Got Your Stuff Stored?

NSA Collection of phone data legal, judge rules.

This is how our system of jurisprudence works.  If you don't like the ruling of the first judge to hear it, take your case to another court.

Personally, I don't care who collects my phone data.  They don't even need storage space on a computer.  They could keep an entire decade's records on a hand-written 3 x 5 card.

Yet I suppose on principle I should come down on one side or the other.

Words Matter, and So Do Spiders

Three or four years ago, vanilla was on about the silliness that PETA sometimes engages in.  Now Ingrid is at it again.  This time the target is New Jersey Governor Christie who demonstrated poor judgment by killing a spider.  So she says.

Yet this no where nearly rises to the level of foolishness engaged in officially by the government of the State of Washington which has undertaken to purge all state documents of words which could be  considered lacking in gender neutrality.  Newly forbidden words include "penmanship," "fisherman," "journeyman," and "clergyman."  More problematic were terms such as "seaman" and "man hole."

But not to pick on my beloved Washington where I resided for seven beautiful years, at least sixteen other states are engaging in similar efforts.