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CORRECTION: TN Does Not Separate Church and State Either

Earlier I posted that Arkansas does not allow Atheists to hold government office nor testify as witnesses. I went on to suggest that TN had been out done in their efforts to live backwards by legislating beliefs and morals. I was wrong. Per Article IX Section 2 of the TN State Constitution.

Section 2. No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards
and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this
state. [Source]

As a matter of fact, religion [implied Christian] is so important to the state of Tennessee that Article IX Section 1 specifically excludes ministers from holding office since their duties are far more important.

Section 1. Whereas ministers of the Gospel are by their profession, dedicated
to God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great
duties of their functions; therefore, no minister of the Gospel, or priest of any
denomination whatever, shall be eligible to a seat in either House of the Legislature. [Source]

Arkansas and Tennessee are in good company. Apparently, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas all require the believe of a supreme being and/or afterlife and in some cases you must specifically be a Christian to hold office or be a witness.

So, not only are Atheists going to Hell (a place they don’t believe exists) but they cannot hold one of the most corrupt jobs known to man for which they would go to Hell anyway.

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Today’s construction lessons/reminders

  1. Just because you have a rotary tool doesn’t mean you should use it
  2. Drywall is made out of dust
  3. A razor blade cuts drywall very well it’s just not as cool as a rotary tool
  4. Razor blades also cut fingers
  5. There is a reason your safety goggles are in your working pile of tools instead of in storage in the garage
  6. Razor blades do not automatically cut straight lines
  7. Take your time or take a lot of time…it’s your choice
  8. Do not walk away and think the mess will clean itself up
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A recycled continent

Bob Grimac, Al Gore, and Ed Begley Jr should get excited over a floating mass of garbage almost twice as large as Texas! We could move hordes of environmental nuts to their very own recycled continent in international waters away from the non-environmental nuts in the White House.

I still like Al Gore; Bob Grimac is one of the nicest people you will ever meet (and the only Rocky Hill teacher to get a standing ovation during parent orientation); and I think of Ed Begley’s house with every home renovation I make asking myself, "Can I do this more environmentally sound?" Let’s keep these guys and move the White House people to the floating mass of garbage.

The largest dump in the world isn’t outside New York or London or Shanghai but in a desolate stretch of the Pacific Ocean nearly a thousand miles from the nearest island. Held together by a slowly rotating system of currents northeast of Hawaii, the Eastern Garbage Patch is more than just a few floating plastic bottles washed out to sea; the Patch is a giant mass of trash-laden water nearly double the size of Texas. [Source]

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CSS3 is coming!

CSS3 is coming! CSS3 is coming! Cascading Style Sheets allow design to be separated from programming. Before quality support of CSS within web browsers, designers and programmers had to rely on tricks to make the site appear correctly. One technique even included creating separate documents for each of the major browser, detecting the browser version, and presenting the correct document. What a pain!

With CSS, a programmer can create an HTML document sematically. In short a programmer can write code that says, "put a paragraph here" without worrying about what a paragraph’s appearance should be. That is, the programmer need not concern themselves with size of the font, indentions, emphasizing the first word, and so forth. The designer can manage that all through the style sheet.

Is it me or wasn’t vertical alignment of text promised in CSS3? I don’t see that in the list!

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Fly Half Way Around the Globe, See Atlanta Airport, Go Home!

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Exerpt from The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus as found on a bronze plaque inside The Statue of Liberty [Source]

Except for you and you and, hey, yes, you–the Asian guy.

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All Things Web 2.0

View a list of the best and most popular web 2.0 applications. What is Web 2.0? It is being hailed the next generation of web applications. In reality, it is an old concept. The way the World Wide Web works is a client computer (your web browser) makes a protocol request (typically http) to a web server which then talks to other servers (ColdFusion, PHP, mail, news, etc.) and returns a document to your browser. We experience this as a screen refresh and the little icon in your browser spinning around like an abnoxious hourglass. Web 2.0 gives the illusion that the wait, the hourglass, has been eliminated. It uses JavaScript tricks to make the requests behind the scenes. You can witness this by adding something to your Google Calendar. Notice the word "Loading…"? That has replaced a total page refresh.

I have problem with Web 2.0 and that is accessibility. For years web developers have held back on certain capabilities in order to not limit their audience. I would ask my clients, "how successful would McDonald’s be if they turned away 80% of their customers?" In the early days relying on something like JavaScript could be just that limiting. As a business, you have to know who you are serving. If your customer base is primarily Mac users and your web developer says, "I don’t support Safari." then you need to decide if you are going to fire your web developer or your customers. Browsers have come a long way and for the most part are much more compliant and compatible and almost all support Javascript. So where is the accessibility problem? We have far more computer neophytes using computers today and playing on the Internet (primarily via the World Wide Web). Apply firewall settings too strictly or get overly aggressive on popup blocking and you may find that Javascript is disabled. Try disabling Javascript and use Google’s calendar. They can afford to turn people away. Can you?

Use Web 2.0! It is cool and what people will expect of your application. However, write it to degrade nicely. Detect that Javascript is disabled and, if so, present your site Web 1.0 style.

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Separation of Church and State..except in Arkansas

So, in TN we are doing stupid things with our constitution like dictating morals, telling people whether or not they can get married, and forbidding people from buying dildos. But in Arkansas they have an article in their constitution forbidding Atheists from holding public office or testifying as a witness! I’m calling my state representative! Our stupidity has been one up’d! (See the correction)

Article 19, section 1 of the Arkansas Constitution: Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness.

No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court. [Source]

The Arkansas constitution is available online.

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Patent Pending

So, this tells me a few things.

  1. Anyone can get a patent.
  2. A patent doesn’t make it a good idea.
  3. This patent owner has obviously never owned a dog. (probably an irrate petless walker that has stepped in one too many landmines)
  4. You don’t have to know how to use Photoshop to get a patent.
  5. Peanuts come from dog butts.

This comes at a timely moment as I am quoting a patent attorney on a web project today. I’ll have to share patent US 7,090,268 B2 with them.

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Bush asks Mom, “How do you know his life would have been good?”

Did Bush really say this?!

Dolores Kesterson’s son died in Iraq. She was granted a private meeting with the President.

Dolores tried to give Bush a sense of what type of person Erik had been. She described her son as a “comedian” whose favorite saying was, “Life is good.” The president replied, “How do you know his life would have been good?” [Source]

He followed up with some enlightenment.

Before he concluded their meeting, Bush proclaimed to Dolores, "We won’t know in our lifetime whether or not Iraq was a success." [Source]

In our lifetime?! I can tell now.

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Start your own business

Want to start your own business? CNN Money asks, "how much money will you need?" I still contend that the government, the same government which encourages small business, is the greatest hinderance to the small business owner. Screw up the taxes and suffer the rest of your life.

Btw, CNN’s answer was $10,000. I started my first real endeavor with $38,000 and pumped another $20,000 of my own money into it before going belly up.

See also.