Monthly Archives: October 2005

commonplace books

Years and years ago, (1998) I was sitting around reading my copy of Benet’s Readers Encyclopedia, which is a somewhat obscure reference book. I came across a passage about “commonplace books” which described them as a type of journal from the 1800s where people would collect scraps of poetry, ideas and their own writing along a common theme. It differed from a diary in that it wasn’t a collection of personal recollections, but was more like an artist’s notebook. They were kept most often by authors who used them as the genesis for novels, but famous commonplace books were also kept by Thomas Jefferson and other politicos.
I was struck at that time by the similarity to what I was doing on the web. My site had been around for several years by that time; I had started with a few pages in 1994 on someone else’s site, and moved to my own area on a local service provider in 1996. I was essentially “blogging” regularly and had been since 1996, although blogger software was still a few years away and I was coding my “blog” by hand.
It was just about the time that it because possible for individuals to purchase domain names of their own, and my site, which was located at http://members.iquest.net/~batgirl/ at the time, was looking more and more professional, although it still had the tell-tale “personal” URL. So I took the plunge and paid for my own domain name, purchasing “commonplacebook.com.”
At the time, I had to explain the concept of a commonplace book to everyone and their mom and their dog every time I gave out my URL to people, or sent an e-mail, and for years I had the definition from Benets on the homepage of my site so people would stop e-mailing me about it.
A while back, I entered a google term of “commonplace book” into both google alerts and technorati so I could get an alert every time someone mentioned my site on their site.
Over the past six months or so, fourteen or fifteen different people have started calling their “blog” a “commonplace book” and they show up every day in my google and technorati pings.
Apparently, seven years after I started doing it, “commonplace book” has become the hot new thing to call your site to set it apart from the crowd.
Late bitches. Suffer; I’ve got the URL.

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Congress to give MORE corporate welfare to Oil companies

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Despite the fact that oil companies made record profits last year, AND the fact that they just got a huge present of tax cuts in the recent “energy” bill, AND the fact that oil companies were throttling their refinery production to boost prices (and profits) before Katrina hit, the house is still considering throwing out the baby with the bathwater and looking at a bill to handout more to oil companies.
John Edwards keeps pointing out that our country doesn’t reward work, it rewards wealth. People who work hard are forced to work harder, while people who sit back on their accumulated money just keep sitting back and accumulating.
UPDATE: This bill came down to a vote in the House, and the Republicans held the vote open (unethical) so they could twist arms and force people to change their votes. It ended up as a shouting match on the floor of the house, with Democrats shouting “SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!” You can see the excitement on video here. The Republicans ended up getting the vote 212 to 210. So not only is our economy going to spiral further downward as oil companies rake in bucks, we’ll have new refineries to pollute our environment, too. Wonderful.

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Bush Polls Hit New lows

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According to a CBS News Poll:
DIRECTION OF THE COUNTRY
Right direction- 26%
Wrong track – 69%
PRESIDENT BUSH’S JOB APPROVAL
Approve
All – 37%
Reps. – 79%
Dems. – 14%
Inds. – 29%
Disapprove
All – 58%
Reps. – 13%
Dems. – 84%
Inds. – 64%
PRES. BUSH JOB APPROVALS
Overall – 37%
Terrorism – 46%
Iraq – 32%
Economy – 32%
Hurricane Katrina – 45%
Recent hurricanes – 46%
DOES PRES. BUSH SHARE YOUR PRIORITIES FOR THE COUNTRY?
Yes – 32%
No – 65%
ECONOMY IS GETTING:
Better – 10%
Worse – 54%
Same – 34%
There’s lots more interesting data there, go and read it.

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Rove’s about to be indicted

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Karl Rove is suddenly not appearing at major White House events (like the Miers announcement) and his lawyer has changed his statements from last Friday’s “Karl is not a target of the investigation” to “no comment.” Also swirling around the blogosphere are rumors that indictments are about to be handed down, and prosecutor Fitzgerald’s office has mentioned that the would mail people a few days ahead of public announcements if that person were going to be indicted.
Steph rubs her hands together in anticipation…

Continue ReadingRove’s about to be indicted

Patricia Miller’s failed Orwell plot

Regarding Indiana’s proposed Orwellian plan to criminalize “unauthorized reproduction”:
State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, issued a one-sentence statement this afternoon saying: “The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission.”
Scott was lamenting yesterday that we look even more like hicks now that the entire country reacted with horror to this idea… but I think it was a very Good Thing. However creepy and dystopian the idea was, it wasn’t a dumb-ass, igner’nt idea… just a totally fascist idea. While that’s not great, what it did do was expose the right-wing, conservative (radical) Republican party for what it really is, which more people really need to catch onto, not just those of us who pay attention to the news every day.

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Criminal Penalties for women concieving out of wedlock

Yep, that’s what state lawmaker Patricia Miller (R) is proposing legislation for here in Indiana. A bill will be heard by the Health Finance Commission intended to restrict any form of “assisted reproduction” defined as “causing pregnancy by means other than sexual intercourse, including intrauterine insemination, donation of an egg, donation of an embryo, in-vitro fertilization and transfer of an embryo, and sperm injection.” These types of reproduction would only be allowed to married women who pass a court petition and receive a “gestational certificate.”

According to the current draft of the legislation, an intended parent “who knowingly or willingly participates in an artificial reproduction procedure” without court approval,”
commits unauthorized reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor.” The criminal charges will be the same for physicians who commit “unauthorized practice of artificial reproduction.”

The married parents who might want to participate in “assisted reproduction” are in for some bad news too: some of the required information includes the fertility history of the parents, education and employment information, hobbies, personality descriptions, verification of marital status, child care plans, letter of reference and criminal history checks. A description of the family lifestyle of the intended parents is also required, including individual participation in faith-based or church activities.

A really excellent analysis of how many people are affected and how is posted on bopnews.com.
The main intent is to keep lesbians from having kids, but the bill affects unmarried heterosexual women as well, so sit up and take notice single women in Indiana.

Read text of the proposed legislation in this downloadable PDF file.

Article by Laura McPhee in Nuvo
An article about this topic
IndyStar article
The Health Finance Commission
Contact your representative

As several bloggers have pointed out, this legislation would have made Christ’s conception illegal.

“We did want to address the issue of whether or not the law should allow single people to be parents. Studies have shown that a child raised by both parents – a mother and a father – do better. So, we do want to have laws that protect the children,” Miller explained.

Okay — this has got to stop: ” Studies have shown that a child raised by both parents – a mother and a father – do better.”

LIE LIE LIE LIE. BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT. DEBUNKED DEBUNKED DEBUNKED DEBUNKED DEBUNKED. It’s a blatant falsehood, people. Studies show no such thing. In fact, studies show the exact opposite; that children raised in households with single parents or with two parents of the same gender do just as well, are just as happy and well-adjusted as kids that grow up with a mom and a dad.

WE HAVE TO TAKE THIS FALSE WEAPON AWAY FROM THEM, BECAUSE PEOPLE BELIEVE THIS LIE.

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I came home around noon

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The conclusion the doctors reached was that I lifted too much and put strain on my sternum. Funny, I could have told them that when I went in. I did, actually. So I have painkillers, which didn’t do much.

I still think there’s something more wrong than that, but they didn’t, so I’m home.

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Emergency room fun

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I’m on my way to the emergency room because I think whatever I did this weekend was pretty serious and now I can’t really lie down or even sit without pain shooting through my chest and back, when I breathe, it hurts like hell. I think I must have hurt my sternum.

Stephanie’s coming to pick me up now…

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