New photos posted. Our son is a GENIUS.

Has anyone seen the deets for Microsoft’s latest anti-spam strategy? Apparently, they’re using the argument that we have so much spam because e-mail is free, and that if we make folks pay for it, spammers won’t send as much. Mr. Gates & company suggest that users can “buy” postage by playing a 10-second math puzzle. (See the story from CNN here.) No doubt this “game” would be Microsoft-branded. Of course, that’s only one proposal–others are calling for users to pay a penny per e- mail. For sure, spamming is annoying, but is it annoying enough that we need to start charging people to send an e-mail? I hope this is one idea that never goes anywhere.

COSI Tax Levy

Yes 70,392 (38%)

No 116,920 (62%)

Precincts Reporting – 789 out of 789 – 100%

Full results here.

And it clearly wasn’t a money issue, since the Children’s Services levy (a 1.5 mill versus COSI’s .5 mill) passed.

“Because COSI is too top heavy with salaries.”

God forbid COSI’s administrators should earn salaries commensurate with running a world-class museum. But you know what, I’ll even give you that. Drop those salaries and it still doesn’t affect what the museum was asking for. Assuming that the top admin makes $200,000, we’ll say that five people make $100,000, and ten people make between $50,000 and $100,000. Total that up, and you’re somewhere in between $1.2 and $1.7M a year. The proposed levy would have brought in approximately $12.5M a year. “Excessive salaries” doesn’t cut it.

“Because a free COSI will become a dumping ground for unruly children and roving gangs.”

God forbid kids of all ages should have free and unfettered access to a musuem dedicated to science and technology. Gee, that’d be awful if they ended up spending time there as opposed to the mall.

Moreover, COSI already requires that kids be accompanied by adults. It’s not as if they let children wander around completely unsupervised. Someone has to be there to be responsible for them.

I’m just angry because I was looking forward to taking my son to COSI one day. COSI’s donors say they can’t continue giving to the museum at the current levels. COSI doesn’t take enough revenue in through admissions to maintain itself. Cutting salaries might help but won’t cure the problem. An additional $12.5 million a year in tax revenues might have.

Sure hope it’s still there in five years.

via phonecam

Explanation and analysis here. Fascinating.

1968: Beatles release The White Album.

2003: Jay-Z releases The Black Album.

2004: Hip-hop DJ Danger Mouse takes both, remixes and makes something new: The Grey Album.

2004: Beatles label EMI sends cease and desist letters to websites hosting Danger Mouse’s reworking, citing copyright violations. Anticorporatelabel music activists get their backs up, come up with Grey Tuesday, an internet protest in which websites will either turn grey in support of Danger Mouse and Downhillbattle or will actually host the The Grey Album for download — a virtual form, one suspects, of civil disobedience for the 21st century. Wandering copyright zealot Lawrence Lessig and the Electronic Frontier Foundation sign on to lend their support. RIAA presumably prepares to take notes of potential violators, argues (justifiedly under current law) that Grey Album likely violates United States copyright law for use of copyrighted material without license from holder.

2004: Dahlberg listens to Grey Album, declares it “okay”.

The first time I met him, when Val brought me to meet her family on one of those early days, he told me that he’d gotten his start as a bootlegger running hooch across the Ohio River. His wife, he told me, had been his getaway driver — that’s how they’d met. In retrospect, I should have recognized that twinkle in his eye — too much like my own grandfather’s was when I was growing up, bemused and mischevious. I bought it, of course, because I never really learned to tell when someone I wouldn’t suspect was pulling my leg. It wasn’t until after I left that they told me he’d been kidding me. “Oh yeah, I figured,” I said, playing it off. But I’d bought it.

He was always like that. Smiling, always positive, a little devilish when he wanted to be. I don’t know if “rascal” is the right word, but I have the feeling that had I known him when he was younger, it probably would have fit perfectly. He was scrappy; we thought, despite the many problems he’d had, that he was probably indestructible. When I’d see him, I’d always ask how he was doing. “Pretty good for an old bugger,” he’d say.

You certainly were, Ernest.

We’ll miss you.

I don’t even know what this is, but man, do I want to find out now.

http://202.212.245.207/htmls/movie/trailer_high.html

ganked from Charlie Chu