House of Eratosthenes

A few days ago I was carping away about how everything good in life, particularly the Tomb Raider Lady’s rack, was disappearing. Well now we have something that makes life fun that is actually getting bigger, or anyway, at least thinking about it. What an oasis of hope for the future in a vast all-present desert of oppression, suffocation and despair.

Hooters Airline Has Lofty Plans
At a time when the whole airline industry is struggling, Hooters Air has had so much success that they are expanding to new businesses and new cities.

This is substantiated by a few other pieces, including a press release on the official site. The service area map that is posted there, effective June 11, is included below.

Hooters Air Takes Over Service from Lehigh Valley Air in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Adds Additional Service to Myrtle Beach

Myrtle Beach, SC - Hooters Air will expand its flight service from Allentown, Pennsylvania when it begins service on routes formerly served by Lehigh Valley Air effective May 8th. In addition to the current service to St. Petersburg and Ft. Lauderdale, Hooters Air will add flights to Myrtle Beach beginning June 11th.

“Allentown opens up another great market for us,” stated Hooters Air President Mark Peterson. “We are taking over a program started by Lehigh Valley Air and will make some small adjustments to the schedule in order to improve the program and add more great destinations.”

Let’s put some thought into defining the very least significance this could possibly have for us. You’d have to be a moron, or brain-damaged, to look at this and not conclude there was a capitalist lesson for somebody somewhere. An industry in which huge money changes hands everyday, is getting absolutely hammered. One interest within the industry is having a dandy time and expanding. Hello? HELLO?

This is so much bigger than gawking at college girls in their skimpy outfits. SO much bigger. For one thing, in addition to being fun, Hooter’s has a lot of practical purposes most people don’t realize. Hooter’s and business travel go together like potatoes & gravy. Milk & chocolate. Beer & shots. While I haven’t flown Hooters Air before, I have travelled on business more than the average bear and I’ve learned a few things about how to get good service when you really need to depend on it. Good service saves you from missing connecting flights. Good service makes the difference between getting done what you flew out to do, or not. Every businessman catching that 5 a.m. shuttle to the airport, the thought you know is going through his mind, is whether or not he will deal with service people at the rental car desk, or at the flight check-in desk, or at the hotel desk, who hate customers. Let’s face it: You have to like dealing with people to succeed at those jobs, but you don’t have to like it to have those jobs.

Just flying in one day, you are depending on the people you meet who have been tasked to provide you with services. Some of those people will hold your life in their hands. You can receive bad service and still succeed, but the handicap factor is not to be underestimated.

What do tank tops and orange shorts have to do with good service, you ask?

To answer that, I have to rely not so much on logic but on my own experience. I can definitely see there’s a connection. There are Hooter’s girls who mumble, frown and sulk, but they are very very few and very far between — searching for frowners and culkers, I’m far better off looking for them at a Denny’s, or a Chucky Cheese, or some kind of data center. I think what sets this establishment apart, is the tips. I know, nobody tips a cute girl in short-shorts double or triple what they would tip a middle-age matronly toothless waitress, but here’s a wake-up call: This is a delusive concept of “nobody”. It’s the same nobody that never buys National Enquirer, since everybody is just glancing at the cover in the grocery check-out line — “nobody” ever actually ponies up some cash on it.

I’ll fess up right here and now, I tip more at Hooter’s. Generally, 15% is a good tip from me, but I wouldn’t dream of running up a $25 tab at Hooter’s, tipping $3.75 & calling it good. It’s unthinkable.

And then there is the matter of attrition. Maybe you are one of these exceptional anti-help-anybody people who happen to work at Hooter’s. Quite possible. But if that’s the case wouldn’t you take your crappy attitude and leave it at home with your long pants? You’re getting tipped forty percent. If you MUST come to work and constantly roll your eyes & sigh at people to remind them what a pain in the ass it is to be listening to them, you’d get tipped zero percent while your co-workers were getting tipped something sky-high. Wouldn’t that be an unmistakable clue that you should try something else?

So by natural attrition, and by attracting a friendly demographic of potential applicants in the first place, it would appear Hooter’s has ways of ensuring it is staffed by positive, upbeat professionals overall. Upbeat service means upbeat customers, which means upbeat tips or tipping potential. That leads to more upbeat service. It’s called “getting started on the right foot.” This isn’t Katy-Couric “perky perky perky” service; this is common-sense service, that can figure out you need to get something done and will get out of your way. When you want them out of the way. Which, of course, ends up being not very often.

Now here’s something else to think about. We’re talking about flying here. Now think back on your experiences with flight attendants. All the indignant looks you got if you dared ask for a second bag of peanuts or another four ounces of Pepsi. Wouldn’t you just love to fly on an airline where quality of service to the customer, was just as important to the flight attendants as it is to the average Hooter’s girl?

It’s a no-brainer. Even disregarding the nice-looking busts & hips & thighs, I am SO down with this. If the trend about expanding the business holds for long, I’ll take it as a given that I’m not alone on that. And it will be interesting to see if the competing airlines are quick to take a lesson from it.

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Here’s My Whole Deal on Filibusters
Wednesday, May 25th, 2005

Here’s My Whole Deal on Filibusters

Here is the link to the Wikipedia page on filibusters. It’s probably worth bookmarking, since Wiki can be updated by the community-at-large, and the subject is a procedure that is enjoying a rapidly evolving history at the moment.

There are four things I’d like to highlight from a high-level history of the filibuster. This just has to do with how we got the filibuster and what it’s all about — these highlights are not Republican-friendly or Democrat-hostile, they’re simply facts.

In 1789, by following Senate rules, you could shut a fellow Senator up and “move to the previous question”;
This was changed in 1806, so that you had to let the Senator talk as long as he wanted, and the filibuster was born;
In 1917, the motion of cloture was born — with a two-thirds super-majority (of those voting), you could end the filibuster;
Since 1917, a number of changes have been adopted adjusting the super-majority — it goes down when Senators think it’s too hard to reach, it goes up when they think it’s too easy.

This clashes head-on with what people have been “educated” about this procedure. Ever single water-cooler or pool-hall debate I’ve seen on filibusters, someone will casually refer to the filibuster as a time-honored tradition that has been with our nation since the very beginning. It’s not so. When our nation got started, debate was brought to an end and attention was moved to action, or other issues, just like in any other deliberative body. After the filibuster arrived, another century came & went before we got to this idea of using it to force a super-majority.

And since then, we’ve been quibbling about what the super-majority is.

This is simply not a part of what you would call “tradition” and it certainly isn’t part of the spirit of the Constitution.

Here is the link to the much-discussed Washington Post poll indicating that “most” Americans are opposed to the rules change that would end filibustering of judicial nominees. The Washington Post got into a little bit of hot water over this. The story surfaces in chat rooms and around water coolers, as evidence that Americans want to keep “the filibuster”. This is an accurate reflection of the issue but it’s not an accurate reflection of the Post’s story. The Post’s summary is “a strong majority of Americans oppose changing the rules to make it easier for Republican leaders to win confirmation of President Bush’s court nominees, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll”. It does not use the word “filibuster”.

The question that was asked of the 1,007 respondents, also, does not use the word “filibuster.” As the story has been repeated, reprinted and regurgitated, the word “filibuster” sneaks in — two-thirds of us are “opposed to ending the filibuster”. This goes back to the headline that was used internally by The Post itself, so The Post is guilty of producing more confusion than clarity here. Ombudsman Michael Getler addressed the issue here.

For those who are not familiar with ombudsmens’ columns, they can be pretty unsatisfying, especially when you think something’s amiss and the ombudsman agrees with you. The ombudsman recites the facts, then he goes into reader reactions, then usually he will partially exonerate the newspaper before diving into what he thinks ought to have been done differently. End of column. And you’re left asking, “and…?” It’s human nature to hope that somewhere, some reporter is being summoned into his editor’s office and called to account for making the ombudsman upset. Maybe having his paycheck docked. It’s not gonna happen. Ombudsmen usually don’t have “teeth”, and cannot have teeth. They write their opinion that “shuckee darn, yup, that sure isn’t a good thing” and that has to be the end of it.

My take on it is, while there is always a danger of a “false consensus,” there are some issues where a poll does more to invite confusion and abuse than it does to settle any uncertainties, and this is one of them. Americans distrust politicians. If this isn’t subject to serious dispute, why conduct a poll about it? You don’t have to. Okay, why do Americans distrust politicians? A lot of it has to do with this stereotype about collecting fat paychecks, sitting around debating endlessly, doing nothing. Is that subject to disagreement? I don’t think so. So what exactly is a filibuster?

So we’re keeping this “time-honored tradition” of the filibuster as a mechanism to prevent majority rule in a popularly-elected legislative body. Here is your link to the Memorandum of Understanding text that represents the agreement reached by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. What it means, is a matter of opinion. The binding effect of the Memorandum, also, is a matter of opinion, and since the consequences of breaking it are going to be purely political, my opinion is it doesn’t mean much.

Are filibusters of judicial nominees unconstitutional? Absolutely! The Constitution comments only on “Advice and Consent” in Article II. The relevant passage says the President “…shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law”. This means (in just my uneducated opinion) such Advice and Consent is a right, and an obligation, conferred upon the Senate.

Now you can take what follows for what it’s worth; it might have some relevance to the discussion.

When the words, above, were written, we did not yet have a Seventeenth Amendment which makes the Senators subject to popular election. Back then, the States had representation in our nation’s capitol. If we had a President who did just a dandy job of representing the Will of the People, but was overly hostile to the interests of State legislatures, and manifested that hostility in his nominees, it was the job of the Senate to shoot his nominees down. To shoot them down. Not to use procedural rules to sit on the nominations. Senate Rules are just fine, but the Constitution trumps them.

And the Constitution requires the Senate, which was designed to be the representation of State legislatures, to give a vote. Advice and Consent. The nomineee gets in, or he doesn’t. But give your answer. The President can’t do anything without the Senate, that’s the “Consent” part; the Senate gives its answer, that’s the Advice part.

Nowadays, the Senate represents the people, effectively functioning as a second House of Representatives. As a separate chamber, it has its own rules, and we have some loudmouths running around — most of them Democrats — inferring that these separate rules are a traditional way of forcing more calm, cool, deliberative debate in the upper chamber. This is just so much nonsense.

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Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit III
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005

Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit III

Danbury, CT. This ought to take care of the “they park that way so that their oh so very nice expensive cars don’t get dinged” crowd. Now take a good look. What a slob. If you’re on a moped, congratulations, you get to squeeze into that itty-bitty space this dickhead left. Everyone else can hoof it from wherever-way-out-there they finally find a place to park.

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Destroy Those Stickers
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005

Destroy Those Stickers

A court has upheld separation of church and state.

Hooray!

The court ordered that stickers affixed to school textbooks, violating the separation of church and state, be removed and destroyed.

Hooray!

The stickers promoted a fundamentalist Christian view of creationism over evolution, on textbooks paid for by taxpayers, and the court ordered the stickers gone.

Hooray!

Well…actually, the stickers didn’t promote a particular viewpoint, they just attacked the universally-accepted theory of evolution. They’re gone!

Hooray!

Well…actually, the stickers didn’t really attack much of anything. They ARE gone, but what they said was this.

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

The stickers have been removed according to the court order.

Hoo– …uh, hmmm.

Yeah…you got it. The First Amendment has been interpreted to prohibit you from thinking for yourself. Saying anything, anything at all, against whatever theory the scientific community has determined to be fashionable, is to be stricken down the very second the striking-down can be justified by any connection, whatsoever, however unsubstantial it may be, to the expenditure of taxpayer funds.

I’m not going to get all frothy-at-the-mouth about this. If you think what happened is correct and my categorization of it is unfair, nothing I can say will change your mind. If you recognize what is amiss here, you don’t need me to embellish it any further.

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I’m Thirty!
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005

I’m Thirty!

Thirty states, that is. In the interest of full disclosure, one of them is DC.

It is abundantly clear what needs to be done about this. I’ve got to get ahold of a motorcycle, and swing through the bayou.

create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

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Lara Croft Is A C Cup Now
Saturday, May 21st, 2005

Lara Croft Is A C Cup Now

It’s gotten spooky. It’s gotten to the point that, when you see something that makes living life a little bit more fun, you just know it’s a matter of time before it will be gone. Continuing the diabolical campaign to get rid of everything good in life, the “Tomb Raider” girl’s tits are the next two things to go.

In an attempt to appeal to more female players the creators of computer game icon Lara Croft have re-vamped her image to remove one of her most prominent and remarked-upon features — her generous bust.

For years, Croft’s gravity-defying chest, waspish waist and long legs have delighted teenage boys playing the various editions of “Tomb Raider,” the computer game in which she stars.

According to Saturday’s edition of The Times newspaper, British computer game firm Eidos, which created Croft, has changed her physique to one less likely to put off female players.

In the soon-to-be-released “Tomb Raider: Legend,” the eighth title to feature Croft, her DD-size bust has been reduced to a more modest C-cup and some of her more revealing outfits have been ditched, the report said.

My opinion? It’s the same opinion I’d have about pairing the “Murder She Wrote” lady up with a goofy sidekick played by Rob Schneider or Joe Pesci. The same opinion I’d have about lacing “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman’ with lots of exploding cars.

Guy stuff for guys, gal stuff for gals. Making things androgenous or all-gender-friendly *never* seems to yield greater profits, or to help mitigate losses. Still, if Eidos thinks a chubby waist, tiny knockers, cottage-cheese thighs and a modest round-neck sweater will pull in some female video-game purse money, they are free to try.

Let me just say this on whether or not such a scheme has the potential to actually work though.

I do know women who don’t like Tomb Raider.

I do know women who don’t like Tomb Raider because they are put off by the fact that Lara Croft is, let us say, just better-looking in general than these women.

These women would not — would not — not, not, not — buy Tomb Raider if the Tomb Raider girl’s tits were shrunk. I guarantee it. They would not. Not a single one. Not one. Never, never, not ever.

The tits aren’t costing you any sales, guys. I got a feeling a flat chest on Lara Croft is more likely to meet approval with some of your female marketing executives, than with any of your female potential customers who you think aren’t shelling out like they should.

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Stand Up For Medicare
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005

Stand Up For Medicare

Medicare can be, is, and will continue to be, used to provide drugs to address male impotence, to the tune of $2 billion over the next decade.

I love to highlight how, based on the way you present a story, you can partially dictate what the public reaction is going to be. If I were King of Newspaper Editors for a day, I might promote that story under this headline:

Women are being taxed to pay for men’s erections.

Hey. Under the harsh glare of the Spotlight of Truth, it checks out, right? That’s better than Newsweek can say.

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A Style Of Thought
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005

A Style Of Thought

Mexican President Vicente Fox has apologized for his “race remarks” as The Chicago Tribune calls them. Speaking Friday in Peuto Vallarta, Fox extolled the virtues of his country’s #1 export product which is illegal aliens.

“There’s no doubt that the Mexican men and women � full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work � are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States,” Fox told a meeting of the Texas-Mexico Frozen Food Council in the western city of Puerto Vallarta on Friday.

Oops, that’s pretty far from what passes for politically-correct in the USA these days.

And that’s exactly the point some of the Fox sympathizers tried to make yesterday.

Victor Hugo Flores, a 30-year-old bond salesman, cringed when asked what he thought of Fox’s Friday comment, but said it isn’t too different from popular sayings celebrating what Mexicans see as a strong work ethic among blacks.

“It was bad, but it really isn’t racist,” he said. “Maybe the president shouldn’t have said it. But here we say things like, `He works like a black person,’ and it’s normal.”

You know why a defensive argument like that devastates President Fox and his comments, like no assaulting argument possibly could: It makes sense. As Americans we tend to forget that when we have imposed cultural pressure on people’s individual thoughts, coercing them to comply with what is considered acceptable by our prevailing culture, the rest of the world isn’t doing the same thing. So from time to time it’s natural we have a rude awakening with how other people think.

But doesn’t that make Fox’s comments all the more telling. This whole thing the United States has gone through — that it’s wrong to say “Mexicans steal things” or “Jews haggle over prices way too much” or “white people always lie” — it turns out, that whole taboo makes sense.

A guy steals stuff. Some guy is known for working his ass off. Some guy builds a rep for lying all the time. You don’t paint an entire race of people that way, unless you enjoy being wrong, often.

That’s the American style of thought — individual attributes for individuals, group attributes for groups. Vicente Fox showed on Friday he has a different style of thought, and if he wants to hide behind apologies like this, he’s still showing it.

How is this relevant? Because Vicente Fox is in a shouting match lately with right-thinking Americans like myself, about what it is his chief export product does to the American economy. It’s been going on and on because it’s so hard to prove one side right or the other side right — but it’s critical to President Fox’s argument, to demonstrate that he has his finger on the pulse of what is really going on. That when he says his people who are immigrating to my country, illegally, are working their butts off and not committing any crimes, he knows what he’s talking about.

Well, it is unlikely he has his finger on the pulse of what’s going on if this is the way he thinks. You can’t point to tens of thousands of people running across a river, and make an unfounded blanket generalization like “they are working their butts off and obeying all the laws” unless you don’t really have a stake in the veracity of what you’re saying. But that is exactly what President Fox has been doing for years now.

Now, his sympathizers are in an intellectually untenable position. They must maintain it is correct to say “undocumented immigrants from Mexico work harder than American citizens” but at the same time excoriate the idea that “blacks have a different work ethic from whites” (better, or worse). Essentially, they have to champion one unfounded blanket statement while rightfully repudiating another, solely on the basis that it is an unfounded blanket statement.

If Captain Kirk were having this argument with an ancient computer, this is just about the time the smoke would start coming out of the vents and circuits would start popping.

Fortunately for President Fox, his audience is not people who think logically. That is a blanket statement that finds reasonable foundation in the content of his messages: He has been maintaining “I am encouraging these people to cross the border and get the hell out of my country but that doesn’t mean they’re people you don’t want around, you should accept them with open arms even though I don’t want them where I am.” There is a certain strain of people who buy into this. Out of logical necessity, they must be the kind of people who never ask “If it’s such a great deal, why do you need me?”

They get e-mail about exciting ways to make money at home, and they nibble at the bait instead of asking the obvious question “why is this guy who wrote the e-mail, not quietly taking advantage of this without my participation, if it’s such a great deal?” This audience is not exactly filled with rocket scientists. If they possessed even average intelligence, the message wouldn’t work.

Because that’s exactly the offer Fox is making: Hey, these are wonderful people — that’s why I want to get rid of them.

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Let’s Abolish Freedom of the Press
Monday, May 16th, 2005

Let’s Abolish Freedom of the Press

Oh, there’s going to be panic over that headline I’m sure. But let me explain. Among those polled, 22% say the government should be allowed to censor the press, in a major poll to be released Monday, conducted by the University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy. The poll also revealed significant gaps in opinion on news, and its place in society, between members of the press and the general public.

In one finding, 43% of the public say they believe the press has too much freedom, while only 3% of journalists agree. Just 14% of the public can name �freedom of the press� as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution…

I think I can help explain this. The press has abused its position of trust by not doing its job. They do not tell people what people need to know anymore; they mold and shape our society in ways they think will protect the classes of people they want to protect. Let’s just take the example of an editorial that pissed me off, just yesterday morning. Worrying About The Right Things, which was published a week ago (link requires registration) explores the idea that gee, maybe liberals haven’t given Janice Rogers Brown a fair shake and she could be a decent judge after all.

What would make Janice Rogers Brown a decent judge? In People v. Conrad Richard McKay, Brown dissented from the majority opinion that Richard McKay’s Fourth-amendment rights were not violated when a policeman patted him down and found a baggie of methamphetamine in his sock.

Brown was the lone dissenter in this opinion. Let’s sum it up. Guy gets pulled over on a bicycle. He’s a black guy, which is important to Ginger Rutland, author of the editorial. He has no driver’s license. The cop pats him down and finds the substance. Guy gets 32 months for illegal possession. Knowning that, if there was a Fourth-Amendment violation here, it would mean the druggie has to be sprung from jail, would you say such a violation took place? Janice Rogers Brown says yes, everyone else on the court says no.

Like most “ordinary” people, I’m going to have to shock the shit out of Ginger Rutland by confessing that, actually, I am far to the right of even Janice Rogers Brown. Furthermore, it is crap like this — even in an editorial column — that erodes our faith not only in the press, but the justice system. The bicycle guy committed a crime. Yes, it is a victimless crime, at least, so far as anyone can determine from the facts available, but a crime nonetheless. Furthermore, he is guilty and his guilt has been proven. It is undisputed.

For the past forty years we’ve been playing this game where, hey, if the guy is guilty but the way you found out he’s guilty, is unconstitutional, then the guy isn’t guilty. That is bullshit. And I say that being a big, passionate advocate of the axiom that the Constitution must be upheld — but — get this — it doesn’t necessarily follow that, to enforce the Constitution, we have to pretend that false things are true and that true things are false.

Today’s journalists take it as a given that enforcement of the Constitution trumps truth; they make their living according to it. If the Constitution has been violated, we have to pretend people with baggies in their socks don’t have baggies in their socks. And, by extension, we have to pretend that guys who rape and kill little girls, don’t rape and kill little girls.

Rutland spends much of her column weeping for the economic plight, and the unfortunate skin color, of the guy with meth in his sock. Apparently, if he was middle-class and white, his Fourth-Amendment rights would not have been violated. Did you catch that? The Fourth Amendment is only for poor black people. If you don’t agree with my interpretation, read her treatise from beginning to end. She says “Judges who ‘gnaw through ropes’ to protect people being hassled by cops represent the kind of judicial activism I can support.”

This is the kind of bullshit that arouses suspicion and mistrust. For one thing, I could take out a subscription to the Sacramento Bee for ten solid years, read every page, and the information I would gather about why we have a Fourth Amendment, and what it was intended to do, I could fit on a postage stamp. That newspaper just doesn’t give a damn about it, nor do any newspapers. The press, like the justice system, thinks of it as a game. You collar the bad guy, bring him in, he gets sentenced, he appeals, maybe his rights were violated and maybe not. We all argue about it and newspapers get sold. In the course of the game, lies become facts and facts become lies, guys with meth in their socks suddenly don’t have meth in their socks.

But what’s ironic — to me — is if you are this poor guy with his desperate circumstances riding his bicycle around, and you’re at the mercy of the police because you are so poor and put-upon — you are also at the mercy of something else: Truth. As a general rule in life, people who are in the trenches, who work dirty jobs, who are poor, or who are closest to the action about which other people make life-and-death decisions…they live and die according to facts. When you pretend things that are true are false, or things that are false are true, you are engaging in a luxurious pastime that is not available to people who are closer to the exigencies of life than you are.

For example, if the guy who lives next door to you is a drug dealer, that is a fact and it affects how you live.

And that, in turn, means that to take part in a mental-contortionist argument like the following…

He has meth in his sock but the way the meth was found, was by a search which the court determined was violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, therefore the search was illegal, therefore he does not have any meth in his sock.

…is a luxury which you simply cannot afford. It is truly ironic that for one poor guy, like Conrad Richard McKay, whose rights are being championed by columnists like Rutland — there are maybe a hundred more poor people whose right to live a safe everyday life, is being trampled upon by her impassioned ramblings, and Rutland is probably completely freakin’ oblivious to this.

And that is the real gap between the press and “normal” people.

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Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit II
Monday, May 16th, 2005

Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit II

Hotel parking lot in Albany, NY. An utterly, completely empty hotel parking lot. No, the driver was not just dashing into a room to get a forgotten wallet or comb, to run right back out again. Nothing like that at all.

I can’t prove it, but I’ve got an unsettling feeling that people are basically slapping their cars into the parking lot, lines be damned, because their cars are getting bigger. In other words, you have a little car, you must do a good job parking, but if it’s a big car, you can let it all go to shit. Now, think about that for a second. How disturbing is that.

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Really Bad News
Monday, May 16th, 2005

Really Bad News

Today’s kids don’t have to walk to school sixteen miles in snow up to their bellybuttons, uphill both ways, they don’t have to spend all their free time doing household chores and odd jobs like I did, and now they don’t eaven halv two wurry abowt speling.

Examiners marking an English test taken by 600,000 14-year-olds have been told not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main writing paper, worth nearly a third of the overall marks.
The rule, issued by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, means that pupils could spell every word wrongly in the most significant piece of writing that they are required to do and yet still receive full marks.

There are two really obvious things to point out here.

One, I can’t say a single word about this without sounding like a really old man. To everyone, save for those who already realize what’s wrong with this without me mentioning a single word. It’s a case of tyranny-of-majority, and dumbing-down; the “Let’s Ignore Bad Spelling” ruling was handed down after too many of the kids taking the test, failed to get the spelling right. They got the content right, I assume, because the administrators figured something out. Quotas are not being met, but if we discount spelling, we can meet the quotas. So the kids have some brains. Trying to use those brains to get words spelled right, has yielded substandard results, so hey, let’s take spelling off the table then we can meet our quotas.

It all comes down to, the God damn kids don’t have to do what I had to do when I was a kid. And get off my damn lawn.

Two: To those of you who, on another subject, will argue that school is all about developing social skills, the FACT that this is a huge mistake should be beyond any dissent. Just think about the social aspect in terms of situations where you have to convince the other person of your intellect.

You want to sell me your motorcycle. It’s a chain drive motorcycle and I’ve got a real thing about shaft drive motorcycles so I’m not willing to buy. You send me an e-mail saying “Hay, their ain’t nuthing rong with a chayn driyv, it’s wurked for me!!!” You think I’m going to stop and read beyond the first sentence of your thesis, let alone change my mind about shaft drive motorcycles? You don’t have as much of a chance as you would have if you spelled things right.

Or let’s say I’m a liberal and you’re a conservative and you drop me an e-mail saying “Yoo liberalz shuld stop ragging on George W. Bush about wepunz of mas dystrucshun, yoo no our troups did find a hole bunch of them owt their in Iruq.” This is a case of trying to convince me of something that, due to my biases, I’m not initially willing to believe. You think you’ll get far by misspelling things? Nonsense. The mind of the liberal looks for any excuse it can to stop listening to an opposing argument. Throw in a few misspelled words, and you’re wasting your time.

Not that conservatives are any better. One of the things liberals have tried repeatedly to throw our way, is that our current president was selected, not elected. How do you think it would go down if a liberal wrote to a conservative and said “It may suprise you to gno that their wuz a lots of balot boxes hidan in floruda that were votz for algore.” It would just be further evidence that these conspiracy theories are aimed at, and consumed by, people who aren’t that bright and therefore the theories are not in need of any serious attention. I’d skim through just enough to get a little bit of a laugh for the day.

As a society, we do not write things down as much as we used to. A few of us have to correspond through e-mail in order to do our jobs; there are phone numbers, e-mail addresses, maybe a shopping list or two. The rest of the writing we do, I’d say, is stuff aimed at other people who do not initially agree with us about something, meant to change the mind of the audience. That’s probably a good eighty or ninety percent of everything we write, if you count word for word. E-mail, blog entries like this one, posts in rapidly lengthening and incendiary threads.

So three-quarters of everything we write is written to change the mind of a hostile audience. And when you try to change the mind of a hostile audience, your efforts fail a hundred percent of the time if you don’t spell everything right. We learn to spell correctly when we are held accountable when we go to school, and our schools are going to stop holding children accountable. Therefore: The medium of the written word will soon cease to be a viable and worthy forum.

You know, a few years ago this wouldn’t even be necessary. The little shits can’t spell, you just go ahead and flunk ‘em. If NONE of the little shits can spell, then you start flunking EVERYBODY until they learn how to get the job done. But now we have all these learning disabilities and with that, we have lost our ability to hold the children accountable for the work they do. So this has actually been inevitable for years now.

As far as that goes, are you ready for another rude surprise? Try looking at some blogs and reading some of the threads posted under the hottest news stories out there. This problem with spelling is nothing new. What we have been losing, and continue to lose, is craftsmanship, which ultimately is the notion that the quality of work says something indelible, good or bad, about the person who made it. With that, we are losing our ability to communicate.

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Wow, They DO Work For Us After All
Wednesday, May 11th, 2005

Wow, They DO Work For Us After All

We can send messages to these people. The Senate agreed on something they couldn’t agree on a year ago. I feel like Sally Field right now. You’re listening to us, you’re really, really listening.

Congress has approved an additional $82 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan and to combat terrorism worldwide, boosting the cost of the global effort since 2001 to more than $300 billion.

Yipeee. But it boosts the price. Gosh, when you spend money on a project that isn’t done yet, it boosts the price. I guess we and the Senate are on one side of this thing, and the Associated Press is on the other.

The Senate approved the measure Tuesday on a 100-0 vote.

All right.

The measure also requires states to start issuing more uniform driver’s licenses and verify the citizenship or legal status of people getting them. It also toughens asylum laws, authorizes the completion of a fence spanning the California-Mexican border and provides money to hire more Border Patrol agents.

Boom chucka lucka lucka.

Thank you, troops. And thank you, Minutemen.

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Not Our Finest Hour
Tuesday, May 10th, 2005

Not Our Finest Hour

Pat Buchanan scored a hole-in-one with his critique over the weekend of President Bush’s visit to Moscow. It should be required reading for anyone who tries to keep up with important historical events as well as current events, since the era & related events receiving Pat’s attention, tend to get covered up or at least tend to get viewed with a blurry lens. It’s hard to learn this stuff with a Google search, with a printed encyclopedia, and even with an old-fashioned trip to the local library:

May 8, 2005
What Exactly Is Bush Celebrating in Moscow?
By Pat Buchanan

To Americans, World War II ended with the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, following detonation of atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9.

But for Russians, who did not enter the war on Japan until Aug. 8, 1945, “The Great Patriotic War” ended on May 9, with the surrender of Nazi Germany. Which raises a question:
What exactly is President Bush celebrating in Moscow?

The destruction of Bolshevism was always the great goal of Hitler. And the Red Army eventually bore the brunt of battle, losing 10 times as many soldiers as America and Britain together.

But were we and the Soviets ever fighting for the same things, as FDR believed? Or was Stalin’s war against Hitler but another phase of Bolshevism’s war to eradicate Christianity and the West?

Vladimir Putin, a patriot and nationalist who retains a nostalgia for the empire he served as a KGB agent, refuses to renounce the Hitler-Stalin Pact of Aug. 23, 1939. Under the secret protocols of that pact, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Romanian provinces of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were ceded to Stalin, as was eastern Poland.

Hitler’s attack on Poland, the success of which was guaranteed by that pact, came on Sept. 1, 1939. On Sept. 17, Stalin, who had hidden in the weeds to see how Britain and France would react to Hitler’s invasion, stormed into Poland from the east and claimed his share of the martyred nation. Six years of terror for Poles began, ending in 44 years of captivity in the bowels of what Ronald Reagan bravely called an “evil empire.”

As a result of this war, Hitler’s 1,000-Year Reich lasted 12 years and Germany was destroyed as no other nation save Japan. Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden and Berlin were reduced to rubble.

Between 13 million and 15 million Germans were ethnically cleansed from the Baltic region, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Two million, mostly women and children, perished in an orgy of murder, rape and massacre that attended that greatest forced exodus in European history.

As a result of the Great Patriotic War, Finland had its Karelian Peninsula torn away by Stalin and 10 Christian countries — Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Yugoslavia — endured Stalinist persecution and tyranny for half a century.

Again, what, exactly, is Bush celebrating in Moscow?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a soldier of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War. Let us hear from him about what a wonderful cause it was. As for Putin, into whose soul Bush has looked, his position is understandable. From the vantage point of Russian vital interests, the Hitler-Stalin pact was a brilliant coup.

Hitler was on the path to war. The war he wanted was one with the Soviet Union: to kill it, carve it up and put every Bolshevik to the sword. His war was also to be a racist war. Hitler wanted to impose Germanic rule over Slavic peoples.

Stalin, with his pact, redirected Hitler’s Panzers to the west and bought the Red Army two more precious years to prepare for Hitler’s onslaught — years Stalin used well.

How did Stalin succeed?

On March 31, 1939, the British and French — in panic after Hitler drove into Prague without resistance — handed Poland an unsolicited war guarantee they could not honor and did not intend to honor. It was a bluff. But believing in that guarantee, the brave Poles defied Hitler over Danzig, stood and fought, and were crushed, as the British and French hid inside the Maginot Line.

But because they had declared war on him, though they had no plan to attack him, Hitler, in April 1940, invaded Denmark and Norway, and in May, the Low Countries and France. In three weeks, he threw the British army off the continent at Dunkirk, and, in six weeks, crushed France.

Meanwhile, Stalin provided Hitler all the food and fuel he had requested and declared Britain and France to be the aggressors against his Nazi partner.

When Stalin’s turn came and Hitler invaded on June 22, 1941, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, who had negotiated the Hitler-Stalin — or Molotov-Ribbentrop — pact, said plaintively to the German ambassador, “What have we done to deserve this?”

Churchill and FDR rushed to embrace Stalin, gave him everything he demanded and more, and at Tehran and Yalta, ceded to him custody of all the peoples of Eastern Europe and of Poland, for which Britain had gone to war.

What Putin is celebrating is easy to see. But, tell me again: What exactly is our president celebrating in Moscow?

This is something I don’t understand about the way George W. Bush manages political situations, and I only understand a little tiny bit about the way America manages political situations. Bush, and his family dynasty as well, appears to place a great deal of importance on this concept of “political capital”. Like any successful politician, he believes in a “balance” of capital that must be “checked” frequently and accurately, just like the checking account balance of someone who doesn’t wish to be overdrawn. However, when th

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Wow, What An Idea! Let’s Call It “Capitalism”Saturday, May 28th, 2005

Here’s My Whole Deal on FilibustersWednesday, May 25th, 2005

Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit IIITuesday, May 24th, 2005

Destroy Those StickersTuesday, May 24th, 2005

I’m Thirty!Tuesday, May 24th, 2005

Lara Croft Is A C Cup NowSaturday, May 21st, 2005

Stand Up For MedicareTuesday, May 17th, 2005

A Style Of ThoughtTuesday, May 17th, 2005

Let’s Abolish Freedom of the PressMonday, May 16th, 2005

Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit IIMonday, May 16th, 2005

Really Bad NewsMonday, May 16th, 2005

Wow, They DO Work For Us After AllWednesday, May 11th, 2005

Not Our Finest HourTuesday, May 10th, 2005

Wow, What An Idea! Let’s Call It “Capitalism”
Saturday, May 28th, 2005

Here’s My Whole Deal on Filibusters
Wednesday, May 25th, 2005

Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit III
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005

Destroy Those Stickers
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005

I’m Thirty!
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005

Lara Croft Is A C Cup Now
Saturday, May 21st, 2005

Stand Up For Medicare
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005

A Style Of Thought
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005

Let’s Abolish Freedom of the Press
Monday, May 16th, 2005

Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit II
Monday, May 16th, 2005

Really Bad News
Monday, May 16th, 2005

Wow, They DO Work For Us After All
Wednesday, May 11th, 2005

Not Our Finest Hour
Tuesday, May 10th, 2005