Where did that week go?

Yesterday (Sunday), we went to Connecticut to see R.'s family. That was nice. I made a horrible, stupid, no-good mistake, and ate some ice cream when I meant to be eating fake ice cream. R. caught it, and the only impact is increased post-nasal drip: no hacking cough, no throwing up or other unpleasantness. But I'm going to be _really_ careful for a while.

T. has figured out how to detect the book trick at the bookstore for the chicken socks draw it again book, so we are not going to the bookstore until I come up with a new clever plan, possibly involving replacing the red zip tie that is the primary difference between new and not-new.

This week is spring break. Also we all continue to suffer from colds and/or allergies.

home economics?

Family and consumer sciences?

Perhaps one of my readers who has recently wrapped up a junior high school and/or high school career or their parent(s) could answer a dumb question. Do schools have shop and/or home ec classes anymore? I recognize they aren't mandatory anymore (and haven't been for a long while), and they may have combined or metamorphosed and/or changed names, but basically I'm trying to find out if there are any classes in junior high or high school which attempt to teach kids how to do things like cook, sew, use wood or metalworking tools, etc. I know some schools have gardens and classes associated with them ranging from biology to cooking to nutrition and so forth.

And if home ec literally died, which decade did it in? Was it the nineties or the aughties?

magnetar

Really, right up there with hiring John Galt whatsis to do government contracting. Could Magnetar possibly be up to anything other than no good at all?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar

In any event, the hedge fund Magnetar is getting some scrutiny, since Goldman Sachs seems to think it is reasonable to defend its own activities with Abacus by pointing a finger over to the side and said, but they did it too, before us, and lots worse.

Perhaps a reasonable argument.

http://www.propublica.org/feature/all-the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble

Some shocking quotes in there: a banker who reviews a deal he did and comments that he deserved to lose his job; Moody's balking at rating the worst of the worst of the Magnetar CDO deals.

I was supremely unhappy with the ProPublica article about Memorial Hospital. Picking on hospital staff in that situation is pointless. The bad decision was to shelter in place. Actually, scratch that. The bad decision was to have any kind of significant hospital facility in that kind of location in the first place. But the Magnetar article is awesome. Forge your way through it; it is one shocking revelation after another.