As soon as the media started saying that the gas price trends seemed to have to connection to the current market forces, I had an idea as to what they were connected to: If gas prices cross the $3.00 pain threshold just as people are voting, they will have an involuntary warm and fuzzy feeling for the people in power (G Bush) and those connected to them (J Mccain). So I plotted the government statistics for the average US price of the average gas formulation (Mid-grade) which is what gets reported on the news. I then projected the slope to achieve <$3.00 by election day and then have added the weekly data points as we get closer to the election:
For a moment there it appeared that the line was trending the wrong way but the slope just got steeper and is still pointing at election day! Note that there was no fancy math used in the plotting of this data.
And I really wonder if the unfamiliar were wondering who the primped-up lady on the screen was when Leno first said "we'll be right back with Rachel Maddow" after our own Rachel, with the cool sneaks, non-primped look, and dorky glasses.
*g*
btw, I'm a complete non-Leno fan too. When Obama is elected he can expect non-stop barrages of nastiness via Leno (until Conan takes over) starting November 5th!
I truly wish Rachel's chat show debut could have been on Letterman instead. But considering Leno is on NBC and all, I suppose Letterman will have to wait for a bit.
I thought Rachel would show up in one of her business suits - so it was a blast to see her come out in the black pajamas, sneakers and wearing her glasses! :)
Yes, she's truly one of the *literati now, isn't she?
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It pains me that Palin's preacher would consider Aunt Clara "evil".
During the debate, McCain said that he saved the US 6 billions dollars on a tanker deal.
The truth is that McCain lobbied the Air Force to send a 100 billion dollar contract to EADS, the home of Airbus. Included would be 40,000 hi tech jobs that would be based in France.
What makes this especially bad is that it's the first time in history that a strategic part of our Air Force is being outsourced.
What makes it especially bad is that even though two Boeing executives have recently been indicted, Airbus had 22 executives indicted.
What makes it especially bad is that the new Airbus A380 is so big; most airports can't afford to let it land. It causes dangerous wind shears for other planes, and even a slight wind can cause a dangerous landing and when it takes off, sometimes the tail drags on the ground. This is who will be building a portion of our Air Force.
What makes it especially bad is that for the first time in it's history, EADS has given money to an American presidential candidate.
What makes it especially bad is that many EADS lobbyists work for McCain's campaign.
What makes it especially bad is that the media hasn't reported any of this. Everything I know comes from overseas newspapers and engineering magazines.
The other night you mentioned not liking Real Clear Politics, though they are useful. I wanted to point out a couple of alternatives.
1) http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ - This is pretty much a direct alternative to Real Clear Politics. They use statistics to predict what they think will happen on election day. They also try to get the bias out of polls.
2) http://www.electoral-vote.com/ - This site is nice for its simplicity. No fancy predictions, they just take the most recent polls for each state and figure out the electoral college vote based on that. They're very good for "If the election were held today" estimates.
Thanks for pointing us to 538.com. I use electoral-vote.com daily but it's lways good to have a backup/alternate source.
As for Real Clear Politics, I do like their headline resource so I can see what the cons are writing - without having to get myself dirty by visiting their actual sites.
::points down:: By frothing his usual UPPER-CASE RANTY INCOMPLETE-SENTENCE homophobic racist illiterate Right-Wing invective. Good to know he's doing his part, alongside Sarah Palin, to ensure that nobody but skinheads will ever take American Social Conservatism seriously again, isn't it? :D
Paranthetically - did everybody read DailyKos's article of the smackdown reviews and loser boxoffice of last week's Right-Wing alleged "comedy" AN AMERICAN CAROL? Where one of AIRPLANE's three writer-directors(!) proves that being a Right-Wingnut will corrode your sense of humor into something toxic and ugly? And that "smug elitism" in Hollywood isn't a liberal disease, but a conservative one?
And why do I ask so many rhetorical questions, anyway?
Thank you Rachel for being about the only member of the cable news channels to actually look into Sarah Palins extremist ties. Great job on Leno last night! You got me so fired up last night I actually started my crappy "hippie"blog today.
Great job on Leno last night. Your MSNBC show is the best thing I've seen on cable news in a long time. Your show has me so fired up I started my own crappy blog http://bluefloridian.blogspot.com/
Several times now I've noticed Sarah Palin talking about how diverse her family is. Does anyone know what she's referring to? They don't look terribly diverse.
The only example I've heard her give is her son, who has Down's Syndrome. The thing is, he's five months old. All he can do is drool and gurgle, like every other five month old in the world, so he's not a significant source of diversity in her life.
Drool and gurgle is all he might ever be able to do if he's lucky. Down's Syndrome is an easy test. The vast majority of women prefer to have an abortion, not to spare the woman, but to spare the child.
Children with Down's Syndrome may be born with other physical problems besides retardation. Sometimes, their entire short life is pain and suffering.
Now, imagine this:
Suppose you had a brother who was retarded. After your parents died, you tried to take care of him. After he was arrested for walking into a neighbor's house because he didn't understand "trespassing", you hired someone to take care of him separately from the rest of your family. Suppose he discovered how to order porn and he sneaked down and watched for hours every night and you had to talk to the cable company about the extra couple of thousand in charges. Suppose he phoned a bomb message to the sheriff because he saw it on TV and that caused him to be committed. Imagine walking away as you left the institution and he was crying and screaming, "I'll be good". Imagine him telling you that he wished he were dead because he is stupid and everyone else is smart. Imagine that he is smart enough to understand that he is retarded but too dumb to be left on his own. Imagine his entire life is now in and institution and all he talks about is dying. Imagine that they dope him up because he hates being there so much, he has become violent. Imagine not being able to move away because you don't want to leave your brother.
I get what you're saying, but I really wasn't talking about Down's Syndrome.
I was just talking about Palin's claims that she has a diverse family, yet the only example of diversity is a small baby. Her child's condition is certainly going to affect her life, but it doesn't give her a diverse family at this point.
I'm sure nobody could just look at a book and figure it out.
However, I've heard of this happening before. I think what people mean is that nobody made a *deliberate* effort to teach that kid to read.
So maybe Mom held the three year old in her lap as she read the picture book. Mom ran her fingers along the words as she spoke and the kid noticed which written words went with the words that Mom was saying.
That's pretty much how we learn to speak. Parents say a word in context enough times and the baby remembers that "mama" refers to one thing and "dada" refers to another thing.
So occasionally a kid picks up enough written words through story time to pick up a newspaper and muddle through, learning new words along the way by the context. Then a parent walks in and says, "Hey, who taught you how to read?"
That's my guess. Perhaps Rachel's mom could give us more details.
It's "parents showing their child how to read" as you pointed out, combined with "child's curiosity" with those basic tools, that would let a child feel s/he had taught her- or himself how to read. That's certainly how I learned to read by the age of four - it's not an uncommon feat among smart pre-Kindergarten children in a home that encourages literacy, and Rachel's a LOT smarter than I am.
I wonder if she, like me, also had an easily freaked-out First Grade teacher who insisted she'd been "ruined" by learning to read by herself, and would have to be "untaught" in order to be taught how to read "properly"?
I "learned" to read, as I sort of remember it, and as my mother confirms, from looking at her magazines. I would ask her what words (usually in advertising) were. And from there, I picked up a lot of the alphabet and some building blocks of reading. I can't say that I was fully literate when I entered first grade, but I was well on my way, based on my own initiative, and my mother's willingness to answer my questions and leave the Ladies Home Journal lying on the couch.
My uncle visited us and found my three-year-old brother sitting on the floor, surrounded by volumes of the new encyclopedia my parents had just bought. Uncle says, “Aw, isn’t that cute? He’s pretending to read.” Mom says, “”He’s not pretending.” Uncle says, “Of course.” Mom says, “Ask him what he’s reading.” Uncle asks my brother, who explains. Uncle says, “He must be looking at the pictures.” Mom says, “Okay, you pick an article without pictures and ask him.” Uncle does so and brother reads article out loud, stumbling over a word here and there but clearly comprehending what he's reading. Uncle says, “Oh.”
No mystery here. My sister got a full-sized chalkboard for Christmas, and her favorite game was “school.” If my brother or I messed up reading aloud, she whacked us with a ruler. So, through aversion therapy, my brother and I were pretty danged good readers at ages three and four. By the time I got to first grade, I’d already finished “Peyton Place” (kyped from the back row of my parent’s overstuffed bookcase), “Gone With the Wind,” “Harriet the Spy,” all of Carroll’s Alice books, the Bobbsey Twins, etc. And we were all making big inroads into my father’s biology texts from college.
However, my first grade teacher very quickly labeled me “retarded” and called my mother in for the big talk. (Sorry folks, “retarded” was the word they used in those days.) That was a fun talk. I was present, and I got to hear all her reasons for the label.
The librarian in grade school spent a lot of time taking books away from me and steering me back to the "age-appropriate" shelves. My sister and I figured out an end-run. If I picked a book and the school librarian seized it from me, my sister checked it out for me. This charade ended when I demanded an allowance and subscribed to the Barnes and Noble catalog. There was a point in my life when my mail-order reading included Kurt Vonnegut and the Weekly Reader, or "Catcher in the Rye" and "Highlights" magazine, in the same delivery. I used to hang out in the ditch next to the mailbox, waiting for the mailman.
And we regularly raided our parents' and our friends' parents' bookshelves. Which is how my brother, a neighborhood kid, and I got caught smoking cigars, drinking bourbon, and reading to each other from Playboy at age eight (all three items found in a desk drawer in the neighborhood kid's father's den).
Just for the record, it was not such a good idea to read Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” at age seven. But that’s the only real regret that I can think of.
...we all tend towards the left end of the spectrum (or at least the left quadrant of the cloud), and we all like Rachel. I don't see any contradictions.
And yeah, from what I've heard, reading Plath ain't a good idea unless you're really into being depressed. My reading tended more towards Lovecraft, Burroughs (Edgar Rice, not William) and the late, great juvenile writer (and I mean that very much in the non-pejorative sense) Mary Alice "Andre" Norton. Oh, and of course, Bobby Lou Stevenson. Now if that doesn't explain some things, then I don't know what else will.
Eyarrrr!
"I don't like to be pushin' athwart me betters."--Long John Silver
I dunno about about that. I prefer "high strung and clever," myself.
There's a lot of science out there saying "smart" correlates pretty neatly to expectations. If you tell a first-grader he's smart, he performs better. If you tell him he's slow, he performs poorly, regardless of measured IQ or previous performance. People perform best in an atmosphere of praise, challenge, and support. I think a whole lot of "smart" is parenting.
My point is that I don't have any problem with the idea that Maddow taught herself to read.
There are a lot of gifts or talents: intellectual (verbal gifts, spatial understanding, mathematics, pattern recognition); social; artistic, athletic; etc.
Smart is just a thang. It either works for you or against you. And it's not necessarily the most important gift a person can have.
But I am bothered by recent tide of anti-intellectualism. I've noticed lately that a lot of people -- some in my own family -- seem to have abandoned critical thinking in this campaign. They're starting their logic with the result they want in the next election, and then they reason backwards from that result. It's appalling. I see this happening in people whom I know to be better than that. What gives?
If it wasn't for the fact that we can think rings around the big, hungry critters, we'd be digesting in their bellies right now. And while upbringing does indeed have a lot to do with the direction one's thought processes go, I have known people whom have a high degree of across-the-board intellectual development despite, not because of their environment. Hell, if I had gone the route of my forebears, I'd likely be wearing Klan robes and polishing one of my eighty-five guns right now.
However, "smart"--the ability to perform well intellectually--is not always synonymous with "wise"--being able to figure what is the best thing" to do. Personally I think it's going to take another step in human evolution for that latter trait to be widespread throughout the genus.
Just as long as that next step doesn't turn our progeny into a bunch of SingSings.
I insist that "smart" ain't nothing but a thang. I think "smart" is both over- and underrated.
You can read Sylvia Plath at age seven and understand every single word without truly grasping the book. There's a store of knowledge that's missing at that age, and an inability to synthesize information about complex emotions, social structures, historical context, etc. There's just a paucity of experience that "smart" can't compensate for.
When you talk about wisdom, I think you're getting at that concept. A hell of a lot of what IQ measures is pattern recognition and the speed with which you can identify, manipulate, and express concepts and retrieve stored information. Those are extremely useful skills. In fact, if my girlfriend had not gently pointed out -- after the eighth episode -- that every single time I ate squid, I became violently ill, I might now be bankrupt from ER bills.
But, and I think you'll like this, wisdom is part of aging. I've got at least two lectures for you that are on point:
(1) Aging and the Perception of Time, by Laura Cartensen
(2) Analogy as the Core of Cognition, by Douglas Hofstadter
I can tell you how to get these lectures for free if you're interested. But the upshot is that our brains do change over time. While some of these changes are uncomfortable (e.g., we really do take longer to retrieve memories, facts, and info, and time really does speed up as we age), other changes are positively good. And one of the best is that in our 40s and 50s, we begin to synthesize information much better than we did when younger. So a 20 year old might be faster to the buzzer on Jeopardy. But he's less likely to fully connect the trivia (that he so quickly retrieves) to all of its far-reaching ramifications and context as well as the 50 year old. This is a physical change in the brain over time, in addition to the advantage of having had more time to build up a larger store of information.
This ability to synthesize is a core part of wisdom. It's sometimes confused with pattern recognition, but they're truly different. Pattern recognition doesn't change over time. My sister had a 180 IQ at age six, and she still has an IQ of 180. But the ability to synthesize noticeably increases over the years.
Plus, extremely high IQ (sheer "smart," as we currently measure it (which is, I think, a very flawed method)) correlates to high suicide rates, high rates of job loss, and high divorce rates. The better gifted programs try address this -- try to help people adapt to the kind of alienation that can result from "the smart."
"The smart" is just a thang, Cap'n. I'm a bit more fond of "kind" and "patient" than "smart." Of course, what we really need is all of the above.
But being smart enough to see through the sub-cultural crap is the only thing that kept me from becoming a drunken racist buffoon like my old man. So while yes, it's a "thang"--but "just"? I don't think so; in evolutionary terms, it's much more important to human survival and flourishing than some old socket wrench you got at a garage sale or a dirty old rock lying by the side of the road.
And while it may be true that smart folks off themselves at a higher per-capita rate than others, it may simply be because they see the futility of living in a world populated by people who'd rather spend their time watching football and drinking cheap beer than thinking. Then again, it may just be cherry-picking information. Mental disorder is not caused by IQ, it's an entirely separate dimension of human consciousness. I've known a lot of smart folks that have managed to use their intellect to establish a happier, more stable life, with a job and a spouse they love far more than their peers could ever manage. I suppose what I'm saying here is not that there's no price to pay for high IQ, but in most cases, it's worth it. I've seen dumb and ignorant, and it ain't pretty, either.
And while "wisdom" may "just" be a "concept", so are "kind", and "patient".
"I don't like to be pushin' athwart me betters."--Long John Silver
Scroll to the third menu box – the entitled “Find Educational Providers.” Select “Universities and Colleges.” This produces a list of universities with lectures and other materials. Almost all of them are free and available to the public. Select Stanford.
Select “Health and Medicine” from the upper left “Categories” menu box.
Scroll down to the icon for “Mental Health.” Both lectures mentioned above are available there for free.
As with everything reading-related, there are some organizational issues. My reading is slowing down as I get older, I mean work more, but also because my to-read pile tends to lose the interesting books first and slowly accumulate the less interesting books. Here's what I'm currently reading, FWIW:
- Stack of recent Scientific American and Skeptic magazines (Lisa Simpson also reads Skeptic). Believe it or not, I read these best at the delicious, Barbarossa-saving Ethiopian lunch buffet around the corner. Combining magazines and Ethiopian food can be tricky, but I've developed a series of table rituals that work.
- Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
- American Violence: A Documentary History, edited by Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace
- Ten Major Issues in American Politics, by Richard Hofstadter
- The Road to Wealth, by Suze Orman. (I know, I know. I keep the dust jacket hidden so she's not grinning at me. But there was good information in the earlier chapters that was new to me.)
- Simone de Beauvoir: A Feminist Mandarin, by Mary Evans. This one's half good and half stupid.
- Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann
- Archer's Goon, by Diana Wynne Jones. Because sometimes you just want to fall asleep without learning anything ;) Seriously, I quite like this 1984 story about politics and sibling rivalry.
- Two Oz books that I bought online for my Baum shelf but turned out not to have the John R. Neill illustrations. I keep meaning to reread them before giving them to a kid or something. Maybe after the election.
Are you sure it was because of a lengthy post? Have you written to them asking for reconsideration and/or an explanation? I just don't get it. Your posts are always head smacking smart, informative, fun, polite, while putting a positive spin on the topic of note. It doesn't make sense to me as I think they run a really good site and seem to be really fair on all matters.
Perhaps you should write to them and ask for reinstatement and see if you can get some feedback in the matter. Here's the email that I have used to contact them in the past: talk@talkingpointsmemo.com
I really do think it was the length of the post. At least that's my best theory, because there certainly wasn't anything objectionable in the attempted post. N.B. - this post is short, and made it online with no problem.
Overall, I blame Chemgirl. She used to do word counts on my posts. She values conciseness and was striving, at one time, to help me appreciate it, too. But she gave up, and I fell back into my way-too-wordy ways.
Here's an idea. How about a "BANNED BY TRMS BLOG" t-shirt?
I know I'm not the only one who's had a post snagged by the new "moderator" scheme. I believe one of Cap'n's posts got intercepted, so he and I should probably be in charge of the new t-shirt. Envision it - me, Cap'n, Sing Sing, and virulent ole MikeyInVa -- all sporting the same outfit.
;-)
Seriously, I'm willing to be patient with Bob and the others while they fine tune the new moderation stuff. It really is nice not to have to slosh through the nasty troll spew to get to the sane posts.
Essic, I am so embarrassed. In reading your problems with getting "banned" I read the acronym as TPM (as in Talking Points Memo) instead of TRMS (Rachel's blog). So all of the links given above are wrong.
I think it must be time for me to take a vacation...
But I do so love the idea of T's, I could broaden my new fall wardrobe with a new t or two. But not to worry about the TRMS ban, they are in the middle of a new moderation program and are working out the kinks as I learned when I was caught up in the very same thing last week. I couldn't post for most of last week and Bob didn't seem to know why, but luckily, he worked things out in the end.
I think it's just part of instituting a new program for the threads, I'm sure it will be up and running smoothly shortly.
Okay Ms. BB, here it is (I split it up into smaller posts). Last week's non-job-related reading:
(1) Documenting the American South’s newly-posted audio interviews with former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt on good governance, and with Charles Jones on civil rights activism in Chapel Hill in the 1930s and ‘40s (interview conducted by Joe Herzenberg, the first openly gay elected official from North Carolina) http://docsouth.unc.edu/browse/newadd/2008-08_titles.html
(3) Bill Moyers’s interview with Andrew J. Bacevich on the Imperial Presidency
On iTunes under the podcast for Bill Moyers Journal from PBS
(4) Library of Congress Webcast on “’extraordinary rendition’— the transfer of suspected terrorists to countries known to employ harsh interrogation techniques that may rise to the level of torture,” and “the role of the judiciary in the cases of Khaled El-Masri and Maher Arar.” http://www.loc.gov/law/news/webcasts.html
(5) “The Secret History of the Dividing Line,” by William Byrd II (circa 1727), a journal chronicling the first attempt to survey the boundary between NC and Va (reprinted in “The South in Perspective,” eds. Franciso, et al. (2001)) – also available at http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/byrd/menu.html
(6) Two Essays from “Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties” (1969)
(a) “On Experiencing Gore Vidal,” by William F. Buckley, Jr., and
(b) “A Distasteful Encounter With William F. Buckley, Jr.,” by Gore Vidal
(7) Ricky Gervais Show: The Fifth Season
from Audible
(10) "You Suck at Photoshop"
Google it -- the url's to long to post
Due to technical difficulties with the blog, I had to strike some stuff that I read while researching strange, lost, and abandoned cities such as the WWII decoy city of Elko Tract (Richmond/Henrico, Virginia) and Soul City, NC.
BTW, I finally bought Sarah Vowell's new book. Nice to have something wonderful to do on airplanes this week. Looking very much forward to reading it.
The Gore Vidal/Buckleyverdammtescheisse was already familiar to me, and the rest is all good! Very cool. I will follow up on these tips when I've finished the responsible adult schizophrenia report (bug-eyed... not smiley but "facey")
Incidentally: if the reading list was multimedia, I must add the following:
Podcasts: Numerous AAR podcasts, Randi Rhodes, BBC's Friday Night Comedy with Sandi Tokswig, BBC's Fighting Talk, KCRW's Le Show, ABC Radio National's Science Show, MSNBC's Countdown, NPR's On the Media, NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me, NPR's Car Talk. I also subscribe to NPR's This American Life but I never get around to listening to it because it's so fictional. When I need to keep working but am having trouble with compliance, I listen to audio versions of books such as Dorothy Sayers's "The Nine Tailors" and "Whose Body" and William Gibsons's "Pattern Recognition" and "Spook Country" and Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash," except Neal Stephenson's recent rare book signing here kind of ruined his genius for me because... I shouldn't get into it. Too thenthitive.
Online papers (as if I'm not obvious): Spiegel-Online, S.F. Chronicle because they have a less conservative attitude toward wire stories than the two retarded passive-aggressive Seattle dailies, Seattle P-I, Dilbert, blog of the weekly paper the Seattle Stranger which is updated hourly and contains local feedback
Bookmarked list of other Maddow-recommended political blogs that I never have time to check
VHS tapes: Stack of Amazon's top John Wayne movies to get me through my situps. (Organized chronologically.)
Essic, what a positively genius scheme to circumvent the word count limit: segment your post into different parts! (I believe you have done this before -- e.g., minutes from TRMS SAB meeting/visit to the AAR studios in January.)
TESTING!
Testing, testing, testing
1 2 3 4
Testing
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By Polly TicsOctober 10, 2008 - 8:43amGood gas price feelings get John Mccain elected...
As soon as the media started saying that the gas price trends seemed to have to connection to the current market forces, I had an idea as to what they were connected to: If gas prices cross the $3.00 pain threshold just as people are voting, they will have an involuntary warm and fuzzy feeling for the people in power (G Bush) and those connected to them (J Mccain). So I plotted the government statistics for the average US price of the average gas formulation (Mid-grade) which is what gets reported on the news. I then projected the slope to achieve <$3.00 by election day and then have added the weekly data points as we get closer to the election:
http://www.tayloredge.com/linkpages/GasTrend.pdf
For a moment there it appeared that the line was trending the wrong way but the slope just got steeper and is still pointing at election day! Note that there was no fancy math used in the plotting of this data.
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By taylorjptOctober 12, 2008 - 11:39amtaylorjpt,
LOL, whatever gets you through the night...
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By Polly TicsOctober 12, 2008 - 11:52amMorning
How's everyone doing?
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By Bob DrummondOctober 10, 2008 - 9:01amHey, Bob!
Welcome to the blog!
And ignore the screaming trolls; we got a guy that's real good at getting rid of them.
;)
"I don't like to be pushin' athwart me betters."--Long John Silver
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By capn_crustyOctober 10, 2008 - 11:12amHi Bob!
Hi Bob!
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By Buxtehude_BarbarossaOctober 10, 2008 - 1:13pmGood to See You, Bob :)
Are there any changes afoot for this blog?
And where's Vanessa? Is she okay?
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By drdarkenyOctober 10, 2008 - 1:14pmIt's alive!
Thank you, Tim!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpcUxwpOQ_A
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By chemgirlOctober 10, 2008 - 9:05amOk...I'm no fan of Jay Leno...
..but how cool was last night!!!!!!!!!
Rachel...not in her High School Principal costume!
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By LarrynowOctober 10, 2008 - 9:13amTwas a great night for Maddowistas!
And I really wonder if the unfamiliar were wondering who the primped-up lady on the screen was when Leno first said "we'll be right back with Rachel Maddow" after our own Rachel, with the cool sneaks, non-primped look, and dorky glasses.
*g*
btw, I'm a complete non-Leno fan too. When Obama is elected he can expect non-stop barrages of nastiness via Leno (until Conan takes over) starting November 5th!
I truly wish Rachel's chat show debut could have been on Letterman instead. But considering Leno is on NBC and all, I suppose Letterman will have to wait for a bit.
In any case - Go Rachel!
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By ShelaghCOctober 10, 2008 - 11:12amI know - wasn't that great?
I thought Rachel would show up in one of her business suits - so it was a blast to see her come out in the black pajamas, sneakers and wearing her glasses! :)
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By drdarkenyOctober 10, 2008 - 1:09pmYes, she's truly one of the
Yes, she's truly one of the *literati now, isn't she?
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By biorhythmatistOctober 10, 2008 - 7:41pmTesting yet again!
Testing, still testing
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By Polly TicsOctober 10, 2008 - 10:04amNew Thread?
New Thread?
Wait a minute, I thought we were going for 500 comments on that last one?
Oh well ...
Chem Girl, do the Nobel prize winners get a SAB t shirt with their prize?
Here's a quick thought from Chris Bowers at OpenLeft:
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=16AE5E72EE66F64BCDA37B4B...
Also, I wonder if Rachel can book Ta-Nehisi Coates from the Atlantic and Tim Dickinson from Rolling Stone on the show?
Dickinson's latest effort is a must read:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_re...
and Coates consistently adds great insights to the campaign happenings.
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By JTGullsOctober 10, 2008 - 10:33amtesting...
testing...
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By pinellasOctober 10, 2008 - 10:35amAunt Clara evil?
It pains me that Palin's preacher would consider Aunt Clara "evil".
During the debate, McCain said that he saved the US 6 billions dollars on a tanker deal.
The truth is that McCain lobbied the Air Force to send a 100 billion dollar contract to EADS, the home of Airbus. Included would be 40,000 hi tech jobs that would be based in France.
What makes this especially bad is that it's the first time in history that a strategic part of our Air Force is being outsourced.
What makes it especially bad is that even though two Boeing executives have recently been indicted, Airbus had 22 executives indicted.
What makes it especially bad is that the new Airbus A380 is so big; most airports can't afford to let it land. It causes dangerous wind shears for other planes, and even a slight wind can cause a dangerous landing and when it takes off, sometimes the tail drags on the ground. This is who will be building a portion of our Air Force.
What makes it especially bad is that for the first time in it's history, EADS has given money to an American presidential candidate.
What makes it especially bad is that many EADS lobbyists work for McCain's campaign.
What makes it especially bad is that the media hasn't reported any of this. Everything I know comes from overseas newspapers and engineering magazines.
France thanks McCain.
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By deanrddOctober 10, 2008 - 10:45am.
.
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By deanrddOctober 10, 2008 - 6:51pmTo Get Rid of Trollboy - Oh, You're Too Clever for Us!
Air America's Customer Service
To contact Air America's Customer Service, please email:
aarsupport@gmail.com
Direct all correspondence to BOB, he is very helpful in all matters.
(Thanks to Polly Tics)
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By drdarkenyOctober 10, 2008 - 12:36pmRachel, a couple alternatives to Real Clear Politics
Rachel,
The other night you mentioned not liking Real Clear Politics, though they are useful. I wanted to point out a couple of alternatives.
1) http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ - This is pretty much a direct alternative to Real Clear Politics. They use statistics to predict what they think will happen on election day. They also try to get the bias out of polls.
Plus, they have some very good analysis. You know how people are saying that the negative ads aren't helping McCain much? They have math to back it up: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/ayers-attacks-piquing-curiosity-b...
2) http://www.electoral-vote.com/ - This site is nice for its simplicity. No fancy predictions, they just take the most recent polls for each state and figure out the electoral college vote based on that. They're very good for "If the election were held today" estimates.
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By Jason M. BryantOctober 10, 2008 - 10:48amThanks Jason
Thanks for pointing us to 538.com. I use electoral-vote.com daily but it's lways good to have a backup/alternate source.
As for Real Clear Politics, I do like their headline resource so I can see what the cons are writing - without having to get myself dirty by visiting their actual sites.
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By JTGullsOctober 10, 2008 - 11:20am538-dot-com
Nate Silver runs fivethirtyeight.com. He's a baseball stats guy - what's not to love? extremely thorough, with the most current state-by-state polls.
www.newsweek.com/id/140469
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By chemgirlOctober 10, 2008 - 12:05pmthank goodness and Tim Einenkel for the new thread
two requests~~Any chance of an ignore feature here? Also, does anyone have a clip of Rachel last night? So happy for her! and for us :)
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By KthCOctober 10, 2008 - 10:50amHooray for "activist judges" in CT
Gay marriage ban struck down -- #5 to ratify the U.S. Constitution, #3 for statewide same-sex-couple marriages. Way to go, Constitution State:
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4996BE20081010
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By chemgirlOctober 10, 2008 - 1:05pmWell, You Can See That Trollboy's ALREADY Celebrating
::points down:: By frothing his usual UPPER-CASE RANTY INCOMPLETE-SENTENCE homophobic racist illiterate Right-Wing invective. Good to know he's doing his part, alongside Sarah Palin, to ensure that nobody but skinheads will ever take American Social Conservatism seriously again, isn't it? :D
Paranthetically - did everybody read DailyKos's article of the smackdown reviews and loser boxoffice of last week's Right-Wing alleged "comedy" AN AMERICAN CAROL? Where one of AIRPLANE's three writer-directors(!) proves that being a Right-Wingnut will corrode your sense of humor into something toxic and ugly? And that "smug elitism" in Hollywood isn't a liberal disease, but a conservative one?
And why do I ask so many rhetorical questions, anyway?
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By drdarkenyOctober 10, 2008 - 1:40pmwoot woot woot
thanks to mhappenow on samsedershow.com, here's the link: http://www.nbc.com/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/video/episodes/#vid=74...
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By KthCOctober 10, 2008 - 11:16amProps to Rachel
Thank you Rachel for being about the only member of the cable news channels to actually look into Sarah Palins extremist ties. Great job on Leno last night! You got me so fired up last night I actually started my crappy "hippie"blog today.
http://bluefloridian.blogspot.com/
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By LoganTylerOctober 10, 2008 - 11:25amGreat show
Great job on Leno last night. Your MSNBC show is the best thing I've seen on cable news in a long time. Your show has me so fired up I started my own crappy blog
http://bluefloridian.blogspot.com/
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By LoganTylerOctober 10, 2008 - 11:39amPalin and diversity
Several times now I've noticed Sarah Palin talking about how diverse her family is. Does anyone know what she's referring to? They don't look terribly diverse.
The only example I've heard her give is her son, who has Down's Syndrome. The thing is, he's five months old. All he can do is drool and gurgle, like every other five month old in the world, so he's not a significant source of diversity in her life.
Where's the diversity she's talking about?
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By Jason M. BryantOctober 10, 2008 - 11:51amIf he's lucky....
Drool and gurgle is all he might ever be able to do if he's lucky. Down's Syndrome is an easy test. The vast majority of women prefer to have an abortion, not to spare the woman, but to spare the child.
Children with Down's Syndrome may be born with other physical problems besides retardation. Sometimes, their entire short life is pain and suffering.
Now, imagine this:
Suppose you had a brother who was retarded. After your parents died, you tried to take care of him. After he was arrested for walking into a neighbor's house because he didn't understand "trespassing", you hired someone to take care of him separately from the rest of your family. Suppose he discovered how to order porn and he sneaked down and watched for hours every night and you had to talk to the cable company about the extra couple of thousand in charges. Suppose he phoned a bomb message to the sheriff because he saw it on TV and that caused him to be committed. Imagine walking away as you left the institution and he was crying and screaming, "I'll be good". Imagine him telling you that he wished he were dead because he is stupid and everyone else is smart. Imagine that he is smart enough to understand that he is retarded but too dumb to be left on his own. Imagine his entire life is now in and institution and all he talks about is dying. Imagine that they dope him up because he hates being there so much, he has become violent. Imagine not being able to move away because you don't want to leave your brother.
Now, tell me how abortion isn't an option.
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By deanrddOctober 10, 2008 - 12:41pmNot really what I meant
I get what you're saying, but I really wasn't talking about Down's Syndrome.
I was just talking about Palin's claims that she has a diverse family, yet the only example of diversity is a small baby. Her child's condition is certainly going to affect her life, but it doesn't give her a diverse family at this point.
So where's the diversity that she's so proud of?
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By Jason M. BryantOctober 10, 2008 - 12:48pmSorry - But I Got to Go For It
B/c, Jason... The Longer She Campaigns...De Verse It Gets! ::ba-DUMP!::
::taps mike:: Hello? Is this thing on...?
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By drdarkenyOctober 10, 2008 - 6:59pmouch
/throws tomatoes
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By Jason M. BryantOctober 10, 2008 - 7:45pm::Grabs Tomatoes, eats one:: Thanks, Jason!
Cheap as this club is, THIS is the only pay I get! ;)
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By drdarkenyOctober 10, 2008 - 8:07pmdeanrdd: Stop talking about Jeb! The Bush CrimeFamily hates that
Details HERE
.
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By THX.1138 UltraV...October 10, 2008 - 2:52pmJMB: "what she's referring to?" There's diverse moose entrails
src
.
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By THX.1138 UltraV...October 10, 2008 - 2:58pmLeno & Maddow
Does anyone have a link to the Tonight show with Rachel that they can share???
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By cactiOctober 10, 2008 - 11:55amHere you go
http://www.nbc.com/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/video/episodes/#vid=74...
Skip to 31 minutes in.
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By Jason M. BryantOctober 10, 2008 - 12:08pmOdd coincidence.
One interesting note: In the interview she says she taught herself to read. Apparently, her parents found her reading the newspaper at four years old.
Ronald Reagan did the same thing.
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By Jason M. BryantOctober 10, 2008 - 12:10pmNo one literally taught himself or herself to "read".
It's impossible.
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By deanrddOctober 10, 2008 - 12:44pmThere were probably other humans involved.
I'm sure nobody could just look at a book and figure it out.
However, I've heard of this happening before. I think what people mean is that nobody made a *deliberate* effort to teach that kid to read.
So maybe Mom held the three year old in her lap as she read the picture book. Mom ran her fingers along the words as she spoke and the kid noticed which written words went with the words that Mom was saying.
That's pretty much how we learn to speak. Parents say a word in context enough times and the baby remembers that "mama" refers to one thing and "dada" refers to another thing.
So occasionally a kid picks up enough written words through story time to pick up a newspaper and muddle through, learning new words along the way by the context. Then a parent walks in and says, "Hey, who taught you how to read?"
That's my guess. Perhaps Rachel's mom could give us more details.
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By Jason M. BryantOctober 10, 2008 - 12:58pmMore or Less, Jason
It's "parents showing their child how to read" as you pointed out, combined with "child's curiosity" with those basic tools, that would let a child feel s/he had taught her- or himself how to read. That's certainly how I learned to read by the age of four - it's not an uncommon feat among smart pre-Kindergarten children in a home that encourages literacy, and Rachel's a LOT smarter than I am.
I wonder if she, like me, also had an easily freaked-out First Grade teacher who insisted she'd been "ruined" by learning to read by herself, and would have to be "untaught" in order to be taught how to read "properly"?
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By drdarkenyOctober 10, 2008 - 1:54pmReading early
I "learned" to read, as I sort of remember it, and as my mother confirms, from looking at her magazines. I would ask her what words (usually in advertising) were. And from there, I picked up a lot of the alphabet and some building blocks of reading. I can't say that I was fully literate when I entered first grade, but I was well on my way, based on my own initiative, and my mother's willingness to answer my questions and leave the Ladies Home Journal lying on the couch.
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By leopardgrrl1October 10, 2008 - 4:07pmI started reading when I was three...
...but Mom helped. Still, all modesty aside, I was the best reader in class through the first half of grade school.
Then, I discovered comic books. :cheese:
"I don't like to be pushin' athwart me betters."--Long John Silver
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By capn_crustyOctober 10, 2008 - 4:11pmYo to age three
My uncle visited us and found my three-year-old brother sitting on the floor, surrounded by volumes of the new encyclopedia my parents had just bought. Uncle says, “Aw, isn’t that cute? He’s pretending to read.” Mom says, “”He’s not pretending.” Uncle says, “Of course.” Mom says, “Ask him what he’s reading.” Uncle asks my brother, who explains. Uncle says, “He must be looking at the pictures.” Mom says, “Okay, you pick an article without pictures and ask him.” Uncle does so and brother reads article out loud, stumbling over a word here and there but clearly comprehending what he's reading. Uncle says, “Oh.”
No mystery here. My sister got a full-sized chalkboard for Christmas, and her favorite game was “school.” If my brother or I messed up reading aloud, she whacked us with a ruler. So, through aversion therapy, my brother and I were pretty danged good readers at ages three and four. By the time I got to first grade, I’d already finished “Peyton Place” (kyped from the back row of my parent’s overstuffed bookcase), “Gone With the Wind,” “Harriet the Spy,” all of Carroll’s Alice books, the Bobbsey Twins, etc. And we were all making big inroads into my father’s biology texts from college.
However, my first grade teacher very quickly labeled me “retarded” and called my mother in for the big talk. (Sorry folks, “retarded” was the word they used in those days.) That was a fun talk. I was present, and I got to hear all her reasons for the label.
The librarian in grade school spent a lot of time taking books away from me and steering me back to the "age-appropriate" shelves. My sister and I figured out an end-run. If I picked a book and the school librarian seized it from me, my sister checked it out for me. This charade ended when I demanded an allowance and subscribed to the Barnes and Noble catalog. There was a point in my life when my mail-order reading included Kurt Vonnegut and the Weekly Reader, or "Catcher in the Rye" and "Highlights" magazine, in the same delivery. I used to hang out in the ditch next to the mailbox, waiting for the mailman.
And we regularly raided our parents' and our friends' parents' bookshelves. Which is how my brother, a neighborhood kid, and I got caught smoking cigars, drinking bourbon, and reading to each other from Playboy at age eight (all three items found in a desk drawer in the neighborhood kid's father's den).
Just for the record, it was not such a good idea to read Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” at age seven. But that’s the only real regret that I can think of.
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By essicOctober 11, 2008 - 11:15amSo we're all smart...
...we all tend towards the left end of the spectrum (or at least the left quadrant of the cloud), and we all like Rachel. I don't see any contradictions.
And yeah, from what I've heard, reading Plath ain't a good idea unless you're really into being depressed. My reading tended more towards Lovecraft, Burroughs (Edgar Rice, not William) and the late, great juvenile writer (and I mean that very much in the non-pejorative sense) Mary Alice "Andre" Norton. Oh, and of course, Bobby Lou Stevenson. Now if that doesn't explain some things, then I don't know what else will.
Eyarrrr!
"I don't like to be pushin' athwart me betters."--Long John Silver
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By capn_crustyOctober 11, 2008 - 11:27amSmart?
I dunno about about that. I prefer "high strung and clever," myself.
There's a lot of science out there saying "smart" correlates pretty neatly to expectations. If you tell a first-grader he's smart, he performs better. If you tell him he's slow, he performs poorly, regardless of measured IQ or previous performance. People perform best in an atmosphere of praise, challenge, and support. I think a whole lot of "smart" is parenting.
My point is that I don't have any problem with the idea that Maddow taught herself to read.
There are a lot of gifts or talents: intellectual (verbal gifts, spatial understanding, mathematics, pattern recognition); social; artistic, athletic; etc.
Smart is just a thang. It either works for you or against you. And it's not necessarily the most important gift a person can have.
But I am bothered by recent tide of anti-intellectualism. I've noticed lately that a lot of people -- some in my own family -- seem to have abandoned critical thinking in this campaign. They're starting their logic with the result they want in the next election, and then they reason backwards from that result. It's appalling. I see this happening in people whom I know to be better than that. What gives?
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By essicOctober 11, 2008 - 12:19pmSmart is the human race's only saving grace
If it wasn't for the fact that we can think rings around the big, hungry critters, we'd be digesting in their bellies right now. And while upbringing does indeed have a lot to do with the direction one's thought processes go, I have known people whom have a high degree of across-the-board intellectual development despite, not because of their environment. Hell, if I had gone the route of my forebears, I'd likely be wearing Klan robes and polishing one of my eighty-five guns right now.
However, "smart"--the ability to perform well intellectually--is not always synonymous with "wise"--being able to figure what is the best thing" to do. Personally I think it's going to take another step in human evolution for that latter trait to be widespread throughout the genus.
Just as long as that next step doesn't turn our progeny into a bunch of SingSings.
:cheese:
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By capn_crustyOctober 11, 2008 - 12:36pmNo, I'm still going to try to back you off "smart" worship
I insist that "smart" ain't nothing but a thang. I think "smart" is both over- and underrated.
You can read Sylvia Plath at age seven and understand every single word without truly grasping the book. There's a store of knowledge that's missing at that age, and an inability to synthesize information about complex emotions, social structures, historical context, etc. There's just a paucity of experience that "smart" can't compensate for.
When you talk about wisdom, I think you're getting at that concept. A hell of a lot of what IQ measures is pattern recognition and the speed with which you can identify, manipulate, and express concepts and retrieve stored information. Those are extremely useful skills. In fact, if my girlfriend had not gently pointed out -- after the eighth episode -- that every single time I ate squid, I became violently ill, I might now be bankrupt from ER bills.
But, and I think you'll like this, wisdom is part of aging. I've got at least two lectures for you that are on point:
(1) Aging and the Perception of Time, by Laura Cartensen
(2) Analogy as the Core of Cognition, by Douglas Hofstadter
I can tell you how to get these lectures for free if you're interested. But the upshot is that our brains do change over time. While some of these changes are uncomfortable (e.g., we really do take longer to retrieve memories, facts, and info, and time really does speed up as we age), other changes are positively good. And one of the best is that in our 40s and 50s, we begin to synthesize information much better than we did when younger. So a 20 year old might be faster to the buzzer on Jeopardy. But he's less likely to fully connect the trivia (that he so quickly retrieves) to all of its far-reaching ramifications and context as well as the 50 year old. This is a physical change in the brain over time, in addition to the advantage of having had more time to build up a larger store of information.
This ability to synthesize is a core part of wisdom. It's sometimes confused with pattern recognition, but they're truly different. Pattern recognition doesn't change over time. My sister had a 180 IQ at age six, and she still has an IQ of 180. But the ability to synthesize noticeably increases over the years.
Plus, extremely high IQ (sheer "smart," as we currently measure it (which is, I think, a very flawed method)) correlates to high suicide rates, high rates of job loss, and high divorce rates. The better gifted programs try address this -- try to help people adapt to the kind of alienation that can result from "the smart."
"The smart" is just a thang, Cap'n. I'm a bit more fond of "kind" and "patient" than "smart." Of course, what we really need is all of the above.
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By essicOctober 11, 2008 - 1:48pmGood luck with the "backing off" notion
But being smart enough to see through the sub-cultural crap is the only thing that kept me from becoming a drunken racist buffoon like my old man. So while yes, it's a "thang"--but "just"? I don't think so; in evolutionary terms, it's much more important to human survival and flourishing than some old socket wrench you got at a garage sale or a dirty old rock lying by the side of the road.
And while it may be true that smart folks off themselves at a higher per-capita rate than others, it may simply be because they see the futility of living in a world populated by people who'd rather spend their time watching football and drinking cheap beer than thinking. Then again, it may just be cherry-picking information. Mental disorder is not caused by IQ, it's an entirely separate dimension of human consciousness. I've known a lot of smart folks that have managed to use their intellect to establish a happier, more stable life, with a job and a spouse they love far more than their peers could ever manage. I suppose what I'm saying here is not that there's no price to pay for high IQ, but in most cases, it's worth it. I've seen dumb and ignorant, and it ain't pretty, either.
And while "wisdom" may "just" be a "concept", so are "kind", and "patient".
"I don't like to be pushin' athwart me betters."--Long John Silver
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By capn_crustyOctober 11, 2008 - 2:00pmLinks?
Hi essic,
Could you post links to those essays? (And have you read William Gibson's Pattern Recognition? It's fun.)
Have 13,000 words to translate on the subject of schizophrenia this weekend, and if I start googling those authors I'll never get it done.
Cheers,
B_B
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By Buxtehude_BarbarossaOctober 11, 2008 - 3:40pmI'll post the links
and a few others. You have to share your current reading list, in kind. Deal?
Got iTunes?
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By essicOctober 11, 2008 - 4:29pm¡Si!
That sounds like a great idea. Yes, I have iTunes.
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By Buxtehude_BarbarossaOctober 11, 2008 - 5:11pmHow to get the lectures named above
Go to the iTunes store
In the upper left menu, select iTunes U.
Scroll to the third menu box – the entitled “Find Educational Providers.” Select “Universities and Colleges.” This produces a list of universities with lectures and other materials. Almost all of them are free and available to the public. Select Stanford.
Select “Health and Medicine” from the upper left “Categories” menu box.
Scroll down to the icon for “Mental Health.” Both lectures mentioned above are available there for free.
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By essicOctober 11, 2008 - 6:05pmReading list
I should be working, but:
As with everything reading-related, there are some organizational issues. My reading is slowing down as I get older, I mean work more, but also because my to-read pile tends to lose the interesting books first and slowly accumulate the less interesting books. Here's what I'm currently reading, FWIW:
- Stack of recent Scientific American and Skeptic magazines (Lisa Simpson also reads Skeptic). Believe it or not, I read these best at the delicious, Barbarossa-saving Ethiopian lunch buffet around the corner. Combining magazines and Ethiopian food can be tricky, but I've developed a series of table rituals that work.
- Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
- American Violence: A Documentary History, edited by Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace
- Ten Major Issues in American Politics, by Richard Hofstadter
- The Road to Wealth, by Suze Orman. (I know, I know. I keep the dust jacket hidden so she's not grinning at me. But there was good information in the earlier chapters that was new to me.)
- Simone de Beauvoir: A Feminist Mandarin, by Mary Evans. This one's half good and half stupid.
- Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann
- Archer's Goon, by Diana Wynne Jones. Because sometimes you just want to fall asleep without learning anything ;) Seriously, I quite like this 1984 story about politics and sibling rivalry.
- Two Oz books that I bought online for my Baum shelf but turned out not to have the John R. Neill illustrations. I keep meaning to reread them before giving them to a kid or something. Maybe after the election.
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By Buxtehude_BarbarossaOctober 12, 2008 - 11:37amYikes!
I've been censored by TRMS blog.
My last post got snagged by the "moderator." I'm guessing the length of my post made me look too SIng-Sing'ish.
That'll teach me to do word counts on my own stuff before I hit the "post comment" button.
I feel so, I dunno -- rejected?
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By essicOctober 12, 2008 - 2:15pmThat Sticks!
Are you sure it was because of a lengthy post? Have you written to them asking for reconsideration and/or an explanation? I just don't get it. Your posts are always head smacking smart, informative, fun, polite, while putting a positive spin on the topic of note. It doesn't make sense to me as I think they run a really good site and seem to be really fair on all matters.
Perhaps you should write to them and ask for reinstatement and see if you can get some feedback in the matter. Here's the email that I have used to contact them in the past: talk@talkingpointsmemo.com
And just in case you want to check, here's their TOS policy:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/termsofuse.php
Best of luck!
.
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By Polly TicsOctober 12, 2008 - 6:45pmYou're too kind
Thanks for the nice words.
I really do think it was the length of the post. At least that's my best theory, because there certainly wasn't anything objectionable in the attempted post. N.B. - this post is short, and made it online with no problem.
Overall, I blame Chemgirl. She used to do word counts on my posts. She values conciseness and was striving, at one time, to help me appreciate it, too. But she gave up, and I fell back into my way-too-wordy ways.
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By essicOctober 12, 2008 - 10:30pmI see
Ahh, when things go wrong we all blame Chemgirl? Works for me
; - )
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By Polly TicsOctober 13, 2008 - 1:05pmYeah, sure, go ahead
I can take it!
:cheese:
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By chemgirlOctober 13, 2008 - 1:08pmNew TRMS Blog T-Shirt
Here's an idea. How about a "BANNED BY TRMS BLOG" t-shirt?
I know I'm not the only one who's had a post snagged by the new "moderator" scheme. I believe one of Cap'n's posts got intercepted, so he and I should probably be in charge of the new t-shirt. Envision it - me, Cap'n, Sing Sing, and virulent ole MikeyInVa -- all sporting the same outfit.
;-)
Seriously, I'm willing to be patient with Bob and the others while they fine tune the new moderation stuff. It really is nice not to have to slosh through the nasty troll spew to get to the sane posts.
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By essicOctober 12, 2008 - 9:53pm"Banned camp"
"Banned camp"
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By Buxtehude_BarbarossaOctober 12, 2008 - 10:22pmOh dear...
Essic, I am so embarrassed. In reading your problems with getting "banned" I read the acronym as TPM (as in Talking Points Memo) instead of TRMS (Rachel's blog). So all of the links given above are wrong.
I think it must be time for me to take a vacation...
But I do so love the idea of T's, I could broaden my new fall wardrobe with a new t or two. But not to worry about the TRMS ban, they are in the middle of a new moderation program and are working out the kinks as I learned when I was caught up in the very same thing last week. I couldn't post for most of last week and Bob didn't seem to know why, but luckily, he worked things out in the end.
I think it's just part of instituting a new program for the threads, I'm sure it will be up and running smoothly shortly.
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By Polly TicsOctober 13, 2008 - 1:04pmReading list
Okay Ms. BB, here it is (I split it up into smaller posts). Last week's non-job-related reading:
(1) Documenting the American South’s newly-posted audio interviews with former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt on good governance, and with Charles Jones on civil rights activism in Chapel Hill in the 1930s and ‘40s (interview conducted by Joe Herzenberg, the first openly gay elected official from North Carolina) http://docsouth.unc.edu/browse/newadd/2008-08_titles.html
(2) Assorted WPA Histories http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html
(3) Bill Moyers’s interview with Andrew J. Bacevich on the Imperial Presidency
On iTunes under the podcast for Bill Moyers Journal from PBS
(4) Library of Congress Webcast on “’extraordinary rendition’— the transfer of suspected terrorists to countries known to employ harsh interrogation techniques that may rise to the level of torture,” and “the role of the judiciary in the cases of Khaled El-Masri and Maher Arar.”
http://www.loc.gov/law/news/webcasts.html
(5) “The Secret History of the Dividing Line,” by William Byrd II (circa 1727), a journal chronicling the first attempt to survey the boundary between NC and Va (reprinted in “The South in Perspective,” eds. Franciso, et al. (2001)) – also available at http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/byrd/menu.html
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By essicOctober 12, 2008 - 10:43pmReading List - Part Two
(6) Two Essays from “Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties” (1969)
(a) “On Experiencing Gore Vidal,” by William F. Buckley, Jr., and
(b) “A Distasteful Encounter With William F. Buckley, Jr.,” by Gore Vidal
(7) Ricky Gervais Show: The Fifth Season
from Audible
(8) WBUR's On Point
(a) A New History of the WPA
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/02/the-new-deal-and-the-wpa/
(b) Rick Bragg's Hard South
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/07/rick-braggs-hard-south/
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By essicOctober 12, 2008 - 10:07pmReading List - Part Three
(9) Weekly Podcast from Better Propaganda
http://betterpropaganda.com/
(10) "You Suck at Photoshop"
Google it -- the url's to long to post
Due to technical difficulties with the blog, I had to strike some stuff that I read while researching strange, lost, and abandoned cities such as the WWII decoy city of Elko Tract (Richmond/Henrico, Virginia) and Soul City, NC.
BTW, I finally bought Sarah Vowell's new book. Nice to have something wonderful to do on airplanes this week. Looking very much forward to reading it.
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By essicOctober 12, 2008 - 10:16pmThank you, essic!
The Gore Vidal/Buckleyverdammtescheisse was already familiar to me, and the rest is all good! Very cool. I will follow up on these tips when I've finished the responsible adult schizophrenia report (bug-eyed... not smiley but "facey")
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By Buxtehude_BarbarossaOctober 12, 2008 - 11:21pmAddendum
Incidentally: if the reading list was multimedia, I must add the following:
Podcasts: Numerous AAR podcasts, Randi Rhodes, BBC's Friday Night Comedy with Sandi Tokswig, BBC's Fighting Talk, KCRW's Le Show, ABC Radio National's Science Show, MSNBC's Countdown, NPR's On the Media, NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me, NPR's Car Talk. I also subscribe to NPR's This American Life but I never get around to listening to it because it's so fictional. When I need to keep working but am having trouble with compliance, I listen to audio versions of books such as Dorothy Sayers's "The Nine Tailors" and "Whose Body" and William Gibsons's "Pattern Recognition" and "Spook Country" and Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash," except Neal Stephenson's recent rare book signing here kind of ruined his genius for me because... I shouldn't get into it. Too thenthitive.
Online papers (as if I'm not obvious): Spiegel-Online, S.F. Chronicle because they have a less conservative attitude toward wire stories than the two retarded passive-aggressive Seattle dailies, Seattle P-I, Dilbert, blog of the weekly paper the Seattle Stranger which is updated hourly and contains local feedback
Bookmarked list of other Maddow-recommended political blogs that I never have time to check
VHS tapes: Stack of Amazon's top John Wayne movies to get me through my situps. (Organized chronologically.)
DVD's: Bourne movies (ditto for situps)
Harrap's French Dictionary, Wenske's Ger<>Eng Chemistry Dictionary, Der Grosse Eichborn, Webster's Unabridged (© 1975, secondhand, does not contain the word "maven"): To elevate my laptop two feet so I can stand while working. Chair freedom! I look forward to the day when treadmills are discreetly embedded in floors. In fact, home offices should trend toward the toddler "exersaucer."
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By Buxtehude_BarbarossaOctober 12, 2008 - 11:51pmWord counts, multiple posts
Essic, what a positively genius scheme to circumvent the word count limit: segment your post into different parts! (I believe you have done this before -- e.g., minutes from TRMS SAB meeting/visit to the AAR studios in January.)
Just wait until I clue Bob in!!
:winky:
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By chemgirlOctober 13, 2008 - 7:43amessic - did you ever read C.S. Lewis's SCREWTAPE LETTERS?
Specifically his later carry-on story "