Pay your iPod to Mock Sarah Palin

So the co-founder of Twitter is finally actually a genius by inventing a tiny credit-card-swiper you can plug into your iPod. It's like personal PayPal.

And you can't actually do what my header promises, but Slate showcases the runners-up in its rather-meanspirited "write like Sarah Palin contest." Though needling, it's also amusing. My favorite entry:

It was only then, after I had removed the saddle from the moose, that I noticed the sweet sound of the warblers singing while perched on the fence post reminding me that unlike New York, Wasilla would always have my heart which not only pumps red, but also white and blue.

This one is also amazing:

Reaching the peak of Igikpak, that majestic mount, feeling the smooth Alaskan wind rustle against my cheeks, watching over this vast yet tender land that epitomized so much of America's resplendent pulchritude, and slowly squeezing the trigger on the wolf cub I'd been tracking through my crosshairs, I suddenly felt in my heart something I had always known to be true: the capital-gains tax must be eliminated.

Also, a note for my Facebook readers: All these posts are actually fed from my blog. That's why the headers don't come through. Someday, I'll try to fix it. Until then, maybe you want to bookmark or RSS the original.

Change the Country, One Pledge at a Time

Victor Davis Hanson shares his main suggestions for immediately reversing America's governance disaster on his personal blog. My favorite suggestions? Enact balanced-budget amendments, cut right to a fair or flat tax, outlaw naming federal projects after politicians.

And an Arkansas 10-year-old refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance until gays and lesbians can marry—that is, until "racism and sexism and discrimination are ended" in this country. Of course CNN nabs him for a jolly little interview. Props for the idealism, not for the ignorance.

Little Will speaks ridiculously articulately, even were he a grown-up, but someone needs to explain to him that a) if he waits for America to "live up to its ideals" and erase evil, he'll wait literally until Kingdom come and 2) a homosexual marriage isn't actually a marriage because, well, marriage isn't just two people now legally allowed to have sex and share tax returns and hospital visits. It's an institution for preserving society, e.g. a mental health, stability, and joy preserver for the couple and baby farm for the world. I don't like it either, but at least I get it.

How to Get Cheap Healthcare For You and Your Turkey

I came across a sweet, free ebook detailing how people with no or poor insurance can get good healthcare, cheap. You have to go through an email-wall and give them your name and email address, but I put in a fake name and my junk email address to see what was inside. Even for people with health insurance (like me), it offers great cost-saving tips to reduce your copay or not max your deductible.

As for that turkey, well, this genius goof-off video from the White House, of all places, demonstrates not just excellent new media but excellent social new media (ugh, what a phrase) for which Obama's team is, rightly, famous. It previews the presidentially-pardoned Thanksgiving turkey's "freedom walk" with just the right amount of good-natured satire.

Babies: Delicious

I couldn't help but laugh hysterically at this picture of the Pope and a baby:

Recession Stories

Reading this beautifully-written and lengthy article in the Washington Post about a studded-resume '09 grad moving home to Montana for lack of work recalled a few similar articles I've read lately. Links, then thoughts.

This in the Washington Times notes that the recession has meant means fewer divorces—divorce is costly.

Another beautifully-written piece, by my friend Katie Rose in Hillsdale's Collegian, evidences the massive difficulties my college class has had finding work since graduation in May.

It's annoying to attempt at something to say on a subject receiving so much press. "The biggest depression since the Great Depression" (which is actually nothing like) probably generates several jobs as a news story simply by offering starving reporters something to print. It's like new takes on the recession create an entire cottage industry.

I'm one of the lucky ones: Somehow, I managed to snag a good job. A few months of steady paychecks have ameliorated several months of blood-pressure-driving searches, frustration, anxiety, and one narrow miss with a retracted offer. Still, in a city with above-average bills and a pile of student loans to pay with more anxiety about the difficulties of shedding them before the scheduled 20 years, money is still not a comfortable subject.

But I'm not sure that's all bad. As the WaPo article illustrates, stripping money reveals vastly more important essentials (with side benefits like producing some self-restraint in areas like marital conflict, as above, and people now paying off their credit cards). I mean, it would be nice and certainly fiscally responsible to bank most of what I make rather than divide it among payments, but an immediate fix to that would not teach the discipline necessary to keep me in that preferable situation. Plus I also would never have realized that I value, more deeply than I can express, that Nathaniel is near, even if we did have a weird wedding or even if he does get "expensive." Or that all I really want most of the time is to read and sleep, not to go out and run up a huge bar tab in Jimmy Choos. Or that it's not that big a deal if it takes forever for an author to get back on edits and I don't get home after work until 7:30. .

Nothing really matters. Except what does.

Skewering Civilian Trials for Terrorists

NPR (of all outlets) records this brilliant exchange between Sen. Lindsey Graham and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder:

GRAHAM: Can you give me a case in United States history where a (sic) enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I've made --

SEN. GRAHAM: We're making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I'll answer it for you. The answer is no.

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: Well, I think --

SEN. GRAHAM: The Ghailani case -- he was indicted for the Cole bombing before 9/11. And I didn't object to it going into federal court. But I'm telling you right now. We're making history and we're making bad history. And let me tell you why.

If bin Laden were caught tomorrow, would it be the position of this administration that he would be brought to justice?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: He would certainly be brought to justice, absolutely.

SEN. GRAHAM: Where would you try him?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: Well, we'd go through our protocol. And we'd make the determination about where he should appropriately be tried.

Cutting out a few things, continuing:

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, let me ask you this. Okay, let me ask you this. Let's say we capture him tomorrow. When does custodial interrogation begin in his case?

If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: Again I'm not -- that all depends. I mean, the notion that we --

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, it does not depend. If you're going to prosecute anybody in civilian court, our law is clear that the moment custodial interrogation occurs the defendant, the criminal defendant, is entitled to a lawyer and to be informed of their right to remain silent.

The big problem I have is that you're criminalizing the war, that if we caught bin Laden tomorrow, we'd have mixed theories and we couldn't turn him over -- to the CIA, the FBI or military intelligence -- for an interrogation on the battlefield, because now we're saying that he is subject to criminal court in the United States. And you're confusing the people fighting this war.

What would you tell the military commander who captured him? Would you tell him, "You must read him his rights and give him a lawyer"? And if you didn't tell him that, would you jeopardize the prosecution in a federal court?

ATTY GEN. HOLDER: We have captured thousands of people on the battlefield, only a few of which have actually been given their Miranda warnings.

With regard to bin Laden and the desire or the need for statements from him, the case against him at this point is so overwhelming that we do not need to --

SEN. GRAHAM: Mr. Attorney General, my only point -- the only point I'm making, that if we're going to use federal court as a disposition for terrorists, you take everything that comes with being in federal court. And what comes with being in federal court is that
the rules in this country, unlike military law -- you can have military operations, you can interrogate somebody for military intelligence purposes, and the law-enforcement rights do not attach.

Props to Sen. Graham's factchecking staff. Nice prep for that.

Soft on Science

A fascinating City Journal article discusses why American kids suck at math–not just in general, but also when compared to students in other developed countries: the prevalence of "theories lacking any evidence of success and that emphasize political and social ends, not mastery of mathematics."

You thought the relativist reconstructionist deconstructionists only masticated the humanities? Read on:

During the 1970s and 1980s, educators in reading, English, and history argued that the traditional curriculum needed to be more “engaging” and “relevant” to an increasingly alienated and unmotivated—or so it was claimed—student body. Some influential educators sought to dismiss the traditional curriculum altogether, viewing it as a white, Christian, heterosexual-male product that unjustly valorized rational, abstract, and categorical thinking over the associative, experience-based, and emotion-laden thinking supposedly more congenial to females and certain minorities.

Those trying to overthrow the traditional curriculum found mathematics a hard nut to crack, however, because of the sequential nature of its content through the grades and its relationship to high school chemistry and physics. Nevertheless, education faculty eventually figured out how to reimagine the mathematics curriculum, too, so that it could march under the banner of social justice. As Alan Schoenfeld, the lead author of the high school standards in the 1989 NCTM report, put it, “the traditional curriculum was a vehicle for . . . the perpetuation of privilege.” The new approach would change all that.

Two theories lie behind the educators’ new approach to math teaching: “cultural-historical activity theory” and “constructivism.” According to cultural-historical activity theory, schooling as it exists today reinforces an illegitimate social order. Typical of this mindset is Brian Greer, a mathematics educator at Portland State University, who argues “against the goal of ‘algebra for all’ on the grounds that . . . most individuals in our society do not need to have studied algebra.” According to Greer, the proper approach to teaching math “now questions whether mathematics as a school subject should continue to be dominated by mathematics as an academic discipline or should reflect more fully the range of mathematical activities in which humans engage.” The primary role of math teachers, constructivists say in turn, shouldn’t be to explain or otherwise try to “transfer” their mathematical knowledge to students; that would be ineffective. Instead, they must help the students construct their own understanding of mathematics and find their own math solutions.

Ah. Find your OWN math solution. There IS no right answer. Not even in math. Wish my dad believed that. I'd have gotten through algebra lickety-split. Oh wait. Except I wouldn't have gotten through algebra. I would have merely believed I'd gotten algebra, while actually getting...nothing.Why don't they just send the kids off to recess all day? Much better than 8 hours of literally mindless indoctrination.

No wonder people are into unschooling.