Flying.....

Caught this video that is part of the TED series:


The music is cheesy but, that looks pretty close to flying to me.

-Cheers

Wisconsin State of Mind...

Recently there has been quite the hubbub over the last week or so. Politifact does a nice job of clarifying one of the claims at the center of dispute here. Wisconsin is facing a budget shortfall this year, but the methods being discussed will not address that shortfall. Also, the tax breaks the Gov. Walker signed into law in the first month will add to further deficit woes in future budgets. So Gov. Walker, did not create the budget shortfall, but neither did the public union employees.

I am going to seriously pimp Ezra Klein (if you are not reading him you need to) here, he and TPM have been doing yeoman's work on this topic.

But here we go. Mr. Klein, goes to bat on what the causes are for the Wisconsin shortfall are here. From there Klein does some corrections on his initial statement, but really gets into the nuts and bolts of of the issue (here, here, here and here).

The basic gist of Ezra comments being that, this has very little to do with balancing the budget and has more to do with legally dismantling a organized constituency that tends to be hostile to Republicans. From reading the bill itself and listening to the Union's willingness to accept the compensation cuts, but not the massive changes to collective bargaining in the state, I tend to agree with the commentators that cast this as union-busting.

Again, I feel like we need to talk about what the wealth distribution is like in this country, and how whenever someone says, "shared sacrifice" and "hard choices", they seem to always be directing that sacrifice at the middle class and the poor, exactly at the time when they are most set upon (h/t Balloon Juice).

As E.D Kain points out:

Alex notes that, “As you can see, this is why the wealthy in this country pay most of the taxes — they have most of the money, by a staggering amount.”

More charts and graphs here.

And Dr. Krugman talks some serious sense about entitlements.

-Cheers

Is are kids learning?

Been a busy couple of weeks so extremely slow on posting. With Grilling of the Meats XII officially in the books, several birthday celebrations (Jay-Z, Penis, Julia W and Michelle Ray), the arrival of a new member of the Voss clan, and shenanigans with Ms. Terri and DMB have made for very little time to get any posts up.

Lots and lots going on in the political world to talk and write about, and hopefully I will have a little more time over the next couple weeks to dig into that.

So I am gonna try to use this post as a bit of a catch-up on what I have been reading recently.

First up we have two stories that inspired the title of this post:

This article from the New York Times on the teaching of Evolution in today's classrooms is just depressing:

Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.

That leaves what the authors call “the cautious 60 percent,” who avoid controversy by endorsing neither evolution nor its unscientific alternatives. In various ways, they compromise......

....But Dr. Moore is doubtful that more education is the answer. “These courses aren’t reaching the creationists,” he said. “They already know what evolution is. They were biology majors, or former biology students. They just reject what we told them.

“With 15 to 20 percent of biology teachers teaching creationism,” he continued, “this is the biggest failure in science education. There’s no other field where teachers reject the foundations of their science like they do in biology.”

[emphasis added mine] This would be like a fifth of physicist and engineers turning their noses up at the Conservation of Energy. Evolution and its understanding is that fundamental to the study of modern Biology. Yet we see this sort of division. But it isn't like we are talking about the arguments that surrounded the inclusion of Einstein's Theory of General and Special Relativity into physics or that of Quantum Mechanics. These are arguments predicated on not know or not trying to answer questions. That is what I find abhorrent about the sort of methodology used by creationist. It is anti-learning. They already have the answer they want, so no study is necessary. This is a bad way to teach children and cripples our discourse on any scientific topic.

Next up the lack of knowledge the electorate has on how the government spends money is truly mind-boggling:

A January CNN poll found the same result, with 81% of Americans supporting cuts to foreign aid, while opposing, by around the same margin, cuts to Social Security and Medicare (which alone comprise roughly one third of the overall budget).

So how much money do Americans think could be slashed from international aid?

In a World Public Opinion poll conducted last November, respondents guessed, on average, that foreign aid spending represented 27% of the federal budget. To trim spending, the same respondents suggested that, on average, foreign should make up a slimmer 13% of the total budget, surely delivering massive savings.

The problem? Foreign aid is actually a minuscule 1% of the total budget. Even eliminating it altogether would do little to balance the budget or reduce the deficit.

This same sticking point -- Americans' misconceptions of actual spending levels -- seems to work the other way around when it comes to the military. When it comes to defense spending, Americans generally oppose cuts and wildly underestimating how much is already being spent.

I never cease to be amazed at how little most people know about their world. The budget of the United States is, more or less, a quantifiable thing. Its spending can be traced and tracked, to see what our tax dollars are spent on. Yet whenever it comes time to talk about spending cuts the first thing that is always mentioned is Foreign aid.

Virtually every time. Even though it makes up less then 1% of our budget. Cutting it entirely would have almost no effect on our deficit. But it is always the first thing mentioned. Medicare/Medicaid, Department of Defense, Social Security?

If you are a partisan politician you might mention which ever one is your particular bugaboo. Aside from that, it follows in most cases, the determination is, "Does this cut effect me? If no. Do it. If yes. Get your government paws off my Medicare!".

And we wonder as a society why our children struggle in school, when we personally do not seem to apply the most basic of critical analysis.
------------

Now just a few links to articles I just enjoyed for one reason or another.

• The most engaging post I have read on abortion/women's rights in a while. Mainly cause it deals with how easy it is for men to sit in judgement of the subject, but never face the very real risks.
• The Economist on Climate Change.
• The sex trade has embraced the future. Possibly making pimpin' even less easy. Money quote:
• "I asked one of them how pimping experience helps him in the legit economy: “You learn one thing,” he said. “For a good blow job, a man will do just about anything. What can I do with that knowledge? I have no idea.”"

That's all I have for right now.

-Cheers