| Personal Notes: |
[Dec. 26th, 2004|06:25 pm] |
| [Tags | | | bush, charles thomson, clare, entrepreneur, founding father, ideabank, notes, phone, privacy, science, slc, wikipedia, wikiquote, zip | ] |
At Clare's, I read an article in some main stream scientific magazine which referred to Privacy Journal which would be interesting to keep tabs on. Someone in the mall today asked me for my phone number when I was buying something and I said "I'm sorry, but I would rather not give you my phone number."
To which she responded: "Well, do you know anyone's phone number?" as though I would respect someone else's privacy less than my own. It seems to fluster a small percentage of the clerks that I deal with when I refuse to give out my phone number or my zip code. They should have privacy education in this country, but instead the whole system is designed to allow corporations to swallow up as much information as possible from unsuspecting consumers.
Clare said that George Bush "supposedly" said this:
"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur."
- origin unknown
Which would have been hilarious if true, but according to Wikiquote, it is misattributed. Too bad.
In addition to WikiPedia there are also slew of "sister" projects which will probably prove useful for reference. The only drawback seems to be that they can be quite slow at times. WikiQuote should put IdeaBank out of business, if we were really in business to begin with.
The poorly known "founding father" my mother was talking about during our Christmas Eve political discussion was Charles Thomson. The Wikipedia entry for him is pretty short, but I did find some additional information on him here:
http://www.rebelswithavision.com/CharlesThomson.com/
which corroborates most of the elements of the story that my mother has been telling.
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| From the Sublime to the Ridiculous |
[Dec. 25th, 2004|12:09 am] |
| [Tags | | | abuse, argument, atheist, australia, bear lake, british empire, byu, christmas, clare, college sports, constitution, don, empire, feminist, fish, funeral potatoes, gelatin, gough witlam, grandma, jelly, john kerr, kay, marriage, mormons, mum, neutral, nudity, photography, politics, polygamy, queen, republic, slc, switzerland, utah, utah state, wine, woman | ] |
Yesterday we went up to visit my mother's friend and mentor, Clare, at her rustic cabin home which looks over Bear Lake. Last July I took a photograph which now is on the welcome page of my web site up there. For "Christmas" dinner, we had fish. Although I am not a fan of fish and I did not have seconds, it did taste pretty good. We also drank lots of Australian wine; that probably helped.
( The Sublime )
In short, our range of topics was both wide and deep, and intellectually stimulating.
Then we drove back to Salt Lake City where we attended the annual Christmas Eve party for Don's (my step father) family. Gosh... where to begin.
( The Ridiculous ) |
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