I'd be willing to bet that the solution we find is to give longer sentences so that they don't come back.
Oh, well. At least we're getting back to our roots, as it were. Though I suppose we were never as much of a criminal deportation solution for Britain as Australia was.
@ 07:02 PM CST [Link]
HA! and HA! again! (Yes, I know it's not a big deal and it was just by 0.48, but still ....)
@ 06:55 PM CST [Link]
Actually, the first line of the article sounds a lot like Florence King on women, somehow.
@ 06:36 PM CST [Link]
In 2001?! I mean, I realize that yes, they do mostly do European fairy tales and cuddly anthropomorphic stuff, but still .....
@ 06:23 PM CST [Link]
I'll bet there were several old lexicographers who dropped dead when this happened. And a few dead ones who are just whirring away in their graves ....
@ 06:20 PM CST [Link]
Yes, that's right! I have joined the few, the proud, the CSS'd! Mostly in an effort to teach myself CSS, but also because the log has had the same interface since it shifted to Greymatter, I think. How can I call myself a weblogger if I don't change the look at least every other month!? (Well, actually, I don't, but that's beside the point.)
At first, I thought I'd do something thrilling, something zippy, something with color and verve and all sorts of fun stuff!
And then I got a little practice at this.
And then I looked at my stats.
And then I realized that (1) making something zippy and thrilling and colorful -- and insert whatever the proper form of "verve" is for this sentence (vervacious?) -- would give me more gray hairs than I already have. And it would still break in either Netscape 6, Mozilla or Opera; (2) I also realized that for reasons I wottest not, I have an amazingly steady number of Netscape Communicator 4.X users -- the percentage has never dropped below 28%, and this past week has stayed above 50%. I didn't want to do something that would break badly in Netscape. But mostly, I just wanted to finish the damned thing sometime with my natural life span. Thus, something simple with lotsa boxes. (But, of course, you can't see its purple-bordered goodness in NS4.)
Mind, the archives log did break in NS4, but I don't care all that much about that. (Though I wish I understood why NS4 thinks the proper font size for that page is MONSTER.) It's also not terribly happy in Opera, but it's liveable. The only truly puzzling thing at this point is that for some odd reason, Greymatter has taken to throwing off 500 Server Errors for no apparent reason. It actually does what I tell it to do, but then gives me an error, which it's never done before. Ah, well. As long as things happen the right way, I don't much care.
And, as a happy side effect, I wound up with an extra new template for the journal -- it seems that you can get DIVs to wrap around each other in the most interesting ways sometimes ...
5:01pm, amended: Of course, if I'd known how much more difficult it was going to be to make it really REALLY work after I'd posted this entry, I'd'a stood in bed. Or at least left it alone.
5:05pm, amendment the second: On the other hand, somehow -- and I've really absolutely no idea how -- I've now got a three-column layout that actually works in both Netscape 4.7 and IE. On the other hand, it actually bites quite a lot of ass in Opera 5 (and not in the good way, no) and Mozilla and Netscape 6 -- the bottom part does, anyway. For some reason, it wants to set the text outside the actual DIV statement for the brown part down there. Eh. Figure it out later. For now, the current layout should actually work for 95% of the people who hit this site. I think.
5:16pm, amendment the third: Fixed! Woo-hoo!
@ 02:27 PM CST [Link]
A RADICAL rethink of Church [of England] teaching on homosexuality that declares it to be "divinely ordered" is revealed this week in a catechism commissioned by the Archbishop of York. [...] "Homosexuality," says the catechism, "may well not be a condition to be regretted but to have divinely ordered and positive qualities." It continues: "Homosexual Christian believers should be encouraged to find in their sexual preferences such elements of moral beauty as may enhance their general understanding of Christ's calling."
And won't that put the cat among the Anglican pigeons?
@ 05:14 PM CST [Link]
Oh. My. It seems that Jonny Quest's father and Race Bannon really WERE having a relationship. Good HEAVENS! (Um ... UnaBooBoo? No. Please.)
At least it'll be something besides that infernal Dragonball Z.
@ 06:22 PM CST [Link]
Given the facts as presented by this paper, it almost sounds like the kid would be better off being raised by someone else completely. (What sane judge would tell a wife that she had to raise the mistress' child? I understand why the father would ask -- and I assume that he's talked to his wife about it -- but still, that just sounds like a gruesome situation.)
@ 06:17 PM CST [Link]
World Naturism Day was last week. Who knew? (Naked cleaning ladies? A status symbol? How ... odd.) And Nude Recreation Week in North America is July 9-15.
@ 05:55 PM CST [Link]
First Paris, now Berlin. I figure Rome and the Lord Mayor of London ought to be next. Maybe throw Madrid in there just for kicks.
@ 05:44 PM CST [Link]
I've heard of giving your all for one thing or another, but this is ridiculous!
@ 05:31 PM CST [Link]
What the hell is WITH this man? Who the hell does he think he IS? Does he think he's just got a deep suntan? I guarantee that nobody else thinks that.
I love the California Republican Party's reason for disliking the initiative, though. It's not that they disagree; they just think it'll make them look ... well, like they actually are. When you're trying to woo minority voters by saying, "No, really, we're the kinder, gentler party now! Buchanan ran away! Ignore the right wing of the party, really!" ... well, then, something that easily appears to be yet another minority bashing law really doesn't fit into the plans, does it?
That said, I expect that even if the initiative passes (and make no mistake, if it gets on the ballot, it will pass), it will wind up being superseded by federal government requirements in almost all areas. The feds seldom accept the excuse, "We don't collect that information" as a reason for not providing it.
@ 02:43 PM CST [Link]
You know, I hadn't planned on putting anything about the latest execution in here. Not one solitary thing. After all, there wasn't much I could say about it, really. And then, while cleaning up my bookmarks file, I ran across this journal entry from abroad. The parts about the execution are interesting enough, I suppose, but what was more interesting to me was his view on how the US is constructed, how its governmental philosophy operates. I must admit, I hadn't thought of how it could be viewed in this particular way, but then, I live here. You don't think about air until it's not there, after all, and there are some ways in which you may not be able to see your home because it's all around and you take it for granted.
@ 12:01 PM CST [Link]
Scalia, Thomas, Souter, Ginzburg and Breyer. (NY Times, registration required.)
Well, that has to be one of the weirdest majorities on a case in recent years. Especially on a search-and-seizure case; Scalia and Thomas seldom rule in favor of the accused against the police. Stevens seldom rules against the accused in this type of case. What a very odd coalition. (And O'Connor on the losing end, for once, in a 5-4 decision; very odd indeed.)
@ 10:52 AM CST [Link]
I can't understand how it's a promising sign that more students are aware of their school's sexual harassment policy if it hasn't made any difference in behavior over the past seven years.
@ 10:44 AM CST [Link]
It'll be interesting to see if the more recently purchased bits of plastic.com can pull themselves out of this mess, but I expect it's most likely that all of the Automatic Media titles have gone down the tubes. Alas.
@ 10:30 AM CST [Link]
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!