Back on August 8th, Mark Hyman wrote the following commentary:
Is gay math any different?
That may be the question New Yorkers are asking. New York City is opening the nation's first homosexual public school for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg hailed the school, which opens in September with an enrollment of 100. The Harvey Milk High School is named after a slain homosexual San Francisco politician.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka" case that separate, but equal public education was un-Constitutional. But that was before the age of political correctness.
What happened to the American melting pot? Why is there this nonsensical drive to achieve diversity and to accentuate differences that divide rather than unite people? The irony is that if some mainstream activist suggested segregating homosexual teenagers in a separate school there would be moral outrage, calls for legal action, and news headlines attacking the suggestion. But when the politically correct thought police suggest the idea it becomes enlightened.
But it is still wrong. As one critic noted, what's next? Separate schools for chubby kids and those wearing glasses?
He brings up a lot of valid points in this article. As a public school, it's unconstitutional for them to segregate. If they were a private school not receiving State or Government funds then I believe they have the right to do whatever they want. If they wanted to allow only kids who are purple w/green poke-a-dots who were born on a Tuesday which fell on the 12th day of an odd numbered month, then that's should be their right. However, to use public money on a "separate" school is just wrong. He's also dead on about the PC police. If this idea would have come from some bigoted group against homosexuality, than everyone would have been up in arms about it. You can't have an idea be either good or bad based on who made it—ok, except for maybe when management's involved :). With all joking aside though, this is a bad idea—because it implies it's ok for public schools to separate kids that are different. Doing this opens the door for other segregation and this seems like a gargantuan step backwards. What's the difference between this and an all black or all white school? A school for only Asians?
Ok, once again I've been pretty silent over the past week—its been a busy week! It all really started on Friday. Jenn's parent's were coming in to town to go to the Ohio State Fair. I got home from work and immediately started cleaning up the house and doing some yard work. I wanted to get the house somewhat respectable before her parent's got there. I didn't get everything done I wanted, but got enough done that I was satisfied. Part of the reason I stopped working is the temperature dropped like 15 degrees within a 30 minute time frame and these dark clouds starting rolling in. I could see lightning and hear thunder in the distance. It looked like the storm was heading our way, so I wanted to start putting stuff away before he got to the house. Well, the storm never ended up hitting the house, so I thought that was the last of it. Boy was I wrong!
Anyway, Jenn's parent's got to town around 9pm or so—maybe it was closer to 9:30pm. They got in a little later than planned because they had waited to eat at the restaurant outside the Mohican State Park they kept hearing about. While they said the food was ok, they said it wasn't worth the wait. We sat around until about 11:10pm or so and then they (with Jenn) headed over to her apartment to call it a night.
Right before they left, we had been watching the news and heard about all the flood damage in the 161/Minerva Lake area. I remember making an offhanded joke to Jenn about her apartment being flooded, but being as her apartment is not at the bottom of a hill, we didn't think much about it—so all joked about it.
Well, I picked up Madden 2004 for the PlayStation 2 last night. The new features—especially the "Playmaker" feature—are awesome. I only got to play one game last night, but my Steelers killed the Bengals in an exhibition match.
A recent test by researchers in Austrilia indicates that creatine—a natural compound found in muscle tissue—when digested appears to not only boost athletic performance, but it can also boost memory and intelligence. The most common side effect is that appears increase body odor.
"Creatine supplementation gave a significant measurable boost to brain power."
The researchers found that subjects' ability to remember long numbers improved from a number length of approximately seven digits, to an average of 8.5.
Dr Rae believes that the creatine increases the amount of energy available to the brain for computational tasks, improving general mental ability.
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The supplement [creatine] is also notorious for creating an unpleasant odour in the vicinity of the taker.
- BBC News
Well, it's been about a week since I've blogged. I took several days off from work in order to "re-energize" a bit. Anyway, I'm back now, so you'll probably here a little more from me again. So, let's see, what's been going on?
Well on Wednesday of last week I did some work around the house during the day and then at night I babysat for Nicholas. That kid is just so funny. He gets laughing so hard that he starts wheazing and rocking back and forth—it's classic. He's really a joy to babysit. He's about as easy to take care of as you could ask.
Thursday I met up w/my buddy Jason and we took our dogs to Antrium park in here in Columbus. I wanted to get Maddie out and let her play and swim a bit. Unfortunately, a thunderstorm starting rolling through so I couldn't let her swim for very long. I know she was pretty bummed about not being able to swim—as we made are way around the lake she kept sneaking back in the water. I just didn't want to risk her getting struck—I know the odds are against it, but what can I say, I wanted to be safe.
Well, I think this link deserves it's own blog entry. Macromedia has (finally) released ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) History list. This documentation shows what features are available starting with ColdFusion v4.01. If you are ever coding projects for older versions of CF, than this is a must download. Here's a quote from their web site:
As the ColdFusion Server product has grown since its inception, the ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) has adapted to meet those changing needs. This TechNote provides a downloadable file providing the details of those changes to the language, beginning with ColdFusion 4.0.1 and continuing through the currently released version.
I worked on a project several months ago where this documentation would have really come in handy. I had lots of problems trying to figure out when certain attributes, tags and functions where introduced. The client was running CF v4.01. I had a manual handy for CF v4.0, but I knew there were substantial updates to the language for v4.01. Since I was doing development on a CFMX box, this made trying to figure out what was code safe for v4.01 very tricky. This document would have saved me tens of hours at the start of my project.
As I stated yesterday, I smelled some announcements coming from Macromedia today. Macromedia released ColdFusion MX v6.1 today. This is a free upgrade to existing ColdFusion MX users. Although listed as a minor revision, as almost all ColdFusion minor releases, it includes some significant changes and improvements. Check out the ColdFusion MX v6.1 FAQ for an overview. I recommend downloading the upgrade and testing it out as soon as you can.
Also, with the launch of the new version of CFMX, Macromedia has released a number of new ColdFusion Development Center articles. Below is a list of articles that introduce concepts new to CFMX v6.1.
I was reading an article on Dream Theater over the weekend and I found this quote by James LaBrie on the new album:
...definitely after the tour, a week off and then into the studio to lay vocals. Um, right now we are slated for a release near the beginning of October and that's pretty much has been written in stone as I speak to you now. Give or take a week, you know? We really don't have much time to play with. I have to get back and get the vocals done and then we have to allow time for the mix and packaging and everything else you tend to do with every release. It's going to be a very busy time for us. But it's do-able. We can certainly do everything and have it completed exactly the way we want it. That's the plan at this point. An October release and then we start with a world tour in January. I believe we start January 15th in Manchester, England.
Hopefully this means I'm listening to a new Dream Theater album by at least November. I'm really curious to see how this album turns out. Seems the inspiration for this album came in big part from their recent concerts where they played The Number of the Beast and Master of Puppets from start to finish. This has really peaked my interest!
Cerulean Studios just released a (semi) public beta of their fantastic multi-protocol instant messenger, Trillian Pro. The beta is only available for paying customers of Trillian Pro v1.x, but the sneek peek is available for everyone.
I smell an upcoming announcement from the folks at Macromedia very soon... I wonder what it could be? :)