I think I'll start handing out the Kurt Vonnegut Award (the Kurt) to the people who are the least serious about the war against Islamofascism. Today's winner, media division, goes to Chris Matthews, who thinks, among other things,
If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil. They just have a different perspective. The smartest people understand the enemy's point of view, because they understand what's driving them.
So, maybe the universe had an intelligent designer, who used evolution as a tool. There now, was that so hard?
Both Democratic and Republican presidents have engaged in this annual Thanksgiving farce, so I'm not being political when I say it's a cynical reminder of the worst in politics, pretending one thing when the reality is quite something else and even getting school kids to go along with the hypocrisy. What about the millions of turkeys that weren't pardoned? You gotta love PETA, though:
Just in case you thought Indiana was the only state with court-mandated property tax changes:
The Texas Supreme Court declared Tuesday that the property tax system that supports the state's public schools is unconstitutional, and it gave the Legislature until June 1 to come up with a new way to pay for education.
Remember the chilling descriptions in "1984" of the cameras that watched people all the time? We're a few years late, but on our way.
One of the aspects of a flu pandemic that hasn't been discussed much is the effect it would likely have on ordinary daily life. This story touches only on the quarantines that might be imposed on travelers coming into the country. But there would certainly be quarantines affecting citizens, too.
"The Scream" is one of the world's most recognized paintings, though not in a way its creator probably would have appreciated. "What was once a serious expression of existential dread is now a self-mocking symbol of the stress of modern life. 'Stuck in traffic?' asks an ad for a Scream keychain.
Can't say I agree totally with this Indianapolis Star editorial:
Gone are the days when Indiana legislators could afford to think of the every-other-year short session as a chance merely to tweak past decisions.Given the state's multiple challenges, lawmakers need a boldness and sense of urgency that usually are missing from nonbudget-writing sessions.
Man, oh, man, the time-zone debacle is the issue that just won't die. After a marathon hearing in South Bend, it's becoming clear that St. Joseph County's petition to go Central won't fly. And people in Elkhart County, trying to keep all of Michiana Eastern, apparently said some mean things, and people's feelings got hurt. Never thought I'd see participants in Indiana's rough-and-tumble political theater crying like babies.
Here's your word for the day: innumeracy. It's the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy, and it helps explain how the federal budget has grown to such monstrous proportions. An agency's funding is proposed to be increased by, say, $100 million, but then the increase is reduced to $50 million. Opponents decry a "50 percent cut in funding," and the press uncritically echoes it, never mind that what we really have is a $50 million increase in funding.
Maybe Gary should spend a little less time on foreign-policy resolutions and a little more on bringing peace to its own streets.
Better access to the Indiana legislative process, thanks to the Internet. More from the Indiana Law Blog (via Indiana Blog Review).
If Kurt Vonnegut is still your favorite Indiana author, you might want to think about giving Booth Tarkington another look. Vonnegut has gone from being a competent chronicler of the horror of war to being a venemous old fool who thinks suicide bombers are "very brave people" who must have an "amazing high" before blowing themselves up.
Would have been nice if this prediction had come true:
By the end of the twentieth century, the futurist Herman Kahn prophesied in 1967, Americans would enjoy thirteen weeks of vacation and a four-day work week. The challenge, it seemed, would be figuring out what to do with all our free time.
Well, we knew this was coming, didn't we?
Swiss Santa Clauses have been banned from sitting children on their laps because of the risk that they might be accused of paedophilia.
The only surprise is that it didn't happen sooner and it hasn't happened in this country. Yet.
Don't worry, white males, you can still be hired by Canada's Department of Public Works, as long as somebody gets "written permission" to do so.
"They are in effect cutting off a significant portion of the workforce from these opportunities," Macpherson tells the National Post. "It sounds like a pretty extreme measure that they're contemplating."
This is just what we want -- Chicago and Gary setting our foreign policy:
The efforts are being pushed by the D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, which sponsored the prewar "Cities for Peace" campaign that helped rally 165 cities to oppose the 2003 invasion. Director John Cavanagh, pointing to polls that show growing public frustration with the Iraq war, said that "we're at a fascinating tipping point."
The latest news on the convergence front is that, with your TiVo, you'll be able to transfer television programming to your video iPod or Sony PlayStation. We've been talking lately about the survivability of newspapers. Maybe it's time to wonder if there's even a future for words on paper.
Intelligent design has been roundly -- and rightly -- criticized for being bad science. David Darlington at In the Agora makes the valid point that it is also bad religion (or at least incomplete theology):
The god of Intelligent Design is not even an identifiably Christian god. Any religion that posits the existence of a supernatural creator-being can fit under its umbrella. At best, Intelligent Design represents a warmed-over deism, with an eternal watchmaker god.
Is it really schools' job to help students lose weight and get fit? The state thinks so, but its voluntary plan to have schools measure the weight and height of Indiana's 1 million public school students this year is running into school concerns about privacy. Only 320 of Indiana's nearly 2,000 public schools have signed up to participate.
