Just found this interesting tidbit from the Washington Post:
Arkansas is one of half a dozen states that still exclude non-believers from public office. Article 19 Section 1 of the 1874 Arkansas Constitution states that “No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor [...]

Posted in Religion, Society 4 Comments »

I’ve been hearing radio ads for gold for some time now.  The basic premise and message is something like
The dollar is going down the tubes.  It’s lost 40% of its value in the last few years, and we’ll be facing massive inflation soon.  You need to own GOLD!  Buy our GOLD COINS NOW!
What do [...]

Posted in Finance, Social, Society 3 Comments »

Just read a piece from Clay Shirky on micropayments.  He makes a couple of good observations, but seems to fail on this one:
People are not paying for music on ITMS because we have decided that fee-per-track is the model we prefer, but because there is no market in which commercial alternatives can be explored.
I think [...]

Posted in Business, Society, Web 2 Comments »

Was reading a couple of blog posts on music piracy recently, and the same tired old threads kept coming up. “Music tracks are just advertisements for the artist - they should make their money selling T-shirts and tickets to live shows.”
I’ve contributed this rebuttal, as have others - “what about music that can’t be [...]

Posted in General, Music, Society 5 Comments »

Was talking with my brother today and got on the subject of tipping (apparently it was on NPR today). We discussed the lousy experience we sometimes get, and there’s no way to indicate that in any way that anyone will notice. I’d like to suggest restaurants start “line-item tipping”.
When you come to leave [...]

Posted in Family, General, Ideas, Society 3 Comments »

Talking with my friend Shawn Hartsock the other day, and we got to talking about the state of software, and some of the history of software development.  He’s a big nerd on this subject, and considers ‘computing’ to go back hundreds (or thousands!) of years.  Yes, one can make that argument, but I when I [...]

Posted in Development, PHP, Society, Software, Web No Comments »

I recently read that the NC legislature did not pass an ‘anti-bullying’ bill recently introduced.  The full text is here.  A blogger over here asserts that this was defeated because of this language:
Bullying or harassing behavior includes, but is not limited to, acts reasonably perceived as being motivated by any actual or perceived characteristic, such [...]

Posted in Society No Comments »

Had a decent amount of driving again in the last couple weeks:
419.6 miles - 12.33 gallons to fill up (@ $3.929 - not over the $4 some of you are paying, but still painful!)
That’s 34.03 mpg for the last fill up.  I had some highway driving, which seems to really help kick it up past [...]

Posted in Personal, Society 3 Comments »

ReadWriteWeb had a thought-provoking article up today about what the future IT worker would look like.  More specifically, what sorts of skills this person would need to have to be successful.  Not surprisingly, the recommendation was, in a nutshell, the ability to communicate with other members of the business on their terms.  I don’t think [...]

Posted in Business, Society, Software, Web No Comments »

I currently don’t drive much, so when I do I tend to be more aware of others’ driving habits than I used to be.  Maybe it’s the speeding tickets I’ve had over the years, or maybe I’m just getting old, but I don’t tend to drive very fast anymore.  If anything my wife thinks I [...]

Posted in Energy, General, Society 6 Comments »