’s Telephone Solicitation Law:
(i) No telephone solicitor shall knowingly use any method to block or otherwise circumvent a telephone subscriber’s use of a caller identification service. No provider of telephone caller identification services shall be held liable for violations of this subsection committed by other individuals or entities.
Here’s what my neighbor said about the call:
I got a robocall last night in which a person claiming to be Maria Schrader (sp?) representing African American conservatives encouraged me to vote for Bill Randall for congress. My caller id showed her number as 919-521-8593. I called back to ask to be taken off the list and got an automated message indicating the the number had been disconnected or was no longer in service.
I’m not too impressed with the use of forged callerid, so I left a message on the “Randall for Congress” line and got a call back this morning from Tom Price who informed me that the robocall came from Washington Political Group. I called them at 678-794-9988 and Don Burrell said he would take my number off their calling list.
Longtime MT.Net readers know I don’t take kindly to callers using forged CallerID. I’m sad to see it has come to North Carolina politics. I hope the attorney general steps in and smacks any campaign that tries to do it, as they so clearly deserve it.