Link Me Up, Scotty - Mensch and Reprobate Edition

Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Sandler O'Neill & Partners, a banking firm, lost 66 employees during the 9/11 attack. Immediately afterward, they set up a Foundation to pay for the college tuition of the 76 children who lost a parent, and 54 of those (now) young adults have completed their schooling, with 22 children still eligible.

The money quote:
[I]...ask[ed] him why he instantly did so very much the right thing, the extraordinary thing, when it would have been so easy and normal and understandable to just do enough.

"Because there was a moment in time to stand up," Dunne says, bluntly. "Because we believed that what we did would echo for a hundred years in the families of our people, their kids and their grandkids. Because how we conducted ourselves in those first few hours and days would define who we really were and what we were about." 
H/T Sister Rivi
_______________

The Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mobus, has announced that by the end of the year, all Navy jobs will be open to every service member regardless of gender, provided they can meet the established standards. No exceptions. When I was in uniform, women were always considered "less than," and this was the major reason why. It's hard to convince a misogynistic culture that women are equal to men when there are categories of jobs women can't do, by law. About fucking time.

H/T Shippie Jim
_______________

NPR reports on scientific literacy in United States using results from the Pew Research Center and The director of the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy at the University of Michigan. The results are painfully, horrifyingly, distressingly predictable. HOW CAN 33% OF AMERICANS NOT KNOW THAT IT TAKES A YEAR FOR THE EARTH TO GO AROUND THE SUN. NOW PAGING COPERNICUS.

The barbarians are at the gate, y'all, and they're us. 
________________

Donald Trump's public appearances most closely resemble a sideshow at a three ring circus, but the message under the hoopla and spectacle is a damn ugly one. And in other news, water is wet. If the GOP allows Trump to win the nomination for their party, I believe it will be the catalyst for the largest minority turnout for the general election in history. Which is not a bad thing.
________________

I'm sure most of you have heard about the yokels who had a 14 year old aspiring engineer arrested when he brought his home-made clock (AN ASSIGNED PROJECT, Y'ALL) to school. And in a completely tone deaf and bone-headed move, they then suspended the young man and refused to admit any fault in the incident. Did I mention the young man's name is Ahmed Mohamed, and he's Muslim? That makes the District's "reasons" for their behavior become much clearer, at least from where I sit.

And then President Obama did this, and won the Internet:


0 comments: