My Name

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 37 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Apparently 32,997 people have my first name and 338,965 have my last name, but the combination is much less common.
h/t: Poliblog

So much to do, so little time. . .

If anybody was wondering, I'm back from my trip to Boise, ID. I've got some pictures that I'd love to post, and I will at some point, I'm sure. There's also a lot going on in the news with the upcoming elections and the issues in Iraq. However, I just really don't have the time to do any of it. I've got a paper proposal due on Thursday and I'm taking my comps on Friday, so I really don't even have the time to be writing this post. Maybe I will find the time to re-emerge before the semester is over, but I somehow doubt it. Wish me luck. I need it.

More blogrolling strangeness

I don't know exactly what happened at 16:21:37 GMT yesterday (or even when that is exactly in CDT), but for some reason most blogs in the blogosphere appear to have updated at that very moment. All the blogs in my blogroll did. Most in Poliblog's blogroll did too. I don't know what's going on, but I hope they get their ducks in a row soon.

Must See

Now this you've got to see. Steven Taylor has posted a great video of Tony Blair "singing" "Should I Stay or Should I Go". You've got to check it out. Whoever made it did an excellent job.

Isn't it ironic?

I find it highly ironic that blogger's spell check feature doesn't recognize the words "blog", "blogging" or "blogger". Go figure.

What do you think?

As I approach graduation, I've begun to think about the road that lies ahead. Once I get my MSIR degree, my ambition is to someday teach, whether it be as an adjunct at Troy or at a junior college in the area or something. I was thinking about what I would want to require my students to do and I had an idea. Could I make them blog?

My husband is an English professor, and he makes his freshman comp students keep a journal, just to make them write and think about writing. He grades them on whether they do it or not, not on the content. I was wondering if I could do that with a blog.

Would it be okay to create a class blog and require each student to be a weekly contributor? The idea would be that they would have to read, and comment on in a scholarly way, at least one class relevant news article per week. They would then receive a participation grade for doing it. What do the blogging professors out there, or blogging students for that matter, think of the idea? Would it fly or not? Please, tell me what you think.

Update-It's working

It's nice to see that blogrolling is back up and functioning. I checked their website and can't find any explanation for the outage. I'm happy that it's working again though.

Just checking

Just a quick post to see if I'm updating with blogrolling.

This was only a test.

In case of an actual blog post you would be notified of some interesting personal information or news story.

We will now returned to our regularly scheduled web surfing.

My Celebrity Collage

Thanks to Lizzy over at Purse Patisserie I found this site. Here is my celebrity collage.



Try it yourself. It's fun! It also said I looked like Nikki Sixx and Brian May, but I left those pictures out of the collage. LOL!

A less than stellar day

Today was my wedding anniversary, but it was a less than stellar day. I had to get up at 5:45, which is much earlier than I normally get it up, and then drive to Dothan (an hour and 15 minutes away) to the hospital. My oldest son had to have a HIDA scan of his gallbladder. We got there at 7:30 and didn't leave until 11:20.

Then I went by to see my sister, whose birthday is also today. She was at work so I only talked to her for a minute. Then I went by to visit my 90 year old grandmother, who lives between my house and Dothan. We visited there for a little while and then finally made it home around 2:30.

Once I got home I had to clean some because we were going to have a baby sitter coming over later (my wonderful husband had already done most the cleaning).

After the baby sitter finally arrived around 5:00, we took my 15 year old to where he was supposed to meet his soccer team to travel to their away game.

Then finally we got to go have our quiet romantic dinner in Montgomery. It was a very nice end to a less than wonderful day. Hopefully next year our anniversary will be a little less hectic.

Did they or didn't they?

MSNBC - France: North Korea nuclear test was a failure
There appears to be some disagreement around the international community as to the validity of the North Korean claim to have entered the nuclear club.

France said outright for the first time Wednesday that North Korea’s proclaimed nuclear test produced such a small blast that it must have failed, and analysts warned such challenging talk could lead Pyongyang to try again.

Testing for nuclear radiation continues, but it could take some time to prove definitively whether a nuclear explosion took place.

In fact,

Some experts say it’s possible that the world never may never fully determine whether North Korea succeeded in conducting the test.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what develops.

Not happy with last night's episode of NCIS

Ever since I first started watching NCIS on CBS I've really enjoyed the show. The characters were smart and funny and they had interesting story lines. Unfortunately I haven't been happy with the direction the show has taken lately. I don't particularly like the fact that they have begun to focus so much on terrorism. I also don't like the new recurrent character, Gibb's old boss who retired to Mexico. Anyway, on last night's episode Gibb's old boss, Agent Franks (played by Muse Watson), came back into town because they were investigating a case that was tied to one of his old cases. In order to keep the bad guy locked up Agent Franks lies about having evidence, knocks out Tony in an effort to get out of protective custody, and ultimately shoots one of the bad guys in cold blood (after he had laid down his weapon). For all you can tell at the end, they just let him go back to Mexico like nothing happened.

In my opinion, this is just sending the message that the system doesn't work so we should all turn into vigilantes. I don't think that is a responsible message. I know that shows sometimes send that message, but that's not the impression I've gotten from this show in the past and I hope it doesn't become a predominant theme. If it does, I guess there will be one less hour of TV I watch per week. Which ultimately wouldn't be such a bad thing, I guess.

A question of jurisdiction

I have a question for any body out there who knows something about international law and/or national jurisdiction. I was reading this NYTimes article today and I came across this passage:

Under the U.S.A. Patriot Act, signed into law shortly after the 2001 attacks, the United States labeled a bank in Macao, Banco Delta Asia, as a “primary money-laundering concern” and declared that any bank doing business on American soil — virtually every big bank in the world — could not do business with it.

I'm taking an international law class right now and we have studied the 5 principles of jurisdiction that are established by international customary practice.
1)territorial - states can make laws regarding people and things within its borders
2)nationality - states can make laws regarding its citizens, airplanes and ships regardless of where the action takes place
3)passive personality - a state has jurisdiction in any case where its citizen is victim of a crime
4)protective - a state can protect itself from espionage, counterfeiting or unwanted immigration or importations
5)universality - some acts are considered so serious that any state can claim jurisdiction, examples: slave trade & genocide

Okay, now for the question. Under what form of jurisdiction does the US Congress have the right to proscribe the actions of banks of different nationalities acting outside the United States, simply because they also do business inside the United States?

If anyone out there has an answer I really am interested in hearing it. This is NOT a rhetorical question.

North Korea Tests Nukes

World Condemns North Korea's Nuclear Test - New York Times
It would appear that the North Koreans have finally tested their first nuclear weapon.

North Korea said it tested its first atomic bomb in an underground explosion Monday morning. The White House said U.S. and South Korean intelligence detected a seismic event at a suspected North Korean nuclear site and were trying to confirm Pyongyang's claims.

The US and Australia now seem ready to turn the security council loose on them.

The United States and Australia demanded immediate U.N. Security Council action against North Korea for its reported nuclear test, while China condemned its ally for blatantly defying the world.

The tests are seen as a provocative act of defiance by much of the world.

The North Korean government paints a slightly different picture. Text of North Korea Announcement

It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the KPA [Korean People’s Army] and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability.

It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it.

This all just reminded me of something I read this weekend in one of my text books.

The idea of deterrence due to the threat of mutual annihilation is really a product of a bipolar world and relies on the rationality and stability of the actors concerned. But as Keith Colquhoun (1993: 210) has put it: "The problem of North Korea is that the government is widely perceived to be insane."

I'm really not totally up to speed on why the North Korean government is so often labeled as insane, but the idea of procuring nukes is not in and of itself a reason for that label. Plus, if they are testing underground under scientific monitoring that seems at least as responsible as any other country and more responsible than some (remember France's test of nukes IN THE ATMOSPHERE not too long ago). If nuclear weapons are going to be synonymous with international power and first world status, third world countries are going to want to acquire them. Period. For the first world to tell the third world that we can have them and they can't, especially with the reason given that we can be trusted and they can't, just isn't going to fly.

Happy Blogiversary!

I just wanted to say happy blogiversary to Sheri over at A Glass of Sheri. It's her blog's first birthday.

Irony Anyone?

I was in Wal-Mart today and I saw a woman wearing a Dixie Traditions t-shirt that I just found ironic. Here is a picture of the logo.


If it is an American pride t-shirt, why say Dixie and 1861?
If it's a southern/Confederate pride t-shirt the reference to defending freedom is just ironic and wrong.

It just seems to me that if this is supposed to represent one side or the other of the Civil War, it seems like a Northern Pride shirt more than a Southern Pride shirt. However, the site bills itself as a "southern redneck" t-shirt site.

Ironic. . .or maybe it's just me.