At M’s parent-teacher interview yesterday we asked about how they teach kids to form letters, because M does some very odd things when she prints. “Oh, we don’t teach that anymore,” said her (absolutely wonderful) teacher, “Any which way they get the letters on the page legibly is fine.” And we all made a few […]
Category: Rants
Not fair. Not fair at all.
I just found out that a women who used to be on a listserv with me has died at the age of 56. She was due to retire this upcoming spring. As long as I knew her she was talking about when she’d retire, how much she was looking forward to it, all the things […]
Seven reasons why the world is a bad place
I burned my hand nastily this morning — left hand, of course; whoever burns their non-dominant hand? — and I can’t even blame anyone. It was just a stupid non-preventable accident (lid fell off the kettle [for the first time ever] while I was making coffee [not even real coffee! Just my usual pathetic decaf!] […]
Mirror check: zits? nosehair? spinach in teeth? assholishness?
Quotation of the Day for August 29, 2007 “I was looking at the moon last night,” Bodo said. “You can see it very well from my cell. I was looking and I thought, one day there will be people there and they will have jails there, because they will have arseholes on the moon. Wherever […]
Public service announcement
If you are a spammer who likes to use any of my domains as spoofed addresses for your nasty little missives, causing me to have to pick my real email out of thousands of your horrid little bounce messages, I had better not ever find out where you live, because if I do I will […]
Your password will expire in 11 days. Change it now?
A nice passage from the middle of a long (and recommended) Boxes and Arrows post: A good password is one that cannot be guessed. And there within lies the problem. What is difficult to guess is most likely difficult to remember. This problem is multiplied when you have many applications that require authentication, each with […]
Sleepy music for kids (and big people too)
Violet mentioned these lullaby versions of rock songs, which made me yelp and leap back in horror. Eeeek! Elevatorized versions of good music! Run away, run away! I am a huge fan of bizarre cover versions of things — Ozzy Osbourne doing “Staying Alive,” a cabaret version of “Darling Nikki,” Laibach doing “Sympathy for the […]
Cringe worthy
Cringe worthy Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease. Horrid little decals intended for bedroom doors. Found at Toys R Gender Apartheid, naturally. Who thinks this stuff up?
…And you know your day is going to suck
In the first five minutes of an all-day meeting: We’ll be doing lots of work with the flipcharts! says the facilitator. Who then shows Ford’s vision statement as a shining example of its kind. To a roomful of health promoters. And you think, only 415 minutes left to go…
Scientific illiteracy, pt. 4003
There’s been a lot of coverage of the Bristol University study on rating various drugs’ potential for harm (BugMeNot will get you in). The intent of the piece was to develop a more objective rating scale — NOT to compare various drugs directly. A comparison of fourteen drugs was done by two different groups as […]
Fie on large, brainless corporations
From User Friendly: Reminds me of this: which is spoofing this ad: Why should we pay to watch ads in already-expensive products? Or be forced to sit through nasty warnings about piracy on DVDs that, since we’re seeing the warning, clearly aren’t pirated? Unskippable ads in children’s DVDs drive me crazy too. Why go to […]
I am large, I contain multitudes
(Update: Ivor Tossell responded to my rather ill-mannered rant with a very gracious note, thus disproving the hypothesis that the Internet exists solely so we can all call each other asshats, and adding strength to the hypothesis that at this point Google runs the world. The conversation will continue.) This article in the Globe: Who […]
Book #27: Biscuit Finds a Friend
By Alyssa Satin Capucilli (Author), Pat Schories (Illustrator) D fell asleep on the couch this afternoon. M wanted to make everything all perfect for him, so she went down and very sweetly covered him up with her special quilt, put some books next to him for when he woke up, turned off the light, closed […]
Choice
This is a US campaign, but I’ll leave out the Bush-directed stuff and join in anyway. Choice of all kinds is critical to our free existence as adults. I do not think I would have had an abortion if I had become pregnant accidentally. My biological clock went off when I was about 18, so […]
Book #11 – Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt with Stephen J. Dubner I wasn’t terribly impressed with this book. But then, economics of any sort rarely impresses me; what’s the use of something with next-to-no predictive value? Economists are forever assuming away anything that doesn’t work with their theories. As a scientist I found the whole subject appalling when […]
Book #4 – Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace
by Dale Spender I’m not going to link this one. I don’t actually like it. Amazon does carry it, though, if you feel inclined to pick it up. Dale Spender’s words from this book have been quoted widely in the ten years since its release. It seems to be the go-to resource for anyone looking […]
Camel, meet straw
I’ve crossed from vague dissatisfaction into active dislike of our current daycare. Objectively speaking, they’re OK. They keep the kids safe and all that stuff. The location is good and the food is good and everyone’s ECE qualified and yadayadablahblahblah. But my kid has been there for a year and four months, and in that […]
King Google
The BBC reports that the top Google search terms this year were Bebo Myspace …which is kind of peculiar, if you think about it a moment. Both Bebo and Myspace have blindingly obvious URLs, so instead of typing into a Google search box you could type into the address bar directly (you could even leave […]
Leah is wrong, as usual
Why online should be off limits in the bedroom And on and on it goes. Wherever you find a household with wireless technology, you will more than likely find a man who is trying to bring a laptop into bed and a woman who is trying to prevent him from doing it. One girlfriend of […]
Give that dead horse a good poke!
The CBC is reporting that the Conservatives will introduce a motion to reopen the issue of same-sex marriage. Apparently in their world that horse ain’t dead, it’s just resting. I am not gay. Not even “questioning”. But if I had to marry either another woman or a member of Stephen Harper’s government, the Tory wouldn’t […]