The Invisible library

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

The weather is getting hotter out here. Pretty soon, it will be downright oppressive. I can’t imagine what it must have been like last summer for the majority of the population in this city without power.

It seems the most significant event people have been wondering about lately is last Friday’s car bomb. Don’t worry, I’m safe and sound. However, I will say that for a few minutes I was pretty stunned. I was having trouble getting out of bed on that morning when Bam! the entire ground shook accompanied by the sound of an explosion. I’ve never seen so many people wake up at the same time. (Remember, I’m leaving in a large tent with at least thirty other people.) We all looked at each other stupidly - not knowing exactly what to do. Was it a mortar, a grenade, a missile? Should we put on our gas masks? A couple minutes later a loudspeaker voice told us to take cover. As I was leaving my tent to get to a more hardened shelter, I saw thick black smoke in the distance. Of course, the most immediate source for news was the internet. The rest of the day went on as usual as if nothing ever happened. Now, people are not even talking about it. I wonder what kind of press the attack stirred up back home. This week, it seems like a distant memory.

I have traversed at least half of the Green Zone by now. Today, I even made it to the “Assassin’s Gate” where back in January, an even deadlier car bomb exploded. For the most part, the Green Zone is like one giant park complex. There are few large buildings with a great deal of open space in between. Some buildings are completely intact while others are reduced partly to rubble. The most imposing of such structures is the Ba’ath Party Headquarters which sits as a shell of itself home to nothing but wild cats. Sometimes, one can spot the occasional bat flying about.

Read the rest

Seatle PI:

WASHINGTON — At least 28 senior-level federal employees in eight agencies have bogus college degrees, including three managers at the office that oversees nuclear weapons safety, congressional investigators have found.

The problem is likely even bigger, mainly because the government has no uniform way to check whether employees’ alma maters are “diploma mills” that require little, if any, academic work, the General Accounting Office reported.

[edit]

Among those with bogus degrees in the GAO review were three workers with emergency operations roles and security clearances at the National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the Department of Energy.

One of those workers paid $5,000 for a master’s degree from LaSalle University, an unaccredited school, the report said. He attended no classes, took no tests and told the GAO his degree was “a joke.”

Other senior government employees with bogus degrees worked for the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Transportation and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Small Business Administration and the Office of Personnel Management.

[edit]

Three unaccredited schools - Pacific Western University, California Coast University and Kennedy-Western University - provided data showing that 463 of their students were federal employees. Most of those listed were in the Department of Defense. The report did not name employees.

And we wonder why the Government doesn’t seem to value education. I guess value is the wrong word; they value it very much, enough to pay up to $5000 for a degree. And here I am, like a sucker, spending two years actually earning a masters degree!

Blogs are undemocratic?

“New Yorker writer George Packer argues that by blurring the line between journalism and pure rant, blogs may not be the best thing for democracy.”

Someone explain to me how a truly free press, in which the citizens can have their say, is somehow undemocratic? Just because I’m not making money (the horror! Are you some kinda socialist?) or sucking the president’s dick doesn’t mean I’m undermining democracy.

It seems the traditional media types are a little scared of us regular folks, since people like Atrios, Kos and Hesiod are doing journalists jobs while the “real” journalists are sipping martinis and reading whatever the White House Hands them. I tell you what, Mr. Packer, if you started doing your fucking job then maybe we bloggers wouldn’t have to pick up the slack, defending democracy from the War profiteers and Oligarchs wagging their cash under your nose.