Archive for September 18th, 2003

BloggerCon Proposed Presenters – B.S.

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glasscastle - September 18, 2003 @ 6:35 pm · ESL Links

Here is the proposed lineup for the four sessions of Blogging 101 Beginners Sessions (B.S.), to be given Day 2 of BloggerCon. Note that each of the invited bloggers uses different tools and platforms, so that atendees can chose the session that will help them the most. Warning! None of these guys has confirmed yet, so there are no money-back guarentees that they will all be there.

Check out the proposed lineup

Nut Protests Student Loans

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glasscastle - September 18, 2003 @ 1:37 pm · ESL Links

Mark McGowan, a 37-year-old
artist, arrives outside 10 Downing Street, in London Friday Sept. 12,
2003. McGowan protesting against student debt, completed the bizarre
stunt Friday of rolling a nut seven miles to Downing Street using only
his nose. Crawling on his hands and knees, McGowan nudged the nut up
the steps to the famous black door of Number 10. He began his journey
at Goldsmiths College in south east London on September 1, and has covered
around three-quarters of a mile per day, working in eight-hour bursts.
McGowan handed the nut over to Number 10, along with a letter asking
Prime Minister Tony Blair to accept it as payment for his student debt.

I would gladly trade one of my nuts for a blanket amnesty for my own student
debt. They could probably put it to better use than I

from AP

Do as we say, Not as we do

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glasscastle - September 18, 2003 @ 12:45 pm · ESL Links

What should we think of a developing country that protected its young industries with high tariffs, stole technologies from established nations, used government aid to develop manufacturing and farming, limited foreign ownership of land, devalued its money in defiance of international wishes, imposed currency controls, and even allowed secessionist provinces to default on foreign debt? The country would probably be drummed out of the World Trade Organization and blacklisted by the International Monetary Fund. Well, the country in question is the United States of America.

Especially egregious is the agricultural policy which protects subsidized US farmers from foreign competition, forces Americans to pay artificially high produce prices, and makes a cynical sham of our posturing on free trade and open borders.

A nicely written Op-ed piece by Robert Knutter in the Boston Globe

Turnaround is Fair Play

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glasscastle - September 18, 2003 @ 12:56 am · ESL Links

Over
the years, I have tried a variety of brushoff techniques with those pesky
telemarketers. For a long while I used five simple syllables: "No hablo
Ingles", but then the Spanish-language calls started coming in as well.
Abusive venting can be a therapuetic outlet for some, but I just don’t
feel comfortable using that kind of language on the phone, afraid perhaps,
after all these
years, that my parents are listening in on another extension.

Sometimes I use lame-ohs like "I’m just housesitting" or "they moved
away." For a long time I kept a little tape recorder with the 60-second
scream from Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe Eugene” looping around over and over next to the phone.
Nowadays, when I am in a bad mood or feeling rude I just hang up, but
lately I have
been
having
a
lot of
success
with
the
following
line:

"Gee, I’m kinda busy right now, but if you don’t mind giving me your
home phone number I would be happy to call you back sometime when you
aren’t
at
work and I am." I must’ve used that over a hundred times so far, and
only two of the telemetiches gave me their "home" numbers – the rest
hurriedly hung up, suspecting madness or some sort of reverse sting.
Both numbers, of course, were fake.

The Great Dave Barry has gone me one better.  He printed the home
and office numbers of several major telemarketers, not coincidentally
those who had been calling his home, in his column
of August 31, which
appears in hundreds of papers.  Thats when things got interesting.

Dave Barry’s Aug 31 column

article from AP about the furor since