Duane Gran’s log of thoughts

When I first heard about plans for a super highway in Texas I was appalled. Waldo Jaquith summarized the situation eloquently in my opinion. To quote:

Building bigger roads to lessen traffic is like buying a bigger belt to lessen obesity.

My thoughts exactly.

Check out a new book that is on the shelves at walmart. Hopefully more people will purchase it (from other outlets) and follow the advice.

Edit: Since posting, the link is dead. Aparently walmart doesn’t care to sell a book with instructions on how to fight them. Fortunately, amazon has no problems with selling the book.

A girl was ejected from her prom in Kentucky for wearing a prom dress fashioned from the Confederate flag. Detail is available from the Southern Legal Resource Center.

These situations often fan the flames of public opinion, but I like to think that I have a little perspective from being born in the north and reformed in the south. I’ve met not one person who displays a confederate flag who is a supporter of racism, but rather feels a profound sense of belonging to the south. There is a southern identity which is unknown and despised by many who haven’t spent time in the area.

While nearly every other group in America is afforded a modicum of respect, it is still perfectly acceptable to ridicule rednecks and portray people in the south as ignorant. Should it surprise anyone that southerners might respond with solidarity and seek out identifying icons like the Confederate flag?

Back in the day, around 1995 I purchased my first Macintosh (a model 7200 for the curious) one of the coolest applications was the Graphing Calculator. Now the real story is surfacing how two dedicated programmers spent six months unpaid sneaking into the Apple headquarters to finish the product and get it released. It is a pretty incredible story.

There are fewer places where I can have a moment of peace, and it appears airplanes may be the next casualty.

I’ve owned a wireless phone in the past, but made every effort to be kind to others. Talking on a phone in public is rude. I considered it a great victory when I didn’t have to deal with smokers on planes, but I would take a quiet smoker over a loud phone conversation any day of the week. I’ve considered directly intervening, but this would be rude on my part, and as much as I’m tempted, two wrongs don’t make a right. I will however draw the line when someone on a cell phone expects me to stop what I’m doing to permit them to talk in an inappropriate place.

One approach may be to rekindle the notion of a phone booth. I believe there is a business opportunity here to build or retrofit attractive phone booths for high-end restaurants, however I don’t see any relief for the un-friendly skies if the FAA goes through with their plans.

Interested persons should take a moment to read through a report (PDF) from the Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce concerning walmart. In my opinion, it isn’t the size of walmart that is upsetting, but rather the burden that this company passes onto the public through a “total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart’s 1.2 million US employees.”

My personal choice is not to patronize their stores, and should another one seek entrance into the Charlottesville market I intend to subject it to scrutiny.