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Artnorant

I know nothing about art. I take that back–the one thing I know about art is that a lot of the “modern art” doesn’t pass for art. Then again I guess that’s just an opinion. But a canvas painted black and I’m supposed to be admiring the width and length of the brush strokes? I don’t think so.

I think modern art is stuff like this video. It uses modern mediums, and is comprehensible by modern people like me (morons). Even if you don’t consider this art, you have to admit it’s really cool, unlike a black canvas.

ht SayUncle

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Are They Going To Sell Them At Wal-Mart?

File under Utterly ridiculous.

A public school in California is now requiring students to wear RFID so they can track them. No, seriously.

The system was imposed, without parental input, by the school as a way to simplify attendance-taking and potentially reduce vandalism and improve student safety. Principal Earnie Graham hopes to eventually add bar codes to the existing ID’s so that students can use them to pay for cafeteria meals and check out library books.

I’ve got a better idea…why don’t you just worry about teaching them? There are all kinds of things you can teach kids in the 7th and 8th grade, like, I don’t know…the Fourth Amendment.

I guess one could make the argument that the rules and regulations of the school override the individual right to privacy. That makes sense if attendance at the school is a choice, but California is moving away from that notion already. And besides, doesn’t the fact that the schools are tax payer funded pretty much guarantee that the Constitution is applicable?

I guess this will help them get prepared for life in the Bush real world.

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You Can’t Say That On…Anywhere

So I haven’t posted for a couple of days because I’ve been in the land of damn-these-people-drive-like-maniacs, aka the ATL.

I’m also way behind on reading, but I just came across a post that is really disturbing. Apparently, it’s now considered bad form to use the phrase “life insurance policy” and “Barack Obama” in the same sentence–not because of what it says, but because someone may read it the wrong way. It reminds me of that fateful day when the word “niggardly” was stricken from the English language because people who didn’t know what it meant (I didn’t at the time) were too lazy to look it up.

It’s so much easier to just get offended first and ask questions later, no?

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The Perfect Run and Another New Balance Ad

Hungry Mother on “that” run:

I thought about my “magic run” back in 1977, when I was on sabbatical leave at Duke. On day, when I was doing a power walk, I jogged for 3 miles for the first time in my life. That run was smooth and effortless. I felt as though I could run forever.

I think everyone who’s ever run (or biked/paddled/whatever) somewhat seriously has had that day. If you’re really lucky you’ll get several of them in your life. To be fair, anyone who’s ever seen me run knows that I’ve never had an “effortless” training session in my life, but I have had a couple of days when it seemed like everything just clicked perfectly. In my case, they usually end with a violent vomiting session because as good as I feel, I’m really overheated or pushed beyond where I can run comfortably. Is that the runner’s high I’ve heard so much about?

As with most of my other successes in life, good runs for me are usually fueled by spite more than anything else. I ran my best 5k on what was supposed to be a recovery day after a 10 mile run that I completely bonked on and barely finished. Luckily, I was highly pissed off at the beginning of the race and was further agitated by a jobroni (he’d later become my running nemesis) who kept passing me then slowing down and letting me pass him back. With about a half mile remaining I decided that this jerk was not going to pass me again, and I ended up edging him out by about 15 seconds to take the title in the fat boy division of that race.

I’ve had a couple of training runs over 13 miles that seemed to go perfectly too. One of these runs started with all the people I was training with taking off at too fast of a pace for me–I’m very slow at the start, but usually accelerate as the run goes on and end up just kind of slow. Running alone gave me a few miles to stew, and I eventually began to boil. I think I ended up passing them somewhere around ten miles, and the site of them just fueled the fire–each mile after that got faster and faster. I actually ran a personal best for the half marathon distance that afternoon, although it doesn’t count since it wasn’t a sanctioned race. Unfortunately, it was also about 92 degrees outside. After I puked I almost passed out and had to go sit inside a nearby restaurant in the AC and sip water for about an hour.

I really showed them, huh?  Here’s some running zen to help you remember why you do it.

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AdSense Money Available On Your Feed

This isn’t much of a surprise…it was pretty obvious that the very reason Google bought Feedburner in the first place was so they could roll AdSense into it. And no complaints here either–to their credit, Google immediately made all of the “pro” features of Feedburner available for free as soon as they took ownership. These features are plenty valuable, and I’m happy to have them.

MoneyI’d expect the number of publishers enrolled in the AdSense program to go up (Go here to
). It’s still the easiest way (ok, maybe second easiest way) for small publishers to monetize. And including ads in a feed is even easier than displaying them on your site–no need to add code in the right place or worry about placement and layout, which is the “art” in displaying ads directly in the template. Feedburner is a great way to start playing with AdSense if you’ve never used it and were curious.

The downside? I don’t really see one. The ads are optional. It’s totally up to the feed owner as to whether or not to serve ads. It doesn’t cost anything to display the ads, and while you may not get rich, you may at least make enough change to pay for gas beer hosting. I am a little surprised it took Google so long to integrate AdSense. Then again, they still haven’t fixed the problem with reporting subscribers that shows up every month or so and makes everyone freak out.

So…why aren’t you seeing ads in this feed? I decided a while back that I was going to keep my feed ad free as sort of a “thanks” to the people who subscribe. In that vein, I’ve also made some changes on the actual site layout to make the site a little more friendly to returning visitors by eliminating one of the ad components in the sidebar and eliminating the ad at the end of each post.

That move isn’t entirely unselfish, as I’ve also added a “related posts” component that will hopefully make the site a little more sticky and get more traffic for older posts. Hopefully I’ll be paid off there, as each post older than 7 days now has an ad component at its beginning.

My other idea is to add a “donate” button. That way people who were just about to comment that I should eliminate all ads (you know who you are) could just give me money and feel like they really deserved ad free content.

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The Whistles Go Woo Woo!

This is an oldy but a goody, and every time I see it I laugh.  BubRub and L’il Sis have to be my two favorite characters of internet viral video.  I know what you’re thinking–what about Jesco?  Jesco was a pre-internet phenomenon, so BubRub and L’il Sis take the title.

Don’t worry though.  It’s just for decoration.  That’s it and that’s all.