toll

[Middle English 'tollen', to ring an alarm, perhaps from 'tollen', to entice, pull, variant of 'tillen', from Old English '-tyllan']

v. tr.
1. To sound (a large bell) slowly at regular intervals.
2. To announce or summon by tolling.

v. intr.
To sound in slowly repeated single tones.

n.
1. The act of tolling.
2. The sound of a bell being struck.

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[Middle English, from Old English, variant of 'toln', from Medieval Latin 'tolonium', from Latin 'teloneum', tollbooth, from Greek 'teloneion', from 'telones', tax collector, from 'telos', tax]

n.
1. A fixed charge or tax for a privilege, especially for passage across a bridge or along a road.
2. A charge for a service, such as a long-distance telephone call.
3. An amount or extent of loss or destruction, as of life, health, or property.

tr. v.
1. To exact as a toll.
2. To charge a fee for using (a structure, such as a bridge).

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[Anglo-French 'tollir', to take away, make null, bar, ultimately from Latin 'tollere', to lift up, take away]

tr. v.
1. To take away (as a right).
2. To suspend or remove the effect of.

Kansas

While doing some fact checking¹ over at the Wikipedia, I discovered that Tom Tomorrow² and Bill James were both born in Kansas. James, it says there, was the last man in Kansas to be drafted for Vietnam (though he actually served in Korea).

Most surprisingly, I discovered that Jason Sudeikis, a Shawnee Mission West High School alum just like me, is now on the cast of Saturday Night Live. Wow!

I'm pretty sure that I never met the guy, but I did know his mother -- she and my father worked for the same company while I was in high school. I recall having lunch on no less than two occassions. Wow!

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1 Was Earl Woods the first non-white athlete to play for K-State? Yes, as a baseball player in 1951.

2 Incedentally, I seem to recall from his blog that Tom Tomorrow claims Iowa rather than Kansas as his home state.

When did this happen?

I seem to remember C-Span's Washington Journal having three call-in lines, one for Democrats, another for Republicans, and a third for independents. This morning, though, there are three available lines labelled, 'Liberal', 'Conservative', and 'Moderate'.

Not a perfect way to carve up the ideological field, but better.

This morning's guest, by the way, is David Keating from the Club for Growth. Which organization deserves to win some kind of prize for branding. Smart of them not to go with the more literal He-Man Profit Makers Club moniker.

Addendum: Whoa! As soon as Club for Growth guy finished talking, the phone labels switched back to 'Republicans', 'Democrats' and 'Independents'. I think there's a branding story to tell there too.

About par

The move, an initiative of the Bush administration, represents the first step in a broader plan to outsource the collection of smaller tax debts to private companies over time. Although I.R.S. officials acknowledge that this will be much more expensive than doing it internally, they say that Congress has forced their hand by refusing to let them hire more revenue officers, who could pull in a lot of easy-to-collect money. |NY Times|

emphasis mine

Friday meme, not a regular feature

Idea shamelessly stolen from here.

List your last five purchases. Mine:

1. Coffee. Medium americano from Ambrosia. $3, including tip. Thursday, 2:15pm.
   
2. Lunch. Falafel and hummus plate from Jerusalem Garden. $7, inclusive. Thursday, 1:00pm.
   
3. Coffee. Medium americano from Ambrosia. $3, including tip. Thursday, 10am.
   
4. Groceries from Kroger. Raisins, buns, hamburger, orange juice, lunchmeat. $16. Wednesday, 7pm.
   
5. CDs from Amazon. The Dresden Dolls, "The Dresden Dolls"; The Dresden Dolls, "Yes, Virginia..."; and, DJ Shadow, "Funky Skunk". $40. Wednesday, 4:00pm.

For the record, on Wednesday morning I bought a pound of coffee beans at Kroger. No patterns that I can see.

The main point of this post is comment whoring, but just for fun I'll tag Dru, since we haven't corresponded in awhile.

That was then, this is now

My laptop experienced something approaching a total existence failure at about 11:15 pm. It's taken me until now to work through enough of the shock to get my old iMac moved out of the spare room and running. I may not have my data, and I may not be mobile, but at least I have internet. |link|

I wrote that on September 15, 2005. Today, a mere 11 months later, I've got my laptop working. Huzzah!

In other news, nobody ever invites me to play in their fantasy football league so I started one of my own. Email me or comment if you want an invite.

One question

Thanks to the New York Times, here's what I know about the new definition of 'planet' proposed by the International Astronomical Union's Planet Definition Committee:

• The definition will, "expand at a stroke the family of planets from 9 to 12 and leave textbooks and charts in thousands of classrooms out of date."
  
• Michael E. Brown thinks that the definition is "...a mess."
  
• The definition, "would apply both inside and outside the solar system."
  
• The definition will be formally anounced today, was written by the Planet Definition Committee, and will be voted on this August 25.
  
• The definition comprises "four paragraphs and four footnotes" and has been said to "read as if it had been written by lawyers, not scientists."
  
• Some critics have suggested that 'roundness...is not a very interesting attribute to use in classifying astronomical bodies.'
  
• Supporters of the definition say that it is, "a nice solution that works both inside and outside the solar system."
  
• "The proposed definition would come as a relief to schoolchildren and others who have rallied to the cause of Pluto."
  
• There is, "a feature of the new definition that would bestow planetary status on Charon, a moon of Pluto." This is, somehow, related to the facts that "Charon is big enough for gravity to crush all other forces and make it round" and that "the center of gravity for Pluto and Charon is between them, not inside either one."
  
• Defenders of the proposed definition say that it is, "logical and not arbitrary."

So here's my question. What's the definition?

Her friends called her 'slim'

Sudden access to cable TV has rekindled my childhood crush on Miss Jane Hathaway. In addition to modifying my dress to include a plaid shirt and a rope belt, I navigated over to imdb to check out Nancy Kulp's bio this morning. Here's something neat:

In 1984, she ran as a Democrat for Pennsylvania's Ninth Congressional District, but lost to Republican incumbent Bud Shuster. She blamed "Beverly Hillbillies" co-star Buddy Ebsen for her defeat, because Ebsen taped a radio ad in support of Shuster, and deemed her "too liberal." She did not speak to Ebsen for several years afterwards, but eventually made peace with him. |source|

I'm wondering if there is a Jane Hathaway/Ellie Mae divide among fans of the show, and whether it tracks the well documented Ginger/Mary Ann division. I'd also like to know Nancy Kulp's campaign platform.

like the do-dah man

According to Bradsher, internal industry market research concluded that S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills.
|Source: Big and Bad -- Malcolm Gladwell|

Flying

Let me tell you, it was a pleasure to fly last Thursday. As a conscientious traveller well aware of the day's news, I arrived at the airport nearly two hours early for my 8:25 flight. My toothpaste, I hasten to mention, was left prudently at home.

The picture is of the airport bar at 9:04pm. My flight finally left a little bit after 11pm. Luckily, I was completely sober.

Addendum: I would have posted this on Thursday night if Concourse Communications provided wireless service that actually worked.

Added Addendum: Maybe later I'll post a picture of Ben Franklin in a toga.

My new book

Wha wha whaaaaat?

Donald Rumsfeld did not know that Paul Bremer reported directly to Donald Rumsfeld?!?

Philosophizing, Hyping, Prevaricating about and Defending the (supposedly) Inevitable War

Safety Neal's review of Fog of War^[1] reminds me that there's a need to talk some serious shit about Bernard-Henry Levi's thoroughly dishonest essay in last weekend's New York Times Magazine. But I'm really busy, so here's the nut:

The problem, she explains, is not just the people killed: Israel is used to that. It’s not even the fact that here the enemy is aiming not at military objectives but deliberately at civilian targets — that, too, is no surprise. No, the problem, the real one, is that these incoming rockets make us see what will happen on the day — not necessarily far off — when the rockets are ones with new capabilities: first, they will become more accurate and be able to threaten, for example, the petrochemical facilities you see there, on the harbor, down below; second, they may come equipped with chemical weapons that can create a desolation compared with which Chernobyl and Sept. 11 together will seem like a mild prelude. For that, in fact, is the situation. As seen from Haifa, this is what is at stake in the operation in southern Lebanon. Israel did not go to war because its borders had been violated. It did not send its planes over southern Lebanon for the pleasure of punishing a country that permitted Hezbollah to construct its state-within-a-state. It reacted with such vigor because the Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel to be wiped off the map and his drive for a nuclear weapon came simultaneously with the provocations of Hamas and Hezbollah. The conjunction, for the first time, of a clearly annihilating will with the weapons to go with it created a new situation. We should listen to the Israelis when they tell us they had no other choice anymore. |Levi|

For those of you keeping track at home, Levi's rationale rests on exactly the same principle that was used to justify America's misadventure in Iraq. Israel will discover, as the United States is beginning to, that the fundamental problem with the so-called Doctrine of Prevention, is that rushing headlong into war is an astoundingly bad strategy when your goal is to avoid the horrors of war.

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1 Don't skip the DVD only features. The additional footage is like a whole new movie of interviews.

This is your mouse's brain on drugs

Seriously, this is educational and totally rad:

Mouse Party!

Fighting the good fight, and occasionally winning!

Thoughts from Kansas:

First, a big shout out to John Scopes the day before his birthday. I'm told that scientists have detected a drop in seismic activity near his grave now that he's stopped spinning.

and

The Board can focus on bigger issues. They can dig into ways to address the special challenges of rural districts, and to find solutions to the problems faced by the students in poorer urban districts. Real challenges, not fake controversy. Helping kids, not fighting culture wars.

That's what tonight was about, and the kids won. This wasn't Dover rejecting a few municipal officials. It's a whole state turning against the divisiveness of the IDolators. Congratulations, Kansas!

This isn't over, but let's just bask in this for a day or two.

"No Amnety"

Heh. That's from Pam at Pandagon. There's another good one over there, too.

I HATE WINDOWS

Non-blogging is temporarily interrupted to bring you these instructions. They explain how to turn off Notification Balloons in Windows XP. Notification Balloons, for those of you who are blissfully unaware, are popups that Windows produces in the bottom right hand corner of the screen telling you things like "Battery Low" or "Updates are Available for this Computer" or, my favorite, "Wireless Network Connected" which reliably pops up every 20 minutes or so.

Here's how to turn them off in five simple steps:

To Disable The Notification Area Balloon Tips

Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
2. Navigate to the following subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
3. Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.
4. Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0.
5. Quit Registry Editor. Log off Windows, and then log back on.
|source|