Cox Crow

Electing Judges

One of the privileges of our fine political system is that we get to elect those who can pass judgment on us. Electing judges makes sense if you know the candidates. But what if you don't? How can you elect someone to pass judgment on you when you cannot make a decision about that person's judgment? Can you know someone from their electioneering?

This is where ease of research comes in. We have a number of candidates up for seats on the New York State Supreme Court bench. We're in the Ninth Judicial District. Some of the candidates are sitting judges. The Hon. Thomas A. Dickerson even has his own web site, where he helpfully links to some of his decisions and papers. (Looking through the rest of the material published on www.courts.ny.us, Judge Dickerson seems like he's a prime mover there.)

While it's obvious that the New York State Office of Court Administration needs an Information Architect, this is more than I knew. I still don't feel qualified to choose among the candidates.

2:18:23 PM # Google It!
categories: Politics

My Nemesis

The Big Sister calls the back yard our "yarden." The garden, now dying and smothered with fallen pine needles, sits in the corner, leaving some room for an apple tree and a swing-set. Behind the garden, a forsythia bush encroaches. But behind that lies the real threat.

We have vines. Vines of at least three different varieties, one poison, entangle the pine trees, the wood pile, the forsythia, a tree of indeterminate origin, and creep stealthily across the yard toward the swing-set.

The Lawn Guy keeps those feelers in check, but only if they're in the path of the mower. So when I turn out for lawn work, I fix my sights on my nemesis: the vines. I chop and cut and pull and chop. And the vines never get any shorter. Looking out over my yarden I want an Evil Eye that will strike the heads from my enemies with a mere glance.

Or a bulldozer.

But the roots lie beyond my grasp, entrenched on my neighbors' properties. And they care not.

11:24:33 AM # Google It!
categories: Family

Feed Manglement

Looks like some thought is being given to efficiency. Or as Phil Wolff put it in another discussion thread, "life-cycle management."

On the other hand, I'm getting sick and tired of finding new features in my aggregator on Monday that were still under discussion when I left on Friday. Maybe I should clarify that: it's not really a discussion when you're talking to yourself.

And we're all talking to ourselves a lot. The distributed conversation that is this medium is not conducive to stating a problem, discussing the problem, coming to a solution, and implementing it. It fails for a number of reasons. First, because the interested parties have to read your screed. Second, because you have to read theirs. And that's before we get to the problem with determining what the consensus was, much less keeping a list of the things decided and who should do what work, if any.

8:07:15 AM # Google It!
categories: Writing Online, System Administration