From Slashdot:

“Democrat Senator Leland Yee (you may know him as a senator often tackling ESRB ratings on video games) introduced SB1451, which would require California’s school board to review books for any of Texas’ changes and block the material if any such are found. The bill’s text alleges that said changes would be ‘a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings’ and ‘a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.”

Now that’s democracy in action.

Looks like the full story is over on Mercury News.

This is just the beginning though for the battle against revisionism. Digital readers, like the iPad, which will allow on-the-fly updating by professors and lowers the ridiculous cost of textbooks in general.

Sure, it will make it easier for douchebags to revise texts and history in a dishonest manner.

On the other hand it will make those who can do their own critical thinking, spot logical fallacies, and take apart arguments even more valuable in the workplace and the world.

25 years of orbital goodness. Atlantis saw its final launch yesterday, May 14, at 2:20pm EST.

However, I heartily suggest downloading the HD version found here. It’s way more awe-inspiring.

Good luck, crew of STS132.

Partisan hackery has resulted in two amazing feats of fail for education and learning.

First is the story of the COMPETES bill. As reported by Science Insider, it was:

“5-year authorization bill that would have provided healthy increases in the research and education budgets of the National Science Foundation and research programs at the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce.”

If there are places where money needs to be funneled, it is certainly in science research and education.

This bill passed through the bipartisan House Science and Technology Committee after much back and forth.

“After wading through dozens of amendments, the committee approved the bill (H.R. 5116) on a 29-8 vote with all the no votes coming from Republicans. It would reauthorize the 2007 America COMPETES Act for five years and authorize about $82 billion in funding for the bill’s programs. The overall funding was reduced by 10 percent after the panel approved a manager’s amendment that stretched the timeline to 2017 for doubling authorized funding for R&D activities at the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Energy Department’s Office of Science. The 2007 law called for doubling research funding at these agencies by 2014.”

That seems like how it should work. Congressmen from both sides of the aisle working together, a little push and pull and voila, we have something that could be agreed on.

Then the first fistfull of stupid raised its ugly head.

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), the ranking member of the House science committee, introduced a motion to recommit, a last-ditch effort to change a bill by sending it back to the committee with mandatory instructions.

In this case, Republicans included a provision that would bar the federal government from paying the salaries of employees who’ve been disciplined for viewing pornography at work.

But it didn’t end there.

“The GOP motion also stopped all funding authorizations in two years as opposed to the five years contained in the original bill, abolished each new program established through the legislation, and froze all existing programs at their current funding levels until the federal budget is balanced.”

Ultimately it was voted to kill the bill and reintroduce it later. What did our rather well paid and looked-after Congressmen net us? Zero. The GOP took something good that would create jobs and innovation and butchered it in the name of partisan politics.

Sad.

Onto the second fistful of stupid – the ongoing travesty that is the Texas Board of Education and their hijacking of educational textbooks. By now you should know their shenanigans, so instead of wadding into that pile of crap here’s just a bunch of quotes from them.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

“There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.”

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

David, I’ll counter you by offering you $2,000 if you can find anything in the Constitution or Bill of rights that mentions that this is a Christian nation or that it should have anything to do with the bible.

“Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)”

Taking all this into account I am left wondering what these fine defenders of conservatism expect people to learn. Perhaps America will once again become the leader of banging two rocks together and dressing like Puritans.

I thoroughly enjoy politics when enough stupid is tossed out into the open that it can’t be refuted, reexplained or talked away. It’s easier to pick out the people that recycle these talking points, rather than doing their own research, and making note on how easily they can be manipulated in the future (never for my own personal gain, of course).

With the latest god bothering from Palin and crew there were a lot of heads shaking in agreement that the country needs to move back to its roots. To them those roots are the 10 commandments and the bible. The things they think this country was founded on.

Last I checked, this country was founded on laws that establish boundaries and freedoms.

The documents that lay out these boundaries and freedoms would be the United States Consitution and Bill of Rights.

I daresay if one takes the time to read through these documents one will find no mentions of: god, 10 commandments, or christianity.

Amazing.

Give these old documents a look see. It might be useful in a future conversation.

P.S. Who grants us all these amazing rights? Check that first sentence, “We the fucking people…” (emphasis mine).

So, lauded anti-gay activist George Rekers likes the men.

It’s really not surprising anymore. The louder they rail against it the more in the closet they are it seems.

The real crime here is the $120,00 in tax-payer money that got doled out for Reker’s expert testimony to suppress the rights of those who are homosexual. That’s on top of the decade’s worth of false witness this jerk has preached.

What a worthless, wrinkled husk of denial that man is.

The FCC, having lost to Comcast in court, seemed on the verge of giving up. However, a new proposal is on the table of how net neutrality could be leveraged and put in place. This has struck anew the fires of pure inane comments, ridiculous talking points and pure and utter bollocks retching from the mouths of individuals who think a TCP/IP stack is a librul way to organize your books.

There are few things more frustrating than ignorant individuals spouting off talking points – grossly wrong talking points on a topic that is rooted strongly in fact and logic. Where there might be leeway in debating how governments might most efficiently run and serve its people, there’s no wiggle room in debating how the internet works unless you’re actually debating the engineering standards.

That’s clearly not what is going on in newspapers, blogs, and talk shows around the country. People aren’t debating what internet protocols might create the most efficient and robust delivery systems. They are vomiting forth scripted talking points like:

So much for laying down billions to build a network so freeloaders can abuse it. 80% of the network is used by 20% of the content…is that fair?

Why should comcast or anyoe else have to subsidize freeloaders?

Wow. The dictatorial, managerial, administrative state in the world of Obama! The EPA, FCC, 26 Czars, and an out-of-control Congress answer only to themselves.

Obama wants “absolute power.” There is nothing he won’t take control of if he gets a chance.

I don;t trust anything the current regime tries. There is always some hidden agenda that ends in “transforming Amerika” and “Spreading the wealth around”. These people want total control over our lives. These Marxist have to be stopped!

Should I let the Gub’mint regulate the internet so my neighbor can download porn 24/7 with no delay ?

the free market is doing what the FCC can only dream of doing, providing choice and service to customers. Of course the government via the FCC can screw up this free market like it’s done to countless other free markets

This “net neutrality” will be coupled with the so-called ‘fairness doctrine’ as an attempt by the statists to stifle free speech.

Where do these inane ideas comes from? Straight from the mouths of Rush, Beck, Hannity, and scores of talk shows with political agendas that know jack shit about how the internet works. Their goal is to smear their political opponents anyway they can. If that means completely brain-washing their audiences on a topic – well you can see they have no qualms. It’s quite sad, really.

First, Net Neutrality has nothing to do with pricing. It doesn’t want to dictate what prices or tiered pricing structures ISPs want to offer. It doesn’t care what bandwidth cap limits will, could, or would be imposed. It could care less about what information is being transmitted.

The long view is that Net Neutrality doesn’t want ISPs throttling packets based on where they come from or what content they contain – most especially if said ISP is both a content producer and transport provider.

That’s it.

Whether the FCC is the best arbitrator for this is still up for rational debate. They very well may not be the best for what needs to be done.

The problem lays in that there is no free market. There is no competition. ISPs have total control – and this is where the wharblegarbl falls apart. The spittle-flecked paranoia that a gubment power grab is underway stems from the ill-reasoned fact that these corporations, based in a competative free market, will regulate themselves.

This reality does not exist.

Looking at the comments posed against net neutrality I can only conclude that the individuals who crafted these responses do not live in our reality either.

This is what good advertising looks like.

Color me impressed with the effort.

Once you’ve built up a life and culture around the internet it’s about as hard to cut off as water or electricity. The internet is a tool, entertainment, and a career.

After years of looking for another house that would better suit the family needs, one has finally appeared. It hits all the tick marks. The only thing left to do was check out what kind of internet service was available.

Right out of the gate Comcast begged off. The street sits too far out of their existing network. The only other choice in Maryland after that was Verizon (Satellite and mobile just aren’t a reasonable solution given their high latency).

I started phoning Verizon Monday morning. Their customer service ‘voice activation menus’ (press 1 for this, say “no’ to that) was a wreck. I spent over two hours just trying to get through to someone. The nice lady who finally answered the phone confirmed that residential DSL was unavailable but I could get business DSL. Twice the speed at only a little more cost.

Awesome, I was in heaven.

For the hell of it during a lunch break I went to check for availability through verizon.com. No dice. The response was no service available except phone. I started getting nervous.

During the commute  home on Monday their customer service menuing system was in such a wreck I couldn’t get a hold of anyone. At this point I had burned another 180 cellphone minutes – almost half my plan at this point – and only three days into the month.

Tuesday brought the same. Their customer service menuing system was still a wreck and continued to hang up on me half way through the menu selections. When I would make it through, I’d magically get teleported from their Business customer service to Residential. They’d transfer me back to Business and I’d eventually get kicked from the network. 120 cell phone minutes later I was left with two more answers. One rep said neither Residential nor Business DSL was available. A third rep said only Business DSL was available but I would have to use a static IP (WTF?!).

My bullshit quota was reached. It was time to turn up the social pressure. To Twitter I went with my complaints, along with the scores of others that were venting about Verizon’s lack of customer service and inability to actually talk to a rep on the phone. A few hashtags and pithy comments later and I had customer service responding directly to me. Amazing what you can do through the internet. What a fantastic medium and communication device.

The end result was that Verizon does not service the location.

Therein lays the real story in all of this. I now have no broadband choices. For all the bluster and hype of the right-wing spin machine and the blow-hard ISP giants, broadband access in this country is piss poor.

It’s slow, coverage is spotty, and access is expensive. And because of that I’ll have to keep looking for another residence that hits all the tick marks. It only took five years of continuous searching to find this last one…

So, remember the next time some windbag spouts off about how net neutrality is a danger, that we have a multitude of choice and the free market is handling it fine, tell them to fuck off.