I have traveled by air about six times in the post-9/11 world. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials have always claimed that, in the event they physically open and examine your checked luggage, a note will be left. Well, at least two of those six times I’ve flown, my stuff arrived clearly-tampered-with but sans-note. The first time (heading to our honeymoon), TSA cheerfully ripped off the hangar-holder of my brand new suitcase rather than . . . you know . . . opening it to remove my clothes. But upon arriving home from travel last week, what did I find? The note. They do exist!
Unmuzzling High School Journalists
When I was a high school journalist, I raised the ire of an assistant principal at my school (John Eggleston) and managed to get myself muzzled—so this op-ed by Richard Just in the Washington Post caught my attention. Unfortunately, I do have to agree with the Supreme Court’s ruling in 1988. Since school papers are published by the school, the school has the right to control what is printed. They own it, they publish it, they have a right to control it—just as News Corp. has a right to control the New York Post, which they publish. But, legal or not, schools should use discretion. They are, after all, supposed to teach. How can a student learn to be a journalist if they are not allowed to act like journalists and ask tough questions?
- Unmuzzling High School Journalists (Washington Post, free registration may be required).
Fixing the Tribute’s Deficiency
After fixing the Civic’s deficiency back in August, it was time to fix the Tribute’s. Our Mazda Tribute compact SUV—despite some early mechanical problems right after we bought it—has been serving us quite well. But its factory stereo was pretty bad. First off, it was in bad condition. It was missing a button and the LCD would intermittently go all garbled on me. Secondly, it was a factory stereo—it had no audio-in or iPod connection and put out medocre sound. Since I’m now playing around with car repair on my own, I figured that replacing the stereo would be another fun project.
Looking for a New Host (not owned by Endurance International)
This site (and Melissa’s site, and Intersanity’s site) have all been hosted by PowWeb since May 2004. I switched to PowWeb from my previous hosting provider—Hypermart—after they were bought out by Endurance International, moved my sites to a new platform, and changed the available features without warning. Their changes effectiely shut down my website, and it was less work to move to PowWeb than to re-architect the site so it could stay on Hypermart. PowWeb used to be great, and I happily recommended it to others whenever asked. But things changed in 2006 when—cue the broken record—the company was also bought-out by Endurance International.
Year of Global Cooling
Here’s the truth about climate change: The nominal 0.7 degree Celsius increase in mean temperature over the last fifty-or-so years is, at best, inconclusive. The average volume and severity of hurricanes hasn’t gotten worse, despite predictions to the contrary. Much of the world has actually been trending cooler for the last few years. I’m a fan of being eco-friendly, and I’ll be among the first in line to buy an affordable fuel cell or electric car once a usable refueling infrastructure is in place, but the evidence points to Al Gore’s ‘inconvenient truth’—for which he ludicrously won a Nobel Peace Prize—being neither particularly inconvenient nor true.
- Year of Global Cooling (Washington Times) [link no longer available].
- Related: NASA Climate Data Miscalculated . . . Badly.
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.