January 2012
3 posts
New Jersey Anti-Bullying is Unconstitutional
The Council [on Local Mandates] struck down the law at a hearing Friday as an unfunded state mandate based on a complaint filed by the Allamuchy school district in Warren County.
While perhaps well-intentioned, the strictures of the law were onerous to districts who had to grab the most convenient employee who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say no.
Are iBooks the Answer, or the iPad's Foot in the...
I first glimpsed the future of the book, and more broadly the textbook, when I bought my first-but-discontinued (that is, old) Newton MessagePad 2100 in the summer of 2002. It was just before I was to start work as a school psychologist; I’d managed to get through 2+ years of graduate school without keeping any real semblance of a calendar or task list, just notebooks and my computers, on...
On Work and Raising Children
“It’s nice to have the extra days to spend with my kids,” she says. “I want to raise them right. I didn’t have them so I could give them to someone else to take care of.”
Tough economic times are always met with attempts to roll back worker benefits, aren’t they?
Link
December 2011
5 posts
Lists
There are two “digital divides”: that caused by poverty, and that by willful ignorance. The former is when a person simply can’t access modern technologies; the latter, when they simply won’t switch set.
I work in public education, and, like many endeavors, the sharing of information is paramount to other people getting their jobs done. For example, the people who...
The War on Christmas
Is there really a war on Christmas?
Charita Goshay finds some men of the cloth who don’t think so:
“I think America’s solely interested in tolerance,” said the Very Rev. Daniel Rogich, pastor at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Canton. “Tolerance sometimes leads to us thinking sometimes that there’s a ‘war’ on Christmas. In fact, tolerance is a good thing. The opposite is...
Hitch
On Thursday, December 15th, Christopher Hitchens died. There’s plenty of good stuff out there from his oevre getting fresh eyeballs, mine included.
RIP, Hitch. Among his finest final moments were his comments about people who hoped (and prayed) that he would would renounce his athiesm on his deathbed.
“Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally...
Butcher and Singer
Making Butcher and Singer a steakhouse was a cheeky move. This would be lost on a diner who had never eaten at Neil Stein’s iconic Striped Bass, which is where Butcher and Singer now lives. Gone is the Bass’s gleaming, leaping fish statue, replaced by a resplendent steer head with a nose ring, mooing “that was then; this is now.”
So the great fish shack is now a chop...
November 2011
19 posts
How To Truss a Chicken →
“We truss chickens because we don’t trust lawyers.” - Brian Polcyn
Pairing Cocktails With Food →
I’m a wine-with-dinner guy, but the Oyster and the Alaska cocktail combo sounds alright to me.
More Walmart Doom and Gloom
Stacy Mitchell, writing for Grist:
By using its market power to drive down the quality of manufacturing, Walmart gains an advantage over department stores and independent retailers because quality (and the knowledgeable service that typically goes with it) is no longer an important factor in a consumer’s choice about where to shop. If you are going to end up with a crappy to mediocre...
The Culture Pushes Back: Thanksgiving as Day to... →
I’m proud of us, for once.
A Little Cold Water Thrown in the Face of... →
Great article on the movement to drug-test people who receive welfare.
Natas Kaupas, Old-Skool Sk8 Hero, Interviewed →
Remember when it was kind edgy that his name spelled backwards was, well, you know.
Dropbox Founder on "Chapter 2"
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to Om Malik, when discussing what’s next for Dropbox:
“What’s the point of Dropbox if it’s just a folder?”
I hope Dropbox gets “chapter two” right, or that sentence is gonna bite Houston in the ass.
Retail Healthcare
Ezra Klein on Wal-Mart and CVS as your new healthcare provider:
Primary care has struggled in the United States, partially because of limited financial incentives for health providers: Doctors who go into primary care tend to have the lowest salaries among physicians. Doctors may not see a reason to go into primary care, but CVS and Wal-Mart do: in addition to bringing in revenue themselves,...
The Republican Voter
Jonathan Chait observes a novel trait of Republican voters:
They oppose government programs that seem to benefit people other than themselves.
Via Andrew Sullivan
College is cheaper, but is it worth it?
Judith Scott Clayton, on college tuition costs:
For the average full-time student, net tuition – which subtracts grants and tax-based aid – is less than half of the published price at private nonprofit four-year schools and less than a third of the published price at the typical public four-year institution.
She writes that college is considerably cheaper than the “sticker...
Daylight Saving Time Explained →
From Devour.com
National Sandwich Day →
I didn’t know there was such a thing as National Sandwich Day, but Serious Eats celebrates it with a glorious slideshow. Man, some of them look good.
Sandwiches We Love in America (Serious Eats)
WriteRoom’s been updated to version 3.0…and it’s a $5 upgrade for previous owners. App Store pricing is infectious, perhaps.
Writeroom
October 2011
11 posts
OmniFocus and Reminders
Shawn Blanc:
So the next question is: can OmniFocus replace Reminders? Perhaps. But I don’t think it needs to. I am content to use both of them, side by side. For me, Siri is the interface into Apple’s Reminders app, using it for quick little one-off tasks and reminders. OmniFocus is still my primary to-do list and personal project management tool.
I think that’s about right; you...
Applescript to Quit Safari (if it's running) and...
on ApplicationIsRunning(appName)
tell application “System Events” to set appNameIsRunning to exists (processes where name is appName)
return appNameIsRunning
end ApplicationIsRunning
if ApplicationIsRunning(“Safari”) then
tell application “Safari”
quit
end tell
end if
tell application “Finder”
move file...
Save sheet shortcuts in Lion
Matt Legend Gemmell discovers where the time-saving, command-character keyboard shortcuts that became muscle memory for most Mac power users in Mac OS X’s save sheets went:
Save can be triggered with either the Return key, or by pressing Command-S.
Cancel can be triggered with either the Escape (Esc) key, or by pressing Command-Period (Command-fullstop).
Don’t Save can be triggered...
“Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.”
– The Blog : The Mystery of Consciousness : Sam Harris
The Quackopractor
I’ve never read a chiropractor so openly admit that people look at them as whackjobs:
Soon after the discovery of chiropractic, Dr. Palmer started to teach his techniques to other doctors, and while many of them went on to successfully utilize chiropractic methods in the treatment of their patients, there were many who labeled Dr. Palmer a “crazy whackjob”, just like Columbus’ ignorant...
"I wanted my kids to know me"
Steve Jobs, on why he let someone into his life to write a biography:
Why had he been so eager, during close to 50 interviews and conversations over the course of two years, to open up so much for a book when he was usually so private? “I wanted my kids to know me,” he said. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”
I get to be with my...
Rest in Peace
Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs.
Mac OS X Lion -- Full Screen vs. Full Screen
Mac OS X Lion introduced system-wide support for displaying applications in a full-screen mode. It’s not a new idea, per se; plenty of other applications offered such a mode, and browsers such as Firefox and Explorer on Linux and Windows have provided full-screen modes.
It’s interesting to see how different applications — even within the same development house — have...
It's a (Facebook) Fight!
I like Facebook, but there are a lot of things about how people use it that burn me up. I’ve been meaning to write a post detailing those behaviors — hopefully I’ll get there. In the meantime, though, one of the most irksome problems with the social media site has caused me to drop an old acquaintance as a Facebook friend.1
This friend recently began selling candles from a...
Ihnatko: Don't Kill AppleScript
Andy Ihnatko frets for the future of AppleScript in Mac OS X:
The Mac must never, ever become a consumer product like the iPad, saddled with artificial limitations in the name of safety, reliability, and tidiness. If Apple refuses to give us the 21st-century equivalent of HyperCard, why can’t they at the very least treat AppleScript and Automator like the gems that they are?
I don’t...
September 2011
9 posts
Bank of America Fallout
Bank of America is going to charge users of debit cards $5 monthly to use their debit cards.
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who sponsored legislation that curbed banks’ ability to charge merchants for debit transactions, reacts:
It seems that old habits die hard for Bank of America. After years of raking in excess profits off an unfair and anti-competitive interchange system, Bank of...
Spongebob Ritalinpants
A study demonstrates executive dysfunction in four-year-olds who watch Nik’s Spongebob Squarepants:
Immediately after these nine-minute assignments [watching Spongebob Squarepants cartoons], the kids took mental function tests; those who had watched SpongeBob did measurably worse than the others.
Also: listening to heavy metal will make you worship Satan and kill your parents.
Who Ever Thought I'd Agree with Bob Ingle?
Bob Ingle criticizes the anti-bullying law passed in New Jersey last year: >There will be grades posted on a website. It’s a state mandate, but there is no additional money to carry it out.
What we’re doing is avoiding dealing with issues — instead of handling differences between kids, or a lack of sensitivity for one’s privacy rights, we’re slapping a bullying...
Life imitates...art? →
Wants and Needs
Jon Talton on Unions:
Commentators have noted rightly that many working Americans now vote against their economic interests. But they miss the larger point that most want to see America as a classless society where hard work and playing by the rule pays off.
Do most Americans want to see a country where five percent of their nation’s citizens make 37% of consumer purchases? Maybe...
Acer Aspire Ultrabook S3 hands-on - Engadget... →
Keyboard looks oddly familiar.
August 2011
17 posts
It's the inequality, stupid
Richard Rothstein on Steven Brill’s book in service of Education “Reformers”:
The possibility that teachers unions are far from the biggest problem facing disadvantaged students is not one Brill or DFER want to broach. You wouldn’t know from Class Warfare that students don’t do any better where teacher collective bargaining is prohibited. In non-union Texas, for...
Mac OS X Lion: Dictionary with Three-Finger... →
MacSparky:
Doing a three-finger double tap in Lion will yield a dictionary search for the selected term in Lion. It’s a sweet power-user perk, and harkens the iPad. I realized, on my extended vacation, that the iPad is a really great reading device, partly because of how well its dictionary feature works.
Link
Always Show the Bookmarks Bar in Safari...
Great tip from the forums at MacRumors:
View -> “Always Show Bookmarks Bar”