Wednesday News

Good Day Conflucians!!

It’s another hot day in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. I’m hearing weather-wise we may be over the summer/heat hump in the next few days and headed for fall type weather. It can’t come too soon for me. Let’s see what we can dig up in the news today.

It’s Slater Time seems to be the new slogan from yesterday’s news about the flight attendant who dramatically made some career changes:

Steven Slater is the Susan Boyle of fed-up employees. On Monday morning, he was just a regular underappreciated working stiff. By evening, he was a viral sensation, the man who stepped up to a microphone and did what so many of us have dreamed of doing — only bigger, better and more dramatically than we’d probably ever imagined. Oh, he dreamed a dream, all right.

…he got on the plane’s public address system, and as the plane pulled up to the gate, said something to the effect of, “To the fucking asshole that told me to fuck off, it’s been a good 28 years!” He then grabbed some beer off the beverage cart, activated the inflatable evacuation slide, slid off the plane, ran to the parking lot and drove home.

For that he got arrested and charged with a federal crime. Apparently pulling the exit slide is a big no no. The latest is he’s now out on bail:

Steven Slater left a Bronx detention center Tuesday night. He said he was grateful for the growing support after the incident a day earlier.

“It’s been very, very appreciated. And it seems like something here has resonated with a few people and that’s kind of neat,” Slater told CNN-affiliate WABC as he exited the jail.

Now if we could all collectively do that with our failed, buffoon of a commander and chief, and all the failbots at the same time. It’s Slater Time.

Also from yesterday, a plane crashed killing Ted Stevens and a few others. Here’s some more on the story:

Although four people perished along with former Sen. Ted Stevens in an Alaska plane crash Monday, the death toll would’ve been higher had it not been for four Good Samaritans who raced to the crash site, National Guardsmen said today.

“Undoubtedly, if they hadn’t been there, not only might they not have survived the night, our extracation would’ve been much more difficult,” National Guardsman Technical Sgt. Kristofer Abel told “Good Morning America” today. “They helped us enormously.”

The volunteers, two emergency medical technicians, a doctor and a nurse, were dropped into the region by aircraft and hiked more than 1,000 feet to the crash site, investigators said. When they arrived, they found the plane on a 30-degree slope but largely intact. One injured survivor had already climbed out on his own. The volunteers performed emergency treatment on the survivors and stayed with them overnight, the Guardsmen said.

There were some primaries yesterday. At MSNBC their pushing the Obama victory in CO and the damage to the GOP with a couple of Tea Party victories:

The Tea Party wins again with Buck’s victory in Colorado… But could the Tea Party end up costing the GOP two or more Senate seats?… The White House snaps its losing streak with Bennet’s victory in Colorado… Another round of overtime for Deal and Handel?… Overall, the Democrats had a pretty good night… The only downsides: Dayton’s win in Minnesota’s gubernatorial primary and the fact that Linda McMahon is going to force them to spend a lot of money… Yesterday’s Rangel debacle… It’s NBC/WSJ poll day… And profiling MO-4

That’s their summary. Read on for more of their opinions. CNN also covers the same issues and the same opinions:

An incumbent U.S. senator with help from the White House held off a tough primary challenge in Colorado, a former wrestling executive easily won the Republican nomination for the Senate in Connecticut, and a dramatic runoff for the Republican governor’s nomination in Georgia was too close to call on a busy primary night Tuesday.

Four states went to the polls with high-profile primaries for governors and the U.S. Senate. Three of the races for governor kept candidates and supporters biting their nails into the early morning hours.

And funny enough, WaPo also has similar opinions:

Sen. Michael Bennet (D) of Colorado turned back a sharp challenge from former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff on Tuesday night on a busy day of primaries that offered fresh clues about the anti-establishment mood of voters and the strength of the “tea party” movement.

Bennet’s victory came after a nasty and often personal campaign between a political novice-turned-senator and a legislative-insider-turned-insurgent. His victory provided a welcome boost to President Obama, who had put his prestige and the muscle of his political organization behind Bennet’s candidacy.

In the state’s fiercely contested Republican Senate primary, Weld County prosecutor Ken Buck, a favorite of tea party activists, defeated former lieutenant governor Jane Norton, the choice of the GOP establishment in Colorado and Washington.

The Colorado races were the marquee events on a day that also included competitive statewide contests in Georgia, Connecticut and Minnesota.

My favorite quote though is from the analysis at MSNBC:

If Obama didn’t have coattails in a Democratic primary in Colorado, the White House would have some really big concerns… To say the White House is “relieved” is an understatement. The idea of dealing with a “Bill Clinton’s candidate defeated Barack Obama’s candidate” headline was beyond depressing to the West Wing.

USA Today also has a round up with a bit more on the Minnesota race:

With ex-Sen. Mark Dayton’s wee-hours win in Minnesota’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, we can declare a trend: In this week’s big primary races, Democrats tended to stick with establishment candidates while Republicans preferred the insurgents.

Still TBD: The knock-down, drag-out Georgia gubernatorial primary, where Sarah Palin fave Karen Handel and ex-congressman Nathan Deal appear headed towards a recount.

Go here for USA Today’s fun interactive election map for 2010. It’s fun, and everyone can play.

And speaking of fun and politics, the US Dollar hits a 15 year low compared to the Japanese Yen:

The greenback fell as much as 0.83% against the Japanese yen to ¥84.73 on Wednesday, before paring back some of those losses to trade around ¥84.91.

It was the dollar’s lowest level against the yen since 1995, when it traded around ¥84.81.

Both the dollar and yen are typically seen as low risk trades during times of economic uncertainty, so downbeat economic data can often boost their value against other foreign currencies.

But the yen’s strength is also viewed as a worrisome sign for Japan, as it makes exporting products to the U.S. more expensive for Japanese companies, said Phil Streible, a senior market strategist with futures broker Lind-Waldock.

Switching gears a bit, there’s a study about social networking showing it’s over taking email:

A new study conducted by market researcher Nielsen reveals that Americans are spending almost a quarter of their online time checking in with friends on social networking sites and blogs — more than double the time they spend checking their emails.

In June 2010, the average American spent 22.7 percent of their Internet time on social networks (up from 15.8 percent in June 2009), 10.2 percent of their time playing online games (up from 9.3 percent this time last year) and just 8.3 percent of their time checking and replying to emails (down almost 30 percent year-on-year).

“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities — social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin in a report released on August 2.

Another study is showing how horribly bad our math books are:

Taken very literally, not all students are created equal — especially in their math learning skills, say Texas A&M University researchers who have found that not fully understanding the “equal sign” in a math problem could be a key to why U.S. students underperform their peers from other countries in math.

“About 70 percent of middle grades students in the United States exhibit misconceptions, but nearly none of the international students in Korea and China have a misunderstanding about the equal sign, and Turkish students exhibited far less incidence of the misconception than the U.S. students,” note Robert M. Capraro and Mary Capraro of the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M.

They have been trying to evaluate the success of math education through students’ interpretation of the equal sign. They have published several articles on this topic, with the most recent one published in the February 2010 issue of the journal Psychological Reports.

Students who exhibit the correct understanding of the equal sign show the greatest achievement in mathematics and persist in fields that require mathematics proficiency like engineering, according to their research.

“The equal sign is pervasive and fundamentally linked to mathematics from kindergarten through upper-level calculus,” Robert M. Capraro says. “The idea of symbols that convey relative meaning, such as the equal sign and “less than” and “greater than” signs, is complex and they serve as a precursor to ideas of variables, which also require the same level of abstract thinking.”

The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes.

One cause of the problem might be the textbooks, the research shows.

The Texas A&M researchers examined textbooks in China and the United States and found “Chinese textbooks provided the best examples for students and that even the best U.S. textbooks, those sponsored by the National Science Foundation, were lacking relational examples about the equal sign.”

And finally, some weird news of the say, someone has developed a prototype coffin that screws into the ground:

They’re not making any more real estate; not until we colonize other planets at least. Laying out our dead horizontally, and leaving them in peace forever, is becoming an expensive proposition. That’s why inventor Donald Scruggs has come up with the screw-in coffin.

Holding a body vertically, it is screwed down into the ground securely, to optimize graveyards’ use of space. It can be screwed in manually or with a machine, and designed to take into account the density of the earth where it’s used.

So not only are we screws now, we may be screwed after we’re dead. Yea, I made that joke. OK, that’s a bit of what’s happening. Chime in with what you’re finding.