What do you animals think of the Maddow crew’s latest theory?
Archives for 2014
Risk aversion, ERs and climbing toddlers
Last night as my wife and I were relaxing after dinner and before bath time, we saw Kid #2 toddle to the bathroom.
Bump, thump, bump….
Kid #2 lugged the foot stool out of the bathroom and dragged it across the living room. Kid #1 decided to tell Mom and Dad that her little brother was breaking informal social norms of keeping the foot stool in the bathroom. She was not amused that we were amused.
He dragged the stool to the kitchen and placed it underneath the counter cabinet that contains the fruit cups and forks. He then went to the bar and dragged a bar stool next to the foot stool. He then began his ascent to the counter-top. Quickly he conquered his summit as I silently spotted him. He stood up, opened the cabinet and pulled out a package of peaches and a spork.
“Eaches, dada, dada, eaches….open dada”
I opened the peaches for him as I brought him to the floor.
He will eventually climb Half Dome.
Kid #2 has already had one good fall several months ago that led to a six hour emergency room visit. That visit turned out to be purely an observational visit as the only thing that was seriously hurt was his confidence for a couple of days. I took him to the ER because the fall happened after his pediatrician’s office closed for the weekend and potential head injuries (including concusions) scare me. But it highlights a problem with high deductible plans.
Risk aversion, ERs and climbing toddlersPost + Comments (57)
Unauthorized Research at a Research University
CNN is doing some investigation of college sports, and here’s the lede of one of their stories:
Early in her career as a learning specialist, Mary Willingham was in her office when a basketball player at the University of North Carolina walked in looking for help with his classwork.
He couldn’t read or write.
“And I kind of panicked. What do you do with that?” she said, recalling the meeting.
Willingham’s job was to help athletes who weren’t quite ready academically for the work required at UNC at Chapel Hill, one of the country’s top public universities.
But she was shocked that one couldn’t read. And then she found he was not an anomaly.
Willingham did some research that showed that 8-10% of UNC-Chapel Hill’s former football and basketball players read at a third-grade level. She’s received death threats and also has been chastised by UNC, which issued a statement saying, in part:
We do not believe that claim and find it patently unfair to the many student-athletes who have worked hard in the classroom and on the court and represented our University with distinction. Our students have earned their place at Carolina and we respect what they bring to the University both academically and athletically.
UNC has asked to review Willingham’s data, even though CNN is reporting that she shared the data with them twice.
I worked in a NCAA Division I University for a few years (staff not faculty), and I had some contact with “scholar/athletes”. It was always hard to tell exactly what they did know, because each of them was surrounded by a coterie of enablers and helpers who greased the skids as long as they were performing, and their academic work was mainly special athletes-only classes with who knows what standards. But it was clear that some of those young men couldn’t read well at all. Unless they are fools, the UNC administrators who are going after Willingham know that, too. I’m sure if they re-work the data carefully they might find that it’s only 5% who read at a third-grade level, or perhaps the 8-10% read at a fifth-grade level. So what, it’s still a fucking disgrace.
Unauthorized Research at a Research UniversityPost + Comments (106)
Occam’s Razor Lost Its Edge
There are a couple of gnawing thoughts tonight about the Outlaw Jersey Whale (thank you TBOGG) that are keeping me awake tonight.
The first is my conflicted opinion about what Tim referred to as “Chris Christie demands to know why nobody told him what everyone in his office is up to.” I mean, to me, it just defies all logic and reason that all his close aides were involved in this shit and yet he is just stunned to be learning about it. What the fuck did he spend the last few months doing since these allegations were first made?
Having said that, I’ve spent a lot of time studying groupthink, and I have had employees in the past in both the “real” world, in academia, and in the military when I was a squad leader, so I know all about the concept of mind guarding and keeping info from the boss and the uncanny ability of employees to fuck up the simplest of things without any recognition of the depth and breadth of what they have just done. In this case, though, Christie presents himself as a hands on guy who is in control of things (that was him walking around after Sandy in a hard hat with Obama, wasn’t it), so that shit just doesn’t fly. He spent hours with these people every day. Either he knew or he is the most incompetent executive ever.
Second, this whole thing with that young, blonde, long-term rightwing aide who got run over by the Christie bus just reminds me of another young blonde female who was also a vicious political hack- Monica Goodling. I simply don’t remember so many vicious female political hacks when I was younger. There was always Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant, but, it just seems like there are so many more female political hacks than before. Not that they outpace the male political hacks by any measure.
Finally, what I really don’t get out of this whole thing is what was the fucking point of it all? It doesn’t matter if Christie was involved or not, what was the fucking point? All it was was a dick move that fucked over a lot of people. No political point was made (until they got caught). No one on the bridge stuck there for hours thought “Well God Damned. I’ll not vote Democrat again.”
It was just pointless dickish idiocy. Which, I guess, isn’t so far removed from the House GOP voting 38 times to repeal the ACA. So I guess, If you look at it holistically, the whole damned thing makes sense after all.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
*** Update ***
I’d also like to be the first to note that this is the second Republican Presidential/VP hopeful in the last few years to have problems with what we shall call a “Bridge to Nowhere.” If I were Christie, I’d personally shoot anyone who mentions the term “Appalachian Trail” within 100 yards of me.
Open Thread: Maybe It Was A Different Democrat Christie Was Punishing
@SamWangPhD Something about someone closing a few lanes on the GW bridge. Apparently routine traffic studies are big news now. #slownewsday
— billmon (@billmon1) January 10, 2014
Chris Christie late night joke: @jimmykimmel : How bad is blocking a bridge? That's what Bane did in the Batman movie!
— Juan Cole (@jricole) January 10, 2014
Just possibly Politico smells blood in the water, because they assigned Olivia Nuzzi, of brief NSFWCorp fame, to explain “15 Chris Christie Controversies You Missed“…
Rachel Maddow has a new theory about the target of Christie’s wrath; I’m putting the video below the fold because people have previously complained about autoplay issues.
Open Thread: Maybe It Was A Different Democrat Christie Was PunishingPost + Comments (30)
Cat Physics
I am feeling the most mellow and relaxed I’ve been in months. I’m seriously melting into the chair as I drink tea, and I’ve spent the last few hours just relaxing and petting the animals.
UNTIL THE GREEN FOG OF DOOM WAFTED FROM STEVE’S ROOM INTO THE LIVING ROOM AND DAMNED NEAR KILLED EVERYONE.
Seriously, before Stephen Hawkings shuffles off the mortal coil, I hope he can explain how Steve can turn a couple ounces of what I think is pretty good wet food into FIVE FUCKING POUNDS OF SHIT PACKED WITH MUSTARD GAS? How the fuck does he do it? How does this happen? Why does this happen? I know you all have all linked all the stories about cats being dicks and that they don’t actually love me, but with this kind of fraud going, you think there would be at least some sort of evolution towards less stinky shit so these cunning freeloading asshole cats could further ingratiate themselves to us. Like that is even necessary.
Should I start feeding him a couple ounces of gold bullion and then smelt his excrement for a 30x gain in precious metals? I mean, that is how it works, right? Whatever goes in comes out thirty fold accompanied by a noxious gas, right?
Also, I don’t remember the last time someone mentioned a blog post and not only did I read it, but I lost four hours reading everything in the archives, but this website is one of them. This guy is fucking great and writes with a clarity and warm descriptiveness that makes you, the reader, feel like you are inside his head, experiencing the same emotions. Read this description of the loss of his beloved cat Banana, and then say goodbye to a couple hours as you read everything he has ever written.
And it is totally ok to cry.
Long Read: Pussy Riot’s New Project
Masha Gessen, in Slate:
… She is one of Russia’s most famous political prisoners, famously released in advance of the Olympic Games in Sochi. With Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova, her collaborator in the balaclava-clad art group Pussy Riot and co-defendant in the trial that captured the world’s attention in the summer of 2012, Alyokhina is now refashioning herself as a prisoners’ rights activist. When the two women were arrested, just under two years ago, they were college students who had come up with a prank. It was a prank that changed the way much of the world viewed Russia—and changed their own lives profoundly—but it was still a prank. They emerged from prison on Dec. 23 as political activists seasoned by time behind bars, surrounded by public and media attention in Russia and abroad, and motivated by a need to address the pain and abuse they have experienced and witnessed in prison…
Russian President Vladimir Putin released the members of Pussy Riot—as well as nearly 30 international Greenpeace activists, held since September, and Russia’s other most famous political prisoner, businessman and Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky—in a last-minute scramble to save the Winter Olympics, which begin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Feb. 7… The Greenpeace activists went home to their respective countries; Khodorkovsky went to Germany, into what appears to be involuntary exile. Only Alyokhina, 25, and Tolokonnikova, 24, remain in Russia, speaking out. Their message is: Do not buy the newly varnished façade. Russia is continuing to abuse the rights of its own people in ways most cannot even imagine. And anyone who goes to the Olympics, whether as an athlete, a spectator, or an official, in effect condones these abuses.…
“I was worried that no one would be interested in prisoners’ rights,” Tolokonnikova says. “I thought this might be just something Masha and I want to work on because we have experienced it.”
But prison is an object of almost universal fear and interest in Russia. The country has one of the world’s highest percentages of its population behind bars—not as high as the United States, but a key difference is that in Russia the risk of landing in prison cuts across class lines. No one knows the exact figures, but human rights advocates estimate that more than 15,000 and possibly more than 100,000 of Russia’s roughly 700,000 inmates are entrepreneurs sent to jail by competitors or extortionists. And then there are the political prisoners, a population that is growing despite recent high-profile pardons. Opposition activists are arrested seemingly at random; many of them are not leaders but ordinary grassroots activists or even one-time participants in a demonstration.
The goal of this tried-and-true Soviet tactic is to frighten people away from any and all opposition activity. It’s effective, but its flip side is that when Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova speak about the abuse of prisoners, they grab the attention of millions of Russians who fear winding up behind bars themselves. Since leaving prison, they have appeared in public wearing borrowed or donated clothes, all of them unfailingly trendy because the donors are their fans in the media and fashion industries. This sends a stark message: When two young, well-turned-out women talk about being subjected to what amounts to torture, they really call attention to the fact that it can happen to anyone…
“I’ve always admired people who can organize others around a cause,” Tolokonnikova says. “My activism was always pretty individual. But now it’s great to see how we can do it too.” This is Friday night; by Monday morning the original Facebook post will have been shared nearly 2,000 times. The official responses to complaints and inquiries will not come until after the holidays and are most likely to be uninformative, but the point of the post was to let IK-2 know that Victoria Dubrovina’s fate was being watched by thousands of people. That kind of attention can mean the difference between life and death for an inmate…