A quick look at five interesting stories that might be worth a little light weekend reading, especially if you are currently watching the Grizzlies game. You know, I hear that Joe Glenn is looking for a job again, and I don’t remember him losing three first round playoff games at home while he was at Montana. Is that too snarky?
Joe Posnanski, one of the nation’s best baseball writers, has a great piece up about George Steinbrenner as the Yankees owner finally steps down from control of the team.
I’m still trying to wrap my brain around this story in the New York Times, about six deep-sea divers who are working 70 stories underground, living in a tank that is 97% helium, trying to fix a 36 million gallon leak in one of the tunnels that supplies New York City with its water.
Love interesting technology? Check out Lifehacker’s Most Popular Top 10s of 2008, including 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks and 10 Easy Ways to Look Sharp.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about the tenure of Michelle Rhee, chancellor of D.C.’s public schools, but I have to say that I do admire this quotation: “The thing that kills me about education is that it’s so touchy-feely. People say, ‘Well, you know, test scores don’t take into account creativity and the love of learning.’ I’m like, ‘You know what? I don’t give a crap.’ Don’t get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don’t know how to read, I don’t care how creative you are. You’re not doing your job.”
Diarmuid O’Connell, VP of electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors, says that the Big Three automakers should not be able to convert Energy Independence and Security Act money into funds for the bailout: “It would be an enormous mistake to refashion the ATVM into a bailout. The original spirit and intent of the program is critical for the nation’s economic security – and the importance of the program is even greater given the harrowing economic climate.”
Okay, Facts in Six. Roger Ebert wrote a great blog post about the death of serious film criticism and a culture that is more interested in triviality than thoughtful writing about art: “The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.”
In light of the holiday, I thought I would take a moment to list a few of the things (some sentimental and others less important) that I am thankful for.
My decision to leave law school after 1 ½ days all those years ago. When I think about what teaching has meant to me and what kind of person might have left law school, I couldn’t be more thankful. Like every job, teaching has its moments of frustration, but there’s nothing I would rather do, and maybe nothing that I am better suited for. By extension, of course, I am thankful for the amazing students who have motivated me and taught me.
The friends who care about and inspire me. You know who you are, and I can’t imagine a better group of people to talk to, even if a few of us never seem to go beyond leaving messages on each other’s phones.
The absolutely amazing recipe for stuffing I came across the other night. Seriously, it might be number 2 on this list. J
Helena, MT. Sometimes I think this little city might have a few too many ghosts rattling about, but there’s no finer place for a late-night walk or an afternoon cup of coffee.
Amazon Prime. If you had told me ten years ago that I could have almost any published book delivered to my door for $4 overnight, I would have thought that you were crazy or that I had died and gone to heaven. Though my bank account doesn’t always feel so thankful, it’s hard to argue with that kind of convenience.
Google—the whole thing. Of course, since they probably know more about me than I do, I don’t need to post this.
That’s it. Though there is much more to be thankful for, I think this list will do for this Thanksgiving. I hope everyone has a great holiday, and enjoys some time off.
Under fire for his role in the near-collapse of Citigroup Inc., Robert Rubin said its problems were due to the buckling financial system, not its own mistakes, and that his role was peripheral to the bank’s main operations even though he was one of its highest-paid officials.
Nothing like accountability, is there? I wonder how I can get a job that pays over $100 million in ten years without being important to the decision-making operations of the corporation that hires me. Maybe I can just promise to lose $18 billion dollars.
"I really think that the biggest reason that more women who are Republicans don’t get into politics is because we are the pro-family party," Warburton said. "So many women with our conservative values are raising kids, and spending time with grandchildren and families. A trait of our party is that our number one priority is family."
This seems to raise a number of interesting questions. Does it mean that Representative Warburton herself is anti-family, choosing to run for and be elected to the Legislature? Her logic would seem to suggest that she is.
More importantly, for how long does the party that votes against the interests of children over and over get to claim to be the ‘pro-family party,’ just because they hate gay people and occasionally try to censor a book or two? At what point do they need to start supporting families with tax policies, adequately funded schools, and affordable health insurance?
Those, Representative Warburton, are the kinds of things that politicians who are pro-family really do.
I wish I could have gone to business school. I think it would have been interesting to sit in lectures discussing the cost-benefit-analysis of certain customer service choices. In particular, it would be interesting to learn about the world of online business, a magical place where some companies seem to have the technical skill and security knowledge to accept my credit card online but mysteriously lack the ability to accept cancellation of that service in the same way.
Recently, I have canceled three online services. I’m preparing for the Great Depression, Part 2, after all.
The Wall Street Journal gave me a soft sell about the value of their service and responded to my reason for canceling with a legitimate alternative, but when I persisted with my decision to cancel, they pulled out the ‘30 day’ free extension trick. I went down that road with them about 14 months ago, so I learned my lesson. Polite goodbye, one service down.
Canceling my online fax service with CallWave was very easy, no sell at all, just a cancellation. The only real drawback was that it felt like I was talking on a space phone to ‘Brian,’ who was located somewhere near Neptune. I hope it was my service he canceled.
And then there is XM radio, the bane of my online existence. I signed up with them two summers ago to catch Padres games, back when the Padres were worth listening to, and have fighting a two year battle with them to cancel my service. My credit card statement since September of 2006 looks like a miniature Verdun, with tiny incremental gains by each side in a battle for survival. I cancel; they counter with an unsolicited ‘free’ extension of my account that reverts to a charged one. I call and get them to refund months of unused service; months later, they bill me for the months I ‘didn’t pay’. At the moment, they seem to be routed, with no charges appearing for a whole month and their acquisition by Sirius complete, but I will remain vigilant.
The interesting part to me in this experience is the idea that some companies know that making cancellation more complicated, requiring a phone call that may or may not work, is worth the expense of having to pay people to process cancellations. America Online seemed to pioneer this strategy in the 90s, and almost everyone I know ended up paying them for months of services they didn’t use.
Online businesses, just be online. Let me cancel the same way I subscribed, and I might even come back some day.
When I saw the title of this video, I naively assumed that it referred to Santa and his elves, who are do to make an appearance shortly, but it turns out that the people coming are much more ominous than an old man breaking in homes across the world. “They” are gay people, bent on destroying your communities.
Far more terrifying to me than the threat of gays taking over my city government is the threat of these people producing more videos. Seriously, 8th graders with iMovie and a short story to adapt will make a more compelling production than this number.
In light of the passage of Proposition 8, I have wondered what the best response for people concerned about true equality under the law is. More often than not, it seems like we would be best served promoting the hate-filled bigotry that comes from organizations like the American Family Association. Who would want to be associated with these leeches, who profit from the pain of people denied the right to marry those the love?
The Onion, dead on: I may be a Christian, but it’s not like I’m one of those wacko "love your neighbor as yourself " types. God forbid! I’m here to tell you there are lots of Christians who aren’t anything like the preconceived notions you may have. We’re not all into "turning the other cheek." [...]
It turns out that my secular ways are responsible for the nation’s economic crisis, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger: It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, [...]
Minesota Public Radio has some great images of challenged ballots in the Senate recount, during which Al Franken has already gained 43 votes. Despite the Coleman campaign’s non-stop working of the refs before the game began, crying about fraud, it seems apparent that they intend to steal as many votes as they can. Consider these [...]
You decide: To the crack of the bat, the cadence of the quarterback and the thwack of a tennis racket, add a new element to America’s sports soundtrack — the shrieks, cries and shouts of N.B.A. players as they try to put the ball in the basket. In part, the emoting is designed to deceive, [...]
The only possible explanation for the spineless behavior of Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership today must be that Senator Lieberman owns a vast collection of Pat Geary-style photos of Harry Reid with live boys and dead girls. Demanding that Lieberman be stripped of his chairmanship was not about revenge for his actions, it was [...]
The indications are that Joe Lieberman will somehow retain his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee after a secret vote tomorrow by Senate Democrats. Why? Because Lieberman threatened Harry Reid: First, President-elect Obama told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he wanted Lieberman to stay in the Democratic caucus. Later, in a meeting with Senate [...]
