It’s the 21st Century, Stupid!

You’ll notice that Dispatches from the Culture Wars is on my small blog roll. How can you not love someone who starts out this article on a Circuit Court decision like Ed Brayton starts this one?

It’s Christmas morning. Family arrived last night. Toddlers and children wander around, waiting for Grandma to finish preparation for the Christmas dinner ham and slip it into the oven and for their aunt, uncle and cousins that live in town to get over here so presents can be open. I did cleanup work for her all day yesterday so I get to sit here reading news and blogs and drink some coffee as I wait (Now that I’ve pulled the turkey out of the oven for her, that is.) for the chaos of opening presents with little ones to begin. Not a bad morning.

Angry Bear and The Big Picture both post about this Bloomberg article. Basically it calls the government on using questionable methods when coming up with the CPI. The numbers don’t even come close to accurately accounting for some of the biggest costs of living for the average American. It doesn’t reflect medical costs or housing costs realistically at all.

I don’t think I really need to say a whole lot about this one. Just read this article from Newsweek entitled “Surge of Suicide Bombers” and then follow it with the one from the New York Times entitled “Top G.O.P. Candidates See Signs of Progress in Iraq”. I just have to say I wonder about some people’s ideas of progress and their definition of victory.

Also in this morning’s Star was an op-ed on oil company hypocrisy concerning their refusal to install equipment to handle the hot fuel issue. For those who might not be aware of this, it is a simple fact of physics/chemistry that when liquids or gases are heated they take up more volume. this applies to pretty much everything much less volatile liquids like gasoline. So when you buy gasoline on a day like today around here, when it’s going to reach 96°F and it’s been that warm for days, you are in reality getting less actual fuel for your vehicle than the pumps are measuring out since it measures by volume. The oil companies scream loudly about the idea of replacing pumps with ones that can adjust to account for this fact. They say that it would cost too much. Customers aren’t really being hurt by it. The litany is long.

A commenter on the article said that he just doesn’t see where there is any hypocrisy involved. Apparently he missed the very telling part about oil company operations in Canada. There they do not complain about pumps that adjust for temperature at all. In Canada, where the temperature differential has to do with “cold” fuel instead of “hot” fuel the pumps work in their financial favor instead of hurting their customers. Hypocritical, indeed.

…since I wrote anything here, something I certainly hope to avoid in the future. I have also opened a new account with a hosting service and plan on using WordPress there to add some things and just do a slightly different format. As a reminder to anyone who’s actually read some previous things here I still never plan on this blog being either my personal journal or a blog that focuses on one field exclusively. Some say that in order to be successful this is what you should do in order to draw a specific audience. Oh, well. If they’re right no matter what I do it’s not going to ever reach the heights of web traffic but I will slog on even if I find myself buying a “No one reads my blog.” t-shirt.

The Washington Post reports on a shortage of personnell in the U.S. Attorney’s offices. What a shock. After the abuse of the system that this Administration slipped into the Patriot Act was repealed by popular demand many attorneys are now only in their jobs on an interim basis, as many as 25% of the attorneys. Normally these are prestigious jobs that attract some of the best lawyers since the jobs were considered great entries on a legal resume. Are they going to be so for those who have it as an entry between the years of 2001 and 2008, though? I tend to agree with Charles Schumer’s view.

“If we had a credible attorney general at the helm, we wouldn’t be scrambling to fill vacancies,” Schumer said. “Instead, top legal talent would be flocking to the department.”

There are lots of things that can make you wonder how seriously some very important people take the war in Iraq, but this one in particular should piss people off a lot more than it seems to be doing.

According to an internal Administration report the Bush policies on greenhouse gases are apparently going to be as effective as their Iraq strategy. According to BusinessWeek (as well as many other outlets) this report estimates that following current policies will result in a 19% increase in the emission of greenhouse gases.

The report claims that the decision to do anything more to slow emissions will be decided on “as the science justifies”. This is more than a bit disingenuous, as anyone who’s paid attention to the policies of this Administration realizes. They ignore science completely whenever it conflicts with their ideology. Expect that to continue to be their real policy.

Protecting children is important. Not exposing youngsters to porn is a good thing. But some people really need to budget some money for clue purchases. A school district and D.A. are arranging for a substitute teacher to do jail time because they claim that she was using the computer to browse for porn even though her expert computer forensics specialist showed that the popups had been on the system since before she was at the school. Does anyone else think this is utterly insane?