Boise
Idaho
windsurfing
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Politics
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Economics
unraveling
30.June.2011
How Grover Norquist drove us into a bathtub
Given the choice between a selfish little weasel who has managed to
hypnotize the GOP into a lockstep denial of the need to actually pay for
the things we've already bought, and
the
Governor of Massachusetts, I'll go with the latter.
"For nearly a decade, our federal government paid for two wars and a
costly prescription drug benefit with borrowed money. Our government
paid for the Bush tax cuts with borrowed money. Now, after exhausting
the budget surplus left by the Clinton administration, the only spending
Republicans are willing to discuss cutting is spending that helps the
poor and vulnerable—meaning anything that does not touch the interests
of large corporations and the very rich. Last December, Republican
hard-liners held hostage benefits for people out of work in exchange for
an agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for those who make a million
dollars or more a year. Last month, many of the same lawmakers rallied
to protect special tax benefits for oil companies that have made record
profits on high gas prices."
And it could well get worse before it gets better, if it gets better.
Taxes may be the price "we" pay for civilization, but the program to
have someone else pay is very popular.
29.June.2011
Accounting not her strong suit
Or, as the executive director of a consumer health care advocacy group
put it, "she's giving hypocrisy a bad name." Turns out Bachmann's
hubby's medical practice has been doing ok,
"collecting
payments under the Minnesota's Medicaid program every year for the
past six years."
Damn those welfare rolls!
This would help explain why in spite of the wide-ranging and
entertaining selection at hand, Republican voters
apparently
lack enthusiasm for their presidential contenders. Plus, it's hot,
and there are other things to do. Check back in a year.
28.June.2011
Our life on earth
Another fine piece in Rolling Stone, this by Al Gore:
Climate of Denial Can science and the truth withstand the
merchants of poison? It remains to be seen.
"All things are not equally true. It is time to face reality. We ignored
reality in the marketplace and nearly destroyed the world economic
system. We are likewise ignoring reality in the environment, and the
consequences could be several orders of magnitude worse. Determining
what is real can be a challenge in our culture, but in order to make
wise choices in the presence of such grave risks, we must use common
sense and the rule of reason in coming to an agreement on what is
true."
Helpfully, he's got a 5 step plan for individuals (summarized briefly
here):
-
Become an advocate for solving the crisis, starting with something
simple: speak up whenever the subject of climate arises.
-
Deepen your commitment by making consumer choices that reduce energy use
and reduce your impact on the environment.
-
Join an organization committed to action on this issue.
-
Contact your local media when they put out claptrap on climate—and
let them know you're fed up with their stubborn and cowardly resistance
to reporting the facts of this issue.
-
Don't give up on the political system. Make it do the right thing.
Definitely worth the read.
Home of the whopper
I'm not laughing, I'm just saying:
Politifact's
scorecard on Michele Bachmann is 1 true, 2 half-true, 5 barely true,
11 false and 7
pants
on fire. It's not just the lying, it's the bald-faced hypocrisy of
decrying
government aid while taking it that gets me. Integrity fail.
The Republican Party probably sees her as useful in an attack dog role,
and easily expendable, but I have to wonder if the Tea Party types
rallying behind her are as credulous as it would seem.
Tell us more, Norm
The effort to recall Idaho's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom
Luna, faced pretty much insurmountable hurdles in terms of collecting
signatures, and having any hope of getting enough votes to kick him out.
And then... his pal, Governor Butch Otter would get to appoint his
replacement?
On the other hand, the effort to enable Idaho to vote on the widely
criticized "reform" measures Luna and others cooked up succeeded, and
we will have a chance to vote on the three bills the Legislature
just passed (even though the laws are having an "emergency" run between
now and the 2012 election).
It's not too surprising that Luna would take a recall effort personally,
and likewise that he'd lash out at his critics by saying
they
made it personal; what's more public school than "I know you are,
but what am I" after all?
The Republican Party in the state has no reason to take it personally,
however, and while
the
press release from its chairman, Norm Semanko
could have been gracious and assured, that's not really his style. He's
more of the fiddle-dee-dee nasty dancing leprechaun approach,
celebrating the "huge blow to the anti-education reform establishment":
"The Union leadership's efforts to use scare tactics and spread
misinformation in order to maintain the status quo and to place Union
interests ahead of the true recipients of public education, the
students, have failed in Idaho."
Not to put too fine a point on it, but public education in Idaho is not
synonymous with the current Superintendent; we have other people quite
capable of doing the job (and some who have actual experience in the
field, rather than just good friends in the party).
But more interesting than the chortling was this very strange sentence
attributed to Semanko:
"We are grateful that the efforts we engaged in were successful in
beating back the recall petitions."
What efforts would those have been exactly, to "beat back" a legal
effort to collect signatures of voters wanting to recall an elected
official?
27.June.2011
The battle for liberty right here in your backyard
It's that gal with the Bunsen Burner eyes, featured by Matt Taibbi in
Rolling Stone:
Michele
Bachmann's Holy War.
"You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's
success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger."
Is it OK if we quietly roll our eyes at teh crazy, called by
You-Know-Who to rise out of obscurity, and in "just over 10 years from
small-town PTA maven to serious presidential contender"? Taibbi might
just be entertaining the possibility for its literary potential, but no
matter that it beggars the imagination; stranger things have happened,
and she comes from the state that elected Jesse Ventura its
governor.
"Bachmann's entire political career has followed this exact same pattern
of God-speaks-directly-to-me fundamentalism mixed with pathological,
relentless, conscienceless lying. ... She is at once the most
entertaining and the most dangerous kind of liar, a turbocharged cross
between a born bullshit artist and a religious fanatic, for whom lying
to the infidel is a kind of holy duty."
All serving a single-minded purpose: "getting herself elected is pretty
much the only thing she has accomplished in politics," having "never
passed a piece of meaningful legislation" in either Minnesota's state
Senate or the U.S. Congress.
26.June.2011
Labor for less
China's got a bridge they want to sell California. Seriously. Actually,
it was bought and sold 5 years ago, and now it's
soon
to be delivered. Some folks aren't too happy with yet another huge
outsourcing of American might, but the steel industry mostly left a
while ago. And then there's this little anecdote about one of the 3,000
workers on the job in China:
"Pan Zhongwang, a 55-year-old steel polisher, is a typical Zhenhua
worker. He arrives at 7 a.m. and leaves at 11 p.m., often working seven
days a week. He lives in a company dorm and earns about $12 a day.
"'It used to be $9 a day, now it's $12,' he said Wednesday morning,
while polishing one of the decks for the new Bay Bridge. 'Everything is
getting more expensive. They should raise our pay.'"
Seek and ye shall find
Virginia Heffernan's headline was
Google's War on Nonsense, which may be slightly too kind. So-called
"content farms" are misnamed, since they're not farming content, but
rather content-like verbiage (same as "nonsense"), designed to obtain
search engine attention and page views from unwary "readers" (who won't
read, because there's nothing to read) thereby collecting revenue
from unwary advertisers.
How little attention does one have to pay to anything about this for it
to make sense? It doesn't make sense, it's just a way to make money,
just as parasites that don't debilitate or destroy their hosts make
metabolism without really working at it.
I don't care what the Federal Trade Commission's anti-trust
investigation digs up, I'm all for Google's effort to wave their magic
algorithm and clean out the useless pond scum of the internet. They made
this thing useful to begin with, and we need them to control the
weeds.
Maybe Google should be a public utility, what do you think?
23.June.2011
Speaking of the Boise River...
Just responded to an
Idaho Rivers United
action alert, with
an email to my congressman, Mike Simpson:
"I'm writing about HR 2018, and hoping you will vote NO on this bill to
weaken environmental protection for our country's water.
"Boise used to have an open sewer running through the middle of town.
Now the Boise River and its Greenbelt are a scenic attraction and the
subject of considerable (and deserved) civic pride. Yesterday morning I
went up to Lucky Peak Reservoir on the Boise River and went windsurfing,
something I've been enjoying here for 28 years, confident that the only
thing I had to worry about when I fell in was how cold the water was,
not what's in it.
"The Clean Water Act has been a fantastic success for this country.
Please cast your vote to continue that success, not dismantle it."
The bill, named the
Clean
Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011, co/sponsored by 31
Republicans and 4 Democrats, proposes to "amend the Federal Water
Pollution Control Act to preserve the authority of each State to make
determinations relating to the State's water quality standards, and for
other purposes."
Because, 50 standards for clean water will work so much better than one?
Because the Clean Water Act is suddenly too heinous to continue, after
40 years of success?
No, I don't think so.
22.June.2011
Sail on
I was singing and sailing on the lake this morning, the opening day
of my 28th season windsurfing. It was better-than-average filled in,
perfectly powered for my 6.0. First day of "hot" weather in the
neighborhood, forecast for the mid-90s, a lovely sunrise decorated with
little cumulus puffballs melting into virga. Sunshine and (just one)
brisk splash in the lake. Nice.
Here's Bruce Robb calling it a morning, not too long after I'd had
enough fun, and about the time the main wave of kitesailors were hitting
the water.
It was all that.
Solstice
Poisoning the well
McKinsey&Company
now
says they were "measuring attitudes about healthcare reform," "not
intended as a predictive economic analysis of the impact of the
Affordable Care Act."
So when their survey says
"30 percent of respondents who said their companies offered employer
sponsored health insurance said they would 'definitely' or 'probably'
drop coverage in the years following 2014, the year the Affordable Care
Act takes full effect" that shouldn't be taken as "predictive."
Besides which what somebody in business in the middle of 2011 says about
what they're going to do or what will happen in "the years following
2014"—that is, more than three years from now—it's pretty
much blue sky and hot air, eh?
It is interesting to imagine that this "panel" the subcontractor, Ipsos
sampled from comprises "nearly 600,000 people" that they "maintain."
Or is it the panel they say they maintain? They
"wholly own" this "online panel," that's interesting. But be
assured,
"Ipsos has three different ISO certifications—ISO 9001 for Quality
management systems, ISO 20252 for Market, opinion and social research
and ISO 27001 for Information technology, security techniques and
Information security management systems."
ISO certified, what could possibly go wrong?
In carefully deprecating the predictive power of the study it
commissioned M&C advises that
"Employers' future actions will be determined by many considerations
[including] medical cost inflation, the details of new state health
insurance exchanges, employee attitudes toward compensation and
benefits, a company's ability to attract and retain talent, actions
taken by competitors and the state of the economy."
Other than that, they stand by their survey! The
Nancy-Ann
DeParle at the White House pushed back, and
Milt
Freudenheim reported in the NYT Business Day.
20.June.2011
Let's get caught up
As if. But in shuffling through a few dusty corners of those 373 folders
I have in Outlook, I came across one email from Howard Rheingold, and
looked to see what he's up to lately. Here he is on
his vlog, talking to a
12-year-old prodigy about what sort of things would constitute "digital
literacy."
"How to deploy attention" is a fascinating question, which she starts to
answer, but then gets distracted, talking about how yeah, she does do
quite a bit of multi-tasking, and they both seem to forget what the
question was.
I was going to say something else, but then the blasted computer locked
up, my first video crash? since the Win7 re-install after
my HD woe.
As Firefox would say "this is embarrassing." Guess I'll just stick to
Adora Svitak's TED talk,
What adults can
learn from kids.
"Ok, so [my parents] didn't tell us to become doctors, or lawyers
or anything like that but my dad did read to us about Aristotle and
Pioneer Germ Fighters
when lots of other kids were hearing "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and
Round." Well we did hear that one too, but Pioneer Germ Fighters
totally rules. I loved to write from the age of four..."
Let's get organized
In the last version of Outlook I got used to using, [alt]f,M would bring
up a GUI (but arrow-navigable) dialog for what folder to move a message
to. In Outlook2010, they dispensed with that, in favor of
[ctrl][shift]v which my fingers haven't memorized yet (but I'm
hoping this post will help them do). "Move" is readily accessibly in
the graphically adorned buttons along the top of the screen and when
GUI-clicked it offers the 10 most recently filed-to folders, or "other
folder," and it seemed like I wasn't hitting the "top 10" list very
often.
I have a lot of folders, so not a huge surprise, but still, seems like
my odds should be a little better.
Just counted 'em up: I have a tree of 373 folders under Mail,
which makes me think it's a little surprising I ever hit the top
10. I've got plenty of vertical space, could I make it the top 20, or
30? Some Outlook MVPs say
no,
you
can't.
Bummer.
19.June.2011
A go at healthcare insurance
Having left the cozy security of regular employment with health care
benefits most of a decade ago, but further than that from signing up for
Medicare, I have the privilege of experiencing a lot of the problems of
"the system" first-hand. I've got a fat collection of links to
interesting facts and opinions that I've been meaning to go through and
digest into an Informed Opinion worth expressing (on my blog, at least;
I'll admit that's a low bar). But it's complicated and other things have
come first.
When my annual "we jacked up your premium again!" letter arrived,
ahead of my May 1 renewal date, I finally decided I should so something
more than just complain about how big the increase was and look into
alternatives. How big was the increase? "Only" 37% this year, about the
same as last year's 36%, both lower than the nice, round 50%
increase in 2009 on top of 43% in 2008. The very first annual increase,
in 2007 was "only" 20%. In case you can't do that multiplication in your
head, let me help. From 2005 to 2011, my insurance premium went up
a total of 381%.
And not because I'm going to hell in a handbasket either. I am aging,
about a year's worth every 12 months, but I'd like to think I'm doing it
gracefully. In 6 years,
Regence BlueShield
had to process a total of
two, count 'em, two claims on my behalf, both for perfectly
ordinary, small amounts. (They totaled less than my new monthly premium
would have been if I hadn't changed plans.) It did occur to me that I
haven't been using enough medical services; are they concerned
that I'm not doing enough preventive care? Ha!
Anyway, when I called Regence, I learned that the plan I was on was
defunct; they weren't signing up new accounts, but I was grandfathered
in (with no pun intended on their part). A quote on the plans they ARE
writing these days was more attractive, and by doubling my deductible,
I could cut my premium by more than half. Without going into some gory
details about just how horribly bad Regence administrative functions are
working these days, the shorter version is that I switched to the new
plan with a simple phone call. (A month and a half later, I don't have
much of any details of exactly what all I signed up for, but hey, I'm
insured! And some "highlights" are readily available.)
Thanks to a late, useless, and poorly worded letter from their
underwriting department that showed up this month, I was motivated to
contact the insurance agent I'd worked with in 2005, and to go through
the process of applying with
Blue Cross.
Their administrative processes are working like greased lightning
at the moment, and I had a quote for 25 variations of 6 different plans
in less than 24 hours (via email, with a printed copy in my mailbox a
day later).
(In Idaho, Regence BlueShield of Idaho and Blue Cross of
Idaho are the only two insurance companies to choose from for
an individual health insurance policy, simplifying your purchasing
decision somewhat.)
Then today, I saw an item on the NYT site,
Seriously, Some Consensus About Health Care, and I thought wow, some
consensus would be great. I got as far as the first sub-head,
The Value of Competition, and the observation that
"If choosing among competing private plans on a government-regulated
exchange is a good idea for someone at age 50, why is it so horrific for
someone who is 70?"
Before I answer that question, let's consider whether choosing among
competing private plans on a government-regulated exchange (or, as now
in my and pretty much every other state, a government-restricted playing
field) is, in fact, a good idea for someone at age
50(-something).
I would submit that it isn't. It would be much better if a single
plan provided for reasonable insurance coverage for everyone, and was
coordinated through a single payer. We already have a nice name for
that, it's called Medicare, and I've been paying for it most of
my life, even though I've got another 9+ years to go before I'll get to
use it, if I should live so long.
Having helped Jeanette navigate "Medicare Advantage" plans, I can
tell you that that's a muddled and unproductive mess, too. She's gone
back to "plain old" Medicare, and cast her own vote on the "Part D"
prescription drug benefit; it wasn't worth the trouble.
I don't want a "free market" supplying my water, transportation network,
sewer, trash pickup, electricity, or health care. Some things are too
essential to be left to a profit motive to supply to the highest
bidders.
18.June.2011
Who says Republicans don't have a sense of humor?
It's seriously twisted, but you can't deny this is funny:
the Louisianans hired an
Obama
impersonator for the Republican Leadership Conference down there,
and the guy just lit right into all of them. And then ...
act like that didn't just happen:
"The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince R. Priebus,
took the stage immediately after the impersonator. He did not make
reference to what had just taken place on stage and instead turned the
conversation back to policy and politics."
The GOP's deep-seated problem with bigotry
It was Idaho's good fortune that Bryan Fischer decided to move to
Mississippi. We can't apologize to them, since we had nothing to do with
where he decided to hunker down, but we can offer condolences.
Fischer's vitriolic and indefatigable bigoted spew provides his own hell
on earth but sadly, it's not a private hell. It's all too public, as
People for the American Way have documented in their article,
The GOP's Favorite
Hate-Monger: How the Republican Party Came to Embrace Bryan
Fischer.
"Meet Bryan Fischer, a Right Wing extremist who tirades against gays and
lesbians, Muslims, progressives, members of the military and President
Obama. Prominent Republican leaders and conservative activists
increasingly lend undeserved credibility to him, reflecting the GOP's
embrace of the Right Wing's escalating radicalism."
What's most disappointing is that the GOP presidential hopefuls have
somehow got the notion that they have to pay obeisance to this creep,
as if the basest of the right-wing base would waver in their opposition
to Obama come 2012? It's conceivable, I suppose, that they might stay
home if the Republican candidate doesn't pass their litmus test.
Perhaps there's reason to support Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination:
Fischer's brand of "Christianity" is nothing if not narrow, and it
doesn't extend any hands of friendship to Latter Day Saints:
"Despite the Constitution's clear pronouncement against religious tests
for public office, Fischer questions whether a Mormon candidate
like Mitt Romney should be allowed to serve as president. He urges
people to ask Romney if 'he embrace[s] the fundamentals of LDS
theology' in order to 'let the American people decide whether they want
somebody with those convictions sitting in the Oval Office.'"
Double dipping
Once upon a summer, I worked in an organic chemistry lab sorting out
something or other about oxazirenes (which I guess didn't catch on to
great shakes: it takes a couple tries to convince Google that's a word).
After mixing some stuff together and I don't know, cooking it a while?
Or just stirring? I'd take it down and get an NMR scan of the stuff,
delivered as a paper plot from which we'd infer things about how the
hydrogen atoms were feeling, and from that, what sort of reaction
products we'd ended up with.
NMR stands for
nuclear magnetic resonance, a form of spectroscopy used for chemical
analysis. I have no idea what the machine at the University of Idaho
looked like; safe to say it wasn't a beast like this Varian machine with
a 21.2 Tesla magnet (but thanks to Martin Saunders and Wikipedia for the
fun photo). These days, there's an "I" in the name, for Imaging, and
because Nuclear makes a lot of people nervous, they dropped that (even
though—shazam—all the atoms in your body have nuclei)
which leaves us with MRI,
Magnetic
Resonance Imaging, and a lot of very cool pictures of people's
insides. MRI uses big magnets, and none of the ionizing radiation
stuff.
Computed tomography on the other hand (which used to be "axial," making
for a nice acronym of "CAT" scan), uses a big old dose of ionizing
radiation, about a year's worth of the old, relatively low-dose chest
X-rays. One CT scan is like getting a chest X-ray every day for a year.
Now that's going nuclear on your butt (or more likely, your head,
or abdomen).
All this comes to mind reading that
Medicare
claims show overuse for CT scanning, with quite a number of people
getting two scans in a single day, something that radiologists say is
rarely necessary.
A suggestion for the next time you're headed into the scanner: ask the
doctor if the plan is for just one scan, and if not, why not.
17.June.2011
Religion and public schools, the first time around
Stumbled across
The
Lord is Not on Trial Here Today on PBS recently, set the DVR to
record it and watched it this evening. It's a remarkable story that was
slightly before my time, and gives me a lot of admiration for the woman
who was the driving force behind the case of
McCollum
v. Board of Education, the landmark case in the separation of church
and state in public schools in this country.
Vashti McCollum
died
in 2006 at the age of 93, not long after the film was made; the
interviews with her in her 90s are a delight.
60 years on, it's hard to imagine what it was like to live under the Red
Scare, McCarthyism, and the post-war cultural uniformity that spawned
Levittown,
let alone to be villified for not believing in God. A 1-hour film can't
really convey all that either, but it does at least remind us that there
was such a time.
Welcome to the 21st century
and your holiday
tour
of the Fukushima Daiichi site. Please keep the bus windows closed,
and when we're outside walking, keep up with the group. Now let's go
over the instruction on "how to wear a hard hat" again, shall
we?
Afterwards, we'll be off to Vienna for
next
week's Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety.
It's been pushed to the back pages of the news (because of, um,
more important issues?), but conditions at Daiichi remain
"very
serious."
If you're getting away from it all for some R&R in the wild woods
this summer, you can also contemplate this thought
from
the "principle water investigator" of a company that sells
filtration (for some, but not all the hazards you might encounter):
"You cannot ever drink fresh water no matter where you are on Earth
without filtering it. ... Bottom line, filter your water at home,
filter it wherever you are."
That's his company's bottom line, certainly, but still, makes one
a little queasy.
15.June.2011
Maybe some Ritalin would help?
So the facilitator who Tom Luna hired to get his Students Come First
Technology Task Force off the ground suggests that in order to respect
your colleagues' time and effort, participants should be punctual,
and
"To the degree that it's possible, I would encourage you all to turn off
your technology and stay focused on what you're discussing at hand. It
will enable you to contribute in a much more significant and meaningful
way. There are breaks built into all the agendas so that you can check
in with your office, but please be present during the committee
meetings."
But Tom Luna gets a big fat F in the "plays well with others" category
on opening day, setting the example for the rest of the class to
feel
free to ignore anything the facilitator says. If you're important
enough. Or if gosh, this thing is just sooo
interesting.
"Luna viewed his iPad during much of the 45 minutes he spent in Monday's
Online Learning Implementation subcommittee."
"Reform" = get rid of teachers
It's got nothing to do with "local control," you can bet on that.
It's all about transferring funds.
Dan
Popkey's rundown of the technology task force being run by Idaho's
Superintendent of Public Instruction describes one district
superintendent's plans being scuttled because he hadn't read the fine
print of
SB
1184 closely enough: "online course" means "the instructor is not
physically located at the school or place in which the student is
receiving instruction."
That looks to leave the state-funded Idaho Digital Learning Academy
scrambling, too: the for-profit vendors of online courses will be
claiming some of their students, and the funding that follows them. One
of the task force members is the regional vice president of a
for-profit, Insight Schools, and he's big
on the "opportunity."
"It's been hard to come into a state and compete with subsidy," Cliff
Green said, referring to IDLA. "Now, whoever has the best product will
win."
As long as they don't let teachers too near their students.
The other education news in today's Statesman was above the
front-page fold,
parents
pan kindergarten plan in Meridian, where the parents (and others)
who voted recently said no to a supplemental levy, and one of the
cost-saving ideas was to reduce busing expenses by having alternate day
kindergarten. "Our" kindergartener is a generation removed (and he's in
Washington, besides) so it won't rile our household, but seriously?
Full-day kindergarten, two days a week for some, and three for others,
that's the plan you came up with?
Among the sampling of public sentiment, bringing up the rear, there's
the "education policy analyst" of the Idaho Freedom Foundation,
Briana LeClaire, with the chipper observation that Idaho schools have a
chance to "rethink the way we do schools," with—you guessed
it—more technology in the classroom, such as letting children use
computers in the morning and work with teachers "to do the fun stuff in
the afternoon." (Presumably she wasn't talking about kindergarten, but
who knows?) LeClaire's credentials include a B.A. in English, a short
stint on the IFF Board, and being on the Board of the National Coalition
for Public School Options, so I'm sure she's up to snuff on fun
stuff.
Update:
Thanks to Sharon Fisher's
comment
on Eye on Boise, noting that back in February,
the
Idaho Statesman's staff take on Luna's modifications to his
legislative proposal would give districts "leeway" for
"blended courses that include in-person instruction, if the majority is
online. They could work together through the state's network or hire
private companies to host the classes."
So, more bait and switch?
14.June.2011
Where in the world is Mitt Romney('s dwelling)?
Let's gauge his commitment the good old-fashioned way, by money. There's
the $12.5M home (at least it was when he bought it) in La Jolla,
California, which I have to say is a really nice place to have a $12.5M
home. A year after buying his place where he could hear the waves, they
cashed in the Belmont, Massachusetts (for $3.5M) and moved into son
Tagg's basement. Supposedly.
Last July, the Romneys bought an $895,000 attached townhouse in Belmont,
on the grounds of the McLean Mental Hospital, which sounds kind of
interesting. Thing is, Mitt kept voting in Massachusetts as if he were
still dwelling there and it were the center of his domestic, social, and
civil life. Which sounds a lot like ...
voter fraud. Which, last we checked, Republicans all feel is just
wrong.
Has the GOP lost its mind?
Michelle Goldberg is
just
asking, on The Daily Beast.
"Here are things that Republicans suggested eliminating or privatizing
in last night's debate: FEMA, NASA, the EPA, the Federal Labor Relations
Board, Medicaid and food stamps. Herman Cain promised not to appoint any
Muslims who want to kill Americans to his cabinet. Michele Bachmann
supports states rights on gay marriage, but also supports a
constitutional amendment outlawing it. Newt Gingrich faults big
government for the lamentable absence of manned stations on the moon.
Rick Santorum wants to 'a system of discipline' to 'punish' gay
soldiers, which suggests that his problem with pornographic Google
results is not likely to abate. Tim Pawlenty views Iraq as 'one of the
shiniest examples of success in the Middle East.'"
(Did he really say "shiniest"?!)
The Beast has
a roundup of debate recapping, take your pick.
Michael
Medved brings the happy news that Michele Bachman's ascendancy will
keep Sarah Palin on her random bus ride to nowhere and out of the race.
He seems pretty smitten though, and might not be a reliable source:
"... Bachmann looked simply smashing—radiant, self-assured,
elegantly understated in her tailored, severe black suit with the
luminous white blouse, simultaneously formidable and friendly, with her
piercing, pale blue eyes igniting for the camera like Bunsen Burners
every time she spoke."
"She's got Bunsen Burner eyes," sounds like a catchy tune.
Selective quoting from the Death Star
I guess the basic talking points must be running out of gas (it is
getting nigh on summer, and hard to hold people's attention, after all)
when the Speaker of the House has to resort to misquoting the
blogosphere. RJ Eskow had to send a
Dear
John letter to clear things up. Someone in Boehner's press corp
liked RJ Eskow's lead sentence on
June
10th,
"When it comes to jobs, sometimes it seems as if the White House is from
Mars and the middle class is from Venus."
but didn't read as far as the next sentence:
"And Republicans act like they're from the Death Star, patrolling the
economy in their Imperial Cruisers directing laser blasts at every job
initiative they can find."
But apart from the jolly sci fi redux, we've still got this economic
malaise problem, with what looks like gridlock and leadership failure
from back east, with
"the Republicans are now running to both the left and right of the White
House on jobs, emphasizing populist themes while pushing pro-corporate
policies."
The populism is of course window dressing, with the
"Plan for America's Job Creators" the actual policy intention. Cut
taxes (definitely) and spending (maybe) and all will be well. In the
Speaker's own words, when asked what was new about the plan:
"Just because we proposed it in the past doesn't mean it was not a good
idea."
Riiiight. And, um, just because you proposed it in the past doesn't mean
it was (or is) a good idea, either.
13.June.2011
Here's looking at you
Looking at a photo on Facebook yesterday, I was wondering who one of the
people in it was, but she wasn't on the list of people "In this photo."
Not too surprising, since not all photos get tagged, and not everyone in
them gets tagged when they are. Maybe she wasn't a Facebook user? (Yeah,
there are still a few people who haven't been sucked in yet.) But there
were also a couple people listed as in the photo who I could see were
most certainly not in the photo. And the little frame popping up
for such names was on a face-free portion of the photo, such as shown
here.
Nick Bilton's piece in the NYT Bits blog provides partial explanation:
Facebook
changes privacy settings to enable facial recognition,
automagically!
"Facebook recently began changing its users' privacy settings to
automatically turn on a facial recognition feature that detects a user's
face in an image. Once the person's face is detected, the Web site then
encourages Facebook friends to tag them. Facebook introduced this
feature last year for its North American users; it is now rolling it out
globally.
"Facebook also doesn't give users the option to avoid being tagged in a
photo; instead, people who don't want their name attached to an image
must untag themselves after the fact. ..."
The other part of the explanation is that the facial recognition is, how
shall we say, "not 100% reliable."
Tax exempt no more
From A SONG IN THE NIGHT INC to the ZONTA CLUB, the IRS'
revocation
of organizations' tax-exempt status listing includes 1,407 Idaho
non-profits, among more than a quarter million nationally. It seems
they didn't file their annual reports for 2007, 2008 and 2009.
If some organization you know and love is on the list and wants to know
how to get off, check the
FAQ
list regarding revocation for non-filing.
The sort-of good news is that small groups (gross receipts of $50,000 or
less) can get reinstated for a reduced application fee of $100, rather
than the typical $400.
The annual filing requirement for most of these small groups is pretty
lightweight:
the
Form 990-N "e-Postcard." But you have to do it every year.
Updated link, years later:
Revoked?
Reinstated? Learn More
11.June.11
Strong man rules
The Idaho Statesman forgot to put SPOILER ALERT in front of its editor's
note atop
the
editorial from the Idaho Falls Post Register, where we see
that Speaker of Idaho's House Lawerence Denney feels there is no need
for an ethics committee investigation into the actions of State Affairs
Committee Chairman Tom Loertscher (R-Iona) ... or, for that matter,
Denney himself.
Nothing to see here, just move along.
A bill providing for public hearings before abandoning county roads was
printed in the Ways and Means Committee (whose chair, JoAn Wood, "has
long been involved in legislative attempts to protect public access to
county roads"), and then assigned to the Transportation Committee where
it, um, belonged? And then ...
"Wood said she next checked with the Transportation Committee secretary
to find out when a public hearing would be scheduled. Wood said the
secretary told her HB 246 had been moved to State Affairs, the committee
chaired by Loertscher.
"Knowing that only the speaker of the House can order such a move, Wood
said she asked Denney why he had taken the bill from Smith and given it
to Loertscher.
"Wood said Denney told her that Loertscher came to him and requested the
bill be moved to State Affairs. Loertscher told Davis he needed to work
on the bill and bring it back next year. The bill died without a public
hearing."
Ironically.
But all of that would just be beaucratic folderol were it not for the
fact that Loertscher had a personal interest in the bill he sucked into
his committee in order to administer the quiet strangulation that is the
prerogative of committee chairs. There are some county roads on his
property which he's claiming are "actually private," and not having this
law saves him the trouble of involving the public.
No need for an ethics investigation in this matter: the Speaker of the
House already knows there are none to be found.
10.June.2011
Now do we get our $billion back?
The case against former N.S.A. employee Thomas Drake
just about
evaporated after the government decided to reduce its 10-count
indictment for obstructing justice, lying to investigators and what-not
to a plea deal where he'd admit he illegally held classified documents
at home.
We don't know if the reluctance to let a jury see some of the allegedly
classified material was based on it being super-duper top secret, or the
chances the jury would find for the defendant. The public's interest is
outlined by this:
Drake "[shared] information about N.S.A. technology with a reporter for
The Baltimore Sun in 2006 and 2007: the agency was rejecting a $3
million in-house program called ThinThread in favor of a $1-billion-plus
contractor-run program called Trailblazer."
The denial that the prosecution was designed to deter whistle-blowing,
is hard to believe, given that no evidence can or will be presented to
substantiate such a claim.
There's more background and reference links (including one to
the
Baltimore Sun story archived by CommonDreams.org)
in the Wikipedia
article on ThinThread.
How do people work?
No idea if the story's true, but the way I heard it, when JFK was asked
why he was able to keep his cool during the campaign while Richard Nixon
often seemed flustered, he pointed out that he didn't have as much to
think about in preparation, whereas Nixon had to start from scratch in
the morning, asking himself "how do people walk?"
That came to mind while reading about
Newt
Gingrich's aides quitting en masse, apparently in large measure
because he and Callista went off for a two-week cruise in the Greek
isles and didn't take any of them with him.
"I don't know how other people work," Mr. Gingrich said in an interview
on Wednesday. "To have a major breakthrough in policy, you have to be
able to stop and think."
Looks like he's going to have plenty of time to stop and think his way
through major breakthroughs, undisturbed by the pressing banalities of
the campaign trail. How much longer do you think it'll take for him to
accept what is pretty much obvious to everyone else?
9.June.2011
15 books and stuff
I'm not looking to change my "professional life" these days, and nothing
jumped to mind for a prompt to "share the book that most influenced my
professional life." Still, this list of
15 books that could change your (professional) life seemed like an
interesting collection, with a number of things I haven't read.
Orbiting the Giant Hairball, who could resist that?
Dale Carnegie's classic How to Win Friends and Influence People
was a book that served my dad well. I've got a copy of Steve Krug's
Don't Make Me Think (I think), and, um, I should read that
sometime. I think.
The collection came out of a "nonprofit blog carnival," whatever that
might be, and even though my blog's definitely "nonprofit," they
probably didn't mean that kind. The page on gettingattention.org has
links spraying off every which way, including
Tobi
Johnson's blog entry about the Hairball, in which a scan
turned up "tiny little tome," "quick read" and the author "started out
in the corporate behemoth that is Hallmark Cards as a graphic artist and
had risen over the years to become an in-house leadership guru of
sorts."
So maybe I won't get to that one, but some of the others?
8.June.2011
Jiggedy jig
In 1975 when I was considering moving to (north) Idaho, my prospecting
trip was put off first by timing (it would have been Memorial Day when I
arrived to visit the campus in Moscow) and then by the color and line
weight on the highway map I had. US 95 looked thin and squiggly, and
not-so-good for the means of transportation I was using, hitchhiking.
300 miles from Boise up to Moscow on a two-lane road? That sounded like
a whole day, at least.
That was back when I did have a day or two to spare, actually, and in
retrospect, what a stupid idea to let that chance go by. But fate led me
to Moscow all the same, my first visit and my arrival coincided that
August, and I've had many chances to make up for the omission, since.
Those good old days came to mind during our 6-day weekend in north
Idaho, visiting family, digging and planting in the Palouse, a little
home repair, a day trip to downtown Spokane, a 15 mile bike loop around
Paradise Ridge. We've made US 95 and Idaho 55 from New Meadows to Boise
a well-worn path, familiar in its remarkably varied elements, but
there's always something surprising and beautiful to be seen.
This time it was the astounding greenness of it all, from bottom
to top (except where it was still snow-frosted in the mountains). On
June 8th, only the cheat grass along the roadside in Riggins was showing
signs of brown. Well that and a couple of rivers: looks like something
blew out in the Salmon drainage in last night's thunderstorms, and the
main was running high, brown and loggy. Don't see any news yet, but
maybe some of
the
logjam from April came apart? Or something new, always something new
in the work of cutting canyons.
Whoop-de-doo Palouse, down to the Clearwater (also a little muddy), up
along Lapwai Creek, the Winchester grade, the Camas prairie (its
namesake flower painting pastures blue), White Bird, the Salmon, Little
Salmon, Bear Creek, Payette Lake and McCall, the North Fork and main
Payette canyons and up and over Horseshoe Bend hill. It is indeed thin
and squiggly, and a fine way to spend a day.
7.June.2011
Tempest in a teapot?
That's
Stanley
Fish's take on the contest between Idaho State University's
administration and faculty. From his academic perch, it seems just
another of those "petty academic squabbles" that come up from time to
time, not the "holy war waged by the forces of good and evil" that he
says the "guardians of faculty prerogatives" are claiming.
He does provide some history of how we got to this juncture, where the
very notion of "shared governance" is either inexplicably "bizarre,"
or a target ripe for derision, and "corporate governance" (otherwise
known as authoritarian hierarchy) is assumed to be the way everything
should be managed, and the purpose of education is training for
corporate employment. Fish provides a brief outline of events still
unfolding at ISU, which have included the faculty senate giving the
president a vote of "no confidence" and the president dissolving the
senate in return.
Fish has been around the block in more than a few universities, and
seems to have made a success of it, spending his effort on something
other than tilting at windmills. It helps to have a career during times
of expanding resources, rather than contraction. But the word of wisdom
I heard decades ago seems apt enough: the battles in academia are fierce
because the stakes are so small.
Some stakes may be; but to the person whose livelihood is put on the
line, one should expect a fight with any weapons at hand.
In the comments,
from
T.L. Moran of Idaho:
"All this [consideration of whether faculty and/or administration members
are suited to their jobs] is moot, however, in Idaho, where higher ed
has been cut and cut again since long before the current Recession
started. K-12 is already done for. The state is effectively positioning
itself to be the low-wage third-world leader amongst the 50 states,
raising its people only to the level of work in such sweatshops as 'call
centers,' and paying them only enough to live in poverty."
A wide margin of error
They're still trying to sort out the Becquerels and the Sieverts
in comparing Fukushima and Chernobyl. Was the former 10% of the latter,
or 20, or 40? Somewhere in that range. And yes, three of the 6 reactors
did experience fuel meltdown. As
the
NYT update concludes,
"Officials cautioned that there was a wide margin of error involved in
both calculations."
Now that's some lame bandwidth
I can sympathize, having been limited to dialup speeds for some of
recent days. (Imagine having to choose whether following a link was
really worth the wait... and video? Fuhgeddaboudit.) But still,
you wouldn't guess how bad the time estimate could be to
"simply sign documentation."
Sign here ... and here ... and here ... aaaaand here ... and here ...
for 18
to 24 months, says the guy from Deutsche Bank.
"Bandwidth" came up a lot in the discussion, apparently bankers are
running short of the stuff. So many derivatives, so little time.
3.June.2011
Where's the beef, Mr. Luna?
Idaho's Superintendent of Public Instruction is using his bully pulpit
to threaten teachers against any sort of political activism, adding a
dollop of insult to the injurious suite of legislation he pushed through
this year's Legislature, attacking the teacher's union and providing for
"reform" to a less labor-intensive form of education.
In today's Idaho Statesman,
some
of the complaints Luna says he's received are trotted out, and I
have to say, it's a rather pathetic lot.
Circulating the Boise School Board's position paper in opposition to
Luna's bills sounds like appropriate communication to me. Teacher's
aren't supposed to discuss their own business? Is there something
magical that happens when their business becomes "political"?
But at least that claim at the top of the list has specificity and
substance, and isn't just "according to my daughter and her friends"
or "an unnamed sixth-grader at her child's bus stop."
Or a phone message from "Randy" who said he didn't "want to be accosted
at school" by recall petitioners. Me neither, Randy, and I don't want to
be accosted in my home, workplace, or public property by a
paranoid Superintendent of Public Schools with delusions of
grandeur.
But maybe that's just me.
And I already signed the recall (and referendum) petition(s), thanks for
asking.
Since our Superintendent is not a lawyer, he doesn't have to know what
"hearsay" is (let alone "double hearsay"). And since he's not a teacher,
the rules apparently don't apply to him:
"In response to a records request, [Meridian Superintendent Linda] Clark
provided a February email exchange between Rocky Mountain High School
teacher Shane Stevenson, who emailed Luna from his district account
praising Luna's plan.
"Luna replied: 'Would you be interested in testifying before the House
Education Committee next Tuesday, March 1, as to the benefits of the Pay
for Performance legislation?' ... "
2.June.2011
Spear phishing
That's what they're calling the
latest technological innovation in fraud:
using
friendly spoofed e-mails to get you to cough up something valuable.
Forget about wholesale phishing that's filling up your spam bucket, this
is coming . right . at . you.
If I get "an e-mail from [my] mother saying she needs [my] Social
Security number for the will she's doing," I'm going to be
very suspicious. "More like a traditional con game than a
technically sophisticated intrusion."
Whoops, there went another one
Last month was my 11th blogiversary. What a long strange trip it's been.
If following the chain of "raveling" links is too tiresome (surely it
would be), you can jump about by URL hacking the simple yyyymm pattern,
back to May, 2000, and all points between.
Just like then, it's iris time at Ft. Boise, cool and wet spring, or
no.
The Schaffer Butte tomato-signal still says "wait a bit," but it's June,
for heaven's sake. Put those tomatoes in the ground, already.
New school
Maine, one of the 20% of states that prohibit charter schools, is on
the verge of joining the two decade-long public school experiment the
rest of the country is conducting. The Bangor Daily News has
a
good, long article about the "best—or worst—idea ever,"
including some of the history that I didn't know about.
"Ray Budde, a University of Massachusetts education professor, began
talking about 'education by charter' in the 1970s, and in the 1980s he
proposed them as a way to support and encourage innovative teachers by
giving those teachers more responsibility and autonomy. But his idea was
to do that within existing public school districts, not separate from
them.
"The idea was taken up by Al Shanker, head of the American Federation of
Teachers, one of the largest teachers' unions in the country. He liked
the thought of giving teachers greater control and leadership
opportunities. He publicized—and popularized—the charter
idea. However, out in the public it soon morphed from a way to support
individual teachers to a way to create whole new schools.
There's enough variation in schools generally, but charter schools in
particular, that pretty much any research is bound to be equivocal, even
before proponents and opponents start picking it apart. Sooner or
later (and probably sooner), someone will observe that "we can't keep
doing what we're doing and expecting different outcomes." Just as we
can't expect change, in and of itself, to produce a better
outcome.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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