I read this article a little while ago, and a discussion that spawned from it, with arguments about who owes what for whatever was done here in the past by the dread English, Spanish, etc., leading up to weird and unwieldy U.S. statutes all the way through the 1960s.
Taking a look at my eight great-grandparents, one of them is connected to a line wherein someone (like, my great-grandmother's great grandfather or great granduncle) is somewhat likely have been cruel to a Native-American in some form or fashion. Three others were related to people who got here well after most of the damage had been done. Two never entered this country at all, the other two got here only about a hundred years ago, and raised my grandma and her sisters in way-upper Manhattan and Queens.
Two of my kids are biracial, and their paternal grandmother has Native-American blood as well as an obvious connection to both slaves and someone who owned them.
How much do I owe for the possibly alleged deeds of great-great-great grandpappy or granduncle Pike*, and can I just give it to one of my daughters? Am I allowed to subtract something for the Scottish line that was probably oppressed by the English, and the Sicilian line that got swallowed up by the rest of Italy? Do I add some back in because some of my English ancestors might have persecuted some of my Scottish ones? But then there is an unsubstantiated trail of info which indicates some of my English ancestors may have actually come from Wales, putting them on the oppressee side instead of oppressor...
...well, and then the Dutch ones, are they on the plus damages side for possibly being related to merchant explorers who helped develop the slave trade, or on the minus damages side because they may have aided English pilgrims searching for religious freedom? But what if they were related to the Dutch who took Manhattan from the Indians? That ended up being fruitful for my Calabrezi relatives who got here in 1907. A mark in both columns.
*Actually, my great-grandmother's photos might lead one to believe that some Pike or other back in the day of the day might have dipped more than just a toe in Injun waters, and I look just a little like her, so maybe I owe myself instead
At any rate, no one I'm related to has ever owned more than a small family-farm-sized piece of land in the U.S., and none of us owns much of any now, so at least no one is likely to come by to "regain" it for "their" people.
OK after the last post, gotta admit I couldn't sleep with a red perfect pencil in a black cap. Why not just tape the pencil as well coz MT masking tape is so thin the pencil still fits to the cap nicely.
Isn't it wonderful? Everything in black and silver, beneath it wood and metal. Now I can sleep and sketch more prototypes tomorrow.
I kind of love the Faber-Castell Perfect Pencil, a light weighted writing instrument with pencil cap/extender and a built-in sharpener. The only thing I hate about it is the two ugly rubber rings. The more I look at the high-end Graf von Perfect Pencil the more I hate those two rings, and the barrel, and…. well since I can't own a US$250 Graf von Perfect Pencil, I settled to change its look.
It is not a huge hack but taping the metal body black did the job to make those two rubber rings fade into the background, sort of. This is yet another wonder of MT's masking tape, the black tape is especially dark and since it is made from washi paper, it is flexible and handles curved surface well without any wrinkles, and it is removable.
Changing the pencil into a black one actually makes it look a lot smarter. Tie a black ribbon/leather strap around the barrel and onto your neck, it is another conversation starter no doubt about it.
Honestly, I hope 2010 is a better year - though my job was "saved" during the last budget crisis, the local government I work for is still having budget issues.
Another moronic muslim terrorist. Oh, wait! Not supposed to say that, but then again who else has been trying to bomb airplanes the last 8 years?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now we are going to be forced to sit in our seats with NOTHING - Oh, what happy fun!
Happy Boxing Day!
Woman knocks down pope at Mass; Christmas celebrations begin
In my day we just had eggnog and sang carols.
Kids these days....
See you in 2010!
You know for retail in Hong Kong, Xmas is huge and we spent a lot of time and energy planning for its arrival and departure. In the past month, I watched almost daily this Treemap visually identifying category composition, which products move and how they perform. In this particular interpretation which I hided confidential information, you can imagine the grids are product categories, the size of the rectangles are sales, height of them are quantity sold, while colors are margin. Don't you think it is highly effective to spot out anomalies or patterns? The best thing about Treemapping is that I can see individual product performance in relation to the whole picture of the department.
I've been using Treemapping for years and eventually settled on a German made Treemap software by Macrofocus. They have constant updates to enhance features and import excel files almost instantly. It has been a great tool for me for the past few years and I feel thankful for such great software development.
If you don't know what Treemap is, check out my previous post "A Visual Person's Links", Treemapping wikipedia or find out some of the treemap images from Google to get a glimpse or to start with.
