No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for October 12th, 2005

ABC News – College nuclear reactors have lax security

by @ 17:47. Filed under Miscellaneous.

ABC News has published the results of a 4-month investigation into security at 25 different college nuclear research reactors, which will be a topic on tonight’s tomorrow’s Primetime. I won’t detail the lapses they found, but don’t rest assured that they’re serious, especially if there’s one in your town.

Normally, I would discount ABC News’ investigations, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has opened investigations into breaches of security protocol at least 5 of the schools. Off the record (the NRC won’t comment publicly on this), they are University of Wisconsin, University of Florida, Texas A&M (heads up, Owen and Jed), Purdue and Ohio State (4 of which use, according to ABC, “highly-enriched, weapons-grade uranium”).

UW’s reaction? It’s a small reactor with a low amount of radioactive material, so it’s no risk. I’m glad I’m not in Madison.

Homer nod – That I got the day wrong for the Primetime showing ought to tell you how much, er, little, I watch ABC.

Mushroom quick hits – now with 33% more news

by @ 17:16. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Here we go again; more news on Harriet Miers:

  • The AP (via Yahoo) has President Bush defending Miers’ conservatism by saying that “part of Harriet’s life is her religion.” I believe I noted that before (can’t remember if it was here or elsewhere) that’s all well and good, but that’s like defending Jimmy Carter’s “conservative credentials” by saying that he is an evangelical Christian.
  • James Dobson, in an interview this morning, said that Miers wasn’t the first choice, and that some of the other candidates withdrew their names because of the toxic nature of the process. This reads like a pre-emptive attempt to sell Miers the same way Anthony Kennedy was sold. I want names of who withdrew.
  • In today’s OpinionJournal’s Political Diary, John Fund takes on Dobson’s claim that other candidates withdrew-

    Another element of the White House spin machine surfaced yesterday as James Dobson, a leader of evangelical Christians, revealed that Karl Rove had informed him that Ms. Miers was selected in part because other qualified women declined to put their families through the rigors of the confirmation process. Judge Priscilla Owen, who only this spring won confirmation to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals after a grueling two-year battle, was cited.

    But apparently that simply isn’t the case. Judge Owen did not ask to be taken off the short list of nominees and Manuel Miranda, a former legal counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, says there is now compelling evidence that some Bush aides exaggerated potential problems with other nominees in an effort to promote Ms. Miers, who herself was in charge of the vetting process.


    There’s a name, but that’s a name that didn’t do what Dobson claimed.

Back to My FBI by Louis Freeh.

Revisions/extensions – Added John Fund’s explosion of Dobson’s claim of other nominees withdrawing, and altered the timestamp due to the nature of this.

Special “overload” edition of the Mushroom Watch

by @ 16:55. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Time to push Jib over the edge (sorry about that :-) . OpinionJournal’s Best of the Web has a very interesting run of news and comments on Miers under the heading “Mutiny on the Committee” –

  • The piece starts off by citing New York Times and Washington Times stories about aides of up to 6 Republican Senate Judiciary Committee members pushing back very hard on the Miers nomination, not “…buying what the White House is selling here” (from the WashTimes article) and “…hoping that something will happen on Miers, either that the president would withdraw her or she would realize she is not up to it and pull out while she has some dignity intact.” (from the NYTimes one).
  • BOTW editor James Taranto then outlines one scenario where the only thing pushed is a guarantee to overturn Roe v Wade, that this doesn’t convince 2 Pubbies (or more likely, turnes Specter against her, as Roe is his pet cause), and the committee rejects her 10-8″. Slight problem; SCOTUS nominees ALWAYS make the floor, even if it is with a negative recommendation from the committee.
  • It closes with a “great face-saving compromise” (Taranto’s words, not necessarily mine) from Mickey Kaus that she gets nominated to an appeals court. Taranto jumps on that, suggesting that the vacancy come from nominating Edith Jones or Janice Rogers Brown for SCOTUS.

It’s almost enough to make MY head explode :-)

Homer nod – how did I confuse the 2 top Washington newspapers?

Remember the Cole

by @ 15:23. Filed under Miscellaneous.

(HT – Marcus Aurelius via BBA)

5 years ago today, a bunch of Al-Qaida terrorists drove their explosive-laden boat up to the side of the USS Cole and exploded it. The attack took the lives of 17 sailors and nearly sunk one of the most-advanced warships in the world.

Michelle Malkin has a much-more-expansive review of this, as well as a call to remember this forgotten chapter in the Global War on Terror.

If your head hasn’t exploded yet from all the Miers talk,….

by @ 14:33. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Justin at Right Side Redux has a rather exhaustive list of the arguments, both pro and con, called The Miers Scorecard. I can’t say that I agree with his analysis that he’s leaning toward supporting Miers, but that he has this exhaustive list tells me where that comes from.

Welcome Stand in the Trenches readers

by @ 12:30. Filed under Miscellaneous.

How many welcomes is this? I’ve lost count. :-)

Seriously, ’tis reassuring that there are so many that have welcomed me to the blogosphere.

$100 laptops for Wisconsin schoolkids?

by @ 12:03. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Somehow, I missed this Journal Sentinel editorial wishing for something like Massachusetts’ plan to give $100 laptops to each Massachusetts middle/high schooler to happen in Wisconsin the first time around. I first twigged onto it during Joe Scialfa’s show on WTMJ last night (he was filling in for Mark Reardon), and in a search to see if the Wisconsin blogosphere also missed it, I found Owen’s quick hit on the MJS’s reflexive suggestion to say, “Spend more money.” and Folkbum’s reflexive negative reflection. I guess a full amateur fisking of said editorial is in order…

The purse strings have been tight in education this decade in Wisconsin and elsewhere, and retrenchment has been the rule. Even as schools have striven to boost academic achievement, budget woes have driven them to scuttle such “frills” as art, music, driver’s ed and library service.

I guess that over-paying (mostly, WEAC’s own insurance company) for such “frills” as no-employee-contribution health insurance is more important (I wouldn’t have brought that up, but the JS edit board did first).

That’s why a costly, ambitious education plan that crossed our desk (or, rather, our computer screen) from another state the other day caught our eye. Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts is proposing to give every middle and high school student in the state a laptop computer. He would also add 1,000 new math and science teachers and give the state’s best teachers $5,000 bonuses. The tab for the plan: $46 million next year, $143 million the year thereafter.

Romney’s plan holds lessons for industrial states like Wisconsin, which is trying to make a transition to a knowledge economy. Massachusetts is a leader in the knowledge revolution, and the governor is taking steps to ensure that it remains in the vanguard.

Probably because the price tag is so high, not because of any of the specifics. Without having the specifics of Massachusetts’ education system handy, the other 2/3rds (otherwise left unmentioned) sounds a lot like the usual government “throw money at it solution”.

To be sure, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle did boost education spending by a whopping $861 million over two years. But he was mostly playing catch-up. Previously, due to a huge budget deficit, Doyle had reneged on Gov. Tommy Thompson’s vow that the state would cover two-thirds of the cost of education. Well, in the latest budget, Doyle reverted to keeping that vow. Yes, schools did benefit. But the two-thirds funding helps local property taxpayers more than it does schools.

Could it be that Craps had other people to pay off 2 years ago, and that, in this last round before the gubernatorial election, he’s making up for ignoring WEAC last time with inflated spending?

Thanks to new technology, Romney’s plan is not quite as lavish as it sounds. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has recently developed $100 laptops for Third World students. Romney figures these hardy, versatile computers would work just as well in American classrooms.

What use, exactly, will laptops have in a middle/high school classroom? I’m a fair typist, and I can’t type fast enough to take notes with a computer. One could argue that the writing pad/tablet feature would take care of that, but there are two “slight” problems with that argument – the lack of storage (not to be confused with the 1 GB of RAM that’s currently forecast), and the steep learning curve of any handwriting-recognition software to convert handwriting into text. The lack of storage also would seem to crimp what these students can use them for. If the intent is to, as Folkbum says, “…turn schools into training grounds for private enterprise…”, the choice of Linux as the OS is a step against that.

Further, there are use and ownership issues. While the bare-bones nature of the processor and limited storage would prevent these machines from becoming Doom3 fragging gamers, that they’re both Wi-Fi and cell-phone enabled, and that they come with 4 USB ports, will inevitably be abused. Middle/high school kids tend to lose and break stuff, especially stuff they don’t own. Speaking of ownership, what happens to the machines at the end of the 7 years; do they come back to the school systems, or do they have to continuously buy those machines for each incoming class?

If there really is a pressing need, why couldn’t the parents come up with the money? I wonder what is more important; the $100 laptop, or the $150 pair of shoes?

Note that I do not address that the $100 laptop is currently vaporware, or that at the moment, $100 seems to be overly-optimistic. If we’ve learned anything, computer technology is both explosive in growth and quick to become dirt-cheap. Indeed, if the machines are intended to be corporate training tools, that these machines would be obselete long before that 7th-grader gets through high school is another argument against this plan.

By the way, Massachusetts ranked fourth in education spending among the states in the 2002-’03 school year. It averaged $11,877 per pupil, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. At $10,085 per pupil, Wisconsin ranked 12th.

State government picked up a greater share of the tab in Wisconsin than in Massachusetts. Accordingly, in local taxes going to education, Massachusetts ranked 3rd and Wisconsin 19th. That factor gives Romney more room to maneuver than Doyle has.

Another factor working for Romney is that while education spending is higher in the New England state than in Dairyland, the spending is less of a burden there than here. Wisconsin spends $54.11 for every $1,000 in personal income, ranking 14th, while Massachusetts spends $45.76, ranking 38th.

I’m actually surprised that the JS edits included this last bit of info. They, however, use this as “proof” that more spending does equal better results, ignoring, for example, MPS. They also don’t see that this suggests that Wisconsin taxpayers can’t afford ever-growing educational spending.

We don’t necessarily endorse the specifics of Romney’s plan, but its expansiveness against a backdrop of austerity is worth pondering.

Translation; it’s not enough to spend and spend and spend; you have to be a Democrat. Guess those “principles” of being non-partisan and fiscally-conservative weren’t worth the electrons inconvenienced in posting them.

Revisions/extensions – How in the heck did I miss Owen’s take on this? I must be going blind :-)

Day-late welcome to Wigderson Library & Pub readers

by @ 10:04. Filed under Miscellaneous.

It’s getting to the point where I can barely keep track of everybody :-)

And yes, I lost a heap of money on the Eaglets/Cowpokes game, but taking the pair of unders kept my head near water overall.

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