Uncategorized
sastyk | July 4, 2012The most important thing about the power outages in the mid-Atlantic is that no one expected them to be this bad, so no one was ready. The storms on Friday were stronger than expected, so no one, including the power company, was prepared. That meant that for 3 million homes, the loss of electricity was a total shock, arriving in the middle of a heat wave. Almost a million households still lack power five days later.
For many of those households, had this been a blizzard or a hurricane, bottles of water would have been purchased, gas cans filled up, prescriptions refilled, pantries stocked…
gregladen | July 4, 2012The following document was written by Benjamin Franklin in 1754, and is said to have been influenced by the structure of the Iroquois Confederacy, of which Franklin was well aware. This is essentially the first draft of the Articles of Confederation and closely reflects Franklin's contribution to the Constitution of the United States.
The Albany Plan of Union
It is proposed that humble application be made for an act of Parliament of Great Britain, by virtue of which one general government may be formed in America, including all the said colonies, within and under which government each colony…
gregladen | July 3, 2012Aha. I'm glad you asked!
There are two events coming up on August 10th and 11th. The first one, I'm definitely going to, the second one...I've not decided yet. First, there will be an Atheist Baseball Game. Here in the Twin Cities we have a minor league team called the Saint Paul Saints. On August 10th, they will be rebranded as the Mr. Paul Aints, and the banners of the Minnesota Atheists and American Atheists will hang in the stadium as they play some other team. Other cute atheistic punny things will be implemented. I won't tell you about all of them becuase that may ruin the shock…
sastyk | July 3, 2012
In honor of Making Home, my new book on Adapting-In-Place which comes out in August, New Society has offered to sponsor a spot in my Adapting-in-Place class that starts tomorrow. In exchange for a sponsored spot for a low-income participant who couldn't otherwise afford to take the class, New Society will ask for a weekly blog post on what the class is doing, what it is like and what you are thinking about. I'll post them at my site, and they will also appear on the NS blog. I already have one blogger doing this, but I have one more space (sorry, only one). Email me at jewishfarmer@…
sastyk | July 3, 2012A little while back we took our current foster sons to visit the university where Eric teaches physics. The boys had never visited a university before, and were curious about who goes there and what they do when they are there. This led to a discussion of the value of a college education, what kinds of jobs require college, and what kind don't.
From here, we segued to "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and it was here that the enormous gap between my biological children, trained from birth to see an adult profession/vocation, mixed perhaps with informal economic activities, as…
sastyk | July 3, 2012I can't really blame George Monbiot or anyone else for buying the narrative hype. Right now the overwhelming narrative is that we have no energy constraints at all. Folks wonder aloud whether the US should join OPEC. Increasingly ridiculous projections are made about the potential of shale oil and new drilling techniques. Slight upticks are assumed to be headed to their logical extremes, and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government issues a report saying we've got all the oil we could ever want. So is it really surprising that Monbiot, who has been focused on climate change, not peak oil…
gregladen | July 3, 2012WTF stands for ... Women Thinking Free. It was an organization born in the Skepchick Crucible, and it did things like the "Hug Me I'm Vaccinated" campaign which really truly probably saved liVes or at least reduced misery. It also spawned (though I'm probably oversimplifying here) the MTM (More than Men) project, which reminds me, it is time to repost my MTM project for you.
Anyway, when WTF started out it was cute. The name, that its. You'd say "WTF" and somebody would say "Huh? What" and then you'd say "Women Thinking Free, what did you think I meant?" and so on. But WTF grew beyond its…
choofnagle | July 3, 2012As an educator, I realize that much of education is...well...a scam. And some scams are much bigger than others. We've all read about the graduates with six-figure debt loads from obscure colleges. But the for-profit college world operates on another level. Gawker has had excellent commentary on the issue, and has pointed out that the only way the people at the Washington Post make money anymore is through Kaplan "education."
But in a setback for justice in this arena, a judge recently invalidated some regulations of the for-profit field. This gave the Association of Private Sector Colleges…
gregladen | July 3, 2012I grew up with Andy Griffith. I think Opie and I are about the same age. I didn't have an Aunt Bea but I did have a Great Aunt Tillie. All neighborhoods were small towns in those days. We had an Otis, we had a Floyd and he had a red and white pole, although we didn't have a Barney. Andy's family was non-traditional and he was in North Carolina and no one, in those days, was passing legislation against them. Also, I watched the show from a city in New York with more African Americans than the small North Carolina town he protected and nurtured with his easy going ways. This later caused…
jrosenhouse | July 1, 2012I haven't tried to solve this yet, but considering the headline I feel honor-bound to give it a try. It's a pity it wasn't available in time to include in the Big Sudoku Book, since we have a section discussing how the difficulty of a puzzle is determined.
gregladen | July 1, 2012
I don't want the scale that tweets my weight. The power stroller is cool, though. It is a hybrid.
____________________________
image of radio by x-ray delta one
gregladen | June 30, 2012Every now and then a news story comes along that makes me want to repost this particular thing I wrote a long time ago. And it has happened again. First, the news story:
National Geographic Channel has run a poll in which they found that 36% of Americans "believe UFO's exist." This is in line with previous results. There are other findings as well, but one item is new. The survey asked people who would do a better job of fighting off Aliens if they come to earth and, well, wanna fight. Obama killed Romney on that question.
So just keep that in mind when you are in the voting booth,…
gregladen | June 29, 2012This is very very cool. A little gruesome of you are not used to this sort of thing.
I wonder if it had ant insurance.
jdupuis | June 29, 2012A follow up to my post from a couple of days ago. It's nice to know that sometimes these stories have the potential for happy endings.
UVa Digital Archive of Materials Relating to the Resignation of Theresa Sullivan
University of Virginia Board Reinstates President
University of Virginia Reinstates President After Outcry
The Right Way to Lead Higher Education Through the Digital Age
U-Va.: The ouster of Teresa Sullivan
Disruptive Innovation: Rhetoric or Reality?
Episode 89 — Strategic Humanism at UVA
University of Virginia Reinstates President, But Colleges Face More Drama Ahead
U.Va. Board…
jrosenhouse | June 28, 2012I've decided it's time to get out of Virginia for two weeks or so. I came up with the most exciting and exotic locales I could think of. I will be visiting central New Jersey, Philadelphia, upstate New York and New York City. Do I know how to travel or what?
It'll be a mix of business and pleasure, but blogging will be very sporadic while I'm gone. Sorry about that.
sastyk | June 28, 2012There's this Onion Column - I'm pretty sure she wouldn't want a bunch of dirt covered farming hicks being able to get their tetanus shots. I shoulda thought of that!
The only reason this is even being considered is because a majority of voters want it. Well, of course they do—they don't have it! But you don't see 33rd Degree Freemasons letting any old average citizen into their inner sanctum just because he's curious. And you won't catch me sharing my God-given right to affordable lifesaving medical procedures with every bum who's got a jones for another hepatitis vaccination. It's…
sastyk | June 28, 2012While I recover from a nasty case of food poisoning, I thought in honor of the SCOTUS decision, it would be worth re-running this piece from 2009. For all that this is not the national health care system the US needs, it is, in the end, a small step in the right direction.
A while back, at a talk I gave, a small scale farmer asked me why my family didn’t farm full time. I observed that one of the reasons we don’t is simply that we have young children and we feel that we have a need for benefits. He pointed out that my state, New York, has a program to provide health insurance for the…
gregladen | June 28, 2012Here is a valuable discussion about the following video and related topics.