I Blame My Mom For This

Fascinating article on this week's Week: The 'liberal gene': An instant guide.

I blame it on my mom, of course.

My favorite part of the article: "The researchers hypothesize that people more open to new ideas and more unconventional points of views already tend toward liberalism, and if they are exposed to enough different ways of living and viewing the world, their political beliefs will tend to solidify to the left of center."

Some people may not agree, I say they're a bunch of knuckleheads. Just kidding! Sheesh!

An Honest Facebook Political Argument

(lazy post)

This is genius. Meg found it at http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1803025.

I find it particularly funny because somebody once sent me a bunch of links to articles that were supposed to change my mind about some particular political issue, so I read them, studied them, actually, wrote a very detailed rebuttal, and sent it to the person who had sent me the articles. She then answered by saying "Sorry, I didn't actually read the articles I sent you. I just thought the titles sounded good."

Newly Frugal Guy

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This Is Just Too Much

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I just got one of those massive emails from a friend who was actually commenting how messed up the email's content is. Anyway, it is in Spanish, and it says something like this: "Mexico's economy wasn't doing well, and neither did the pharmaceutical companies, so why not make up a fake disease? That way the whole world will freak out, buy the vaccine, and just like that the world's economy will improve. We hear of all these people that are sick, but we don't know any, they haven't been on tv, we haven't seen pictures of any of them, blah, blah, blah."

It's funny, because a guy at lunch yesterday said "I am amazed that they still haven't blamed this one on Bush," but conservative pundits are going crazy blaming democrats for it. "Close the borders and get those illegal immigrants away," said Glen Beck (I'm paraphrasing. I really don't feel like listening to the actual sound bite again), not stopping to think that the cases that erupted in the USA are a consequence of Americans traveling to Mexico.

Here's the text in Spanish (I don't feel like translating, but just for the record, it's full of misspellings and grammatical errors).

Gratuitous Insult to Teachers

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I love my job. I work my butt off, but I do get abused by students at a daily rate, I'm overworked, and viewed basically as their employee by my students. But that's not enough, though, so Ann Coulter decided to go a little further in her insults. In her latest article she wrote:

(Obama) was suspiciously verbose about saving the jobs of public schoolteachers. Because nothing says "economic stimulus" better than saving the jobs of lethargic incompetents who kick off at 2 p.m. every day and get summers off. Actually, that's not fair: Some teachers spend long hours after school having sex with their students.

It is true that teachers do have the summer off, but we don't get paid for it, so we usually have to end up getting a summer job to make ends meet. Besides, I have to stay in school until 3:15, by contract, each day. That's an 8 hour shift, but I stay long after 4:00 every day, and we don't get paid overtime, so that's hours we put in for free. I get 30 paid prep. minutes a day, but there's no way I can grade papers and tests, prepare my next day lesson, tutor kids who need help, and fill up all the paperwork that stupid programs like the Queen B.'s dear Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind imposed on us. But what does she care? She writes two pages a week and rambles about stuff she's not even prepared to talk about in public forums (fora?), and she thinks she has the moral authority to say anything about teachers?

What a bastard.

But then, I guess that when you're a sore loser you tend to get nasty like that.

We Voted!

Meg and I voted early today. It was her first election, and my first American one. I voted for president before in Argentina, and although the president I voted for won, a couple of years later he was kicked out of the presidency for being too slow to do anything. This time I feel much more positive about my choice!

We voted early because 1) we wanted to avoid long lines on Tuesday. We would have had to vote in the morning before going to work, because Tuesday nights I have a class at WSU, and 2) I wanted to make sure that my vote went through, and if I was to have any problems, I wanted to have a few days to fix it and have my vote counted. Fortunately, the people at the polls were very nice and we had no problem at all. I know that my vote won't make Obama win in Utah, but it was nice to be able to support some local candidates (I mean, besides the fact that our district's Utah House candidate has a 6 foot sign out in our yard).

PS: Well, since I'm here, might as well post Slate's newest summary on the election.

Time for Some Campaigning

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My Favorite Part of the Debate

0:40: Obama quotes Kissinger as saying that we should meet with Iran without preconditions. He did not quote Kissinger as saying "meet at a presidential level."

0:53: McCain begins to steam.

0:58: McCain: "Kissinger didn't say that he would approve a meeting face to face between the president of the United States and Ahmadinejad." Obama: "Of course not." McCain: "He said that they should be at the lower level. I always incouraged them."

Actually, Kissinger wanted a higher level meeting. So, McCain lies again.

1:40: McCain totally looses it.

This is a transcript of what Kissinger said:

KISSINGER: Well, I am in favor of negotiating with Iran. And one utility of negotiation is to put before Iran our vision of a Middle East, of a stable Middle East, and our notion on nuclear proliferation at a high enough level so that they have to study it. And, therefore, I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of state level so that we -- we know we're dealing with authentic...

(CROSSTALK)

SESNO: Put at a very high level right out of the box?

KISSINGER: Initially, yes. And I always believed that the best way to begin a negotiation is to tell the other side exactly what you have in mind and what you are -- what the outcome is that you're trying to achieve so that they have something that they can react to.

(Read the whole transcript here)