Did You Know? Mexico Had a Government and an Economy Such That Swine Flu Is Shutting Them Down. Could’ve Fooled Me.

CNS:  Labor Secretary Says Making Sure Undocumented Workers Get Paid Will Be Priority

They will be paid every pay period, on time, and paid an amount indicative of their $1.50 an hour wage rate.

Jihad Watch:  Egypt calls for the “immediate” death of all pigs

Charles Manson once called for the same thing.

CNS:  Specter Calls for ‘Revolution’ and ‘Uprising’ Against Republicans ‘Far to the Right’

I’m stockpiling on every sort of armament there is to defend Carbondale against the imminent Klingon invasion.  What’s that you say, there are no Klingons?

NPI:  Food Stamps Create Jobs… in India

What say you, President that promised no more outsourcing?  Oh, I forgot, he didn’t actually promise that, he just said there would be no tax breaks for companies that outsource.  So we should look forward to new taxes on the food stamp administration?

CNN:  Obama pushes for immigration reform

Nice timing, slappy.  Isn’t that Rahm Emmanuel I hear coughing?

KSDK:  Teens & Texting: How do you manage your cell phone bill?

Take the phone away.  You’ll be amazed how parsimonious your teenager will become all of a sudden after you give it back a month later.

MSNBC:  Mexico to shut down government in flu fight

What government?

Reuters:  Mexico shuts down economy as flu pandemic imminent

What economy?

USNAWR:  Most Americans Think Obama’s First 100 Days Were Successful

I think Obama’s first 100 days have been successful.  Lenin’s five year plans were successful, too.

AP:  Girl beats off muggers with marching band baton

He must have been the world’s weakest mugger if a marching band baton could take him.

McClatchy:  Somali pirates say foreign trawlers made them do it

I was wondering how long it would take before they started pulling out the Jesse Jackson card.

AFP:  Facebook exec eyes California [Attorney General] position

If you become AG, you’ll have to learn really quickly that you can’t be as gabby about the cases you bring as the average FB user is about his or her daily activities.

AFP:  Internet ‘flooded with swine virus spam emails’

Wouldn’t it be ironic if some of those spams had computer viruses attached to them, perhaps with names like swine.w32?

Three Tech Stories

Two of them involving the Borg Lite.

(1)  Why I don’t have or want an iPod — KGB South is pulling out all the stops to keep you from finding out that you don’t need iTunes to use an iPod.  (In case you’re wondering what I do own in lieu of an iPod)

(2)  Bye bye x86 and x86_64 — it looks like KGB South is slowly moving away from those commodity processors.  If anything, they should be moving in the other direction.  The Mac OS will perpetually be at under a 10% American market share unless KGB South decouples Mac OS from Apple hardware, i.e. allow the Mac to be installed on any PC.

(3)  The first decade of the 21st Century — in like a lion, out like a lamb.  Or to translate the metaphor into plain English, it starts with AOL buying Time-Warner, and ends with Time-Warner spinning off AOL.

It’s Called Course Title Inflation, Dummy.

CSM:

High-schoolers have made little progress since the 1970s, study says

(snip)

The flat math scores among 17-year-olds happened despite the fact that larger percentages have taken higher-level math courses than in previous decades. That raises questions about whether such courses are really offering higher-level curriculum, whether the students bring the necessary math background to be successful, and whether the teaching is effective, Ms. Wilkins and others say.

The Oprah (of all people) solved that riddle.

More on course title inflation.