http://wheatblog.com personal weblog of James "Wheatbread" Martin Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:26:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Arkansas, the state where my parents relocated from Texas when I was just entering junior high, passed a ridiculous ballot provision this November, sponsored by a Little Rock-based, right-wing NPO called the Family Council Action Committee (FCAC), an offshoot of the Family Council of Arkansas (which is, in turn, an ... http://wheatblog.com/2008/11/while-youre-banning-things/ I caught a lucky break yesterday, the evil domain squatters who had hijacked wheatsbassbook.com forgot to renew it, and I was able to swipe it back.  Here are the details: Though I started Wheat's BassBook back in 1997, for years it just lived at wheatdesign.com/bassbook. Relatively recently, I decided to register ... http://wheatblog.com/2008/11/back-where-you-belong/ Possible titles for this post that were considered but rejected:   "In your face, McCain":  Lacks class.  Sore winners are almost as insufferable as sore losers.  McCain's consession speach was, after all, surprisingly magnanimous.  And it would be unintentionally ironic to embrase the sort of partisan divisiveness that Obama himself has been ... http://wheatblog.com/2008/11/a-change-is-gonna-come/ Defective Yeti is starting up a new "National Novel Reading Month" (NaNoReMo) event.  The syllabus goes out on Monday.  The pick?  Lolita.  So, if you've never read it, or are intersted in reading it again, it should be fun.  I've read it--and loved it--but I'm not sure if I want ... http://wheatblog.com/2008/10/nanoremo08/ We drove up to Columbia, South Carolina this past Saturday and took Haden to the zoo.  It was Gina's birthday.  So it was a special occasion for both of them: I uploaded a few pics from the visit under the zoo tag.  And, of course, all of these are now part ... http://wheatblog.com/2008/10/haden-at-the-zoo/ Joe Biden did a fine job in the vice presidential debate last night.  His rhetorical prowess was impressive--something, in fact, to be studied--as was his superior grasp of foreign affairs and the details of his own, his running mate's, and his opponent's records.  Sarah Palin's repeated dodging and yes/no replies ... http://wheatblog.com/2008/10/joltin-joe/ I often find myself helping people crunch numbers in Excel that are generated by some other database system and exported as CSV.  These are generally log files of some sort.  The data gets exported as CSV and pulled into Excel.  Then you go about inserting formulas to get the various ... http://wheatblog.com/2008/10/excel-as-log-parser-value-is-your-friend/ A blast from the past, Negativland's "Time Zones," parts of which are forever stuck in my head.  I'd never before seen this rather excellent animation of it:   http://wheatblog.com/2008/09/negativeland-time-zones-1987/ This is the American Library Association's "Banned Books Week," an event they've held since 1982.  It just so happens that I'm teaching Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at the moment, one of the most-often challenged books in the canon of American literature (it was No. 5 on the list for ... http://wheatblog.com/2008/09/banned-books-week/ Most people don't understand science, even on the most basic level.  Put more specifically, most people don't understand scientific skepticism--the obligatory frame of mind from which one must view scientific research in order to benefit from it.  Maintaining doubt, if you're unused to it, hurts your head.  Certainty certainly feels better.  It ... http://wheatblog.com/2008/09/so-much-misinformation-so-little-time/