Posts on June 23, 2005
flag burning, mostly
Mood: mellow
Music: nothin' at the moment
Posted on 2005-06-23 10:15:00
Tags: activism flag burning python challenge
Words: 263
So the House passed the flag-burning amendment yesterday, and people think it has a chance in the Senate.
Quick poll on the subject:
I wrote my senators (Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn) just now.
I would urge you to vote against the constitutional amendment that would give
Congress the power to ban desecration of the American flag. I agree that the
flag is a powerful symbol of our country, that many have fought and died for.
However, they have fought and died for the freedoms that the flag represents,
including the freedom to disagree with the government. Free speech is one of
our country's most important rights, and any curtailment of such should be
avoided.
In addition, flag burning is such a rare event that it seems foolish to amend
the Constitution to prevent it. Our Constitution has been amended very few
times in the history of our nation, and never has it been amended for trivial
or symbolic reasons.
All these concerns notwithstanding, the text of the proposed amendment is very
broad and open to interpretations. Does this mean that wearing or washing a
T-shirt with a picture of the American flag on it is "desecrating" it?
I hope you share my concerns about this amendment, and I would be interested in
hearing your thoughts on the matter. Thank you for your time!
In non-flag related news, I did another Python Challenge level, but I'm stuck on level 5.
ASMC rehearsal is tonight - hopefully it won't be as tiring as the last one. Especially since I'm more tired going into it...
del.icio.us-only entry
Mood: curious
Music: not now, thanks
Posted on 2005-06-23 13:31:00
Tags: del.icio.us
Words: 223
At destroyerj's request, more del.icio.usness.
Last time I talked about the benefits of tagging your own bookmarks. But that's not all del.icio.us offers!
First, the front page is just a list of the 30 or so most recent bookmarks that anyone has added. This is a great place to find lots of random stuff. There's also a page of what's popular (as well as populicio.us, which has a list of the most popular links that were not bookmarked before yesterday). I've found lots of good articles and useful websites that way.
You can also look at the tags for all bookmarks. So, if you're looking for cool google-related stuff, try del.icio.us/tag/cool+google, or even just del.icio.us/tag/google. This to me is less useful than tags for your own bookmarks, but it's fun to just pick a random word and see what sites come up. Like trogdor!
Also, all of the bookmarks show how many other people have that site as a bookmark. So, I can see that someone else has bookmarked my iTunes info. I'm famous!
You can also get RSS feeds for all of those sorts of pages, if that sort of thing is your bag.
Well, that's about the cool things I can think of, so here ends the series. Play around with it for a while - I think you'll like it!
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