Tag: schools

Rosencrantz and Shorties Are Undead

Volcanoes!: Ok, the Eyjnafjallajökull eruption was bad, but usually when it goes the far more dangerous Katla volcano goes as well. Icelandic volcanic eruptions are blamed for temporary climate change that resulted in the Mississippi river freezing as far south as New Orleans and causing famines that eventually resulted in the French Revolution. Here’s 5 more great volcanic eruptions.

Real banking reform, now!: Mr. Reich presents what I consider to be a minimum regulatory laundry list. In the meantime, here’s some things you can do to figure out who really owns your mortgage. Oh, and if you are having trouble with your mortgage (or are in bankruptcy), pay extra close attention to this. Crap like that would not happen if it weren’t for “deregulation.” If you are a little lost figuring out the Goldmann Sachs story, here’s a nice analysis. Don’t forget that there’s a criminal investigation into what happened at Countrywide. Could it bring down Bank of America? We can only hope.

The recession is over? Like hell: The economy is very far from normal (and in my opinion will stay that way until the fundamental banking issues and certain insurance issues are solved).

Oh yeah, it’s 4/20: Did you know that a majority of Americans in the West support legalizing (and regulating) marijuana?

Stupid School Administrator Tricks: The story of a school district in Pennsylvania secretly using webcams in school issued notebook computers to spy on children gets deeper and weirder. They now admit to having some 56,000 pictures (and those are just the keepers and the ones they admit to having). Yet somehow, even though they have pictures of sleeping students, they miraculously don’t have any nudies? Yeah, I’m with Amanda on this one: suuuuure they don’t.

On the other hand: The Supreme Court isn’t amused by a SWAT officer who was reprimanded for texting his wife and girlfriend — both!? — on a police issued phone. Justice Stevens asked “Wouldn’t you just assume that the whole universe of conversations by SWAT officers who were on duty 24/7 might well have to be reviewed by some member of the public or some supervisor?”

Stupid Tax Tricks: Teabaggers who don’t know what they are talking about, and the myth that somehow corporations will pass on the cost of taxes on profits to customers.

Stupid Legislator Tricks: Apparently they are using some “new math” on Capitol Hill, as Senator Coburn is going on record as saying more money is “wasted” on Medicaid than is actually spent on it. Can’t he just admit he hates poor people and thinks any money spent on them is a waste? Either that or sign him up for Kumon.

Chemo sucks: but it is better than dying of cancer.

Almost makes me want to take up guitar: light-up guitar picks!

A cool cookbook, I hope: The Primal Blueprint Cookbook. Mine is on pre-order. So far all the recipes shared on Mark Sisson’s blog have been winners.

I will have more to say about this soon: Local interest lawsuit with nationwide ramifications.

Building a castle:  In the Ozarks. Now. It’s a pretty cool project!

Star Wars Japan Filter: Did you know that Mark Hamill went to High School in Japan? He’s working on a new movie project, by the way. And just to wrap things up, here’s an artist’s impression of what Star Wars characters would look like as done by Akira Kurasawa.

Low Hanging Fruit on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

This is a special post for Blog Against Theocracy Weekend. Yesterday’s post was a repost of my 2007 offering.

Nobody is harmed by the fact that “In God We Trust” appears on our money.

Most of us can ignore public prayers at a public school event —  or compose our own alternate prayers and meditations in our minds.

Some of us held our noses when considering the political implications of who was chosen to offer prayers at President Obama’s inauguration, but nobody died as a result.

But church meddling in our newly passed Health Insurance Reform bill may well cause harm and perhaps even death to some people. However, since those people are women, some people don’t care. Moreover, church meddling in civil law may well bring harm to the poor in Washington DC.

It is of course the low hanging fruit: the Catholic Church.

In a petulant fit of pique, Catholic Charities threatened to cut off services to Washington DC if they actually made it legal for gay people to marry. When they realized that they could not in fact do that without legal repercussions, they instead decided to deny benefits to all new employee partners, gay or straight. Further, they demanded that new employees sign a statement that they won’t violate the tenets of the Church!

Remove the plank from thine own eye, Catholic Church!

If there were ever a stronger case for a public safety net rather than depending on the fickleness of charitable organizations deciding that this issue is important and this not, I am not familiar with it. As much as we all appreciate the work that charities do, it is simply not acceptable to pick up your ball (or shelter, or food kitchen) and threaten to go home if you don’t get your way. And pressuring new employees into signing documents regarding their private lives is just a little onerous, particularly in the middle of a recession where the only new jobs really being created are temp positions with the Census. Denying partners health insurance within weeks of a law being signed requiring mandatory insurance in a few years? Just twist the knife already in the new employee’s back.

Of course, it is now well known how the Catholic Bishops meddled in the Health Insurance Reform Bill, even over the objections of the Catholic Nuns — who for all their own faults aren’t accused of covering up dozens of priests who committed sexual crimes against thousands of minors under the age of consent. There. I didn’t call them pedophiles, but what they did is criminal and should be prosecuted. Since there was a clear conspiracy, no statute of limitations applies.

So then, when something tragic happens to a woman in your life and she must make the terrible decision to abort an embryo or fetus, remember that it would have been covered under her mandated health insurance policy if it weren’t for these meddling kid-molesters. If she finds it difficult to find a provider who will help her, remember that it is Catholic groups that have hounded doctors out of the business. And remember, not a single one of these Bishops will ever get pregnant, will ever have a wife who might get pregnant, will ever have a daughter who might get pregnant. Talk about no skin in the game.

As easy as it is to lob shots at the Catholic Church right now, I don’t want to overlook another serious threat to the separation of Church and State. Susie Madrak has pointed out that there is now an investigation by CREW into whether the shadowy religious group known as “The Fellowship” or “The Family” has been breaking the law by providing below market rents to the Congressmen who live in their C Street residence. Rep. Stupak and Sen. Ensign both could have [additional] problems as a result. Since it is relatively well documented that the purpose of this group is to put control of Congress in “godly” hands — their narrow definition of godly, of course — this investigation is necessary and overdue.

In Closing: They don’t make recoveries like they used to; job creation looks even worse compared to population growth; huh, I guess it is possible to teach a large number of students at once; I’ll say it again on the 19th, but this is what Militias are about; You can’t talk bad about your boss!; bankruptcy filings up you say? Well, as long as they aren’t spiking!; it’s surely a sign of Armageddon for me to link to Politico, but Banking Hypocrisy; melanoma may be more complicated than staying out in the sun too long (which never seemed to hurt our great grandparents much); and no, you should not laugh out loud if you see somebody drowning.

Survival of the Shorties

Just so you know up front: I’m not big on April Fools jokes. The only thing I ever did was send a new maintenance guy to fix a toilet in a non-existent apartment. My boss was more amused by it than I was. Anyways, on to the Shorties!

Unemployment is Certainly No Joke: It’s high. There’s no sign that it will get better soon. We’re still losing jobs in this economy, and Spring Semester doesn’t end that long off now.  Tim Geithner calls it “unacceptable” but hasn’t really offered a plan on what to do about it. Well then, as long as he’s clear on that! Perhaps we could have some sort of, I dunno, public job creation plan? Well, here’s an “ugly truth” about how you can buff your resume.

Something Approaching Justice: The terrorist who killed a doctor in the middle of a church because he happened to perform a medical procedure he didn’t like (and couldn’t have in any event) has been sentenced to life in prison. The soonest he could possibly get parole is 50 years.

Something Light: Barack Obama Looking at Awesome Things.

Doing Something: It’s better than doing nothing. School tries new ways of stopping bullies that don’t involve platitudes to the victims.

Maybe Doing Nothing Would Be Better?: A doctor talks about unnecessary tests. No, not because a doctor is covering his ass.

Something to do when you grow up: Perhaps something that begins with a K.

Something Old: a little history lesson regarding our nation’s banking issues.

Something Serious: It’s Autism Awareness Month.

Something you probably already suspected: Asset Forfeiture Laws can be horribly abused.

Something that will either horrify or amuse you: Scarface, as performed by pre-schoolers. Come on, it’s only 2 minutes and 11 seconds!

And finally, Something I Totally Do Not Need!: Hello Kitty Message Watches. Price, $620-800.

Paging Dr. Dynasaur!

For the benefit of younger readers: Back in the old days before cell phones, there were pagers. And before that, there was the overhead paging system. Not that many years ago, it was normal to hear things like “Dr. Jones to 4B nursing station, please” on the hospital public address system.

Ok. It’s law now. It looks like the health insurance reform bill that got passed and signed into law was neither as bad as it could be nor as good as it should be. There’s some benefits, and some stuff that’s absolutely odious. However, it is only a first step. At least two crucial things are missing.

First and probably most important is a non-profit health insurance option. The law, as it stands, requires us to all buy health insurance by 2014, which forces us to do business with the very same companies that got us into this mess. The best answer to this problem by far is Alan Grayson’s Medicare-For-Anybody bill, which has 80 co-sponsors so far (click here to sign the petition to demand a vote!). Howard Dean has even endorsed Rep. Grayson at least partly as a result. You remember Howard? The doctor who became a Governor and managed to get health insurance for almost every kid in his state despite the fact that they don’t vote? This bill is revenue neutral for the Government — it won’t raise the deficit a cent because it says the premiums will be set at what it costs to provide the insurance. Bringing this thing to a vote puts the opposition in a tough spot: if Medicare is good enough for Grandma, why isn’t it good enough for me?

The other thing it needs is a program I like to call MediKids. Regular readers have heard me beat this drum before, but we have a system where most health insurance is purchased by employers. And most kids don’t have employers. The existence of an automatic enrollment health insurance program for kids under 18 (and in my ideal dream world, any full time student under 25) would help almost every family in America. It would of course have a disproportionate effect on low income families that are likely to have inadequate insurance for themselves and their kids, if they have insurance at all. Moreover, by keeping our kids healthy, it would improve schools and the quality of our future workforce. Even if there were a modest premium associated with the program like there is for Vermont’s Dr. Dynasaur program, it would be worthwhile.

In Closing: Why aren’t you in school, you lazy bastards?; stupid banker tricks; three times more Chapter 7 than Chapter 13 bankruptcies; air worship is like air guitar for shrine visits (maybe the Catholics could try this? Then it doesn’t matter if the priest is a pedophile); as fast as financial reform made it through committee, I must wonder what political favors are embedded in it; and let Mr. Otis get you high. I mean, like to the 20th floor.

Twist the Facts

Yesterday morning, I wrote a post over at Age Against the Machine on British research showing that oral contraceptives reduce women’s risk of death from cancer and cardiovascular disease. Those happen to be the top two causes of death for American women, so it’s a big deal. And we aren’t talking about some teeny study, but over 46,000 women in a study that went on for 39 years. I think this is good news for the vast majority of women!

Yet I could not help but think that this news might not be welcomed by all. After all, there is a segment of our society that might think this encourages promiscuity. When I ran this past my partner, he thought that was just nuts.

But unfortunately, we live in a society where parents withhold vaccines that could someday save a woman’s life not because of safety concerns with the vaccine itself, but because they think she might think it’s ok to have sex (because good girls don’t like sex, good girls are never sexually assaulted, and good girls certainly never have cheating husbands). We live in a society where pharmacists who should know better are arbitrarily deciding not to dispense oral contraceptives because of “moral objections” and/or the mistaken belief that they can cause “abortion” of an embryo that has not implanted (never mind the other medical indications for oral contraceptives, and never mind that these pills prevent pregnancy rather than end it; arguably they prevent abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancy). We live in a society where the so-called-pro-life crowd thinks abortion causes breast cancer. We live in a society where some people value the lives of embryos more than the lives of full-grown adult women and their families.

So yes, I expect this study to be either ignored, mis-quoted, or mis-used by the Religious Right. They will focus on the small but unexplained increased risk of death by accident or violence — See? The Pill increases your risk of [violent] death! —  if they acknowledge the research at all.

Mere minutes after posting, I found this article at the Christian Science Monitor — hardly a “liberal media” source — with the headline “High divorce rates and teen pregnancy are worse in conservative states than liberal states.” It turns out that educated women and access to contraceptives lead to greater family stability and fewer unwed or teen mothers than “that old time religion.” Yet the Religious Right  has hamstrung both trends by getting the Feds to go along with “abstinence only” sex ed, which not only doesn’t work, fails to teach about contraceptives and disease control, and outright lies to children, but attempt to reinforce very outdated gender roles.

And then I read about how the Texas State Board of Education has decided to re-write history, decreeing what may and may not appear in textbooks. Sure, the Civil War was about “states rights” — specifically the right of states to say it’s ok to own other human beings! Sadly, Texas is a large enough textbook market that students around the country may be subjected to this ultra-conservative, highly Protestant, reinterpretation of reality.

You can say what you like about reality, but you can’t change it.

In Closing: 30! 30 bank failures this year, ah ha ha ha! (reference); fattiest fast foods; mortgage insurance providers say “sorry, we won’t cover this fraudulent claim“; obligatory health insurance reform items (notice I don’t call it health care reform, or worse yet HCR which always makes me think HRC instead) includes Go Grayson Go! Put them on the spot of either saying yes to a real public option, or going on the record as being against Medicare!; oh sure, let’s make it more complicated; what recovery?; Oh No! Obama’s Liberal base is “disengaged!” Could that be because they’ve kicked it in the butt at every opportunity?; most Americans think Wall Street needs better (i.e., more) regulation; for that matter, most Americans would like to see the Government make some progress on anything; don’t take the battery for granted; median wealth, $5; and Blog Against Theocracy weekend is coming.

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

This week’s Time Magazine arrived in the mail a little while ago. Here’s what the cover looks like. Accompanied by a big picture of a deflated football, the cover stories are “The Most Dangerous Game. How to Fix Football” and “The Crisis in High Schools.”

My immediate thought was that somehow football is more important that education? Will football impact America’s ability to compete in the world economy more than what high school kids are learning?

I have a soft spot in my heart for educational issues, so I opened it up and tried to find the article on what crisis is befalling our high schools. I could find no such article title in the table of contents, so I began to flip through. Oh, look 10 questions from readers posed to Ozzy Osbourne, that’s nice. Good picture of him too. Bomb crater in Baghdad, shame the picture isn’t in the online edition. Flip, flip, flip…. Joe Klein on “Failing our Schools“. Huh, not about high school, but about how the evil teachers unions are preventing meaningful reform of our schools. Not even the same author mentioned on the cover. Moving on. Disaster porn, pictures of the devastation in Haiti. Can Bank Bashing Help Obama (yes, only if it comes with rules and regulations that protect us from predatory banking). What Obama should learn from Reagan (stand up for something, blame the guy you replaced for everything that’s wrong). Oh, we’re up to the cover article on football now.

And the article on what’s wrong with our high schools! Finally fount it! Is it standards that are too low? Curricula that don’t get kids to the standards? Is it teachers? Is it helicopter parents? Is it student apathy? High stakes testing? Too little focus on preparing kids for college and the workforce? Underfunded technology initiatives??

No, the article that the cover bragged was on a crisis in our high schools is in fact called “A Lifetime Penalty: In Texas, catastrophic spinal injuries aren’t enough to change high school football.” The article isn’t about instructional issues at all, but the tragedy of a handful of kids who suffer serious, crippling injuries on the football field. What schools are “failing” to do is keep young players of a dangerous, full-contact sport safe. The writer’s answer to this problem? Not better coaching to avoid injuries. Not getting rid of a dangerous extracurricular activity with debatable educational value. Not educating the teen-aged players about the risks of concussions and more serious injuries. Not changing the “win at any cost” mentality that makes this an acceptable risk for communities, coaches, and the players that understand the risks. No, he thinks there should be an ambulance at every high school football game.

Yeah, that will really keep kids from ending up in wheelchairs.

Not to make light of these kids, but is that really the biggest problem our high schools face?

This is what passes for a news magazine in our country. And that is part of the educational crisis in our country.

Silent Night, Deadly Shorties

Merry Christmas! Here’s a little Christmas history for you.

Ok, let’s start off with obligatory items on health insurance reform. The Senate has officially voted on the accursed thing. Here’s the rational case for kill the bill, and push back in conference. The real problem is that this, like many bills, is so long that nobody knows what’s in it, even the Senators.

I have a soft spot for education. Here’s an item on schools that work.

Surely the economic worst is behind us. So saith the President. Unfortunately, he thinks small business is going to lead us out of this mess. That can’t happen as long as banks won’t lend to small businesses (or will only make home equity loans to them), and certainly won’t happen if that small business can’t get affordable health insurance for its owners and employees — who will all be required to have “mandated” insurance under the new bill. Maybe what we really need is some manufacturing, instead of pretending we can build an economy on selling lattes to one another.

Go ahead and tackle that kid, but don’t do any science! You might get hurt! Yeah, maybe we have gone a little wacky on the safety thing (oops, unintentional football joke!). But the point is well taken that the Dangerous Book for Boys isn’t, and most kids aren’t doing any real science in school for fear of lawsuits.

What a great idea! Boy sees problem. Boy asks why problem exists. Boy comes up with solution. Food banks for pet supplies!

SHHHHHHH! Most censored news stories of the year.

Must be nice. Fannie and Freddie’s CEOs are taking home 7 figure paychecks this year. Where do I send my resume?

Schneier on the Predator Drone hack. Short version, it’s not that big a deal. Find out why!

And last…

I think he’s on to something: The grand unifying theory of progressive frustration.

Sorry for anybody who was disappointed that I didn’t cover the Emperor’s birthday. I had net outages yesterday.