30 Oct 2006
Have Laptop, Will Travel

Well, I'm off to Minnesota in about 3 hours - I'm pulling a trailer full of my daughter's belongings to her new digs in the Twin Cities, where the courts are forcing her to reside until her divorce is over. And I'll also be looking for work ...

No, we're not surrendering the farm - yet. But things are really tight, and there are no off farm tech jobs at my level here. So I've been investigating contracting, on the theory that I can find a top paying job elsewhere, sending money home, and Kris can stay here and maintain the farm (and her schooling). If I hit it right, we should be able to come out of this crisis in fine shape. If I don't ... well, I don't want to think about it.

So posting may be sporadic for the next few days - if I have access and time, I'll write. Otherwise, well, stay tuned. I'll be back.

Oh yeah - if any of my valued readership knows of opportunities out there, by all means let me know. My resume is posted here.

07:49 /Home | 1 comment | permanent link

Deja Vu

Fascinating look at the history of the American newspaper. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Early American newspaper publishers scoffed at the idea that they should hide their political prejudices under a cloak of objectivity. "To profess impartiality here," wrote William Cobbett in his Federalist newspaper, Porcupine's Gazette, "would be as absurd as to profess it in a war between virtue and vice, good and evil, happiness and misery." The motto of the Gazette of the United States, which began publication in 1789, was "He that is not for us is against us."

(link) [Wall Street Journal]

07:43 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

New Drugs Offer Hope to Addicts

You're addicted! Don't smoke that cigarette - take a pill! Do you just gotta have a drink? Put it down, take a pill instead!

Doesn't anybody else see the irony here?

By 2003, Brenda Moore was desperate to keep her promise. A smoker since age 16, she had vowed to her daughter two years earlier that she would quit; now, several failed tries later, young Tiffany had developed asthma. Then a Sunday newspaper ad caught Moore's eye, a call for volunteers to take part in the clinical trial of a new antismoking drug. For three months, Moore, now 40, took a pill daily and made regular trips from her home in Beattyville, Ky., to Lexington to be monitored. This time, things were different. "In the first two weeks I was taking the drug, I started to look at the cigarette differently," she says. "It literally took on a new nastiness."

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

07:40 /Home | 3 comments | permanent link

USDA patents microbes to fight wheat fungus

This seems to be a direct patent on an existing life form. Funny, that ... I always thought such things were discovered, not invented. Somehow I think we've lost sight of this critical distinction - to our ultimate detriment.

Peoria, Ill. (ARS) - Four yeasts and three bacteria that live on flowering wheat heads, but cause no harm there, have been patented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as biological control agents in the fight against Fusarium head blight (FHB).

(link) [The Prairie Star]

07:35 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Lynne Cheney novel churns controversy

If you have political aspirations, you would do well not to write fiction. Or fact.

Lynne Cheney is deflecting talk of the sexual content in her novel "Sisters," a 25-year-old book that resurfaced in a campaign Friday and is stirring up controversy.

(link) [CNN.com]

07:30 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link