• SBC: Become Openly Anti-Gay or Get Out - You’re either with us or with the enemy, I guess. Money graf: “The moral legalism inherent in the Southern Baptist Convention’s decision indicates the spiritual disease infecting and destroying our Baptist body today. Instead of focusing our energies of love on a lonely and hurting world, we are obsessed with endlessly parsing out arcane legalities designed to assert our own moral purity and superiority.”
• Mat Staver is Your Best Friend in Protecting Religious Liberties…But Only If You Pick the Right Religion - “Rights for me, but not for thee.”
• Gov. Sarah Palin to resign her office - KTUU.com | Alaska’s news and information source | - Yikes!
• Palin ‘rules out Alaska re-run’ - “You won’t have Sarah Palin to kick around any more.” Yeah … remember how that worked out last time.
• Church-state divide looms for Episcopalians on gay marriage - Salt Lake Tribune - No new news here — though, honestly, I doubt there are many remaining in TEC that would leave if the General Convention decides on allowing same-sex rites. The “riting” has been on wall for a while.
• Snowfall on Mars? NASA’s Phoenix Lander recorded it - Martian coolness!
• Marketers Call For Twitter To Filter Content For Pornography, Spam (Laurie Sullivan/MediaPost) - Um … I don’t go to Twitter for pornography, spam, or your marketing. Bugger off.
• Scientists tour the Creationism Museum: Cory Doctorow
• En Tequila Es Verdad: Happy Hour Discurso - Love is unconditional acceptance of another, despite their flaws. It’s not ignoring the flaws, telling them the flaws don’t exist, or not helping them overcome those flaws.
• DHS Cybersecurity Plan Will Involve NSA, Telecoms - washingtonpost.com - I’m not sure how else they could do it … but it still strikes me as problematic.
• Noooooooooo Mommy! - Oh, yes. A universal reaction from all the cats we’ve owned.
• 2K ‘Huge’ Steam Pack Bundles 20 Games for $54 - Wow. If I were interested in more computer games to suck up my life, I’d be all over this deal like a cheap suit.
• Was The Earth Designed For Life? - Very nicely done.
• Shoot Better Nighttime Pictures [Photos] - Some good photography advice here, too.
• Reese Schonfeld: SNAFU: Truck You, Detroit, or Tanks for Nuttin’ - I’m not fond of sweet deals, nor do I think Detroit was entitled to Pentagon contracts … nor, for that matter, do I think it unlikely that, had they received the contract, they’d have still (a) bilked the DoD out of zillions and (b) potentially needed bailing out because of their craptastic response to customer needs. That said, it sounds like the Pentagon didn’t even try, and instead responded more to pressure from certain Congresscritters to pump up stuff in their own districts. What a lost opportunity all around …
• Chuck Grassley: If You Want Good Health Insurance, Work For The Government (VIDEO) - “Let them eat cake [from the public trough, like me].” The amazing, probably-unaware arrogance of power and entitlement.

I am now live at the Blogathon site, ready to take donations for my cause the Denver Dumb Friends League.

What’s a Blogathon, Dave? 

Along the line of various other charity “-athon” types of events, the Blogathon lets me blog for 24 hours (with one post ever 30 minutes) in exchange for your sponsorship of me, promising to donate to my selected cause.

You can also read the online FAQ.

You’re going to blog for 24 hours? Inconceivable! 

Nope. Done it before (2003, 2005, 2006, 2007). The Blogathon itself has been running since 2001.

When is the Blogathon? 

Saturday, 25 July, starting at 6 a.m. PDT (so 7 a.m. here in Denver). A new post is due from each blogger every 30 minutes.

Does that mean I have to stay up 24 hours to read you? 

Nope. You can send me emails and IMs and tweets of support for as long as you want, but the cool thing about the Blogathon is … all the results show up in my blog, suitable for reading the next morning.

So what are you blogging about? 

Once you have a successful shtick, stick to it. So, along the lines of previous Blogathons, I’ll be posting about comic books — mostly review, and mostly of graphic novels (I do have a few years to catch up on). I’ll be telling you what I’ve been reading, what I think of it, and maybe help you figure out whether you should buy (or borrow) it to read for yourself.

But I don’t care about comics, Dave. Why should I sponsor you? 

Because I’m blogging for a neat organization.

Who’s that? 

I’m blogging for the Denver Dumb Friends League. They are a local animal shelter / animal adoption organization. We got our last two cats from them, and we think they do a really nifty job. I’ll be blogging more about them later, and during the ‘Thon.

How did you choose them? 

I’ve blogged on behalf of several other organizations previously – the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Episcopal Relief & Development Fund (ERD) – but we’ve interacted with the Denver Dumb Friends League, and I decided that’s who I wanted to go with (though the others are all very worthy causes, and I continue to donate to them personally).

So who are these Blogathon people, and why I am sending them money? 

You’re not. None of the money ever, ever goes to the Blogathon folks. They are merely facilitating the event. You go to their site, you find a blog (or three) you want to sponsor, you sign up with a pledge, and then after the Blogathon, they send you an email with a link (provided by those blogs) to go directly to the charity organization’s website. There you do all the normal web contribution stuff. (Most charities have online forms you can download, too, in case you want to do it the old-fashioned way.)

Again, the Blogathon folks never get your money, never see your credit card, etc. They just hook you up, via me, to the charity of my choice (ditto for other ‘Thonners).

So I send the money to you? 

No! I mean, if you want to send me money, I won’t turn it down, but for the Blogathon, you’ll be sending it directly to the charity.

Sounds spiffy, Dave! What should I do? 

1. Go here. Once there, find a blog you want to sponsor and click on “Sponsor this blogger!” 
2. Assuming you want to sponsor me, you can actually skip the above step and just go here.
3. If you don’t already have an account (this year) with the Blogathon, you’ll be given a chance to create one. You do have to create an account, so that there’s a record of your email address to send reminders to. (That also makes it easier to sponsor more people.)
4. Choose your sponsorship amount — this can be a lump sum, or an hourly amount (just in case I crap out midway through).
5. Decide if you want to have your name visible to me or the site, or be anonymous to one or te other or both. Your email is never published. (Read the Blogathon privacy policy.)

That’s it. You’ll get an acknowledgment of your sponsorship, and then a reminder right after the ‘Thon, and another a bit after that. And, of course, you’re welcome to come read what I post during and after the ‘Thon, and chuckle over my Wee Hours Incoherence.

What happens if I change my mind or forget afterwards? Will thugs hired by the Blogathon come to my house and rough me up? 

Nope. It’s all on your conscience. The ‘Thon will send you an automatic email, reminding you of your pledge, and I’ll send you a thanks-for-the-sponsorship note … but if you never give the money, they (and I) will never know. 

But God will, and He’ll getcha! 

But, Dave, I don’t have a computer! And, when I borrowed one, I couldn’t figure out that complicated website! What do I do? 

Let me know, and I can enter in a proxy pledge for you.

What if I have other questions? What do I do? 

You can go to the Blogathon forum, but it’s probably just as easy to leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you.

Thanks! 

“Yeah?”

“I have a problem. In the bathroom …”

Margie was in the bathroom, heard some rustling behind the toilet, figured it was a cat … until the cats all wandered by.

Yes, that little gray huddle behind the porcelain was actually a small raccoon. And, after some rather comical (were someone else watching it) gyrations, we determined it was a small, injured raccoon, only capable of dragging itself along. Almost certainly the injured raccoon from the other day, apparently having gotten himself around the house perimeter during the day to there. 

From the way he was moving, his leg must have been seriously injured or broken. He didn’t flee upon discovery, and even if we got him out of the bathroom, he’d almost certainly not leave the garage.

(Insert that all my compassion gauges just pegged at 11.)

Animal control was basically useless at this point of night, it being after hours (and not a Ravening Wolf or something). Ditto for private animal control services.

So … we wait until the morning to see who we can get hold of then. 

Poor critter. Not much we can do aside from close him in the bathroom.

Analysis of the studies shows that people are almost two times more likely to select information that is congenial to their current beliefs and behaviors than they are to pick information that opposes them. That is to say, when offered material containing views that were contrary to their beliefs (either in article or broadcast form), people had only a one-in-three chance of taking a closer look at that information.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bias against conflicting views was exaggerated when the information concerned political, religious, or ethical issues. Also in the “no surprise” department was the finding that individuals with close-minded personalities selected information that is aligned with their views 75 percent of the time (for more typical people, the number was 67 percent). The study also found that people who are unsure of their beliefs are actually more likely to avoid conflicting views.

No big surprises here. “Question everything” is a valuable long-term cognitive strategy, but probably not as helpful for sort-term survival (”Do we really need to fear lions in every case? Let’s consider that a moment …”). We can afford to question a lot of stuff these days, but we’ve got a lot of evolutionary and cultural inertia to overcome.

Besides, the euphoria of a new discovery aside, questioning or confronting possible chinks in your beliefs isn’t easy. It’s uncomfortable, even painful. There’s a sense of shame (”If I change my mind on this, then everything I’ve said about the subject previously shows me to be a fool.”). There’s fear (”What will my friends and family think?” ”I understand my current position; there may be ramifications of this new possibility I haven’t considered?”). And there can be hard work involved (”Wait, if I respect the dignity of every living thing … that means I can’t eat veal?” “But I have all sorts of friends in this particular group, which I’m going to lose if I stop/start believing X … which means I’ll need to find new friends!”). That makes it all tough to face hard facts about your faith, or your philosophy, or your relationship, or your politics. 

On the other hand, hearing people say stuff that you believe already feels good. It confirms your intelligence, that the stuff you’re saying and doing is smart and correct. It makes life easier, at least in the short run. It avoids conflict. It nurtures rather than confronts, encourages rather than frightens.

But if that’s the case, how do we ever learn to change our mind? Are we doomed to ignorance or intellectional / cognitive stagnation?

Fear not. Being Socratically brave and determined in the face of all the above factors isn’t the only way to pursue truth and reality. Sooner or later we change our mind …

… when too many of the clear premises of our belief get knocked out. (”You said we should listen to you because you’re X and Y happened to you … but it turns out you’re not X, and Y was just rhetoric, not reality.”)

… when the results of our belief are too discordant. (”We keep trying X to cause Y, but only Z ever seems to happen!”)

… when enough counter-examples hit our attention. (”I was always taught that X people are Y … but my neighbors are X, and my coworkers are X, and this person I was reading a book by turned out to be X — and none of them are Y!”)

It’s a long, painful (to all sides) and uncertain process, but I think it does happen, sooner or later. Most people don’t accept slavery of blacks by whites any more. Most people I know don’t (openly) think of women as chattel, or Jews as Christ-killers, or Irish as drunks, or Japanese as inscrutable, or Catholics as disloyal Papists, or adulterers as deserving of stoning, or that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Many people I know (and most people I respect) don’t think of gays as pedophiliac hedonist Satanists out to corrupt our precious bodily fluids, or that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin were co-conspirators for 9-11. Time marches on. People, in aggregate, do change — usually (I like to think) for the better. 

I just wish, too often, that it were easier. For me, if nobody else. I like to think that I can face the truth unafraid and with boldness — but I know I’m as prone to be selective about what I care to hear as anyone else.

Privatization fails over and over in the UK 

The Margaret Thatcher Tony Blair privatization plans all sounded so wonderful. Basic services such as public transportation and the mail could be spun off and the free market would save everyone lots of money! Hooray! Except it didn’t quite work out that way. Public transportation privatization has been a fiasco and costs to consumers have hardly decreased. As a regular consumer of public transportation in France I’m horrified with the outrageously high costs when I travel to the UK. It’s very expensive and the quality is generally sub-standard.

The rail privatization took a hit as another rail operator notified the government that it has had enough. Like many business ideas from the recent past, what sounded impressive during the credit boom suddenly looks like a very bad idea. Politicians such as Blair and “modern” lefties all bought into the idea that government services could become sexy and profitable if only they had a bit of faux capitalism. Only a politician who spent their life working in government could have viewed this as a good idea.

The point is rather breathlessly made, but it raises an interesting point, both as Britain’s rail privatization and post office privatization efforts have run into serious problems.

There are times when privatization is a good idea. The government is not automatically the best provider of any given service. As with most things, there is an optimal mean in an overall economy and society between services/goods that are organized and owned by the government and ones that are organized and owned privately.

Private ownership has many advantages. A competitive marketplace encourages new ideas, which succeed through a combination of pricing and quality of service. The Darwinian model does tend to promote, through trial and error, fitness.

Of course, the “trial and error” part can be hard. Species do die. Disasters do wipe out even the fit sometimes. But for experimentation and a vigorous promotion of lower costs and/or better service (or multiple options for both), a distributed and competitive model is generally best.

That said … is it ever appropriate to vest a service in the hands of the government, rather than private enterprise? Does everything the government do actually benefit from privitization? When is privatization (vs., in the opposite direction, nationalization) a good idea?

Some thoughts:

1. When you are replacing a government monopoly with true competition, not with a private monopoly (or duopoly). If the advantage of privatization is competition, you need, well, competition — in ideas, services, price points, etc. Giving over your government service provider for a private service provider who’s just as prone to get stuck in a rut isn’t a good way to change. The best thing that ever happened to the telecommunication world was the break-up of Ma Bell, if only because it promoted competition (it would have been still better if it hadn’t been simply broken up into regional monopolies).
2. When it’s a buyer’s market, not a seller’s market.  If someone doesn’t have a choice as to whether or not to acquire a service or product, then it’s better to leave that service provision to an entity that is, at least in theory, beholden to the public as a whole, rather than to an entity that is beholden to stockholders to generate a profit. This is a key element in the health care area, where, as noted elsewhere, people don’t generally choose whether they need treatment for pneumonia or get their breast cancer treated. Government bureaucrats can be tyrannical, but so can industry bureaucrats.
3. When society can afford for it to fail. If the government owns its own print shop for government publications and privatizes it, then if it financially fails the government can go to a different printer. Society doesn’t crumble. If the service provided is more crucial, then financial failure is correspondingly more of a risk. If a town is served by a private security company instead of government (city) police, then if they close up shop, the town is in real trouble (which is why public workers are generally not allowed to go on strike). Ditto if a privatized company must be supported by a bail-out if it fails, in which case we’ve simply split the profits of success to the private side and the costs of failure to the public side, which is hardly competitive or a free market. Now, governments can financially fail, too but have ways, if unpleasant, to mitigate that. The point is, if we as a society can’t afford for a company to go under, then maybe we as a society should own it and consider it an essential service.
4. When we don’t want the government to know what we’re doing. As a generalization from my international software development expertise, Europeans have high privacy barriers against companies, low ones against governments; in the US, it’s the reverse, as we resist giving the government any information, but freely hand out all our personal particulars toany company that tells us we should. So, in this case, I wouldn’t want the government to own the banks, or the credit card companies, such that they knew all that I was spending my money on. Similarly, a government monopoly on porn is scary on a number of levels, not least of which is that I don’t want the government to know whether or what kind of porn I enjoy.
5. When standards are less important than innovation. Competition and differing ideas make for different solutions. The government, on the other hand, tends to do thing One Size Fits All. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes not so much.

The important (well, one important) thing  about government ownership, is that it’s not about the money. It’s not about making money. It’s not about saving money. It’s about spending money for (ideally) the betterment of society. Governments can change the laws of physics, and the laws of finance are not costlessly broken, either, so the government simply cannot spend our way to happiness — but that doesn’t mean that every government program should be evaluated solely on the basis of whether it is profitable to the government or to some individual, at least not just profitable from a monetary standpoing.

So consider some businesses that might be privatized, or might be nationalized, in light of the above, should they be made (or have been made, or be left) private.

The Post Office: An ideal example of how not to do privatization, the USPS is a quasi-governmental organization that enjoys a government monopoly on the least efficient and most costly sort of physical mail delivery. FedEx is much better than the USPS (competition!) but for all it bitches over the Post Office’s preferred status for mail delivery (and public buildings), it really doesn’t want to have to get into that biz. 

1. True Competition? That mixture of monopoly and competition makes #1 a No, Sorta. 
2. Buyer’s Market? No, at the time of the semi-privatization; now it would be a Yes, since physical snail mail is so much less important.
3. Affordable Failure? No now turned Yes, since physical snail-mail has become less essential.
4. Better Privacy? Yes, probably good that some massive database can’t be as easily created now to track everyone’s mail.
5. Innovation better than standards: Yes and no. The package shipment world has shown flexibility and innovation in different types of shipping. But imagine the chaos if first class letters were treated (and charged, and delivered) differently by different mail vendors, up to and including how you address things, addresses themselves (or at least ZIP codes), etc.

So net, divesting the Post Office at the time was probably not all that good of an idea, but now it would have made more sense. I’m not sure why the Royal Mail privatization has gone wrong. It may be that without the remaining monopolistic protections the USPS enjoys, it’s not economically viable as a for-profit organization. The question, then, becomes whether the cost of offering such a service publicly exceeds the cost of not having it available.

Automobile Manufacturers: We’ve had car companies as private industries in this company since their creation. But the Chrysler bail-out a few decades back was a warning sign, and the government’s bail-out (and forced restructuring) of GM and Chrysler (again) raise the issue of whether they might not be better off nationalized for good. Should auto companies be private concerns?

1. True Competition? A big Yes here, since there’s plenty of competition in the auto world (and in the world, for autos). 
2. Buyer’s Market? Yes. Buying a car (or a particular car at a particular time) is pretty much considered optional for many.
3. Affordable Failure? Sorta. Here’s the rub. The Big Three are so big (with so many dependent industries), the government has deemed it politically and economically unfeasible to let them just collapse. So some measure of government intervention and oversight remains necessary — or else a break-up of the auto industry giants like GM to make them individually less critical to employment and supply streams within the country.
4. Better Privacy? The government already knows what sort of car you own. No, no advantage here.
5. Innovation better than standards? The auto industry has found a reasonable set of standards to work with (or to have imposed on them through regulation). The disparity between English vs Metric tools, or the fact that parts for a Honda Civic don’t necessarily work with parts for a Ford F150 (except for key components like batteries and tire standards and gasoline) indicates that the industry is reasonably self-regulating between innovation and standardization.

So, net-net, there’s not much of a reason to nationalize the auto industry, and plenty of reason to leave it in private hands … with some precautions and regulation.

Law Enforcement: Businesses use private security; why not the public? Sign up for your local security patrol. How much police protection can you afford?

1. True Competition? It’s an untested model, so it’s tough to say. Certainly there are notIt’s most likely that municipalities, rather than individual houses or blocks, would band together for such contract, giving a local monopoly on service. Leave this one uncertain. 
2. Buyer’s Market? No. When you need the police, you need them now. That gives the vendor way too much power (”Oh, sorry, we’ve imposed a fee for rolling a unit after 8 p.m. … will that be MasterCard or Visa?”).
3. Affordable Failure? No. If your security firm goes out of business, whether it’s for your town or for your house, you are potentially in deep doo-doo.
4. Better Privacy? “Yes, but …” Various levels of law enforcement share a lot of data. That can invade privacy … but is also pretty important in catching criminals. I’m not sure I wouldn’t want my local city traffic cop to be able to find out that a particular car was reported stolen in another state.
5. Innovation better than standards? It’s not clear that innovation plays a huge part in policing — it’s more tactical than strategic in importance. On the other hand, knowing that local and state and federal law enforcement operate on certain common, identifiable laws is actually a benefit. So, no.

Net-net, we should probably stick with local police. Arguably we could make a case for state or even national police, but that isn’t highly compelling.

Schools: We have a universal public education system — locally administered, but still univeral. We also have a fairly healthy private education infrastructure alongside it. Is there a reason to push things one way or the other? Should we privatize all education?

1. True Competition? Yes. While I can imagine educational industries growing up in the wake of privatizing all public schools, at the moment (capacity issues aside) it appears there are plenty of companies in the ed biz.
2. Buyer’s Market? This one comes up a No. Unless you’re home-schooling, when your kids if of school age, they need to go to a school. Discovering they’re all wildly expensive doesn’t change that decision.
3. Affordable Failure? Maybe. Private schools do, I imagine, fail. I’m not sure how families handle that (what happens to the records? are there other schools in the area to go to?); in part, this is a case where having a “public option” backstop is valuable.
4. Better Privacy? Privacy issues with public vs. private schools seem to be non-existent, so No.
5. Innovation better than standards? The nature of our public school systems, locally controlled, is such that experimentation and innovation exist, while still maintaining an accepted infrastructure of grades, test measures, curricula, and educational policy on a local, state, and federal level. Such a setup would be probable in an all-private school world, but more prone to variation. I’m going to call this a No.

So there’s no great advantage to fully privatizing our schools — but the co-existence of both private schools and public schools demonstrates that both can co-exist without one overwhelming the other.

Health Insurance: Yeah, you know it was coming here. Is this best privatized, made a public/government function, or what?

1. True Competition? Sorta. Lots of insurance companies out there, with lots of different options.  That’s reduced by some individuals being unable to afford health insurance, or being stuck with whatever their company provides.
2. Buyer’s Market? No. For most medical care, you need it when you need it. It’s not cosmetic surgery, it’s appendicitis or cancer or pneumonia or the measles. That puts the insurance companies in an unconscionably powerful position.
3. Affordable Failure? Yes. Blue Shield or Prudential or Kaiser failing would be a serious inconvenience, even disruption, but alternatives would fill in the gap.
4. Better Privacy? I suppose some folks worry about the government knowing about their medical conditions. Of course, VA and Medicaid and Medicare already run that risk.
5. Innovation better than standards? A one-size-fits-all setup for health insurance is probably not ideal. On the other hand, some standard baselines of what is covered for whom has some societal (and individual) advantages. Call this one a wash.

So there’s not a compelling case to have health insurance fully private (#2), but not a compelling case to make it a national health care system, a la the UK (#3, #4), and some reasons why a mixed model has something to recommend it (#1, #5). That might be, as proposed by the Obama Adminstration, a combination of current private insurance with a public insurance option (similar to the present mix of private and public schools). It might be a system like Canada, where the government is the single payer, but does so through private plans which can provide optional benefits beyond the baseline. 

This thought experiment can be run on other industries, everything from supermarkets to the armed forces to railroads (as in the UK, and also in the US) to highways (private toll roads everywhere?) to utilities. At the very least, it’s better to analyze things in this sort of way, then accept “To Each According To His Needs” or “Greed is Good” or similar catchphrases as being anything more than political rhetoric from someone who has something to sell you.

• The Online Class Divide - Hrm. So now I have to second-guess why I have a Facebook page vs a MySpace page? There are some interesting thoughts here, worth consideration, but also some leaps to conclusions that are less so.
• Nigerian gas firm Nigaz gets web all of a twitter about ‘racist name’ - Oh, Lordy — just this morning I was commenting on another post about PC a-twitterness (over “plantation”) and I almost hauled out “Nigeria” itself as something to be offended over. This one is even better.
• The Magic of Purity Rings - What a brilliant idea!
• Eliminating the Faith-Healing Exemptions in Wisconsin - While I applaud the desired end-state (kids getting treatment), it’s not clear to me either law would change things. Faith-healing parent think their kids will get better solely through prayer. Attaching criminal penalties is no greater an incentive for them to get the kids treatment from real doctors than the threat of actual death to their kids. I’m conflicted over the level of punishment that should result from letting your kid die, but don’t let’s fool ourselves that this is actually likely to save many kids before they are neglected to death.
• The Aliens of the Star Iota Horologii Are Just Watching Captain Kangaroo Now [Space] - Pity the poor Pollixians. What horrors await them in the next few years …
• Explained: Fireworks vs Firecrackers vs Sparklers [Science] - Now you know! And knowing is half the battle!
• Vatican now investigating nuns - Yeah, that sounds like a great way to deal with the ever-dwindling number of nuns in the church. Bravo.
• New Material Made From Paper Sludge Could Replace Plastic Packaging - Spiffy!
• Universal wins ‘bidding war’ for Asteroids movie rights: Ludwig Kietzmann
• While You’re At It, You’re Not Really an Island - (Rolls eyes at politically correct, if linguistically inane) renaming movements.) Yeesh.
• The 7th habit personified - This is cool.
• I’m A Doctor, Not A Veterinarian - Now I have to clean my monitor from the coffee I just sprayed on it.
• Ambition - To seek out new life, and new kitchen preparations!
• Republicans On House Census Subcommittee Rebuke Bachmann’s Fearmongering As ‘Illogical’ And ‘Illegal’ - And another thing — why is it that nobody on the Right or in the media runs around criticizing her (vs. Michelle Obama) for wearing sleeveless dresses?
• Republicans On House Census Subcommittee Rebuke Bachmann’s Fearmongering As ‘Illogical’ And ‘Illegal’ - When even your own party insiders are telling you you’re a nut, it’s probably a time to reconsider your position.
• New Budget Estimate Of Public Plan Proves It Lowers Cost And Covers More Americans - I’ll note that saying “prove” in this context — from either side of the argument — is poor language use. Estimates and projections never “prove” anything. National health insurance schemes will cost a whole lot more than any estimate — but I suspect they will also save a lot more in “hidden” costs than any estimate, either.
• ‘Farscape’ panel set for Comic-Con - Glad to hear about the panel and the new DVDs. I hope they are much more competitively priced than the original DVD series; I might actually pick them up.
• Fort Worth Police Chief: That Faggot Had It Coming | Slog | The Stranger - Ah, Texas, land of rugged individuals, as long as you’re One Of Us.
• Google Voice Is Cool, But Do You Need It? [Phones] - I’m waiting on this one, even though I fit most of the “then this is for you” categories. I want to see if it’s well-adopted before leaping in, if nothing else, so that Google doesn’t turn around and abandon the project out from under me.
• R-71 Backer Ron Boehme Literally Demonizes Opponents - Wow, that’s remarkably goofy. I’m sure he’s not the only one who feels this way, but to actually see it written down is amazing.

I understand the need for spoiler warnings and dislike the necessity. I’m not quite sure who came up with the idea, but I’d like both to thank and smack them. Thank, because it’s kept me from finding out secrets I didn’t want revealed. Smack, because there’s something inherently absurd with thinking you can read a review of a book or film without something getting revealed. I mean, come on. It’s a review. 

[Don’t know all there is to know about the Spoiler Game.] 

It’s a simple enough thing to add a warning, and I almost always do. But there’s a part of me that, when adding it, feels like a hypocrite. I wrote something and now I’m warning you not to read it? Yeah, right.

That’s a little goofy. There are, of course, reviews (the most common occurance) and there are reviews. If I am hyper-sensitive to being spoiled on a movie, I skip all reviews. If I’m less sensive, I might take a look, and avoid those reviews that are kind enough to provide spoiler warnings. Once I’ve seen the movie, then I’m actually kind of interested in those spoiler reviews.

A while back, John Scalzi proposed a statute of limitations on spoiler warnings, as follows:

Television: One week (because it’s generally episodic, and that’s how long you have until the next episode)
Movies: One year (time enough for everyone to see it in the theaters, on DVD and on cable)
Books: Five years (because books don’t reach nearly as many people at one time)

I think that’s a fine system, but it’s as arbitrary as anything else to do with spoilers. If a book has been out a hundred years and a faithful film adaptation is released this month, how much can you reveal about the film without warning? 

Scalzi’s system is actually pretty good — and I say that as someone who often slips multiple weeks behind on TV (the DVR and the DVD season set are challenging this rule). And in the case of the question, the counter-question is, how likely is the person involved to know the book vs. the movie? I mean, an adaptation of Little Women, if faithful, is unlikely to hold any surprises for people (I’m presuming that most people have either read the book (or seen another adaptation) or have been acculturated to the big plot elements in passing, so far as plot goes. On the other hand, Rose in Bloom by the same author might less familiar and the big revelation in final chapter that the axe murderer is really Kindly Aunt Bess could be considered a spoiler to movie-goers.

The article (there’s more in the same vein) is a nice review of the issues, though it doesn’t break any ground that people (including me) have debated on the subject for year. “Caveat lector and don’t be a jerk” sum it all up pretty well. Sort of like life — be polite, but don’t assume that others will be.

Or, as another rule of thumb, if you find yourself saying, “I can’t wait to see your reaction to seeing/reading/hearing X,” then maybe you should hesitate before telling them about X in advance (or even that there is an X), since the build-up and reveal is much the fun and impact of such a thing. 

On the other hand, I’m probably oversensitive to the matter, as my friends will well-appreciate (I can hear your eyes rolling, guys).

• June Nearly Sets An All-Time Moisture Record
• Stay on Target…Stay on Target: Eric Martin
• CIA Report Release Delayed Again: The Huffington Post News Team
• Masses Yearn To Huddle In Liberty’s Reopened Crown: The Huffington Post News Team
• Karl Malden Never Left Home Without It: bbulik@adage.com(Beth Snyder Bulik)
• Pressure Mounts On Sanford To Resign: Versha Sharma
• Registration is live – go register now! …: Sheana
• Self-Esteem : The Frontal Cortex - It seems to me that the penchant for improving kids’ self-esteem came out of the observation that underachieving kids had poor self-esteem, and someone swung the causational arrow around. Of course, some of that poor self-esteem may have come from discrimination, too — being told the color of your skin, or your gender, makes you unable to learn to be as smart as white boys probably hurts your self-esteem. But the solution is not to try to fix the self-esteem, but what’s lowering it. Duh.
• Beck Falsely States The U.S. Bought Alaska In The ‘1950s’ So We Could Drill - Because buying Alaska was really all about the oooooiiillll, right? Well, maybe fish oil …
• Bachmann Lies About Census’ American Community Survey, Claims It Doesn’t Ask About Citizenship - Does anyone expect anything other than sheer goofiness from Rep. Bachmann?
• Ala. closes in on Miss. as most obese state - USATODAY.com - And kudos to Colorado …
• “The Optics Are Bad” - I can understand banks not being thrilled, even if they were as virtuous and pure as the driven snow, over increased regulation. But their inability to police themselves, to the detriment of millions of people, demonstrates that, yes, the best way to protect consumers is with some toothful consumer protection.
• A new Alien Nation series develops at SCI FI Channel - While not generally a fan of remakes, I think there’s a lot of potential in this series … and hearing Minear, of all folks, is involved makes me even more interested.
• Clear: What Gives? - I find it amazing that the TSA can work hand-in-glove with Clear, but as soon as the company goes belly-up, can claim it’s none of their responsibility or concern how the data or future programs are handled. Of course, I find it mildly outrageous that these background-check easy-entry services aren’t managed by TSA themselves.
• 2005 Uri Geller: Michael Jackson’s career comeback to be “most dramatic ever seen in showbiz” - I’m sure Uri will point out the tremendous outpouring of love and admiration for Jacko since his death and claim this was the ultimate (truly) career comeback …
• Jim Hilll : Hollywood bets big on “Beast,” considers remake of “My Fair Lady” - Making a note that I want to rewatch the current 2D-animated BatB sometime soon …
• Is a NO GODS License Plate Offensive? - He certainly has a case. If folks can create theistic license plates (background design or text), certainly the First Amendment requires folks be allowed to create atheistic ones.
• Monticello, Minnesota Wins Right To Run Fiber - TDS Telecom loses a series of appeals to kill the project…. - What? Competition against a public option can actually improve service and lower prices? Inconceivable!
• Does The Future Hold Infinite Bandwidth? - Or a litany of roadblocks, restrictions and fees? - As with so many things, there is no “free market” when all you have locally is a monopoly or duopoly. Companies, localities, and nations that continue to embrace that model will ultimately fall behind and become uneconomical to do business with.
• Grandmas Tell AT&T: We Don’t Want Metered Billing Either - ‘We grandmothers know a rip off when we seen one…’ - AT&T's patronizing attitudes that grandmothers would only be interested in (or technologically capable of) sending text emails to their kids isn't going to earn them many points.

WordPress 2.8 is out.

Probably need to do some upgrading fairly soon. Though, of course, there’s the Add-Ons That Don’t Quite Work Right Yet. And, of course, the sub-point releases (WP 2.8.1 is in Beta 2 already). So … I might wait.

So we went out into the back yard at one point yesterday afternoon. And spotted, to our surprise, a raccoon. A young one, to be sure. It was halfway down our fence, frozen there, obviously waiting for us to move on and standing still so we wouldn’t notice him.

Except …

Ruh-roh. Raccoon was caught in the fence — either falling or climbing down, one rear leg had got caught in the down slats at the end of a length of it. (Our back fence is in pretty sad shape, but I digress), and he was caught there, upside down.

Still alive though, as it hissed and wiggled at us.

Ultimately (after sent Kitten back inside with the cats), Margie had to lift up a tree branch (which was lying on the fence from the neighbor’s yard, not helping its structural integrity), while I pulled that section of fence loose so the raccoon could hop down. All the while trying not to get close so that it wouldn’t leap up at my throat with big, pointy teeth.

We quickly trundled inside, as it hunkered down next to the fence. Cats stayed in last night.

My hope is that, hurt but unbroken, it shortly thereafter hobbled away to safety. Or, failing that, out of our yard. I didn’t go out to see if it (or its remains) was still there this morning. I’ll save that for this evening, oh goody.

Spotted in a Southwest Airlines lavatory. I’ve no idea "why" the quotation "marks" go there.

• Lipinski Wants Federal Laws Regulating Carry-On Bags - Wow … which to hate more, congresscritters who think everything can be solved through more micromanaging regulations, or airlines who think that they can do pretty much anything they want and the actual fliers can go hang? Decisions, decisions, decisions …
• Women Just Can’t Compete - That’s right! Gays are the natural enemy of … women! Preying on their men! Men are so weak and naturally homosexual that if homosexuality is the norm, guys will be down with the guys and not with the gals! That’s what the Right’s been saying all along! Think of the girl-children! It’s them vs. them! Soylent Green is people! Eeek!
• Thinking About The Coup: Andrew Sullivan
• Wilkerson says DADT ‘should be repealed’ immediately.: Ben Armbruster

The result?

THE GOOD: Kitties are both well, as are the plants in the yard, even the New Tree (who’s looking still a bit stressed from the transplant, but still doing okay).

THE BAD: Cats can go out … which means raccoons can come in. Which, evidently, they did. Only damage was an overturned food bin in the kitchen, a bit of a mess in the bathrooms, but that was it.

THE UGLY: DVR somehow got turned off or something, or else there was a failure in the pgrogramming, but missed out on Doctor Who: The Next Doctor special (27 June). And no sign of a repeat (unlike everything else on BBCa). Rats.

On the other hand … great to be home! Feels oddly like a Sunday, which makes me feel like I lost the weekend. On the other hand, it’s only a two-day week, so it all balances out.

As point of reference, upcoming BBC America stuff I need to remember (not yet showing on the DVR schedule, yet):

Just wondering …

Save (this sign) today!