Crush meme

Just heard about this from athenais and decided I had to try it. I could use some egoboo...

LJMeme.com Crush Meme

Number of crushes on me so far: 1

LJ username:

Crush meme

Just heard about this from athenais and decided I had to try it. I could use some egoboo...

LJMeme.com Crush Meme

Number of crushes on me so far: 1

LJ username:

Taking the Ballot Title Back

After the California gubernatorial recall election, my friends in Florida were relieved that they had finally lost the title of "stupidest election commission in the U.S." But the following excerpt from a recent news story proves that their relief was premature:

"Jim Kemp shuddered when he saw Palm Beach County's absentee ballot.

"People aren't going to understand this," he said of the ballot, which instructs people to connect an arrow to vote for the candidate of their choice. "It's just going to be a mess again."

From the butterfly ballot to the broken arrow, Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore is setting up the county for another election meltdown potentially, said the Delray Beach retiree, who was communications director for Children's Hospital in Miami and a communications specialist for the Palm Beach County School District.

Kemp and others wonder why LePore had to complicate matters by using the broken arrow when voters could be asked simply to fill in a circle to indicate their vote, known as bubbling in.

"People have to bubble in a lot of things today, but I've never seen where you have to connect an arrow," he said.

Taking the Ballot Title Back

After the California gubernatorial recall election, my friends in Florida were relieved that they had finally lost the title of "stupidest election commission in the U.S." But the following excerpt from a recent news story proves that their relief was premature:

"Jim Kemp shuddered when he saw Palm Beach County's absentee ballot.

"People aren't going to understand this," he said of the ballot, which instructs people to connect an arrow to vote for the candidate of their choice. "It's just going to be a mess again."

From the butterfly ballot to the broken arrow, Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore is setting up the county for another election meltdown potentially, said the Delray Beach retiree, who was communications director for Children's Hospital in Miami and a communications specialist for the Palm Beach County School District.

Kemp and others wonder why LePore had to complicate matters by using the broken arrow when voters could be asked simply to fill in a circle to indicate their vote, known as bubbling in.

"People have to bubble in a lot of things today, but I've never seen where you have to connect an arrow," he said.

Brushoffs in the Internet Age

(Can you tell I'm catching up on a few days' worth of newspapers?)

A new service: If someone hitting on you refuses to take "no" for an answer and you don't want to make a scene when the person insists on getting your email address, you can write down "name@papernapkin.net" without registering in advance. When the person sends an email message to that address, a form letter is returned. It says, in part "Maybe you're just out of your league here." Ah, dating in the Internet age. Here's the full story.

Brushoffs in the Internet Age

(Can you tell I'm catching up on a few days' worth of newspapers?)

A new service: If someone hitting on you refuses to take "no" for an answer and you don't want to make a scene when the person insists on getting your email address, you can write down "name@papernapkin.net" without registering in advance. When the person sends an email message to that address, a form letter is returned. It says, in part "Maybe you're just out of your league here." Ah, dating in the Internet age. Here's the full story.

Olympics, Day 10

Cheers to the U.S. women's softball team, which won the gold today after outscoring opponents throughout the tournament 51-1 -- and that one run scored in their last game in the sixth inning. Can you say "dominating"?

Back to gymnastics, where I remain creeped out by the Romanian gymnasts' bizarre style of excessively arching their backs so that their chests stick way out, ruining for me an otherwise impressive gold-medal-winning balance beam performance by Catalina Ponor. If there was an award for least-Barbielike leotard, she would have won that, too. See whether you agree (although the photo doesn't show that the dark material also sparkled).

Still more judging controversy erupted on the men's gymnastics front, this time in the individual events. The crowd was so upset about the score for the high bar routine by popular Russian Alexei Nemov that they booed and catcalled for over 5 minutes. Amazingly, this prompted a judges conference and the Malaysian and Canadian judges actually changed their originally way-too-low score, but the crowd was not appeased. They only calmed down a bit when Nemov himself got up and motioned them quiet several times.

Guess who was next up and had to follow this chaos? Poor U.S. gymnast Paul Hamm, who's already had controversies enough at this Olympics to last a lifetime. As in the all-around, though, he came through with an impressive performance despite the pressure. For even more fun, Italy's Igor Cassina, who came afterward, tied Hamm's score but won the gold on a tiebreaker. Hamm's brother Morgan, also in the competition, finished out of the medals thanks to... a tiebreaker for third. Nemov, despite the changed scores, came in fifth.

The men's all-around gymnastics controversy also continues: to recap, the Koreans are claiming that Yang Tae Young's parallel bar routine was given a start value that was .1 too low. Had his score been adjusted to reflect that value, he would have won the gold over Paul Hamm. However, the Koreans did not make the protest on the floor as required so although everyone agrees that a mistake was made, they're not obligated to do anything about it. The solution being bandied about unofficially is to award a second gold.

I agreed with commentator Tim Daggett the other night when he said that changing marks after the fact could lead down a very slippery slope. Sure enough, Hamm's coach reviewed the tape of Yang's routine, which shows (as explained in play-by-play by Daggett during the coverage tonight) that the Korean had four holds on the bars, exceeding the maximum of three, which is a mandatory .2 deduction that would have put him in third anyway.

Speaking of the TV coverage, I really wish NBC did not feel obligated to show us the complete medal ceremonies for the American winners. They could probably show highlights from another sport or two during the time it takes to play the national anthems. I can understand a brief shot of an athlete wiping away tears or blowing the words or something, but the entire ceremony?

Olympics, Day 10

Cheers to the U.S. women's softball team, which won the gold today after outscoring opponents throughout the tournament 51-1 -- and that one run scored in their last game in the sixth inning. Can you say "dominating"?

Back to gymnastics, where I remain creeped out by the Romanian gymnasts' bizarre style of excessively arching their backs so that their chests stick way out, ruining for me an otherwise impressive gold-medal-winning balance beam performance by Catalina Ponor. If there was an award for least-Barbielike leotard, she would have won that, too. See whether you agree (although the photo doesn't show that the dark material also sparkled).

Still more judging controversy erupted on the men's gymnastics front, this time in the individual events. The crowd was so upset about the score for the high bar routine by popular Russian Alexei Nemov that they booed and catcalled for over 5 minutes. Amazingly, this prompted a judges conference and the Malaysian and Canadian judges actually changed their originally way-too-low score, but the crowd was not appeased. They only calmed down a bit when Nemov himself got up and motioned them quiet several times.

Guess who was next up and had to follow this chaos? Poor U.S. gymnast Paul Hamm, who's already had controversies enough at this Olympics to last a lifetime. As in the all-around, though, he came through with an impressive performance despite the pressure. For even more fun, Italy's Igor Cassina, who came afterward, tied Hamm's score but won the gold on a tiebreaker. Hamm's brother Morgan, also in the competition, finished out of the medals thanks to... a tiebreaker for third. Nemov, despite the changed scores, came in fifth.

The men's all-around gymnastics controversy also continues: to recap, the Koreans are claiming that Yang Tae Young's parallel bar routine was given a start value that was .1 too low. Had his score been adjusted to reflect that value, he would have won the gold over Paul Hamm. However, the Koreans did not make the protest on the floor as required so although everyone agrees that a mistake was made, they're not obligated to do anything about it. The solution being bandied about unofficially is to award a second gold.

I agreed with commentator Tim Daggett the other night when he said that changing marks after the fact could lead down a very slippery slope. Sure enough, Hamm's coach reviewed the tape of Yang's routine, which shows (as explained in play-by-play by Daggett during the coverage tonight) that the Korean had four holds on the bars, exceeding the maximum of three, which is a mandatory .2 deduction that would have put him in third anyway.

Speaking of the TV coverage, I really wish NBC did not feel obligated to show us the complete medal ceremonies for the American winners. They could probably show highlights from another sport or two during the time it takes to play the national anthems. I can understand a brief shot of an athlete wiping away tears or blowing the words or something, but the entire ceremony?