Edjukshun Is Hilee Over8ed LOL

Ther is a big hipe on edjukshun. Oh, I no they got numbers that U will get a fansy job if U get colege, but truly U dont need no edjukshun 2 mak a lots of mony. I am entrepenur on thu net, & mak lots of mony. If U want lots of mony & get chances, pick U family good. U don’t need no edjukshun. I quit out of hiskul cuz thu net dont need no edjukshun.

Thu way I mak mony is on thu net & I subsckrib 4 X porno & slezy net skuls, all legul. If you want to mak mony on edjukshun, do verts & soshul netwerk 4 net skuls but I got sumbody to writ 4 me cuz sumbody sed that wuz not real cuz the writing wuz stoopid. They R stoopid. My frends all stick with me when I git thum stuff and do there stuff with thum that is fun 2. That taks no edjukshun.

My freind sed it wuz not thu sam. Thu kids that wuz on thu net all thu time new much as big shots. Now it not so E-Z cuz it got mor complik8d all laws & siense & such. Now all taks colege. Not tru. I writ on thu koments of thu net all thu tim. Read on the koments of the net sumtim. U wil see me ther. That dont need no edjukshun. My freind is stoopid.

Here's Thinking for You
Iffy

The Devil Take the Hindmost

In a way I feel bad for Obama, not because his approval ratings are down, that goes with the territory, or even because McChrystal couldn’t remember what he was doing in Afghanistan, or even because the Russians don’t like chili dogs, but because, like Arnie in California, the job is impossible. Like I said before the election, the Rove/Cheney/Bush abyss may be too vast for any mortal human being to span in one lifetime. It is a no-win job that the republicans should have had responsibility for fixing as much as for breaking. But Arnie has only managed to confirm that the republicans can’t fix anything except their wallets. In spite of good intentions, Arnie gets hit from every direction. (http://politics.newsvine.com/_news/2010/06/26/4566213-gop-schwarzenegger-a-great-disappointment

Obama was the only hope, and I hate to see him go down in a thankless, impossible job, but he asked for it, so he gets the credit for not fixing it just as much as the Dubya Posse gets credit for breaking it. The opportunity to rise above the occasion for Dubya was exceeded only by the opportunity to screw it up, and so he did, leaving a legacy that even a sincere republican like Arnie can’t touch.

As for comparing Deepwater Horizon with Katrina, all Bush had to do to be a hero in New Orleans was to evacuate the sports dome and the hospital in two days. That’s all it would have taken. They would have forgiven everything else over time, but the pressure on law enforcement and resources in the city with no place for people to go turned into a spectacle that we’ll remember for a lifetime.

Military trucks, vessels, and aircraft a hundred miles away never moved, and the final irony was that the airport was still operational. That’s what really pissed people off, and likewise intensified resentment of every other perceived inadequacy of the response. After that, it was prove you can do better than New Orleans, instead of we are so glad to have some help.

As for fixing Deepwater Horizon, what in the hell was Obama supposed to do? This was not a regularly occurring natural disaster like a hurricane. The only domes involved are a mile under water, and there isn’t any known device in existence to manage the results. All he could do was stand on the beach and jump up and down. The Navy doesn’t have a huge stock of oil containment equipment. Yeah, somebody should have been ready to deal with this kind of problem. We know blowouts happen. We know BOPs can fail. We know working a mile under water is tricky, but republicans and other conservatives are always whining about big government and free enterprise. Nobody wanted to put responsibility for another expensive project on the government when they already had so much invested in cozy regulatory relationships. Does this remind you of anything, like the SEC? The industry could have cooperated on joint development of equipment and planning for contingency protection, but that would have been a quasi-government function. Chalk another one up for free enterprise, and let the devil take the hindmost. Only problem is, the hindmost is us.

Here's Thinking For You
Iffy

Insecticide: How a Failure of Diplomacy Wiped Out an Entire Community

In the spring when I was cleaning the yard, I kicked up a low-lying wasp nest out behind the shed without realizing it at first. The wasps came in around my ankles, and I got stung pretty good (or pretty bad, or badly). Wasp stings can be so intense that the impact is first sort of incomprehensible, like suddenly running into an electrified barb-wire fence that was never there before. “This can’t be happening,” I say to myself, and then, ouch, yes it is happening, and I am doing the tribal dance of pain. I have some sensitivity to wasp stings as well. For several days my ankles swell into a painful imitation of exercise weights. I was seriously annoyed, but the truth was they were just doing what wasps do, and they weren’t really a problem otherwise. I wasn’t planning on going back there anytime soon, so I slathered on hydrocortisone and left them alone. After a couple of weeks, I could again walk like a human being instead of a two-legged pogo stick, and my outrage subsided into a comforting haze of live-and-let-live magnanimity.

This summer I had to work on the fence across the back, which wasn’t really in the range of the nest, but I had to walk within a couple feet of the wasps to get around them. I was a little apprehensive at first, but apparently I wasn’t a threat, and they left me alone. When I was almost done with the fence, however, I was picking up where I had been working, and suddenly the agonizing combination of sensations like sharpened lightning bolts hit me from behind. After days of ignoring me, apparently the capo wasp had suddenly decided to put out a hit on me, and without warning, the enforcers targeted the backs of my legs. This apparently unprovoked and unreasonable attack infuriated me. I had left them alone and given them their space, but they attacked me without mercy, the vicious little buzzards. I did what people do when they collide with the impersonal aggression of nature. I pulled out a can of insecticide and blasted the colony into oblivion.

Perhaps the wasps had legitimate concerns, at least in wasp terms. Perhaps in another reality we could have been sitting down with a couple of beers under a big umbrella, amiably chatting up our unjustified mutual paranoia. Perhaps we could have reached an accommodating agreement regarding our space and our right of way. Perhaps we would have found that our basic motivation was not so different, and that we shared fundamental ambivalence about our competing relationships with the unfamiliar and the unique.

Unfortunately, wasps are short on diplomacy and long on attack skills. While their needs may be uncomplicated and fundamental, their triggers are irrevocable and somewhat mysterious. As far as I can tell, they have little patience or appreciation for negotiation, and so for all intents and purposes, they quite decisively and carelessly commit themselves to heroic annihilation, and the truth is that I have a hard time feeling thoroughly bad about it.

Here’s Thinking for You.
Iffy

Perfect Business

Conservative republicans accused President Obama of opposition to business. What does opposition to business mean? Does it mean Bernie Madoff and AIG, no accountability, no enforcement, and no regulation? If so, then Obama opposes business. Does it mean uncontrolled pollution and collapsing bridges? If so, then Obama opposes business. Does it mean dangerous food, inadequate disaster response, and discrimination? If so, then Obama opposes business. Does it mean all the resources and all the income are controlled by a few people? If so, then Obama opposes business.

The conservatives accused another President of opposing business. His name was Theodore Roosevelt, and the business was Standard Oil. No doubt that ruined the country. By now we could have a government operated for profit by one corporation, like Idi Amin in Uganda. Wouldn’t that be perfect?

Here's Thinking For You.
Iffy

Full Ride

Shanna McLaughlin got a lot of exposure in a UCF locker room and subsequently on the internet, as the images went from less than outlandish
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/432879-shanna-mclaughlin-pics-the-playboy-playmate-and-ucf-fan-causes-a-stir#page/7

to borderline pornography as reported by some kind of illiterate scribblealazzi.
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6487262-shanna-mclaughlin-shot-nude-in-university-of-central-florida

One entertaining thing about the internet is just how much the information can be lost in translation, or even just transfer. Apparently the mere attempt to repeat information is too much for some reporters. Female nudity in college football locker rooms makes interesting headlines, but in this case it’s also misunderstanding at best and sheer fantasy otherwise.

But Shanna McLaughlin in the locker room doesn’t bother me. The more blessings we can find to celebrate the better as far as I’m concerned. What does bother me is that anyone employed by the university would think it was okay to provide access to university facilities without consulting the legions of bureaucrats we employ to administer such things, alum or no alum. Do you have any idea what kind of hoops a business has to jump through to get approved for operating on campus? The university athletic department wouldn't even dignify a polite inquiry from Iffy with a reply, but a publication connected to adult entertainment can walk in and somebody hands them the key.

I’m not complaining. I just want to make sure we understand who really runs this parking-lot carnival.

Here’s Thinking for you.
Iffy

The Wages of Sin is Wages

Mark Hurd bailed out of Hewlitt Packard after some kind of sexual harassment suit landed in their laps.
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20100806/7ff465f1-26ff-485d-a021-cf6229cbd0e8

What exactly Hurd did to qualify for the shakedown is very unclear. Hurd himself and the company he is credited with revitalizing by cutting about a thousand jobs seem to be saying there was no sex and no harassment, only some kind of misinterpretation. For this minor carelessness they canned his ass, and he settled with his adversary for an undisclosed amount. Do you suppose she got forty dollars and a tee-shirt?

A pillow stuffed with about 30 million cushioned Hurd’s fall from grace. I don’t think you could call it a parachute. I don’t think there’s any way to make 30 million buoyant. Where do I sign up for harassment?

Here's Thinking for You.
Iffy

Gramatikly Speaking

For a long time, I thought hassle was spelled hastle. Funny how the rules work when you're not paying attention, and I was critical of Michael Zerbe because the introduction to his book insisted that the contributions of his colleagues could not be "underestimated." Speaking of which (if this can be considered speaking) is refudiating really a word, or is Marilyn Standard-Pseudonym just goofing on me? (cryptic Facebook reference) But on the other hand, why not?

I also thought the level of grammatical consistency in national publications was declining because of electronic communciations, but when I went back and started looking at publications from the Seventies, Twenties, and before 1900, I came to the conclusion that there have always been a lot of typos in all kinds of publications, in spite of pedantic ranting about excellence and accuracy in writing.

Experts like Bennett are probably some of the worst offenders. Not only do they make mistakes, but they claim to set the standards. So is the question really whether the message gets across or not?

Here's Thinking for You.
Iffy