Seven Degrees from Normal

Two people, eighteen years of marriage, seven college degrees.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Family math

L = S/B

You can determine L, the number of lights that will be left on in broad daylight in the average house, by dividing S, the average number of ads for scary movies that appear during one hour of Nickelodeon programming, by B, the number of boys aged twelve and under in the household.

We are seeing L-values of 5 +/- 2 these days. I'll be glad when all the Halloween movies have debuted.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Kind of surprising

Few Black Churches Get Funds
Small Percentage Participate in Bush's Faith-Based Initiative
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
. . . .
Black churches in the Northeast and those with self-identified progressive congregations and liberal theologies were most likely to be taking part in the program, a finding that surprised the researchers, who concluded that the White House has not used the program as a political tool as some critics have suspected.
But not really:
"The thing is that the churches that are most likely to actually do social outreach or social ministry are liberal churches, they are not conservative churches," said David A. Bositis, a senior research associate at the center who conducted the study.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

R.I.P.

Couldn't think what to say about Steve Irwin's death--I'd always expected something awful to happen to him, but I really thought it would be more along the lines of losing a limb here and there over the years. Hard to believe he's just gone.

Harry Hutton put it nicely:

His death is especially tragic when you consider how many people there are on TV who deserve to be attacked by stingrays.

Friday, September 01, 2006

20 million

Your tax dollars at work:

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. command in Baghdad is seeking bidders for a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for monitoring the tone of Iraq news stories filed by U.S. and foreign media.

Proposals, due Sept. 6, ask companies to show how they'll "provide continuous monitoring and near-real time reporting of Iraqi, pan-Arabic, international, and U.S. media," according to the solicitation issued last week.


This could almost be a good idea, if they'd actually listen to what they're told. But somehow I don't think the Pentagon is paying $20 million to listen to a bunch of bad news.