Happy New Year

The new year is moving towards us here in New England (I’m in Keene, NH for the night) and I feel like putting up some pictures of Saturn(the first is really of the moon Rhea; the credit for both is NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute):

And then there’s Mercury (credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Arizona State University/Carnegie Institution [...]

Silvergate and the Armenian Genocide

It seems that Harvey Silvergate is trying to be controversial:
At issue this time is a lawsuit he filed in 2005 that claims state education officials violated the First Amendment by removing material from a human-rights curriculum questioning whether the mass killings in the Ottoman Empire between 1915-1918 constituted genocide. (He filed the lawsuit on behalf [...]

TSA channels Kafka

If Kafka was alive, he would have kicked himself for not thinking of the TSA (via KD):
Time and time again, I’ve been cleared for entry into the United States. So why does my name remain on the list? Will I have to go through this for the rest of my life? In desperation, I always [...]

Henshaw: OSHA is for employers

The situation at OSHA shows how the Bush administration worked:
The agency’s first director under Bush, John L. Henshaw, startled career officials by telling them in an early meeting that employers were OSHA’s real customers, not the nation’s workers. “Everybody was pretty amazed,” one of those present recalled. “Our purpose is to ensure employee safety and health. [...]

New music for me and a poem

Instead of a random 10, here are the CDs I got for Christmas:
Funplex by The B-52’s
Greean Album by Weezer
Safe Trip Home by Dido
Doolittle by The Pixies
Excitable Boy by Warren Zevon
Consolers of the Lonely by the Ranconteurs
These Four Walls by Shawn Colvin
I’ll probably add to that list using the gift certificates that I got. What’s a [...]

Merry Christmas

Well, tis the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring–ok a mouse is.
Merry Christmas unless you don’t believe in that sort of thing. In that case you could celebrate Isaac Newton’s birthday. Which is sort of tomorrow–he was born on December 25, but in the Julian calender which translates [...]

Yankees argue for salary caps

Ok, not really but this:
After a stunning turn yesterday, Red Sox fans are waking up this day before Christmas with a new hardball villain. Mark Charles Teixeira is a New York Yankee after agreeing yesterday to a contract that will pay him roughly $180 million over eight years, in the process jilting the Red Sox [...]

Banks: It’s Our Money Now, Go Away

Let me put together two articles:
At Bank of New York Mellon Corp., chief executive Robert P. Kelly’s stipend for financial planning services came to $66,748, on top of his $975,000 salary and $7.5 million bonus. His car and driver cost $178,879. Kelly also received $846,000 in relocation expenses, including help selling his home in Pittsburgh [...]

They’re Our Terrorists

This shows what the Bush administration is about:
Iraqi officials say they intend to expel members of an Iranian exile group living in a camp north of Baghdad that is protected by the U.S. military. The expulsion, which the Shiite-led government has long sought, is expected to become feasible once the U.N. mandate that regulates the [...]

Finals Over and a Poem

Well, Final’s week is over here at NU (and what a lovely day–by the time I got out of my 1pm final, there was a blizzard). I’m not done grading though, that’s due next Monday.
Anyways, here’s some of the music I’ve been grading to:
Side Of The Road Beck
Bitter Boy Truck Stop Love
The Judgement Elvis Costello & The Imposters
Everybody’s [...]

Jacoby: We Should Cut Taxes, Because (Fill in the Blank)

It’s good to see that some people never change their mind. Here’s Jeff Jacoby (talking about a proposed tax holiday by US Rep. Louie Gohmert):
Granted, a two-month tax holiday isn’t ideal. The best economic medicine right now – the best way to stimulate new spending, investment, and saving – would be a permanent reduction in marginal [...]

Spam and Fraud

A while back Kevin Drum had a post about the huge drop in Spam when McColo Corp’s servers were taken down. It turns out that McColo wasn’t only supporting spam:
One month after the shutdown of hosting provider McColo Corp., spam volumes are nearly back to the levels seen prior to the company’s take down by [...]

Another Music Confidence Interval

First, here’s my random 10:
Ghosts Japan
Mirror In The Bathroom The English Beat
Song For Kim (She Said) Concrete Blonde
Your Phone’s off the Hook, But You’re Not X
Pacific Ocean Blues Gigolo Aunts
Have You Ever The Offspring
Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Peepin’ and Hidin’) Little Richard
Love Is A Long Road Tom Petty
Mary’s In India Dido
Suddenly I See KT Tunstall
Don’t Come Close The Ramones
The Delivery Man Elvis Costello & The Imposters 
Last week I [...]

Somalia, DR Congo, Zimbabwe

Three countries in crisis with the question about what can be done:

In Zimbabwe, the numbers are staggering:

Inflation officially hit 231 million percent in July, but John Robertson, an independent economist in Zimbabwe, estimates that it has now surged to an astounding percent: 8 followed by 18 zeros.
That means the daily inflation rate is between 5.4 [...]

Bush Performance in a Nutshell

If you want to see the problems with the Bush administration, look at what happened in Somalia:
A collapse of the government and the human disaster that would almost surely follow would be strike three for American efforts in Somalia.
The United States failed disastrously in its peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s. (Remember “Black Hawk Down”?) [...]

Douthat: Please Read My Column in Parts Only

Via Steve Benen, I see that Ross Douthat doesn’t mind contradictions:
Compromise, rather than absolutism, has been the watchword of anti-abortion efforts for some time now. Since the early 1990s, advocates have focused on pushing largely modest state-level restrictions, from parental notification laws to waiting periods to bans on what we see as the grisliest forms [...]

A Sit-In in Chicago

Here’s another example of corporate compassion:
Fried said the company can’t pay its 300 employees because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won’t let them. Crain’s Chicago Business reported that Republic Windows’ monthly sales had fallen to $2.9 million from $4 million during the past month. In a memo to the union, obtained by the [...]

95% Confidence Interval For My Music

Hmm, here is my random 10 for the day:
All The Love In The World Nine Inch Nails
Blowin’ In The Wind Bob Dylan
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat Bob Dylan
Fa_Ci-La Feelies
I’m Waiting For The Day The Beach Boys
Help Me Joan Osborne
Layla Eric Clapton
Running On Faith Eric Clapton
Radio Friendly Unit Shifter Nirvana
Wonderwall Oasis
Sweetness Skindive
Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment The Ramones
I wonder if the songs are really randomly played, but that’s a hard question [...]

Tweeter Shafts Workers, Again

What is it with the company Tweeter? Last year they closed stores without paying severance that was promised workers and then tried to get bonuses for its executives. Yesterday they shut all their stores (they were being closed, but this was cut short) and:
The employees, including roughly 150 in Massachusetts, are still owed at least [...]

Interrogator Says Torture Is Counterproductive

Matthew Alexander, who led an interrogations team in Iraq, says that many of the methods of interrogation in Iraq were flawed and ineffective, specifically this was true for torture. How did he conduct interrogations?
I taught the members of my unit a new methodology — one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and [...]