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Friday, July 3, 2009MiscellanyAn assortment of curious tales from the national scene, a couple of local notes, and a weird Mormon moment. Here are some miscellaneous items which may be of interest. At least they are to me. In any case, I'm trying to clear my (virtual) blogger's desk so I can think some Independence Day thoughts tomorrow on Independence Day. National You know Helen Thomas, the wizened senior White House correspondent who didn't feel the need last year to veil her hatred for President George W. Bush and all things conservative and Republican? Now she's saying that even the Nixon administration didn't try to exert the level of control the Obama administration is exerting on the press. (Thanks to Luis Garcia, a Facebook friend, for the link.) Here's a funny piece that has the White House explaining, "The vice president misrepresented what the vice president meant to say." It also has ABC's Jake Tapper objecting to a "clarification" of Biden's meaning: "With all due respect, and I sympathize with you trying to explain the vice president's comments, that's not even remotely close to what he said." Remember how a major factor in the housing and mortgage collapse was the government coercing, then enabling, lenders to relax their standards for making loans? Representative Barney Frank chairs the relevant committee in the US House of Representatives, so he ought to know better than almost anyone how that turned out. But now he wants more of the same. I'll mention this later in a long second post about the House's cap and trade bill, but in case you don't delve deeply enough to see it there, here's a story about the EPA burying its own recent 98-page report questioning the science behind global warming. And I mentioned this one yesterday, in another long post. It's a video from the ACLU, opposing a national ID system. I think we need a national ID system, but I think this video also illustrates a more general point: the need to restrain government in a way that doesn't seem to be the fashion just now. I'm not sure whether it's absolutely hilarious or one of the scariest things I've comtemplated in a while. Maybe both. Here's a story about chronically inadequate road maintenance in American Fork and the high cost of catching up. I recommend Colonial Days in downtown Provo tomorrow. I went today, mostly to hear a favorite local singer, M. Ryan Taylor, and to have my first look at the fascinating Crandall Historical Printing Museum, admission to which is free during this event. There are other attractions, including ladies wandering around in old-fashioned dresses -- the dresses deserve their own parking spaces -- along with other pieces of daily colonial life. One for the Mormons In high tech one is often wise to be looking for the next job fairly constantly. I've been looking lately, and I applied for a certain job at LDS Church headquarters, where high-tech job listings tend to be an impossible combination of every technical acronym in the book (under Qualifications) and an odd, cheerleading sort of spiritual fervor for the organization's mission. (I share a commitment to the Church's mission, to be sure, but not a great fondness for cheerleading in professional places.) Yesterday, I received an e-mail message from Human Resources. It begins -- and I swear I am not making this up -- as follows:
I checked out the new listing and was bemused to learn that I am seriously overqualified to be their Technical Genius. I may apply anyway. Copyright 2009 by David Rodeback. |
