Our liberal media at work

GDP rise not enough to make dent in jobless rate

What's the news?
The economy grew 3.2% in first quarter of the year.

What's the headline???
JOBLESS RATE.

If a Republican were in office, I'm betting 3.2% growth would be hailed as a triumph.
Our liberal media at work.

... and the world is still spinning on its axis!

Woods misses the cut at Quail Hollow

... tho' maybe this helps explain SNOW in Albuquerque today.

Augghhh! NO!!!

Miss him? Bush's reputation might be ready for a rebound

I don't have the stomach to read the article.

I thought this was from The Onion

... I was wrong.

Arizona Expands Its Discrimination: Teachers With Heavy Accents Can’t Teach English, Ethnic Studies Are Banned

Reminds one of a Tom Lehrer quotation:

"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

Maybe baseball really is the All-America game!

From Think Progress:

Major League Baseball Players Association calls for ‘repeal’ or prompt modification of Arizona law.

Will this kind of not-so-good publicity have any influence on the other half dozen states that are contemplating similar laws?

Buffoon welcomes a new follower

"Mysterious Man from the Shadows".

Welcome to the neighborhood! Delighted to have you!!!

The profit motive [a p.s. update]

OneFly over at Outta the Cornfield, on the violence in Juarez:

Outta the Cornfield: Iraq Is In The Air Of Ciudad Juárez

The Copernican theory - that the earth circles the sun - was devised to help fix the calendar... but it had a bunch of unforeseen positive consequences: it explained the seasons; it led directly to Kepler's laws of planetary motion, & to Galileo's mechanics... which led more-or-less directly to Newton's theory of gravitation.

In much the same way, legalizing drugs - in addition to pretty much stopping the deadly violence of the illegal drug trade - would doubtless have many other unforeseen positive ramifications. (... for example, Afghanistan could have a healthy, self-supporting economy!)

Recall, Al Capone's violence was fueled by, enabled by, created by Prohibition. The profit motive is strong.

update: p.s. -... and you'd think that the Repugs, with their strongly individualistic, "keep the damn government outta my life" philosophy, would be strong supporters of legalizing drugs. Go figure.

Go read someone else (a better writer than I)

Nance over at Mature Landscaping comments on the Westboro Baptist Church:

Mature Landscaping: "You! What planet is this?"

Statistical thinking in the blogosphere

Atrios, referencing the off-shore drilling platform disaster in the Gulf:

While specific events aren't predictable, what is knowable is that these types of things are inevitably going to happen.

This is one of the very few examples of "statistical thinking" to be found in the blogosphere: the specific cannot be predicted, but the long-term rate - the inevitability - is knowable.

Full disclosure: One of my favorite pictures of my dad is of him with 2 other guys on the back of a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, with a diving bell hanging off the stern. They were prospecting for oil for a big oil company.
One of my first jobs - a summer internship - was coding FORTRAN to model 100-year storms... to help that same big oil company design off-shore drilling rigs to withstand these freaks of nature.
I've nothing against Big Oil - it fed me, clothed me, sent me to school.
BUT: there are risks inherent in oil production, ... and the supply of petroleum is finite.

Know any bright, energetic students?

Do you know a smart, motivated, and enthusiastic college or high school student who is looking for something to do this summer?

Great! Heinrich for Congress is currently seeking summer interns!

We are seeking organized and motivated interns for our field and finance departments. The fast paced world of campaigns is a fun was to spend a summer and learn the inner-workings of our political system. It is also a great chance for anyone who is interested in getting into campaigning and politics to get a foot in the door.

Please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested. We are looking for a commitment of 15-25 hours per week.

For more information and instructions on how to apply please contact Molly Ritner at molly.ritner@martinheinrich.com.

Sunny in ABQ

After cloudy, chilly morning, the day turned out quite lovely.

I agree with everything Mr. Degan says!

"The Rant" by Tom Degan: Goldman Sucks

just a cool headshot

I don't even know who this is - published on HuffPost under heading, Financial Fix.

Is it time to pull a Nixon?

Nixon, for all his faults, eventually had the sense to declare victory and leave Viet Nam.
Could Obama do the same in Afghanistan?

Yes, all hell broke loose, and it may have cost Ford the 1976 election...
BUT: today, VietNam is one of our stronger trading partners.

I may have to rethink my position

Given the GOP heavyweights who've come out against AZ's immigration law, I may have to rethink my position.

If Karl Rove, Tom Tancredo, and Joe Scarborough are agin' it, maybe it's a good thing!

Another shoe...

Europe debt crisis spreads to Portugal

Given the inter-connectedness of world economy, it's only a matter of time till EU mess starts being felt in earnest here.

V-shaped recovery? Ha!
U-shaped? If we're lucky.

Me - I'm betting on double-dip, W-shape... which seems appropriate, given the MBA genius who's responsible.

(... My only hope is that we're heading up come November... even if it's just prelude to another down)

Here's a politician I can support!

Brazil official urges more sex for better health

Looking for a silver lining

Financial reform nears test in Senate
By Kevin Drawbaugh and Andy Sullivan Kevin Drawbaugh And Andy Sullivan
– Mon Apr 26, 2010
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The most sweeping overhaul of financial regulation since the Great Depression was on track to fail its first procedural test on Monday in the Senate, where Republicans vowed to block the Democratic bill.

Okay, this is NOT good news.

BUT: if DSCC, DCCC, and DNC have their acts together (a big "IF"), GOP siding with Wall Street could be a PR boon for Dems.

Noam Chomsky: a Cunning Linguist

The Well-Armed Lamb: Chomsky (who is over 80, now) on "Liberal Disillusionment with Obama"

Apologies for this post's heading.
This was a joke when I was an undergraduate:

Noam Chomsky is a cunning linguist.

Male undergraduate humor.
... this was back when Chomsky was known as a linguist, not a political advocate.

Aside: as it turns out, long after my undergraduate years, I had occasion to study Chomsky's linguistic theories as a graduate student. His theories of syntax - "generative grammar" - led in the computer age to "computational linguistics". The only problem with this theory, from an algorithmic perspective, being that only a Turing machine could represent natural language - a Turing machine being capable of formulating ANY formal structure. Human languages appear to require more than this level of organization, but within the "Chomsky hierarchy", even the next step up from a Turing machine is too restrictive to accommodate natural language.

This is all remembered, so probably not quite right... and even when I was immersed in this stuff, I wasn't bright enough to really grasp all of it.
That said, what struck me at the time was that pure syntax was insufficient to accommodate language - semantics, meaning, is necessary to make sense of grammar. Formally syntactically correct statements can be meaningless, while "ungrammatical" statements can express thoughts perfectly well.

On the bright side: I'm no longer engaged in this pursuit, and am happy to accept Chomsky for the fiercely progressive statesman that he is today.

Somehow I missed this holiday till now

Have a Blessed Charles Krauthammer Day
by Henry on April 22, 2010

The calendar has once again rolled around to the date on which we commemorate Charles Krauthammer’s pronouncement that:

Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

You’ve had seven years now, Charlie. How’s it looking? Hoping for a result sometime in year eight?

Just in case you don't read Krauthammer (& I wouldn't, except his column runs in the Sunday Albuquerque Journal), he's one of the very serious people on the right who proclaim that ANYTHING Obama does will bring about the end of civilization as we know it.