Equal rights for women in Iraq

The US Ambassador to Iraq has urged the writers of Iraqi constitution to include a guaranty of equal rights for women.

This got me to thinking. How many countries in the world guaranty equal rights for women? The US doesn’t (remember the ERA?).

Which, of course, leads to another question.

Of the rights guaranteed by our Bill of Rights, how many are shared by other countries? I know that the UK and Canada don’t have a free press. Both countries have laws (beyond libel laws) restricting what can be printed. I believe that Japan (thanks to the US) does have a free press, at least in theory.

Hmmm. Interesting. I just checked. Japan, at least, does guaranty equal rights for women. Once again, thanks to the good ole US of A...

8/4/2005 1:54:31 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  

Michale Barone has a blog

Instapundit.com has reported that Michael Barone now has a blog. This is great news to me; I have a lot of respect for Mr. Barone. Of course, I’d be happier and have more respect if his blog:

1. had an RSS feed (join the 21st century, Mike!)

2. allowed comments

So, I’d like to pass on my impressions to Mr. Barone, in hopes of improving his site, but I don’t even have an e-mail address for him. I guess he’ll just have to do without my insightful views.

 

Update:

It turns out that Mr. Barone has his own Web Site, that includes his e-mail address (isn't Google wonderful?). I've passed on my comments.

8/4/2005 9:38:21 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

The New Jews?

Via Instapundit.com, I found this interesting blog on immigration and terrorism. Among other things, the article pointed to talks about the treatment that Muslim immigrants receive throughout continental Europe. It seems to me that, in a way, Muslims are becoming the new “Jews” of Europe: a perpetual underclass segregated by custom and religion. I hope that Europeans wake up and realize the history that they’re repeating.

8/4/2005 9:15:14 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  world affairs

It looks like some Democrats may have a "problem" with John Roberts

Yahoo News is reporting that Roberts Donated Help to Gay Rights Case. It seems that Judge Roberts, then a lawyer specialising in appellate work, helped prep an attorney with a pro bono case appearing before the Supreme Court. It appears that Judge Roberts may not be the great conservative ideolog that many Senate Democrats would like him to be.

Can we say “Hello Justice Roberts”, boys and girls?

8/4/2005 8:31:31 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Low Rent Blogging

You know, even though I did manage to get a site up that could support Das Blog, I keep coming back to the world needing a low rent blogging environment. Something that will work with all those no frills web sites out there, like what a person gets with their ISP account. That would mean at the lowest end, something that just spit out HTML, where all the content management was done locally.

CityDesk does this, but its more of a general purpose “content management system” and really doesn’t work well as a blogging tool (sorry Joel. I did try it out, but gave up in the end). On the other hand, if CityDesk supported .NET scripting, like this or this, I think it could really take off as a web tool, but that’s another topic.

8/3/2005 4:29:12 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

It appears that Mark Burnett is over paid...

Reality TV World reports that Mark Burnett told the Wall Street Journal that he “… measures whether a series is “successful” based not on whether it is a ratings hit… but instead based on his personal financial gain…” (Reality TV World’s words). Given that the WSJ reports that CBS is paying him “in the neighborhood of $50 million” for Rock Star: INXS (once again, as reported by Reality TV World), and that CBS has moved the Monday night episode to VH-1 for the duration, maybe, just maybe, Mark’s being overpaid .

Frankly, I’m more than a little disappointed. Rock Star’s a great program, with terrific talent. But I guess rock just isn’t as mainstream as it once was. sigh.

8/3/2005 4:00:58 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV

Scott has his first draft of WatirMaker out

Scott Hanselman has his first draft of WatirMaker, his Watir test recorder, out, but he’s not happy.
8/3/2005 9:50:52 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

Design metrics for Dot Net
Robin Curry listed a set of code metrics and tools for dotnet in his blog recently. Now he’s gone further and writes about integrating NDepend with NAnt. I’m very curious about what NDepend brings to the table. It might provide just the right level of metrics to help manage the design process.
8/3/2005 9:20:53 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

Well, what do you know?
What do you know? Newzcrawler posted that entry (3 times!) even with the error message. How friendly of it . I thought about deleting them, but let’s just leave them there for the whole world to see…
8/2/2005 5:10:48 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

Hmph
Well, I found a way to get Newzcrawler’s blog interface to let me include a title in my post, only to run into some totally cryptic error message seemingly related to changing an entry outside of Newzcrawler. Now, that’s just ridiculous. BlogJet’s looking better and better. Now, if BlogJet would just add a Browse button to their link dialog…
8/2/2005 5:08:39 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

RTFM, RTFF?
I checked out the Newzcrawler forum, and found an entry talking about using a different API for the Blog interface. I switched to MoveableType, and voila! Titles! I don't know why Newzcrawler doesn't support titles via the Blogger API when BlogJet does. Oh well. I think BlogJet still has this interface beat (gotta love those smileys!).  So, now I want Newzcrawler to support pluggable Blog tools. Apparently, some of the other aggregators do.
8/2/2005 5:04:05 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

RTFM, RTFF?
I checked out the Newzcrawler forum, and found an entry talking about using a different API for the Blog interface. I switched to MoveableType, and voila! Titles! I don't know why Newzcrawler doesn't support titles via the Blogger API when BlogJet does. Oh well. I think BlogJet still has this interface beat (gotta love those smileys!).  So, now I want Newzcrawler to support pluggable Blog tools. Apparently, some of the other aggregators do.
8/2/2005 5:03:55 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

RTFM, RTFF?
I checked out the Newzcrawler forum, and found an entry talking about using a different API for the Blog interface. I switched to MoveableType, and voila! Titles! I don't know why Newzcrawler doesn't support titles via the Blogger API when BlogJet does. Oh well. I think BlogJet still has this interface beat (gotta love those smileys!).  So, now I want Newzcrawler to support pluggable Blog tools. Apparently, some of the other aggregators do.
8/2/2005 5:03:44 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

Thanks, Alan

Thanks to Alan, I’ve moved Kurt’s and Eric’s sites to the blogroll. I’m intrigued: both Blogspot and Live Journal hide their syndication feeds. I assume its intentional; I wonder why they do it.  While my aggregator, Newzcrawler didn’t find them, SharpReader had no problem finding them. So, if their intent is to make it difficult for people to find the feeds, they’re failing.  But, then again, I shouldn’t complain because now I have them

8/2/2005 4:42:09 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

This is what I mean!

So Kurt was surprised that he didn’t have to register to post comments here. Blogger requires you to have an account with them before you can post. I mean, come on!

Okay, okay. So, it could be nice to be able to filter out the “riff raff” from the site and reduce flames. And, for the casual user, it would be nice to have the “host” do the heavy lifting for you. But then, Blogger doesn’t do any filtering.

So, yes, as things stand now, there’s no registration necessary to either see an article or post a comment. Maybe in the future. I’ll see about posting something on the Das Blog forum…

8/2/2005 2:27:52 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

hey hey hey!

We have lift-off! That fixed it, by golly. Can’t wait until this gets released. Using betas always makes my teeth hurt

And they need more smileys. I miss the Yahoo IM smileys and the MSN Messenger smileys…

8/2/2005 2:17:24 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

Okay, this is another test
This version is supposed to fix a date/time bug working with TextPad. Let’s see if it works for Das Blog as well…
8/2/2005 2:15:05 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general


Hmm... no title. bummer. Well, I probably won't be using this, then. At least, not a lot...
8/2/2005 10:55:15 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  


This is a test of the Blogging feature of my news aggregator. I don't see a place for a title. I wonder if it's going to ask me for one...
8/2/2005 10:52:49 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  

It's here!

The grill just arrived! It was a little touch and go getting it to my deck. For those who haven't been to my place, the deck's off the ground enough that getting anything on it from the back is more trouble than its worth. So, like so many British homes' backyards, the only way to get anything on the deck is to bring it in the front door.

It barely made it through the front door, and there was no way it was going to get past the sliding door, because of the pellet hopper in the front. Luckily, the grill is actually narrower than it is deep, so they just rotated it, and it (barely) slid out to the deck.

Then, the latest complication: they forgot the drip bucket at the store. So, I could either drive out to Tigard to pick it up, or they'd drop it off later in the week (sheesh). I really wasn't planning on trying the grill out until Saturday, so I told them to just drop it off.  Besides, I have to "season" the grill, which means running it for 45 minutes at high. I'll do that later in the week.

8/2/2005 9:51:26 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

Pickin' and Grinnin'

Here I am, sitting at home, waiting for the delivery guy. I messed up. I'm expecting my new Traeger grill   to arrive today. They said "between 8:00 and 12:00. So, of course, this morning, I calmly got dressed and went to work! I finally remembered at 8:30. Hopefully, I wasn't the first on their list.

Of course, when I got home, I had a message on my answering machine (left at 7:40) that they were on their way. sigh.

8/2/2005 9:08:53 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

There's a date/time problem
There seems to be a date/time problem with BlogJet. Notice the time of this posting? It’s actually 2:07 pm by my computer’s clock. What gives??
8/2/2005 7:08:04 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

Testing BlogJet

So, I’m trying out BlogJet, a desktop blogging tool that also integrates with IE. It certainly looks cool enough . Notice the smiley. That’s built in. Anyway, they auto-magically inserted the following text into the editor the first time I ran it:

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It's a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -- Pablo Picasso

Can we say “self promotion” boys and girls? I guess I shouldn’t get cranky about this. I would’ve posted the links myself anyway.

First interesting tidbit: the built in spell checker doesn’t recognize “blogging”.

8/2/2005 6:52:00 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  

Here we go again!

Once again, I'm heading down the blogger trail. It seems like everybody is blogging these days, not like the last time (3 years ago)...

Both Kurt and Eric already have blogs up, and there's even several internal blogs at work (no, you can't see those. I said internal). And Bob's been bugging me about getting my blog up to date. He's discovered RSS, and wants sites to subscribe to.

So, here it is; the start of a new, improved blog. BTW, I'm using Das Blog for this. I've got to admit, it seems a whole lot better than the state of blogging systems 3 years ago. The stone age quality back then was what cooled my enthusiasm the last time.  This time, I'm considering investing in BlogJet. That's what I really want, a desktop blogging tool that makes all this typing and linking easier.

8/1/2005 7:47:17 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

Congratulations, you've installed DasBlog!

Be sure to visit all the options undfer "Configuration" in the Admin Menu Bar above. There are 16 themes to choose from, and you can also create your own.

 

7/20/2005 12:00:00 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  dasBlog