Yale meets University of Delaware

Not to be out done by a mere state university, Yale is now hiring "diversity councilors" to make sure Yale students are trained multi-culti's. At Delaware (my alma mater!) diversity training was pretty close to brain washing. ("All whites are racists. When did you become aware of your sexuality") An Ivy like Yale ought be be able to raise diversity training to truly Gulag levels.

What's gotten into kids these days? (WSJ)

"Glennette Scott was horrified when heer daughter Brianna, 3, started picking fights, throwing chairs, and having emotional meltdowns in pre school."

Could it be that 3 is just plain too young for preschool?

Do we really need more roads?

Contractors love roadbuilding contracts. Automakers like more roads. Real estate people want roads that raise the value of their raw land.
A twelve member federal panel issued a Surface Transportation report the other day. It called for jacking up the federal gas tax to pay for $225 billion a year in "infrastructure investment". Most amazing fact is that one quarter of the panel, including US Transportation Secretary Mary Peters refused to sign the report. Doubtless she fears the money would go for more bridges to now where. The vice chairman of the committee went on C-Span defending the majority spend-a-lot report. Turns out he is a lawyer. What does a lawyer know about surface transportation? Another member is a state transportation secretary. Where are the truckers, the civil engineers, the railroaders, the shippers, the bus operators and AAA on this committee?
And, with $4 a gallon staring us in the face, do we really think traffic is going to increase that much in the future? Especially as we already have interstate highways running the length and breadth of the land. No where in the US is far from an interstate. Do we want to double them up to carry more traffic? I don't think so.
Fuel costs are going to press the truckers into more piggyback (trailers hauled cross country on railroad flatcars) operations. That will keep the freight moving.
Traffic expands to fill road available. Build more roads, speeding up peoples commute, and they will take jobs further from home. It is impossible to build enough road to prevent rush hour traffic jams.

Medical Costs, FDA enhancement thereof

February Popular Science has a round up article on new treatments for various diseases. Two different researchers, on two different projects, are quoted saying they have no plans to commercialize the treatment because getting the treatment thru the FDA approval process is just too expensive.
FDA has been in a CYA mode ever since the thalidomide disaster in the 1960's. They always demand more tests, more clinical trials, more studies, more time, and more money. The small laboratory or independent researcher lacks the money, skill, endurance, and connections to even contemplate entering the obstacle course that is FDA drug approval trials. The classic technique for jacking up prices is to eliminate competitors. FDA is doing that for the pharmaceutical business.

How Detroit can meet the 35 MPG CAFE,

Simple. Vehicles that can run on ethanol, the so called flex fuel vehicles, get a 50% bonus on gas mileage for the purposes of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) calculations. Make all the company's vehicles be flex fuel vehicles and presto, chango, each company's CAFE jumps from today's 27 mpg to 40.5 mpg. Problem solved.
Cost? Trivial. They have to specify that fuel system elastomers (mostly hoses and gaskets) will withstand ethanol. This isn't hard, this stuff already withstands gasoline, and most elastomers that are gasoline proof are also alcohol proof. The auto makers simply specify alchohol resistance on all their purchase orders, and the suppliers will do the rest. Alcohol resistant hoses and gaskets don't cost anymore than what the industry uses today. The fuel injectors have to inject about 1/3rd more alcohol than gasoline, but the injectors are all controlled by microprocessors. Add a bit more programming (code) and the micro will squirt in the right among of alcohol for proper engine operation. More code is cost free.
Marketing can have a field day trumpeting how green the flex fuel vehicles are.

Obama, the only Democrat in favor of nuclear power

Caught the democratic debate on MSNBC last night. The field has been whittled down to Obama, Clinton, and Edwards. Quite a bit of shrinkage since the first debates. The NBC newsies moderating the debate ( posing the questions) made a couple of attempts to stir up some racial tension but Obama and Clinton weren't buying any of that. With one exception the three survivors are all coming from the same place, issues wise. Obama was the one exception, he spoke favorably about nuclear power, whereas Clinton and Edwards both said no way. Obama did qualify his support a bit, calling for more testing, review panels, environmental impact statements, and such, but he did say yes.
On this issue Obama is the only grownup. Candidates who obsess about addiction to oil, energy independence, CO2, and global warming, which Clinton and Edwards did, while rejecting the only existing technology that will reduce same, are being childish.

TV news brings race into the Democratic primary

During the NH primary Bill and Hillary made a couple of remarks that could be interpreted as slights to Martin Luther King or Barack Obama. You have to work at it to see the remarks as racial slights, but the TV guys have a lot of time to do just that. The TV news has been rerunning, commenting upon, and asking "have you stopped beating MLK" kinds of questions for a week now. Even Lehrer's News Hour rose to the bait last night. With enough air time they can convince the electorate of many things. I find it shameful for newsies to egg the candidates on to disgraceful behavior. So far the candidates have kept their cool (mostly) but how long will that last with the national press calling for a fight over who is more racially prejudiced?