Compassionate Conservatives In Action

Compassionate Conservatives in action:

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

To which Rick Perlstein responds:

First, observe the contempt for liberty. When E. coli conservatives say self-regulation is preferable to government, they’re even lying about that. Second, observe the contempt for small business. When a small company wants to — voluntarily! — hold its product to a higher standard, the government blocks it, in part because bigger companies have to be protected from the competition, in part because a theoretical threat to the bottom line (false positives) trumps protection against a deadly disease.

Start Wearing Purple (Update)

The top seeded Greece (N.Y.) Odyssey High School baseball and softball teams won their opening round games. The baseball team beat Marcus Whitman 5–1, while the softball team beat Marcus Whitman 2–0.



Meanwhile, the Northwestern University Wildcats softball team won both of their Super Regional games over South Carolina and advance to the Women’s College World Series, where they were runner-up last year. The Northwestern University women’s lacrosse team used a spectacular performance over Penn to advance to the national championship game on Sunday night, where they will attempt to win their third straight national championship.



I hope you are having a fun weekend!

A Possible End To E-Mail Spam?

Certainly, this will result in a reduction of e-mail spam. Let’s hope it gets widely adopted, and quickly.

What To Do This Weekend (Reprise: Start Wearing Purple)

I’ve sworn off politics this weekend. So what is there to do?

Looking back a year, I was about to have back surgery. I wasn’t feeling well and so I was basically a couch potato. All I felt like doing was sit in front of the television.

With nothing else to do, I “adopted” a college softball team, the purple-clad Northwestern University Wildcats, and I was extremely glad I did. Northwestern played a sequence of dramatic, heart-stopping ballgames leading to their first-ever appearance in the final round of the Women’s College World series.

This year, and this weekend, Northwestern is in the NCAA tournament, seeded number 2, and facing South Carolina in the Super-Regionals. The games will be broadcast on the Internet, and I will be watching and rooting for Northwestern.

My other purple-clad team, the Greece (N.Y.) Odyssey High School baseball and softball teams are in action this weekend in the Section V baseball and softball tournaments. Both are seeded #1. Go Leopards!

Extra added bonus: the Northwestern women’s lacrosse team has made it to the NCAA Final Four (for the third year in a row). If they advance to the finals, which they won last year, the game will be on CSTV.

Cosmologists Predict A Static Universe In 3 Trillion Years

Somehow I’m just not all that excited over this. Should I be?

Tostitos Flour Tortillas

Tostitos new product, Flour Tortillas, is yummy! And, they don’t break as easily when you dip them into guacamole! And they don’t irritate my stomach the way corn tortillas do. Go out and buy a couple dozen bags!

Arrrrgh!

It seems to me that a lot of people voted for Democrats in the last election because they wanted to change the direction of the Iraq War, and to eliminate the corruption that has become systematic with Republicans in charge.

So what happens? It appears that the Democrats will cave in to President Bush and give him another blank check. This is incredibly frustrating … why did we vote for Democrats in the first place? What good is it to have them in charge of Congress, they have the power of the purse, and they won’t use it?

In the past year, as I discussed over at DragonFlyEye, I have written, e-mailed, signed petitions and phoned my Congresscritters explaining why they needed to step up and stop the madness of King George. And now that the blank check is about to be voted on, what else can I do? I don’t think I can do anything more. One more phone call isn’t going to change anything.

So I’m taking a break from politics for a few days. I’m not even going to read or watch the news. It’s a politics free weekend for me. A weekend that includes ribs on the barbecue and sporting events on the TV. You have a great weekend too.

The Scam That Is COMIDA Rochester

Over at RochesterTurning, stlo7 has done a masterful job of exposing the quasi-government organization sham known as COMIDA. He shows, in a series of articles (read this one first to get a sense of what is happening), how COMIDA is simply an excuse to allow its board members to move public money around without any accountability or oversight (except that the money seems to wind up in the hands of donors to the Republican party). The latest COMIDA grant goes to a hotel in Brighton that will allegedly result in one (that’s right, one) new job.

I congratulate stlo7 for his excellent series. This is what local blogging should be all about.

How America Treats Its Citizens

Ezra shows a nice simple chart which shows how America compares to other countries in terms of mandated vacation for its workers. America is dead last — there is zero mandated days of vacation for American workers. The other industrialized nations range from 10 to 30 days of mandated vacation.

Now I know that some conservatives will yell that you need to loosen the restrictions on business to be competitive … and yet businesses in other countries seem to be able to compete, even with all of the mandated vacation for its workers. I would add that there needs to be a balance between restrictions what business can and can’t do, and the needs of the workers.

Kevin Drum shows a handy dandy chart as well, in which America’s health care system is ranked against Australia, Germany, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Guess what? No surprise, this has been reported in many places before: America pays more for health care, and its health care system is ranked last among the six countries studied.

It’s way past the time for some worker and people friendly policies here in the good old USA.

The Sad State of Mathematics Knowledge, Part III

A while back, I complained about a math problem put forth by Mensa that should be easy for sixth graders to answer, and how a local DJ couldn’t understand the very simple solution. A reader from Panama wrote in to say that by 12th grade, everyone in his country was required to pass calculus. No wonder that China and India now have more students trying to get engineering degrees than the United States does.

Here’s a recent example of mathematical illiteracy — Rachael Ray, upon finding a shoe store that offers shoes at 70% off, tell us: “For those of you that are not good at math, that means I can buy 70% more shoes.” Rachael, that means that you are not good at math. In fact, I’d say you were mathematically illiterate for making a comment like that.

Abandoned Relic In The Woods Near Rochester

If you like a walk in the woods, and you like seeing abandoned relics of times past, there is a wonderful old relic in the woods of Chili — an abandoned railroad turntable pit build in 1910. The date is still visible engraved into the wall of the pit. It’s about a twenty minute walk from Ballantyne Road. (Kudos to Scot Lawrence for finding the turntable pit and putting up the website about it).

The walk takes you across Black Creek on a beautiful old stone culvert (click picture to enlarge).

Then you turn off the main Genesee Greenway path, and head along another much smaller path into the woods. The turntable will appear after about five minutes walk from the main Genesee Greenway path (click picture to enlarge).

Happy hiking!

Megastar explodes in brightest supernova ever seen

Megastar explodes in brightest supernova ever seen: A gargantuan explosion ripped apart a star perhaps 150 times more massive than our sun in a relatively nearby galaxy in the most powerful and brightest supernova ever observed, astronomers said on Monday. And there is one such star in our own Milky Way galaxy that appears to be on the brink of dying in just such a supernova. The exploding star’s dramatic death may have come in a rare type of supernova reserved for “freakishly massive” stars that astronomers had speculated about but never previously witnessed

New York Moves Toward Better Health Care for Children

What a difference a progressive governor makes! New York has passed a bill funding health care for nearly all children. This makes New York one of a handful of states to cover children with health insurance. And it is about time that New York State (and others) move towards this coverage. It makes good long-term sense — healthy children will do better in school, have fewer behavioral problems, and will have a better chance of staying healthy as an adult. Next step: health care for everyone!

Belated Sunday Cat Blogging

After I was disappointed by Saturday’s events, I tuned in on Sunday to watch the Alabama–Tennessee softball game (the top two teams in the country), only to find out that no games had been played on Saturday due to the weather. So there was still a tie between Monica Abbott and Cat Osterman for the NCAA career strikeout record. Abbott was the pitcher, and Osterman was the announcer.

Shortly after the game started, Abbott struck out a batter, giving her the NCAA career lead, and Osterman congratulated her and was very gracious. In the post-game interview, Abbott was also very gracious to Osterman.

But as Osterman is relatively new at announcing, she needs to project her voice more. Her voice has a tendency to fall off, and that's what happened as Abbott struck out her first batter, giving her the record. Osterman was discussing something and as strike three sailed by the batter, Osterman said something but her voice tailed off and I didn’t quite catch what she said.

Despite her occasional vocal problems, Osterman certainly provided great insight into the game. She understands well what goes through a pitcher’s mind and communicated clearly. In fact, she provided interesting insights into all facets of the game. And after Saturday, when she sounded very nervous, I thought she might be one of those announcers that didn’t say much, but that was not the case. Osterman was a chatterbox, in a good and informative way. She didn’t start her comments with “well, you know”, which I think is a horrible habit that some announcers have. And kudos to ESPN play-by-play announcer Eric Collins for working smoothly with a relatively new partner (I have also enjoyed Collins’ work over the years).

And as an extra added benefit, Cat stars in an impressive commercial for Under Armour.

Fast Food and Nose Rings

I stopped at the local fast-food sandwich joint tonight, and ordered a sandwich for dinner. The young man behind the counter who actually made my sandwich had a pierced nose — not on the side, but in the middle. His nose ring hung down from the middle of his nose, a piece of metal extending downward on each side of the piercing, very similar to the picture here next to “nasal septum piercing”. Now I don’t know this young man, and he may be the most sanitary person on the planet, and certainly his nose ring never came in contact with the food — but the thought of this unsanitary adornment on a food preparation person was very unsettling. Well, not just unsettling, but disgusting. I took my sandwich home, tried to get the image out of my mind ... and ate dinner. But I just can’t imagine going back to that fast food place. I don’t want to be disgusted like that again. In case you are wondering, and feel the same way I do about such nose rings, the place was Pita Pit on Jefferson Road. Oh, and the sandwich wasn’t very good, either.

Saturday Cat Blogging

While there might be weightier issues in my life and in this country, I continue to be fascinated by USA Softball player Cat Osterman. This young lady currently holds the NCAA career strikeout record with 2265 (and she was the first player to record more than 2000 strikeouts). During her senior year, she averaged 2.2 strikeouts per inning, and she accomplished this not with a blazing fastball, but with such a huge variety of pitches and movement that batters regularly swung at balls and didn’t swing at strikes.

I didn’t expect to see Cat on the TV again until this summer when the USA Softball team would play some tournaments. And today, when I turned on a different softball game, there was Cat, as color announcer on ESPN. Her website doesn’t even mention that she is working for ESPN. Was it her first appearance? I think it was. I don’t know if she had done any announcing priort to this. She sounded very nervous, and sounded like she was reading a script. Other announcers sound much smoother.

The game I tuned in to watch, that Cat would announce, was between number 2 ranked Tennessee and number 1 ranked Alabama. As I write this, Tennessee’s star pitcher Monica Abbott was tied with Cat for the career strikeout lead. So Abbott’s first strikeout would have broken Cat’s record, and Cat would be announcing. What great drama and emotion! But it was raining cats and dogs, and the game had been rescheduled for later in the day on a different network: ESPNU, and I don’t receive ESPNU! Arrrggghhhhhh!