Written on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 by Jessica
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Photos of Seth
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Written on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 by Jessica
"It's really important to me not to be known as Ross when I'm 60."
--David Schwimmer
Good luck with that one.
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Quotations
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Written on Monday, October 22, 2007 by Jessica
"I have not survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary. This is my story."
--Amy Krouse Rosenthal
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Darn funny,
Quotations
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Written on Friday, October 19, 2007 by Jessica
This is just too funny. I'm thinking of converting to a new religion!! :)
http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/
Posted in
Darn funny
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Written on Thursday, October 18, 2007 by Jessica
Sorry to address such a weighty subject on my normally fluffy blog, but I saw this article about Dr. James Watson, who is among three people credited with the discovery of the double helix. He's made questionable statements about race and gender in the past, and now he's at it again. Choice quotations:
The eminent biologist told the [Sunday Times] he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really."
...
In the newspaper interview, he said there was no reason to think that races which had grown up in separate geographical locations should have evolved identically. He went on to say that although he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".
While I'm perfectly aware that some people hold such views, I was surprised to hear it from someone of his education and stature. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Racism is everywhere. You can probably even find it in the deepest recesses of my own mind.
It'll be interesting to see if he claims his statements were somehow taken out of context. I don't see how they could be rendered in such a way as to seem reasonable, but maybe I'm just not "smart" enough to figure it out. After all, I'm a woman and my brain is smaller than his...
UPDATE: Watson has
apologized, saying: "I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said."
He went on to say:
To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.
Well, as continents don't have genes, I never once drew the inference that Africa is somehow genetically inferior. I drew the inference that people who live in Africa or have descended from Africans are intellectually inferior.
He says it's not what he meant, but if so, I find myself wonder what he
did mean. It doesn't appear that he attempted to explain how his statements had been misinterpreted. To me, it looks more like he realized what a terrible blunder he made. He's sorry for saying it, but not really sorry for thinking it. That's not good enough.
I wonder if I'm being too hard on the guy -- he's seventy-nine years old and was shaped by very different times from those that shaped me -- but I don't think so. There's just no excuse for such beliefs.
Posted in
Miscellany
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Written on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 by Jessica
We have a tie:
25% Through a mutual friend, but we weren't fixed up.
25% We were friends first. It developed into something more.
17% Online - other (chat room, blog, forum, etc.)
8% At a bar/club
8% Online - dating/match service
8% Blind date. We were fixed up!
8% Other.
0% Single, thank god.
Click here for a chart.
I'm surprised to learn that I have no single readers. None who participated in this poll, that is.
I originally wondered about the "Other" response, but then I remembered how my sister met her boyfriend. She was a young, innocent little thing working at a gun shop, when a really old customer came in and asked her out. :) None of the available responses matched such a scenario. Who knows how many other scenarios I overlooked.
Baby's Daddy and I were fixed up on a blind date, although technically we'd met once before. I just didn't remember him. :) Hmmmm, you'd think that would've been a sign that it wouldn't work out, but whattaya know. We're happily married now, and for eleven years at that!
How about you? What's your story? (Lisa, feel free to link us to your blog entry, since I know you've recently covered the subject.)
Posted in
Poll results
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Written on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 by Jessica
I want to get a nice DSLR camera. I'm sick of missing shots due to shutter delay, and I'm really sick of listening to Baby's Daddy bitch whenever he has to use it.
It occurs to me that I ought to make a nice camera my reward for losing weight (the diet is not going well). That bites. I want a camera now. Actually, it's practically a moot point because Baby's Daddy is not working and we can't afford to spend $700 on a new camera. We can't even afford the bills we have.
Posted in
Losing weight,
Miscellany
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Written on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 by Jessica
"Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these."
-- Ovid
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Quotations
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Written on Monday, October 15, 2007 by Jessica
Let's say you've gone on two or three dates with someone and you like him/her. Then s/he tells you s/he's still a virgin. How would you feel about that?
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Miscellany
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Written on Friday, October 12, 2007 by Jessica
Got this off my sister's blog:
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Miscellany
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Written on Thursday, October 11, 2007 by Jessica
Frequently used words are less likely to evolve or mutate over time.
...The entire family of 87 Indo-European languages spoken today are thought to share a common origin reaching back some 10,000 years.
Very commonly used words — two or water, for example — remain recognizably related across this vast linguistic spectrum, they found. But others words that occur less frequently in daily speech, even if they are hardly obscure, have changed profoundly over centuries and millennia.
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Words
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Written on Tuesday, October 09, 2007 by Jessica
Most of you like your steak overcooked. :) A whopping 80% of respondents preferred their steak cooked to at least medium doneness.
Well done - 30%
Medium well - 10%
Medium - 40%
Medium rare - 10%
Rare - 10%
Blue - 0%
I don't like steak - 0%
I'm vegetarian /vegan - 0%
Click here to see the handy graph.
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Poll results
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Written on Tuesday, October 09, 2007 by Jessica
These are some photos from August. As we rarely feed the child, he has developed remarkable survival skills. Here is a yogurt container he fished from the trash. Yum. I resisted the urge to overreact (it was a container I'd thrown away a couple of hours earlier) and took some photos instead.
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Photos of Seth
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Written on Tuesday, October 09, 2007 by Jessica
The family pumpkin crop failed this year, so we had to go someplace else to get pumpkins -- Just a Plain Farm fit the bill. (Click here for a bigger slide show.)
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Photos of Seth
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Written on Monday, October 01, 2007 by Jessica
The state legislature has passed an increase in income tax, from 3.9% to 4.35%. Necessary, I suppose, given the state's $1 billion budget deficit. They've also been kicking around the idea of taxing services, but I never believed they'd actually do it. I was wrong. Effective December 1, there will be a 6% tax on services.
I'm so ticked off. I'm concerned that I'm going to have to start charging a service tax for anything I do in connection with my web design business. I don't even know how to properly collect and submit such taxes. This is a PITA.
Here is a partial list of some of the more interesting services being taxed (click here for a full list):
- Astrology services
- Baby shoe bronzing services [Yup, they specifically mentioned baby shoe bronzing.]
- Balloon-o-gram services [I'm not making this one up, either. Michigan legislators prefer the term "balloon-o-gram services" over "balloon-delivery services."]
- Business service center services [Sounds redundant, no?]
- Coin-operated blood pressure testing machine services [They better start making a 26.5-cent coin so that I don't have to carry around extra change just to check my blood pressure.]
- Coin-operated personal service machine services [Personal service machine? When I was in college, I heard that the local porn store had little coin-operated booths where you could watch special "programming" while servicing yourself. I wonder if that qualifies.]
- Comfort station operation services [Huh? What's a comfort station? Maybe that's what they called the coin-operated booths I mentioned above.]
- Fortune-telling services
- Numerology services
- Palm reading services
- Phrenology services [So if you're planning to have someone read the bumps on your head, make sure it's before December 1, 2007.]
- Psychic services
- Singing telegram services
- Skiing services [Not interesting in and of itself, but I'll come back to this one later.]
- Social escort services
- Social introduction services
And finally (this is perhaps my favorite one):
- Service contract services in which the seller, in exchange for the buyer's single payment, agrees to provide repair, maintenance, or replacement of 1 or more items of tangible personal property during a specific period of time, which services the buyer is not required to buy in connection with the purchase of tangible personal property.
I had to read that one a half-dozen times to figure out what it's talking about: extended warranties! Not sure why it doesn't just say "extended warranty services," but whatever.
Please notice one particular item that is
not on the list. Although the politicians were certain to include skiing among taxable services, they excluded golf. Damn straight, because every politician dearly loves a good round of golf.
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Miscellany
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