Well, this is a first for me… flipping the home page before going to bed.
Today, Neale impresses with SIMS: American Beauty in ASCII. Wicked.
And nobody at UserLand wants to answer my support question from yesterday, so I now spread it out to the world: does anyone know how, or if it’s possible, to have an option on a Manila site member sign-up form that has to be answered in a specific way before the membership can be created? A consent, if you will — COPA states that commercial websites can’t collect any information about children under 13 without parental consent, so I want to know how to make someone assure me that they’re 13 years old or over before I create the membership. If you’ve got an answer, I’d love a posting.
It’s strange to say, but when thinking about the six-year-old who shot and killed Kayla Rolland today, I pretty strongly agree with the notion that there’s most likely someone other than the boy that should be held responsible. If you’re an adult, and you have guns (much less stolen guns) in your home that are easily accessible to your children, then to me, you’re completely and inarguably responsible for anything that happens if the children do get their hands on those guns. This is just tragic; this child is as much a victim as he is a participant in today’s sad events. Stephen started a discussion about kids and weapons this morning; I’d love to hear how other people feel about this.
Oh, and I have a new hero on this here planet: Dahlia Lithwick. She’s the Supreme Court reporter for Slate, and she manages to combine a terrific legal analysis with a side-splitting sense of humor to create virtual works of art every day of Court argument. Today’s column discusses the Court arguments in Bond v. United States, a right to privacy/illegal search case in which Bond was arrested for posession and transportation of a large quantity of methamphetamine after a border patrol agent touched and squeezed his luggage. After recounting the various points made by both sides and most of the Justices, Lithwick concludes:
Wherever the court draws the line between “good touch” and “bad touch” today, one pragmatic point is clear: If you ever have to pick which justice to sit beside on a plane, go with Ginsburg. Breyer is a self-confessed luggage-mover, and Scalia may well be a closet luggage-sniffer.
Excellent — Andy Dehnart figures out that, given that the millionth video was played this past weekend, MTV has played only four videos an hour for the last nine years. Anyone else sick of Music Television not playing any damn music?
