Barry Misses Three Hots and a Cot

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America’s favorite crack-smoking mayor is back in the legal limelight.  Marion Barry, former mayor and current city council member of Washington, D.C., has been charged with failure to file his income tax returns.  It’s a misdemeanor charge that could bring 1 1/2 years in jail.

Conviction won’t mean Barry loses his job as a city council member since by law he would only lose it if he gets felony jail time.  Even better, at the end of his current term in 2008 Barry will be qualify for pension benefits and a lifetime income.  So that’s what happens when you help run a city into the ground for over 30 years.  Sheesh.

Kids Can Be Jerks, Creative Solutions Needed

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Over at Dave Hoggard’s blog there’s an interesting post about disciplining students in public schools.  Even more interesting is the discussion going on in his comments section.

Disciplining students is a sticky situation for teachers and administrators these days, and the lack of discipline in many students’ homes doesn’t help matters.  But one comment to Dave’s post had the following statement that I think highlights another problem in schools:

Yes, discipline begins in the home, and there way too little of it
these days. And yes, the issue is complex. And I did not chime in to
advocate corporal punishment, though it sure worked in my 7th grade gym
class. But as former public school teacher for five years I can attest
that David�s basic point is spot on. The system is totally rigged
against the teachers, and as such there is almost no hope for
discipline, except in those classes that happen to have the exceptional
teachers who just plain inspire it. (Emphasis mine).

I agree with the writer that in many ways the system is rigged against teachers, but I also think it is rigged against students.  How sad is it that only exceptional teachers inspire their students?  Shouldn’t it be a core skill?  And unfortunately the same students that cause problems for the teachers cause just as many problems for the other students, if not more.  The "good" kids are being robbed of their teachers’ attention and of the opportunity to learn and be taught.

Celeste and I have been fortunate that our kids have not had any spectacularly bad teachers, but they have had some very average teachers that did little to inspire them.  On the other hand they’ve also had the fortune of having a few very energetic and inspired teachers and in those classes they have blossomed in a way we could hardly imagine.

Oh and in case you’re wondering about our view towards school discipline, our kids would much rather not find out what would happen if we ever got a call from the principal.  Let’s just say that they would have a far greater appreciation for the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

If I Was a Business Editor

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Since I have a job and don’t have time right now to do the research I’d like to, I had this fantasy today about stories I’d assign reporters at the Winston-Salem Journal if I was their editor.  Here’s my short list:

  • Look at how many companies have gotten incentives to locate their companies in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County over the last four or five years, figure out how much those incentives totaled, how many jobs they created and the direct benefit to the city/county’s coffers.  I know there are indirect benefits tied to it, but I’d tell them to focus on the hard numbers (there are after all some indirect costs associated with businesses too).  Maybe come up with a nice cost-per-job number and an annual-revenue-per-job number.  Avoid drawing an "incentives are evil" conclusion, just pull together as much quantifiable data as possible and provide some perspective, then let people draw their own conclusion. 
  • Figure out how many companies in the city/county have dropped or decreased employee health coverage.  Look into what that means for city/county agencies and institutions that deal with health issues.
  • In the most recent issue of Wired magazine they do a story on the rising "megalopolis’" in the US, and identify 10 regions where these things will grow.  The I-85 corridor between Raleigh and Atlanta is identified as one of these, and the rising bio-tech industry is projected to be the main economic engine for the region.  What does this mean for W-S and its nascent bio-tech industry?  What’s the impact of the recent announcement about the Kannapolis development?

I figure that could keep them busy for a while.  I just wish I had the time to do it myself.

If Ignorance Isn’t Bliss It Might Be Orgasmic

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Results of a study on human sexuality have revealed that university educated women are less likely to experience an orgasm than women with only a high-school diploma.  One of the study’s co-authors then makes this silly statement:

"It may well be that highly educated women are different from
less-educated women in many respects. Maybe they have higher standards
. . . higher expectations and legitimately lower evaluations. They may
be living much busier, much more stressful lives," said William Fisher,
a professor of psychology and obstetrics and gynecology at the
University of Western Ontario who is a co-author of the paper.

Sorry pal, I don’t think it takes a degree to have high expectations when you get your freak on, and I find it hard to believe that someone without a university degree has a less stressful life than someone who does.  Something about that diploma getting you better jobs, more money and all that.

The study also has some "no-duh" findings like the fact that married women have a lower sex drive than single women and having children has a certain dampening effect on the old libido, but there are a couple of other surprises in there.  Go check out the article here.

You just know that you’re gonna hear something about this on Leno or Letterman.

USA Today is Controlled by Leftist Rebels

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Now I’ve seen it all: McPaper is being pilloried by the likes of Michelle Malkin for running a doctored photo of Condi Rice that made her look just a tad demonic.  Here’s the doctored photo (photos are by Mikhail Metzel, AP
WASHINGTON (AP)):Evilcondi

And here’s the less-doctored photo that replaced it on the USA Today site after the stink raised by Malkin & Co., along with the editorial note from the paper:

Regular_condiEditor’s note: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally
accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA
TODAY’s editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly
adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size
and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance.
In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor
brightened a portion of Rice’s face, giving her eyes an unnatural
appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in
keeping with our editorial standards.

Personally I don’t think the airbrushing can do any worse damage to Condi’s image than this picture did to W’s:
Bushzipperpic1fr

Reading List October 25, 2005

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  • You’re Pre-Approved = A Real Family Application (The Post Money Value) – Rick Segal points out something I’ve been saying for a long time: while there are services out there that people can use for sharing family information (shared blog, shared photo, etc.) there isn’t one that is really non-techie, geared to people who have just gotten used to email.  He smells opportunity and so do I.
  • What Did Cheney Know? And When? (Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire) – Did the VP lie when he said he went on Meet the Press two years ago and said "I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson…. And Joe Wilson
    — I don’t know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I
    ever saw when he came back." Three months earlier his chief-of-staff had documented a conversation with the VP about Mr. Wilson and his wife.  Hmmm.
  • The Earthquakes Changed Kashmiri Politics (StrategyPage.com) – The US has the opportunity to make strong inroads into Pakistan and the region in general via its relief efforts in response to the earthquakes in the Kashmir region.
  • Innovation is Bursting Out Again (Don Dodge) – Microsoft’s emerging tech guy looks at some of the areas that are seeing a burst of innovation, and highlights some of the companies providing said innovation.
  • White House Insisting on Torture (Bayosphere) – Links to a piece in the New York Times about the Bush administration’s stance on a pending bill before congress, and an amendment proposed by John McCain in particular.  "Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the handling of
    detainees, the White House is insisting that the Central Intelligence
    Agency be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of
    suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists."      Make sure you read the comments.
  • Dickless: W Without Cheney (Davenetics) – Not a particularly revealing post, but I kind of like the headline.

US Senators Outperform the Market by 12% Annually! Shocking?

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Once again you’re going to be shocked – shocked I tell you! – by the apparent genius of our elected officials.  According to this article in the New Yorker a professor in Georgia has done a detailed study of over 6,000 stock transactions made by US Senators between 1993-1998 and has found that the Senators outperformed the market by an average of 12% annually.  As the author says:

Over that time, senators beat the market, on average, by twelve per
cent annually. Since a mutual-fund manager who beats the market by two
or three per cent a year is considered a genius, the politicians’
ability to foresee the future seems practically divine. They did an
especially good job of picking up stocks at just the right time; their
buys were typically flat before they bought them, but beat the market
by thirty per cent, on average, in the year after.

To further enhance our grasp of the obvious the author writes:

Are senators really that smart? The authors of the study suggest a more
likely explanation: at least some senators must have been trading
“based on information that is unavailable to the public”—in other
words, they were engaged in some form of insider trading. It’s
impossible to pin down exactly how it happened, but it’s easy to
imagine senators getting occasional stock tips from corporate
supplicants, and their own work in Congress often deals with
confidential matters that have a direct impact on particular companies.

I wonder how many of them are heavily invested in energy companies these days?  Come to think of it how many are heavily invested in defense contracting companies?

Just asking.

Political Statement 2005 Style

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Today’s generation of grassroots political commentators may not have its marches on Washington ala the Vietnam era, but it does have its own unique form of commentary which has been enabled by all the cheap audio and video editing software that’s out there and the ability to distribute the resulting product via the internet.

A great example is what a guy who’s dubbed himself DJ RX has done with a mix or "mashup" of President Bush singing U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday, which you can listen to here.

Genius.

Reading List October 24, 2005

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  • The Entrepreneurial Mind Set (Moore’s Lore) – Dana Blankenhorn is entering the entrepreneurial realm himself and it has caused him to take that position that countries like China and India are developing more entrepreneurs, the US education system stinks and the Baby Boomers have killed the golden goose (the last are my words, not his).  It’s an interesting take on our society right now.
  • The Fall of the Warrior King (New York Times Magazine) – The story of Col. Nick Sassaman, his role in Iraq and how it led to his fall from grace.
  • Good News: People are Social Animals (Fractals of Change) – Tom Evslin talks about why peer-driven services on line have developed, and how/if they will continue to work.