I probably won't be posting for a while. I'll be on a train soon riding across the West. Through snow this time. And I'll be back with pictures. (like last time.)
The city council where I live is thinking about implementing a "no car day" on the first Sunday of every month. It seems to have polarized folks on both sides of the issue, and the meeting last night almost turned into a brawl.
Thanks to a tip from the music underground, I went out of my way to find a copy of Röyksopp's Melody AM CD. It's not available in the US, so I ordered it from the friendly folks at Norman Records, Leeds, UK. It was worth the effort.
How much is your local TV news influenced by the people who buy ads? Too much, according this latest report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism: "A quarter of news directors in small markets, those under 376,000 households, report that they have been pressured to censor their news. One news director in the Rockies described the situation as 'a very large problem in this market.'" If the pressure from advertisers to alter content is this bad at the local level, I can only imagine how bad it is for national news where the sums of money and numbers of viewers at stake are much, much higher. And with the economy in a slump, television news will need to find ways to remain profitable and keep advertisers. [via sotd]
Something tells me you won't see this reported in the news.
I made a little bookmarklet to run any page you're looking at through an HTML validator. If you'd like to use it, drag this link:
Validate!
to your toolbar. Because we all need validation. It's just a shortcut to opening a separate window for the site, pasting the URL, hitting submit, etc. I've only tested it with IE5. Void where prohibited.
Validate!
to your toolbar. Because we all need validation. It's just a shortcut to opening a separate window for the site, pasting the URL, hitting submit, etc. I've only tested it with IE5. Void where prohibited.
Ever wonder how to make homemade pasta? I did. And I got a demo this weekend. It goes a little like this:
It was great!
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Dig out your copy of 1984 by George Orwell. Read it. Then read about the sweeping changes our current administration is putting into place. This is not American, and this is not temporary. We should all be protesting in the streets.
Sorry I've been neglecting you, gentle onfocus reader, I've been very busy.
Man, we really are living under a showery regime. It's been pouring the past two days. Reminds me of this description of the Northern California seasons from the book I'm reading by Le Guin: "...the turn from one season to the other is less transition than reversal. A few dark-grey, pouring days when the burnt and sodden brown hills brighten suddenly into the aching, piercing green of the new grass." My backyard turned from brown to green overnight this weekend.
Last night I was watching the local news weatherperson describe the weekend's outlook. She said we'd see a showery regime thanks to a new trough scenario. I wonder if the barrage of military speak in the media is bleeding into our everyday vocabulary. oops, I mean word arsenal. Maybe it's always been there and I'm just noticing it now.