f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

thick clouds lowering…

brown eyes of horses blinking

through the whirling snow

 

 

Deep snow

on the white church dome–

not even the sparrow stirs

 

 

Ice crystals in the pines–

the dark half of the moon

faintly visible

 

 

 

“skatersignNF”  Rebecca Lilly, from Shadwell Hills (Birch Prees Press, 2002)

 

 

 

by dagosan:  

sad chirp of 

the smoke detector —

another low battery

                                       [Feb.8, 2005]

 

one-breath pundit

 

  A good result: Ocala boys arrested for violent drawings to get counseling. Per the

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Feb. 3, 2005:

Two boys accused of threatening a classmate by making violent drawings of stick figures will

avoid felony prosecution by joining a counseling program, officials said.

The boys, ages 9 and 10, are set to take part in a five- to seven-month intervention plan that

includes anti-aggression and anti-bullying counseling, said Robin Arnold, a Marion County

supervisor for the state attorney’s office.

 

With the criminal charges dropped, the boys are free to return to school.

• 
  
  The boys’ parents will also participate in the counseling.
  
  
• 
  
  
  

  Sidenote:  I wish commentators, would be a little more precise when they attack

  
  

  the overzealous school administration.  For example, John W. Whitehead says

  
  

  the boys were arrested because they “drew stick figure drawings that were

  
  

  considered by school authorities to be violent.”  The arrests were because the

  
  

  drawings were deemed to be specific threats, aimed at and shown to, a specific

  
  

  classmate — putting the child in fear of death.
  
  
• 
  
  
  

  
  

  Other commentators seem to think it was important that the boys were “special

  
  

  education” students.  As is repeated in the article linked above, the malady of at

  
  

  least one of the boys was Attention Deficit Disorder — hopefully, not a reason to

  
  

  use a lesser standard when assessing the risk to others posed by the boys.

“tinyredcheck” A very good result: “The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

of Israel declared an effective cease-fire here today in the four-year low-intensity war known

as the intifada. Mr. Abbas said the two sides “have agreed to cease all acts of violence against

all Palestinians and Israelis everywhere.”  (NYT article, Feb. 8, 2005)

 

“eschewSN”  Eschew Jargon: Monica Bay’s advice for tech vendors dealing with tech journalists is

good for almost every situation where technology is being hawked to lawyers — or to any other members

of the non-techie public:

“Don’t use jargon! If you want to communicate, use plain English. Save the acronyms

for one-upsmanship games with your competitors — journalists don’t want to have to

 refer to their vendor-speak translation devices to understand your pitches. You have

a short amount of time to capture journalist’s fancy, don’t squander it. Key words to

avoid: solution, robust, mission-critical, -centric, strategic, deploy, enterprise, initiative,

value-added, form factor.”

See our own war of words against jargon:  here, there, everywhere.  (find the eschew obfuscation bumper-

sticker here at cafepress.com)