Monthly Archives: August 2008

Ampersands Anyone?

This entry was posted in Potpourri on by

If you like ampersands you will love The Ampersand blog where the publisher says:

I like the ampersand. I think it is often the most attractive punctuation mark of them all. This blog is an attempt to give this humble character the respect it deserves.

Here is one from the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park that I don’t believe has been featured yet at The Ampersand:

SAM%20Ampersand%202008-07-20Small.jpg

The above ampersand is the rotating element in this sculpture:

Mixed media installation with benches, tables, live tree, pathways and illuminated rotating element

For me the setting and this piece were the highlights of the park. Well, unless you are really into giant traffic cones (maybe to be shown in a future post).
Speaking of ampersands, Ampersand is always worth a read.

Hat tip Daring Fireball for the link to The Ampersand.

OK, So What Will Define the End?

This entry was posted in al Qaeda bush administration War on Terrorism on by

Regarding the Hamdan trial verdict Warren Richey writes in the Christian Science Monitor:

Even if he’d been acquitted of all charges, Hamdan was unlikely to be released from his Guantánamo cell anytime soon. In addition to the military commission charges, Hamdan is being held in open-ended detention as an unlawful enemy combatant.
Under the law of war, he can be held for the duration of the war on terror.

As the title says: “OK, so what will define the end.”

One Small Step

This entry was posted in Drug Laws on by

You can help in the battle against the so-called war on drugs.
This Massachusetts Initiative may not go far enough and would not be required in a free country. But we don’t live in one and the initiative is One Small Step in the right direction:

On November 4, 2008, Massachusetts voters will have the chance to pass a ballot initiative decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana — removing the threat of jail time for possessing an ounce or less of marijuana for personal use.

Help Massachusetts take this step by financially supporting this initiative. Send contributions to:

Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy
P.O. Box 130151
Boston, MA 02113

Or, online here.

You can also help by asking your congressional representative to support the Personal Use of Marijuana Act.

Learn more at the Marijuana Policy Project.

Not For the Vertigo Impaired

This entry was posted in Photography Potpourri on by

The Space Needle cleaning crew in action:

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Photo: Karcher GmbH & Co.

Employees of Karcher GmbH & Co. are doing the work. They get paid. Karcher does not:

Early on, Kärcher determined that it would donate its cleaning services of public monuments, donating skilled labor as well as the technical, analytic and supervisory services necessary to complete such projects. Their reasoning was twofold: not only was the donation a goodwill gesture, but the feedback the company’s engineers received was invaluable in refining the innovation and manufacture of future cleaning systems.
To that end, Kärcher has carried out some 80 cleaning projects on historical monuments,…

Via Kottke.