There seems to be two opinion camps with regard to this Gates affair.

1. Racial: Gates was arrested because he was black - a white person in similar circumstances would not have been arrested. This speaks to the racism in this country.

2. Authoritarian: Gates was not arrested because he was black - he was arrested because he talked back to the police, as well he should be. People who don't respect the authority of the police deserve whats coming to them.

My perspective falls into a third column:

3. Gates was not arrested because he was black - he was arrested because he talked back to the police. The police ought to understand that someone whose house has been broken into is going to be in an agitated state, particularly if they are confronted with an officer of the law who at least initially thinks they might be the criminals who did the break-in.

I agree with Obama's observation that:

The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.

This was petty muscle flexing on the part of the officers. This is not a racial issue. This sort of unnecessary exercise of power by government officials is an everyday problem that occurs in all kinds of different contexts.

I don't understand why none of the public commentary on this issue that I've seen takes this position. Its interesting to see the President speak out on something like this, but inevitably the policy responses will be targeted at solving the wrong problem.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Black scholar arrest angers Obama

Can you speak Lest-oh?
Do you know your cob from your cob on or your cardi from your okey? Check out our Leicester dictionary and send in your own contributions.

English as spoken on the council estates of my home town

BBC - Leicester - Voices 2005 - Can you speak Lest-oh?

... maybe

In ur quantum box

Frank McCourt, author of best-seller Angela's Ashes, has died of cancer in a New York hospice.

RIP

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Best-selling author McCourt dies

hehehe

Piled Higher and Deeper

So — as post-1960s cliché decreed — I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I’d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.

The Joy of Less - Happy Days Blog - NYTimes.com

“It has been a long time since any of us boys have seen a woman, so we are writing to you in hopes that you’ll help us out of our situation,” Cpl. Frank J. Gizych lamented in a letter posted from the fog-shrouded Aleutian Islands. “Since we know that it’s impossible to see a woman in the flesh, we would appreciate it very much if you could send us a photo of yourself.”

It was July 1944, and America was at war. From bases and battlefields in Europe and on Pacific islands, soldiers, sailors and airmen were sending streams of letters to their favorite actresses in Hollywood, asking for pinup photos and commenting on life on the front lines.

Almost all of that mail, which studios usually answered with a glossy shot showing the star in a saucy pose, has been lost. But the actress Donna Reed, later famous for her roles as Mary Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the middle-class housewife Donna Stone on “The Donna Reed Show” and who won an Oscar for “From Here to Eternity,” saved some of the correspondence. After nearly 65 years in a shoebox inside an old trunk long stored in the garage of her home in Beverly Hills, Calif., the letters have at last been read and made public by the actress’s children. Ms. Reed died in 1986 at age 64.

Dear Donna - A Pinup So Swell She Kept G.I. Mail - NYTimes.com

The Caitlin Rhododendron is a beautiful pink scented rhododendron that was created by Dr. Jim Marcellus through the crossing of the Fortune and Hummingbird Rhododendrons, and named after his granddaughter.

Its my great uncle Jim who had a major influence in my interest in science at an early age - this is just one of many reasons:) He has made a new flower - and it is soooo beautiful!

Official Flower

Your Life Ambition

janelane wrote:

Acidus wrote:

So there's your tweet from your sweet, Lance Armstrong. He's watching the Belgium cycling race La Fleche Wallone. Does receiving that information make you feel like you're part of something? And if so, what? And why?

Am I sounding negative? Even petty? Sue me. Everybody has a limit, and I've reached mine with Twitter, which isn't just the world's fastest-growing social networking tool. It's a religion, filling the hole in regular people's regular lives.

Don't look at me like that. I'm not the neighborhood crank, kicking you kids off my lawn. I've embraced the blogging revolution, bookmarking multiple sites and visiting them every day. More than 20 million Americans write a blog, many of them for audiences approaching zero. Less than 9 percent of the blogging public makes any money at all, and only 2 out of every 100 bloggers support themselves fully. But still 20 million people do it. And I get that. It's personal expression. It's art. Doesn't matter whether it's done well or not. Art is art. So I get blogging.

Facebook and MySpace? I don't get that, unless it's for dating purposes. Horniness, I understand. The need to tell people what you're doing at various junctures of the day? And to read what other people are doing? Gregg is folding clothes ... I don't understand. And I never will. My life shouldn't be that interesting to you, and your life damn sure isn't that interesting to me.

The only thing more inane than Twitter is people blogging about hating it. Even the people that use Twitter already know how stupid it is. Seriously, how much longer can it stay cool if Barbara Walters and CNN are talking about it?

Just bide your time a little more and then we'll be on to the next lame fad and on and on into eternity. :-)

-janelane

You're all using it wrong.

Sure, using it to report your banal daily activities is shallow. That's not to say it's useless, because I've managed to run into people that I hardly ever see, or get interesting topical and CONTEXTUALLY relevant information that I probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise. In a lot of ways, this usage is like the Agents fad from the early dot com days, but instead of intelligent bots, it's your social network doing the work for you.

A good friend described it this way: Facebook is for the people you know. Twitter is for the people you want to know. If you're an old dog internet person, then you already know the power of connecting online. You got access to people on IRC or via email listservs back in the day that you'd never have gotten any other way. Those people became colleagues, employers, friends, or lovers in the real world. Twitter is more of the same. It allows you to connect with people that you ordinarily wouldn't have. Particularly about a specific topic or event.

I didn't get this eit... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

RE: 'This Twitter thing is annoying as hell' -- Gregg Doyel at 6:01 p.m. - CBSSports.com News, Fantasy, Video