View from a Farley

Denise Pope: Change the Pace of the School Day - NYT

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 20:37:56 -0500

Denise Pope: Change the Pace of the School Day - NYT:

Schools need to take seriously the issue of student stress, particularly high-powered schools where students are likely to sacrifice their own health for a college admissions letter.

Ultimately, schools need to foster a love of learning in students. If a school manages that, not much else really matters.

Today in Father-Son Bonding

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 22:40:15 -0500

Today in Father-Son Bonding:

North Korean leader and son visited artillery site: reports | Reuters

Just What You Want to Hear from High-Stakes Negotiations

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:23:19 -0500

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

Bizarre Sentence from Daily Mail Article

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 18:46:35 -0400

Bizarre Sentence from Daily Mail Article:

“There were today reports that Hughes’s death was due to complications from a failed attempt to kill himself.”

I think this speaks for itself.

CNN: Explosives found on US-bound flights

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:19:58 -0400

CNN: Explosives found on US-bound flights:

It never ends. I fear the day when incidents like this become the norm rather than the exception, but it seems inevitable. These types of attempts have increased in frequency, and it suddenly seems so easy to do something like this. I can’t help but think that one day one of these attempts will be successful.

Regarding Juan Williams

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:33:25 -0400

The entire nation seems to be focused on Juan Williams. Never mind the two wars we’re fighting. Never mind the dire economic straits we find ourselves in. Never mind an election in less than two weeks. No, let’s spend an endless news cycle discussing de-funding NPR.

Williams expressed a personal opinion on Fox. As an NPR news analyst, that is unacceptable. NPR was wrong to let him occupy these two conflicting roles for so long, but no one should be surprised that they fired him now.

Unfortunately, the charged political atmosphere meant that this was a lose-lose situation for NPR. If they hadn’t fired Williams, they would have been attacked by the same people who are attacking them now for setting a double standard. The Republicans and the tea pots would have screamed about how the liberal media elite sets a double standard—one for any conservative who makes derogatory remarks and another for liberals who do the same. They’d say that a conservative would be hounded out of his job but the liberal media elite protects its own.

NPR can’t win. They’re caught in Act 1 of a nice bit of political theater along with the rest of the nation. Next week: Big Bird—friend or foe?

"The court has not reached this conclusion lightly. It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of..."

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:25:05 -0400

“The court has not reached this conclusion lightly. It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the Constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not only when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction. To do less would diminish us and undermine the foundation upon which we stand.”

- Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, reading his order to bar federal prosecutors from using information obtained while Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was being interrogated in an overseas jail by the CIA. Quoted in today’s New York Times.

AP: CNN's Sanchez fired after calling Stewart a bigot

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:20:09 -0400

AP: CNN's Sanchez fired after calling Stewart a bigot:

Quite frankly, Rick Sanchez was bad at his job. He was a bad reporter, an awful anchor, had no idea what he was talking about, and entirely deserved Jon Stewart’s criticism. His recent comments are proof of that. Sanchez was not fired because of a massive Jewish conspiracy inside CNN, he was fired because he was an idiot and bad at his job. Unfortunately, the idiocy part can’t be helped, but at least he doesn’t have to worry about being bad at his job anymore.

Deadline.com: The Social Network Leads This Week's Box Office

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:12:05 -0400

Deadline.com: The Social Network Leads This Week's Box Office:

Go see it. Now. It’s ostensibly a movie about Facebook, but it’s really about the challenge of friendship versus fame and fortune in the digital age. Aaron Sorkin’s witty dialog makes it even better. There’s a message in the movie about success and another message about signing contracts: always get your lawyers, not the lawyers of the company you think is loyal to you, but your lawyers to review things before you sign them.

Go see it.

Mark Zuckerberg Worth More Than Steve Jobs

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 10:36:08 -0400

Mark Zuckerberg Worth More Than Steve Jobs:

Yay for Mark Zuckerberg, but headlines like this are a bit misleading. Most of Zuckerberg’s wealth is tied up in Facebook stock which he can’t sell easily. Facebook’s current valuation is also inflated because of a few recent investments by venture firms that are willing to pay a premium just to have Facebook stock. If Zuckerberg sold his stock at IPO, it probably wouldn’t fetch the inflated price.

Michael Arrington Discovers Super Angels Colluding

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 22:51:11 -0400

Michael Arrington Discovers Super Angels Colluding:

Assuming what Arrington says is true, super angels are colluding on a massive scale. It’s a conspiracy not to compete, and it’s targeting Y Combinator specifically. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of this.

NY Daily News: Can I 'call him an a--hole?' Andrew Cuomo in tizzy after GOP foe Carl Paladino questions his manhood

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:59:58 -0400

NY Daily News: Can I 'call him an a--hole?' Andrew Cuomo in tizzy after GOP foe Carl Paladino questions his manhood:

Oh, New York. Such a civil political landscape.

Rasmussen Reports: 52% of Voters Say Their Views Are More Like Palin’s Than Obama’s

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:03:51 -0400

Rasmussen Reports: 52% of Voters Say Their Views Are More Like Palin’s Than Obama’s:

Scary. The President is pretty mainstream; Sarah Palin is not. I think this shows the increasing polarization of the political climate.

NYT: Finding the Positive in Cellphones for Children

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:12:28 -0400

NYT: Finding the Positive in Cellphones for Children:

Phones can be distracting in school, but so is the pick-up game of football that’s happening outside the window. There are so many positives to pushing better technology into the classroom—better organization and being able to conduct labs and other exercises that weren’t possible before among them. They’re not right for every purpose or setting, but the demonization of phones (basically people saying that phones are ruining kids’ concentration) has been overblown.

NYT: Tea Party Victory Opens Rift Between Moderate and Conservative Republicans

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:27:48 -0400

NYT: Tea Party Victory Opens Rift Between Moderate and Conservative Republicans:

Wait. There are still moderates in the Republican Party?

NYT: Cloud computing hits snag in Europe

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:17:46 -0400

NYT: Cloud computing hits snag in Europe:

Privacy vs. convenience—it’s the big battle of the cloud computing world. I’m still not convinced we can’t have both, it’s just that no manufacturer has a real incentive to care about privacy when most of their users are ambivalent at best.

Richmond Times Dispatch: Give States a Tool to Check Federal Power

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:17:09 -0400

Richmond Times Dispatch: Give States a Tool to Check Federal Power:

This proposal would allow acts of Congress to be repealed with the votes of 2/3 of the state legislatures.

Proposals like these fail to grasp that most of the time, we’re one country, not 50 states. There may have been a time when having 50 sovereign, largely independent states made sense to govern such a large area. Not anymore. We fight as one country, trade as one country, and conduct foreign policy as one country.

States are looking out for their bottom lines, which is understandable, but if we gave states the veto power, we’d have nothing but a lot of unpaved roads. Those unfunded mandates are beneficial for the country as a whole, but awful for individual states. The federal government’s constituency needs to remain the people, and not the states, of the United States.

West Wing - Why are we changing maps? (via uncyjugs) It’s...

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:43:08 -0400

West Wing - Why are we changing maps? (via uncyjugs)

It’s never a bad time for a West Wing clip. For anyone who hasn’t seen the show, buy the pilot from iTunes. It’s worth it. This is one of the more frivolous and funny clips, but it was largely a serious show. Television at its best, brought to you by Aaron Sorkin.

Dowd on Christine O'Donnell: Myth and Madness

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 12:14:00 -0400

Dowd on Christine O'Donnell: Myth and Madness:

To me, Christine O’Donnell is just another in a long line of politicians with the same happy disconnect with the issues. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She doesn’t know what the words she’s saying mean. And when she compares herself to mythical elf creatures (“I’m a fighter, like Eowyn”), no one else knows what she means either.

Her website’s section for “Christine O’Donnell on the issues” is nothing more than a collection of one sentence, bite-sized nuggets of nothingness. She believes “our country was founded on…freedom,” but not for those terrorists who shouldn’t even hope for “precious Constitutional rights.” Let’s also prevent “government meddling in the doctor/patient relationship,” as long as you’re not even thinking about getting an abortion. And by all means, let’s support a “market-based approach to energy solutions” because there’s never been a market for energy before. After all that, let’s flap our wings and fly to Never Never Land.

But her inability to say anything that actually means anything doesn’t seem to trouble her followers. In fact, they seem perfect happy to support her because she’s just like them — uninformed and disdainful of people who actually are informed. She’s the sort of person you’d want to meet at a NASCAR race, therefore she’s the sort of person you’d want to elect.

"Apple Inc. is developing a digital newsstand for publishers that would let them sell magazines and..."

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 11:51:00 -0400

“Apple Inc. is developing a digital newsstand for publishers that would let them sell magazines and newspapers to consumers for use on Apple devices, said two people familiar with the matter.”

- Apple Said to Negotiate With Publishers Over Digital Newsstand - Bloomberg

It’s all about control. If Apple can give them access to enough user data, then the publishers might think it’s worth it to surrender control of the sales apparatus to Apple.