The NY Times and a lot of blogs are reporting on an obvious miscarriage of justice that is now occuring in Georgia. From the NY Times article: The 20-year-old former high school football player and honor student works in a library, the perfect job for a young bookworm. Unfortunately, the library is in a prison because Genarlow was convicted of having consensual oral sex with a minor (he was 17, she was 15). He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life - for doing something any teenager I’ve ever known would have done. Please sign the petition to correct this situation and donate to help prevent this young man’s life from being ruined.

I discovered this issue on Mark Cuban’s blog (the owner of the Dallas Maverick’s basketball team). Mark has stated that he won’t be doing business in Georgia until this issue is resolved. I’d be doing the same if I had any business to do there.

Just saw an article at the Get Rich Slowly blog that talks about how to stay warm in a drafty old house. Moving to Scotland has been a learning experience in this area - our flat was built in 1824 and still has the original windows and drafty floorboards. The nice thing about city living is that our downstairs neighbor does a nice job of sending most of their heat up through our floor. The downside is that most of our heat goes right up to the person above us. The people at the top floor probably don’t even have to turn on their heat, but that’s their reward for having to walk up so many stairs every day.

The solution to energy conservation that most Edinburghers seem to use is to turn their heat off completely at night and put a hot water bottle in their bed. When we first heard about this it sounded old fashioned and inconvenient but we thought we’d give it a shot. For a couple of months now (in the coldest part of winter) we’ve been turning our heat completely off at night, with the exception of India’s room where we keep her radiator on since she’s too young for a bottle (or even blankets). Rather than being inconvenient it has been a real treat to jump into bed with a piping hot water bottle that actually stays hot and warms the entire bed all the way until morning. It is certainly warmer than if we had kept the heat in the whole house blasting all night. The result is that the radiators in the bedroom and the rooms that we don’t usually use (guest room, second bathroom) are never turned on, and the drawing room, kitchen and bathroom are only heated during the day and we’re still completely confortable. What a great way to save energy but still stay toasty warm!