Even if you're a customer service droid, you need to be able to divide by 100 and keep your units straight. If you don't, in this glorious internet age, someone may record the conversation to shame you and your company. In the case of Verizon, not just one, but several customer service representatives and managers were caught being unable to distinguish between 0.002 cents per kilobyte and 0.002 dollars per kilobyte, even when it was explained to them repeatedly:

LSU decided to cancel classes on Monday, September 26.

However, the LSU football game will be held in Tiger Stadium on Monday night, as scheduled.

If my reading is correct, the proposed rule changes by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in the Department of Commerce that were posted in the March 28 Federal Register contain changes that appear to be designed to prevent many foreigners in the US, specifically including foreign students, from having access to more than very basic computing power. I have written a quick analysis.

Alabama is at it again. Not content with their continued assaults against teaching science instead of religion, they're now attacking the teaching of literature — if the author or any of the characters is gay.

A bill proposed by Republican Representative Gerard Allen would ban any such book from public school libraries. Originally, this went so far as to cover Shakespeare, though he eventually added in an exception for "classics", a term that he never defined (I suppose a library could get around it by calling any work older than 20 years a "classic"). Amazingly, he even seems to be disputing that such an act is censorship:

I regularly see or hear about people with the notion that the right to freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, includes the right to demand that the government endorse you and pay for your advertising, distribution costs, and even your soapbox.

The Associated Press is reporting that a law school student group at a southern Illinois university is suing the university — for failing to provide funding and the official university sanction to their group, which requires members to pledge to adhere to Christian beliefs, including a prohibition against homosexuality. The group can still use campus facilities to meet, they haven't been banned from speaking on campus, but somehow, the fact that this government institution, a taxpayer-funded university, refuses to lend its name and its funding to a religious group means that freedom of speech is being restricted.

I remember having a civics class as early as junior high, and a US Government class in high school. I also had the advantage of parents who took an interest in my education. I cannot claim that I was not unusually advantaged. Still, I am left gibbering in horror at this.