Friday, May 18, 2007

Florida Reading Problems

Not only do some Floridians have trouble reading and understanding how to correctly execute a political ballot, requiring state intervention, via the courts, to clarify a vote, apparently some Floridians in Destin, Florida have trouble reading and understanding bathroom signs, which also required state intervention.

Like the dollar bills hanging from the ceiling or the signature drink the Irish Wake, the craftily worded signs on the bathroom doors are part of the charm of McGuires’s Irish Pub.

It takes some careful attention to the fine print to end up in right bathroom, but it’s all in good fun, said General Manager Billy Martin.

“We’re not trying to be malicious,” Martin said. “It’s an Irish joke kind of thing.”

For those who haven’t seen them, the gist is the men’s room sign has large print that reads “Ladies” and smaller text clarifying they shouldn’t go in there because it’s the men’s room — vice-versa for the other bathroom.

But not everyone sees the humor, and the signs have been removed by order of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

The agency threatened McGuire’s with closure for a six-word violation — “Lack of signage properly designating bathrooms.”

The problem, here, wasn’t a lack of signage, but a lack of reading comprehension, and a sense of humor.

State forces McGuire’s to remove ‘joke’ restroom signs

Via The Obscure Store.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/18 at 11:11 AM
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Laws for Short and Fat People in Massachusetts

It appears that the State of Massachusetts has more problems than just issues with dogs. They are now attempting to craft legislation to protect the rights of short and fat people.

Ellen Frankel stands just 4-foot-8 inches tall, a size that allowed larger co-workers to playfully scoop her up at the office and make remarks about her height. Some even patted her on the head.
Lawmakers are considering complaints such as hers as they review a bill that would make Massachusetts just the second state to bar discrimination based on height or weight.

Just the second state to craft such a law, hey?  A dubious distinction at best.  I wonder if songs such as Randy Newman’s Short People, will run afoul of the height and weight police in Massachusetts?

While I agree with the comment made by Jeanne Toomb, as noted in the article linked below, that individuals, no matter what their height or weight, “deserve to be treated as human beings,” this should not require legislation to enact.

Todd Domke sums it up rather well.

‘’We might as well add colorblind, left-handed, allergic-to-cashews, and get it over with,’’ Domke said.

Short, fat people may get rights

Posted by John Venlet on 05/18 at 07:28 AM
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Learning from Historic Travels in Islamic Lands

The Claremont Institute has an interesting piece available for reading online titled Encountering Islam.

The piece is written by Algis Valiunas, is a semi critique of Edward Said’s writing, and it provides a concise overview of lessons learned in Muslim lands by some of the more well known travelers of that part of the world.  Works written by men such as Chateaubriand, Edward Lane, Gustave Flaubert, Richard F. Burton, Charles Doughty, T.E. Lawrence, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Lloyd Stephens, Mark Twain, and Robert Byron.  Lessons we can still learn from.

The piece is long, just over 6900 words, so it will take a bit of your time to read, but it is well worth your time.  An excerpt from towards the end of Valiunas’ piece.

Someone who reads only Edward Said—and he is a sainted authority among leftist academics today—may come away convinced that his argument is true. But to read in the travel literature he disparages is to see how wrong he is. The travelers’ tales do not originate in malevolent prejudice or issue in gross distortion; rather they are drawn from carefully observed reality. A great variety of writers see many different things; but more importantly, they see some of the same things over and over again, not because of the Orientalists’ engrained turn of mind, but because those things are striking and significant and true. The travel literature overwhelmingly shows Islam recoiling from the Western touch, perhaps in part out of legitimate fear that it might be transformed into an alien shape with all the West’s deformities, and to a great degree out of blind hatred inculcated over centuries of prejudice and ignorance. In any case, the Orientalists’ writings testify to the deep roots of the modern Islamist fighting creed, in which Islamic purity must be preserved from Western, liberal, modernizing pollution.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/18 at 05:44 AM
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Count Me Out of the "Next Social Contract"

Writing in the Washington Post, Reid Cramer and Ray Boshara suggest that the next president should engineer a new social contract.

Whenever I read words such as “new social contract,” I immediately check to ensure that my wallet is still in my pocket, and that my arms are close at hand.

The first five paragraphs of Cramer and Boshara’s piece, for the most part, provide advice to the ever growing crowd of presidential wannabes, noting this presidential race as a “historic moment,” since no incumbents are running.  Though there may not be any past presidents, or vice presidents running for high office, I’d say that the field of candidates is littered with incumbents, anyway, representing merely the status quo.  But I am disgressing from what I desire to discuss in this post.

After the first five paragraphs, Cramer and Boshara begin to describe the “next social contract,” and initially one could be inclined to think that, hey, this makes sense.

We suspect Americans will be able to agree that going forward we need policies that are designed to encourage entrepreneurship and risk-taking, promote long-term growth and wealth creation, and encourage individuals and families...

After the word “families,” though, Cramer and Boshara’s proposal totally breaks down.

”...not as employees, but as citizens. This is why the next social contract must be citizen-based, lifelong, and supportive of families and economic growth. Taken together, these principles offer a vision for the kind of society we should aspire to become, serving as the social and political glue which binds people together in a cohesive collective.

Making the social contract citizen-based means that benefits aimed at individuals should flow directly to them rather than through employers or other intermediaries, and they should be fully portable so that eligibility is not contingent on where you work, where you live or what communities you belong to. Moreover, the next social contract should extend throughout the life course, supporting families as they raise young children. Currently, we seem to have socialized old age and privatized care of the very young. A better approach would be to begin at birth by guaranteeing health care, pre-school and asset accounts for all children. And we should adopt policies that help families balance their work and family responsibilities through, for instance, greater access to flex-time and family income insurance. Furthermore, the goal of the next social contract should not be to eliminate poverty through as-of-right income transfers, but to ensure that everyone is given a stake in our shared prosperity through broad-based asset ownership.

Yeah, a “better approach” is to turn individuals into state dependents at birth, rather than simply at old age, and let’s stop “as-of-right income transfers,” and simply redistribute assets instead.

Count me out.

The Next Social Contract

Posted by John Venlet on 05/18 at 04:31 AM
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