April, 2010 archive
To Paraphrase What the Old Man Back Home Said about Our State Senator, “It Calls Itself a University” 0
(What the old man actually said was, “He calls hisself a lawyer.”)
What could more indicate that Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University is about neither liberty nor learning than this?
Words fail me.
Full Disclosure: Mrs. State Senator was my boss for three years of summer jobs.
Dustbiters 0
Time for your regularly scheduled Friday evening roundup of financial geniuses.
It appears to be Illinois’s time in the barrel tonight:
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Wheatland Bank, Naperville, Illinois
Peotone Bank and Trust Company, Peotone, Illinois
Lincoln Park Savings Bank, Chicago, Illinois
New Century Bank, Chicago, Illinois
Citizens Bank&Trust Company of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
They haven’t even gotten to Mountain Time yet.
All Ur Stuf Iz Belongz to Facebook 0
Todd went on about the new Facebook privacy changes in today’s podcast. He was rather miffed.
So am I.
If you use Facebook, check your privacy settings carefully, particularly the ones under “Applications.” Facebook’s defaults are to let anyone in, especially Facebook’s “partners.”
Opt out information is here, courtesy Todd.
Down, then Up 0
This is truly strange.
Yesterday:
Circuit Court Judge Charles E. Poston ordered an immediate removal of the website May4thCounts.com, stating that other legal action “is not adequate under the particular circumstances of this case.”
Today:
Circuit Court Judge Charles E. Poston reconsidered the day-old motion without legal prompting and concluded “that the temporary injunction should not have been granted.”
GoDaddy took the site down when it got the first order.
It’s not back up yet. GoDaddy is quoted as saying it’s waiting for a copy of the new court order before it restores it. (Follow the “Yesterday” link above for a link to the site.)
Now, I’m still learning my way around local politics and I’m not in Norfolk (though it’s right next door), so I don’t know beans about either Mr. Burfoot or the website, but, unless the site was actually slanderous, the judge probably got it right the second time.
In the United States, what with the first amendment and all, slander, defamation, and libel are extremely difficult to prove. Opinion clearly stated as opinion is normally protected and truth is an absolute defense against any of those charges. That is, if you are convicted of bribery, someone cannot defame, slander, or libel you by pointing out that you take (or pay) bribes because, well, you did.
This is certain: If the site goes back up, it’s going to get far more traffic than it otherwise would have gotten.
(Full disclosure: I use GoDaddy for this site. I cannot fault GoDaddy for complying with a court order. The legal principle is to follow the order first, appeal later.)
Housekeeping 1
I’ve spent the afternoon messing around with the blog, updating the sidebar to add some Virginia blogs to the list, moving stuff around to what I hope is a more convenient order, and adding a “Donate” button on the theory that it can’t hurt and might help.
Expect more tinkering over the next couple of weeks.
Yeah, I know. Nobody looks at the sidebar anyway.
CyberHoaxes 1
Richard Clarke has a new book out, which means that “Cyberwar” hype–also known as full employment for computer security consultants–is making the rounds of the talk shows.
The list of luser$ hacker countries of which we should be very, very afraid commonly includes North Korea, China, Iran, and whatever other nation is the bad guy of the moment.
People buy into the hype because, for most of us, a computer is a magic box we don’t understand–so it’s easy to believe it can be used to saw the beautiful assistant in half and then reassemble her.
It’s akin to your older relatives who, in the early days of electricity, feared that current could somehow leak from an outlet that had no plug in it. As George Smith points out,
This is not to say that computer security is unimportant. It is. There are safety rules for computers just as there are for electricity.
As George Smith also wonders, does the recent boo-boo by McAfee warrant adding them to the list of rogue states?
Echoes 0
Writing at the Guardian, David Smith, a white South African, remembers attending a recruiting meeting for the AWB, a pro-apartheid militia-style group, during the dying days of South African apartheid. He was 14 at the time and went with his father. They never went back.
His description of the meeting sounds as if it could have come from the contemporary US. Here’s a bit of it:
All of which was absurd rubbish, racist alarmist bunkum. But for so many people in that room, it made sense. Somehow, when they weighed up their options, the lunacy of a preacher with a handgun and a racist army of fat blokes in khaki seemed like a credible path forward. And that is scary. The same kind of scary that leads people to join all sorts of extremist groups. Whether it be the AWB, the KKK or the BNP. Their strategy is perfectly simple. Find the panic button and hit it as hard as you can.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 1
The road rage guy I talked about here has apparently killed himself rather than go back to the slammer. He didn’t like the slammer.
Mithras has some rational thoughts.
In other non-firearms-related road rage news from Bizarro World . . . .
I’ve felt road rage a couple of times. I deal with it by making fun–sometimes profane fun–of the other driver. Quietly. Behind closed windows. Without gestures.
Tea Party Jesus 0
This is strong stuff and not for the faint of heart.
Follow the link to see how deeply hypocritical and bereft of values the Party of Family Values truly is.
Link below the fold.
A Pox on Your Chickens 0
TPM does the math and figures how many chickens it takes for health care in the U. S.
- Total U.S. health care costs in 2008: $2.3 trillion
- US population: About 300 million
- Average cost of health care per person: $7,681
- Average weight of a chicken: 5.9 lbs
- Market price per pound: 85 cents
- Average spot price per chicken: $5.02
- Average number of chickens per resident needed to cover health care costs: 1,530 chickens
- Total number of chickens needed to cover United States health care costs: 459 billion chickens
- Estimated worldwide chicken population: 16 billion chickens
- Current worldwide chicken shortage to cover U.S. health care: 443 billion cluckers
Maybe if we throw in a can of gravy.
Buzz Words Make My Head Buzz 0
The newest one seems to be “epistemic closure.” It appeared out of nowhere this week and took the world like some kind of new Apple iYawn.
It must be a Very Important Phrase, for it has Lots of Syllables and Sounds Vaguely Scientific.
“Epistemic” is apparently related somehow to epistemology, the branch of philosophical inquiry that concerns itself with how we know things. “Closure” comes from closed minds. It seems to mean the phenomenon of deciding that one already knows all that one needs to know and therefore needs to learn nothing more.
Frankly, I prefer Anonymous Liberal’s phrase, “Bubble World”; it is pithier and much more descriptive, even though it doesn’t have as many syllables and doesn’t sound vaguely scientific.
A. L.’s description of Bubble World, excerpted from a much longer post that is well-worth one’s while (If you haven’t seen the Truman Show to which he refers in his post, do so; it is an excellent movie and good training for reading the news):
A. L.’s follow up post on the Manzi mocking is also quite a good read.
John Cole enumerates the bubbles here. DougJ, also writing at Balloon Juice, has a nice starter collection of links on the Manzi mocking.
Full Disclosure: I haven’t read the Manzi post yet. There is room for only so many electrons in a day.
No Longer Seen on the Street (Updated) (Updated Again) (and Again) 4
The state revokes a license plate. Follow the link to decode what it might mean:
A photo of a truck with the plate came to light when it was posted on the Internet. The truck has a Confederate flag on its rear window and a picture of the World Trade Center attack with “Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11” on its tailgate.
Addendum, Two Days down the Road:
Picture here, via Not Larry Sabato.
Much Later:
Not necessarily so, says the plate’s owner:
Addendum-dee-dum-dum:
Raw Story dissects the denials. The owner of the 14CV88 plates has a rather long record of public statements that belie his protestations.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Still stalled in the high 400,000s. The long-term trends, though, are looking up:
Investment Advice 0
My father was a big fan of Wall Street Week as hosted by Louis Rukeyser. It helped him understand the market, where he pursued a sideline as a moderately successful investor.
Here’s an updated version for today’s investors:
The Entitlement Society 0
Even Ben Stein, who’s not known as particularly progressive (he’s still wondering whether the Iron Horse is such a good idea) is fed up:
I have never seen such a blatant disregard for ethics, and possibly the law, by a large Wall Street firm as is alleged in this case.
Maybe If I Baked a Cake (Updated) 1
Because, as Atrios points out, most of us who live in cities and suburbs aren’t allowed to keep chickens.
Video via TPM.
Addendum:
With apologies to Joann Worley, another chicken joke.
Combinations 0
Dumb and Dumber meets ignorant. Ignorant of history, ignorant of political theory, ignorant of America. Oh, never mind. It’s all about the Scary Black Man anyway.
Must be Fox News viewers (warning: language):
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Bernie Goldberg Fires Back | ||||
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Teabaggers via the Booman Tribune.
Jon Stewart via TPM.
Deficit Thinking Deficit 0
Jamelle points out that it’s not a deficit when Republicans do it, at least not insofar as the press is concerned:
As for the second point, our current deficits are not the product of entitlement spending. This isn’t a hard fact to grasp, but it seems to elude most of the professional commentariat (or at least those that can’t be bothered to use Google).
I Think I Have a Pinched Nerve . . . 1
. . . and it’s nowhere nearly so exciting as this one.
