March, 2014 archive
Chris-Crossed 2
Shaun Mullen looks across the Delaware River to contemplate New Jersey. He does not find conducive to peaceful contemplation.
He starts with a question:
Do read the rest.
Stand Your Pop-Tart 0
The father of the gunshine state’s “Stand Your Ground” law is moving into breakfast foods, pushing a bill to prevent schools from punishing kids who nibble their pop-tarts or other food items into the shape of guns.
My two or three long-time readers know that I think schools’ “zero-tolerance” rules are silly and stupid. They have resulted in the punishment of elementary school children for silly, harmless kid stuff that was malicious in neither intent nor result.
Those same readers know that I think “Stand Your Ground” is pernicious and vile. Underneath the high-fallutin’ rationale, it does nothing more than provide legal cover to Judge Lynch.
The Florida legislator is clearly grandstanding to the gun nut portion of his constiutency, but Frank Cerabino thinks some good might come from his effort:
But this might be the rare Florida gun bill that actually won’t create more harm to Floridians.
If this bill encourages school kids to imagine that Pop-Tarts function better as building materials for fake guns, rather than an acceptable breakfast food, it will be doing Florida’s kids a lot of good.
Florida has more than its share of child obesity . . . .
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
A little better.
(snip)
The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits decreased by 8,000 to 2.91 million in the week ended Feb. 22, the fewest this year.
Where the Heck Is PgUp? 0
Adjusting to a slightly different keyboard on a new laptop is annoying.
Aside:
The keyboard on my new machine is easily the best laptop keyboard I have ever had. The keys have a good solid feel and are well-placed: it even has a discrete NUM pad.
Facebook Frolics 0
There are six billion persons in the world and over 300 million in the US.
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that more than one of them have the same first and last names.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Two Different Worlds, Reprise 0
Reg Henry tries to make sense of out what’s happening in Ukraine and of possible courses to take. A nugget:
Moral equivalence? No, logical equivalence. I think we are the good guys and Vladimir Putin is a weasel, but good guys and bad guys all have their reasons. It is necessary to understand those reasons if we are to act sensibly.
Instead, those who loved the Cold War are delighted that it’s back . . . .
The Duke of Hazardous Has Friends in High Places 0
The Charlotte Observer observes:
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources said Duke was issued notices of violation late Friday for failing to have storm water permits at six of its N.C. power plants. That came only after a 48-inch storm water pipe without a permit ruptured at Duke’s Eden plant, spilling some 39,000 tons of toxic coal ash into the Dan River.
Getting the permits would have involved inspections that might have cost Duke a few nickels and prevented the coal ash spills, and we couldn’t have that, now could we, because of the fee hand of the market or something.
More observations at the link.
Two Different Worlds 0
At Asia Times, Mikhail A Molchanov, a professor of Ukrainian descent at a Canadian university, tries to provide a Russian perspective on the events in Ukraine. Whether or not you find it credible is not the issue; the issue is that there are other ways of interpreting what’s happening there than we are not hearing from our media, whose coverage seems to boil down to “Russia. Bad.”
I urge you to read it.
Here’s a snippet:
(snip)
The fact is, no matter how corrupt or weak Ukraine’s Yanukovych is, he remains the democratically elected president deposed in a revolution which had full support of the West from the beginning.
Our media are not known for analytical brilliance or balance as regards foreign policy. They have obediently sold us wars based on lies from the Mexican War on down; just in my lifetime, they led the cheers for the Viet Namese War, the overthrow of Allende in Chile, the Dominican invasion, the Nicaraguan incursions, and the Crusades of George the Worst, just to mention a few.
Grains of salt are wise additions to the news junkie’s diet.
“Self-Professed Behavior” 0
That phrase (which, when parsed, turns out to be meaningless but important-sounding jibber-jabber) seems to be the latest wingnut word salad for defending the mistreatment of persons they don’t like.
Via C&L.