He's also a fan of Piers Morgan.

Wow, I can't wait until they start using drone to take out cop killers.

drone_targets = 'select * from automobile where type='pickup' and color='blue'

Ah yeah, the old cross join. Those are burned in my memory after having missed a question about them in an interview. They're pretty hard to use accidentally, though, since they're pretty rare.

Cartesian joins definitely should not be the default for the "no join" SQL. It should be a join that you must call for explicitly. I'd rather have a no-join SQL fail.

Similarly, note that he requests that his brain be studied to, essentially, see what went wrong. The '60s University of Texas bell tower shooter, for instance, also did this.

orm

Do you ever really need to go past 3rd Normal Form?

Bush's paintings--from the email hack--are stranger than I expected. They aren't great, but I had him pegged as a lighted cottage on a snowy hillside kind of guy. They might not be good but they aren't sappy.

This makes perhaps two things--with jogging--that George Bush can do better than me.

My favorite crazy politician doodles are Sarah Palin and especially Newt Gingrich. Feel free to post crazy doodles by liberals, I'm sure they're out there but I just don't know about them.

This makes perhaps two things--with jogging--that George Bush can do better than me.

Semi-related.

Fear not, your secret identity of mild-mannered wannabe academic is safe with me, Delusions of Grandeur Man!

Late last month, Rick Brattin, a Republican state representative in Missouri, introduced a bill that would require that intelligent design and "destiny" get the same educational treatment and textbook space in Missouri schools as the theory of evolution. Brattin insists that his bill has nothing to do with religion—it's all in the name of science.

"I'm a science enthusiast...I'm a huge science buff," Brattin tells The Riverfront Times. "This [bill] is about testable data in today's world." But Eric Meikle, education project director at the National Center for Science Education, disagrees. "This bill is very idiosyncratic and strange," he tells Mother Jones. "And there is simply not scientific evidence for intelligence design."

HB 291, the "Missouri Standard Science Act," redefines a few things you thought you already knew about science. For example, a "hypothesis" is redefined as something that reflects a "minority of scientific opinion and is "philosophically unpopular." A scientific theory is "an inferred explanation...whose components are data, logic and faith-based philosophy." And "destiny" is not something that $5 fortune tellers believe in; Instead, it's "the events and processes that define the future of the universe, galaxies, stars, our solar system, earth, plant life, animal life, and the human race."

The bill requires that Missouri elementary and secondary schools—and even introductory science classes in public universities—give equal textbook space to both evolution and intelligent design (any other "theories of origin" are allowed to be taught as well, so pick your favorite creation myth—I'm partial to the Russian raven spirit.) "I can't imagine any mainstream textbook publisher would comply with this," Meikle says. "The material doesn't exist."

The bill also establishes a nine-person committee (who must work for free) responsible for developing ad-hoc textbook material until appropriate textbook material is found.

The book Laura Murphy wants removed from Fairfax County classrooms is considered a modern American classic. It is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a masterpiece of fiction whose author’s 1993 Nobel Prize in literature citation said that she, “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”

But Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” Murphy said, depicts scenes of bestiality, gang rape and an infant’s gruesome murder, content she believes could be too intense for teenage readers.

...

“I’m not some crazy book burner,” Murphy said. “I have great respect and admiration for our Fairfax County educators. The school system is second to none. But I disagree with the administration at a policy level.”

...

Now a freshman at the University of Florida, Blake Murphy, 19, recalled reading the book before bed and having night terrors after he fell asleep.

“It was disgusting and gross,” he said. “It was hard for me to handle. I gave up on it.”

School officials point out that AP English is a college-level class that often involves discussions of adult topics.

232. spike Posted: February 09, 2013 at 06:15 PM (#4366204)
Having trouble deciding which is more Galt-y - The rugged individualism to demand someone turn over their property to you with no compensation, or personal freedom to call in the UN for help.

Dagny, Dagny, you oughta go ahead and hang me....

my doodle of Calvin Pickering decapitating Syd Thrift or John Boehner having a child's tea party with Snuffleupagus

Being President is a very hard job. Two of the reasons that's true work against each other, kind of: 1) it requires making thousands of decisions about incredibly varied and complex subject areas, and 2) screwing up any one of the big decisions can be utterly devastating. Grady Little waited too long to remove Pedro Martinez from an elimination playoff game, and was fired on that basis. I'd like to think I wouldn't have made that mistake if I were the Red Sox manager (I called it correctly on my couch ;-) That would indeed constitute a plausible argument that I'd be a better manager than Grady Little: I wouldn't have made a career-ruining mistake that he did make. But I'm reluctant to say that, because Little had innumerable other responsibilities and decisions in his managerial career, and I don't know if I would have been better on those (realistically, it's very likely that I would not have been). Similarly, I'd like to think I wouldn't have gone to war with Iraq, but I'm still reluctant to say I'd have been a better President than George W. Bush.

Who knew that receiving a letter on Saturday instead of Monday was that delicate thread keeping our society together?

What impact would two day interruption of delivery have on small businesses in rural communities - say an Etsy shop or something - that relies on USPS pickups to delivery their wares to other regions?

I have a disturbing number of random MS Paint doodles that I'm not sure why I doodled. I'd be sort of embarrassed 30 years from now if someone found my doodle of Calvin Pickering decapitating Syd Thrift

I think package delivery continues on Saturday under the plan. Just not regular mail.