voluntaryXchange

Mass Resignation Coverage

Outside of Utah, news sites are reporting a mass resignation from the LDS church that was held in downtown Salt Lake City today (the link is one version of a widely disseminated Reuters piece).

Inside Utah, there’s an odder perspective. Both major newspapers in the state are owned by the same company, which is in turn owned by the LDS church.

The Deseret News is traditionally the newspaper of Mormon faithful. The Salt Lake Tribune has traditionally been less positively disposed towards the church.

The Trib was going broke a few years ago, and was bought by the Deseret News. At the time, some people worried if Utah was losing a voice independent of the dominant culture.

Tonight, the Deseret News contains zero coverage of the mass resignation (at least that I can find).

Interestingly though, the Salt Lake Tribune has this piece posted on the home page.

For my part, kudos to both the people brave enough to act on their beliefs, and also to the LDS church for tolerating open protest.

Technorati Tags: mormon,lds,quit,mass,resignation

Good Advice for Students

Sarah Hepola:

Change is not a bolt of lightning that arrives with a zap. It is a bridge built brick by brick, every day, with sweat and humility and slips. It is hard work, and slow work, but it can be thrilling to watch it take shape.

Via Lifehacker.

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Domino’s Transshipment Visualized

Two thoughts about this visualization of Domino’s delivery routes:

1) The bicycle deliverer is a piker. I delivered (by car) in the Buffalo suburbs for over 4 years. I covered about 100 square miles of territory, did over 100 miles of stop-and-go-driving on a weekend night, and the suburbanized swampy terrain had very few neat, homogenous rectangles.

2) What a great video for the transshipment portion of a linear programming or Excel class.

P.S. We have a distribution center (one of the red nodes towards the video’s end) for Wal-Mart located about 35 miles south of my home. I recently found out that it’s actually a distribution center for distribution centers: it handles mostly clothing, and ships nothing directly to stores.

Technorati Tags: domino's,pizza,transshipment,delivery,route

Windows 7 Tip # 5: A Good Use for Libraries

Libraries are cool … but what do most people need to add a new one for? Documents, music, photos, videos, that covers the bases for most people.

Well … here’s one I figured out.

Locate the folders where the shortcuts on your start menu are located. Right click on the folder, and there will be an option to “Include in library”. Click that, and there is an option to add a new library.

Why would you want to do this?

Well, if you’re like me, your Start menu gets cluttered up by a lot of software installs which create their own folders.

Also, I work in an office with a LAN: installs that I do are stored in one location, while defaults are stored in another location. This means that my Start menu often doesn’t have what I want at the top.

So, where are those folders?

• Each user has a folder that stores their Start menu shortcuts. It’s in c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\microsoft\windows\start menu.
• Also, there may be Start menu shortcuts in a similar path, where the username is default, public, or some other name created by your employer.
• Lastly, there are also some in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

For each of these, you may need to go into your folder options and unhide hidden folders.

Technorati Tags: windows,7,tip,5,libraries,start,menu

Windows 7 Icon Resources

An interesting resource: all the files in Windows 7 containing icons you can use.

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Henri Is Back

And Henri is getting a lot more hits on YouTube:

This is the third installment. Still good, but not as good as the second. But his French is perfect.

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The Way Forward

So, Obamacare was upheld 5-4. Not a huge surprise.

Here’s the important precedent that I see.

It’s now clear that Congress can create a tax in an unusual form, and insist that it not be labeled as a tax … and get away with that.

And, it’s also clear that such a stealth tax will still be held valid after it has passed.

So, we’re going to see a huge reorientation of the label “taxes” towards other terms that are not such hot potatoes. Like “inflows”.

I think this a huge victory for centralizers and tax-and-spenders. Most people regard those features as matching those of progressives, but I think they match the features of … politicians who need to get reelected.

So, a small victory for Democrats, a huge victory for people who like to boss others around and spend their money.

Technorati Tags: obamacare,supreme,court,taxes

Another Jesse-ism from Breaking Bad

We’ve just starting watching season 4 of Breaking Bad, which just came out on DVD. And there’s Jesse in the second episode showing off his new stereo with:

“… digital vacuum tubes …”

Classic.

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Matthieu Barrere–Visual Joke

Via Visual News.

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Making the National News Again

Cedar City didn’t make FOXNews but our (far smaller) county seat of Parowan did, as well as a village called Paragonah that neighbors it.

The problem is the formerly endangered Utah Prairie Dog — upgraded to threatened in the 1980’s.

You see, the cute little threatened creatures happen to be thriving … just about everywhere. Come out for a visit and I’ll show you a few hundred.

FWIW: a single one of these social and colonial animals appeared, sans burrow, sans flat grassland environment, in the lush sprinkler-watered grass of our walled backyard about 6 years ago. No clue how it got there … the nearest colony is about 2 miles down the mountain.

Technorati Tags: utah,prairie,dog,endangered,species,parowan