May 2008 archive

So I was poking around in one of my boxes of salvage parts today and I ran across an old IBM keyboard.

Not so old because it has one of those PS/2 connectors instead of the older style AT (the main drawback is that people plug their mice into the wrong hole) but old enough that IBM was still making a point about their keyboards and how nice the feel was.

People claim that the IBM Selectric Typewriter had the best keyboard ever.  I know that my Olivetti portable had a real snappy action.  Early on in my computing career I got myself 2 Northgate Omnikey Ultras, THE BEST KEYBOARD EVER, with function keys where God intended them, across the top AND down the side.  Sadly they each need about $50 dollars of repair that is not in my current budget, the last one having gone down a little less than a year ago.

Since then I have suffered with a “Windows” keyboard of the mushiest kind imaginable with innumerable function keys to run your Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.  You have to turn them all off to make it not screw up your whole system.

It worked, but it was like pushing your fingers into squishy memory foam.  I’m quite happy to have snappy keys that push back under my digital control again.

This is a book review of Benson, Harkavy, and Puckett’s book of last year,

Dewey’s Dream (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2007), which picks out a moment in John Dewey’s opus in which he is recommending a rather activist model of schooling.  The authors of Dewey’s Dream then criticize Dewey for deserting this vision, largely to be found in Dewey’s (1899) text The School and Society, and suggest that Dewey’s leaving Chicago (and his experimental school) was a disaster.  I agree, and further suggest that there are insights to be found in Dewey that go beyond those to be found in Dewey’s Dream.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

1. The Washington Post reports the Fifth top aide to McCain resigns. “Tom Loeffler, the national finance co-chairman for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, resigned yesterday because of his lobbying ties… He is the fifth person to sever ties with the campaign amid a growing concern over whether lobbyists have too great an influence over the Republican nominee.”

   “McCain… has been criticized for months about the number of lobbyists serving in key positions in his campaign. Until recently, his top political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., was the head of a Washington lobbying firm…”

   “Loeffler, a former congressman from Texas, is a close friend of McCain’s and took over the campaign’s fundraising last summer… His firm, the Loeffler Group, had collected $15 million from Saudi Arabia and millions more from other foreign governments. He is listed as chairman and senior partner at the firm.”

   The New York Times reports McCain to rely on Republican Party money against Obama. “To confront the Obama juggernaut, Senator John McCain, whose fund-raising has badly trailed that of his Democratic counterparts, is leaning on the Republican National Committee…

   To that end, Republican officials said they were enlisting President Bush, a formidable fund-raiser who has raised more than $36 million this year for Republican candidates and committees, for three events on Mr. McCain’s behalf… Offering a glimpse of the kind of money that can be spread around with such a committee, $300,000 was collected from nine hedge fund executives and real estate investors at an event in New York in March…

   Lacking a robust small-dollar Internet fund-raising operation, Mr. McCain has a busy schedule of some two dozen high-dollar fund-raising events this month.”

2. Meanwhile, Barack Obama draws a crowd of between 72,000 and 75,000 people in Portland, Oregon. The Oregonian reports “Tens of thousands jammed Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland on Sunday to watch Sen. Barack Obama wrap up a busy weekend in Oregon and a historic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.”

   According to the Tribune Newspapers, Obama gave his standard 30-minute stump speech, but added a few Portland flourishes. “He’s added a few Oregonian flourishes, drawing big cheers when he said the country can learn from Portland’s commitment to mass transit and bicycle lanes. The biggest applause came when he denounced the Iraq war”.

   “If you vote for me on Tuesday,” Obama said, “We won’t just win Oregon. We’ll win this nomination, we’ll win this general election. And you and I together, we’ll change this country, we’ll change the world.”

Four at Four continues below the fold with a story from Guantanamo Bay and about banning cluster bombs.

There has been a lot of talk over the past few months and even past couple of years with respect to the refugee crisis in Iraq – the flight of much of the professional class from Iraq, the displacement of millions of Iraqis and the sectarian cleansing are just some of the things that jump to mind.  Couple that with the high unemployment rate, the lack of electricity, the ongoing violence and rampant corruption, and the outlook has been pretty bleak for quite some time.

However, the recent events and fighting in Sadr City that created a shortage of food, water and medicine for tens of thousands of Iraqis (including up to 75,000 children) is just the tip of the iceberg.

How can that be, you may ask.