One liner

A guy from West Virginia passed away and left his entire estate to his beloved widow, but she can't touch it 'til she's 14.

Cortland County 2003 Election final results summary

"Last Updated: Nov 20 10:18

Results listed are preliminary, contact Cortland County Board of Elections for Official Results, (607) 753-5032."

I'll try to get a full report done before the big server switch. Edinger holds on in Preble, by 5. The county legislature is now 13 Republicans, 5 Democrats and one tie to be decided later.

Hang Time

Microsoft news site prepared using Macs (MSNBC)

" All about the em-dash, the en-dash and the impenetrable hyphen"

This is a rather funny and frivolous letter about nothing much... BUT it intrigued me because I'm a Mac user since 1984. I have my first Mac, a 128K Mac that I bought in 1984. But that aside I learned something new and that is the 'dash'. A dash is different from a hyphen.

This is a hyphen - and this is a dash —

MSNBC uses the dash in all their articles and the only way, according to the letter that you can create a dash is with a Mac because the PC does not have a dash on its keyboard and Macs do. They do? I looked all over my keyboard and didn't find the dash so I played around and found it. Type shift-option-hyphen and you get the dash. Apparently this doesn't work on a PC and thus the author claims that MSNBC has to use Macs to create their website. Now that I know how to make a dash you'll be seeing more of it. —Lucky you.—

Stop Static - a safety campaign

"In January of 2000 the Petroleum Equipment Institute began a process of documenting automotive refueling fires. This was prompted by a sharp increase of incidents that could not be attributed to a running engine or cigarette smoking, the leading known causes of such fires.

To date over 150 refueling fires have been documented that appear to be caused by a discharge of static electricity."

IRAQ THE MODEL

"YOU OWE US AN APOLOGY"

This is a new blog from an Iraqi with just three posts so far, but it will open you eyes if you take off your blinders and open your heart if you have the courage to look. Or you can ignore it and look the other way.

Yahoo! News - Senate Panel Eyes Justice Dept. Leak Probe

"The Oct. 27 memo from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith provided details of intelligence linking Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and the toppled Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein"

Polls are easy to understand.

40% of the people are on one side and 40% are on the other. The 20% in the middle can't make up their minds and bounce from one side to the other. If a president is over 50% he is doing great, over 60% and he is eating the other guys lunch. The job of the loyal opposition is to try to keep the numbers as near to 50% as possible. When they are near 60% the loyal opposition has little to lose so they try anything to see what sticks. The only real variable for any president is that 20% in the middle. To really see how an issue or any political leader is doing just take the poll number and subtract 40 and multiply the remainder by 5. That will give you a real number. For example: Say a president has a poll rating of 57%. Subtract 40 and you get 17. Multiply by 5 and you get 85%. That means that in this example the president has 85% of all the votes that are gettable. That's why the republicans in the senate did not remove Clinton after he was impeached. His poll numbers were 60% or so and they knew if they removed him they would be themselves removed come election day. But you already knew that didn't you?

Changes to the site so far...

Permalink: following the date and time of the post. This is a link to that particular post. It will bring up the page that post is on and go to it. Useful if you want to email the link of a particular post. More useful for posts that have been archived. This is a permanent link, thus the name and will not change.

Update: I changed the archive frequency from monthly to weekly. If you want to print a post without wasting paper you would click on the Permalink and print just that weeks posts. That works for current posts too. I'm looking for a way to have just one post appear when you click on a Permalink but haven't found it so far.

Other changes so far are just cosmetic.

Case Closed

"OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD."

Apple cluster third in new supercomputer ranking

"A computer cluster consisting of 1,100 Apple Computer Inc. Power Mac G5 desktops that were purchased online and connected together in a matter of weeks by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is currently the third fastest computer in the world"