Lincolnite: Lincoln's Online Community

13.44% of High Schoolers Will be Dead in 5 Years

August 31, 2005 at 7:35pm By: Mr. Wilson Posted in 625 Elm Street

It’s true. The new federal website Just Think Twice links to Meth is Death, which tells us that:

• 1 in 7 high school students will try meth
• 99 percent of first-time meth users are hooked after just the first try
• only 5 percent of meth addicts are able to kick it and stay away
• the life expectancy of a habitual meth user is only 5 years.

Therefore, 13.44% of all high schoolers will be dead in 5 years. It’s true because our government told us it is true. (Even though they also tell us it’s all lies.)

(Hat tip: Hit and Run)

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Kudos to the Seattle Times

August 31, 2005 at 3:14am By: Mr. T Posted in Mr. T's Den

I became a C-Span junkie in my 3rd year of law/grad school (God knows you have enough time to watch a lot of TV in 3L), and have been as faithful addict ever since. This past week, they recently covered a panel discussion featuring none other than James Yee - the Chinese-American Muslim convert US Army Chaplain who was the subject of a pretty intense investigation for alleged mishandling of materials at Gitmo. It was actually Yee’s first public appearance ever since the entire debacle, and the journalists in attendance were hot and heavy for some questions of his experience.

The entire show, which I highly recommend watching/listening, is available at CSpan and so is a related, and belated, story by Ray Rivera - now a Washington Post journalist - about Yee’s ordeal at the Seattle Times’ excellent special investigations website.

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Murder

August 31, 2005 at 3:09am By: Mr. Wilson Posted in The Lincolnite Blog

A Lincolnite was shot and killed around 12:30a.m. this morning. Robert Herndon was murdered by two men who had come to his house, but it is not clear if Herndon knew the men. Herndon’s girlfriend witnessed the murder.

Often these situations involve gang activity or a drug deal gone wrong. So far no motive has been suggested.

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A Star City Hooker

August 31, 2005 at 2:21am By: Mr. T Posted in The Lincolnite Blog

I just had my first encounter with a Lincoln prostitute.

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Free Opera

August 30, 2005 at 11:11pm By: Mr. Wilson Posted in 625 Elm Street

Opera is giving away its web browser for free in honor of its 10th birthday. That’s the full, ad-free version.

Go get your copy!

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How does the saying go…

August 30, 2005 at 7:17am By: D.M.B. Posted in D.M.B. Sports Report

...when you try something for the first time?  Close your eyes and jump in?

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A Skip in My Step

August 29, 2005 at 11:20pm By: Mr. Wilson Posted in 625 Elm Street

I recently discovered Adobe Designer at work. It’s an incredibly powerful form design tool that makes form creation easy for designers, and form completion easy for users. Unfortunately, it has a couple shortcomings in how it interacts with the user. Those shortcomings nearly torpedoed a hefty portion of a project I’ve been working on. In fact, we had “officially” decided to dump Designer and go a more old-fashioned route.

Fortunately I was stubborn, and my stubbornness paid off.

Through a bit of luck I ran across a helpful document (PDF) that led me down a path that led to a path that led to a dead end, which encouraged me to dig a tunnel… Long story short, I found a workaround to do what we wanted to do with zero extra effort on our end, and only an extra mouse click or two from the folks who will be using our end product. And best of all, I earned a healthy scoop of brownie points, which always come in handy.

I love the rush you get when you accomplish something you had almost given up on. Considering how much energy we had put into this project, I would have been really disappointed if we had had to back down. Instead, I get to go hop on the bus with a skip in my step. To which I say: cool.

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New at Lincolnite: Big Decisions

August 29, 2005 at 4:24pm By: Mr. Wilson Posted in The Lincolnite Blog

The Articles section of the website isn’t technically ready to go live just yet, but I have posted my first article in my weekly (give or take) column called The Front Porch. The summary:

My wife and I are parents in need of a child in a world filled with children in need of parents. When the old fashioned approach didn’t work as advertised, the decision about what to do next came a lot easier than we expected.

Comments on this blog entry are closed; comments may be posted at the article.

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Poop Head

August 28, 2005 at 10:34pm By: Mr. Wilson Posted in 625 Elm Street

Daisy rolled in a huge, fresh, steaming pile of poop this morning. Her neck and portions of her head were coated with it. She was pleased as punch; I was not amused. I would have strangled her, but there was no way in hell I was going to touch her. Fortunately, when we got home she jumped into the bathtub on her own, and I was able to rinse most of it off without having to touch her. But it’s going to take a long time before I let her cuddle up close to me.

Why must dogs roll in foul, stinky things? Why?!

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Travel Problems for Chucky

August 28, 2005 at 8:30pm By: Mr. T Posted in Mr. T's Den

A few of the Senate Foreign Relations guys got held up in Russia. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know who to blame. I just found it sort of funny.

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Big Bitch

August 28, 2005 at 8:16pm By: Mr. T Posted in Mr. T's Den

A good friend of mine lives on the gulf coast of Florida south of Tallahassee and is planning on riding this sucker out (he lives in a high rise apartment and a friend is letting him park his car in their garage). With all the attention given to New Orleans (and rightfully so) it should also be kept in mind that when this hits its going to affect the entire Southeast.

I’ve been to New Orleans before and had a great time. It was a wonderful city. Lets hope it gets through this.

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Chahal Redux (“outsourcing torture”)

August 28, 2005 at 12:34am By: Mr. T Posted in Mr. T's Den

Finally got done with a few pages today on a forthcoming article regarding the Soering case (violation of ECHR by the UK for extraditing a West German to Virginia’s death row) and its prodigy the 1996 Chahal case. Chahal was an Indian national living in the UK under an immigration amnesty who was very active in anti-Indian government activities - including publicly advocating for a violent separatist campaign against India, various domestic indictments, and alleged involvement in an assasination attempt of Rajiv Gandhi - following massacres of Sikhs in 1984 in India. The UK moved to deport Chahal to India as a threat to national security, but Chahal claimed that his deportation would likely lead to torture and persecution by Indian authorities.

However, unlike in Soering, the UK argued that Chahal’s deportation and possible risk of torture upon his expulsion to India should be balanced by the national interest of removing him from the UK as a threat to domestic security. The good old Strasbourg Court, however, ruled against the UK and held that no matter how serious Chahal’s alleged threats were to the UK’s national security, the Convention’s prohibition of torture stopped the UK from deporting him to India because of the real risk he would face of being tortured or otherwise persecuted by Indian authorities (which he had previously experienced while in custody of Indian police).

Expect to hear more about the Chahal and Soering cases in the near future, particularly given the UK’s recent announcements that non-citizens will be deported for “inciting terror.” I recently heard both BBC Radio and NPR elude to this issue in recent broadcasts late last week.

Somewhat related international crime trivia

, in the course of my research I also found that Jens Soering - the West German national who allegedly murdered his girlfriend’s parents in Virginia and then escaped to England - is today serving a couple of life sentences in Virginia, has converted to a strict Catholic school of belief, and now writes regular stories that are available on the internets.

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Go Gary Walker, Go!

August 26, 2005 at 2:25pm By: Mr. Wilson Posted in The Lincolnite Blog

I really respect Gary Walker. He’s the owner of the freedom flyer, a large bus that sits outside the Hi-Way Diner on Highway 2. The bus serves as the Hi-Way Diner’s “unofficial” smoking section, since paternalistic Lincolnites have decided that smoking in restaurants is evil. Unfortunately, the bus runs afoul of another law that restricts using recreational vehicles to supplement a business. (I don’t get it either.) Mr. Walker is fighting the issue all the way through—which probably means he’ll end up in jail for a couple days.

There is good news in all of this. Apparently the City of Lincoln is now nearly crime free! It must be, or else why would Lincoln’s prosecutorial community be spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to press such a tiny issue?

Anyway, good for Gary Walker for standing up to an unjust law. Most anti-smoking ban types in Lincoln just sat back and whined (paging Bob Ihrig), while Mr. Walker actually got creative. Good for him!

As an aside, has anybody eaten at the Hi-Way Diner recently? Has the joint cleaned up at all? The last time I was there—probably a half-dozen years ago or more—it was a tad on the icky side. I’m all for character in my local diners, but the Hi-Way Diner had character literally crawling in the carpets.

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Friday Diversion

August 26, 2005 at 2:20pm By: Mr. Wilson Posted in 625 Elm Street

Check out The Matrix, ascii-fied.

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Scovilles Aplenty

August 25, 2005 at 8:17pm By: Mr. Wilson Posted in 625 Elm Street

I had lunch today with Mr. T and a joint acquaintance, whom for today we will call “The Black Widow.” I will spare you the full back story, but Mr. T and The Black Widow decided to make a wager: whichever of them lasted longer in a hot chile eating competition would win a free steak dinner, purchased by the loser. I would act as the judge, and I would supply the chiles from my garden. I just happened to have a couple fresh habaneros waiting to be eaten.

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