Rock me, Amadeus.
In closing: as true as this is, the other half of the solution involves prison time for supervisors and managers that ignore the law; facts can be twisted; work out before breakfast; how to cancel almost anything; hahahahahaha what planet are they from that they think doctors set their own prices??; 150 things really smart people are worried about; what kind of moron texts his girlfriend to say the baby isn’t breathing instead of calling 911??; deadliest jobs in America; Fluffy’s Dream Home.
In Closing: the cat came back; the wages of austerity; aww rats; adventurous surrogate mother wanted; rubber duckies; well yeah, it looks silly when he does it; too redacted; Clouds! Pork Exercise! Mexico! Pass the word; backtrack; never occurred to them that’s not an option for everybody; locking up the dumb b**** for not knowing what’s good for her baby; dealing with climate change; some bosses think Jesus wants them to break laws they don’t like (I seem to remember a line about rendering unto Ceasar…); on math; on history; and a prototype of facebook.
Let’s clean up some tabs here…. It’s supposed to be cold in Vegas tonight. First person to say that disproves global warning gets smacked upside the head.
It’s called “math”: Someone notices that rent can be more than a mortgage these days. Funny thing, your landlord is entitled to a profit over paying his own mortgage!
Go ahead, opt out. They dare you: The TSA. And be sure you have an ID with your age on it if you look young.
Drink Up: Red wine seemingly increases testosterone, and reduces the amount peed away.
Musique Concrete: How Dr. Who changed music.
That leaves 1-3 hours for eating, pooping, demanding attention, and running around like a fuzzy maniac: Cats spend the rest of the time sleeping and grooming.
Defused: The latest school shooting rampage was not stopped by “a good guy with a gun.” It was stopped by a teacher talking him into laying down the weapon. Hmm.
Free Gift!: You can now play CDs you bought from Amazon from the cloud in many cases. Even if you bought them 15 years ago. Surprise!
Dave Johnson: He tends to be a bit long winded, but he’s correct.
Too Big To Fail must be Too Big To Exist: Robert Reich.
Didn’t anybody else think the headline didn’t make sense?: It turns out there was a lot more to the story of the woman fired for being too attractive.
And now back to their usual silliness: The American Academy of Pediatrics thinks it would be wonderful to have a doctor in every school. Well sure it would, particularly since I’m sure they would want that doctor to be one of their members! I’m not sure where they think these doctors are going to come from, since there is a shortage which will only get worse as Baby Boomers retire. And I’m certainly not sure where they think school districts will come up with the money. After all, average (median?) pay for a pediatrician is $156,000, and that’s one of the low salary specialties. That kind of money could pay for at least 3 teachers. Which do you think will give the district the most bang for the buck in this age of budget cuts?
Last but not least: The best time to buy almost anything.
So Clark County School District — the 5th largest school district in the nation — has a “successful” pilot of a program to keep track of students on school busses. Parents can theoretically find out whether their kids got on the bus, and where the bus is. Roughly 700 of the 110,000 students who daily ride the bus got special ID cards and were tracked for 4 whole weeks. Clearly something short of a representative sample. However, “because of financial problems, the district has shelved any large-scale program.”
Good for administrators for realizing that there were concerns about losing passes, and concerns about the costs of the system.
However, here’s the thing. There’s already a great technology in the hands of many middle school students and virtually all high school students that parents can use to keep track of their kids. Better yet, there is absolutely zero cost to the school district for this technology; most parents willingly — nay, eagerly — pay for implementation and all necessary equipment. I personally tested it for 4 years within the Clark County School District Transportation Department, and I feel certain that other parents here and elsewhere have similar experiences. In one case, I was even alerted to a wreck involving the school bus. This of course not only delayed pickup, but changed the pickup location. Use of this amazing technology saved the school district the time and expense of individual notifications to parents in most cases.
It’s called a cell phone.
Stop trying to reinvent the wheel, and stop pretending that a child’s RFID tag is necessarily in the same location as the child.
In closing: good call; inconvenient truth for anti-porn crusaders; Heinlein; I guess none of the researchers ever played the “telephone game”, or they could have saved a lot of research; so some busybody docs and pharmacists think they know more about women’s reproductive health than gynecologists; support a political cartoonist; hackers, crackers, and black swans; Expert Ezra; what could possibly go wrong; income inequality; the Buffett Rule; sure, there’s no such thing as inflation; and Cat Heaven Island. Enjoy an early Caturday.
Back in July, I talked about turkey sandwiches being dressed up in Thanksgiving condiments. I figured the trend would percolate around the high end dining scene for a while before hitting casual dining. Well, I was a little off. It is returning to the carry out restaurant world from which it came first.
Einstein Bros is now offering a seasonal menu that includes a “roasted turkey breast sandwich… spiced with cranberry ginger chutney and offered on an artisan wheat bread.” Sure, it’s seasonal. But I bet if they sell well they could jump to the regular menu. Regrettably, it’s hard to get nutrition info on the seasonal items.
So, where do we see the “Thanksgiving sandwich” pop up next? A quick web search suggests that it’s the item to have on seasonal menus everywhere. I miss La Madeleine more now.
In Closing: this is what parental consent laws do; I see what you did there; killing Big Bird will cut 0.01% from the national budget; not only dumbed down, but deliberately made unreadably dull; stamps; debunking; let them be responsible but remember that we’re checking up on your oversight; and a new mom.
Or, Caturday, Film Festival Edition
Ok, I like cats well enough. I even have a cat. Sure, I occasionally look at pictures of cats online, with or without witty catpions (intentional misspelling). I’ve been sucked in by video of Maru the Box Cat at least once. I have posted about Stationmaster Tama and library cats. IBKC and Cute Overload are linked in the sidebar. But you know, I think this cat thing has officially gone off the rails.
Thursday night in Minneapolis, ten thousand people turned out for a festival of short films starring cats:
The crowd — easily double what organizers expected — packed the lawn outside the museum, spilling onto the sidewalks across the street. There were local cat lovers and out-of-state fans of Fluffy; many wore kitty-theme T-shirts or simply ears and whiskers. Some took real cats on leashes. A few dogs came, for irony.
They all settled in for a screening of cats behaving badly, or cutely, or mysteriously, sometimes all at once. That much of the audience had already seen the clips on YouTube did not seem to diminish the enthusiasm. Quite the contrary.
Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat allegedly wanted to be paid to attend. Inasmuch as Nyan Cat is animated, I’d like to know how that would even work. I won’t link to those furry freeloaders now just on principal.
Did they actually use film, or did they just cue up 60 tabs in YouTube?
In Closing: more stuff to do in Vegas; we don’t need no steenking warrant; just say no to huge birthday bashes for little kids; “The recovery continues to be skewed toward low-wage jobs, reinforcing the rise in inequality and America’s deficit of good jobs”; of course job growth is variable by region (which is why we need streamlined short sales now) Double Dose of Ezra; is that where I’ve heard it before?; Etch-a-sketch; mathematically impossible; yes the Republicans have a place for single women, I guess; low carb diets do work; the study never said skinny monkeys, just underfed monkeys; and great timing.
In Plane Sight: I have a soft spot for Boeing. Here’s the latest version of the 747.
True: About the 2012 Elections.
On the Economy: global growth; more than 3 people for every available job in June despite the highest number of job openings in 4 years.
Math: “With regard to mathematics, the problem is not that we are teaching too much of it—but that we are teaching math ineffectively. The expectations and architecture of the new Common Core State Standards in Mathematics can help to remedy this. Faithful implementation of those standards will support districts that want to adopt curricula that unfurl mathematics in a rational, coherent program and that jettison approaches that are illogically sequenced and that overuse and abuse manipulatives.”
Perhaps there’s a logical explanation: Kids who eat good food turn out smarter than kids that eat junk food. Is it that good food contributes to intelligence, or that smarter parents feed their kids better stuff? I fail to see that this study accounted for the IQ, educational level, or socio-economic level of the parents.
People stand with the Nuns: and they appreciate it.
Today I learned: apparently, a psychic’s word is enough to get a warrant to search somebody’s property for a mass grave. Local governments are strapped for cash, but somehow they’ve got money for psychics? I do hope the locals find a way to get rid of the sheriff and judge that signed off on this.
The truth about corporate income tax: Many companies don’t pay that much.
Killer Kats: Turns out that outdoor cats kill a lot more than anybody knew. Funny thing about them being predators.
Funny, I have yet to kill anybody: “People without Facebook accounts are suspicious“? Seriously? I don’t have a Facebook account. There are millions of people who don’t. I’d say that relatively few of us are planning violence. Except maybe against idiots who think it means anything that I choose not to participate.
I’ve been in a seminar all week and haven’t really had much to say worth posting. Hopefully next week will be back to normal.
In Closing: looks like a great way to drown; doesn’t everyone need one; wealth gap; “you people“; is the media going to let them get away with an outright lie?; an odd proposal with interesting connotations (Zoolander Zoolander Zoolander); and you don’t normally find something this cute in a wrecking yard.
I suspect that this item from Comic-Con is inspired by this little song:
In Closing: oh Tyler; how ethical failures happen; what?; and who would define “exotic“?