Links for 2010-12-11

"Holiday decorations are unstable. (We're talking about physics here. We'll leave their emotions aside.) To take a closer look at what we're dealing with, I've considered three of the most popular items from the array of December decor: The Christmas tree, the Hanukkah menorah and, of course, the Festivus pole.

Which of the three is the most likely to topple over when cousin Fred bumps into it after sampling too much egg nog?"

"Getting laid off is not the same as getting fired.

That should be particularly obvious, as for the past three years America's economy and the economy of many other countries around the world have been shaped by mass lay-offs and not by mass firings. But yet this confusion persists -- particularly on right-wing talk radio, on Fox News and among conservative pundits and politicians.

The effects of this confusion are cruel.

Advice given on the basis of this confusion is foolish.

Policy misinformed by this confusion is futile and ineffective.

So let's try to clear this up.

Getting laid off is not the same as getting fired."

The nearly unheard-of single-author experimental PRL. Which, amusingly, is still written in first-person plural.

"The percentages of ACT-tested 2008 high school graduates who met or surpassed ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks in math (43%), reading (53%), and science (28%) were unchanged compared to last year and were either the same or higher than they were in 2004 to 2006. The proportion of 2008 graduates who met the benchmark in English (68%) dropped by one percentage point compared to the last two years but was equal to the percentages in 2004 and 2005."

"@monkeyflungpoo: Mos Eisley Space Port security officials admit to ethnic profiling, and enhanced patdowns of Sand People.

@deathspal: Ballistics report show Greedo's gun never fired"

"If you are a little Jewish kid, Santa Claus does not enter your home via the chimney on Christmas Eve. Instead, he arrives in late fall, usually by way of the Target catalog and the television set. And if you are a little Jewish kid confronting old St. Nick for the first time via Frosty, Rudolph, Charlie Brown, or the 1966 animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you may find yourself with a lot of questions. "Mamma, who is Center and where are my presents?" asked my 3-year-old, rather randomly, in October. "Mommy, is Santa real?" my 5-year-old asks pretty much daily. In the way of 5-year-old boys everywhere, he follows that one up with "Mom, if Santa and Judah the Maccabee got in a fight, who would win?""