Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Other than recognizing the parking lot, the good part is in the last 15 seconds or so.

A couple years ago (actually, exactly two years ago, which is somewhat frightening), I asked if there was a word for the day after tomorrow. Until now, the answer, it seemed to me, was “yes, but not a good one.” Now, however, I’ve found a good answer to this question: overmorrow. Overmorrow is allegedly obsolete, but I believe that can be changed.

PS: for me and the rest of the PHP coders out there: unfortunately strtotime(“overmorrow”) does not work.

PPS: I’m not the only one who has discovered this. There are over 4000 google results, and a handy xkcd thread.

I think I’m dealing with a small sample size, but it seems like whenever I read something at ThinkProgress, there’s at least one major error. Today’s case in point, “Five Progressive Deficit Reduction Ideas That Both Obama And The House Republicans Failed To Endorse“. Let’s go straight to #1 [emphasis mine]

1. Rein In The Military Budget: … CAP Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has laid out $1 trillion in defense reductions that can be made over the next 10 years by phasing out outdated programs and resizing our military. This comes out to roughly $100 billion a year, which is approximately how much funding is being proposed to be cut from the Pell Grant program.

If the cuts to the Pell Grant program are $100 BILLION per year, the implication is that the program itself must be many times bigger. 2x? 5x? 10x? Is the Pell Grant program a $1 TRILLION dollar a year program?

So what’s the mistake here? Bad reading? Bad math? Or both?

On the reading side, I think one could argue that misreading of the quote below could be cause.

“House Republicans’ Spending Bill for Remainder of 2011 Would Cut Pell Grant by 15 Percent… Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have unveiled a spending bill for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year that would slash $100-billion from the president’s budget request.”

Of course, you’d have to be making a really idiotic mistake to convert that to what appeared on ThinkProgress.

What about the math?

Let’s look more at the article about the cuts to Pell Grants. We learn that Republican proposals would make 1.7 MILLION people ineligible and it would reduce max funding per person by $845 to $4705 from $5550. Here’s the math: Assume that those 1.7 MILLION people would have qualified for the full amount. That would amount to a $9.4 BILLION cut, leaving $90.6 BILLION to be cut. If we divide the $90.6 BILLION to be cut by the $845 per person, we find that ThinkProgress is implying that over 107 MILLION people are receiving $5550 per year in Pell Grants from the federal government.

What’s more, the size of the program isn’t even nearly $100 BILLION per year. Obama’s proposed budget “would expand the Pell Grant program to nearly $35 billion.”

In other words, it’s quite a fuckup, and what I consider to be par for the course.

From February 16th, 2010. This picture was taken 10 days after it started snowing.

Right now there’s no snow on the ground and high temperatures are forecast to be in the 50s and 60s the next several days. What a nice change.

Under his proposed budget, “Obama would cut airport spending while proposing $53 billion for high-speed rail.” The first part of that quote is great. Obama is proposing “$1.1 billion in cuts to airport grants.” A spending cut. That’s a good start. Too bad it’s paired with such a large, stupid, spending proposal.

Nearly as stupid are the airlines, who are “saying it amounts to a $2 billion tax increase on the flying public.” Cry me a freaking river. It’s wrong that we should expect people who are flying to pay the costs associated with, ya know, flying? The horror! Much better of course that we keep taxing the non-flying public for the sake of the flying public. Stupid airline asshats.

Equally as stupid as the airlines, apparently, are the Republicans who are opposed to ending the grants that the airlines are currently receiving.

Fuckemall.

I just had a memory from my childhood. Several times on children’s television there were features about some guy who had built a weird computerized bicycle. I suspect it will take some time to find out what the deal was and is with that guy, so hopefully this will help me remember to search later when I have time.