There’s a great article on the Washington Post opinion page today by Nick Rabkin and Robin Redmond about something I’ve been saying for a long time: the way to improve schools is not to cut back, dumb-down, or ‘stick to the basics.’ No, the way to improve schools is to actually challenge the students and to keep things interesting!
Quick Car Update
Just a quick update on the car:
I had it towed to Darcars Chrysler of Fairfax on Tuesday afternoon, they looked at it early on Wednesday and told me that the problem was a pair of bad Transmission Speed Input/Output Sensors. The bizarre “low gear, no speedometer” symptom was the transmission’s failsafe mode that it goes into when it gets bad or irregular data from the sensors.
Six Apart buys LiveJournal
LiveJournal announced yesterday that it has been purchased by Six Apart. Six Apart is best known for being the creators of the Movable Type content management/blogging system and the TypePad blog service.
Door Contest; Car Trouble
I forgot to mention that Mike and I won the Plexus Holiday Door Decorating Contest in the Technology category (this was all the week before Christmas). We took that old IBM ThinkPad I have (Dinky Thinkum) and hung him up with heavy-duty twine, two wreath holders, and some stabilizing velcro.
LiveJournal Feed Working; RSS Fix for Firefox; Photos Up
The Off on a Tangent LiveJournal feed is working again. If you are a LiveJournal user, just add “lifenewsblog” to your friends list.
Additionally, the site RSS feed has been properly flagged so that RSS-aware browsers (like Mozilla Firefox, the preferred browser for Windows and Linux users) will know the feed is there. This makes it an easier process to add the Off on a Tangent feed to live bookmarks and RSS aggregators so you can be among the first to know when new content is available!
Also, the Photos section (under ‘Random’) is now populated with most of what was on the old site.
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.