Say What?

So here's an odd little tidbit: Microsoft is apparently pushing a 56meg update to
Vista in order to add five words the the English and German
dictionaries. What I want to know is why it takes 5.6 megs (5.6 for five
words in two dictionaries is 56) to add a word to a digital dictionary
(standard ascii text is measured in BITS per character). What I'd really
like to know is why a patch that adds a handful of words to the dictionary
(used mostly for spell-check) is marked as "Important." But what I'd REALLY
like to know is why in the world updating a dictionary should require
me to restart my computer!?

Girls Can't Play Football; Try Cheerleading Instead.

So I'm no great apologist for gender equality* (quite the opposite in some
cases), but This
story kind of makes me upset. A 10-year old girl in Cleveland wasn't
allowed to join a local football league because she's a girl. (She later
successfully joined another league across town.) But what really gets me is
that, after saying the bylaws from 1971 barred girls from joining, the
president of the league suggested she try out for cheerleading instead.
That's just insulting, if you ask me.

(*Equality here means 'sameness'; the discussion about what equality means
and how equal the genders are or should be is for another time.)

Cat's [NOT] in the Kettle

I find this mildly irritating, too: China is banning the sale
of dogs during the Olympic games. Now, granted, it's banning the sale
of dogs as entrees in restraunts, and the argument is that eating
man's best friend could offend visiting foreigners. But the ban itself
offends me: part of the point of visiting another country (and of the
Olympic games themselves) is to experience and appreciate other cultures,
and that includes their cuisine. If I went to China, I'd want to try
a dish of dog, if for no other reason than the novelty of it. But during
the games this year, "[i]f someone does demand 'fragrant meat', as the
locals call it, restaurant staff should 'patiently suggest another entree',
according to Xiong Yumei, deputy director of the Beijing Tourism Bureau."

Similarly irritating, it seems they're also banning "not smiling cheerfully
at foreigners," which is not surprising but makes me pretty angry.

(no subject)

Keeping with today's trend, I find This to be rather
irritating, but also a little frightening. A woman in Canada had her
children (aged 7 and 2) taken away by Family Services after drawing a
swastika on her daughter's arm (apparently a repeat offense). Now, granted,
given that the home was full of neo-Nazi flags and such, and the woman
acknowledges her political leanings, and given that the whole Nazi thing has
a LOT of bad attached to it, not the least of which is a legacy of hate,
racism, and genocide -- given that, it's hard to have sympathy. But if her
only crime is holding beliefs you don't like, and that's enough to
take her children away, that's really frightening. It wouldn't take
much change for a lot of my personal, political, and religious beliefs to be
held as offensive.