Urglu

This morning while riding the bus to school, I watched as a woman got on the bus with a scarf wrapped around her face like it was 20-below outside. (It was actually 40, with a stiff wind and some snow.) Apparently, she had a cell phone buried under the scarf and was having a single-word conversation with someone on the other end.

I had to chuckle as I recalled the old “urglu” game. For those of you who never had to do one of those ridiculous getting-to-know-you games, the object is to appear to have a complete conversation using only the word “urglu”. In this case, however, I think the word was a breathy “murfff”.

“Murfff…. murfff… murfff. Murfff-murfff. Murfff? Murfff. Murfff-murfff.”

Freedom of Choice Act

Wow. Seriously? I hope that everyone has a chance to read this bill prior to it being voted on by Congress. It expands Roe v Wade to allow termination of a pregnancy for any reason prior to “fetal viability”. “Viability” is determined subjectively by the physician performing the abortion and is defined by the bill itself as: “The term `viability’ means that stage of pregnancy when, in the best medical judgment of the attending physician based on the particular medical facts of the case before the physician, there is a reasonable likelihood of the sustained survival of the fetus outside of the woman.“

I have serious concerns about the intellectual capability of an individual who aspires to be the President of the USA who does not realize or acknowledge that the ability of a fetus to survive outside of the mother depends very much on the care received. There is absolutely no reason that this definition could not be applied to a full-term, healthy baby since it too has a zero chance of survival outside the womb if it is simply abandoned.

Oh, and the bill would remove the right of the states to make their own abortion laws.

So really, which of the candidates has the most “extreme” position on abortion?

to Yahoo…

1) Move Jerry Yang from CEO to CTO.
2) Cut 50% of non-US staff and facilities. Retreat back to your core, original, loyal base.
3) Sell Search. Yes, I realize this was your first service and that all of Yahoo was built from it, but it’s a dog. And you won’t catch Google.
4) Buy Skype from eBay and then wait for eBay to totally tank. Resurrect Yahoo Auctions and link it to Shopping.
5) Forget developing your own peer-networking stuff. It’s been done to death, just use someone else’s API.
6) Flickr is great. Answers is pretty cool. Finance is nice. You have stuff to build on.
7) You are a portal. Make it the best, easiest, nicest place to go for news, stocks, video, etc. iGoogle is nowhere close and MSN may already have you beat. But it’s the only thing that really defines Yahoo as a single entity anymore.