Newsweek is dumb as a sack of hair

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Prof. Felton deconstructs their school ratings, which are just about as boneheaded as anything we’ve heard today:

Newsweek has once again issued its list of America’s Best High Schools. They’re using the same goofy formula as before: the number of students from a school who show up for AP or IB exams, divided by the number who graduate. Just showing up for an exam raises your school’s rating; graduating lowers your school’s rating.

Seriously. Read that bold part again. (Emphasis added.)

As before, my hypothetical Monkey High is still the best high school in the universe. Monkey High has a strict admissions policy, allowing only monkeys to enroll. The monkeys are required to attend AP and IB exams; but they learn nothing and thus fail to graduate. Monkey High has an infinite rating on Newsweek’s scale.

What’s worse, they actually EXCLUDE some obviously very good schools because their students score too highly on the SAT:

Also as before, Newsweek excludes selective schools whose students have high SAT scores. Several such schools appear on a special list, with the mind-bending caption “Newsweek excluded these high performers from the list of America’s Best High Schools because so many of their students score well above the average on the SAT and ACT.” Some of these schools were relegated to the same list last year — and still, they’re not even trying to lower their SAT scores!

How to tell if your company is a douchebag

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Consumerist lays it out:

  1. Are your most profitable customers those who have the most reason to be dissatisfied with you?
  2. Do you have rules that you want customers to break because doing so generates profits?
  3. Do you make it difficult for customers to understand or abide by your rules, and to you actually help customers break them?
  4. Do you depend on contracts to prevent customers from defecting?

Telcos, we’re looking at you.

Oops.

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Due to our own human fuckery, blogging was not possible on Sunday or Monday. Get over it. We’re back now.

Dept. of TSA Incompetence, Part Six Billion

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As we all know, the ID requirement for flight these days is about airline revenue, not security. The airlines had a problem with people selling tickets they couldn’t use, so they wanted to tie tickets to individuals. Putting names on the tickets didn’t work, since any male could fly on one of our tickets, and any female on Mrs Heathen’s. However, after 9/11 they managed to get the Feds to require ID, and the problem was solved.

Sort of. As it turns out — and this should surprise precisely nobody — the new ID requirement is yet another example of the naked emperor. A CBS affiliate in Kansas City set out to see how rigid it is, and were able to get past security with a totally fabricated ID made on a home computer. Nice.

Now, seeing as how this ID thing has nada to do with safety — remember, the 9/11 guys had valid ID — we think it’s pretty funny they’re doing basically nothing to enforce the edict, but if they’re so ineffectual on this, what else are they dropping the ball on?

Oh, wait. We know that answer, too.

What Republicans think

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In last night’s debate, Tancredo and Giuliani were applauded when they endorsed waterboarding (Tancredo actually said he was “looking for Jack Bauer”); Romney went on-record seeking an even bigger gulag at Gitmo, apparently without regard for the actual population of Gitmo (i.e., predominately people no American ever saw commit any crime or act of aggression).

And now there’s three

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Following Emusic and Apple’s iTunes Music Store, Amazon announced today that they will open a DRM-free online store. EMI is on board, along with literally thousands of other, presumably small, labels. (No other majors are listed in the release.)

Watch the RIAA cringe!

Life in the Future

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Frankly, we’ve been waiting for this one. As a kid, after too many episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, we asked our parents how long they thought before prosthetic limbs might impart an athletic advantage. Pure fiction, they told us.

Well, now we have Oscar Pistorius, an amputee sprinter facing challenges from the tnternational track & field governing body over whether his carbon fiber legs do just that.

Since March, Pistorius has delivered startling record performances for disabled athletes at 100 meters (10.91 seconds), 200 meters (21.58 seconds) and 400 meters (46.34 seconds). Those times do not meet Olympic qualifying standards for men, but the Beijing Games are still 15 months away. Already, Pistorius is fast enough that his marks would have won gold medals in equivalent women’s races at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Pistorius’s time of 46.56 in the 400 earned him a second-place finish in March against able-bodied runners at the South African national championships. This seemingly makes him a candidate for the Olympic 4×400-meter relay should South Africa qualify as one of the world’s 16 fastest teams.

Holy Crap!

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We said, and many agreed, that we were amazed that Gonzales actually made us miss Ashcroft, but we had no idea how true this was. Check this out:

On the night of March 10, 2004, as Attorney General John D. Ashcroft lay ill in an intensive-care unit, his deputy, James B. Comey, received an urgent call.

White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., were on their way to the hospital to persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize Bush’s domestic surveillance program, which the Justice Department had just determined was illegal.

In vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Comey said he alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and raced, sirens blaring, to join Ashcroft in his hospital room, arriving minutes before Gonzales and Card. Ashcroft, summoning the strength to lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers they had brought.

Yeah, that’s right; Ashcroft wouldn’t sign off on the illegal wiretapping that his successor embraced so fully. As Wired puts it: “You know a government surveillance program is getting a tad iffy when John Ashcroft balks at giving it his John Hancock, even just for a while.”

Buh-bye

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Jerry Falwell is dead. We’re sure it’s awful for his family and loved ones and all, but here at Heathen Central we found the Rev. to be a strikingly divisive character who spent his career misrepresenting Christianity as some sort of faith-based cudgel. America and the world are better off without that brand of pseudo-piety. Do not forget that it was Falwell who said this, in the days after 9/11:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’

More: BoingBoing has a link to a list of some of his other odious quotes, including:

  • “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”
  • “It appears that America’s anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men’s movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.”
  • “Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions”

Catching up and Blogging from 30+ kilofeet

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Did you notice how lame our press was during the run-up to the Iraq war? Yeah, us to. Fortunately, so did Bill Moyers. His documentary on the subject is viewable online. We don’t think “enjoy” is the right word, but it’s damned well something you all out to watch.

Here’s part of the problem:

Just consider that, as Moyers notes, there has been no examination by any television news network of the role played by the American media in enabling the Bush administration and its warmonger propagandists to disseminate pure falsehoods to the American public. People like Eric Boehlert have written books about it, and Moyers has now produced a comprehensive PBS program documenting it. But the national media outlets themselves have virtually ignored this entire story — arguably the most significant political story of the last decade — because they do not think there is any story here at all.

Homegrown Nutjobs

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Sure, the Taliban is scary — and quite far from mainstream Islam — but American Protestantism has its own brand of nutbird frootbat fundamentalism. Check out what Bill Barnwell to say about The Troubling Worldview of the ‘Rapture-Ready’ Christian.

Once you begin thinking of the implications involved, you begin to see why this doctrine is so dangerous to everybody. Dispensationalists seem to have a preoccupation with war. In fact, right now, dispensationalist mega-church pastor John Hagee is preaching that a war with Iran is not only the right thing to do, but is prophetically inevitable. Apparently, Bible prophecy demands a showdown with Iran. You see, if you aren’t on the side of war, then you aren’t on the side of God. Talk of peace now becomes irrelevant. It’s God’s will that we be militarists.

[…]

The dispensationalist view of Daniel 9:27 provides some troubling implications as well. They don’t care that tearing down the al-Aqsa mosque would result in a regional war and cause all sorts of global distress. This would not be a bad thing in their minds. They believe that it was all foreordained and is a sign that the end of the world would be soon upon us.

Also, if you buy into these interpretations, talks of peace in the Middle East are futile. Jews and Muslims must continue killing each other at high rates. And who will be the one bringing peace to the Middle East in this popular end-time paradigm? Not Jesus, but the Antichrist. Therefore, talk of Middle East peace during this current “dispensation” is not from Jesus, but the Antichrist. When dispensationalists hear talk of peace summits or treaties in the Middle East, they assume it must have evil origins and be antichristic. If that’s the cause, why bother trying to make the world a better place? All we need to do is be good Christians and wait for our ticket out of this earth and make way for the Antichrist.

Is it a rerun? We can’t tell.

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We first encountered the tale of the Cement Cuddlers some years back, and were pretty certain we’d posted about it here, but vigorous grepping suggests not. Enjoy.

I had been thinking for a long time about making cement filled teddy bears. I wasn’t exactly sure why. At first it was just a perceptual curiosity I wanted to experience, and I wanted others to experience. I liked the idea of someone being handed what appeared to be a fluffy stuffed animal, only to have it go tearing through your relaxed fingers like a lead meteor.

The Christmas shopping season seemed an ideal time to get them on the shelves of Los Angeles toy stores, so late in November, members of the Los Angeles Cacophony Society gathered in my backyard to gut several dozen plush toys and replace their innards with Portland’s finest.

We called them, “Cement Cuddlers”.

Click through for the whole story. It’s brilliant.

The HBO Chief Technology Officer is a disingenuous hack

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He’s down on the term “Digital Rights Management,” preferring instead “Digital Consumer Enablement” on the theory that if you call it something else, nobody will notice that it sucks:

Digital rights management (DRM) is the wrong term for technology that secures programmers’ content as it moves to new digital platforms says HBO Chief Technology Officer Bob Zitter, since it emphasized restrictions instead of opportunities.

Speaking at a panel session at the NCTA show in Las Vegas Tuesday, Zitter suggested that “DCE,” or Digital Consumer Enablement, would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers “to use content in ways they haven’t before,” such as enjoying TV shows and movies on portable video players like iPods.

Hey Bob? Bullshit. Music is going DRM-free already; it’s only a matter of time before video follows suit. DRM has already failed in software, and will certainly fail with music and video. We suspect you’re more of a numbskull marketing droid than an actual technologist, and that you don’t actually understand what you’re talking about, but that doesn’t excuse the outright dissembling nature of this decidedly Orwellian coinage.

It sort of goes without saying that this was in Florida

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Armless Driver Escapes Police:

Michael Francis Wiley of Port Richey, Florida has no arms, only one leg, and is one of the “most accomplished traffic violators” in Pasco County, according to news reports. Yesterday, police chased Wiley, 40, in a “suspcious vehicle” but he managed to outrun them. Wiley steers with his shoulder stumps. A few years ago, he attempted to elude police in a green Corvette speeding along at 120 mph. He has such a terrible record that driving at all is a felony crime.

Part of Wiley’s resume also includes spousal battery and assaulting a state trooper. Without using arms, which he does not have.

Contractor Diary: Telecommunications Edition

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Why automatic cell billing is a potentially bad idea
You don’t notice when, after one month of 100% travel, you blow the top out of your cell plan
What do you mean by “blow the top out of”?
$325 instead of $160 for March.
How we noticed.
We really want one of these, but our carrier isn’t carrying it yet. We logged into the site to get their customer service address, and saw what the current bill is.
And that was?
$650
HOLY CRAP!
That’s what we said. Among other things. Actually, at first we thought it was some sort of auto-billing failure, and the amount represented several months. No such luck; thanks to the combination of a 100% travel job and some drama on the nonprofit side, we spent some 2900 minutes on the cell last month. Oops.
So what did you do?
Called them and begged for mercy.
How’d they react?
The first-line un-empowered drones were pretty unhelpful; they were willing to credit half the minute overage (i.e., $200 of about $400) on the April bill if we agreed to up the contract, but frankly we wanted more than that.
Why? What are you, some kind of entitlement freak?
In a word, yes. First, it’s absurd that the penalty for going over is so high — Cingular charges 45 cents per minute for any overage, versus less than a dime a minute for our plan minutes. While they clearly need to provide a disincentive for folks to constantly exceed their plan (i.e., for provisioning and bandwidth planning, it’s best to have a good idea how much Joe Blow is going to be on the phone in a given month), they’re just as clearly enjoying the financial ass-rape associated with plan overages. Furthermore, we’ve been with Cingular — nee Houston Cellular — for nearly 13 years, minus a year or two slumming with other carriers. We spend a decent amount a month normally, have two lines with them, and are — crucially, as it turns out — up for renewal now.
Escalation Uber Alles
At the next level, we got a guy who could only repeat the “half of the overage” mantra over and over, and we were about to give up when he mentioned the plan change would likely force a contract renewal. Uh, no thank you. We pushed and pushed, politely, on this point — and mentioned again that, since we’re not on contract now, and since we’re actively shopping for phones, it seems like this would be a great opportunity to reduce that bane of cell carriers, churn. Under no circumstances were we willing to take the coerced contract re-up for only $200. Getting in that situation would make us pretty certain, we noted, to look elsewhere in the coming weeks for our next wireless carrier
Did it work?
Yep. After a few more go-rounds on the party line, the second-level guy went away for a while to talk to his supervisor (as our request; it’s all about the escalation). When he came back, they were offering more than we’d overtly requested: complete April overage refund + a no-new-contract rate plan change.
And so who are you likely to deal with at upgrade time?
Whoever has the Nokia, unless that answer remains “no US carrier”.

The WaPo fails us, again

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In an unsigned editorial, they opine that candidates like Ron Paul and Mike Gravel ought not be in the debates, because they’re just “clutter:”

If you tuned in to the recent Republican and Democratic presidential debates, you may have had the same reaction as many viewers looking at the crowded stages: Who’s that? The Democratic debate in South Carolina featured eight candidates, while 10 crammed into the GOP debate in California last Thursday. Voters trying to sort out their presidential choices aren’t helped by debates cluttered with the likes of Mike Gravel (hint: he’s a former senator from Alaska) on the Democratic side and Ron Paul (hint: he’s a libertarian House member from Texas) among the Republicans.

Of course, they’re also the only candidates on either side with substantial divergence from their respective party lines. Reason delivers a well-earned spanking to the Post for this absurd and anti-democratic position:

[T]here were plenty of candidates on those stages who really were clutter: They don’t have a chance to win and their messages are indistinguishable from the people who do have a shot. But it’s telling that the Post didn’t single out, say, Chris Dodd or Jim Gilmore. It singled out the two most anti-war and anti-establishment figures in the race, two men who clearly are alternatives to the frontrunners. Unlike the clutter candidates, Gravel and Paul said things at the debates that actually generated some buzz afterwards, on talk radio and online if not in the Post or with the Sunday-morning dinosaurs. I don’t know if they won any votes, but they did more than anyone else to add ideas to the conversation.

Word.

Weddings are insane

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We’re so glad ours was cool, fairly cheap, and nearly 2 years ago:

Advice books warn brides not to reveal that they are shopping for a wedding, if possible, Ms. Mead said; vendors know that “if it’s wedding, you’re going to spend more.” So her suspicion is immediately aroused when the woman at East Coast Limousine asks, “Is it for a wedding?” when the question of a 22-passenger excursion in a long, white stretch limousine comes up. The wedding special is $720 for 3-1/2 hours and includes an aisle runner, Champagne, bar and “horns” that play a recording of “Here Comes the Bride” when the car stops. Ever the experienced shopper, Ms. Mead asks how much the regular rental would be, if there were no wedding.

“A four-hour minimum is $576.” So you could spend $144 less and receive a half-hour more? Why not do that instead?

“You can’t,” the saleswoman replies. If it’s a wedding, you must do the wedding special. “If the bride and groom are in the car, you can’t do it. We’ve pulled in, and there is a woman in a wedding dress, and they can’t do it. The car had to leave.”

After taking a few steps away, Ms. Mead said, “This is the kind of thing that I’m really interested in — that mentality: you’re going to get the horns whether you want them or not.”

She imagines the scene: “They won’t let you in,” she repeats, picturing the bride, groom and 20 other passengers stranded on a street as the limo driver slams the door and pulls away. “That’s the one you need the videographer for.”

From NYT.

Using π when getting pie

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Over at Binary Dollar, we here the tale of how πR2 saves money at the pizza parlor.

We do this all the time, Mrs Heathen’s teasing notwithstanding. How else can you know whether two 8″ pizzas are a better deal than one 12″? (Note for Aggies: Do not count slices.)

Following their stunning success with DRM, the RIAA finds another target

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They’re now pushing hard for laws that will restrict the sale of used CDs, which strongly suggests they’d like very much to dismantle the whole “doctrine of first sale” thing entirely. From Ars:

New “pawn shop” laws are springing up across the United States that will make selling your used CDs at the local record shop something akin to getting arrested. No, you won’t spend any time in jail, but you’ll certainly feel like a criminal once the local record shop makes copies of all of your identifying information and even collects your fingerprints. Such is the state of affairs in Florida, which now has the dubious distinction of being so anal about the sale of used music CDs that record shops there are starting to get out of the business of dealing with used content because they don’t want to pay a $10,000 bond for the “right” to treat their customers like criminals.

The legislation is supposed to stop the sale of counterfeit and/or stolen music CDs, despite the fact that there has been no proof that this is a particularly pressing problem for record shops in general. Yet John Mitchell, outside counsel for the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, told Billboard that this is part of “some sort of a new trend among states to support second-hand-goods legislation.” And he expects it to grow.

In Florida, Utah, and soon in Rhode Island and Wisconsin, selling your used CDs to the local record joint will be more scrutinized than then getting a driver’s license in those states. For retailers in Florida, for instance, there’s a “waiting period” statue that prohibits them from selling used CDs that they’ve acquired until 30 days have passed. Furthermore, the Florida law disallows stores from providing anything but store credit for used CDs. It looks like college students will need to stick to blood plasma donations for beer money.

John McCain is an enormous douchebag

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He’s now claiming “not to know” if condoms help prevent HIV, presumably in accordance with the sayings of Chairman W.

We’re pretty sure we’ve run off any actual Republicans, but, seriously, who’s running for the GOP nod who doesn’t suck? All we see are nutbird fundies, authoritarian fascists, or craven powermongers like McCain, and we’re pretty sure the electorate isn’t going to swallow any of them. Maybe the electable candidates are sitting out, on the theory that running for ’08 gives the winner an excellent chance of winning the Dole Award (also known as the Mondale Award on the left side of the aisle).

Mrs Heathen will hate us for this

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We’ve been calling it the “horny whiney doctor show,” but frankly Ms Stanley at the NYT provides even better snark:

Thursday’s two-hour episode of ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” in which Addison (Kate Walsh) has an emotional meltdown and flees Seattle Grace Hospital for a fancy wellness clinic in Los Angeles, serves as a prelude to a new, still untitled series centered on Addison and her new life in Southern California. It also suggests that the spinoff is doomed to be even sillier and more sex-obsessed than the original. And that is an achievement, considering that “Grey’s Anatomy” managed to squeeze in love scenes for a disfigured, pregnant disaster victim with amnesia.

Rudy Has Weird Ideas About Freedom

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From remarks made by the former Mayor, as transcribed by the NYT here:

We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

[ Interruption by someone in the audience. ]

You have free speech so I can be heard.

Um. (emph. added.)