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On those occasions when I consider a career in journalism, I fantasize about doing the sort of work that Daniel Gilbert did at the Bristol Herald Courier that blew open the mineral royalties story a year ago. I have the unusual ability to take enormous data sets, normalize them, and distill interesting information out of them. That doesn't have a lot of application in general (tying cherry stems in a knot with your tongue is definitely more interesting at parties), but it sure is handy in investigative journalism.
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This dog has a service girl. "If he’s about to bump into something, [she] says 'boom,' and if he needs to lift his foot to step over something, she stomps her foot on the floor."
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Senator-elect Rand Paul, who ran for office on the evils of earmarks, now says that "he will fight for Kentucky's share of earmarks and federal pork." It took him, what, a week to surrender his ideals?
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There are some CSS selectors here that I've never heard of or even seen, some of which strike me as fantastically useful. Especially the negation pseudo class.
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The story on Rand Paul reminds me of Doonesbury from 1976 (as the old fart really dates himself). Ronald Reagan was running against Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination, and Doonesbury had Zonker Harris covering the convention. The cartoon resulted in two lines that I will always remember.
First, Zonker said that he was going to support Reagan, because “Anyone who can cut taxes, not cut spending, balance the budget and not be on drugs has my vote.”
Second, Reagan took the unusual step of announcing in advance that he would choose Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker, a fairly liberal guy, as his VP nominee. In the cartoon, Zonker asked Schweiker, “How long does it take to renounce everything you have ever stood for?” And Schweiker replied, “About a week. The paperwork is incredible.”
The 30 you must memorize? I think that was *all* of them…
Auditioning for the Huffington Post? Two problems with your snippet about Paul:
1 – Your “quote” is not something that Rand Paul said, but it certainly comes across that way in your teaser. Honesty in blogging seems to be disappearing as quickly as honesty in real journalism.
2 – Context is everything. What Paul actually said is, “as long as it’s doled out transparently at the committee level and not parachuted in in the dead of night…I will advocate for Kentucky’s interests.”
And here I thought you were all about transparency in government, like, umm… it’s a *good* thing. That’s all Paul is saying. He campaigned on ending earmarks because there was nothing transparent about them. Make them transparent, and voila! They’re not so awful anymore.
That’s the opposite of true. That could only be accurate if a) my readers aren’t very smart or b) Rand Paul is in the habit of speaking about himself in the third person. I’m pretty sure A isn’t true, and this would be the first I’ve heard of B, hence the more likely option of you being wrong.
Transparency isn’t a balm that cures all wounds. If the General Assembly quite transparently carves out gerrymandered districts this winter, that doesn’t make it OK. Rand Paul ran on a platform of eliminating earmarks, and now says that, in fact, he’ll fight for them. Transparency doesn’t make that any less hypocritical. Let’s widen the context of that quote larger still:
So, yes, that thing I said.