Lincolnite

Omahan Warren Buffet made $776 million on the recent Gillette, Proctor and Gamble merger. Not a bad day's work.

Global warming is a good thing, or so say a few scientists:

"Instead of driving us to the brink of environmental disaster, human intervention and technology progress will be seen as vital activities that have unintentionally delayed the onset of a catastrophic ice age."

You heard 'em, go start up your cars and start belching out fumes. It's for the protection of the human species, darnit!

I'm not usually a Rodney Balko fan, but his latest article is a sober assessment of the erosion of civil liberties we tolerate in order to conduct the War on Drugs™.

Well I confirmed with my own eyes today that Vien Dong restaurant across from the UNL city campus has either closed or moved. This was my favorite restaurant in the UNL/near downtown area, and for a while there, especially during the summer, I was heading over there every weekend for some beef pho (and they did serve it with a slice of lime, lettuce and sprouts - - but often times no basil). I'm not sure what it DIDN"T have going for it. The pho was decent - and I have eaten pho in Vietnam before - the place was clean and actually quite nice with the full length mirrors, and they had a mix of familiar "Americanized" dishes as well as the more authentic ones. Not to mention right across the street from a campus brimming full of kids and faculty. Perhaps it was the small lunch buffet? High rent? In anycase, RIP Vien Dong...lets hope the empty space is filled with a worthy replacement.

Aren't you proud to know that this guy is a Nebraskan?

I am waaaaay behind on my movie watching. The Academy Award nominations came out today and I haven't seen a single one of the Best Picture nominees. One of these days I'll catch them all on DVD. I hope.

I'm such a meany. Today I received an e-mail from Braeda advertising their Super Bowl catering services. I had also received an e-mail from them a few weeks ago. It annoyed me then and it annoyed me today, primarily because I know where they got my e-mail address: from my business card, which I gave them in an effort to win a free lunch. So I sent them this:

I did not agree to receive your marketing e-mails. I believe you are therefore in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Specifically, your e-mail lacks a clear and obvious way to opt out of receiving further e-mails as required by the Act. (Incidentally, responsible and reputable businesses would offer that feature even without a federal law in place to require it.) Please immediately remove me from your mailing and contact lists, electronic or otherwise. Future unsolicited commercial e-mails in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act will be reported to the Federal Trade Commission. Please see http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm for helpful information about the Act.

They will claim, of course, that I "opted-in" to their marketing efforts by supplying them with my business card. That's crap, of course. Nowhere near their little fishbowl did they state that my contact information could or would be used for anything other than to contact me about winning a free meal. I wonder if I'll hear back from them?

Firefox has now passed the 20,000,000 download mark since it was released in November 2004. Are you one of them? You should be.

I am familiar with this standard Monopoly rules variation, but the article also mentions this Scrabble twist:

Other interesting board-game rule variations include the blank-tile substitution rule in Scrabble. Under this rule, if somebody puts a blank on the board to signify "R,' say, and later you wind up with an "R' in your rack, you can substitute the real letter for the blank and re-use the latter. This keeps the blanks in constant circulation, which can be useful toward the end of the game when everybody is getting down to the nubs, letters-wise.

Has anybody ever used that one, or even heard of it? I can't say that I have.

From the United States: Repeal of 'Woman Slander' Law Sought. From France: France Outlaws Sexist Insults Does this mean we'll soon see an influx of women-insulting Frenchmen here in the U.S.?

Perhaps somebody with a background in law can explain this to me: how is this not entrapment? Especially this part:

Some suspects in prostitution investigations are confronting naked justice. A prosecutor says police are now allowed to undress in an effort to persuade suspected prostitutes to negotiate sex acts. [emphasis added]

Anybody care to give me a primer on entrapment and related concepts?

The Missus and I woke up to a nice 54 degree house this morning. Not an intolerable temperature by any means, but when you're expecting at least in the 65, it catches you a bit off guard. I want to send a big thank-you to the friendly folks at Service Guard. Seriously, they were very helpful when I called, and a little repair dude -- actually a fairly large repair dude -- showed up in under two hours. (It was probably around 90 minutes, but I didn't actually pay attention to the time.) Good news: The house is now approaching 64 degrees, and warming. The furnace is, for the moment, working. Sort of. Bad news: The (large) repair dude couldn't figure out what was wrong. He's pretty sure the problem is in the electronics within the control module, so he's going to replace it. He doesn't know if he'll be able to get a new part today, though. It is, after all, Sunday. We should have full-functioning heat either late this afternoon or sometime tomorrow. Cool news: The repair dude gave me permission to kick the furnace to get it to work. Well, those weren't his exact words. But it was something like that. I watched him work, and tapping on the control panel appeared to be the best way to get it to (occasionally) work correctly. Beating things is my usual solution to get them to work, so this won't be unusual for me at all.

I ate at Samurai Sam's today. By all appearances they aren't going to go down without a fight. They had an anti-eminent domain abuse sign posted, along with a petition (which I forgot to sign!). I may offer the affected parties -- the owners of Sam Sam's, along with other property owners and lessees -- free use of website space here on Lincolnite.com. If anybody out there knows any of those parties, feel free to connect them with me, or let me know their contact information.

Omaha Senator Pat Bourne wants to overrule local anti-smoking ordinances with a single statewide ordinance. Now I'm experiencing an ends/means conflict. I support the ends (property and business owner rights) of Bourne's bill, but I hate the means (usurping local control). I support the means (local voters decide) of Lincoln's anti-smoking ordinance, but I hate the ends (squashing property and business owner rights). But I'm not going to be wishy-washy and try to have it both ways. I'll be a good boy and pick my side. I do not support Bourne's bill. Bypassing local democratic processes -- even wrongheaded ones -- is not something Nebraska ought to be doing. More importantly, the bill's evil goes beyond overthrowing Lincoln's democratic decision. Bourne wants to pre-emptively halt similar democratic activity in Omaha, where an anti-smoking ordinance similar to Lincoln's will probably be enacted within the next few years. That's no different than Nebraska's voters bypassing Omaha voters' democratic rights by booting Ernie Chambers out of office via the term limits initiative. And so I come out on the side of Lincoln's anti-rights na... No, no, I'm not going to say it. Let me rephrase: I come out on the side of Lincoln's anti-smoking advocates. We are an unlikely alliance, but when you have principles to uphold, sometimes you find yourself among odd company.