shorter star ed board: let's not be too hard on bigoted cops. honestly, it's no big deal if a cop writes "jackie chan" instead of "john doe" on the arrest papers for a chinese refugee. these things happen, after all. ¶

shorter paul k. ogden: blue indiana has a post ridiculing me. when they laugh at you, that means they're scared! ¶

indystar.com:

Would you be mind if KFC put advertising on the streets in your neighborhood if the fast-food chain had fixed all the potholes there and the city didn't have to raise your taxes to do it? How about being forced to stare at ads on the back of street sweepers and snowplows if advertisers had paid for those services?

personally, i wouldn't be mind. but i bet some people would be mind quite a bit! ¶

indy star columnist matt tully has yet another column up today about how awesome it would be if IPS could fire teachers at whim, without being hampered by pesky union rules. this is at least the third column he's written on this topic in the past month, so clearly this idea is something he's excited about. it's a shame that all these columns are based on faulty assumptions.

tully seems envision a war in our classrooms, with one side consisting of legions of inept, bumbling geriatrics who have somehow managed to hang onto their teaching jobs despite being completely incompetent, and the other side made up of wunderkinds whose unerring brilliance makes them immediately and automatically better teachers than those who have, you know, decades of teaching experience.

tully's first column with this frame in june was based on interviews with superintendent white, so it's no mystery where he got these ideas from. but in his later columns, he no longer has the excuse that he's just lazily repeating what white wanted him to. tully owns this argument now, and in order to advance it, he's using disingenuous arguments.

the disingenuousness starts right in the lead:

From the union hall to the superintendent's office, there is one point on which just about everyone agrees: Indianapolis Public Schools administrators have done an awful job of ridding the district of poor-performing teachers.

really? so if i went to the union hall and asked around, everyone would agree that IPS hasn't fired enough (or the right) teachers? seriously?

at this point, you'd be excused if you put the column down and turned away, your suspension of disbelief shattered. but the real killer comes a few paragraphs later:

Let's be clear: Nobody is rooting for any teacher to be fired. I've spent quite a bit of time in classrooms this year and repeatedly find myself thinking how much we ask of the people charged with educating children. Few people reading this -- and definitely not the person writing this -- face more day-to-day challenges than the average public school teacher.

That said, there are some bad ones. They need to go.

shorter tully: nobody is rooting for teachers to be fired, but when are we going hurry up and fire some damn teachers already?

what editor allowed these two paragraphs to appear side by side? their extreme proximity only highlights the flimsiness of the excuse. tully is transparently and full-throatedly advocating for teachers to be fired. this is his third column fantasizing about teacher firings; his hard-on for teachers getting fired practically leaps off the page.

sure, he doesn't have any particular teacher in mind—i imagine that makes the idea more appealing to him, the thought that nobody he knows would be laid off, just those people, those unnamed mystery teachers who are out there somewhere messing it up for everyone. as captain jack said, it's easier if you don't know their names. but these are real people we're talking about, and the policies tully is advocating would result in them losing their livelihoods. let's not have any pretense here—tully is rooting for teachers to be fired.

it's clear why superintendent white wants to change collective bargaining rules: experienced teachers are more expensive. he wants to fire some and bring in younger, cheaper replacements. that's the way it is in every business, and that's precisely why the seniority rules are there in the first place! the question is: why does tully keep falling for it? ¶

i have two new designs up for voting on threadless. the first is actually my first collaboration, with fellow designer alex macduff, and is a must-see for ginsberg fans:


the other is my latest glitch illustration—probably my best glitch design yet:


also, since the folks on threadless don't know anything about databending or glitch art, i posted a process blog that explains how i created the illustration. it's probably nothing new for my regular readers, though. ¶

while indiana's most outspoken birther is surely gary welsh—just yesterday he posted yet another rambling, delusional screed on the subject—abdul suggests that our state's most famous birther is in fact rep. dan burton.

from the washington independent:

"It's a good idea," said John Donnelly, a spokesman for Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who became one of the bill's co-sponsors this month. "If candidates provided that information to the Federal Election Commission you wouldn't have all this hullaballoo. You don't want to needlessly expose presidents to crazy conspiracy theories."

it's pretty hilarious to hear a spokesman for dan "head-shaped object" burton talking about "crazy conspiracy theories"—a topic that burton knows better than most.

of course, the statement is worded in such a way that it suggests burton isn't actually a birther. and it's possible that he's not, that he's simply sponsoring the bill because he knows the issue is popular with his base and he wants their support. (after all, he faces a contentious primary next year, and there's been a lot of chatter that this may finally be indiana's chance to get rid of him.) but honestly, does it really matter? effectively, it makes no difference whether burton actually believes this nonsense or whether he's only humoring the wackos in order to get votes. either way, the end result is the same.

i'd like to think that this could be the last straw for 5th-district voters—or at least part of that straw—and inspire them to finally vote him out of office. but if they weren't turned off by the whole shooting-a-watermelon-to-prove-the-clintons-are-murderers business or the loaded-gun-in-an-airport business, then i can't see this being much different. ¶

i got up this morning and checked my feeds, ready to read this morning's "behind closed doors" column, when i got a nasty surprise:


either somebody really screwed up, or somebody really screwed up. i'm now unable to view any news stories on the site without a username and password. even going to the front page of indystar.com brings up the login box, and as you can see, the website can't even pull its own headlines because of permission problems.

there are two possibilities here:

1. gannett has decided to charge for the website.
2. someone on the IT team made a massive error, rendering the entire site essentially unusable.

one can only hope that it's option 2, because i can't imagine many people wanting to pay to visit a news site where they can't even check the headlines for typos.

oh well. now we wait. hopefully the site will be fixed by end of day. if not, i guess i'll be getting my news elsewhere.

update: as of approximately 10:45 a.m., the problem appears to be fixed. the site was inaccessible for at least 2–3 hours.

2nd update: IndyStar.com access problems corrected

IndyStar.com is now fully restored after this morning’s two-hour outage caused by two brief power losses to some circuits feeding the servers, according to the company that maintains the Web site.

The wide-spread problem caused other Gannett Web sites, mainly in the eastern United States, to be inaccessible as well.¶

i use a firefox plug-in called forecastfox to keep up with the weather. the plug-in places little icons in my browser's status bar indicating current weather conditions as well as a customizable forecast (i have mine set to show me four days' worth of weather along with the RealFeel™). i jokingly refer to these icons as "the runes", so when my wife asks about the weather, i'll respond, "the runes say it's going to rain." or whatever the runes say. this is especially fun when the runes indicate that it's currently raining but it clearly isn't, and so on.

one feature of forecastfox is a little stop sign icon that typically indicates severe weather—thunderstorms, tornado alerts, flash floods, icy conditions, plague, brimstone hail, whatever. so i was surprised when i clicked the red icon today and got the following warning from the NWS, which i'll repost verbatim (meaning, with original ALL CAPS formatting intact):

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE INDIANAPOLIS IN
427 AM EDT SAT JUL 18 2009
INZ021-028>031-035>049-051>057-060>065-067>072-181800-
CARROLL-WARREN-TIPPECANOE-CLINTON-HOWARD-FOUNTAIN-
MONTGOMERY-BOONE-TIPTON-HAMILTON-MADISON-DELAWARE-
RANDOLPH-VERMILLION-PARKE-PUTNAM-HENDRICKS-MARION-
HANCOCK-HENRY-VIGO-CLAY-OWEN-MORGAN-JOHNSON-SHELBY-
RUSH-SULLIVAN-GREENE-MONROE-BROWN-BARTHOLOMEW-
DECATUR-KNOX-DAVIESS-MARTIN-LAWRENCE-JACKSON-JENNINGS-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...LAFAYETTE...FRANKFORT...
KOKOMO...CRAWFORDSVILLE...ANDERSON...MUNCIE...
INDIANAPOLIS...TERRE HAUTE...SHELBYVILLE...BLOOMINGTON...
COLUMBUS...VINCENNES...BEDFORD...SEYMOUR
427 AM EDT SAT JUL 18 2009
...UNSEASONABLY COOL WEATHER THIS WEEKEND...

A STRONG LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM IN COMBINATION WITH HIGH PRESSURE ACROSS THE NORTHERN PLAINS STATES WAS PUSHING VERY COOL AIR ACROSS CENTRAL INDIANA. PLENTY OF CLOUD COVER IS ALSO EXPECTED WHICH WILL HELP TO PREVENT TEMPERATURES FROM RISING.

HIGH TEMPERATURES ON SATURDAY ACROSS CENTRAL INDIANA ARE EXPECTED TO BE IN THE UPPER 60S TO AROUND 70...OVER 15 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL.

THE COOL AIR AND CLOUDS WILL MOVE OFF TO THE EAST ON SUNDAY AND HIGH TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO RECOVER TO LOWER AND MIDDLE 70S.

THE NORMAL HIGH TEMPERATURE AT INDIANAPOLIS ON JULY 18 IS 86 DEGREES.

THE RECORD FOR COLDEST HIGH TEMPERATURE AT INDIANAPOLIS ON JULY 18 IS 75...SET BACK IN 1883 AND 1871.

be careful! it's much more temperate than usual out there. ¶

dear star editorial staff: what's a cador?


perhaps one of the reasons the newpaper industry is dying is because they've fired so many staffers that they can't even catch typos in headlines anymore? ¶

do you have too many undesirable types voting in your district? too many elderly, poor, or minorities? try this simple remedy!

1. pass one of the strictest voter ID laws in the nation.
2. change the BMV rules to make it much harder to get or renew an ID.

voilà! now you can disenfranchise voters and blame it on identity thieves!

surprisingly, the indy star has an editorial this morning about the new BMV rules, and it doesn't even mention the danger of disenfranchisement—it just makes vague references to unspecified "rights" that shouldn't be trampled. did potential disenfranchisement not even occur to the ed board, or did they simply decide not to mention it? ¶

i still haven't quite solved the mystery of PNG databending. most of the time, the results are crap, but every once in a while you get an awesome effect i call PNG smearing. i don't know how to do it consistently, but if i put in a couple hours, i can get a few good ones:

Labels: databending

when she goes on CNN and declares that she's not!

"I am not a quitter. I am a fighter," Palin told CNN on Monday while on a family fishing trip, on the heels of her Friday bombshell announcement that she was resigning as Alaska's governor.

but seriously... by definition, sarah palin is a quitter. when the going got tough, she chose to quit. she didn't choose to fight on, as a "fighter" would have—she quit. which makes her a quitter. QED.

if you had a taste for puns, you could even call her barraquitter, and her constant twittering as qwittering (individual postings would be qweets). if photoshopping were more your style, you could create an unmotivational poster bearing her face and declaring that "winners quit and quitters win!"

if the word quitter has any meaning, then it applies to the sarah palins of the world. any definition that makes sense includes her. her own definition, apparently, is something quite different. take this quote from her resignation speech:

Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out.

in her mind, the "quitter's way out" would be... not to quit. you have to wonder whether even she believes this nonsense. ¶

shorter gary welsh: i'm disgusted by all these bloggers spreading false, mendacious rumors about sarah palin! they should be spreading false, mendacious rumors about barack obama, instead, like i do. ¶

regarding the state budget, which was finally passed last night, the indy star ed board asks, "why did it take so long?"

of course, one of the easiest and most obvious answers to this question is because the governor was more concerned about defeating the democratic budget proposal than about actually getting a budget passed.

after all, let's not forget why we went to special session in the first place. senate republicans and house democrats had reached a compromise on a budget back in april. governor daniels had even led republicans to believe that he'd support that agreement, but at the last minute he moved the goalposts and announced he wouldn't support the plan without more cuts. the plan subsequently fell apart.

if the governor hadn't pulled the old switcheroo back then, the budget would've passed and there would've been no special session. of course, that would've been bad for mitch, because almost none of his proposals had passed. the special session gave him a second chance and getting some of his policies passed—and in the end, it worked. ¶

shorter paul k ogden: southern strategy? never heard of it. ¶