Up, up and away with my beautiful education bubble
In just under 30 years, we've gone from students being able to pay for tuition with summer jobs, and part time employment, students being able to graduate with no debt to now. Students are graduating with huge mountains of debt, and degrees that let them work in Starbucks.
For the politically connected, rising tuition costs are a feature, not a bug. Now, those same politicians and school officials are going to tell us what they are going to do about it? Don't hold your breath until they kill their cash cow. It won't happen.
Truth and Music
A memorial tribute to a great friend:
http://jasonfrith.tumblr.com/post/23171538961/truth-and-music
Dear Idiot CNN Writer:
In response to your recent opinion piece- The type of parents who beat their children are not in the target demographic of a book like GTFTS. The people who buy GTFTS are the parents who actually care enough about their kids to care that they are not going to sleep....and they have the good sense which allows them to realize that parenting is stressful, but that stress should not be taken out on their kids- this is where humor comes in.
The fact that the language in the book "can also reflect some kids' reality" implies that the book helps create that reality. The fact is that there have been asshole parents for centuries before this book was written. Sadly, they will exist for centuries after this book has been forgotten. It would be nice if you could have used the screen-inches of your column to rail against actual violence being dished out to some unfortunate children on a daily basis. Instead you preach to the parents who have the patience and other coping mechanisms to treat their children well, even when those children are testing boundaries. these are the parents who least need to hear your opinion.
An open letter to Apple's MobileMe/iCloud team
Let me begin by saying that I have been a Mac user since I bought my first Powermac 6500 in 1998 and a .mac/mobileme subscriber since December 2004. I have had no problem paying for the service in that time. I've felt that the value which the service provided fit my needs very well.
I would have no problem continuing to pay for a paid-subscription service.
However, as of yesterday's WWDC Keynote, MobileMe is no longer a paid-subscription service, as people who have signed up for trial accounts have been given a year's extension of their free service.
I renewed my account on May 24th- 13 days before MobileMe became a free service, and I get stuck with a full $150 bill for a mere 13 days of service.
When I contacted MobileMe via chat, I was informed that my options were:
1) Keep the account as is, receive no prorated refund for the portion of the service which is now offered to others for free
- or -
2) Cancel my account, receive a refund, lose my accounts and all information associated with the accounts, with no opportunity to sign up for a trial account, which has now been extended for a full year.....for free
A Memorial Day Pledge
I will not raise my precious child to kill your precious child.
And if it is within my power,
I will not hand over my beloved child to others
to kill your beloved child, or
to learn how to kill the one you cherish.
–Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy.
My love for Jessica
...The truth is that I have always considered this to be the perfect rock and roll instrumental (a little gift from my father). The tune is infectious, and Chuck Leavell's piano solo is sheer brilliance. Two years ago- at about this time of the night- I was sitting on a stool waiting in a long, silent, stark-white hallway.... the scene could have been taken straight from a Kubrick movie. My iPhone was clutched in my right hand, headphones in my ears, and this tune was playing (loudly) as I counted my breaths. I spent a few minutes waiting, listening, and breathing before the nurse stepped out into the hallway and said "OK, Mr. Frith. You can follow me." A few minutes later Kerry and I saw the girl we had loved for months, but had never even met. 5 pounds and 7 ounces of perfection. Happy birthday, Punky
Snowpocalypse 2011 diary entry #1:
Happy Fourth of July, America
As we celebrate the holiday we have grown accustomed to calling "Independence Day," author, and professor of economics, Dr Thomas DiLorenzo reminds us of the "Reason for the Season"
Happy birthday, America. While we celebrate our country's birth, let us remember these important (and often forgotten) thoughts from America's first secessionist document:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
...and who, exactly didn't see this coming?
Nick Gillespie over at reason.com brings us this (accurate, in my opinion) prediction of the forthcoming bursting of the education bubble. This bubble has been growing festering for a good long while now with help, in no small part, from federal loan guarantees which are purported to help make college affordable, and not at all designed to drive business to the same banks which will soon be lobbying for another bailout (*wink*wink*). These education loan guarantees are very similar (read: a carbon copy) to those which fueled the housing bubble, and the resulting bust market correction that we are seeing today.
When the education market does correct itself within the next couple of years, who are the politicians going to blame this time? Greedy banks? Greedy schools? Boobs?
How many of those politicians will have no idea who to blame? How many of those hapless politicians didn't know who to blame the last time a market melted down?
Should we continue to believe that they claim themselves to be innocent bystanders...
Make me President. I know who's ass to kick
I'm going to make a chilling and bold statement.
I think you'd better sit down....
Obama is working in cahoots with BP. I know it's a real shocker that someone would accuse a modern president of being so chummy chummy with a heavily subsidized industry which uses much of that subsidization to fill-to-overflowing the coffers of election campaigns. But it becomes painfully obvious once you start to notice how often this administration (as all the other modern administrations would have- I'm not here to hate on Obama, nor do I grade my politicians on a curve) treats the oil which is lost and floating in the ocean as "BP's Oil."
The Coast Guard is making sure that no vessels are getting near it. 125 commercial fishing boats which were retrofitted with oil collection equipment were recalled after 4 members on 3 of the 125 ships reported feeling ill.
Three.... Of the one hundred and twenty five ships.
(3).
It's as if BP's "brain trust" said to themselves: "..... ..... ...... .......... Hey! Wait a second!"
Why do you hate the poor?
#1: The Club for Who? The Club for Growth is not what I would call the standard-bearers of free market capitalism. They spout some rhetoric of "limited government," but they are quick to encourage the use of the state to meddle in the markets to try to nudge them into a path that favors their agenda. Not exactly what I'd call Laissez-Faire. You'd do well to learn that there are other philosophies, and schools of thought.
#2: When discussing this type of extra-constitutional Federal spending, it must first be acknowledged by all that the Federal government has LESS than no money. This point is as axiomatic as it gets. Even as I write this, the federal debt stands at 11.054 trillion dollars. In order to spend anything on any program, Washington must get money they don't have.
In order to do so:
a) They must borrow money to pay off the previous lenders. Not only are they paying off previous debt and interest, but they are also simultaneously and automatically creating even more debt.
b) Since borrowing alone will not meet the demands of this extra-constitutional spending, The federal government must find another source of money. This, they gained by granting the Federal Reserve System (a private banking cartel, who is as much a part of the federal government as Federal Express) monopoly powers of money creation. Federal Reserve notes are created out of thin air, they have the backing of no commodity. Make no mistake, these notes are pure credit. Being pure credit, the notes are loaned to the US Treasury at interest. Thus, the interest charged per dollar creates the need for the personal income tax to pay this interest back to the Federal Reserve. To add insult to injury, the more dollars which are created the less those dollars are worth. This is a hidden, regressive tax (A tax, mind you, that directly benefits one singular banking group, not the public). As the dollar is worth less, the poor see their purchasing power sapped increasingly more.
An open letter to the Giuliani campaign
[The following letter to the editor was printed in The State Newspaper, and the Columbia Free Times after the South Carolina GOP debate in May 2007]
To whom it may concern,
I wonder if Mr. Giuliani would ever engage in genuine debate with Rep. Ron Paul. A true debate. An exchange of real ideas, rather than an exchange of cheap sound-bites. I find it hard to believe that a man who is seeking his party's nomination for POTUS has never heard of "Blowback". This concept has been mentioned in several different credible sources (including the 911 Commission Report, and by our "own" CIA), as a major root of Islamic hatred towards the government of this country. Some very smart people seem to accept blowback as more than theoretical possibility. Perhaps, Mr. Giuliani would do well to read the 911 report as Mr. Paul has.
Before Mr. Giuliani, or any other candidate, deserves my vote for Chief Executive- that person needs to show that he or she understands that actions taken by this government (overtly by its elected officials, or covertly executed by non-elected and non-accountable agencies like the CIA, et al.) can, and do, have dire consequences for its citizens.
Well, damn. It blow up, it go boom (Go eggrolls edition)
Current mood:old.
When I was just a verdant college freshman, not even yet a WADling, I moved into my first dorm. Laborde. Located on the corner of Sumter and Blossom. It was one block away from the USC Bandhall, and across the street from Stuffy's. I'm trying to think of other amenities...
Still thinking.... I'm sure something will come to me...
The building's interior walls were pink and green.
Let me say that again.
Pink and Green. Yea. My thoughts as well...
The roaches in LaBorde spoke with a marked French accent. The honeycombed concrete facade was hip in the Eisenhower era. It had communal bathrooms, but not the fun kind where you could stop up the door with a piece of plywood, and create a swimming room. They were just... communal. If it were not specifically disallowed by the RA, you'd do well to disinfect the floors by setting off a low-yield tactical nuclear device before each shower. Flipflops, just wouldn't cut it.
The hallway floors would end up with puke on them at some point during each and every week. On more than one occasion, a floor's water fountain would take a ride on the elevator. The favorite game of the the drunk-stoned-maggot-infested-FM-types was "Pull the fire alarm". Extra points were given for alarms getting pulled between the hours of 2am and ass-crack-of-dawn, apparently. Double those points if the weather outside was frightful.
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