NOT the law-bomb lobbing Bob Loblaw Law Blog.

Sophie Annabelle Honerkamp

Born: 28 December 2011, 1:20pm

I'm putting together a Top 10 List of Things Politicians Talk About When They Don't Have Any Real Ideas About Anything Important.

Right now, the list has (in no particular order):

1) Gays/gay marriage
2) Religion/athiests/culture war/war on Christmas/evolution
3) Flag burning
4) Terrorists/Sharia law in America
5) Cutting spending/balancing the budget/lowering taxes (without any real details of how they'd do it)
6) Israel
7) Abortion/birth control
8) Mexicans/immigration/NAFTA/"NAFTA Superhighway"/"They took our jawrbs!"/outsourcing/offshoring
9)
10)

Any suggestions?

Yesterday morning, I heard my first commercial on Sirius. Sirius still brands its music channels as "100% Commercial-Free", so I was a little concerned about this. I sent this email to them:


Question :

I was under the impression that your music channels were "100% Commercial Free". This morning, on Kid's Place Live, your DJ did a promotional piece for home cola machines.

Are you changing your policy to allow for commercials? If so, will our monthly subscription rate decrease?

Robbie


Sirius responded this morning. They claim that their commercials aren't actually commercials - they're "announcements and on-air host discussions". So when a host goes on for almost a minute about the SodaStream Soda Maker, how great it is, how you should get one for your mother for mother's day, and the names of stores that sell it... that's a commercial, not a discussion.


Dear Mr. Honerkamp,

Thank you for contacting SiriusXM. We appreciate your comments regarding our programming.

Our emphasis is on the music and entertainment you want. Master music programmers and on-air personalities, who are true experts, host our music. They back up the music with compelling information about the song being played. We do not consider announcements and on-air host discussions "commercials”, we simply want to ensure that our listeners remember who they are listening to so they can come back to their favorite channels and make requests. We apologize for any frustration caused by the announcements and on-air host discussions.

We have forwarded your comments to our programming department and will take your suggestions into consideration. If you have any further questions, comments, or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact SiriusXM Customer Care. For your convenience, we are available 7 days a week at:

1-866-635-2349

We are committed to providing you with the best in listener care. If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this email and you can always manage your account online 24/7 by clicking
http://www.siriusxm.com/

Thank you,

Ervin
SiriusXM Email Listener Care Team
1-866-635-2349


Has anyone else heard this recently?

So, I've thought about dropping out of grad school (again). The first time was when I left the political science masters program in 2008. I decided that I didn't like the large amounts of theory involved with it, but then thought I'd like to get a degree with practical use, like the masters in international business degree.

Fast forward two years - I started my MIB last year. First class was good, but now that we have a kid I don't like being away from home at night. I really would rather be at home with Heather and Gemma. Then dad died in December just after Fall classes finished. I registered for two interesting classes for the Spring term and got ready to move on with school. Unfortunately, it was more than I could handle at the time- being in a new job where I'm building a new department, dealing with dad's death, and having a kid at home was too much to deal with at once, so I dropped both classes.

Over the last few weeks I've been thinking about grad school and its value.

PROS:
- A masters in business is a useful credential. It would make opening some career doors easier.
- Some hiring managers (probably those with masters in business) prefer to only hire others with business degrees.
- Good networking opportunities.
- Job placement benefits.
- Required four-month overseas internship will likely open doors for future employment.

CONS:
- It's expensive - almost $5k/semester for two classes plus books and other materials.
- Two nights a week spent in class rather than with family.
- Additional time for reading/homework/projects.
- Four months away from family (quite possibly unpaid) is going to be very difficult.
- Two to three years with our lives on hold - can't take jobs that would interfere with school.

At this point, I think that the costs and time away from the family are too much for me. We're working to pay off our remaining debt, and that tuition money could go a *long* way towards that.

In lieu of a business masters, I can spend some time and effort networking (which I'd have to do anyway) in various business groups around town, taking Spanish classes, and learning on my own (the Personal MBA blog/book are pretty good for this). In the end, I might not be considered for some jobs because I don't have the degree, but in the end I'll be happier because I can start living my life without school hanging over my head.

Ever get an idea that sticks in your head so hard that you feel like you should drop everything else you're doing and go get started on it immediately?

I've got one of those now. If I didn't have bills to pay, I'd be going full steam ahead on it. But I've got bills to pay, and I've gotta rein myself back in... for now, at least.

Sigh. Fooey on reality.

The story of why the father was there that day.

In the last week or so there's been a lot of talk about the .ly TLD and how the Libyan government is revoking domain registrations for domains whose content violates Libyan law. It all started with this blog posting by Ben Metcalfe: The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe.

I don't have much sympathy for him for two reasons. One is that he registered a Libyan domain name, and thus must abide by Libyan law. Libya owns the .ly TLD and can set whatever regulations around it that they like. If people don't want to abide by their policies, they can register a domain elsewhere.

The other reason I don't have much sympathy for him is that the US Government does this sort of thing and there's hardly any uproar at all. I mean, saying that Qadaffi has yanked some guy's Internet web site offline gets good press -- Even Fox News brought out their crack team of punmakers to cover it. But where was the discussion and outrage a couple of years ago when the US Government yanked the .com domains of people who had information about or business in Cuba?

Don't remember it? Here's a New York Times article to refresh your memory. Essentially, the US Government yanked .com domains pertaining to Cuba that were registered with US registrars. One of the domains was a Spanish travel agent selling holiday packages to Cuba, another was about Ernest Hemmingway.

Admittedly, you could argue that people registering domains with US corporations should know about the (stupid) Cuban embargo and should plan to register their domain elsewhere. Still, the odds that Americans can get their government to stop being stupid about Cuba are higher than the odds that Libyans could do the same with Qadaffi and their social taboos.

For the first time ever, I'm going to voluntarily sit out an election*. There's nobody worth voting for. The gubernatorial candidates would rather spend their time beating up on immigrants and arguing over who hates gays the most instead of actually talking about issues. All of the candidates for the 4th district House seat want to talk about is Israel, abortion, and FairTax. Bah- there's not a single person out there that makes it worth me casting a ballot.

I'll just hold my nose and vote for the lesser of evils again this November.

*: I missed the last presidential election, but that was because of an emergency work situation that sent me out of town on election day.

Until this week I had no idea who Lebon James was, other than he had something to do with sports. Now I just want to stop hearing about him.

Fortunately, someone else has written a better slam of his ego and the whole media frenzy than I ever could. Warning: NSFW language.