Some musings on the education speech

Okay, I read the text of Mr. Obama's address to school children. If this is what he'd originally planned to say, a lot of us on the right should be feeling a little sheepish. If this is a significant revision from what he originally planned to say, we should be pleased.

Some of the right-leaning commentariat is unhappy with the I-I-I content of the speech. Not me. First of all, the guy's a Leo, like me, so what do you expect? If he's self-referential, blame the stars! But more serious is the point that goes to what karenkay called the transformative nature of his presidency on, especially, African-Americans. Mr. Obama's personal narrative of the absent father, the invested mother, the missteps, and the second chances resonates with many people -- but especially with those who have always believed they had *no* chances. I am hopeful that many students will find inspiration in his remarks.

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EMP Deflector?

I've been spending a couple spare brain cells thinking about the potential devastating attacks of an electromagnetic pulse event, now getting some play over at WIRED:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/e-bomb-doomsday-conference-starts-today

This is a nice change from zOMG Obama is going to steal my doctor or zOMG we're going to be hit by an asteroid. So now I'm wondering what one could do to protect one's own things from an EMP attack. I found this page:

http://www.standeyo.com/News_Files/NBC/EMP.protection.html

...but it's 20 years old.

Rummaging around on various other sites, it appears that the easiest way to shield sensitive one's electronics may be to put them in something like our late lamented Mr. Red Car or our son's GOAT, and park the car far away from metal buildings till the shooting is over.



(Of course, we don't have Mr. Red Car, since the ageing Mrs. Cipullo ran a red light in the early 80s and creamed Roy -- who was furious, as he'd hoped to baby that car along till it hit 500,000 miles. But he replaced it with Mr. Alfa Romeo and was content.)

Now, I don't see an old Clunker in our immediate future as long as we're here. I could see jury-rigging a Faraday Box out of a file cabinet, but what's all this about keeping things eight feet from phone lines? Does that mean external phone lines? I don't think there's a spot in our house that's 8 fee from the internal kind...

This is all a thinly-veiled excuse to post that toothsome picture of our handsome younger selves when we had a car that could turn heads... It's amazing that Roy looks exactly like himself and that my hair still does some of those very same flippy things if left to its own devices. I think I still have those shoes packed away in Anderson House, too...