Personal Musings category archive

How many on-target drone strikes must a CIA agent direct before he levels up?

I don’t think that the NRCC will be wasting my time on the telly phone again.

Jay Leno:

This is why Twitter exists. Members of Congress can now send you pictures of their penises electronically. Remember the old days of Senator Larry Craig when you had to get in your car, drive to the airport, find the airport bathroom, try to figure out which stall he’s in, knock on the door…Now they send it right to your house.

I recently listened to this episode of the Diane Rehm show, in which a panel of Beltway insiders discussed Congressman Weiner’s twits. (You can listen or read the transcript at the link.)

There wasn’t much new in the discussion. The Congressman has brought so much dumb to the table that one of the panelists reported using his behavior as a tool to teach the family teenagers that the internet is, indeed, a public place.

What most struck me, though, was the smug sanctimonious self-righteousness of the panel as it was shocked! shocked! SHOCKED! at someone’s doing something stupid while under the influence of male hotness delusion syndrome and at his attempts to deny it.

In America, parents can’t talk with their kids about sex; hell, they can’t even admit to it.

It is not surprising that someone would have difficulty talking to a howling pack of press jackals.

Clearly, none of the panel had ever succumbed to the temptation to do something stupid while under the influence of hormones or attempted to deny it when caught out.

Americans’ attitudes towards all things sexual are seriously bent, a sewer of fantasies in an uptight suit, glorifying hyper-sexual imagery, vicariously celebrating celebutards and their sex tapes, snickering at snookis, while quivering in fear and fiction and denial when confronting actual sexuality in any form. (See the note below.)

Congressman Weiner was stupid. If he were a run-of-the-mill employee in private industry or civil service, he likely would have been disciplined, possibly fired, by now. Indeed, by the time this posts, he may well be gone.

This does not make the public circus any less stupid.

Daniel Denvir addressed thia at the Guardian. An excerpt:

The reaction to Weiner’s misbehaviour is predictably lame. Older America carries on: one people by day, another nation entirely by the computer’s soft glow – while young people immortalise their crotches far beyond the walls of high school restrooms. The media could better spending (sic) its time unravelling this tangled sex-knot of mass repression and compulsory exhibitionism.

Asides:

(This is the blue plate special; it comes with two asides)

In a tangentially related article, Suzanne Moore points out what’s behind the hyper-sexual imagery I mentioned above.

It’s not libido; it’s marketing, marketing to and via libido. Sex sells, even as it is illegal to sell sex:

The awkward encounter between the right and feminism is premised on this daft word, sexualisation. So let’s call it as it is. We are talking really about commercialisation.

Also, this “I’m going to rehab now” is no more than today’s version of “I must have been possessed”–blame-shifting.

Except possibly in the case of psychopaths, “sex addiction” has become a synonym for “getting away with bad behavior just because I can.” The beneficiaries of a diagnosis of “sex addiction” are “sex addiction therapists.”

The Note Below:

I have nothing against sexual imagery.

Indeed, I quite appreciate sexual imagery.

Just don’t pretend it’s something else, like a swimsuit review, when it is clearly what it is.

I do have something against willful ignorance salted with crocodile tears.

Doug J at Balloon Juice:

What I’ve never understood about “what will the children think” is that it is always applied to something trivial, usually to consensual sexual relations among adults. No one ever asks “what will the children think about genocide in the Sudan?” or “what will the children think about the government torturing people?”. I can remember as a kid, listening to the news and hearing of horrible atrocities and being genuinely troubled by it . . . .

He has a point.

I remember sitting on the porch swing at Pine View Farm at about age seven wondering whether the nuclear bombs that would be dropped on The World’s Largest Military Complex(TM) across the bay when World War II started would take us out to (yes, they likely would have).

Some years later, when I was becoming curious about what Doug J. refers to as “consensual sexual relations,” I couldn’t get a straight answer out of anyone. I couldn’t even get any help in figuring out what the hell I was curious about.

Grown-ups are weird.

Where’s my jet pack?

“Plain vanilla” is not a perjorative.

It’s a compliment.

The media, even the funny pages, have Memorial Day tributes to those who have served and, perhaps, fallen for this country. The radio is playing patriotic music. Flags are everywhere, outnumbered only by the “Big Sale” signs.

Sad thoughts interspersed with beach-goers and shoppers and jingoism.

Now consider those (or their sons or daughters or brothers or sisters or fathers or mothers) who were sent into harm’s way and perhaps did not return for unjust or fabricated cause.

Is their sacrifice greater or lesser?

I would argue that it is greater, for they have served with honor those who betrayed their honor.

Persons like to prattle about speaking truth to power.

Mark Memorial Day by resolving to demand truth from power.

I have been feeling none of the triumphalism that seems to have greeted the killing of Osama bin Laden.

I do not regret it, not that my regrets are here or there, but celebration seems rather a wrong reaction.

I think this, from@ericfiddler on Twitter via Mr. Feastingonroadkill, encapsulates why.

Remember on Sept 12, 2001 when you saw people in some places abroad celebrating death? Exactly. Don’t be like that.

My mother, who retired from teaching over two decades ago, once said that the biggest change she had observed during her career was this:

When she started, if little Johnny got into trouble, the parent would call and say, “What did the little bastard do today?” (only she would never have said “bastard”).

By the time she retired, that same phone call would start, “How dare you mistreat my little darling. He didn’t do it.”

It appears to have gotten much worse.

A school official speaks out. A nugget:

Members of Generation X, born between 1965 and 1979, now constitute most parents of school-age children. As an educator, I can identify a typical Gen X parent immediately.

Gen Xers orchestrate every move of their preschoolers, from perfect play dates and obsessively healthy diets, to instructional flashcards and hypoallergenic socks.

Once school starts, Gen X parents may become upset to discover other students doing more advanced work than their own, demanding a meeting with the principal about why the teacher is “letting their child fall behind.” Of course the parents have done their research, identified the problem, and it’s clearly the school’s fault that their child is “underperforming” — in kindergarten.

Indeed, a Gen X parent holds her child’s self-esteem as something to be protected at any cost. Gone are the days of the “helicopter parent,” hovering obsessively to make sure little Taylor is prepared for success. Gen Xers are “snowplow parents,” knocking all potential obstacles out of their children’s paths to pack their young résumés with successes.

I have long thought that parents take themselves and their children far too seriously. If you get the kids to adulthood so that they can be responsible, moral, and functioning citizens and persons, that’s doing a damned good job. Anything else is gravy.

As someone–I wish I could remember who–once said to me, “When you’re raising kids, if you do one more thing right than you do wrong, you’re going to be a good parent.”

Thank heavens that’s over.

Now our media can go back to covering important things, such as LIndsey Charlie Paris Keira Hilton Sheen Kim Knightly Snookidashian.

My Wachovia branch is not even flying the Wells Fargo flag yet and already I dislike Wells and am considering going through the hassle of changing banks.

Am I the only person who finds the phrase “smart TV” to be an oxymoron?

Why does the rose with the sharpest thorns always get the worst case of black spot?

My little brother’s retirement luncheon was today.

Baseball.

In the Guardian, Walt Gardner looks at the history of “pay for performance” for teachers.

Early in my career with the railroad, I learned that, if one employee contravenes a policy, the employee is likely culpable; if the majority of employees contravenes a policy, the policy is likely wrong.

Aside from the overtly criminal (embezzlers, ponzi scheme managers, and other fraudsters), most working persons do not go to work planning to defraud their employers by performing their jobs badly. They may be intending other forms of misconduct while on duty and on the property, but they aren’t thinking something like, “I’ll just stock all the merchandise on the wrong shelves today.”

I’ve long had qualms about “pay for performance” for teachers and most of the other education “reform” schemes based on testing. As my mother, a math teacher, once said to me, “How can we expect them to read if there isn’t a magazine in the house?”

The reports of “teaching to the test” and fudging students’ scores are so numerous and so frequent as to indicate to me not a failure of school teachers and administrators, but the failure of the strategy.

Pay-for-performance began in England in about 1710, when salaries were based on test scores in reading, writing and arithmetic. The rationale was that it would help keep students from poor families in school, where they could learn the basics. The plan became part of the Revised Education Code in 1862, and remained on the books for more than 30 years.

The trouble was that the strategy sucked the creative life out of classrooms, as teachers became obsessed with the code. When it became apparent that the approach demeaned education, it was dropped in the 1890s. Pay-for-performance re-emerged briefly in Canada in 1876, but it ran into similar difficulties and was terminated in 1883.

Afterthought:

Ever notice how many bad ideas’ reason for existence is summed up in, “But we have to do something?“

Someone who must deny science to protect his or her faith has not faith.

The writers for Criminal Minds are some sick puppies to come up with the plots they do.

But Garcia runs Linux, so they are forgiven.

Listening to this, I wonder why the phrase “in this day and age” in a statement so often presages something blitheringly idiotic?

Depressing.

AT&T Inc. (T) surged in early U.S. trading after agreeing to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE) for about $39 billion in cash and stock to create America’s largest mobile-phone company.

I’ve been with T-Mobile since before they were T-Mobile (they became T-Mobile when Deutsche Telekom bought Voicestream).

Their network wasn’t as big as the networks of some of the other carriers, but their customer service and support have always been excellent and their pricing reasonable, and roaming works when out of the network.

In contrast, At&T is AT&T because Southwestern Bell had to change its name to Cingular had to buy the AT&T name to escape its reputation for service.

Wonder whether my Android works with Credo?