The new Newsweek is out...

...and Kaus isn’t impressed:

The general impression: staleness, meaning a lack of both a) editorial imagination and b) news.  Readers could be forgiven for checking for dust to make sure the magazine didn’t drop from the attic where they stored it around 1999.

I’ve been unable to understand all the excitement about Tina Brown since back in the day when she hired on at Punch to do what I guess was supposed to be a “personality” column.  (My reaction at the time: Who is this person, and what’s the point of giving her all that space?)  Admittedly (and to my continued amazement), since then she’s gone from strength to strength.  (Shows how much I know.)

But couldn’t the mag’s official relaunch have been better served than with yet another profile of Hillary Clinton, and yet another “influential women” article?^[1]  After all, it ain’t named LifestyleWeek.  At least not yet.

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Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 21:21:09 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Security, there’s nothing like it!

Via Radley via Glenn:

COURTLAND[, VA]—A Southampton Middle School student was suspended Thursday for opening an exterior door for a visitor.

“Students are not allowed to open the doors, and if anyone does, they will be suspended,” said Dr. Wayne K. Smith, executive director of administration and personnel.

A districtwide policy prohibiting students and staff from opening doors to the outside was recently adopted after a $10,800 security system was installed...

All of the schools’ doors are locked during the day. Visitors must ring a buzzer and look into a camera before office personnel can let them in. - Tidewater News, February 26, 2011

Any school district that employs a doctorate-level “executive director of administration and personnel” is most likely way overstaffed and needs to have its budget cut immediately.

(Oh, and I’d love to have their “security” contract.  In 2008, Southampton Schools spent almost $85,000 for security cameras.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:09:42 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Iran arrives late, misses the point

The Guardian:

Iran has threatened to boycott the London Olympics unless the organisers replace the official logo, which Tehran claims spells out the word “Zion”.

Erm, when the logo was announced (back in 2007), there was a whole big discussion about what it “looked like.”  And the consensus was that although it sucked, “Zion” had nothing to do with it.

(Aaah, they’ve probably realized that all their athletes and coaches were planning to defect.)

Via Meryl via Insty.

Elsewhere:
Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:37:50 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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“And seriously, where are you going to go?”

Answer:  Here.
Please stow hot beverages safely before departing.

(Via:  Tam)

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 18:12:16 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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England tries becoming Indiana

Time addicts such as Fuzzy Curmudgeon Nathan may find this report on events across the pond of interest:

Hey Britain, steel yourself for Double Summer Time.  This is the Coalition’s latest wheeze to boost tourism/save energy/cut road deaths by making our evenings lighter later.  More specifically they’re considering changing from GMT to GMT+1 in the winter, and from GMT+1 to GMT+2 in the summer.  This doesn’t increase the amount of daylight we have, that's physically impossible, but it does shift more of the available daylight past breakfast to a time when you're actually awake.  In June Double Summer Time would mean it’d stay light until roughly 11pm, but conversely in late December the sun wouldn’t rise anywhere in Britain before 9am.  [Links in original. -O.G.]

In essence, the United Kingdom’s government wants to replicate should-be-CST Indiana by bumping its clocks ahead to match... Warsaw?

This is astronomically perverse. The sun takes precisely one hour to travel through 15 degrees of longitude, but the longitudes of Belfast and Warsaw are nearly 30 degrees apart.  We’d be joining a CET timezone that’s twice as wide as it ought to be, with the sun taking two hours to travel from one side to the other rather than just one.

...except that being further north, the effect would be even greater than it is in Indy.

•Sunrise (winter):  There’d be five (yes five) months of the year when the sun rises later than 8am, and two months when it rises later than 9am  (ugh, that’d be miserable)
•Sunrise (summer):  There’d only be one month of the year when the sun rises before 6am  (hurrah, this minimises the amount of wasted daylight while most people are asleep)
•Sunset (winter):  There’d be only three months of the year when the sun sets before 6pm, and just one when it sets before 5pm  (hurrah, that’d be great)
•Sunset (summer):  There’d be four months of the year when the sun sets later than 9pm, and two months when it sets later than 10pm  (hurrah if you're outdoors) (boo if you’re trying to get to sleep)

And what’s worse, if “London time” is actually to be an hour ahead of Greenwich, when do you celebrate New Years?  (Snappy answer:  Twice.)

Given the other important things presently going on in the world, the cynic in me suggests that the...erm...timing of Coalition’s focus on this issue may be an attempt at an “Hey, look, squirrels!” distraction for the British electorate.

Given that DG’s post already has 40-some comments, one fears they’ve succeeded.


Previously:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:30:22 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Surrounded!

 

We have a “rain changing to 2-5" of snow” forecast for central Indiana, then temps. back into the 50s by Sunday.  Well, maybe it’ll keep the Democrats away.

UPDATE (110225 17:23):  Roberta has a report.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Dear Diary... at 00:15:25 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Get ’cher tickets!

It's blogmeet time again!

Monon Food Company is at 6420 Cornell Ave. Indianapolis, IN 46220. Right next to the Monon Trail.  Brunch menu runs until 3:00, so brunchers may want to arrive earlier.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 22:33:18 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Mitch blows it...

but then...

If you know your goals and if your beliefs are strong, you don’t stumble over what you’re saying.  Every day Mitch sounds more and more like George Bush, and less and less like Ronald Reagan.

Daniels sure does seem to have to clarify a lot of things after-the-fact.
- Andy, in AOS sidebar

Daniels’s other problem is he persists in playing Charlie Brown to the Democrats’ Lucy.  If he hasn’t learned by now– after two terms dealing with Pat Bauer as House Democrat leader– he’ll never learn, and the top of the Republican ticket is no place for somebody who thinks he’s playing ping-pong when the Democrats are playing Rollerball.

Oh well, I really never thought he was all that interested in being president in the first place.

Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:38:38 GMT | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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“Was an actual leopard involved with those shoes, and if so, did she shoot it herself?”

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 22:01:28 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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92 reasons for *NOT* donating to the National Republican Congressional Committee

And here they are:
source

Related:

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 23:00:36 GMT | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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