Fingertoe.com

A big thankyou to Troy Kirby of Eastern Washington University's student newspaper for having the courage and commitment to research and publish the story of our friend, April Strader. The Easterner Online - Before and after the trust was broken

When I met my wife, Andee, she was a very successful and proud sociology student and EWU. She wanted to fight the injustices of the world, and believed that her education would give her the knowledge and convictions necessary to fight the battle.

One of her professors was William 'Dan' Purdue. She was quite impressed with the lessons he taught about how power is abused, and how the people at the top often get away with all kinds of crimes and injustices.

She was absolutely devastated when she found out that Dr. Purdue had raped one of her friends. (allegedly) Everything that she had learned from him was cast in a totally different light. As the scandal rumbled on, she saw many of the professors that she knew and trusted being either totally indifferent to the situation or rallying around the alleged perpetrator.

Actions speak loader than textbooks. She felt like her professors taught an idealism, but when the issues Hit home, they did not live by the values they espoused. Andee quickly became totally disillusioned with sociology, EWU, and her degree.

To be fair, Andee was a friend and confidant of April's and knew the whole story, pretty much how it is published in the Easterner article. Many of the professors probably where not privy to the details, and only saw the potential damage that the scandal would bring upon the university and the department. They probably trusted their friend and co-worker much as Andee knew and trusted April.

April was a person with a very kind and idealistic heart. She had a passion for seeking and exposing the truth. She was an outstanding editor of "The Easterner" According to the testimony quoted in the article Perdue had been victimizing women since at least 1975 at EWU. Thank God, that April had the strength and courage to put an end to that.

It was very sad to watch her slip deeper and deeper into her illness. We lost track of her several times as she moved from home to home... We lost track of her for a final time about a year ago. Today, we ran into one of the sociology professors and heard that she passed away.

This article is a fine tribute to April. It exposes the truth that has been hidden for so long, and it raises awareness of the injustice that continues to this day. As a journalist and a sociologist, I think it would make her quite pleased.

It is so sad that she had to die before anyone would write it.

Posted by at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Kudos to Don Mischer for taking responsibilty for his actions. The Drudge Report has been berating him for throwing a profantiy laced tantrum about the quantity of balloons being released at the Demcoratic National Convention. CNN was kind enough to broadcast his tantrum live for the whole world to hear.

"I feel terrible about it, and I deeply apologize to anyone I might have offended," Hollywood heavy Don Mischer tells Saturday's LOS ANGELES TIMES.

Perhaps they are heeding the advice of some of us bloggers out here. I am glad that there was no conspiracy this time.

Posted by at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

I just installed StatCounter on all of my websites. A good tracking program is a very handy tool for anyone who is serious about building traffic to their website.

The Statcounter can be installed so that it is totally invisible on the website. You just paste a bit of code into each of your HTML documents, and every visitor to your website is tracked.

Statcounter includes a very useful path report that shows what each visitor looked at while touring your website. You can see where customers are entering your website, and what pages are intriging your visitors enough that they stick around and check out the rest of your content.

Another useful feature is the referer report which shows how people are finding your website. For example, I noticed today that I was getting hits from here: Basecamp

It is also good to know what screen resolutions and browsers your visitors are using so that you can test and optimize your site to keep your visitors happy.

Sitecounter is free for casual users. It is supported by ads that appear on your reporting pages. If you don't have another counter you are using, it is worth checking out.

Posted by at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Further evidence mounts that the Kerry Campaign lies. How insane that you would squander your credibility to lie about something as silly as a photograph? Apparently the bunnysuit photos where their idea until they didn't play well, then the suddenly became a Right Wing Conspiracy Smear tactic.

Local News

Furthermore, NASA spokesman Bill Johnson said the Kerry campaign asked that the pictures be taken of the senator's unusually up-close tour of the Discovery and that processing be expedited so reporters could have them.

How would you like Kerry for a boss? He asks you to do extra work on his behalf, you go out of your way to help him out, and then for totally political reasons, he accuses you of wrongdoing.for doing excactly what he asked you to do.

Character does matter.

Posted by at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Countries that believe in hell are more prosporus and less corrupt.

Yahoo! News - Believing in Hell Has Its Benefits

Posted by at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Appears that the Democrats don't have a monopoly on conspiracy theories:

DRUDGE REPORT 2004�

Hopefully the GOP will have the wisdom to avoid endorsing such stuff. Even if Kerry did fake his presidential fluff peice 33 years ago, It is going to be hard to sell the non-partisan voter on the conspiracy theory.

Credibility is a pretty important asset, and it should not be wasted on this kind of stuff. Let Kerry's Vietnam comrades have their 15 minutes of fame if they want it, but I don't think the campaign should talk about this.

Posted by at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

The Republicans must be so clever.. Drudge is reporting that they conspired leak photographs of John Kerry crawling through a tube in a clean room suit.

DRUDGE REPORT 2004�

Kerry's camp denies knowning that these photographs where being taken. Kerry has a pretty big smile and pose in those photos, I suspect that they might be lying.

I would love to see what is really inside Karl Rove's dirty trick drawer.. (I suspect it is something much better than a Oompa Loompa suit!) Whatever it is, we will probably find out soon enough.

On a side note... I wore a suit like that for work for 22 months in the 90s. I don't think there are any photographs.

Posted by at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Congrats to Ricky Williams on his retirement.

Yahoo! Sports - NFL - In retirement, Williams still on the go

Many fans couldn't understand why Williams abandoned the team a week before training camp or why he gave up more than $5 million a year -- $3.6 million in salary this season plus $1.5 million in incentives -- at the peak of his career. He already has enough money, he said, and making millions more wasn't a priority for him.

How many NFL players play until they have totally worn their bodies out. How many of them play for the money and not for the love of the game?

I am glad that Ricky Williams is not one of them anymore!

Posted by at 2:27 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

"I Had An Abortion" T-shirts

Planned Parenthood is proud to offer yet another t-shirt in our new social fashion line: "I Had an Abortion" fitted T-shirts are now available. These soft and comfortable fitted tees assert a powerful message in support of women's rights.

If these sell well, I plan to begin selling parody T-Shirts with the slogan "I had a child" on them..

Posted by Josh Reighley at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just re-discovered IRC. I wonder how many people use IRC these days. I remember using it back in the 93-96 era before I had graphics on my internet machine. Back then you had to know all of this Jargon and commands Like this page describes.

I started looking at The Freely Project the other day. This is a website about Using Open source software in Churches. They advertized their IRC channel and decided to fire it up again.

I looked at my Instant messenger, Kopete, and found that it had IRC support built in. So I set up the connection and bingo, I had a open line to Linuxy Church Techs around the world. Pretty cool deal. I wonder if IRC will go mainstream again anytime soon. It certainly is useful.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Must have leaked this story:
Yahoo! News - Prostitutes Join Police Converging on DNC Boston

Funny. I didn't know that prostitution was legal in Boston. If you where to read the article, you would assume that it is.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

There seems to be quite a bit more to experience each day since we mostly unplugged the TV. (I still watch American Chopper)

I finished the revamp of the website for my Church

Planted a Garden. Cleared most of my collection of compost fuel into the actuall composter.

Cleaned out our house and delivered a good chunk of the clutter to the local Goodwill.

Cooked a lot more real meals.

Installed Linux on this computer and customized it to my liking.

Anyway, after a month or so of accomplishing things that have been on the back burner for years, I think that most of our procrastonation is related to our television consumption.

My kids are also much happier and more imaginative since Dora got unplugged.

I wonder if Internet use is as evil as TV.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Yahoo! News - Bigger Breasts for Free: Join the Army

The New Yorker magazine reports in its July 26th edition that members of all four branches of the U.S. military can get face-lifts, breast enlargements, liposuction and nose jobs for free -- something the military says helps surgeons practice their skills.

Free is a good price I would suppose, but I suspect that plastic surgery rarely makes people happy for the long term. It is impressive to see how popular this fad is becoming with all of the reality TV shows.

I think it would be cool to do a reality TV show 2 years or so after the event. See the effect that being on "The Batchelor", "Extreme Makeover", or "The Swan" has on people in the long term. It is pretty easy to see that winning "The Batchelor" is not all that it is hyped up to be. I would bet that these "slice and dice" reality shows are equally unfullfilling for the contestants in the long term

Posted by at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Notice how many times she uses the word "I".

The New York Times > Magazine > Lives: When One Is Enough

(Free Registration required)

Posted by at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Looks like I made somebody's day yesterday. Nathan World: I got a comment!!!

I have been randomly subscribing to a Blog or 2 out of Bloglines new blogs section every week or so and adding them to my "New/Untested" Blogroll.

There are a lot interesting people out there, and I figure they will only keep writing for a short time if nobody bothers to check them out.

Posted by at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I wonder if anyone is fooled by this stuff... The Democrats have one of their leading advisors get caught 'accidentally' stuffing classified documents in his pants and socks. Now they are trying to turn it into a massive Republican conspiracy.

Yahoo! News - Kerry Camp Accuses White House of Berger Leak

This is another evidence of why Bush is going to win. The moderate American voters are moderate because they don't believe everything that anybody tells them. If somebody stuffs classified documents in their socks and calls it an accident, they lose a lot of credibility. Then they try to make the whole thing into their opponent's fault?

Their case: It is damages their credibility and comes at a convienient time for their opponent.

The credibility was damaged by Mr. Berger's actions, not by anything the Republicans do. Also, it is a political season, so anytime between now and the election is going to be a darn convienient time for any damaging info to come out. Leaks happen. Usually they are not a massive conspiracy. They are the actions of one individual who believes the public should know about something in the public interest. If the DOJ had put out a press release on this matter, I am not sure they would have been out of line.

The Democrats don't want us to know the truth because the truth hurts them. The "Farenheit 9-11" fans might buy this conspiracy theory, but the moderates of America is going to trust them less, and trust Bush more.

Posted by at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Here is a good story. All too rare in today's world I am afraid.

Madeleines: Boomtime: Why Diversity Matters

I think that our corporate workplace mentality tends to value peace at the expense of truth.

Lies can quickly be transformed into the truth if the boss believes them. Without an agitator, management will believe most anything they are told. They do not have eyes and ears everywhere, and tend to only hear and see issues from the perspective of people who see things just like they see them.

Is cowardice a virtue? I have made several managers angry and uncomfortable, but I have yet to be fired for telling the truth. How am I to learn that I am wrong if I don't discuss my veiwpoint with management? How are they to learn they are wrong if nobody has the guts to talk to them?

The grumbing and gossip that is so common in the workplace today only demoralizes people
Having the courage to stand up for what you believe and discuss issues honestly helps us understand each other and move towards a common perspective.

Posted by at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I for one, am very glad I don't work for The Chicago Tribune today!

Tech breakdown nearly stops Tribune presses: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Test twice, install once...

Posted by at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

So, I got pounded today with Viagra comments. I think I got about 10 of them. I am fairly vigilant about cleaning that stuff out.

So I figured it was a good chance to hack on MT a bit to see what could be done to prevent the comment spam problem.

First I renamed the comments file so that the robots would actually have to look at my page to figure out how to post a comment. I hear that works pretty well, but not perfectly.

Second, I downloaded and installed my first MT plugin, the mt-blacklist. It was quick and easy install. We will see how effective it is! It looks like it should do a pretty good job of blocking both trackback spam and comment spam. Anything we can do to frustrate spammer.

Posted by at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From: 20 Questions to a Better Personality

Wackiness: 50/100 Rationality: 68/100 Constructiveness: 60/100 Leadership: 56/100

You are an SRCL--Sober Rational Constructive Leader. This makes you an Ayn Rand ideal. Taggart? Roark? Galt? You are all of these. You were born to lead. You may not be particularly exciting, but you have a strange charisma--born of intellect and personal drive--that people begin to notice when they have been around you a while. You don't like to compromise, but you recognize when you have to.

You care absolutely nothing what other people think, and this somehow attracts people to you. Treat them well, use them wisely, and ascend to your rightful rank.

I am not sure that I am born to lead. Time will tell I would suppose. I am boring, but quirky. It takes a while before people start to recognize my ideas as being at all inspired. I believe in right and wrong, and I don't tend to bend too much on issues of right and wrong. I call it as I see it, but I am fairly kind to people even if they are wrong.

Personal drive has been lacking lately. There are times when my drive is very strong and I get a massive amount of stuff done, but often I coast on my talents.

(Yes, I am copying Consistently Chili again.)

Posted by at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I have been engaged in a lot of debates lately by those who believe president Bush is pure evil, and created a vast conspiracy of lies to allow himself to invade Iraq. I am fairly certain that all of this talk will result in Bush's re-election.. The American moderate never does seem to buy the "This president is pure evil" arguement. Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton all faced these kind of angry propaganda, and they won their second terms quite handily.

In thinking about these issues, an interesting theory emerged in my brain, and I figured I should share it.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Saudi's felt that they needed to have a strong army protecting their borders. Osama Bin Laden tried to convince them to bring in his mujahedeen to protect the country, the declined and instead relied on the U.S. The US presence in Saudi Arabia is Bin Laden's primary motivation for being angry at the U.S. Frontline has a lot of details of his rise to power and his politics. He is not alone in this anger, and our presence there allows him to recuit a lot of young Saudi's to fight against us.

The critics of the war in Iraq, claimed that the policy of containment was working. They where right. For the most part however, the US and Britain where the countries doing the containing, and our required presence in Saudi Arabia was fueling the growth of Al Quida.

President Bush tends to Appease his political opponents. If you look at the Steel Teriffs, the Medicare prescriptions and various other policies enacted in his administration, they where all intended to appease the one-issue voter into not being a sure thing for his opponent. I believe this was his motus apperandi as governor of Texas as well.

The same is stratagy could be applied on a world scale. We have a one issue political leader in Osama Bin Laden. If we where to get out of Saudi Arabia, he would lose most of his leverage, and the political movement would be severely weakend. Saudi kids would no longer feel the need to boot us out of their country.

The truth is, that we really didn't want to be in Saudi Arabia either. However if we left, It would send a signal that Saddam had won. The policy of containment would cease to work if we where no longer there to draw lines in the sand and swat Saddam each time he crossed one.

If we stay, there is also a substaintal risk. Bin Laden's Political movement seeks to destablize Saudi Arabia. Our continued presence there is adding fuel to the fire. the Saudi's rulers where not going to put up with us forever. If we where forced out, and Saudi Arabia where to collapse into a civil war or the like, then our policy of containment of Saddam would also fail.

Our economy is also quite dependant on political stability in the middle east. If we where not able to buy oil from that region, our economy would quickly collapse, and we would have a pretty ugly depression here. Unlike the liberal conspiracy theorists, I do not think our interest in protecting the flow of oil is inherently evil. We are not stealing the oil. We are just protecting the rights of the people in that region to live in a stable society where the are able to work for a living and sell a much needed product.

Our continued presence there would also increase the likelyhood that al Quada would do more 9-11 style attacks against us in the future.

The first Gulf war ended with Saddam agreeing to take certain steps. He failed to keep his end of the bargin. If we where to just walk away, in the future, countries would feel that they could lie to us without fear. The contract ending the first war was null and void.

All of the reasons Bush gave for fighting the war where valid reasons. They where accepted as being truth for the last 13 years. Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Edwards, even Kennedy, spoke of Iraq's WMD programs. To say that Bush made this up is absolute hogwash. I believe that there where a lot more strategic factors that went into the decision that could not be stated because it would embolden our enemies, or weaken our allies.

In 5 years or so, Iraq could be a free and weathly nation capably of maintaining stability in the region. Other nations could see Iraq's success and also move in that direction. We will not be needed in the region anymore, and Osama will not be able to recuit kids to help him boot us out. I don't think history will judge Saddam kindly, no matter what your race or religion. Once the War is over, the people in the region will generally be glad it is over, and they will not be too eager to start another fight. Especially if our troops are not actively involved in their area.

If the policy fails, then the fanatics will continue to hate us just like they do now.

Overall, I don't know if Bush was right or wrong. God knows, and perhaps history will reveal the answer. I don't think he started this war out of 'pure evil' The Satus Quo had some pretty substantial humanitarian risks associated with it over the long term.

Posted by at 8:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I think it is funny to see Blogging's effect on the mainstream media. There have been several blogger type news items that I have noticed in the top 9 Reuter's stories on Yahoo.

Example:

Yahoo! News - Odor May Be Clue to Missing Airport Fish

Some guy loses some fish, and it becomes a Top Headline? People lose luggage ever day.

I also remember seeing the guy in olympia who's ffriends wrapped the contents of his house in Aluminum foil in the lead headlines. That one I remember seeing on a most poplar blog link list.. Then a few hours later, the mainstream news sites started carrying the story nationally.

Posted by at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I went down to Hillsboro Oregon for a few days on business.. I am back now. Got to see my freinds and Sisters who live in the Portland area. My sisters are still Kerry supporters, but at least they don't run IE anymore. ;-) They where pretty impressed when I installed Firefox with gestures on their system. I wandered all over the western suburbs of Portalnd, and only got lost 2 times in 3 days. Not bad for a guy who refuses to read directions. (I learn better when I figure it out on my own)

We are expecting quite a hectic week. Andee is having surgery on Wednesday. She will probably not be in baby chasing mode for several weeks. Andee's Mom, Sister and Neice are coming down next week to help out. Then it sounds like a lot of our friends from Liferoads have offered to help out in the weeks afterwords if needed.

Posted by at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

One of the Bloggers on my Trial list is reporting that his access to websites such as Blogspot and typepad are being blocked by the South Korean Government.

What If I Stumble blog

Posted by at 6:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If anyone has a minute, can you take a look at a website I am working on and make sure that it displays properly?

The address is http://www.liferoads.org/test.htm

I am mostly wanting to make sure that the columns display properly, and text doesn't overlap etc. I still have not optimized all of the images, so it may take a few extra seconds to load.

If you see any problems please leave me a comment letting me know what display resoution and browser you are using.

Thanks!
Josh

-- Update --- this is finished. Thanks for everyone who helped. The test page has been deleted, and the new style has been applied to the liferoads website

Posted by at 8:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don't know why I like stories like this, but I do.

Too many cars, too few digits - 07/01/04

Hopefully someday we will learn. to ask questions like this way in advance.

Posted by at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I have been playing with Basecamp over the past couple of days. I am impressed. I love bang for the buck. Basecamp seems to be a fairly simple product that can really put the life back into a team.

Basecamp is a project collaboration tool. It allows you to basically run several blog style conversations about the projects that your team is working on. It features a calendar for putting up milestones, and events and the like. You can also set up to-do lists.

I am relatively cynical about project management in the workplace. I think that we make it quite a bit more complicated than it really is. There is a tendancy to manage people to their maximum effieciency, and often over-efficiency on a local scale breeds inefficiency on a global scale. If I am scheduled to be working on my projects for 90 percent of my time, then it will take me 9 days to catch up for a single sick day or day spent dealing with Murphy. In this environment every event impacts timelyness of completing what needs to be done.

I think the trick to being successful is to make sure everyone knows what needs to be done, and keep everyone working on something that needs to be done. if you plan too much more than that, you are inviting Murphy to make the hours you put into planning totally wasted.

Basecamp looks like it will be quite effective at making sure that you have the tools to let your team know what is being done and what needs to be done. (The part of project management that I think is most effective) It is very reasonably priced, and is fully web hosted, so there is no software to install. They know that their product is addictive, so they give out the first hit for free. (one project at a time)

Check it out!

Posted by at 9:43 PM | Permalink | Comments ()