Tuesday evening roundup

First of all, GOOD RIDDANCE. It's about f*ing time. Here's to more where that came from.

And [please forgive the obvious statement that will follow; I am framing the links, not insulting your intelligence] it, i.e. the contractor takeover of the national agenda--is not just a waste of money; it has a detrimental effect on innovation and policy. Even the contractors grow fat and happy, knowing they have a meal ticket. Only their lobbyists are exercising their muscles. The Sunday Post had a whole section on the anniversary of the moon landing, and the gist of it was, "we've come a long way... back."

Meanwhile, amateur astronomers are finding holes in Jupiter's atmosphere. What the f* have I been doing with my free time?

On a different note, this is impressive.

Back to the theme of food and the free market: before you cry socialism at Michael Pollan's thoughts, keep in mind that agriculture in this country already constitutes its own welfare state; it's not more socialistic to re-skew the system so it's not subsidizing the worst possible food.

Interesting thought: can anyone be trusted these days the way Walter Cronkite was? Some of the responses baffle me, particularly Deepak Chopra's. The Dalai Lama's not selling anything but peace, my a$$. In the most literal sense of the concept, he's sold books. But the bigger issue is, nobody’s always right. You know how I feel about Jon Stewart, but he’s not--he can’t be (a) perfectly informed or (b) right about everything. Even he knows that. You can trust someone's intentions without accepting their all-knowing authority.

It's funny-- I absolutely agree that this would be a waste of public funds, but only because of the length and expense. We actually had an in-house version... so it was free or almost free, but it was AWFUL. The topic was incorporating humor into oral presentations. The people teaching the class had very mediocre presentation skills. It was sad. They did bring in a comedian for about twenty minutes--that probably cost money--but he salvaged the whole thing, made it worthwhile.

Okay, first but least of all, having returned from China to the East Coast, I know that I wouldn't want anyone wasting my time afterward. More importantly: seriously? I mean, the guy shows you his ID, which has his address, and you're still going to give him crap for being in his own house? That would be when you apologize and leave.

Moving on... I can say a lot about bilingual children, because I grew up as one and also studied language acquisition back in the day. This article misses some major points, one being that bilingual kids learn to think differently about language. They learn to separate the word from the thing, earlier on. I can also say, having learned several languages the hard way, in addition to the two that I learned the easy way, and having observed other people learn languages the hard way, the way you think about language is huge. People can be their own worst enemies, either because they don't get it or they're too lazy to get it. It being that you're not sticking a bunch of new words into a system you already know; you have to learn a whole new system. And the sooner you get over yourself and stop fighting it, the sooner you start talking.