Unsought Input

This is all the evidence I need that the human race has destroyed evolution.

Tom Wilson - aka “Biff” from the Back To The Future - sings a song about the questions he constantly gets asked by fans, as part of his standup act.

I think if I met him I WOULD ask him to call my friend a butthead on his answering machine…

In case you’ve been living under a rock or are one of those annoying people who say they don’t watch TV because its a waste of time (by the way pop culture just called and said fuck you), you’ve heard about the new TV show on NBC Heroes. So far it is only 3 episodes into its season and already it is the highest rated new show on network TV. This goes to show that interesting shows with creative plots and characters can be successful in today mass media society wheren people are constantly bombarded by different types of entertainment. This also goes to show that NBC’s new policy to only have reality shows and game shows in the 8 pm time slot is stupid. True Heroes is in the 9pm time slot but will people really be tuning in earlier to watch some shitty game show where people pick yes or no. Maybe NBC should focus on making for good TV shows then putting out cheap crap to get people to watch their network. Unless the game show is a real life Running Man, I don’t think that the world needs another game show brought over from Europe. So be sure and watch Heroes, unless your one of those lame people who would rather do something outside in which case go fuck a tree.

While researching the RICO statutes, I was astonished to find two disturbing applications of these laws. First, when RICO intersects with mail and wire fraud statutes, it allows the federal government to turn underlying offenses outside the scope of RICO into actual RICO offenses. Second, the federal government can prosecute an offender both under RICO and on the underlying crimes that constitute a RICO violation, creating a scenario equivalent to double jeopardy. After the cut, I will explain what the RICO statute is, how these two applications work, and why this is injust.

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Is your blog starting to bog down? Getting nasty emails from your ISP about overloading the database server? Since most blogs are read far more often than they are updated, caching your pages can result in a real performance improvement.

Wordpress has some very basic object caching, but you really need to be able to cache whole pages to see a big benefit. Luckily there is a very good page-caching plugin, WP-Cache.

If you are on a Linux or Unix host, installation is pretty straightforward.

Now, what if you are on a Windows/ IIS host and using ‘date and name based’, almost-pretty permalinks? No sweat. Okay, a little bit of sweat.

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So, recently I have discovered Pandora. Pandora, for those of you who were like me just mere months ago, is a free music radio station on the internet. What makes this radio station any different from any other radio station, you might ask? Pandora is built on the foundation of the music genome project. Basically, a whole bunch of muscians and other music geeks analized over 10,000 songs and put together songs that are related by certain sounds, vocals, rhythms, drums, arrangements, harmonizations, ect… and made a giant database of them.

So, how does Pandora work? Basically, you go to the website and tell it what kind of music you like. It makes you a radio station of whatever you told it you like. Then, it starts adding songs to it that sound similar or that it thinks you would like based on what kind of patterns in the music are similar to the stuff you already like. You have several radio stations based on what you are in the mood for at the time. It finds stuff you like, and if you don’t like it, then you tell it so and it doesn’t play stuff like that anymore. So, reasons to use Pandora:

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The other week, I got a phone call from someone who immediately expressed her intention to offer unsolicited input, then proceeded to beat around the bush talking about how libraries are underfunded and such. She described an illuminated map that we used to sell in the gift shop and advised that we start selling them again and require every school building in the state to purchase one and display it prominently for the edification of young minds. However, she continued to tell me, this was not her primary suggestion, which she did not begin to unveil until much more pounding in the vicinity of shrubs. Her unsolicited input was kindly offered, free to the library, with no expectation of monetary compensation. “Do you know of [incredibly famous historical local writer, one of whose characters is the namesake for our city football team]?” she asked me.

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MPOW has a system that assigns people to use computers. The other day, I was summoned by a frustrated-looking woman to assist her with it. She pointed to a user number assigned to a particular computer and told me “That’s me, but it won’t let me on!” I looked at her user number, which was a different string of digits from the one at which she was pointing as well as from every other number on the waiting list. “That must be someone else’s number, which is why that computer won’t allow you to log on” I informed her. “I don’t see your number anywhere on this list. I’m not sure if you signed up earlier and got timed out, or what happened. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to sign up again to get on a computer.”

“This crazy message keeps coming up when I try to enter my number, see!” she complained.

It was the message asking if the person really wants to sign up for the computer waiting list. “Oh, that always comes up” I told her.

“NO it doesn’t. YOU PEOPLE are full of BULLSHIT!” she hissed at me and started to mutter angrily.

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I recently wrote a glib, throwaway post on Five Quick Steps for reforming education. While the list was made partially in humor, it has sparked a substantive debate and I would like to wade in with more detailed thoughts.

1. We should not overly federalize education. The federal government, bastion of bloat and incompetence, cannot address education issues as well as the various States. The federal government is crucial for legislating on issues that are national or interstate, such as environmental regulations. That is where they are most useful. Education is primarily a local issue. Therefore, it is more appropriate for the States to control education, since they would be able to craft solutions that address the specific needs of failing schools. While one school district may have crumbling infrastructure that needs to be addressed, another may have a teacher shortage. The federal government does not have the time nor the energy to address such specific issues and their attempts at reform, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, have been deleterious rather than ameliorative.

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Hooray! After 27 years of suffering through being Really Really Fat I have FINALLY been given the answer I was looking for - it is NOT my fault and my fatness is a disease with a name!

No, it’s not diabetes or hypothyroidism. Those have been around for many years and all Really Really Fat people have been tested for those at least twice in their lives. The new disease is Metabolic Syndrome. It’s symptoms are:

• Obesity (particularly around the waist)
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Insulin resistance

OMG I am so stoked. The Mayo Clinic says if I have any one of these symptoms, I’m totally in the running for Metabolic Syndrome. Now my obesity can be attributed to my high blood pressure and high cholesterol and not the other way around! (more…)

Todd started the discussion with his post about reforming education in America and Tracy added her two cents. Tracy agreed with me about the less-than-impressive track record of charter schools, but both thought market-style competition were the solution.

I disagree that bringing up charter school problems is a pot shot, since charter schools are exactly what many reformers and proponents of privatizing public education want. My main point is not that I think privatization is morally wrong or doomed to failure, but that we should take a more scientific approach to charter schools, vouchers, and other forms of privatization.

Here are five slow, difficult steps for reforming education in America.

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I stumbled upon this website a few weeks ago and it’s really funny. It has a little something for everyone. You just have to see for yourself instead of me ruining it for you by describing it.
www.fakegaynews.com

Read Tod’s post and Jason’s comment before you read this, please.

Jason, your complaint is not unique to schooling. Any time marketing exists it exists in a world in which consumer is not educated; in fact, they are counting on it. Thus we have things like McDonald’s. At the same time market pressure is the most responsive and pliable type of reform initiative. For instance, for the exactly two point three seconds that everyone remembered (a la non-research based docu-drivel) just how disgusting McDonald’s food really is they drastically changed their menus. That was nation-wide; hundreds of thousands of store almost over night all because of a little market pressure.

Show me a neighborhood that has any consumer educated enough to make a “rational” decision about what to friggin eat for lunch and I’ll show the Garden of Freaking Eden. (more…)

1. Blow up the Department of Education.

2. Eradicate the teachers’ unions by hiring Pinkertons.

3. Abolish government control over running schools and place most of the governance and day-to-day operations in private hands.

4. Create a comprehensive school choice voucher system funded by the States.

5. More pizza parties.

Fellow interneters, imagine with me if you will: You are in a group, either that you know or you don’t, it doesn’t matter. The subject turns from something innocent about the upcoming elections to, dare I say it, sex. Not just ‘hey, that’s sexy’ but ‘oh my god, there is sex everywhere and my/someone’s children could possibly hear about where babies really come from and now I am super offended’. Now, everyone is in a giant debate over their personal views of sex. Some are offended and leave, some yell and scream and don’t listen to what anyone else has to say, and some never get their point across.
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So, now you have this visual. Someone please tell me why it’s such a hot topic? Personally, I think that we are way to hung up on it. We can’t have our children finding out about sex! It’s immoral. It’s disgusting and dirty and better just not to think about. (more…)