Output Stream of Consciousness

Education and Rewarding the Wrong Things

Nimble — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 23:03:00 +0000

I find education... frustrating. It feels like two things are very common:

Taking identified concerns and going into territory far beyond fair or reasonable to address them
Putting undue emphasis on proxy measurements for good education and causing corruption of the system to achieve those measurements

There is research to be had, but it seems as though educational management either listens to just what they want to hear, or go with what's fashionable, or go with something that pays mere lip service to the problem.

Take no-fail policies - there has been research available for a couple of decades now.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Anti-Transgender Dogwhistles

Nimble — Wed, 05 May 2021 02:48:00 +0000

Like just any other conspiracy-minded movement, anti-transgender activists have come up over time with a plethora of insider phrases, jokes, symbols, images and even colour schemes to talk about their ideology and the subjects of their bigotry in public channels with plenty of winks to each other.

Many of these "dogwhistles" (the term for something that the public can't detect but members of the movement can) exist in profiles, and like bumper stickers are anywhere from subtle to garish, and many of them show up in posts and images.

Anti-transgender activists are relentless online, often posting links for each other to massively comment on, or "brigade", especially if any public body or celebrity or domestic violence shelter comes out in support of transgender people.

This is an incomplete collection of them, and this will likely be a work in progress, since they pop up with new ones over time, and explanations of their origins may take a while to source.

Some of them are highly indicative of anti-transgender ideology, some overlap with phrases and practices used commonly elsewhere but may merit a second look.

Full story »

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

A Litany Of Fun Aliases

Nimble — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 12:24:00 +0000

In our youth, when LANs were things you pretty much had to go to an office to get, when signing in after hours, we would often leave plausible-sounding spoof names instead of our real names.

So I'm just going to keep this post around as a spot I can just add silly names to as I think of them :)

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Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Defiance: The Game

Nimble — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:34:00 +0000

(I'll see if I can work at getting some screen captures in here, because it needs some dang screen captures! :) )

I got to be a minor fan of the Defiance TV show in the first couple of episodes because of some of the characters and twists they threw in, but I'm woefully behind; we switched PVRs and are stuck trying to find a time to hook up the old one just to watch some older leftovers.

I will admit that I only tried the game because of being slightly partial to the show and it being a free weekend to try. I had every intention of just letting it go when the free weekend was up... but I didn't.

It's just a lot of fun, despite not being particularly ground-breaking. It's like someone came along and just decided to make sure there was some good solid world-building backstory, and then just write a game that they would really like.

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Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Elle Grand Prix 2012 Beauty Products

Nimble — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 14:09:00 +0000

I enter all kinds of contests. As a Canadian, my two favourite sites for contest listings are Contest Canada with its good listings and amusing taglines, and Contestgirl, with some good tools to keep track of contests.

My wins are fairly sparse, but one recent surprise was winning the "Elle Grand Prix 2012 Beauty Product Contest". Products competed for Best Of titles, and the prize here was the best of and runners-up in quite a few categories. We opened up the box and found all manner of cleansers, makeup, moisturizers, hand products, shampoo and other hair products - some of which we found out definitely cost a pretty penny off the shelf!

No shaving products or anything, but hey, Dena can't use all that moisturizer herself, so here are our thoughts on some of these products so far:

Full story »

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Creationist on a Thread: Part I

Nimble — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:13:00 +0000

This article in TechnicianOnline stirred up a lot of controversy. You could follow the Facebook responses to that for days and hardly come to the end of it.

Where I chose to chime in was where someone had rebuffed that original author, a creationist popped up to oppose them, and folks started piling on. The conversation gets rather long, but it's a fascinating study in how just about every creationist argument can get pulled out of the sack in sequence. My favourite bit: agreeing to disagree, then proceeding to get a dig in! Enjoy.

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Original post blogged on b2evolution.

JavaScript Script Tags Violate Normal Tag Rules

Nimble — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 11:02:02 +0000

You know how you can - for just about every HTML tag - combine the start and end tags, XML-style, into just one node?

For example, you need not go <img src="mypig.jpg"></img> - you can simply go <img src="mypig.jpg"/>.

It turns out that this is not the case for <script> tags at all, at least not without special treatment.

I had a fairly simple page to which I was trying to add a JavaScript include, a snippet of which went like this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="../js/dialogs.js" /> <script type="text/javascript"> function initPage() { .. rest of function ..

Then, later on in the page, I tell the body to run initPage when it loads:

<body onload="initPage()" ...

When I showed the web page, I got the error:

SCRIPT5007: The value of the property 'initPage' is null or undefined, not a Function object

How could that possibly be?

As it turned out, that JavaScript inclusion did not seem to consider the script block finished... or something. Everything worked again when I changed that line to this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="../js/dialogs.js" ></script>

Now there's a twist. Apparently, this is the case when the web page gets sent back with the 'normal' HTTP header Content-Type: text/html. If it is sent back with application/xhtml+xml instead, then the start and end script tags no longer have to be broken up. See here.

Original post blogged on b2evolution.

Parenthood, Part II

Nimble — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:49:51 +0000

One thing I would recommend in particular for the little one is a bassinet right by the side of your bed, particularly if mom is breastfeeding. The baby is going to be wanting to feed about every two hours for a period of about two months, and during this period, it is really good to be able to roll over, pluck the baby out, feed the baby and be half-asleep at the time. There really is something a little more refreshing about not having to fully wake up for things.

Alternately, if you are set up for it, get a chair comfy enough to sleep in with wide, soft arms on it for the nursery. This is great for later, but may also be necessary if one parent is not taking any or much parental leave and needs sleep to be able to function at work.

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Original post blogged on b2evolution.