This civics literacy test turned up in my local paper’s opinion pages this morning, along with the following dismal commentary on its findings: US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday. Ordinary citizens did not …
I was throwing clothes into the dryer a moment ago and the TV was showing us CNN’s In the Money, a weekly show devoted to talking about the economy. One of the guests was a representative from the Cato Institute, a think tank which says its mission is to increase the understanding of public policies …
Given all the crises we’re facing, can’t we let Bush go immediately, fired for cause? Gail Collins agrees with me.
The John Adams DVD was due back at the library yesterday, and we had two episodes plus the features still to watch (the Making Of and McCullough’s bio sketch are both worth the time). This meant that we had to start watching at about 10:00am in order to be done by mid-afternoon. Most of my …
Hawai’i is converting to digital television signals on January 15, 2009, one month earlier than required by law. Why are we switching early? Well . . . Federal wildlife officials suggested tearing down the old analog transmission towers earlier to avoid interference with the nesting season of a bird, the endangered Hawaiian petrel. Petrels, also …
Wow. I thought the last three episodes would be anticlimactic and that all the events leading up to the Revolution would far exceed any drama after Washington’s election. It’s true that the Great Events slowed down after that, but it became a much more personal and humanizing film. The conflicts between Adams and Jefferson as …
I see the cable shows are wringing their collective hands about the return of some Clinton-era Democrats to actual policy-making jobs in the Obama Administration. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when GWB brought John Negroponte and Elliot Abrams into his Administration I don’t recall any such kerfuffle, despite their dirty hands in Central and …
A 46oz pickle jar can hold about $15 worth of pennies. I know this because, thanks to my friend Kate’s post, I learned about a coin-counting machine maker named Coinstar. I found a credit union at the bottom of my hill which has one of their machines installed, and I took my accumulated pennies in …
ESPN has paid $125 million for the rights to broadcast the Bowl Championship Series from 2011-2014. ESPN’s president, George Bodenheimer, said the network planned to keep all of the games on ESPN and not broadcast any on ABC, but would not charge cable providers a premium. ESPN is available to about 98 million homes on …
Continue reading ‘University presidents are money-grubbers’ »
A final thought on Lieberman: you know that phrase people use about a guy “on their side” even though he’s a jerk? “He may be an SOB, but he’s our SOB?” Lieberman campaigned for the other side, raised money for the other side, and fretted publicly that the guy leading our side might be a …