http://www.democraticunderground.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:51:43 Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:51:43 [b]How It All Started 1[/b]
My wife was broiling something in the GE electric wall oven. There was a strange noise, and the lights dimmed. A heating element in the oven had just burned out.

[b]RIpoff Number 1[/b]
I called GE appliance repair, gave them the model number of the oven, and descr... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/10 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:12:14 This is a true story.

I was with a tour group in a hotel in Paris. I was playing some blues on the piano.

In walks this gorgeous young woman. I have never seen her before. She sits down and puts an arm around me. She holds me tight with one hand and starts caressing me with the other. ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/9 Sun, 02 Oct 2011 01:42:05 Rising costs of government-run emergency services have reached a critical level in many communities. I hereby submit a modest cost-saving proposal to privatize 9-1-1 telephone answering services. Callers who have joined the premium 9-1-1 club will get immediate service in any emergency, while thos... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/8 Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:39:22 [b]Farmworker advocates say adherence to state rules to prevent heat illness remains sporadic at best.[/b]

By Paloma Esquivel, Los Angeles Times
September 14, 2011

<begin quote>

Reporting from Buttonwillow, Calif. -- At noon, when the morning breeze had faded and the temperature hit 95, a ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/7 Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:23:26 This just in from the Irascible Professor (Mark H. Shapiro):

"The number of administrative positions in colleges and universities in general, and in the California State University system in particular continues to grow at an obscene rate that far outstrips the growth in the number of students or... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/6 Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:59:41 Like many other musicians, amateur and professional, after taking piano lessons as a child I discovered that I could name notes that someone else played on a piano, even if I couldn't see the keyboard. Now that I am old, I can't do this any more. I still have a sense of absolute pitch, but it is n... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/5 Sat, 11 Jun 2011 21:47:02 our fathers brought forth on the continent of Europe
a new invasion,
conceived in Casablanca, Quebec, and Tehran,
designated Operation Overlord,
staged in the UK,
delayed one day because of bad weather,
carried out exactly 67 years ago,
and known ever after as D-Day,
June 6, 1944.

ht... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/4 Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:43:02 The "death of astrology" is discussed in a couple of books I have on the history of astrology. The term is a misnomer, since obviously astrology is still with us. A better term would be the "marginalization of astrology". It happened, arguably, during the second half of the seventeenth century. ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/3 Mon, 30 May 2011 17:13:47 The word "mission" has religious connotations. It brings to mind, for example, the California Missions and the Spanish missionaries who built them.

Nowadays, for some reason, every organization justifies its existence with a peculiar document called a "mission statement". I have read hundred... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/1 Sun, 28 Nov 2010 18:59:02 Numerals are usually written with a constant height, like capital letters. That's how I was taught to write them in elementary school.

In some fonts, however, the numerals have various heights, like lower-case letters. Have you ever seen numbers like that? They look kind of funny.

Some ... http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Lionel Mandrake/2 Fri, 26 Nov 2010 19:50:35