thick clouds lowering…
brown eyes of horses blinking
through the whirling snow
Deep snow
on the white church dome–
not even the sparrow stirs
Ice crystals in the pines–
the dark half of the moon
faintly visible
A good result: Ocala boys arrested for violent drawings to get counseling. Per the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Feb. 3, 2005:
Two boys accused of threatening a classmate by making violent drawings of stick figures will
avoid felony prosecution by joining a counseling program, officials said.
The boys, ages 9 and 10, are set to take part in a five- to seven-month intervention plan that
includes anti-aggression and anti-bullying counseling, said Robin Arnold, a Marion County
supervisor for the state attorney’s office.
With the criminal charges dropped, the boys are free to return to school.
The boys’ parents will also participate in the counseling.
Sidenote: I wish commentators, would be a little more precise when they attack
the boys were arrested because they “drew stick figure drawings that were
considered by school authorities to be violent.” The arrests were because the
drawings were deemed to be specific threats, aimed at and shown to, a specific
classmate — putting the child in fear of death.
Other commentators seem to think it was important that the boys were “special
education” students. As is repeated in the article linked above, the malady of at
least one of the boys was Attention Deficit Disorder — hopefully, not a reason to
use a lesser standard when assessing the risk to others posed by the boys.
“tinyredcheck” A very good result: “The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
of Israel declared an effective cease-fire here today in the four-year low-intensity war known
as the intifada. Mr. Abbas said the two sides “have agreed to cease all acts of violence against
all Palestinians and Israelis everywhere.” (NYT article, Feb. 8, 2005)
“eschewSN” Eschew Jargon: Monica Bay’s advice for tech vendors dealing with tech journalists is
good for almost every situation where technology is being hawked to lawyers — or to any other members
of the non-techie public:
“Don’t use jargon! If you want to communicate, use plain English. Save the acronyms
for one-upsmanship games with your competitors — journalists don’t want to have to
refer to their vendor-speak translation devices to understand your pitches. You have
a short amount of time to capture journalist’s fancy, don’t squander it. Key words to
avoid: solution, robust, mission-critical, -centric, strategic, deploy, enterprise, initiative,
value-added, form factor.”
See our own war of words against jargon: here, there, everywhere. (find the eschew obfuscation bumper-
sticker here at cafepress.com)
February 8, 2005
not even the sparrow stirs
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