December 2006 Archives

Well, I'm off to Thailand for a nice 2-week vacation. I truly procrastinated *way* too much before I left, but I guess that just means I'll have to kick it into overdrive upon my return. Before I left, I wanted to clear out the "blog queue". Months ago, Chicklet was wonderful enough to buy me an introductory flying lesson for my birthday. The instructor gave me a quick 20-minute on the ground lesson, and then Chicklet and I went up in a tiny propeller plane!

Here I am preparing to take-off:

You turn a plane with foot pedals on the ground -- it takes some getting used to. But I managed to take-off with only a little help from the instructor.

Up in the air, looking down at NJ:

Once airborne, the 30mph wind made things a bit bumpy, and since my body was tense from being so focused, my stomach was really in knots when we landed. (To be clear, I had nothing to do with the landing :-) .) But, overall, it was a great experience, and a lot of fun to be flying a plane.

Mission Accomplished!

I'll be celebrating New Year's in Bangkok, so everyone: have a wonderful 2007!

Twas the night before Christmas and across the states
Students were working soon after clearing their plates.
Writing up proofs -- leaving no function to derive
In hopes that a distraction soon would arrive.

The grad students, lit by the glow of laptops
Hoped to avoid cheek pinches by their grandpops.
Running regressions 'til their faces were blue;
Why couldn't that t-value stay above two!

When out from the inbox came a loud ding!
What could this email on Christmas Eve bring?
Problem set solutions?! who could have thunk
It's enough to make anyone want to get drunk.

"Should I look at my score?" Maybe tomorrow;
Why fill this festive night with such a great sorrow?
"I'll help my brother with math -- that I can do,
Especially since he's still in grade number two!"

But how could I get such a mundane Christmas gift?
Doesn't my preceptor at all get the drift?
Maybe in return I should buy him a clue:
Though I guess that's what happens when your TA's a Jew!

Lots of news today, at least from my perspective. First, JK opened the door to her "do not disturb" room! After a struggle to get inside, the reward is a simple game of hangman that reveals the Title to Book 7....(stop reading if you want to try the door yourself)...Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The Washington Post article leads one to believe that JK's use of "hallow" as a noun refers to some sort of saint, but some snooping on fan web sites leads me to a different conclusion. Hallows in this context most likely refers to Horcuxes, or more specifically, the historically-relevant artifacts that Voldemort chose for his Horcruxes. The real-life connection is The Hallows of Ireland, four mystical objects with special powers. These four artifacts are a subset of the The Thirteen Treasures of Britain, which include objects very similar to those already seen in the series: an invisibility cloak and wizarding chess. In fact, someone just added the following to the Hallows article:

It has also been recently confirmed that these four treasures will be illustrated in book seven of the hit series, Harry Potter. It is unknown what role they will play, however, it is rumoured the main character will have to search for these treasures.

Take that WaPo reporting!

Second item: Governor Corzine signs civil unions into law! Four states down (or five, depending on whether you count CA), 46 to go :)

Third: What the hell was Sandy Berger thinking? Hiding classified documents under trailers, cutting them into pieces, and throwing them out! My gut tells me that these documents were specifically damaging to Berger, and not necessarily the Clinton admin in general. I can't imagine going that far out on a limb for a former President. But, then again, I wouldn't have thought Berger was capable of such a ridiculously stupid act in the first place.

Less than a month after I celebrated the exit of process-story-writing Jim VandeHei, in comes someone (potentially) worse.

AP spokesman John Stokes confirms. "John Solomon is departing at year's end for the Washington Post," he wrote to us in an email that reproduces verbatim the memo we posted above.

In case, you don't know/remember John Solomon, he was the AP reporter that wrote the story about Harry Reid's boxing tickets. You know, the story where Reid followed the law, McCain broke the law (well, tried to), Reid voted against the wishes of his supposed donors, and yet Solomon decides to write a hit peice about Reid? Oh, and Solomon was also the one who tried to parlay Reid's transfer of his land to a LLC (which he also controlled) as something nefarious.

Number Two of the apparently four-part series was just released, wtihout the weird shoulder touching this time.

In case you hadn't noticed, it's gay rights week on Mindless Philosopher.

(No links since I'm Treo blogging)

Sticking with the gay rights theme from the past three posts: What is wrong with my former denomination, the Conservative Jewish movement? Today they announced three sanctioned positions for Rabbi's to take on the question of gay relations and marriage. (Leave it to us Jews to agree on three *conflicting* stances.)

The so-called "compromise" position, and the only one to propel the Conservative movement forward on this issue, would allow gay rabbis to be ordained and remove the restrictions on gay marriage. The act of sodomy, however, remains an abomination. Why is the Rehnquist court to the *left* of these rabbis?!

I have no doubt that every rabbi who marries two men knows _exactly_ what is going on in the honeymoon suite. So let's not kid ourselves. The Torah is wrong here. The sooner we accept that the faster we can move on. (We? I mean "they". I'm firmly ensconced in the reconstructionist movment now.)

And, while I'm on the topic, congrats to Mary Cheney! Janeite informs me the case law on second parent adoptions in VA is unclear to non-existant. Hopefully this happy event for the second family will instigate into some happy VA legislation. (Though I'm not holding my breath.)

And who knows, maybe today's announcement was the result of egg fusion and they won't need the case law. Mary? The world wants to know.

On the topic of last night's post, check out Blue Jersey's spoof of those Mac ads.

And, since you're already watching videos, here's MIT's new development campaign video. What is up with the lame game in the middle? As Prof.Manning would say, "This is MIT, not ITT!" Plus, I'm not sure that the development office understands that MIT students don't really care about Harvard (certainly not as much as these Princeton undergrads do). We made fun of Harvard about as much as we made fun of ourselves!

It boggles my mind that the Supreme Court might strike down local school boards' efforts to increase diversity. I understand that using race as factors in decisions is often wrong-headed (certainly when racism is involved), but when the compelling state interest is racial diversity, it makes sense that you'd have to take race into account.

I don't know much about the two desegregation systems in question (Seattle's and a county in Kentucky's), but after listening to the oral arguments in the Seattle case, their system is certainly "narrowly tailored." Racial considerations only come into play in school choice after the family's preferences, the family's school connections (e.g., where siblings attend), and proximity to the school are all examined. Race is only used as a "tie-breaker" and there are not hard-and-fast limits on the racial make-up of the schools (unlike in the KY situation). Both programs have the support of the community (though obviously not unanimous support).

It will truly be a sad day if the Court strikes down Seattle's de-segregation policy. How some justices believe that diversity in public education is not a compelling state interest, yet keeping two adults who love each other from marrying is within the purview of the state's goals is simply beyond me.

Speaking of loving adults getting married, if you live in New Jersey, the Assembly may act on the Court's mandate to give equal marriage rights to gay couples in the next couple of weeks. (The goal being to get the controversial decision out of the way before we even begin to approach the 2007 NJ election season.) I hear that only about a sixth of the 120-member state assembly members support gay marriage, but that fraction climbs every day. So, if you live in NJ, express your support for full rights by calling:

• Governor Corzine, (609) 292-6000
  
• Senate Pres. Codey (973) 731-6770
  
• Assembly Speaker Roberts: (856) 742-7600
  

Let's show these elected officials that compelling state interests start with the people's interests!