Include something in the subject line if the blog entry is just a video link.  90% of the time I don't watch them, but get annoyed as heck opening a page just to find a video...

Maybe I'm being grumpy, or just too picky.  I dunno.  It annoys me anyway.  Of course I probably annoy a lot of people too :-) 

What to do when people don't agree with you.  Tell them to get lost.

NY Man Guilty in Death of White Teen

By FRANK ELTMAN

The Associated Press
Sunday, December 23, 2007; 3:30 AM

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. -- A black man who invoked images of lynch mobs in explaining why he killed a white teenager was convicted of second-degree manslaughter when a jury rejected defense lawyers' arguments that his actions were justified.

Jurors reached a verdict Saturday after four days of deliberations and an emotional three-week trial that flared around questions of race and recklessness.

The defendant, John White, raised the nation's history of racist violence in describing why he brandished a gun at a group of angry white teenagers who came to his house on Aug. 9, 2006. White ultimately shot 17-year-old Daniel Cicciaro in what he said was an accident, but a prosecutor said was the result of poor judgment.

Saying White planned to appeal, defense attorney Fred Brewington called the verdict "disappointing for African-Americans" in the area.

"You have to survive in Suffolk County, where people can roll up on your house at 11:30 at night, threaten you, threaten your family, curse at you, call you a (N-word), and you've got to take it," he said.

But the slain teen's mother, Joanne Cicciaro, said the case "was never about race. It was about individuals and individuals' actions."

I find that the messsage "Access Denied" has all sort of negative connotations to me and in the absence of the inability to fix the spam filters, the tracking, the general sporadic glitchiness of the site, maybe we could simply alter the programming language just a bit so that instead of getting "Access Denied" as a message, we would instead see "You Should Now Practice Non-attachment to Your Message." 

It wouldn't make a difference as far as the result of the message, lost is lost, but the reminder to practice non-attachment would probably be good for all of us.

Some thoughts on attachment and suffering from Holiness, the Dalai Lama:

‘Attachment is the origin, the root of suffering; hence it is the cause of suffering.’

‘...it is said that as long as one is in cyclic existence, one is in the grip of some form of suffering.’ 

‘Non-attachment...views desire as faulty, thereby deliberately restraining desire...’

..when you have attachment to, for instance, material things, it is best to desist from that activity. It is taught that one should have few desires and have satisfaction - detachment - with respect to material things...’

...the sense of an object as being attractive, unattractive, or neutral...feelings of pleasure, pain, or neutrality arise. Due to such feelings, attachment develops, this being the attachment of not wanting to separate from pleasure and the attachment of wanting to separate from suffering...’ 

LooketIkindoo!

A benevolent alien, the XO, is heading for our door. Shhh... don't tell Orion, it's a surprise.

http://laptop.org/

Why can't my favorite salsa invest in this charity?

12 mini-reviews for the short attention span, taken from dark corners of stevenl's video vault:

College student John Erickson parked his scooter and was walking toward his house when a pit bull charged him in an unprovoked attack.

“All of a sudden the dog grabbed my leg from behind,” he recalls. He swung his helmet at the dog, temporarily halting the assault but the dog recommenced the onslaught. Erickson, a concealed-carry permit holder, was forced to draw his 9 mm pistol and shoot the delinquent animal.

His mother, Lyn, used to oppose her son’s firearm ownership, but after the incident she noted, “Now I’m saying, ‘I’m just so thankful he had a gun.’ I’m just so thankful because what would you do?”

(Daily Herald, Provo, UT, 09/18/07)