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Only one sentence space in digital documents!

People, we should be using only a single space between sentences in electronic documents. Many of us still use two!

On the topic of this practice, Slate says,

Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.

And the Chicago Manual of Style agrees:

But introducing two spaces after the period causes problems: (1) it is inefficient, requiring an extra keystroke for every sentence; (2) even if a program is set to automatically put an extra space after a period, such automation is never foolproof; (3) there is no proof that an extra space actually improves readability—as your comment suggests, it’s probably just a matter of familiarity (Who knows? perhaps it’s actually more efficient to read with less regard for sentences as individual units of thought—many centuries ago, for example in ancient Greece, there were no spaces even between words, and no punctuation); (4) two spaces are harder to control for than one in electronic documents (I find that the earmark of a document that imposes a two-space rule is a smattering of instances of both three spaces and one space after a period, and two spaces in the middle of sentences); and (5) two spaces can cause problems with line breaks in certain programs. read more

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Chaos? Blame It On Retrograde Mercury

Every once in a while I’ll have a series of failures occur that couldn’t have been predicted and which weren’t logical at all. Logically, they should never have happened. Like the time that my computer, our DVD player and my car, all failed one after the other in a couple day timeframe. Even odder: for a few days we used a spare DVD player that was so noisy it drove my family crazy and took all the pleasure out of watching movies. I told my sons we should plug back in our old DVD player because if it was going to have reset itself that would have happened already and sure thing, the player which had been completely, brick dead a few days prior worked perfectly once again, and has ever since. My car had to be repaired though, and my computer needed to receive massive massaging to finally get it back on line. read more

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Overcoming the Bush legacy: a people bled, betrayed and frightened

The Power of Propaganda

Just before election day I understood what they had meant to accomplish when, only one month after Obama’s inauguration, Republicans began reciting the litany I would hear many times over the next 20 months, “Just look at the mess Obama’s gotten us into.”

I was so astonished the first time I heard a friend say this, I was literally struck dumb. After a moment, I recovered the power of speech enough to ask, “How can you say that, Barry? Obama hasn’t been in office long enough to know his way around his desktop yet, let alone take any action which could affect the country in any radical sense. What we’re dealing with is directly due to the policies Bush enacted over eight years of bleeding the country dry.” read more

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NJ’s pension debacle: time to rethink pensions?

A recent article gives a view of some of the steps which have caused a public employees pension fund debacle in New Jersey. This very informative, well researched report, is written by a police officer. It seems to be lacking only one piece of essential information: were pension funds actually looted by New Jersey governors, or were employee pay-ins simply not matched, at the 8.5% rate stipulated by law when the funds were created? No matter the answer, it’s apparent that there are serious problems with the pension fund’s management. read more

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Hide your list of email recipients

This morning I received a hoax email forward and was disgruntled, but not surprised, to discover that my friend, along with many previous senders, had made visible to each recipient the long list of other people to whom that email was forwarded. I wish my friend had checked to see if the email were true before forwarding it to me. I also very much wish she had hidden my email address from view.

There are good reasons to hide recipient’s addresses when you sent an email broadcast. Here are a few to think about: read more

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Eulogy to my Aunt June

Had a surprise reunion, patching up of relations with my mother’s only sister in early September. My Aunt June passed away yesterday.

The boys and I had arrived in Boston for a conference we were attending that weekend. The balance of the conference was to take place in Quincy, going out towards “The Cape.” I had planned to visit my Aunt June, who was recovering from a hip operation, with my boys on Saturday night or Sunday after we settled in and could assess the best time to break away, or visit after the conference ended. Finding ourselves with a car in Central Boston at rush hour on a Friday afternoon, however, it seemed most logical to head over to the hospital for a visit with my aunt while the traffic sorted itself out. Truth to tell, as soon as this idea occurred to me I realized that I was quite anxious to see my aunt. read more

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EPA needs to monitor pesticides better

Apparently, the US has been asleep at the helm for years when we should have been much more closely monitoring the alarming and increasing use of herbicides and pesticides in our crops, fields and yards. Atrazine, a chemical widely banned across Europe since 2004, is finally coming under the scrutiny of our own government, and it’s about time.

The Huffington Post tell us,

Atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides in the U.S. An estimated 76 million pounds of the chemical are sprayed on corn and other fields in the U.S. each year, sometimes ending up in rivers, streams, and drinking water supplies. It has been the focus of intense scientific debate over its potential to cause cancer, birth defects, and hormonal and reproductive problems. As the Huffington Post Investigative Fund reported in a series of articles last fall, the EPA failed to warn the public that the weed-killer had been found at levels above federal safety limits in drinking water in at least four states. Some water utilities are suing Syngenta to have it pay their costs of filtering the chemical. read more

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No user privacy on iPhones & iPads

Did you know that data is collected by Apple applications running on iPhones and iPads, and is transmitted to the applications’ owners, without you knowing about this? Craig Michael Lie Njie of KismetWorldWide learned while creating an application for his own company that reports are created every day by applications used on these devices detailing

every action a user takes within an app: every button click, every page viewed, every table cell viewed, and the time a person took between each action, all sent back to the server without any notification or customer access to that information. read more

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Roza Jaffe: Forced Journeys, a holocaust survivor remembers

Family friend Roza Jaffe recounts,

“My grandfather was a big merchant, my mother helped in the store. They were 9 children, 6 survived by coming to America in their twenties.

One sister died of hunger during the holocaust . . Khotyn, my hometown, was set on on fire and my house along with everything in it was destroyed. My family members and I were forced to travel by foot from Khotyn to the Ukraine. I was the only survivor, an orphan, begging in the streets, until I was taken on a transport to Romainia with a group of other survivors. The Russians came into Romania and I was taken to an orphanage in Odesa . . .” read more

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Missão Brasil Festival Brasileira 9/6 em Clifton

Venha festejar no feriado em Clifton com Missão Brasil

Dia 6 de Setembro
Segunda-feira (Labor Day) às 12pm
Igreja Assembléia de Deus Filadélfia
45 Hazel Street, Clifton, NJ 07011

Mais informações ligue 1-973-951-3407

400+ pessoas esperadas!

Comida Tipica
(Pé de moleque, bijú, acarajé, pamonha, curau e muito mais

Diversão para a Garotada
Pula-pula, histórias animadas e muito, muito mais

E muita Música

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Get Annie back to her owner

My Aunt writes from Florida:

I know the heartache of losing a pet. My Aussie was 9 when she died and this dog is 8 and the man had her since a puppy. The article spells it all out. I am also contacting the local talk show to see about starting a legal fund for him. An organization has already offered the people who adopted the dog $1,000 but they won’t accept the money in exchange for Annie’s return. We need to write letters to help Chuck get his 8 year old Australian Shepard back. She got spooked while he was feeding horses. Chuck looked for her and made a report to animal control but his dog was adopted out to new owners, and they refuse to give her back. read more

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Iceland poised to provide true freedom to journalists

Edited to add: Julian Assange, one of the engineers of Iceland’s new freedom of speech protection laws, was arrested for rape today but released after police decided the report against him lacked merit.

After Iceland’s near-economic collapse laid bare deep-seated corruption, the country aims to become a safe haven for journalists and whistleblowers from around the globe by creating the world’s most far-reaching freedom of information legislation.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and parliamentary representative Birgitta Jonsdottir are helping to create, “the world’s most far-reaching freedom of information legislation,” in Iceland. Reformers estimate it will take 1 1/2 years to change 13 laws to make it possible for Iceland to offer the most extreme level journalists have anywhere in the globe, plus similar protection for whistleblowers who report on abuse by governments and major corporations and afterwards may become targets for persecution, harassment, slander and even assassination. read more

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Macbook i5 and i7 run too hot?

I asked an ebay seller for his thoughts about the last generation core duo Macbook Pros and the newer i5s (15″) and i7s (17″), “I’d stay away from the newer MPB models until Apple solves the heating issue . . . previous models (of the Macbook Pro), such as the 2.8 Ghz MBP run barely warm to the touch and will last a lot longer because of that.”

Wanting to know exactly how hot would be too hot for the processor temp to rise up to I did some searching on the topic and came up with several references to the heating issue: read more

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Immediate benefits of health care reform

So many people are asking what the benefits are of recent health care reforms, and there’s a lot of frustration because so much help is needed right now, but the changes aren’t all that exciting – for this year. I share feelings many have that urgent help is needed NOW but it helps to remember that every journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, and the current changes add up to way more than that. Along with the health care changes, the final bills provided changes to aid for college students too. Let’s take a look at some of the health care changes that do kick in this year: read more