If the politicians (and I use that term to mean someone lower than a dishonest car dealer) that drew the above voting districts represented North Carolinians, would you not vote them out the first chance you got? I was a registered Republican for about 35 years of my life, from 18 years old until about 53. Now during that time, I don’t ever recall voting a “straight party ticket”. I’ve voted for several Democratic US Presidents during that time, but often having voted for either a Republican or Democrat, I wised up during the second election and voted against them. My leanings during those years was more toward Republican values, but I often wanted some Democratic balance.

My State Representatives should be enacting legislation that will give me Insurance alternatives. Apparently, ObamaCare is increasing the cost of insurance. Well, insuring ALL should cost something and passing that cost on to all of us seems reasonable. But, making the Medical Process much more cost effective should also be a goal. I do not expect more than to pay more and get less and still not have everyone covered.

As a tangent, my apartment was broken into in 2008 and several items stolen. When I filed for insurance, I received a check for half the value of the items that were taken. When I called about this, I was told that we (NC) was the only state where this was in effect. Apparently, those that had influenced State rules favored the Insurance Industry rather than the Citizens of North Carolina. You got half the money up front, but to get the rest, you needed to purchase the replacement items and send the insurance company receipts for these purchases. They would then send the rest of the money (if the replacement items actually cost what the insurance was supposed to pay). Needless to say, I didn’t send in any receipts and the insurance company “made out like a bandit”. Let me repeat that, the insurance company “MADE OUT LIKE A BANDIT!”

I was playing with a free online 3D image creation utility called “123D Make” a couple of weeks ago. You took still photos around an object and the application generated a 3D image that could be rotated in various directions.

I just came across this article where (several years ago now) some researchers proved that they could take an image of keys from a relatively long distance (say from one high rise office window across to another high rise office where a set of keys were laying on a desk. They were then able with software they had created to make a working copy of the key they had photographed from say 200 feet away. I am not familiar with the materials that are used in 3D printing, but it would seem conceivable that plastic could be sturdy enough to make at least a temporarily working key copy.

http://vision.ucsd.edu/~blaxton/sneakey.html

http://vision.ucsd.edu/~blaxton/pagePapers/laxton_wang_savage_ccs2008.pdf

http://www.hammacher.com/Product/82332?cm_cat=ProductSEM&cm_pla=AdWordsPLA&source=PRODSEM&gclid=CMe8sYWI_rkCFVFp7AodyhUAsg

This is a test.

Sent from my iPad

Here is another post.

I did not know that you could do this, but for a news or magazine site this is great. A bunch of contributors and a few editors/publishers.

[attach 1]

I was reading a blog posting and a teacher of keyboarding offered an observation that this year’s students were "not getting it" on how to type. She realized that their use of tablets and phone keyboards was changing the way they were able to interact with the full-sized, touch keyboard. Rather hindering their ability to use a full-sized keyboard.

Do you realize what an enormous threat this loss of capability is, both to communication and the educational process? *I think I now am beginning to understand why my suggestion that "posting via email" to a WordPress site, using a full-sized keyboard, could be used for taking class notes has fallen on deaf ears.

If students are neither learning to write cursively, nor type quickly, their communication skills are being reduced.