Closing the federal government for one day costs taxpayers roughly $100 million in lost productivity...I really wonder where that estimate came from. Federal employees produced it, I bet.
...a 9-year-old student at PS 52 in Staten Island, N.Y., was in the school cafeteria Tuesday playing with LEGOs when he was taken to the principal’s office and threatened with suspension. One of his toys was a LEGO policeman that holds a 2-inch plastic gun. The school has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to toy guns.A lot of these "no-tolerance" policies are "no sense" policies.
Women on gender-imbalanced campuses are paying a social price for success and, to a degree, are being victimized by men precisely because they have outperformed them, Professor Campbell said.This confuses 2 distinct groups of men. The men who were outperformed are NOT in college. The men who are "victimizing" are the high-achievers who kept up.
In this way, some colleges mirror retirement communities, where women often find that the reward for outliving their husbands is competing with other widows for the attentions of the few surviving bachelors.Pity the poor wife
VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool. VisiCalc sold over 700,000 copies in six years.Before Lotus, and long before Excel,
It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn't good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn't been done that way before. It's simply good if it works and bad if it doesn't. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.Those computers are tyrannical,
Scott Lee Cohen -- a pawnbroker who shocked state Democratic leaders Tuesday night by winning the party's nomination for lieutenant governor -- was arrested about four-and-a-half years ago and accused of holding a knife to a former live-in girlfriend's neck, newly obtained court records show.You might think Lt. Gov. isn't really an important job. But....
The misdemeanor charge against Cohen was dropped weeks later when the woman -- who had just been found guilty of prostitution -- failed to show up to testify, according to those records.
The term "mental retardation" is a diagnostic term denoting the group of disconnected categories of mental functioning such as "idiot", "imbecile", and "moron" derived from early IQ tests, which acquired pejorative connotations in popular discourse. The term "mental retardation" acquired pejorative and shameful connotations over the last few decades due to the use of "retarded" as an insult.
Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard. On the face of it, it’s a rather intuitive idea. But psychologists are only beginning to uncover the surprising extent to which fluency guides our thinking, and in situations where we have no idea it is at work.One result, one familiar to me, is that rhyming statements are more likely to be seen as true.
McGlone did a study in which he presented subjects with a series of unfamiliar aphorisms either in rhyming or nonrhyming form: “Woes unite foes,” for example, versus “Woes unite enemies.” He found that people tended to see the rhyming ones as more accurate than the nonrhyming ones, despite the fact that, substantively, the two were identical. Phrases that are easier on the ear aren’t just catchy and easy to remember, McGlone argues, they also feel inherently truer. He calls it “the rhyme-as-reason effect.”My favorite result comes in the form of an apparent paradox:
Couples asked to come up with a short list of good qualities about each other reported higher levels of marital happiness than the other couples in the study - but so did those couples asked to come up with a long list of each other’s bad qualities.So when your significant other is mad,
President Barack Obama plans two separate actions to curb salaries and bonuses of the highest- paid executives in the government.But, wait.
FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes alleges that O'Keefe aided and abetted Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who dressed up as employees of a telephone company and attempted to interfere with the office's telephone system.Here's the thing. You can enter an ACORN office under false pretenses, and you probably haven't broken the law yet. But, sure enough, you're not allowed to mess with the Feds like that. There's a law for that!
Their model assumes that the roles of sand grains is played units of political pressure. They assume that there is a network of influence in Congress through which representatives exert political pressure on each other (just as sand grains exert forces on each other through the network of contacts between them in the pile). When the pressure on representatives reaches a threshold, they co-sponsor the resolution and this, in turn, puts pressure on other member of congress to sign.Glenn Reynolds doesn't concur,
Elin confirmed her lingering suspicions about Tiger’s affair with Uchitel by impersonating her husband in text messages with Uchitel, prompting the rage that led to Woods fleeing his house.People rarely fret about
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s (formerly) prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (known as the IPCC), may have raised millions of dollars for his New Delhi institute on the basis of the totally bogus ‘glaciergate’ claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.His predictions were not backed
Capitalism has brought more wealth to more people than any other economic system in history, but it works by appealing to self-interest and greed, and it causes huge disparities in wealth. Is it good or evil? Can we determine its moral status? Readings include writings by Plato, Aristotle, Smith, Marx, Veblen, Weber, Mises, and Rawls.Class started today, with a discussion of part of Plato's Republic. Shimer is a "great books" college, so the students were already familiar with the Republic.
Air America, the liberal talk-radio network that helped boost the careers of Al Franken and Rachel Maddow, said Thursday that it was declaring bankruptcy and going off the air.My theory is that NPR
Air America, the liberal talk-radio network that helped boost the careers of Al Franken and Rachel Maddow, said Thursday that it was declaring bankruptcy and going off the air.My theory is that NPR
After Obama Rally, Dems Pin Blame On BushTake that pin and give it a push
January 17, 2010 6:16 PM By Felicia Sonmez
As audience members streamed out of Pres. Obama's rally on behalf of AG Martha Coakley (D) here tonight, the consensus was that the fault for Coakley's now-floundering MA SEN bid lies with one person -- George W. Bush.
a pattern of symptoms indicative of some diseaseYou don't need to know which disease necessarily. Just some disease, perhaps yet to be discovered.
A Follies beauty, Mary Dugan, is on trial for the murder of millionaire Edgar Rice. Her defense seems to be faltering until her young brother, Jimmy, a lawyer just beginning his career, insists he himself replace her present lawyer, Edward West. Mary admits to affairs with several men but wins favor with the jury when she reveals that the money she received was used to provide Jimmy's education. After it is determined that Rice was stabbed to death by a powerful, left‐handed man, Jimmy provides the reason for her initially weak defense. Rice, it seems, was murdered by attorney West, who loved Mrs. Rice, so decided to frame Mary. Time remarked that the play “moves more swiftly than the law with all its ruthless directness. Its plot has the fascinating features of a front‐page murder story.”Here's a plot summary of January 16th:
Bjorn Faulkner has swindled millions of dollars from investors, by investing cash he didn't have in order to control the gold trade. In the wake of a crash, he is facing bankruptcy despite the injection of money by Mr. John Graham Whitfield, a prominent banker whose daughter, Nancy Lee Faulkner, married Faulkner shortly after the loan. On the night of January 16th, Karen Andre, Bjorn Faulkner's mistress of ten years, and Bjorn are in the penthouse at the top of the Faulkner Building in New York when Faulkner falls to his death. The purpose of the play is to decide if it may have been a suicide - or murder.Rand's play also features a gimmick where an audience jury decides who is found guilty.
...with Sunday, I was really interested in moments where the illusion of paintings fall apart and where characters within the painting realize that they are just painted. So, the character in this painting is using the decorative technique of one-stroke flower painting (as seen on PBS) to decorate the surface of the painting that she is in. It also speaks a lot to the roles of women within art history as the hobby artist (or the sunday painter), relegated to what has been considered lower generas of painting, such as flower painting.And here I thought it was just a magical moment! But I found her point about relegation rang true. The art world is full of secondary competition - not just competition of talent and production, but fierce competition in criticism and gate-keeping.
Snow shrivels away to a sickly shade of gray, vanishing quickly.B:
Snow shrivels awayC:
to a sickly shade of gray,
vanishing quickly.
Snow shrivels awayEverything's the same but the line breaks. Which is best?
to a sickly
shade of gray,
vanishing quickly.
The public is getting a bad return on its tax dollars because government workers are operating with outdated technologies, Orszag said in a statement that kicked off a summit between Obama and dozens of corporate CEOs.Interesting that he admits we're getting a bad return.
He says he saw his wife's hand from under the rubble and heard her tell him to keep it together and just get her out. He describes it as terrifying.I'm visualizing this. She's the one buried under the concrete. But he's the one freaking out.
A green sea slug appears to be part animal, part plant. It's the first critter discovered to produce the plant pigment chlorophyll.How thuggish of the slug to steal plant genes
The sneaky slugs seem to have stolen the genes that enable this skill from algae that they've eaten. With their contraband genes, the slugs can carry out photosynthesis — the process plants use to convert sunlight into energy.
This guy, he was catapulted in on hope and change, what we hope the guy is. What the f---? Everything he’s saying’s on the teleprompter. I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived. I saw it all growing up.”He has since apologized, sort of:
Using the word "stupid" dozens of times in an ad hoc five-minute press conference, the former Illinois governor called his comments a "metaphor," but defended the spirit behind them. He claimed that his comments were expressing a frustration with Barack Obama's policies, bailing out the banks but leaving everyday people behind.When he beats his drum,
In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends, and they have had images of the ice pack declassified to speed the scientific analysis.I've always felt
The most important principle of the esthetics of literature was formulated by Aristotle, who said that fiction is of greater philosophical importance than history, because "history represents things as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be."In fact, Aristotle's account left out the "and ought to be". I and others had wondered, for some time, how she had gotten that quotation wrong. Had she read something misleading, or had her memory played a trick on her? Some even suggested she was purposely misquoting.
It appears that Rand drew this concept not from Aristotle, but from Albert Jay Nock. In Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943), 191, Nock writes, ‘History, Aristotle says, represents things only as they are, while fiction represents them as they might be and ought to be.’ In her copy of the book, Rand marked this passage with six vertical lines.Note that Rand's Aristotle "quotation" actually comes word-for-word from the description Nock gives of Aristotle's position. She merely drops the "only".
The Burj Dubai offers its own structural innovation: the “buttressed core.” A hexagon-shaped concrete core helps the skyscraper resist the twisting force of the wind while the internal structure of the skyscraper’s three wings buttresses the core and provides further wind resistance to the wind.
Miller and Jenkins were joined in a Vermont civil union in 2000. Isabella was born to Miller through artificial insemination in 2002. The couple broke up in 2003, and Miller moved to Virginia, renounced homosexuality and became an evangelical Christian.Jenkins was given visitation rights. Miller refused to cooperate.
The "Y2K" reprogramming was "child's play" compared with what is needed for a world-wide calendar switch, admits Dr. Bromberg.That quote practically writes itself into a rhyme:
American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia, where they entered into an "art therapy rehabilitation program" and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.Here's more on the art therapy approach:
The calligraphy and depictions of sunrises and flowers do not really reflect the darker emotions confronted in treatment and are images Western therapists might not expect to see. In fact, some might define the content of their artwork as being "in denial" of the crimes committed.If you were an art therapist
It's overused.Whatever this writer intended,
It devalues actual, justified rage.
It encourages self-congratulatory offensiveness.
And, finally: we already have better words.
Every year on Dec. 24 at 3 p.m., half of Sweden sits down in front of the television for a family viewing of the 1958 Walt Disney Presents Christmas special, "From All of Us to All of You." Or as it is known in Sverige, Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul: "Donald Duck and his friends wish you a Merry Christmas."At first, the viewers came back
They pulled into an alley. As they bumped along the snowy path, the woman told the driver to toss her the gun because she didn't want police to see it, he said.In the confusion, the victim got hold of the gun, got out of the car, and started running away - down the alley. The woman ran after him.
"All of a sudden, by the grace of God, between these two fools, I hear 'boom,' and then I hear her hollering and screaming, 'I shot my finger off, I shot it off.' The driver starts panicking and he goes right into a Dumpster," the victim said. "That's when I knew it was my moment."
"I don't know if she's going to kill me or not, so I fire a warning shot," the man said. "Unfortunately, it hit her. I never fired a gun in my life."She's dead from his "warning shot."
As a result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest...I was so looking forward to Gitmo coming to my home state.
They in turn question their relationship with a man willing to spend such a large amount of money on something that they find hard pressed to consider 'art.'Coward's play is about a critically acclaimed painter who has signed his works, but who has not painted his works. Rather, he has secretly had 4 untrained people paint for him, each responsible for one of his "periods".
Modern sculpture, music, drama and poetry will all shrivel in the holocaust. Think what will happen to those tens of thousands of industrious people who today are making a comfortable livelihood by writing without grammar, composing without harmony and painting without form. These poor miserable wretches will be either flung into abject poverty or forced really to learn their jobs.This isn't Coward the dandy,
The top prosecutors in seven states are probing the constitutionality of a political deal that cut a funding break for Nebraska in order to pass a federal health care reform bill, South Carolina's attorney general said Tuesday.The states investigate a congressional deal? What nerve. On the other hand, the deal is unique:
"The Nebraska compromise, which permanently exempts Nebraska from paying Medicaid costs that Texas and all other 49 states must pay, may violate the United States Constitution — as well as other provisions of federal law," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said.Nebraska's senator was plucky -
Washington’s influence industry is on track to shatter last year’s record $3.3 billion spent to lobby Congress and the rest of the federal government...The expansion of government control - and we've been seeing a lot of that - is a platinum mine for lobbyists.
I saw the name "Lightbulb Day" somewhere on the internet as a way someone had devised of celebrating the holidays without religion, and I adopted and made it our own. (After all, isn't that the way most inventions evolve?) On December 21, the "darkest evening of the year," the day when we symbolically most need technology, our two families celebrated human ingenuity, creativity, reason, and invention.The day's name put me in mind of Thomas Edison, who invented the first practically usable lightbulb, and who said:
Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.Even Edison couldn't simply say "let there be light."
The University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain "promotes information processing strategies".However, the researcher does concede that happiness is better for creativity.
Cocaine's a hell of a drug, and even more so when laced with another drug that's commonly used to deworm opossums. Federal agents have found that 69 percent of cocaine shipments seized entering the United States contain levamisole, a veterinary drug linked to serious weakening of the immune system in humans. Here's the real funny part: no one knows why.Deworming possums? Around here they're considered a nuisance, and a wild animal, and I don't think you can keep them as pets in Illinois. So who is catching them to deworm them?
And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write ‘Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’? No, we didn’t. Christmas is a Christian holiday—if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.He's specifically attacks the Rudolph song and the Chestnuts song, which were indeed written by Jewish guys.
Anyone who becomes pregnant or impregnates another servicemember, including married couples assigned to the same unit, could face a court-martial and jail time, according to an order issued by Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo.I can see that pregnant soldiers may be less effective soldiers. But contraception, while highly effective, is not 100% effective.
The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance rose last week, the government said Thursday. Analysts had expected a decline.I'm sad about the rise,
Between 1980 and 1994, he donated at a Michigan clinic twice a week. He's looked at the records of his donations, multiplied by the number of individual vials each donation produced, and estimated the success of each vial resulting in a pregnancy. By his own calculations, he concluded that he is the biological father of nearly 400 children, spread across the state and possibly the country.Sociobiology proposes that men are motivated by a desire to have as many children as possible - at as little cost as possible. In this case, he actually got paid for his contributions.
We are on the precipice of an achievement that has eluded Congresses and presidents for generations.Being on a precipice
The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it’s not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it’s the fact that the country has become ungovernable.I wonder if that hasn't always been the problem. In a deeper way than this writer imagines.
Currently, exaggerated claims are often made on the packaging about the light output of compact fluorescent lamps - for example that an 11-12-watt compact fluorescent lamp would be the equivalent of a 60-watt incandescent, which is not true.They tried
This year, the scene straight out of the movie "A Christmas Story" unfolded Tuesday morning in Boise with a boy of about 10.The fire department got him free by pouring water on his tongue.
Last week, the U.S. Senate began debate on an $848 billion health-care reform bill that includes a 5 percent excise tax on elective cosmetic surgery. It would take effect Jan. 1.Since their health plan's running short on bucks,
The aim: to raise an estimated $5.8 billion in the next decade.
At maximum altitude, astronauts will be able to see the curvature of the Earth, a view that until now only few people have been able to experience.The 21st century arrives, at last.
Passengers aboard the SpaceShipTwo will be able to remain strapped in and view the Earth from portholes next to their seats, or unbuckle and experience weightlessness, once the craft passes beyond the atmosphere.
It is believed the man wanted to give her the virus, which leads to Aids, so she would have sex with him again, the New Zealand Sunday Star-Times reported.He confessed and faces a possible sentence of 14 years.
...she told me what she meant--I must help other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself.... I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about it--except for the other people; so at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go.Out in the woods
a typeface is a set of one or more fonts, in one or more sizes, designed with stylistic unity, each comprising a coordinated set of glyphs.I would write a nice riff
There's talk of Federal Government bailouts of newspapers, changing their tax status, changing copyright laws, granting them non-profit status, etc. All to keep them afloat, and keep them pumping the Government's pure filth-ridden lies to the public.Just because they would own the press,
The White House on Wednesday invoked the separation of powers to keep Desiree Rogers, President Obama’s social secretary, from testifying on Capitol Hill about how a couple of aspiring reality television show celebrities crashed a state dinner for the prime minister of India last week.How did they crash
