If Jim DeMint can singlehandedly shut down the Senate by just clicking his heels together three times, I can only imagine what he would be like as minority leader. I hope I see that day soon. This guy is a one-man wrecking machine.
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
Flexbooks
ED and DougJ’s posts about their hippie views on the school system made me want to mention the CK-12 institute and their innovative textbook creation system called Flexbooks. This system allows K-12 teachers to assemble subject textbooks from state-approved content, add in their own teaching materials, and download the result in ebook or pdf form. All the content is freely licensed, so the books cost nothing.
Couple a flexbook with a third-generation Kindle, which costs $130, needs a recharge every few weeks, and weighs a few ounces, and you have a whole textbook delivery system that costs little more than a couple of books and is fairly tough and resilient when compared to a laptop (or even an iPad). Even printing Flexbooks at Kinkos is probably cheaper than what the textbook racket wants for their books.
In addition to being free, Flexbooks sound like a great way to sidestep the hegemony of Texas, which apparently sets the standard for many textbooks in the nation simply because they order a lot of them. Texas can keep its bible/textbook fusion, and schools in the rest of the nation can simply use Flexbooks instead of being forced to buy Biology textbooks that shill idiocy like intelligent design.
Oldster Glasses
Homely glasses aren’t just for hipsters anymore. These are TruFocals, which allow the user to dial in better focus using a little bar on the bridge of the frame.
I’m just about to buy bifocals but I’ll be god-damned if I can stand looking like a geriatric Harry Potter, no matter how compelling the technology.
Encryption Nonsense
It’s hard to improve on Charlie Savage’s story and the many good discussions of the civil liberties implications of the Obama administration’s desire to mandate back doors to encrypted messaging systems like BlackBerry and Skype. I just want to point out that, in addition to the violation of privacy, it’s also bad business and bad security.
It’s bad business because it opens the doors to companies that aren’t governed by US law to create competing solutions and sell them in places where US law doesn’t apply. BlackBerry may buckle under and allow a back door to remain a player in the US market, but some other player could well create a smartphone messaging system that doesn’t have a back door and sell it in the parts of the world that don’t give a shit about US law. And other companies may create smartphone software (apps) that run on top of your iPhone or BlackBerry’s phone or messaging apps to encrypt voice and text traffic, but those companies will be headquartered (and employ engineers) somewhere beyond Eric Holder’s reach.
It’s bad security because a back door is an opening that can be breached by hackers as well as law enforcement, and the existence of a back door makes the system that has one an immediate target of hackers. RIM, the maker of BlackBerry, may not care about your civil rights, but they sure as hell don’t want to be the target of a hack that leverages a back door that they put in to satisfy the US, UAE and India.
A back door to publicly-available encryption has been the wet dream of law enforcement for decades. The last attempt, Clipper, died a quick and inglorious death, and I can only hope that the current idiocy is tucked away in a grave soon, and buried deep.
On the Right Side
This is good news for Democrats if they can leverage it:
A new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1.
The toplines for the poll [pdf] show that the main areas where people are confused about the reform bill center around coverage for illegal immigrants. There’s broad (80/20) agreement that drug manufacturers and insurance companies make too much money. And, by 60/40 margins, there’s agreement that minorities and the poor will get better care as a result of the bill, while a smaller majority thinks that whites and the middle class will not get better care.
Reading this poll, it’s clear that “kill the bill” is political suicide, that traditional Democratic constituencies think the bill benefits them, and that overall people are interested in more change to the healthcare system, not less.
Million-Dollar Man
Let’s set aside for a moment the accusations that megachurch pastor Eddie Long is a hypocritical, gay-bashing closeted homosexual who used his position to coerce sex from teenage boys. Can we all just agree that an enterprise with a leader who rolls like this probably doesn’t deserve a tax deduction as a charity?
Bishop Long cuts a flashy figure in Lithonia, the Atlanta suburb where he lives and has built his church. He is often seen in a Bentley attended by bodyguards. He tends to wear clothes that show off his muscular physique. He favors Gucci sunglasses, gold necklaces, diamond bracelets and Rolex watches. He lives in a 5,000-square-foot house with five bedrooms, which he bought for $1.1 million in 2005.[…]
In 2005, for instance, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published tax records showing that from 1997 to 2000 Bishop Long had accepted $3 million in salary, housing, a car and other perks from a charity he controlled.
Taxing the non-charitable part of megachurch operations isn’t even on the political radar, and I’m sure it’s just my heathen nature causing me to bring it up, but why the hell should the Haggards and Longs of the world get hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax-free perks from their “charities” just because they’re in the Jesus biz?
Hipster Economy
After reading that sales of vinyl records have almost quadrupled in the past four years, I was wondering about other ways that hipsters contribute to the economy. I found an item reporting that PBR sales were up 20% last year, but I couldn’t find any statistics on moustache wax. Since the retail sale of fixies is banned in the United States, the hipster fascination with those deadly machines is still part of the black-market economy.