“Somewhere in the White House attic is a picture of Barack Obama getting smarter.”
The Road To The Nomination
As Treacher notes, Huntsman has secured the crucial Howard Dean endorsement.
Generation Web
Beloit College looks at the class of 2015:
O.J. Simpson has always been looking for the killers of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Jim Carrey has always been bigger than a pet detective.
They’ve always gone to school with Mohammed and Jesus.
John Wayne Bobbitt has always slept with one eye open.
There has never been an official Communist Party in Russia.
“Yadda, yadda, yadda” has always come in handy to make longFaux Christmas trees have always outsold real ones.
They’ve always been able to dismiss boring old ideas with “been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt.”
The bloody conflict between the government and a religious cult has always made Waco sound a little whacko. stories short..
Jimmy Carter has always been a smiling elderly man who shows up on TV to promote fair elections and disaster relief.
Women have always been kissing women on television.
Their older siblings have told them about the days when Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera were Mouseketeers.
Unlike their older siblings, they spent bedtime on their backs until they learned to roll over.
Music has always been available via free downloads.
And to them, tales of men walking on the moon are like stories of the depths of the Depression to me. And many of them probably don’t believe them.
Schools Of Education
It’s not a new topic for me, but here’s more reason to simply abolish them:
The education sector is notoriously ineffective at identifying high- and low-quality workers, making it difficult for the labor market to penalize students from education departments that produce low-quality teachers. The culture of low standards in education is partly to blame, as those within the education establishment have shown little interest in distinguishing good teachers from mediocre teachers, but why can K-12 schools get away with not distinguishing high-quality workers from low-quality workers? What makes education different?
Two words: teachers’ unions. As that famous report noted three decades ago, if a foreign entity had imposed on us this educational system, it would rightly be considered an act of war. What should we think about the domestic enemies that have done, and continue to do so?
New York Nine
Could a Republican be about to take the seat of Gerri Ferraro and Chuckie Schumer? It’s about Israel, and gay marriage.
Albany is run by the Dems, and if they lose that seat, they may just redistrict it out of existence (something they were considering after Weiner imploded anyway). But psychologically, such a perceived referendum on the White House won’t bode well for the election next year and traditional Jewish support for both Obama and Democrats in general.
The Palestinian State
…there is none. And as Michael Ledeen reminds us, events in Libya, Syria, Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan are not unrelated — they are all battles in a much larger war, the one that replaced the Cold War in pitting totalitarians against the liberal West.
Pheremones
…are bunk.
With regard to stinkum in general, I don’t have a very good sense of smell, so if I can smell a woman’s perfume when I’m not in close proximity, she’s definitely wearing too much.
Bon Mot
Frank J.: “Obama inherited his problems from Bush, and being a good steward, he’s preserved his inheritance for future generations.”
Vague Generalities
So, the Aerospace Industries Association has issued a position paper for a strategy on human space exploration, but it’s pretty unspecific about what the actual policy should be:
Developing this recommended path forward will not be easy; to that end, AIA encourages this Independent Study on Human Exploration of Space to address in detail:
• Near term human exploration milestones including robotic precursors. The lack of proximate exploration activity now could severely hinder our future exploration capability.
• Mission-oriented technology priorities that tie development of needed enabling technologies to milestones on our track toward eventual Mars exploration.
• Integration of science and technology missions with a parallel human exploration strategy. Exploration, science, and technology must progress hand in hand.
• The implementation, within fiscal constraint guidance, of societal and national goals stated as Key Objectives in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010.
• Path forward options if fiscal constraints change.
One good thing — there’s no mention whatsoever of heavy lift. The only way defenders of it will find it is to call it a “mission-oriented technology” or “needed enabling technology” for Mars. But it’s a hard case to make, if orbital storage and transfer of propellant is deployed.
ECM Bleg
Is anyone out there familiar with Nuxeo?