Pet Peeve of the Day: "Some People"

Depending on who you ask, I am either gifted with the opportunity to pursue my creative ambitions in a non-traditional academic setting, or I'm being lazy, worthless and shiftless in a place full of people that never worked an honest trade in their lives. Either way, I'm at a liberal arts college.

"Oh, Darling, isn't it avant-garde?"

Well, liberal arts colleges apparently have a habit of attracting them who say things like "Those people" when referring to folk that are wrong, biased and/or backwards. This just drives me crazy. We were discussing why Americans hold this and that horrible opinion of Muslims, and some girl starts chirping about how "they" were ignorant, or misled by the media, or just plain stupid. News flash: You're in this country with the rest of us, and just because you're sitting in a well-furnished room in an Islam class doesn't mean you get to look down on the dumb proleteriat, you ass.

Anyway, that's my pet peeve of the moment. Moving on, I've got a roundup of a few links:

From Der Spiegel, via the lovely Veronika Apfl, we have this tidbit about an owl who had too much Schnapps somewhere in Germany. The owl was reportedly found slurring its words and singing Bavarian showtunes in the parking lot of a local pub. http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,740157,00.html

Its eyes are crossed!!

From POLITICO, we have the report of House Republicans rolling out a whopping $2.5 trillion in cuts to federal spending, which would be saved over the next ten years or so. I applaud the spirit, but no matter its status as the instant death of political ambitions, someone's going to have to tackle Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid someday. And let's not forget the sprawling defense budget. Neither of those things are addressed in the House's package, according to POLITICO. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47896.html#ixzz1BeOo9CY8

Along the same lines, we have a column in yesterday's Washington Post by GOP presidential prospect Tim Pawlenty in which he lays the wood to Obama's rhetoric: The choice isn't necessarily between raising the debt limit and defaulting on our obligations. We can stop the budget ballooning in size. I don't like Pawlenty's Tea Party-esque shots--'Washington insiders say this can't be done', or empty words like "Set some priorities and then cut funding for just about everything else" but it's hard to disagree with his other points. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012103415_pf.html

From a couple of days ago, we have a report from the GAO about what DADT was actually costing the government to enforce. Try upwards of $193 million over the life of the policy. You want a place to cut the defense budget, I found one! http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-170

And the cool Wikipedia science-y link of the day: Black holes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole "Black holes in fiction" is also a fun read.

I'm going to eat "those sandwiches". Later, blogosphere!