I was watching "Good Morning America" yesterday, and a NASA representative was being hounded by one of the Silly Morning People about plans to spend $104 billion to get back to the moon by 2018: What about some people who say this kind of money shouldn't be spent on this kind of foolishness when we have poverty and hunger here and are spending so much money on the Iraq war, and there is, you know, this huge post-Katrina problem?
Let's see. We have foreign terrorists to worry about, not to mention domestic monsters of all sorts as well as fraud and robbery and kidnapping and God knows what else, so of course we should make the FBI's new prime mission going after adult porn. If this truly is what some suspect, the attorney general's attempt to curry favor with the GOP base in hopes of a Supreme Court appointment, may he end up in Terre Haute as a public defender, representing destitute drunk-driving child molesters.
Sure, this is one of those gee-whiz studies that lets us make fun of some professional groups: Psychopaths make the best investment decisions. But let's not overlook the grain of truth in the findings: For some decisions by some people in some circumstances, it is necessary to turn off, or at least override, emotions. Think not just of high-risk investors but also of soldiers and rescuers.
I'm happy to report that the eminent-domain oafs who tried to muscle in on a group's plans for a private school, reported on yesterday, have backed off. Note that, though school officials had sent the group a "strongly worded" threatening letter, they now say it was all a "misunderstanding." Cretins.
Here is the followup story (from the same annoying newspaper site that requires registration):
Let us now praise obsessed people, at least those who are obsessed about the right things. The death of Simon Wiesenthal is a reminder that evil not only exists, it is relentless, so those who recognize it must be relentless, too. Wiesenthal could have had a more normal life, but he dedicated himself to the fight against forgetting.
All schools that get federal money have been required this year to devote a day to teaching students about the U.S. Constitution. How much do you know? Take this 10-question quiz and find out. Not to put any pressure on you, but I got 9 out of 10 right.
Sorry to keep hitting you with all these eminent domain postings, but the Supreme Court's Kelo decision is one of the most serious assaults on our freedom in years. Here' s an up-close view from the Kelo whose refusal to give in led to the case in the first place.
It's fine if these people want to appease fundamentalist offense-finders just to protect the bottom line, but what about the sensitivities of the rest of us? Why are they allowed to keep calling the place Burger King instead of Burger President or Burger Committee Chairperson?
Reams and reams could be written on what we can learn from the movies than make men cry and the movies that make women cry (click on the chart to see the complete lists). But you know what? I won't touch it, except to note that "Schindler's List" being at the top of the men's list and "Ghost" heading the women's says a whole lot.
There's something about the choice program for Fort Wayne Community Schools I'm not quite getting.
This is an amusing little story about shallow, clueless people, until you stop and realize that it pretty much describes the way government has treated the poor in this country at least as far back as the Great Society. Poverty is a permanent condition you can only throw money at, not a temporary circumstance we encourage people to leave behind.
Suppose his wife's anticipated presidential bid had anything to do with Bill Clinton's classless attack on President Bush? Wonder how it's been affecting the road-buddy relationship of Clinton and Dad Bush?
UPDATE: a memory refresher course for Mr. Clinton. And some scathing reactions here.
If you haven't check out Fort Wayne Observed, Nathan Gotsch's blog, you should give it a try. It began as a media-criticism site but has expanded to include comments about a variety of Fort Wayne-related subjects. He also has links to a lot of other local blogs. You can find a permanent link to the site at the top of my blog roll on the left.
When eminent domain is used to take property for actual public projects, such as roads, bridges and schools, instead of private use masquerading as public good, that's OK, right? Well, how about when a group of people spend enormous time, money and energy getting ready to build themselves a priave school, then the local school system comes along at the last minute and says, "Good idea, we think we'd like to build a school there instead"?
Ryan Lengerich, The News-Sentinel's economic-development reporter, has a good column in tonight's Busniess Monday about his recent trip to Greenville, S.C., which has done such a good job of bringing back its downtown that Fort Wayne is looking there for ideas. Ryan is new to Fort Wayne, so his take on the two downtowns is especially interesting.
Three weeks out from Katrina, it's clearer than ever that people at every level of government made a lot of mistakes, which had a multiplier effect. Those who just can't get past their own political prejudices to take an honest look at what happened will be increasingly irrelevant to the debate; they will add nothing helpful.
All of us in the news business -- especially those engaged in dead-tree journalism -- are trying to figure out how to engage those whippersnappers called "young people." This post gives a pretty good explanation of why that effort might be a little trickier than most of us want to believe. I know this makes me really sound like a fuddy-duddy dinosaur, but I continue to believe that journalism should strive to be what it always has been: a good story well-told.
I tell people I have a manual PDA. I write things on scraps of paper, matchbooks, napkins, business cards, POST-IT notes, and wad them all together in my back pocket. When the wad gets too big, I go through all the scraps, throwing some away and stacking the rest neatly on my dresser. This is called archiving. Now I'm ready for an upgrade.
This is talk like a pirate day. Yaarghh, matey -- ya must be the son of a biscuit-eatin' land-lubber if ya don' find this highly amusin'.
