Crime in suburbia

From The Landmark police/fire reports:







I'm telling!
No, I'm telling!

Nichols and Stone may be closing

Nichols and Stone is one of the last chair manufacturers in Gardner and seems to be on its way out: Worcester Telegram & Gazette: Furniture maker teetering on brink

As Bill Clinton said, "There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what is right with America."

The Simpsons have been renewed for their 20th season

Mine is #8 on the list

The 10 Most Worthless College Majors

Don't do the crime if you can't do the rhyme

Middlebury VT hooligans sentenced to poetry classes after party at former Robert Frost home turns destructive: Frost house vandals learn about poetic justice - CNN.com

Here's what you missed on Feb 2, 1965

From the Gardner News, TV listings:

And, the Westminster selectmen remind us to keep Fido at home:

Things you wouldn't know unless you asked Calvin's dad.

Quotes: Ask Calvin's Dad

Q. How come old photographs are always black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?
A. Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It's just that the world was black and white then. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Q. But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn't artists have painted it that way?
A. Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
Q. But... But how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn't their paints have been shades of gray back then?
A. Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the '30s.
Q. So why didn't old black and white photos turn color too?
A. Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?

Why Obama has won the contest

We're angry, uneducated and unhealthy. Now what? (Scripting News)

"I want a President who welcomes the chaos and then figures out how we can be smart about the hand we've been dealt. Not one that whines and complains about how irrational the world is."

Be an American - Buy something

This pretty much sums up the Bush policies toward economic development, patriotism, and the war on terror. Just in time for your economic stimulus check. If you send these folks, The Something Store, they'll send you something. You won't know you'll get until you get it, but, hey, we're at war here.

I ... don't ... know ... what ... to ... say.

English Russia » The Sauna Truck:

Rev. Wright, Rev. Hagee, and the company we keep

Anyone who lives any kind of an interesting life is going to hang around with people who cause them trouble. This presidential race is no different. Just as the Clintons faced in the 90s, both senators Barack Obama and John McCain will have people from the fringes saying and doing things that makes it appear that the candidates are more radical than they are. My advice to myself on this is fairly simple: get over it.

The people of Utah keep re-electing Sen. Orrin Hatch, even though Hatch is good friends with Ted Kennedy. No one's going to confuse the two. The same with Alan Simpson and Robert Reich in their PBS discussion show, "The Long and Short of It." Harry Truman was elected to the Senate because he had the backing of Jim Pendergast's political and racketeering machine. Shunned for a time, Truman became one of the most independent and respected presidents.

Yeah, I know about dogs and fleas and all that. I also know that taking the measure of a person is a lot more complicated than just looking at the person's friends.

My mother was often curious about a person's ethnicity and occupation. She knew that these traits didn't fully define a person, but did tell something important. Someone might be a scientist who also practices meditation or a conservative Republican business owner who runs a food pantry. We only get to know the whole person by knowing the whole person and we only get to love a person by loving the whole person.

Dept. of Wiring

For a time in the 90s, I managed a quality assurance team in a small company that tested networked storage. We had lots of cables because we were testing dozens of systems connected to several servers. It was really easy to have the wiring get out of control. That's a particular problem when you're dealing with fiber-optic cable. These cables have threads of glass in the core. If the cable is looped too tightly or is crimped, the glass can break and the cable is useless. (This sample only shows a few fiber cables, the ones in orange.)



Dark Roasted Blend: Disturbing Wiring, Part 4