Friday, October 3, 2008 Post comment
About a month ago, Senator McCain's campaign released an attack ad titled "Education" (watch the ad here) which says on the subject that, "Obama's one accomplishment? Legislation to teach sex education to kindergartners."
It seems pretty improbable, and a few days ago on NPR, Steve Inskeep asked McCain about it's accuracy. The Senator answered,
"It's factually correct. It's absolutely factually correct, and you can go on my Web site and you can see the exact language of the bill that Senator Obama sponsored."
When I saw Senator McCain reiterated this again to the editorial board of the Des Moines Register, I decided I'd take a look at what his site has to say.
As it turns, his site doesn't have the exact language of the bill after all, it's just a press release quoting a Fox News story which in turn quotes a National Review reporter.
"...It says curriculum in, quote, 'Any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV,' end quote. The Obama camp maintains the bill was intended to teach kindergarteners only about inappropriate touching, but Byron York, at the National Review after doing some reporting, writes, quote, 'the "touching" provision did not have the prominence that Team Obama has suggested it had, and certainly wasn't the bill's main purpose.'"
So what does the bill, which Senator Obama did not sponsor by the way, only voted for along party lines, say? I looked it up on factcheck.org,
"It's true that the phrase 'comprehensive sex education' appeared in the bill, but little else in McCain's claim is accurate. The ad refers to a bill Obama supported in the Illinois state Senate to update the sex education curriculum and make it 'medically accurate.' It would have lowered the age at which students would begin what the bill termed 'comprehensive sex education' to include kindergarten. But it mandated the instruction be "age-appropriate" for kindergarteners when addressing topics such as sexually transmitted diseases. The bill also would have granted parents the opportunity to remove their children from the class without question:"
The full article includes the specific provision of the bill and a link if you want to read the entire bill yourself, something you won't find on the McCain website.
- politics.typepad.com
With an election close at hand and a lot of TypePad members blogging about politics, we've now got a place where you can see them all together.
- What else could 700 $billion buy? (SF Gate)
SF Gate has a database of other things the bank bail out would buy. As it turns out, 6 years of universal health care, 3.4 million+ homes, 70 Hubble Space Telescopes, and would pay the wages of 22 million Americans for a year.
- The Truth About Sarah Palin (Rolling Stone)
The Myth: "She's from a small town with small-town values." -- Fred Thompson, convention speech
The Truth: Wasilla and the surrounding valley recently named the meth capital of Alaska, with 42 meth labs busted in a single year.
- McCain Suspends Campaign, Does Interview, Gives Speech (TPM)
"So John McCain has suspended his campaign. Immediately following his announcement, McCain took the opportunity to appear on CBS for an interview with Katie Couric. This morning, he gave a speech to Clinton's Global Initiative," and the senator's ads are still running for the time being.
So really, all he's suspended is answering questions from those pesky reporters, right?
- Planet Quest: New Worlds Atlas
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has an atlas of the 309 planets which have been discovered outside our home solar system. You can also follow their Twitter account to learn when new ones are discovered.
- As Mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin Cut Own Duties (Washington Post)
Amazing how little experience Palin has, "Firefighting and schools, two of the main elements of local governance, are handled by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the regional government for a huge swath of central Alaska. The state has jurisdiction over social services and environmental regulations such as stormwater management for building projects."
- Disable store links in iTunes 8 (Gizmodo)
I don't like that Apple puts arrows in iTunes which link from my library to related items in the iTunes Store. I regularly buy music, and now apps, from the iTunes store, but I want a clear separation between my stuff and shopping online.
This had been an easily disabled option before, but gone from the preferences in iTunes 8. Thankfully there is still a way to turn it off even if you have to open Terminal to do it.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008 Post comment
I really dig the new iPod Nano design Apple introduced today. They replace the stubby ones from the generation before, which left me scratching my head at their oddly proportioned screen and clickwheel. They just didn't seem up to Apple's usual standard, even the pastel colors (gone from the iPod Shuffles too) didn't quite gel. This has been a sort of theme for Apple, which tends to have trouble keeping quality up when spreading themselves to thinly with a lot of products.
We saw that again recently with the simultaneous launch of the iPhone 3G, 2.0 Software, third-party apps and MobileMe (which still seems to be down as often as up) but this morning's revamping of the entire iPod line along with the most significant redesign of iTunes in years is hopefully a good sign of things to come.
And speaking of iTunes, the new version includes a feature I've wanted pretty much since they added podcasts: per-podcast download settings. While I want every single episode of many audio shows like Astronomycast, I also subscribe to several audio and video (especially video) podcasts where I only want selected episodes.
Monday, September 8, 2008 Post comment
I loved this photo Mena posted of the Randall Museum's model railroad a few weeks ago, when she was trying to track down the KFC model.
I ran across the post again saturday while I was cleaning up my bookmarks right after re-reading this Photoshop tutorial on creating a fake scale miniature effect and wondered what would happen if I tried the scale miniature effect on a photo of a miniature.
Would I create a paradox and implode the universe?
I tweaked the color while I was at it, I like how it turned out.
- iPod Nano 4G photo leak (Engadget)
The new nano, assuming this isn't photoshopped, is seriously stylish. I'm glad to see the stubby design is gone and the clickwheel is sized to the right proportions again. The vibrant orange color is back, which seems more fitting than the pastels Apple currently offers.
Thursday, September 4, 2008 Post comment
Earlier this year, my neighborhood got a retro makeover. For a couple weeks we were living in the Castro District of the 70's (minus the bathhouses though) for a film about Harvey Milk, San Francisco's first openly gay District supervisor.
Now, the trailer is online and it includes a scene I got to be an extra in.
- E-Embarcadero line runs this Sunday (Market Street Railway Blog)
Muni will be running historic streetcar service down the southern part of The Embarcadero to AT&T Park this Sunday. The streetcars will run, free by the way, from 9-1 to coincide with the Sunday Streets road closure and street party.
The E-Embarcadero line will eventually become a permanent route, running from Fisherman's Wharf where it will help overcrowding on the F-Line, but when the F turns towards Castro at the Ferry Building, the E-Line will continue south to the Ballpark and Caltrain.
- Valencia Street Makeover (The Snitch)
One lucky block of Valencia Street will get an overhaul next spring when construction begins on widening the sidewalks (at the expense of center lane) to make it more pedestrian friendly.
- The best-designed blogs (Jim Ramsey)
Jim asks, "What blogs are so well-designed that they make you say, 'I wish my blog looked like that'? What is it about them that makes them good?".
Thursday, August 21, 2008 Post comment
As a kid, I spent a lot of time at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. The Academy offered free (or maybe it was just discounted) admission in the evenings which made it a frequent destination during the two years my sister spent going through chemotherapy at the nearby UCSF children's hospital.
Thinking back to that still chokes me up, a children's cancer ward is just not a happy place (at some point I think I realized not to ask what happened to my sister's friends in the hospital) no matter how much the staff and families try to make it fun. The Academy provided an escape from that and a peak into just how amazing the natural world could be.
Four years ago, I went back to visit the Academy one last time before the old building was closed and construction of the new Academy began, I still knew my way around 20 years later. Now construction is over and the new Acadamy is a month away from opening.
KQED's program Quest gave a preview this week. I'm looking forward to taking my brother and his kids for a visit.
