Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Random news blasts

Vladimir Putin won election as President of Russia again in elections blasted by the opposition as "corrupt" and "unfair". Thing is, opinion polls and exit polling by independent organizations seem to say that Putin has the support of around 55% of Russians, so in a fair election he'd win anyhow. Pumping up the total to 65% is just habit or arrogance on his part, apparently. You know how it goes, you're a secret policeman, there's some things you do just because that's how you've always done it, even if you don't need to do them anymore...

In other news, thanks to recent tuition hikes at the University of California system, it is now cheaper for the average middle-class student to attend Harvard or Princeton than to attend UC-Berkeley. WTF?! This is just fucked up. But what can you expect from a state that spends more on prisons than on higher ed? Of course that's not why the state is bankrupt -- the state is bankrupt because of Medicaid costs combined with a tax code that is one loophole after another for the Ciscos and Intels of the world so that corporate taxes flowing to the Franchise Tax Board today have plummeted to almost nothing -- but still, it just goes to show California's priorities. If I didn't have to live here to work... SIGH!

And finally, Comcast is being Comcraptastic again. Sigh! They had it fixed for a couple days, then it went right back to crap again. Thus why no links to the stories above, I just don't have reliable enough Internet to do the web searches for the right links (those stories came out of the dead trees).

-- Badtux the News Flash Penguin

1 comment:

  1. I was born and raised in Bezerkeley, high school class of 1971. There was this 'unspoken promise' in my years there , that if you were a good student, good grades, the right social clubs, ( I went to cotallion) , etc, that you would be guaranteed access to Cal B. upon graduation. I went other ways(like "my side of the mountain")and never put that to the test.
    I wonder sometimes if that was just a day dream even back then. I feel much more empowered by my survival skills and time outdoors that I think "computer science" would have left me feeling now. Hard to say tho, hard to say.
    w3ski

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