The FL butterfly ballot that caused us so much grief in 2000.

-janelane

This is the photo-essay that Powell mentioned in his endorsement message.

Look at it.

-janelane

Service

Those outside of government at places like the Cato Institute and Reason magazine are just as consistent in their opposition to government bailouts as to the kind of regulation that might have prevented one from being necessary. "Let failed banks fail" is the purist line. This approach would deliver a wonderful lesson in personal responsibility, creating thousands of new jobs in the soup-kitchen and food-pantry industries.

-janelane, personally irresponsible

How the financial collapse killed libertarianism. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine

Among that provision’s most tenacious critics has been Robert Linn, a University of Colorado professor emeritus who is one of the nation’s foremost testing experts. He argued, almost from the law’s passage, that no society anywhere has brought 100 percent of students to proficiency, and that the annual gains required to meet the goal of universal proficiency were unrealistically rapid, since even great school systems rarely sustain annual increases in the proportion of students demonstrating proficiency topping three to four percentage points.

“If, no matter how hard teachers work, the school is labeled as a failure, that’s just demoralizing,” Dr. Linn said.

Only a freaking idiot with zero grasp of scientific principles would consider 100% in anything a realistic goal. 100% carbon-free cars! 100% withdrawal from foreign oil! 100% democracy in a fundamentalist Islamic country!

This list only needs universal healthcare and world peace to be complete.

-janelane, wondering where all the smart people have gone

Under ‘No Child’ Law, Even Solid Schools Falter - NYTimes.com

I'm lame. I just started using Pandora. But, it kicks ass, and now I'm spreading the gospel.

-janelane

Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music

Today [08/15/07], the Graham-Dodd approach produces a very different picture from the one that Wall Street has been offering. Based on average profits over the last 10 years, the P/E ratio has been hovering around 27 recently. That’s higher than it has been at any other point over the last 130 years, save the great bubbles of the 1920s and the 1990s. The stock run-up of the 1990s was so big, in other words, that the market may still not have fully worked it off.

At noon today [10/10/08], after several gyrations in the morning, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was at about 870. That meant the five-year p-e ratio was just below 12. (The corporate earnings data isn’t all available yet, so this is an estimate.) It was last that low in late 1985. Over the past 100 years, the average p-e has been about 15.5.

If you use a 10-year p-e instead, stocks look somewhat more expensive — the [current 10-year] ratio is 14, the lowest since 1988 but only a little lower than the 100-year average.

In August 2007, the 10-year price-earnings (P/E) ratio was 27.

In October 2008, the 10-year P/E ratio is 14, below the 100-year P/E (15.5) but above the "long-run average" for the depressions of the 30's and 80's (6).

-janelane, trying to make sense of my inferior 401k

Remembering a Classic Investing Theory - New York Times

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

NYT on the misnomer Sarah No-Talent-Ass-Clown Palin keeps using.

-janelane

The Nation - Who You Callin’ a Maverick? - NYTimes.com

"It would be helpful if we opened up ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge)[for oil drilling]. I think it's a mistake not to. And I would urge you all to travel up there and take a look at it, and you can make the determination as to how beautiful that country is."

~ George W. Bush, at a White House Press conference, March 29, 2001

Looking up sustainability quotes for a project at work, I found this gem. Hmm, what other Republican no talent ass clown thinks we can drill our way out of our oil dependence in any appreciable amount of time?

-janelane, left (and north) of the center

Drury University: Sustainability Quotes

We've met some of the most amazing moms and dads who are forging their own path to prevention and recovery. When our son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism we were lucky enough to benefit from their knowledge and experience. Evan has been healed to a great extent by many breakthroughs that, while perhaps not scientifically proven, have definitely helped Evan and many other children who are recovering from autism.

There are some who wonder what we mean when we say "recovering" from autism. They confuse the word recover with cure. While you may not be able to cure an injury caused in a terrible car accident, you can recover; you can regain many skills that you once lost. In the case of autism, we think there are treatments that often bring about such healing, so that the observable symptoms of the condition no longer exist. Even though we may no longer see any symptoms of autism, we can't say a child is "cured" because we do not know what they would have been like had they never been injured.

Idiot celebrities who think they know more than 50 years of proven science also sometimes confuse "diagnose" with "your son's a moron".

[..House is in an exam room with a young mother and her baby.]
..
Young Mother: Her whole face just got swollen like this overnight.

House: Mmhmm. No fever, glands normal, missing her vaccination dates.

Young Mother: We're not vaccinating.
...
House: Think they don't work?

Young Mother: I think some multinational pharmaceutical company wants me to think they work. Pad their bottom line.

House: Mmmm. May I? [He takes the frog and starts to do the gribbit noise with the baby]

Young Mother: [Whispered] Sure.

House: Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. [The baby laughs] All natural no
dies. That's a good business: all-natural children's toys. Those toy companies, they don't arbitrarily mark up their frogs. They don't lie about how much they spend in research and development. The worst a toy company can be accused of is making a really boring frog.

[Young Mother laughs and so does House. The baby giggles again]

House: Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. You know another really good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins. You can get them in frog green or fire engine red. Really. The antibodies in yummy mummy only protect the kid for 6 months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think that you'll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove them wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they'd rather let their kid die then cough up 40 bucks for a vaccination, believe me, prices will drop REALLY fast. Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit.

Young Mother: Tell me what she has.

House: A cold.

-janelane, vaccinated non-moron

Jenny McCarthy: My son's recovery from autism - CNN.com

The credit crisis caused Athens-Clarke County, Ga., to delay a $221 million bond issue planned for the day Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. The county has been planning for 10 years to upgrade three sewage treatment plants built more than 40 years ago when the population was much smaller.

To put that in perspective, Atlanta-Fulton County performs major capacity expansions and equipment upgrades on a 5-year cycle (or smaller). They do minor upgrades to outdated/disfunctional equipment constantly. And, they plan all upgrades on population estimates at least 10 years in the future.

I'm working on a small upgrade for a wastewater plant in the Atlanta area which was built 30 years ago and has also had no major upgrades since. The electrical system is so outdated that it has caught fire in two separate locations. There are no record drawings (which reconcile differences between the design drawings and what the contractor actually installed), so before any upgrade you have to reverse engineer everything AND put it into a computer-aided design program. Not to mention that none of the existing structures were designed to be expanded, so you'll have to get really creative in your preliminary engineering before the County can commit to any upgrades. To start design work on one of these facilities is therefore in the millions of dollars, much less the full design, materials and equipment, and construction costs of the finished product.

In short, this is bad for Athens, all municipalities, and all white-collar jobs tied to their revenue stream, e.g. mine and a host of others. Let's hope Congress gets off their asses SOON.

-janelane, engineer especial

Under Strain, Cities Are Cutting Back Projects - NYTimes.com