What I want for Christmas

Even though I don't personally celebrate Christmas anymore, a lot of my family does, so I feel entitled to make a list (in order from most likely to I wish):

1. Repeal of DADT.
2. Spurs aggregate win over AC Milan in Champions League.
3. Prison reform/marijuana legalization (not the same things but overlapping goals).
4. Jetpack.

Online Myths Gone Wild

I don't mean to pick on John Derbyshire (well, maybe a little), but did it not cross his mind to be at least a little skeptical of this:

Well, there is an urgent need for firefighters in the West to battle about two dozen major wildfires. The Denver channel dot-com [?] reports that many of the new recruits are Hispanics who speak only Spanish, and in Oregon that means that some of the supervisors who speak only English are being laid off or demoted, because in Oregon a crew boss is required to be able to speak the language of the firefighters, even if it's only one worker on a twenty-person crew.

The state says the rule is necessary for safety reasons. So why not require the workers to speak English? The state has no clear answer on that.

Five minutes poking around brought me this, from the Oregon Department of Forestry:

The old saying, “Rumor can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on,” is borne out in information circulating on the web and elsewhere that claims the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) is firing and demoting fire crew bosses that do not speak Spanish.

This is not the case. Here are the facts:

• ODF has no requirement that its employees speak Spanish, and does not demote or fire anyone because they don’t speak Spanish. And to our knowledge, no crew boss on the private contract fire crews we use has ever been fired because of inability to speak Spanish.
• ODF and its partner agencies contract with private companies to supply fire crews for frontline firefighting work. The crews work under the guidance of incident management teams fielded by ODF and other agencies to manage large firefighting operations.
• Because English is the language of firefighting in the United States, we must have the ability to communicate with all crews. Accordingly, the contract requires that the leaders of contract crews speak English. This requirement covers the crew boss and the three squad bosses on a typical 20-person crew.
• Companies may choose whom they hire for their crews. If a company elects to hire employees who do not speak English, then the supervisors of that crew must speak English as well as the language of any crew members who don’t speak English. This is a matter of good communication, safety, and effectiveness for the agencies that hire crews under the contract. Over the years, this system has established a record of solid firefighting performance and safety.

Keep on tilting, Derb.

Dude

Soon-to-be-President Obama collects comic books (specifically Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian) (via Matt Yglesias). This makes up for him being a West Ham fan. Though, come to think of it: skinny intellectual comic-book reading soccer fan? It's like Obama is me, only, you know, successful. And black.

That's President Barack Hussein Obama to you

A day that was long overdue.

Of course, now comes the hard part.

The Great Gig in the Sky

Rick Wright died today. I had pretty much given up on expecting any new work from Pink Floyd, and after The Wall they had never achieved the same level of quality they did when fighting together through the '70s. They all seemed fat and happy and deservedly content to rest on their laurels (well, Roger apart, of course). But of course there's always that small chance, until something like this happens.

So it's a sad day, partly because of that small chance being gone and mostly because 65 is still too young. But Rick Wright played a large part in a really great band, and that's worth being happy about. So cheers to you, Rick, and here's hoping there's a really finely tuned Hammond organ in the sky.

Overhead, Without Any Fuss, A Star Was Going Out

I didn't really intend to go on a blogroll here, but now comes the news that Arthur C. Clarke has died. My extremely minor connection to Clarke is that when I was working at my first job in New York as an editorial assistant for Asimov's and Analog, I was responsible for gathering e-mail, and we received one brief one from Clarke (I can't remember to whom it was directed). I was actually not a huge SF fan (I think that helped me get the job, really), but that and taking a phone call from Harlan Ellison were cool moments (though maybe not as memorable as my encounter with the Star Child).

More importantly, he was responsible for helping Stanley Kubrick shape the brilliant 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film I loved as a child and still love today (though not for the exact same reasons), he wrote the classic Childhood's End (in important respects a forerunner of 2001), and generally was in the vanguard of encouraging space exploration and scientific discovery. There may have been arguments about who the B was in the ABCs of SF, but the C was always Clarke.

It Haunts Me

It originated in Chicago and was syndicated in a few areas around the country, including the city of my childhood, Dallas, and it was the weirdest, creepiest children's show I have ever seen, like some methed-out version of Sesame Street. So naturally I want to share. I give you The Gigglesnort Hotel:





I'm sure the creators are perfectly lovely, nondemented people, but my sense is that if they televise a children's show in Hell, it's this one.