PARIS, Oct. 21 – To enforce its new law banning religious symbols from public schools, the Ministry of National Education has decided to get tough.

This week it held formal disciplinary hearings and began expelling students who violated the law. The goal was to get rid of those defined as hopeless cases before the 10-day All Saints school vacation that ends with a national holiday honoring all of Catholicism’s saints.

The French government sees no contradiction or irony here.

[NY Times] (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/22/international/europe/22france.html)

The more I read about this French ban, the more shocked I am at how brazen the idea of secularism is being twisted to enact an edict clearly aimed against a particular religious group. Seeing the separation of church and state used as justication for persecution is a frightening exercise in spin to suit the mass’s need for a scapegoat.

Imagination at Work! CUBED is a VERY cool Flash applicatin by people at GE to do collaborative whiteboarding. The cool thing is they’ve built in chatting, basic drawing, and a way to invite people to ongoing sessions via either email or IM. Very neat.

Click image to play movie.

(If you don’t have Quicktime, you can download an AVI version )

We produced our first movie of the baby with the new camcorder. Much as we promised ourselves we weren’t going to be the “tapes everything” kind of parents… well… what can I say?

Voters who visit the Votergasm website can choose from three different levels of commitment:

• “Votergasm citizens” must pledge to withhold sex from non-voters for a week after election night
• “Patriot-level commitment” requires a voter to have sex with another voter on election night as well as withholding sex from non-voters for a week
• Those who take the most extreme pledge, called “American hero”, commit themselves to having sex with another 2004 voter as well as turning down all non-voters until the 2008 vote.

BBC

Every year it seems like attempts to involve the youth vote are more and more far-reached. I think it speaks a lot about the common perception among young voters when being involved in electing the government needs to be spun with “sex and rock & roll.”

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

But what if Brin had stayed in Moscow, and Khosla remained in India, and Wang had gone to university in Europe? That’s the provocative question posed by Richard Florida in “America’s Looming Creativity Crisis,” an article in the October issue of the Harvard Business Review. Florida, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, maintains that “the global talent pool and the high-end, high-margin creative industries that used to be the sole province of the U.S., and a crucial source of its prosperity, have begun to disperse around the globe.”

Fast Company Now

Important point considering the reliance constantly emphasized by many in innovation pushing our economy forward. I’ve always thought the fact that innovation was fastest in America would help keep us on top–if for no other reason than things happen in English first.

There’s been a lot of heated debate over dishonesty and manipulation of facts after the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates. In many ways I think the items that are attracting outrage are relatively small, and those more deserving of public scrutiny seem to be getting ignored.

For instance, given the overall context of a political debate, I thought Cheney’s remark about having never previously met Edwards was for rhetorical effect–not a literal statement. The substance of the remark–Edwards’ poor Senate attendence–was both on target and (I felt) not adequately addressed by Edwards’ response.

The brouhaha over Cheney’s remarks seem as well-grounded as Democratic allegations of Bush being prompted through a concealed microphone during the debate (a charge which the Presidential tailor – EVERY president’s tailor since Nixon or so was quite incensed over). This sniping of superficial remarks in the age of Tivo has masked what I feel are some serious points. Continue Reading »

It wasn’t pennies from heaven but an estimated $2 million in cash and coins that spilled across the New Jersey Turnpike in Carteret last night after an armored car crashed into a guardrail and flipped, spewing its cargo.

“It’s a madhouse. There’s money everywhere,” said Turnpike spokesman Joe Orlando, who was on the scene. “We’re in the toll collection business and I’ve never seen so much money.”

link

Lisa and I passed by this on Monday night, but sadly were not rewarded with part of the cash. According to the followup article 95% of the money was recovered, but that still means $100,000 are floating around the turnpike somewhere. Sadly, none of that money ended up on our windshield, though we did see all kinds of recovery vehicles and whatnot at the site.

Google SMS (Short Message Service) enables you to easily get precise answers to specialized queries from your mobile phone or device. Send your query as a text message and get phone book listings, dictionary definitions, product prices and more. Just text. No links. No web pages. Simply the answers you’re looking to find.

Access to google from any location could be dangerous. Combined with the local service, this could easily replace 411 for me. (cheaper too)

Froogle from my phone would be nice too to compare those impulse buys and convince yourself how much cheaper you can get the product somewhere else.

Opened a 529 plan for the little one yesterday. Our selection process basically came down to 2 choices: the USAA College Savings Plan (which allows UPromise contributions) and the NJBEST plan which has the advantage of a $1500 scholarship for school in NJ if you contribute enough. Right now the tipping decision for us was that we had $58 sitting in a UPromise account thanks to switching to a Citibank Upromise credit card.

Since switching to the card has basically given us UPromise contributions without any behavior modification required, it’s been a good deal as far as I’m concerned.