In Our World

National Geographic has a video clip about the problem with New Orleans. In a nutshell, wetlands help defray the effects of the storm surge. Wetlands are being removed at a rapid rate – about 1 acre every 25 minutes, according to the video (presumably by development). This, coupled…

As reports continue to flood in (pardon the pun), it looks more and more to me like the catastrophe that is New Orleans isn't going to get better anytime soon. While on the road this morning, I heard a report that gunfire was reported in the city, which…

Americans love their cars. I don't know about too many other cities, but this is especially true in Charlotte. Charlotte has buses, and we're even building a multi-billion dollar light rail system that no one will ride. This is so we can be World Class, because that's important…

We were on our way to church last night and noticed a lengthy line at the corner station for gas at $2.99 per gallon. Further down the road, we noticed a longer line at a station offering gas at $3.09. Somewhere around two hours later we came back…

I can't claim to be a software developer. I've built some plugins and an extension, and a few other little things here and there. But I still don't feel like I am a developer. Perhaps I never will. Nonetheless, I feel I have at least a bit of…

So I get a phishing email the other day, as is all-too-common, and this one actually looks pretty good – enough so that I had to double-check it, even though I knew it wasn't real. So as I'm reading through the copy, I see that I can also…

As I'm driving to the doctor this morning, I spy a dump truck with one of those stickers on it that reads "Not Responsible for Broken Windshields". Now I understand the desire of the company to not get a bill from everyone and their brother, claiming that the…

It's really pathetic that our world has come to this. Some teenagers are roughhousing – like that's unusual – and in the process, one breaks the other's glasses. The breakee demands payment, but the breaker only has half the money, so friends of the "victim" beat up the…

There are so many times where I try and enter my ZIP+4 – not just the ZIP code, but those extra little digits to be helpful. And at times, I am stymied by a field that only accepts a strange number of characters – like 7. I think…

It seems that Iraq may have spent as much as $300 million for faulty military gear – outdated, and perhaps even faulty! While I'm all for independence and everything – you just have to wonder. With all the deaths, all the problems, they can still waste (or possibly…