2010 archive
Crabbing about Apples 4
I would suspect these folks already have computers, likely even laptops.
Is there any kind of justification for locking them into the walled orchard:
(snip)
City officials say it currently costs $710 to print each city council information packet and another $200 per council member to assemble and deliver the packets.
It’s happening here in the city and in the state:
State lawmakers first received laptops as part of a 1999 pilot program which was extended the following year to provide computers to all 140 members of the legislature. Since then, those computers have been replaced every 3-4 years.
It is possible that there are data security concerns that justify the government’s purchasing and setting up the computers, but let’s look at the math: They could get laptops for half the price of iPads and netbooks for a third the price.
They are letting themselves get sucked into the Apple vortex of hype.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 1
Released early because of the holiday:
Fewer firings are a first step to improvement in the labor market, followed by faster job and income growth that will help fuel gains in consumer spending. Bigger increases in payrolls are also required to bring down an unemployment rate that’s close to 10 percent.
Walmart must be hiring up greeters for the Christmas rush.
Aside: I commend Bloomberg for not be afraid to use the word, “firings.”
Facebook Frolics 0
Wonder what she said?
(snip)
Federal labor law has long protected employees against reprisal for talking to co-workers on their own time about their jobs and working conditions, including remarks that may be critical of managers. The law applies whether or not workers are covered by a union.
I’ve found that, if one only person in a work group complains about supervision while the others do not, it’s likely the employee who has the problem. If most of the persons in the work group complain, it’s likely that supervision is the problem. Most persons do not come to work in order to be miserable.
All seriousness aside, we’re probably going to see more tension between employers and employees over use of social media. Employees will contribute to this by forgetting that the internet is a public place, and employers will respond by hammering the employees, rather than by cleaning up their practices.
Comment Rescue, The Voter Fraud Fraud Dept. 2
I’ve been distracted by computer problems for the past few days (you can read about them at Geekazine) and have put off responding to this comment, from which I’ve excerpted the opening sentence. I’m promoting it because, in my view, it deserves the plain light of day:
Mississippi has more registered voters than residents is that not a problem?
Startpage is your friend.
- The U. S. Census reports Mississippi’s 2009 population as slightly less than three million.
- As of 2004, the most recent year for which I could find voting registration figures, as opposed to voting turnout figures, the voter roles totaled slightly more than 1,500,000. I rather doubt that the voter rolls have more than doubled since then.
- Mississippi’s turnout in the recent election was slightly under 800,000.
I have not argued and will not argue that keeping accurate voter records is not a good thing.
Nevertheless, the right-wing hysteria over voter fraud is a redstate herring.
It is simply not true that large numbers individual persons are registering fraudulently in order to throw elections.
The voter fraud fraud is the spiritual and intellectual bastard child of the poll tax and the literacy test–Sunday go-to-meeting clothes on a strategy to keep the poor, the downtrodden, the dispossessed from having a public voice.
Elections are stolen in the counting room, not in the voting room.
Facebook Frolics 0
Given the stuff that students do and say every day, this does rather seem to be an overreaction by the school system.
Payne said she was pressured to resign over the e-mail; the district said she volunteered.
A suit is working its way through the court system.
Stray Question 0
If someone is going to click “Not Sure” in one of those newspaper poll thingees, why would he or she even bother to click?
It’s Kind of Like Running into a Cop Car 0
Going from running into the dock to being in the dock:
Charges have been filed.
And justly so. It’s dangerous enough out there without adding stupid to the mix.
The Rich Are Different from You and Me 1
They get a “Get Out of Jail” card.
Martin Joel Erzinger will not be charged with a felony because “Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger’s profession,” according to District Attorney Mark Hurlbert.
Afterthought: A hit-and-run can have some pretty serious job implications too.
Via the Wage Slave.
Q. What Are “the Whirries”? 0
A. What the external hard drive on my file server has got.
Now I know why I was motivated yesterday to order a new 2TB external hard drive from Tiger.
I use it primarily for backing stuff up. All that is uniquely stored on it is the complete F-Troop and the complete Meet the Gimp, which I put there so I could watch them from any computer on the network.
I’m downloading the Meet the Gimp right now.
The Immaturing of NASCAR 0
From time to time, after I finish the Cheerios box, I find myself reduced to reading the NASCAR coverage in the local rag.
Back when I was a young ‘un, back in the days of cars of wood and men of steel, back when persons actually knew what a “hemi” is, stock car racing was about winning races with the best car and driver. The cars were stock: you could drive one to the race, then drive it in the race.
Now the cars are as far from “stock” as they can be, and racing seems to be about causing your opponent to crash. Items like this are far too common:
They met in the backstretch. Gordon shoved Burton before they clutched and grabbed each other as series officials separated them.
It’s turned into pro wrestling without the clever scripting.
Old Tea, New Bags 0
Gary Younge, in the Guardian, states over the obvious, but does so quite well. A nugget:
Having a name helps. It has offered a political identity to a significant number of people who were either not active or might not have understood themselves to be in any way connected. That name has helped reorient the stated priorities of the right away from social issues and towards fiscal ones. But this is no more than the old whine in new bottles.
From Three Card Monte to Bait and Snatch 0
I think it’s called “diversification”:
The Cacsos say they never missed a subsequent payment, so they were horrified when the bank decided the smaller payments weren’t enough and foreclosed on their modest Long Beach home.
Via Atrios.
Twi-lite 0
One hopes that this will do for the Twilight series what Airplane did to the Airport series:
Via Kung Fu Monkey.