I disagree with a lot of what Lindsay Beyerstein writes, but she's still one of the most thoughtful people on my blogroll. However, she gets a bit goofy when it comes to labor unions. Consider yesterday's post about the Employee Free Choice Act: Management groups object to majority signup (aka "card check") for the simple reason that it would make it easier for workers to have … [Read more...] about EFCA and Secret Ballots
Stuck In Computer Limbo
A couple of weeks ago, my main computer started crashing. Sometimes Windows would just hang, not responding to the keyboard or mouse, and sometimes I'd walk in to find it sitting there displaying the Blue Screen of Death. This happened two or three times a day. I'm running a pair of Seagate Barracuda 500GB hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration. This means that the hard drive … [Read more...] about Stuck In Computer Limbo
Fatal Distraction
I just read a story in the Washington Post that's going to stay with me a long, long time. It's by Gene Weingarten, it's brilliantly written, and it will break your heart. You have been warned. The story is about people who have accidentally left their babies in their cars in the heat, with fatal results. I could write thousands of words about the issues touched on in the … [Read more...] about Fatal Distraction
Pluto and the Final Stage of Grief
I'll tell you, I didn't have much Love for the Pluto haters. But I've come to accept the truth of it. Pluto crosses the orbit of Neptune, it's tilted out of the ecliptic, there's other crap all around it, and it's small---almost as small as its moon, which doesn't even orbit a point inside Pluto. It's a rock. Just like all the other outer-system dwarf planets: Haumea, Makemake, … [Read more...] about Pluto and the Final Stage of Grief
“What if everyone whose account was canceled sued Google?”
Google offers some fantastic services to users of the internet, but they're so big that we're all small potatos to them, which is probably why they seem to avoid giving one-on-one customer service whenever possible. So when Aaron Greenspan of Think Computer Corporation had trouble getting anyone at Google to explain why they cancelled his AdSense account, still owing him $721, … [Read more...] about “What if everyone whose account was canceled sued Google?”