What's Capitalism ever done for us?

REG:
Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what has Capitalism ever given us in return?!
XERXES:
Lasik?
REG:
What?
XERXES:
Cheap and effective laser eye surgery!
REG:
Oh. Yeah, yeah. It did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.
COMMANDO #3:
And the IPod.
LORETTA:
Oh, yeah, the Ipod, Reg. Remember what the recording industry used to be like?
REG:
Yeah. All right. I'll grant you that Lasik and the Ipod are two things that Capitalism has done.
MATTHIAS:
And Microsoft Windows.
REG:
Well, yeah. Obviously Microsoft Windows. I mean, the OS goes without saying, doesn't it? But apart from the Lasik, the Ipod, and the Windows--
COMMANDO:
Target.
XERXES:
Amazon.com.
COMMANDOS:
Huh? Heh? Huh...
COMMANDO #2:
Airbags.
COMMANDOS:
Ohh...
REG:
Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
COMMANDO #1:
And Starbucks.
COMMANDOS:
Oh, yes. Yeah...
FRANCIS:
Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Communists took over. Huh.
COMMANDO:
OS X.
REG:
All right, but apart from the OS X, Starbucks, Amazon.com, airbags, Lasik, The Ipod, Windows, what has Capitalism ever done for us?
XERXES:
Brought freedom.
REG:
Oh. Freedom? Shut up!

Inspired by TJIC and the Pythons.

Sticks and stones . . .

Michael Gableman is running for State Supreme Court. One Wisconsin Now notes that he's taking the race to the gutter by calling his opponent names. The pejorative?

In an email Monday, Gableman starts referring to the incumbent as "interim Justice"

Wisconsin politics are clearly an arena for gentlefolk.

Solaris 8 to the 21st Century - it just might be that easy

Referring to Solaris 8 Migration Assistant I wrote

Is it actually easy to implement? Mebbe - the docs claim you install Solaris 10 8/7, install a patch and two packages and you're ready to rock and or roll.

So far it has been that easy to implement.

Upgraded the host yesterday, fully patched, added the two packages, flash archived the Solaris 8 host, installed the flash into the zone and ..

# zoneadm list -cv
ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP
0 global running / native shared
1 solaris10_server running /opt/zones/co-web-005_noc native shared
- solaris8_server installed /opt/zones/co-ap-015_leg solaris8 shared


Presto!

Granted, I can't turn it on because the old legacy hardware is still being used and my cut-over window isn't until tomorrow but .. I'm a happy camper.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Hey, Lege, are you listening? Governor Doyle, pay attention ..





You know the people y'all represent? They're paying attention.

When I met John Scalvi

I met John Scalvi. Quite the rogue he was. Supposed to have been a helluva Marine, but you'd never know it to look at him.

I was standing Duty NCO for II MEF in 1992 on a Saturday night in 1992 or '93. The Duty Officer was drowsing in front of the TV.

The front gate called and startled the heck out of me.

You should know this about the job of Duty NCO - each unit larger than a company has one these - plus an officer of the day. Their job is to sit around and answer the phone after hours and take care of 'stuff'. A unit has a drunk driver, or a guy in jail, they get the call. PMO has a wayward lamb in custody for breaking up a bar, they get the call. A problem in barracks, broken plumbing, drunk Marine .. they get the call. They tour the area to make sure there are no riots, visit the chow hall to make sure the food is tasty and fit for human consumption. It can be exciting if by exciting you mean busy.

II MEF owned nothing that wasn't right around the headquarters building; not a chow hall or an armory or a motor pool; those all belonged to subordinate units. The Duty could look out the window and see pretty much everything. The area was remote from everything else aboard Camp Lejeune, adjacent to general officer housing. It was on the way to nothing and nobody was going to come around and mess with anything. After hours the entire area felt like downtown Tulsa in the 70s, but quieter and with less crime.

The only real purpose for the Duty NCO at II MEF was to answer the phone. The only time the phone rang was when a subordinate unit could not handle something or the Pentagon called to tell us to march to war.

The front gate called and startled the heck out of me.

"Hi, this is Gunnery Sergeant X. I'm a chaser, we've got a deserter. We need to drop him off. Put your duty officer on, please."

I did so. Why were they calling us and not the brig? The brig didn't want him - the wayward lamb actually belonged to I MEF way out in California. The chaser needed to park him someplace while he ate chow and talked to the PMO and figured out where to put him while they ran his raggedy ass through the process so the government could officially quit 'im.

'Him' turned out to be John Scalvi; Mr. Legend himself.

They brought him over. My job was to keep an eye on him and not let him escape. This wasn't so hard - he was not inclined to go anywhere.

John Scalvi presented an interesting appearance; sequined halter, pink shiny pumps, hip huggers, light make up. The cops had busted him in Wilmington for a variety of offenses to good order during a morals sweep of The Gut.

He was - I have to say - a most interesting deserter. He mustered out of the service months before Saddam decided Kuwait would be happier as part of Iraq. Missed the call-back of I.R.R. Maines and was sort of laying low in the seedier parts of the world two years later.

How you miss a call-back - what with it being on the news and letters being sent to your home of record and so forth - is hard to imagine. But that was his story and he stuck to it. He wanted to tell me his story so we shot the shit for the two hours it took the chaser team to get back.

Presently the chasers came back and hauled him off to the brig. I imagine he spent a few weeks in custody and was let go. Possibly they reinstated him just so they could give him a summary court and a BCD.

I later heard that John became some sort of SciFi writer, got famous with a book about old crabby senior citizens going to war or some weird crap like that ... but I don't read genre trash so who knows.

Virtual School really is school

From the AP wire: Court Ruling Threatens Virtual Schools

Barbara Stein of the National Education Association, the teachers' union, objected to the use of tax dollars to support what she called a new form of home schooling.

"The issue is whether a program where you don't have licensed educators and where you don't have students working directly with other students should be getting fully funded as though it were a quality educational experience," she said.

I have the kind of job that would allow me to work from home. Yet if I do, no one is going to accuse me of taking funds from my employer and trying to support a new form of self-employment. I'm still working for a company, I have tasks to complete, a team to work with, goals to accomplish related to making a profit for The Man.

Kids in virtual schools - in my experience - work under the direction of licensed educators. They don't, it is true, have a great deal of face-to-face interaction with their peers, but this is the nature of being in a dispersed classroom. As for the quality educational experience .... well I'm not going there.

We're going to Apple Con!

The hotel room is booked - The Friend and her two daughters are on board with it - the con tickets we'll buy next payday.

We're going to Apple Con!

Apple Con is a convention that brings together the best parts of Minneapolis music, science fiction fandom, Wizard (a game of trump), and pie! April 11th, 12th & 13th 2008.

We're bringing good cheer, pie, Chrononauts and Munchkin. See you there!

School Friendly Legislation - why are Progessives opposed?

Representative Bill Kramer has a good summary of the virtual school mess; how we got here, what are the issues and where we might go.

Over here we have a group called 'One Wisconsin Now' - a progressive, non-partisan (hah) advocacy organization getting all partisan and worked up against AB 697, but in favor of SB 396.

Representatives of virtual schools and the supporting industry behind them have been bucking the Lehman proposal

That supporting industry includes, yes, representatives of K-12 - it's not illegal for private interests to lobby the government. It also includes 3,000 familes directly affected by the legislation, the 1100 people who rallied at their state capital in support of their schools, and their friends and relations.

You know - the people that One Wisconsin Now is representing.

At any rate the piece is not worth more quoting - go read it if you want to see a raft of half-lies and smear. Virtual schools - in my experience - have just as much accountability as a bricks and mortar school - hell, they're being run by the same district. The legislation does not fork over money - or at least not any more than is being forked over now.

We may not always like taxes but they're going to be collected and disbursed so we might as well have an efficient school system over one that is not-so-efficient.

I'm honestly puzzled - why is an organization devoted to the common good opposed to this? Their arguments don't make sense in terms of 'what is best'.


Hint: AB 697 is the one that corrects existing state law, correcting the problems that caused the court to rule in favor of the schools and for the teacher's union. We here at Space For Commerce* refer to this as the Good Bill.

SB 396 would cut school funding in half, empower the crats at DPI to offer online courses and generally give the state more power. We refer to this as the Evil Bill.

**We're partisan and biased, but we're nice about it.

What color is the ribbon?

From the Media Violence Project ..

I have to say I was heartened by the response to my investigative piece on the national crisis in journalist violence. As you know, whenever a public crisis is identified, the first steps in a solution are (a) a non-profit foundation, and (b) posters!

And a ribbon - we need a ribbon so people can demonstrate How Much They Care without any of that actual Commitment of Time and Money.  Is there a color that isn't taken?

Near miss - dang it

It's like having the Fourth of July fireworks show canceled.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology said tracking measurements of asteroid 2007 WD5 from four different observatories indicate a significantly reduced probability -- to .01 percent -- that it will make impact with Mars, effectively ruling out a possible collision with the planet.

You don't have to be crazy to be a Marine but ..

After watching this video of a Marine manning a checkpoint in Iraq telling a taxi driver to find some guys to fight 'cause they're bored ...

" .... Wear your seatbelt, drink milk, don't run with scissors. Have a nice day."

My son looked at me and said he knew why I wasn't still in the Marines. Because I'm not insane.

Ya, maybe.

Jay Grodner - future ex-pat

Hey buddy ..

Grodner told me he'd describe himself as a "radical liberal" who's ready to leave Chicago now with all this negative publicity and move to the south of France and do some traveling.

Au revoir! Ne laissez pas la porte vous frapper dans l'âne sur la sortie!

Solaris 8 to the 21st Century

Dude* .. you have no idea how cool this is.

In a nutshell, we've built a Solaris Container (or Zone) which is capable of running the Solaris 8 user environment. We have also created a capability to perform P2V (or Physical-to-Virtual) transformation of existing Solaris 8 systems into containers running on a Solaris 10 host. This is an enabler for rapid migration of legacy Solaris 8 environments onto modern, environmentally friendly, cost effective hardware. And onto Solaris 10. The idea is to break up the upgrade tasks into chunks, allowing the hardware and OS to be upgraded, while continuing to run legacy environments. Next, the legacy environments can be used until they are retired, or redeployed into Solaris 10 containers, or into logical domains.

Is it actually easy to implement? Mebbe - the docs claim you install Solaris 10 8/7, install a patch and two packages and you're ready to rock and or roll**.

Then we can take those applications we have running around still sitting on legacy hardware and shove them into the modern era and call it a day.

Not that we'll ever get around to retiring or redeploying them into a modern OS but it's nice to pretend.


*No connection, I just wanted to use the word 'dude'.
** Reference.

Applecon

The blurb at con_central said

AppleCon is a Minneapolis Music and Pie Convention

They seem to be serious about the last; programming is broken down into three categories: Music, Science Fiction & Fantasy Programming and Pie.

Pie will be served and eaten. Pie participation while not mandatory is strongly encouraged and is seen as important to the social development of all fans.

Provided enough members will donate various pies we will hold a pie walk at sundown.

Pie must be sacrificed.

Mmmm, pie.

Letter from the William Harbron, Superintendent of Northern Ozaukee School District

Letter from the William Harbron, Superintendent of Northern Ozaukee School District

Dear WIVA & H2O Students and Parents:

I have just returned from two days in Madison with a great sense of optimism about the future of virtual schools. You are to be commended for being present and having your voice heard by our state senators and representatives. Your voice was heard and made a vital difference in the fate of bills AB 692 and SB 396.

I also take a great deal of pride in being associated with parents who are fully committed to providing quality education for their children, as well as being fully involved in the educational process with their children. In addition, I am extremely proud of the teachers who are collaborating with you. The voices of Kathy Hennings, Jennifer Trattner, and Kaye Martin were heard and spoke sincerely of the relationship and partnership between the home and the school. These three teachers represent the quality and commitment of teachers serving WIVA and H2O.

I express my appreciation to the parents from WIVA and other virtual schools who came forward to testify. Your voice helped the legislators to more fully comprehend how virtual education for K-8 is effectively collaborated between the teacher and the parent.

The most important voice heard was that of the children. Aidan Gordon-Dunbar's presentation to the Assembly Education Committee was a powerful, sincere, and meaningful message. I know that I was deeply touched by Aidan's thoughtful words. I feel Aidan captured the essence of why virtual education needs to be a vital option for students and their families in the future. In addition, WIVA and H2O students made a powerful impression on the senators and represen­tatives they visited.

I also say thank you to many of you who have written letters, e-mails, and articles. Your writing is also having a strong impact.

Following the hearing of SB 392 sponsored by Senator Lehman, we all left with a new sense of optimism. Senator Luther Olsen needs to hear our appreciation for his support, as well as Repre­sentatives Brett Davis and Dan LeMahieu for their writing of AB 692.

I would also like to take this opportunity to recognize and thank Rose Fernandez for all of her efforts in organizing the rally and parent voice, and her personal testimony for AB 692 and against SB 396. Rose, along with each of you, is a champion for virtual education.

There is still much work to be accomplished over the next several weeks. I encourage you to stay in contact with the family coalition for future developments over the next several weeks. Northern Ozaukee School District remains committed to keeping you informed.

Again, I thank you for making a difference with your presence and voice. You can be very proud of your school. Northern Ozaukee School District is committed to virtual education and making a meaningful difference in the education of our students.

Sincerely

William R. Harbron, Ed.D.

Superintendent

This is a government by the people and for the people - but it doesn't just happen you have to work at it.

He speaks!

My god, Teller, the small, quiet half of Penn and Teller, can talk!?

It's Friday and it's sunny and warm here in southern California, so enough market chatter already. Here is a fascinating video of Teller (of Penn & Teller fame) talking at a neuroscience conference last summer about implied causality and the art of misdirection. Thought-provoking stuff.

Click To Play

Who woulda thunk?

WPA

He said it ..

I am Larry Kaseman, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Parents Association, a state-wide organization of over 1,400 member families founded in 1984, that works to protect the rights of parents and families in education, primarily homeschooling. However, I do not purport to speak for all WPA members and certainly not for all home schoolers in Wisconsin

That was Mr. Kaseman's testimony from 2002. He said substantially the same thing on 1/16/08, and upon being questioned said there was no poll of the WPA membership approving that organization's resistance to AD 697, just a general sense of 'well we've always been a PITA about this stuff so it's our default position'.

Kaseman appears to represent a trend that irked the beejezus out of me when we home schooled Older Monkey; there are any number of gadflys, goofballs, good guys and gonzos running around acting and sounding as if they're in charge of and responsible for huge movements. Some of them are, and WPA may well be. But this guy comes across as a fellow in loose charge of a website and a few dozen fellow travelers and that's about all.

This is reason 9348484 why I can't be a politician in a representative democracy; even yammerheads get their say.

Me, I'd roll my eyes, mutter something about 'this guy again' and have some big beefy troopers from the Household Gaurd toss him out the door. Sure that approach breeds discontent but it sure makes things happen.

The Hispanic Man's Burden

Stereotype much, Bruce?

The lead story on the Pentagon's new AFRICOM web site is entitled "U.S. Sailor Helps Save Drowning Woman in Gabon."

Here come the good white guys to the rescue.

While I don't actually know, the sailor in question - PO Petty Officer 2nd Class Ronald Saucedo - has a Hispanic surname.

Another good tidbit from the article ..

On January 14, Saucedo was on liberty at Sogara Beach with three other APS Sailors when they witnessed four men carrying a body from the water.

"As we walked up to the crowd of people on the beach, they saw my dog tags and said, 'U.S. Marines, U.S. Marines,'" Saucedo said.

It is freaking awesome to have been associated with a group that has such an incredible reputation; go anywhere in the world and people will know about Texas and the U.S. Marines.

Hearing on AB 697 video

The Assembly Committee on Education hearing for Assembly Bill 697 video is archived on the Wisconsin Eye site here, look for the title '01.16.08 | Assembly Committee on Education 1/16' - new entries appear at the top.

Watch or Listen.

The entire 7 plus hours is interesting - but Pasty and Aidan's testimony is at 6:38, which (I'm biased) I find especially interesting. Why does Pasty sound so hoarse? She's exhausted and just getting over a nasty cold.

To the guy at the computer store in Madison

I am sorry as hell that when I called directory assistance and asked for 'The Apple Store at West Town Mall' they connected me to your establishment; dealing with the public must really suck.

And yes, I am aware (as you said) that they are your competition and when I asked you if you had their number you were fully justified in saying 'no I will not because they are the competition'.

So. Sorry to have bothered you - I never have, nor will I ever darken your door.

FoxPolitics.net - Overwhelming demonstration of support for Virtual Schools

Jo Egelhoff was kind enough to post my wife's report on the rally in Madison at FoxPolitics.net. Thanks, Jo!

Guest Blog: Overwhelming demonstration of support for Virtual Schools

My family, along with approximately 1100 others, spent many hours today [January 16] in Madison to show our support for Virtual Schools. WEAC sent one representative, their lawyer, to represent their case against AB 697 which went before the Assembly Education Committee today.

The representative was neither informative nor did she have any true arguments ....

More at the link.

March on Madison - It's Late and I'm Tired Edition

Impressions from today's rally in support of AB697.

The coalition estimated - last week - they'd get 400 people there. 1100 people showed up. For a rally that was less than six days from 'plan to start'.

The fellow organizing events at the hotel said he spent twelve years working in the capital as a legislative assistant and he'd never seen anything like this turnout.

A middle-aged mom on the steps muttered that she'd gone to school in Madison and she'd never seen a crowd that large on the steps of the capital.

T-shirts - no rally or protest is complete without t-shirts. The ones whipped up for the occasion featured a clip-art desktop PC with two floppy disk drives, one of which was a 5 1/4 drive. That's seriously old school.

The committee chair noted that there were over 600 people registering approval for AB697, 7 registering disapproval. '7' would be about the number of speakers who spoke out against at the hearing.

The people speaking against were a variety of sorts but if you had to characterize them with a phrase it would be 'hired goons'; including legislative liaison from DPI and a WEAC lawyer. The exception would be the fellow from WPA: he was no hired goon but manage to sound like a reformed Bircher. And he got a lecture from a committee member for being snotty about what 'conservative' means.

People speaking for were (obviously) just as biased and included parents, students and staff from the affected virtual schools.

The hearing ran for at least eight hours - they were going at it when we had to leave.

At hour 7 the committee chair noted - and members agreed - that it might be the virtual schooling or the parents or the good nature of the kids but they'd been extraordinarily well-behaved. And since there were easily two - three kids for every parent, running all over the capital building, and in and out of the hearing rooms and offices they had ample opportunity to see the kids doing what they do.

Wisconsin Assembly Bill 697

This is the bill that nearly 800 people*will be supporting tomorrow in Madison. Some said that when the court found against WIVA in December - and ruled that all of the virtual schools in Wisconsin were illegal - that the thing to do was not to piss and moan but to work with the lege and change the law.

Presto!

I can't claim any credit; all my wife and I have done is call our reps and .. well ... piss and moan to them. I certainly didn't expect anything to happen so quickly but here it is.

Analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau

Under current law, any person who teaches in a public school, including a
charter school, must hold a teaching license or permit issued by the
Department of Public Instruction (DPI). This bill specifies that if a
pupil attends a virtual charter school, a person who provides educational
services to the pupil in the pupil's home, other than staff of the virtual
charter school, is not required to hold a teaching license or permit. The
bill defines a virtual charter school as a charter school in which
instruction is provided primarily through means of the Internet and the
pupils and teachers are geographically remote.

Current law provides that a charter school established by a school board
must be located in the school district; an independent charter school
established by the city of Milwaukee, the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, or the Milwaukee Area Technical College must be
located in the city of Milwaukee; and an independent charter school
established by the University of Wisconsin-Parkside must be located in a
unified school district that is located in the county in which the
University of Wisconsin-Parkside is situated or in an adjacent county.
This bill provides that these restrictions do not apply to virtual charter
schools.

In general, current law provides that only pupils who reside in the school
district in which an independent charter school is located may attend the
charter school. This bill exempts virtual charter schools from this
restriction.

Current law provides that if the University of Wisconsin-Parkside
establishes a charter school, the state must pay a sum to the unified
school district in which it is located to reimburse the school district
for the reduction in state aid resulting from the loss of pupils to the
charter school. This bill provides that this payment does not apply if the
charter school established is a virtual charter school. The bill provides
that if a pupil who is not a resident of this state attends a virtual
charter school established by or under contract with a school board in
this state, the school board must charge the pupil tuition in an amount
equal to at least the amount used for the per pupil state aid adjustment
under the Open Enrollment Program.

Finally, the bill clarifies that a pupil may attend a charter school in a
nonresident school district through the Open Enrollment Program. For
further information see the state and local fiscal estimate, which will be
printed as an appendix to this bill.

Please call or write your representative and let them know what you think about AB697. If you don't live in Wisconsin, send your good wishes our way, if you are so inclined.



* 971 people that have responded 'yes' to the evite invitation as of 8/15/08 at 13:30.

March on Madison

He wrote it, she recorded it, he put it on YouTube with our blessing. He means what he says.



I did - do - have huge misgivings about putting his mug on the internet. Why? Well if I knew why I'd do something about it; call it free floating anxiety.


Garfield - when it was funny

But there it is; he's out to make a difference and do his part to making the world a better place.

Ouch

I'd say 'zing' but it hurts 'cause it's true. Edward Wright, From comments
on Sam Dinkins' post on Transterrestrial Musings

Four astronauts is not a space program, it's a rounding error.

Ouch.

Stardust and a Man's Duty

Saw Stardust today. You know what lesson can be drawn from that movie?

No, not about true love. No, not the bit about how a star can only shine when it's heart is unbroken.

The Lesson to draw from Stardust is when you have your enemy in front of you at your mercy, and the enemy gets all sad and weepy and begs for mercy or seems to atone do not take her words at face value. Deliver the stroke, stake her heart, chop her head off, dash cold water on her, do what it takes for god's sake Tristan finish her off now and live happily ever after already.

Geez Louise.

An insane, But Lame, Pun

Jon Goff writes about a very 'interesting' idea for space launch.

The idea is what Allen called Fleet Launched Orbital Craft, or which another author calls "Separated Ascent Stage Launch Vehicles" (I'll call it by Allen's term "FLOC" from here on out).

If the individual craft were named after a common seabird then you'd have ..

.. wait for it ..

A FLOC of Seagulls.

Pregnant Marine Is Found Dead

What a world. Our condolences to the family of Maria Lauterbach; Rest In Peace.

Updated, Friday, 12:25 p.m. Eastern Sheriff Ed Brown of Onslow County, North Carolina, announced at a news conference just now that Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach was dead, with her body found buried.

We also have people who can't resist displaying their ignorance in the comments

As for this young woman, I think it adds to the Abu Ghraib-sized mound of evidence that our military and the military-worshiping crowd in this country is plagued by psychosexual problems, which is only natural in an arrogant institution that revolves around violence

if her stepmother would of cared more while she was growing up things may have been different.

People in the military are taught how to kill other people in boot camp, it’s the first thing they learn, the second thing they learn is how to cover up a crime like this.

Ultimately GWBU$H is responsible for the climate of criminality that has led to her likely “snuffing” to repress her testimony. The military is above the law in the eyes of the White House.

Via Frau Budgie.

Virtual Schools - Wisconsin - March on Madison

Interesting news on the home school / virtual school front ...

Rep. Brett Davis, R-Oregon, chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, proposed that online schools, also known as virtual schools, be allowed to continue operating with few restrictions. About 3,000 Wisconsin students attend online schools.

When WEAC* put the smackdown on students** in December some people pointed out that WIVA was illegal. If we wanted virtual schools - went the refrain - then we needed to enact laws to make them legal. What are you a bunch of knuckle dragging Republithugs who want judicial activism only when it suits you?

I have no problem with WIVA, except for the fact that such an educational venture in Wisconsin is against the law.

Be careful what you ask for. Next week the forces of justice and decency will descend on the state capital in support of Representative Davis' bill.

Without legislative action this year, it is a strong possibility that your public school will close, perhaps as early as the next school year. While the State Supreme Court may take up an appeal of our recent court loss, the current limbo schools find themselves in cannot continue.

Those of us who make the trek to Madison will sacrifice vacation time, put off ongoing projects and rearrange the school week. But we do so knowing that to stay home would jeopardize the very existence of the particular school we and our children love so much. Parents, teachers, students, grandparents, all supporters are welcome!

A reminder that this government is by God for the People and of the People and that once in a great while legislation will be passed not because it's been bought but because it's the right thing to do.


Virtual schools are cost effective and they do what schools are supposed to do - teach children.

At the end of the day it's not about ideology or money or who controls the schools - it's about the kids.

*Official song: Look for ... the union label ... when you are divining ... our motives!

**No, this isn't fair, nor nuanced, nor balanced. Screw that, this is an editorial.

Now that's class

An spam - way off topic - made it's way into Rand's blog

Vote us out of Iraq. Vote Ron Paul!
http://www.youtube.com/obfuscated

Posted by Raphael at January 11, 2008 05:38 AM

Political spam - now that's classy. Why, it's slick as owl snot.

Because everyone is going to get on board for a candidate whose supporters anonymously spam blogs comments.

A Thing I Did Not Know This Morning

A Thing I Did Not Know This Morning.

Henry Ossian Flipper (March 21, 1856–May 3, 1940) was an American soldier and the first black American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy (West Point)

Cool

James Lileks on the election ...

I’ve been sitting here bopping to Brian Setzer while I write this, and it’s more fun than thinking about politics. I still think we should take a big poll and find one band that satisfies everyone, and the day after the election we have a big grand beer bash to celebrate the fact that everyone loves “Rock Around the Clock” and tanks won’t roll when the baton passes, and that’s no small thing. Because if you can’t find yourself at 1 AM laughing and arguing about the glories of American popular culture with someone who’s on the absolute opposite site of the political aisle, well, here: one big ticket redeemable for a quart of pity. I don’t want unity about the secondary issues; I want constant conflict and tension and friction and argument and eventual compromises, even if it's a decade after the argument faded. About the great glorious uniqueness of this country and the things we can do, yes: at least we can agree on that. So let’s elect a president and fix some stuff and screw up the things we can’t help but screw up and go to Mars. We can argue about what the flag meant and what it will mean tomorrow, but can’t you see a day where everyone’s leaning forward on the sofa, in the bars, in Times Square, watching the pole drive down into red soil? Wouldn’t there be a grand nationwide huzzah, and wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t that be cool?

That would be very cool indeed.

Spaceships and Poetry

Spaceships. And poetry. Any species that can create both spaceships and poetry is worth saving.

~ Solomon Short

Nanoc

What's Nanoc? It says on the tin

nanoc is a Ruby content management system for building static web sites.

Calling it a CMS might be a bit grandiose. You run it locally, compile markup documents into static webpages, then copy those to the server. It appears to be one of those deals that Just Works.

I redid the rammro.net page with it. Total time was 30 minutes, 20 of that installing and running through the tutorial.

The 'meh' content of that page is my fault, not Nanoc's of course.

Kenneth Culver

Seen this guy? He's a wanted man ...

Kenneth Culver walked into the locker room Jan. 4. A student saw Culver's reflection in the mirror and made a lot of noise. Culver then left school property.

Culver may have entered the locker room on five different occasions. He had no verbal or physical contact with anyone.

Culver is wanted for five counts of invasion of privacy and two counts of bail jumping from outstanding cases in both Winnebago and Outagamie counties. He ignored law enforcement requests through family members to turn himself in.

Culver is 6-feet,1-inch tall, weighs 250 pounds, and is bald with a goatee. He was driving a black 1994 Ford Tempo with the plate number 916-GWN.

If you have any information about Culver, contact the Neenah Police Department at (920) 886-6000.

A fifty-year old guy in the girls locker room ... innocent until proven guilty of course but the sooner this guy is located the better, I think.

A good rant is a thing of beauty

And this one is good and long ... Rails Is A Ghetto

After Mongrel I couldn’t get a gang of monkeys to rape me, so forget any jobs. Sure people would contact me for their tiny little start-ups, but I’d eventually catch on that they just want to use me to implement their ideas. Their ideas were horrendously lame. I swear if someone says they’re starting a social network I’m gonna beat them with the heel of my shoe.

Oh my

Wow.

The new Mac Pro combines two of Intel’s new 45 nanometer Quad-Core Xeon 5400 processors running up to 3.2 GHz, new graphics and up to 4TB of internal storage. Prices start at $2,799.12MB of L2 cache per processor, dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses and up to 32GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memorystandard with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of video memory. The systems also include a new PCI Express 2.0 graphics slotFor storage, the Mac Pro has four internal drive bays allowing up to 4TB. The systems also have five USB 2.0, two FireWire 400, two FireWire 800, optical and analog audio in and out, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and a headphone jack.

My, my my.

The new Mac Pro is available immediately.

Well that's good - not that I'm buying one but I'm sure someone can, and will be. Immediate graftification rocks.

Alien thoughts

Alien in the sense of 'other', in the sense that I don't want to understand someone who can think this way.

You are invited to read the entire editorial; it won't take you long.

There must be violence against women

This title may sound strange, but it’s actually not just a way to attract readers to the topic because I really do mean what it indicates. Violence is a broad term, especially when used regarding women. In this piece, I want to shed light on those instances where violence against women is a must.
.....
Relationships between fathers and daughters or sisters and brothers also provoke argument from human rights organizations, which propose the suggested solutions for all relationships. Personally, I don’t think fathers or brothers would undertake such behavior unless there was a reason for it.
.....
Dear readers – especially women – don’t think that I hate or am against women; rather, I simply mean to preserve the morals and principles with which Islam has honored us.

I hope my message is clear, since it’s really quite relevant to the future of our societies, which must be protected from any kind of cultural invasion.

Good luck, back there in the 13th century Mr. Al-Kholidy. I'll take the 21st century anyday; I'll bet most of your sisters and daughters in faith will, too.

Rails Metaphor - Pipes

I've been teaching myself Ruby on Rails. Not for any particular reason*, but to learn something new. Now, I am not a programmer, I'm a system administrator. I was, for a few months, employed by the US Marines as a programer (Clipper '87**) where I specialized in writing programs that consumed more memory than a PC had before crashing.

The Marine Corps quickly found me employment as a LAN Admin; at least there, in 1990, we were all new and not knowing what you were doing was not so much a liability as SOP.


So I'm not coming at this as a coder learning a new skill but a stranger from another country learning a new language and a new culture.

So it's all kind of slow going.

In reply to this post Travis wrote

Once you internalize these, and realize that they are - effectively - unix command line pipes, or filters, you stop thinking about itterating, and instead start thinking about piping large blocks of data through filters, or tools.

(insert sound of needle skidding on a record)

realize that they are - effectively - unix command line pipes, or filters,

One is studying something - and it's a bit of a slog - and LO someone comes out of left field comes a comment and it all becomes clear. Not a choir celestial but a certain 'hunh' that turns your viewpoint around a few degrees.

You gain a useful metaphor that enables one to lurch along in the right direction.

I've been using pipes (and filters and tools) to sort large blocks of data for years, in shell scripts. I don't think this is going to make it actually easy but I've got a metaphor now to use that will make plowing through this bit easier on the ol' noggin.

That and thinking about a programming language as a series of tools and filters - just groovier and more complicated versions of awk, sed and the like - makes me want to do a Snoopy Dance.

*Or at least not one I'm willing to talk about yet.
** Which was an extension language and compiler for dBase III.

Epicurians Rule!

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2008/01/intellectual-sports-teams.html

…So I said that we ought to have intellectual names for sports teams. The anti-intellectualism of jock culture is an embarrassment to this country. (My wife’s country doesn’t have academic athletic teams.) How about “the Norman Nihilists”?My wife was captivated by the idea and wouldn’t let it go. We played the game in the restaurant, and that evening she took all the ideas we’d come up with and added bunches of new ones with the help of an Oklahoma map.Guidelines: it has to use the name of a state town, should ideally be alliterative (or rhyme) and represent a philosophical/religious position. So how about…

The Ardmore Atheists

The Ada Aristotelians

The Edmond Epistemologists

.....

Neenah Gnostics
Appleton Arianisists
Delafield Docetisists
Exeter Epicurians
Menasha Montanists
Kaukauna Kabbalists
Oshkosh Ophites

Inspiration from TJIC

For Loops considered obsolete

From my point of view one of the odder things about Ruby is that 'for loops' are obsolete . . .

If you're still writing for loops, stop; there's a better way. Exactly why merits some examples.

[1, 2, 3].each { |number| puts number }

That's a pretty straightforward one. It says: with each element in this array, execute the given block.




That's just darn weird. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Hello Kitty - with BLAM

California legal 'AR-15' for the Hello Kitty fan in your life.

A Bad Day

Evidence that a rabbit had a bad day.



From Soni, who got it from Scalzi.

A Reason to vote for Obama

I wish I'd thought of this slogan . .

Der Spiegel says there's no freakin' way Obama's going to get the Presidential nomination for of all the usual reasons: he's too young, his message is too vague, and candidates who win in Iowa don't usually win elsewhere. And then there's this: "and for many Americans, too black." I hear this all the time from Europeans- it's impossible that those bigoted Americans would ever vote for a black man. I think the Obama people should use it in their campaign.

"Vote for Obama and tell Europe to suck it!"

FM 3-0 Operations (SAMS Edition)

FM 3-0 Operations (SAMS Edition)
Doctrine for Dummies
Illustrated by Mrs. Finklestien's Third Grade Class

Introduction

You are students. This means you are supposed to learn things. Read this and learn it.

There will be a test. There are only two grades…”win”, or “lose”.

Come back with your shield, or on it.


I.M. Mean
General
Soldier in Chief

Excerpt

2. Whacking bad people is dangerous. It’s also hard. It’s easier and safer to whack the bad people if you do it from the air or the ocean. That’s because the bad people can’t afford the super weapons that do stuff from there. That’s why we have to be nice to the Navy and Air Force; so they will whack bad people with great enthusiasm.

Full text is here, includes a link to a PDF file.

Condensed version, with multimedia is here.

No one has produced an ultra condensed version in comic book 'graphic novel' format written at the 1st grade level for Marines. No doubt some very bright field-grade officers are working on that at Quantico.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Iowa

My wife's reaction on hearing that Huckabee won in Iowa was interesting but not repeatable* in a family blog. This pretty much sums it up, however

Iowa has given its seal of approval to (1) a one-term Senator who stands for "hope" and "change" and (2) a tacky, big spending governor who doesn't know much about foreign policy but did stay at a Holiday Inn Express. The common demoninator here, other than a patent lack of qualifications for the presidency, is likeability.

For another detailed look see Jeff Harrell's blog.


*nor was it that bad, either - I'm just trying to mind the swears.

Cautionary Tale

Coyote had a corrupted Excel file;

I tried to open a complicated Excel file today and Excel told me that it was corrupted and that it would try to rebuild it.

That happened to me, once. It not a complicated file, but it was terribly important; it contained all of the IP addresses for nearly 1800 client desktops* at the site I was contracting at.

All of these machines were manually assigned their address.** So knowing what these were was a pretty big deal.

No problem - a file that important must be backed up on the server. Except this one .. wasn't. That volume had never been backed up.

"I knew that was going to get us, one of these days," said a company system admin in a very resigned tone.***

After a week for the magnitude of the catastrophe to sink in, and with various schemes tried to recover the data, my company had no problem selling them on a project to convert the entire facility to DHCP.

* I inherited the spreadsheet - I did not create it.
** Yes, for this many machines in 1999 assigning addresses by hand made no sense. It was that kind of a place.
*** It was that kind of a place, which was why I was glad to be a contractor there and not an employee.

I'm the King of Legacy!

... and baby it's good to be king.

We have a rather old and poorly understood system for document management. This week I helped to fix it and setup correct documentation. Thus, by the unwritten rules of IT, I now own a rather old and poorly understood system for document management.

All I need to do now is slap a token-ring network up between my legacy server and the world and I'm set.

Jay R. Grodner - now in wiki format

Jay R. Grodner has a wikipedia page now.

Seems like a notable bloke to me.

Don't be an ass - the internet never forgets: Follow Up

In response to this, Jim K. commented

He could have made the whole thing go away by simply agreeing that what he had done was wrong and offering to pay for the damage. Instead he tried to weasel his way out of it. Public shaming is appropriate and today public means on the internet.

Yet . . . what of redemption?

The point here is that this shame goes on .. and on. Eternal finger waving and cries of 'shame' without pause.

Harassment without a chance for redemption is not shaming; it's bullying.

Don't be an ass - the internet never forgets

Get caught doing the dumbs and you will never, ever live it down - the internet has a long memory.

Guy is caught keying a car - $2400 worth of damage. Guy has words with the car owner. Seems the guy keyed the car because the car owner has military tags and plates. The police are called. More words are tossed around. A citation is issued.

The details are at Blackfive.

A moment of ill-considered vandalism, a lifetime of crap.

The problem is, Google is good at finding stuff but not so good for measuring repentance. He could have a Come to Jesus moment a year from now, he could find himself a changed man a decade from now but Google will likely always pull this incident up, first.

It will also find the hatred and bile piled on by blogs and blog comments.


I have some sympathy.

A long time ago I made a foolish choice and screwed up. If I'd been a civilian I might have gotten fired and moved along to the next job.

I was enlisted in the Marine Corps. I got Non Judicial Punishment; docked a few months pay, reduced in rank.




Yes, it sucked.


Every service member has a record book. Your new commanding officer opens that sucker up and just about the first thing his eyeballs fall upon is Page 11; the list of all the Bad Things you've done. Later there is another page with all of the good things but by then it's way too late.

If it you were a bad kid five minutes ago, or five years ago it's all the same thing - condensed into neat tidy paragraphs for their reading displeasure. You know what's coming ..

- We going to have any problems like this?

A small part of you may want to roll your eyes: I've heard this before. You want to say "That was five years ago and I regretted it about five seconds after the fact and long, long before the The Man had me standing tall in his office and oh boy have I changed, hey look at last quarter's pro/con marks .." but you don't because all you can do is suck it up and demonstrate you've changed because Marines Don't Whine.

You say 'No Sir' and get on with it. Because that's what you do.


Five Navy Crosses. Not a whiner.


At the risk of beating this into the ground .... this is a problem in the Real World where everyone is looking at your Page 11 and no one is going to be around to see what a good guy you actually are. First impressions are last and final ones.

Google is great for finding information. It's not so hot at measuring reputation capital - for telling people who you are now or how an otherwise 'ok' person had a bad day and fucked up his google rep for the next few years.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Just when you think

... you can depend on a long-term 'oil is too expensive' trend to make Solar Power Satellites look attractive along come market forces ...

The tripling of oil prices since the summer of 2003 has unleashed forces that within the next two or three years will bring oil prices tumbling back down to below $50 a barrel. Looking even further ahead, prices could easily fall to $30 a barrel or even lower.

Darn capitalists.

Complacency kills

Fallujah is not exactly safe but it's not the horror-show it was a year ago.

Several Marines were shocked that I was willing to walk around the streets of Fallujah without a gun, but I didn’t feel the slightest bit nervous. Complacency kills, and I get that. But I had Marines as bodyguards and I wasn’t allowed to defend myself anyway. So I figured I might as well relax.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year.




... and here is wishing high hopes and a prosperous future to you and yours. Ad astra, y'all.

The last word in Lolcats . .

Indoor plumbing rocks

and the good old days .. weren't.

I waked in the morning about 6 o’clock and my wife not come to bed; I lacked a pot, but there was none, and bitter cold, so was forced to rise and piss in the chimney, and to bed again.

Italics mine. Note that Pepys wasn't a prole - he was - in 1664 - a reasonably well-to-do fellow living in a cosmopolitan city in the most advanced region in the world. Who woke up cold and pissed in his own chimney.

The tools who want us all to live like peasants and get the willies about economic over-consumption can kiss my warm and toasty ass.

The Gold Standard - Killer App for Space?

Mr. Poretto is going on about the gold standard - he is in favor of it - which is interesting but a bit much for my poor button-brain.

Travis replied ...

The world supply of above-ground gold increases by about 2% per year. The supply cannot be accelerated faster than that; the laws of physics prevent

I disagree. Gold mining, like everything else, responds to increasing demand. If the price of gold doubled, could we not drastically increase gold mining with a decade or so?

Look up? 99% of the resources in the solar system are not terrestrial. We think that Eros has

20,000 million tonnes of aluminium along with similar amounts of gold, platinum and other rarer metals.

In the 2,900 cubic kms of Eros, there is more aluminium, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust.

That is just in one asteroid and not a very large one at that. There are thousands of asteroids out there.

People will talk about a 'killer app' that drives development in space - the one thing that will be the thing that we can't live without.

SPS could be that but putting all our hopes in such a frail basket seems unwise.

I wonder if putting the world's largest and most productive economy on the gold standard would be the killer app that drives development in space.

You may not be able to depend on energy policy or expensive oil .. but you can always count on people's hunger to acquire wealth.

It's not the inner system - it's a treasure map.

... and Armageddon sick of it

Dog toys exist to be destroyed

I guess most dogs enjoy death and destruction of toys

Half-right, for our house.

The (toy fox) terrier will take any toy and demolish it as quickly as she can.

The German Shepherd .. while enjoying a good chomping and chewing fest .. seems to take care not to destroy them. Her volley ball has a few hundred fang marks but she's never punctured the vinyl.

She still has a soccer ball that she tore the snot out of when she was a puppy - it's such a mess that you can't tell what it is aside from a floppy mass of vinyl and drool - but it's held up pretty well since she grew up.

Via.

The sub-prime mortage mess, explained

"Peter, did you read the fine print on this loan contract?"
"Um, if by "read" you mean imagined a naked lady, then, yes."

- Brian and Peter in A Fish Out of Water

Go, Fred Go

I lack the funds and I completely lack the time to fiddle with blog widgets but ... support Fred in Iowa.

Why?

• He's married to a complete hotty.
• He's not Mike Huckabee.
• He's from the South - having a fellow with a southern accent in the White House would make some people completely flip their lids. And that would be cool.
• He's more of a Federalist than anyone else running.

Gumption Trap

I've been fighting with my Windows XP desktops (one virtual, one hardware) for the last ninety minutes - I've gotten them to crash, reboot, restart, dump memory and do everything except what I wanted them to do - which was to a) run Outlook and b) run Hummingbird Exceed.

90% of the people in this country run some version of Windows at the office. How in the hell do y'all get anything done?

Save the world, one bit at a time

You can't save the entire world. Mostly you have to do what you can, where you can and trust that everyone else is as well.

Ala'a lived in Iraq. He was nine, suffered from cerebral palsy, and an orphan. Ala'a orphanage was adopted by a unit of MPs.

To [Captain Scott] Southworth, Ala'a was like a little brother. But Ala'a — who had longed for a soldier to rescue him — secretly began referring to Southworth as "Baba," Arabic for "Daddy."

Then, around Christmas, a sister told Southworth that Ala'a was getting too big. He would have to move to a government-run facility within a year.

"Best case scenario was that he would stare at a blank wall for the rest of his life," Southworth said.

To this day, he recalls the moment when he resolved that that would not happen.

"I'll adopt him," he said.

And he did. It took a while and a mountain of paperwork and a lot of family support but . . . he did.

They made it to Wisconsin late Jan. 20, 2005. The next morning, Ala'a awoke to his first sight of snow.

He closed his eyes and grimaced.

"Baba! Baba! The water is getting all over me!"

"It's not water, it's snooooow," Southworth told him.

I can sympathize about the snow.

Hooray for Wendy

Hooray for Wendy.

Wendy, the little girl who cried every single day when she went to school, who was told and thought she was stupid, and who became our first guinea pig in the home-school realm…

Has made the Dean’s List.

I won't say 'hooray for homeschooling' - as tempting as it might be - because it's not about how you get it done, it's about the kid.

Edward 'NIMBY' Kennedy

Sam Dinkin has a take-down of Scientific American's grand plan for solar power - worth a read.

The real gem is in the comments ..

[solar power is] viable, as long as you can't see the vast cell farms from Sen. Kennedy's house.

Haw.

Culture

Culture matters.

Each class at the Idaho Police Officer Standards and Training Academy is allowed to choose a slogan that is printed on its graduation programs, and the class of 43 graduates came up with "Don't suffer from PTSD, go out and cause it."

Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney, who attended the Dec. 14 graduation, pointed out the slogan to the academy's director, Jeff Black, minutes before the ceremony began, Raney said. A photograph of the program was e-mailed anonymously to news outlets throughout the state.

"That's not something we encourage or condone," Black said. "It shouldn't have been there. It was inappropriate."

Mr. Black is being disingenuous ... or he's a victim of the Peter Principle.

I am reasonably sure the academy does not have a course of instruction detailing 'how to be an ass' .. but the students did not come up with that on their own. That kind of stuff gets stuffed into a person's brain housing group by culture and the attitude of the instructors.

Via.

I dare you to click this

You can't not click this ..

"A Hard Day's Night" recited by Peter Sellers in the style of Laurence Olivier doing Shakespeare's Richard III.

Via.

Vendor Follies

Hi, I'm reinstalling an application server. The license key doesn't work. This is the key: REDACTED

Vendor: That's a version 9213 key, you need a 9214 key.

I don't have one of those. But we did upgrade from 9213 to 9214 six months ago ..

Vendor: Right, you need a 9214 key. Copy the key from your 9214 environment and use that.

The version 9213 key is the only one I have. So I can run an existing server with an obsolete key, but I can't install a new one. I sure am glad I'm having this problem now and not on a weekend with flaming chunks of server falling around my ears and crazed users pounding on my door wanting their critical application restored right now! Because if I were having this conversation then I'd be really pissed irate instead of bemused.

Three cheers for licensing schemes that work sorta kinda sometimes.

This isn't really appropriate for this, but it is funny.

The More Things Change

Electronic equipment from 1939.




The rack and cable management could be moved into a 21st century server room without attracting any attention.

I suspect that server rooms in the 23rd century will still be using a 22 inch rack. Some of them may even have antique Sun hardware running in them to enable backwards compatibility that some biz guy just can't live without. And they'll talk to the equipment using VT100.

His and Hers

I can't quite explain but this works out quite nicely. The psycho-babble not so much but there it is.

his

Find your own pose!

hers

Find your own pose!

Tis Two Nights Before Christmas - A Poem

She's a poet - and she knows it.

'Tis Two Nights Before Christmas...

Tis two nights before Christmas and all through the house
Not a sign of one ornament, I must be a louse.
The presents are unwrapped all lying on the bed,
and thoughts very un-Christmassy still run through my head.
The tree still undecorated, only lights lit.
I guess i should get up and try to fix it.
But if only I could forget the presents I must wrap
and put them in Wal-Mart bags, be done with this crap.
The children are waiting to see what Santa brings,
but I have been ready to be done with these things.
But the children keep me going and I know I must try
to keep up tradition, so I'll start now with a sigh.
I'll decorate the tree, make cookies, and smile.
I'll try to remember celebrations aren't a trial.
And when Santa shows up with his red sack filled with toys
He'll find our house ready with happy little boys.
And he'll know that in spite of the cold and the snow,
I'll open my heart and mind and go with the flow.

So Merry Christmas my friends that are both far and near.
I may sound hum-buggy, but I wish you good cheer.
May you find every wish that you have in your heart,
and I hope that your New Year has a wonderful start.

Blessings,
Pasty

Merry Christmas!

Beauty

Ain't she gorgeous?



I'm a lucky guy.

The 21st century is an amazing place

If the Marines don't have these now, they will soon; R/C airplane, with real-time video feed to a goggled display on the ground. The operator can swivel the POV as desired.

Google Video 'Bromont golf club'

Not a UAV from Boeing, but a hobby job. I'll bet you could slap one together from off-the shelf parts for the cost of a fire-teams's worth of small arms. Rockin'. There might be problems ...

Captain Cool: Sergeant, I need you to recon hill 465. Strap on your goggles and get airborne over the target by 1345. Go in low and slow and loiter - I need imagery crisp and clean. S4 has laid in a req for more birds from Brigade so if they do bring one down, no biggie.

Sergeant Schmuck: Aye-aye, Sir.

CC: And .. the Colonel shot me an email a few minutes ago. He said bravo zulu for spotting the fire mission this morning but knock off the victory rolls - the Air Force is getting jealous.

Horror and moral terror are your friends

If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.

Last night I had one of the most frightening dreams a man can have. I dreamt that someone, who hated me very deeply, got me a new computer for Christmas.

Subject line hattip.

I put it on your Visa

Campaign commerical: Hillary is wrapping presents for Christmas, attaching cards to each package . . .

• Universal Health Care
• Alternative Energy
• Bring Troops Home
• Middle Class Tax Breaks
• Universal Pre-K

Merry Christmas, I put it on your Visa.

I hope she doesn't forget to include a gift receipt. Maybe she should have just gotten us all gift cards. Sure, they feel so impersonal but .. your recipient can get what he actually wants and you don't have to fool around at the customer service desk with eleventy billion other people.

Unrelated thought: perhaps they do things different in Arkansas. Where I grew up people wrote the recipients name on the cards, not what the gift is.

Update: edited to remove verbosity.

Who Homeschools

A criticism about home schooling is that only well-to-do will homeschool. The rich will abandon public schools to the poor downtrodden masses, class divides will deepen, cats and dogs will live together ...

Maybe not so much.

Friedman summarizes survey data from the National Center for Educational Statistics . . .

Classified by household income, the percentage of children home schooled is essentially constant for the first three categories (under $25,000, $25,000-$50,000, $50,000-$75,000), a bit lower for the top ($75,000+) category--presumably because higher income parents have easier access to the private school alternative.

Common sense trumped by data. Umpossible!

Multi-tool

He's pawing through the pocket litter on my dresser.

"What's this?" Little Monkey asked. "Oh, it's a multi-tool."




It's a Swiss Army knife.

"It looks like a multi-tool."

I conceded that it was a sort of multi-tool, but that when I was growing up we didn't have multi-tools as such so .. it's a Swiss Army knife. I deployed the various tools and showed him what they were for. Concluded with the ritual warning about knives and other sharp objects. Endured a small eye-roll: yes dad, I know that part by now.

Kids are neat.

Narc

Rachel Lucas said

I’m pretty sure Sunny’s looking to score some primo.

I'm pretty sure that Sunny is a narc looking to bust some druggies.

Crustacean uber alles

First they model machines on lobsters ... then they cram lobster intelligence into machines .. then we're living in a Strossian future and no one wants that.

Well the lobsters do. Or they would if they were self-aware. Which they will be.

Wake up America!

Think of the children!

What has a bigger carbon footprint - delivering a Christmas card or a pound of banana bread?

Things that I'm amazed everyone doesn't know

The perfect country and western song. You Never Even Called Me By My Name', performed by David Allen Coe, written by Steve Goodman and John Prine.

Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison.
And I went to pick her up in the rain,
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got runned over by a damned old train.

YouTube
Lyrics

Eat local - unless it's inconvenient

In which we hear from Bruce 'Sourpuss' Gagnon about consuming . . .

Let this holiday season be the time of our personal liberation from the chains of shopping, consumption, materialism, and the death of real spirituality.

To everyone I know I say........I will still love you if you don't send me a holiday card or a present. Send me an email instead or bake me some banana bread. Or maybe just call me to say hello.

Shop local, eat local, and walk local.

Except for those tasty bananas, which don't grow in Maine.

Not just a good idea, it's the law

Mike Huckabee

I think we ought to be out there talking about ways to reduce energy consumption and waste. And we ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is.

Reason commenter 'de stijl'

In this election, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Best .. Response .. Ever.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

I heart OS X

Why do I heart OS X?



Because it let me run 'Windows' as an application. That way when it crashes while Outlook is running it's rules on eleventy-dozen messages from my server I can cruise along doing other stuff while I wait for it to get over it's hissy fit.

Ugh, Luddites

A: We've got Luddites!
B: I thought we sprayed for those last month?

"I'm fond of the old and suspicious of the new," he says. Mr. Rice explains all this over a rotary telephone from the 1970s.

His phone connects from the 1970s, but it's connected to a network that lives in the 21st century. One suspects he wouldn't like using his 1970 phone on a 1970 phone network .. but who knows?

Mr. Rice will often write a letter on his typewriter, scan it into his computer, and then send the image as an e-mail attachment. "Some people are tickled by it," he says. "Some people are absolutely annoyed."

If I had regular corespondance with the guy .. that would get old, quickly. Not the fact of the attachment but the kludge involved.

Update: Best comment from Noah D.

Don’t spray for Luddites. Wastes ammo. Aimed single shots, or short controlled bursts.

LOL.

Update 2: Good follow up from ScottH . .

Use sabot rounds - give ‘em a taste of their own medicine.

The Atlantic Ocean - with pasta

Since she had her heart attack we've been taking it easy on the salt - not just table salt but reading the ingredients on packaged food with diligence and care. This is what you do if you want to stay alive long enough for Medical Science to come up with a 'cure heart disease' pill.

Still - the kids don't have to follow our diet. Little Monkey asked for this in the store so ... why not? Two cans went into the basket.


The snack that bites back . . Now with sea water flavoring!


Older Monkey had a can for lunch today. He ate a bit. Ate a bit more. Made a face . . .

Him: I don't want this.

Why not?

Him: I'm not .. hungry.

I tried a slurp. Ever gotten a snoot full of salt water at the beach? It tasted like the Atlantic Ocean off the Delaware beach, with pasta. Bleh.

I'll bet the other can will work out well as broth over the dog's food.

Senile Demntia

Just . . . wow.

I literally spent at least half the day just sitting and talking with her, doing my best to help her remain calm and not obsess over contacting her parents or going “back to school”. Even with all my experience and what I’ve learned about distracting her and redirecting her attention, it was an almost constant battle.

And in the middle of it, I got an email from another friend with a link to this video.

That’s basically the last six years of my life compressed into six minutes. You want to have some idea what it is like to be a care-provider for someone with Alzheimer’s or other age-related dementia? Watch it.

When you get the lawyers involved everyone looses

From Atomic Fungus

Mother threatened with jail for homeschooling. No one told her that our government and its shills on the Left are very protective of the government's monopoly on education.

I saw this when the teacher's union won their lawsuit to have my children's state-wide charter school put out of business, just this month. Now, I don't think that every commenter is part of a vast Left wing conspiracy but ...


". . . right-wingers and the Bradley Foundation profiteers . . . "

As if bricks and morter schools don't contract will all kinds of private corporations for cafeteria services, books, and just plain stuff. Profiteers, the lot of 'em.


"The state is paying for homeschooling."

No, my kids are enrolled in public school, but they learn at home.


"It's against the law, it always has been".

A court read the law in a way favorable to the teacher's union. A lower court decided in terms favorable to the school. We might assume that WIVA was launched after the lawyers read the applicable law and provided advice, and we might further assume that that advice was not "you guys are going to get shut down in a few years but .. go have fun, you wacky kids" The state supreme court has yet to hear the case.

The legislature makes the laws, the judiciary interprets them. This is what they do, but it does not mean that the school was illegal from the beginning.


"Talk to your representative, don't bitch about it online".

We are. Blogging is a PR tool - which is part of the process for change.


"The point of teaching and school should be and is socialization and interaction with people who are not your parents."

Gee - I thought the point of teaching and school was education. As for socialization - do you imagine that we keep them under lock and key 24/7? They have friends - online and off. My kids interact with people who are not their parents all the time.

What is so troubling about this is the rabid zealotry and ignorance displayed by some people. Whatever we've been doing with the public schools these last thirty years, it ain't working. More of the same is not the answer ... Brother, I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

You get paid to solve the hard problems

Food for thought from Joel Spolsky

The trouble is, the market pays for solutions to gnarly problems, not solutions to easy problems. As the Yorkshire lads say, "Where there's muck, there's brass."

Lyrics

No, I don't listen to lyrics of most songs. They're catchy, it's hummable - so who cares if I don't know all the words?

My personal favorite are the Pepsi ads featuring "Brown Sugar" from the mid-1990's. Nothing like raping slaves to make one thirsty for Pepsi.

Do .. what?

Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver know hes doin alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good

Well for Goodness' sake.

It's a guy thing

Homosexual culture has a dark side according to Steve Baldwin because - among other reasons

"Research on the homosexual lifestyle confirms it is almost exclusively a youth-oriented culture," Baldwin wrote. "Very few gays exhibit preference for older men."

"Some admit to focus on teenage boys," he said, "some on prepubescent boys, and many cross over between categories."

Dude. Have you watched much TV? Read any 'guy' magazines? Watched an episode of Nip/Tuck?

That isn't a gay thing - it's a guy thing.

Things I did not know this morning

I did not know there was a name for joining a word or a phrase without spaces . . .

CamelCase (also spelled camel case) or medial capitals is the practice of writing compound words or phrases in which the words are joined without spaces and are capitalized within the compound — as in "BackColor" or "iMac". The name comes from the uppercase "bumps" in the middle of the compound word, suggestive of the humps of a camel.

Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day

I missed it, it seems. As if I don't act dizzy and disorientated at the best of times . . .

You must spend the entire day in costume and character. The only rule is that you cannot actually tell anyone that you are a time traveler. Other than that, anything's game.

Remember, the only real rule is staying in character and try to fit in. Never directly admit you're a time traveler, and make really, really bad attempts at keeping a low profile. Naturally, the dystopian future has a little more leeway. And for the record, I've already tried out all of these in real life, in costume. It is so much fun you want to pee yourself.

Interesting idea. Talk Like A Pirate day was cute back in the day but if everyone is walking around sounding like extras from that pirate movie (or this one) then it's kinda lame and mainstream.

Dressing and acting like a time traveler for the entire day - that takes commitment.

Fire!

Ok ... now you're warm - but it's four miles to the tavern . . .



From Colebrook Ski-Bees Snowmobile Club.