Rocky Hillside

From a comment at Washington Monthly:

"I would rather have the Postal Service run my health insurance than have EXXON, AT&T, or GE run it, wouldn't you?"

I would.

Sent by a friend. My response would be "just kill me now":

This 1.5 days of goal setting should be very fun and interesting. We will be brainstorming, listing, and ranking all our goals for this project. After we get all our goals on paper we will list all our potential risks for this project, and then we will connect the risks and goals so as to help direct [the organization] on where exactly we will need to focus our attention to make this project a reality. To be successful we will need creative thinking, collaboration, and a breadth of expertise.

I wonder why people continue to do these things. My private theory remains that these events give the illusion of progress without anyone having to do anything.

I start thinking of chewing off my arm, when the facilitator comes up with ever more abstract summaries to garner "agreement," records them, and congratulates everyone on the incredible process. I try to exit without insulting anybody. It usually works because everyone else is distracted admiring the meaningless pabulum they've created. "We shall creatively pursue appropriate, strategic opportunities in pursuit of goals supporting our mission." or some such.

Bis is still the best place to go if you are considering an organized ride in the U.S. this summer.

Gerty and I have been over there the last couple days discussing the possibilities.

Can you call yourself a university if you don't have a library?

University of Denver is replacing its research library with an "Academic Commons." The university trustees think the University library has too many books. (The trustees include academic luminaries like Pat Bowlen, owner of the Broncos.)

Which books will the Academic Commons hold?

[W]e are proposing to have the on-campus collection include books published after 2002 as well as teaching material suggested by very high use (5 or more uses), recent use for courses, or by recommendation of faculty. I cautiously note that we won't have room for all faculty proposals, especially in the humanities and social sciences, but that we will do our best to build a sensible set of high use and recently published resources.

Why do we need books when we have Wikipedia and Yahoo!? Nothing important happened before 2002 anyway.

Came across this title on a journal entry at crazyguyonabike.

Gerty and I enjoyed seeing Cedar Rapids at the Denver Film Society. Painfully and delightfully silly while being more real than real life. From a review by mikechinea at IMDB:

I think Ed Helms just invented a new genre, the Midwestern.

Image by Twenty.Twenty. Some rights reserved.

If you have any doubt, read this.

I am not enthusiastic about our standing army, but our military can do -- and actually does == some important and amazing things

Pretty awesome.

Of course, they mostly kill people.

About that high speed rail vision? Not so fast.

From the HuffPost:

The current level of funding was $2.5 billion-a-year. The cuts secured under the budget deal reached on Friday night brings the annual rail dollars down to $1 billion

Only 40%. No problem.

But at least we kept funding for Planned Parenthood.

Well, sort of. From the NYTimes:

President Obama successfully resisted Republican efforts to take all federal money from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. But the spending bill cuts money for the program that finances many family-planning services provided by Planned Parenthood and other organizations, Title X of the Public Health Service Act. The appropriation would be reduced to $300 million, from $317 million, Congressional aides said.

And the EPA. Mostly:

The Environmental Protection Agency, which has been in the cross hairs of the newly empowered House Republicans, took one of the largest hits, according the House appropriations documents.

The agency’s budget under the agreement is reduced by $1.6 billion, or 16 percent from last year’s level. Specifically, funding levels for Land and Water Conservation Fund programs were reduced 33 percent.

Well, at least climate change:

Across all agencies, the bill would cut programs relating to climate change by $49 million, or 13 percent.

Nope to that, too.

Image by opensourceway. Some rights reserved.

I have an idea! We're losing priests; we're losing people; we're closing churches, so let's make the Catholic Mass closer to the original liturgical Latin! Because . . . ? Well, people love words like "consubstantial," as in "consubstantial with the father." And incomprehensible is more mysterious like.

Welcome to the 1930s. From the NYTimes:

Throughout much of the English-speaking world, the Roman Catholic Church is preparing its priests and parishes for the most significant changes to the Mass in the more than 40 years since the church permitted English in place of the Latin.

The changes are included in a new English-language translation of the Roman Missal, a translation produced after almost 30 years of labor, intrigue and infighting. The new missal, the book of texts and prayers used in the Mass, is intended to be closer to the liturgical Latin that was used for centuries than the current version. The church officials promoting it say it will bring an elevated reverence and authenticity to the Mass.

And then there's this, from the HuffPost:

The new translation also includes a special Mass for Giving Thanks to God for the Gift of Human Life, to be celebrated each year on Jan.22, the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

The whackjobs are taking over the world.

Image by Clare H-P. Some rights reserved.

Bicycling Magazine's lead article is entitled "Lance's Endgame, It's time to stop arguing about whether Lance doped and start figuring out what it means."

Finally, the right question. My answer: Typical American willful blindness abetted by those who were making tons of money on the Lance phenomenon. Like that big bike company . . . .

I found this comment interesting:

I notice that this issue of Bicycling, with the "Lance Armstrong's Endgame" article, has NO ADVERTISING by Trek, Bontrager, Gary Fisher, or Carmichael Training Systems. Was it a coincidence, political pressure, or a threat?

Probably Trek is so busy with its lawsuit to break its contract with Lemond that it forgot to buy some ads. Oh no, that's settled. Must be something else.

Another victory!

The final compromise was $38.5 billion below 2010’s funding levels. That’s $78.5 billion below Obama’s original budget proposal and $6.5 billion below John Boehner’s original counteroffer.

And it's all out of non-defense, non-corporate subsidy, i.e. social welfare stuff. With some nice riders, removing endangered species protection for Montana wolves -- for example, thrown in.

Dear lord,

Please don't let us "win" any more.

Let's face it. We are totally screwed. The guy whose job it is to win, seems to be absolutely fucking clueless. Actually, he's the guy who proclaimed our last two capitulations as things to be proud of. It's good to meet evil dunderheads half way, he said, because otherwise something worse would happen. Or, at least I think that's what he said. It's hard to tell what he is saying from what the bad guys are saying.

That guy just announced that he's running again. And I know he expects all of us to rally round. But, I gotta say, he buys into all of the same bullshit as the other folks. They want to do it faster than he does, but what the hell, if we're going to get there anyway, better sooner than later. Maybe then people will realize just how screwed we are. Lol. Nah.

So, the basic idea is, you need to send those of us that care about one another a sign. And give us a reason to vote. Or a reason to care.

As things stand, we're going to get the same old crapola, screw the poor, help the rich bull shit if we vote for that guy again. That's what we have now. That's what we had when we had both houses of Congress. And that's what we had when we had the chance to appoint two Supreme Court justices. The same old help the rich, screw the poor crapola.

And, you know, I don't think I'm going to do that again. Let someone else vote him in. I'm not doing it.

If we can't do better, let the fuckers win. At least I won't be responsible.

Every best wish,

The Boy

Image by RLHyde. Some rights reserved.

Who are these people that think private business is so incredibly efficient compared to government? Do they have credit cards? Deal with banks? Have a cell phone? A cable company? Are they lemmings who happily sign over whatever the big company asks for, no questions asked?

This week I spent nearly ten hours on the phone with Qwest, Capital One, and -- the greatest black hole ever created by humankind -ATT customer service.

Auto Zone sold Gerty a defective fuel pump, a private mechanic installed it but didn't test it, and the Toyota dealer finally replaced the defective one but forgot to remove a "temporary" plug that prevented Gerty from filling the tank. Altogether it took two nights in a hotel, paying for rides here and there, charges for useless labor, lots of confusion, running around, and many good deeds by nice folks to get her back on the road.

It took me, literally, less than 40 minutes to file my federal and state taxes and complete the federal financial aid form (which, though run by the Department of Education linked to my tax information at the Internal Revenue Service.)

This Greasemonkey script is a way around the NYTimes article limit, if you want a way around the article limit.

Must one be a moron or evil to become a Congressperson?

If only cluelessness were a virtue I'd be an enthusiastic Democrat.