Larger ImageBeads by Jared DeLong

Larger ImageA Selection of Seed Beads

Larger ImageFlowery Beads

These are from the June 2005 Bead and Button Show in Milwaukee. If you know the maker of the beads in the last picture, let me know.

Ethne at Pole Dancing in the Dark has some Halloween Helpful Hints that we should all learn for our safety.

I've just joined the Life, Liberty, Property Community at TTLB, which is a group of 87 blogs—now 88 blogs—that share a belief that the purpose of government is to protect our inherent rights, identified by John Locke as the rights to Life, Liberty, and Property. Note their link button in the right-hand bar.

Welcome, by the way, to anyone who's dropping by thanks to Eric's New Member announcement for me. Check out some of my "Best Of" links in the left-hand bar to see the sorts of things I write about. (Eric spells my name wrong in the announcement—it's Draughn, pronounced just like drawn—but that's okay, I'm used to it. Besides, I couldn't spell his last name either.)

I'm hoping that joining this community will help me find other bloggers with similar interests, will lead to new ideas for articles, and will maybe draw a little more traffic my way. For my part, I need to start contributing regularly to keep the community's stats up and to help draw more attention to it.

Continuing Ken Lammers' concerns with how to distinguish restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, I have a little bit to add to what I said earlier.

I've checked several more writing handbooks, including the Harbrace College Handbook, the Little, Brown Handbook, the St. Martin's Handbook, and The Careful Writer. (My editions are not as current as those to which I've linked.) All agree to a preference for using which to introduce only non-restrictive clauses, with the degree of preference ranging from "better" to "usually" to "some writers prefer," but none of the handbooks is as firm as the Strunk and Whiteexcerpts I quoted earlier, and certainly none of them set forth an absolute rule.

The Careful Writer has this interesting note:

There are writers who have the notion that the relative that is colloquial[...],whereas the relative which is literary. That is a mistaken idea. Jespersen has put his finger on one cause of the error: "Who and which reminded scholars of the Latin pronouns and came to be looked upon as more refined or dignified than the more popular that." To this day there are those who seem to feel that which is more stately.

I imagine the writers of Virginia's statutes prefered the stately and Latinate which to the common that.

On the other hand, all these handbooks (and the Chicago Manual of Style) agree that non-restrictive clauses are always set off by commas.

How come all the Google AdSense ads on my About Me page are for criminal defense attorneys? That can't be good.

I just sent $865.96 of my hard-earned money to the United States Government. Then I sent $246.60 to the State of Illinois. I feel pretty stupid about it, but it has to be done. In fact, it has to be done several times a year.

I incorporated my software consulting business a few years ago, so I have to pay my own payroll taxes. It works like this: I do the work. People pay me with checks I deposit in the corporate bank account. Every now and then, I want to move some of that money from the corporate bank account to my personal bank account. I track both accounts on my computer using Intuit's Quicken and Quickbooks software, and both accounts are at the same bank. But when I want to move money from one account to the other, I have to send some of my money to the government.

When you work an ordinary job, all this happens behind the scenes. You get your paycheck and you see that some money has been taken out, withholding it's called, but there's still plenty of money for you. It's relatively painless.

But when you run an incorporated business, you see behind the scenes. That money that gets taken out of the paycheck? I have to do that myself. I issue myself paychecks, with deductions for federal and state income tax withholding and for social security and medicare (sometimes called FICA).

There are also amounts the employer has to pay but which aren't taken out of the paycheck. First, there's social security and medicare, where the employer has to match what the employee had to pay. This means the government gets twice what you see on your paycheck for these items. Then—and this just kills me—there's unemployment insurance. That's right, I had to set aside $206.52 for unemployment insurance in case I decide to lay myself off.

Then comes the hard part. I have to take all that money and send it to the government.

It hurts. It hurts a lot.

I think I'm just a little creeped out at the thought of Google having a soul of its own.

Ken Lammers needs an English language expert for an appeal he's writing. The argument is about the meaning of a statute, so I imagine this problem could have been avoided if the Virginia legislature had worded their law a little more carefully. Instead, someone's freedom may depend on how restrictive clauses are supposed to be introduced in sentences.

Update: I did a little research.

An excerpt from the "Misused Words and Expressions" chapter of Strunk and White:

That. Which. That is the defining, or restrictive pronoun, which the nondefining, or nonrestrictive. See Rule 3.

The lawn mower that is broken is in the garage. (Tells which one)

The lawn mower, which is broken, is in the garage. (Adds a fact about the only mower in question)

Ths use of which for that is common in written and spoken language ("Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass.") Occasionally which seems preferable to that, as in the sentence from the Bible. But it would be a convenience to all if these two pronouns were used with precision.

So it looks like Strunk and White agree with the judge as a preference, but acknowledge that actual usage is less precise. Note the presence of commas. There is more about this in Strunk and White's Rule 3:

3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.

[...]

Nonrestrictive relative clauses are parenthetic, as are similar clauses introduced by conjunctions indicating time or place. Commas are therefore needed. A non-restrictive clause is one that does not serve to identify the defining antecedent noun.

The audience, which had at first been indifferent, became more and more interested.

In 1769, when Napolleon was born, Corsica had but recently been acquired by France.

Nether Stowey, where Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is a few miles from Bridgewater.

In these sentences, the clauses introduced by which, when, and where are nonrestrictive; they do not limit or define, the merely add something. In the first example, the clause introduced by which does not serve to tell which of several possible audiences is meant; the reader presumably knows that already. The clause adds, parenthetically, a statement supplementing that in the main clause. Each of the three sentences is a combination of two statements that might have been made independently.

The audience was at first indifferent. Later it became more and more interested.

Napoleon was born in 1769. At the time Corsica had but recently been acquired by France.

Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner at Nether Stowey. Nether Stowey is a few miles from Bridgewater.

Restrictive clauses, by contrast, are not parenthetic and are not set off by commas. Thus,

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Here the clause introduce by who does serve to tell which people are meant; the sentence, unlike the sentences above, cannot be split into two independent statements.

So, although there is a rule regarding the use of that and which, the rule is not as firm as the use of commas to set off the nonrestrictive clause. I would say that the use of commas is definitive. Actually, the definitive test is whether the sentence can be split into two independent sentences, but I think that's what Lammers is trying to prove: That the statute's language does not allow for the sentence to be split, as evidenced by the use of punctuation and relative pronouns.

If I had to make this argument, I would argue that the commas are the definitive indicator, and that which is sometimes used to introduce restrictive clauses in flowery language such as the Bible or, presumably, statutes. Since Strunk and White is practically the catechism of modern English writing style, my argument would probably convince an English teacher, but I don't know if it will help with a judge.

A lot of people noticed that the picture of Condoleezza Rice in yesterday's USA Today looked a little funny. To a Stargate SG-1 fan like me, it suggested nothing less than a host's eyes glowing brightly as the controlling Goa'uld System Lord within reveals its malevolent presence.

The question is not whether this was photoshopped, but whether it was done to make fun of Rice or is just a sloppy bit of photo enhancement. Samantha Burns' technical grunt MrBig did some image analysis of the Condi picture and concluded it was an accident.

I've fixed another one of Jakob Nielsen's top ten blog design mistakes that I mentioned earlier by creating a Best of Windypundit collection of articles to introduce newcomers to my blog:

• Greatness
• The Greatest American
• MADD Man
• Freedom Isn't Free
• Wedding Night
• Cal Thomas's 24-Hour Torture
• Protecting Prostitutes
• Protecting Prostitutes, Part 2
• The Wealth Un-Race
• Be the Good Guy
• Great Moments in Data Mining
• Whither Joe Batters?
• Soggy Computers

I picked articles that people have said they liked, or that show how I like to think about various issues.

Also, because photographs are easy to skim through, I added links to the entire series of photography-based departments:

• Eminent Domain
• Photoblogging
• Catblogging

Now I think I only make four of the mistakes on Nielsen's list, and three of those are design decisions. That leaves only Irregular Publishing Frequency, which will probably always be a problem.

I've just asked my hosting service to upgrade Windypundit to the latest version of the Movable Type blogging software. If you don't see any more postings, you'll know something went wrong. That's not a knock against the fine folks at 2MHost, I've just done enough software upgrades to know things can go wrong.

I mentioned earlier that Windypundit makes seven of Jakob Nielsen's top ten blog design mistakes. I've fixed two of them by adding an "About Me" page to the left sidebar.

Time for some more Friday catblogging.

Larger ImageBuffy Relaxed

Larger ImageBuffy Really Relaxed

It looks like something Lileks would do, but at least for now, check out Pork Tornado's 10 Worst Album Covers of All Time.

(Hat Tip: Doug Petch

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy they're talking about tongue-in-cheek questions to ask when the interviewer asks you if you have any questions.

The Conspirators are all lawyers or law students, but some of the questions would be good for the rest of us:

• "How would you describe the atmosphere here — Is it more like a labor camp or a slave ship?"
• "I heard there was this guy who came here and only billed like three hours a week. They say it took the firm two years to kick him out, and they gave him a nice bonus to leave, too. Is that true?"
• "Is it as bad as they say?"
• "How many partners here are still on their first wives?"
• "Is the firm's suite at Wrigley or Comiskey?"
• "Will I be allowed in the same room as a client? How about if there's a client walking down the hall, can I take a look-see?"
• Look at them quizzically. Then lean back, look up into the air, stroke your chin, and pause for a long time. Then sigh deeply. Repeat until they interrupt.
• "Say I have a "friend" who's embezzling money from the law firm where he's a summer associate. Is that so bad?"
• "What's the absolute fewest number of hours an associate can work, and still not get fired?"
• "Is that your wife, or your grandmother?"
• "Is that your wife, or your granddaughter?"
• "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
• "How much errors and omissions coverage do you have?"
• "Am I expected to check my Blackberry at 3:15 a.m.?"
• "There's not a drug test or anything, is there?"

Here are the ones I suggested:

1. Will the size of the book shelves in my office depend on my title or on the number of books I need to do the job?
2. If you move a department with four executives to a floor that has five executive-quality offices, does some lucky staff member get the good office or do you remodel it back to the lower quality level even though that costs more?
3. If you can't afford to remodel the office in question 2, do you move the copy machine in there rather than give it to a non-executive?
4. Hypothetical question: If there's not enough money in the budget for more filing cabinets, but meanwhile we're buying another company, can we have their filing cabinets?
5. Everyone working in this office has a college degree and has passed a background check. If I go to the restroom, will I find that the toilet paper is inside a gadget that allows you to pull the paper out the bottom, but requires a key to open, because you don't trust your employees with unlocked rolls of toilet paper?

(Yes, all based on something that happened, but not necessarily to me.)

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen's top ten blog design mistakes. Windypundit makes seven of them, maybe eight, depending on what my future boss thinks of my opinions.

(Hat tip: Philipp Lenssen.)

Heh.

(Hat tip: The Volokh Conspiracy)

Over at Reason they've started a discussion about how bad Disney live action movies were before Mike Eisner took over. (Three words: Apple, Dumpling, Gang.)

In a rebuttal, commenter Tom Crick mentioned the incredible Dexter Riley series. These three Disney movies starred Kurt Russell as a college student who was the subject of a series of scientific mishaps. In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes Dexter accidentally mixes water and a computer and the resulting mess turns him into a human computer that knows everything. Next, in Now You See Him, Now You Don't he and the other kids accidentally invent a chemical which can turn people invisible. Finally, in The Strongest Man in the World they invent a chemical that, well, you get the idea. I have fond memories of the first two, and the third one was OK, but after invisibility, strength just didn't seem like such a big deal.

I'm tempted to order the DVDs just to see them again, but I'm not sure that's a good idea. These movies all came out before Star Wars set a new standard for movie effects, and even some of the effects in Star Wars look bad these days compared to the wonders of digital film-making. Also, I'm just not a kid anymore. If I see these movies again as an adult, I'm afraid the new experience will erase the magical memories.

This got me thinking about films I loved as a kid that I dare not see again for fear of ruining the magic.

Movies like these:

• The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
• Now You See Him, Now You Don't
• The Strongest Man in the World
• The awesome Escape to Witch Mountain. That ending was amazing. I didn't see it coming, but it explained everything. Damn that was cool!
• The People. I caught this on television late one night. It's about a teacher who visits a small town where there's something a little unusual about the children. I'm afraid I'll just giggle at William Shatner, but at the time I thought it was a nice understated performance. It's a low-budget, but it's warm and moving and magical.
• The Love Bug
• Herbie Rides Again. All other sequels must be destroyed!
• Tom Sawyer the musical from 1973.

There have got to be others. I'm not talking about classic movies like The Absent-Minded Professor, which I'm sure will hold up just fine, or even That Darn Cat! which might not hold up but won't be so bad it's embarassing. I'm talking about movies that will probably suck if I see them again, but I liked them too much to take that chance.

Anybody else out there have movies like that?

I take a lot of pet pictures, mostly of our three cats, but I also get to take a few pictures of other people's pets. Many of them look a lot better than I would ever have expected...I'm not known for my artistic streak.

Some people, however, are so good they can do it professionally. A few months back, while I was taking pictures at the Chicagoland Family Pet Expo, I ran into Felicia Banys, who does pet photography in the Chicago area. She gave me some encouraging words, and now that I've got a bit of traffic, I figure I should at least return the favor by linking to her gallery:

http://www.pictureyourpets.com/portfolio.html

If you want some nice pictures of your pets in their natural environment, Felicia will come out to your home and take the pictures there. She sure does a nice job.

Military intelligence analysts have this saying: "Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

Even so, this is probably nothing...

1. October 2 at the University of Oklahoma: Joel Hinrichs III dies in an explosion he set off about 100 yards from a stadium filled with 80,000 people. Police call it a suicide, not a suicide bombing, but you have to wonder why he did it in such a public place. There are also rumors—perhaps completely unfounded—of attempts to buy ammonium nitrate (an ingredient in some bombs) and of contact with a nearby mosque.

2. October 7 at UCLA: The Los Angeles police bomb squad detonated an explosive device found in an apartment complex. Residents reported hearing an explosion earlier.

3. October 10 at Georgia Tech: A custodian was slightly injured when a plastic water bottle exploded as he picked it up. The Atlanta police bomb squad found and destroyed two more bottles rigged to explode. It's being investigated as a terrorist act, although it may be nothing more that a prank gone bad.

For all I know, police find small bombs at universities all the time. After all, we're talking about crazy college kids, some of whom are probably majoring in chemistry.

Still, I sure hope this isn't the start of something bad.

Update: Nope. Looks like coincidence and rumors. Joel Hinrichs appears to have just committed suicide in a very public way. There's no real evidence that he made any attempt to enter the stadium or otherwise take anyone with him. The UCLA thing appears to have been a meth lab, and the Georgia Tech thing is a prank with dry ice in a bottle. Cathy Young covers the blog over-reaction.

Alex at Stillettos and Sneakers has a list of things that have changed during her lifetime. For this post I'm stealing her list of items and writing my own comments:

The Remote Control

All that fancy technology just to avoid getting up and walking across the room? It seemed extravagent. Nice to have, but not worth the expense when I could just get up and press the buttons on the front panel. That worked until remotes got so cheap that television makers provided them with every television. Then they started saving space and money by leaving most of the buttons off the front panel. My Tivo box doesn't even have a front panel, and I have two remotes so I don't lose control if one of them fails.

The Death Of Disco

I ignored it all at the time, but now some of the music has that nostalgic feeling to it.

The Answering Machine

I used to hate to get them, because I didn't have all my thoughts gathered in to a single paragraph for the message. Now, they seem completely normal. When someone calls me, I always let the machine get it if I don't recognize the number.

Cell Phones

Remember when if you were in your car and you wanted to make a call you had to find a pay phone and pull over? Wasn't that weird?

The Home Computer

As a computer programmer, it seems like I should have bought one right away. I didn't need to though, because I lived only two blocks from my office, and I had lots of powerful computers there which I could use whenever I wanted to. I didn't need to buy one until I moved further away and wanted to play more video games.

AIDS

I can remember when I first started hearing about this sexually transmitted disease that gay people were getting. It was 100% fatal, it wasn't going to stay confined to a few well-defined groups, and it had a long incubation period which meant an infected person could spread it for years before they knew they were infected. This was very, very bad. Still, at a time when only a few thousand people had it, the World Health Organization's predictions that millions would die seemed unreal.

The CD (The Death Of The Album)

Great idea. Loved it from day one and never looked back.

Cable Television

I first saw this when one of the girls in high school got it at her house. A bunch of us hung out in her living room one evening watching the new channels. It seemed like a good idea. As it happens, I am literally 10 feet from that living room. I've been married to that girl for 15 years. We have a lot more cable channels now.

The Death Of Lucille Ball

Just wasn't a fan.

The Debit Card

Remember when you used to have to visit the bank to do your banking? Then they put these machines outside so you could get money after the bank closed. That was cool. Then a lot of banks got them and you could get your money from the machines at other banks, and later from the service counters at grocery stores. When ATM owners started charging for using ATMs, a lot of people were upset with what they saw as greediness. I knew enough economics, however, to be thrilled: If you could make money by installing an ATM, people would put them everywhere!

9/11

I've written a lot about this already.

The Death Of The Variety Show

Didn't really notice they were gone until now.

Johnny Carson Retiring

It was kind of amazing that he was leaving, but really I hadn't seen his show in years.

The IPOD

Yet another way to store digital music. I don't need it to play music, I just need the storage. I'll probably get one when I can plug it into my car radio and control it through the dashboard.

I shit you not.

A few weeks ago, I started what I hope will be a continuing series of photoessays on eminent domain abuse. You might want to check out my first essay on the Sportif bike shop in Chicago, Illinois.

Another local target of post-Kelo eminent domain abuse (and also pre-Kelo eminent domain abuse, I might add) is the International Plaza shopping mall in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Larger ImageInternational Plaza

By my rough estimate, the whole mall covers about 12 acres, including the service areas. If you check out this Google Map of International Plaza you'll see the main mall surrounding the parking lot in the center, with a little strip mall wing on its west side.

Larger ImageThe Attached Strip Mall

This all seems a bit unusual, doesn't it? I would have thought a shopping mall much more likely to be the cause of eminent domain abuse rather than the victim. How did things turn out this way?

A very nicely done Chicago Sun-Times article by Abdon M. Pallasch, David Roeder and Eric Herman gives a bit of the story:

The village of Arlington Heights wants to acquire International Plaza, a complex at 120 Golf Road, and replace it and neighboring parcels with a SuperTarget. With more than 40 stores and few vacancies, the plaza is mostly leased to businesses owned by Korean families. The village has reasoned it can draw more tax revenue from a SuperTarget, but has found the plaza's owner, Su-Chuan Hsu, unwilling to sell.

A tenant at the plaza, Gary Mednicov, owner of Garibaldi's pizza, said he believes the village will try to force the sale once it completes a contract for a SuperTarget.

"I feel I have no choice, but I think what Arlington Heights is doing is wrong," he said. "Some of the people started the businesses there from nothing."

International Plaza isn't the nicest mall in Arlington Heights, but it's managed to attract a number of national chain stores, including Blockbuster Video, Tuesday Morning, and an Eileen Fisher Outlet Store.

Larger ImageEileen Fisher

Other stores include the Garibaldi's Restaurant mentioned in the quote above, Oak Creations, an XSport Gym, and an Elly's Pancake House:

Larger ImageXsport Gym

Larger ImageElly's Pancake House

(By the way, most of my pictures were taken on a cloudy morning about half an hour after the mall opened, so don't make too much of the empty parking lot.)

To be fair, I should mention that about a half dozen of the storefronts appear empty, including a large internet cafe and a corner clothing store.

Larger ImageClosed Internet Cafe

Larger ImageClosed Suit Store

On the other hand, here's a salon that just opened:

Larger ImageXotic Skin & Nail

Unfortunately, I don't think this newly-opened Xotic Skin & Nail salon will help the mall avoid the "blighted" designation. From what I've been reading, when it comes to eminent domain and urban renewal, these types of businesses just don't count. They're not the right types of businesses.