What about scarecrow’s brain?!
From the NY Times, this article.
The bottom line: if you’ve got an email address for an .edu domain, you can purchase Office Ultimate for the low, low price of $60, which is great considering that the retail price of the software suite is ordinarily $690.
Or, you could just get OpenOffice, which is just as good (or better) and completely free.
Read it here.
My favorite part:
2. Don’t be an idealist!
Don’t chain yourself to a redwood tree. Instead, be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. No matter how much you cheat the IRS, you’ll still end up paying $100,000 in property, sales and excise taxes. That’s $100,000 to schools, sewers, roads, firefighters and police. You’ll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?
Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, “I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I’m a better person. And because I’m the better person, I have the right to boss you around.”
Get a pair of bolt cutters and liberate that tree.
Who does more for the redwoods and society anyway — the guy chained to a tree or the guy who founds the “Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company” and makes a million by turning redwoods into a tourist destination, a valuable resource that people will pay just to go look at?
So make your contribution by getting rich. Don’t be an idealist.
Continuing my recent post-binge with a movie review.
Bald people are bad. There are two of them in Iron Man and both of them turn out to be bad. Must be the shiny Afghan sun on their balding heads. Which brings us conveniently to Afghanistan, where the movie begins. Tony Stark, super-patriot, mega-rich, mega-intelligent, womanising and arrogant weapons maker has come to the beautiful Hindu Kush to demonstrate his latest super weapon. On the way back he is kidnapped by terrorists lead by a bald, moody looking type. They’re using his weapons and want him to build them some more; instead he builds a mecha suit to escape and blows them all to hell. Back in the USA he takes his company in a new direction, faces betrayal and builds a new perfected suit to fight the bad guys. Continue reading ‘Film Review: Iron Man’
For Star Wars fans, every little licensed trinket can be tempting… but not like this. I’ve seen remote controlled R2-D2s, but this one is the first one that I REALLY want to get. A remote controlled multimedia projector R2-D2?!?!?!?!?!? Wait until you see the video…R2-D2 Projector In Action
Lesbos islanders dispute gay name
News today of a law case started by Greek islanders from Lesbos (Lesbians) over the use of the word ‘Lesbian’ and the embarrassment they feel that this causes them globally. Continue reading ‘Who are the real Lesbians?’
Channel 4 today reveals that bail hostels - halfway houses for parole prisoners and those on bail - are being set up in average houses in average UK streets by a company named Clearspring. These hostels are unsupervised, unlike government run ones, and no planning permission is needed for the company to purchase the properties and set up the hostels. Neighbours report anti-social behaviour of various kinds. If you happen to live in the UK, heres a basic list of where these places are:
There’s one in my city, Bath.
The trouble is, these places are needed urgently by the British prison system. Our prisons are at capacity and many who are incarcerated temporarily turn out to be innocent at trial. Others are perhaps reformed by their time in prison, such as one man who was featured on Channel 4’s news this evening.
I have to admit that if there was one on my street I would feel uneasy but these guys are probably no worse than your average neighbours. People will complain about over crowded prisons, but them become all NIMBY about solutions. Clearspring should make their plans public, but in the end we need bail hostels.
For once, I post a fresh work, never seen before…
The Yellow Rose
A single yellow rose
to many, it is but a simple flower -
the forgotten cousin of the red rose
but its symbolism goes far deeper,
even these many years gone by
Simple, yet eloquent -
It speaks to the deeper bounds,
and the spontaneity of it all
It may not seem much,
but that yellow rose fights on -
brings memories to the forefront,
relives them anew, as if freshly made,
witnessed by a morning rose,
the look of instant joy,
contained, yet flowing, from
a single yellow rose.
04.29.08-1 glenn
Barack Obama’s ’spiritual mentor’ Rev. Jeremiah Wright held a press conference yesterday. The astonishing results can be found here. Some excerpts:
He griped that the government has never “confessed” to nor officially apologized for slavery - and he refused to back off his assertion that America invented the AIDS virus to kill black people.
“Based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” said Wright, who was provided bodyguards by Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, according to The Washington Post.
I could easily talk about Rev. Wright’s comments, but they’re so insane and racist, why bother? What strikes me most about Rev. Wright is his facial expressions, the way he speaks (”"You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it to never come back to you.”) and his hand gestures. He looks like a makeup-less clown.
Obama’s reaction will be to do nothing.
The full transcript from Fox.
Fresh Cracks...