The ripples from the VT shooting: be careful of what you write in creative writing

Americans are now more scared and stupid than ever after the VT shooting.

Allen Lee, a straight A student in Cary-Grove High in Cary, Illinois, was arrested for a creative writing essay he submitted due to violent content and references to school shooting. It was a routine creative writing assignment that the students are asked to write without interruption, making corrections, and censor as asked by his English teacher.

The full essay may be found here at Sun Times.

I guess this would be the end of the creative writing practice. The message now is be careful of what you would like to write, someone will be watching you. In the context of the VT shooting, this will no double stop people expressing their anger and frustration in a peaceful way. As one of the reader of the Sun Times' story pointing out:

"We all imagine gruesome, or sexual, or embarrassing things we wouldn't typically say out loud. Creative writing should be a vehicle to let those things out. Isn't that better than keeping them in? (The professors at Virginia Tech who told the world how they told Cho that his writing was unacceptable bear some responsibility for suppressing a means of escape and relief.)

"The police and school officials responsible for this young man's arrest are the real criminals. Public education and law enforcement have combined to show America how incompetent our public servants really are. With a government like this, you're damn right we need to bear arms."




To me, it's more like the English teacher was pissed about Lee's comments about her boring teaching style and wanted to punish him for that. Well, this teacher should be fired and the school should be sued for violating Lee's civil right and for all the consequences such as not be able to attend school while six weeks to graduation. Imaging a school suspends a student six weeks before graduation.

Diable the aftermarket Ford Explorer alarm/anti-theft system

The anti-theft alarm on my 1997 explorer is very annoying. If it's a factory installed module, it's going to be difficult to diable/turn it off.

Luckily, it turns out that mine is an aftermarket one. So, it can be turned off by doing the following:

1. put the key in the ignition,
2. turn forward all the way just before cranking.
3. Then within 5 seconds, locate, press and hold in the valet/overide button, found under the dash area, (push button, spring loaded)

(Your valet switch might be the toggle (on/off) type. in this case, key on, flip switch in opposite direction, then turn the key off.)

This should reset the alarm.

I found it in allexperts.com through Google.

Google Map driving directions from New York to Paris

Heard this from a co-worker and tried it myself. So funny...

3,800 mi (about 29 days 7 hours)
Step 1: Head southeast on Chambers St toward Broadway, 0.2 miles

Step 6: Turn right onto the F.D.R. Dr N ramp, 0.4 miles

Step 23: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean, 3462 miles
....


I guess most of the 29 days been spent on swimming at 2.2 meters/s or 120 meters /minute. Pleaes note the current world record on 100m freestyle is 47.84s.

What's wrong with our Universities?

In the event of all these things happening, I'm sad about the education you may get from these two top public Universities.

Max Karson is a student at University of Colorado at Boulder. He expressed his sympathy to the gunman of VT. He was doing that during a class discussion.

What do you think would happen to him?

Well he was arrested and suspended by CU and charged with "interference with faculty, staff and students of an education institution."

I'm speechless. CU-Boulder WAS considered as one of the best public schools in the nation. Not after today. After today's incident, it is the least possible place I would send my kids to. I'd rather do home school.

For the administrators who suspended Max, they need to go back to school themselves to learn what is the meaning of a university.

For the students who reported Max. I'm just sorry that you got really bad education. On the other hand, if even your stupid school taught you to think this way, you are already an idiot to agree with them.

As for the lone gunman of VT, he certainly should receive as much as sympathy as any other victims. He is a victim himself. He is a very sick man who needed help. Well, although his English teacher spotted the problem, her action did little help.

Separate a loner from the class would make the whole thing worse!

Bill Maher's New Rules about Monica Goodling

It's the April 13 episode, which has not been posted online yet but you will see the link in a few weeks.

It's kind of shocking to learn that Monica Goodling is only 33 years old while holds "the N0. 3 job" in the Justice Department in charge of the job performance evaluation of all 94 US attorneys.

What's more shocking is that she graduated from Messiah College and Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School, two lowest tier colleges for people "who can't get in University of Phoenix."

Do you know how many alumni of Regent's working for the Federal government?
150

Enough said.

More information about Monica Goodling at Wikipedia and the links.

Stranger than Fiction: best movie I've seen this year

Benjamin Franklin said, "The only things certain in life are death and taxes."

The main character is Harold Crick wonderfully played by Will Ferrell. "I am an IRS agent, everyone hates me," says him. He is also the main character of a book Kay Eiffel (played by Emma Thompson) who always killed her main character in the end of her book. So far she's successfully, very successfully, got eight of them killed. Somehow this time, Harold started to hear her voices narrating the book in progress. May be Harold is the only one who's real or may be the others also did, but died anyway. The story goes from here.

Other important characters:
Ana Pascal, played by the sexy Maggie Gyllenhaal, is a bakery owner who's audited by Harold and, of course, fell in love with;

Dr. Jules Hilbert, played by a rain man like Dustin Hoffman, is a literature professor obsessed with the Eiffel's work or the perfection of the story.

Penny escher, played by Queen Latifa, is Eiffel's publisher appointed assistant/secretary, who's job is to make her finish the book on time, i.e. efficiently and promptly kill Harold in time before the deadline.

The case is excellent in delivering the plot, which some times switching between Eiffel imagining boring ways to kill Harold and reality when a demolishing crew mistakenly took Harold's apartment wall out with a crane.

"Did you say 1893? Oops."

Finally, although I'm curious how the ending is going to be, I'm also certain it will be a Hollywood happy ending, when Harold was telling Ana how the food she gave away to homeless people hanging around her store can be used to deduct all her taxes.

This movie tells you how to face the seemingly certainties of death and taxes, and most importantly, how to beat both.

It is one of the best movies so far this year.

Memorable quotes:
Penny Escher (Queen Latifa): Did you smoke all these cigarettes?
Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson): No, they came pre-smoked.

Kay Eiffel: I read this, in this fantastically depressing book, that when you jump from a building, it's rarely the impact that actually kills you.
Penny Escher: Well, I'm sure it doesn't help.

Kay Eiffel: [narrating] Little did he know that this simple seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death.

Freedom of Speach is at issue?

Is the right to the freedom of speech been stripped away from Imus? I don't think so. It is just hateful, prejudice slur and should be condemned. In this respect, thank you, GM, Sprint/Nextel, Staples, General Motors, Sprint Nextel, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, PetMed Express, American Express and Bigelow Tea. Shame on you CBS. Without the pulling out of these companies, CBS probably never going to fire Don Imus.

What NAACP should find out is which advertisers on the Imus show didn't pull out their ads from this program.

Hampton Inn Cleveland downtown

Great location. I even got a room with a view (ok, partial) to the lake. It's on east 9th st, which goes all the way to the lake. Only the north east corner rooms on higher floors can have the view. The building has about 14-15 floors, so only 10 rooms have views. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is on the water front behind the black office building on the left.


It's also within walking distance to the city hall, the Brown stadium, Science centre, the gallaria, etc. The weather was nice that day and I walked around for about two hours. A bit windy, but very nice.

The hotel itself is also fine. One of the best I have stayed, better than some five-star.

Good:
the people (front desk and valet) there is very nice, there were no shampoo in the room, after a phone call and it's delivered in 2 minutes. room is clean and updated; very comfortable bed and dawn comforters; free wireless Internet (password given by front desk); real hot free breakfast;
Bad: not much, if you're really picky, here goes
No pool, didn't check out the gym either; very limited temporary parking space in front when check-in/out; self parking is across street at the church lot, you have to drive around the block to get there and the entrance is VERY narrow;