Make sure your drink matches your tie. (Right down to the lemon wedge going with the handkerchief!)

If there wasn't a Christmas shopping season, hundreds of games would have been allowed to develop further instead of getting dumped on the market prematurely. So many glaring flaws would have been fixed and the games would have been so much better.

When saving files, I never got in the habit of using the History button. Now I want to, and I have hundreds or thousands of links such as "My Documents (35)". I don't want to delete them one by one. I searched for "History" and "Recent" and haven't found them yet. Googling is a PITA since I don't know what to search for that won't bring up stuff for Internet Explorer. Help?

BART Pulls the Rug Out: Agency Will Swap Out Dirty Carpets For Easy-To-Clean Plastic Floors In 80 Of It's Cars Before Gauging Whether To Revamp Entire Fleet

So in the first group there are insensitive people who stain the carpets as they eat and drink in violation of the rules. In the second group there are the sensitive people who are more concerned with how the carpeting looks than how it functions. Functionally carpeting feels softer and absorbs more noise from the loud ride.

Well if the stains are so bothersome, I propose BART keep the carpeting, but change the color to dark mud. This will hide the stains. If the seats are also reupholstered in forest green, the cars will have a natural color scheme so appropriate for the environmentally friendly Bay Area.

I don't mean come up with a better search engine. I mean one of their features like orkut or flickr? So now you can presume the idea I have isn't in those departments. But I have an idea for what I think is the missing killer feature in an existing app.

It actually turns out the company that comes closest to my idea isn't yahoo or google, which makes me think those two are either working on it already, or seriously missing out. It's a missing piece that would unify, compliment, and or augment two or more of their existing apps.

So I think my site would kick ass and the competition would be sluggish to respond or wouldn't want to completely duplicate my idea as it would force them to change their simplified approach. Except then I figure if I had any real success they would modify their sites to get users back. I wouldn't at all mind being bought by them though.

That's my million dollar idea with loads of risk. I have another I'd like to think is worth five or six figures a year, but from my research no one is doing it yet, at least not in English. I'm leaning towards working on the second site.

Jerry McNerney is running for California's 11th Congressional District against Republican incumbent Richard Pombo. McNerney polled 48% to Pombo's 46% in a district where 43% of the voters are registered Republicans, and 37% are registered Democrats.

So today I took a shift in Oakland calling people over the East Bay hills in Danville and San Ramon to encourage them to vote. No leaving answering machine messages. People we couldn't reach will get callbacks tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday. If they're undecided, we give them a few statements or ask what issues they're concerned about. If they're voting for McNerney, we offer to remind them where their polling place is.

Turnout campaigns are said to be worth 1-2% of the final results. I'll be ecstatic if that's how close the margin of victory is for McNerney. Monday I'll do another shift of calling, and Tuesday go out walking a neighborhood and knocking on doors.

Dawkins vs. Haggard.

Key Evangelical quits amid gay sex claim
By CATHERINE TSAI, Associated Press Writer
29 minutes ago

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The leader of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals, a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, resigned Thursday after being accused of paying for sex with a man in monthly trysts over the past three years.
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The Rev. Ted Haggard, a married father of five who has been called one of the most influential evangelical Christians in the nation, denied the allegations. His accuser refused to share voice mails that he said backed up his claim.

Haggard also stepped aside as head of his 14,000-member New Life Church while a church panel investigates, saying he could "not continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations."

"I am voluntarily stepping aside from leadership so that the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity," Haggard said in a written statement. "I hope to be able to discuss this matter in more detail at a later date."

He also told KUSA-TV late Wednesday: "Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife."

The allegations come as voters in Colorado and seven other states get ready to decide Tuesday on amendments banning gay marriage. Besides the proposed ban on the Colorado ballot, a separate measure would establish the legality of domestic partnerships providing same-sex couples with many of the rights of married couples.

Mike Jones, 49, of Denver told The Associated Press he decided to go public with his allegations because of the political fight. Jones, who said he is gay, said he was upset when he discovered Haggard and the New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage.

"It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex," said Jones, who added that he isn't working for any political group.

Jones, whose allegations were first aired on KHOW-AM radio in Denver, claimed Haggard paid him to have sex nearly every month over three years. Jones also said Haggard snorted methamphetamine before their sexual encounters to heighten his experience.

Haggard and his attorney, Martin Nussbaum, did not return calls Thursday night from the AP.

Jones said that he had advertised himself as an escort on the Internet and that a man who called himself Art contacted him. Jones said he later saw the man on television identified as Haggard.

He said that he last had sex with Haggard in August and that he did not warn him before making his allegations this week.

Jones said he has voice mail messages from Haggard, as well as an envelope he said Haggard used to mail him cash, though he declined to make any of it available to the AP.

"There's some stuff on there (the voice mails) that's pretty damning," he said.

Haggard, who is about 50, was appointed president of the evangelicals association in March 2003. He has participated in conservative Christian leaders' conference calls with White House staffers and lobbied members of Congress last year on
U.S. Supreme Court appointees after
Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement.

After Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, Haggard and others began organizing state-by-state opposition. Last year, Haggard and officials from the nearby Christian ministry Focus on the Family announced plans to push Colorado's gay marriage ban for the 2006 ballot.

At the time, Haggard said that he believed marriage is a union between a man and woman rooted in centuries of tradition, and that research shows it's the best family unit for children.

"Homosexual activity, like adulterous relationships, is clearly condemned in the Scriptures," the evangelicals association says on its Web site. The Bible says homosexuality is a sin that "brings grave consequences in this life and excludes one from the Kingdom of God."

Haggard's resignation from the NAE seems unlikely to do lasting damage to the organization, an umbrella group for a diverse and independent-minded membership. At his own church, Haggard's decision to step aside -- if it became permanent -- would have a more profound effect.

"One would hope and pray that this matter would be resolved expeditiously and quickly and he can be restored back to being the pastor of the church and the leader of the NAE," said Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative Washington think tank.

New Life Church member Brooks DeMio, 44, said he thinks Jones is a liar and can't believe Haggard would engage in sex with a man.

"He loves the Lord, homosexuality is a sin and that's not Ted," DeMio said. "His desire is to serve other people and uphold the word of God. ... I don't know him well enough to give a complete character description, but I know him enough to know it's not true."

Carolyn Haggard, spokeswoman for the New Life Church and the pastor's niece, said a four-member church panel will investigate the allegations. The board has the authority to discipline Haggard, including removing him from ministry work.

"This is really routine when any sort of situation like this arises, so we're prepared," Carolyn Haggard said. "The church is going to continue to serve and be welcoming to our community. That's a priority."

___

Associated Press writers Dan Elliott in Denver and Rachel Zoll in New York contributed to this report.

Metaphor hides mufti's real message

Caroline Overington
October 28, 2006

WHEN you cut the colour out of the mufti's speech - when you drop the references to cats, to uncovered meat, and even to Satan - his message doesn't become more palatable, it is horrific.

Cut back to basics, what is the mufti saying - that men cannot be trusted in the company of women? That they are so driven by sordid, sexual urges, they will pounce upon any female who, for instance, bends down to pick something up off the floor?

Does he mean that women are vixens who flirt and flaunt themselves until men are forced to commit violent acts upon them? Or that men are like horny dogs, waiting for a bitch on heat to wander into their orbit?

While some women cover up as part of their religious experience, there is no doubt that some Muslim men order their wives to wear the hijab or burqa as a form of control.

Tanveer Ahmed is a Sydney-based psychiatrist who is writing a book about Islam in Australia. He says the great shame is that "many, many" Muslim men, young and old, regard women - particularly Western women - as "less than ideal".

"The mufti meant exactly what he said, and those views are widely held," Dr Ahmed said.

"I did my own little poll this morning, of a security guard and others who are Muslim, and all said they agreed with the mufti, that he is absolutely right.

"It comes from households, where young Muslims get the message that white girls are different, and that women in general are a corrupting influence."

Dr Ahmed said it was "an opinion I've heard throughout my life, that women can tempt you into trouble. Even otherwise sophisticated people will say this, and slur white women.

"My own theory is, when they are growing up, they are told they are not allowed to participate in much of Western life, they cannot drink, they cannot go to parties.

"And when they are very young, I think they would love to participate - but then they get older, and suddenly, they find they have developed a contempt for the society in which they live."
Dr Ahmed rejects the argument that women wear the veil because "it's their choice". "You see children aged five wearing it. Are we seriously arguing there is an element of choice, when you sexualise a child in that way?"

The writer Salman Rushdie cut to the quick of the argument last week when he said: "Veils suck. They do. I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women." Mr Rushdie, a Muslim, said none of his three sisters "would've accepted the wearing of the veil. The battle against theveil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women."

It is a view that would be strongly resented by Muslim women such as Zuleyha Seyit, a devout mother of a three-year-old boy, who started wearing the veil about four years ago.

She does not feel oppressed by the garment.

"When I was growing up, there was no pressure from my family to wear it. I simply had a very strong, quite amazing experience one day, when I was reading the Koran, and I thought, I must put it on," she said.

There was nothing suitable in the house, so she attached a cloth with pins "and it was very uncomfortable at first, and I suppose people were surprised when I went out".

She rejects as nonsense the idea that she must wear the veil, or tempt men into violent acts.

"Everyone is responsible for their own actions," she said. "If a man commits a crime against a woman, that is his responsibility, not hers. I wear the veil because I choose to wear it, as an important part of my identity as a Muslim woman."

For Karen Green, the debate over the status of women is both personal and philosophical. She has a sister who converted to Islam.

Dr Green, whose Phd in philosophy is from Oxford, said she initially accepted her sister's view, when she argued that women were liberated by the veil.

But over time, Dr Green concluded that women were so sexualised within Islamic society "that it is assumed that any private encounter between a woman and a man will be sexual. Women are thus assumed to have two functions, and these are sex and child-bearing.

"By submitting to headscarf, chador or burka, women allow men to divide and conquer. Women are either 'good' - which is to say obedient - or they are 'bad'."

Dr Green said she simply could not understand the underlying assumption "that women who are not covered (wearing a veil) are somehow not deserving of respect."

A moderate's response.
Editorial: Sheik's values out of step with modernity

When swearing, variations of "god damn it" are popular in the US. It's so pervasive that plenty of athiests use it too. Of course plenty of people also swear by "fuck" or "shit". If the concept of God didn't exist, American swearing would lose a significant part of it's vocabulary.

What about in other countries? Are there some places where swearers don't blaspheme God very often, perhaps because it just hasn't caught on like it has in the USA? Are there places with a greater variety of commonly used swear words? Places that could keep on swearing without the concept of God and not miss it much?

Like I said,

In general, it's harder to win the voters over with facts, opinions, and philosophy if the opposition is willing to flat-out lie or radically distort the truth.

From FARK, Bush lying.

Bush: 'We've Never Been Stay The Course'

Liar.

Also, Ken Mehlman lying about the same thing just recently.

I really like the movie Excess Baggage for many reasons, including when it plays One Headlight. I've watched it so much that when I think of the song I think of the movie. Back in the 20th century I recorded the song from the radio onto a tape, but haven't listened to that in forever. So just now it started playing in my head and I went to iTunes and searched for Wallflowers, and I don't have it! Well that explains it.

I just acquired a copy, so now I can play it to my heart's content.

Hey, come on try a little
Nothing is forever
There's got to be something better than
In the middle
But me and Cinderella
We put it all together
We can drive it home
With one headlight

San Francisco Chronicle
OPEN FORUM

Farmworkers' Plight
No fruits for their labor

David Bacon

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Julia Preston, a New York Times reporter writing from Washington, D.C., describes pears rotting on trees in Lake County, Calif., owing to a lack of farmworkers to pick them. Growers tell her 70,000 of the state's 450,000 farmworkers are missing. America's newspaper of record is being spun by agribusiness, which wants a new bracero program, and complains of a labor shortage to get it.

Two weeks ago, in the olive groves of neighboring Tehama County, I saw hardly any fruit on the trees. Rain and cold weather this spring hurt the crop, and workers were leaving to find work elsewhere.

There are always local variations in crops, and the number of workers needed to pick them. But the Times is painting a false picture. I've spent eight months traveling through California valleys and I have yet to see rotting fruit. I have seen some pretty miserable living and working conditions for workers, though.

Californians need a reality check about farm labor.

Today, more and more agricultural workers migrate from small towns in southern Mexico and even Central America. In the grape rows and citrus orchards, you're as likely to hear Mixtec or Purepecha or Triqui -- indigenous languages that predate Columbus -- as you are to hear Spanish.

They are making California a richer place, in wealth and culture. For those who love spicy mole sauce, that's reason to celebrate. The Guelagetza festival showcases Oaxacan dances in Fresno, Santa Maria and San Diego. Families of Triqui weavers create brilliant rebozos (shawls), in the off-season winter months when there is not much work in the fields.

But the wages these families earn are barely enough to survive. As Abraham Lincoln said, "labor creates all wealth," but farmworkers get precious little of it. Twenty-five years ago, at the height of the influence of the United Farm Workers, union contracts guaranteed almost twice the minimum wage of the time. Today, the hourly wage in almost every farm job is the minimum wage -- $6.75 an hour. And taking inflation into account, the minimum wage is lower today than it was then.

Farmworkers are worse off than they've been for over two decades, while the supermarket price of fruit has more than doubled.

Low wages have a human cost.

In housing, it means that families live in cramped trailers, or packed like sardines in apartments and garages, with many people sleeping in a single room. Indigenous workers have worse conditions than most, along with workers who travel with the crops. Migrants often live in cars, sometimes even sleeping in the fields or under the trees. Their income is too low to rent anything better.

Housing is in crisis in rural California. Over the last half-century, growers demolished the old labor camps for migrant workers. They were never great places to live, but having no place is worse.

I've seen children working in fields in northern Mexico, but this year I saw them working here too. When families bring their kids to work, it's not because they don't value their education or future. It's because they can't make ends meet with the labor of adults alone.

What would make a difference?

Unions would. The UFW pushed wages up decades ago, getting the best standard of living California farmworkers ever received. But growers have been implacably hostile to union organizing. For undocumented workers, joining a union or demanding rights can mean risking not just firing, but deportation.

Enforcing the law would better workers' lives, too. California Rural Legal Assistance does a heroic job inspecting field conditions and helping workers understand their rights. But that's an uphill struggle. Many workers still get paid less than the minimum wage, some are poisoned with pesticides or work in illegal conditions.

Giving workers real legal status -- a green card or a permanent residence visa -- would help them organize without risking deportation. Immigrant families need equality, stability and recognition of their important contribution to our economy.

But growers don't want to raise wages to attract labor. Instead, they want to recruit workers outside the country on temporary visas, not permanent ones -- a steady supply of people who can work, but can't stay. This is a repeat of the old, failed bracero program of the 1940s and '50s.

With a temporary labor program, farm wages will not rise. Instead, farmworkers will subsidize agribusiness with low wages, in the name of keeping California agriculture "competitive." Strikes and unions that raise family income will be regarded as a threat.

We've seen this before. During the bracero program, when resident workers struck, growers brought in braceros. If the braceros struck, they were deported. That's why Cesar Chavez, Ernesto Galarza and Bert Corona finally convinced Congress to end the program in 1964. The UFW's first grape strike began the year after the bracero law was repealed.

Giving employers a bracero program is a failed idea, one we shouldn't repeat. Farm labor that can support families is better.

David Bacon, a photographer and reporter who specializes in labor issues, is author of "Communities Without Borders," (Cornell University Press, 2006). dbacon.igc.org

Now I don't completely support his conclusion. I'm open to trying higher wages and benefits and seeing if we could bus the unemployed out from the cities to the fields. If that fails though, I want a guest worker program to pick the fields, but only with some provisions. The border needs to be closed to illegals, and the government needs to improve the laws and enforcement on businesses hiring illegals. The unemployed in our cities should be doing the janitorial, construction, and gardening jobs illegals have been taking. That will put the unemployed to work, making at least minimum wage, if not more. Crime will go down, benefiting everyone. Some in the middle class will cry that they can only afford to pay fair wages for a maid or a gardener, but not both. I'll thank them for helping reduce crime and put Americans to work. Maids and gardeners have traditionally been luxuries for the rich. Next time scale back on the McMansion.

The problem with just doubling farm wages and adding benefits to get Americans doing the work is that costs for food will substantially increase. It really will become cheaper to import the same fruits and vegetables from other countries. Unless we go back to tariffs. I support going back to them, but that's NOT going to happen anytime soon. Maybe in thirty years the effects of globalization will be so crystal clear, and the anti-globalization forces organized enough to change the system.

So have a guest worker program for Central Americans to do the backbreaking labor at 5-10 dollars an hour. Our crops are a vital resource for our country. We already subsidize many farm industries. This just subsidizes all of them with cheap labor. Along with this the USA needs to get like the rest of the world and subsidize more skilled and semi-skilled industries that we want to keep around. Europe does this. Most of those countries have pet industries they subsidize and support. Meanwhile the USA has let globalization decimate most of our factories.

The summary misses the problem/question even as it talks about the link.

"Stephen Levy writes in the Guardian about the perception of randomness, or the lack thereof, on an iPod set to shuffle."

What does the market research say people want? Do they want Random, or do they want Shuffle? Companies and programmers have been asking the question, "How do we make this random?" without considering if the public would prefer their songs Shuffled. Shuffled in this case means "mixed up" but with some conditions. I want Shuffled, and I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of the market wants that too.

And at my store they usually are. Mundane stuff like "Additional assistance to customer service please, additional assitance to customer service."

Which is why tonight around seven o'clock it was so amusing to hear:
"Stephen please call extension Cal 31, Oregon 10."

My mattress is more than a decade old, and a week ago I got some pretty good evidence it's been causing pain between my shoulder blades. I sleep on my side and have a medium-firm mattress, but the pressure points are definitely there. I'd been thinking the pain was more of a result of my old chair, but the new one hasn't helped as much as I thought it would.

Then two weekends ago I flew to San Diego to see my relatives for Rosh Hashanah and slept in a bed with memory foam. I didn't ask if it was a genuine Tempur-pedic. Even if it was a less expensive model, I can't afford it. After two nights the pain was gone and I was amazed.

So last week I did some googling and Amazon.com shopping. I vowed that if I could find a memory foam mattress topper for up to $100, I'd put it on my credit card balance.

I took my findings with some large grains of salt, but they seem to make sense. Supposedly only the top 3-6 inches of memory foam mattresses are the foam, meaning that adding a topper can make an ordinary mattress fairly similar. However, the stuff Target sells is only an inch or two thick, which isn't enough. Also, some of the toppers use foam that only weighs around 2.5 pounds per cubic foot. In order to provide enough support, five is the minimum worth getting. Four pounds or less is likely to lack durability.

I ended up ordering a three inch thick pad with a 5.5lb/ft^3 density for $65. I'm still waiting for it to arrive, but probably the first thing I'll do even before I open the box is weigh it. I'm half-expecting the pad to be a let-down somehow, and not being as dense as advertised would be a likely start. So if the box weighs around 25 pounds, or at least 20, my mood will brighten considerably.

The past few days though, the pain returned, so I put a Therm-a-rest camping pad under my sheet. I left it quite under inflated. By itself on a hard surface it would be rather uncomfortable, but the mattress under it softens the pressure points. There's enough air in it though that it distributes and cushions some of my body.

I've found that because the Therm-a-rest is only 20 inches wide, it's hard to find comfortable positions. My arms and legs drape off the sides and I feel the edges. My sleep has been more restless, probably because of that. I adjust or turn over more often. But the back pain is much reduced. So I wake up feeling less refreshed because my sleep isn't as good, but my back doesn't hurt the way it did.

PS: Go A's!
PSS: Oakland in 4