April, 2019 archive
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
Will Bunch struggles with Republicans’ crusade against dealing with, or even admitting the reality of, climate change.
Courted Disaster 0
Congressman Ro Khanna discusses Donald Trump’s anti-refugee policies.
Facebook Frolics 0
Molly Baker reports on the phenomenon that I might dub “Facebook blinders,” in which persons confuse their Facebook feeds with the Big Wide World. Here’s a bit:
And there’s the disconnect.
Liz Duffy of Radnor recently used the site to let friends know her 92-year-old father had died. “It was very helpful in getting the word out to a lot of people quickly,” she says. “But there were people I would have heard from and didn’t. And that’s when I realized I never told them.”
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Raise your children to be polite.
Thus passeth another day in the playgrounds of NRA Paradise.
The Seltzer King 0
David gets a telephone call from a fake IRS scammer during his show and decides to return the call.
Afterthought:
At a computer forum where I have participated for years, one of the regulars told of stringing along a phone scammer for about half an hour, and then revealing said stringathon. To his surprise, the caller responded, “But this was the only job I could find!”
A Pre-Existing Condition 0
Paul Krugman and Dick Polman differ on what precisely said pre-existing condition may be. Read them both and decide which one is correct.
Afterthought:
Their two diagnoses are not mutually exclusive.
Make TWUUG Your LUG 0
Learn about the wonderful world of free and open source. Use computers to do what you want, not what someone else wants you to do. Learn how to use GNU/Linux and its plethora of free and open source software to get stuff done with computers.
It’s not hard; it’s just different.
When: Monthly TWUUG meeting at 7:30 p. m. on the first Thursday of the month (April 4, 2019). Pre-meeting dinner at Chicago Uno, JANAF shopping center, 6:00 p. m. (map)
Who: Everyone in TideWater/Hampton Roads with interest in any/all flavors of Unix/Linux. There are no dues or signup requirements. All are welcome.
Where: Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital in Norfolk Training Room (map). (Wireless and wired internet connection available.) Turn right upon entering, then left at the last corridor and look for the open meeting room.
Chartering a Course of Disaster 0
The charter school movement originated out of good will as an attempt to fix struggling public schools on the cheap by allowing charter school operators to try new things.
That was the rationale, at least. Of course, it hasn’t fixed anything. Fixes cost money and “on the cheap” is never a good strategy; you do get what you pay for.
Instead, this “movement” has mutated from a hopeful fix into a con and a scam. In the course of a longer article about legal obstacles facing Pennsylvania school districts who want to fix failing charters (in a fix over fixing the fix), Lisa Haver tells the story of such charter gone bad:
Several Philadelphia Daily News stories reported that Aspira had filed phony receipts for contractors and diverted funds from the Renaissance schools to their other charters, a clear misuse of taxpayer funds.
To ice the cake, Pennsylvania’s charter school law makes shutting down the charter cons almost impossible.
Do please read the rest.
Skirting Disaster 0
Honest to Betsy, you can’t make this stuff up.