Change of Emphasis

If anyone is still reading this, you will notice a lighter posting schedule as of late. We finally found a local library that didn't want to charge us $50/yr for a library card. It's small, but they do have a nice shelf of classics which I'm working my way through. That means a lot less time on-line, which translates into fewer posts here. Besides that, summer is somewhat here (it's still rather cold most of the time), and we plan to spend it outside with the camera. Or maybe I'm just bored with the whole internet thing right now. I feel like I keep reading the same news stories over and over: Europe is Bankrupt! Oil Still Pouring into the Gulf! Politicians Point Fingers! Billions Supposed to be Spent on Preparing Weren't! Europe is Still Bankrupt! Big Banks Still Don't Get Why We're Pissed at Them! The US Economy Sucks! The US Economy Sucks Part II! The US Economy Sucks Slightly Less! President Appoints Unqualified Friend from Chicago! People Paid to Not Work Don't!

Facebook. I continue my tolerate-hate relationship with FB. When FB Purity is working and I have the time, it's not the worst way to spend a half-hour. The rest of the time, it's just more pain than it is worth. I haven't been on in a few days now mostly because of that whole reading flat dead trees thing. I'm not saying I'm on hiatus like I did a few months back, but I definitely won't be making any special effort to get on or to read everything I missed. In any case, the most popular status updates seem to be "I didn't send everyone those porno videos! Honest!" and "I got a virus from [fill in the blank] application!" so maybe FB has become as much of a tar pit as e-mail. And the computer-generated status updates. That's special on so many levels....

The census job continues. I finally finished up my first binder yesterday. The whole process took way longer that it should have, mostly due to me not really knowing what I was doing, plus losing a couple days because I was feeling... not really sick, just icky. And the apartment block turned out to be a significant challenge. The new binder I started yesterday doesn't have any apartment complexes, but around 20% of the houses are summer cottages on a lake, which again is something that I haven't had to deal with before. I expect this will take some time. The initial circuit took me nine hours just to find all the buildings.

Because people aren't suspicious enough of census workers, someone posing as one has murdered someone. If they don't have a badge, don't open the door.

A senior center in Georgia has told the seniors they can no longer pray out loud before they eat their federally-subsidized food due to first amendment concerns. A little stupid, in my opinion, and this particular interpretation would shock the people who wrote our constitution (as would federal tax money being used to put on subsidized lunches for old people). But the answer is pretty simple for the "outraged" Mayor Jones: don't take federal tax money and you can pretty much do as you damn well please.

I've been saying for years that excluding people strictly on the basis of their race is, by definition, racism. It doesn't matter what color is being excluded. That this happened in an elementary school in the most loony-lefty-liberal city in Michigan tells you pretty much all you need to know about the hole that neo-liberalism has dug itself into. If liberals want race to stop being an issue, then maybe they should stop making race an issue even when there is absolutely no reason for it to be an issue. It was a field trip for the gods sake. But of course if race were to ever not be an issue, what would we need the loony-left for?

Well, I need to take Debbie to work and get going on more census stuff.