From June to October 1985, my home town looked like this:
(Don't you) forget about John Hughes.
Via Talking Points Memo, the founder of the company that paid a $1.7 billion fine for defrauding Medicare—also the same guy leading the effort to derail health insurance reform—answered some questions on CNN today:
First, on the 45th anniversary of President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act into law, Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Second, John Hughes died this afternoon. He was 59.
Third, Britain has had unusually squishy summer, which only matters because I'm spending the entire last half of August there. Oh, it also matters to anyone trying to fly out of the U.K.
Via Andrew Sullivan, 329 hot-air balloons taking off from Chambley, France, in time lapse.
Via the Economist's Gulliver blog, a Conan O'Brien segment from last year with Louis CK about how much we take for granted:
Via How We Drive, a Fairfax, Va., man gets off with a warning after helping a gaggle of geese cross a highway:
When Jozsef Vamosi stopped to help a gaggle of geese cross the Fairfax County Parkway, he found himself ticketed for jaywalking. On June 18, Mr. Vamosi sighted three large geese and eight smaller ones attempting to cross four lanes of fast-moving traffic. In a move reminiscent of the children's classic "Make Way for Ducklings," he pulled over, got out of his car and waved the geese across, standing in the path of traffic and shouting "Move, move, move." The geese made it across unscathed, but Mr. Vamosi attracted the attention of a Fairfax police officer, who repeatedly ordered him out of the road and concluded by handing him a ticket.
District Court Judge Thomas E. Gallahue acknowledged that it was difficult to figure out the right thing to do in such a situation. ... Judge Gallahue said he would dismiss the case as long as Mr. Vamosi remained on good behavior for the next six months. He wisely noted that "I think we have to be careful when we do a thing we think is for the greater good that the consequence isn't more dangerous." And it's worth recalling that before Mr. and Mrs. Mallard completed their dangerous (if fictional) journey with little Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack, Officer Michael had arranged for the cooperation of the police department.
Some already know my feelings about Canada geese—"Kitchen Sink" category indeed—so I might have just shooed them back whence they came, but I woulnd't want to see them get run over. Still: it's kind of cute.
(By way of explanation why I'm being wery wery qwiet today.)
Actually, I'm hunting financial accounting (Duke) and bugs (client). Like this one, which shows one of the perils of refactoring. See if you can spot my stupidity:
Original code
private void OldMethod
{
bool canChangeThing =
(
_isCompany |
_isClient &
(
someConditionA == true |
someConditionB == true
)
);
if (canChangeThing)
{
// do stuff
}
}
Refactored code
private bool CanChangeThing
{
get
{
return (
_isCompany |
_isClient &
!(null == _thing) &&
(
someConditionA == true |
someConditionB == true
)
);
}
}
private void OldMethod
{
if (CanChangeThing)
{
// do stuff
}
}
Fixed bug
private bool CanChangeThing
{
get
{
return (
_isCompany |
(_isClient &
!(null == _thing) &&
(
someConditionA == true |
someConditionB == true
)
)
);
}
}
private void OldMethod
{
if (CanChangeThing)
{
// do stuff
}
}
The sound you hear is me hitting my head on my desk until it stops hurting.
I did some landing practice yesterday morning: four at Waukegan and one at Chicago Executive. A quick review of my Google Earth track shows that my turns to final are getting much more consistent (within 350 m now) and my final approaches are right down the center line. I still need to work on squaring my turn from crosswind to downwind; I'm turning too early which makes the downwind leg slightly oblique. (By the time I'm abeam the numbers, though, I'm where I should be—about 1400 m from the touchdown point.)
It helped that yesterday's weather was glorious: clear, light winds, cool air, and unlimited visibility:
A Wisconsin jury has convicted a couple of murder after they allowed their 11-year-old daughter to die right in front of them:
Dale Neumann, 47, was convicted in the March 23, 2008, death of his daughter, Madeline, from undiagnosed diabetes. Prosecutors contended he should have rushed the girl to a hospital because she couldn't walk, talk, eat or speak. Instead, Madeline died on the floor of the family's rural Weston home as people surrounded her and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing.
Neumann, who once studied to be a Pentecostal minister, testified Thursday that he believed God would heal his daughter and he never expected her to die. God promises in the Bible to heal, he said.
"If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God," Neumann testified. "I am not believing what he said he would do."
No, if you go to the doctor, you're saving your daughter's life. Or put another way, Proverbs 16:18.
Seriously: praying is fine, especially if it makes the supplicant or sick person feel better. I believe this even though I think prayer acts through a placebo effect (when it works at all, which is usually no more often than random chance). Praying for someone's recovery at her hospital bed is positively admirable, as it combines a demonstrated placebo effect with actual medical care.
What is not acceptable, what is actually kind of depraved, what I hope outrages my Christian, Jewish, and Muslim friends as much as it does me, is to have a prayer group stand around watching your own child die in agony on the floor of your house.
I find it odd that Wisconsin Public Radio's report used the word "unrepentant." I'm absolutely sure he fully repents his sins within his understanding of his religion. He just doesn't think letting his daughter die horribly while he and his friends watched qualifies. Fortunately for the last glowing embers of the Enlightenment, the people of Wisconsin think it does.
Leave it to Krugman:
The essence is really quite simple: regulation of insurers, so that they can't cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance.
...[W]hat it means for the individual will be that insurers can’t reject you, and if your income is relatively low, the government will help pay your premiums.
That's it. Any commentator who whines that he just doesn't understand it is basically saying that he doesn’t want to understand it.
The article he's reacting to is also worth reading.