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filkerdave has a birthday today. He is one of those friends I knew in real life long before becoming the hopeless LiveJournal addict I am today. He is also one of the filk songwriters and performers whose talent I most admire and envy. I hope he and his sweetie and sons have a marvelous day today.Mar. 1st, 2009
filkerdave has a birthday today. He is one of those friends I knew in real life long before becoming the hopeless LiveJournal addict I am today. He is also one of the filk songwriters and performers whose talent I most admire and envy. I hope he and his sweetie and sons have a marvelous day today.
The American Chemical Society is sponsoring a video contest for the best audio-visual answer to the question, "What is 'nano'?"—as in nanotechnology, the science of making very, very, very small but useful things. I admit I haven't seen the other videos submitted as yet, but I gotta say I'm already smitten with this one, Sesame Street/Muppets fan from way back that I am:
"The Nano Song" by Glory Liu and Friends
If all you know about nanotech comes from old Star Trek shows, this may enlighten you just a tad more. Even if you do know more, you should still find it delightful...and maybe want to show it to your kids. After all, they'll likely be living with the outgrowths of all this.
"The Nano Song" by Glory Liu and Friends
If all you know about nanotech comes from old Star Trek shows, this may enlighten you just a tad more. Even if you do know more, you should still find it delightful...and maybe want to show it to your kids. After all, they'll likely be living with the outgrowths of all this.
It be snowing here nao
Mar. 1st, 2009 12:08 pmSnow. In Atlanta. In the deep South. We were warned it might happen, but I didn't think it really would after yesterday came and went with only gobs of rain.
But now big, wet white flakes are falling by the hundreds outside my door.
Guess I won't be going anywhere today either.
But now big, wet white flakes are falling by the hundreds outside my door.
Guess I won't be going anywhere today either.
Our local right-wing columnist Jim Wooten (who I'm happy to say is retiring shortly, but will be replaced by a new writer being chosen by the paper in a public-submission contest) has in his column today joined the chorus of conservative pundits and scholars out to prove that the late former President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs not only did nothing to alleviate the Great Depression of the 1930s, but actually prolonged it and made it worse.
On one level, of course, this is nothing new; the right has been trying to undo the New Deal and its successor, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, since their inceptions, for reasons both ideological and mercenary: to prove their own ideas are better and eliminate expensive social programs that, in their view, forcibly confiscate money from those who worked hard to earn it and give it to slackers. But they see in the current economic crisis an alarming resemblance to that earlier worldwide one...and a dangerous opportunity for the current administration to usher in a "New New Deal" which must be stopped at all costs. Discredit the old New Deal, the logic goes, and we can discredit Barack Obama's plans too—killing two liberal birds with one rhetorical stone.
To this end, they have enlisted a fair number of historical scholars and self-styled economics specialists, one of whom, Burton Folsom Jr., is based here. His new book, which Wooten cites, joins such tomes as Jim Powell's FDR's Folly and Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man on the racks at your local Barnes & Ignoble. But already there are some who question the scholarship, the assumptions and the worldview of these writers, most notably Shlaes herself in a recent article at CrooksAndLiars.com.
I am once again reminded of the sage words of the late former Democratic Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts." We need to have more people out there exposing these right-wing efforts at rewriting history to suit their own tax-cutting, government-starving agenda, and the sooner the better.
On one level, of course, this is nothing new; the right has been trying to undo the New Deal and its successor, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, since their inceptions, for reasons both ideological and mercenary: to prove their own ideas are better and eliminate expensive social programs that, in their view, forcibly confiscate money from those who worked hard to earn it and give it to slackers. But they see in the current economic crisis an alarming resemblance to that earlier worldwide one...and a dangerous opportunity for the current administration to usher in a "New New Deal" which must be stopped at all costs. Discredit the old New Deal, the logic goes, and we can discredit Barack Obama's plans too—killing two liberal birds with one rhetorical stone.
To this end, they have enlisted a fair number of historical scholars and self-styled economics specialists, one of whom, Burton Folsom Jr., is based here. His new book, which Wooten cites, joins such tomes as Jim Powell's FDR's Folly and Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man on the racks at your local Barnes & Ignoble. But already there are some who question the scholarship, the assumptions and the worldview of these writers, most notably Shlaes herself in a recent article at CrooksAndLiars.com.
I am once again reminded of the sage words of the late former Democratic Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts." We need to have more people out there exposing these right-wing efforts at rewriting history to suit their own tax-cutting, government-starving agenda, and the sooner the better.
